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Pursuing three horizons of growth - three cases: Bombardier (Canada), Disney (US) and Hutchison Whampoa (China)	[ "Resources", "Uncertainty management", "Entrepreneurialism", "Business development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: For all businesses, continued growth is a central challenge - where will it come from, how to invest for it, how to manage it? Since Edith Penrose's Theory of the Growth of the Firm (Penrose, 1959), knowledge and capabilities-based theory of growth has attracted scholars and practitioners. The theory's attractiveness owes a lot to its focus on entrepreneurship, strategic choice, understanding of risks and uncertainties, and the entrepreneur's \"image\" of new productive opportunities capitalizing on firm knowledge and capabilities (Penrose, 1959; Chandler, 1962; Wernerfelt, 1984; Hamel and Prahalad, 1990; Barney, 1991; Kay, 2003; Peteraf, 1993; Teece and Pisaro, 1994; Slywotsky and Morrison, 1997).\nEntrepreneurship: the most important job: McGrath and MacMillan (2000) argue that leaders of growth initiatives should have in-depth understanding of customers and markets, sustained personal and organizational interest in as-yet unprofitable projects, clear two-way communication with employees while results are still unknown, and the ability to recognize when to continue with - or abandon - a promising idea.The focus on an entrepreneurial mindset brings to mind Edith Penrose's acknowledgment that the entrepreneur is the primary shaper of the firm's productive opportunity, a composite of the possibilities that are envisioned and utilized. Entrepreneurs provide invaluable services to their firms, with respect to the introduction and acceptance of new ideas about products, location, and significant changes in technology, the new managerial personnel, fundamental changes in the administrative organization, the raising of capital, and plans for expansion, including the choice of method of expansion.If expansion requires major efforts to develop new markets or entails branching out into new lines, entrepreneurial versatility is needed. Here the imaginative effort, the sense of timing, and the instinctive recognition of what will catch on become overwhelmingly important.These entrepreneurial services are not likely to be equally available to all firms. Operating with the same resources, different entrepreneurs may generate entirely different \"product opportunity\" sets. Penrose submits that the experience and knowledge affect not only the productive services available from resources, but also \"demand\" as seen by the firm (Penrose, 1959).\nA portfolio of ventures and project-based milestones: In The Entrepreneurial Mindset, McGrath and MacMillan (2000) suggested growth-committed firms develop and manage a portfolio of related business experiments, projects and other activities within a target domain selected for its long-term growth opportunities and relevance to the business's core strategies. The goal is not to develop a perfect portfolio at the outset, but to initiate a series of activities that are directionally right and will be refined by multiple market trials. The processes are essentially to try, fail, learn quickly, and try again. Since emerging markets evolve rapidly, the Horizon 3 management team must initiate market trials and modify the strategy to reflect new learning and changing market needs.\nManaging risk by staging investments and setting milestones: Following Penrose, the McKinsey authors and McGrath and MacMillan would argue that the firm exists in an uncertain world where managers must make the best decisions they can, knowing that they may not have complete information.In an uncertain world, one of the most important tasks is to obtain as much information as possible about the course of future events. This requires an input of resources, and making a full evaluation of the information requires the services of existing management. Uncertainty will limit expansion only to the extent that managerial resources are limited. Each new activity undertaken requires an increased input of managerial services to obtain sufficient information, as well as act on the information to develop plans sufficiently formulated to reduce risk.For McGrath and MacMillan (2000), portfolio milestones are a fundamental management vehicle to test entrepreneurial vision, reduce risk, and allow for learning while keeping costs low. Horizon 3 projects need to have explicit milestones/objectives at their launch and need to be adapted as new learning modifies project goals. Milestones should be linked to the most critical business design assumptions.Critical assumptions have one or more of the following properties:* they affect many elements of the project;* they have the greatest effect on key outcomes;* they make or break basic feasibility;* they precipitate significant investment commitments;* small deviations or changes have huge impacts; and* if they are wrong, they cannot deliver the business (McGrath and MacMillan, 2000, p. 260).Portfolio milestones for Horizon 3 initiatives include market trials, product/offering launch, partnerships/alliances, staffing and key customer wins. Each Horizon 3 venture will have unique milestones within these categories. Projects that no longer meet a Horizon 3 objective or fail to meet their milestones must be terminated quickly to minimize losses and enable redeployment of resources. To capture value from terminated projects, an effective exit strategy, involving licensing, sale and/or spin-off, should be pursued. Developing a portfolio of experiments in the new domain allows the entrepreneurial leader the freedom to investigate and test new business design elements, and ultimately determine what avenues will be pursued or avoided.\nA brief history of firms following a three-horizon growth strategy: For The Alchemy of Growth Baghai et al. (1999) profiled a group of international companies that had been employing a three-horizon growth strategy since the late 1980s. I chose to inspect the growth of three of those companies during and after that last downturn: Bombardier of Canada, Disney of the USA, and Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong.Bombardier\nHow the world changed - an assessment of the global environment for business 2000-2003: The highly productive, high energy, high gains environment of the late 1990s had changed dramatically by the second half of 2000 for the technology industry, and for the rest of the world by the second half of 2001. The dotcom bust and the end of the Y2K spike saw the beginning of capital spending cutbacks on big technology projects. GDP sharply decelerated in 2001. Stock valuations fell below 90 per cent of boom-time levels, as the market underwent a series of steep corrections, with no foreseeable bottom. Accounting irregularities in some high profile corporate cases - Enron, WorldCom, and others - led to profit misstatements and ultimate legal action.The September 11, 2001 terrorist attack ignited fears of incidents around the world. The industries most negatively affected were the airline industry and tourism. While tourism began to return in 2002, the airline industry has remained unprofitable. The war in Iraq, which began in 2003, heightened Americans' unwillingness to travel, leading a number of carriers to cut fixed costs and liquefy assets, and others to declare bankruptcy.Through the end of 2003, the economies of the world were still very soft. The leading indicators - GDP growth, lower unemployment claims, low inflation, continued home building and consumer sentiment - reinforced the perspective that the economy was improving, if slowly. Demand was improving. Companies were making adjustments in their businesses, cutting costs, improving their business processes. Consumers continued to spend, fueling retail growth and home building. Consumer confidence reflected low inflation and interest rates as well as continued tax cuts. Capital spending continued weak. IT spending had shifted into security, disaster recovery, networked storage and web-based applications. Investors were only beginning to re-enter the stock market - after siphoning some $2.24 trillion out of stocks from 2000-2002.The spirit of optimism, opportunity and growth that were the hallmark of the \"new economy\" in 2000 had been replaced by caution, cost cutting, and security issues in 2003. Surely, the quality and kind of investment and growth decisions made in this atmosphere would be different. What happened to growth leaders in this period? We can see the impact of the recent economic downturn on several of the \"great grower\" and \"kick starter\" companies profiled by Baghai et al. (1999) (see Table I).\nCase study companies - what became of growth initiatives between last downturn and today?: Bombardier\nLessons for growing firms: While the experience of the last six years has been an extraordinary awakening for those of us brought up in the extraordinarily lush late 1990s, we are far more alert to the impact of the general environment on our business, and more aware of the uncertainty and incomplete knowledge that underlie managerial decision-making at all times. In an environment in which it is neither possible to have all the facts nor completely trust that one's own assessment of the facts is accurate, managers must make the best decisions they can.How important is managing uncertainty to the firm? The Bombardier, Disney and Hutchison Whampoa cases teach a powerful lesson about the role of the general environment in our business operations and the absolute necessity to manage uncertainty by responding to internal and external factors and influences to pursue new opportunities, perceive threats in the environment and change course as might be required to seize advantage or to limit the downside.The ability of the firm to grow, to push into new markets, to develop strategic alliances or joint ventures depends on the insight, assessment and vision of managers who understand the possibilities and the restrictions and act on them with discipline. That discipline includes a horizon approach to investment, the preservation of core businesses and the culling of businesses that are no longer growing, while adding the proceeds to reserves for future growth.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The article looks at how companies pursuing a three-horizon growth strategy weathered the last economic downturn and what became of their growth initiatives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper examines the financial performance and continued investment of three growing companies from 1996-2004: Bombardier (Canada), Hutchison Whampoa (Hong Kong/China) and Disney (US).\nFindings: - The Bombardier, Disney and Hutchison Whampoa cases teach a powerful lesson about the importance of using investment in growth to manage uncertainty and limit downside risk.\nResearch limitations/implications: - While the focus of this article is on three companies only, the financial performances of a dozen other growing firms are examined over the same period for purposes of comparison.\nPractical implications: - Following the last downturn, companies sought to preserve the core and outsource non-critical functions to reduce the cost of business. Some chose to sideline growth initiatives during this period. This article analyzes the outcomes for three companies that continued to invest in growth during and after this period.\nOriginality/value: - This article addresses a series of questions. Is a three-horizon growth strategy sustainable in a downturn? Have companies that pursued a three-horizon strategy actually grown? Do they continue to finance the growth of horizon two and horizon three businesses? Have any viable options matured?\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Religiosity and the construction of a cultural-consumption identity	[ "Culture (sociology)", "Religion", "Consumer behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Religion's influence in consumer behaviour remains under-researched with Cutler (1991) noting only 35 relevant articles out of a sample of 7,000 published during 1959-1989. This paper contributes to this area by exploring religiosity's affect on culture, self-identity and consumption by comparing Indians living in Britain (people of Asian Indian descent with British nationality) to two related groups - Asian Indians and British Whites. This comparison provides a pivotal means to investigate ethnic minority acculturation, both their ancestral and host societies and the affect of religiosity on culturally construed consumption. This paper defines religiosity as the beliefs and behaviours in an external God and not in a specific religion.Britain's dominant religion is Protestant Christianity with church attendance falling to just 1 million people a week out of a population of 60 million (Rowland, 2000). In contrast, India's diverse religious profiles reflect a history of invasion and nationalism, resulting in a variety of dominant religions including: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism and Sikhism. Finally, Indians living in Britain can be identified as transient in their cultural self-identities existing within a collection of societal values that can be identified with both Britain and India.Delener (1990) describes religiosity as one of the most important cultural forces and influences on consumer behaviour. The relationship between religion and culture manifesting through family and self-identity will then applied to three consumer behaviour themes: materialism, role of possessions as status enhancers and the use of friends and family as a reference group.\nBackground: The constituents of religion\nMethodology: Cross-cultural considerations\nResults: The MLR scores are presented in Table II. Based upon overall group EXP (B) scores, both British Whites (with the exception of being significantly more likely to view possessions as status enhancing) and Indians living in Britain had a majority of significantly lower scores than Asian Indians, indicating that both British sample groups were less group and consumption orientated that Asian Indians. Furthermore, British Whites declining religiosity scores showed no significant differences indicating a level of group homogeneity. Therefore, the remaining discussion will focus on Indians living in Britain compared their Asian Indian equivalent.When \"self-identity\" is considered, Indians living in Britain were overall significantly more individualistic in their self-identity, indicated by their EXP (B) scores. This sense of individualism was significantly further enhanced for those who visit a temple either \"never' or \"several times a year\" when compared to their Asian Indian equivalent. When importance of religion is considered, the only significant difference is for religion being not at all important, indicating that Asian Indians are more likely to be individualistic then their Asian Indian equivalent. H1 and H2 are therefore partially supported.Indians living in Britain non-significant score for \"immediate family\", combined with their EXP (B) score indicates they can be considered the same as Asian Indians. When attendance at a temple is considered, only those who attended a temple either \"never' or \"several times a year\" were significantly less likely to hold immediate family values, in contrast to their Asian Indian equivalent. Those Indians living in Britain who believe religion is not important to them were significantly more likely to value the immediate family then their Asian Indian equivalent. Therefore H2 and H3 are partially supported.Indians living in Britain \"materialism\" scores indicated lower levels of materialism as importance of religion declined in contrast to their Asian Indian equivalent, with declining attendance at a religious institution producing significantly higher levels of materialism for those visit a temple either \"never\" or \"several times a year\". In contrast when importance of religion was considered, those Indians living in Britain who viewed religion as not all important were significantly less materialistic than their Asian Indian equivalent. When considered with their overall MLM and EXP (B) scores combined with their religiosity scores we can only partially support H5 and partially reject H6.\"Possessions as status symbols\" produced a significant differences for those Indians living in Britain who visit a temple either \"never' or \"several times a year\" in contrast to their Asian Indian equivalent. When importance of religion in daily life was considered, only those Indians living in Britain, who indicated religion as being not important at all, were significantly less likely to use possessions as status symbols when compared to their Asian Indian equivalent. When considered with their EXP (B) scores we can only partially support H7 and H8.Indians living in Britain and British Whites overall were significantly less likely to use collectivist reference groups, supported by their Exp (B) scores. Indians living in Britain who \"never\" or visited a temple \"several times a year\" were significantly less likely to access this reference group than their Asian Indian equivalent. In contrast when the importance of religion in daily life was considered those Indians living in Britain, those who viewed religion as \"not all\" important were significantly more likely to access this reference group compared to Asian Indians. Considered with their MLR and EXP (B) scores H9 and H10 are partially supported.\"Friends as a reference group\" overall were significantly less likely to be used by Indians living in Britain, with their EXP (B) scores confirming their difference. For Indians living in Britain who \"never\" or visited a temple \"several times a year\" were significantly more likely to access this reference group than their Asian Indian equivalent. In contrast the importance of religion in daily life for those who viewed religion as \"not all\" important were significantly less likely to access this reference group in contrast to Asian Indians. Considered with their MLR and EXP (B) scores H11 and H12 can be partially accepted.\nDiscussion: The premise of this paper was to investigate the extent religiosity affected cultural and subsequently consumer behaviours. Considering the data analysis results, four findings emerge:1. Attendance at a religious institution is not akin to viewing religion as an important aspect of daily life.2. Divergence of religiosity determined consumer behaviours across the Indian sample groups.3. Religion's effect on British Whites.4. Religion as an acculturation agent.Attendance at a religious institution and religion in daily lives would have been expected to produce similar behaviours, since both are inherently inter-related as concepts. This relationship however, was not apparent among the three sample groups. This finding then suggests that religious institution attendance may not be necessarily for religious purposes but actually serve alternative purposes. For example for Asian Indians the relationship between religion and personal life is neither separate nor antagonistic (Venkatesh, 1994). One explanation for the Asian Indian differences between the two religious measures may lie within the religious ethos of Hinduism and Jainism, were worship is not necessary within a designated temple but can be done within the home. Lyon and West (1995, p. 441) and that Indian culture and religions are perceived by Western observers as within a \"narrow sense, as signifying a separate realm of activity, involving devotional matters, rituals and beliefs\". Put simply, religion is inherent within all aspects of Indian life and may not require attendance at a religious building.Another important finding was the divergence in societal and consumer behaviours, amongst the two Indian groups. For Indians living in Britain low or non-attendance at a temple tended to result in heightened levels of individual self-identity and the greater need to engage in the consumption process compared to Asian Indians. The consumption of products therefore may provide a means to culturally identify with other groups of people, supporting Simon and Gagnon's (1976) earlier observations. Both the British groups heightened sense of self-identity may also lead to a detachment from a sense of group belonging. Consumption may then provide a means to create a sense of belonging or compensate for the loss of community belonging. This finding is particularly important as previous cross-cultural research has not identified the affect of declining religiosity on consumption in collectivist cultures. In contrast, Asian Indians self-identity tended to reflect a greater group orientation, attributable to a need to conform, arising from a need to exist within Indian culture, i.e. rejection from the group would remove social identities needed to exist and negotiate Indian society. Indian society and its collectivist cultural values it was argued were based upon the premise of the group needs taking precedent over the individual (Tafarodi and Swann, 1996). Within Indian society and collectivism, an individual's self-identity was orientated towards the need for group conformity, which was identified with higher levels of conspicuous consumption (Sinha, 1982). Religiosity and group conformity among Asian Indian participants may then represent identification with Indian cultural values, explaining the behaviours identified. Therefore, for Asian Indians viewing religiosity as not all important may represent a detachment the very cultural system that religion supports.The British White sample group results indicate that religiosity had no significant affect on their culturally construed consumer behaviours. This finding suggests that in secular cultures, like Britain, religion's influence is minimal and in stark contrast to Lyon and West's (1995) earlier observations regarding religion in Indian society.British Indian religiosity differences may be explained by their ethnic minority status. Religion was identified to be important in creating a sense of racial self-identity in response to discrimination (Dosanjh and Ghuman, 1997). Attendance at a temple may simply occur as a means of substantiating their self-identity among a group they identify with, i.e. fellow Indians living in Britain. For Indians living in Britain low or non-attendance at a temple resulted in heightened levels of detachment from the immediate family suggesting Western individualistic cultural values. The need for a sense of identity may also have switched from a religious to a consumption one. This change may suggest an over reliance on product usage and purchasing and their use of products to gain conformity with British White society, supporting previous research (Lindridge and Dhillon, 2002). An implication is that where the temple represents the cultural embodiment of Indians living in Britain perceived cultural values declining attendance may then symbolize detachment from an Indian cultural identity. In such circumstances, product consumption may then embody the dominant ethnic majority's cultural values therefore indicating acculturation to British White culture and society.The research has two limitations: sample group criterion and size. The adherence to a strict cross-cultural methodological criterion resulted in a sample group biased to affluent, well-educated middle/upper class males. An outcome of this is a sample group that although adhering to cross-cultural requirements only represent a small select population and not representative of their wider countries populations. Secondly, a much larger sample group was desirable, yet owing to the cross-cultural methodological criterion applied only a relatively small sample group could be obtained. Although every attempt was made to increase the final sample size this was to no avail. The cross-cultural researcher is then faced with the situation of weakening the validity of the sample group through being less rigid on sample group selection or accepts a small but valid sample group.Future research, into consumption, culture and religiosity should review a broader spectrum of goods that may produce fragmented behaviours and self-identities. Such behaviour has been noted (Lindridge and Dibb, 2004; Lindridge et al., 2004) and among Indians living in Britain were individual culturally derived self-identity alters depending upon the product and the situational influences.\nReligion in a wider context: Religiosity has been shown to affect the relationship between cultural and consumer behaviours in two countries and three differing sample groups. In understanding how religiosity affects attitudes and behaviours, religion must be considered within a broader cultural/societal context, i.e. consumer behaviour motivations exist within a complex set of inter-acting and related variables. Furthermore, the apparent emergence of similar culturally/religiously induced behaviours suggests the emergence of a new group of consumers, where religiosity may be a medium for greater closeness through consumption behaviours.\nManagerial implications and applications: Religion's role in culture and subsequently consumer behaviour were identified to differ between Eastern and Western cultural contexts. From an Eastern perspective, religion appears to be a central tenet of culture and societal behaviour manifesting through a need to engage with in-groups through consumption encounters. Marketers would be advised to acknowledge the centrality of the group in their marketing activities in Eastern cultures.Western culture emphasis on the individual became more pertinent when religiosity declined. Marketers are advised that marketing strategy should focus on the centrality of the individual's needs and how subsequent consumption will enhance and reinforce this individuality.For an ethnic minority group, that can identify with both these cultures, marketers need to assess the extent religion is important to the group per se. Opportunities to market segment may arise from those individuals who disengage from their religious and subsequently cultural frameworks. This segment may compensate for this through increased conspicuous consumption.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Religion's influence in consumer research remains under-researched. This paper aims to explore religiosity's effect on culture and consumption by comparing Indians living in Britain, with Asian Indians and British Whites. The paper is relevant to both academics and practitioners who wish to understand the role of religion's influence regarding culturally determined consumer behaviours.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A questionnaire measuring family, self-identity, materialism, possessions as status symbols and reference groups was administrated in London and Mumbai. Religiosity was measured by religious institution attendance and the importance of religion in daily life. A total of 415 questionnaires were submitted to factor analysis, identifying six factors. These factors were then submitted to Multinomial Logistical Regression (MLR), with the two religiosity themes used as influencing variables on the factors.\nFindings: - The analysis indicated that Indians living in Britain and British Whites sample groups were culturally less group- and consumption-oriented than Asian Indians. Declining levels of religiosity produced mixed results for Indians living in Britain, when compared to Asian Indians, indicating that: attendance at a religious institution is not akin to viewing religion as an important aspect of daily life, a diversity of religiosity determined consumer behaviours across the Indian sample groups, and religion is an acculturation agent. The research, however, is limited owing to the small sample group and the need to maintain cross-cultural methodologies.\nOriginality/value: - Marketing practitioners should recognise the importance of religion in culture in Eastern cultures, while in Western cultures they should focus on the centrality and the need to use consumption to maintain the individual's sense of individuality.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
User adoption of a hybrid social tagging approach in an online knowledge community	[ "Social cognitive theory", "Technology acceptance model", "Social tagging", "A hybrid social tagging approach", "Online knowledge organization", "User adoption" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: To publish or share knowledge resources on the internet, platforms based on Web 2.0 are getting more and more popular (Alqahtani, 2017). As one of the most typical applications of Web 2.0, online knowledge communities (e.g. Wikipedia and Zhihu) have become an efficient place for users to acquire and share knowledge. The online knowledge community refers to a group of individuals with common interests, goals or practices who participate in the knowledge sharing and social interactions through the internet, such as BBS and online forums (Ye et al., 2015). Currently, these knowledge communities have become a huge dynamic knowledge repository for global knowledge sharing and knowledge innovation that allows knowledge resources to be reconfigured. Users' participation in these communities is critical and creates potential value (Cao and Wang, 2018). Users are not only the knowledge producers and seekers, but also the organizers and managers of knowledge resources.\nA hybrid social tagging approach: Current social tagging approaches in online knowledge communities combine taxonomy and folksonomy. Taxonomy is a traditional method of classifying and organizing information into a hierarchical structure (Sommaruga et al., 2011). It demands high domain expertise (Tsui et al., 2010) and allows a precise classification of knowledge elements (Kiu and Tsui, 2011). Folksonomy, also known as social tagging, is a user-centric method of indexing (Huang et al., 2012) and can help enhance technology for users to retrieve and organize information (Lu et al., 2018). It allows users to add metadata to resources in the form of keyword-based tags (Golder and Huberman, 2006), contributing to a collaborative mode. In such mode, users are not only the knowledge producers and users, but also the organizers and managers of knowledge resources.\nTheoretical background and proposed conceptual model: A new, hybrid social tagging approach as illustrated in Figure 2 is adopted to describe, organize and manage online resources in online knowledge communities. It is a user-centric innovation and relies on user participation, so it is important to evaluate individual adoption. TAM is a classical theory to investigate user adoption. In our context, users' BI also depends on usefulness and usability of this new tagging approach. Thus, TAM is appropriate to be applied.\nResearch methodology: To empirically analyze user adoption, we carried out a survey among Zhihu (www.zhihu.com) users. Zhihu, one of the most popular online knowledge communities in China, was launched in January, 2011. According to a recent speech of the CEO, it has been registered around 160m members by May, 2018. To effectively organize and manage the online knowledge in its community, Zhihu uses the hybrid social tagging approach to develop its tagging system called topic structure (www.zhihu.com/topic/19776749/organize/entire). Specifically, the top three layers, including the root node, have already been set up by domain experts. At bottom layers, users spontaneously create topics (namely, tags) for questions and add hyponymy relationship to the topics. Specifically, people can not only give aliases to topics, but also define a hierarchical relationship between the superior topics and the subtopics. However, all these public edits are restrained to some conditions. Only users who owned five answers endorsed by five people can be entitled to participate in public edit. Moreover, topics generated by users will be checked to ensure their rationality and accuracy. Above all, the topic structure of Zhihu is a practice of a hybrid social tagging approach, which motivates us to carry out this study in the context of Zhihu community.\nResults and analysis: A total of 678 questionnaires were distributed among Chinese Zhihu users, of which 307 were collected. After removing invalid questionnaires with incomplete data and the same answer, 283 valid responses were retained for subsequent empirical analysis, proving a response rate of 41.74 percent. Two items, namely, PU1 and PU2, were deleted due to their cross loading. Besides, PEOU4 was also omitted because of its low loading. As a result, there remained 18 measurement items in total.\nDiscussion: In this study, we aim to examine user adoption of a hybrid social tagging approach and verify factors imposing on individuals' BI. The model is developed based on TAM and SCT and includes six constructs, namely, SE, SI, PU, PEOU, attitude and BI. It turns out that the proposed ten hypotheses were all supported.\nConclusion: Integrating the methods of taxonomy and folksonomy, this hybrid social tagging approach plays a significant role in the organization and management of online knowledge. Its top layers can guarantee the precision of classification, while bottom layers reveal the multi-dimensional relationships among tags to intensively reflect users' requirements or interests. It has become an imperative part of online information organization system today. To identify the relevant factors influencing user BI, an integrated model combining TAM and SCT is proposed on the basis of previous literature. Furthermore, with data from Zhihu users in China, the measurement and structural model were tested by SEM, both of which are satisfactory. Empirical analysis indicated that SE, PU and PEOU had a significant effect on attitude toward a hybrid social tagging approach. Furthermore, we also found that SI, PU and attitude positively influenced BI to use this approach.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Online knowledge communities make great contributions to global knowledge sharing and innovation. Resource tagging approaches have been widely adopted in such communities to describe, annotate and organize knowledge resources mainly through users' participation. However, it is unclear what causes the adoption of a particular resource tagging approach. The purpose of this paper is to identify factors that drive users to use a hybrid social tagging approach.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Technology acceptance model and social cognitive theory are adopted to support an integrated model proposed in this paper. Zhihu, one of the most popular online knowledge communities in China, is taken as the survey context. A survey was conducted with a questionnaire and collected data were analyzed through structural equation model.\nFindings: A new hybrid social resource tagging approach was refined and described. The empirical results revealed that self-efficacy, perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use exert positive effect on users' attitude. Moreover, social influence, PU and attitude impact significantly on users' intention to use a hybrid social resource tagging approach.\nOriginality/value: Theoretically, this study enriches the type of resource tagging approaches and recognizes factors influencing user adoption to use it. Regarding the practical parts, the results provide online information system providers and designers with referential strategies to improve the performance of the current tagging approaches and promote them.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An inquiry into exchange rate misalignments as a cause of major global trade imbalances	[ "Competitiveness", "J-curve", "Competitive devaluation", "Exchange rate misalignments", "Trade imbalances", "F14", "F31", "O24" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction and background: Trade imbalances are not a new phenomenon in the history of international trade and finance. An imbalance occurs when a nation exports more than it imports (trade surplus) or vice versa (trade deficit). A surplus is often desirable and the deficit is not; nevertheless, in this balancing the value of currency or exchange rate is perceived to play an important part (Bahmani-Oskooee and Ratha, 2004). If the value of the currency is lower as compared to the competitors or trading partners, the products of such a country will be more attractive in the eyes of foreign consumers as they have to pay less in their own currency. Concomitantly, this aspect of currency devaluation or exchange rate can induce countries to keep the value of their currencies deliberately below what might be perceived as the equilibrium level in order to gain competitive advantage, a practice often referred as \"competitive devaluation\". This misalignment of the exchange below equilibrium has also been stated as a cause of phenomenal growth by some of the developing economies in the recent past (see, for instance, Gala and Lucinda, 2006; Rodrik, 2008; Wong, 2013). However, some empirical studies suggest that evidence does not support the notion that devaluation is universally responsible for economic expansions (Bahmani-Oskooee and Gelan, 2013).\n2. Nexus exchange rate misalignment and trade imbalance: The major trade imbalances have political implications and are often exploited for political gains. Reinhart (2017) argued that since the 1980s, USA has accused first Japan, then China and lately Germany for its own current account deficits. In facts it is the US tax policy which favoured debt accumulation by household sacrificing saving and productivity slowdown which has affected its competitiveness. Unfortunately, the politics of trade imbalances has been more pronounced in recent years. Under the Trade Facilitation and Enforcement Act (2015), USA put China, Germany, Japan, Korea and Taiwan on the watch list for the potential currency manipulator countries[6]. Criticising the current US administration stance on Germany and China, Sachs (2017) declared it to be the lack of US savings rather than the unfair trade policy by Germany and China. Eichengreen (2017) argued that the idea that the country's economic strength is its current account balance is the worst kind of economic nonsense, underpinned by the discredited mercantilism. Furthermore:In 2016, Germany ran a current-account surplus of roughly EUR270 billion ($297 billion), or 8.6% of GDP, making it an obvious target of Trump's ire. And its bilateral trade surplus of $65 billion with the United States presumably makes it an even more irresistible target. Never mind that, as a member of the eurozone, Germany has no exchange rate to manipulate. Forget that Germany is relatively open to US exports, or that its policymakers are subject to the European Union's anti-subsidy regulations. Ignore the fact that bilateral balances are irrelevant for welfare when countries run surpluses with some trade partners and deficits with others. All that matters for Trump is that he has his scapegoat.(Eichengreen, 2017, p. 1)\n3. Methodology: A SVAR framework is used to analyse the impact of exchange rate misalignments on trade balances. Prior to the application of the model, we are required to measure the degree of misalignment in the real equilibrium exchange rates of under-analysis economies.\n4. Analysis and findings: To proceed with our data analysis as a first step we are to ensure that the data we have is stationary. The unit-root test using the ADF method is performed[19]. It showed that all the series of the exchange rate misalignments were stationary at level (0) which was quite interesting with the implication that the exchange rate misalignments from equilibrium are rather transitory and there is mean reversion. Hence, the claims of consistently keeping the exchange rates below equilibrium seem rather overstated, at least in the longer term. Figure 2 gives the graphical depiction of exchange rate misalignments in the under-analysis economies during the period of study.\n5. Conclusion: In the context of heated debate and rhetoric on competitive devaluation, exchange rate misalignments and global trade imbalances, this study has investigated the role of exchange rate misalignments as a determinant of trade imbalances in selected major trade surplus (Germany, China, Japan, Russia and KSA) and major trade deficit countries (USA, UK, France, India and Turkey). Specifically, our inquiry was navigated by the motivation to find whether the exchange rate has been misaligned from its equilibrium values (competitive devaluation) and whether there is some nexus between real exchange rate misalignments and trade imbalances in under-analysis economies. Our analysis based on the SVAR model led to conclude that although exchange rate misalignment from equilibrium may have some implications for the current account balance for surplus and deficit countries, the effects observed varied country to country, mostly, they were very mild and transitory. There was a heterogeneity in the response of the current account position to exchange rate misalignments in each country which also led us to conclude that the nexus between the two variables of interest is heavily influenced by country-specific factors which may include the saving and investment imbalances, productivity, non-price competitiveness of its tradable, market access and trade network and partnerships. In specific to two of the largest surpluses countries, i.e. China and Germany, only the former can have significant negative effects on the balance of trade. This finding has profound implications in terms of rebalancing of the Chinese economy from an investment-based economy to a more consumption-based economy. The exchange rate misalignments in Russia, Japan and KSA were not found to be associated with trade imbalances; in fact, the upward misalignments were associated with a positive imbalance in KSA which implied that for KSA and Russia these could be due to other factors, for instance, oil price shocks than the exchange rate misalignments. On the whole, the empirical findings lead us to conclude that the case of competitive devaluation does not universally hold and there are factors beyond this phenomenon which are required to be explored and addressed to solve the global trade imbalance issues, particularly in the deficit nations. The political rhetoric will not be of much help!\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In the context of debate on competitive devaluation and trade imbalances, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of exchange rate misalignment as a determinant of trade imbalances in selected major trade surplus (Germany, China, Japan, Russia and KSA) and major trade deficit countries (USA, UK, France, India and Turkey).\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors used a structural vector auto-regressive model on data from ten countries with the highest trade deficit and surplus. The period of analysis is from 2000 Q1 to 2016 Q1.\nFindings: The key findings suggest that although exchange rate misalignment from equilibrium may have some implications for the current account balance for surplus and deficit countries, the effects observed were rather very mild and transitory. There was a heterogeneity in the response of the current account position to exchange rate misalignment in each country, concomitantly; the exchange rate misalignment shall not be seen as the sole responsible factor in the debate on global trade imbalances.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research has profound implications in terms of exploring the notion of competitive devaluation and exchange rate misalignment as a cause of major global trade imbalances.\nPractical implications: This study has important practical implications for the trade policy of major economies in the world. These are twofold. First, this study has analysed and reported on the degree of misalignment of exchange from its equilibrium values in the major trade surplus and deficit countries. Second, it has investigated the implications of any misalignment for the trade balance or respective economies.\nSocial implications: There are important social implications as the notion of competitive devaluation and exchange rate-trade balance nexus has been heavily politicised. This study provides an empirical insight and an answer to these claims which have social and political implications.\nOriginality/value: There is a significant element of originality and contribution to the existing body of knowledge on the subject. In the context of debate on competitive devaluation this is the first study which has investigated whether the exchange rate has been misaligned from its equilibrium values (competitive devaluation) and whether there is some nexus between the real exchange rate misalignment and trade imbalances in under-analysis economies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Robot wars: Advances in robot technology throws up questions about how to integrate them into human-robot teams	[ "Supervisor", "Autonomy", "Robot", "Automation", "Human-agent teams" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: To date, most robots have been \"slaves\" to their human operators, but they are gaining much greater power and autonomy.\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 increasing use of robots has thrown up questions about how they can be integrated successfully into human-robot teams. A research paper by Dale Richards, from the Faculty of Engineering and Computing at Coventry University, discusses how such teams can share goals through delegation between humans and robots, or \"agent\" members. His research examines such questions as could the agents be allowed to make their own decisions? How would humans react to being told what to do by a robot?\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" } ]
The impact of mixed eWOM sequence on brand attitude change: cross-cultural differences	[ "International marketing", "Cross-cultural studies", "Brand attitude change", "EWOM sequence", "Perceived cognition congruency" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: With the rapid development of digital technologies and the internet, the boundaries between countries are shrinking and markets are becoming global (Oh et al., 2016). Simultaneously, cross-border online shopping is another trend that has spread worldwide, and global e-commerce has now become a reality (Johnson et al., 2003; Moore, 2015). Numerous consumers attempt to obtain enough product information to minimize their risks before purchasing. Generally, consumers have viewed electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) as more credible and trustworthy than corporate-led marketing communication (Christodoulides et al., 2012; de Matos and Rossi, 2008). This means that the role of eWOM is becoming increasingly prevalent and important (Berger and Milkman, 2012; Dellarocas, 2003), and it has a strong influence on consumers and firms (Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006; Dellarocas et al., 2007). Effectively, eWOM is said to be more influential than its offline counterpart (WOM), given its ability to reach a larger number of individuals instantly and on a global scale (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004; Phelps et al., 2004). Due to the increased visibility of online product reviews from previous buyers, the influence of the majority may become more important during online shopping (Christodoulides et al., 2012). Therefore, numerous studies have been conducted to analyze the role of significance of eWOM (Berger and Milkman, 2012; Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006; Dellarocas, 2003; Dellarocas et al., 2007; Park and Kim, 2008). For instance, Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006) showed that online book reviews have a significant impact on book sales, and Liu (2006) explained his finding by suggesting that consumer reviews on the Yahoo Movies website greatly influence box office revenue.\n2. Pilot study: 2.1 Cross-cultural study: the perspective of differences in thinking style\n3. Literature review and hypotheses development: 3.1 Changes in brand attitude depending on the eWOM sequence: the moderating effect of culture\n4. Method: 4.1 Study object\n5. Results: 5.1 Manipulation check\n6. Conclusions: Although prior studies have demonstrated that online consumer behavior on the internet is not homogenous, cultural differences between the East and West - along with numerous other factors moderating the eWOM effect - were ignored (Christodoulides et al., 2012; Dobele et al., 2007; Fong and Burton, 2008). Therefore, this study investigated the differences in brand attitude changes depending on the sequence of mixed eWOM, as well as cross-culturally, based on thinking styles. Furthermore, we examined the moderated mediation effect of perceived cognition congruency across cultures to explain the underlying mechanism.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Despite the importance of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in e-commerce transactions on the global market, there is still limited understanding about the effect of eWOM sequence and its psychological mechanism in cross-cultural settings. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences in brand attitude changes according to the eWOM sequence, as well as cross-culturally, based on thinking styles. Furthermore, the authors examine the moderated mediation effect of perceived cognition congruency across cultures to explain its underlying mechanism.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use a 2 (eWOM sequence: positive/negative, negative/positive) x 2(culture: East (South Korea), West (USA)) factorial design. Perceived cognition congruency is measured as a within-group variable.\nFindings: First, brand attitude changes in the West (USA) for the negative/positive presentation order are significantly larger than for the positive/negative presentation order, while, in the East (South Korea), no significant differences exist. Second, in the Westerner group (analytical thinking style), the perceived cognition congruency shows a significant difference according to the eWOM sequence, whereas in the Easterner group (holistic thinking style), the perceived cognition congruency does not show a significant difference according to the eWOM sequence.\nPractical implications: As such, a strategic interpretation of the mixed eWOM presentation order across cultures is needed. In the West, interest and attention are necessary for the eWOM sequence. However, in the East, a different strategic approach, except for the presentation order of mixed eWOM, is required. The other elements of the mixed eWOM, such as attribute type or intensity of negative information, need to be considered for mixed eWOM management.\nOriginality/value: This study expands the existing body of knowledge on the sequence effect of mixed eWOM. Furthermore, it provides strategic direction and practical implications for mixed eWOM-driven information management, focusing on sequence in cross-cultural settings.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Buyer-seller relationship development episodes: theories and methods	[ "Business analysis", "Critical incident technique", "Qualitative methods", "Modelling" ]	[ { "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.\nIssues addressed: How do episodes in business relationships foster trust? Create conflict? Spark commitment? Looking down from our research observation balloons, we see networks clearly. To a lesser degree we are obtaining good resolution on the state of business relationships. However, we just cannot seem to put episodes, let alone patterns of interaction, into focus.The interactionist perspective says buyers and sellers in business marketing engage in social and economic exchanges leading to working relationships (Hakansson, 1982). Macneil (1980) theorizes that the social component of relationships is all-important, for it compensates for imperfect legal contracts. That is, to sustain an ongoing commercial relationship, adjustments are required that adapt commercial exchange to changing circumstances. Legal contracts are insufficient for this purpose because it is impossible to perfectly predict the future and build legal remedies into a contract - hence, the importance of working relationships that can make adjustments.That social interaction is embedded in business relationships we have no doubt (Granovetter, 1985). The marketing literature contains many articles about the state of a business relationship. Various research questions have been addressed. Is trust necessary for cooperation and commitment? How does the level of communication influence conflict? Unfortunately, there is a significant gap in our understanding about the nature of critical interaction-episodes and the effects they have on buyer-seller relationships. First, we lack a system for characterizing and grouping key episodes. That is, how can we typify episodes? Because of this deficiency, the second problem is our incomplete understanding of the effect episodes have on relationships. For example, is conflict over obligations a sign that a relationship is in trouble or a hopeful indicator that partners are working to adjust their relationship? Third, we need greater understanding of the human calculus associated with episodes. For example, do individuals keep mental accounts of positive and negative critical episodes, leading to cumulative effects? How do agents make attributions about critical episodes? Fourth, since our goals are different from the Flanagan-inspired researchers of critical incidents, we also want to understand how less critical episodes, such as meetings for exchanging information on recent performance and new opportunities, influence relationships. Clearly, interaction episodes need more attention.The importance of these research questions has to do with understanding how the actions taken by purchasing agents and sales consultants in the context of a business relationship influence the outcomes of their collaboration. Interaction episodes are engines of change, motors that engage the energy of a relationship. Relationship theory is incomplete without a more complete understanding of interaction episode dynamics. From a business strategy standpoint, it is not possible to effectively manage relationships because, as Hakansson and Snehota (2000) assert, \"choices in fact are made in interaction with others\" (p. 44) and are dependent on emerging situations. Yet a better understanding of patterns of interactions and their consequences for relationship change may contribute to improved cooperation - or more effective disengagement. This paper aims at contributing a foundation for episode investigations. Our contribution is that we review, critically assess, and draw conclusions about three issues that underlie interaction episode investigations:1. What is the state of the theory connecting episodes and relationships?2. Are qualitative methods, quantitative methods, or some combination of the two methods more suited to investigations of interaction episodes?3. Given that Flanagan's (1954) critical incident technique has been widely applied to episode studies, is this the research paradigm of choice?\nThe state of theory connecting episodes and relationships: Hakan Hakansson (1982) and the multinational European research team known as the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group (IMP Group) produced important early work connecting episodes and relationships. Several key insights distinguish this work. First, despite the mixed motives of buyers and sellers in organizations, their exchanges are more typically characterized by continuity - relational exchanges, not discreet transactions (Dwyer et al., 1987). This observation predated the managerial attention given to the benefits of closer cooperation within supply chains by perhaps five to ten years. Second, interactions represent the appropriate unit of observation. Third, the hierarchy of effects travels upwards from interaction episodes to relationships to networks. An interesting consequence of the IMP Group perspective was that followers of this paradigm adopted case study methods, which had the unintended effect of keeping many developments in the IMP Group research out of the mainstream US marketing journals. This unfortunate state of affairs makes the quantitative-qualitative debate worthy of more attention. Of course, the IMP group research has expanded its influence and its domain of scientific writing in the two decades since this paradigm-changing work was published. Our narrow focus in the following discussion concerns the episode construct.The business marketing literature\nConstructivist or post-positivist paradigms for episode research?: Two camps have emerged in the community of marketing scholars. The positivists, who rely on quantitative methods, often place their quantitative reports in US journals, such as the Journal of Marketing. The post-positivists, who often rely on narratives and case studies with varying degrees of statistical summary, find many outlets for their work in European journals. And then there are the liberals of the research field, the proponents of the qualitative method. Lincoln and Denzin (2002, p. 1047) offer a realistic yet flattering perspective on qualitative research:Qualitative research is many things at the same time. It is multiparadigmatic in focus. Its practitioners are sensitive to the value of the multi-method approach. They are committed to the naturalistic perspective and to the interpretive understanding of human experience. At the same time, the field is inherently political and shaped by multiple ethical and political allegiances.Of course, few would argue that a single method or even a collection of methods provides the direct route to ultimate knowledge. Debate over scientific methods is always healthy because it sharpens our thinking about the factors that make one method more applicable than another in a particular situation. Next, I will highlight some of the important dimensions of the debate with a view toward understanding the range of options available for conducting research on the connections between interaction episodes and business relationships. In the assessment section, suggestions are made for positioning research according to its objectives.Review of method paradigms\nMethods suited to interaction episode studies: Flanagan's (1954) critical incident technique is already receiving attention in studies of service encounters, and CIT certainly appears relevant to studies of interaction episodes in business relationships. Therefore, the following sections devote more attention to this particular method. In addition to a basic introduction to the method, studies that discuss the method are noted and unresolved issues with using the technique are discussed.Review\nConclusions: Perhaps the most curious aspect of the bountiful research on relationship development - particularly the quantitative studies - is that so many studies are locked in a moment of time. Marketing studies of relationship development tend to ignore the causes of changes in the state of a relationship, the dynamic effects of alternative communication strategies, and most significantly, the importance of time and process. Progress on the investigation of interaction episodes in relationship development will require different thinking about appropriate research questions and more balanced thinking about the approaches to and the uses of research.In conclusion, this article offers a foundation for stimulating research into interaction episodes - both critical and non-critical - as they relate to networked relationships that grow and are productive as well as relationships that are riddled with unproductive conflict and degenerate into separation. The first part of this paper reviews the theoretical significance of an interaction episode level of understanding. Research is needed to connect episodes to relationship change other than relationship dissolution, for business relationships tend to persist. With this objective in mind, the categories of generative, degenerative, and neutral episodes were introduced. Further, I proposed that researchers investigate characteristic episodes within these categories and patterns of non-critical episodes that lay the foundations for critical episodes. The second part of this article assessed available methods and concluded that perhaps critics give insufficient attention to how a research project is positioned before evaluating the methods used. A paradigm is best only if it fits the purposes of the research, but following the dominant paradigm in a particular community seems at times driven by publication needs. Third, this article summarized the state of CIT research in marketing, noting that it is at present incompletely adapted to business marketing research. Work is needed on adapting the technique to the more complex setting provided in many business marketing contexts and the presence of networks and critical as well as non-critical episodes. There is a special need to develop ways of eliciting responses about non-critical events that provide a foundation for successes and failures associated with critical episodes.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - For the benefit of those who want to address gaps in our understanding of business relationships, this paper seeks to conceptually frame investigation into critical interaction episodes that fundamentally strengthen or fatally weaken relationship development. It also considers the importance of non-critical episodes in business relationships. Particular attention is paid to the enduring yet frequently modified critical incident technique associated with Flanagan.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Episode relationship theory, the qualitative/quantitative debate, and the critical incident technique (CIT) literature are selectively reviewed and critically assessed.\nFindings: - First, because business relationships tend to persist, episode research must advance beyond relationship dissolution studies and progress into investigations of how different types of interactions change relationships. New types of episodes need to be studied, such as the generative, degenerative, and neutral episodes discussed here. Also, functionally distinct characteristic and non-critical episodes are conceptualized. Second, the methods review suggests that useful qualitative methods deserve more attention. Third, though CIT research is prevalent in the marketing literature, it is at present incompletely adapted to business marketing research and needs development along the lines suggested in this article.\nOriginality/value: - The interaction perspective on business relationships is given a dynamic framework at the interaction episode level while keeping the connection to the more macro relationship development models that conceptualize relationship states and processes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Culture, benevolent and hostile sexism, and entrepreneurial intentions	[ "Masculinity", "Culture", "Entrepreneurial intentions", "Benevolent sexism", "Hostile sexism", "Social construction of gender", "Ambivalent Sexism Scale" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Entrepreneurial activity is critical to economic development and the effective functioning of free market economies (Hessels et al., 2008). Interestingly, most entrepreneurs are men; in fact, in the early twenty-first century still almost twice as many men as women are choosing to become entrepreneurs (Acs et al., 2004). Although there is an upward trend, a review of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Reports that between 2000 and 2015/2016 across the countries studied, the ratio of female to male Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rose only from 0.5 in 2000 to 0.73 in 2015/2016 (Kelley et al., 2016; Reynolds et al., 2000). The special GEM 2012 Women's Report observed a female to male TEA ratio of 0.69 across the 67 countries studied (Kelley et al., 2013). Despite this positive trend, the gender gap in entrepreneurship continues to exist and poses a problem because women represent half of the population in most countries and economies would benefit greatly from increased participation by women in entrepreneurial activity.\nTheory and hypotheses: Entrepreneurial intentions and cultural masculinity\nMethod: Participants\nResults: To explore the relationship between benevolent sexism and entrepreneurial intentions (H1a), a regression was executed in which entrepreneurial intentions was the dependent variable, benevolent sexism was the independent variable, and country and education were control variables. Supporting H1a, the results indicate that benevolent sexism is related to entrepreneurial intentions, b=0.31, t (191)=4.19, p<0.001, adj. R2=0.09. To ensure that this result was not qualified by gender of participant, a post hoc analysis in which participant sex and the interaction of participant sex and benevolent sexism were also entered into the regression. The result indicated that the interaction of sex by benevolent sexism was not significant (p=0.18), suggesting that benevolent sexism is related to both men's and women's entrepreneurial intentions alike. Note that the relationship between benevolent sexism and behavioral intentions is positive.\nDiscussion: There is a gender gap in entrepreneurship. Across countries most entrepreneurs are men. This is problematic because entrepreneurship is critical to a free market economy and women's lack of participation harms the economic productivity of a nation as well as their own economic independence. Women's lower entrepreneurial intentions may be partly due to cultural level factors which hinder their participation in entrepreneurship. Generally, cultural masculinity is associated with lower gender equality. On the other hand, cultural masculinity is acknowledged to support entrepreneurial activity (McGrath et al., 1992), although the findings have been inconsistent (Busenitz and Lau, 1996; Shinnar et al., 2012). In this study, we relate cultural masculinity to individual level sexist beliefs (hostile and benevolent sexism) and gendered entrepreneurial stereotypes. We examine how different sexist beliefs, as a proxy for cultural masculinity, are related to entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, we explore whether hostile and benevolent sexism affect entrepreneurial intentions and whether this relationship is mediated by the relationship between hostile and benevolent sexism and entrepreneurial stereotypes. These sexist belief systems have not been explicitly included in prior studies on entrepreneurial intentions.\nConclusion: Contribution to knowledge\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In this study, the authors relate cultural masculinity to individual level sexist beliefs (hostile and benevolent sexism) and gendered entrepreneurial stereotypes. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether hostile and benevolent sexism affect entrepreneurial intentions and whether this relationship is mediated by gendered entrepreneurial stereotypes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The proposed relationships are explored using a sample of 192 participants from the USA and India with varying interest in starting a business. An online survey instrument was used to collect the data. Regression and mediation analyses were used to analyze the data.\nFindings: The authors find that both hostile and benevolent sexism are positively related to entrepreneurial intentions of both men and women. However, only benevolent sexism is related to both the masculine and feminine gender traits ascribed to entrepreneurs. Interestingly, the authors find support that hostile sexism is actually positively related to feminine traits ascribed to entrepreneurs, albeit with a small effect size. The authors do not find any support that these results vary by participant gender; the findings are implicated for both men and women alike. The authors find that for both hostile and benevolent sexism only the feminine traits perceived as stereotypic of entrepreneurs partly mediate their relationship on entrepreneurial intentions.\nResearch limitations/implications: The survey consists of cross-sectional, self-report data, and therefore the authors cannot conclusively infer causality. The direction of relationships found is of theoretical value. Only two countries are included in the sample limiting generalizability to other countries. Most of the participants in the sample reported some interest or experience in nascent entrepreneurial activities, which may limit the generalizability of findings to those without any prior interest or experience as a nascent entrepreneur.\nOriginality/value: The relationship between ambivalent sexism (both hostile and benevolent sexism) and both entrepreneurial intentions, and the gendered traits ascribed to entrepreneurs, has not yet been explored before this work. Using the lens of cultural masculinity, we present a theoretical model of how hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes facilitate or inhibit entrepreneurship via how entrepreneurs are perceived. This is the first study we know of which explores the relationship between Ambivalent Sexism and the gender attributes ascribed to entrepreneurs, and how these gendered entrepreneurial stereotypes in turn are related to entrepreneurial intentions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The allure of celebrities: unpacking their polysemic consumer appeal	[ "Autoethnography", "Celebrity", "Consumer appeal", "Experiential consumption", "Parasocial relationship", "Stardom", "Human brands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For over a century, film and entertainment have presided among the world's most successful industries (Elberse, 2013; Epstein, 2012; Kerrigan, 2017). Since the birth of the Hollywood star system from the 1910s to 1920s, it is the film stars and any other celebrities who have captured consumers' attention and imagination with both their creative performances and private lives (Barbas, 2001; De Cordova, 1990; O'Guinn, 1991). It should therefore come as no surprise that film stars and starlets, directors, rock and pop stars, TV personalities, athletes, models, novelists, reality TV stars and artists have become an essential part of contemporary culture (Gabler, 1998; Hackley and Hackley, 2015; Turner, 2004) and the market economy (Luo et al., 2010; Thomson, 2006). Their popularity with consumers, however, has over the years also drawn scorn from self-appointed social reformers and cultural critics (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972; Baudrillard, 1970/2017; Giles, 2006; Thorp, 1939). In their mind, celebrities are the living proof that our contemporary society has been corrupted by an obsession with superficial fame, glamour and celebrity, where false heroes and human pseudo-events prevent us from devoting ourselves to the pursuit of higher, true and authentic cultural values (Boorstin, 1961). But while this ideology-informed, sociological-theoretical view has dominated much of our scholarly media discourse - including our recent marketing discourse (Kerrigan et al., 2011) - on stardom and celebrity, it is arguable that these same critical theories fail to explain how and why individual consumers consume, relate to and personally engage with individual celebrities (people) in daily life while, at the same time, shunning others.\nLiterature review: To gain a deeper understanding of how a celebrity appeals to and is consumed by individual consumers, settling on a suitable definition of celebrity and celebrities is essential. Despite appearing obvious to the non-scholarly audience, the answer is actually not that straightforward. Indeed, a substantial gulf exists between how the sociological-theoretical discourse among film, media and, recently, some marketing scholars conceptualises film stars/celebrities as semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning (Dyer, 1998; McCracken, 1989; Schickel, 1985) and how ordinary consumers perceive and consume celebrities primarily as actual people who are famous for being popular actors, musicians, athletes, writers, etc. or in the media for any other reasons (Hills, 2016; Redmond, 2014). Interestingly, many cultural critics (Alberoni, 2006; Boorstin, 1961; Thorp, 1939) have also viewed celebrities as real people who are famous and in the media for what they do or have done; except they felt that what celebrities do is not worth doing. Such a conceptualisation of celebrities should also come as no surprise, as the term celebrity stems from the Latin adjective celebrer, meaning being famous, and the noun vir celebratus, meaning a famous, distinguished and/or praised person - in other words, someone who is admired and famous for something.\nMethodology: To obtain a deeper understanding of how and why a consumer experiences a personal attraction, catches fire and consumes a particular celebrity but remains indifferent to other equally talented, physically attractive, interesting and even more popular ones, it is necessary to focus on how this consumer experience becomes manifest to consciousness (Thompson, 1997). In taking an existential-phenomenological perspective, the role of the researcher is to interpret the everyday meanings and structure of the world as lived by the individual consumer. According to Merleau-Ponty (1962/2002), the foundation of human understanding emerges thereby from an underlying field of pre-reflected lived experiences like practical knowledge, emotional experiences and an intuitive understanding of the individual's socio-cultural way of life. The individual's life-world is examined in terms of how he/she perceives his/her historicised self, emotional relationships to others and the cultural settings (Merleau-Ponty, 1962/2002). As this requires a fusion of horizons between the researcher and the consumer, an autoethnographic approach is used to achieve it.\nFindings: The hermeneutic analysis of the autoethnographic data has revealed some interesting insights into how each celebrity offers a different personal attraction to and is therefore consumed by the individual consumer. In contrast to the stardom (Dyer, 1998; King, 1991), celebrity (Marshall, 1997; Schickel, 1985), celebrity endorsement (Erdogan, 1999; McCracken, 1989) and some of the recent marketing (Hackley and Hackley, 2015; Mills et al., 2015) literature, the analysis of the autoethnographic data in this study clearly shows that in line with the recent movement among film scholars that focuses on film stars as performers and their craft of screen acting (Hollinger, 2006; Lovell, 2003), consumers may not be so much attracted to celebrities for what they, as semiotic symbols, (may) represent in society, but instead for what they actually do as performers and who they are as human beings. Subsequently, each celebrity can be consumed in highly complex, diverse and heteroglossic manners by offering each individual consumer a different personal attraction based on the latter's inherent interests and desires (Brown et al., 1999; Lovell, 1999).\nDiscussion/conclusion: In this paper, we have drawn on autoethnographic data to examine how a celebrity actually appeals to the individual consumer and why a consumer may be attracted to one particular celebrity but feel indifferent to other equally talented, attractive, intelligent, interesting and maybe even more popular ones. The indisputable fact is that different consumers are attracted to different celebrities. Even if they actually like the same ones, they may still be motivated by different desires and, thus, apply different meanings to their experiences with the celebrity. The polysemy of meanings and the heteroglossia of perspectives suggest that viewing the consumer-celebrity relationship solely through a semiotic lens, as the celebrity and stardom literatures have traditionally done, reduces and masks the co-creation of that relationship and the diversity of narratives that blossom rhizomatically (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987/2003) in the daily cultural interaction between celebrities and consumers. In aligning the marketing literature with a recent movement in film studies (Baron, 1999; Hollinger, 2006; Lovell, 2003) and rehumanising celebrities as human beings and performers, this paper contributes to the emerging understanding of multi-constitutional polysemy of any celebrity's personal appeal to any particular consumer.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explain a celebrity's deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity's polysemic appeal. While celebrities are traditionally theorised as unidimensional semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning, the authors conceptualise them here instead as human beings/performers with a multi-constitutional, polysemic consumer appeal.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Supporting evidence is drawn from autoethnographic data collected over a total period of 25 months and structured through a hermeneutic analysis.\nFindings: In rehumanising the celebrity, the study finds that each celebrity offers the individual consumer a unique and very personal parasocial appeal as the performer, the private person behind the public performer, the tangible manifestation of either through products and the social link to other consumers. The stronger these constituents, individually or symbiotically, appeal to the consumer's personal desires, the more s/he feels emotionally attached to this particular celebrity.\nResearch limitations/implications: Although using autoethnography means that the breadth of collected data is limited, the depth of insight this approach garners sufficiently unpacks the polysemic appeal of celebrities to consumers.\nPractical implications: The findings encourage talent agents, publicists and marketing managers to reconsider underlying assumptions in their talent management and/or celebrity endorsement practices.\nOriginality/value: While prior research on celebrity appeal has tended to enshrine celebrities in a \"dehumanised\" structuralist semiosis, which erases the very idea of individualised consumer meanings, this paper reveals the multi-constitutional polysemy of any particular celebrity's personal appeal as a performer and human being to any particular consumer.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
E-learning flowers in the UK	[ "E‐learning", "United Kingdom", "Learning organizations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Learning Light's report on the UK e-learning sector in 2009 states that the sector is \"flowering\" and highlights Sheffield as the UK's \"e-learning capital\".\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to define the annual size of the UK e-learning sector - and identify trends in this sector.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper presents a series of interviews with organisations engaged in the e-learning market, from micro-businesses developing innovative technologies to established major service and product suppliers in the UK. Thus the report is based on anecdotal evidence, combined with financial information.\nFindings: - The annual size of the UK e-learning industry is currently between PS300 million and PS450 million; with growth rates forecast of between 6.7 per cent and 8 per cent.\nResearch limitations/implications: - While it impossible to produce a definitive definition of \"e-learning\" which is universally accepted, it is possible to apply a realistic definition consistently - to identify trends at the very least. Thus, Learning Light's research needs to be carried out on a regular basis.\nOriginality/value: - No organisation, apart from Learning Light, has attempted to assess the size of the UK e-learning industry. It has now done so twice - in 2007 and 2009. These data provide valuable comparisons and help identify trends. It will be interest to suppliers and buyers of e-learning in the UK, as well as worldwide. It will also be of interest to market analysts and commentators on this sector.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Brand avoidance - a services perspective	[ "Experiential avoidance", "Advertising avoidance", "Brand avoidance", "Moral avoidance", "Identity avoidance", "Service brands", "Communication avoidance", "Deficit-value avoidance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Brands have long been regarded as critical in marketing and in building successful products. They continue to serve as a focus of marketing strategy because of their importance as a source of differentiation (McDonald et al., 2001). Brands are also critical for the success of service providers (Berry, 2000). Branding of services is complicated by the intangible nature of services (Berry, 2000; Grace and O'Cass, 2005). Despite their intangible nature, it is necessary for services to have strong brands (McDonald et al., 2001) since consumer behaviour (such as loyalty and brand love) are equally applicable to service brands.\n2. Purpose of the study: Brand avoidance is an everyday phenomenon in the lives of consumers. This behaviour negatively impacts on the organisation whose brand is being avoided as the organisation's sales are affected and consumers who avoid the brand, may spread negative WOM regarding the brand. Although research has predominantly focussed on the avoidance of product brands, it stands to reason that brand avoidance is also relevant in service contexts. Service brands are central to the global economy, yet little research has focussed on avoidance of these brands and specifically the reasons why these brands are avoided. The purpose of this research is thus to gain insight into brand avoidance of service brands and to explore whether the different types of brand avoidance as identified in a product-related context apply to service brands and whether additional reasons for avoidance exist within this context.\n3. Literature review: A brand serves several important functions for an organisation. At its most basic, the brand serves as an identity (and logo) for the organisation's offerings (De Chernatony and Dall'Olmo Riley, 1998). A brand also provides an indication of quality, reflects the organisation's values and portrays the functional and emotional characteristics of a product (De Chernatony and Dall'Olmo Riley, 1998). Brands furthermore reflect the way in which consumers view products (Keeble, 1991). Despite organisations' efforts to promote their products by emphasising these functions, consumers often make the decision not to purchase the product. Similar to Cherrier et al. (2011) and Lee et al. (2009a), this study views consumers as rational in their decision-making, using their experience and values to resist a particular brand.\n4. Methodology: Qualitative methods are generally deemed more appropriate when conducting research that is exploratory in nature (Keaveney, 1995). The exploratory nature of the study is evident from the fact that there has been limited research conducted on not only the negative aspects of brand relationships, but specifically brand avoidance (Lee et al., 2009a, White et al., 2012; Romani et al., 2012). For example, advertising avoidance has been established as a possible brand avoidance type in only one previous exploratory qualitative study (Knittel et al., 2016). Qualitative methods are appropriate because of not only limited knowledge on the topic but also the ability of these methods to allow the researcher to collect rich data from participants (Malhotra, 2012; Saunders, 2012).\n5. Findings: Participants reflected on experiences with a wide range of service brands, including mobile phone network providers, retail stores, fast food outlets and hairdressers. Respondents held experiences similar to those identified by Lee et al. (2009a), Lee (2008), Lee et al. (2009c), Keaveney (1995) and Knittel et al. (2016) and could be classified within existing categories based upon the responses from the participants. Based upon the responses of the participants, no new categories could be uncovered within a services context. Some participants believed avoidance was a more complex issue when dealing with services in contrast with products.\n6. Discussion: The purpose of this research was to gain insight into brand avoidance of service brands and to explore whether the different types of brand avoidance identified in a product-related context apply to service brands. While focussing on service brands was regarded as more complex by the participants as opposed to product brands, five types of service brand avoidance could be identified, as suggested in previous research (Knittel et al., 2016; Lee, 2008; Lee et al., 2009a; Lee et al., 2009c, Khan and Lee, 2014). Thus, the interviews show support for the proposed framework (Figure 1) with each of the types being evident from the results of the study. Support for these types was found in both Swedish and South African participants, supporting the findings of Khan and Lee (2014) who also found evidence of brand avoidance in developing economies.\n7. Conclusion: The purpose of this study was to explore the types of brand avoidance, specifically for service brands. These brands were the focus because of the importance of services in the global economy and the lack of research in service brands. The study found that brand avoidance is manifested in the case of service brands, and that the types of avoidance suggested in the case of products in previous studies can also be identified in the case of service brands.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into brand avoidance of service brands and explore whether the different types of brand avoidance identified in a product context apply to service providers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Because of the exploratory nature of the study, the critical incident method and semi-structured interviews were used to achieve the purpose of the study.\nFindings: The findings suggest that five types of brand avoidance, as identified in studies involving product brands, can be identified as impacting service brands. In addition, the findings show that advertising avoidance should be expanded to communication avoidance because of the multifarious communication influences that were identified. The study proposes a framework to deepen the understanding of the types of brand avoidance affecting service brands.\nResearch limitations/implications: Since the different types of brand avoidance previously identified are also evident in a services environment, service providers should develop strategies to deal with the different types of service brand avoidance. The findings are broad in scope because of the exploratory nature of the study, and a detailed analysis of each type of service brand avoidance is still required.\nOriginality/value: This paper focuses on the various types of brand avoidance and their manifestation in the services context. The study contributes by showing that the broader concept of communication, not only advertising, should be considered when studying brand avoidance in a service context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Value generation from industry-science linkages in light of targeted open innovation	[ "Open innovation", "Knowledge transfer", "Technology transfer", "Public research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: For the past decade, innovation has received increasing attention in the academic community, among policy makers and also in the industrial establishments. Whereas for long time, innovation was commonly considered a normal precondition for successful business, it is now been increasingly challenged to provide more visible and countable contribution to industry successes and to the economic and social development of nations. Accordingly, more and more approaches toward defining, measuring and accounting innovation and its' resulting impact were developed and described and thoughts given to increasing the speed and impact of innovation activities and results. In doing so, two major schools emerged which share the same aim but view the challenge from different angles:\n2. Value generation form science, technology and innovation: 2.1 Levels of value generation from science, technology and innovation\n3. Approaches to science, technology and innovation value generation: In light of the complexity of technology and knowledge transfer outlined in the earlier sections, it becomes obvious that there is a quest for coordinated actions of all stakeholders in the process and at the different level. There is a general perception especially within the policy community that linking HEI/PRI and industry leads to short-term economic impact and strengthens both sides including the existing willingness of both sides to engage in these undertakings (Barge-Gil and Modrego-Rico, 2013). But this expectations rest on many assumptions, and most of them are not fulfilled in reality. To accelerate the impact from these linkages, measures are required by governments, HEI/PRI and also industry.\n4. Science, technology and innovation value creation under the open innovation paradigm: The open innovation paradigm is present to companies and researchers for a long time stressing the importance of companies cooperating along the innovation value chain with multiple partners and highlighting the meaning of joint innovation-related efforts with external partners (Dahlander and Gann, 2010; Huizingh, 2011; Chiaroni et al., 2011; Bianchi et al., 2011). In this respect, it can be observed that new forms of complementarity between business and public research have emerged which correspond to the increasing desire by companies to take advantage of the growing technology and knowledge stock as a result of the ongoing increasing public expenditure in research and education (Carayannis et al., 2015). This increased knowledge and technology inventory brings more options and opportunities for generating innovation because in a narrower understanding, innovation is rooted in the combination/recombination/assembly of existing knowledge and technologies paired toward special purposes in course of which companies are increasingly engaging in alternative innovation practices (Doz et al., 2004). Looking at the innovation process from this perspective, it is obvious that the main features of generating innovation remain similar (Huizingh, 2011), whereas inbound innovation, so to say ideas for innovation and outbound innovation, e.g. exploitation paths have, became more divers (Dahlander and Gann, 2010). Another important challenge arises from the quest to integrating complementary knowledge and competences to leverage the innovation potential (Doz et al., 2004) because different knowledge and technology sources are not always complementary (Fallick et al., 2004). Knowledge and technology absorption from different sources is more challenging when it also requires integrating market, customer and competitive intelligence. Speed and intensity of incorporating external knowledge and technology is also at least partially determined by the geographical proximity of partners (Doring and Schnellenbach, 2004; Fritsch and Franke, 2004; Simmie, 2003; Spithoven et al., 2010).\n5. Discussion and conclusion: Over the past decade, much has changed in the innovation generation process and the respective strategic orientation of the actors. This includes the changed attitudes toward innovation by HEI and PRI as well as the open innovation paradigm which is a common sense meanwhile among companies. Moreover, company innovations are increasingly targeted at more integrated innovation models, e.g. combined product/process and service innovation and also business model innovation. This implies that product and process innovations are now accompanied by services and modeled around the business itself and in turn opens new and broader opportunities for companies' collaborating with external partners in R&D undertakings.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to provide a substantial overview of features and channels of knowledge and technology transfer in light of achieving impact from science and research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is conceptual with substantial desk research undertaken. A taxonomy of transfer channels is proved and levels of impact from STI proposed.\nFindings: It is found that there are different levels of value generated from science, technology and innovation, each featuring different stakeholders with different agendas and expectations. It is argued that to make knowledge and technology transfer impactful and sustainable, a long-term and holistic view and approach is required.\nOriginality/value: Against most papers about technology and knowledge transfer, this work presents an overarching overview of objects, channels and features of partners involved in transfer. It is features technology and knowledge transfer from a holistic perspective and provides useful background for future empiric studies and impact assessments.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effects of interpersonal attraction on service justice	[ "Distributive justice", "Procedural justice", "Physical attraction", "Social attraction", "Task attraction", "Interactional justice" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The customer's assessment of a service company takes place at the moment when he or she interacts with that company. The interaction between customer and service companies has some tangible clues, such as facilities and environment, but employees during these encounters greatly influence customer evaluations of service companies (Beaujean et al., 2006). Therefore, many scholars have been aware of the importance of employees at the point of contact with customers and have studied the factors that may influence their service implementation. Factors related to employees, such as personality (Mechinda and Patterson, 2011) and interpersonal attraction (Kuppelwieser and Touzani, 2016), as well as organizational factors, such as corporate culture (Beitelspacher et al., 2011), leadership (Popli and Rizvi, 2015) and empowerment (Sok and O'Cass, 2015), have been studied.\nLiterature review: Interpersonal attraction\nEmpirical analysis: Hypothesis setting\nDiscussion: Results of the study\nConclusion: Unlike previous studies, physical attraction negatively affected customer perceptions of service performance and outcomes. Social attraction also had a negative impact on procedural justice. The reasons for these findings are explained by the interaction effect of the interpersonal attraction factors and the expectation discrepancy theory. In the study of interpersonal attraction in the future, it is necessary to carry out an empirical study on the interaction effect of interpersonal attraction factors and the expectation discrepancy theory.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine the effects of physical attraction, social attraction and task attraction, which are interpersonal attraction components of service staff, on interactional justice, procedural justice and distributive justice, all of which are components of service justice.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study was conducted after deriving measurement tools through two preliminary studies. The research sample was made by those who have visited the restaurant where the service staff provides services directly to the customers. Respondents were instructed by investigators to complete the questionnaire based on their most recent visit to the most visited restaurants in the past three months. They received a $5 gift voucher after completing the questionnaire.\nFindings: Physical attraction negatively affected interactional justice, procedural justice and distributive justice. Social attraction had a negative impact on procedural justice. Task attraction had the greatest positive impact on all service justice factors.\nPractical implications: To attract customers' positive perceptions of service execution and outcomes, task attraction should be considered first rather than physical attraction and social attraction of service staff.\nOriginality/value: This study expanded the scope of research on interpersonal attraction by studying physical attraction, social attraction and task attraction as interpersonal attraction factors at service encounters, and on service justice by setting the interpersonal attraction as a variable affecting service justice.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Competitiveness and disclosure of intellectual capital: an empirical research in Portuguese banks	[ "Competitiveness", "Data analysis", "Disclosure", "Intellectual capital reporting", "Banking industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Intellectual capital (IC) is the dominating resource in the knowledge-based economy; however, traditional accounting practices only partially recognize the value of an organization's IC. Some studies (Guthrie et al., 2007; Chen and Pan, 2011) show that although IC reporting is still low, there has been an increase in IC disclosure in annual reports over the years, even in sectors where IC may not be expected to be a significant value driver, such as real estate, utilities and retailing (Unerman et al., 2007). While there is an increasing evidence that the IC of an organization represents the path to creating modern and competitive environments, there are inadequate disclosures of IC in the financial statements of organizations (Petty and Guthrie, 1999, 2000; Bruggen et al., 2009).\n2. Literature review and hypotheses development: IC is increasingly acknowledged as the most important asset for business performance and the foundation for competitiveness. A competitive and efficient financial sector is a prerequisite for economic development and growth. Banking institutions, in particular, are dealing with intense competitive pressures which arise from changes in financial environment, technological advancements and changing needs of the consumers in terms of product quality. Therefore, banks need to anticipate and respond to these demands and expectations. Skilled employees as well as sound infrastructures, networking systems, information systems, innovativeness, brand name, trademarks and knowledge bases, normally termed IC components, are needed to facilitate the delivery of high value-added products and services.