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The effect of financial distress costs on ownership structure and debt policy: An application of simultaneous equations in Iran
|
[
"Ownership structure",
"Financial distress",
"Growth rate",
"Debt policy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Agency costs result from the misalignment of interests of corporate owners and managers or, to put it more simply, the separation of ownership and control. Agency model identifies a number of governance mechanisms that align the interests of agents and owners and reduce agency costs. The foundation of corporate governance is agency theory and agency issues also result from the separation of ownership and control. Ownership concentration is one of the monitoring governance mechanisms affecting the firm performance, which have been less emphasized particularly in Iran. According to the agency theory literature, the greater use of debts in the capital structure of a company is regarded as a mechanism to reduce agency costs, primarily because this reduces the need to equity financing and lessens the conflicts of interests between managers and shareholders (Jensen and Meckling, 1976).\n2. Theoretical framework, literature review, and hypothesis development: 2.1 Ownership structure and costs of financial distress\n3. Research design: 3.1 Sample selection procedure\n4. Research findings: 4.1 Specification tests (diagnostics) in panel data models\n5. Conclusions and limitations: The present study attempted to investigate the interrelationship between MO and debt and whether this trade-off relationship is moderated by firm's growth, financial flexibility, and financial health. The analysis of such interrelationships provides an incentive for us to fill a considerable gap in the body of literature on capital structure, assisting investors in reducing agency conflicts and costs.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of financial distress costs, corporate growth rate, and flexibility on the interaction between ownership structure and corporate debt policy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors test the hypotheses by employing simultaneous equations system methodology with two-stage least squares regression and panel data technics on a sample of 786 listed companies on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2010-2015.\nFindings: The results indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between corporate debt level and managerial ownership in the Iranian listed companies. The authors also find no convincing evidence that either the firm's growth or financial health could influence or moderate this interrelationship.\nResearch limitations/implications: The implications drawn from this study are constrained by two primary limitations. First, the present study is conducted in an Iranian setting; therefore, the data utilized for the study only contain companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. The utilization of listed companies on the Tehran Stock exchange is likely to affect the generalizability of the study in a national context. Second, the authors were unable to extend the sample time period due to some major deficiencies in the Tehran Stock Exchange library and its supplementary software.\nSocial implications: Since the fundamental institutional assumptions underpinning the western and even East Asia capital structure models are not valid in the institutional environment of Iran, the findings could provide substantial implications for our understanding of capital structures as well as debt policy literature.\nOriginality/value: This is an innovative research in terms of the mutual relationship between debt and ownership structure and the use of equations system to measure the interaction between them.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The impact of lease structures on the optimal holding period for a commercial real estate portfolio
|
[
"Simulations",
"Portfolio management",
"Lease structure",
"Optimal holding period",
"Real estate",
"Real estate investment"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nI. Introduction: The optimal holding period in real estate portfolio management is a topic that has only recently drawn the attention of both investors and academics. Institutional investors have only recently realized the importance of appropriately setting a holding period for managing the risk of real estate assets or, more generally, real estate portfolios[1]. Traditionally, real estate investment had been a rather passive process, with investors adopting a buy-and-hold strategy for real estate, an asset class capable of generating relatively stable recurring cash flow derived from rental agreements. The strategy was to hold real estate for many years, a valid strategy given the large transaction costs and limited liquidity of real estate investments. Few institutional investors engaged directly in opportunistic or value-added investments that typically hold on to assets for relatively short periods. This latter type of investment style was the preserve of developers, opportunistic funds and specialized REITs. Given the increasing specialization and sophistication of the real estate industry and to some extent the general perception that real estate cycles tend to be shorter, investors are giving more attention to the notion of the ex-ante holding period when investing, essentially by systematically asking the question \"How long do I expect to hold this asset for?\".