\n3. Competitiveness and IC disclosure in banking sector: Banks have traditionally been considered to be more vulnerable to instability than other industries, for various reasons. Emerging from a dramatic crisis, the most critical challenge for financial sector is to restore the trust and confidence of consumers. This is critical for its survival and competitiveness. In a context of instability, the creation of a fair and competitive environment claims for information transparency and reducing information asymmetries among investors. This is more imperative in knowledge-intensive organizations as banks where competitiveness depends on the resources that differentiate them from their competitors, which are lasting and difficult to imitate or substitute (Serenko and Bontis, 2013). As mentioned by Abeysekera (2006), competitiveness depends less on the strategic allocation of physical and financial resources and more on strategic management of IC. In addition, reporting on IC creates a transparency that allows managers to manage their intangible resources better, facilitating decision making and the management of the organization as a whole. Despite that, the number of studies of IC reporting with specific reference to the banking sector (Khan and Ali, 2010) is still scarce. Table III highlights some studies on the IC disclosure practices in banking sector.\n4. Methodological approach: The methodology involved in the exploratory research study includes the collection of secondary data and semi-structured interviews. As part of secondary sources, annual reports and institutional websites information have been collected from the 28 banks, which constitute the universe of banks operating in the Portuguese financial market. In line with other studies (Li et al., 2006; Quinteiro, 2009; Mention, 2011; Herrera-Rodriguez and Macagnan, 2012; Linlin et al., 2013; Ramadan and Majdalany, 2013) our research focusses only on the banking sector. Linlin et al. (2013, p. 667) refer that \"banking industry is not only knowledge-intense but probably also has the most of IC reports produced among other industries\". Those 28 banks published their individual annual reports in 2015 and had an active and autonomous webpage in August 2016. As a technique of gathering data, both quantitative and qualitative information were picked up from those sources. The universe of banks involved in the study is listed in Table IV.\n5. Analysis and discussion of results: The average IC disclosure in annual reports is 0.3693, with a standard deviation (SD) of 0.2063, as shown in Table VIII. Disclosure in webpages is 0.2860, with a SD of 0.1192. In both cases, values show a large variability from the average, but this variability is lower in the disclosure in webpages, i.e., values are closer to average in the disclosure on webpages and there is a greater dispersion of values regarding the average in the disclosure in annual reports.\n6. Conclusions: This study aims to fill a research gap of limited works with respect to IC reporting in Portugal. We examine both the extent of IC disclosure and the IC components disclosure through constructing an IC disclosure index. It also explored the means chosen by banks to disclose IC information. Annual reports and webpages were found to be the primary means to IC disclosure. Along with the official and audited disclosure included in the annual reports, banks also give importance to an informal disclosure through the internet, namely in what concerns relational capital.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the level of intellectual capital (IC) awareness among Portuguese bank managers and which disclosure techniques are most common. The annual report is regarded by some authors as the most important vehicle of information about banks' affairs because of some specific characteristics of banks' activities. However, organizations are increasingly using their webpages to disclose a broad spectrum of information. The objectives of this study are twofold: to investigate how Portuguese bank managers perceive the impact of IC disclosure on the bank's competitiveness; and to assess the extent to which Portuguese banks voluntarily report their IC in annual reports vs webpages.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The methodology involved in the exploratory study includes the collection of secondary data - annual reports and websites - collected from the 28 banks operating in Portugal, and semi-structured interviews from 25 banking managers. Content analysis is applied using a constructed index based on two European frameworks - Intellectus and InCaS - slightly modified to take into consideration the peculiarities of the sector.\nFindings: Results show higher level of IC disclosure in annual reports than that provided in websites. Human capital and structural capital are the most reported category in annual reports and, conversely, the disclosure of relational capital is higher in the webpages. Findings are found similar in comparison to various other studies on the subject which reveal very low level of IC disclosure, not yet receiving priority from the mentors of banks. Interviews reveal that not many managers recognize the need and significance of measuring and reporting IC, although it is recognized as a driver of competitiveness. For protecting business confidentiality, banks do not want to report information of sensitive nature.\nResearch limitations/implications: The analysis is limited to a single sector. Future research can expand to other industries (e.g. manufacturing, technological, services) to enable a more comprehensive understanding of IC disclosure in Portugal. The cross-sectional approach is also a limitation. A longitudinal study could be conducted for capturing the trend of reporting practices during the period. Further research could apply research methods other than content analysis (e.g. questionnaire survey, interviews or mixed-methods) in order to obtain a more in-depth view of how the Portuguese organizations manage, measure and report their IC.\nPractical implications: Research may be of relevance for both banking managers and regulators. For banking managers because it offers an opportunity to envisage their banks' future potential for growth and competitiveness. For regulators, the relevance of the study focusses on their understanding of developing mandatory reporting or additional policy requirements. This study provides a motivation for further research that contributes to a body of knowledge and practices on the IC disclosure.\nSocial implications: Emerging from the years of a financial crisis, restoring trust and confidence is the most critical challenge for banks to become competitive. IC disclosure could help to restore confidence.\nOriginality/value: The existing literature on the IC reporting and disclosure in the context of banking sector is limited. Based on the Intellectus model and the InCaS model we built an index of IC disclosure to banking sector which contributes to a greater accuracy, transparency and reliability in the disclosure of this unique sector. This initiative may encourage its applicability in other sectors.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Improved Markov stable state simulation for maintenance planning	[ "Equipment maintenance", "Prediction", "Process parameters", "Simulation model", "Stable state probabilities" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The primary goal of planned maintenance is to retain proper operational conditions of systems/components with minimum cost and emergency break downs. Hence, condition-based maintenance planning models are generally preferred to age/block replacement and time-based models by most industrial organizations because of their numerous advantages (Suprasad, 2006; Rosmaini and Shahrul, 2013). Age/block replacement and time-based maintenance programs assume one state (working or failed) of a system at any given time and that failure depends entirely on its age (Wang, 2002). However, equipment degradation/deterioration is a multi-stage process where the system parameters worsen over a period with the first being the good stage, and last being the failed stage. In time-based maintenance, systems/components are replaced at a prearranged time and at the time of their failure, which is inappropriate because it is prone to undesired frequent emergency break down maintenance in most cases (Kamran, 2010; David and Matthew, 2015). Also, Suprasad (2006) and Moubray (2001) showed that only about 15 to 20 percent of industrial equipment failures are age-related. In condition-based maintenance, the systems performance indicators are regularly measured and a maintenance action(s) is taken when measurements are about to exceed operating limits (Mulugeta, 2009). Three categories of parameters/data: machine output measure, physical changes of the equipment/components (vibration, sound, temperature levels, wear) and time-to-failure/other reliability measures are utilized in the implementation of this maintenance policy (Rosmaini and Shahrul, 2013). Since condition-based maintenance responsibility is not to fix a system when it fails because time preceding the failure stage is often enough to avoid or control failure, the stochastic nature of equipment deterioration process has been incorporated by researchers over the years using multi-stage deterioration models of Markov chains for maintenance programs (Suprasad, 2006).\nMethodology: The stable state probability prediction model for assessing equipment condition was developed using the mechanistic modeling approach, which involves steps such as system description; choosing of symbols for the input/process variables; derivation of the transition rate (failure and repair) governing equations by applying basic laws of system reliability, mathematics and statistics and other derived relations of the interactions between the process variables with some assumptions to obtain the desired equations required of the system. Its performance process involves the collection/acquisition of data from a system of interest, processing of extracted data of condition indicators is performed, diagnostics using discrete event model is performed to determine stable state probabilities of various degradation states, and finally a decision scheme is built on health condition detection and maintenance decision to be employed on the system. The algorithm in this work is implemented with Java programming language as part of a simulation application. The algorithm was then tested using plant process data as obtained from equipment of interest. This allows the coded algorithm to be studied and verified to determine how the algorithm should work and assessment of their effectiveness. The algorithm has proven to be effective.\nState space model description: In this work, four stages of degradation (states) are adopted. Using Di to represent each state as illustrated in the state space model in Figure 2. In state D=1, the component is as good as new, while at D=4, the condition of the system becomes critical, requiring prompt maintenance actions. State 1 represents an \"as good as new\" condition (no degradation). State 2 represents incipient degradation, requiring mM actions. State 3 represents severe degradation, requiring some PM action. State 4 represents a critical condition where CM actions are required. Three types of maintenance action were adopted on the basis of the requirement of the system. They are: mM, IM and MM.\nStable state probabilities model formulation: Considering a new system that is repairable and maintainable having N components, each subject to deterioration. Each component i is assumed to have rate of failure occurrence, li(t), where t is the actual time (t>0). The rate of failure occurrence is given as:(2)\nEquipment state simulator: The implementation of this software requires operating system (OS) of Windows 2000 and above, with reasonable RAM size, disk space and high screen resolution. Its installation involves the pre-installation of the Netbeans IDE and Java applications, then import of the folder named \"Maintenance\" to run the setup file inside the folder following the prompts to install the software. Launching this software after installation requires a double click on Netbeans shortcut icon on the desktop or single click the same on the window start menu (Figure 3) to feature the window (main outlook) of the program environment (Figure 4).\nCost analysis: For the economic evaluation of different maintenance technique alternatives, a life-cycle cost (LCC) analysis has to be made. This implies that all cost categories including initial and variable costs must be considered. LCC are all the anticipated costs associated with a project or program alternative courses of action throughout its entire life span. Industries have used LCC to help determine which maintenance policy, manufacturing methods, alternative support schemes, etc., will cost less over the life of a system. This analysis can help to make decisions early in a project about which alternative has the lowest LCC considering relevant variables, with the objective of choosing the best alternative to employ scarce resources. Life cycle costs analysis consists of defining the LCC of each alternative and reducing each cost to a common basis using present worth calculations. After identifying all costs by year and amount and discounting them to present value, they are added to arrive at total LCC for each alternative:(21)\nResults and discussion: Based on the maintenance planning algorithm presented in Figure 1, the right time and maintenance action can be determined. The stable state probability prediction process using the Markov chain model as presented in Equations (18)-(20) is initiated after the data of li(t) and mi(t) have been updated. After processing, the program will compute values of the performance parameters, which are: Normal state probability, PM state probability and Failure/CM state probability (Figure 10). Prediction of these three performance indicators for a given set of operational parameters involves a click on CALCULATE button to run the computation and prediction of maintenance action based on the results of the stable state probability computation. From this result, one of four maintenance actions (No action, mM, IM or MM) set out is recommended. Furthermore, this developed algorithm is able to determine component(s) that requires maintenance at a given time and the level maintenance required. The decision is based on the fact that not all components in an equipment require maintenance at the same instant of time. Performing maintenance on the wrong component may increase unnecessary cost without adding value to the system. Therefore, determining which component in the unit requires maintenance is very relevant. To solve this problem, the decision algorithm incorporated state probabilities comparative analysis. This measure compares the health condition of various components that make up the system and assigns maintenance action based on their state probabilities.\nConclusion: Equipment State Simulator for predicting the degradation state probabilities of manufacturing equipment for state health evaluation was developed. Analysis of this software revealed that its predictions result with the actual performance result of the test equipment showed similarity by about 99 percent. Also, the implementation of this technique gave a considerably low LCC. Thus, this maintenance planning procedure can enable maintenance personnel to detect and possibly eliminate the causal conditions leading to breakdown, better plan for maintenance and repairs, order parts and schedule maintenance just-in-time, and reduce the chance of equipment failure during operation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a software (Equipment State Simulator) used for predicting equipment performance parameters required for maintenance planning.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This maintenance software was developed from the derived stable state probability models using algebraic substitution and computation of total operational period, number of breakdowns, total downtime, mean time between failures and mean time to repair of equipment/component(s) at preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance states. The models were derived using mechanistic modeling technique such that all the relevant variables were accounted for.\nFindings: Analysis of this software revealed that its predictions reckon with the actual performance of the test specimens by about 99 percent.\nOriginality/value: The research proposes a maintenance model and software for predicting state probabilities of manufacturing systems degradation. This program also predicts maintenance action(s) required by the equipment based on the predetermined alert levels.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
"Only English Counts": the impact of English hegemony on South-Korean athletes	[ "South Korea", "Athlete career development", "English hegemony", "Linguistic capital" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Global proximity enabled by the evolution of technology has made English language proficiency one of the most valuable commodities and, even more importantly, social capital for individuals (Crystal, 2012; Kubota, 2011; Pennycook, 1994). Canagarajah (2005) stated that while \"non-Western communities were busy working on one project (decolonization), the carpet has been pulled from under their feet by another project (globalization)\" (pp. 195-196). The implicit rationale behind a dominant position of English within globalized society is that English is the language of choice in cross-cultural communications, with its ever-increasing presence across many scientific fields (Song, 2011; Van Weijen, 2012). A great deal of literature discusses \"the snowballing global dominance of English\" (Bacon, 2017, p. 425), with many academic journals devoted to bettering English as a foreign or second language (EFL/ESL) methods from kindergarten to college level, e.g. TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Journal, Language Learning and Bilingual Research Journal. There is, however, a dearth of information regarding how particular groups of people, in predominantly non-English speaking countries, are impacted by the far-reaching influence of English. Although this study was initially incepted to broadly explore the essential factors influencing post-retirement career of elite South Korean athletes, the impact of English language proficiency emerged as the determining measure of post-retirement success. Thus, with the concepts of English hegemony and linguistic capital underpinning this study, it attempts to tease out the complexities of the English language proficiency, athletic achievement, and societal forces that influence post-retirement success of elite South Korean athletes. In the next section, we trace what has become known as \"English fever\" (Krashen, 2003; Park, 2009) and connect it to the experiences of elite South Korean athletes.\nSouth Korean globalization context from athletes' perspectives: The impact of South Korean globalization\nDiscussion: Consistent with the purpose of this study that aimed to explore factors affecting former Korean athletes' post-retirement career development, the findings demonstrated that English proficiency appears to have hegemonic influence on the job prospects of these retired athletes. At the international sports organization level, linguistic homogenization is touted as bringing global unity and understanding. However, our findings revealed the dominance of English puts elite athletes at a great disadvantage when they pursue employment within the sports administration positions. Regardless of their athletic accomplishments and multilingual proficiency, the English hegemony is a factor that denied many capable individuals access to aspired employment and financial security. Although there are no simple solutions to the problematized situation, we suggest that a conversation about the notions of linguistic capital is long overdue.\nLimitations: Limitations of this study include a relatively small number of interviews and focus groups, as well as a limited number of participants drawn from a larger pool through purposeful convenience sampling. Due to this limited access to retired athlete participants and the absence of voices of policy-makers and sports administrators, the study findings cannot be generalized or broadly applied to other contexts. Despite these limitations, the perspective of the participating retired athletes offers significant insight into the intersections of language, athleticism and employment.\nConclusion: Gramsci's (1985) words ring true: \"Every time that the question of language surfaces, in one way or another, it means that a series of other problems are coming to the fore\" (p. 183). Even if the broad influence of linguistic hegemony and capital is indisputable, or perhaps some even might say unavoidable, critically investigating social phenomena accepted as inevitable is imperative to identify winners and losers. In this case, Korean retired elite athletes appear to be on the losing end. Governments must exercise a balancing act between pursuing socio-politically and -economically ambitious goals for their people and unintentionally creating systemic biases that exclude the stakeholders from benefiting from their policies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: While conceived to examine key factors affecting post-retirement career advancement of retired elite athletes in South Korea, the purpose of this paper is to report how English, as a de facto global lingua franca, functions as a powerful gatekeeper in the sports administration field.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Interpreted through the lens of Bourdieu's linguistic capital and Gramsci's hegemony of language, the present study draws on content analysis of semi-structured individual interviews, as well as focus group interviews, conducted with thirty former South Korean elite athletes.\nFindings: Based on the data analysis, systematic bias toward athletes was uncovered, privileging English as the single determining factor for employment. Furthermore, the educational implications for adult learners of English as a Foreign or English an Additional Language reveal unrealistic expectations of top-down language policies.\nOriginality/value: Perspectives of athlete participants, an underrepresented group in educational research, within the South Korean globalization context shed critical light on the pervasive aspects of English hegemony and its unexamined dimensions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Feeling better when buying more? Harmonious passion and obsessive passion in online food group buying	[ "Compulsive buying", "Impulse buying", "Harmonious passion", "Intrinsic enjoyment", "Obsessive passion", "Online food group buying" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The easiness of online information exchange and social interaction provide ideal opportunities for the growth of online group buying (OGB) (Kim et al., 2014). Most OGB websites take food as the key product and use photos of delicious food as major attractions on their homepage (Zhang et al., 2013). The popularity of OGB can be found around the world, such as Groupon in the USA, LetsBuyIt in Europe, Coupang in Korea, Gomaji in Taiwan, and Dianping in China. Moreover, some OGB are formed specifically for food, such as Chef Site and other online groups on social media (Liang and Lim, 2011). Due to the importance of food in OGB, this study focuses on online food group buying (OFGB). Previous OGB (Kim et al., 2014; Wu and Lee, 2012; Zhang and Tsai, 2015) and OFGB (Liang and Lim, 2011; Lo et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2013) studies have analyzed consumers' perception about discount rate of buying, popularity of products, service quality of the product provider, former previews and trust toward the product provider, transaction cost to complete a buying behavior, consumers' need for uniqueness, and consumers' subjective norms and attitudes toward OFGB.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Self-determination theory and passion types\n3. Method: The research setting of this study is a Facebook group specifically for food buying, with population of 2,387 members who are interested in OFGB. Members in the group deliver information about food products for generating group food buying, and share experiences about purchased food products through former food group buying. The online group is suitable to collect data for this study for two main reasons. First, the members in the group are all interested about and engage in buying behavior for food. The continuous buying behavior allows researchers to further examine the concept of the proposed buying types. Second, the interest to join the group reveals members' passion toward OFGB. The passion-driven food buying behavior perfectly fits with this study to deeply examine the effects different types of passion on following buying outcomes.\n4. Results: 4.1 Profile of participants\n5. Discussion: Findings of this study add rich insightful implications to literature of the self-determination theory and OFGB. First, buying more does not lead to better short-term and long-term mental status. Miao (2011) noted the buying more behavior itself brings ambivalent cognitive responses, based on consumers' self beliefs about whether the consumption is for self-indulgence or due to weak self-control. The self-determination theory also argued the key to separate people's continuous passionate behavior is the freedom for people to naturally engage on passionate activities without bothering other life aspects (Deci and Ryan, 2000). That is, the external buying more behavior is not a solid clue to refer consumers' mental status, but consumers' mental passion types toward the activity. Different from previous studies to concern key factors for motivating consumers' online buying behavior and behavioral intention (Liang and Lim, 2011; Zhang et al., 2013), such finding add knowledge in the filed by finding the meaningful affective mechanism of consumers in OFGB. Second, in the relationship between passion types and buying behavior, we found obsessive passion has strong influence to stimulate consumers' impulse buying and compulsive buying. Harmonious passion, in contrast, cannot even motivate impulse buying. It revealed that not all passion types motivate consumers to consume more. Under high harmonious passion in OFGB, consumers can still stick to conducting normal buying, without buying impulsively or compulsively.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand consumers' passion types in online food group buying (OFGB) and the following outcomes in buying behavior and mental status.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research setting of this study is a Facebook group specifically for food buying, with population of 2,387 members who are interested in OFGB. Among 2,387 members in the case group, there were 1,286 members clicked on the questionnaire, and 254 of them participated in the survey and returned valid responses. In total, 254 valid questionnaires were collected for 19.75 percent usable response rate (254 out of 1,286).\nFindings: Results of this study proved that harmonious passion can improve both long-term intrinsic enjoyment and short-term positive feelings, while exert no effects on impulse buying. On the other hand, obsessive passion can significantly stimulate both impulse buying and compulsive buying, and strengthen short-term positive feelings as well.\nOriginality/value: It is interesting to find that buying more does not make consumers feel better based on the evidence that impulse buying and compulsive buying performed no positive influences to both short-term and long-term mental status.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Factor selection for service quality evaluation: a hospital case study	[ "SERVQUAL", "Data envelopment analysis", "Service quality management", "Common weights" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The service sector's rise and development has been the predominant pattern in this century's structural changes (Zarei et al., 2012). Services have an influential effect on a country's development, including poverty reduction and access to basic amenities such as education and healthcare. In Asia, services play an obvious role as a growth source. However, service quality improvement is a key challenge faced by Asian countries (Noland et al., 2012). Delivering high quality services can result in achieving high customer satisfaction, leading to consumer retention (Hu et al., 2009). Researchers try to conceptualize service quality in different ways. Service quality is different from goods quality in many ways. The only tangible service quality aspects are equipment, facilities, and employees. Subjective aspects make services difficult to evaluate (Parasuraman et al., 1985). However, researchers believe that service quality can be assessed by measuring the gap between service expectations and performance (Cronin and Taylor, 1992). The SERVQUAL scale is a popular instrument used extensively in healthcare to assess service quality. Parasuraman et al. (1985) identified ten determinants that may influence the gap; i.e., competence, courtesy, credibility, security, access, communication, knowing the customer, tangibles, reliability, and responsiveness. By the early 1990s, Parasuraman et al. had refined the model to five factors; i.e., assurance, empathy, reliability, responsiveness and tangibles (Zeithaml et al., 1990). They analyzed the gap between perception and expectation so that the negative gaps meant that the perceived service quality is less than satisfactory, zero gaps meant service quality is satisfactory and positive gaps meant service quality is more than satisfactory (Parasuraman et al., 1985). Researchers and experts use SERVQUAL in many services including healthcare services as a standard scale, although SERVQUAL has been criticized (Hsieh and Lin, 2010). To remove SERVQUAL's shortfalls, Najafi et al. (2014) introduced a service quality measure called the perceived service quality index (PSQI), which shows how much customers' expectations are met.\nMethodology: DEA is a linear (non-parametric) programming technique for measuring relative efficiency in decision making units (DMUs) when there are multiple inputs and outputs that do not require any assumptions about a priori information on their importance. Its advantage is that it does not assume frontier functional forms. The DMU definition is generic and flexible, and includes different consumable or non-consumable inputs and outputs. Recently, DEAs have been used to evaluate performances in dissimilar activities (which are often reported in non-commensurable units) in diverse contexts and countries. One reason for this applicability is that DEA makes dealing with the systems involving multiple inputs and multiple outputs possible. To evaluate DMU efficiency with multiple inputs and outputs, weights should be determined and outputs and inputs aggregated separately to form an efficiency ratio (Cooper et al., 2006). Considering n DMUs, each transform varying m inputs to produce s different outputs. Specifically, DMUp consumes xip input (i=1, ..., m) and produces yrp output (r=1, ..., s). Assuming xip0 and yrp0, each DMU has at least one positive input and one positive output value. The standard input-oriented Charnes-Cooper-Rhodes (CCR) model is:(1)\nSampling and data collection: Participants were selected from inpatients who had stayed between August and December 2014. In all, 280 questionnaires were distributed among eligible patients (more than 15 years old, mentally well and willing to respond on discharge). Questionnaires with 50 percent unfilled statements and those with one answer for each statement were eliminated to avoid using invalid data. Thus, 256 usable questionnaires were received (91 percent response rate) (Table I).\nResults: Evaluating hospital service quality\nDiscussion: To be different from their rivals, hospital managers should focus on service quality perceptions. Several methods to assess service quality have been proposed. SERVQUAL has been applied in many different service fields. Like each model, the SERVQUAL scale has its merits and deficiencies, so we aimed to promote SERVQUAL's usefulness using mathematical models, which enabled us to deepen our service quality insights. The gap between expectations and perceptions were analyzed in a novel way. Two DMUs were defined as EXP and PER with virtual inputs. Then using a common weights approach, customer expectations and perceptions were compared mathematically. This analysis encouraged us to use another model that introduces the improvements needed to promote services to a desired level. However, the desired level is clearly higher than current service quality. In SERVQUAL's conventional use in most studies, dimension ranking, based on service quality gaps, are introduced as a guideline to improve service quality. By introducing new insights into service quality, each dimension's realistic impact on service perception was examined. Results show that trust in services has the most impact on PSQI. Applying mathematical models does not have the limitations found in other statistical tools. Our service quality study showed that tangibles, problem solving, trust in services, empathy, and assurance are meaningful dimensions. However, patient expectations have not been met since PSQI is less than 1.\nConclusion: It is crucial to identify the service quality elements in different service contexts and focus on them to help customers perceive a desirable service level. Assessing service quality is achievable by analyzing the gap between customer expectations and perceptions (the SERVQUAL model). Our main question was to find a guideline to improve service quality. To do so, we needed to know which service quality dimension has a stronger effect on customer perceptions. This information is needed to start any service improvement and strategic planning. Although this analysis has been done using conventional statistical methods, mathematical sensitivity analysis assessment is more reliable. A new DEA model solved this problem in a way that each service dimension's impact on PSQI was identifiable. The items needing improvement depend on the service provider's capability to broaden their efforts to improve service quality. Service sensitivity analysis prepares the ground for further research for those who are willing to scrutinize each service quality item's effect. Devising a method that detects the most critical service quality factors can be further studied. Additionally, using fuzzy logic to manage linguistic variables and develop new specific functions is interesting.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic approach to predict service quality dimension's influence on service quality using a novel analysis based on data envelopment and SERVQUAL.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To assess hospital service quality in Tehran, expectation and perception of those who received the services were evaluated using SERVQUAL. The hospital service quality dimensions were found by exploratory factor analysis (EFA). To compare customer expectation and perception, perceived service quality index (PSQI) was measured using a new method based on common weights. A novel sensitivity approach was used to test the service quality factor's impact on the PSQI.\nFindings: A new service quality dimension named \"trust in services\" was found using EFA, which is not an original SERVQUAL factor. The approach was applied to assess the hospital's service quality. Since the PSQI value was 0.76 it showed that improvements are needed to meet customer expectations. The results showed the factor order that affect PSQI. \"Trust in services\" has the strongest influence on PSQI followed by \"tangibles,\" \"assurance,\" \"empathy,\" and \"responsiveness,\" respectively.\nPractical implications: This work gives managers insight into service quality by following a systematic method; i.e., measuring perceived service quality from the customer viewpoint and service factors' impact on customer perception.\nOriginality/value: The procedure helps managers to select the required service quality dimensions which need improvement and predict their effects on customer perception.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Do low gasoline prices cause more traffic fatalities in the 50 states of the USA? The importance of other factors	[ "Gasoline prices", "Dynamic panel model", "Road fatalities", "System GMM estimators", "R41", "H23", "O18", "Q43" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Americans have been driving record miles in the last few years because of factors such as more automobiles, low gasoline prices in combination with low gasoline taxes, an improving economy, and changing gender participation rates. The National Safety Council (NSC) estimates that in 2016 US may see its deadliest driving year since 2007[1]. One cannot help but think of the impact of relevant driving-related factors on road fatalities, particularly for the 50 individual states that stand out in terms of the size, strength and diversity of these factors at the state-level relative to other countries.\n2. Literature review: The literature lacks extensive studies on the impact of gasoline prices, gasoline taxes, gender, alcohol consumption and macroeconomic variables on road fatalities in the 50 states of the USA There are many studies that have been undertaken by non-economic researchers, mostly about the developed countries as a whole. Thus, our study fills a large gap in the literature. Precedent studies of economic researchers can be summarized as follows.\n3. Data description: In this study, we use annual state-level data over the period from 2000 to 2013. The data for road fatalities are sourced from the National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, https://www.nhtsa.gov), while population and per capita income data are from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (https://www.bea.gov). The data for female and male drivers are sourced from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS, https://http://www.iihs.org) and those for gasoline prices are provided by the American Petroleum Institute (API, http://www.api.org). The vehicle registration data are from the Office of Highway Policy Information of the Federal Highway Administration (https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation). The data for per capita alcohol consumption are obtained from the \"Per capita ethanol consumption for States, census regions and the USA, 1977-2013\" (http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov.pitt.idm.oclc.org).\n4. Empirical results: 4.1 Definitions of variables in the analysis and descriptive statistics\n5. Final conclusions: The US media attracted the attention of Americans in 2015 by stating that recent plunges in gasoline prices considerably increased road fatalities in the country. Of course, the media could neither support this statement at the state level nor define the factors that interact with each other to produce such a result. Our research has been motivated by such media, as well as by the large gap in the literature on road fatalities for the 50 states. We managed to gather the data for road fatalities, along with diverse explanatory variables, despite the difficulty in collecting data at the state level.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Motivated by the news media and a lack of comprehensive research on the USA, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between changes in road fatalities and gasoline prices, per capita disposable personal income, alcohol consumption per adult, blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits and gender.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study employs both static and dynamic panel data models, making use of annual data over the 2000-2013 period collected from the 50 states of the USA and the consistent system GMM estimators of the parameters, to estimate the impact of these variables on fatalities per 100,000 persons and per 100,000 vehicles.\nFindings: The results highlight the importance of gasoline prices in determining the level of road fatalities, underscoring that a 10 percent decrease in gasoline prices leads to a 248 increase in the total number of road fatalities, but with many more injuries. Increases in the female-to-total driver ratio have a greater significant positive impact on road fatalities where a 10 percent increase in this ratio increases road fatalities by 1,008 deaths. Increases in registered vehicles per capita also increase the number of fatalities. Other variables such as alcohol consumption per adult and BAC limits are not as important. Policy implications are also provided.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results of this study highlight the importance of gasoline prices in determining the number of road fatalities. This factor can be an effective policy measure by which policymakers can offset increases in fatalities due to further drastic declines in future gasoline prices. But the effects of the gasoline prices in determining the number of road fatalities are not as strong as the media would lead us to believe. The media ignores the impact of other factors on fatalities, which results in an overestimation of the impact of gasoline prices.\nOriginality/value: This study uses the panel data of 50 US states and the dynamic panel data model. In addition to gasoline price effects on the road fatalities, this study also considers other factors such as gender, gasoline taxes, per capita disposable personal income, per capita alcohol consumption, BAC limits and number of registered vehicles.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Technical training in the MNCs in Malaysia: a case study analysis of the petrochemical industry	[ "Training", "Individual development", "Multinational companies", "Petrochemical industry", "Technical training", "Malaysia" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In today's global market, companies are surrounded by competitors, regardless of industry. To develop a competitive advantage, it is imperative that companies truly leverage the workforce as a competitive weapon. A strategy for radically improving workforce productivity to drive higher value for the organization has become an important focus. Organizations seek to enhance employees' morale and productivity, limit job turnover, and help organizations increase performance and improve business results. In this, organizations effectively use employee skills, provide training and development (T&D) opportunities to improve those skills, and increase employees' satisfaction with their jobs and working conditions (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2008). In short, organizations seek to optimize their workforce through comprehensive development programs not only to achieve business goals, but also most importantly, survive and thrive for years to come (Anonymous, 2006). To accomplish this undertaking, organizations will need to invest resources to ensure that employees have the information, skills, and competencies they need to work effectively in a rapidly changing and complex environment (Hooi, 2007). This includes investments in T&D as part of an overall effort to achieve cost-effective and timely results. For this, organizations need to understand human resource development (HRD) policies that would enhance employee performance and improve the bottom line. Simply providing T&D programs is not the key to better performance and higher productivity. Organizations need to look into the needs of the employees and ensure that HRD policies are aligned with both company and individual goals. How are companies in Asia responding to this?Multinationals in China and India are considered to be \"pattern-setting employers\" which have led to the emergence of global value paradigms among their employees (Chatterjee and Pearson, 2000; Warner, 2004; Zhu and Warner, 2000). Local organizations still lag behind in applying the concept of human resource management (HRM) as is understood internationally (Warner, 2004) and copy systems from their global counterparts (Smith, 2000, 2003; Smith and Abdullah, 2004). Local employees regard global organizations as training grounds (Khilji, 2004). To understand if global organizations are indeed a training ground for local employees in Malaysia, this paper analyzes the T&D practices of technical workers in a sample of multinational companies (MNCs) operating in Malaysia. Specifically, four MNCs in the petrochemical industry, which were selected based on equity ownership, were analyzed to ascertain if different ownership has an impact on the T&D practices of the company. A salient focus of the study is to assess what the current T&D practices of technical workers in the MNCs are, and if they are indeed the best practices in the industry. As it is generally believed that in developing countries, MNCs have better HRM systems when compared to local companies (Taylor et al., 1996; Rowley and Abdul-Rahman, 2007), it is anticipated that foreign-owned MNCs being more globalized and technologically advanced are likely to have better T&D practices for their technical workers (Hooi, 2007).The next section will focus on a review of related literature on the T&D practices of the MNCs. First, T&D is defined. Then, previous findings on T&D practices would be discussed. The objective is to identify current T&D practices that could be used as a benchmark. Then, the results of the findings are discussed, together with a concluding section, to expose the current T&D practices of technical workers in the petrochemical industry. It is intended to help human resource practitioners assess company's T&D efforts and make it easier to determine what, where, and how improvements may be implemented. Finally, practical implications of the findings are discussed.\nLiterature review: Purpose of training and development\nMethodology: Site and subjects\nResults: The findings of the study give an account of T&D practices of technical workers in the four petrochemical MNCs operating in Malaysia. This will give an insight of the current best dominant T&D practices that could be emulated by local companies as well as other large enterprises. No judgment is made on the relative merits of the different practices, as this research sought to identify and update knowledge on T&D practices of technical workers and to promote those positive developments and initiatives that were identified. Expenditure on HRD will not add value to the organization if HR departments develop knowledge, skills and attitudes that are not instrumental to the success of the organization. An analysis of the T&D practices of technical workers in the four MNCs reveals some similarities and differences. The T&D practices are discussed under three categories, namely types of training, cost benefit analysis of training, and the need for training.Types of training\nImplications for research and practice: Though this paper provides several contributions to the understanding of T&D of technical workers, particularly those in the petrochemical industry, there are a number of implications for research and practice. These are briefly discussed below.Types of training and alternatives to training\nConclusion: With the government's emphasis on T&D in recent years, many incentives have been offered by the government to encourage the private sector to develop its human capital. For more commitment in T&D, routine hiring of new school graduates and long term employment is likely to play an important role. Hiring as when needed and on an ad hoc basis causes job hopping, which is one of the major constraints of continuous T&D. Recruiting new school graduates and long term employment makes it worthwhile to carry out training especially now that the HRDF has made it compulsory to set aside funds for training. Appropriate T&D for long-term employment would probably lead to greater dedication and commitment on the part of the employees.All the organizations rely heavily on OJT and Off-JT techniques that emphasize mainly on job rotation for OJT and lecture and case study for Off-JT. Though the emphasis is on OJT, to create a well rounded employee who is equipped with better balance of practical and intellectual skills, Off-JT is carried out as well. Though long-term training programs are needed to halt the problem of job hopping, there is no incidence of constant and long term training in all the organizations surveyed. Self-learning seems to be a more popular method of self improvement. Though recognition is not given to those who have gone for further education and training, the increasing demand for self-learning perhaps suggests that there are insufficient training programs carried out in corporations in Malaysia.Comparatively, Company A and Company C placed more importance in T&D to remain competitive in the present era of globalization and technological advancement. Though it is anticipated that foreign owned MNCs are likely to have better T&D policies, the findings of Company B prove otherwise. Thus, it cannot be concluded that foreign-owned MNCs have better T&D policies as compared to locally-owned MNCs. Though Company B is wholly Japanese owned, it has not adopted the practices of its parent company. The significant emphasis on T&D as a contributing factor to competitiveness is likely to elevate the responsibility of HR practitioners to take T&D seriously. With the enforcement of the HRDF, efforts are being made to provide more T&D. In this, companies are making a conscious attempt to ensure that the T&D policies of each company are tailored to the needs of the employees by aligning individual goals with the objectives of the company.Looking at some of the T&D policies, Company A seems to be slightly more techno savvy in its approach. Perhaps with the use of software, it was able to correctly match training needs with the training programs available. The policies of Company C and Company D are also rather similar to those of Company A, except that in Company D there are quality control circles. In addition, in both Company C and Company D, there are the mentor-mentee system and career path guidance. T&D policies seem least developed in Company B. Unlike the other companies, there is no training needs analysis - something consider essential in most corporations. Also, training is not continuously carried out throughout the year and employees are not given equal opportunities in training. Emphasis is on obtaining ISO status for the company and only those involved in this are given opportunities for training. Though Company B emphasizes on multi-skilling, there is no e-learning facilities and no study grant to encourage employees to go for self development. Unlike other companies where there are suggestions for alternatives to training, Company B only provides a training manual for its employees.Among the policies, it is important that companies provide the training necessary to improve job performance. Though the provision of training is vital, training schedules should also be convenient and meet the needs of the employees. Besides this, managers' support is also much valued as employees expect managers to be available when needed. It is crucial that employees have someone to turn to for help when they have work related problems. Employees would also like to have equal access to job related training opportunities that would help them improve on their skills and enhance their development and growth. Managers that encourage their subordinates' professional development are also much favored. By highlighting these practices, it is hoped that best practices in T&D could be identified and adopted to create more effective and efficient workers that will contribute to organizational effectiveness.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to gain insight into some of the types of training and development practices that are carried out in the chemical industry for technical workers. A salient focus of the study is to make a comparative analysis of four MNCs, which were selected based on equity ownership, to ascertain whether T&D practices are similar regardless of equity ownership.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Specifically, four MNCs in the chemical industry were analysed to ascertain the types and intensity of T&D practices in these MNCs in Malaysia. In-depth interviews were conducted with some of the HR practitioners in each organisation.\nFindings: - Regardless of ownership, T&D practices of technical workers in the chemical industry in Malaysia are rather similar, though it differs in terms of intensity. On the whole, European MNCs place more importance on T&D, but it cannot be concluded that European-owned MNCs have better T&D practices than Asian-owned MNCs.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Similar research could be conducted on a larger sample, incorporating MNCs of different equity ownership to determine how T&D policies of globalised MNCs affect employee performance. Further research could be extended to different regions and sectors.\nPractical implications: - It provides an insight of desirable T&D practices that HR practitioners could develop to create competitive advantage through their human resources.\nOriginality/value: - In addition to identifying the relevant T&D practices, commentary is provided of current knowledge in terms of best T&D practices that could be emulated by local organisations as well as other institutions in the Asia Pacific region.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Unilateral acts and peremptory norms (Jus Cogens) in the international law commission's work	[ "Jus Cogens", "Peremptory norms", "Reservations to treaties", "Unilateral acts", "Unilateral declaration" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The relation between unilateral acts and jus cogens gave rise to an interesting doctrinal debate over whether peremptory norms apply on unilateral acts. Most of the scholars in International Law emphasize that unilateral acts must be a subject of jus cogens, as the prohibition of derogation from peremptory norms which is adopted in article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties was a comprehensive prohibition that covered not only international conventions but also, prima facie, unilateral acts. So any act or legal position based on the will of any international person must conform to jus cogens, or otherwise be null and void (Hannikainen, 1988; Saab, 1967; Allain, 2001; Meron, 1986, 1988; Ford, 1994; Zemanek, 2010; Jennings, 1967; Meron, 1986; Czaplinski, 1990; Provost, 1994; Tomuschat, 1999).\n2. Jus Cogens in international law: The peremptory norms as a concept has been significantly influenced and raised in international law through the contributions of professor Verdross, who derived them from natural law. Verdross believed that there are rules having the character of jus cogens in international law as the general principles of morality or the common public policy of legal systems in civilized nations constitutes a restriction on the obligations of the contractual states. Verdross considered that these rules nullified treaties of immoral purpose which include:\n3. International Law Commission's work on the codification of unilateral acts and the matter of jus cogens: The concept of jus cogens has become a preventive weapon in International Law because in practice, there are no known examples of treaties that derogate from such rules. In other words, the international practice did not witness any examples of treaties invalidity as a result of their conflict with a peremptory norm. It appears that States have attempted to circumvent the content of jus cogens by resorting to unilateral acts to depart from peremptory norms rather than treaties, as unilateral acts have remained for a considerable period beyond the umbrella of restraint imposed by jus cogens, at least in practice (Diaconu, 2016).\n4. Jus cogens in international law commission's work on codification of reservations to treaties: The International Law Commission decided to include the topic \"Law and practice relating to reservations to treaties\" in its programme of work in 1993, and appointed Alain Pellet as a Special Rapporteur for the topic at its 46th session, in 1994.\n5. Conclusion: It is clear, from the review of the work of the International Law Commission on unilateral acts and reservations to treaties, that the subject of peremptory norms has formed a major part of the work of commission. Indeed, the issue of peremptory norms was a source of great interest within the Commission. The inclusion of this notion in the works of the Commission on the unilateral acts reveals the stability of the notion of peremptory norms in the conscience of the international community as a whole, and the expansion and penetration of this notion in all areas of international law. Because the applicability of peremptory norms to unilateral acts was a matter of considerable controversy in the field of international law before the work of Commission.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore the evolution of the notion of peremptory norms (Jus Cogens) in international law through the work of the International Law Commission on unilateral acts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study depended on analyzing the work of the International Law Commission on two topics: Unilateral Acts 2006 and Reservations to treaties 2011 to reveal the relation between jus cogens and unilateral acts.\nFindings: Jus cogens restrict unilateral acts like treaties due to the recognition of the importance and necessity of the concept of Jus cogens in protecting the fundamental interests of the international community.\nPractical implications: States must be compatible with jus cogens when making any reservation on a treaty and also when taking any unilateral act.\nOriginality/value: This paper reveals the importance of jus cogens in promoting the values of the international community and the need of such notion to protect the common interest of that community.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Making risk pay: the board's role	[ "Risk management", "Boards", "Corporate governance", "Management strategy", "Business excellence" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Pursuing opportunities exposes organizations to risk. Creating sustainable stakeholder value is becoming increasingly challenging in a world where risks are growing due to globalization, changes in regulations, political upheavals, talent wars, and disruptive technologies. The biggest risk organizations face, however, is the risk of not properly managing their opportunities and risks. It is the board's responsibility to approve the organization's strategy and monitor the risks assumed and risk mitigation treatments. The board needs to ensure management makes risk pay off by identifying and selecting opportunities which more than compensate for the risk.\nHas management identified all opportunities?: An organization's strategy outlines what offerings it will sell, which customers and markets it will serve, and how it will do this effectively and efficiently. It is the board's responsibility to ensure that management's proposed strategy maximizes the potential of its resources and activities by matching them with profitable opportunities. This process starts with management identifying which resources and activities have the greatest potential to create stakeholder value. One way management can ensure it has considered all resources is first examine those assets which are capitalized on the balance sheet (such as manufacturing facilities), and then for look for others that are not recognized by GAAP as assets, such as the organization's reputation, relationships with stakeholders, and its people. Porter's (1998) value chain can be used to help identify the organizations key activities, such as production, logistics, sales and support, procurement, training, and new product development. After generating a list of assets and activities, the next step is for management to classify each of these resources and activities into one of three types based on their ability to provide the organization a competitive edge (Barney, 1995):Need to improve\nWhat are the risks associated with each opportunity?: Management needs to perform an in-depth assessment of the risk exposure and potential risk mitigation treatments for each opportunity. One method to systematically bring the discussion of raw risks[3] to the board table is to identify and classify the risk associated with each opportunity using the following risk classification framework:Strategic risks\nManaging the risks identified: Now that the major risks have been identified for each opportunity, the next step is for management to estimate the probability of each major risk will occur and its potential monetary impact. Board members need to be comfortable with the probabilities and monetary values associated with each opportunity's risk profile as these guide the choice of risk treatments. To be successful, each of the significant risks identified need to be managed using one or more of the following four risk treatments (see Figure 1).Avoid the risk\nConclusion: The biggest gain in making risk pay off is improved performance. This results from adopting a strategy which successfully balances the need to pursue profitable opportunities, while managing the risk. Boards and management that successfully incorporate both into the strategy process will enhance their organization's resilience to risky events, and reduce the variability of its performance, which in turn will enhance its reputation with stakeholders.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this article is to propose a process which ensures boards make risk pay off by identifying and selecting opportunities which more than compensate for the risks assumed. Organizations are increasingly under threat from factors such as globalization, regulations, and technology. Given this, the biggest challenge boards' face is to competently manage these opportunities and risks. Although boards can benefit from fully integrating risk management into the strategy formulation process, survey evidence shows most have not done so.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This article draws from the confluence of the risk management, strategy formulation and board governance streams to illustrate how boards can enhance performance by integrating strategy formulation and risk management into a single process.\nFindings: - Given that many boards formulate strategy and manage risk separately, organizations can gain a competitive advantage by managing them in an integrative fashion. Boards that integrate strategy formulation and risk management should achieve higher stakeholder returns and be more adaptive than rivals.\nPractical implications: - Boards need to adopt strategies for their organizations which create the desired amount of stakeholder value within acceptable risk levels. Boards can only ensure this occurs if the opportunities and risks are discussed as part of the same process. Only with full knowledge of the opportunities and risks, as well as the risk management responses, can boards ensure management are recommending optimal strategies for their organizations.\nOriginality/value: - This article outlines a process which ensures boards are adequately addressing risk when selecting strategies for their organizations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Factors driving consumption behavior for green aquatic products: Empirical research from Ningbo, China	[ "Social cognitive theory", "Consumption behaviour", "Green aquatic products" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Green food is defined as clean, safe, high-quality products produced according to the principle of sustainable development and the related unique mode of production. Products recognized by the China Green Food Development Center are permitted to use the label \"green food\" (Liu, 1998). Green food is a unique Chinese concept, and green food certification seems to be used by foreign manufacturers as a quality assurance strategy (Paull, 2008). Foreign products similar to Chinese green food are ecological food, healthy food, natural food, and organic food (Liang, 2002). Green food is not only beneficial for people's health but is also good for the environment. Therefore, green food consumption is a kind of sustainable consumption. However, it is difficult to promote green food consumption, perhaps because people know little about it, it is relatively expensive, or it is not always easily obtained.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Theoretical foundation\n3. Method: 3.1 Item development\n4. Results: 4.1 General descriptive analysis\n5. Discussion: Green food is a unique Chinese concept. Green food certification seems to be used by foreign manufacturers as quality assurance strategy, and Chinese organic food is certified to international standards (Paull, 2008). Organic food is food produced by methods that comply with the standards of organic farming. Standards vary worldwide, but organic farming in general features practices that strive to cycle resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. In China, organic food refers to products that are produced, processed and sold in accordance with the standard GB/T 19630-2011 for human consumption. According to this standard, pesticides, fertilizers, growth regulators, feed additives, and genetically engineered organisms and their products cannot be used in the production of organic food. Therefore, organic food is healthier and more eco-friendly than green food. However, unlike organic food, green food is well known and readily available, and the price is more acceptable than organic food in China. This is the difference between green and organic food and the reason why this paper examines green food instead of organic food.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence consumers' consumption behavior with regard to green aquatic products from a social cognitive theory perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A web survey was used to collect the data. The survey subjects were citizens of Ningbo City in Zhejiang Province. A total of 403 subjects were obtained through the sampling service, and 337 subjects were retained after strict examination. The data were used to construct a partial least squares structural equation model.\nFindings: The cognition of green aquatic products significantly positively affects outcome expectancy, self-efficacy, perception of others' behavior, and socio-structural conditions. Self-efficacy and outcome expectancy significantly positively influence consumption intention. Self-efficacy, perception of others' behavior, and consumption intention significantly positively affect consumption behavior.\nPractical implications: The concept, connotations and benefits of green aquatic products should be widely publicized through diversified channels to increase people's knowledge of these products and to encourage people to distinguish them from regular aquatic products and to believe in their benefits. In addition, measures should be taken to guarantee that only genuine green aquatic products can enter the market because the false claims of some products have damaged consumers' belief in these products.\nOriginality/value: To test the effect of the cognition of green aquatic products, the construct \"the cognition of green aquatic products\" was added to the model based on social cognitive theory. This paper contributes to the existing literature by further exploring how cognitive aspects affect consumption behavior with regard to green food.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Examining persistence factors of golf management students	[ "Institutional support", "Cohort matriculation", "Golf management", "Program characteristics", "Student persistence" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Since the inception of the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) of America in 1916, the organization has focused on the following objectives: promote the game of golf; elevate the standards of the golf profession; protect the mutual interests of its members; provide association meetings and tournaments for the membership; provide unemployment assistance for its members; establish a benevolent relief fund for its membership; and accomplish relevant objectives determined by the Association to be in the best interest of the game (PGA, n.d.b).\nLiterature review: Since noted variation of attrition rates exist among PGA-GMUPs, an exploration of factors influencing persistence is appropriate. Tinto (1993) suggested that the investigation of student departure should begin by exploring the first year of college. Further, Tinto (1988), Graunke and Woosley (2005) and Adelman (2004) explained that previous student persistence research has focused primarily on the student's first year, and more evidence is therefore needed regarding those factors pertaining to students at the sophomore level and beyond.\nMethods: Using a survey instrument, this study examined undergraduate students' family background (e.g. SES, parental educational level, parental expectations), individual attributes (e.g. race, gender), pre-college schooling experience (e.g. characteristics of the student's secondary school, and record of high school academic achievement, academic ability), academic performance (e.g. college GPA), PAT passing rate, career goals (e.g. school related, job related, value related), social (e.g. peer activities) and academic (e.g. faculty activities) relationships, program characteristics (e.g. interventions, academic major and learning communities) and institutional support characteristics (e.g. financial aid, and residency status) that relate to cohort intent to persist in PGA-GMUPs.\nResults: Data were collected from 12 of the 19 PGA-GMUPs. The remaining seven schools did not participate in the study. The data set contained 490 students with 17 missing cases, and 473 cases were used for analysis. Students responding to the survey represented 36.7 percent of the total enrollment (1,289 students) of the participating 12 programs in the study. This represents over half of the population of PGA-GMUP programs.\nDiscussion and conclusions: Cohort matriculation is a requirement for students enrolled in PGA-GMUPs, and this policy provides a unique opportunity to examine factors that relate to cohort persistence. Previous scholars suggested that the examination of student persistence factors specific to class standing (similar to cohorts) can contribute to the body of knowledge already present in student persistence literature (Ackerman and Schibrowsky, 2007; Graunke and Woosley, 2005; Tinto, 1988).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine student, program and institutional support characteristics that relate to cohort intent to persist among Professional Golfers' Association Golf Management University Program (PGA-GMUP) undergraduate students from 12 universities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey instrument was created and disseminated to the targeted population. Multiple regressions were used to analyze the 473 responses of students' intention to persist across the three independent variables (student, program and institutional support).\nFindings: The research findings suggest higher levels of college GPA, career goals specific to the student's desire to become a PGA professional, higher levels of faculty engagement, higher levels of satisfaction with major, being a leader in the student association and involvement in the student association are related to students' intent to persist. Conversely, the results suggest career goals focused on being happy instead of graduation or working as a PGA professional and finding it difficult to make friends are associated with lower levels of intention to persist, while parental expectations of advanced degrees negatively affected students' intent to persist. Additionally, passing a player ability test did not have bearing on intention to persist.\nOriginality/value: Results from this analysis offer insight into which persistence factors lead to students' matriculation, with the ultimate goal of program completion. Identifying persistence factors may help PGA-GMUPs and other hospitality programs recruit students that are more likely to persist in the program, develop program characteristics that optimize cohort matriculation, and utilize university or institutional support services characteristics that may ensure program completion.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The relationship between manufacturing production and economic growth in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia	[ "Manufacturing sector", "Economic growth", "Saudi Arabia", "Kaldor–Verdoorn’s law", "Thirlwall’s law" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The relationship between growth in the manufacturing sector and economic growth continues to hold a prominent place in economic research, following seminal research by (Verdoorn, 1949) and (Kaldor, 2007), which focused on the role of growth in value added in the manufacturing sector in promoting growth in gross domestic product (GDP). Nevertheless, the empirical study ensured the validity of Verdoorn's (1949) hypothesis, which states that an increase in the growth rate of industrial value added will lead to an increase in productivity in this sector.\n2. Theoretical framework and literature review: In his research, Kaldor (2007) provided a model for economic growth, through which he defended the idea of the manufacturing sector, with its backward and forward sectoral linkages, playing a leading role in economic growth. According to Kaldor, manufacturing will absorb the residuals from other sectors (production and service), such as agriculture or mining. This sector will manufacture products and provide services to meet the needs of the local market, instead of importing from the foreign markets. Growth in the manufacturing sector generates demand for new types of services (e.g. banking, finance and trades (i.e. construction)), hence, a growth in manufacturing will generate spin-offs to and growth in other sections. This can lead to a growth in GDP and the economy, in general. The Kaldor theory can be summarized in the following laws (Cantore et al., 2014):\n3. Empirical framework: Estimation approach\n4. Empirical results: Test of stationary of the study variables\n5. Results and recommendations: This paper examines the effects of the manufacturing sector growth rate on the rate of growth of GDP in the KSA. The study used data from different resources, including the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the World Bank and the PWT database. By discovering the statistical characteristics of the time series used in this research, we found that some of the variables were stable in level and some were stable in the first difference; this forces researchers to use the proper standard methodology to test the research hypothesis. The bound analysis approach was used according to the ARDL method. This method is important and appropriate as it has statistical properties that deal with different and relatively short time series. Four models related to industrial output and GDP were estimated. When the model of Kaldor's law was estimated, we found that this law is applicable to the data on the KSA and its results conform with previous studies on the KSA, such as Al-Qudair (2005). However, it does not support the hypothesis of increasing returns to scale because Kaldor's coefficient (=0.83) is less than 1. The model of Verdoorn's law was estimated for the industrial sector and for the Saudi economy. The two estimated models show the applicability of the law in the KSA, as we found that GDP growth will lead to growth in overall production in the Saudi economy. The long-term elasticity between the variables was 0.81. The results also show that growth in industrial output will lead to increased labor productivity, in this sector, but with an elasticity coefficient equal to 0.81 for the whole and 0.616 for the industry sector. These results contradict the findings of several studies, specifically Romero and McCombie (2016) and Millemaci and Ofria (2014), whose studies supported the hypothesis of increasing returns to scale in manufacturing sector in developed countries.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the long-term relationship between the performance of the manufacturing sector and economic growth in Saudi Arabia. It does so by testing Kaldor-Verdoorn and Thirlwall's laws.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors used data for the period 1980-2014 from databases of the World Bank, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the Penn World Table (PWT8) and the five-year plan of the Ministry of Planning and National Economy of Saudi Arabia. The authors used the bound test for the cointegration approach, which allowed them to test the two hypotheses in the long run, after examining the stability of the time series and ensuring the rank of its stability.\nFindings: The results that emerged from the analysis show that Kaldor's law is applicable to the data on the KSA, but with decreasing returns to scale, with coefficient equal 0.83. Verdoorn's law is also applicable at both macro and sectoral levels with elasticity coefficient equal to 0.81 and 0.616, respectively, also with decreasing returns to scale. For Thirlwall's model, the results show that the relationship was reverse, contrary to what expected, with a significant elasticity coefficient of 0.599.\nSocial implications: This study recommends that policy makers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia focus on the industrial sector because of its impact on productivity, social returns and other sectors of the economy.\nOriginality/value: One of the important aspects of this paper is that it tests both Kaldor-Verdoorn's and Thirlwall's laws in the case of countries that depend on oil exports for growth and where the contribution of industrial output to GDP, in Saudi Arabia, is relatively low, at about 13 percent, across the period 1970-2013, and about 16.8 percent between 2000 and 2013 (see Figure 1). Since there have been few studies on this subject, the authors used data from Saudi Arabia to provide evidence of the importance of diversifying the economy by increasing the contribution of manufacturing to GDP to ensure increased productivity and to promote economic growth.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Performing the cross-border economies of post-socialism	[ "Ukraine", "Romania", "Rural economies", "Arbitrage", "Rural communities", "Consumption", "Borders", "Post‐socialism", "Diverse economies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In this article, I add to the growing academic literature on the diverse economies of post-socialism, by exploring the ways in which cross-border economies are viewed by a rural Ukrainian community situated close to the Romanian border. My time spent living and participating in this community highlighted not only the economic importance of the growth in cross-border economies as the people of Diyalivtsi were able to \"insert themselves practically into economic life on their own account\" (Hart et al., 2010, p. 5) but also enabled me to develop an understanding of the impact of the interactions and observations arising from diverse economies through the ways they were articulated and discussed within the day-to-day life of the village. Therefore, my interest in the \"informal economy\" evolved not as Samers (2005, p. 875) suggests due to the hidden or mysterious nature of it but as a result of the way it entered into all aspects of life in the village, from religious festivals and schools plays to shopping trips.The role of diverse economies cannot solely be evaluated in terms of their scale or enduring presence in post-socialist life 20 years on from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whilst analysis and efforts to \"document and theorize the diverse economies of postsocialism\" (Smith and Stenning, 2006, p. 191) have proven fruitful in challenging capitalocentric and particularly (in the context of the \"transition\") neo-liberal economic views, I believe that we need to go further by asking not only about the \"autonomous capacity\" of the informal economy to generate growth (Hart, 1973, p. 61), but also how those involved employ their capacity to interpret their activities. This reflects one of the precepts of a \"human\" view of the economy, which is that it is \"made and remade by people\" (Hart et al., 2010, p. 5). In Gibson-Graham (2008, p. 615) writing on diverse economies, they suggest that fundamental to the transformative potential of research in this field is a change in our own understanding. Participant observation in Diyalivtsi allowed me to learn from the members of the local community and challenged my own academic subjectivities regarding economic alterity. This led me to see beyond the economic practices themselves and to look to representations of them within village life.I begin this article with a short discussion of the diverse economies of post-socialism, exploring briefly the variety of approaches taken to theorising the proliferation of economic activities that have emerged in the region since 1989/1991. In this discussion, I illustrate how the post-socialist states have provided fertile ground for furthering research into and theorising on diversity within our understanding of the economic. I then move on to provide details of the fieldwork site, including an overview of the local economy and the functioning of the cross-border economies. Here, I draw on rich ethnographic material to elucidate the life of the border and to make it \"lively\". In this way, I aim to encourage the reader to visualise life in and around the border. In the final section, I explore two key narratives emerging from experience and observations of cross-border economies that were prevalent in Diyalivtsi and the use of discursive performance within the village to create a sense of distinctiveness.\nThe diverse economies of post-socialism: Early research on post-socialism focused on the process of \"transition\" from centrally planned to free market economies. In the field of economic geography, this led to a burgeoning critical literature of the \"transition\" that focused on its \"unintended consequences\" (Burawoy and Verdery, 1999, p. 1). Research highlighted the growing socio-spatial inequalities and widespread geopolitical impacts resulting from neo-liberal policy agendas in the region (Gowan, 1995; Sokol, 2001; Pickles and Smith, 1998). Interest has shifted more recently to economic alterity within post-socialism; exploration beyond the market economy into the \"proliferative\" nature of economic life in the region. This brought studies of post-socialism into a broader research community within economic geography seeking to challenge market-centred, neo-liberal approaches, through foregrounding diverse economies (Gibson-Graham, 1996, 2008; Community Economies Collective, 2001) and alternative economic spaces (Leyshon et al., 2003). This shift, also built on primarily ethnographic and anthropological accounts of post-socialism pertaining to \"survival strategies\" (Bridger and Pine, 1998).Ethnographic accounts have explored the multifaceted responses of communities to the economic challenges posed in the post-socialist context, highlighting practices such as self-provisioning, exchange and barter (Clarke, 2002; Seabright, 2002; Caldwell, 2004). This body of research has emphasised the cultural embeddedness of diverse economies by exploring them from a grounded perspective. Either explicitly or implicitly, much of this research draws upon Keith Hart's classic economic anthropology of informal income opportunities in 1960s Ghana, in which he asks to what extent the informal economic activities central to the lives of low income, urban workers present prospects for generating growth (Hart, 1973, p. 61). Since Hart's study, the concept he is credited with initiating, i.e. the informal economy, has formed the basis of much academic interest, driven by a desire to theorise the ways in which individuals and households are able to mitigate the failings of the formal economy and ensure social reproduction (Stenning et al., 2010). In doing so, the resultant research on the informal economy has incorporated vastly different forms of economic activity, from the envelope economy (Woolfson, 2007), which sees employees receiving part of their salaries in informally, to self-provisioning (Caldwell, 2004). Grounded empirical research in the region has been able to challenge the \"binary\" and \"negative\" approaches taken to the study of the informal economy (Williams et al., 2007), contesting policy approaches which have sought to deter the \"informal\" in the economic sphere.Nestled within the work on the \"multicoloured\" economies of post-socialism (Sik, 1994), is research into cross-border economies. Economic activity at borders is the result of the arbitrage opportunities created by the border itself. Profiting from these opportunities can be observed across the world, as businesses and individuals import and export goods. Such transactions are inevitably legislated, requiring the procurement of licences and permits, as well as the payment of relevant duties and taxes. However, alongside formal import/export transactions, borders are also sites of informal trade, whose profits are grounded in avoidance of formal payments for permits, licences, taxes and duties. These formal payments are replaced by much lower payments of informal bribes to customs and border officials, which make small-scale trading profitable. This informal trade contributes to not only the local economy, but to the national and international trade through circulating commodities and monies back into the formal enterprises[1]. As such, cross-border economies are \"relational\" to both formal and informal economic practices (Smith and Stenning, 2006). They have come to be viewed as not solely a \"survival strategy\" for households but an \"enduring alternative site of economic activity\" (Williams and Balaz, 2002, p. 324).Consideration of cross-border economies has focused on trading at the borders and the structures and power relations (Williams and Balaz, 2002), in addition to the role of the trade in the \"transition\" (Konstantinov, 1996) and to illustrate the weakness of post-Soviet states (Polese, 2006). However, whilst understanding the \"informal\" spaces of the border and particularly \"border-crossing\", is vital to contextualising cross-border economies, discourses at the border are often curtailed due to the official environment of customs and immigration control. In their own communities, those involved in these cross-border economies are able to reflect upon and discuss more openly not only their own experiences of the border, but also those of their friends and neighbours. I argue that observing these interactions is vital to understanding the impact of cross-border economies.In framing this article within the broader literature on the diverse economies of post-socialism, I have shown how it can be amalgamated into wider academic initiatives to diversify our understanding of economies and develop new means by which to challenge capitalocentric and institutional views that have dominated economic studies across a number of disciplines. Work has developed from several differing perspectives and what characterises this body of research is a \"multiplicity\", which is exciting in the possibilities it presents. This enables us to think of diverse economies not as \"backward\" (Geertz, 1963), but central to thoughts on \"progress\" and future economic development (Community Economies Collective, 2001). As such, research on diverse economies should not only be limited to understanding and theorising the workings of these economies, but also to recognising their potential to shape and be shaped by societies in which they are now embedded. Whilst suitcase trading and cross-border economies may be a legacy of socialism, they have also changed in form (Williams and Balaz, 2002, p. 325). In the rest of this article, I focus on the premise that interactions and observations of the changing nature of cross-border economies result in a shift in local understanding and perspectives.\nThe Ukrainian-Romanian borderlands: Diyalivtsi is a small[2] Ukrainian-speaking[3] village, which ends just 500 m from the Romanian border and is located 4 km from one of the main road border crossings between Ukraine and Romania. From many points within the village, you can see a Romanian town and surrounding villages, as well as the customs and immigration points at the nearby border crossing. Its proximity to the border has meant that the view of neighbouring Romania has become a metaphor for the changes that have taken place since 1991:You know in Ceausescu's time there were no lights there. It was completely dark, just like it is here now. Oh, how things have changed (Lyuba, Diyalivtsi, January 2008)[4].Diyalivtsi is situated in the pre-border zone, which is subject to particular restrictions. A checkpoint on the main road is supposed to be manned at all times to check traffic turning off the main road and towards Diyalivtsi and its neighbouring village. There are also regular border guard patrols through the village and local businesses display warning notices for people to report any suspicious persons to the local immigration police. Border patrols had the right to request documents and those with land close to the border were required to have permits to enter the area. In these ways, the official nature of the border enters into village life.The local economy\nPerforming CBST and consumption: In the region in which Diyalivtsi is located, differentiation on ethno-national terms is not possible due to the large number of Romanian villages in Ukraine. I argue here that as the border in this region cannot be understood in ethno-national terms, the view of it in economic terms (which Lyuba's comment from the previous section illustrates) that developed in the soviet period in Diyalivtsi, has shifted to a basis of patterns and competencies in consumption resulting from experiences of cross-border economic practices, which serves to dichotomise those living south of the border. In creating this dichotomisation (Eidheim, 1971), they also form values that need to be maintained in the community and a new form of collective identity based on consumption emerges.Self-provisioning as distinction\nConclusions: In this article, I have drawn upon ethnographic material from participant observation amongst rural communities in the Ukrainian-Romanian borderlands to illustrate the ways in which the cross-border economies of post-socialism are being discursively performed to create notions of distinctiveness that differentiate Ukrainian villagers from their Romanian neighbours. By attributing greater value to aesthetic forms of consumption, such as home improvements, rather than self-provisioning, villagers in Diyalivtsi are able to maintain a sense of economic status that defines their Romanian neighbours as poor. In addition, where the greater economic capital of Romanian citizens becomes evident in cross-border consumption, critical discursive performance is used to highlight their ability to purchase goods more cheaply than their neighbours. This ability is seen to be distinctively Ukrainian; however, it also creates pressure on villagers to maintain their distinctiveness, by investing time in consumption and purchase everyday goods as cheaply as possible. Those returning to the village from shopping trips will be subject to detailed questioning regarding their purchases and the prices paid. Knowledge of sources for low-cost goods is shared primarily with family members and close friends and neighbours. Revealing sources too widely within the community would inhibit the ability to seek status.At the beginning of this article, I suggested that the vast array of literature on the diverse economies of post-socialism should not only draw attention to alternatives to narratives on the \"transition to capitalism\", but that should also include discussion of its capacity to bring about social change. It is my contention that understanding the social aspects of diverse economies is also extremely important to policy makers and that these aspects are often obscured in research methodologies, which do not ground the researcher through participant observation. Changes in policy affecting diverse economies threaten not only material reproduction of communities but they also challenge the ways in which people within them construct their relationships with neighbours, the state and the wider world. The people of Diyalivtsi have been able to interpret the proliferation of cross-border economies in a way which conveys positive cultural traits. However, this is accompanied by a critical approach to their Romanian neighbours, who are conferred a new and central role in the life of the village.The \"darkness\" from across the border until 1991 represents not solely a physical absence of lighting in Romania, but also a \"lack of seeing\" from the Ukrainian side. There was not only a shortage of knowledge about what happened across the border but also insufficient desire to know. The border represented a limited role in local thinking until the mid-2000s, when CBST and later consumption have brought the Romanian side clearly into focus. Whilst on a national level, changes in Romania have not been central to policy making, for the villagers of Diyalivtsi, Romania's continued growth serves to distance them further from a political elite with whom they had already grown disillusioned. Romania has become part of \"Europe\" in local understanding; a place with whom they as Ukrainians form an unequal relationship. The challenge to policy makers therefore relates not solely to economic disenfranchisement, which has generally been dealt with through a laissez faire approach on both sides[17], but also how to actively engage with citizens whose basis for understanding their own place in the world is being formed through diverse economies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenge of interpreting the growth in arbitrage opportunities at the Ukrainian-Romanian border within a rural Ukrainian border community. The author illustrates that whilst the proliferation of economic activity through the border has provided a boost to the local economy, it has also led to the development of discursive performance around these practices within rural Ukrainian communities, which both mitigates the potentially negative impacts of economic growth in Romania and also reflects emerging views of consumption as a cultural competence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper draws on more than 18 months of participant observation in three rural communities on either side of the Ukrainian-Romanian border between September 2007 and May 2010.\nFindings: - The discursive performance of consumption has emerged as an important means for the production of values amongst the low income households of Diyalivtsi (pseudonym). As part of this performance, the villagers of Diyalivtsi differentiate themselves from their Romanian neighbours through critical analysis of Romanian consumption practices, which are viewed through the prism of cross-border economies.\nOriginality/value: - This is one of the first papers to consider how the diverse economies of post-socialism are (re)performed in the communities in which they have become embedded. Rather than seeking to theorise or quantify cross-border economies and the practices of trading and consumption, it illuminates the social aspects of them for rural Ukrainian communities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Predicting intentions to purchase organic food: the moderating effects of organic food prices	[ "Purchase intention", "Attitude towards organic food", "Organic food price", "Organic-label trust", "Relational embeddedness in a channel" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Organic food is the fastest growing market in the food industry in many countries (Dettmann and Dimitri, 2010), including in Europe and South Asia (Al-Swide et al., 2014). Moreover, in the last decade or so its production area and sales volume have achieved a compound annual growth rate of more than 10 percent (Willer and Kilcher, 2012). However, the rapid development of the organic food market has also exposed the fact that related studies, which have focussed on either exploratory understandings of consumer decision-making processes (Essoussi and Zahaf, 2008) or describing the nature of organic food and analyzing demographic variables (Dimitri and Oberholtzer, 2009; Lea and Worsley, 2005), have been unable to keep pace with developments in practice. For example, Lee and Yun (2015) note that existing studies on organic food lack a strong theoretical foundation.\n2. Literature review: 2.1. The relationships among attitudes toward organic labels, attitudes toward label sources, and organic-label trust\n3. Research method: 3.1. Questionnaire design\n4. Statistical results: 4.1. Sample description\n5. Discussion: With respect to creating an effective organic food purchasing environment, attention should be paid to strengthening positive consumer attitudes toward the food labeling and certification institutions. For example, organic food labeling is a clue that is external to the product (Darby and Karni, 1973; Janssen and Hamm, 2012), and which is used as a signal to help consumers resolve the challenge of information asymmetry associated with organic food. The procedure of the organic food authentication mechanisms and the expertise and roles of the various related parties should all provide consumers with background information to be used as assessment clues. In addition, the R2 value of 22 percent indicates that there are still many origins of trust that are not included in the discussion. Among the trust relationships noted by Jiang and Chiu (2014), the origins of trust can be divided into interpersonal trust, organizational trust, and institutional trust. Parkinson (1975) claims that different product information sources (e.g. friends, salespersons, and advertisements) generate different preferences in consumers due to the different levels of professionalism and impartiality of the sources.