\nII. The literature and existing models: A. The literature\nIII. Optimal holding period: using Monte Carlo simulation to derive influential factors: It is prohibitively complex to determine an analytical formula for the optimal holding period of a real estate portfolio when options embedded in the lease are considered. Following the reasoning of Baroni et al. (2007b) and the model of Amedee-Manesme et al. (2013), we use Monte Carlo simulations to derive optimal holding periods that maximize the discounted asset's value.\nIV. Conclusion: We have shown in this paper how the optimal holding period for a real estate asset or portfolio can be estimated by simulation, considering the specific risks linked to the lease structures in place. By using the model originally derived by Amedee-Manesme et al. (2013) and expanding it using Monte Carlo simulations and option theory we are able to take into account many additional factors such as passing rent and rental value dynamics and volatilities, vacancy duration and the time structure of break options in leases. These simulation techniques are a valid and accurate means of simulating the main risks in real estate cash flows, combining systematic risks (on the terminal value and on the MRV - as well as their correlation over time) as well as specific risks (the vacancy duration at which the rent becomes higher than the MRV and the tenant decides to leave the premises). The optimal holding period is then derived as being the one associated with the maximum discounted value for the asset.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of lease duration and lease break options on the optimal holding period for a real estate asset or portfolio.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use a Monte Carlo simulation framework to simulate a real estate asset's cash flows in which lease structures (rent, indexation pattern, overall lease duration and break options) are explicitly taken into account. The authors assume that a tenant exercises his/her option to break a lease if the rent paid is higher than the market rental value (MRV) of similar properties. The authors also model vacancy duration stochastically. Finally, capital values and MRVs, assumed to be correlated, are simulated using specific stochastic processes. The authors derive the optimal holding period for the asset as the value that maximizes its discounted value.\nFindings: The authors demonstrate that, consistent with existing capital markets literature and real estate business practice, break options in leases can dramatically alter optimal holding periods for real estate assets and, by extension, portfolios. The paper shows that, everything else being equal, shorter lease durations, higher MRV volatility, increasing negative rental reversion, higher vacancy duration, more break options, all tend to decrease the optimal holding period of a real estate asset. The converse is also true.\nPractical implications: Practitioners are offered insights as well as a practical methodology for determining the ex-ante optimal holding period for an asset or a portfolio based on a number of market and asset-specific parameters including the lease structure.\nOriginality/value: The originality of the paper derives from its taking an explicit modelling approach to lease duration and lease breaks as additional sources of asset-specific risk alongside market risk. This is critical in real estate portfolio management because such specific risk is usually difficult to diversify.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Redesigning the business model: from one-sided to multi-sided
|
[
"Practice",
"Business model",
"Digital industries",
"Multi-sided platform",
"Network effects",
"Redesign"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the past several decades, the diffusion of information and communication technologies has created new business model (BM) opportunities with multi-sided platforms for digital industries. Indeed, with the declining costs of acquiring information and intermediation, many multi-sided platforms have emerged on the internet, including eBay, Amazon, YouTube and Airbnb, by adopting a business model based on networking and intermediation of complementary and interdependent categories of users, implying positive network effects. However, the success of a multi-sided platform strategy is rare because companies must deploy many resources to implement the platform technologically, attract users rapidly and massively and organize sides by creating several complementary user groups. These conditions are necessary to reach a critical volume of users who will create value, thus triggering network effects. In addition, designing a suitable business model to support multi-sidedness also requires new strategic thinking, new tools for managers and new capacities for the firm (Rumble and Mangematin, 2015). A model conceptualizes the way a company wants to organize its value creation within a value chain and value network, adapt its value proposition to a target customer and establish its value capture through a revenue model. It is a cognitive tool to elaborate the business of a firm. From a multi-sided perspective, business model design requires simultaneously targeting several consumer groups, developing and implementing new technologies and supporting the scalability of the platform. This challenge is even greater for small and middle-sized enterprises (SMEs) already in place on the market, due to their limited resources. To help them, we propose studying the way to develop the multi-sided strategy, but starting from the existing business model. Indeed, we think that companies can adopt the multi-sided strategy without needing to be large (with extensive resources) or to create a start-up. This can be achieved by redesigning their existing one-sided model into a multi-sided one. Thus, we address the following questions:\nMulti-sided business models: an architecture based on multi-sided platforms: A multi-sided platform is defined as a technological support that facilitates interactions (or transactions) between two or more distinct but interdependent customer or user groups (that represent sides) and that grows value so the presence and activities of a group increase the value of other groups and attract more customers or users through a phenomenon of network effects (Hagiu, 2014). Multi-sided platforms and multi-sided business models are linked because the model allows defining and organizing the value transactions made on the platform between the firm and the user groups. By offering a market space where several user groups can consume goods and services, the platform is a key technological, strategic and economic resource for the business model because it helps to structure the value proposition and value capture. From a technological perspective, a platform is a system of components and interfaces that form a common structure. This system often uses digital technologies (software, internet, communications networks, etc). because of their accessibility and their capacity for networking and thanks to the low-cost of content duplication (Shuen, 2008). With APIs[1], platforms favour collaboration between suppliers, partners and distributors in the offering design. A technological platform allows delivering services to fill the needs of several user groups and engages them in a value creation process. For example, with a digital platform (Web, mobile apps and database), BlaBlaCar delivers a transport service that links drivers and passengers remotely rather than in-person. Such ride-sharing services already existed in a niche market, but they have taken-off again with the advent of the internet and smartphones (Figure 1).\nFrom one-sided to multi-sided business models: Based on the previous section, we suggest six operations for redesigning a one-sided into a multi-sided business model (Table I). Two operations effect the entire model: setting up the platform and opening the model. Three operations effect the value proposition: reformulating the value proposition, structuring and linking complementary customer groups and multiplying the niches. One operation effects the value capture structuring prices.\nManaging the process of business model redesign: Based on several empirical case studies with multi-sided business models, we applied our grid of operations to characterize the steps of constructing multi-sided business models and identify how a company moves from a one-sided to a multi-sided business model. The source of these cases is two fold:\nConclusion: Our research provides a first response concerning redesign operations that enable transitioning from a one-sided to a multi-sided business model. We show that:\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine the way to develop a multi-sided logic for existing business models. More precisely, the objective is to find rules for designing a multi-sided business model from a one-sided business model.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Given that business model (BM) literature and multi-sided literature do not address the complex issue of multi-sided business model design, the authors propose here a set of six redesign operations. These operations are built from a comprehension of the development and evolution of multi-sided platforms and their consequences for business model architecture. Several empirical cases illustrate each operation.\nFindings: A process of business model redesign is proposed with three phases: setting-up a technological digital platform to support the multi-sided architecture, identifying and engaging several customer groups on the platform and linking the customer groups and structuring the revenue model. This process details the chronological order in which the redesign operations can be implemented to build a multi-sided BM.\nPractical implications: The importance of the stage of semi-finished development of the platform, the openness of digital content, reaching the critical threshold and the combination of a dual economic model (free/paid) is highlighted. For managers, this provides better practices to successfully manage the business model redesign process.\nOriginality/value: This paper helps managers in companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to profit from a multi-sided business model by proposing a way to achieve it.\n",
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] |
Sanitation, human rights and disaster management
|
[
"Sanitation",
"Human rights",
"International law",
"Disaster management",