\n6. Conclusions and future work: 6.1. Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Organic food represents the fastest growing sector in the food market, with outstanding performance in both production and sales. However, existing studies on organic food have lacked a strong theoretical foundation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships among purchase intention and the properties, certification mechanisms, retail channels, and prices of organic food from multiple theoretical perspectives.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using a rigorous sampling design, 507 valid questionnaires collected from consumers at four well-known organic food markets, and the hypotheses were tested based on a linear structural equation model.\nFindings: The results of the structural equation model analysis showed the following: consumer attitudes toward organic food labeling/certification institutions had a positive impact on the trust in food labeling; channel dependence positively influenced the relational embeddedness in a channel; the effect of the nutritional value of organic food on environmental protection also had a positive impact on attitudes toward organic foods; attitudes toward trust in the organic label, relational embeddedness in a channel, and attitudes toward organic foods had a positive impact on consumer purchase intentions; and in relation to low-price scenarios, consumers required more confidence to purchase higher-priced goods, meaning that the relational embeddedness in a channel exerted more influence on purchase intentions. By contrast, compared to the high-price scenarios, consumers tended to choose lower priced goods based on personal preferences, e.g., making the purchase decision based on trust in the organic label and attitudes toward organic food.\nOriginality/value: The contributions of this study include the following: the relationships among the variables were investigated comprehensively from multiple theoretical perspectives; and the results can help the government and the organic food industry to understand their respective responsibilities in promoting organic food to reduce the waste of resources, in which the government can provide basic information on organic food, e.g., a certification mechanism and related definitions, while the organic food industry provides specific knowledge about organic foods, e.g., product features.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Research from Brazil provides framework to design performance measurement systems (PMS) in nonprofit and public administration organizations	[ "Performance measurement", "Design", "Non-profit organization", "Public administration" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Research from Brazilian academics has produced a list of 10 factors that influence the design of performance measurement systems (PMS) for non-profit (NPO) and public administration organizations. The authors produced their list of 10 factors after a systematic study of 29 research papers. They divided the list into three groups, factors relating to purpose, stakeholders, and management.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In the past models of PMS have been used from the for-profit sector, but the goals are often different. The researchers advised that it was essential to understand how the differences between for-profit businesses and NPOs influenced the design of PMSs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors produced their list of 10 factors after a systematic study of 29 research papers\nFindings: The authors said their work presented a conceptual framework that could influence the design of PMSs for these organizations. The findings also revealed that there are factors which are unique to the NPO sector, such as fairness, volunteering and financial sustainability.\nOriginality/value: This area has received little attention in the research, but there is increasing pressure for NGOs and public administration organizations to measure performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Do we bank on regulation or reputation? A meta-analysis and meta-regression of organizational trust in the financial services sector	[ "Trust", "Financial services", "Business strategy", "Banking industry", "Regulations", "Company performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Trust is pivotal to trade and development in the financial sector (Gillespie and Hurley, 2013) and yet trust in financial institutions has been eroded through the collapse of mortgage-related securities, with confidence further denuded through well publicized cases of rogue traders and rate fixing cases, such as with the Lehman brothers, the Libor rate-fixing scandals, and the hypo real estate breakdown (Edelman, 2013). In response to these events, governments have introduced a range of distinct policy initiatives designed to restore trust in this sector. Many of these policies have focused heavily on regulation and control as a means of enhancing transparency. Such regulations enable people to feel confident about their expectations of the other party's future behaviour (Sitkin and Beis, 1994). For example, customers develop more trusting beliefs when assured of compliance with legal standards of banking (Gill et al., 2006). Questions do arise, however, such as: are these regulations and control mechanisms sufficient in isolation, or are there other elements that this sector needs to pay attention to in efforts to build and sustain customers' trust?\nTheory and hypotheses: Definition of organizational trust\nMethodology: Sample and coding\nResults: Our meta-analysis confirmed a strong correlation between our antecedents, reputation and regulation and control mechanisms, as well as with satisfaction on organizational trust (see Table III). We performed standard checks of significance and heterogeneity which indicated that our results are highly significant (1 per cent level). Our check of heterogeneity is discussed with the help of a moderator analysis.\nDiscussion: In considering the results of our meta-analysis of trust in organizations from our 93 studies, including 20 empirical investigations of organizational trust in the financial sector and a combined N of 11,224 respondents, we make two key contributions. First, from integrating this large set of quantitative studies, we derive that the regulatory environment, reputation and customer satisfaction are very influential factors for trust in the organizations, especially within the financial services sector. Shared values were also influential, while communication emerges as having become significantly less important over the last decade. Importantly, our meta-analysis reveals the increasing need for a multi-stranded approach to trust management, which includes attention and the successful management of a range of antecedents in the building and maintenance of trust. Second, through assessing the moderating impact, we show that both cultural and temporal contexts are important factors in the financial services sector. We identify how reputation and third party support have more impact in an Asian banking setting than in Europe. Our analysis indicates that experts and third parties have a prominent role to play in the Asian market. It raises interesting questions as to whether, and to what level, those who lose their reputations within this context can recover it. This is a topic in which further research is required.\nConclusion: In summary, our results demonstrate that trust is of great importance in the financial services sector. We show that the banking sector is heavily affected by two distinct forces: first, customers' perceptions of an organization's level of compliance and conformity with laws and regulations is a necessity for banks' sociopolitical legitimization (Aldrich and Fiol, 1994; Deephouse, 1996), and second it is also related to how non-compliance is dealt with (Weibel, 2010); the adequacy of punishment has a clear role as a deterrent (Verboon and van Dijke, 2011), yet recent research on the relationship with trust within a tax context suggest that enforcement compliance might increase likelihood of further evasion (Kastlunger et al., 2013). Clearly further work is required if we are to better understand the role of regulation, enforcement compliance and trust. Importantly, this meta-analysis indicates that regulation is just one of a suite of devices that organizations need to deploy in their efforts to restore trust. We identified two further elements of significance in this context: customers require direct evidence, derived either from their own or others' satisfaction with the goods or services provided, and customers do take note of the external endorsement of the firm, especially in Asia, where customers place huge emphasis on the reputation on a firm.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Trust in financial institutions has been eroded through the collapse of mortgage-related securities, with confidence further denuded through well publicized cases of rogue traders and rate fixing cases, such as with the Lehman brothers, the Libor rate-fixing scandals, and the hypo real estate breakdown. In response to these events, governments have introduced a range of distinct policy initiatives designed to restore trust in this sector. Thus, the question arises: are these regulations and control mechanisms sufficient in isolation, or are there other elements that this sector needs to pay attention to in efforts to build and sustain customers' trust? The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: There is a compelling agenda for both financial organizations and academics to understand better organizational trust in this context especially the role and impact of regulatory mechanisms in its development and repair. The paper therefore examines the special facets of the financial services sector in comparison to other sectors, such as manufacturing, to consider whether trust is fundamentally different in this context than others, and thus address how far there are special challenges concerning trust and the banking industry. The paper analyses, by using a meta-analytical design, 93 studies (N=38,631), of which 20 empirically investigate organizational trust in the financial sector with a combined N of 11,224 respondents.\nFindings: The paper shows that the banking sector is heavily affected by two distinct forces: first, customers' perception of an organization's level of compliance and conformity with laws and regulations is a necessity for banks' sociopolitical legitimization, and second it is also related to how non-compliance is dealt with. Importantly, this meta-analysis indicates that regulation is just one of a suite of devices that organizations need to deploy in their efforts to restore trust. The paper identified two further elements of significance: customers require direct evidence, derived either from their own or others' satisfaction with the goods or services provided, and customers do take note of the external endorsement of the firm, especially in Asia, where customers place huge emphasis on the firm's reputation.\nResearch limitations/implications: First, meta-analysis is inherently reliant on the earlier studies and therefore retains their weaknesses. Some of the relationships included self-report variables collected at the same point in time and therefore may be inflated by common method bias. Second, due to the focus and because of the limited number of studies in this sector, and a paucity of attention on some key topics, such as perceptions of regulation, second-order sampling error may also be a limitation. Third, some relationships were not investigated frequently enough in studies to enable us to include them in the review, such as cooperation, opportunistic behaviour or quality. Finally, despite calls for trust scholars to include propensity to trust measures within their studies, many of these studies do not include this measure and therefore it is more difficult to identify and control individual difference factors.\nPractical implications: The results show the merit of multi-strand trust development strategies. There is a striking paucity of financial institutions, which have examined how far their trust deficit may be related to their internal culture, and whether recent corporate corruption could be the product of bonuses and the internal short-term individualized reward systems. The analysis reveals that although external regulations and controls are an effective and powerful devise for organizational trust, over the last two periods of significant crisis, their impact appears to be warning; Yet reassuring customers of their expectations of the other party's future behaviour is central to trust. Alternative remedies need to be considered, such as the establishment of a more effective regulator, or board of governors who oversee and assure compliance. Monitoring and surveillance offer a further external means of reducing the possibility of future misbehaviours. However, as the analysis indicates, other strands are required to build trust, including greater attention by firms on customers' direct experiences, which in turn would enhance the third part endorsement of their competence and goodwill intentions of organizations.\nSocial implications: Significantly, the results indicate the potentially partial erosion of credence factors, and thus confidence, in this sector over the last 20 years, during what has been a period of repeated exposure to trust breaches. The paper shows that single strand solutions, such as improvements to customer communication, are no longer sufficient, nor, more importantly, do they have the same impact. Instead, the paper shows the necessity to utilize more effectively and target attention towards three distinct antecedents: external regulations and their enforcement; third party and expert endorsements, and therefore external reputations; and customer satisfaction in terms of the effective delivery of customer expectations.\nOriginality/value: Organizational trust has been shown as critical in positively affecting and repairing broken relationships through uncertainty reduction and confidence enhancement. In the past, different meta-analyses of trust have been undertaken, but this, to the authors knowledge, is the first meta-analytic study measuring trust on an organizational level in the context of the financial services sector and its regulatory environment. This meta-analysis indicates that regulation is just one of a suite of devices that organizations need to deploy in their efforts to restore trust. The paper identified two further elements: customers require direct evidence, and do take note of the external endorsement of the firm.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring millennial psychological contract expectations across talent segments	[ "Expectations", "Psychological contract", "Millennial generation", "Talent segments" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Globally, competition has intensified for talent, and organizations face unprecedented challenges in managing employee performance and retention. High performing and high engaging employees with an aspiration to succeed in important positions constitute talent (Naim and Lenka, 2017b). Given the limited resources, it is important that organizations segment their workforce and deploy resources to develop their most critical employees (Seopa et al., 2015). Such strategy to attract, develop and retain talent will enable organizations gain competitive advantage (Philips, 2008).\nMethodology: Measures\nResults: H1 proposed significant dimensions of PC expectations for millennials. The principal component method was used for factor extraction, and eigenvalues were kept close to or greater than 1 to extract factors (see Table II).\nDiscussion of findings: At a preliminary level of analysis, PC expectations of millennials have three dimensions- those from the manager, related to career development and related to the job and work environment. In the Indian context, Saxena and Jain (2012) found through their study that Gen Y expects challenging work assignments, accelerated career growth, socially responsible workplaces, flexible work environments, freedom and collaboration and innovation from their jobs and employers. These findings seem to substantiate other findings in the Indian context that a good management, organizational condition, work environment, opportunities at work and the job itself explain a high level of variance to explain organizational commitment among milliennials (Sathyakumar and Ramakrishnan, 2013). Learning opportunities, career growth and job responsibilities form a significant component of expectations within the Indian milliennials and employee loyalty to the company is higher when the job fulfills intrinsic needs and personal goals of the employees (Mamtha and Nandini, 2013). Job and resource support, growth opportunities as well as developmental opportunities have been identified as important expectations of employees in the Indian context (Aggarwal and Bhargava, 2009).\nConclusion and suggestions for future research: The results lend support to diversity in the perception of PC expectations across talent segments which can be a strategic input while devising TM programs. Future research can attempt a comparative study on PC expectations of employees in the manufacturing industry, heavy engineering, and the banking and financial institutions, which may reveal interesting results. A longitudinal research design tracking millennials' PC expectations through different life and career stages would also be of immense value to organizations. Finally, this study used perceived performance for the creation of the talent segments. Using the potential performance of an employee may be of great relevance for organizations to improve employee retention.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify talent segments within the millennial generation based on performance and intention to stay and differentiate them in terms of their expectations. Based on results, the paper proposes a customized approach to talent management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper uses a mixed methodology, including 11 exploratory focus group discussions, followed by a survey involving 1,065 employees from nine information technology and business process management companies.\nFindings: The paper creates a framework of talent segments (performing loyals, performing movers, developing loyals and developing movers) that have different values for the organization. Significant differences are observed in their PC expectations from the manager, PC expectations related to career growth and development and PC expectations related to job and work environment.\nResearch limitations/implications: Researchers faced constraints in obtaining actual performance data from the organizations; therefore, a self-perception report of performance was used.\nPractical implications: Organizations' talent-management strategy must acknowledge and understand the differences in PC expectations of talent segments and offer tailored TM programs for maximum impact.\nSocial implications: The paper challenges the old assumption of a uniform psychological contract (PC) that has guided the talent management strategy. Every talent segment has value and must be viewed on continuum rather than a binary construct of \"Talent or no talent.\"\nOriginality/value: This is one of the few studies which explores how the perception of PC expectations differs between talent segments. It contributes to literature on talent segments, PC and the millennial generation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Clinical governance, corporate social responsibility, health service quality, and brand equity	[ "Corporate social responsibility", "Education", "Brand equity", "Health service quality" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Open-door policy in Vietnam in 1986 (Luu, 2013a) placed healthcare organizations in transition from a hierarchical to a market form of organization in which the competitiveness is of growing perceived importance. Moreover, with increasing awareness among consumers about their rights, the patient, as a consumer of health services, expect and demand quality healthcare (Ramanujam, 2011). On the journey to high healthcare performance, some hospitals such as Institute of Heart, FV Hospital, and Sihospital have further entrenched their brands in the mental maps of patients and community; nonetheless, numerous hospitals failed to reinforce the awareness of their brands. One of the reasons is that their attempt to elevate healthcare service quality was primarily based on the investment in advanced medical facilities rather than on continuous quality improvement mechanism such as clinical governance.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Concepts and their key dimensions\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 Sample\n4. Findings and discussion: 4.1 Findings\n5. Limitations and future research directions: The hypothesized framework in Figure 1 was verified through the research findings. The positive connectivities were established between ethical CSR and clinical governance effectiveness, which in turn positively influences dimensions of patient care service quality including reliability, assurance, empathy, responsiveness, and tangibles. These dimensions of patient care service quality, within anticipation, are strong predictors of brand equity of the hospital.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Brand equity of hospitals is built on patient care service quality. Through the testing of the hypotheses on the relationships between brand equity and its precursors, the purpose of this paper is to examine if clinical governance effectiveness is driven by corporate social responsibility (CSR), and if clinical governance effectiveness influences patient care service quality which in turn influences brand equity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In total, 417 responses in completed form returned from self-administered structured questionnaires relayed to 835 clinical staff members underwent the structural equation modeling-based analysis.\nFindings: CSR, as the data divulges, is a strong predictor of clinical governance effectiveness which yields high patient care quality and brand equity of the hospital.\nOriginality/value: The expedition to test research hypotheses constructed layer by layer of CSR-based model of hospital brand equity in which high levels of CSR among clinical members in the hospital activates clinical governance mechanism, without which, initiatives to improve patient care service quality may not be successfully implemented to augment brand equity of Vietnam-based hospitals.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Determinants of non-performing loans in the banking sector in developing state	[ "Non-performing loans (NPLs)", "Banking factors", "Panel data models", "Pakistan" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Financial crises are one of the most immediate and important issues for the banking sector globally, especially in developing countries. Over the past few years, remarkable financial crises have been witnessed in numerous countries. The latest financial crises were faced in the US subprime mortgages due to the financial credit crunch that occurred in 2007 and 2008, resulting in financial crises and financial market instability. Earlier in 1997, the developing countries in East Asia have suffered the financial crises in the form of a significant outflow of foreign investment (Soedarmono et al., 2011). Monetary crises are highly marked by the ascent of non-performing loans (NPLs) in banking advances. After the global crises, NPLs are mainly under the eyes of government and banking management since they are considered with the failure and crises of the banking system (Ghosh, 2015). This phenomenon is most crucial to countries that highly rely on banks as monetary intermediaries that assign funds throughout the country's economy. In banking-centered economic system, banks play a key part in the sustainability of the banking system and are known as the primary source of funding, as the capital markets of these countries are still emerging (Moradi et al., 2016).Advances that remain unpaid are called NPLs. International Monterey Fund (IMF) stated that loans would be considered NPLs if they do not produce interest and principal amount for a minimum of 90 days Alton and Hazen (2001) stated that loans become NPLs if the principal amount and its interest are not yet paid on the maturity date and are not anticipated in future dates. The main reasons for high NPLs are weak credit procedure, low capable credit specialists, high markup spreads, low credit principles and lack of monitoring policy of the borrowers. NPLs are major indictor to measure credit risk that affects the banking system of the country. Handley (2010) stresses that NPLs can be used as an indicator of banking crises as it affects the economic growth of the nation by decreasing credit development (Ivanovic, 2016). A low level of NPLs shows a strong monetary system of the country while high NPLs indicate a weak financial position. The increasing level of NPLs will first affect the commercial banks in the long run then it will affect the financial position of the economy in the country (Souza and Feijo, 2011). The increasing drift of NPLs will affect the banking efficiency resulting in banking crises (Vouldis and Louzis, 2018). The NPLs will block the interest revenue, reduce investment openings as well as develop liquidity crises in the financial system, which results in bankruptcy problem and weak economic system. Thus, it is necessary to identify the factors that affect NPLs to decrease the level of NPLs for financial stability and economic goals (Stijepovic, 2014).Michael (2006) stated that NPLs affect the overall routine of the banking sector, thus threatening the bankruptcy of the banking sector. A high level of NPLs directly affects the overall financial performance of the banks (Berger and DeYoung, 1997). Fofack (2005) stated that the leading cause of economic crises in African countries is due to the high level of NPLs in banks. In case of Pakistan, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) controls the overall banking structure of the country and is responsible for the smooth regulations of banking sector. The reports of SBP shows that NPLs ratio is increasing rapidly over time. In 2005, the NPLs ratio was 6.7%, which reached to 14.3% in 2010 and is still moving upward. The effects of NPLs will result in dividend payments, high interest rates and low levels of investments resulting in the lower economic development of the country.\n2. Literature review: Researchers have identified various elements that affect the NPLs, including income diversification, profitability, capitalization and operating efficiency. However, the relationship between NPLs and these factors is not clear. Some researchers concluded that these factors have positive relationships, while others reject their results. 2.1 Return on assets (ROA)\n3. Methodology: Banking data are retrieved from balance sheets and income statements of the individual banks. Nine different types of banks are used for analysis from the time period ranging from 2005 to 2017. This time period is taken because it has never been considered in previous studies to assess the NPLs in the banking sector of Pakistan. Previous studies have only considered the time period ranging from 2000 to 2012 in different studies by (Badar and Yasmin Javid, 2013; Mehmood et al., 2013; Jameel, 2014). Studies on assessing NPLs considering data from recent years are lacking. Therefore, in this study, we attempted to assess the determinants of NPLs from the time period ranging from 2005 to 2017. This time period is considered due to the availability of sufficient data for the analysis of variables. One advantage of the panel data is that it decreases the multicollinearity among variables and also enlarges the number of observations and degree of freedom (Boudriga et al., 2010b). Panel data is also helpful in identifying the bank-specific factors and unknown observation differences among individual banks (Ghosh, 2015). In this study, we considered the banking sector of Pakistan. The NPLs are considered as a dependent variable and measured as NPLs ratio, while profitability, income diversification, capital and operating efficiency were considered independent variables. 3.1 Definitions of variables\n4. Results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The size of non-performing loans (NPLs) plays a key role in the stability of the banking sector of a country. The factors that explain the NPLs contain very important information for banks. Studies in this regard with respect to developing states such as Pakistan have received little attention. This study aimed to scrutinize the determinants of NPLs observing a case of the banking sector in Pakistan over the period from 2005 to 2017.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The sample consists of the banking sector (i.e., commercial banks) listed in Pakistan Stock Exchange over the period of 2005-2017. The banking factors, including profitability, operating efficiency, capital adequacy and income diversification, were evaluated. The estimations were done by regression modeling using random and fixed effects through STATA software.\nFindings: Results show that the operating efficiency and profitability indicators have a negative association with NPLs but were statistically significant, while capital adequacy and income diversification have a negative association with NPLs but were statistically insignificant.\nResearch limitations/implications: The present study has considered limited banking indicators as determinants of NPLs and was limited to a specific time period from 2005 to 2017.\nOriginality/value: The study is an attempt to investigate various banking factors that affect the NPLs with respect to developing economies such as Pakistan.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Looking at the taxation effect on cross-state smuggling using rational addiction models	[ "Taxation", "Rational-addiction", "Smuggling", "Neighbouring price", "G02", "H21", "H31", "H71" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Becker and Murphy (1988) introduce a theoretical model of rational-addiction in which consumers or investors, assumed to be infinite-lived and to maximize the sum of discounted lifetime utility, are rationally addicted to the consumption of some goods in the sense that they anticipate the expected future consequences of their actions. The key difference between the rational-addiction model and myopic models of addiction and habit-persistence is that in the former model, individuals are forward-looking. As a consequence of this, the current consumption depends not only on current prices and lagged consumptions, but also on expected future prices and future consumptions.\n2. Literature review: Reynolds (2015) illustrates that the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR)[1] highlights the effect of tax differentials on the cigarette smuggling in the USA and recommends that governments exercise restraints when considering raising taxes. From 2006, the World Bank estimates that approximately 30 percent of all cigarette exports in the world finish up transactions in the black market. It is no doubt that there is a direct relationship between raising state taxes and the increases in illegal trafficking. Maclean et al. (2014) investigate a heterogeneous response to state tax increases. They document tax elasticity across a sample of adult smokers, which reveals a U-shaped relationship in that only moderate smokers reduce their smoking following a tax increase, and the magnitude of the tax effect is small. Larue et al. (2009) are motivated by cases of smuggling in Canada and UK. Legally exported sales are followed by subsequently illegally imported transactions. High export taxes or the elimination of taxes need not suffice to eradicate smuggling.\n3. Theoretical framework: Becker and Murphy (1988) are among one of the first who adopt a rational choice framework to analyze addictive behaviors. Their main idea is that people are rational even in making choices involving addictive goods in the sense of exercising forward-looking maximization with stable preferences. The testable implications are that the addiction increased in past consumption increases current consumption, and the rationality, as opposed to myopia in addictive behaviors - anticipation of changes in future consumption - has positive effect on current consumption. Our framework is based on BGM's model and extended to general setup as follows.\n4. Model and estimation: We consider the dynamic equation in BG (Baltagi and Griffin, 2001) and BGM (Becker et al., 1994) as follows:(5)\n5. Moment condition specification: Before addressing the detail results of different model selections, we want to take a moment to discuss that there exists potential endogeneity problem. We want to demonstrate the local price effect and the exercise tax differential effect on the current consumption at the same time, when putting both local price and neighboring price series, Pit and Pnit, into structural equation. But as long as the cross-state tax policies are highly correlated, the impact of exercise tax on local price of cigarette will lead the local price and the neighboring price correlated to a high extent. At this point, it is reasonable to argue that there may exist some omitted variables which are measured on the exercise tax and closely related to the local price and the minimum neighboring price. Thus, it seems that only putting both Pit and Pnit into the structure equation is not reasonable either from the econometric view or from the public financial inference.\n6. Empirical results: 6.1 Basic model\n7. Conclusion: The basic and extended framework for rational-addiction models have been discussed, resulting the fundamental equations for empirical estimations and testing specifications. In the region of Arellano and Bond, the general equations for rational-addiction models get more rooms to carry out the estimations by the general method of moments (GMM) and testing specifications. Our results improve those from the previous literature in that we are able to show strong supports for the smuggling effects on current consumptions. Indeed, the taxation which is aimed at capturing price variation across state borders turns out to be significantly affecting current consumptions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to show how the taxation effect on cross-state smuggling can be a valid instrumental variable for lagged and future consumption together with the local price series.\nDesign/methodology/approach: On the same grounds, the authors raise the question using the rational-addiction model by noticing that the neighboring price differentials really capture the possible smuggling or bootlegging effects.\nFindings: Moreover, the authors look into the extended model to test the key condition that the expected future financial consequences will affect the current consumptions.\nOriginality/value: This supports the rational-addiction model, which can be used to plan the taxation for the forward-looking consumptions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Happy ever after in the quasi-market place? The dowry logic of active labour policy in the Lombardy Region	[ "Governance", "Activation policies", "Individualisation", "Logics of welfare", "Quasi-markets" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As in most European countries, in the past two decades a deep rescaling process in Italy has allocated to Regions new responsibilities in both social and labour policies. In this context, the Lombardy Region has developed a specific quasi-market-oriented approach, initially promoted within health services and progressively extended to other domains, such as home care, education, training and employment policies (henceforth T\n2. The policy context: 2.1. Changes in employment-related policies in Italy\n3. From service to performance: the development of the dote system: 3.1. The evolution of the logics of T&E policies in Lombardy\n4. Discussion: To determine the implications of the dote system and how it has reshaped regional welfare policies, we now analyse its impact in relation to three main issues: freedom of choice (SS4.1), activation (SS4.2), working conditions (SS4.3).\n5. Conclusions: In this paper, we have analysed the logics of the Lombardy Region's dote system, a very particular experiment in the panorama of activation policies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The dote system is the most recent and only way to finance and deliver services in the training and labour policy field in Lombardy (Italy), strengthening the regional quasi-market approach. The purpose of this paper is to analyse its logic and highlight the implications for the policy system.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Qualitative case-study including preliminary documentation, analysis of administrative data, in-depth interviews with stakeholders and practitioners.\nFindings: The dote system is based on a strongly pre-structured and pure performance logic. It predefines forms, ways and steps towards people's \"autonomy\", further categorising the policy system and establishing a combination of individualisation without personalisation. The strict regulation makes it difficult to design accessible, high-quality and tailor-made interventions. Dote could represent an interesting innovation for high-profile measures, but as a universal equivalent it often fails to match the needs of people and the labour market.\nResearch limitations/implications: The self-funded research is limited to a regional context, analysed against the background of European welfare transformations. Greater effort in qualitative research could improve the knowledge about the implications of NPM and quasi-markets.\nPractical implications: Regional centralism is strengthened; local authorities and private bodies are excluded from planning; freedom of choice is limited. A marriage of convenience between providers and users increases the level of stress and the dispersion of resources.\nOriginality/value: Dote is a particular experiment in the panorama of activation. It works in a unique way, impacting on governance and activation modes. The paper is addressed to researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in gaining better understanding of the implications of quasi-markets and NPM.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Learning from complex and heterogeneous experiences: the role of knowledge codification	[ "Learning from experience", "Organizational learning", "Abstraction", "Codification", "Complex and heterogeneous experience" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Fixed graphic\n1. Introduction: Over the past 50 years, organizational learning has been a popular research focus among management and organization scholars (Cyert and March, 1963; Argyris and Schon, 1978; Fiol and Lyles, 1985; Levitt and March, 1988; Senge, 1990; Huber, 1991; Epple et al., 1991; Miner and Mezias, 1996; Crossan et al., 1999; Crossan and Bapuji, 2004; Argote and Miron-Spektor, 2011). In both theoretical and empirical research, scholars have emphasized the role of experience as the first source of learning (March, 2010; Argote, 2013). Researchers have studied different types of experiences (e.g. direct, indirect, rare and failure) and the learning that ensues. However, as early as 1988, scholars warned against \"superstitious learning\" from experiences, especially when the links between actions and outcomes are poorly specified (Levitt and March, 1988; Levinthal and March, 1993; Zollo and Reuer, 2003). According to March (2010), the debate on the challenges and limitations of learning from experience now has renewed importance.\n2. Organizational learning: role and diversity of experiences: Argote and Miron-Spektor (2011) defined organizational learning as \"a change in the organization's knowledge that occurs as the organization acquires experience\", emphasizing the role of experience in the process. Experience is accumulated in the organization as it performs or tries to perform tasks. Indeed, organizations learn from their attempts to perform a task, whether those tasks are complete or incomplete, and whether they are successful or fail (Argote, 2013).\n3. Knowledge codification strategies: contributions from the knowledge management literature: Deliberate learning requires developing and implementing processes that encourage organizational knowledge transfer and creation (i.e. knowledge management). In this section, we present the contrasting perspectives that are debated in this field, and position our work within the knowledge management literature. We then focus on the codification process that is central to knowledge management practices to consider its potential contribution to learning from complex and heterogeneous experiences.\n4. Knowledge codification strategies in deliberate learning: As shown in Table I, besides learning from simple and direct experience, learning is usually deliberate and involves codification effort. However, from one experience to another, contexts change, the cognitive styles of the agents responsible for codification differ and objectives vary. As discussed in Section 2, this leads to the use of different codification strategies which are more or less abstract. Thus, based on the theoretical findings described in Sections 1 and 2, in this section, we propose a knowledge codification strategy for each experience type (Table II).\n5. Conclusion: This article was intended to enrich our understanding of learning mechanisms associated with complex and heterogeneous experiences. In doing so, we answered a call for research from Argote and Miron-Spektor (2011) to link and combine two fields of related research that had yet to be connected: organizational learning and knowledge management. We accomplished this goal by revisiting the concept of codification using the critical realist paradigm to overcome epistemological boundaries between knowing and knowledge. Further analysis of the codification process, particularly of the key role of abstraction, has greatly enriched our understanding of deliberate learning mechanisms required for complex and heterogeneous experiences.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study organizational learning from complex and heterogeneous experiences. According to March (2010), this kind of high intellect learning is difficult to accomplish because it requires deliberate investments in knowledge transfer and creation. Zollo and Winter (2002) emphasized how knowledge codification can facilitate this process, as long as it is \"well-performed\". However, knowledge management scholars have yet to explore what is meant by well-performed codification and how to achieve it.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper addresses this gap and provides a conceptual analysis based on two related but previously disconnected research areas: organizational learning and knowledge management.\nFindings: This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, a new understanding of different types of experiences and their effects on learning is proposed. Then the codification process using a critical realist paradigm to overcome the epistemological boundaries of knowledge versus knowing is discussed; in doing so, it is shown that codification can take different forms to be \"well-performed\". Finally, appropriate codification strategies based on experience type are identified.\nOriginality/value: The abstraction-oriented codification outlined in this paper runs counter to the logic of concrete codification that dominates both theory and practice. Thus, going beyond the traditional debate on the degree of codification (i.e. should knowledge be fully codified or just partly codified), this paper introduced a new debate about the appropriate degree of abstraction.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
All the world's a stage: transforming entrepreneurship education through design thinking	[ "Entrepreneurship education", "Student feedback", "Design thinking", "Graduate employability", "Student satisfaction" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In today's connected, knowledge intensive world the notion of didactic approaches to pedagogy development appears at odds with expectations from students, employers and societies at large in fostering capabilities better able to deal with uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility. Moreover, in the field of entrepreneurship education the learning journey is shaped by the need to bridge the gap between knowledge creation and delivery and action in transforming concepts to viable realities. The case of one entrepreneurship programme and how a co-created curriculum was designed and delivered is presented in this paper highlighting the efficacy in reducing hierarchical \"barriers\" between educators and students by avoiding jumping straight to solutions. A design thinking approach was adopted in stepping back from solution mode (i.e. \"I know how to fix this\"), to discover what the problem was in terms of dissatisfaction with the current approach, in order to shape an empathetic, user-centric lens on what could be. The paper begins with a discussion of the ontological, theoretical, pedagogical and practical challenges associated with entrepreneurship education. We then present a review of relevant literature that led to a synthesis of five key questions to consider in developing a pedagogical framework for entrepreneurship education. The paper then in greater detail presents the case study of the reimagining, redefining and delivery of a foundational entrepreneurship course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University in Melbourne, Australia, co-designed using design thinking from 2013 to 2015 by the course team, students and industry advisors. Following this, the journey map of the iterative development of the pedagogy, including positive and negative experiences and outcomes, is presented and in subsequent discussion the findings section reports how the new curriculum - and, crucially, its approach to design and delivery - enabled an appropriate alignment of the learning principles and elements with the content, pedagogy, assessment items and learning outcomes. The paper concludes with an outline of the implications of our findings for higher education providers and future research.\nEntrepreneurship education in the new economic era: Over the past 20 years, universities are increasingly being held accountable for the student experience, treating students as consumers, and producing work-ready and entrepreneurial graduates (Darlaston-Jones et al., 2003; Rae, 2010; Cable, 2011; Millican, 2014). The skills that have been identified by employers as most important in the UK, USA and Australia are communication, teamwork, critical thinking, problem solving, initiative and enterprise, self-management and learning through technology (Casner-Lotto and Barrington, 2006; Australian Industry Group and Deloitte, 2009; Lowden et al., 2011; Gilbert, 2012). In the context of the changing role of universities, a debate has reopened around the extent to which the focus on employability conflicts with a holistic approach to learning (Giroux, 2010; Ramsden, 2011; Millican, 2014). Nonetheless, the increasing demand for entrepreneurship education globally is well recognised (see De Faoite et al., 2003; Finkle, 2007; West et al., 2009).\nThe university enterprise context: Stanford University's contribution to the development of Silicon Valley that led to what has been described as \"inventing the entrepreneurial university\" calls for universities to harness increased collaboration with industry, particularly since both federal and state funding is being cut to support the operation of the university (Nelson et al., 2001). A range of studies that explore how universities can act in \"entrepreneurial\" ways (Poole and Robertson, 2003) including those that argue that universities are already at the forefront of innovation and hence should act entrepreneurially (Conceicao and Heitor, 2002; Jacob et al., 2003) and encourage academic entrepreneurship (Shane, 2004); affirm that the university leadership, organisational culture and strategy; the existing university-business interface; and the interaction between students and entrepreneurs all create important contexts within which entrepreneurship education is applied (Pittaway and Cope, 2007). Despite this general consensus around the context in which entrepreneurship education takes place, business schools are still being criticised for their \"persistent deficiencies in certain non-technical graduate skills\" (Jackson and Chapman, 2012, p. 96). Crebert (2002) and Jackson and Chapman (2012) argue that outdated curricula, inappropriate pedagogical techniques and inadequate opportunities for work-integrated learning are some of the major reasons for such deficiencies.\nApplication of design thinking in the context of entrepreneurship education curricula: Neck and Greene (2011) reflect on Simon's (1996) observation that, while entrepreneurship is an applied discipline, it is more often than not taught and researched as if it was a natural science. They argue that entrepreneurs \"think and to some extent act like designers\" (p. 65), highlighting alignment in the way both diverge and converge around identifying and then acting on realising what could be, in response to an opportunity or problem. This requires skills in \"observation, synthesis, searching and generating alternatives, critical thinking, feedback, visual representation, creativity, problem-solving and value creation\" (p. 65) - quite a range and depth of skills for educators to enable and facilitate.\nMapping the five key questions to the double diamond model: To enhance the convergence around pedagogical solutions so that we could move from the \"understand\" diamond to the \"create and deliver\" diamond, we mapped the five key questions to the double diamond model (Figure 1).\nJourney map of the enhanced pedagogy: The evolution of the pedagogy for the entrepreneurial process course began in Semester 1 of 2013 with the integration of the lecture and tutorial into one three-hour session under the new delivery model of the \"lectorial\". Although the lectorials became more interactive as students were encouraged to offer their own perspectives on the learning content, the student presentations tended to be repetitive and did not facilitate an engaging or dynamic environment.\nData collection: The course team initiated greater engagement among the students in the curriculum innovation through a series of focus group discussions with students and industry partners, qualitative feedback through surveys and Course Experience Survey (CES) data from Semester 1, 2013, until Semester 2, 2015. The CES is administered by the RMIT University survey services centre through an online survey. CES data have approval from the Business College Human Ethics Advisory Network of RMIT and can be used for research into teaching and learning practice. The CES forms comprise standard questions pertaining to the Good Teaching Scale (GTS) of academics as well as the overall satisfaction index (OSI) for the course. Since 2012, the CES forms have also allowed academics to choose up to eight additional questions relating to various aspects of the course, such as course content, delivery model, feedback, assessment, course team and learning outcomes. Following the introduction of the lectorial model in Semester 1, 2013, the course team carefully chose additional questions for students related to the curriculum innovation. The findings are based on both course statistics and content analysis of the qualitative feedback provided by students.\nStudent evaluation of the lectorial model for the entrepreneurial process course: The CES data and the qualitative feedback provided by students were analysed in relation to the development of the dynamic delivery model and the redesign of assessments.\nConclusions and further research: This case study presents a design-driven pedagogy for a foundational entrepreneurship course offered at RMIT underpinned by notions of justice, equity and constructivism, and the use of humour and role-play. The results demonstrate that the approach to constant enhancement of curriculum informed by five key considerations in the pedagogical framework for entrepreneurship education brought to life through the double diamond model, significantly improved student satisfaction and learning outcomes.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present an alternate approach to entrepreneurship pedagogy development through an iterative journey of co-ownership between students, industry partners and academic course teams to enhance student satisfaction and learning outcomes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Utilising design thinking, the pedagogy evolved over a three-year period (2013-2015) through iterative innovation in the delivery model and assessments, underpinned by notions of classroom community, constructivism, justice and equity, humour and role-play.\nFindings: The findings strongly validate the integration of notions of justice and equity, constructivism, humour and role-play as learning principles and delivery elements in entrepreneurship pedagogy to enhance student satisfaction and learning outcomes. A critical outcome of this design and delivery process is the reduction of barriers between students and teachers and the impact this has on creating a shared learning journey; a journey that in this case has resulted in meaningful outcomes for all involved.\nResearch limitations/implications: Further research with longitudinal data is needed to validate the link between design-led entrepreneurship pedagogy and enhanced student learning outcomes as well as implications relating to graduate employability. In global settings, further data collection could also validate whether the findings are culturally neutral or culturally sensitive.\nPractical implications: Entrepreneurship educators will benefit from this pedagogical approach in seeking to meet the needs of business start-ups, intrapreneurial capacity-building and potentially, enhancement of graduate employability. The model also offers promise for other learning contexts.\nOriginality/value: Design thinking has received scant attention in entrepreneurship pedagogy. This case study demonstrates how design thinking can enhance student satisfaction and learning outcomes by integrating notions of constructivism, justice and equity, humour and role-play in entrepreneurship curricula.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How confusion impacts product labeling perceptions	[ "Health claims", "Consumer confusion", "Dietary supplements", "Product labeling", "Product perception" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Consumer confusion - a negatively valenced state of mind wherein consumers lack comprehension or understanding - is ubiquitous in the marketplace. Shoppers may be confused by environmental elements at retail stores (Garaus et al., 2015), when comparison shopping (Mitchell and Papavassiliou, 1999) and by pricing structures (Chioveanu and Zhou, 2013). Recently, many health issues are \"news\"; this media attention has coincided with an influx of health-related products. According to the popular press, many health issues are confusing including the meaning of \"healthy\" (Reingold, 2015), \"superfoods\" (Food Insight, 2016) and the difference between \"natural\" and \"organic\" (D'Adamo, 2018).\nConsumer confusion in marketing research: It is useful to review confusion in the broader literature related to consumer knowledge. Alba and Hutchinson (1987) first developed a framework for consumer expertise. They suggest differences in consumer expertise and demonstrate how expertise can impact consumer decision-making. After their seminal work, researchers richly explored consumer expertise and knowledge's role in consumer decision-making. While the literature related to consumer knowledge is vast, there are surprisingly few studies which examine the role of consumer confusion in decision-making. The literature does, however, lead us to infer that more knowledgeable consumers experience less confusion. This relationship is expected for at least two reasons. First, highly knowledgeable consumers will have stored more relevant information in long-term memory and are better able to give meaning to incoming information. Additionally, it is possible that consumers with high subjective knowledge are susceptible to confirmatory biases, therefore, are less likely to experience the negative emotions and lack of understanding that comprise confusion.\nConfusion as a consumer state: Traditionally, psychologists have had difficulty conceptualizing confusion (Darwin, 1965). Central to this is whether confusion is a cognitive state, an emotion, or both. While not typically discussed as a \"basic\" emotion (i.e. anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise), some have argued that confusion meets all the criteria to be considered an emotion (Ekman, 1992), or at least has an emotional component (Rozin and Cohen, 2003). Even if one considers confusion to be an emotion, the literature suggests that the construct's cognitive aspect must be acknowledged. Confusion, and other \"hybrid\" emotions (e.g. concern, concentration), seem to be more intellectual than the basic emotions noted above. Appraisal theory suggests that constructs such as confusion need not be pigeonholed into being exclusively an emotion or cognition (Ellsworth and Scherer, 2003). While it is accepted that cognition plays an important role in emotion (and vice versa), some have argued that confusion is a perfect example of the inseparability of thoughts and feelings. \"Hybrid\" emotions such as confusion are not well understood. Because confusion seems to have both emotive and cognitive dimensions, many research studies have classified it as a \"nonstandard emotion\", \"emotion expression\", \"affective state\", \"knowledge emotion\", \"non-emotional form or expression\", \"affective-signaling state\" or \"cognitive feeling\" - falling under the umbrella term, intellectual emotion (Ellsworth, 2003; Rozin and Cohen, 2003; Hess, 2003). Based on this literature, the authors expect confusion to have cognitive and emotional dimensions.\nConfusion and qualified health claims on foods and dietary supplements: Qualified health claims on packaged foods or supplements make a claim that a product reduces the risk of a particular condition (i.e. coronary heart disease), but also presents a qualifier that the scientific evidence behind the claim is preliminary, uncertain or even unlikely to support the claim. For instance, a manufacturer can make the health claim, \"Psyllium husk may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes\", as long as it is accompanied by the qualifier, \"FDA has concluded that there is very little scientific evidence for this claim\" (Food and Drug Administration, 2014).\nHypotheses: Based on the review of the relevant literature on confusion and the proposed conceptual definition of consumer confusion (i.e. as an intellectual emotion), the authors develop a theoretical model in which they empirically measure confusion and then test its antecedents and consequences. The authors assert that the level of scientific certainty regarding a health claim and the presence of conflicting marketplace information (i.e. either on the package itself or between the package and an external source) impact confusion in predictable ways. The authors suspect that confusion for qualified health claims is dependent on the product category (i.e. either a food product or dietary supplement) and the amount of prior knowledge. The consequences of confusion (i.e. consumer perceptions of scientific certainty, overall product quality and firm credibility) are examined in the model.\nProcedure and method: A nation-wide sample with 238 usable responses was recruited from an online panel (n = 238, 41 per cent male, modal age 46-55, 86 per cent Caucasian). We used a 2 (check-box qualifier: qualifier stating strong evidence vs weak evidence to support the on-package health claim) by 2 (external information: press release stating strong evidence vs weak evidence to support the on-package health claim) by 2 (product type: food vs supplement) between-subjects design. Study participants viewed full-color mock labels, based on labels in the marketplace.\nModel specification: To test the antecedents (H1) and consequences (H2) of confusion regarding health claims, a SmartPLS model was developed (Ringle et al., 2015). SmartPLS allows for modeling formative constructs, offers the ability to estimate both direct and mediated effects, allows for multiple independent and dependent variables to be estimated simultaneously and provides estimates of explained variance. Table I provides a conceptual and operational definition of each of the constructs of interest tied to H1.\nDiscussion: It is hard to think about many of marketing's focal issues (e.g. trademarks, disclosures, deception, search) without using the term confusion; yet, it has evaded focused study. This research expands the marketing literature by focusing on consumer confusion, conceptualizing confusion as an intellectual emotion. We explore a measure of confusion as experienced by consumers which can be adapted to many business/consumer interactions. We demonstrate confusion's role in the context of qualified health claims, showing how marketplace information can create confusion and lead to negative consumer perceptions. We conclude that consumer confusion is an important construct - explaining a significant amount of variance and mediating marketing communications.\nContributions: This research offers a conceptual definition of consumer confusion as an intellectual emotion experienced by the consumer. Surprisingly, such a definition does not currently exist in the marketing literature, despite the wide range of topics for which confusion is important. We are among the first to explicitly measure consumer confusion (not just its outcome) in the business domain. We suggest that confusion may be best modeled as a formative construct, a measurement approach explicitly recognizing the emotional and cognitive components of confusion. Modeling and measuring intellectual emotions such as confusion is in its preliminary stages, and will need further refinement. However, there is preliminary evidence of discriminant validity (as indicated by Hetererotrait-Monotrait ratios), nomological validity (in that confusion's impact on outcome variables are consistently negative as expected) and face validity.\nFuture research directions and limitations: Replication and refinement of the confusion measure are needed. The proposed measure could be examined using several different physiological measures concurrently to determine whether the questions adequately reflect the intellectual emotion. Studies could be designed to expose participants to confusing marketing stimuli while EEG or facial expression data are collected in addition to the confusion scale.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Consumer confusion is an often discussed, but seldom investigated, construct central to marketing. This study aims to conceptualize consumer confusion as an intellectual emotion with cognitive and emotional components, and examine it in the context of qualified health claims and conflicting marketplace information.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A between-subjects experimental design is used to test the hypotheses.\nFindings: Structural equation modeling suggests that weak science discussions and conflicting information on dietary supplements evoke consumer confusion. Confusion, in turn, impacts scientific certainty perceptions, product quality and firm credibility. Incorporating confusion measures in theoretical models significantly increases the amount of variance explained in consumer perceptions. Implications are offered for businesses, consumer behaviorists and public policymakers.\nOriginality/value: It is hard to think about many of marketing's focal issues (e.g. trademark theory, disclosures and warnings, advertising deception, search and shopping behavior) without using the term confusion. While confusion is central to discussions of these domains, it has evaded focused attention and study. Indeed, no previous research in marketing has directly addressed the experience of consumer confusion per se. The current research fills a gap in the marketing literature by explicitly defining the construct of confusion and offering a measurement approach that is easily adapted to many business/consumer interactions. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate the role of confusion in the context of qualified health claims by showing how conflicting information between health claims, qualifiers and external information can create confusion, and in turn, lead to negative consumer perceptions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The 4Cs of mass customization in service industries: a customer lens	[ "Service innovation", "Co-design", "Co-production", "Customer participation", "Mass customization", "Co-configuration", "Co-construction", "Taxonomy", "Innovation strategy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Customers frequently seek unique products, services and experiences suited to their individual preferences, resulting in greater aesthetic and functional fit (Franke and Schreier, 2008; Wind and Rangaswamy, 2001). Increasingly, therefore, brands are pursuing alternative ways of delivering tailor-made experiences, seeking to move away from traditional mass production strategies and their limitations. Accordingly, there has been a significant growth in the theory and practice of personalization and customization. Personalization involves tailoring products for specific customers, often without their knowledge. In essence, personalization is largely about filtering content to satisfy an individual's particular taste (Churchill, 2013). For marketers, the delivery of personalized content to consumers is common practice, and can include marketing campaigns where customer information (e.g. preferences, past behaviors, online search activities) is used to segment, target and convert them (Dunlap, 2014). Following the lead of Amazon that has been personalizing marketing content for many years (i.e. via online product recommendations), others such as Netflix now provide customers with recommended content based on their usage history (Campbell et al., 2020; Perez, 2017), while spotify selects playlists based on a listener's music preferences. Such personalization processes are often undertaken without active customer involvement.\n2. Mass customization: Customers have individual preferences and needs, which standard product and service offerings often cannot fulfil. Mass customization is a modern means of offering increased value to customers, and providing firms with unique competitive advantage (Piller and Muller, 2004; Pine, 1993; Salvador et al., 2009). Given the increasing demand for customization, there is a need to clarify the concept from the customer perspective (Hunt et al., 2013; Piller and Muller, 2004; Sandrin et al., 2014) and extend existing research beyond outcomes, such as value and satisfaction (Yoo and Park, 2016). In doing so, we encapsulate the antecedents of consumer involvement and articulate the various conceptualizations of mass customization. To date, mass customization has spanned a range of production practices (Duray et al., 2000) that have clouded the term's meaning and its respective theoretical development. Consequently, the conceptual boundaries of mass customization are blurred, with theorizing suffering from various, somewhat insular perspectives. Several researchers have proposed taxonomies to understand customization. However, these frameworks have lumped mass customization strategies into one category of a broader framework (Miceli et al., 2007; Wind and Rangaswamy, 2001) or examined it solely from a firm perspective (Gilmore and Pine, 1997; Lampel and Mintzberg, 1996) or have lacked theoretical foundations or future research guidance (Loef et al., 2017). Despite previous research on mass customization, there is no integrated framework that helps to systematize it in terms of its potential manifestations and strategies. In drawing together and synthesizing the relevant literature, Table I provides an overview of key conceptualizations of mass customization and highlights the unique contribution of this research.\n3. Theoretical implications for future research directions: While mass customization has received significant attention in the literature, the current state of theorizing remains somewhat disparate, with terms applied interchangeably or with nuances omitted. Despite the risk of conceptual enmeshment, insular streams of research on the topic contribute to the study of seemingly independent parts rather than advancing the integrated whole. There have been often diverse streams of research on customization with a range of theoretical focuses (e.g. value, price premium, satisfaction, operation efficiency) and terminologies (e.g. mass customization, service customization, personalization, customer participation and value co-creation). Although the task of systematically integrating these streams for a more holistic and granular perspective on mass customization is daunting, this study has done so to further the conceptual contributions of 'explicating' and 'relating' theoretical concepts proposed and called for by MacInnis (2011). This study has explicated by delineating and synthesizing key forms of mass customization according to the design of market offerings and has related by differentiating and integrating mass customization strategies, to show how these aspects comprise a greater whole while warranting individual attention.\n4. Conclusion: In response to MacInnis (2011), the aim of this study was to establish foundational mass-customization strategies by means of an integrative and coherent framework that will inform marketing theory through its granular yet holistic perspective. Four distinct mass-customization strategies were identified and then explored in combination with a focus on the rather understudied and under-theorized domain of co-configuration in particular. Four important emerging research priority areas were outlined to provide a deeper understanding of the drivers of co-configuration, considering the outcomes of co-configuration, determining the impact of VR, AI and Blockchain technologies, and investigating optimal levels of customization.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Increasingly, customers are demanding products that fit their individual needs. Many firms respond by cultivating product individualization via mass customization, often integrating this capability via interactive platforms that connect them with customers. Despite such customization, research to date has lacked cohesion, often taking the organizational, rather than customer, view. The purpose of this paper is to provide inconclusive theorizing in regard to customization from the consumers' perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The review and synthesis of the literature revealed that co-configuration is an underexplored domain of mass customization. Consequently, an initial conceptualization of co-configuration is developed and compared with current customization strategies. Specifically, the definition and boundary conditions of co-configuration are compared with three domains of mass customization, namely, co-production, co-construction and co-design. This led to the development of research priority areas to establish an agenda for future research on mass customization and its role in customer' firm relationships.\nFindings: This paper provides the delineation of four distinct consumer customization strategies, conceptualized in a matrix, and proposes separate customer journey visualizations. In advancing the theoretical understanding by means of a unifying typology, this paper identifies three existing Cs of mass customization (co-production, co-construction and co-design) and focuses specifically on a fourth (co-configuration), identified as an understudied mass customization strategy.\nOriginality/value: This paper extends the previous conceptualizations of mass customization comprising co-production, co-design and co-construction. The proposed typology establishes a foundation for four research priority areas that can improve both academic rigor and practical application.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Mapping the linkage between Organizational Culture and TQM: The case of Indian auto component industry	[ "Indian auto component SMEs", "OCTAPACE culture", "TQM interventions" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: There is considerable evidence that the success of performance enhancing strategies such as reengineering and total quality management (TQM) is dependent on cultural change (Becker and Gerhart, 1996; Daymon, 2000; Delaney and Huselid, 1996; Heifetz and Laurie, 1997). Foster and Whittle (1989) have found that TQM is a fundamental shift away from traditional approach to quality. It is seen that control based on systematic analysis, preplanning and blueprinting of operations continue to be core of the organisational operations but the focus has shifted to continuous improvement, where control is embedded in and driven through the culture of the organisation. According to Cameron and Quinn (1999), the assessment of Organisational Culture (OC) in terms of key dimensions has become increasingly important because of the need for organisations to change while maintaining stability in the current turbulent external environment. Therefore, identification of those core organisational cultural values that are conducive for planning and execution of TQM interventions can be especially beneficial for the effective implementation of TQM in any organisation.\n2. Literature review: 2.1. OC\n3. Objective, hypotheses and proposed model: 3.1. Objective of the study\n4. Research methodology: 4.1. Sampling procedure\n5. Data analysis, results and discussion: Data analysis is conducted by inferential statistics techniques such as exploratory factor analysis using SPSS 17.0 and CFA using AMOS 18.0. In this section, seven constructs of TQM have been identified through exploratory factor analysis. Thereafter, CFA was first applied to confirm the latent constructs of OC and then to confirm the latent constructs of TQM.\n6. Conclusion and recommendation: The present study intended to examine the impact of OC on TQM implementation in Indian auto component SMEs by using SEM. The proposed model has been tested in three steps: first, OC: its latents and indicators; second, TQM: its latents and indicators; and third, the effect of OC on TQM. Results obtained from the study suggest that OC has a significant and positive impact on TQM implementation. This research finding is consistent with the findings of previous studies conducted by Fu et al. (2015), Gimenez-Espin et al. (2013), Haffar et al. (2013), Pun and Jaggernath-Furlonge (2012), Al-Swidi and Mahmood (2012), Baird et al. (2011), Schroeder et al. (2011), Zu et al. (2011), Rad (2006) and Ambroz (2004).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of Organisational Culture (OC) on total quality management (TQM) implementation in Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the auto component sector. Specifically; it attempts to propose a model linking OC and TQM for this sector.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Survey method was used for data collection by targeting the whole population of 482 Indian auto component SMEs drawn from Auto Component Manufacturers Association members' database. Out of 482, 150 completely filled questionnaires were taken for data analysis. Proposed relationships among identified dimensions of OC and TQM interventions have been validated through parameter estimation statistics and goodness-of-fit statistics using path analysis technique of structural equation modelling using AMOS 18.0.\nFindings: Based on the results, a culture influenced TQM model has been developed. The model demonstrates a linkage between cultural dimensions and TQM interventions, thereby suggesting that OC characterised by \"openness\", \"confrontation\", \"trust\", \"authenticity\", \"proaction\", \"autonomy\", \"collaboration\" and \"experimentation\" has a significant and positive impact on TQM implementation.\nPractical implications: The study presents many practical implications, specifically for quality managers in Indian auto component SMEs. The study has developed a culture influenced TQM model which identifies dimensions of OC that promote TQM implementation. The study also identifies various interventions of TQM in their order of significance, which can be used by SMEs in mapping the critical links between OC and TQM through this model. Thus, findings of the present study will help SMEs in this sector to move up the value chain and sustain their global competitiveness.\nOriginality/value: The study provides a culture influenced TQM model which would assist managers in quality implementation in Indian auto component SMEs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Change and opportunity: the role of leaders and SMEs in creating new business futures	[ "Entrepreneurship", "Initiative", "Stakeholders", "Competences", "Commitment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Crisis - political and economic - uncertainty, instability, unemployment, and demand for change, more rapid and drastic than ever before known. These are the elements of contemporary life in many countries; distressing for a great many, even more acutely for young people. Regardless of educational achievement some find hope and aspiration spiraling down to gloomy hopelessness and even gloomier speculation. Immense changes are thrust upon us, but the essential issue is how they will be managed.\nWe need entrepreneurs: It is a grim paradox that vast numbers of talented graduates cannot find opportunities to apply their hard won knowledge. Additionally, the fact that technological and scientific advances allow production of all kinds to be increased with fewer people accentuates the issue of highly significant shifts in employment trends, and consequently serious problems of creating future employment.Reductions in many existing companies and organizations - often technology driven - go far beyond the need to prioritize new jobs; they demand that the creation and development of entirely new job markets. Since the majority of the world's total work-force is in SME's, and not in large corporations (or even the public sector) it is self-evident that the focus of development must, therefore, be in encouraging and supporting individual initiative and a culture of entrepreneurship on the widest possible scale in the SME sector.Essential principles of entrepreneurship are what I term the four I's; ideas, initiative, innovation, and implementation - embraced by determination in achieving objectives. Consequently, the encouragement of entrepreneurship, and this concept of the four I's must be advanced within the framework of strict objectivity with regard to potential markets and competent risk management.An entrepreneurial view of business trends for the future for this new era is particularly appropriate, not only for young people everywhere, but equally for older people with solid work experience, of any kind, who are compelled by circumstances to seek a new direction to earn a living. In itself, even bringing such groups together to define and fill a perceived need suggests opportunities, especially in regions which have no major industries and few large companies.\nLeadership support: However, foresight, bold thinking, encouragement and support by leaders is fundamentally critical to success. If this condition exists, hope and motivation is encouraged and the dynamism of individuals - especially young people - is released, leading to long-term benefit for individuals and society as a whole. Potentially good leaders are found everywhere, but, talent must be properly nurtured and the advancement of worthy people by merit over patronage must become the norm, not the exception.Even the best ideas have little value if they do not lead to effective implementation, and this demands good leadership by intellectually and emotionally strong individuals because a prime task in the implementation of any significantly new activity is the creation of an effective group dynamic. The skill with which the motivation of individual participants and groups is evaluated, and then focused to achieve the defined goal, always determines the success of the outcome.A worthy leader, no matter how talented and able, can only achieve the best possible overall performance by ensuring that the supporting team is efficient, well organized and dedicated. Consequently, leaders of even the smallest group need to have clear and objective views on how to focus resources for successful implementation, and of stakeholder motivation to achieve the stated aims. Therefore, understanding the value of empathy, the need for sound evaluation of stakeholder interests, and the importance of team working are fundamental factors. The question is, then, how to define and create this vital, but often elusive, dynamic? In my experience, the key factors are:evaluating attributes of competence and commitment within the framework of a sound knowledge of the workings of the organization and its practical problems;making best use of those who are wholly committed; and*gaining the support of those who are less so - given that genuine objections have been recognized and plans modified as needed, but without deviation from the common aim.The leader needs to have the skill to empathize with stakeholders and translate this understanding of the dynamic into sound decisions. The rhythm of the dynamic can never be constant - nor does it need to be. As with an enduringly famous orchestral symphony, the key phrases must come at the right moment, and it is the conductor's job to see that they do so. The purpose in both instances is to unleash potential, and to generate and maintain high levels of commitment at critical points throughout, in order to achieve an excellent and lasting result.Machiavelli concluded, and serious teachers and practitioners of management today acknowledge, that there is really nothing \"new\" in management theory - or practice. There are only new insights, or approaches. This is not in any way to denigrate, or underestimate such development. On the contrary, it is natural, valuable and essential. Constantly changing circumstances, not least the changing pace of events, and the rapidly increasing development of larger and more complex structures and activities, demand increasing expertise - theoretical and empirical - focused on the evolution and refinement of skills to support the heavy demands on managers to turn plans into successful outcomes. In varying degree, these principles apply just as much to the smallest of SMEs, as to multinational businesses - and no less to the slower moving changes in governmental structures.As much as small-scale entrepreneurial activity may be a logical course of future business development, social awareness is a key contributory factor in the success of any management project. Community focus of a small enterprise is often the core reason for their establishment and development. Success in these is now being demonstrated by community supported agriculture schemes (CAS) which are expanding rapidly in the US and are springing up in the UK. These are relatively labor intensive sustainable enterprises directly linked to the planned production of products - in cooperation with consumers - for a well-defined local market. They offer examples of opportunities for SME's in other sectors which may offer a reasonable return, focused on well perceived local, or limited market needs for the provision of goods or services.Above all, the consistent challenge of leadership is the need to cope also with unpredictable issues, and to have the confidence and courage to seize advantage, or limit risk, when confronted with unforeseen events which may often arise as a result of developments wholly beyond the control of those managing planned change, or a new venture. The ongoing global economic crisis is an extreme example. Consequently it is at such times that \"knowing the team\" and how best to harness a range of abilities is fundamentally important.\nLearning lessons: Implicit in many examples of failure is the lesson that ethical considerations in relation to management within society can and should be a prime consideration. It is more than just a matter of concepts of what may be considered right and wrong. The speed of modern communication allows issues, which may at first seem trivial, to come rapidly to the fore, but which develop into catastrophic dimensions. The collapse of the Enron and Worldcom companies in the US are well-known examples of failure to recognize and acknowledge apparently ephemeral but vital matters of ethics in governance and management but, regrettably, there are countless examples of similar failures in varying degree, both in government and business, regionally and internationally. Are we learning the lessons that such failures have offered?The welcome contemporary trend to give increasing emphasis to issues of governance, and corporate social responsibility provide a clear example of the high value of such developments in management thinking and education. The more they become the recognized norm - and extend to the political world - the better for everyone, and the greater the possibility of a future where hope and aspiration replace gloom and despondency.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to highlight the universal benefit of promoting: initiative, competence and commitment, in any organization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The value of a historic approach is highlighted.\nFindings: - Long international experience has shown the writer that promoting initiative pays - personally, economically and socially.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Research analyzing case studies in widely different sectors, countries and conditions could be valuable.\nPractical implications: - Encouraging initiative and entrepreneurship within organizations can improve function and cost-benefit significantly.\nSocial implications: - These will be self-evident from case study research (comment - the Spanish Mondragon Corporation is a good example).\nOriginality/value: - The point is that nothing is new in management as history shows, therefore it is worthwhile to study known successful outcomes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Organisational culture's influence on tacit knowledge-sharing behaviour	[ "Knowledge sharing", "Tacit knowledge", "Organisational culture", "Malaysia" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Resources are central to the existence of any organisation. The Resource-Based View is premised on this belief (Barney, 1991; Drucker, 2000; Grant, 1996; Penrose, 1959). Among the many organisational resources, knowledge is recognised as the one and only distinct resource (Drucker, 1993) and is recognised as the key differentiator, and crucial for any organisation to maintain its competitive advantage (De la Vega and Stankosky, 2006; Halawi et al., 2005). Knowledge can be broadly classified into two types; explicit and tacit (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Knowledge that can be articulated and stored independently and is constructible, expressible (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995), and easily communicated (Grant, 1996) forms the explicit component of the knowledge dichotomy. Conversely, tacit knowledge is \"unarticulable\" and intuitive and is part of an individual's cognitive thought and perception. Tacit knowledge is not easily shared (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Wang et al., 2006) and attempts to share can be slow, costly and uncertain (Kogut and Zander, 1992). However the volume (Buckman, 2004; Mooradian, 2005) and value (Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Reychav and Weisberg, 2010) of tacit knowledge makes it a knowledge sharing imperative for organisations. Knowledge sharing is gaining more and more recognition from researchers because of its potential benefits to individuals and organisations (Jonsson and Kalling, 2007; Yi, 2009) and is critical to a firm's success (Davenport and Prusak, 1998).Although it is acknowledged that there are inherent benefits to knowledge sharing, people are reluctant to share. Various reasons have been cited and among them scholars have consistently identified organisational culture (Al-Alawi et al., 2007; Davenport and Prusak, 1998; McDermott and O'Dell, 2001) as one of the main reasons. Schein (2004) posits that culture is an abstraction but its behavioural and attitudinal consequences are concrete. The usefulness of culture can only be realised if it is observable. Organisational culture can be diagnosed effectively and understanding the schema of culture types in the organisation would explain many otherwise unexplained organisational members behavioural patterns. This study explores the influence of the various organisational culture types on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour in organisations in Malaysia.\n2. Problem statement: An organisation is a bundle of resources and among them knowledge has been recognised as the most important resource. Management of knowledge within organisations has become a critical activity (Kingston and Macintosh, 2000) and knowledge sharing is acknowledged as the most common knowledge management (KM) activity (Ford cited in Al-Alawi et al., 2007). Knowledge can be found in organisations in either tacit or explicit form. The first research problem is that most past empirical studies on knowledge sharing took a macro view of the knowledge construct. Scant attention was given to the fundamental differences between explicit and tacit knowledge.Scholars and practitioners have emphatically argued that a large part of knowledge in organisations is tacit. Unlike explicit knowledge, that can be stored in external repositories and is visible, tacit knowledge essentially resides in the minds of the knower. It is almost impossible for tacit knowledge to be shared without the active participation and cooperation of the knower (Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Explicit knowledge artefacts may confound the findings of a study that views knowledge as a single dimension. Evidence of explicit knowledge sharing behaviour may result in a generalised conclusion. This can be fatal. The problem becomes more acute when the high value and volume of tacit knowledge in the organisation is considered (Buckman, 2004; Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Mooradian, 2005; Smith, 2001). Therefore it is important that studies in knowledge sharing discern accordingly. This study is on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour and takes cognisance of the stated anomaly.Among the myriad factors that facilitate or impede knowledge sharing, prior research has consistently identified organisational culture as one of the most important (Abzari and Teimouri, 2008; Al-Alawi et al., 2007; Chin-Loy and Mujtaba, 2007; McDermott and O'Dell, 2001; Roman-Velazquez, 2005). Although there are limited studies on the influence of organisational culture on knowledge sharing (Sackmann and Friesl, 2007) most of these studies superficially describe organisational culture. Furthermore, very few have gone to the extent of diagnosing organisational culture. There is also a dearth of literature on the influence of organisational culture types on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour.The mix of the research problems stated above gives birth to a potent combination of challenging issues to the researcher. However, the benefits of such an under-investigated area cannot be denied. This study is premised on these research gaps.\n3. Literature review: Knowledge, knowledge management and knowledge sharing\n4. Theoretical framework: Cameron and Quinn (2006) identified two major organisational effectiveness dimensions, namely:1. flexibility and discretion, and stability and control; and2. internal focus and integration, and external focus and differentiation.Together these two dimensions form four quadrants; clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market; each representing a distinct set of organisational effectiveness indicators (Cameron and Quinn).Tacit knowledge sharing behaviour is intricately linked to the people in the organisation; the employees, leaders, and managers. There is sufficient literature (e.g. Chin-Loy and Mujtaba, 2007; Roman-Velazquez, 2005) to allow the researchers to infer that clan and adhocracy cultures facilitate whereas market and hierarchy cultures impede knowledge sharing behaviour; furthermore this stand can also be substantiated by the attributes of the culture types adduced by Cameron and Quinn.The theoretical model developed for this study is illustrated in Figure 1. The fundamental premise of this model is that the various dominant culture types influence tacit knowledge sharing behaviour differently; some positively and others negatively.Tacit knowledge sharing behaviour\n5. Data collection methods and measures: A survey based data collection method was employed in this study. There are basically two dimensions that were studied, namely:1. tacit knowledge sharing behaviour; and2. organisational culture type.The survey on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour was conducted through a structured and standardized close ended questionnaire and data collected using a Likert five-point scale. Four indicators, that is: organisational communications, personal interactions, mentoring/tutoring and willingness to share knowledge were measured and the aggregate mean of these indicators was used as single-value scale representing tacit knowledge sharing behaviour. The survey on organisational culture types was conducted through a structured and standardized close-ended questionnaire segmented along six content dimensions, and data collected using an ipsative rating scale. Respondents divide 100 points among the alternatives in each of the content dimensions. Although Cameron and Quinn agree that the most common rating scale is the Likert scale, they deliberately selected the ipsative alternative as its primary advantage is that it highlights and differentiates the cultural uniqueness that actually exists in organisations (Cameron and Quinn, 2006). The 100-point rating scale results in more differentiation unlike the five or seven-point Likert scale. Another drawback of the Likert scale highlighted by Cameron and Quinn is that respondents tend to rate all quadrants high or all quadrants low, therefore, providing less differentiation.A total of ten organisations drawn broadly from both the public and private sectors, each with a minimum of 100 knowledge workers were selected to participate in this study. Three organisations withdrew due to various unavoidable reasons. Table I outlines a brief profile of the organisations that participated in this study.The questionnaire was divided into two sections. Section 1 contained demography related questions, and section 2 asked participants to respond to questions related to organisational culture and tacit knowledge sharing behaviour. A total of 540 survey questionnaires were distributed and 408 were returned giving a response rate of 75.6 per cent. 46 responses were rejected due to inconsistencies in scoring section 2. Although some missing data was detected in section 1, the authors accepted the responses as they do not impact the findings significantly.\n6. Results: Demographic information\n7. Discussion: Clan culture was found to have a positive influence on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour (Table VIII). This finding supported our first research hypothesis. The standardised coefficient of clan culture is higher than the combined standardised coefficients of the other culture types in the model. It can be safely concluded that even a moderately significant existence of clan culture in the organisation would contribute toward a positive change in tacit knowledge sharing behaviour. The second research hypothesis could not be examined as the data gathered was not statistically significant for analysis.Both the market and hierarchy culture types contributed negatively to tacit knowledge sharing behaviour. The third and fourth research hypotheses were accepted as a result. In a mixed organisational culture environment, based on the regression coefficients there is sufficient justification to infer that:* where clan culture is dominant, the overall influence of organisational culture would be positive; and* where clan culture is not dominant, the overall influence on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour would be negative.\n8. Conclusion: Theoretical contributions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This research aimed at investigating the influence of organisational culture types on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour in Malaysian organisations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Survey data was collected from 362 participants from seven organisations. Multiple regression was used to assess the research model.\nFindings: - The research findings indicate that organisational culture types influence tacit knowledge sharing behaviour and that such influences may be positive or negative depending on the culture type.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study only investigated seven organisations. A larger sample size may be necessary for a study of this nature. Aside from this the ipsative rating scale was not clearly understood by the respondents resulting in scoring errors by some.