"Disaster law"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Sanitation is one of the key challenges of our time. Every day, a lack of adequate sanitation creates immeasurable suffering, primarily through the spread of disease via water, land or insects. Sanitation problems contribute to, and are exacerbated by, disasters.\n2. The concept of sanitation and contemporary challenges: 2.1 Defining sanitation\n3. Sanitation and IHRL: Although not recognized as a human right in itself until recently, adequate sanitation is vital for the fulfilment of a number of human rights obligations. As one of the key contributors to water contamination, sanitation affects not only the right to access safe water and the right to sanitation, but also the right to life, health, housing, food, and education (CESCR, 2003, p. 3; Winkler, 2016, p. 24).\n4. The role of IHRL in disaster management: It is increasingly acknowledged that disasters do not exist in a legal vacuum, but that (pre)existing rules and obligations continue to apply in disaster situations. This includes rules under IHRL (see e.g. Lauta, 2016). The benefits of taking a human rights-based approach to disaster management have been widely acknowledged, as leading to persons affected by a disaster being considered \"individual rights holders who can claim rights from particular duty bearers rather than [...] passive beneficiaries and recipients of charity\" (IASC, 2011, p. 2; see also UN Human Rights Council, 2015, para. 82). It is, however, not always clear how IHRL rules are to be interpreted in the disaster context. First of all, it should be remembered that the affected State has the primary responsibility to care for its citizens in the event of a disaster. This obligation extends not only to the State's citizens, but to all persons on its territory (Art. 2(1) ICCPR; Art. 2(2) ICESCR). It should be noted that Article 2(2) ICESCR allows for some scope of discrepancy between nationals and non-nationals as concerns certain benefits (CESCR, 2009), but these exceptions are not relevant for sanitation and will thus not be elaborated upon here.\n5. Addressing sanitation in disaster management through a human rights lens: A human rights-based approach to sanitation requires action on all stages of disaster management, including prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. The stages are addressed in turn below.\n6. Conclusion: Even though it is widely acknowledged that IHRL continues to apply in disaster situations, there are still significant uncertainties as to how IHRL rules are to be interpreted and applied in the disaster context. The discussion above has sought to address this issue by linking previous work on human rights and sanitation to disaster management. States are required to respect and protect human rights in all stages of disasters. Although it might be justified for states not to completely fulfill the right to sanitation under certain circumstances, states must always provide at the very least their core obligations under the ICESCR, including provision of basic sanitation. States must also take positive action in order to prevent the loss of life from inadequate sanitation.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to link debates around the international law on human rights and disaster management with the evolving debate around the human right to sanitation, in order to explore the extent to which states are obliged to account for sanitation in their disaster management efforts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is based on analysis of existing laws and policy relating to human rights, sanitation and disaster management. It further draws upon relevant academic literature.\nFindings: The paper concludes that, while limitations exist, states have legal obligations to provide sanitation to persons affected by a disaster. It is further argued that a human rights-based approach to sanitation, if respected, can assist in strengthening disaster management efforts, while focusing on the persons who need it the most.\nResearch limitations/implications: The analysis in this paper focuses on the obligations of states for people on their territory. Due to space limitations, it does not examine the complex issues relating to enforcement mechanisms available to disaster victims.\nOriginality/value: This is the first scholarly work directly linking the debates around international human rights law and disaster management, with human rights obligations in relation to sanitation. The clarification of obligation in relation to sanitation can assist in advocacy and planning, as well as in ensuring accountability and responsibility for human rights breaches in the disaster context.\n",
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Price presentation effects on green purchase intentions
|
[
"Perceived quality",
"Perceived value",
"Consumers’ degree of greenness",
"Green purchase intentions",
"Perceived savings",
"Price promotion framing"
] |
[
{
"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.\nIntroduction: As global concern about the negative effects of industrial and human activities on the earth increases, the importance of being responsible regarding the environment and society enforces proactive plans to protect the environment. There is an increasing trend of firms that aim to take into consideration their corporate social responsibility and produce green products (Liu et al., 2012). Since the early 1970s, environmentalism and the green movement have driven many US consumers to be more responsible for a sustainable world through changing their behavior (e.g. recycle and reuse) and consuming green products (Albayrak et al., 2011; Smith, 1998). According to McKinsey and Company's global survey, the majority of consumers (87 per cent) is concerned about the environmental and social impact of the products they purchase (Bonini and Oppenheim, 2008). Green products have gradually spread from small niche markets to large markets of consumer goods and services (Roberts, 1996). Subsequently, green marketing has emerged to respond to the needs of green consumers who are concerned about the environment (Peattie and Crane, 2005).\nConsumers' degree of greenness: It is important for marketers to identify market segments in which consumers are more concerned about the environment and are more willing to purchase green products even at a higher price (Laroche et al., 2001). Consumers' demographics, their level of income and purchase power are major factors that influence their price sensitivity and willingness to buy green products (Rahman and Haque, 2011). According to Ginsberg and Bloom (2004), consumers are categorized into five groups based on their degree of greenness: the Greenback Green (6 per cent) and True Blue Green (9 per cent), who are truly concerned about the environment and willing to pay more for green products; the Spouts (31 per cent), who believe in environmental problems in theory but perceive green products as expensive; the Grousers (19 per cent), who do not have enough knowledge about environmental threats and believe that green products are expensive; and the Basic Browns (33 per cent), who mainly focus on their daily needs and are not concerned about environmental or social issues. Hence, 15 per cent of consumers can be categorized as having high greenness (the Greenback Green and True Blue Green), 31 per cent can be categorized as having medium greenness (the Spouts) and the others are considered as having low greenness.\nEffects of price promotion presentation and framing: Prospect theory posits that framing a decision problem can affect individuals' cognitive judgments. An evaluation of an outcome is strongly influenced by a standard of comparison or reference point. This reference point determines whether outcomes are characterized as gains or losses because a shift in the reference point can alter the comparative value of outcomes and, subsequently, change choices. People are more sensitive to the prospect of loss than to the prospect of gain and, thus, have a stronger tendency to avoid losses than acquire gains (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). Framing the price promotions is similar to framing decision problems. The price promotion literature suggests that framing the same price promotions in the format of either additional gains or reduced losses can significantly influence consumers' decision-making (Diamond, 1992; Thaler, 1985). In addition, researchers suggest that buyers may behave based on their lay theories regarding the mutability of the environment. If they believe that they can make a change, they may approach a certain behavior, such as buying green products to protect the environment. However, if they believe that their action cannot lead to a positive change or it is not worth the price, they will remain inactive (Jain et al., 2009). Therefore, to motivate such consumers, marketers can better communicate their promotional messages through framing to reduce the perceived monetary sacrifice of going green (i.e. costs) and enhance consumers' green-buying behavior to protect the environment.\nStudy 1: Experimental design\nStudy 2: Experimental design\nDiscussion and implications: Despite the increasing awareness of consumers regarding environmental issues, there is still a gap between their attitude toward green products and their intention to purchase (Kilbourne and Pickett, 2008). Previous literature indicates that consumers have various levels of greenness. Consumers who have a lower degree of greenness often view price as the major barrier for green product consumption (Bonini and Oppenheim, 2008; Ginsberg and Bloom, 2004). To promote green products and persuade consumers to make a purchase, marketers can use various formats to present price promotion messages. Drawing on the prospect theory and price promotion research (Chen et al., 1998; Kahneman and Tversky, 1979), we propose that consumers are sensitive to their perception of loss and gain and price promotions appropriately framed as reduced loss or gain may enhance their overall perceptions toward green consumption. As researchers suggest, consumers may perceive price promotions differently based on various price presentations or framing (i.e. save more vs pay less) or deal characteristics (i.e. discounts vs free gifts). Each consumer segment may subsequently respond to these presentations differently (Darke and Chung, 2005; Xia and Monroe, 2009). Hence, consumers' overall perceptions of green consumption depend on how sellers frame price promotion presentations (Krishna et al., 2002). This research studied the effect of different price promotion framings on consumers' green purchase intentions across consumers' different levels of greenness.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to examine the effect of price promotion presentation formats on consumers' green purchase intentions across various levels of greenness. Despite the increasing awareness of environmental issues and green products among consumers, there is a gap between their green attitude and purchase intentions. Previous studies show that consumers' degree of greenness varies and that price plays an important role in their green consumption decision-making.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Two between-subject experiments with 236 participants were used to examine our hypotheses and conceptual model.\nFindings: The results show that different formats of price promotion presentations influence consumers' purchase perceptions differently. Consumers with a high degree of greenness are attracted to promotions emphasizing gain, while those with a low degree of greenness prefer promotions underlining reduced loss. In addition, medium-greenness consumers show similar reactions to both formats. Our studies further demonstrate that consumers' perceived value mediates the moderated effects of perceived quality and perceived savings on green purchase intentions.\nPractical implications: This research helps marketers better design price promotions, taking into account the various levels of consumers' greenness. The focus of reduced loss or gain of the promotional programs should be targeted at consumers with different levels of greenness.\nOriginality/value: This is the first paper to examine the role of price promotion presentation formats in consumer decision-making regarding green consumption. The study provides new insights concerning how to design price promotions to enhance the green purchase intentions of consumers.\n",