\nPractical implications: - Knowledge is considered the one and only distinct resource and is crucial for an organisation to sustain its competitive advantage. Determining the organisation's culture type will allow managers to implement, among the myriad knowledge sharing activities, the ones that would be more appropriate and relevant to the organisational culture.\nOriginality/value: - Most of the knowledge in organisations is in tacit form. There is a dearth of literature on the influence of organisational culture types on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour. Aside from theoretical contributions, the findings of this study have the potential to assist organisations to unlock economic value from knowledge embedded in the minds of its employees.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of board diversity and voluntary risk disclosure on financial outcomes. A case for the manufacturing industry	[ "Board of directors", "Gender diversity", "Board diversity", "Ethnic diversity", "Financial outcomes", "Risk disclosures" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Understanding how a board of directors actually functions and how boards may contribute to financial outcomes has generated major research interest for some time now, and the corporate governance literature has highlighted the key role played by board effectiveness in firms' success. In particular, board diversity has gained significant attention from researchers, investors and policymakers (Mensi-Klarbach, 2014; Lending and Vahamaa, 2017) and has become a priority in most countries with regard to improving the governance of firms. As a result, there is an ongoing debate concerning whether board diversity actually leads to value creation (Kilic and Kuzey, 2016; Gordini and Rancati, 2017). However, despite the growing importance of diversity, the literature has generally failed to consider how more diverse boards may have a positive financial impact. In this paper, we merge two branches of literature to provide an explanation as to why board diversity might lead to positive financial outcomes. In particular, the relationship between board diversity and firm financial outcomes may be explained because boards that are more diverse help to improve disclosure practices. A number of studies support the notion that boards are responsible for the information published in annual reports (Li et al., 2008) and that directors can help to disclose relevant information to all stakeholders (Pucheta-Martinez et al., 2016). In addition, a major stream of the literature has shown that voluntary disclosure practices may have positive effects on financial outcomes (Lamber et al., 2012; Plumlee et al., 2015).\n2. The US context: the manufacturing industry, risk disclosures and board diversity: The manufacturing industry has traditionally made a decisive contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the USA[1] and has become extremely important as it provides high-wage jobs, commercial innovation and is key to reducing trade deficit (Helper et al., 2012). However, the destructive global effect of the financial crisis became particularly clear in 2009 for US manufacturing industries. The manufacturing sector often faces a wide range of risk factors (Linsley and Shrives, 2006; Dobler et al., 2011). In the USA, a number of risks are associated with this industry such as domestic and overseas supplier problems, distribution disruptions, federal, state and/or local legislation, labour concerns, commodity and raw material prices, competition, threats to international operations and the ability to innovate to meet changing customer needs, among others. The year 2009 was a particularly significant period that witnessed major stock market decline and volatility, coupled with general economic conditions that rendered the manufacturing sector more vulnerable to risk. According to Ernst and Young (2009), the risks for global business in 2009 that might have accentuated the risk exposure of manufacturing firms concerned the credit crunch, the deepening recession, cost cutting, as well as regulations and compliance. Generally speaking, periods of financial crisis and high-risk exposure tend to exacerbate agency conflicts in capital markets and stakeholders' information demands and may make listed firms place greater emphasis on risk disclosure (Abraham and Cox, 2007).\n3. Literature review and hypothesis development: 3.1 Board diversity and financial outcomes\n4. Data and methodology: 4.1 Sample and data\n5. Results: To evaluate the structural model, this paper uses path coefficients, the R2 of endogenous latent variables and standardised root mean square residuals. Additionally, both the bootstrapping procedure with 5,000 resamples (Hair et al., 2011) and the percentile bootstrap 95% confidence interval (CI) (Chin, 2010) show the statistical significance of the path coefficients (Table 4 and Figure 1). The application of bootstrapping allowed us to test the mediation hypothesis (Hayes et al., 2011). Thus, this work's 5,000 resamples generated 95% CI (percentile) for the mediator.\n6. Discussion and conclusions: In the USA, the manufacturing sector faced a wide range of risk factors in 2009. Moreover, several agencies highlighted the role of boards of directors in the oversight and disclosure of risk information. In particular, the inclusion of women and ethnic minorities was explicitly recommended in that year (SEC, 2009). Given such a scenario, the main objective of the present paper is to ascertain whether board diversity may exert a positive financial impact through the voluntary disclosure of risk information. Although previous studies addressing board composition have tended to single out one dimension of board diversity, this paper underscores the importance of considering the joint effect of gender and ethnic diversity.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse how board diversity affects firm financial outcomes through the way in which this diversity helps to improve voluntary disclosures.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The partial least squares (PLS) technique is used, and a sample of the manufacturing firms listed in Standard and Poor's 500 for 2009 is studied. In relation to board diversity, two specific characteristics are considered, namely, gender diversity and ethnic diversity. Content analysis techniques are used to measure risk disclosures.\nFindings: The results show that there is a positive association between board diversity and firms' financial outcomes, which is explained by disclosing risk information.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results indicate that the effect of boards of directors on firm outcoumes is influenced by the board involvement in specific strategies, thereby providing encouraging opportunities for future research.\nPractical implications: These findings have implications both for companies, when selecting board members, and for policymakers, when establishing requirements concerning board composition. Moreover, the evidence highlights the role of disseminating risk information, which has direct implications for managers and regulators, who may better understand the value-relevance of risk disclosures.\nOriginality/value: The use of PLS technique is one of the novelties of this paper. The novelty of this approach provides fresh insights into the literature, highlighting that the effect of boards on firm outcomes may be mediated by director involvement in specific disclosure strategies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Welfare costs of crime and common violence	[ "Accounting", "Contingent valuation", "Violence", "Crime", "Marginal willingness to pay", "Welfare" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Crime and violence have many welfare implications. There are straightforward consequences to the quantity and quality of life, such as reductions in lifespan, widespread feeling of insecurity, and changes in behavior to avoid crime. There is also the social waste from the value of goods lost and destroyed, the public and private expenditures on prevention, and the costs related to the criminal justice and prison systems. In addition, crime has potentially deleterious effects on growth, through reduced productivity and shortened planning horizons. This paper critically reviews a vast array of literature that estimates different dimensions of the costs of crime and common violence. Using as theoretical benchmark a simple economic model of crime, it analyzes conceptually the estimates available in the literature and evaluates their usefulness as inputs for public policy.\n2. Theoretical benchmark: In order to shed light on the economic content of the evidence from the empirical literature, I develop a simple model of crime. The model follows the tradition of Becker (1968), Stigler (1970) and Ehrlich (1973), and is set up in the simplest possible way, with the only goal of guiding the discussion on some limitations of the current literature. Consider a rational agent with preferences over two goods, c and y, represented by the utility function V\n3. Methodologies: This section discusses the main methodologies that have been applied to estimate the welfare cost of violence: accounting of expenditures and other costs, contingent valuation surveys, and other marginal willingness to pay approaches. In the next section, we discuss studies that have analyzed specific consequences of crime, highlighting less tangible costs that are not directly translated in monetary units.\n4. Difficult-to-measure costs of crime: Several potential consequences of crime that go beyond the immediate costs related to victimization, expenditures on prevention and punishment escape the scope of the methodologies discussed before. These involve the effects of a violent environment on decisions related to investment, entrepreneurship, human capital accumulation, and urban development. There is evidence on the effect of crime along all of these dimensions, but these cannot be easily incorporated into standardized methodologies.\n5. Results from the literature: Table III presents a summary of the main results from some studies discussed in the paper, with particular emphasis on those reviewed in Section 3. The table is organized by methodology, specific study in question, geographic region or area of analysis, year, types of crime or expenditures included, and main results. Since the studies are very diverse in nature, main results may refer to estimates of costs of crime, potential welfare gain from crime reduction, or other consequences of crime. Also, some results are presented in monetary units, others as shares of the GDP of the relevant geographic area, and some in non-monetary terms. All monetary values were converted to US dollars using the respective exchange rate and deflated to 2007 prices. This section is not intended to be an exhaustive review of all studies available, but rather an illustration of the types of numbers that can be obtained from methodologies such as the ones discussed before.\n6. Concluding remarks: Current estimates of the welfare costs of common crime and violence offer a broad picture of the social losses related to crime. Yet, different methodologies deliver different types of estimates, each with a particular conceptual significance. The most serious limitation of this literature at the present stage is probably its lack of theoretical foundation, and therefore lack of a simple unified framework under which the different numbers provided by the empirical studies can be appreciated and compared.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Negative effects of crime encompass several different dimensions. As a result, there is no existing methodology capable of dealing with all the relevant issues simultaneously and the interpretation of the estimates currently available lacks theoretical foundation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a unified view of the meaning and relationship between the various dimensions of the welfare cost of crime and violence available in the literature.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper develops a theoretical model of crime and illustrates the different interpretations of welfare costs of crime and violence within this unified framework. This theoretical benchmark is then used as a benchmark to review the empirical literature on the topic.\nFindings: The analysis suggests that the most commonly estimated dimension of the welfare cost of crime - related to the total loss associated with crime - although relevant as an illustrative tool, is not very useful from a policy perspective. The literature should therefore move closer to the idea of estimating marginal costs and benefits in order to become policy relevant.\nResearch limitations/implications: Policy-oriented research related to optimal law enforcement should move in the direction of estimating the marginal willingness to pay of individuals for reductions in crime. This should be compared to the marginal cost of alternative policies in order to guide public policy in the area.\nOriginality/value: This survey rationalizes in economic terms the estimates from the existing methodologies, highlights some of their limitations, and points out potential directions for future research. It provides one of the first unified views of the various dimensions of welfare cost of crime and violence that have been presented in the literature.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Post-implementation analysis: dependence and trust in VMI context	[ "Dependence", "Trust", "Collaborative relationships", "Vendor managed inventory (VMI)" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Adoption of vendor managed inventory (VMI) has steadily been on the rise in buyer-supplier relationships (Radzuan et al., 2015) and according to a survey conducted among executives where 73 percent of respondents were from Fortune 1,000 companies, the VMI adoption rate reached 70 percent (E2open, 2015). E2open study also reports that while \"the visibility into time-sensitive data continues to be a struggle,\" \"there is a sustained demand for better inventory management collaboration\" perhaps because the same study reports that 31 percent of the executives report below-average levels of VMI collaboration with their trading partners.\nLiterature review: VMI was initiated as a promising collaborative approach to managing inventories of the buyer by its supplier (Waller et al., 1999; Yu et al., 2009; Yao et al., 2012; Xu et al., 2016). To date, extant literature includes several studies related to the factors that affect the successful implementation of VMI. For instance, Yang et al. (2003) and Disney and Towill (2003) demonstrated VMI's effectiveness at mitigating the bullwhip effect and proposed a set of guidelines to aid managers for VMI implementation which includes the consideration of demand variability, inventory review interval, number of downstream firms, information availability and upstream firm's flexibility. In order to identify the operational and strategic benefits of VMI and how these benefits are split between the upstream and downstream firms, Kauremaa et al. (2009) search and propose VMI implementations under three patterns, basic, cooperative, and synchronized. Reitner et al. (2012) developed a business process integration framework for the downstream firm to help firms act upon estimating the effects of VMI. Finally, Niranjan et al. (2011) describe how industry has created a practical approach which lists the preconditions for implementation of VMI under three headings: downstream firm (with stable growth, high transaction costs, good information and communication system, willingness to share information, and purchasing should not be a core competency), product (standardized, repeating, standard identification, low demand variance and demand is forecasted and stock levels are monitored), and upstream firm (supply chain trust/long-term relationships, advantages evident to both supplier and customer, key suppliers constitute a high percentage of purchase orders, suppliers are willing to cooperate, integrated information system) (Niranjan et al., 2011).\nMethodology: In this empirical research, the unit of analysis is the distributor-manufacturer VMI relationship. Within this relationship, the distributors share the item-level point-of-sales data as well as the inventory levels with their manufacturers thru electronic data interchange (EDI). In turn, the manufacturers manage and replenish the inventories at the distributors (no consignment). Our survey study explores the multiple buyer and multiple supplier setting.\nAnalysis and results: In this study, OLS regression is employed. There are three models: one for first hypothesis and two for the second hypothesis where the models are constructed as follows:\nDiscussion: Utilizing survey data collected from distributors that have their inventories managed by manufacturers through VMI arrangements, we provide empirical evidence that longer VMI relationships are associated with increased distributor dependence on the manufacturer. Moreover, we identify an inverted U shape relationship between distributors' dependence on the manufacturers and distributors' trust in the manufacturers.\nConclusion: Handfield (2013) recommends manufacturers to be careful in launching VMI relationships, \"Contrary to what many people think, companies like Toyota and Honda have moved away from VMI and simply chose to co-locate suppliers as close as possible to their facilities.\" Although literature points to multiple VMI failures, the world's largest cloud-based VMI service provider, Datalliance, recently reported more than 20 years of consecutive growth (Nasdaq, 2017). E2open, a cloud-based supply chain software company, is pursuing further opportunities based on the survey results demonstrating only 33 percent of the executives feel that inventory levels reflect optimized cost and service levels (E2open, 2015). While still believing in the potential of VMI, we propose that post-implementation stage merits more attention to dependence and trust. Since it is possible that the unilateral dependence may create power imbalance and hurt the relationship through eroding trust, the distributors should limit dependence levels on their manufacturers to certain upper boundaries before the rollout of the VMI relation. Once under way, the expectations from VMI collaborations should be adjusted accordingly and sufficient relational investments ought to be allocated for advancing the collaboration beyond VMI. Other considerations can be listed but not limited to working on backup plans such as dual sourcing, and also evaluating the efficacy of keeping certain critical purchasing and inventory skills in-house in lieu of targeting extended cost savings.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: More than two decades long technological improvements in information sharing have not yet ensured a flawless execution of vendor managed inventory (VMI) and left interested parties wondering about the reasons of poor results. Although VMI is a collaborative tool, the relational factors in a VMI setting have not received enough attention due to challenges in obtaining relational buyer-supplier data in addition to extant focus on analytical approaches. The purpose of this paper is to investigate post-implementation relational factors in order to extract relevant insights.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Accounting for the duration of the VMI relationship, the authors focus on two dimensions of VMI often ignored post-implementation: dependence of the buyer on the VMI-supplier and trust of the buyer in the VMI-supplier. Cross-sectional data were collected using a survey collected from distributors mostly in auto and electrical supply industries, which have their inventories managed by manufacturers through VMI arrangements. The sample was obtained from a leading third-party VMI-platform service provider that serves thousands of distributor-manufacturer locations with billions of dollars in sales orders. Multiple ordinary least squares regression has been used to test the hypotheses.\nFindings: This paper provides empirical support that in the post-implementation stage, longer VMI relationships are associated with higher distributor dependence on the manufacturer. In addition, too much dependence could actually hurt the distributor's trust in the manufacturer.\nPractical implications: The authors propose that distributors maintain some of the purchasing and inventory management skills in house to limit their dependencies on the manufacturers. Manufacturers should also invest in trust-building activities, such as regular communications with distributors.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study providing empirical evidence on the positive association between length of VMI relationship and buyer dependence on the supplier, and curvilinear dependence-trust link in a post-implementation VMI context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Bridging the gap between theory and design: A proposal for regenerative campus development at the Swedish university of agricultural sciences	[ "Campus development", "Systems theory", "Place attachment", "Regenerative design", "Illustrations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: global challenges and university campuses: Global challenges call for designs that enhance environmental and human resources and their capacity to regenerate over time. Sustainability objectives are particularly crucial when envisioning university campuses; which serve as living laboratories for researchers, teachers, students and residents of the surrounding community. Activities on campus foster local place-bonding and build new knowledge; as people are spread throughout the world ideas are dispersed globally.\nTheoretical point of departure for regenerative campus development: As merely sustaining civilization is not enough, McHarg (1998) has argued that we must begin to design regenerative communities and landscapes. Nearly 50 years ago, McHarg (1969) championed an ecological approach to spatial design, rooted in landscape analysis and underpinned by respect for ecological processes. At the same time, planning theorists began to promote a person-centered, participatory approach to spatial design that considers the role of multiple users and clients in a complex way (Arnstein, 1969; Davidoff, 1965). An ecological approach to design is generally expert-driven and top-down, whereas a participatory approach that gives users a voice in decision-making is considered bottom-up (Sanoff, 1990). The approach to spatial design in this paper attempts to synthesize an analytical ecological design method rooted in systems ecology theory with a human-centered, participatory approach to planning in efforts to balance ecological and social perspectives and enhance opportunities for place-attachment (Manzo and Devine-Wright, 2014; Hester, 2006). Regenerative design is conceived as the re-design of human-environment interactions that heal and amplify ecosystems (Zari, 2015). This aspiration is operationalized using regenerative systems landscape design as developed for urban contexts by Bergquist and Hedfors (2018), a theory based design process that draws on the ecological approach by Murphy (2016) and systems ecology (Odum, 2007). It essentially concentrates on relations between elements, i.e. the spatial organization of structure and non-visible relations that are relevant from a broad systems perspective, as opposed to the detailed design of individual objects and isolated phenomena. Consequently, sustainability is conceived as regenerative functions and qualities that are found at multiple scales, and in physically visible as well as invisible and relational dimensions.\nMethods: To ensure a design direction rooted in knowledge and activities on campus, local visions of a desired campus future were gathered prior to developing the preliminary design concepts in this paper. During the course of 18 months in 2017-2018, this was done in two ways: interviews with staff involved in research and teaching in SLU and a review of multiple plans submitted over the previous decade by a range of actors. Followed by landscape analyses, the work was then concluded by design explorations aiming to reconnect the empirical accounts to theory. Consequently the work presented in this paper is delimited to the time period during 2017-2018, emphasizing design opportunities identified at that time, and operationalized for the specific site of campus Ultuna. However, since the design approach is rooted in the theoretical criteria for regenerative design, the results may offer inspiration also for other campus projects, i.e. as an example of sustainable campus design based on the practical application of sustainability theory in campus development.\nResults: Narratives obtained by interviews provided objectives that were given physical form by the production of sketches that captured the essence of the future desire. Next, an analysis of strengths and weaknesses of the multiple plans was conducted, and future scenarios that support goals for sustainable form and regenerative landscapes were adopted as objectives for the next phase of generating plans.\nDiscussion and conclusions: The criteria for regenerative landscape design worked as a guide in the process of siting and designing specific elements and activities in Ultuna. As such, the results derive from a process of weighing concrete opportunities in Ultuna against normative and theoretical sustainability aspirations. The scenarios illustrated in response to interviews describe activities that can be placed at specific locations on campus, to maximize the potential for regenerative ecological and human processes.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to describe an exploratory research and design process that uses illustrative techniques to bridge the gap between theoretical principles of systems ecology, stakeholder input and a workable physical planning strategy for Ultuna Campus in Uppsala, Sweden.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Stakeholder interviews provide the empirical basis for this exploratory design process, in conjunction with landscape analysis, and review of previous proposals for campus development. Central principles of self-organizing systems are selected and concretized as visionary hypotheses in a physical context. Preliminary design concepts and plans illustrate sustainable systems while supporting new functional programmatic requirements: housing, industry-research collaboration, transportation and community-integrated landscapes.\nFindings: The result is a proposal based on regenerative landscape design, envisioning campus Ultuna as a coherent whole.\nResearch limitations/implications: A large-scale modern building program is already underway at Ultuna, and rapid urbanization in the surrounding region coupled with projected growth on campus suggests future intensification of university lands. A master plan to be implemented until 2040 is now in the preliminary design phase. Ultuna is home to significant cultural and ecological landscapes, and a holistic approach is called for.\nPractical implications: Illustrative techniques suggest ways to synthesize knowledge by creating future scenarios that are workable in practice.\nSocial implications: Global challenges call for designs that enhance environmental and human resources and their capacity to regenerate over time. Sustainability objectives are particularly crucial when envisioning university campuses; the environment serves as a laboratory for researchers, teachers, students and residents of the surrounding community.\nOriginality/value: This paper describes an innovative process for bridging ecological principles, stakeholder perspectives and practical design strategies for sustainable campuses.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Too little too late: can we control browser fingerprinting?	[ "Browser fingerprinting", "Online tracking" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Browser fingerprinting appears to have become a somewhat commonly used technique for online tracking (Al-Fannah et al., 2018), i.e. linking multiple visits by a single browser to the same website, and/or linking individual visits by a browser to multiple sites. For many years, both types of tracking have been made possible through the use of cookies, where third-party tracking sites can link multiple site visits through inclusion of their content on cooperating sites. However, fingerprinting is far more persistent than cookie-based tracking, virtually uncontrollable by users and non-trivial to detect. Moreover, fingerprinting can be used to create supercookies, where if a tracking cookie is deleted from a user platform, it can be regenerated if the same browser is detected via fingerprinting (Eckersley, 2010).\n2. Browser fingerprinting: Browser fingerprinting, as first described by Eckersley (2010), is a technique that allows web servers to uniquely identify user devices by examining information retrievable from a browser, where this collection of information is unique for most instances. There are various possible uses for fingerprinting, but one of the most widely discussed (and controversial) is online tracking (i.e. enabling web servers to link multiple interactions with the same platform). Since Eckersley first described it, the range and richness of information retrievable from a browser that is usable for fingerprinting has substantially increased, as has real-world deployment of fingerprinting by websites (Al-Fannah et al., 2018; Laperdrix et al., 2016).\n3. Limiting browser fingerprinting: 3.1 General approaches\n4. User-based countermeasures: We now describe and analyse a variety of ways in which users can reduce the effectiveness of browser fingerprinting. We also consider the main challenges to user-based approaches, in particular observing that none of these techniques prevent fingerprinting - indeed, some may even make it more effective.\n5. Browser-based countermeasures: We next discuss the various countermeasures that could be implemented by browser vendors, as well as the associated challenges.\n6. Making browser fingerprinting unnecessary?: 6.1 A different approach\n7. Conclusions: 7.1 Browsers with fingerprinting-resisting features\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Browser fingerprinting is increasingly being used for online tracking of users, and, unlike the use of cookies, is almost impossible for users to control. This has a major negative impact on online privacy. Despite the availability of a range of fingerprinting countermeasures as well as some limited attempts by browser vendors to curb its effectiveness, it remains largely uncontrolled. The paper aims to discuss this issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper provides the first comprehensive and structured discussion of measures to limit or control browser fingerprinting, covering both user-based and browser-based techniques.\nFindings: This study discusses the limitations of counter browser fingerprinting measures and the need for browser vendor support in controlling fingerprinting. Further, a somewhat counterintuitive possible new browser identifier is proposed which could make cookies and fingerprint-based tracking redundant; the need for, and possible effect of, this feature is discussed.\nOriginality/value: This study provides the first comprehensive and structured discussion of measures to limit or control browser fingerprinting. Also, it proposes a new browser identifier that could make cookies and fingerprint-based tracking redundant.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Dynamics of narcissistic leadership in organizations: Towards an integrated research model	[ "Leadership", "Organizations", "Leaders" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The present synthesis proposes to examine the dynamics and components of a particularly dysfunctional form of leadership known as narcissistic leadership. Moreover, our analytical exploration lays the ground for the development of an integrated research model whose objective is to identify promising future avenues of research. These suggestions are mainly based on the observed lack of empirical confirmation in studies focusing on narcissistic leadership.\nThe nature of narcissistic leadership: Characterized by many more negative than positive attributes, narcissistic leadership is generally defined as the exercise of power for strictly personal or selfish ends (Khoo and Burch, 2008; Resick et al., 2009). Rather than serving the company, narcissistic leaders use all the resources available to them to attract the admiration of others as a way of confirming their feelings of superiority (Higgs, 2009; Maccoby, 2007). However, before analyzing narcissistic leadership in detail, a phenotypic description of overt narcissism is in order. This type of pathological dysfunction will form the basis of our study on narcissistic leaders.Overt narcissism - also called grandiose narcissism - is presented as a psychological disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, 1996), under the heading \"Personality Disorders\" (Axis II). According to the diagnostic criteria set out in the DSM-IV, to be clinically recognized as having narcissistic personality disorder, an individual must display at least five of the nine symptoms listed by this manual. These symptoms are:1. a grandiose sense of self-importance;2. overwhelming fantasies of unlimited success, power, beauty or ideal love;3. a belief that they are special and unique and that they can only be understood by other individuals or institutions of similar superior status;4. an excessive need for admiration;5. a sense of entitlement;6. a propensity to exploit others to achieve their own ends;7. a lack of empathy towards others;8. a profound enviousness of others and a belief that others are envious of them; and9. a tendency to show arrogant or haughty attitudes and behaviours.We now propose to examine more specifically the main components of narcissistic leadership.\nComponents of narcissistic leadership: Charisma\nFactors concomitant with narcissistic leadership in the workplace: A number of mainly correlational studies focus exclusively on factors concomitant with organizational narcissistic leadership. These studies establish a positive link between narcissistic leadership and the following variables:* volatile and risky decision-making and organizational performance (Chatterjee and Hambrick, 2007);* absence of a climate necessary to achieve sustainable performance (Higgs, 2009);* inflicting damage on others (bullying, coercion and damage to the psychological well-being of subordinates) (Aasland et al., 2008);* destruction of subordinates' trust and degradation of organizational effectiveness (Benson and Hogan, 2008);* a toxic work atmosphere (lack of empathy and coldness toward colleagues and staff) (Goldman, 2006);* poor management rankings (supervisor ratings of interpersonal performance and integrity) (Blair et al., 2008);* dysfunctional management (difficulty learning from feedback) (Campbell and Campbell, 2009); and* proclivity to white-collar crime (Blickle et al., 2006; Ouimet, 2009a, b).With a view to promoting the advancement of scientific knowledge, future research based on an experimental or quasi-experimental design should be conducted in order to formally establish a causal link between narcissistic leadership and the variables mentioned above.\nReflections on the management of narcissistic leaders: Three case studies of narcissistic leaders, conducted, respectively, by Goldman (2006) and Ouimet (2008, 2009a), reveal that they are inherently ego-syntonic. Indeed, these narcissistic leaders possess an extremely low capacity for introspection. In order to effectively deal with the lack of self-reflective capacity that can lead to detrimental behaviours in narcissistic leaders, accountability theory can be seen to offer potentially interesting solutions. The notion of accountability refers to an implicit or explicit expectation within a community that the decisions and actions of all members of that community will be systematically evaluated by their peers. Based on the adequacy of their actions and decisions, members expect to be either rewarded or punished (De Cremer and van Dijk, 2009). Based on clearly defined performance standards that are determined in advance and widely distributed, members are held accountable for their performance and hold expectations regarding the positive or negative consequences arising from their performance (Laird et al., 2009). Knowing that they will be held accountable exerts a self-regulating effect, with members modulating their behaviour based on its anticipated consequences (Paolini et al., 2009). There are several accountability mechanisms organizations can use to promote favourable outcomes. These constitute, in fact, a \"web of accountabilities\" which employees must navigate in the workplace. Whether formal (performance evaluations, employment contracts, performance monitoring, reward systems, disciplinary procedures, supervisory leadership training, personnel manuals, etc.) or informal (group norms, corporate cultural norms, informal leadership pressure, etc.) in nature, these mechanisms influence members' behaviour by making them answerable to both themselves and others (Frink and Klimoski, 2004).Despite the potential for normative adaptation inherent in the notion of accountability, a number of authors also highlight the inevitable limitations of accountability (Collins and Stukas, 2008). Two of these limitations are particularly relevant to our thematic analysis of narcissistic leadership. Considering that the implementation of a system of accountability requires behavioural transparency and respect for authority, we have certain reservations regarding the applicability of such a system to the narcissistic leader. Indeed, these two preconditions for the systemic implementation of an accountability system appear highly incompatible with the narcissist's personality structure. There is a wealth of clinical and empirical evidence clearly demonstrating that narcissists display a strong propensity for Machiavellianism (duplicitous conduct) and transcendence of authority (sense of being above the law) (Ouimet, 2010; Pincus and Lukowitsky, 2010).Consequently, in the case of the narcissistic leader, it may be more appropriate to employ a system of accountability based on the frequent verification of compliance with standards (instrumental conditioning program) rather than one based on the promotion of a strategy of acculturation (psychoeducation program). Of course, this would need to be verified empirically.We now propose to examine the factors that can trigger manifestations of narcissistic leadership.\nConditions of emergence of narcissistic leadership: First, it should be noted that the identification of factors that play a role in the emergence of narcissistic leadership is principally based on theoretical reflections. Indeed, there is very tenuous empirical evidence to scientifically support the role of these factors in the emergence of narcissistic leadership. As such, they are presented here on a purely speculative basis.Idiosyncratic factors\nSuggestions for future research: First of all, it should be mentioned that this reflection on narcissistic leadership opens up several interesting avenues of reflection. Based on our exhaustive review of the most recent studies examining the nature and scope of the factors associated with narcissistic leadership, we propose a research model, shown in Figure 1, encompassing the causes, nature and effects of this type of leadership.Moreover, this review, by revealing a significant heuristic gap due to the systematic use of a non-experimental research approach based on the correlational method, encourages the exploration of promising new research directions, as formulated at the end of each of the sections and subsections above. Indeed, a lack of control of the independent variables studied confines researchers' observations to the domain of concomitance - that is, the coexistence of factors as opposed to their respective precedence. To overcome this explanatory limitation, the use of a research strategy making it possible to distinguish co-occurrence from causality would represent an undeniable scientific advance. For example, the use of a quasi-experimental design guaranteeing the presence of two distinct research conditions would be highly appropriate in the case of narcissistic leadership. With respect to the research model shown in Figure 1, in order to establish veritable causality, it would be important to examine both the antecedents and the consequences of narcissistic leadership. By exploiting the existence in vivo of at least two distinct factor conditions, it would be possible to formulate research proposals (P) aimed at testing the veracity of causal relations with regard to the emergence of narcissistic leadership (P1) and/or the production of harmful consequences (P2).\nConclusion: Finally, considering the recent rise in the prevalence of narcissistic personalities that has been observed in some segments of the American population (Twenge et al., 2008), our analytical synthesis is particularly relevant in the current context. Consequently, we believe that in-depth study of the manifestations of narcissistic leadership and its dynamics could make a positive contribution to the advancement of scientific knowledge in the field of organizational psychology as well as to the improvement of management practices.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to establish a critical synthesis of the dynamics of narcissistic leadership in organizations. Moreover, this paper offers suggestions for research aimed at providing greater insight into this form of leadership.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper comprises a review of the latest scientific research in the field of narcissistic leadership. In strictly methodological terms, this synthesis can thus be classified as a literature review.\nFindings: - The paper presents details of four factors that can trigger manifestations of narcissistic leadership: idiosyncratic, cultural, environmental and structural factors.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Based on a comprehensive review of the literature, this paper proposes an analysis of the dominant characteristics and dynamics of narcissistic leadership, essentially from the point of view of a pathological narcissism of the overt (grandiose) type. It would be interesting to extend the exploration to another form of narcissistic leadership - namely, covert (vulnerable) leadership.\nPractical implications: - Through its exploration of the nature and limits of narcissistic leadership, this paper proposes avenues of research that could have interesting managerial applications.\nOriginality/value: - To the author's knowledge, this is the first synthesis to propose an integrated research model that incorporates the antecedents, components and consequences of narcissistic leadership in organizations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Raising services' tangibility in foreign markets via marketing: A model construction and a cross-national comparative empirical survey	[ "Services marketing", "Intangible assets", "Marketing models" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Tangibilizing services: operational issue or marketing issue?\nLiterature review: This section consists of three parts. The first one circumscribes the managerial problems caused by intangibility, and to correspondingly detect ways to solve these problems. The second part, based on the literature, proposes to construct the MBT model to solve the above managerial problems. The final part reviews related articles concerning how to measure the tendency of marketing-based tangibilization.Intangibility and its managerial problems\nMethodology: The measures\nResults: The constructs and construction validity\nSummary: Conclusions and discussions\nSuggestions and future directions: First, this study has constructed an MBT model for services providers to decrease the natural intangibility with marketing techniques, and an empirical survey is conducted for conforming the model. The results tell us that substantialization, quantitation, and ranking perform the best in effect. These findings provide good insights into the related issue. Not only can practitioners design their services based on these findings, but academicians can go on working to clarify the how and the what of these strategies. Some potential agendas might include how to do ranking, when should firms employ quantitation rather than just increase information frequency, and how to make the tangibilization strategies fit the resources and conditions of the firms.Second, this study indeed reveals the differences between the three economies. Although some reasons have been deduced here, further replication still needs to be worked out in order to make clear the determinants for why these firms conduct their service marketing. This gives some intuitive directions, such as cultural factors, history in managing services, and managerial ideology and aggressiveness toward the host markets.Third, this study constructs an MBT model by reviewing the literature primarily while seeming to neglect opinions from the practical world. Future studies could solidify the model by involving more practical viewpoints with deep expert interviews and observations. This study also constructs an MBT scale for measuring the strategies (details in Table III), which gives a rough checklist for the implementation. It would be worthy to increase more practical items to the scale and purify it.Fourth, as was mentioned in \"Sampling and samples\", this study solely samples service providers' response, rather than the customer's, due to the difficulty of sampling and factors of time and cost. This study, by conducting a small-sample pretest, rudimentarily finds the insignificant differences of the tangibility perceptions between of the providers and their clients. However, this undoubtedly is a major shortcoming for the empirical efforts and may produce serious doubts on the linkage between tangibility techniques and the effects. To balance the gap between the providers and clients, it is essential to sample both parties for future studies.Fifth, this study samples European respondents for their empirical efforts and takes all of the respondents as unity due to the small sample size (n=30). From the cultural practices and literature, however, every European culture is unique in its own degree of cultural context. Future research can work to deliberately clarify the differences between these European cultures.Finally, sampling might be another shortcoming of this study. The current study only samples services firms that operate in China and Taiwan, and the sampling scope solely concentrates on particular service industries. Even though their services sectors develop rapidly and their roles are getting critical in the world, they are still manufacturing-based economies in nature. This makes foreign-owned services firms not pay more resources on marketing-related activities, but focus on simplified operation-related works. Future research thus needs to replicate this study by sampling more economies, including more domestic and parent nations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Intangibility plays a critical role in the field of services and brings great managerial problems to services firms, particularly for cross-national firms that operate in unfamiliar host markets. This study attempts to explore how to raise the tangibility of services in foreign markets by marketing-based activities, rather than the conventional perspective based on operational activities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Based on the literature, this study builds a six-element model to circumscribe and define the managerial problems caused by intangibility. Moreover, this study proposes six strategies to raise consumers' sense of tangibility toward services, namely: quantitation, ranking, factualization, substantialization, word-of-mouth effect, and information frequency. Following that, this study samples US-, Japan-, and Europe-owned firms operating in China and Taiwan to examine the proposed model.\nFindings: - The results indicate that the six strategies can improve the tangibility of services sufficiently, especially quantitation, ranking, and substantialization. This study also builds a three-construct, nine-item services tangibility scale to measure consumers' perceptions of tangibility toward a particular service. Statistical evidence confirms the reliability, discriminant, and convergent validity of the scale.\nOriginality/value: - This study not only conducts an academic model construction on the service tangibility issue, but also provides a new insight on the services practices cross-nationally. This study constructs the model by reviewing the literature primarily, while seeming to neglect opinions from the practical world. Future studies could solidify the model by involving more practical viewpoints with deep expert interviews and observations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Missing cloud security awareness: investigating risk exposure in shadow IT	[ "Cloud computing", "Mobile security", "Belief-action-outcome", "Distributed infrastructure", "Morphological box", "Shadow IT" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Cloud computing solutions like Dropbox are commonly used in companies (Osterman Research, 2012), but often without the management's permission. Therefore, many risks arise that neither the cloud computing user nor the management is aware of. Cloud computing is defined as a model, which enables an \"ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computer resources (e.g. networks, server, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction\" (Mell and Grance, 2011, p. 2). Just as the unauthorized usage of cloud computing services, the use of so-called shadow IT also carries risks. Shadow IT is defined as business process supporting IT solutions and tools that replace or extend the IT functionalities officially provided by the IT department. But these IT solutions are not part of the IT governance strategy and, thus, are generally not known and neither accepted nor supported by the IT department or the management (Shumarova and Swatman, 2008; Rentrop and Zimmermann, 2012b). These risks should not be underestimated by decision-makers, not least because shadow IT and cloud computing are becoming increasingly important (Alshamaila et al., 2013).\n2. Literature review: In a synthesis of the procedures by Vom Brocke et al. (2009) and Webster and Watson (2002) a systematic literature review was performed. The aim of this review was to reconstruct and analyze (Brocke et al., 2009) all knowledge of a particular topic - in our case shadow IT in general and shadow IT with respect to cloud computing in particular. The performed systematic literature review can be divided into three steps: the search in leading publication outlets, the backward search (review of reference lists) and the forward search (author-centric review) (Webster and Watson, 2002).\n3. Mixed-methods approach: The overall methodological approach used is a mixed-methods approach, which is an approach that combines qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore the topic of cloud computing services in conjunction with shadow IT. There are many reasons to apply a mixed-methods approach to this topic: complementary views can be incorporated, a more complete picture of a research area can be formed from a developmental perspective and each piece can build on previous findings, inferences obtained from one approach can be corroborated using another approach, the weaknesses of one approach can be compensated by using another and divergent views of the same phenomenon can be obtained (Venkatesh et al., 2013a, b). We triangulate data sets from different quantitative and qualitative research methods. Triangulation generally refers to using more than one scientific method to collect data on the same research inquiry, explicitly in exploring and explaining the use of cloud computing services in conjunction with shadow IT (Bryman, 2004; Venkatesh et al., 2013a, b). The mixed-methods approach allows us to use different but complementary data sets and to draw conclusions, which would not be possible by use of one method only (Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2003, 2009). As a quantitative method, we use the cloud computing awareness study, whereas the vignette study and expert interviews represent the qualitative research methods. All research methods lead to individual findings, which are consolidated to make sure a complete picture is received (Venkatesh et al., 2013a, b).\n4. Results: A systematic literature review was conducted in order to determine the scientific status quo. Based on this, experts have been interviewed on the safety of cloud computing services in conjunction with shadow IT to understand the employers' point of view. This view is now triangulated with the results of the surveys. As a study carried out on the usage of cloud computing services in companies clearly shows: about 58 percent of the employees use Dropbox, but only 14 percent have the permission from their IT departments (Osterman Research, 2012). Therefore, both perspectives have to be synthesized.\n5. Practical implications: From the results of the mixed-methods approach, practical implications in the form of six recommendations for action for employers can be deduced. The results are also of interest for employees, as they provide a brief view of the employer's perspective. In addition, the employees are generally made aware of the topics cloud security and shadow IT in the corporate context.\n6. Conclusions: With this contribution we wanted to answer RQ1, RQ2 and RQ3. We reached the target set by making use of a mixed-methods approach. Overall, it can be stated that the main problem is not the technical implementation (e.g. a comprehensive - local and mobile - identity and access management), but the underlying strategy given and followed by the management. There are already many approaches to deal with unauthorized cloud computing services, but it is essential that these are handled proactively and follow a strategic goal. The integration of cloud computing services in conjunction with shadow IT can result in increasing efficiency and productivity, reduced operating costs, minimized risks, flexibility and increased employee satisfaction. However, these advantages can only be achieved if the specified guidelines are not too restrictive and the potential risks, e.g., loss of mobile devices, malware, hacking and industrial espionage, are addressed adequately.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: On account of its easy and intuitive usage as well as obvious advantages (e.g. access to work data from anywhere, at any time and through any means) the evolutionary cloud computing paradigm favors the use of shadow IT. Since many employees are not aware of the associated risks and possible legal violations, unauthorized use of cloud computing services could result in substantial risk exposure for any company. The purpose of this paper is to explore and to extend the body of knowledge concerning the topic of cloud computing with regard to shadow IT.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The aim of this contribution is to identify the reasons for the use of cloud computing services and the resulting shadow IT from an employee's perspective, to demonstrate the counteractions a company may take against the unauthorized use of cloud computing services and to elaborate on the inherent opportunities and risks. We follow a mixed-methods approach consisting of a systematic literature review, a cloud computing awareness study, a vignette study and expert interviews.\nFindings: Based on a triangulation of the data sets, the paper at hand proposes a morphological box as well as a two-piece belief-action-outcome model, both from an employee's and employer's point of view. Our findings ultimately lead to recommendations for action for employers to counteract the risk exposure. Furthermore, also employees are sensitized by means of insights into the topic of unauthorized usage of cloud computing services in everyday working life.\nResearch limitations/implications: The limitations of the triangulation reflect the limitations of each applied research method. These limitations justify why a mixed-methods approach is favored - rather than relying on a single source of data - because data from various sources can be triangulated.\nPractical implications: The paper includes recommendations for action for the handling of the unauthorized usage of cloud computing services within a company, e.g., the set up of a company-wide cloud security strategy and the conduction of an anonymous employee survey to identify the status quo.\nOriginality/value: This paper fulfills an identified need to explore the usage of cloud computing services within the context of shadow IT.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The influence of typologies of school leaders on teacher retention: A multilevel latent class analysis	[ "Leadership styles", "Management styles", "School improvement", "Latent class analysis", "Teacher retention" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nReview of literature: Principal and teacher types and teacher retention\nMethods: This study included a nationally representative sample of US public school principals (n=7,310) and teachers (n=35,560) from the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) (Gruber et al., 2002). Originally collected by the National Center for Education Statistics, SASS includes items that measure the work conditions in schools from teacher and principal perceptions and provides school, principal and teacher characteristics (Gruber et al., 2002). These work condition items align with descriptions from the literature of the core leadership behaviors found across leadership styles by measuring the frequency of tasks and amount of influence over tasks performed by teachers and principals. In addition, the SASS variable ATTRIT provides an account of whether or not the teachers in the full sample stayed at their school, moved schools or left teaching the following year. Of note, the 1999-2000 SASS was examined specifically because this year of administration included responses about the frequency of leadership tasks not included in more recent surveys and represents a time period of school restructuring to include teachers in decision making (e.g. Marks and Louis, 1998).\nResults: The purpose of this study is to identify the way in which types of principals and teachers interact in shared leadership; and test the extent that these particular types of teachers in a school with a particular type of principal is likely to stay, move or leave the profession. The number of teacher and principal types were selected based on previous analyses since the purpose of this study focussed on the interaction between types rather than the number of types. In addition, a multilevel LCA with classes on two levels of data does not yield a hypothesis test for the number of classes or Lo-Mendell-Rubin test (Muthen, 2012). Instead, the interpretability of the results and other fit statistics provided help to compare models and assess the appropriateness of the selected number of classes. The fit statistics for this model with apriori selected number of classes (four teacher and three principal classes) were: entropy=0.89, AIC=2,975,654.01, BIC=2,978,087.50 and negative log likelihood=1,487,540.01.\nDiscussion: For the first time in the literature, this study modeled the ways in which different types of principals and different types of teachers interact, and the extent that this relationship influences teachers to stay at their current school. A long history of literature has defined differences in school leadership using leadership styles, such as transactional, transformational, instructional and shared instructional. While each leadership style is known for particular prominent behaviors, such as transactional for managerial tasks (Bass, 1985; Bass and Avolio, 1990), transformational for building community and professional development (Bass and Avolio, 1993; Bogler, 2001; Leithwood, 1994), instructional for coordination of curriculum (Edmonds, 1979; Hallinger et al., 1996) and shared instructional for the distribution of leadership to teachers (Marks and Printy, 2003), together these styles represent a set of core leadership behaviors that often overlap across styles (Leithwood et al., 2010; Urick and Bowers, 2011, 2014a). Further, all of these core behaviors are associated with the style with the largest effects on school, teacher and student outcomes, shared instructional leadership (Robinson et al., 2008). Shared instructional leadership is described as a synergy between principal and teachers that a principal established through order, a mission, a sense of community, professional development, coordination of the instructional program and distribution of leadership tasks to teachers (Marks and Printy, 2003; Printy et al., 2009). Leadership style literature has provided a comprehensive list of potentially effective leadership behaviors but has not demonstrated the ways in which school leaders actually differ. Change in methodological approaches from a variable-centered to person-centered provides evidence to show the similarities and differences in how leaders perform these behaviors. Further, with a person-centered approach, school leadership is defined by the individual actions and perceptions of principals and teachers rather than an aggregate view of the behaviors in the school (see Leithwood and Jantzi, 2008; Robinson et al., 2008). Using person-centered modeling approach (here, two-level LCA) highlights issues related to the past use of principal and teacher perceptions and particularly how these perceptions relate to teacher outcomes, such as teacher retention.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: While school leadership literature has searched for practices with the largest effect on outcomes, we know little about how these behaviors vary by context. Further, recent shifts to include teachers in leadership have prompted a need for purposeful distinction between teacher and principal perceptions and roles. Person-centered statistics offer a means to study differences in how teachers and principals perceive leadership by context, how these perceptions interact, and the extent to which this interaction influences teacher decisions, such as whether or not to remain at their current school. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study applies a two-level latent class analysis (LCA) with a cross-level interaction to the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), n=35,560 teachers across n=7,310 US public schools. SASS includes a comprehensive set of leadership measures, not found in other surveys, collected when US schools restructured to include teachers in leadership. Multilevel LCA helps to identify different types of teachers and principals in leadership, the distribution of teacher types across principal types and to test the extent that these types predict teacher retention decisions.\nFindings: Teacher and principal types were best defined by the survey items that addressed their own role not the role of the other. The highest and lowest responding teacher types were evenly distributed across principal types. Teacher types who reported the lowest principal-directed leadership were more likely to leave their school regardless of principal type.\nOriginality/value: This study provides evidence for how leadership differs across perceptions and context and, in turn, influences teacher retention.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Estimating customer lifetime value for new product development based on the Kano model with a case study in automobile industry	[ "Satisfaction", "Product design", "Quality", "Kano model", "Customer lifetime value", "New product development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Today, organizations recognize the commercial advantage of relationship with customers and calculating customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV is usually measured in a period of time from the first transaction till present or in a future time. CLV indicates the difference between incomes and costs created by one customer (Chang, 2011). Mudie and Cottam (1999) believed that CLV is dependent on purchase frequency, customer life expectancy, and average of transaction value. Hoekstra and Huizingh (1999) proposed a perceptual CLV model in which, most of the CLV equations were derived from an original equation, in which the income obtained from customer is subtracted from the cost of income generation, and regarding interest rate of company, its present value is calculated. Hwang et al. (2004) defined an equation for calculating potential and historical customer values which is used as the basis of the proposed approach of this paper.\n2. CLV: The aim of customer relationship management (CRM) is to create a deep relationship with customers and to maximize CLV for organization; therefore CLV is originated from CRM (Swift, 2000).\n3. Customer loyalty and NPD: Customer loyalty can be defined as an indicator that people tend to remain a customer for an organization (Shahin and Dehghan, 2011). Customer loyalty is a basic factor in business survival and improvement. A loyal customer is regarded as a competitive asset for an organization (Chen, 2012). Customer loyalty is a vital factor in predicting profit levels (Reichheld and Teal, 1996) and market share (Baldinger and Rubinson, 1998). In general, customer satisfaction is the prerequisite of customer loyalty (Reichheld and Teal, 1996; Abdinnour-Helm et al., 2005; Christodoulides and Michaelidou, 2011). In the literature of marketing management, using behavioral, attitudinal, and compound measures for assessing loyalty are generally accepted (Bowen and Chen, 2001). Behavioral measures focus on customer purchase history including transposition, repeat, and value for money.\n4. Kano model: Since product requirements do not play equal role in customer satisfaction, identifying factors which determine satisfaction is essential for success of any organization (Tontini and Silverira, 2007; Chen and Su, 2006). Figure 1 has been used for recognizing specific requirements which potentially create customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Mikulic and Prebezac, 2011). Classified quality requirements of the Kano model are located in five groups including must-be, one dimensional, indifferent, attractive, and reverse, and they have different impacts on customer satisfaction considering different quality requirements (Shahin, 2004; Shahin and Zairi, 2009; Shahin and Nekuie, 2011; Shahin et al., 2013).\n5. Research methodology: As it was mentioned earlier, Hwang et al. (2004) considered present value of previous profits, potential value, and customer loyalty, and suggested an approach for calculating CLV (Equation (5)), where, P\n6. Case study: Since automobile industry is a luxury and competitive sector and is looking for maximizing customer satisfaction, it requires developing and producing varied products. The proposed approach can be appropriate in determining desired requirements for development of products in the automobile industry. Apart from the advantages of integrating the Kano model and CLV, due to the dynamic nature of requirements in the Kano model, the proposed approach is only capable of solving short time periods. Therefore, the automobile industry as a relatively luxury sector is selected for investigation. The proposed approach is examined in Iran Khodro Company as the largest car making company in Iran. Two separate sets of options of Soren and Samand (Iranian car brands) are determined by the department of research and development of the company for product development. Regarding the position of product in the life cycle, it is found that the product is at the growth phase. Hence, the appropriate formula for estimation of CLV is used according to Figure 3. Ultimately, by comparing the ratio of CLV, management can decide on what type of requirements to invest in. It is important to note that the authors could examine the proposed approach only on one option, but due to the NPD processes and also with respect to the role of value engineering in desirable selection of product design options, two options are considered for investigation in order to show how the proposed approach can contribute to NPD and value engineering subjects.\n7. Findings: The results obtained from collecting filled questionnaires are presented in Tables II and III. The first row of Tables shows the types of Kano requirements. The second row of these tables belongs to frequency of responses to the Kano questionnaire; for example, according to Table III, 62 customers have answered \"M\" in respect of having front passenger safety air bag; implying that front passenger safety air bag is a must-be requirement. In all, 14 customers believe this requirement as an \"O\" type, meaning that existence of front passenger safety air bag is a one-dimensional requirement; 15 customers feel that this requirement is attractive; seven customers consider it as indifferent; two customers have answered suspicious responses; and no one believe it to be reverse.\n8. Discussion: Findings indicate that if the company invests in the first option, CLV would increase. Therefore, the first option is on priority. This is due to the fact that the product is at the growth phase, and based on the comments of experts, if at this phase the attractive and must-be requirements are emphasized, customer satisfaction would be higher. At the growth phase, the product share in the market is growing; therefore, it is necessary to focus on must-be requirements so that the company remains in the competition arena. Moreover, the attractive requirements should also be concentrated.\n9. Conclusions: In this study, satisfaction coefficient of new product requirements was calculated based on the Kano approach in the automobile industry, and considering the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty in Equation (8) instead of loyalty indicator, the SI of Kano was used, and then by interviewing a group of experts, Kano requirements were allocated to various phases of PLC. It was determined that the studied product was at the growth phase of the cycle. Ultimately, by using the data related to customers' purchase records during a three years period, CLV was calculated.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In previous studies, historical information of customer had been used for determining customer lifetime value (CLV). The purpose of this paper is to modify CLV estimation to be applied before producing a new product.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this study, the CLV estimation has been modified using Kano satisfaction coefficient. The Kano satisfaction coefficient has been assumed as loyalty indicator in estimating CLV and related equations have been developed for allocating Kano requirements to various phases of product life cycle. The proposed approach has been examined in two new product options of the automobile industry. Finally, by using customers' purchase records during three years, CLV has been calculated for both product development options.\nFindings: Findings indicate that CLV of the first development option is equal to 407 million and 500,000 toumans and of the second option is equal to 392 million toumans, this difference is related to different requirements of the Kano model, and as a result, to different satisfaction coefficients. Therefore, the first option has been suggested for investing in developing new product.\nResearch limitations/implications: Application of the proposed approach is limited to short time periods. The findings are limited to the automobile industry.\nOriginality/value: The modified approach of estimating CLV can be applied for prospective new product development in addition to traditional approaches in which, only the historical data of sold products are used. In addition, using Kano satisfaction coefficient in estimation of CLV in short periods, seems an appropriate approach for competitive industries that focus on dynamic needs of customers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
HRM and work practices in Chile: the regulatory power of organisational culture	[ "HRM", "Regulation", "Chile", "Work practices", "Organizational culture" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For the past 20 years, the Latin American region has remained at the centre of scrutiny in business and management studies given the emergence of Chile in the 1990s, and more recently the emergence of Brazil as one of the strongest economies in the region until the recent onset of economic crisis in the latter. However, amid discourses of advancement and economic development, both employment relations and the quality of employment remain largely unexplored in Latin America (Hojman and Perez Arrau, 2005; Nunez and Aravena, 2005; Aravena, 2007; Lopez, 2007). The Chilean case deserves special attention given its relevance for neoliberals as a supposed \"Latin American country model\" of economic development. Despite this, many aspects of the labour relationship in Chile belie neoliberal assumptions which ignore the negative historical relationship between employers and workers. The authoritarian cultural legacy continues to impact labour relations (Duran-Palma et al., 2005; Rodriguez, 2010) and issues such as restrictions to collective bargaining, organisations' ability to replace workers on strike and the possibility of dismissal \"due to company's needs\". This legacy reproduces space(s) for multiple instances of employer abuse (Nunez and Aravena, 2005). Other factors such as the strong paternalism and male managerial dominance make this legacy difficult to overcome (Valdivieso, 2000; Rodriguez and Gomez, 2009).\nOrganisational culture and HRM: There is complementarity between organisational culture and HRM. The concept of organisational culture has been used to describe and interpret work settings as dynamic and live systems, using notions of sharedness and social survival (Argyris, 1979; Davies, 1984; Schein, 1985; Martin, 2002; Alvesson, 2012) to highlight how individuals discover, create and share ideas about the right way to behave as they go about their daily activities in the workplace. Hoogervorst et al. (2004) suggest that organisational culture provides behavioural guidance, helping organisational members to guide their actions and perceptions.\nThe study: HRM and organisational culture in Chile: The current research was conducted with the aim of exploring the relationship between organisational culture and HRM practices in Chilean workplaces. The research was conducted in the Metropolitan Region of Chile, which covers six provinces and 52 neighbourhoods and where Santiago, both the regional capital and capital city, is located. The sample was non-probabilistic; this sampling method was chosen to facilitate achieving a larger number of participants. The size of the sample was determined using the common statistical parameter of representativeness hence it was determined to survey 10 per cent of the active working population in the Metropolitan Region. According to the most recent data available from Chile's National Institute of Statistics (INE), the active working population in the Metropolitan Region at the time of the survey was approximately 2 million workers. Hence the sample of 2,000. Criteria for participation were Chilean nationality, and being employed by an organisation in the Metropolitan Region.\nFindings and discussion: culture, work and HRM practices in organisations in Chile: In this section, we look at structures, work and participation, and motivation, relationships and communication.\nStructures, work and participation: Key themes emerged from the findings in respect to structures, work and participation. Organisational structures were thought to be inflexible and paternalistic organisations were said to be strongly legalist but highly permeable to discretionary internal norms. The importance of networks was highlighted as power and status were directly linked to individual networks and alliances. Issues such as discrimination based on educational background, physical appearance and gender were noted as prevalent. In terms of participation, workers' lack of independence was noted and the presence of unions seemed fragmented, with mixed perceptions about their role and credibility.\nMotivation, relationships and communication: Asked about work motivation, participants indicated that this was inherently low with the key motivator for work being financial need. Organisations were considered to provide little opportunities for workers to develop and a utilitarian approach to learning was identified, with little or no development opportunities. As a result, workers perceived that organisations did little for them outside financial remuneration. The manager-worker relationship was considered central to the lack of work motivation. Highly hierarchical relationships and communication dynamics between managers and workers were reported by workers, who indicated that they had minimal to no input on decisions regarding work because decisions were normally restricted to those in formal positions of authority. The idea of \"perceived mutual distrust\" was put forward by workers, whom were identified by managers in the sample as risk avoidant, lazy, unable to accept criticism and needing to be told what to do. Conversely, workers considered managers to be strict, paternalistic, indifferent and non-participative. In general, workers' narratives shift from discourses of distance between themselves and workplaces to discourses of emotional proximity and commonalities with other workers.\nConclusion: Based on the findings reported, it could be argued that in Chile, the impact of organisational culture traverses practices at micro (HRM as performed by line managers) and meso (HRM as performed by HR staff) levels. The relationship between managers and workers is particularly problematical. Historical and socially determined patterns continue to define dynamics between managers and workers, where status differences and authority resemble historical feudal and paternalistic relationships. These findings are in line with others (cf. Rodriguez and Gomez, 2009), who also suggest that leadership styles in Chilean organisations are characterised by strong authoritarianism: interpersonal relations are functional and marked by a strong sense of hierarchy. Moreover, strong hierarchical, vertical, structures are complemented by informal horizontal hierarchies that are validated by societal culture based on understandings of class and socio-economic status. In that respect, figures of authority are usually associated with higher personal worth, which in turn reflects the value of individuals as social commodities. This translates into relationships that are established based on societal dynamics that prioritise loyalty within systems of kinship and friendship, and where acceptance by managers is synonymous with acceptance by the organisation, and equated to secure employment. Mechanisms and processes of transmission, perpetuation, affirmation and learning of organisational culture are subsumed to societal traits and HRM practices are articulated within these. Interestingly, there is no clear evidence here of a shift towards Anglo Saxon values, which is now centred on high-performance work systems. The latter, of course, anticipates that involvement can be achieved through practices that promote participation, empowerment, and worker autonomy (Boselie et al., 2005).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the characteristics of working practices, in particular HRM practices in work settings in Chile, specifically the regulatory strength of organisational culture.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is based on data gathered from a non-probabilistic sample of 1299 workers in the Metropolitan Region of Chile.\nFindings: Findings suggest that HRM practices sustain, while restructuring, dynamics of worker monitoring and control, consistent with historical and social patterns of relationships in Chile. These relationships are sustained via status differences and operate through the development of paternalistic relationships between managers and workers.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides insight into the character of human resource management in Latin America from the perspective of workers. In addition, it highlights the impact of organisational culture on regulating workplaces and shaping HRM practices that do not challenge the socio-cultural order.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A snapshot of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami: societal impacts and consequences	[ "Disasters", "Sumatra", "Earthquakes", "Sustainable development", "Tidal waves" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The December 26, 2004 earthquake and the tsunami that it generated across the Indian Ocean have been described as one of the \"worst disasters\" in recent history. Very few natural hazards in recent history have had such widespread, catastrophic consequences. As a result of the Sumatra earthquake (measured as 9.0-9.3 magnitude on the Richter scale), a massive tsunami traveled 4,500 km across the Indian Ocean in a period of about seven hours. Twelve countries suffered the consequences of the tsunami but Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand were most dramatically impacted, as measured by the death toll and the number of missing and displaced individuals. The number of people killed is estimated at about 250,000 (United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, 2005), though precise numbers will probably never be available[1]. Further, the number of people missing ranges from 14,000 to over 51,000; about 1.5 million people were displaced, and the economic impact is estimated to be in the billions of dollars (www.eeri.org/lfe/clearinghouse/sumatra_tsunami/overview.html). These preliminary estimates portray the extent of societal disruption and human suffering generated by the Indian Ocean tsunami.\nField research goals and objectives: Approximately one month after the tsunami, a group of social science researchers from the Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, and the Emergency Administration and Planning Program, University of North Texas participated in an Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) reconnaissance team, which traveled to some of the most affected areas in India and Sri Lanka. We engaged in a two-week field research expedition that yielded an extensive amount of data and information on disaster preparedness, response, and recovery from this devastating tsunami. The goals of the field team were to:* collect perishable data;* identify communities particularly hard hit by the tsunami;* observe methods being used to restore lifeline facilities;* identify local, regional, and national-level government agencies as well as local and international non-governmental agency (NGOs) taking part in the recovery and relief efforts; and* establish contacts with local researchers and practitioners.\nThe social science reconnaissance team: The EERI social science team included the authors of this paper and A. Subramanian (Political Scientist, Madras Christian College, India) and Ram Alagan (Department of Geography, University of Peradeniya, affiliated with the International Center for Ethnic Studies - ICES - in Kandy, Sri Lanka[2]). Subramanian and Alagan have conducted research and were actively engaged in disaster relief work in some of the areas that the team visited in India and Sri Lanka. They provided detailed information focusing on cultural, historical and political aspects in these countries thus providing the needed context in which to ground our observations.The field team traveled from Chennai to Point Calimere, India (January 23-27, 2005), and from Colombo, Sri Lanka to destinations across the country (January 28-February 1). It is important to note that the research team visited India and Sri Lanka in the immediate post-impact phase of the disaster. Therefore, although we saw signs of the initiation of the reconstruction and recovery process, the overwhelming majority of the communities we visited were still in the response or the very early phase of recovery. For example, victims were engaged in the grieving process, corpses were being uncovered and burials were taking place, the cleanup process was underway, temporary shelters were being built, many of the fishermen (particularly in India) had not returned to the sea to engage in fishing activities, and many children had yet to return to school. It is noteworthy, however, that as we compare data, notes and observations with other social science teams that also visited a number of countries, including India and Sri Lanka, as recently as the summer of 2005, the preliminary observations, problems, and issues that we document in this paper were also documented and reported by some of these teams. As we attend professional meetings, continue to review government reports and professional/scientific articles, and monitor media reports on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, we are able to confirm that the emerging issues and concerns raised in our initial field reports and explained in detail in the following sections still remain pertinent topics. More important than supporting our initial observations, recent work by other researchers serves as an indicator of the continued need to devote resources and research efforts to better understand the demographic, societal, economic, and political implications and ramifications of the tsunami on communities throughout the Indian Ocean.\nField research and data collection methodology: In India, we surveyed coastal communities in the State of Tamil Nadu, the region most significantly impacted by the tsunami. The communities visited spanned the Indian coast from Chennai to Point Calimere, including Sulerekuttukuppam, Mudaliarkuppam, Puddukuppam, Kanpatichettikullamkuppam, Pattinacherry, Kameswaram, Kodiyakkarai, Pushpavanam, and Velankanni (Figure 1). We also visited a number of ports with hundreds of damaged boats, bridges that sustained substantial damage, a salt mining operation, the Nagapattinam Office of the Collector, and an emergent tsunami-related protest (Figure 1).In Sri Lanka, the team arrived in Colombo and then traveled to Kandy to meet with the ICES faculty and researchers. We then traveled to a number of impacted communities on Sri Lanka's eastern and southern coasts, including Trincomallee, Kinniya, Balapitiya, Kahawa, Relief Camp Peraliya, Hambantota, Paiyagala, and Galle (Figure 2). We visited other heavily damaged areas along the way, a grade school, a salt harvesting operation, and other businesses impacted by the disaster. We also met with representatives from UNICEF, members of a local community based organization, local residents operating under the auspices of USAID, as well as with organizers of relief camps and a field hospital.In both countries, we talked with fishermen, women, community and organizational leaders, representatives from NGOs, disaster relief aid workers from both local and international organizations, government representatives, people in different types of industries, and researchers. The field team covered a variety of substantive areas in our conversations with these individuals including but not limited to: the physical aspects of the tsunami; individual and community activities that were taking place at the time of the event; individual, community, and governmental response to the event; the social and economic impacts of the tsunami; distribution of disaster relief aid and the role of NGOs and the local government in this process; the building and use of temporary shelters; the relocation process, including the government's intentions to enforce legislation focusing on the coastal buffer zones; and the primary concerns and difficulties that these communities, organizations, and industries were confronting.Each night, the team would meet to discuss our observations and to generate preliminary reports; field notes were also transcribed. Other field documents collected and analyzed include: government reports, secondary data (e.g. census data, socio-economic data on the impact of the tsunami), and other types of reports and documents.\nEmerging issues: a snapshot one month after the tsunami: In the course of our field research in India and Sri Lanka, we identified a number of emerging issues that merit future research collaboration and that should be of primary concern in the effort to protect populations residing in coastal regions throughout the world from similar catastrophes, including: education and awareness regarding tsunamis; the devastation and the loss; economic impact; mental health issues; irregularities and inequities in community based response and recovery efforts and in the distribution of disaster relief aid; gender and inequality; relocation and temporary shelters; and social organization and social cohesion, among others. We elaborate on these issues in the following section and conclude by highlighting the role and importance of generating integrated early warning systems and strategies aimed at fostering sustainable recovery and building disaster resilient communities.Lack of education and knowledge regarding tsunamis\nConcluding remarks: Given the high death toll, the number of people displaced, the extensive devastation across many countries, and its economic impact, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami has been described as one of the most devastating disasters in recent history. Hundreds of volunteer organizations and NGOs converged to the Indian Ocean, governments pledged billions of dollars aimed at disaster relief aid, and it engaged many governments throughout the world in conversations regarding early warning systems. The tsunami also highlighted issues of poverty, inequality, and vulnerability in the countries impacted by this event.Despite the many problems highlighted in this paper, it is important to note the critical role of communities, NGOs, and local governments in the recovery process. In the context of our somewhat limited observations regarding the response to the Indian Ocean tsunami, the data and information collected suggests that the disaster relief aid generated by NGOs (particularly local NGOs) was extremely important and contributed to meeting many of the communities' basic needs. NGOs in both countries were involved in a variety of recovery/relief activities, including the development of public/private partnerships to better assist tsunami victims; providing medical care, counseling, and addressing housing-related needs; long-term rehabilitation efforts; cultural, educational, and recreational programs; training; construction of shelters; repairing boats and catamarans or providing new boats and nets; distributing school kits and household kits; and engaging women in decision-making processes and recovery efforts. Moreover, the emergence of self-help groups, establishing groups to assist in the cleanup process, contributing funds to re-open a modest convenience store, gathering pieces of catamarans to construct a \"new\" one, and engaging local community leaders with local and international NGOs to coordinate the distribution of disaster relief aid and the cleanup process, among other efforts, are all illustrative of a community's disaster resiliency. Nevertheless, given the scope and magnitude of the social and economic impact of the tsunami on these communities, there is an urgent need to develop more formalized, systemic and structural changes that will promote and facilitate a sustainable recovery process. For example, initiatives aimed at increasing the population's level of education, reducing illiteracy rates, increasing employment opportunities, reducing poverty, enhancing the role and participation of women in the decision-making process, and reducing the population's vulnerability to disasters should be at the forefront of planning and preparing for future disasters. In this regard, the role of local and international NGOs and, more importantly, of local governments is critical. Unfortunately, among the communities that we visited in both India and Sri Lanka, there was a high level of skepticism regarding the extent to which the government would fulfill the promises made in terms of the recovery process and the aid to be provided to communities.Warning systems: going beyond sensors and buoys\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore the societal impacts and consequences of the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - One month after the tsunami, a group of social science researchers from the Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, and the Emergency Administration and Planning Program, University of North Texas, participated in an Earthquake Engineering Research Institute reconnaissance team, which traveled to some of the most affected areas in India and Sri Lanka. Data were obtained through informal interviews, participant observation, and systematic document gathering.\nFindings: - This research yielded important data and information on disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. A number of issues are identified that emerged from the field observations, including: tsunami education and awareness; the devastation and the loss; economic impact; mental health issues; irregularities and inequities in community based response and recovery efforts and in the distribution of disaster relief aid; gender and inequality; and relocation and housing issues.\nPractical implications: - The paper highlights the role and importance of generating integrated early warning systems and strategies aimed at fostering sustainable recovery and building disaster resilient communities.\nOriginality/value: - An extensive amount of perishable data were collected thus providing a better understanding of the societal impacts of disasters on impoverished communities. A number of emerging issues are identified that should be of primary concern in efforts to protect populations residing in coastal regions throughout the world from similar catastrophes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Critical success factors in enterprise resource planning implementation: A review of case studies	[ "Critical success factors", "ERP", "Implementation", "Information management", "Case studies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Enterprise resource planning (ERP) refers to organizational information systems used to improve process efficiency by providing real time data (Holland and Light, 1999). The need of open and efficient flow of information between the company, its suppliers, distributors and customers was a primary driver to implement ERP systems. Moreover, the need for improved businesses processes has resulted from an ever increasing competitive environment plagued with delays in supply and whereby production challenges resulted in loss of financial resources and consequently competitive advantage. Umble et al. (2003), elaborates on the benefits of ERP to \"provide information about all the functions of an enterprise by a single system which provides an enterprise wide view of the company.\" ERP helps in decision making and projecting a strategy for the future. Some of the various departments influenced by the implementation of an ERP system are: finance, human resources, operations, logistics, sales and marketing.\n2. Research methodology: Our research work presented in this paper entails two methodologies: the first involves the literature review; and the second relates to the treatment (analysis and synthesis) of the content of the articles.\n3. Literature review: During the synthesis of the final set of articles, we observed that the treatment of CSFs is highly inconsistent. Many approaches, styles and methods were used. This made the synthesis process the more complex because multiple readings by multiple participants, followed by many discussion were necessary to provide a reasonable interpretation of comparative meanings. In specific, the variations were as follows:\n4. Analysis, synthesis and discussion: The consolidation of the CSFs is presented in Table II. In this table the first column from the left refers to the proposed CSF while the right-hand column presents the factors identified in the literature (from Table I). This process of assigning or mapping the original CSF into the consolidated list was the lengthiest of all the steps in our research work. This process involved the following three steps:\n5. Theoretical and practical implications: From a theoretical point of view, this paper adds value to the existing ERP body of knowledge. The new distribution of the stages of the ERP implementation provides an avenue to relate it to the existing stages of the implementation process and find out correlations between them. The distinct success factors provide a starting point to develop a framework of success factors throughout an ERP implementation process. One of our intentions of this paper is to provide an updated list of case studies relevant to ERP implementation, while at the same time encourage and in fact call for more case studies - it is very important that more practitioners collaborate with researchers to report on their experiences to ERP implementation.\n6. Limitations: The research in this paper is not without limitations. First, the case studies are not all structured in the same way. If they were then comparison would have been straight forward; however, since they are not, different data, sections, content breadth and depth have been reported. As such, comparison of these articles are complex and may include researcher's bias for comprehension and interpretation. Second, and in the same vein, the synthesis stage also entails the same level of uncertainty of interpretation of meaning. Finally, the results of this research are limited to reported cases and does not include research work on ERP implementation models and frameworks.\n7. Conclusions and future research: In this paper we focussed on the identification of a consolidated CSF set for a successful ERP implementation using case studies in different contexts alone. There have been articles which also mention the CSFs according to the stages of ERP implementation (Somers and Nelson, 2001; Bharathi and Parikh, 2012); however, literature shows that these stages are not understood in the same way by industry. There is a need to not only condense these factors but also be as specific as possible to eliminate overlap, redundancies, and multiple meanings across the factors and to simplify them by assigning them to industry agreed upon stages. A total of 37 related case studies were selected; a total of 64 CSFs were extracted which were condensed to 22 unique ones.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consolidate the critical success factors (CSFs) as published in enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation case studies. The authors perform the analysis and propose the final CSFs based on the reported ERP implementation process stages.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper follows the eight category coding steps proposed by Carley (1993) and utilizes only ERP implementation case studies to identify a distinct set of critical success factors. The 37 case studies used in this paper provide a reasonable sample from different countries and contexts. Two methodologies were followed, one for the literature review process and the other for the analysis and synthesis.\nFindings: Out of 64 reported CSFs that were extracted from the literature and subsequent detailed analysis and synthesis the authors found a total of 22 factors that are distinct. These factors which encompass change management, are proposed with five ERP implementation stages.\nResearch limitations/implications: The final set of success factors proposed in this study gives a consolidated and unified view of the significant variables to be considered during all the stages of ERP implementation. The research is limited to case study literature and does not account for ERP implementation models and frameworks. Another limitation would be the scope of the literature searched which is that of the Management Information Community.\nPractical implications: The proposed CSFs can be used by practitioners in five ways: assess implementation of an ERP; ex-ante assessment; comparative analysis with other implementation experiences; utilize CSFs from model as part of key performance indicators; and utilize the model to establish a concise strategy to project management process for the ERP implementation.\nSocial implications: ERP implementation is complex. The promise has not yet been fully realized. An ERP-enabled organization entails primarily strategy and change management. To that effect, all stakeholders are impacted by ERP implementation. This paper, identified CSFs extracted from cases of ERP implementation and proposes a model to support its project management, user satisfaction and sustainability. The results aim at reducing costs, maintaining timeline, reducing employee anxieties and with a successful implementation, better service to customer base.\nOriginality/value: This paper is the first attempt to present a consolidated list of CSFs and mapping them to the stages of an ERP implementation as reported from the industry. It originality is its focus on utilizing rigorous published case studies with the hope that future case studies would utilize the work to report on the same factors. The value is that as the case studies are increased, comparison and differentiation between is enhanced.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
University and course choice: Implications for positioning, recruitment and marketing	[ "Universities", "Recruitment", "Marketing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The HE environments in most developing countries have become competitive and institutions increasingly have to compete for students in the recruitment markets (James et al., 1999). A useful way to gain understanding of these recruitment markets is to have a clear grasp of the choice and decision making processes of intending applicants. There is however an insufficient research basis upon which we can build that understanding. This paper aims specifically at answering a deceptively simple question: what are the factors that influence sixth form pupils in England to choose a university and the courses they intend to study?The paper argues that knowing the reasons applicants choose universities and courses of study is central to developing institutional positioning in an increasingly competitive HE environment. Hirsch (1976) has argued that HE has become a positional good in which some institutions and degrees they offer are seen, in the eyes of students, parents and employers as offering better social status and lifetime opportunities than others. In addition, the recently announced introduction of student fees in HE may result in greater consumerist behaviour by applicants were the issue of \"value for money\" may begin to become a big part of applicants' decision making.The paper thus begins with a brief reflection of the theoretical constructs of choice and decision making in HE, institutional positioning, and summarises available empirical evidence in the field of choice in HE. It then explores the research methods used to collect data. The findings of the research are then presented followed by a discussion of implications at both operational and strategic marketing levels in universities seeking to position themselves securely in the competitive recruitment markets of HE.\nTheoretical constructs: Choice and decision making in HE is an area of growing research interest primarily because HE has been transformed from a domesticated, centrally funded non marketised entity to a highly marketised and competitive environment (Soutar and Turner, 2002). On a global scale, this transformation has been driven by world economies which have tended to embrace the idea of the market forces (Mazzarol, 1999). At country or national levels, expansion, diversification and growing competition have been identified as the \"overarching forces\" driving the marketisation of HE (Smith et al., 1995). In expanded systems of HE, in which institutions are increasingly being required to shed off the \"spending model\" and developing business models which demonstrate \"balanced corporate books\" (Clarke, 2003), and in which there is a huge diversity of HE products developed to cater for an increasingly diverse HE market, students now have a wide range of options from which to choose and have to undertake complex decisions in order to make the right choices.Choice is an iterative concept (Foskett, 1999) which is clearly a complex and multifactorial process involving a wide range of influences that bear upon a decision. Early structural models (Gambetta (1996), Roberts (1984) and Ryrie (1981) explain choice in the context of institutional, economic and cultural constraints imposed upon choosers whose decisions can be predicted along socio-economic, cultural and ethnic lines. Such models have been used to predict and explain participation and progression of students into HE. The central argument here is that choice is not a rational process. Economic models of choice such as those developed by Becker (1975) have been developed to counter this argument and are based on assumptions that students make rational choices based on precise or imprecise calculations of the relative rates of returns associated with participating in HE. A third group of models are based on the importance of personality and subjective judgment in the decision-making process. Hodkinson et al. (1996) for example have argued that \"choice is a rational process that is constrained by a realistic perception of opportunities and shaped by individual personality\" (Payne, 2003, p. 13). Hemsley-Brown (1999) has endorsed this view in her study in which she concluded that while pupils often give utilitarian reasons for making choices, these were usually filtered through layers of preconceptions emanating from influences in family background, culture and life history. Foskett and Hemsley-Brown (2001) have developed an integrated model which brings together elements of these three models in which they argue that while choice is never a completely rational action, it is nonetheless not irrational or random and involves three broad elements of the context of choice, the key choice influencers and the choosers themselves into a complex dynamic in which decision making becomes a reflexive process. In this paper, choice will be defined as an expression of preferences that exist at a particular moment of the decision-making cycle of the student.Decision making is broadly seen as a problem solving process undertaken by applicants in the process of making choices. Models of decision making have been developed around what is commonly called the purchase behaviour of consumers. Purchase behaviour is generally seen as encompassing a series of stages including need arousal, information search and evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and the post purchase feeling (Kotler, 2003). Chapman (1986) was amongst the first to apply buying behaviour theory to education suggesting that in selecting an institution or subject of study, students and their parents will pass through a number of uniquely definable stages. The stages include.Pre-search behaviour\nPositioning the institution: Consumers in HE now exist in positional market, where institutions compete for the best students while the applicants compete for the most preferred institutions. No institution can be excellent at everything, nor can any single institution pander to needs of all applicants. Universities in this environment need to play to their strengths or situate themselves around aspects for which they can become excellent. Dibb (1997) has defined positioning as:The process of designing an image and value so that customers within target segments understand what the company or brand stands for in relation to its competitors (in Wilson and Gilligan, 2002, p. 302).Positioning thus involves three elements of developing an institutional brand or image, deciding on the market segments to serve and developing a communication strategy that accentuates the institutional capability to deliver to this market. Understanding choice and decision making of applicants feeds into this institutional positioning strategy through a clear identification of both the reasons for purchase behaviour of applicants.Following is a review of available empirical evidence in this area of research.\nResearch evidence in HE choice and decision making: Broadly, there are three levels at which choice and decision-making research in HE has been conducted. First is the global level, which shows why students choose to study abroad. Second is a national level where students' choice of university is the main focus. The third level which has received relatively little attention is the choice of courses of study.On a global level, student migration and study abroad has become a multi billion pound business matched by huge investment especially among western countries. Zimmerman et al. (2000) has identified \"push and pull\" factors which operate along the students' decision-making process in the international market. Others such as Dreher and Poutvaara (2005) have suggested that economic and cultural forces play an important role in shaping the international students migration markets. Overall, push factors tend to be related to existing barriers to educational attainment in countries of origin, lack of career opportunities, deteriorating economic standards for example in Zimbabwe and South Africa (Bhorat et al., 2002), dissatisfaction with the political situation including political violence and loss of confidence in the ability of governments to improve living conditions (Dzvimbo, 2003). Pull factors that attract students to specific countries in the developed world include: economic prospects including future employment, safe political and study environments, perceived high educational standards in host countries, the high quality of teaching, opportunities for part time work, opportunities for accessing funding, opportunities for state assisted funding for family members and opportunities for post graduate study (Borjas, 1994).Choice of HE institution within countries has been a subject of substantial research. In Australia, for example James et al. (1999) have found that: field of study preferences; course and institutional reputations, course entry scores; easy access to home and institutional characteristics in that order exert significant influence on applicants' choice of institution. Overall, costs incurred have usually not been a strong influence in applicants' decisions and choice of university. While confirming the above, research in England has added further dimensions. For example, applicants to undergraduate programmes in England consider the teaching reputation of universities as more important than their research profiles (Price et al., 2003). In addition, as a result of the newly introduced HE fees in England, there seems to be greater propensity for students to consider more carefully economic factors such as job opportunities to supplement their incomes, accommodation costs and family home proximity as a fall back in times of distress and financial difficulty (Foskett et al., 2006). This may suggest factors influencing university choice could be turned upside down now that financial considerations are going to be more important to students.Course of study decisions tend to be closely related to institutional choice decisions. Research in this area has identified a range of factors influencing course preference including: belief that school results will allow entry to the course; the reputation of the course among employers; graduate satisfaction from the course; graduate employment rates from the course; the quality of teaching in the course; approaches to teaching, learning and assessment on the course including opportunities for flexible study (very important to mature students and single parents especially) (James et al., 1999).\nMethodological issues: Aim and objectives of the research\nThe findings of the study: Profile of the survey respondents\nRelative importance of factors influencing subject choice: Following previous research (Price et al., 2003; Ivy, 2002; James et al., 1999), participants were asked to rank ten factors on scores ranging from 1 to 10 to indicate the extent to which they considered those factors as being important in their choice of subjects of study. For analysis purposes, scores between 7 and 10 were aggregated to indicate very strong influence. Scores between 4 and 6 were aggregated to indicate moderate influence while scores between 1 and 3 were aggregated to indicate weak influence. A mean score was calculated for each aggregate score. Using these mean scores for each factor, clearly career considerations have the greatest impact on students' choice of subject of study at university. All respondents indicated that this factor had a strong or moderate influence on their choice of subject (Table III).From the above, it is clear that:* Career opportunities associated with HE study closely followed by realistic consideration of ability and performances in the subjects currently under study exert the greatest influence on subjects students choose to study at university. Mean aggregate percentages for those who indicated that these factors were either a strong or moderate influence were 100 per cent for career influence and 97 per cent for ability and performance in the subject. Thus, students choose subjects they intend doing at university primarily on consideration of future job opportunities and on the basis of their assessed ability in those subjects.* Teacher influence and interest in the subjects are the third and fourth most powerful influence on choices of university courses by students. The mean aggregate percent influence for those who considered these to be a strong or moderate influence was 95 and 93 per cent, respectively.* Interestingly, not many students choose courses because they are perceived to be easy. This may suggest that students are anticipating a challenge from the experience of HE rather than a casual \"walk in the park\". Only a minority 30 per cent consider this to be a strong or moderate influence. Of these, more male students than females seem to be looking for an easy passage through HE.* Among the external influences, teachers are considered the strongest factor in students' decisions regarding choice of course, while parents are the least important. This agrees with Foskett and Hemsley-Brown (2001) who found that parental influence on schooling decisions seems to wane as the children become older. It also shows that secondary teachers could be universities' greatest allies in helping students decision making about HE study.* Formal career guidance in schools is considered of much less value in students' HE decision making, especially by boys. This also is in line with Foskett et al. (2004) who found that students were more likely to be influenced by factors other than schools' career services in their post 16 decision-making.* Based on mean aggregate percentages, the relative importance of the above factors can be shown in Figure 1.\nFactors influencing university choice: Following Ivy (2002), sixth form students were asked to rank on a 1-10 scale the importance of 30 factors to their decision making in choosing a university. The thirty factors were classified into 7 categories and mean scores and standard deviations for each category were computed. Results are summarised in Table IV.The relative strength of these factors in the decision making of students' choice of institution is shown graphically in Figure 2.Programme, price, place and prominence factors seemed to be the most important in determining students' choice of university for their HE study. Broadly, this confirms Ivy's work on students' choice of MBA programmes, although some differences in the prioritisation of elements within the broad factors were noted. The following points can be noted:* Taking 5.5 as the mid point on a ten point Likert scale, three of the seven factors had a mean score lower than this mid point. It can be assumed that promotion, people and prospectus elements do not have a great influence on the choices students make about where to study for their HE. This is an indictment on institutions which spend huge sums in advertisements and promotion activities to lure students to their institutions. However, this does not mean that such activities should be discontinued, but that a refocusing of strategy to reflect the real concern of applicants could help institutions reposition themselves in the recruitment market.* Among elements included in Programme factors, field of study and details of course, information appear to exert the greatest influence on university choice.* Price elements which had the greatest impact on university choice included considerations students give to regional economic job market issues such as availability of part time work and general costs of living. The tendency to avoid London and the preference shown for institutions up north suggest that these factors were uppermost in students' decision-making frameworks.* Issues of institutional prominence maintain fairly a high profile in students' decision-making. Of critical importance is the overall reputation of the institution and staff credentials. Students however seem to be less influenced by press reviews and institutional web site information in the university choice decisions.\nDiscussion and implications: Sample size and the convenience sampling strategy employed place considerable limits on the generalisability of the findings of this research. Further, the data obtained could have been subjected to quantitative analysis using inferential statistical tools to investigate gender and ethnic differences in the choice processes of sixth from pupils. Nevertheless, using simple descriptive statistics, the findings broadly confirm what is already known about choice of university. There are however some important messages identified in this research which need highlighting.Dynamics of the HE recruitment market\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Higher education environments have become increasingly competitive and institutions have to compete for students in the recruitment markets. With the introduction of student fees, it is hypothesised that potential applicants to HE will increasingly become consumerist. The research upon which this paper was based was aimed at finding out the factors students consider important in their decision making related to choice of university and courses of study.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Five sixth form schools and colleges in the Southampton University Partnership Scheme participated in the study. Three hundred and eighty seven students (186 male and 201 female) voluntarily participated. The study involved a survey questionnaire based on a 10 point Likert scale and included 35 university choice factors which students were to rank accordingly. It also included 10 items similarly ranked to identify factors influencing university subject or course choice. Simple descriptive statistics were used to identify the factors students consider most important in their choice and decision making.\nFindings: - Two key signals have been identified. First is that, students seem to be adopting a consumerist approach to their HE decision making. The importance attached to labour market motives in terms of employment and career prospects significantly outweigh those related to pursuing HE on the basis of subject interest and a love for the subject. Second is that as a result of this, students consider programme and price related issues as more important than other elements of universities marketing mix.\nResearch limitations/implications: - There are no claims for generalisability of findings from this research on account of the small sample of participants and the use of convenience sampling employed in the study. However, the findings generally support what is already known about factors influencing university choice and go beyond to show signals of change within the undergraduate recruitment market.\nPractical implications: - The findings have implications for university positioning in a diversifying recruitment market, and for a reconsideration of marketing and recruitment strategy at institutional levels.\nOriginality/value: - The paper identifies signals of a changing undergraduate recruitment market and notes the implication this has on recruitment and marketing activities for institutions intending to position or reposition themselves in the highly competitive markets.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
75 years of lessons learned: chief executive officer values and corporate social responsibility	[ "Corporate social responsibility", "Business ethics", "Stakeholder analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Tone at the top is a popular expression to recognize the importance of the values top executives transmit to their organizations. This goes beyond organizational culture and permeates the corporate core, providing a beacon to all within the organization. Nowhere else is this more profound than in how the organization views its social responsibilities, which stakeholders it recognizes and what ethics guide its conduct.While corporate social responsibility is now a widely accepted domain, it was only 50 odd years ago that (Drucker, 1954, p. 381) conclusion entitled \"The Responsibilities of Management\", included the captions \"the social impact of business decision, making a profit the first social responsibility and the ultimate responsibility: to make what is for the public good the enterprises' own self-interest.\"This paper will explore the antecedent and subsequent business classic works that influenced and embodied these concepts. We will draw on these authors, largely using their own words, to develop the foundation of the executive's role in translating values and ethics into what we now term corporate social responsibility in a stakeholder view of the firm. Corporate social responsibility recognizes that \"business and society are interwoven rather than distinct entities\" (Wood, 1991, p. 695), while McWilliams and Siegel (2001, p. 117) \"define corporate social responsibility as actions that appear to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law.\"We review the lessons of the twentieth century scholars for direction in understanding top management's impact on corporate social responsibility. We seek to bridge the traditional views with more contemporary perspectives. Using a historical organization of ideas as expressed at the time, we frame the evolution of the executive's impact on corporate social responsibility.We also briefly identify contemporary considerations for how corporate social responsibility is reflective of executive management and propose areas for future research. To situate the reader with the historical context, a timeline of the publication of these classic works illustrating the chronology to be utilized is included as an appendix.\nTheory development from the classic literature: 1930s - the great depression\nA contemporary view of corporate social responsibility: 1980's and beyond - stakeholders\nCurrent stakeholder themes: Some subsequent refinements to stakeholder theory focus on requiring legitimacy to be considered a stakeholder (Rowley, 1997); on segregating primary from secondary stakeholders based on their necessity to firm survival (Clarkson, 1995); and in utilizing urgency, power and legitimacy to determine stakeholder salience (Mitchell et al., 1997).While it would be altruistic for firms to be intrinsically committed to stakeholder interests because it is the right thing to do, a more instrumental approach views stakeholder management as a strategic tool to improve financial performance and provide a sustainable competitive advantage over the long-term (Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Harrison and Freeman, 1999; Wood, 1991).The institutional view of the corporation's legitimacy is developed in relationship to how a corporation manages its stakeholders (Wood, 1991), with any loss of legitimacy seen as a withdrawal of stakeholder support. While \"legitimacy is a perception or assumption in that it represents a reaction of observers to the organization as they see it; thus legitimacy is possessed objectively, yet created subjectively\" (Suchman, 1995, p. 574), making it both the Achilles' heel and cornerstone of the stakeholder relationship.Even today, while linked to sustainability, stakeholders and ethics, there is no single, universal definition of corporate social responsibility. One that exemplifies the underlying partnership is The World Business Council for Sustainable Development's (WBCSD) definition of corporate social responsibility as \"the commitment of business to contribute to sustainable economic development, working with employees, their families, the local community and society at large to improve their quality of life\" (WBCSD, 2000, p.10).The diversity and breadth of the elements included in corporate social responsibility range from marketing dangerous or harmful products to uninformed customers and unfair labour practices to environmental degradation and pollution (Harrison and Freeman, 1999). While corporate social performance has often been linked to financial performance, findings remain inconclusive (Griffin and Mahon, 1997; Margolis and Walsh, 2001; Waddock and Graves, 1997), however the longer-term profitability of environmental and social initiatives has been recognized by many major corporations (Epstein and Roy, 2003).With respect to management attitudes, \"today's captains of industry place no greater importance on social responsibilities than the individuals who occupied their positions thirty years ago\" (Kinard et al., 2003, p. 89), a finding the researchers described as \"unexpected\" given the more widespread acceptance of corporate social responsibility.Selznick's (2002, p. 29) The Communitarian Persuasion draws upon the author's current reflections on many of the topics of his earlier works, as well as exploring new avenues. On the theme of accountability, offers a broader view of responsibility where the question is \"whether and how much you care about your duties,\" looking to \"ideals as well as obligations, to values as well as rules.\" In questioning whether a corporation has a conscience, Selznick (2002, p. 101) notes, \"a corporate conscience is created when values that transcend narrow self-interest are built into the practice and structure of the enterprise,\" becoming an \"organizational culture\" and accepting the \"realities of interdependence.\"\n75 Years of lessons learned: Most of the business classics reviewed have provided the underpinnings of what has become stakeholder management and corporate social responsibility. The overwhelming importance of top management's values, ethics and morals in setting the tone of organizational culture is the foundation upon which corporate social responsibility is also built. The role of the top echelons has been described as:[...] tone at the top means that the board and senior management are responsible for setting the ethical tone for the corporation and for then managing the corporation and its business in a manner that is consistent with that tone (Hansell, 2003, p. 14).The notion of authentic leadership essentially sets out the need for executives to balance their responsibilities to stakeholders to obtain the cooperation necessary for corporate and personal success (Novicevic et al., 2006). Barnard (1938) also linked the executive's personal code of conduct to the development of organizational codes of ethics, noting that any conflict between the personal and corporate codes would cause serious concern. Thus, in responding to stakeholder expectations of corporate social responsibility, the chief executive sets the tone and priorities for the firm's actions. However, as Hambrick (2007) points out, moderating the CEOs influence are the latitude of managerial action (discretion) and the demands placed on the executive (both task and performance), along with the executive's own aspirations. These factors reconcile the opposing views held by strategy's upper echelons theory (executives strongly impact organizational outcomes) versus population ecology and institutional theory (executives have little effect on outcomes) (Hambrick, 2007). Extrapolating these observations to the impact of CEO values on corporate social responsibility, as managerial discretion increases the more CEO values will influence the organization's choices of social actions. In examining one single aspect of corporate social responsibility, that of corporate philanthropy, Lerner and Fryxell (1994) found a positive link to the values of the chief executive officer, while executive values and managerial discretion were found to have a moderating effect (Buchholtz et al., 1999).While the determination of stakeholder salience has been attributed to power, legitimacy and urgency (Mitchell et al., 1997), the chief executive's personal ethics and values will also frame an interpretation of these attributes. Hambrick (2007, p. 337) suggests that \"executives' experiences, values, and personalities affect their: (1) field of vision, (2) selective perception, and (3) interpretation\", characteristics reminiscent of Wood's (1991) corporate social responsiveness processes of assessing the environment, identifying the issues and managing stakeholders. Accordingly, we make the following observations:* the chief executive's personal values will influence the firm's response to its social responsibilities;* the chief executive's personal ethics will influence an interpretation of the firm's code of ethics when responding to corporate social responsibilities; and* managerial discretion will moderate the chief executive's influence on the firm's response to its social responsibilities.The values and ethics of senior corporate officers have long left their mark on the corporations they have led. The corporate culture of entitlement that has also characterized some firms may also be traced to the attitudes of senior corporate officers. The corporate misconducts such as accounting fraud, tax evasion and pricing collusion are rarely isolated incidents of which senior officers were unaware. Current examples include Franklin Raines of Fannie May where earnings were manipulated with disastrous results (Hilzenrath, 2007), Apple founder Steve Jobs' illegal backdating of stock options (Elkind, 2008) and the Smithsonian Institution's Laurence Small's personal excesses and indulgences at the expense of the public organization (Grimaldi, 2007). The chief executive officer's selection of a senior management team determines the ethical context against which corporate decisions will be taken to respond to social responsibilities. The founder of Southwest Airlines, Herbert Kelleher, chose Gary Kelley as CEO to fit the mold (Bailey, 2008) and maintain the egalitarian, customer focused culture unique to the LUV airline.While it often easy to think of firm founders such as the late Anita Roddick of The Body Shop or Microsoft's Bill Gates who have imparted their personal values on the corporations they founded, non-founder chief executives such as John Browne at BP and Jeff Swartz at Timberland have so too left their marks on corporate values. In such cases, the individual executives have had a greater impact on shaping corporate values than the corporation has had in influencing the ethics or values of these executives. However, not all would agree. Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway contends, \"When an industry with a reputation for bad economics meets a manager with a reputation for excellence, it's usually the industry that leaves with its reputation intact\" (Hough, 2006, p. 45).While public attention has often been drawn to situations of major conflict between personal and corporate values, there are noteworthy instances of exceptional value alignments. On the positive side the Johnson and Johnson handling of the Tylenol poisonings is an exemplar in coherence, ethics and executive/corporate values, while the unethical, corrupt culture of Enron was rampant among executives as well as the corporation, as finally exposed by a whistle-blower (Nam and Lemak, 2007).\nDiscussion and conclusion: This exploration of the contributions from the business classics integrates the antecedents to stakeholder theory and corporate social responsibility. In spite of having made significant progress from the earliest proposals, corporate social responsibility still offers many unresolved issues for future research. As Hambrick (2007, p. 341) concludes, \"we still have much to learn about the effects - both positive and negative - of top executives on organizations,\" placing before us a broad agenda for studying the interaction of the executive's values and corporate social responsibility.Furthermore, the role of the chief executive officer in the firm's response to its social responsibilities merits empirical research to better understand the decision-making criteria, degree of managerial discretion and role of personal values/ethics. The importance of the executive search process in matching personal values with those of the corporation also calls for further analysis. Hambrick (2007) suggests the possibility of reverse causality as an explanation, as it may be that executives are drawn to firms that correspond to their personal values and as such they are custodians of firm embedded values, rather than missionaries imparting their own values. It may also be that the executive search process is a reflection of board priorities, such as the desire for a change in firm direction often associated with the appointment of an outsider chief executive (Hambrick, 2007).Echoing Zhu et al. (2004) call to examine possible distinctions between public and privately held firms, the impact of ownership, market pressures and job demands on firm executives may offer further insight into identifying whether the CEOs personal values will direct the firm's ethical values. The stage of the firm's life cycle, the diversity of the firm's operations, the home or host culture of the corporation and the CEO tenure are further factors worthy of examination.The institutional and population ecology views of isomorphism and the minimal impact of corporate executives on the evolution of firm processes and outcomes offer alternative interpretations for the direction of corporate social responsibility initiatives. The research design of future empirical studies should examine the role of industry or societal drivers, distinct from the powerful organizational actors within the firm. As noted by Hambrick (2007, p. 338) longitudinal studies that \"incorporate temporal lags and control for prior states of both the independent and dependent variables\" are essential to gain the insight necessary to understand the causal mechanisms.From a practical perspective, aspiring executives with a strong moral compass may evaluate the ethics of industries and firms against their own values to identify zones of greatest synergy. The degree of managerial discretion may be interpreted from the mandate given by the board, as well as any reinforcement linked to executive compensation plans. From the firm's perspective, the executive search process may assess the coherence of candidates' values and ethics, as well as establish parameters for the latitude in decision making.Authenticity in leadership is achieved when actions and values are consistently aligned in the eyes of the stakeholders (Zhu et al., 2004). Harkening back to the classic works of Barnard and Drucker, to achieve firm goals requires moral leadership that rallies the full cooperation of internal and external stakeholders. With the increased complexity of the often conflicting perspectives of diverse stakeholders on the global stage, we suggest that it is the chief executive's personal values, ethics and morals that ultimately frame corporate social responsibility decisions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore how chief executive officer values and ethics have been translated into what we now term corporate social responsibility in a stakeholder view of the firm.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - To fulfill this purpose, the reflections of early business scholars on top management's impact on corporate social responsibility are examined and linked to more contemporary views.\nFindings: - In response to stakeholder expectations of corporate social responsibility it is the chief executive officer's values and ethics, moderated by managerial discretion, that frame the firm's actions and ethics.\nPractical implications: - The aspiring executive may evaluate the ethics of industries and firms against his or her own values to identify zones of greatest synergy, while the firm's executive search process can consider including an assessment of the fit of candidates' personal values.\nOriginality/value: - This paper builds on the works of early management scholars to specifically link contemporary corporate social responsibility decision making with executive values.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Learning adaptation to climate change from past climate extremes:: Evidence from recent climate extremes in Haryana, India	[ "Climate change adaptation", "Conservation agriculture", "Ex ante risk coping strategy", "Learning from past climate extremes", "Turbo happy seeder" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the most important cereal crop in India and is grown in about 29 million ha (Majumdar et al., 2013). It is a staple food, supplying about 61 per cent of India's protein requirement (Sapkota et al., 2014) and its assured supply is essential for national food and nutrition security. Analysis of trends in wheat production shows that yields have stagnated, as the beginning of the twenty-first-century with various possible causes including climate change and climate variability (Saharawat et al., 2010; Majumdar et al., 2013; Jat et al., 2016). Therefore, to cope with increasing climate risk, wheat production systems need to be more robust and resilient to buffer the effects of extreme climate events (Jat et al., 2014; Sapkota et al., 2015; Jat et al., 2016; Aryal et al., 2018a; Sapkota et al., 2018; Aryal et al., 2019).\n2. Extreme climate events in wheat season, loss of crop yield and public burden: Climatic variability, especially rainfall variability (i.e. both drought and excess rainfall) and end-of-season high temperatures severely impact wheat production in India. Many studies have demonstrated negative effects of high temperature during wheat maturity period, i.e. \"terminal heat\" in India (Jat et al., 2009; Lobell et al., 2012; Tashiro and Wardlaw, 1989; Samra and Singh, 2004; Gupta et al., 2010).\n3. Study area and data: In this study, authors used the panel data collected from 184 wheat farmers of Karnal district, Haryana for three consecutive wheat seasons of 2013-2014, 2014-2015 and 2015-2016. Data were collected from 10 village clusters (scattered over 15 villages) of Karnal district.\n4. Analytical framework and estimation issues: This study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods for the analyses of the data and in-depth understanding of CAW adoption from learning. Using mixed methods - econometrics methods to rigorously analyse the CAW learning data and FGD to probe deeper to understand farmers' views and experience about CAW managed to bring forth issues, which otherwise would be overlooked. The main focus was whether farmers learn from past experiences, and also from their social networks (Bandiera and Rasul, 2006; Hanna et al., 2014; Crane-Droesch, 2018) and the importance of learning in the adoption process (Cameron, 1999).\n5. Results and analysis: 5.1 Descriptive statistics\n6. Discussion and policy implications: The findings of this study have important policy implications. Given that the majority of farmers believe that CAW contributes to climate change adaptation, removing barriers to adoption can help enhance farmers' income with and without climatic extremes. Hence, identifying and strengthening existing institutions rather than creating new ones is required to enhance the adoption of CAW. Despite some barriers to adopt CAW, the knowledge on CAW is spreading among farmers, primarily through farmer-to-farmer communications and farmers meeting in the local farmer clubs. Based on the findings, the authors suggest the following to promote CAW:\n7. Conclusion and way forward: CAW, which has been adopted by the farmers primarily to reduce production costs, is now being adopted as a climate risk coping measure. The findings show that farmers learn climate change adaptation through their own experience and through the experiences of their neighbours. Several factors determine these learnings and their use for climate risk adaptation. Farmer learning and uptake of new technology is not only related to the characteristic of technology but also how well the technology fits the farming system and its impact on farmers' livelihood. Even though the technology has no investment risks, other factors related to the technology and farmers can largely influence its uptake.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Conservation agriculture-based wheat production system (CAW) can serve as an ex ante measure to minimize loss due to climate risks, especially the extreme rainfall during the wheat production season in India. This study aims to examine whether farmers learn from their past experiences of exposure to climate extremes and use the knowledge to better adapt to future climate extremes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors used data collected from 184 farmers from Haryana over three consecutive wheat seasons from 2013-2014 to 2015-2016 and multivariate logit model to analyse the driver of the adoption of CAW as an ex ante climate risk mitigating strategies based on their learning and censored Tobit model to analyse the intensity of adoption of CAW as an ex ante climate risk mitigation strategy. Farmer's knowledge and key barriers to the adoption of CAW were determined through focus group discussions.\nFindings: The analysis shows that the majority of farmers who had applied CAW in the year 2014-2015 (a year with untimely excess rainfall during the wheat season) have continued to practice CAW and have increased the proportion of land area allocated to it. Many farmers shifted from CTW to CAW in 2015-2016.\nPractical implications: While farmers now consider CAW as an ex ante measure to climate risks, a technology knowledge gap exists, which limits its adoption. Therefore, designing appropriate methods to communicate scientific evidence is crucial.\nOriginality/value: This paper uses three years panel data from 184 farm households in Haryana, India, together with focus groups discussions with farmers and interviews with key informants to assess if farmers learn adaptation to climate change from past climate extremes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Sustainability innovators and anchor draggers: a global expert study on sustainable fashion	[ "Consumer behaviour", "Sustainability", "Organizational change", "Partnerships", "Business models", "Accountability" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The fashion industry is a major contributor to problems of social and environmental sustainability. Sustainability challenges span across the entire life cycle of a piece of garment. The environmental impacts include energy use and generation of greenhouse gas emissions in production and use, water use, toxicity, hazardous waste and effluent associated with production stage pre-treatment chemicals, dyes, and finishes. Social impacts include poor working conditions, including sweat shops and child labor, low wages and long hours, workers' rights and health and safety risks, and animal welfare (Pedersen and Gwozdz, 2014). All impacts are exacerbated by the ever-increasing volume of clothing consumption (Goworek, 2011; Moore, 2011, Gam et al., 2009; Defra, 2008/2011; Birtwistle and Moore, 2007). Today, more than 80 billion garments are produced around the world and in 2011 global fiber production (mainly cotton and polyester) set a new global record of 86 billion tons, reaching nearly 12 kg per capita (Deloitte, 2013).\nMethod: Existing research sustainable fashion is mainly based on evidence from surveys (i.e. Pedersen and Gwozdz, 2014; Kozar and Connell, 2013; Langhelle et al., 2009) and especially case studies analyses (interviews, participant observation, secondary sources) (e.g. Arrigo, 2013; Curwen et al., 2013; Dickson et al., 2012; Goworek, 2011; Hvass, 2014; Perry, 2012; Plieth et al., 2012). Existing research also tends to pick individual organizations or a limited part of the fashion life cycle as the locus of analysis. Few studies provides a broader analysis of the multiple stakeholder groups related to the fashion industry which all have a role to play in bringing about changes toward sustainability (e.g. design students, NGOs, governmental bodies, industry associations, technology providers, consultants, research institutions, etc.).\nAnalysis: Participants in the online study were requested to visualize the fashion industry by uploading photos, drawings, videos, or other material that best represented their view of the industry and subsequently reflect on the rationale for their choice. Moreover, the participants were asked to articulate what they considered the main barriers for change toward sustainability. The analysis of the visual material and the text clearly indicate that the fashion industry is having a serious image problem as most experts portray the sector as superficial, irresponsible, unsustainable, and/or unethical. Upstream, lack of visibility and transparency in the fashion supply chain is repeatedly highlighted as a problem by the experts. As an example, one of the participants has chosen a retail window to illustrate the fashion industry because it looks glamorous but provides little information about the journey of the individual garments. Downstream, overconsumption, and a throwaway culture implies is a significant barrier for sustainability in the fashion industry. In the words of a participant:\nDiscussion: reflections on the journey toward sustainable fashion: The results from the online study point in a number of different directions. In general, the participants echo the view that current approaches to sustainability often lack scale and scope (Visser, 2010). Moreover, the discussions between the participants also highlight the complexity and interconnectedness of the challenges of sustainability in the fashion industry. However, in order to better understand the findings from the analysis, the results need to be related to the broader literature on sustainability and CSR. Therefore, a number of continuums have been developed inspired by the existing literature which is used to structure the discussions of the progress toward sustainability within the fashion industry (see Figure 1).\nConclusion: The purpose of this paper was to map the current challenges and opportunities for sustainable fashion by conducting an online study among fashion experts from different sectors and geographies. The online discussions among the participants document the inadequacies of the current fashion supply chain - from extraction of raw materials to end consumption - and the surrounding institutional environment. However, the emergence of new and more sustainable alternatives to conventional fashion manufacturing and consumption also offer potentially interesting avenues for lowering the social and environmental footprint of the fashion industry. The systemic nature of the sustainability challenges in the fashion industry highlight the need for concerted action from all stakeholder groups (businesses, designers, policy makers, consumers, researchers, NGOs, etc.).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore current barriers and opportunities for sustainability in the fashion industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is based on a study among 36 fashion experts from academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations, who took part in an online study on sustainable fashion.\nFindings: The results from the study indicates that the fashion industry faces immense social and environmental challenges and that the scale and scope of current approaches to sustainability are limited and fail to address more fundamental challenges linked to the dominant business models and consumption behaviors.\nResearch limitations/implications: As the study is based on the knowledge, values, attitudes, and cultural stances of the participating experts it cannot claim to provide a picture of the \"real world.\" Nonetheless it contributes with a nuanced understanding of current challenges and opportunities within the industry, as experienced by key stakeholders in the field.\nOriginality/value: The expert study approach moves beyond \"good practice\" case studies and allow a broader discussion of micro- and macro challenges for sustainability within the fashion industry. The learnings gained through such an approach could inspire future system level research as well as business model innovation in the industry.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Impact of employer branding on employee engagement in business process outsourcing (BPO) sector in India: mediating effect of person-organization fit	[ "Human capital", "Employee engagement", "Employer branding", "Person organisation fit" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Organisations are consistently in search of resources which can provide them with a sustainable source of competitive advantage. Many previous research studies suggest that human resource is the source which offers a strategic advantage to a firm in the tumultuous business environment (Kraaijenbrink et al., 2010; Rose et al., 2010; Messersmith et al., 2011). Thus, based on the same premise organisations are spending significant resources to develop strategies which can facilitate engagement of competent employees (McCracken et al., 2016). The practitioner and academic research have highlighted that developing effective employer branding strategies can provide a strategic advantage to the firm by developing engaged employees who are loyal and committed to the firm and work towards achieving the super-ordinate objectives of the firm (Wilden et al., 2010). The increasing use of the likes of employer branding strategies is due to the upsurge of knowledge economy wherein there is a constant war for competent talent (Sivertzen et al., 2013).\nLiterature review and hypothesis development: Employer branding\nResearch context: India has observed mammoth growth in terms of economic and social development. Also, the rise of the middle class and the education standards in the world's emerging economies like India has developed it into the source of intellectual capital. The manpower present in the country is English speaking and has expert technical and managerial competence gained through world-class institutions like Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) (Srivastava and Bhatnagar, 2010).\nMethod: Samples and procedures\nMeasures: Employer branding\nAnalysis and results: Structural equation modelling was employed by the researcher for data analysis. The AMOS software program was used with maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) for parameter estimation. Maximum Likelihood estimation is a superior technique which can be strong for violations of the multivariate normality assumption (Hair et al., 2010). A measurement model was estimated followed by the estimation of the proposed structural model. The Cronbach's a values were between 0.7 and 0.91 for all the measures citing sufficient internal reliability.\nStructural model estimation and test of mediation effects: Figure 1 highlights the structural model which was tested. It is revealed that employer branding has a direct and indirect effect on employee engagement through P-O fit. It can be deduced from the output that P-O fit partially mediates the relationship between employee branding and employee engagement (Christensen Hughes and Rog, 2008). Research also cite in their research that hiring and retaining a quality workforce is the most critical task an organisation faces today (Biswas and Bhatnagar, 2013). Therefore, it is necessary for the firms to respond to the talent retention challenge proactively to get desired results. This study pertains to a similar cause as it tries to identify the influence of employer branding strategies in positively engaging the employees. Bhatnagar (2007) in her paper cites that organisations need to consistently design strategies that focus on attracting and developing people with the required skills, as human resources are the key differentiator and facilitate leveraging competitive advantage. However, it is necessary that apart from the human resource strategies the values and beliefs of the individual and organisation should also match highlighting the importance of P-O fit. To do so the mediating effect of P-O fit was assessed in the relation between employer branding and employee engagement. It was observed that P-O fit partially mediates the relationship.\nDiscussion: An extant literature review had revealed that empirical studies linking employer branding and engagement levels of employees have received little attention. The current research tends to fulfil the gap whilst simultaneously analysing the mediating effect of P-O fit. The study is set up in the Indian scenario and it provides empirical proof of the influence of employer branding on employee engagement in one of the emerging economies across the world. This study supplements the affirmative influence of employer branding on employee engagement and the results of the study are in consonance with previous studies which have been conducted in western context (Srivastava and Bhatnagar, 2010). It thus strengthens the primary fundamental that human capital being the strategic tool in the hands of the management must be proactively managed to achieve the super-ordinate objectives of the organisation (Morokane et al., 2016). The available literature on employer branding also suggests that if organisations consider human resource to be a source of a strategic advantage it must create an \"employment experience\" (Ambler and Barrow, 1996). This which is specific to the firm and makes a positive distinctive impression on the current and potential employees, citing it as an employer of choice (Edwards, 2009). The reputation thus formed can act as a source of employee attractiveness especially for potential applicants, thus facilitating the organisation to attract and retain a talented workforce (Bali and Dixit, 2016). Furthermore, this study espouses the proposition that it is important for an organisation to achieve consonance between their values and beliefs with the values and beliefs of the individual working in the organisation. A sound congruence in P-O fit and employer branding can lead to recruitment and retention of individuals who can be engaged and stay for a long time with the firm (Narayanan and Sekar, 2009). Also, the current research establishes that employer branding and P-O fit are predictors of employee engagement as employer branding accounts for 37.2 per cent of the variance for employee engagement and P-O fit accounts for 37.9 per cent of the variance for employee engagement. Additionally, P-O fit has partial mediating effect in a relationship between employer branding and employee engagement which states that employer branding can facilitate people adjust towards organisational values and goals which will have an affirmative impact on engagement levels of employees.\nConclusion: The purpose of the research was to analyse whether employer branding has an influence on employee engagement through P-O fit. It can be deduced from the findings of the study that employer branding has a direct as well as the indirect effect on employee engagement through P-O fit. Therefore, it can be explained with the help of empirical independence that employer branding and P-O fit are independent factors which can be used to enhance engagement levels of the employees. Therefore, managers must focus on developing comprehensive employer branding strategies which increase the capabilities of the workforce and inspires them to achieve the desired organisational goals. Furthermore, it can also be deduced that employer branding strategies are not only beneficial in the western environment, but it can also have a similar positive influence in the Indian context.\nManagerial implications: Managers are consistently in search of strategies which enhance the performance of the employees. A set of integrated strategies like employer branding can increase the work related outcome and also let the employees enhance their ability and motivation to work. Higher engagement leads to increased productivity and various other work-related outcomes. The results of the current study state the role employer branding strategies play in enhancing engagement whilst enhancing value congruence amongst the workforce and the organisation. This gives birth to many managerial implications like an engaged workforce from top to bottom shall be positively inclined to learn about the challenges in the organisation. Further it will also help in developing affirmative employer-employee relationship with positive psychological contract thus increasing engagement as well as retention of the employees. With employer branding as a strategy the organisation can treat workforce as the wealth-co-creator wherein employees as partners in the organisation work towards rewarding career goals as well as use their business acumen for the organisation to achieve newer heights.\nLimitations and future research: The findings and interpretation of the current research must be understood with certain limitations. It is important to state that the hypothesized relationships exist for the cross-sectional dataset but no findings for the causal relationships can be asserted. A longitudinal study in the same regard can add depth to the results of the current study. Second, the research focuses on the employee engagement as the outcome, it is imperative to state that there can be other outcomes which can be linked to employer branding and since India is a growing economy and a hub for talent, future studies should examine other outcomes like job satisfaction, organisational citizenship behaviour to ascertain whether the affirmative outcomes are reproduced across other outcomes. Also, the future studies can also examine the negative effects of employer branding strategies, for instance, research can be conducted to examine if the organisation is not able to keep its brand promise to its employees, does it lead to any kind of psychological contract violation. Lastly, the outcome of the current study focuses only on the employees working in Indian off shore call centres and thus cannot be generalised in the Indian context. Therefore, it offers the researchers to conduct the research in other sectors as well as can serve as a foreground to compare the public and the private sector in India. Howsoever, the researcher presumes that due to the scarcity of management research on Indian soil pertaining to employer branding, this research serves as the foreground for future management research examining the outcomes of imbibing employer branding strategies as a part of their corporate strategy.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of employer branding strategy (a mechanism used by organisations to hire and retain competent talent) on employee engagement whilst simultaneously measuring the mediating effect of person-organisation (P-O) fit.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study analyses a sample of 296 employees working in the BPO sector in India. The proposed model is tested with the help of structural equation modelling.\nFindings: The findings of the research highlight that employer branding has an affirmative relationship with P-O fit and employee engagement. The findings also reveal that P-O effect has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between employer branding and employee engagement.\nPractical implications: Understanding and implementing employer branding strategies provides the organisation with a tool for not only harnessing good employees but also facilitates them to engage and retain them. Employer branding strategies ensure an increase in employee's sense of belongingness and alignment of goals. Value congruence in the form of person organisation fit also ensures that employees believe that they are valued across the organisation and may go an \"extra mile\" to achieve organisational objectives.\nOriginality/value: Employer branding is a comprehensive strategy which can be used by employers to attract and retain talented employees. In a global economy where a talented workforce is scarce and has plenty of choices available to them, firms can use employer branding as a strategic opportunity to enhance employee engagement.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Antecedents of green consumption: a scale of measure	[ "Background of consumption", "Environmentally friendly consumption", "Scale of measure" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of environmental challenges. For example, in France, this environmental awareness has translated into action for 82 per cent of those who say they have changed their behaviour in favour of the consumption of environmentally friendly products (Ademe Press and Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maitrise de l'Energie, 2014). Another example concerns the considerable growth of the organic market, which represented $29bn in North America, $31.7bn in Europe and $4.2bn in Asia in 2012 (Agence Bio, 2014a). To address this situation and operate effectively, firms need to adapt and better understand this new type of purchase.\n2. Challenges for green consumption: 2.1 Green consumption or environmentally aware consumption\n3. Research methodology and results: 3.1 Qualitative study\n4. Conclusion: 4.1 The contributions of the research\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to provide a scale of measure that is based on the antecedents of environmentally friendly consumption, which will measure multifaceted profiles and apply to several product categories over the long term.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The list of antecedents is derived from the literature and a qualitative study. Exploratory and confirmatory analyses using two samples of respondents are conducted to validate the scale.\nFindings: The results suggest the use of a scale with three multi-dimensional facets when examining the antecedents of environmentally friendly consumption. The first facet is called \"barriers to purchase\" and has a four-dimensional structure; the second facet is called the \"relationship with the product\" and has a two-dimensional structure; and the third facet is called the \"propensity to consume environmentally friendly products\" and has a four-dimensional structure.\nResearch limitations/implications: Future research should seek to test and confirm the version of the global tool of measure proposed in this study.\nPractical implications: Firms can use the tool to better understand the reasons to buy or not buy green products. They can now have multifaceted profiles to better comprehend environmentally aware consumption and to adapt their marketing strategies.\nOriginality/value: The tool of measure proposed here highlights the predictive indicators of green consumption based on its antecedents. Because these antecedents can differ not only in their nature but also in their intensity, combining them to develop a global tool is necessary.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How to improve organizational performance through learning and knowledge?	[ "Human resource management", "Organizational learning", "Organizational innovation", "Knowledge management capability", "Organizational performance", "Learning", "Knowledge management", "Taiwan" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The technological revolution is accelerating a global transformation of the competitive environment. Consequently, traditional organizational management is no longer perceived as an appropriate strategy in current markets. As a result, businesses must sustain their competitive competence through uninterrupted enhancement and innovation. In fact, businesses need competitive strategies and innovation in order to survive and react to the challenges and opportunities in the modern competitive environment. Resistance to innovation is likely to result in a business's downfall (Leavy, 1998). Globalization has not only opened international trade markets, which brings numerous businesses opportunities; but this phenomenon also opened the door to numerous competitors. Thus, \"employees\" are no longer considered as \"laborers\" who only contribute their manpower.Gates (1999) suggests every person in the job market should be considered a knowledge worker in such a speed-emphasized era. In fact, human resource is considered the most important asset that any company must treasure. It is especially essential to implement a successful knowledge management environment in order to offer the resources at the right place at the right time to knowledge-workers holding multi-nation and multi-cultural views. However, successful knowledge management is dependent on a well-functioning human resource management and the employees' perceived behavior in knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and knowledge application (Lord and Farrington, 2006). Therefore, appropriate human resource management is one of the critical factors for effective knowledge management (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). In other words, successful corporate knowledge management comes from the support of top management and the fundamental investment of human resource managers. It explains how organizations establish that mature human resource management systems are becoming an important issue in the contemporary business environment.The benefits of knowledge management result from a combination of appropriate organizational culture and structure. To deal with this issue, past research has explored the critical success factors for implementing KM (Wei et al., 2006). Davenport and Prusak (1998) pointed out the goal of knowledge transfer is to enhance organizational action power through shared vision and utilization of past experience, which is also perceived as the process of organizational learning. Current studies indicate that a number of organizations have implemented organizational learning strategies (e.g. Lee and Gandolfi, 2007). However, it is concluded that insufficient organizational infrastructure and inappropriate diffusion processes have decreased the value of knowledge management and led to employee disappointment. Therefore, establishing a systematic organizational structure and fostering an organizational culture that promotes active information sharing, and ensures the circulation of knowledge sharing channels are critical issues that should be the focus of all modern organizations.Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 1996) indicates that contemporary economies are increasingly based on knowledge and information. OECD analysis is increasingly directed to understanding the dynamics of the knowledge-based economy and its relationship to traditional economics. According to OECD, knowledge-based economy is directly based on the production, distribution and use of knowledge and information, and it is considered:* an innovative economy, in terms of knowledge content;* a networked economy, in terms of knowledge presentation;* a learning economy, in terms of knowledge social type; and* a green economy, in terms of organization sustainability.This is also reflected in the trend in OECD economies towards growth in high-technology investments, high-technology industries, more highly-skilled labor and associated productivity gains.This study aims to propose a model to explore the relationships among human resource management, organizational learning, organizational innovation, knowledge management capability and organizational performance using structural equation modeling. The research participants are from 208 electronic manufacturing companies. The study particularly targets management-level personnel (e.g. line managers, knowledge management officers, human resource management or training department directors) and explores their complete perception of the implementation of knowledge management. The following sections present the theoretical development of the ten hypotheses (to achieve the research objective mentioned above), its method, analysis and result, followed by discussions, conclusions, and managerial implications.\n2. Theoretical development and hypotheses: 2.1 Human resource management and organizational learning\n3. Method: 3.1 Sample and data collection\n4. Analysis and result: The structural equation modeling approach is a multivariate statistical technique for testing structural theory (Tan, 2001). This approach incorporates both observed and latent variables. The analysis for the present study was conducted using LISREL 8.52 and utilizing the maximum likelihood method. In the proposed model (Figure 1), HRM is considered an exogenous variable, and OP is considered an endogenous variable. OL, OI, and KMC serve as both an endogenous variable (to OI, KMC, and OP) and exogenous variable (to HRM, OL, and OI). The individual questionnaire items were aggregated into specific factor groups. The following four rules were utilized for the hypotheses' structure:1. each observed variable has a nonzero loading on the latent factor within the structure, but have a loading of zero towards other latent factors;2. no relationship among measurement errors for observed variables;3. no relationship among the residuals of latent factors; and4. no relationship among residuals and measurement errors.The reliability results are illustrated in Table III, Table IV, Table V, Table VI, and Table VII (i.e. observed variables reliability).Additionally, the analytical results of the LISREL model reveal a satisfactory fit for our sample data. The final result of LISREL analysis is shown in Figure 2.The final SEM model analysis is presented in Figure 2. The absolute fit measures (GFI=0.91, AGFI=0.88\\; and\\; RMSEA=0.036) indicate that the structural model either meets or exceeds recommended levels, and thus represents a satisfactory fit for the sample data collected. The Chi-square statistic divided by the degrees of freedom also indicates a reasonable fit at 1.26. It can be concluded that the proposed model maintains good construct validity (see Table VIII for the statistics of the fit test of the model). Based on Figure 2, nine out of ten hypothesized relationships (H1, H2,H3, H5,H6, H7,H8, H9,and H10) show statistical significance.\n5. Discussion: The following discussion is based upon the results of the LISREL analysis (shown in Figure 2). It is first noted that HRM has a positive direct influence on OL, OI and KMC (H1, H2 and H3 are supported) but has no direct influence on OP (H4 is not supported). However, HRM has an indirect influence on organizational performance through organizational learning (by H1 and H7), organizational innovation (by H2 and H9) and knowledge management capability (by H3 and H10).The results of the current study fail to support the findings of prior studies concerning the influence of HRM on OP (e.g. Wright and Boswell, 2002; Collins and Smith, 2006), since we found no direct influence of HRM on OP (i.e. H4 is not supported). However, based on the structure of our research model, which includes OL, OI and KMC, the results seem to be reasonable. That is, the model suggests that an organization needs to effectively and efficiently manage OL activities and leverage OI and KMC by implementing an effective HRM system to enhance OP, since HRM can affect OP positively through OL, OI and KMC (i.e. H7, H9 and H10 are supported).In addition, support for H1 concludes with the argument that HRM plays a pivotal role in facilitating OL, as proposed by a number of scholars (e.g. Lopez et al., 2006; McLean, 2006). It also shows that HRM has direct and positive effect on OL as well as KMC, which is supported by several studies (e.g. Shipton et al., 2005; Ikeno et al., 2007).From the perspective of OL, the study concludes that it has a positive effect on OI, KMC and OP. Support for this conclusion can be found in many studies (e.g. Ju et al., 2006; Ruiz-Mercader et al., 2006). Moreover, past research (e.g Bonifacio and Molani, 2003; Aragon-Correa et al., 2007) is in line with the finding of the present study that OI has direct and positive effect on KMC and OP. Last, as with previous research (e.g. Bogner and Bansal, 2007), the results of this study support the finding that KMC significantly affects OP.\n6. Conclusion and managerial implications: The findings of this study have been largely unexplored by prior researchers. The results indicate that HRM can only indirectly impact OP though OL, OI and/or KMC, although HRM still has marginal positive effects on OP. This implies that all HRM policies or activities should be constructed to facilitate the activities of OL, OI and/or KMC, otherwise the positive effects on OP can not be achieved from the policies or activities of HRM alone. Thus, in order to enhance a firm's OL, OI and KMC, the top management in organizations should focus on formulating effective OL, OI and KMC polices, and facilitate their implementation. As Rezgui (2007) points out, a suitable HRM system is necessary to help organizations overcome barriers to achieve effective KMC, which consequently adds value to the firm. In the context of global companies and their human resource system, it is essential for a company to try to institute a standardized human resource management system in all or most of its facilities around the world (Ryan et al., 2003). One possible suggestion to the management may be to establish a reward system to motivate employees to devote their effort in OL, OI and KC activities in order to enhance OP.Several results of this study support the findings of prior research, which proposed a positive relationship between OL and OI, KMC and OP (e.g. Garcia-Morales et al., 2006). Past research indicates appropriate information technology is one of the critical factors to supporting learning activities (Real et al., 2006) and knowledge management mechanisms (Gray and Meister, 2006) within organizations. In fact, appropriate investment and adoption of advanced technology not only supports OL, but also helps knowledge capturing, storage, and distribution (Tidd and Trewhella, 2002). That is, technological-mediated learning and management of knowledge form a driving force on OL, OI, and KMC, which also influences the effectiveness of organizational operating systems (Real et al., 2006). It is evident that OL is often considered as one of the key performance indicators for international enterprises (Azadeh et al., 2007). According to Azdeh et al. the top management may improve existing management systems through OL practice, which ultimately increases OP.Last but not least, although the empirical results of the study largely support the current model, at least two limitations should be carefully considered. First, since individual informants provide the empirical data, possible biases may exist. Second, since the data were collected in Taiwan, the characteristics of the surveyed firms may be different from those in other regions or countries. Hence, the present results do not necessarily represent the general case. However, it may provide a fundamental reference for the firms located in other areas or countries whose environment is similar to those in Taiwan.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Through investigating the relationship among human resource management (HRM), organizational learning (OL), organizational innovation (OI), knowledge management capability (KMC), and organizational performance (OP), the aim of this paper was to find a way of improving organizational performance through learning and knowledge.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey questionnaire was utilized to collect data. The population of this study included 659 employees from electronic industrial listed and over-the-counter listed technological companies in Taiwan (N=208, valid return rate 37.21 percent). Descriptive statistics, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, as well as structural equation modeling were used for data analysis.\nFindings: - The results indicate that: HRM strategies result in better organizational learning, organizational innovation, and knowledge management capability, which ultimately contributes to achieving organizational performance; organizational learning improves organizational innovation and accumulates knowledge management capability; organizational innovation results in knowledge management capability development, which contributes to the establishment of organizational development; and technological companies should utilize organizational knowledge in order to enhance organizational performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The generalization of the present study is constrained by the existence of possible biases of the participants, and the regional-constrained data which were collected in and thus focused on Taiwan. Thus, the characteristics of the surveyed firms may be different from those in other areas or countries. Managerial implications are presented at the end of the work.\nOriginality/value: - This structure has rarely been explored and the findings are particularly useful for management in helping to set human resource management, learning, innovation, knowledge management and organizational performance in a bigger context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Attitudes of French pig farmers towards animal welfare	[ "Animal husbandry", "Agriculture", "Quality management", "France" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Between the 1950s and the early 1980s, animal production in Europe was aimed at meeting the main expectation of society: to produce at the lowest cost. Most of the farmers conformed to that. A good farmer was a man who was proud of his occupation and of reaching good technical performances. The present expectations of society appear to be much more complex: limitation of production, quality of products, respect of environment, and of animal welfare. Farmers should then not only take these new requirements into account but also gradually re-define the image they have of their own job, as well as their global professional ethics (Dockes and Kling-Eveillard, 2006). The Welfare Quality(r)\" project questions the opportunity to build specific quality schemes focusing on animal welfare. Our team is specifically responsible studying the French farmers' attitudes towards this kind of scheme. The present paper presents the results about the pig farmers.\nThe French context of pig production and its quality schemes: The French pig sector covers nearly 47,000 farms, which produced 25 million porker pigs in 2002, of which 92 per cent were marketed by producers' cooperatives. Having increased steadily for 15 years, production in France has stabilised and pig numbers remain at around 15 million pigs. Only one third of farms containing pigs (16,800) have over five sows or 20 pigs in total, but we chose to focus on this specific rather specialised population (see Figure 1 for a sight of the pig production structure).Compared to its European competitors, the French pig sector is of average size. The most common model in France is the farm with between 100 and 200 sows, with an average of 175 sows. About 28 per cent of pigs (7 million out of 25) are produced in quality assurance schemes. All of them are led by farmers' cooperatives. Usually farmers belong to one scheme only because the specifications of each are really different and because usually their cooperatives lead only one scheme. There are four kinds of schemes, as follows (see Table I).First, quality assurance schemes without or with few animal welfare requirements. Within these schemes, there are \"CCP\" (certificates of product conformity) schemes, concerning 4,480 producers and 25 per cent of production, and whose specifications do not contain requirements on farming practices. Then, there are \"Red labels indoors\" schemes, of which the only requirement concerning animal welfare is to have more than 120 per cent of the minimum regulatory surface area per animal in buildings. They apply to about 250 producers and 1 per cent of production. These labels procure an added value of around 2.5 per cent for the farmer, but only on the animals which are effectively accepted into the system (40 per cent of them on average). Additional production costs are significant (building surface-area, food) but the difference in the taste of the meat does not seem to be noticeable to the consumer. Second, we find quality assurance schemes with animal welfare requirements alongside others. For instance, we have an \"Outdoor red label\" or straw bedding system concerning about 330 producers and about 0.5 per cent of the production. Some of these labels favour rustic breeds of pig. Thirdly we find organic farming, with housing and animal welfare requirements, such as outdoor rearing or straw bedding, a ban on systematic tail docking and tooth clipping, concerning about 300 producers. Lastly, a very small quality assurance scheme based on animal welfare (Specific Animal Welfare scheme) exists, concerning only five farmers - \"Les Fermiers de l'Est\" (\"Farmers of Eastern France\"), with strict requirements in terms of animal welfare: straw bedding, large surface areas for animals, and no animal mutilation, alongside other specifications. In the French pig production, the proportion of quality assurance schemes including animal welfare requirements is very low. It represents only 2 to 3 per cent of production, and concerns about 900 farmers, i.e. only 4.5 per cent of farmers.\nResearch method: Sample and the choice of farmers interviewed\nMain findings: Analysis of the survey results reveals great diversity in the responses of the farmers, on the different themes and sub-themes analysed. This diversity is, according to the themes, more or less strongly associated with the schemes in which the farmers participate. Our paper will focus, on the one hand, on the transversal aspects, that is to say, those for which the diversity does not match the objective characteristics of the farmers, and on the other hand, to come back to the types of farmer, on describing the specificities of each one. We will then conclude by answering the question posed by the study, on the barriers and the motivations of the farmers regarding their participation in a restrictive animal welfare scheme.Transversal aspects of the farmers\nThe types of farmers identified: On certain themes, the responses and attitudes of the farmers differ according to their participation or not in a quality assurance scheme, and according to the level of stringency of their scheme regarding animal welfare. Their opinions are summarized in Table II.The farmers in the Thierry Schweitzer and organic farming schemes (8/62)\nConclusions: It is useful when concluding, to remember that our sample presents a large proportion of farmers committed to quality assurance schemes, which concern in fact only a minority of pig farmers, less than a few percent. The results of the surveys, then \"zoom in\" on opinions, which in reality are very little represented among the population of French pig farmers. We must also remember that the \"Fermier de L'Est\" scheme, started by Thierry Schweitzer is the only one to promote animal welfare as its primary aim.The analysis of the attitude of farmers towards their animals and animal welfare is important to study. In fact the very strong link between farmers' attitudes and the welfare and productivity of their animals has been clearly shown by many studies (Hemsworth, 2003). Therefore, promoting training courses for farmers to explain animal perception and welfare has been shown to be useful in helping to change farmers' attitudes and behaviours (Boivin et al. 2003). One of the uses of this research work is that it can help in the design new training programmes, by taking into account the farmers' motivations and perceptions.The definition of animal welfare by farmers participating in alternative schemes is more complex and more varied than for those not involved in a scheme. They mention natural living conditions and freedom. The definition of animal welfare by standard farmers is simpler. They mainly base it on the sanitary state and production performances of their animals, but they all say that the welfare of their animals is good. It is clear that the farmers can be divided into two groups regarding their vision of animal welfare. On the one hand, those who participate in restrictive quality assurance schemes in terms of animal welfare, and on the other hand, those who participate in not very restrictive schemes or who do not participate at all in a scheme, the so-called \"standard\" farmers.The farmers who participate in a restrictive scheme regarding animal welfare have varied and personal motivations. They mention the choice of production system, the choice of lifestyle, outdoor working conditions, and they consider important that animal welfare should be a requirement in the scheme specifications. They have not switched from \"standard\" production to an alternative mode, but have chosen from the outset a production mode which they mainly accept, even though the constraint of workload is sometimes mentioned.The standard farmers and the farmers participating in a not very restrictive scheme strongly highlight the financial aspects and the workload of the farmer as factors for participation, or reluctance (financial risk linked to niche products, working conditions perceived as restrictive in the outdoor and straw bedding systems). Reluctance is stronger in intensity in cases where the division is larger between the current system and the alternative system. Reluctance is reduced when the current system would not need much modification (for example a standard farmer with animals on straw bedding), but the nature of the reluctance (financial, workload) stays the same. All the farmers surveyed lament the bad image that pig production has in the eyes of the public. It is worth noting on this point that replying to the public at large and the consumer constitutes one of the satisfying aspects for the farmers participating in a scheme, whatever scheme that may be. They speak of \"producing quality\" and feel less concerned by criticisms than standard farmers, given their participation in a quality assurance scheme.For farmers participating in the quality assurance schemes surveyed, animal welfare is never highlighted as the motivation to participate in a scheme.The main levers for participating in a quality assurance scheme do not depend on the fact that they include requirements on animal welfare or not. They are financial, related to working conditions for the farmer, and also related to varied personal choice (linked to ethics, lifestyle etc.). The first two levers are easier to manoeuvre when carrying out a conviction strategy.Development of \"animal welfare quality assurance schemes\" in pig rearing seems linked to their capacity to find a profitable and distinct market, rather than the implementation of regulations. Quality assurance schemes which are not very stringent, are confronted with the difficulty, on the one hand, of obtaining a commercial distinction regarding the taste of products, or added value, which would compensate for the increased production costs, and on the other hand, with the existence of considerable reluctance found among the standard farmers. The more stringent quality assurance schemes are confined to niches, sustained by motivated farmers who have conviction in their choice, but the schemes are not very well-known. To develop these schemes, efforts would have to be made to communicate to the consumer and marketing would need to be carried out among large and medium-sized distribution circuits. Developing these schemes could be interesting for both farmers and animals because they allow a renewed \"social contract\" between man and animal (Larrere and Larrere, 2001). It is a real marketing and production challenge.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to describe the main characteristics of the animal welfare specifications in different quality schemes of the French pig sector; to present the French pig farmers' attitudes towards animal welfare in general, and illustrate different quality schemes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Prime source of data is interviews with 60 pig farmers. Supplementary sources are research reports and statistics, specifications of the quality schemes.\nFindings: - On many themes, the responses and attitudes of the farmers differ according to their participation or not in a quality assurance scheme, and according to the level of stringency of their scheme regarding animal welfare. For instance, farmers in the most stringent schemes define animal welfare as providing natural living conditions for the animals, whereas for farmers in no schemes, or in more intensive schemes, animal welfare is above all an animal in good health, for which one must provide correct housing and a balanced and sufficient diet. Animal welfare is almost always a part of more global quality schemes including environmental and high flavour quality aspects.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides insights into the different definitions of good animal welfare by French pig farmers, as well as their attitudes towards public regulations and different types of private schemes. This is interesting from a scientific point of view and to fuel the debate between a high level of regulation for all farmers, a market segmentation based on welfare specification, or a market segmentation in which animal welfare is one aspect of the specifications.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Inferring the as-built air permeability of new UK dwellings	[ "Compliance", "Mathematical modelling", "Airtightness", "Domestic energy use", "Inference" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Airtightness testing of new dwellings became mandatory in England and Wales in 2006 (ODPM, 2006) and in Scotland in 2010 (Scottish Government, 2010). This was partly as a result of the limited data available at the time showing that over 75 per cent of dwellings were not as airtight as their design specification (ODPM, 2004); therefore the stated aim of this new testing requirement was to reduce the number of poorly sealed buildings (ODPM, 2004).\n2. Data: This paper uses two data sets, one each from after and before the introduction of compulsory testing. The ATTMA data, testing procedures, metadata and data cleaning process are reported in detail by Love et al. (2017); with key features summarised in Section 2.1. The pre-regulatory testing data set used for comparison is described in Section 2.2.\n3. Methodology: The approach taken in this paper is statistical modelling, whereby a model is applied to a data set with the aim of extracting useful information about the data-generating process (Konishi and Kitagawa, 2008; Anderson, 2007). Using models to understand data is a standard technique in the field of energy and buildings. For example, at the simplest level it could entail linear regression (see e.g. Summerfield et al., 2010), whilst other studies use more complex models (see e.g. Rouchier et al., 2018). The appropriate level of model complexity should take into account the amount of structure present in the data - representing the complexity of the phenomenon being described as well as the ability to measure it - and the extent to which the phenomenon is understood and evidenced (Ashdown, 2018). While all models in the field of energy and buildings are abstractions of reality, some explicitly attempt to describe causal processes such as physical laws (e.g. Biddulph et al., 2014) and others encapsulate a large number of unknown physical and social processes without trying to model them explicitly (e.g. Huebner et al., 2016). The approach in this paper is situated in between these two approaches: we develop a mathematical representation of the socio-technical process of airtightness testing.\n4. Conceptual model of airtightness testing: A simple conceptual model of the current airtightness testing process, shown in Figure 2, is used as the basis for the analysis in this paper. The conceptual model is derived from simplifying Figure 8 in Love et al. (2017), and attempts to encapsulate the range of possible testing processes that may occur.\n5. Statistical model of airtightness testing process: We now express the above conceptual model of the testing process in terms of probability distributions. Two distinct phases of the process for constructing dwellings to a certain airtightness have been identified above and are treated separately in this model: dwelling construction itself, and post-construction sealing and remedial measures.\n6. Analysis: The aim of the analysis was to estimate the following outputs:\n7. Results: The most suitable model is shown in Section 7.1. Its parameters are given in Section 7.2 which gives insight into the current status of airtightness construction in the UK. The progress made since compulsory testing began is then explored in Section 7.2.\n8. Discussion: It has been possible to recreate the unusual shape of the ATTMA data distribution (Figure 1) using a simple model which learns its parameters from the data set. The model consisted of a lognormal background distribution and a set of exponential intervention distributions at five design targets located by the model. Figure 5 demonstrated that this model can recreate the main structure observed in the data, using ten parameters.\n9. Conclusion: This paper investigated the premise that a proportion of the dwellings with test results recorded in the UK's largest data set of airtightness test results, ATTMA, have already undergone post-construction sealing interventions to enable them to meet their design targets. The distribution of test data and a model of the testing process were used to infer the as-built air permeability of dwellings and the proportion not meeting their target in this state.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Compulsory airtightness testing was introduced for new dwellings in England and Wales in 2006 and in Scotland in 2010 to ensure that they are constructed according to design air permeability targets. These targets are set to limit heat loss through air infiltration. Previous work examining the large Air Tightness Testing and Measurement Association (ATTMA) data set of UK airtightness test data suggested that, in a proportion of dwellings, the targets were being met by post-completion sealing as opposed to airtight construction, but did not quantify the prevalence of this practice. The paper aims to discuss this issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this paper, the distribution of as-built airtightness and the proportion of dwellings undergoing post-completion sealing are estimated from the ATTMA data set covering 2015-2016. This is carried out by Bayesian statistical modelling, using the data set of recorded test results and a modelled representation of the testing process.\nFindings: This analysis finds the mode of the as-built distribution of air permeability as 4.38 +- 0.01 m3/m2h. It predicts that 39 per cent of dwellings aiming for one of the five most common design targets have sealing interventions at the point of pressure testing to meet their target. The as-built distribution of the ATTMA data is compared to airtightness test data obtained from just before compulsory testing was introduced, showing an improvement in the modal air permeability of 3.6 m3/m2h since testing became mandatory.