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] |
A comparison of Korean and US continuous improvement projects
|
[
"Organizational change",
"Quality circles",
"Continuous improvement",
"Performance improvement",
"Kaizen Events"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: With the current global landscape for manufacturers, the importance of process improvement has increased. To be competitive, manufacturers need to pursue both products and process innovation and continuous improvement (Un, 2010). Continuous improvement activities, in particular have emerged as a key to both production and quality improvements (Choi, 1995).\nLiterature review: Korean quality circles\nMethodology: Logic model\nCompany-level analysis: Comparative case study Group 1\nComparative case analysis: QC1 and KE1 comparison\nDiscussion: Across the cases, both similarities and differences emerged when comparing and contrasting Quality Circles and Kaizen Events using the logic model framework. Common and dissimilar elements are summarized in Table VI and are discussed in the next section.\nConclusions: This research was designed to characterize the similarities and differences in structure and outcomes between two different CPI approaches - Quality Circles and Kaizen Events. Toward this end, three comparative analyses of matched continuous improvement projects were conducted. Three Quality Circle projects from three different Korean companies and three Kaizen Event projects from three different US companies were included in the study. All projects were conducted in a manufacturing setting, and projects were matched based on the size of the organization, the type of industrial sector, and the manufacturing operations targeted by the improvement project.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: Quality Circles and Kaizen Events have resulted in productivity and quality improvements for organizations. There is limited empirical research comparing these two approaches. This research study was designed to understand the similarities and differences in the structure and outcomes of these two popular continuous improvement approaches in Korea and the USA. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A logic model was used to structure a comparative analysis of Quality Circles and Kaizen Events undertaken in six different organizations in Korea and the USA. A logic model framework consisting of four areas (resources, activities, outputs and outcomes) was used to assess the key components of these six improvement projects. Data for three different comparative case study project pairs were collected. Projects were matched on both manufacturer-level and project-level characteristics. Matched projects were similar in size and type of product produced.\nFindings: Similarities between Quality Circles and Kaizen Events were identified in every component of the logic model. Both mechanisms were effective in driving improvements in performance and in motivating employees, even though significant differences in the project size, type, and industrial sector existed across the six different projects.\nOriginality/value: There was no evidence to support the conclusion that one continuous improvement approach is more or less effective than the other. Both approaches produced improvements in both technical and social system outcomes. Overall, it appears based on this study, that both Quality Circles and Kaizen Events can be successfully deployed in an organization's continuous improvement journey.\n",
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The use of the balanced scorecard to measure knowledge work
|
[
"Control",
"Research and development",
"Balanced scorecard",
"Control systems"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Within the operations management arena, control of organisational activity is a key managerial priority. One of the features of the last two decades is the evolution of economic activity from operations that involve physical labour to those that are cerebral. This phenomenon has been discussed by many authors. For example Alversson (2001) discusses the phenomenon of the \"knowledge intensive firm\" as one where \"most of the work is said to be of an intellectual nature and where well-educated, qualified employees form the major part of the workforce\". This paper explores the issue of management control of knowledge workers.\nThe balanced scorecard: The balanced scorecard was created at a time when there was increasing dissatisfaction with managerial accounting practices: for example Kaplan (1984) documented the change in economic activity in the USA from a manufacturing-led environment to one in which process automation and information-workers were key drivers of organisational success. At around the same time, there was an increased realisation that globalisation was having an adverse effect on US manufacturing firms who were trying to compete with rivals from countries like Japan who had higher levels of quality and better inventory control.