\nOriginality/value: This paper has investigated the available data beyond simply what is reported, to estimate what the real levels of airtightness in the UK new build stock may be.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The relationship between working spaces and organizational cultures	[ "Organizational culture", "Change management", "Relationship", "Fit", "Organizational space", "Work groups" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: What is the role of fit in the relationship between the design of working spaces and organizational culture? Classic as well as more recent studies have pointed to the strong link between the culture of modern enterprises and their organizational spaces (Markland, 1995; Kallio et al., 2015). Previous research typically highlighted the importance of \"fit\" between organizational culture and space (Markland, 1995; Skogland and Hansen, 2017), indicating the physical setting as one of the key determinants of the organizational culture, including relevant outcomes such as job performance, innovation and job satisfaction (Hatch, 1993; Schein, 1984; Gibbert et al., 2014; Kallio et al., 2015), a major factor mediating between the organizational creativity and physical space (Kallio et al., 2015), a connection to the company's values and culture (Vischer, 2005), as well as a sign of culture (Carpenter et al., 2010). The purpose of the present study is to re-examine the role of fit in the relationship between the design of the working spaces and organizational culture. We entered the field initially with a deliberately broad research question:\n2. The relationship between the working spaces and the organizational cultures: The working environment, office design and organizational architecture have traditionally, as well as more recently, been mentioned as some of the most significant factors influencing the organizational culture (Hoskins, 2014). Office design has been considered as one of the visual elements and signs of culture (Carpenter et al., 2010), its support (Martens, 2011) and symbolic representation (Markland, 1995; Kornberger and Clegg, 2004). Previous studies (Markland, 1995; Kallio et al., 2015) have tended to hone in on the \"fit\" of the organizational spaces and cultures by assuming that fit leads to positive outcomes (Vischer, 2008; Skogland and Hansen, 2017). In particular, Augustin (2014) pointed to the positive influence of the workspace design on mood, engagement, performance and productivity of the employees. Several other authors (Baldry, 1997; Taylor and Spicer, 2007; Dale and Burrell, 2008) investigated the effects of fit on organizational behaviors, including satisfaction and perception of own productivity (Nieuwenhuis et al., 2014). In addition, Shellenberger (2011) studied the impact of space on behavior, finding an increase in employee productivity. At the same time, adding to Lefebvre's (1991) notion that social change depends also on spatial change, Vischer (2005) indicated that space can be used to modify behavior; however, spatial change can also involve pitfalls including territoriality and disturbed productivity of the employees. Similar assumptions have been explored by Carpenter et al. (2010), who pointed out that the same spatial solutions might not work for every organization.\n3. Methods: 3.1 Research design and theoretical sampling\n4. Findings: 4.1 Case #1: the American Parcel Service corporation\n5. Discussion and conclusion: The field was entered with the broad question: What is the role of fit in the relationship between the design of working spaces and organizational culture? Based on the qualitative study of the first (single holistic) case, it was discovered that a \"fit\" between space and culture at the company level of the studied 'Pyramid\" (Mars, 2008) leads to positive outcomes such as employee productivity, satisfaction and good functionality of the organization. However, the results at the work group level indicated that there are other moderating factors influencing these outcomes, such as the type of job and the personalities of the employees not considered by the author (Mars, 2008). Therefore, the research design was extended by comparing the results with the \"Module\" - an organization with the opposite incorporation level (Mars, 2008). The second (longitudinal) study was a case where the company made an attempt to change the organizational space (by implementing new buildings) to evoke positive outcomes (such as obtaining a new image and increasing the creativity of the employees). While studying this case, the focus moved to the second question, which emerged from the expansion of Mars's (2008) study: Is it possible to modify the organizational culture through the design of space? The observations indicated that both of the spaces (old - building with the separated rooms and new - open spaces) were \"fitting\" the corresponding cultural archetypes - old \"Pyramid\" and new \"Module\"; therefore, we tried to find out if the \"fit\" between the space and culture is sufficient to obtain positive outcomes. The outcomes at this level of analysis confirmed the emerging moderating factors from the initial study on the single holistic case and added new multiple embedded outcomes, both at the company level (implementation of the change management process) and at the work group level. Overall, the results showed that it is not only the \"fit\" between organizational space and culture in general that drives the outcomes in the cultural change, but the match between space, type of job, personality and seniority of the users of that space.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the role of fit in the relationship between the design of working spaces and organizational culture.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research is based on a set of two case studies compared on two levels of analysis (company and work group level). Empirical results are based on triangulated data involving observations, as well as interviews with the users, managers and designers of spaces in two organizations.\nFindings: The results suggest that the overall \"fit\" of space and culture are not sufficient to engender positive outcomes (such as job performance and employee satisfaction). In particular, the results point to the moderating factors on the work group level of analysis (such as the type of job and employees' personalities), as well as on the company level (implementation of the change management process), as crucial drivers of job satisfaction and productivity.\nOriginality/value: The authors demonstrate that a singular focus only on the fit between space and organizational culture leads to equivocal results in terms of cultural change outcomes. A more fine-grained analysis on the work group level considering the match between space, type of job, personality and seniority of the users of that space reconciles these differences.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Innovation from emerging market firms: what happens when market ambitions meet technology challenges?	[ "Innovation", "Jugaad", "Emerging nations", "Global competition", "Innovation development process", "Technology acquisition" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A growing body of evidence on innovation development by firms in emerging markets suggests that the approaches they follow differ from those predicted by conventional theories and assumptions, proposed by scholars and practitioners in Western, developed countries (Sharma and Iyer, 2012). Firms in developed markets generally recognize that innovation is critical for their growth and competitive advantage. Traditionally, innovation development process is considered as a linear process that starts from idea generation and ends with commercialization (Booz Allen Hamilton, 1982; Rothwell, 1994; Gopalakrishnan and Damanpour, 1997). An example of an innovation development process may be new need/new technology -; idea generation -; research and development -; production prototype -; manufacturing -; marketing and sales (Rothwell, 1994).\n2. Theory: Within Western societies, predominantly developed markets, the traditional organization of the scientific side of innovation took the form of a proliferation of research laboratories widely different in size, sponsorship, goals, personnel and facilities (Rosenburg et al., 1986). The traditional format of research was basic research -; applied research -; development -; (production and) diffusion (Godin, 2006). Later, the process for innovation development was broadened to include - needs -; idea generation -; research and development -; prototype -; diffusion (Rothwell, 1994; Gopalakrishnan and Damanpour, 1997). Also, developed country firms are focused on the returns from the financial costs of development, including costs of R&D, product and process changes and market tests (Sharma and Iyer, 2012). Projects are evaluated on the basis of returns on investments and profit margins, and successful projects are those that exceed the firm's expectations, leading to financial success driving innovation (Sharma and Iyer, 2012). In this regard, most traditional innovation programs are built on assumptions of developed world affluence and abundance (Prahalad and Mashelkar, 2010). Another very important aspect of Western innovation development process is that the majority of innovation outcomes are incremental that focus on continuous improvement to product features and performance and targets the firm's most attractive, profitable and demanding customers (Christensen and Raynor, 2003).\n3. A categorization framework of global market expansion by emerging market firms: To understand innovation beyond domestic markets, we develop a two-by-two categorization framework that captures the innovation development process of emerging market firms (Figure 1). The axes reflect insights provided by Prahalad and Mashelkar (2010), who describe technology dimensions (internally developed vs acquired), and Luo and colleagues (Luo, 2002; Luo et al., 2011), who delineate emerging firm market foci (domestic vs global). That is, the vertical axis represents the technology used by producers, which might have been developed internally or acquired. On the horizontal axis, we indicate whether the producer seeks domestic or global markets. With our focus on emerging markets and the unique manner in which they develop innovative products, this two-by-two matrix represents our attempt to categorize innovation development processes and the use of technology by emerging market firms.\n4. Case studies: To describe emerging market firms that have moved from domestic to global markets, we examine data available from firms in multiple emerging markets that started domestically but have since gained a global presence, in an effort to understand how they developed innovations and technology during this journey. These firms provide cases that can be used as illustrative examples. We used archival data, and as in previous research, case selection was based on data availability (Luo et al., 2011). The data that we sought included details on product introductions (approximate time and type), details about entry into foreign markets (approximate time and countries), details about licensing (time, type and technology), details about joint ventures (time, type, markets and technology), details about acquisitions (time, type, markets and technology) and financial outcomes. Finally, we cross-checked the obtained information from multiple sources.\n5. Insights from the case studies: In analyzing cases, we could classify firms into stages based on the classification framework proposed in Figure 1. For most of our case studies (three), firms started in the domestic markets, internally developed technology cell, then gravitated to domestic markets, acquired technology, before moving into the global markets, acquired technology quadrant and, finally, reached the global markets, internal R&D quadrant. Interestingly, Mindray after entering global markets acquired domestic firms, a pattern that we did not observe in other firms. BYD China followed the path of domestic markets, internally developed technology -; domestic markets, acquired technology -; global markets, acquired technology, but one would expect that it will soon reach the stage of global markets, internal R&D.\n6. Discussion: The goal of the paper was to address two research issues. First, we examined innovation development processes adopted by emerging nation firms to determine how they innovate. Second, we examined if the migration of firms from domestic to global markets is defined by specific and unique innovation processes.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Western business-to-business firms are under increasing competition from firms in emerging nations. As examples, Mindray in medical devices, LiuGong in earth moving equipment, Tata motors in Buses and Suzlon in Wind turbines are emerging as strong competitors in their industries. Yet despite increased competition from emerging nation firms, insufficient research has examined the growth of these firms, specifically in the areas of technology and innovation development processes. The purpose of this study is to examine how emerging nation business-to-business firms that have global ambitions achieve technology competence.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors examined several case studies on emerging market business-to-business firms that have moved to global markets and highlight the following five: LiuGong China (excavating products), Mindray China (medical equipment), Suzlon Energy India (wind generators), Tata Motors Buses India and BYD Auto China (batteries to electric cars). The firms are in business-to-business markets, except for BYD China that emerged as a business-to-business battery supplier but is currently in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets.\nFindings: The authors find that firms in emerging markets that have global ambitions follow different approaches to innovation development processes from conventional theories and assumptions held by scholars and practitioners in Western developed countries. Our cases suggest that firms follow the proposed progression: domestic markets - internally developed technology; domestic markets -acquired technology; and finally to, global markets - acquired technology.\nResearchlimitations/implications: The authors contribute to research in three areas. First, they suggest that the innovation development process for emerging market firms is different from the Western world. Second, they provide a framework of innovation development process that can be tested in multiple environments. Third, this study suggests a deeper examination of the longitudinal development of business-to-business firms, an area that has received less attention.\nPracticalimplications: The authors suggest that firms need to better track their competition from emerging nations because emerging nation firms can quickly acquire technology to become strong competitors.\nOriginality/value: Extant research has not examined these issues.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The influence on export performance of performance ambiguity among foreign sales agents	[ "Export", "Export performance", "Performance ambiguity", "Opportunism", "Sales agents" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The increasing globalization of economies, and growing worldwide competition, motivates firms to grow beyond their home market. The most popular way to expand across borders is simply by exporting (Leonidou and Katsikeas, 2010). According to The World Bank[1], the influence of exporting on world gross product has shown a steady growth from 12 per cent in 1960 to 28 per cent in 2016. Because of the importance of exports in creating economic value, an understanding of the drivers of firms' competitiveness in foreign markets must also encompass the barriers that affect firms' ability to compete in export markets (Morgan et al., 2012; Cavusgil and Zou, 1994).\nTheoretical background and conceptual framework: To elaborate on factors inhibiting export performance, this study integrates core dimensions within transaction cost analysis (TCA) and agency theory. Although TCA and agency theory are concerned, respectively with governance modes, or control modes, these theoretical avenues are implemented in previous research analyzing, for example, precursors of exchange partner commitment (Anderson and Weitz, 1992), degree of expectations of relationship continuity (Heide and John, 1992), export intermediary performance (Peng and York, 2001) or market selection (He et al., 2016). Moreover, TCA and the related agency theory focus on curbing transaction costs by prescribing governance, or control modes, that may reduce costs - or negative dimensions - in an exchange relationship. As such, these theories offer a suitable theoretical framework for analyzing factors inhibiting export performance.\nMethodology: Research setting\nAnalysis: A structural equation modeling approach may be used to simultaneously examine both direct and indirect effects of predictive variables on the outcome. The method tests hypotheses about the relationships among observed and latent variables, incorporating both variables. Structural equation modeling is widely used in behavioral science (Kline, 1998; Byrne, 2001), and adopted here to investigate the role of export performance in international relationships. This methodology usually entails a confirmatory approach and can be separated into measurement models and structural models. The recommended two-step approach to model construction and testing was adopted (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988) and uses SPSS 24 and Mplus 8 statistical analytical software applications to evaluate the collected data.\nDiscussion and implications: The aim of the present study is to examine to what extent performance ambiguity influences export performance directly through misdirected efforts, or indirectly through shirking by the foreign sales agent. The results support H1 and H2. Performance ambiguity relates negatively to export performance, and positively to sales agent opportunism. On the other hand, H3 is not supported. Sales agent opportunism does not seem to influence export behavior negatively, compared to the difficulties in evaluating sales agent performance. The results indicate the importance of the evaluation problem in relation to independent sales agent performance in international relationships.\nLimitations and future research: The present study contains a theoretical framework that proposes performance ambiguity and opportunism as inhibiting dimensions of international relationships, with possible deteriorating effects on export performance for sales agents, which somewhat limits the applicability of results at the firm level. For example, the study examines the overall effect on export performance, not specifying the product category involved in the exporting, or the principal firm's resources. Goods-dominated product categories may entail less performance ambiguity than more complex services. Firms that are better endowed with resources could prove to experience fewer evaluation problems with a foreign sales agent. Future research should include these dimensions, as well as others which affect possible antecedents of performance ambiguity or opportunism.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the extent to which exporter difficulties in evaluating foreign sales agent performance affect export performance, either directly or as mediated by opportunism.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In developing the hypotheses, the study integrates transaction cost theory and principal-agent theory. The proposed relationships between the constructs (performance ambiguity, opportunism, and export performance) are examined for a multi-industry sample of Norwegian exporters in their dealings with foreign sales agents. A survey of 410 qualified key informants yielded 101 usable questionnaires - a response rate of 24.6%. Structural equation modeling is used for data analysis and hypothesis testing.\nFindings: The analysis finds support for the hypothesis that sales agent performance ambiguity relates negatively to export performance. While performance ambiguity is positively related to sales agent opportunistic behavior, opportunism does not significantly influence export performance. It seems that the adaptation costs created by the evaluation problem are of greater importance in reducing export performance than the costs created by opportunistic behavior.\nResearch limitations/implications: In focusing on the core dimensions of sales agent performance in foreign markets, other factors influencing export performance are not included. The fact that small Norwegian firms dominate the sample, further limits application and generalization of the findings. Hence, results should be interpreted with caution and the study considered as investigative. Nevertheless, the results indicate to export managers and theory potentially deteriorating dimensions in the relationship between exporter and foreign independent sales agent.\nOriginality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to examine how performance ambiguity and opportunistic behavior among foreign sales agents affect export performance. By concentrating on basic deteriorating dimensions, the study adds to the few that focus on inhibiting drivers of exporter - foreign-sales-agent relationships.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Hotel guests' social media acceptance in luxury hotels	[ "Technology acceptance", "Theoretical model", "Luxury hotel industry", "Social media networks" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The emergence of Web 2.0 has revolutionized the way people communicate, search for information and share experiences (Minazzi, 2015). This phenomenon has led to an increase in the popularity of social media networks (SMNs), such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Myspace and Google+ (Leung and Bai, 2013). Minazzi (2015, p. 12) defines SMNs as \"websites that allow subscribers to connect and interact with other people [...] [which] creates a group of people who share information and content\". A majority of consumers gain luxury experiences by living vicariously through consumers who share their stories via SMNs. Taylor et al. (2015, p. 90) found that luxury and budget hotels have distinctively different approaches to the use of SMNs. While budget hotels focus on selling their products, a luxury hotel aims to \"to keep its guests satisfied by letting them know that the hotel employees and associates were listening and easily accessible for any help\". Therefore, luxury hotels seem to view SMNs as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool rather than a distribution channel (Akbar et al., 2016). In fact, Cervellon and Galipienzo (2015, p. 429) confirmed that SMNs are particularly important for the luxury hotel industry, \"where communication is more emotional than informational\" and where consumers are more interested in collecting and reviewing information during their decision-making process. Therefore, luxury hotels are strongly dependent on the social and engagement aspects of SMNs, and they do not market their offers on static websites because guests are able to \"reflect immediately on their experience\" (Cervellon and Galipienzo, 2015, p. 429). However, research on the acceptance of SMNs in the luxury hotel context is scarce.\nLiterature review: Social media in hotel context\nQualitative research methodology: Baron et al. (2006, p. 112) emphasized that research has proven traditional TAM constructs as significant within organizational settings; however, \"current definitions of the key constructs of TAM can be inadequate for technology-based services where the consumers have co-created value of the service\" as it is the case with SMNs. Therefore, Baron et al. (2006) pointed out the importance of qualitatively identifying consumers' perceptions in regards to researched technology prior to the actual developing of the TAM model and its external dimensions. Ayeh et al. (2013a) supported Baron et al.'s conclusion, and their study revealed that SMN research should identify context-specific external dimensions when researching travelers' acceptance of SMNs.\nAnalysis of qualitative research: Within this analysis section, the researchers refer to the interviewees as G1-G16. The interviewees' profiles included eight males and eight females ranging in age from 25 to 54 years. Their professions ranged from management positions to students and housewives. In total, the researchers found five external dimensions that influenced luxury hotel guests' SMN acceptance.\nQuantitative research methodology: Measurements\nQuantitative research results: The researchers conducted an exploratory factor analysis to test the main constructs' factor structure and respective internal reliability. For the confirmation of the measurement model, they applied the partial least square (PLS) technique using SmartPLS 2.0 (M3) Beta software (Ringle et al., 2005). PLS is a well-established technique for estimating path coefficients in structural models and has been widely used in various research studies (Ali et al., 2016). The PLS technique has become increasingly popular in marketing and in management research in the past decade because it can model latent constructs under conditions of non-normality using small to medium sample sizes (Hair et al., 2011). The rule of thumb for the required sample size to conduct traditional SEM covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) is having at least five respondents per indicator in the measurement model (Peng and Lai, 2012). The sample size for this study is 258, which is lower than the required minimum sample size of 315, justifying the usage of PLS-SEM. In addition, analyzing the skewness and kurtosis values for all of the measurement items also indicates that assumptions of normality were partially violated for the dataset, further strengthening the usage of PLS-SEM. Moreover, PLS is also considered useful for complex and predictive models and has been commonly adopted in previous TAM research, as it requires a smaller sample size to draw reliable conclusions with a recommended sample of at least 200 (Venkatesh and Bala, 2008).\nDiscussion and conclusions: Conclusion\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to propose and test a modified technology acceptance model for the social media networks (SMNs) in the luxury hotel context, integrating satisfaction and continued usage intention, using a mixed-method approach. SMNs have revolutionized the way people communicate, search for information and share experiences. The technology acceptance model is the predominant theory for researching technology acceptance; however, there is a gap in identifying and testing context-specific constructs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper uses a mixed-method approach. The researchers conducted 16 interviews and 258 questionnaires with luxury hotel guests. Following the collection of data, interviews and questionnaires were analyzed using thematic and partial least square analysis.\nFindings: Findings show that accessibility, trust, social influence and perceived benefits influence perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, which affect attitude and satisfaction and ultimately continued usage intentions. Findings also reveal that enjoyment, although qualitatively proposed, does not influence luxury hotel guests' SMNs continued usage intention.\nPractical implications: This study suggests that hotel managers have to concentrate their marketing efforts in enhancing SMN's interaction and increasing the number of positive reviews to retain current customers and acquire new ones. Hotels should also develop effective mobile strategies by adopting mobile social network webs and applications, as accessibility becomes more important in today's marketplace.\nOriginality/value: Former scholars adopted the approach of proposing external dimensions based on previous research and, thus, did not integrate up-to-date and context-specific variables. Therefore, the present paper uses a new approach by exploring SMN-specific dimensions and testing them in the luxury hotel context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Analytic perspectives on online purchasing in hotels: a review of literature and research directions	[ "User generated content", "Consumer behaviour", "Hotel", "Mobile purchasing", "Online purchasing", "Online travel agencies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The increasingly symbiotic interconnection between information technology (IT) and the hotel industry resulted in the incorporation of IT in almost all tasks and core functions of the hotel (Lai, 2015). As a result, electronic commerce (e-commerce) ecosystems emerged to support the most essential function: online purchasing. In such contexts, the difference between traditional and contemporary purchasing lies in the extensive use of IT networks that facilitate online purchasing (Morosan and Jeong, 2008). To support such commercial mechanisms, hotels have deployed tools that facilitate online purchasing while incorporating elements that allow consumers to recognize, design and appropriate value (Lim, 2009). Consumers have developed online purchasing habits that are unique to the hotel industry (e.g. make their own bundles in the online retail space and efficiently use search tools mechanisms), which are heavily mediated by IT (Morosan and DeFranco, 2015).\nReview of literature: Contextually, this study focuses on the hotel industry. However, as consumer experiences naturally transcend from singular transactions/industries to multiple transactions/environments to form the broader travel experience (Mohammed et al., 2015), it is necessary to also accept contextual foci that span beyond the traditional hotel (Leiper, 2008). This view is grounded in the notion that the purchase decision for a distinct hotel consumption episode is likely to be linked to other subcomponents of a broader experience (Leiper, 2004) and permits a better explanation of purchasing (Law et al., 2012). It is also critical to define the hotel product/experience. Despite the changes in the service provision models (Chathoth et al., 2014), the fundamental attributes of a hotel experience remain the same (Nyheim and Conolly, 2012), and may be divided into a core component (i.e. room/bed) and an augmented component (e.g. number/quality of TV channels, Wi-Fi, etc.) (Kotler et al., 2016). While augmented components serve critical roles in product differentiation, the core products still remain the major objects of online purchasing (Estis Green and Lomano, 2012).\nMethodology: In line with recent literature reviews (Amaro and Duarte, 2013; Buhalis and Law, 2008; Leung et al., 2013), we followed a rigorous set of steps to ensure proper coverage of relevant research. First, the search keywords were chosen to reflect the term \"online purchasing\" and its semantic network (Amaro and Duarte, 2013; Leung et al., 2013). The keywords were derived from terms commonly used as keywords in the literature and based on the logical connections to online purchasing. Examples of search words included \"online buying\", \"behavior\" and \"website adoption\". The types of work included in this review were full-length published research articles (Morosan et al., 2014). Second, the time frame of the search was restricted to articles published after 2006, to cover the most recent 10 years of research in online purchasing and to avoid empirical results referring to online purchasing IT or business models that are obsolete. The search was conducted in the fall of 2016.\nFindings: Online consumer behavior\nConclusions, recommendations for future research and limitations: First, we conclude that the discrete transaction per se represents the focal element in the hospitality scholarly research in online purchasing. There is an opportunity for researchers to focus beyond discrete transactions to examine how hotel products are being marketed, sold and evaluated in online environments beyond one single transactional platform. This orientation would give researchers opportunities to better understand issues that have tremendous importance for both hotels and consumers. For example, while rate parity is still an issue that influences how inventories are being presented and sold across multiple channels in the USA, it is no longer a critical issue in other parts of the world. In line with rate parity, scholars can focus on the role of pricing regulations or the manner in which online purchasing platforms are used by various segments of consumers. The value of research could reside in understanding the global differences in the business environment and how this environment influences the development of various online purchasing customer interfaces and corresponding business models.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: As scholarly research in online purchasing increases in size and scope, understanding the manner in which consumers engage during online purchasing in hotels is critical. The purpose of this study is to provide an analysis of the current online purchasing research pertaining to the hotel industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A content analysis was conducted of 85 peer-reviewed articles published between 2006 and 2016 in hospitality and tourism journals to uncover the most critical aspects of online purchasing in hotels. Keyword searches and specific search parameters (e.g. literature time frame and locus of search) guided the review of the articles selected for the analysis.\nFindings: This study recognizes that the discrete transaction per se represents the focal element in the hospitality scholarly research in online purchasing. It also recognizes the importance of the overall encompassing hospitality experience in creating and appropriating value for all stakeholders. Finally, the review found a strong orientation toward self-reported survey data as indicative of online transactions and the steps that precede them online.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study recognizes the present focus on discrete transactions and recommends expanding the focus to tap into more comprehensive purchasing processes that are mediated by technology.\nPractical implications: The analysis presented here offers practitioners insight into the value chain member and consumer behaviors that could be feasibly converted into actionable managerial practices.\nOriginality/value: In contrast to the reviews discussing online purchasing, this study provides a unique broad analytical perspective on the relationships among buyers, sellers, products, retail interfaces and consumer decision processes that characterize the hotel online purchasing environment, as reflected in the past 10 years of hospitality and tourism literature.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Rising use of "food aid" in the United Kingdom	[ "UK", "Food security", "Food banks", "Food poverty" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The rise of food aid provision and uptake, particularly in the form of food banks providing parcels of food for people to take away, prepare and eat, has become increasingly high profile and politicised in the UK in recent years. The country's largest group of food bank projects - the Trussell Trust Foodbank Network[1] - reports rising numbers of food parcels distributed from just under 41,000 in 2009-2010 to over 900,000 in 2013-2014 (Trussell Trust, 2013, 2014). These data are much cited as evidence of need for emergency food provision in the UK and as an indication of an emerging problem. In 2013, research by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty (Cooper and Dumpleton, 2013) estimated that 500,000 people were reliant on some form of food aid and Cooper et al. (2014) estimated that over 20 million emergency food meals were given out between 2013 and 2014. The growth of this charitable food assistance is situated within a context of rising food, fuel and housing costs, stagnating incomes and a wider backdrop of austerity and welfare reform (Defra, 2014; Lambie-Mumford, 2014; Cribb et al., 2013).\nThe situation in the UK: A particular terminology is emerging in the UK and \"food aid\" is increasingly being used by policy makers and NGOs (Cooper et al., 2014; Hansard, 2013b). This terminology is utilised in a way comparable to that of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra, 2013) to encompass a range of different types of short-term assistance with food, beyond the provision of food parcels, to include onsite and home-based meal provision. The term \"food bank\" appears to be widely used to refer to initiatives which provide emergency parcels of food for people to take away, prepare and eat, although the organisation and management of such initiatives vary (Dowler and Lambie-Mumford, 2014).\nImplications and future challenges: This current evidence base and the emerging public discourse around UK food aid has important implications and poses some immediate challenges for not only researchers but also policy makers and other stakeholders seeking to arrive at effective solutions to the apparent rising need. The reviews presented above reveal that the evidence base is highly limited, and there remains a need for a better understanding of the drivers of increased food aid use. However, even if/when this evidence is gathered what effective interventions would look like and which stakeholders have responsibilities for implementing them are key issues which will need to be confronted.\nConclusion: Whilst the evidence base in the UK is currently slim, what exists conveys the urgency of the need experienced by food aid users. Dramatically reduced or completely halted incomes appear to be driving individuals and families to food aid providers and this emergency food seems often to be drawn on within the context of complex household food and budgeting strategies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from two recent reviews on food aid use in the UK and discuss their implications and the challenges they posed for researchers, policy makers and the voluntary and community sector.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws on two research reviews conducted in 2013 and 2014.\nFindings: Whilst it is possible to draw important insights into key drivers of food aid use, how food aid is draw on by recipients and some of the perceived outcomes of the provision from the research that is available, ultimately the reviews highlight the emergent and largely unsystematic nature of the UK evidence base. The lack of agreed definitions and measures of food insecurity/food poverty further limits the knowledge base. Even where such evidence may be forthcoming, in terms of implementing effective solutions to the need for food aid, UK researchers, policy makers, NGOs and others face considerable challenges in terms of identifying responsibilities for addressing the causes of this need, which the most effective scale for response may be (local or national) and finally, overcoming a highly complex and not necessarily co-ordinated policy framework.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides a critical overview of the state of knowledge on food aid in the UK.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Impact of a retailer's CSR activities on consumers' loyalty	[ "Trust", "CSR", "Brand equity", "Loyalty" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Many studies have taken into account the economic and financial performance of a company as consequences of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities (e.g. Waddock and Graves, 1997; Luo and Bhattacharya, 2006). Nevertheless, a hierarchy of these consequences has to be established. The financial performance of a company is indeed a direct consequence of the benefits derived from the reputation (Anselmsson and Johansson, 2007; Aramburu and Pescador, 2019) and image (e.g. Gupta and Pirsch, 2008; Jahdi and Acikdilli, 2009; Cacho-Elizondo and Loussaief, 2010; Kim et al., 2014) acquired through its CSR activities. In essence, a company's CSR activities create intangible assets in terms of reputation and image that are difficult to copy and that create a competitive advantage (Porter and Kramer, 2006; Webb et al., 2008) which then translates into superior financial performance. Financial performance and thus firm value is a long-term consequence of a company's CSR activities (Melo and Galan, 2011). Luo and Bhattacharya (2006) highlighted for instance that consumers' satisfaction is a full mediator of the impact of a company's CSR activities on its financial value. Harjoto and Laksmana (2018) recently showed a positive indirect impact of CSR on firm value through the impact of CSR on risk taking. Therefore, Swaen and Chumpitaz (2008) state that it is essential to understand the mechanisms through which a company's CSR activities can have an impact on consumers and ultimately the financial performance of the company. CSR would therefore be a tool to create a deep and long-lasting relationship with consumers in order to build their loyalty towards the company through their identification with this company (Du et al., 2007; Marin et al., 2009).\nConceptual framework and research hypotheses: Definition and dimensions of CSR\nMethodology: Data collection\nResults: Groups formed\nDiscussion: The objective of this research was to study the impact of different dimensions of a retailer's CSR activities on consumers' loyalty towards this retailer. This research highlighted that: this impact differs according to the dimensions considered (philanthropic activities, respect for the environment, the consumers and the workers), is partially or fully mediates by consumers' trust in this retailer and/or retailer's perceived brand equity and depends on the groups of consumers considered (the very responsible consumers, the local sceptical recyclers and the least responsible consumers).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the main dimensions of a retailer's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities (philanthropic activities, respect for the environment, respect for the consumers and respect for the workers) (e.g. Maignan, 2001; Brunk, 2010a; Oberseder et al., 2014) on consumers' loyalty towards this retailer. Mediation (through consumers' trust in this retailer and/or retailer's perceived brand equity) and moderation effects (depending on the groups of consumers considered) are also studied.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This research was conducted on 547 consumers, representative of the Quebec population. These consumers were asked to select a retailer of their choice that they were familiar with (notably with its CSR activities) and to complete a questionnaire with regard to that retailer.\nFindings: This research highlights that: the impact of a retailer's CSR activities on consumers' loyalty differs according to the dimensions considered (philanthropic activities, respect for the environment, the consumers and the workers), is fully or partially mediates by consumers' trust in this retailer and/or retailer's perceived brand equity and depends on the groups of consumers considered (the very responsible consumers, the local sceptical recyclers and the least responsible consumers).\nResearch limitations/implications: This research indicates that when CSR is considered not as an aggregate construct, but in terms of its dimensions, their impacts on consumers' loyalty towards the retailer may differ or appear under certain conditions. Moreover, this research points out that consumers' trust in the retailer is a partial mediator (for the philanthropic activities dimension of a retailer's CSR activities for the very responsible consumers and the local sceptical recyclers) of the relationship between the dimension of a retailer's CSR activities considered and consumers' loyalty towards this retailer. Consumers' trust in the retailer is also a full mediator (for the respect for environment dimension of a retailer's CSR activities for the very responsible consumers) of the relationship between the dimension of a retailer's CSR activities considered and consumers' loyalty towards this retailer. Lastly, retailer's perceived brand equity is a full mediator (for the respect for environment dimension of a retailer's CSR activities for the three groups of consumers considered) of the relationship between the dimension of a retailer's CSR activities considered and consumers' loyalty towards this retailer.\nPractical implications: This paper indicates to retailers that the dimensions respect for the consumers and the workers of their CSR activities do not have an impact on consumers' loyalty. By contrast, for a retailer to be perceived by consumers as engaged in philanthropic activities or being environmentally friendly has a positive impact on consumers' loyalty.\nOriginality/value: In this research, CSR is conceptualised as a multidimensional construct and the impacts of its main dimensions (philanthropic activities, respect for the environment, respect for consumers and respect for workers) on an important and strategic variables for retailers, loyalty, are highlighted. Moreover, this research also indicates that the impacts of a retailer's CRS dimensions on consumers' loyalty depend on individuals and may follow different paths (through consumers' trust in the retailer and/or retailer's perceived brand equity).\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Does emotional intelligence and empowering leadership affect psychological empowerment and work engagement?	[ "Emotional intelligence", "Empowering leadership", "Psychological empowerment", "Work engagement", "Nurse", "Hospital" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: For more than three decades, leadership theory has mostly been applied across industries characterized by top-down bureaucratic systems (Amin et al., 2014; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007, Uhl-Bien et al., 2011). Researchers have suggested that organizations should move away from hierarchical approaches to empower employees (Fong and Snape, 2015; Zhou et al., 2018). Leadership roles are becoming more challenging, with leaders expected to display emotional intelligence (EI) in handling themselves and their employees (Hur et al., 2011; Li et al., 2016). Successful leaders manage their own emotions effectively and recognize the managing employees involves emotional processes, so EI is a prerequisite for successful leadership (Goleman, 1998; Goleman, 2004; Miao et al., 2018). Emotionally intelligent leaders are more committed to their work and perform better in the workplace (Castillo and Valle, 2017; Follesdal and Hagtvet, 2013; Gardner and Stough, 2002) compared with leaders having a lower level of EI (Hui-Wen et al., 2010; Watkin, 2000). In the hospital sector, Wang et al. (2018) emphasized the significant contribution of EI in the relationship between a nurse manager's leadership and a nurse's intention to stay. Nurses with a high level of EI exhibit higher work performance (Chen et al., 2015) and occupational well-being (Yan et al., 2018). Heffernan et al. (2010) showed nurses' emotions play a dominant role in their relationships with patients and families.\nTheory and hypotheses: Emotional intelligence (EI)\nMethods: Data collection process\nData analysis and results: Measurement model\nDiscussion and implications: Theoretical implications\nLimitations and future research: There are limitations to the extent that one might generalize the findings beyond the study context of private hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Expanding the research to public hospitals, other sectors and other countries would make it possible to explore whether relationships found between EI, EL and psychological empowerment and work engagement are context-specific or more generic in nature.Future research could also explore which elements of EI and EL affect psychological empowerment and work engagement, and which have most effect. There is also value in incorporating other variables, such as employee commitment as an independent variable and turnover intentions or other employee outcomes as dependent variables. The positive impact of EI on EL and of each on psychological empowerment appears to be unambiguously beneficial for employees, but the findings are less clear with respect to work engagement. It would therefore be of value in exploring the extent to which work engagement is perceived to be beneficial by employees given its association with work intensification (Truss et al., 2013) and its potential to undermine collective representation (Townsend et al., 2014).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The objective of this study is to investigate the role of emotional intelligence and empowering leadership in enhancing psychological empowerment and work engagement in private hospitals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed to staff nurses at five private hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 100 questionnaires to each hospital, with an achieved response rate of 34.8%.\nFindings: The results show statistically significant positive relationships between emotional intelligence, empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and work engagement. The relationship between emotional intelligence and work engagement and psychological empowerment and work engagement were not significant.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study found that employees who have a high level of emotional intelligence and the positive stimulus of empowering leadership demonstrate enhanced psychological empowerment and work engagement.\nPractical implications: A better understanding of the role of EI and EL in enhancing psychological empowerment and work engagement could help hospitals reduce turnover among nurses and improve their relationships with patients, as well as maintaining competitive advantage.\nOriginality/value: The study provides evidence to support the effect of EI on empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and work engagement in private hospitals.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Country-of-origin and brand redeployment impact after brand acquisition	[ "M&A", "Country of origin", "General country attributes", "General product attributes", "Purchase intentions", "Brand redeployment strategy", "Taiwan" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.\n1. Introduction: Consumers have access to a large amount of product information during their purchasing process (Ozretic-Dosen et al., 2007). Country-of-origin (COO) image is an important extrinsic product cue, and studies show that it affects consumer perceptions and overall evaluations of the product (Thakor and Katsanis, 1997). Country-of-origin also has a major influence on consumer tendencies to purchase products (Papadopoulous and Heslop, 2002; Knight et al., 2007). Previous studies demonstrate that consumer perceptions of brands or products decrease when the COO changes from a country with a superior association with the product category to a country with an inferior association with the product category (Jo, 2005; Pappu et al., 2006). As globalization continues, more successful companies from developing countries (i.e. low country-of-origin image) will attempt to acquire companies from developed countries (i.e. high country-of-origin image). An example of this is the largest Indian steelmaker, Mittal, acquiring French Arcelor (Craze and Deen, 2006). For companies with a low country-of-origin image, it is essential to understand how that image will impact their merger and acquisition activities. Understandably, studies on the country-of-origin's effect on M&A are almost non-existent because major M&As occur between multinational companies with high country-of-origin images (i.e. companies from developed countries).In addition to the influence of country-of-origin image, Balmer and Dinnie (1991) deduce that many M&A failures occur because companies fail to maintain the brand name's value during the merger process. A brand name is an another important predictor of perceived quality and purchase intentions (Ahmed and d'Astous, 1996). A brand name is a very valuable asset (Jaju et al., 2006). Successful companies invest years of marketing resources into developing and maintaining a brand name. A strong brand name communicates its image to consumers and helps develop customer loyalty and trust (Keller, 1998). When a company acquires another company, executives have many distinct options for corporate redeployment. Selecting the right brand redeployment strategy can set forth a compelling vision for the combined entity and send important signals to employees and outside world (Ettenson and Knowles, 2006). However, only one empirical study (Jaju et al., 2006) investigates different post-merger brand name effects on consumer trust and perception of the new brand. That study analyzes the typology of alternative brand redeployment strategies and examines different post-merger branding strategies. The present paper examines the impact of country-of-origin image on consumers' perception of the product and how to establish a successful brand redeployment strategy to ensure M&A success.\n2. Literature review and hypothesis: 2.1 Country-of-origin image conceptualization\n3. Method: 3.1 Measurements\n4. Conclusion and recommendations: In the future, more companies with low country-of-origin image, such as Lenovo, might attempt to acquire large international companies to rapidly gain market access, market share, technologies, know-how, and the most valuable intangible asset: a better brand. Yet their strategies will fail if they underestimate the impact of country-of-origin on their international M&A. As the Balance theory (Heider, 1958) posits, when consumers cannot reconcile incongruent thoughts about two products or brands, which then weaken perceptions on two products or brands. In the case of Lenovo, still a leading brand in China, the end result might be losing market share in Europe and the USA (Shang, 2006). For success, they must also implement a corporate brand redeployment strategy carefully that addresses consumer concerns to decrease consumers' uncertainness about the new brand.4.1 Recommendations\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This study aims to examine the country-of-origin's impact on consumer purchase behavior post-acquisition, especially when the acquirer-dominant business is afflicted by a low country-of-origin image and the acquired business enjoys a high country-of-origin image. This study also aims to examine brand redeployment strategy impacts on consumer purchase intentions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data are collected from an online questionnaire in Taiwan. A total of 325 usable questionnaires are returned. Data analysis is conducted using regress analysis and ANOVA.\nFindings: - These results indicate that general country attributes and general product attributes have a positive effect on purchase intentions. In addition, general product attributes play a mediating role between general country attributes and purchase intentions. These results further show that target-dominant redeployment strategy is the most powerful to purchase intentions. A company which wants to use M&A to increase market share must seriously consider general country attributes, general product attributes and brand redeployment strategy because these three constructs affect purchase intentions, and consequently maintain consumer loyalty and attract new customers.\nOriginality/value: - There were seldom studies which investigated country-of-image effect and M&A from marketing perspective. The major contributions of the study were investigating consumers' perception of the effects on country-of-origin image and the redeployment strategy on an acquired brand.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Whistleblowing: motivations, corporate self-regulation, and the law	[ "Whistleblowers", "Employer retaliations", "PIDA", "Sarbanes–Oxley act", "Whistleblowing", "Worker victimisations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Recently, whistleblower Edward Snowden, an employee of the US National Security Agency's (NSA) defence contractor disclosed the NSA's domestic surveillance programme, claiming concerns over its effects on privacy, Internet freedom and basic civil liberties (Greenwald et al,. 2013). US Federal prosecutors are reportedly filing charges against Snowden for espionage, theft and conversion of government property (Finn and Horwitz, 2013), even though hailed as a hero in the social media (Cohen, 2013). Interestingly, and in contrasting fashion, little, if anything, is heard about whistleblowers coming from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the USA Treasury (FinCEN Bureau), and this is attributed to the Bureau's conduct of an apparent unimpeded surveillance of American's financial activity and in plain sight probably for its deterrent effect and consequently nothing much to blow the whistle on (Matonis, 2013).\n2. Whistleblowers: Whistleblowing involving exposures of alleged wrongdoings as seen in the NSA leakage has a sensational quality of considerable interest to the media:\n3. Whistleblower motivations: Past and current circumstances suggest that there are those in workplaces noticing or suspecting wrongdoings going on but electing to remain silent. There are though on a relatively lesser extent those others who, despite appreciating the likely difficulties ahead, choose to disclose and these are likely to include those deeply affected by the severity of organizational harm they witnessed (Wortley et al., 2008; Near et al., 2004). There are yet others opting to use whistleblowing as a cover to pursue their own private grievances. Whatever the circumstances, workers commonly encounter a quandary which they still have to respond to, whether with appropriate guidance from the workplace or externally. In the end, they resolve this after going through complex socioeconomic, ethical, moral and interpersonal factors not as yet fully comprehended or that can be reliably foretold. What this boils down to is, workers in such situations undertaking some kind of cost-benefit analysis of these financial and nonfinancial considerations to drive their decisions or actions, meaning to reveal what they know or suspect or to remain reticent, and if the former to disclose internally or externally (Rapp, 2012; Rona, 2011).\n4. Internal versus external whistleblowing: Public scrutiny of business corporations in the USA, UK and elsewhere have in general fluctuated from tight to laissez-faire and back to tight supervision by various regulatory agencies, respectively, from the 1960s to 1970s, 1980s-2000s and from 2010 onwards. Throughout these regulatory supervision swings, business corporations for obvious reasons prefer the relatively light-touch approach of the kind promoted in the USA as part of the deregulation process and later in the UK of the kind promoted by the Financial Securities Agency, which played a big part in making London a leading global financial centre and copied across many jurisdictions. Light-touch supervision requires effective self-regulation, and business corporations will have to deliver this, failing which the state may return to intervene with more or enhanced regulations which can be costly and burdensome to the former. Corporations ignoring this may have to face the risks of exposure by external whistleblowing and so on, but the more responsible effective self-regulatory corporations would encourage control systems to include facilitation for internal whistleblowing whereby workers may in good faith disclose either to pre-empt or post facto to identify responsibility for corporate wrongdoings that causes or may cause potential physical or financial harm to the corporation, customers, fellow workers or the wider public. Hence, though once viewed as a challenge to the way corporations are run, whistleblowing is now increasingly widely perceived as integral to the self-regulatory socially responsible business enterprise (Pemberton et al., 2012).\n5. Whistleblower protection laws: Research on the effects of whistleblowing law in the UK in the initial ten years of PIDA revealed that working adults' knowledge of the whistleblowing law is low and protection to whistleblowers insufficient (Lewis, 2008). This was despite the increased in PIDA claims from 157 in 1999 to 1,761 in 2009, and the submission of over 9,000 claims alleging victimization [Public Concern at Work (PCAW), 2010]. Further, information on claims to the Employment Tribunal including those made under PIDA are not accessible to the public unlike civil cases, and against the proportion of settled PIDA cases, it is suggested that most probably, public concerns raised may remain unaddressed aggravated by pressures on whistleblowers to withhold consent for the information to be passed on to the regulators concerned. It also appears that eight of ten claimants first raised their concerns with their employers (but with only 1 per cent of these subsequently going to the media) and that 8 per cent of claimants raised their concerns with regulators. Thus far, over PS9.5 million have been awarded to successful claimants, with the average award at PS113,667.\n6. Reform initiatives: At the global level, Article 33 of United Nation Convention against Corruption, where the USA and the UK are signatories, requires participating countries to consider incorporating measures to provide protection against any unjustified treatment for any person reporting in good faith and on reasonable grounds to the competent authorities concerning offences stipulated in the Convention. UK's use of PIDA is criticized for its narrow interpretation of what constitutes as \"information\", while USA laws on whistleblower protection is criticized because the reasonable belief standard it uses is complex and troublesome, as it requires the specification of the underlying misconduct expected to result in unlawfulness or impropriety, and also that the information being disclosed could not have been disclosed otherwise and made outside regular employment channels (Soltes, 2012).\n7. Conclusions: Whistleblowers are impacted by tremendous personal, social and economic costs, but on the other hand they may be motivated by the desire to do the right things or out of altruistic concerns, the need to avoid personal liability, and in the case of those in the USA, the inducement by financial rewards. More research is nonetheless needed to establish which matters more. Whistleblowing laws in general function to instil ethical norms of behaviour to deter various wrongdoings from happening and to detect various ongoing organizational deficiencies from wastes to frauds. Empirical case studies in both the USA and the UK suggest that most whistleblowers disclose initially to their immediate superiors and they go external only when their employers failed to provide timely adequate response.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to investigate the motivation behind whistleblowing, the tussle between internal and external whistleblowing and the extent whistleblowing laws in the UK and the USA are able to provide protection to whistleblowers. While employees need to be protected against unfair retaliations for making legitimate disclosure, employers seek to prevent irreparable damage from abusive disclosure of sensitive corporate information.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A mix of legal examination and case study analysis of recent whistleblowing cases in the financial services sector is used in this study. It ergo relies mainly on primary data from recent applicable legislations and secondary data available in the public domain, journal articles, media reports and related academic texts.\nFindings: The study's findings and analysis suggest that whistleblowing law in the UK, namely, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 appears unable to promote effective whistleblowing awareness among working adults and adequate protection to whistleblowers. The situation is broadly similar in the USA with reports of serious employer retaliations though bounty awards available there have brought some relief to whistleblowers. Consequently, whistleblowing to help safeguard public interest is not appropriately encouraged and protected, suggesting the need for further reform initiatives.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research mitigates the limits of primary secondary data analysis through triangulation of different sources of data and from the use of different perspectives. This paper suggests that whistleblowing laws in the UK and the USA, while assuring protection for workers for reporting wrongdoings internally or externally to prescribed regulatory agencies, can in theory help the early detection of corporate wrongdoings like those witnessed in the 2007 global financial crisis as employees are likely to first witness such activities. In practice, because of fear of employer reprisals and other social and economic costs, whistleblowers frequently hesitated until way too late. The findings suggest that business corporations missed such occasions to beef up their internal controls and demonstration of their commitment to ethical governance; and ergo would need to address such issues more effectively.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes insights from a combined corporate management and legal analysis perspective. It suggests that this type of approach and analysis of whistleblowing would be helpful to employers, employees, policymakers and regulators, as whistleblowing is a complex process involving not just the law, but social, psychological and economic considerations. The paper, by providing further insights on the motivations behind whistleblowing including other considerations as well as the impact of current whistleblowing laws in the UK and the USA, supports earlier suggestions on the lack of whistleblowing contributions to various current financial scandals until way too late and the need to review these laws and current internal corporate controls reporting practices.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The problem of heterogeneity between protected geographical indications: a meta-analysis	[ "Meta-analysis", "Heterogeneity", "Food label", "Geographical indications (GI)", "Q13", "Q18", "C10", "C59" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The recurring debate about the quality of products with a geographical indication (GI) such as \"Parmesan cheese,\" \"Parma ham\" or \"Feta cheese\" reflects an increase in consumer uncertainty caused by a growing global product range with very heterogeneous quality standards (e.g. see Jahn et al., 2005; Becker, 2009; Herrmann and Teuber, 2011). Therefore, it is not surprising that many member states, as well as the EU itself, ask producers to provide a large amount of different information to safeguard the interests of consumers in their purchasing decisions. An important and influential quality signal for consumers is the regional origin of products, which often leads to an increased marginal willingness to pay (e.g. see Hoffmann, 2000; van Ittersum et al., 2003; Merel and Sexton, 2012).\n2. Literature review: A large number of empirical studies and research approaches attempting to quantify and identify the value of the GI quality signal are already in existence. Thereby, the marginal willingness to pay for the PDO or PGI label is defined as LE, with the assumption that the labeling of a GI implicates a positive quality signal. Accordingly, previous research contributions found significant and positive LEs for GIs in the majority of cases. But often, studies also observed high mark-up volatilities between individual PDOs and PGIs. And in some cases even negative values for PDOs and PGIs were found (e.g. see Hayes et al., 2004; Bramley et al., 2009; Herrmann and Teuber, 2011).\n3. Empirical method: As an extension to previous studies and the work of Deselnicu et al. (2013), this research paper analyses not only the most extensive meta-data set (see Table I), but include along with the meta-analysis an independent heterogeneity analysis (incl. moderator analysis), for the first time. This is not only to quantify LEs of the GIs, but also to test for statistically significant heterogeneity between the individual PDOs and PGIs.\n4. Results: 4.1 Meta-analysis\n5. Conclusion: The aim of this research paper was to quantify and evaluate empirically the marginal willingness to pay for the regional quality signal (i.e. label) of a GI according to Reg. 1151/12. The motivation was given by the requirement of the GEO-Regulation, which aims to establish \"the availability to consumers of reliable information [...] about [...] value-adding characteristics and attributes\" (Art. 1(1a-b) Reg. 1151/12) of PDO- and PGI-certificated products. But to justify the exclusive European GI regulation, it is necessary to prove the positive value of a GI quality signal (i.e. label) by quantifying its monetary value for the consumers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: For a long time the European geographical indication (GI) regulation has been of great interest to economists and policymakers. To justify exclusive European regulation it is necessary to prove the positive value of a GI quality signal (i.e. label), which is often achieved by quantifying its monetary value for the consumers. But even though a large number of literary contributions already deal with this question, they lack the evaluation of overall effect sizes for the GI label. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to quantify and evaluate the overall marginal consumer willingness to pay for the European GI label.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To reach this aim, a meta-analysis is used for which a literature survey had been carried out in order to determine the GI label effects (LEs). In addition to previous works, this paper not only includes a meta-analysis, but also implements a heterogeneity analysis to distinguish between the LEs of individual GI standards. To eliminate study- and product-specific determinants of heterogeneity, moderator variables are used.\nFindings: The empirical results indicate that consumers have a highly significant and positive marginal willingness to pay for GIs. However, the marginal willingness to pay differs significantly between the individual GI standards and indicates great heterogeneity between the protected products.\nOriginality/value: As an extension to previous studies and meta-analysis; this paper includes the most extensive GIs meta-data set so far, and conducts for the first time an independent heterogeneity analysis to distinguish between the LEs of individual GI standards and implements a moderator analysis to eliminate study- and product-specific determinants of heterogeneity from the GI effects.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Storytellers and their discursive strategies in a post-acquisition process	[ "Narratives", "Storytelling", "Change management", "Acquisitions and mergers" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Mergers and acquisitions are commonly characterized by the clash of cultures (Barros et al., 2003; Evans et al., 2002). Managerialism usually assumes two approaches to implementing the change process. The first is the logic of absorption that implies the intent of making the acquired company like the purchaser. It is supposedly accomplished by reproducing its values and practices. The second is the logic of integration, where the emphasis is on \"capturing hidden synergies by swapping and leveraging capabilities\" (Evans et al., 2002, p. 263).The implementation approach determines the level of change in the organizations (and impact on individuals) involved in the process (Barros et al., 2003; Evans et al., 2002; Marks and Mirvis, 1998). Absorption implies the dissemination of the acquirer's values, practices, and artifacts throughout the acquired organization. It aims at a high level of change for the acquired organization and little or no change for the acquirer. Integration, on the other hand, implies change for both organizations involved, and also for their employees.This paper analyzes discourse practices of three experienced executives during a post-acquisition process determined by the logic of absorption, by using discourse analysis (Grant et al., 2001, 2004; Hardy, 2001; Phillips and Hardy, 2002; Spink, 2004). Our main objective is to better understand how experienced executives use narratives and storytelling to frame - and reframe - their own role and to \"strategically\" position themselves in the change process.The paper is structured in four sections, besides this introduction: the next section presents a short review of existing literature on storytelling within the field of discourse analysis; we then describe the methodological approach, the context of the absorption process, and present three individual narratives of the change process; this is followed by an analysis of the similarities and differences among narratives and stories; we conclude by discussing the ambiguous nature of the official story, disseminated by the acquirer.\nNarratives, stories and storytelling: In recent years, influenced by the \"linguistic turn\" (Rorty, 1991), researchers began do perceive texts as important forms of social action (Linstead, 1999) and constituted a field of inquiry strongly influenced by socio-constructivist epistemology. This field is now based in a variety of research methods, which include the study of narratives (Czarniawska, 1998; Riessman, 1993) and stories (Boje, 1995; Gabriel, 1991, 2000), the comparison of competing narratives (Buchanan, 2003), the interpretation of symbolic speeches (Heracleous, 2006), discourse analysis (Grant et al., 2001, 2004; Hardy, 2001; Phillips and Hardy, 2002), and the study of language games (Mauws and Phillips, 1995).Narratives may be defined as discrete units, detachable from the surrounding discourse, with clear beginnings and endings and a chronologically-determined sequence (Riessman, 1993, p. 17). According to Czarniawska (1998, p. 2): \"A narrative, in its most basic form, requires at least three elements: an original state of affairs, an action or an event, and the consequent state of affairs.\"Stories, in turn, can be defined as \"narratives through which events, at times major, at others trivial, become charged with symbolic significance\" (Gabriel, 1991, pp. 857-8). Stories help to provide coherence and make sense of a chaotic and senseless world, and constitute a reflexive process. In constructing their stories, individuals create their own identity (Gabriel, 2004a, b). Moreover, story construction and legitimization is not trivial, as stories may be challenged or ignored.Individuals make sense of actions, events and objects, or explain the relationship among them, using the interpretative schemes they have learned through experience and socialization (Soederberg, 2003). Narratives and stories are discourse practices that integrate, through language, the sense-making apparatus of organizations.Discourse analyst scholars, such as Grant et al. (2004) and Phillips and Hardy (2002), define their approach as the systematic research of all kinds of discourse practices (for instance, written or spoken texts, artifacts and visual representations) with the aim of explaining how these practices are produced, distributed and consumed. By their turn, Alvesson and Karreman (2000, p. 143) point out that the conventional research methods in this field underestimate the usage of language to accomplish things. They recognize the contribution of discourse analysis and encourage other scholars to overcome the \"naive view of language as a mirror of external reality or someone's inner world.\" Similarly, Alvesson (2003) argues for the need of avoiding the predominant romantic view and interpret the narratives constructed during the interviews as performances. Spink (2004), in turn, notes that the narrative is produced through a dialogue between narrator and listener, when both put into action their own interpretative repertory and face a power relation, at a precise historical moment; and Gabriel (2004a, b, p. 74) points that:It is the researcher's task not merely to celebrate the story or the narrative but to seek to use it as a vehicle for accessing deeper truths than the truths of undigested personal experience.\nField research: Methodology\nDiscussion: Bruno, Takashi and Pietro are important characters and, one may assume, archetypal figures in the change process. They have had different life and professional paths that brought them to noteworthy positions in the management of their institutions and that conditioned their discursive strategies.Bruno, the skillful reproducer\nFinal comments: In this paper, we investigate a radical change process in a major financial institution. We analyze the discourse of three seasoned executives who played important roles in the social construction (and reconstruction) of reality and in the \"management of meaning\" at the organizations involved in the process (Smircich and Morgan, 1982). The purpose of this final section is to add comments and speculations on the case.Contradictions and ambiguities in the official discourse\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim is to discuss how storytelling can be used in different ways to enlighten change processes occurring within and after a takeover situation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Case study reseach based on in-depth interviews critically examined as forms of narratives.\nFindings: - Storytelling gives the organisation the possibility to change its goals.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Through storytelling analysis contradictions and limitations are provoked within the takeover process.\nPractical implications: - Storytelling is always about various stories, which one needs to read into practice.\nOriginality/value: - The paper illustrates the value of aquisitions as seen through the eyes of the key players.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Dragons in the stacks: an introduction to role-playing games and their value to libraries	[ "Indoor games", "Role play", "Collection management", "Popular culture" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This article discusses tabletop (pen and paper) role-playing games (RPGs) contrasting them with live action role-playing games (LARPs) and massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). The first section traces the development of tabletop RPGs from their beginnings as a spin-off from miniatures war games in the 1970s to much broader mainstream acceptance in the twenty-first century, and will look at the reasons why collecting these games is important to libraries and users. Historically these games spurred the design and growth of the massive multiplayer online RPGs. In addition, the games are played in social groups, are inclusive and provide a rich environment for learning and developing team skill and personal leadership. In a world of increasing social interaction and globalization these skills are very important. The last section develops a core list of RPGs to collect, limited by the availability - if it is not in print, it will not be on this list.\nWhat are RPGs?: Tabletop RPGs are a set of rules of varying complexity where a group of people (the players) assume roles (characters, the protagonists) and cooperatively seek to overcome obstacles and resolve conflicts placed before them by the game master (the GM). The action in the game is narrated by both the players (for their characters) and the GM (for all other inhabitants) for the purpose of collaboratively crafting a kind of ongoing narrative. There will be occasional mention of non-fantasy RPGs in this history, but this will only be to introduce new concepts of styles in game design and social contracts[1].\nThe history of fantasy RPGs: 1974-1989: days of wine and roses\nTailoring the collection: An in-depth discussion of the most popular theoretical framework of RPGs is beyond the scope of this article, but a brief overview can be essential for assessing RPGs and tailoring them to a library's collection based on patron use and feedback. As early as 1992 there were discussions on Usenet about the theoretical nature of RPGs, the first attempt was made to establish a coherent theory by dividing games into \"Dice vs Diceless\" (Kim, 2003). It was generally recognized that this dichotomy was insufficient and debate continued until 1995, when Kevin Hardwick proposed the \"narrative stance\" which defines four stances a player takes during play. In addition to this proto narrativism, a basic definition of \"simulationism\" was established as well by Mary Kusher. In discussions of simulationism the third component of current RPG theory was formed. Jim Henley, in 1997, posited the idea of \"gamism.\" Henley focused heavily on the negative aspect of gamism, where players concentrate on the \"self contained nature of the rules system\"[10]. In 2001, Ron Edwards posited a theoretical framework to discuss RPGs and to help game designers improve future games. This theory is called Gameism, Narrativism, Simulationism (GNS).Edwards sought to unify the terminology of the previous threefold theory so that all RPGs could be evaluated along three continuums: gamism, narrativism and simulationism. Gamism is expressed by competition among participants (the real people); it includes victory and loss conditions for characters, both short-term and long-term, that reflect on the people's actual play strategies (Edwards, n.d.a). Narrativism is expressed by the creation, via role-playing, of a story with a recognizable theme. The characters are formal protagonists in the classic Lit 101 sense, and the players are often considered co-authors. The listed elements provide the material for narrative conflict (again, in the specialized sense of literary analysis) (Edwards, n.d.b). \"Simulationist role-playing has a great deal of power and potential ... Simulationism heightens and focuses Exploration as the priority of play. The players may be greatly concerned with the internal logic and experiential consistency of that Exploration\" (Edwards, n.d.c). The other important aspect of simulationism is that the game simulates a given genre, not necessarily the real world. For example, Weapons of the Gods by Eos Press is specifically designed to simulate a high action wuxia comic book series and includes rules for over the top action and mystical martial arts. At the other extreme, but still simulationist, is Phoenix Command, by Leading Edge Games. This game was \"designed to be truly realistic; not complex, or deadly, but simply a representation of what really happens to people\" in armed conflict. The simulation of near-future modern combat went so far as to divide combat into 1/10,000 of a second rounds (where typical fantasy RPGs average at 6 seconds) in order to simulate bullet flight times.\nRules intensive vs rules non-intensive: A newer discussion concerning RPGs is the debate between rules intensive and rules non-intensive (as opposed to \"rules light\") games[11]. Rules intensive games have a large number of rules for many situations and can have multiple resolution systems for different tasks. A raw measure of the rules intensity is the size of the rule book(s) needed to play the game, e.g. Dungeons and Dragons currently requires three books containing 960 pages of rules. While only 320 pages are necessary, or less if the player is simply concerned with their character's abilities, a GM needs to be familiar with 640 pages of this game, none of which includes setting information. Size alone, however, is not a sufficient measure; Exalted weighs in at 400 pages and has 48 pages of the book devoted solely to the setting. The amount of rules in RPGs is nearly impossible to memorize and reference to the books is an inevitable part of playing these games.Rules non-intensive games are, usually, short in length and have minimal and streamlined rules for conflict resolution; indeed, often the rules for conflict resolution are the same regardless of the type of in-game conflict. Examples of rules non-intensive games are: Donjon, Trollbabe and Questers of the Middle Realms. Rules non-intensive games have an implicit trust between the GM and the players, a sense of cooperation that was, and often still is, missing from earlier games. Players have the ability to dramatically edit the situations by adding elements and even taking narrative control over the scene. Within these games there is a blurred line between GM and player as the entire group cooperates to tell a story. Rules non-intensive games are also more focused in the stories able to be portrayed, with an extreme example being The Mountain Witch, by Timothy Kleinert, a game designed to tell only one basic story structure. The challenge for the players and GM lies in how the players create their characters and how they interact to change elements along the overarching narrative framework (Kleinert, 2004, p. 3).These games have a high level of GM-player trust built into the social contract[12]. Chad Underkoffler writes in his game Truth and Justice about high trust:The most important part of T&J is that it's high trust. Players have to be convinced that the GM isn't going to try and screw them over, and GMs have to believe that the players will have some faith in the game, setting, campaign tone, gaming group, and his or her fairness. One way that this trust can be built is by having the GM and players cooperate in generating characters, as well as some of the details of the setting.Another facet to consider when selecting games is that some games are made to have no setting or a very vaguely implied one. At one end of the spectrum are two excellent examples: Dungeons and Dragons and Burning Wheel. In Dungeons and Dragons there is minimal reference to an established setting discussed directly; primarily the only setting is found in the pantheon used for clerics, which was borrowed directly from the old Grayhawk setting, first produced by TSR. For Dungeons and Dragons, both TSR and WotC produced additional settings that can be used with the core rules, two of the most popular being the magic-punk Eberron Campaign Setting and the high fantasy Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Burning Wheel has an implied setting in that the game's creator, Luke Crane, sought to emulate Tolkien and establishes a setting within the character generation system using lifepaths, a set of careers which determine the previous experience of each character (Crane, 2004, 2005a, b).At the other end of the spectrum are settings made without accompanying rules. The most well known example of this is HarnWorld. This setting is produced without any reference to the accompanying system, HarnMaster. This allows a group to utilize whichever system suits them to play in this setting. With no rules to accompany the setting, this category is the most detailed as no room in a book is taken up by rules, unlike settings designed for specific systems, e.g. Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting which has to dedicate some space in each book for game statistics.\nCollecting RPGs: RPGs have been a part of the popular culture for over 30 years and in the past ten they have moved further into mainstream popular culture. Having RPGs in the collection and sponsoring programming around RPGs are ways to build social networks and circles of camaraderie. Another advantage of having RPGs in the collection is that they will spur further use of the collection. Many RPGs today draw inspiration from our own popular culture as well as myths and cultures of various peoples, and once players' imaginations have been captured by these games they will want to find out more about the sources for these games. Additionally there are a growing number of games designed to emulate certain genres of popular culture, e.g. anime, manga, Western comic books, television programs, etc. These games could be used to highlight or enhance specific aspects of the library's collection.A library has several options for acquiring RPGs. The first option is to purchase them from a local gaming store. This option is generally seen as the \"best option,\" as these stores keep the industry afloat and can serve as places to hold gaming sessions and to get information on upcoming releases. Another benefit is that one can examine the game in person before purchasing it for the collection. Locating a local gaming store can be challenging as many of them are run on small profit margins and can close or move location unexpectedly. Good resources for location stores would be to look in the local phone directory under headings like Gaming, Games, and Game Supplies Retail. If there are no dedicated gaming stores in the area, comic book shops can be helpful in acquiring games.The second best option is purchasing the books directly from the publishers. This is the most direct way to support the publishers. Another benefit to going to the publisher is that the web site has a forum available for people to discuss the game and ask questions.A third option is large online booksellers. These web sites do well in stocking books from the larger gaming companies, namely Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf, but can be fairly unreliable in acquiring games from smaller companies.\nCore list of RPGs: Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 edition, www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/welcome\nSites relevant to fantasy RPGs: The sites listed below are a small sample of sites focused on RPGs in general. Many of the publishers of RPGs also have forums for fans to post comments on, get suggestions and ideas from, and establish FAQs and errata on the RPGs published by the company.www.rpg.net\nConclusion: This article has provided a necessarily brief introduction to the genre of tabletop fantasy RPGs and their importance and usefulness in a library. These games can be used to enhance the use of the collection by tying in the RPGs acquired to strengths within the collection. These games lead to enhanced socialization, leadership building and can be used to explore serious social issues. Additionally some RPGs have enormous longevity with some games having been played since the 1970s when the RPG hobby began.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to introduce the genre of tabletop fantasy role-playing games and provide guidance in building an initial collection.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The first part of the paper is designed to present the development of tabletop fantasy role-playing games in a historiographic model, tracing the history of these games from the 1970s to 2006. The second portion is a bibliographic essay and critique of several noteworthy fantasy role-playing games, including analysis of the settings and systems of each game.\nFindings: - The paper provides a history of the development of fantasy role-playing games and provides guidance on how to start a collection. The study recognizes a lack of academic research on the topic and seeks to provide a brief introduction.\nPractical implications: - The paper provides a clear concise history of role-playing game development and balanced advice for librarians who wish to begin collecting role-playing games.\nOriginality/value: - This paper begins to fill the need for academic study of the subject and provides practical advice for collection development librarians.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
On the drivers and performance outcomes of green practices adoption: An empirical study in China	[ "Environmental performance", "Financial performance", "Stakeholder theory", "Operational performance", "Green practices", "Chinese manufacturing industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years, increasing importance has been attached to environmental issues, it is expected that manufacturing firms from various countries and industries to implement initiatives to be green. Thus, green practices (GP) have gained in popularity for manufacturers in the hope of mitigating their environmental damages while achieving performance gains (Cronin et al., 2011; Qi et al., 2010). Previous studies posit that a variety of stakeholder pressures can act as motivating forces that push firms to pursue GP (Eltayeb et al., 2004; Cai and Zhou, 2014). For example, environmental regulations have always been identified as a main driver due to their mandatory properties (Darnall et al., 2009). Customers' increasing environmental awareness further pushes firms to alleviate their negative environmental impacts (Gonzalez-Benito and Gonzalez-Benito, 2006a; Kassinis and Vafeas, 2006). Additionally, pressures originate from successful competitors promote firms to develop products and services that are respectful to the environment (Cai and Zhou, 2014). Apart from the above mentioned external stakeholders, internal stakeholders such as employees and senior managers, also play significant roles in promoting GP.\n2. Theoretical framework and research hypotheses: To explore mechanisms that potentially explain the drivers and performance outcomes of GP, a theoretical framework that simultaneously integrates the constructs of stakeholders, GP, and firm performance is proposed. As shown in Figure 1, this model explores the internal and external driving forces that trigger GP on the basis of stakeholder theory. Subsequently, we develop hypotheses to investigate the effects of GP on firms' environmental, operational, and financial performance. Finally, we determine the mediating role of environmental performance between GP and operational and financial performance.\n3. Research methodology and data analysis: 3.1 Sampling and data collection\n4. Results and discussions: This study presents empirical results for a conceptual framework that ascertains the primary drivers in promoting GP and explores the influence of said practices on the financial, operational, and environmental performance of firms. Moreover, we check the mediating role of environmental performance.\n5. Conclusions and implications: This study investigates the drivers and performance outcomes of GP by empirically examining data collected from 124 Chinese manufacturing firms. We add to the literature a more complete framework that simultaneously integrates the constructs of stakeholders, GP, and firm performance. To the best of our knowledge, it is one of the first models to integrate these variables in this way. This study provides practical implications for both manufacturers and policy makers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine a multitude of motivators that facilitate the implementation of green practices (GP) in the context of Chinese manufacturing industry. Also, this study aims to explore the influence of GP on the environmental performance, operational performance, and financial performance of manufacturing firms.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper developed a conceptual model to investigate the stakeholder drivers and commensurate performance outcomes of GP. Statistical analysis was based on the data collected from 124 manufacturing firms across the Greater China. Finally, the hypotheses were empirically tested by partial least squares approach.\nFindings: Of the ten proposed hypotheses, seven are considered valid. The statistic results reveal that pressures originate from employees, senior managers, and customers exert significant positive influence on firm's decision to adopt GP, while the drivers generated from government and competitors is non-significant. More specifically, this study indicates that environmental performance partially mediates the relationship between GP and operational/financial performance.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this research is that it proposes a novel conceptual model, ascertains the primary drivers in promoting GP in Chinese manufacturing industry. This research provides policy insights for professional organizations, regulators, and legislators to further promote GP.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Using Global South Sport-for-Development experiences to inform Global North CSR design and implementation: a case study of Euroleague Basketball's One Team programme	[ "Corporate social responsibility", "Euroleague basketball", "Needs analysis and cultural lens", "Sport-for-development", "Stakeholder involvement", "Sustainable community development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Sport has gained recognition as an effective tool for development (Kidd, 2008; Levermore and Beacom, 2009). Within international development, the value of sport as a social good for achieving non-sporting outcomes is globally recognised in what has come to be known as the international development-through-sport, or sport-for-development (SfD), sector. Similar to the noted value of sport as a social good for international development; Smith and Westerbeek (2007) identify seven unique features that boost the use of sport as a vehicle for deploying corporate social responsibility (CSR). These unique features are:\nSfD and CSR in sport or through sport: The concept of SfD or development through sport has had multiple definitions. While the recognition of this new global movement (Kidd, 2008) as part of the wider international development field is evident, there is no consensus on the use of terminologies referring to this field (Schulenkorf and Adair, 2014). Some have referred to it as sport-in-development (Coalter, 2007; Levermore and Beacom, 2009; Read and Bingham, 2010), while other academic papers, including the naming of a newly established division of the UN, chose to use the term sport for development and peace (Darnell, 2010; Gasser and Levinsen, 2004; Hayhurst et al., 2011; Sugden, 2006; United Nations, 2005). At times, authors (Coalter, 2007, 2010) have crossed the definitional boundaries between sport-in-development and SfD, showing the inherent weakness or fluidity of the use of the term to refer to all activities that use sport for development purposes. Read and Bingham (2010, p. 14) use the term sport-in-development to \"include all types of organised physical activity that may serve as a tool for development and peace\". Levermore and Beacom (2009, p. 9) favour the use of the same term \"sport-in-development\", as it is \"representative of the perception that the use of sport may assist the international development processes\". We, however, privilege the use of SfD as referring to the design and implementation of sport, or physical activities which specifically give first priority to non-sporting outcomes.\nLimitations of international development through sport: The notable limitations of the international development through development sector have focussed on relations of power, privilege, dialogue and dominance of those with resources - especially organisations from the Global North (Darnell, 2010). Such criticisms have particularly highlighted: lack of methodological and theoretical underpinnings of programme development and measurement (Kay, 2009), lack of integration in local structures (Lindsey and Banda, 2011), inadequate personal and social development approaches (Spaaij, 2012), overlooking required structural changes (Darnell, 2010), poorly designed monitoring and evaluation systems (Coalter, 2007, 2010), Western discourses excluding the \"voices\" of underserved communities (Darnell, 2007; Hayhurst, 2009), domination of the governance of development schemes by economically powerful societies from higher-income countries (Levermore, 2009) and the questionable extent of dialogue between donors and recipients (Darnell, 2007; Hayhurst, 2009). We intend to use the aforementioned international development-through-sport criticisms to highlight how they influenced the development and implementation approach of EB's CSR programme, the One Team. We particularly pay special attention to stakeholder governance, dialogue and engagement challenges within the EB's different cultural settings. While so much debate has focussed on limitations of international development through sport in Global South settings, we did not come across studies exploring knowledge transfer from the Global South to Global North relating to CSR programme design and implementation, and stakeholder involvement. We are convinced that the academic gaze on development through sport within Global South settings can also inform CSR practices in the Global North.\nTheoretical insight - stakeholder involvement: Stakeholder involvement (Morsing and Schultz, 2006) emanates from Freeman's (1984, p. 25) concept of a stakeholder as \"any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the firm's objectives\". Alternatively, Evan and Freeman (1988, p. 97) also note that stakeholders are \"those groups who have a stake in or a claim on the firm\". Freeman's initial definition above calls upon business organisations to undertake corporate strategic planning to have positive relationships with their identified stakeholders. At the centre of the stakeholder involvement theory, business organisations \"should not only influence but also seek to be influenced by stakeholders, and therefore change when necessary\" (Morsing and Schultz, 2006, p. 328). Donaldson and Preston (1995) postulate that stakeholders obtain benefits through such relationships, as well as make a contribution towards the organisation's wealth. However, Andriof et al. (2002) caution that only long-term mutual relationships characterised by frequent engagement are bound to create the sort of aforementioned value for both the organisation and several of its stakeholders. Short-termism is criticised as not beneficial to sustainable development which any CSR initiative may intend to achieve.\nMethodology: This study used a qualitative approach to data collection to explore the design and implementation of the EB's CSR initiative, the One Team Programme. The methods involved semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs) and documentary analysis, enabling triangulation of data collection.\nCase study background: Euroleague Basketball Community Trust association sans but lucratif\nEB's old CSR orientation: Within social responsibility in sport initiatives, Babiak and Wolfe (2013) note that philanthropic activities are aimed at raising the business organisation's profile. Similar CSR intentions were noted within the EB since the establishment of its CSR department in 2006. Its philanthropic activities mainly consisted of making contributions to the work of Humanitarian Aid Agencies (HAAs) or International Non-governmental Organisations (INGOs). The conceptualisation of CSR within the EB merely focused on responding to humanitarian or human rights-based needs of people around the world and \"doing good\", as explained by a senior official:\nFraming the new CSR in multicultural communities: Based on the arguments presented above regarding the limitations of EB's altruistic CSR towards meeting its business function, what changes were strategically necessary to promote sustainable CSR initiatives in the organisation's multinational context? To respond to this question, we suggest that the tenets of strategic CSR (Lantos, 2001) and issues of corporate governance, commitment to sustainability and societal dialogue process (Maon et al., 2009) firmly apply to EB's CSR re-orientation. The framework we propose symbolises both internal and external integration of stakeholders consisting of head office employees, professional basketball club employees, their families, the clubs' fans and the local communities in proximity to the clubs and the society at large. The framework is designed inherently to enable integration of the needs, concerns and roles of the stakeholders as opposed to the old EB CSR approach. The sections that follow will discuss the stages identified in Figure 2 which are intentionally designed to promote interactions between CSR decision-makers and stakeholders:\nStage 1: New CSR awareness and primary stakeholder interaction at the corporate level: The restructuring of EB's CSR approach included the establishment of a new governance structure, the EBCT, and also a new CSR vision of \"integrating communities using the power of basketball\". The new CSR vision was formalised into values and norms, and communicated to all affiliated professional basketball clubs as a mechanism of convincing the clubs of the mutual benefits to join the new strategic CSR (Lantos, 2001). Despite stakeholder involvement at this stage being a passive top-down process of \"giving sense\" (Grunig and Hunt, 1984) by the EB's CSR department, the next stages that follow involved active participation in decision-making and governance of CSR activities by clubs. Hence, stakeholder involvement at this stage is seen as a mechanism for cooperation and corporate governance (Greenwood, 2007) within the EB's multicultural context. In addition, the two-way communication with clubs placed emphasis on creating a value-driven culture (Lyon, 2004) focussed on sustainable community development as opposed to the former, target-driven, single or non-coherent events.\nStage 2: Active interaction between EBCT and professional clubs: Club freedom for choice of CSR social issue identification\nStage 3: Stakeholder involvement at grassroots level - basketball in the community: Identification and alignment of social contribution to local community needs\nStage 4: Joined-up CSR project delivery: Contrary to the old CSR in which decision-making was centralised, the new strategic CSR upholds a devolved approach from the centre concerning agenda setting, decision-making and implementation. Professional basketball clubs and their identified MPAs use joined-up implementation as main CSR actors at grassroots level. The shift of power in EB CSR governance from the top to the bottom is embedded in the new EBCT CSR framework and management practices as confirmed by an EB CSR official that such an approach \"enables clubs to maintain independence and become part of the programme\". Though the designated lead agency of the local One Team Project is the EB club, locally based MPAs tend to be powerful actors due to their possession of resources. Academic CSR literature has also questioned organisational involvement in addressing social or public welfare issues where the CSR implementers lack moral or social expertise (Freeman, 2001). To overcome this competence or expertise deficiency, the One Team Programme strong urges clubs to utilise the expertise of MPAs. The unique features of sport such as the power to grab the attention of wide audiences through the passion and devotion of its fans brings considerable value to the work of MPAs. We argue that value creation at this stage is enhanced by on-going stakeholder interactions such as joint working on Problem and Objective Trees Analysis to collaboratively set project objectives and implementation tasks. The utilisation of these situational analysis tools provides interactive opportunities which further cement the sense of community ownership and acceptance of the CSR approach (Quazi, 2003).\nConclusion: Our article relates firmly to international organisations or federations in sport and other sectors who face the challenge of developing and implementing their CSR orientation in multicultural settings. The article has highlighted community development and sustainability of CSR initiatives in sport by stressing the application of stakeholder involvement theory from project design to implementation stage. Within our discussion, we have outlined stages that are crucial to successful design and implementation of CSR country-specific projects by way of using several tools which we have adopted from the international development sector. Our particular focus on the international development-through-sport sector and the criticism labelled towards the sector's programme design and implementation have been informative in analysing and influencing the re-designing EB's new strategic CSR (Lantos, 2001). Sheth and Babiak (2010, p. 436) highlight that programmes such as the One Team operating under professional sports clubs have both unique internal and external resources to deploy their CSR initiatives and \"generate perhaps greater awareness for social issues than businesses in other industries might\". However, if the development and implementation processes pay less attention to engaging stakeholders from the initial stages, CSR activity is more likely to fail to influence corporate performance. Our paper shows how the EB's altruistic CSR was an example of failure to align CSR activities as a business function. However, we have stressed that the re-orientation of EB's new CSR to a strategic approach (Lantos, 2001), focusing on each local clubs' business environment, is mutually beneficial to clubs and their communities.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to clearly outline the practicalities of designing and implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) through sport programmes via stakeholder involvement theory by an international governing body operating across Europe's multicultural setting. The concept of CSR and the use of sport to achieve the objectives of CSR have become common buzzwords. Within CSR, most of the academic literature, or research, has focused on defining or framing CSR through sport particularly discussing the implementation or staging of CSR activities by both sporting and non-sporting organisations. However, not much has been done regarding the practicalities of designing CSR programmes by employing stakeholder involvement theory and conducting of a thorough needs analysis before programme deployment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This explorative study is based on participatory action research informed by international sport-for-development experiences. A qualitative approach was adopted in assessing the application of stakeholder involvement theory (Morsing and Schultz, 2006) in programme design and assessment of the target group's needs.\nFindings: The old CSR approach was fragmented and lacked integration into local area needs. The new CSR approach ensures that community needs are reflected in CSR activities. The delivery of CSR by Euroleague Basketball professional clubs secures a licence to operate through joined-up approaches with mainstream partner agencies. These social partnerships instil a sense of community ownership of One Team Basketball projects.\nOriginality/value: This paper draws on lessons learnt from international sport-for-development sector where stakeholder involvement is vital for deploying development-through-sport initiatives. The paper addresses aspects which constitute sustainable developmental approaches in communities using sport CSR as a vehicle for change.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Does a more complex service offering increase uncertainty in operations?	[ "Servitization", "Case study", "Complexity", "Uncertainty", "Engineering services", "Product-service system" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Many manufacturing companies engage in engineering services which they add to and integrate with their existing product portfolio (Kastalli and Van Looy, 2013). This trend known as servitisation (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988) offers high potential benefits (Wise and Baumgartner, 1999; Mont, 2002; Vargo, 2008). However, providing engineering services increases uncertainty exposure of service providers (Durugbo and Erkoyuncu, 2016; Kreye, 2017a) arising from the nature of services and the specific processes of engineering services in particular. Services are uncertain by nature due to the value co-creation with the customer with uncertain timing and quality of customer inputs (Frei, 2006) and difficulties of controlling output levels (Bettencourt et al., 2002). Furthermore, engineering services are particularly uncertain because the provider typically assumes responsibility for parts of the customer's processes (Nordin et al., 2011; Reim et al., 2016). This increases provider's dependence on customer operations and their internal capabilities to process and provide information (Zhang and Banerji, 2017) and the customer's demand structures (van der Vorst and Beulens, 2002). While engaging in servitisation also increases the provider's risk exposure (Benedettini et al., 2015; Reim et al., 2016), it is uncertainty that determines the provider's ability to implement servitisation successfully (Durugbo and Erkoyuncu, 2016) and the service performance (Kreye, 2017a).\n2. Literature review: The nature of the service offering creates important implications for the management of the operations required to produce, deliver and ensure performance. This has been described extensively with regard to contract management where the complexity of the service offering requires more intensive work on ensuring compliance and performance on the provider side (Eisenhardt, 1989a; Roehrich and Lewis, 2014; Melander and Lakemond, 2015; Nullmeier et al., 2016). Here it is specifically uncertainty that has been highlighted as one of the core issues for effectively managing operations because it determines, for example, the attributability of service performance to the provider's actions (Rindfleisch and Heide, 1997; Nullmeier et al., 2016). This paper applies this logic by investigating the links between the complexity of the service offering (service complexity) on the uncertainty perception in the operation of these services.\n3. Method: The author adopted a qualitative case-based approach because of the exploratory nature of this research. The lack of prior investigation into the topic with a lack of existing frameworks means that the author could not formulate hypotheses (Eisenhardt, 1989b). Case-based research offers the empirical evidence needed to improve understanding and build theory (Siggelkow, 2007). Further, case-based research enables the researcher to immerse themselves within the empirical context of their cases and thus offers the ability for in-depth investigations into the researched phenomenon (Yin, 2009). This is particularly important for engineering services where the organisational and industrial context may determine research observations (Kastalli and Van Looy, 2013). Furthermore, the multiple-case design enabled the researchers to investigate the research question in a situationally grounded way while seeking a sense of generalisability (Voss et al., 2002). Thus, the multiple-case approach was suitable for the purpose of this research.\n4. Within-case analysis: 4.1 Maintenance services\n5. Cross-case analysis: Table II summarises the observations from the four presented cases and forms the basis for the cross-case comparison presented in this section. For the cross-case comparison, the author approximated service complexity as a binary variable comparing maintenance services (relatively simple) to performance-based services (relatively complex). The cross-case comparison showed that some uncertainty types differed depending on the service complexity while other remained unaffected. Specifically, organisational uncertainty and relational uncertainty showed strong similarities between the four cases suggesting that these uncertainty types are not linked to service complexity. In contrast, the author's findings suggest a link between environmental and technological uncertainty with service complexity. These two uncertainty types were observed for both cases of performance-based services while there was only limited evidence in the maintenance service cases.\n6. Discussion: This research sets out to investigate the link between service complexity and the uncertainty in service operations in engineering services. The findings showed that some uncertainty types (organisational and relational uncertainty) were not linked to service complexity, while other uncertainty types (environmental and technological uncertainty) were. This section derives four propositions based on the empirical findings as summarised in Figure 2.\n7. Conclusions: Engaging in engineering services remains an important challenge for companies and scholars alike. Although scholars have researched the existence of uncertainty in service operations (Durugbo and Erkoyuncu, 2016; Kreye, 2017b; Zhang and Banerji, 2017), previous insights have focussed on specific types of service offerings (Galbraith, 2002; Nullmeier et al., 2016). This research explored the existence of uncertainty in service operations depending on service complexity, aiming to provide a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of engineering service operations. The author's findings empirically demonstrate how different uncertainty types were perceived in settings of maintenance services and performance-based services, respectively. Providing insights from four industrial cases, this research indicates that organisational and relational uncertainty were unaffected by service complexity while environmental and technological uncertainty increased with increasing service complexity.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the complexity of the service offering (service complexity) affects the uncertainty during service operations in engineering services. Specifically, the authors compare the existence of organisational, relational, environmental and technological uncertainty in maintenance services and performance-based services.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors present insights from four cases - two each for maintenance services and performance-based services. The in-depth data were based on 56 semi-structured interviews, multiple site visits, meeting notes, service contracts and other secondary data.\nFindings: The case findings indicate that organisational and relational uncertainty were not linked to service complexity, while observations of environmental and technological uncertainty were higher and more varied for performance-based services. Based on these findings, the authors formulate four propositions regarding the relationship between service complexity and uncertainty in service operations.\nOriginality/value: This research contributes to the OM literature by suggesting that external sources of uncertainty increase with increasing service complexity, while internal sources of uncertainty remain unchanged.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Diabetes self-care in-the-wild: Design challenges for personal health record systems and self-monitoring technologies	[ "E-Health", "Design research", "Health information systems/medical record systems/care delivery", "Case study", "Empirical study", "Ethnography", "IT artifact", "Practice" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years, health care delivery for citizens is recognized as being unsustainable and has become a major political, social and economical concern in western countries. Together with an ageing population, the impact of chronic disease in our society is growing fast and puts more and more pressure on our healthcare systems, which are already struggling with high costs and lack of specialized personnel. As a result, some of the key challenges are shifting towards outpatient care, prevention and wellness (Geissbuhler, 2010), and increasing attention is given to the notion of self-care (Barlow et al, 2002; Bodenheimer et al., 2002; Wagner and Groves, 2002). Indeed, the idea of redistributing healthcare practices back to the citizens and their community, especially in chronic disease, generates understandable interest. On the one hand, medical administrations have the clear economical goal of reducing hospital stays and put people back into local communities and into their own homes. On the other hand, nation states have the political goal of empowering citizens. They claim that self-care is required in order to ensure that people can take control of their own illness, rather than being passive consumers of a centralized and hospital-framed care model. In this context, the enabling role of Information Technologies and E-health infrastructures appears to be crucial and, in this sense, generate an increasing interests on the part of manufacturers concerning the design and deployment of a vast array of home-health and self-care technologies into the marketplace.\n2. Background: studies of self-care practices and technology in chronic care: As mentioned, the demographic changes and the excessive costs of our health care system and the traditional model of care delivery draw attention to new ways of empowering the patient to actively participate in management of their disease. This trend is evident in the explosion of assistive, pervasive, ubiquitous, self-, home- and mobile-care technology[4] (Axelrod et al., 2009; Palen and Aalokke, 2006), in the vast diffusion of medical information (Nettleton and Burrows, 2002) and health online communities (Akrich, 2010) changing the role of the patient (Hardey, 2001).\n3. Methodology: In order to investigate self-care practices and the patient's perspective in dealing with diabetes, I joined a diabetes type 1 support group and I attended all of their meetings for a period of ten months. This gave me an insight into the diversity of patient's concerns and perspectives, and provided access for deepening the investigation through in-depth semi-structured interviews (see Storni, 2013a for more information about this investigation), home visits and, later, participatory design workshops aimed at exploring design possibilities and testing design prototypes. An approach aimed at emphasizing the patient perspective, the practicalities of dealing with a chronic disease and the need to empower the patient suggests a qualitative and pragmatic methodology aimed at understanding and describing more than measuring and explaining. The aim of this approach was to look at what individuals with type 1 diabetes really do in dealing with their condition, and not necessarily at what they are supposed to do from a normative perspective. An ethnomethodologically inspired approach was used to provide in-depth insights and thick descriptions of chronic-disease self-care practices. This was done by going \"native\", i.e. shadowing selected subjects' activities as well as interviewing them a number of times. By using an ethnomethodological eye (Garfinkel, 1967) I was able to access the logic, strategies and perspectives of the observed subjects (their ethnomethods), thus suspending any normative external judgment[8]. Furthermore, this emic approach allowed me to focus on the inner perspective of the patient dealing with the disease and it demonstrated its potential to provide great insights for the development of a patient-centric care model.\n4. Diabetes self-care practices and technology in the wild: Diabetes is a metabolic disorder characterized by chronic hyperglycaemia (high levels of sugar in the blood) that results from the body's difficulty or inability to produce and/or use insulin, which is a hormone that helps the body use blood sugar for energy. Type 1 diabetes develops when the body can no longer produce insulin, requiring it to be injected. This condition produces both immediate complications (ranging from chronic fatigue and blurred vision to even coma) and a series of long-term complications generally due to the deterioration of blood vessels (cardiovascular and coronary heart disease, retinopathy, kidney failure and so on). Today, thanks to the development of artificial insulin, the mass diffusion of portable glucose monitoring devices (glucose meters), and clinical evidence, the importance of tight regulation of food intakes, physical exercise and insulin has been established as the correct way to manage diabetes (at least in western countries).\n6. Questioning the role of technology in patient empowerment: implications for design: In keeping with the predominant medical approach, the majority of self-monitoring technology and PHR platforms are designed from the perspective of medical experts rather than patients. Borrell's concerns about the consolidation of scientific methods in medical practice through the spread of monitoring and measuring devices seem to be justified with the current explosion of digital technology in health and fitness:\n7. TiY in the wild: a qualitative evaluation: As mentioned, the TiY PHR platform was informed by the qualitative investigations that are partly reported in this paper. The TiY was also evaluated by real users as part of an iterative user-centered design process, which involved conducting two rounds of tests throughout the design and development process. The tests were primarily focused on assessing the tag editor and its actual use in everyday life. The selection of subjects was guided by certain conditions such as: the user had to have a form of diabetes requiring journaling and monitoring (type 1), the user had to be familiar with the use of a smart mobile phone, and the user had to fall within the 18-50 age bracket.\n8. Conclusions and future steps: In this study, I focused on the growing impact of chronic diseases in our society. I started this project with a general question about the enabling role of technology in the area of chronic self-care. I argue that as we move towards self-care in the wild, we might need to re-think some of the assumptions and paradigms of the traditional medical model, which are implicitly applied in the design of technology for patients, such as self-monitoring devices and PHRs. Through an ethnographic investigation looking at chronic self-care practices among type 1 diabetics, I have shown how diabetes is a complex lifestyle issue and not just a disease. In the patient's view, diabetes is so intrinsically associated with every aspect of daily life that it is practically inseparable from all mundane activities. I discussed how patients learn to adjust and compromise on different aspects of their condition in order to manage it and, in doing so, they develop lay expertise in dealing with the disease. I also stressed the huge diversity of patients' attitudes towards the disease, thus reaffirming the need to support a high degree of flexibility and personalization in the treatment and management of the disease both in the clinical setting and in the wild with self-care tools. I then tried to characterize the different forms of expertise involved in chronic care, and I showed how the expertise of the patient is often different but of equal value to the expertise of the clinician. I also illustrated how attempts to reproduce a clinical perspective and impose its metrics in the new emerging settings for chronic self-care can lead to conflict and frustrations in the medical encounter. For example, I witnessed mutual blaming and scenarios where patients hide or fabricate information to avoid getting into trouble with their doctors. These conflicts can only increase the separation between patients and their doctors to the detriment of effective communication and much-needed collaboration. Lastly, I noted how the current proliferation of medical self-care devices bears the same problematic stamp, and risks further consolidation of the superiority of hard biomedical and epidemiological data over other forms.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to raise issues about the design of personal health record systems (PHRs) and self-monitoring technology supporting self-care practices of an increasing number of individuals dealing with the management of a chronic disease in everyday life. It discusses the results of an ethnographic study exposing to analysis the intricacies and practicalities of managing diabetes \"in the wild\". It then describe and discuss the patient-centric design of a diabetes journaling platform that followed the analysis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study includes ethnometodological investigation based on in depth interviews, observations in a support group for adults with type 1 diabetes, home visits, shadowing sessions and semi-structured interviews with a series of medical experts (endocrinologists, general practitioners and diabetes nurses). Findings informed the design of a proof-of-concept PHR called Tag-it-Yourself (TiY): a mobile journaling platform that enables the personalization of self-monitoring practices. The platform is thoroughly described along with an evaluation of its use with real users.\nFindings: The investigation sheds light on a series of general characters of everyday chronic self-care practices, and how they ask to re-think some of the assumptions and connotations of the current medical model and the traditional sick role of the patient - often unreflectively assumed also in the design of personal technologies (e.g. PHR) to be used by patients in clinically un-controlled settings. In particular, the analysis discusses: the ubiquitous nature of diabetes that is better seen as a lifestyle, the key role of lay expertises and different forms of knowledge developed by the patient in dealing with a disease on a daily basis, and the need of more symmetrical interactions and collaborations with the medical experts.\nResearch limitations/implications: Reported discussions suggest the need of a more holistic view of self-management of chronic disease in everyday life with more attention being paid on the perspective of the affected individuals. Findings have potential implications on the way PHR and systems to support self-management of chronic disease in everyday life are conceived and designed.\nPractical implications: The paper suggests designers and policy makers to look at chronic disease not as a medical condition to be disciplined by a clinical perspective but rather as a complex life-style where the medical cannot be separated by other aspects of everyday life. Such shift in the perspective might suggest new forms of collaborations, new ways of creative evidence and new form of knowledge creation and validation in chronic self-care.\nSocial implications: The paper suggests re-thinking the role of the patient in chronic-disease self-management. In particular, it suggests giving more room to the patient voice and concerns and suggest how these can enrich rather than complicate the generation of knowledge about self-care practices, at least in type 1 diabetes.\nOriginality/value: The paper sheds light on everyday intricacies and practicalities of dealing with a chronic disease. Studies of self-care practices that shed light on the patient perspectives are sporadic and often assume a clinical perspective, its assumptions (e.g. biomedical knowledge is the only one available to improve health outcome, doctors know best) and implications (e.g. compliance, asymmetry between the specialist and the patient).\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Knowledge-sharing behaviour of bank employees in Greece	[ "Knowledge management", "Knowledge sharing", "Employee behaviour", "Banks", "Greece" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Knowledge management (KM) has attracted much attention by the business world since the introduction of the concept by Davenport and Prusak about 12 years ago. Although the essence of managing knowledge is not a newfangled issue (Davenport and Prusak, 2000), the changing contemporary business environment, calls for an active engagement into KM initiatives. Whatever, the KM strategy followed by an organisation is, it targets for the promotion of sharing knowledge, ideas, and experience among individuals and groups (Cabrera and Cabrera, 2002). In this paper, emphasis is placed on knowledge-sharing behaviour, since the success of KM initiatives largely depends on the willingness of organisational members to share their knowledge. And this has been proved as \"a promising yet elusive goal for many organizations\" (Koulopoulos and Frappaolo, 1999). To support this claim, Davenport and Prusak (2000) explain that organisations do not usually lack knowledge; however, its existence does not guarantee its use.Having realised the importance of knowledge sharing for successful KM initiatives, this research attempts to examine the factors that influence knowledge-sharing behaviour in an organisational framework. Research has examined several different variables believed to influence sharing behaviour, such as incentive systems and culture, or top management and senior leadership (Bock and Kim, 2002). However, only a few researchers (Bock and Kim, 2002; Ryu et al., 2003; Lin and Lee, 2004; Bock et al., 2005; Kankanhalli et al., 2005) attempted to empirically test such factors in the knowledge-sharing context on a solid theoretical background.The basic aim of this research is to investigate the knowledge-sharing behaviour of bank employees in Greece. This is important because it is still crucial to accurately explain the knowledge-sharing behaviour of individual professional groups (Ryu et al., 2003). Understanding the factors that influence individuals' behaviour toward knowledge sharing in the organisational context is essential, in order to implement successful KM initiatives. Nevertheless, very limited number of studies investigating the knowledge-sharing behaviour of bank employees can be found. While most studies in the literature, relating to all aspects of KM, are concerned with the manufacturing industry, the service industry, and banking in particular, has not received much attention (Kubo et al., 2001). The research model for this study is based mainly on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), an extension of the theory of reasoned action (TRA), a social psychology theory, and other similar research models. Findings of previous studies using similar models suggest that the TPB is superior in explaining intention to share knowledge and the model has a reasonable overall fit (Ryu et al., 2003).Therefore, the main contributions of this study are the following:* examination of the knowledge sharing in the banking sector;* use of data concerning employees working for the private sector, as opposed to other studies in the literature (Bock and Kim, 2002; Bock et al., 2005; Kankanhalli et al., 2005);* testing of a specific well-known research model in the South-Eastern European environment;* examination of the actual knowledge-sharing behaviour and not only of the behavioural intention to share knowledge (Bock et al., 2005); and* finally, examination of the direct effect of the perceived behavioural control (PBC) on knowledge-sharing behaviour, which, although suggested by theory, has been neglected by previous studies.\n2 Literature review: 2.1 Knowledge sharing\n3 Theoretical background: 3.1 The theory of planned behaviour\n4 Research model and hypotheses: The purpose of this study is to investigate the behaviour of bank employees in Greece toward knowledge sharing, applying the TPB model. Past studies, have indicated that there is a strong causal link between intention and targeted behaviour (Ryu et al., 2003), as the theory also suggests. According to the TPB, the stronger the intention to practice a behaviour, the higher the likelihood that the individual will actually end up in engaging in that behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). Intention, on the other hand, is determined by three conceptually independent factors: attitude toward behaviour, subjective norms about the behaviour, and PBC over the behaviour.Based on the theoretical framework of the TPB and past research models, the following research model and hypotheses are proposed (Figure 1). The following research model is an aggregate model incorporating the basic TPB model (Ajzen, 1991), including also another variable (level of information technology usage (ITU)) suggested by Bock and Kim (2002). Table I lists the model constructs and their operational definitions, as well as the related literature.Since attitudes, subjective norms, and PBC are proposed to determine intention to engage in a behaviour, the following three hypotheses are formulated:H1. Individual's attitude toward knowledge sharing has a positive effect on the intention to share knowledge.H2. Individual's subjective norms, related to knowledge sharing, have a positive affect on the intention to share knowledge.H3. Individual's PBC over sharing knowledge has a positive affect on the intention to share knowledge.H1 examines the relationship between attitude and intention regarding knowledge sharing in the organisational context. H2 and H3 investigate the relationship between subjective norms and intention toward knowledge sharing, as well as between PBC and intention, respectively. For H1, H2, and H3, intention is the dependent variable.The next hypothesis (H4) examines the relationship between intention to engage in a knowledge sharing act and the actual behaviour of sharing knowledge. For this hypothesis, knowledge-sharing behaviour is the dependent variable. Therefore, H4 proposes that:H4. Individuals intention to share knowledge has a positive affect on the individual's knowledge-sharing behaviour.H5 refers to the individual's level of information technology usage (ITU). Information technology (IT) is believed to be an important enabler in KM (Bock and Kim, 2002); therefore, the effect of the level of ITU on knowledge-sharing behaviour is also examined. The addition of this variable is based on the TRA. For H5 knowledge-sharing behaviour is also the dependent variable:H5. The level of ITU of the individual will have a positive affect on the individual's knowledge-sharing behaviour.As it was previously mentioned, Ajzen's (1991) theory proposes that PBC, in conjunction with behavioural intention, can be used directly for the prediction of behavioural achievement. Ajzen (1991) presented two rationales for establishing the direct link from PBC to actual behavioural performance. First, \"holding intention constant, the effort expended to bring a course of behavior to a successful conclusion is likely to increase with perceived behavioral control\" and second, \"[...] perceived behavioural control can often be used as a measure of actual control\" (Ajzen, 1991). As it was previously explained, \"actual control\" over a behaviour summarises all non-motivational factors as availability of the requisite opportunities and resources. Based on this proposal, the direct link between PBC to knowledge sharing and sharing behaviour is examined through the following H6:H6. Individual's PBC over sharing knowledge has a positive affect on the individual's knowledge-sharing behaviour.For H6, knowledge-sharing behaviour is the dependent variable. The direct link between PBC and behaviour has not been examined by any relative research on knowledge-sharing behaviour.\n5 Research methodology: 5.1 Sampling and data collection\n6 Data analysis and results: 6.1 Measurement model\n7 Conclusions: 7.1 General conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to develop an understanding of the factors that influence knowledge-sharing behaviour within an organisational framework, using widely accepted social psychology theories.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Knowledge-sharing behaviour of bank employees in Greece is examined using an aggregate model, which is based on the theory of planned behaviour. The suggested research model was tested using structural equation modelling.\nFindings: - The results indicate that intention to share knowledge is mainly influenced by employees' attitude toward knowledge sharing, followed by subjective norms.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Knowledge-sharing behaviour was examined solely focusing on salient beliefs. Findings should be confirmed using a larger sample, as well as through cross-sectional studies.\nPractical implications: - The results highlight the necessity of creating a climate that would help individuals develop a more favourable attitude toward knowledge sharing as well as the important role of the perceived social pressure by organisational members (peers, supervisors, senior management) on the intention of individuals to share knowledge.\nOriginality/value: - The main contributions of this study are the following: examination of the knowledge sharing in the banking sector; testing of a specific well-known research model in the South-Eastern European environment; examination of the actual knowledge-sharing behaviour and not only of the behavioural intention to share knowledge and, finally, examination of the direct effect of the perceived behavioural control on knowledge-sharing behaviour, which, although suggested by theory, has been neglected by previous studies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
QSR customer sustainable behaviors and brand practice perceptions on willingness to pay a premium	[ "Economic", "Sustainable practices", "Willingness to pay a premium", "QSR", "Social and environmental sustainability" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Sustainability has made a major impact and continues to challenge restaurants of all sizes and in all segments. In the last few years, the growing significance of sustainability has forced many quick service restaurant (QSR) brands to implement major environmental initiatives. For example, Yum! Brands has built more than 30 LEED-certified buildings around the world and plans to incorporate LEED-certified green buildings in all other locations, McDonald's recently eliminated foam packaging and has committed to sourcing 100 percent of their packaging from renewable or recycled sources by 2025 and Subway is dedicated to sourcing ingredients from environmentally responsible suppliers (Murphy, 2018).\n2. Literature review and hypotheses: 2.1 Theory of planned behavior (TPB)\n3. Method: 3.1 Measurement\n4. Data analysis and results: 4.1 Preliminary analysis\n5. Discussion and conclusion: This study assessed the importance of sustainable practices for QSR consumers and if perceptions of QSR brand implementation of sustainable practices or QSR consumer sustainable behaviors impacted purchase behaviors. Specifically, QSR purchase behaviors were assessed in relation to a WTPP in the QSR context. Sustainable practices were divided into three categories of sustainable practices (economic, social and environmental).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of consumer sustainability attitudes and quick service restaurants (QSRs) practices along with the willingness of consumers to pay a premium for sustainability efforts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A random sample of QSR customers in Germany resulted in 428 completed surveys. First, common factor analysis was conducted to assess the summated scales related to the sustainable behavior of customers, the importance attached by them to the different dimensions of sustainability and the extent to which customers perceive that QSR implement such practices. Second, the effect of these summated scales on the willingness to pay a premium (WTPP) for sustainability practices were assessed by means of a logistic regression.\nFindings: The findings indicated that WTPP for sustainability efforts is primarily driven by internal beliefs and behaviors of consumers themselves rather than actions by QSR firms. Furthermore, when comparing five major QSRs, QSR brands did not appear to create a strong point of differentiation in their sustainability practices in the minds of frequent QSR consumers in the context of this study.\nPractical implications: Implications of these results suggest that a growing number of consumers place high importance on sustainability and engage in personal sustainability practices that impact behaviors such as QSR selection and a WTPP for QSR brands and products that are perceived as implementing sustainable practices.\nOriginality/value: This paper addresses a gap by assessing drivers of willingness of QSR customers to pay a premium for sustainable practices and if QSR brands sustainability practices differ in the minds of consumers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The direct and indirect effect of the existence of risk management on the relationship between audit committee and corporate social responsibility disclosure	[ "Risk management", "Palestine", "Audit committee", "CSR disclosure" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Over the past few decades, a number of significant corporate scandals such as WorldCom, Enron, Health International Holdings and Onetel highlight a poor corporate governance role, dishonesty, fraud and a lack of proper disclosure by the managers of the firms. As a result of these scandals, media, regulators and shareholders have scrutinized firms more closely than ever. In particular, shareholders demand more efficient audit committee, more social, environmental, financial disclosure and higher quality financial statements (Arvidsson, 2010; Young and Marais, 2012). Hence, firms start acting in more accountable way and improving their corporate social responsibility (CSR) involvement by considering their overall effect on society and applying more transparency in their CSR disclosure (Lee, 2011; Young and Marais, 2012). CSR is defined as corporate integrated responsibilities, i.e. ethical, legal, economic and discretionary opportunities that the society has of organizations (Carroll, 1979). The World Business Council for Sustainable Development in 2014 is also defined as the continuing commitment by business to contribute to economic development while enhancing the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the community and society at large. It is also defined as the relationship of a corporation with its society as a whole. It is a developing area of action for management (Kolder-Webb et al., 2009).\n2. Literature reviews and hypotheses: The view of agency theory indicates that the efficient monitoring role of management behaviors is more expected to be effected by audit committee independent directors because they have no personal or economic relationship with management and, therefore, they can work objectively and independently from management effect (Bedard and Gendron, 2010). Hence, audit committee independence has more chance to monitor and decrease management opportunities to withhold information for their personal benefits (Allegrini and Greco, 2011). Fama (1980) indicates that audit committee independent directors may decrease the possibility of collusion by managers and the expropriation of shareholders wealth. Fama and Jensen (1983) also argue that audit committee independent directors can effectively monitor managers' actions to improve CSR disclosure and, however, reduce agency problem and asymmetry information. Haniffa and Cooke (2002) argue that audit committee independence could enrich the corporation by providing prestige, expertise and impartial decision making. Mangena and Tauringana (2007) use a sample of 262 companies in the UK and indicate that a positive influence of the level of audit committee independence on non-mandatory statements of best practice. Kelton and Yang (2008) use a sample of 248 listed companies in the USA and find a positive relationship of audit committee independence and internet financial reporting. Similar result reports for a sample of 42 listed and 39 unlisted Portuguese companies and suggests that the presence of independent directors on audit committee increases risk-related disclosure (Oliveira et al., 2011). Appuhami and Tashakor (2017) and Akhtaruddin and Haron (2010) also find that audit committee independence is positively related to voluntary disclosure. On the other hand, Li et al. (2012) report insignificant relationship between audit committee independent directors and voluntary disclosure in the UK. Similar finding find for a sample of 92 companies in Hong Kong (Ho and Shun Wong, 2001). In contrast, Haniffa and Cooke (2005) find a negative effect of audit committee independent directors on the level of CSR disclosure for a sample of 139 Malaysian companies. However, Othman et al. (2014) find insignificant effect of audit committee independent directors on the level of CSR disclosure for a sample of the top 94 companies listed on Bursa Malaysia. Sylvester and James (2016) use a sample of 174 listed companies in the Nigerian stock exchange between 2007 and 2008 and find that the corporate governance attributes of audit committee independence have no significant impact on CSR quality in Nigeria. Therefore, it is recommended that the corporate governance mechanisms should be strengthened, so that they can play a greater role in making companies act in the best interest of all stakeholders through qualitative, specific and non-rhetoric disclosure of their social and environmental activities. It is, therefore, hypothesized that:\n3. Research methodology: The conceptual framework is presented in Figure 1. It has been proposed to investigate the direct and indirect effect of the existence of risk management on the relationship between audit committee and CSR disclosure in Palestine. For independent variables, audit committee independence (ACINDit), audit committee meeting (ACMit), audit committee financial expertise (ACFEit) and audit committee size (ACSIZEit). In addition, firm age (FAGEit), firm size (FSIZEit) and debt ratio (DEBTit) are used as control variables. CSR disclosure (CSRDit) is used as the dependent variable and finally the existence of risk management (ERMit) is used as mediator variable to explain the relationship between audit committee and CSR disclosure.\n4. Results and discussions: Table II presents the results of descriptive statistics of the study variables. It presents that CSR disclosure of Palestinian listed companies over seven years period ranged from 0.000 to 1.000 and with mean value of 0.483 and the standard deviation of 0.501. This indicates that, on average, 0.483 of the observations disclosed CSR-related information. It indicates that the minimum disclosure is 0.000, while the maximum disclosure is 1.000. It is an indication that none of the companies disclosed all the CSR-related information. It also presents that the highest mean value is 8.871 reported for audit committee meeting with maximum (standard deviation) values of 22.000 (5.011). Meanwhile, the lowest mean value is 0.372 reported for audit committee financial expertise with maximum (standard deviation) values of 0.676 (0.156). Moreover, the average value of the existence of risk management is 0.082, where the range is between 0.000 and 1.000 percent with standard deviation value of 0.276 percent.\n5. Conclusion: This study investigates the direct and indirect effect of the existence of risk management on the relationship between audit committee and CSR disclosure in Palestine after the issuance of PCCG in 2009 using a sample of 31 nonfinancial listed companies from 2010 to 2016. The results suggest that a positive and significant effect of the existence of risk management, audit committee meeting and audit committee size on CSR disclosure, while audit committee financial expertise has a negative and significant effect on CSR disclosure. Furthermore, the results also suggest that the effects of audit committee meeting and audit committee financial expertise are significant on CSR disclosure through the existence of risk management.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct and indirect effect of the existence of risk management on the relationship between audit committee and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in Palestine.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study utilizes a panel data of 31 Palestinian listed companies from 2010 to 2016. It also utilizes structural equation modeling (SEM) model.\nFindings: The results of SEM model find a significant positive relationship of the existence of risk management, audit committee meeting and audit committee size with CSR disclosure. However, audit committee financial expertise has a significant negative relationship with CSR disclosure. The results also find a significant relationship of audit committee meeting and audit committee financial expertise with CSR disclosure through the existence of risk management.\nPractical implications: This study is important to policymakers, accounting professionals and shareholders on the extent to which audit committee related to such committee efficiency in monitoring CSR disclosure.\nSocial implications: This study adds to the existing literature by investigating the direct and indirect effect of the existence of risk management on the relationship between audit committee and CSR disclosure in Palestine as one of the youngest market in region that assists to test the validity of agency theory in a young and small emerging market context.\nOriginality/value: It is the first study to investigate the direct and indirect effect of the existence of risk management on the relationship between audit committee and CSR disclosure in Palestine.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Collaborative contracting in the Singapore construction industry: current status, major barriers and best solutions	[ "Collaborative contracting", "The Singapore construction Industry", "Barriers", "Solutions" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Players (i.e. designers, consultants, engineers, contractors, facility managers and the like) in the Singapore construction industry have a culture of working in silos, causing the sector to be lagging with sluggish productivity (Sen, 2017). The detachment or noncollaborative behavior brought constant change requests from clients (Hasan et al., 2018; Jarkas and Bitar, 2011; Jarkas and Radosavljevic, 2012), resulting in a productivity loss of 25-50% (Arashpour and Arashpour, 2015). Given that the building industry takes up an estimated 6% of Singapore's gross domestic product valued at $23 to $35 billion SGD (BCA, 2017), it is imperative for the industry to progress in order not to stump economic growth. One critical way to achieve progress in the industry is to encourage a collaborative working culture in the industry.Collaborative contracting (CC) as a practice where organizations or individuals work together for knowledge and resource sharing (Bygballe et al., 2010), it has been one of the key catalysts for improving construction productivity (Rahman et al., 2014). That is because such effective working relations is a necessary condition for innovative performance in projects, in which it will enable progress in the industry (Gambatese and Hallowell, 2011). Furthermore, such an abstract concept of aligning project stakeholders across the value chain could foster better relations between them to develop joint solutions and achieve the desired outcome (Kumaraswamy et al., 2005b; Amirkhanyan et al., 2012). Given the benefit of reducing transactions and increasing efficiencies, CC is critical for the progress of the Singapore construction industry.Other than attaining a reduction in cost, variation and time, CC would come in handy as it complements prior initiatives by the BCA like BIM adoption and Early Contractor Involvement (ECI). ECI was introduced since 2010 and it encourages the engagement of contractors from the design stage to provide perspective for consultant architects in the areas of productivity and constructability (BCA, 2018). The implementation of CC can further enhance the values of trust and cooperation, which is the core focus of ECI and the Construction Industry Transformation Map (Construction ITM). Also, the adoption of CC could be the catalyst for integrating the construction value chain by promoting mutual trust and collaboration among stakeholders. For achieving the complementation of prior efforts relating to integration, this is one of the main objectives of BCA's endeavor in introducing CC in Singapore.However, the adoption of CC involves many problems such as lack of trust, communication barriers, adversarial mentalities among project stakeholders, and disputes (Sparkling et al., 2017). Moreover, the local industry tends to be more conservative and relied on the usual contracting models, resulting in resistance to adopt CC (Pheng et al., 2015). For moving toward CC, there is a need to explore potential barriers and possible solutions for CC to be effectively adopted in the Singapore construction industry, which has not been done in the existing studies.Thus, the objectives of this research are to (1) evaluate the current status of CC adoption in the Singapore construction industry; (2) identify potential barriers hindering the implementation of CC and assess their importance; (3) propose feasible solutions to promote the adoption of CC. This study will disclose the major barriers and possible solutions for adopting CC in the Singapore construction industry to bridge the knowledge gap in past studies. In addition, this paper would contribute the BCA to refining the CC policy and aid practitioners in adopting CC successfully.\nLiterature review: CC in Singapore\nMethodology and data presentation: Various methods were adopted in this study. Firstly, an extensive literature review was conducted to draw out knowledge about the potential barriers and possible solutions for adopting CC. Then, a questionnaire was designed to assess the relative importance of each barrier and solution. Before the large-scale questionnaire survey, pre-survey interviews were carried out with four industry professionals to validate the survey questions and to improve the quality of the questionnaire. After the pre-survey interviews, the questionnaires were distributed to targeted respondents, and the survey results were validated by three industry practitioners via the post-survey interviews. Finally, a series of statistical tests were carried out to analyze the collected data.For collecting data, a questionnaire survey was conducted from January 2019 to February 2019. This questionnaire contained four sub-sections except for the respondents' basic information (e.g. occupation, work experience with CC, the information of projects undertaken in the past three years, etc.) and the open-ended segment. In the first section, respondents were requested to rank the barriers for adopting CC on a five-point Likert scale. The second section aims to solicit opinions on the potential solutions to overcome the barriers. Section three is about the relative importance of the critical success factors identified from the existing studies. Section four surveys the perception-based performance where respondents are required to give their opinions on the extent of performance improvement with the adoption of CC. All respondents were requested to fill in all the sections of the questionnaire, depending on their experience and knowledge. Given the limit of words and space, this paper only focuses on the first sub-section and the second sub-section, which indicated the major barriers and the best solutions for implementing CC in Singapore.Due to the objective of surveying CC adoption in the Singapore construction industry, the target respondents should be various types of practitioners in the Singapore construction industry, such as contractors, consultants, developers, quantity surveyors, etc. of the private and public sectors. Hence, the sample frame is composed of individual stakeholders and firms from the BCA's Contractors Registration System, Singapore Institute of Surveyor and Valuers, Society of Project Managers and Singapore Institute of Architects. Also, the respondents were chosen at random within the sample frame.Eventually, a total of 165 questionnaires were distributed via email and LinkedIn InMail. Among them, 31 questionnaires were received with a response rate of 18.8%, which is sufficient compared with the general response rate of Singapore construction industry surveys range of 10-15% (Teo et al., 2007). Furthermore, the statistical analysis can be conducted because the central limit theorem holds true for sample sizes larger than 30 (Ott and Longnecker, 2015; Ngo et al., 2020). As shown in Table 3, the respondents belong to a variety of backgrounds with occupations involving directors (29.03%), project managers (25.81%), quantity surveyors (22.58%) and engineers (22.58%). More than 60% of respondents are working on a project with a value of more than 4 million SGD, which benefits the high quality of the survey result as big projects usually involve more coordination and collaboration problems. Table 3 also shows the organization profile that the respondents are from, suggesting that the majority of the firms (87.1%) have more than 20 years of practice in the industry. Also, among the 31 respondents, 20 of them have been in the construction industry for more than 10 years and 10 of them have directly experienced working in a project with CC elements. Given that CC is not widely adopted in Singapore yet, the presence of the 32.36% who undertaken projects with CC elements is a bonus in value-adding the responses received.\nData analysis and discussion: Current adoption status of CC in the Singapore construction industry\nValidation: For validating the obtained results, the postsurvey interview was held with three industrial professionals. The profile of post-survey interviewees was shown in Table 8. Due to confidentiality issues, their names were not revealed. Three industrial professionals come from the statutory board, developer and subcontractor respectively. All of them have rich work experience in the Singapore construction industry and have experience with CC implementation.Three industrial professionals all supported the survey results and proposed that barriers hindering CC adoption are associated with organizational culture, financial support, legislative regulations, mutual objectives and commercial benefit. They indicated that the most significant cause of inefficiency is the misalignment of incentives amongst the participants involved in the delivery of construction projects. To encourage collaboration among the key players involved, ensuring effective communication and establishing a common incentive pool based on the overall project performance is necessary. Also, the middle management is the key for knowledge transfer in collaborative talks.Moreover, the paradox between seeking for low cost and investment on CC adoption would be a big barrier. CC requires persistent investment in building trust and instilling collaborative behaviors. Due to the principle of seeking for the lowest cost, players rarely invest on their own if there are no definite returns. That can hinder the industry moving from a traditional contacting approach to CC adoption. They also argued that conventional contracting models have long been favored for their simplicity and the certainty risk transfer. Practitioners may resist to change in the current way of working. Hence, the government can publicize the benefits of CC to the industrial professionals, and in the meanwhile, provide funds to offset uncertainties for projects adopting CC.\nConclusion and recommendations: The study investigated the current status, major barriers and possible solutions for the adoption of CC in the Singapore construction industry. First, an extensive literature review was carried out with the identification of 26 barriers, as well as 21 possible solutions. Then, a questionnaire survey was disseminated to firms and industry professionals after receiving validation from 4 industry experts. The survey result reveals that only a mere 32.23% of respondents have participated in projects with CC form/principles. In addition, for the past three years of all the projects that the respondents were involved in, only 25.22% of projects adopted CC elements. By mean score ranking, the top barriers of this study came out to be: (1) inherent difficulties in changing organizational cultures; (2) lack of incentives/financial support; (3) lack of legislative regulations; (4) resistant to change the current way of working; (5) seeking for the lowest cost; (6) difficulties in converting strategic decisions to operational levels; (7) unclear contract terms and objectives. Respondents also gave their opinions on the best solution to overcome the barriers. The top five solutions are: (1) increasing awareness of the benefits of CC; (2) management to take the lead in ensuring a collaborative company culture; (3) involving the middle manager in collaborative talks to promote knowledge transfer; (4) government provides funds to offset initial uncertainties for projects adopting CC; and (5) ensuring effective communication with key players involved. Finally, to validate the obtained results, a post-survey was conducted by interviewing three industrial professionals.The obtained results should be interpreted in the context of study limitations. First, the survey results are based on the respondents' perceptions and their experiences, which might be affected by personal bias. Respondents might withhold information especially when it comes to organizations or projects, if they deem it as sensitive information. Second, the survey was carried out in the case of the Singapore construction industry, causing the findings might change in other areas. However, the research findings are still useful because they investigated the current status, major barriers and possible solutions for the Singapore construction industry adopting CC. Specifically, for construction industry practitioners, it could contribute them to improving the awareness and understanding of the impending barriers to overcome. For the Singapore authorities, it could provide them with guidance and reference for their policy development.Moreover, this study unfolds several recommendations. First, the government could provide financial subsidies to push the adoption of CC. Singapore's construction industry is known to be passive and slow in adopting new initiatives. Especially in such a situation that firms would have to bear the tangible additional cost in establishing tools like IT platforms, organizing partnering workshops and developing CC competencies. Providing financial incentives might be an impetus for adoption CC. Second, the top managers should lead the change of mindsets and cultures. It is an uphill task to change mindsets and the way of doing things, especially in the older generation. BCA could first educate firm leaders about the benefits and technicalities of CC, then push the leaders to inculcate a culture of trust and collaboration. Third, awareness about CC should be raised. The benefits of adoption CC should be made known to the masses, especially to the clients who tend to be reluctant to adopt CC. And practitioners who have been through CC in other countries can be invited to share their experience and successful stories.Last, it is recommended that future research could discuss the critical success factors and the potential impacts of adopting CC in the Singapore construction industry. It might also be interesting to conduct an in-depth case study, expecting to introduce the best CC practice and draw on the successful experience for industry practitioners.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Collaborative contracting (CC) is the direction that Singapore is venturing into in line with the Construction Industry Transformation Map. For its successful adoption, it is necessary to examine the potential barriers and possible solutions. Therefore, this study aims to explore the current status, major barriers and best solutions for the adoption of CC in the Singapore construction industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To achieve these objectives, a comprehensive literature review was carried out and 26 barriers, as well as 21 solutions, were identified. Then a questionnaire was designed to assess the priority of these barriers and solutions. After a pilot study, 165 questionnaires were distributed, and 31 responses were received. And the survey result was validated by post-survey with three industry professionals.\nFindings: Results revealed that only a small percent of projects adopted CC in Singapore. Seven significant barriers hindering CC implementation were found out. They are \"inherent difficulties in changing organizational culture,\" \"lack of incentives/financial support,\" \"lack of legislative regulations,\" \"resistant to change the current way of working,\" \"seeking for the lowest cost\" and \"difficulties in converting strategic decisions to operational levels\" and \"unclear contract terms and objectives.\" Also, five best solutions were suggested to overcome the identified barriers.\nOriginality/value: The findings of this study could enable industry practitioners to be aware of the potential barriers to adopting CC and choose suitable solutions to overcome these barriers. It is also helpful for authorities to come up with effective policies to promote the adoption of CC.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Is organizational learning being absorbed by knowledge management? A systematic review	[ "Organizational learning", "Knowledge management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the current era of information and knowledge, organizational learning (OL) and knowledge management (KM) are two fundamental fields that add value to organizations by facilitating the achievement of their goals (Castaneda, 2010). Companies that learn faster and use knowledge more effectively tend to be leaders (Smith, 2008). However, KM and OL are dynamic subjects that \"have gone through dramatic changes in the last twenty years and will continue to change in the next ten years\" (Easterby-Smith and Lyles, 2011, p. 1). These changes have rarely been investigated and they are the main focus of this study. Vera and Crossan (2003) stated that although OL and KM are closely related, these are rarely studied together. Furthermore, despite the theoretical extension of KM, its trajectory and identity remain largely unknown (Serenko, 2013), which applies equally to OL.\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 Knowledge management\n3. Methodology: The method used in this study was a systematic literature review covering KM and OL publications from the 1970s, when the OL field started to grow, up to 2016 (inclusive). A review is: \"a replicable, scientific and transparent process, in other words, a detailed technology, that aims to minimize bias through exhaustive literature searches of published and unpublished studies and by providing and audit trail of the reviewer's decisions, procedures and conclusions\" (Tranfield et al., 2003, p. 209). The current review differed from traditional narrative reviews by using more systematic, rigorous, explicit and reproducible methods for the selection of articles (Tranfield et al., 2003; Delbufalo, 2012).\n4. Results: In total, 16,185 KM and OL publications were found using the Web of Science and Scopus databases, where 14,452 (approximately 87 per cent) were found using the KM search string and the remaining 2,104 (13 per cent) using the OL search string. It is important to note that some publications were listed in both databases so the numbers are not absolute.\n5. Discussion: The objective of this study was to review the evolution of research into OL and KM, particularly to determine whether OL had been conceptually absorbed by KM.\n6. Limitations and conclusions: The current study had some limitations. The first was that only two databases were used, i.e. Scopus and ISI Web of Science, but these were selected because of their academic prestige and breadth, as well as their extensive coverage of KM and OL studies. Second, the search terms used excluded some terms recommended by certain authors. However, the major terms were included and the effect of excluding certain terms was not expected to be significant. Third, the number of thematic categories was not formally optimized and the descriptive names used were open to other interpretations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to focus on research regarding organizational learning (OL) and knowledge management (KM), and to specifically investigate whether OL has been conceptually absorbed by KM.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study is based on 16,185 articles from the Scopus and ISI Web of Science databases, using VantagePoint 10.0 software. The method used in this study is a systematic literature review covering KM and OL publications from the 1970s, when the OL field started to grow, up to 2016.\nFindings: Nuclear processes of OL, creation and acquisition of knowledge, have been conceptually absorbed by KM literature in the past years.\nResearch limitations/implications: Only two databases have been considered, Scopus and ISI Web of Science, because of their academic prestige. However, these databases include a large number of articles on KM and OL. Search terms used could exclude some relevant terms, although all major descriptive terms have been included.\nPractical implications: This paper identifies thematic clusters in KM and OL, evolution of both fields, most cited authors and representative journals by topic.\nOriginality/value: This is the first paper to jointly analyse the evolution of KM and OL. This paper shows a conceptual absorption of OL into KM, which may enrich academic discussion and also provide some clarity to the conceptualization of these two fields.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Critical, manifest variables in virtual construction project value delivery	[ "Information control", "Critical success factors" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One innovative technology which is gaining importance in the construction industry in recent times is the \"virtual construction project\" concept. This concept entails reliance on modern information and communication technology (ICT) tools by potentially, dispersed parties to operate independent of time and space to achieve common goals (Barima, 2003; Oosthuizen et al., 1998). The potential benefits in the use of the virtual construction project model include time and costs savings (Barima, 2003; Oosthuizen et al., 1998). Research has however shown that actors who use the virtual model in their operations face a lot of challenges (Cramton, 1997). Research is therefore required to illuminate the use of the virtual model in construction project delivery.Existing research on the virtual and allied concepts in relevant literature have, however, tended to focus on the use of tactical tools to improve on tasks delivery in the construction industry. For example, scholars have examined the use of the virtual model: in structural analysis (Chung et al., 2001; Deng and Nguyen-Minh, 2003); also as a tactical tool for the development of planning and execution strategies to support construction tasks delivery (Waly and Thabet, 2003). Other studies have also explored the use of the model for the evaluation of construction productivity and safety (Hadikusumo and Rowlinson, 2002; Maruyama et al., 2000); object visualization technology (Alves and Bartolo, 2006); agent based procurement systems (Obonyo et al., 2005). Thus, little research exist to enhance our understanding on the use of the virtual concept at the strategic project delivery level.This paper focuses on the examination of the critical variables which can enhance the delivery of manifest value in virtual construction projects. The unit of analysis is at the construction inter-organizational level. To achieve our aims we used a triangulated research design to provide a robust inquiry into the subject.In this study we define value in projects as the delivery of construction end products (tangible and intangible) via the use of efficient processes for effective results delivery. Virtual construction project also entails the use of modern ICT tools by actors in construction projects, to operate irrespective of time and distance to achieve common goals, whilst maintaining less physical presence (Barima, 2003; Oosthuizen et al., 1998). Also critical, manifest variables refer to certain few, observable, key items which can enhance the delivery of value in virtual projects.The research gives the following value to the literature and practice. First, it increases understanding on the critical, manifest issues which do require attention in the use of the virtual model in value delivery in construction projects. This revelation can enhance understanding in research and practice. Also our focus on virtual construction projects contrasts extant scholarly attention on examining critical variables in traditional physical project delivery. Second, the study uses triangulated data analysis to reveal insightful knowledge, and also provides a fresh view in interpreting the disentangled, critical variables from the perspective of influential and necessary variables.The paper is structured as follows. First, we discuss previous, relevant literature to put this research in context. Second, we present the research methodology used in the study. Third, we then provide the results and discussion of the findings of our study, before giving the conclusion.\nLiterature review: Research into issues which can be critical in the delivery of specific objectives is not new. However in the relevant literature, most extant studies have focused on examining critical variables which can lead to success in projects (e.g. Kerzner, 2001). Also previous research have tended to focus on traditional physical projects (e.g. De Wit, 1988; Kerzner, 2001), since the extensive use of ICT in project delivery is a relatively recent development.Over the years, scholars have done commendable studies to clarify certain key concepts and issues relating to the use of the critical success factors (CSF) model, which hitherto appeared blurred in the literature. For example, Lim and Mohamed (1999) emphasized the need to clearly differentiate between success factors and success criteria which seemed to be confusingly interchanged in scholarly work. They argued that success factors relate to the facts, circumstances, and influences which provide input for the successful outcome of projects. Further, they clarified that success criteria concerns the set of standards used to evaluate the success of projects. Also the potential conflicts on perceptions of project success was illuminated in the literature. Scholars have persuasively argued that project success can have varied meanings to different stakeholders in projects (De Wit, 1988; Soderlund, 2004). Hence a realistic assessment of project success requires an extension to the often rigidly held traditional project success criteria of time, cost, and quality to include other factors as well (De Wit, 1988; Kerzner, 2001; Soderlund, 2004). Thus over the years certain studies have advanced understanding in the critical variables research domain, but the focus has however been on the use of project success as the dependent variable.Although the examination of critical variables has been labeled as one of the key bodies of knowledge in the project management literature (e.g. Soderlund, 2004)more can be done to enhance knowledge in this area. This can be done by handling extant limitations and gaps in the application of the CSF concept. For example, instead of the unrelenting focus on studying the dependent variable of \"success\" other neglected project objectives like value delivery can be explored. This is important, since though many references have been made to \"value\" in the relevant construction and project management literature, few studies have focused attention in studying this construct (e.g. Thomson et al., 2006). It is rare to find research which uses \"value\" as the dependent construct in examining critical variables in project delivery.Other gaps in the critical variables research domain include the need for the use of mixed research methods, more empirical studies, and examination of novel concepts in construction project delivery. For example, the use of triangulated research methods to examine the critical variables concept can enhance deeper understanding. Also more empirical investigations will be needed to strengthen research in this area, since most extant studies have been criticized as relying more on theory than empirical evidence (Belout and Gauvreau, 2004; Lim and Mohamed, 1999; Pinto and Slevin, 1987). Further, the study of critical variables in the use of novel concepts like the virtual model (instead of traditional physical projects) in construction project delivery can definitely provide fresh perspectives on the subject.This paper fills part of the identified research gaps. The contributions of this paper include enhancing fresh understanding of the examined topic via the use of triangulated research methods. Also the paper provides empirical data to support theoretical concepts on the critical issues which require attention in value delivery in virtual construction projects (of which little is known). The study is part of a wider investigation, and this part focuses on the manifest variables which can be critical in virtual construction project value delivery. The next section gives the research methods used in the study.\nResearch methodology: Owing to the nascent state of the research topic, this study used both qualitative and quantitative methods to achieve the objectives of the research. This triangulated approach gives both rich and robust insight of the examined topic. Qualitative methods were used at two main stages of the research. The first stage of the qualitative studies involved the use of initial semi-structured interviews, observations, and desk studies which provided illumination and insights about the constructs of the study. Twenty nine semi-structured interviews (with 29 professionals), and one focus group style interview were done during this stage to explore the perceptions of professionals in the construction industry in Hong Kong on the subject. Also, the focus group interview involved the use of 3 knowledgeable respondents (selected on purpose).All the respondents in the qualitative studies possessed adequate knowledge of the subject. Theoretical/purposive sampling was used in the selection of the respondents in the initial qualitative studies, and theoretical saturation guided the further choice of respondents till the attainment of the stated number of respondents. The use of theoretical/purposive sampling in the study provided focus in the selection of theoretically, helpful cases (see, e.g. Yin, 1994).The second key phase in the use of qualitative studies entailed the verification of the final results of the study by 8 experts with knowledge on the subject, to boost the credibility of the findings. The 8 experts were selected after wide consultation with people in the industry on this matter.All the interviews in the study spanned between 1 hour to 2.25 hours. An interview protocol was used to guide the conduction of interviews. The interview questions comprised a set of triangulated questions to ensure a complete collection of data on the subject. Also pilot studies were used to refine the interview questions.The initial qualitative semi-structured interviews, observations and thorough, literature review provided 16 manifest, independent variables for further examination via quantitative studies. The quantitative studies which is the focus of this paper involved initial pilot and main questionnaire-based surveys to examine the critical variables in the use of the virtual concept in value delivery in projects. The pilot studies supported the refinement and enhancement of the scales used in the final quantitative study.A set of 17 sub-scales were used in the research to measure the variables. Multi-item scales were used in each subscale to reduce error. Respondents were asked to give scores on the items which are critical in the delivery of value via the use of the virtual concept in construction projects. The reliabilities were measured using Cronbach alpha. The overall alpha value for the composite scale was 0.934. The alpha value for the 5 item scale used to measure the dependent variable (manifest value in virtual construction projects) was 0.79. Table I provides the details of the reliabilities of the other sub-scales used in the main quantitative study. From the evidence given, the overall scale's reliability as well as the subscales therefore satisfy the recommended rule of thumb alpha range of 0.6-0.7 (Hair et al., 1995; Herrmann et al., 2006; Liu and Arnett, 2000; Pai, 2006).Sampling for main quantitative study\nResults and discussion: Data analysis general\nImplications for research and practice: This study has revealed 16 manifest, critical variables which do require attention in the use of the virtual concept in construction project value delivery. Although this research is one of the early attempts to examine this topic, the 16 disentangled, manifest variables reinforces previous findings in the critical variables domain in project delivery. For example, earlier studies which were focused mainly on the delivery of physical face-to-face projects have identified variables like (for example) top management support, selection, planning (e.g. Pinto and Slevin, 1987). Also certain indirectly, related, previous research have emphasized the importance of issues such as shared understanding, trust, technology, integration, training, and teams in the general use of the virtual concept at the group-level of analysis, task delivery, or delivery of other business objectives(e.g. Handy, 1995; Joshi et al., 2003; Kayworth and Leidner, 2000; Kuruppuarachchi, 2006). This research empirically confirms these issues as important in virtual construction project delivery. It also extends the crucial issues via the introduction of variables such as context management, digital value delivery opportunistic orientation, pre-use readiness, framework for collaboration in the virtual construction project environment.Whilst all the 16 manifest critical variables were found to be of at least above average importance, managers can further differentiate these items into influential and necessary variables to support value delivery. The four influential variables of integration and systemic alignment, trust, tool, technology leverage and associated factors and created shared understanding do explain a significant variance in value delivery via the virtual concept. However, the other 12 variables can be seen as necessary variables. Thus using this concept of necessary and influential variables can be a useful lens to support the management of project value delivery, from a systemic yet differentiated view. Hence it is appropriate to view value delivery from this latter perspective, where the non-existence of the necessary variables can cause problems or underachievement in value delivery. For example, proper partner selection, and risk management can reduce vulnerabilities; the structured management of information and its communication is a necessity; also the purposeful opportunistic orientation to use digital media to seek value opportunities can add extra value to the whole project delivery.In summary, this study has given both theoretical and practical illumination to the use of the virtual concept in value delivery in projects. We have disentangled 16 manifest, critical variables which require attention in value delivery in virtual projects. This enhances understanding on this nascent topic, where there is scanty knowledge and hence understanding on the subject. The research has also added value by providing a fresh view on the examination of the identified critical variables from the lens of influential and necessary variables. This latter perspective gives both a differentiated perspective within the cluster of critical items to support systemic and focused value delivery. Thus giving fresh view to both the literature and practice.Future studies\nConclusion: This study has given triangulated evidence to support our understanding on the critical variables in the use of the virtual model in construction project value delivery. The research has disentangled 16 manifest, critical variables which can enhance the delivery of value in construction projects supported by the virtual model.The study has also provided fresh perspective to research in the critical variables domain: by differentiating between influential and necessary, critical variables. Four variables were found to be influential, whilst the other 12 variables are better perceived as necessary variables. This latter view can give a differentiated and yet a systemic perspective, on the issues which require attention in value delivery in virtual construction projects. Further studies may be required on the concepts examined in this research in varied cultural contexts, to support the accumulation of evidence.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to examine the use of the increasingly important virtual concept to deliver value in projects, focusing on the manifest, critical issues which can enhance value delivery in virtual construction projects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study uses both quantitative and qualitative triangulated methods to examine the concepts in the study. Triangulated data analysis is also used to give insight.\nFindings: - The study disentangles 16 manifest, independent variables as being crucial in enhancing value delivery in virtual construction projects. Also the research gives a fresh view, by differentiating between influential and necessary crucial variables in virtual construction project value delivery.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study demonstrates the use of triangulation in critical variables research. It also gives integrated insight on rigorous, triangulated, data analysis to enhance understanding in the critical variables research domain.\nPractical implications: - The research gives insight to managers on the issues which need attention in the design and implementation of virtual construction projects to deliver value.\nOriginality/value: - The research adds value to the literature on the virtual construction project delivery concept, where little knowledge exists. Based on empirical evidence, the study also gives a fresh insightful lens, for the examination of critical variables from the perspective of influential and necessary items.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Generation Y consumer online repurchase intention in Bangkok: Based on Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model	[ "Trust", "E-commerce", "Online repurchase intention", "Stimuli-Organism-Response (SOR) model" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The development of science and technology has made changes to the way we live and the way we consume (Kim and Kim, 2004). It is undeniable that the extensive usage of internet has incubated and facilitated e-commerce (Avinash and Akarsha, 2017). Traditionally, consumers visit stores to buy goods (Laohapensang, 2009) but at present, internet allows the consumers to complete their purchases without travelling to stores (Ling et al., 2010). However, the number of online visitors who eventually make a purchase is relatively small as compared to the huge number of active internet users (Ai-Maghrabi and Dennis, 2011; Gupta and Kim, 2007). For this reason, the competition in the marketplace is getting fierce. The interaction, customization, personalization and visualization of products and services have intensified (Deloitte, 2017; Detmer, 2002). This pushes online retailers to adopt or evolve new business models in order to win the customers from competitors (Kim and Kim, 2004). In this context, it is believed that the victory of online retailers is determined not only by the fundamental characteristics of products and services that are promoted in the market (Kim and Kim, 2004) but also the way to retain the customers. Hence, retention of existing customers has become indispensable for online retailers since they find it hard to get the attention of new customers, which makes understanding consumers repurchase behaviour or repurchase intention extremely important for the academicians and marketers (Kumar and Anjaly, 2017).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model\n3. Conceptual framework and research design: 3.1 Conceptual framework\n4. Research findings: 4.1 Respondents' profile\n5. Discussion: The research findings reveal that website appearance, security and online promotion affect online trust thereby triggering Generation Y consumers repurchase intention. In this section, discussion mainly emphasizes on main phenomenon derived from hypotheses testing since all hypotheses were supported.\n6. Conclusion: Our study highlights significant inter-relationships between online environmental cues, cognitive and affective states and outcome within SOR framework in e-commerce context in Thailand. It also provides insightful research findings for academicians, online retailers and marketers. From theoretical perspective, the discoveries regarding SOR model and trust issues could be contributed to the further research in cyber settings, and particularly it adds values to Thai researchers. Also, from managerial perspective, the findings would help online retailers to understand Generation Y consumers more and improve their business strategies in order to strengthen trust. As a result, Generation Y consumers online repurchase activities will be enhanced.\n7. Limitations: As all other studies, this study presents several limitations. Foremost, our empirical data are limited, thus findings are generated from a limited number of Generation Y consumers in Bangkok only. As a result, the limited sample and findings cannot represent the Generation Y consumers' online shopping behaviour in Thailand. Future study should emphasize on larger and diverse regional samples. Second, our study limits itself to survey study especially from buyer perspective; thus, conducting in-depth interview with both buyers and online sellers in the future study tends to generate more comprehensive and updating information about online consumption phenomenon in buyer-seller context.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The rapid growth of e-commerce has encouraged online retailers to adapt to the purchase behaviour of Generation Y consumers. For this purchase, the purpose of this paper is to investigate Generation Y online consumer repurchase intention in Thai context based on Stimuli-Organism-Response (SOR) model.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were used to test the hypotheses that Generation Y consumer online response is influenced by online environment cues and organism. In total, 401 questionnaires were collected in Bangkok through judgemental sampling and convenient sampling. SPSS 24 was used to analyse Generation Y consumers' demographic information and reliability test. Amos 24 was utilized to examine measurement model and structural equation model.\nFindings: The findings finally revealed that website security presents the strongest influence on Generation Y consumers trust. Also, online promotion possesses the weakest association with Generation Y consumers trust. More importantly, Generation Y consumer online repurchase intention is positively influenced by the degree of trust they have towards websites. The implications of the findings for marketers are discussed.\nResearch limitations/implications: The empirical data are limited to generate findings from a limited number of Generation Y consumers in Bangkok only. Also, the study limits itself to explore only inter-relationship in the scope of SOR.\nPractical implications: It is suggested that in order to draw attention from and retain Generation Y consumers, online retailers should aim at strengthening trust-building in the online buyer-seller context as well as a dynamic promotional campaign. Moreover, a constellation of relevant marketing strategies is recommended.\nOriginality/value: Since there is a lack of implementation of SOR model based on the Thai context, this paper fills the gap by illustrating how SOR works in Thailand with updating findings.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Managing stakeholder knowledge for the evaluation of innovation systems in the face of climate change	[ "Decision support systems", "Knowledge management", "Climate policy", "Technological innovation", "Low carbon transitions", "System maps" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Transforming societies into low-carbon and climate-resilient systems is a complex and multi-dimensional problem domain, as it has impacts on people and institutions within the systems. Replacing conventional technologies and behaviour with climate-friendly solutions may bring about socio-economic and environmental benefits to societies but could also have negative implications such as employment losses, investment requirements or required imports of resources, which could create resistance to changes. Moreover, regions, countries or sectors may feature several inertias. For example, recent investments in coal plants can partly lock a system in fossil-fuel-dependent energy production for as long as the following two decades. Therefore, capturing the dynamic interactions between system actors and institutional processes or policies and finding ways to enhance acceptance of low-emission solutions constitute a crucial aspect of desired transformations. As a result, an array of respective evaluation methods and tools are required.\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 Systems of innovation framework\n3. The system maps framework as a research tool for climate change: One of the challenges of analysing techno-socio-economic aspects of climate change is the scale and complexities of known and unknown problems that cut across national boundaries and intersect across sectors. System maps can assist in defining the boundaries of a study or a unit of analysis, identifying a system's main elements and its dynamics. It is not a one-size-fits-all tool rather a systematic but flexible tool that considers the unique structural context and different scales of each innovation system for climate change at the household/community, sectoral, sub-national, national, regional and/or global level.\n4. Mapping Tool for Innovation Systems Evaluation: 4.1 Introduction to Mapping Tool for Innovation Systems Evaluation\n5. Conclusions: The proposed methodological framework for evaluating complex innovation systems for climate change is based on the system mapping approach and can be built on valuable stakeholder knowledge and expertise. It begins by defining conceptual boundaries of a system by identifying all relevant actors, policies and functions within key components of an innovation system, namely, the life cycle of the complete supply chain; the environment of enablers and barriers that directly or indirectly impact the system; and facilitating services that are external to the system but are fundamentally necessary. It later involves capturing and delving into the past and present dynamic interactions between these actors, policies and functions. Building on the identified system dynamics, the framework finally allows for evaluating pathways towards low-carbon, climate-resilient economies by exploring such dynamics while also assessing different policy strategies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to frame the stakeholder-driven system mapping approach in the context of climate change, building on stakeholder knowledge of system boundaries, key elements and interactions within a system and to introduce a decision support tool for managing and visualising this knowledge into insightful system maps with policy implications.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This methodological framework is based on the concepts of market maps. The process of eliciting and visualising expert knowledge is facilitated by means of a reference implementation in MATLAB, which allows for designing technological innovation systems models in either a structured or a visual format.\nFindings: System mapping can contribute to evaluating systems for climate change by capturing knowledge of expert groups with regard to the dynamic interrelations between climate policy strategies and other system components, which may promote or hinder the desired transition to low carbon societies.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study explores how system mapping addresses gaps in analytical tools and complements the systems of innovation framework. Knowledge elicitation, however, must be facilitated and build upon a structured framework such as technological innovation systems.\nPractical implications: This approach can provide policymakers with significant insight into the strengths and weaknesses of current policy frameworks based on tacit knowledge embedded in stakeholders.\nSocial implications: The developed methodological framework aims to include societal groups in the climate policy-making process by acknowledging stakeholders' role in developing transition pathways. The system map codifies stakeholder input in a structured and transparent manner.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study that clearly defines the system mapping approach in the frame of climate policy and introduces the first dedicated software option for researchers and decision makers to use for implementing this methodology.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Enterprise education: Towards a framework for effective engagement with the learners of today	[ "Teaching methods", "Entrepreneurial education", "Enterprise education" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Dorothy Law Nolte is perhaps not a name we would readily associate with enterprise education, however her poem should resonate with all academics and practitioners in the area and is the basis upon which this research is founded. In Nolte's poem \"Children learn what they live\" we can observe the correlation between how children are treated and its influence on their social and intellectual development (Nolte and Harris, 1998). If children are encouraged to express themselves in a supportive learning environment, and allowed the freedom to be creative, imaginative and to see failure as a positive and not necessarily as a negative outcome, they may become more skilled and productive members of society (Taylor, 2013). Reviews of educational policy and practice demonstrate the crucial role that a skilled workforce can play in the economy and society (Wojdylo-Preisner and Zawadzki, 2015; Potter and Watts, 2014; Sanghi et al., 2012). However, the approaches used in educational institutions to develop this skilled workforce has arguably changed little over the last 200 years which raises the question, are the traditional educational methods appropriate for today's classrooms and employment market? The digital disruption observed in business has not yet been fully realised in education meaning that learners are not necessarily being taught the contemporary skills necessary for life and employment in today's disrupted society. This research will explore the themes around how learners currently learn, what they are learning and provide some insight into what and how they perhaps should be learning. Supported by quantitative analysis the research will examine young learners' attitudes towards enterprise education within the context of a university led initiative, a real-world business challenge.\nLiterature review: Although by no means an absolute, in many countries where students have limited access to education, enterprise and entrepreneurial activity continues to thrive (ILO, 2013) whereas in countries like the UK where education is more established, such activities are rather more stagnated (Smialek, 2015). This observation raises the question, are educational institutions in their current form more of an inhibitor than an enabler to innovative practices, with students being educated \"out\" of creativity and innovation (Robinson, 2006). As the global marketplace becomes increasingly unpredictable with employment opportunities becoming more competitive worldwide (GEDI, 2016) there is an argument that many of the traditionally perceived economic powers could gradually decline through a lack of innovation and growth (Smialek, 2015). This possible future should provide an impetus for countries like the UK to encourage innovation and enterprise in educational institutions, to enhance the knowledge-based economy. However, there is also a more fundamental reason to make the educational pedagogy more engaging for its learners (Taylor, 2013; Jones and Iredale, 2010), so they enjoy and benefit from the learning experience.\nMethodology: In November 2015 the research used face-to-face self-completed questionnaires, which took approximately five minutes to complete, with 117 business studies students in Stages S4-S6[2] from secondary schools across Dundee and business students from Years 1-4[3] at one university in Dundee, Scotland. As the research was questioning respondents under the age of 18, the research liaised with the secondary schools to ensure appropriate ethical procedures were followed and implemented. The research used quota sampling because this approach appeared more viable and more representative of the population (Malhotra and Birks, 2006), able to \"produce a quality, representative sample\" (McGivern, 2003, p. 179). It is acknowledged however that by using this approach the research could not calculate the sampling errors and confidence intervals (Hague and Harris, 1993, Churchill, 1991), this limitation was partially addressed by using an interlocked approach which reduces bias and increases the representativeness of the sample (McGivern, 2003). A further limitation of this research was the sample size, which although representative of the pupil and student cohorts at the particular time of data collection, and is suitable for an exploratory study, the research would have benefitted from being both larger and complimented by more of a qualitative dimension beyond the inclusion of open-ended questions. Such limitations are being addressed in a larger study which, as explained in the conclusion section of this paper, intends to build on the themes to emerge from this study and take research forward in the area of enterprise education.\nAnalysis and discussion: In terms of respondent's demographics, they were aged between 15 and 24 with the majority being female. With regard to the educational background of respondents, 38 came from secondary schools[4] in Dundee, 17 came from Year 1 at university, 40 came from Year 2 at university, 13 came from Year 3 and 9 came from Year 4. Although these figures vary between stages of education they do represent the number of individuals the research had access to, specifically business studies pupils participating in an enterprise challenge for Tayside[5] schools and undergraduate students studying business at a university in Dundee.\nConclusion: This exploratory research examined young learners' attitudes towards enterprise education within the context of real-world business challenges for business studies students at secondary schools and business students at a university in Dundee. The research made the distinction between enterprise and entrepreneurial education, consolidating existing literature in enterprise education (Jones and Colwill, 2013; Draycott and Rae, 2011; Birdthistle et al., 2007) and taking research forward in terms of identifying the specific skills learners felt they developed while participating on enterprising activities. The research found that overall learners were particularly positive about engaging with enterprise education activities, not only did they enjoy the experience of real-world business challenges, they felt it helped improve their hard and soft skills, project management, communication, creative thinking, problem solving, reflection and in particular confidence (confidence in one's own abilities and in relation to public speaking). However learners did not feel that these types of enterprise initiatives improved their leadership capabilities, which links to observations regarding entrepreneurship. Although learners thought such enterprise education initiatives prepared them for the employment market they were less agreeable to such education initiatives making them more entrepreneurial. The research reveals that the traditional approach to teaching business could be improved with regard to enterprise and entrepreneurship. As learners progressed through the education system there appeared to be an inverted relationship between learning to be enterprising and entrepreneurial and wishing to be entrepreneurial. In other words as a learner learned the necessary skills to become entrepreneurial they became less inclined to be entrepreneurial supporting the assertions of Robinson (2006) that universities may be playing a role in reducing the entrepreneurial aspirations of learners.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine young learners' attitudes towards enterprise education within the context of a university led initiative to construct a sustainable framework which benefits identified stakeholders.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research used self-completed questionnaires with 117 business studies students in Stages S4-S6 from secondary schools across Dundee and business students from Years 1-4 at one university in Dundee, Scotland.\nFindings: The research reveals that respondents positively engage with enterprise education and felt that their project management, creative thinking, communication skills and confidence were enhanced by the activity of real-world business challenges. The findings support the notion that an enterprising spine embedded in the academic curriculum better equip the learner with the necessary hard and soft skills required for the employment market but not necessarily to be entrepreneurial.\nResearch limitations/implications: A limitation of this research was the sample size, which although representative of the pupil and student cohorts associated with the various stages of education being studied at the particular time of data collection, and is suitable for an exploratory study, the research would have benefited from being both larger and complimented by more of a qualitative component beyond the inclusion of open-ended questions.\nPractical implications: As an exploratory study which informs a wider comparative study into enterprise education, the research examines learner's perspectives and the measures they feel are required for effective engagement with enterprise education activities in schools and universities. The findings should assist education providers to deliver a better learning experience and the learners with improved enterprising and social skills, particularly the building of confidence.\nSocial implications: As an exploratory study which informs a wider comparative study into enterprise education, the research examines learner's perspectives and the measures they feel are required for effective engagement with enterprise education activities in schools and universities. The findings should assist education providers to deliver a better learning experience and the learners with improved enterprising and social skills, particularly the building of confidence.\nOriginality/value: The research should prove useful to educational establishments who are considering the implementation of, or further engagement with, enterprise education and involvement with the business community and how such activities impact on their learners.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Co-construction of meaning, creative processes and digital curation: The transmission of music with live electronics	[ "Performance", "Contemporary music with live electronics", "Creative process", "Digital curation", "Documentation methodology", "Intelligibility" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In Fall 2012, the contemporary music percussion ensemble Sixtrum started the production of three works of mixed music - a combination of instrumental and electroacoustic music which grounds trace back to the 1950s - by three world-renowned Canadian composers: Robert Normandeau (R.N.); Serge Provost (S.P.); and Laurie Radford (L.R.) (Boutard and Marandola, 2014). The works were performed in May 2013. All three works comprised a live electronics part that is embodied in a piece of software specifically designed for each work. This piece of software is implemented on top of a software development framework used in different artistic contexts: music, dance, theater, installation art and so on. This framework provides the creative process with a set of possibilities, that is to say intentional affordances (see Conein, 2005). Still, \"because equipment comes to embody one set of conventions in such a coercive way, artists frequently exercise their creativity by trying to make equipment and materials do things their makers never intended\" (Becker, 1982, p. 58).\n2. Documentation, dissemination and preservation: 2.1. Objects and practice\n3. DiP-CoRE: 3.1. Theoretical framework\n4. Discussion: 4.1. Obsolescence and collaboration\n5. Conclusion: DiP-CoRE articulates two forms of transmission, with objects and by practice, across an interdisciplinary theoretical framework stemming from work psychology, organizational science and music research, with the intention to bound together documentation, dissemination and preservation. In this paper, we emphasized several notions relevant to the preservation and the co-construction of the intelligibility of a repertoire, where the goal is to provide the means to re-perform in order to keep the works alive. We further provided several future directions to complement our approach toward MMDC pointing at the core notions emerging from the analysis for the three creative processes, namely, the thickness, boundary objects and the workshop. The investigation of the relation among these three notions in relation to curation is an exciting direction of research.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The preservation and curation of music with real-time or live electronics is challenging. The goal is not to preserve a recording of the performance but to keep the work alive by providing the means to re-perform them. The purpose of this paper is to present the theoretical and practical outcomes of the documentation, dissemination and preservation of compositions with real-time electronics (DiP-CoRE) project.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The methodology combines methods stemming from work psychology and ergonomics with conceptual frameworks constructed according to grounded theory. Data were collected during a six months' creative process. Subsequent interviews were conducted during confrontations with documents, including observational recordings, sketches and technical specifications.\nFindings: This paper demonstrates the relevance of the proposed documentation methodology for the preservation of contemporary music with live electronics, focussing on the notion of intelligibility. It brings into light the multiple perspective of the documentation of the activity in a multi-agent creative process, which encompasses what was done but also what could have been done.\nResearch limitations/implications: The DiP-CoRE project bring to light connections between the notion of intelligibility, the thickness of the activity and boundary objects. The paper proposes further directions of research in order to embed the designed framework within digital repositories.\nPractical implications: The documentation methodology, designed and tested in this paper, proposes a framework for practitioners, building on video-stimulated recall as well as documents produced during the creative process. This framework requires less expertise (but a more important technical setup) than a traditional interview-based documentation framework. It thus provides opportunities for various size organizations to build methodical documentation processes and to further build on distributed expertise with computer-supported collaborative work.\nOriginality/value: This paper proposes a new interdisciplinary documentation methodology relevant in the artistic domain, which brings together transmission with objects and by practice. It specifically defines the relation between this proposal and a high-level model for digital curation, namely, the mixed methods digital curation model. It further creates a link between documentation best practice and the ongoing research in the tracking of creative processes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The temporal properties of e-learning: an exploratory study of academics ' conceptions	[ "Grounded theory", "Higher education institutions", "E-learning", "Adoption", "Academics", "Conceptions", "Temporal properties" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Previous research into social systems has established the complexity of theorising time (Adam, 1990; Giddens, 1994; Moore, 1963; Zerubavel, 1981) and temporality, understood here as the collective experience of time (Ballard and Seibold, 2003; Gomez, 2009). In considering the specific relationship between time and change, social systems theorist Luhmann (1995, p. 41) goes as far as proposing that \"for some systems time exists as an aggregate designation for all change\".\n2. Methodology: Grounded Theory was selected as the methodology in this study for its capacity to integrate theory and method as a whole. We followed Clarke's (2005, 2006) postulate that symbolic interactionism and Grounded Theory constitute a theory/methods package (Charmaz, 2008, p. 52), suitable to move scientific enquiry further from mechanicist models of causation through centring the focus of research on meaning \"as established in the conjoint adjustive responses of interacting and communicating individuals\" (Mead, 1934, p. 78).\n3. Towards a grounded theory of polychronicity: As mentioned previously in the methodology section, Grounded Theory is concerned with the generation of a parsimonious \"set of well-developed categories (e.g. themes, concepts) that are systematically interrelated through statements of relationship to form a theoretical framework\" (Strauss and Corbin, 1998, p. 22). In the course of this study, intensive interviewing permitted the in-depth exploration of academics' cognitions and situated realities, with informants being asked to describe and reflect upon their experiences.\n4. Discussion: From a sociological perspective that embraces the dimensions of time, identity and work, the transformations of work that make time fluid can be explained as the transition from an industrial era in which \"time measured as the length of the working day was pivotal in the exchange between worker and employer\" (Kamp et al., 2011, p. 229) to an era of increasing volatility in which multiple task-orientation and an output-oriented culture overpower the old notions of time spent at work. Within the specific context of academia, this has led to the emergence of what Ylijoki and Mantyla (2003) describe as \"conflicting time perspectives in academic work\", notably the fluid yet tensional coexistence of simultaneous perspectives such as: longer and fragmented working days that make individuals constantly feel under time pressure; becoming entirely immersed in tasks due to deep personal dedication; and the general perception of lacking personal time.\n5. Conclusion: Emergent academics' conceptions concerning the temporal properties of e-learning indicate the existence of unregulated and unaccounted for dynamics, mainly deriving from changes in the approaches to teaching online. The consequences of these changes result in perceived disruptions to established workload metrics, work patterns and conflicts with dominant modes of instructional delivery that are not synchronised with the demands of online interaction and immediacy. These problems seem to be reinforced by entrenched organisational practices and change-resistant institutional processes.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an exploratory study that investigates Portuguese academics' conceptions concerning the temporal properties of e-learning, in the context of traditional Higher Education Institutions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Grounded Theory methodology was used to systematically analyse data collected in semi-structured interviews with 62 academics. Data analysis followed the constant comparative method and its three-staged coding approach: open, axial and selective coding. Data collection and analysis developed until theoretical saturation was reached.\nFindings: Emergent academics' conceptions concerning the temporal properties of e-learning indicate the existence of unregulated and unaccounted for dynamics, which are a direct consequence of transitioning from campus-based lecturing to teaching online using the affordances of virtual learning environments. This transition produces disruptions to established workload metrics and work patterns, as well as conflicts with dominant modes of instructional delivery that are not synchronised with the demands of online interaction and immediacy.\nOriginality/value: This paper is valuable to e-learning strategists and administrators. An understanding of the temporal properties of e-learning as perceived by academics provides actionable knowledge that is directly applicable to the design of suitable work arrangements, normative frameworks and e-learning practices that address perceived time-related barriers. To mitigate the time-related conflicts and disruptions identified in the study the authors suggest the establishment of university-wide norms of virtual presence and the implementation of temporal protocols to sustain the productive engagement between instructors and learners.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Challenges for Australian fashion	[ "Retailing", "Fashion", "Australia", "Consumer research", "Textiles", "Clothing Industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nThe changing local capacity of the fashion industry: Historically, Australia relied on the importation of apparel and textiles from the earliest days of settlement of the colony (Maynard, 1994). Chiefly, imports came from England although lighter fabrics and apparel also came from Asia especially India. However, the need for local manufacture was also addressed and industries producing basic apparel, especially underwear and footwear, also developed into the textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) manufacturing sector. Most fancy wear was imported although tailors and dress makers copied fashionable modes as well. In fact, there was a perhaps surprisingly high interest in following the latest European fashions not only among the elite but also among ex-convicts and free settlers (Maynard, 2001). Visitors castigated the ostentatious display of clothes and finery as the colony grew.\nEmployment: Whereas the TCF manufacturing sector used to be a major employer in the manufacturing sector, employment has drastically declined from about 115,700 in 1989 to 51,500 in 2007, 43,000 in 2006, 46,500 in 2010-2011, and an estimated 40,000 in 2013, a decline of two thirds (Green, 2008a, p. 22; Weller, 2007, p. 5; My Future, 2012; ABS, 1301.0 Year Book Australia, 2012). About 60 per cent of these are women who, under the provision of Fair Work provisions, are now classified as \"employees\" not contractors or outworkers (TFIA, 2012). This has significant implications for employers who must provide regular work, pay overhead costs and employ people in a factory-type place. While intended to raise the notoriously poor working conditions of TCF workers, the legislation has further cut the number of employees in the sector as traditionally much work is occasional, one-off or short runs with tight deadlines. An increasing number of employees are, as a result, classified as part time.\nBusinesses: There are now just an estimated 16,000 fashion-related businesses dominated by small-to-medium enterprises. These are dominated by micro businesses with half (about 8,000) employing less than 20 people. A further 1,400 SMEs employ more than twenty people but only 66 businesses employ more than 200 people (TFIA, 2012). About 10,000 apparel retailers support this industry though this figure too is declining. The value of the industry and its contribution to GDP has also declined significantly. It is now the poorest performing manufacturing sector (ABS, 2012; Weller, 2007, 2013a, b).There are a number of converging reasons for this situation but most importantly, it is an effect of the global infiltration of the Australian fashion industry. This has taken a number of forms.\nThe challenge of sustainability: While consumers continue to purchase more and more apparel as well as to discard it after a short active life, an opposite pressure is changing attitudes towards fashion as an industry and practice. This is the vexed issue - or wicked problem - of sustainability (Claudio, 2007). Fashion depends on change and regular renewal of fashions and trends, and in so doing, creates galloping social, cultural and environmental problems. So is sustainability achievable in the fashion industry? And what does the term mean when applied to the fashion industry? Is it a contradiction in terms?\nChanging consumer trends: Apparel has become a major preoccupation among Australian consumers with half of Australians aged 14 and above spending an average of AUD$100 on clothes every month and spending AUD$1500 million annually on 1 billion units of apparel (Wells, 2011). By way of example, Australians spend AUD$90 a month on clothes and shoes. In fact, Australians spend almost as much on \"lifestyle\" commodities (including apparel) and services as they spend on rent and mortgages (approximately AUD$1000 p.m.).\nSo what are the implications of these challenges for Australia fashion?: A number of changes have transformed the Australian fashion industry. These include:\nConclusion: Altogether this overview has painted a very mixed picture especially at the discount, mid level and fashion forward designer points. Retail experts advocate increasing emphasis on new ways to engage consumers and build a loyal and energised consumer and fan base with jargon words like \"innovate\", \"titillate\", \"eyecatching\", \"customisation\", and \"personalisation\" plus the use of psychographics to identify market segments of consumers (e.g. Fairfax Media, 2013). Commentators have identified new feelings that the consumer wants from their shopping experience, namely, dreaming (questing for novelty and inspiration); exploring (open minded to being influenced); and locating (seeking a specific brand, product or service) (Fitch, 2012). This was reinforced by observations of the liquidation administrator of Mothercare:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges facing the Australian fashion industry (textile, clothing and footwear or TCF sector). Just at the point where Australian fashion has achieved international attention for its distinctive design practice, the industry is on the point of collapse. Since the 1980s, radical re-structuring aimed at reducing industry protection to encourage greater international competitiveness and innovation. Key policies have included tariff reduction, new forms of industry assistance, new manufacturing techniques, changing retail forms, and reform of employment and workplace conditions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Overview of recent trends in the Australian fashion industry due to industry policies and the effects of globalisation.\nFindings: Severe decline in industry viability.\nOriginality/value: Important multifaceted analysis of the state of the industry and tracking of effects of government policies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The art of entrepreneurial foresight	[ "Forecasting", "Innovation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Entrepreneurial behavior is essentially characterized by rationality. The successful modern enterprise consists of rational decision-makers operating in a relatively predictable microeconomic market. In this context, rationality in pursuit of profit maximization inspires all entrepreneurial actions - including the rational optimization of technologies, the rational optimization of financial structures, and the rational optimization of wage policies. In short, rationality in pursuit of profit maximization is the unifying principle of modern entrepreneurial microeconomic management.Commenting on this increasing emphasis on rationality, Thaler (2000) ventured:... my prediction is that this trend will be reversed in favour of an approach in which the degree of rationality bestowed to the agents depends on the context being studied, ...Thaler's (2000) observation on the importance of \"context\" is pertinent to this paper. The true entrepreneur does not live merely in the context of the present. The entrepreneur and the enterprise exist now, but always with a view to the context of the future. The implications of today's decisions are realized tomorrow.Of course, if the entrepreneurial context is shifted from the present to the future, all decision-making becomes more complicated and potentially less rational. It requires consideration of uncertain market developments, undiscovered technologies, changing organizational patterns, and ever-shifting financial options. By definition, the enterprise of the future is not available in the here and now to be objectively analyzed and rationally evaluated. The future is open only to the imagination. The future is not yet written.Furthermore, a substantial part of the future will be a direct result of the purposeful decisions taken in the present. The achievements and events of the future are affected by the anticipations, interpretations, and visions of the present. In this scenario, Thaler's (2000) prediction (as quoted above) is especially apposite. If context sets bounds to rationality, as Thaler (2000) asserted, the future context of anticipation will place limits on the efficacy of entrepreneurial rationality. The context of anticipation requires more than competence in rationality; it also requires competence in aesthetics.This paper first provides a review of current and past economic thinking on entrepreneurial activities. This review proposes a structure of entrepreneurial functions, and then attempts to identify the place of anticipation in that structure. The paper then reviews some key aspects of research in the fields of creativity and forecasting. It concludes with a discussion of the importance of aesthetics in entrepreneurial decision-making.\n2. Entrepreneurial functions: a review: Economic thinking has preferred to work with the theoretical stereotype of the entrepreneur as a rational utilitarian agent, and most academic thinking has tended to presume that this is reality. Authors who have adopted a more objective empirical approach to the analysis of entrepreneurial functions - such as Cantillon, Say, Schumpeter, and Knight (see Redlich, 1949; Hoselitz, 1971; Hebert and Link, 1989) - have been the exceptions to this general attitude, rather than the norm. On occasions, these alternative views on the entrepreneur's role have been augmented by the offerings of various social sciences - such as Weber's (1904) sociological contribution, Sombart's (1913) historical perspective, and McClelland's (1961) psychological approach. Unfortunately, each of these approaches, though valuable in itself, has been developed without considering the others. As a result, a wide variety of extant notions coexist about the functions of the entrepreneur in promoting entrepreneurial success (Blaug, 1983; Hebert and Link, 1989; Wennekers and Thurik, 1999):* A quick survey of each of the main theories reveals some fundamental components of the entrepreneurial function that can be synthesized with a view to developing a taxonomy of the concept of entrepreneurship. In short, these fundamental components can be summarized as follows (Guzman, 1994).* Several schools of thought consider the capitalist function as the only (or at least the most important) element in entrepreneurship. Such is the case with both the \"classical\" doctrine and the Marxist doctrine of entrepreneurship.* Other schools of thought focus on managerial activity when defining the role of the entrepreneur. The \"neoclassic\", \"marginalist\", and \"institutionalist\" schools tend to adopt this view.Finally, various theories incorporate other psychosocial (\"human\" or \"personal\") entrepreneurial elements with varying degrees of objectivity and formality. In this regard, the following are worthy of note:* the \"innovation\" factor in the Schumpeterian entrepreneur (Schumpeter, 1934);* the \"uncertainty\" factor in Knight's (1948) entrepreneur;* the \"attraction to opportunities\" espoused in Kirzner's (1997) entrepreneur; and* the various personal qualities and social conditionings that constitute a range of psychological and sociological approaches to the question.On the basis of the above characterization of the fundamental features of various historical approaches to the question of entrepreneurship, and without wishing to proffer yet another definition, the present authors would argue that the following \"functional spheres\" comprise the activity of the quintessential entrepreneurial agent (see Figure 1):* Financial sphere: This sphere of activity corresponds to firstly, the traditional \"capitalist\" function of the entrepreneur; and secondly, activities concerned with the formal (financial) ownership of the entrepreneurial firm. The latter function includes interaction with shareholders (if any) or any other holder of equity financing (if relevant).* Managerial sphere: This sphere is concerned with corporate direction and management. In its strictest sense, a managerial or directorial agent, even if situated in the highest echelons of the company, is effectively a salaried employee. The director can develop the daily labor, oversee all decisions, and organize the productive process in various parts of the company, but (in contrast to the other functional spheres discussed here), he or she does not assume any capital or personal risks.* \"Booster\" sphere: This sphere of activity encompasses the psychosocial elements of the \"human\" (or \"personal\") entrepreneur referred to above. That is, apart from the investment of capital (financial sphere) and corporate direction and management (managerial sphere), it is apparent that the \"human\" (or \"personal\") entrepreneur takes on other functions of a less tangible nature. These tend to be \"basic initiatives\" of a psychosocial nature in the business - such as the initiation of an innovative project; the recognition of new profit-making opportunities in the market; and awareness of possible fluctuations in demand in society (Blaug, 1983).The last of these, the \"booster\" function, has a markedly dynamic character, and is therefore difficult to formalise in objective terms. In contrast to the strictly \"financial-sphere\" entrepreneur, whose function is limited to the investment of financial resources in a given project, the \"booster\" entrepreneur takes on even greater risks and frequently mobilises the resources of other stakeholders (such as those of a bank, for example). Moreover, the exercise of the booster function does not depend on the application of objective technical knowledge about business activities (such as detailed expertise in production, for example); this sort of technical activity corresponds to the managerial sphere in the schema being utilized here. Rather, the booster function depends on the personal psychological and sociological qualities of the individual entrepreneur.Although the booster functional role resembles Mises' entrepreneur-promoter in many respects (Mises, 1949), the term \"promoter\" has a clear connotation that links it to the beginning of entrepreneurial activity. Nevertheless, this same \"spirit of initiative\", on which Mises (1949) tacitly based his approach, extends throughout the life of an entrepreneurial organisation. Indeed, such \"initiative\" can be perceived in a succession of \"business projects\" in the life of a single entrepreneurial organisation over a period of time. Similar observations can be made about the \"state of alert\" before possible opportunities in the market (Kirzner, 1997), risk-taking (Knight, 1948), the response to internal corporate inefficiency (Leibenstein, 1978), and the application of innovative combinations (Schumpeter, 1934).Incorporating these notions of \"promotion\" (at the beginning of a venture) and \"successive initiatives\" (during the life of a venture), the \"booster\" function as described above can be understood as consisting of two subfunctions (Guzman, 1994):1. a promoter sub-function: which includes the activities of an entrepreneur in creating a new business (including those of \"potential entrepreneurs\" who have not yet created a venture, but have a propensity to do so); and2. an energiser sub-function: which includes the activities of an entrepreneur during the life of an enterprise, whereby the entrepreneur promotes the development of the business (or at least keeps it \"alive\").\n3. Main characteristics of the booster function: Of the \"functional spheres\" described above, the booster function best reflects the essence of entrepreneurship. As previously noted, it reflects the psychological and sociological qualities of the individual entrepreneur, and thus brings social, institutional, political, and personal factors into relationship with a firm's success and economic growth (Reynolds et al., 1999; Audretsch, 2002). In this context, the following personal entrepreneurial qualities are of particular significance (Guzman and Santos-Cumplido, 2001):* motivation;* ambition;* innovation;* cooperation; and* proactiveness.Each of these is discussed below.Motivation\n4. Intuition, creativity, and forecasting: 4.1 Intuition and entrepreneurship\n5. Final consideration: Intuition, creativity, and forecasting are essential components of all artistic endeavors. These are also the essential elements in entrepreneurial decision-making - at least in the specific context of decisions pertaining to the future of the enterprise (which, in many ways, are the most important decisions to be made in any enterprise). The rational entrepreneur of the profit-maximization model, who is essential for success in the market economy, has to move into the field of aesthetics when faced with a consideration of the things to come. Both in terms of the environment and in terms of the internalized world of his or her own initiative, the entrepreneur's thinking must become more like that of an intuitive artist. In other words, when considering the existential questions of survival and growth, the entrepreneur necessarily becomes less \"rational\" and more \"emotional\".By using the available tools of creativity and forecasting (as outlined in this paper), it is still possible to remain \"quasi-rational\". But the final creative act - the decision that finally displaces the unknown future to a step further ahead in time - will always be essentially aesthetic.This conclusion establishes a strong link between entrepreneurship and art. In the process of making decisions that open and close possible futures, the entrepreneur, gives \"sense\" to the enterprise, provides its design and its shape, and transforms its language beyond that of mere economics. The future-oriented entrepreneur and the artist share many attributes - including creativity, innovation, motivation, and courage. At their best, they both demonstrate dash, elegance, and charm.Entrepreneurial decision-making, when working beyond the controlled and known environment in which rationality can operate, can be enhanced by a recognition of two complementary realities - a recognition of the profoundly artistic nature of entrepreneurial thinking and a recognition that art itself is not merely a matter of mystical intuition, but rather an intuition based on instrumental experiences.A knowledge of the tools for improving perception of the economic future is an important subject for teaching and learning in business schools, and ongoing research into creativity and forecasting methods is certainly required. However, the notion of the strictly \"rational\" entrepreneur has to be extended. In the business schools of the future, there will certainly be a place for art, creativity and foresight alongside \"rational\" optimization and management science.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to present an analysis of entrepreneurial activities that emphasises anticipation and the art of future exploration; in so doing, it identifies important aspects of entrepreneurship as aesthetic or creative activities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - After a short synthesis of the main entrepreneurial functions in terms of decision making in the financial sphere, the managerial sphere, and the \"booster\" sphere, the paper concentrates on the qualities required for a successful \"booster\" function (motivation, ambition, innovation, cooperation, proactiveness). Because proactiveness and innovation both require futures thinking and creativity, the paper presents relevant material from the literature on long-term foresight to establish the artistic aspects of these important components of entrepreneurial activities.\nFindings: - The paper's linking of entrepreneurial functions to the capacity for anticipation establishes the need for entrepreneurs to acquire competencies (in the area of forecasting) that are usually associated with artistic endeavours.\nPractical implications: - There is an urgent need for university curricula to include material that is oriented towards the training of entrepreneurs. This should include specific courses on creativity and forecasting.\nOriginality/value: - The recognition that key entrepreneurial functions (proactiveness and innovation) are more art than science, and that they therefore require a set of operational tools, is relatively novel in the current literature on entrepreneurial (and managerial) functions, and opens a research field in business decision making.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Omni-channel retailing research - state of the art and intellectual foundation	[ "Operations", "Retailing", "Supply chain", "Distribution", "Omni-channel", "Multi-channel", "Co-citation analysis", "Content-analysis based literature review" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Arguably the most significant change in retailing has been the integration of physical and virtual worlds due to the emergence of internet-based marketing channels (e.g. Brynjolfsson et al., 2013). Retailers provide different channel services, such as \"click and collect\", \"order in-store, deliver to home\", \"order online, return to store\", \"showrooms\", and other combinations of online and traditional retail activities (Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson, 2014) which enable customers to utilise multiple distribution channels.\n2. Managing customers and distribution channels in a multi, omni and cross-channel manner: Looking into the relevant sources on omni-channel retailing, management and/or distribution, we found that - in order to offer a comprehensive understanding of the research phenomenon - it would be necessary to widen the perspective towards multi-channel as well as cross-channel retailing. Thereby, we are able to observe that the terms multi- and cross-channel are used interchangeably in the literature, despite being different in scope.\n3. Methodology: The methodology of this research encompassed three stages: we first surveyed the relevant literature and identified a sample of articles of key relevance to omni-channel retailing research (= research front). We then extracted the relevant bibliographic information from the sample and finally we conducted a bibliometric analysis (= intellectual base/foundation). In the following, all three steps are explained in more detail.\n4. Results: 4.1 Characterisation of research front by means of content-analysis-based literature review\n5. Conclusion and outlook: With respect to the emerging field of omni-channel retailing, this paper explores the questions of: where the knowledge that drives the field of omni-channel retailing comes from; and what kind of research has influenced this particular research domain so far. The results show that the number of articles has been increasing over time, demonstrating the continuing research interest in the topic area and the increased research interest in overall technological development and greater use of this technology by consumers. The ability to use a mobile phone for shopping allows retailers to become ubiquitous, and we can see that this started in 2007 (also the year in which the Apple iPhone was introduced).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold: to identify, evaluate and structure the research that focusses on omni-channel retailing from the perspective of logistics and supply chain management; and to reveal the intellectual foundation of omni-channel retailing research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper applies a multi-method approach by conducting a content-analysis-based literature review of 70 academic papers. Based on the reference lists of these papers, the authors performed a citation and co-citation analysis based on the 34 most frequently cited papers. This analysis included multidimensional scaling, a cluster analysis and factor analysis.\nFindings: The study reveals the limited consideration of logistics and supply chain management literature in the foundation of the omni-channel retailing research. Further, the authors see a dominance of empirical research as compared to conceptual and analytical research. Overall, there is a focus on the Western retail context in this research field. The intellectual foundation is embedded in the marketing discipline and can be characterised as lacking a robust theoretical foundation.\nOriginality/value: The contribution of this research is identifying, evaluating and structuring the literature of omni-channel research and providing an overview of the state of the art of this research area considering its interdisciplinary nature. This paper thus supports researchers looking to holistically comprehend, prioritise and use the underpinning literature central to the phenomena of omni-channel retailing. For practitioners and academics alike, the findings can trigger and support future research and an evolving understanding of omni-channel retailing.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A revised FMEA application to the quality control management	[ "Methodology", "FMEA", "Risk assessment", "Quality control", "Supplied products quality" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: During recent years, the worldwide economic crisis and globalization of markets have heavily affected industrial production systems. Increasing customer requests in term of product quality, cost and flexibility forces more and more enterprises to adopt lean manufacturing strategies, in order to pursue the elimination of waste through continuous improvement and thus increasing product quality and supply chain competitiveness.\n2. Literature review: FMEA is \"a systematic method of analysing and ranking the risks associated with various product (or process) failure modes (both existing and potential), prioritizing them for remedial action, acting on the highest ranked items, revaluating those items and returning to the prioritization step in a continuous loop until marginal returns set in\" (Dailey, 2004). FMEA investigates causes and effects of potential failure modes in order to assure quality and reliability of a product or process. The use of the FMEA tool is very important, especially in the earliest development phases (Dittmann et al., 2004). FMEA timing is essential: an early implementation of the technique is crucial for reducing and/or eliminating the corrective actions, thus reducing the cost of a late non-compliance identification.\n3. Research approach: 3.1 FMEA methodology\n4. Results and discussion: The product database is composed of 13 product classes, each of which consists of at most nine subclasses. The whole supplier set is composed of 286 suppliers. Data related to the first half of 2012 have been used. The product database size does not allow the authors to show the whole analysis performed. For this reason the results analysis will explain in detail only two product subclasses:\n5. Conclusion: This paper describes a cost-effective and easy-to-use FMEA system applied to the quality control of supplied products. The work arises from the need to create and implement a structured and lean procedure of quality control on purchased items. The revised FMEA allows to study the products' criticality from a quality control point of view and to organize specific corrective actions for reducing the risk and improving the efficiency and efficacy of quality control tasks.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a cost-effective, time-saving and easy-to-use failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) system applied on the quality control of supplied products. The traditional FMEA has been modified and adapted to fit the quality control features and requirements. The paper introduces a new and revised FMEA approach, where the \"failure concept\" has been modified with \"defect concept.\"\nDesign/methodology/approach: The typical FMEA parameters have been modified, and a non-linear scale has been introduced to better evaluate the FMEA parameters. In addition, two weight functions have been introduced in the risk priority number (RPN) calculus in order to consider different critical situations previously ignored and the RPN is assigned to several similar products in order to reduce the problem of complexity.\nFindings: A complete procedure is provided in order to assist managers in deciding on the critical suppliers, the creation of homogeneous families overcome the complexity of single product code approach, in RPN definition the relative importance of factors is evaluated.\nOriginality/value: This different approach facilitates the quality control managers acting as a structured and \"friendly\" decision support system: the quality control manager can easily evaluate the critical situations and simulate different scenarios of corrective actions in order to choose the best one. This FMEA technique is a dynamic tool and the performed process is an iterative one. The method has been applied in a small medium enterprise producing hydro massage bathtub, shower, spas and that commercializes bathroom furniture. The firm application has been carried out involving a cross-functional and multidisciplinary team.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Is there an audience for public sector annual reports: Australian evidence?	[ "Public sector accounting", "Annual reports", "Information media", "Australia" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The public sector reforms which have been embraced in western countries since the 1980s have placed the spotlight on the governance of public sector organisations. Accountability is an important element of good governance. Access to information in a form that allows users to gauge whether the objectives of the organisation are being discharged and to assess its performance is an essential pillar of accountability. In both the private and public sectors, one of the main vehicles used to discharge accountability is the annual report (Cameron, 2004).The concept of the private sector annual report has a long and unchallenged history. It is widely regarded as the main accountability mechanism, reporting on the governance and performance of an organisation. This concept and format of the annual report has been translated, unchallenged, into the public sector. This translation has three main implications for the public sector, all of which lack empirical substantiation. First, the relative importance of the annual report in both sectors has been assumed to be equal. However, it is widely argued that in the public sector, in the absence of a market, and definable performance measures, accountability through the regulated disclosure of information is even more important (Hooks, 2002; Coy et al., 2001; Guthrie et al., 2003). Second, the format and content of the public sector annual report has been adopted from the private sector with little regard for the differences in operating structure and objectives of the organisations in the two sectors. An annual report commonly comprises both descriptive information about the entity and its activities usually at the beginning of the report and the statutory information - the audited financial statements which comprise the audited general purpose financial report at the end of the report (Stanton and Stanton, 2002). The third implication in prescribing requirements for annual reports, is that public sector regulators in some western democracies have treated the public sector as consisting of an homogonous group of organisations (as indeed the listed companies in the private sector are) and has failed to differentiate requirements between the different public sector organisations. Consequently, in Australia, all public sector organisations (local governments, departments of state and corporatised bodies) have similar annual reporting requirements despite the differences in terms of complexity and diversity of the accountability relationships and the different operating, financial and legal structures of these organisations.It is the lack of the empirical verification of this translation of the annual report into the public sector that has raised a number of unresolved dilemmas for public sector researchers. Internationally, there have been numerous attempts to determine the use made of the annual report by public sector stakeholders (see for example Butterworth et al., 1989; Lapsley, 1992; Hodges et al., 2002 in the UK, Alijarde, 1997 in Spain, Steccolini, 2004 in Italy, Skaerbaek, 2005 in Norway, Coy et al., 1997 in New Zealand and Clark, 2001 in Australia). Concurrently several researchers have investigated the approaches taken by public sector entities in reporting to their external stakeholders. Lee (2004) argues that there are two approaches which public sector entities can take in reporting to their stakeholders. He refers to the traditional institutional approach which involves an indirect reporting relationship with the public through intermediaries such as the media or oversight bodies and a direct approach where the entity communicates directly with its stakeholders. Lee (2004) argues, in an American context, that organizations have found the traditional indirect approach to reporting to external stakeholders through intermediaries unsatisfactory, and have sought a direct involvement with the public through the development of the public report. Similarly in an Australian context Parker and Gould (1999) and Guthrie (1998) have argued that there has been a shift from traditional reporting mechanisms to a reporting regime which is more market and customer oriented.It is the in depth investigation of this direct reporting to stakeholders which is the focus of this paper. Skaerbaek (2005) acknowledges that it has been a \"recurrent ambition\" of researchers to analyse who uses annual reports. However, in the main, studies have relied on proxies for actual users. Carlin (2005) acknowledges that the justification for the use of proxies is the difficulty in obtaining \"hard evidence\" on actual users. This is the contribution this paper makes to the extant literature; it is a survey of actual users of annual reports, across the different types of public sector entities.The issue of the use of the annual report, and its resolution, has important public policy implications. Not only are considerable resources expended by public sector agencies in the preparation of these reports (Jones and Pendlebury, 2004; Skaerbaek, 2005) but some governments have made a strategic decision to step up their direct reporting to the public as part of a focus on citizen engagement (Lee, 2004). If reports are not being accessed by stakeholders, then policy makers will need to review the ways in which they discharge their accountability obligations. What is the composition of the stakeholder profile of those that use the annual report? How useful do they find the annual report relative to other sources of information about an organization? These are empirical questions that have not been effectively addressed to date.The paper proceeds as follows. The next section examines the prior literature pertaining to the production of annual reports in the public sector. The section following then outlines the research methodology, the results and the policy implications that flow from the research are then reported and the final section details the limitations of the study and suggests avenues for further research.\nApproaches taken in prior studies: There are a number of prior studies which aim to identify the stakeholders of annual reports. For the purposes of this current study, it is useful to classify them according to their methodological approach.Most studies that have been conducted have used normative arguments to identify stakeholder groups or classifications. The seminal work in the area is that by Anthony (1978). He aimed to have a brief list and normatively identified five categories of stakeholders; governing bodies, investors and creditors, resource providers, oversight bodies, and constituents. Other researchers have also used a normative approach, and have identified similar categories to Anthony (see for example Davidson, 1977; Holder, 1980; USA and Canadian Auditors General, 1985; Jones et al., 1985; Drebin et al., 1981; Hay and Antonio, 1990; Daniels and Daniels, 1991; Priest et al., 1999). Some researchers have used these normatively identified classifications of stakeholders as a starting point and have attempted to empirically identify stakeholder groups. Atamian and Ganguli (1991) found that other municipalities were common recipients of the financial reports of municipalities in the USA. While the focus of the prior work was external stakeholders, internal management was identified as a stakeholder of financial information by both a USA study (Van Daniker and Kwiatowski, 1986) and a Spanish study (Alijarde, 1997).A second and smaller group of studies have sought to empirically determine the actual stakeholder profiles by accessing actual users of reports. Butterworth et al. (1989), attempted to identify if the general public actually read annual reports. The method employed to identify users was to leave a questionnaire in copies of a local government's annual report. The copies of the annual report were available in public libraries and the librarians ensured that a questionnaire was always in the report. Because of the low response rate, the study was inconclusive with regard to identifying users. This study also examined the readability of the annual report. The study concluded that as a means of widespread communication, the annual reports were not effective.In a New Zealand study, Coy et al. (1997) attempted to directly identify the users of tertiary education institutions' annual reports and sought their views on the qualities and disclosures of the annual reports that they received. They used a similar data collection method to that of the UK study, but refined the method by obtaining the co-operation of tertiary education institutions in placing cards in all reports distributed and then surveying those recipients who returned the cards. The study revealed that of the recipients who identified themselves by returning the cards, 60 per cent had a role in the management, operation or governance of the institutions, 10 per cent were involved in other educational institutions' management, 25 per cent were managers of businesses or employee organisations and the remainder were journalists, librarians, Members of Parliament and members of the general public. This study provided further evidence of the widespread use of the annual report by internal stakeholders.The most comprehensive study of recipients and users of public sector annual reports is Clark's (2001) Australian study of eight Victorian government departments. He used the actual mailing lists of these departments to examine the distribution patterns of annual reports and then followed up this interrogation with a survey of recipients. The importance of this study is that the data source used (the mailing lists) allowed for a more reliable and comprehensive identification of users of annual reports than previous studies. The users identified by Clark represent a broader range of stakeholders than prior studies and the study found that library and information services and other government agencies were significant user categories.While the prior research on stakeholder identification has been sustained and international in focus, it has been piecemeal to the extent that there has been no systematic interrogation of actual users of annual reports across all the different public sector entity types.\nResearch method: Research approach and scope\nResults and discussion: In total 4,595 research instruments were sent to recipients of annual reports produced by public sector entities in Queensland - there was 999 useable responses. Overall a response rate of 21.7 per cent was achieved - 24.6 per cent for departments, 23.7 per cent for local governments and 16.5 per cent for government owned corporations. This response rate compares favourably with response rates achieved by other surveys of this type (Jones et al., 1985 - 10 per cent; Priest et al., 1999 - 19 per cent, Dixon et al., 1994 - 56 per cent)[4].The importance of the annual report relative to other sources of information\nConclusions: This study has adopted a research methodology that directly surveys stakeholders of the three different public sector entity types to obtain insights into the role of the annual report as a source of information. The results support the notion of direct reporting to stakeholders by public sector entities. Direct reporting mechanisms comprise the top sources of information for departments, local governments and government owned corporation stakeholders. These results empirically support Lee's (2004) argument that agencies are beginning to place more emphasis on annual reporting as a way of directly engaging with their stakeholders.The results have implications for policy makers internationally, who are charged with the responsibility for determining the content of annual reports. Regulators need to differentiate content prescription depending on entity type. Moreover, they support the various efforts being made internationally to tailor the information provided to stakeholders. Examples of this are seen in the USA through the services effort and accomplishment reporting framework established by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board and the attempts to simplify reporting embodied in the move towards \"Popular Reporting\" in local governments (Carpenter and Sharp, 1992); in Australia through the provision of audited performance, and the moves to simplification with the production of a Community Financial Report (Cuningham, 2001).A limitation to this research lies in its reliance on the use of a mailed survey as the data collection method. There is no guarantee that the person to whom the research instrument was sent was the person who actually completed the survey. With governments spending increasing resources on annual reporting, future research could aim to capture the views of those who currently do not use the annual report to assess the changes that need to be implemented.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this research is to investigate the role and importance of the annual report as a source of information about public sector entities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This research uses a survey methodology to access users of public sector annual reports and is innovative because it has directly studied actual users across the entire public sector.\nFindings: - The findings of this research indicate that the annual report is an important source of information about public sector entities but it is not the most important source of information. This study also found that the annual report is not regarded as equally important across all public sector entity types. Differences in the importance attached to the annual report by different stakeholder groups were also noted.\nResearch implications/limitations: - These findings have important implications for policy makers with respect to the information content of public sector annual reports. In particular the blanket approach to legislative requirements for annual reporting may need to be reviewed in view of the findings of this research that there are differing levels of importance attached to the annual report as an information source by users from different public sector entity types.\nOriginality/value: - The research in this paper is original in that it has, systematically and directly accessed users of public sector annual reports to determine their information sources.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Job satisfaction of shrimp industry workers in Bangladesh: an empirical analysis	[ "Shrimp industry", "Labour law", "Labour satisfaction", "Bangladesh", "JEL Code J 28", "M 54" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Aquaculture is broadly considered to have the potential to decrease poverty and increase food security (Subasinghe et al., 2010; Edwards, 1999). Fishery is one of the important parts of aquaculture that provides employment to 45 million worker in the world (of them 90 per cent live in the least developed countries) and is one of the important basis of animal protein in the world (FAO, 2010; World Bank, 2009; Worm et al., 2006; Myers and Worm, 2003; Pauly et al., 2003). In the context of Bangladesh, the fishery is an agricultural subsector along with jute, crops, livelihood and forestry, and this subsector contributes 23.81 per cent to the agricultural sector and 3.65 per cent to the national gross domestic product (GDP) in financial years 2015-2016 (BFFEA, 2019). Shrimp is one of the important items of the fishery in Bangladesh. This industry has been sharing a prospective role by export earnings in the development of the national economy. For example, in 2016-2017 total export earnings from shrimp and fish were Tk 42bn [1] where shrimp export earnings were Tk 36bn (BFFEA, 2019). Also, it has been significantly contributing to employment generation and community progress in the coastal area in Bangladesh (Nuruzzaman, 2006). According to the Government's Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, the growth of the shrimp industry was regarded as an important means of reducing poverty, improving pro-poor growth through increased production, exports, recovering performance and increasing competitiveness.\n2. Conceptual model: The conceptual model has been developed based on different evidence, i.e. primary and secondary sources, as well as focus group discussion with the shrimp workers in Bangladesh. Thereafter, the conceptual framework has been divided into two broad part of shrimp workers' financial benefits, non-financial factors that facilitated to improve workers' job satisfaction.\n3. Literature review: Job satisfaction of fish farming workers has mainly depended on Maslow's (1954) Hierarchy of Needs theory, i.e. the fulfilment of basic needs, social needs and needs of self-actualization (Bavinck and Monnereau, 2007). In the context of the fishery industry, a study designed and tested a list of 22 variables as well as two additional questions on the whole job satisfaction (Pollnac and Poggie, 1988). Factor analyses of the 22 items resulted in factors reflecting Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs inspiring more research on this issue. Other researchers made small amendments to this original set of items, yet their analyses pointed out that it maintained its overall structure (Binkley, 1995; Gatewood and McCay, 1990, 1988). Comparing these approaches, one of the important results has been that non-pecuniary aspects constituted significant components in determining job satisfaction.\n4. Methodology of the study: The research has been designed for inferential study. The population of this study is full time and permanent shrimp industry's worker from different categories of shrimp farms in Bangladesh. Data has been collected between June 2017 and July 2017. Samples have been selected from workers in the shrimp industry of Khulna, Satkhira and Bagerhat districts in Bangladesh. These areas have located in the south and southwestern part of Bangladesh. According to an opinion survey, these regions such as Khulna, Satkhira, and Bagerhat are creating most of the shrimp farms in the country. These are the most promising region for shrimp cultivation in Bangladesh. Respondents were workers, who have work experience in between 1 and 20 years. Among the whole respondents, 30 per cent from Khulna area, 35 per cent from Satkhira area and remaining 35 per cent from Bagerhat area have been collected as per the ratio of present shrimp farming workers in these localities.\n5. Data analysis: 5.1 Data reliability\n6. Result and discussion: In one hand, the regression coefficient table -1 shows that there are four non-pecuniary factors such as weekly holiday facility, workplace safety, appointment policy by an appointment letter and job security variables positively influence shrimp and fish farming workers' mind about 30, 20, 41 and 35 per cent, respectively. The other hand, the four pecuniary benefit of the workers' such as the amount of salary, yearly increment facility, legitimate payment for over-time, sufficient compensation positively influence shrimp workers' mind 19, 30, 44 and 33 per cent, respectively. Among the non-pecuniary issues, workers are more concern about their appointment by appointment letter and job security. If the workers are appointed by appointment letter, then their level of satisfaction will lead 41 per cent. The worker feels that their job is secured if they appoint by appointment letter, and when they feel that their job is secured then the level of satisfaction will lead 35 per cent to their work. Among the pecuniary facilities, workers are more concerned for their legitimate overtime payment and sufficient compensation package. The amount of salary of the worker has only led to 19 per cent of their level of satisfaction, whereas legitimate overtime payment and sufficient compensation package lead to 44 and 33 per cent level of job satisfaction, respectively. Thus, the result can be summarized that pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors are equally important to satisfy the shrimp workers' in Bangladesh.\n7. Compliance of labour law: Study demonstrates that compliance of labour law in the shrimp industry meaningfully increase workers' job satisfaction. However, labour law barely follows in this industry. As a result, the worker in this industry is mostly dissatisfied due to non-compliance with the labour law. According to the provision of Bangladesh Labour Act, 2006, (BLA, 2006) a worker will be \"entitled to allowance for overtime work at the rate of twice his ordinary rate of basic wage and dearness allowance and ad-hoc or interim wage, if any\" [SS 108(1) BLA, 2006].\n8. Conclusion and implications: A constitutional mandate that \"it shall be a fundamental responsibility of the State to emancipate the toiling masses the peasants and workers and backward sections of the people from all forms of exploitation\" (Art. 14, the Constitution of Bangladesh). Also, the constitution prohibited all forms of forced labour, and any contravention of this provision shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law (Art. 34(1), the Constitution of Bangladesh). Notwithstanding the fact, shrimp workers in Bangladesh are indiscriminately deprived of these State responsibilities. As a result, this industry is now facing some formidable challenges of labour mismanagement and labour turmoil due to lack of standard labour practice, which leads to job dissatisfaction among workers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess different issues for promoting job satisfaction as well as improvement of work efficiency in the shrimp industry of Bangladesh.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The random sampling (RS) technique has been used for collecting data. A total of 132 data has been collected through a structured questionnaire from shrimp industry's worker, working in different shrimp cultivating industry of three specific cultivating areas of the Southwestern part in Bangladesh such as Khulna, Satkhira and Bagerhat. The survey was conducted between June 2017 and July 2017.\nFindings: This study shows that eight factors significantly influence job satisfaction among the shrimp workers in Bangladesh. Among these factors, four are relating to non-pecuniary issues such as workers' appointment by appointment letter, job security, weekly holiday and safety of health and skin, and remaining four factors are relating to pecuniary issues such as legitimate payment for overtime, compensation, yearly increment and salary.\nOriginality/value: This study helps in assessing the opinion of the workers' job satisfaction as well as policy planning for the development of the shrimp industry's worker labour management.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of IT application on supply chain learning and service performance	[ "IT application", "Service performance", "Supply chain learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Supply chain (SC) learning is a process of the focal firm to acquire, assimilate and exploit information and knowledge across internal functions as well as from its key suppliers and key customers. It has become a key component to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain management (SCM) (Bessant et al., 2003; Flint et al., 2008; Spekman et al., 2002; Willis et al., 2016). Scholars believe that learning helps firms to tailor their service offerings according to the specific needs of customers and leads to enhanced service ability (Brewer and Speh, 2000; Stank et al., 2001; Zhu et al., 2018). It also leads to resource duplication reduction, better relevance to customer needs, flexible accommodation to changes and prompt customer demand response (Brewer and Speh, 2000; Stank et al., 2001; Wilson and Frimpong, 2004). However, previous studies paid scarce attention to examine the effect of SC learning on service performance. This leads to the first research question:\n2. Theoretical background and research hypotheses: 2.1 IT application\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Questionnaire design\n4. Analyses and results: 4.1 Non-response bias and common method bias\n5. Discussion: 5.1 Improving SC learning through IT applications\n6. Conclusions, limitations and future research: This study empirically investigates the relationship between various types of IT application and their impact on three dimensions of SC learning, which, in turn, improve service performance. We find that strategic application leads to tactical and operational application, whereas tactical application leads to operational application. We also observe that different types of IT applications exert a peculiar influence on SC learning dimensions. Operational application is positively related to internal and customer learning. It does not influence supplier learning. Tactical application has a positive relationship with all dimensions of SC learning. On the other hand, the direct effect of strategic application to SC learning is negative, while it shows a positive effect through the indirect effect of tactical and operational application. We also notice that various dimensions of SC learning influence differently on service performance. Internal and customer learning are positively associated with service performance, whereas supplier learning has no significant influence on service performance. These findings contribute to both IT application and SC learning literature and offer important directions to practitioners.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Despite the recognition that supply chain (SC) learning is important for competitive advantage, little is known how to enable such learning. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of information technology (IT) application on different types of SC learning (i.e. internal, customer and supplier learning) and service performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study applies structural equation modeling to test the conceptual model based on data collected from 213 manufacturing firms in China.\nFindings: Although strategic application has a direct and negative relationship with all three dimensions of SC learning, it indirectly and positively improves SC learning through tactical and operational application. The authors observe that tactical application is positively related to all three dimensions of SC learning, while operational application improves internal and customer learning only. The authors also notice that internal and customer learning are positively related to service performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study classifies IT application into strategic, tactical and operational dimensions, which may not adequately cover the entire set of IT application portfolio.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest managers to use corresponding IT application to improve SC learning and service performance.\nOriginality/value: This study provides a new framework to understand the relationships between IT application, SC learning and service performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
"Rules of engagement": How experiential learning facilitates the formation of a public-private partnership in Russia	[ "Russia", "Experiential learning", "Concession", "Concrete experience", "Public-private partnership (PPP)", "Social environment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The public-private partnership (PPP) development in Russia began in 2005, when the government adopted the federal law on concessions (Federalnyi Zakon Rossiyskoy Federatsii #115-FZ, 2005) and started forming an institutional framework. The latter includes the National PPP Centre placed within Vnesheconombank, which is the federal government investment channel, and PPP centres that regional governments started to form since 2010. Subsequent amendments to the law on concessions made in 2008 gave a further kick-start to partnership formation. For PPPs, the priority sectors in Russia include transport infrastructure (e.g. toll roads, tunnels, bridges, airports and seaports), housing and utilities infrastructure (e.g. water treatment facilities) and social infrastructure (e.g. kindergartens, schools, hospitals and sports objects).\nProject background: In 2010, a Russian company called Regional Toll Roads formed a PPP which bypassed Russia\nTheoretical framework: There are multiple approaches to the study of experiential learning, e.g. learning as a strategy for individual economic survival and career progression (Paechter et al., 2001), learning for group consciousness raising (Weil and McGill, 1989) or learning as a tool for an organisation\nApproach and research question: Interviews that we conducted to investigate the case revealed that learning has occurred based on the experience of other PPP projects in Russia, which we discuss later in this paper. The company - Regional Toll Roads - simply could not use its own experience in the PPP formation because it lacked prior experience. As partnerships are new in Russia, a business firm that has accumulated any significant PPP experience is hard to find. Whilst management used the learning experience of other organisations and projects, does it mean that the concrete experience stage, according to Kolb\nMethodology: This qualitative study draws on the data that we collected from in-depth interviews. The study participants include five respondents. We selected two of them from the Regional Toll Roads' corporate management and one from the senior staff at the National PPP Centre in Russia. Additionally, we interviewed two lawyers from Russian law firms that are engaged in PPP contract preparation in order to ensure data validity.\nFindings and discussion: After critically assessing the accumulated experience of a range of companies that are either engaged in a PPP or are preparing a partnership agreement, Regional Toll Roads management has opted for a non-concessionary legal framework for a partnership. This means that the company forms a PPP with the municipal government by receiving land (for temporary use) from the latter and building a viaduct at the firm\nResearch validity: Research validity refers to the study\nContribution to theory: The paper contributes to ELT in two ways.\nConclusion: As a result of experiential learning there are implications for both theory and practice. The practical implications concern further PPP development in Russia. Whilst the PPP actors in Russia (e.g. staff of national and regional PPP centres, ministry officials, industry experts, interested businessmen, lawyers and researchers) actively debate conceptual, legal, institutional and financial barriers to PPP development in the country, experiential learning has allowed progress in PPP formation by essentially bypassing the federal legislation regarding concessions. Unless the government initiates regulatory changes, an opportunity that experiential learning has identified opens the backdoor for faster and easier PPP formation. Using this backdoor, the \"rules of engagement\" in a PPP become considerably more straightforward as opposed to where partners seek some form of government financial support that a law on concessions permits. This backdoor may look like a language game; however, the use of appropriate terminology carries legal meaning, which is critical for success of any business endeavour.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent one can apply experiential learning theory (ELT) to the public-private partnership (PPP) setting in Russia and to draw insights regarding the learning cycle\nDesign/methodology/approach: The case study draws upon primary data which the authors collected by interviewing informants including a PPP operator\nFindings: Experiential learning has resulted in a successful and a relatively fast PPP project launch without the concessionary framework. The lessons learned include the need for effective stakeholder engagement; avoiding being stuck in bureaucracy such as collaboration with Federal Ministries and anti-trust agency; avoiding application for government funding as the approval process is tangled and lengthy; attracting strategic private investors; shaping positive public perception of a PPP project; and making continuous efforts in order to effectively mitigate the public acceptance risk.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to ELT by incorporating the impact of social environment in the learning model. Additionally, the paper tests the applicability of ELT to learning in the complex organisational setting, i.e., a PPP.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A simple parallel algorithm for large-scale portfolio problems	[ "Portfolio investment", "Programming and algorithm theory", "Modelling", "Optimization techniques" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The classical Markowitz (1952, 1959) model for portfolio selection has been studied in the past by simplifying it or reformulating it into different models (Cooper et al., 1997; Konno and Yamazaki, 1991; Sharpe, 1963, 1971; Zenios and Kang, 1993). Several practitioners pointed out to the computational difficulty of Markowitz model which is associated with solving a large-scale quadratic programming (Kallio and Rosa, 1999; Perold, 1984). In addition, they (Konno and Yamazaki, 1991) considered it impractical and complicated to implement it. However, the theory of Markowitz model is still being used indirectly because the derivation of capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is based upon this model.Use of standard deviation as a measure of risk in Markowitz model is questioned in some studies (Konno and Yamazaki, 1991; Kroll et al., 1984). In this case, they suggested the use of third moment of the distribution; others considered the use of semi-variance downside. There are also studies, for example (Kariya, 1989), on the effect of the assumption that returns are normally or symmetrically distributed.Investors are faced with selection from a huge number of assets, such as stocks and bonds. It seems very difficult to choose which securities should be selected because of the inherent existence of uncertainty. Thus, portfolio selection problems can be modeled as large-scale quadratic programming problems that provide a general framework to deal with a huge numbers of assets.The above reflections motivated the current effort to improve large-scale portfolio selection model. In this paper, we illustrate the effect of introducing parallel algorithm in investment portfolio model for solving the quadratic program. Moreover, for comparison purpose, we have solved the Markowitz model with a quadratic constraint using van de Panne's method (van de Panne and Whinston, 1964; van de Panne, 1966) and the linear risk model, using WinQSB.The main purpose of this paper is to establish that design of a parallel algorithm for a large-scale portfolio selection using the quadratic risk (standard deviation risk) function and van de Panne's technique supported by parallel computing can remove some of the difficulties of quadratic program.Noting the fact that there are studies which challenges (Kariya, 1989) the assumption that returns are normally distributed, our approach does not require the necessity for modifying the model from the standard deviation portfolio selection to linear risk portfolio selection model. That way, the approach developed is not only suitable for dealing with large-scale mean variance optimization but also appropriate for exploiting any large-scale optimization model.The rest of the paper is organized as follows: the original Markowitz model, linear risk model (absolute deviation) and van de Panne finite iteration approach are introduced in Section 2, and their structures are presented. In Section 3, both the original quadratic model approach is solved with the help of van de Panne method and the linear risk model, for comparison purpose, are solved using Markowitz's (1959) empirical data. In Section 4, parallel computation aspect was introduced with proposed algorithm. Finally, discussions and conclusions are provided and opportunities for future research are identified in Section 5.\n2. Conceptual framework and literature background: 2.1 Review of Markowitz's model\n3. Empirical results: The above method of van de Panne has been used innovatively, in this paper, to study the problem of portfolio selection. This approach becomes very simple for the portfolio selection problem and yields an efficient solution as described in this section. The data (Table I) has been taken from the book of Markowitz (1959) mainly for illustration purpose; we note that the proposed method can be applied with any financial data. We show that the induction of parallel computing in the solution process makes the outcome different from the other models and gains efficiency with a considerable speed up in the process itself. In this paper, all the results have been obtained using a commercial software (WinQSB). For comparison purpose we have also presented results from van de Panne approach in Table II.The model M1 using the empirical ex-post returns\n4. Parallel algorithm for portfolio selection: Most academic research in the optimization arena face the problem of computational resource required to solve many of the important and practical problems which arise in business environment. Currently, as the technology is improving so does the demand for a better excellent approach for solutions to address more complex and large-scale problems. Parallel computing environment could be created on networks of workstations running message passing interface, such as Beowulf system. The work can be distributed between various processors and considerable speed up can be achieved.We present an algorithm here to develop the model M2 and QP into an equivalent problem which can be run concurrently in parallel computing environment. Our initial investigation has suggested that parallel algorithm for the solution of portfolio selection model can be efficiently implemented on distributed computer systems.The finite technique presented earlier provides a very good starting point for parallel processing. At the outset we can invoke M2 and QP concurrently in two processors via the same solution process, as both M2 and QP have the same structure differing only in one constraint which is quadratic. Then we plan to employ more processors to carry out many of the sub-tasks under each of M2 and QP problems. This way, the information exchange between the processors can be kept minimal. We present below an outline of the proposed parallel algorithm for the problem and it is summarized in Figure 1. Let us define: Equation 27 The optimal value of M2, denoted by V(M2) is: Equation 28 and: Equation 29 In addition we denote: Equation 30 * Step 0. Initialization: solve the M2 and obtain the associated optimal solution w0.* Step 1. Check if w0 satisfies (2) in M1 if yes go to step 4, otherwise go the next step.* Step 2. With a w0[?]LM2, let one processor check the constraint (2) in M1, and the other processor concurrently check over LQP to find the optimal solution using l=l0=w0tR.* Step 3. Set l-li such that li<l0.* Step 3.1. Let one processor determine the optimal solution, say w, for which the value w still remain feasible to LPQ.* Step 3.2. Repeat the process by decreasing the value of l parametrically.* Step 3.3 Let the other processor check simultaneously for each w* if it is still remain feasible to Lb.* Step 3.4. If a specific w* satisfies Lb, go the step 4. Otherwise, go the step 3 using li+1<lii=1, ... ,n-1.* Step 4. (Termination): The current w*, and l associated with it are the optimal portfolio and maximum rate of return, respectively. Terminate.The steps 3.2 and 3.3 above have many sub-tasks involving matrix operations. We plan on employing more processors to solve the matrix problem concurrently.\n5. Discussions and conclusions: With the use of parallel computation in the portfolio model, it implies that the portfolio model tends to generate more distributive investment and faster computation of the portfolio than the one with absolute deviation (linear risk). In other words, the use of computational algorithm could effectively overcome the difficulty associated with a large-scale problem and forestalls the cumbersome modification required in the model from a mean- variance model to a mean-absolute deviation model.The empirical example of choosing the optimal portfolio solved by original crisp model using finite iteration technique as well as by linear risk model. In all cases, the results are similar because we have been dealing with nine securities in our example. Thus, as the number of assets increases the differences will be noticed. However, the model M'1 with the finite technique segregates the available securities more clearly (Table III).These results show that the approach is a useful model for decision making, and has an advantage in that the investor is not forced to choose among a specific number of assets (ex-post returns) rather she/he is given flexibility to adjust to any ambiguity present and to choose from a huge number of assets. Additionally, the financial adviser does not have to form a better portfolio from a certain securities bundles during the investigation in an uncertain environment when she/he feels unable to construct one.Furthermore, with the proposed simple technique the investor has the flexibility to add more securities and to update the rate of returns periodically for a better more distinguishable and satisfactory result among competing assets. Consequently, we may be able to solve a problem with more than one thousand assets on a real time basis.We note that it is necessary to take maximum advantage of the experts' judgment to carry adequate tolerance levels to use the proposed method which provides a more efficient solution. That is consistent with Markowitz's (1952) suggestion that the E-V (mean-variance) requires a reasonable process to find the mean and covariances which is handled by the statistical methods available, and the judgment of practical experts. This is done by inducing relaxation in those indicated parameters (covariances and mean) based on some factors were not taken by the formal computation.This paper proposes a parsimonious solution approach to solve the portfolio selection problem that is both simple to use and efficient in nature. We expect that the implementation of parallel algorithm for the portfolio selection process would provide a superior way to deal with large-scale data. This would also provide more flexibility within the general framework of the problem under investigation.More broadly, there are more opportunities for parallel computing applications in the context of modern finance. Parallel computing provides an effective way to cope with the large-scale optimization difficulties that are inherent in the progressive stages of financial decisions.One direction for the future research is the process of making experts' judgment in the form of tolerance levels. Simply stated, the future research will look at the way to assign membership functions to rate of returns (Zimmermann, 1996), and how to incorporate parallel computing algorithm for an efficient and faster results. Some research has investigated, methods to quantify the tolerance level and/or experts' judgments (Inuiguchi and Ramik, 2000; Leon et al., 2000; Tanaka and Guo, 1999), however, we note that the computational aspect of the problem in this context has not been studied.Since there is some empirical evidence of the importance of the bid-ask spread had been provided by Datar Vinay et al. (1998), another future research is the application of the same approach with the integration of bid-ask spread in the portfolio selection model.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Although the mean-variance portfolio selection model has been investigated in the literature, the difficulty associated with the application of the model when dealing with large-scale problems is limited. The aim of this paper is to close the gap by using the quadratic risk (standard deviation risk) function and finite iteration technique to remove difficulties in quadratic programming.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using van de Panne' approach, this paper proposes a finite technique to optimize large-scale portfolio selection problem.\nFindings: - The proposal of parallel algorithm structure to the model provides a clearer decision framework to significantly enhance the efficiency of the portfolio selection process.\nOriginality/value: - The proposal of parallel algorithm structure to the mean-variance portfolio selection model provides a clearer decision framework to significantly enhance the efficiency of the portfolio selection process. An empirical example that illustrates the application and benefits of the method is provided.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]

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