\nKnowledge workers: It is apparent from the extant literature that there is no consensus on definition of the term and that different authors use different definitions of the term \"knowledge worker\". Indeed Scarborough (1999) recognises that \"the term knowledge worker can be easily criticised for a lack of methodological rigour\" as does Davenport (2005) who argues that this difficulty stems from the fact that most jobs require some sort of knowledge. A number of authors have put forward definitions of knowledge workers, for example Robertson and Swan (2003) who identify employees who \"combine significant levels of technical skill in problem identification and problem solving, with marketing, strategic and financial acumen\".\nKnowledge worker control: Having defined the term \"knowledge worker\", the notion of knowledge worker control is now discussed. A number of authors have discussed contingent theories of management control, using attributes of the work being undertaken to analyse different work contexts.\nResearch methodology: The research aims to explore how the balanced scorecard supports management control of knowledge workers. Given the research is exploratory in nature an interpretative approach appears appropriate. This allows observations and findings to be used to build theory Bryman (2001, p. 10). This approach aligns with a phenomenological research paradigm which should provide a \"richness\" (Silverman, 1993) that would not be possible using quantitative approaches to research.\nCase study data: Upon entering the field, it became apparent that the balanced scorecard played a small although important part of a package of management control activities that encompassed a range of different activities and systems.\nResults and discussion: A number of phenomena were identified through analysis of the case study data.\nConclusions: The empirical investigation shows that the cascading of measures through an organisation - a notion suggested by Kaplan and Norton (1996a) was not evident. The Anthony (1965) three-layer hierarchy of control system provides a useful way of framing an understanding of the managerial control systems that were present. The balanced scorecard provided strategic and managerial control whilst operational control of knowledge work occurred through bureaucratic means.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to question whether the balanced scorecard provides an appropriate control mechanism for management control of knowledge workers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A case study approach is taken to explore the way in which management control of employees engaged in research and development is undertaken.\nFindings: The key finding of this work is that the balanced scorecard is not in itself a useful approach to management control of knowledge workers but provides an important mechanism for ensuring that there is alignment between the strategic objectives of an organisation and the work being undertaken.\nResearch limitations/implications: The inductive approach taken in a single-company case study has provided a rich data set for exploratory research, however, this research design limits the generalisability of the findings.\nPractical implications: The work provides insights into how the balanced scorecard can be used in knowledge-worker environments.\nOriginality/value: The balanced scorecard is often reported as a tool that allows organisations to cascade strategic priorities down to the level of the individual though the use of measures. This research provides an alternative explanation of how the balanced scorecard can support knowledge worker control.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Loan demand by microfinance borrowers: Do self-help groups and joint liability groups differ? A case study of Mirzapur district
|
[
"Microfinance",
"Joint liability group",
"Loan demand",
"Self-help group",
"Size of group",
"Interest on loan"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Inclusive growth has been stated as the objective of eleventh five year plan[1] in India (2007-2012). Financial inclusion has been recognized as one of the policy mechanism to achieve objective of inclusive growth that aims at \"easy availability and affordability of credit and financial services to the people especially poor and vulnerable\"[2]. Financial inclusion can be defined as the process of ensuring access to financial services and timely availability of adequate credit to poor[3]. Indian financial system has vast expansion of commercial banking network, and other agencies such as post offices, cooperative societies and microfinance institutions are also involved in availing financial services/products to the poor and financially excluded. But despite of impressive outreach of the financial institutions a sizeable portion of Indian population is deprived of formal financial services and has to depend upon informal sources of finance.\n2. Review of literature: 2.1 Theory of demand for credit\n3. Data and methodology: 3.1 Data source and sampling structure\n4. Empirical results and discussion: In this section we discuss the empirical results wherein we analyse what determines the loan demand by microfinance borrowers.\n5. Conclusion: There are very few studies that have compared various aspects of SHGs and JLGs (including loan-related aspects) prominent among them are (Paul and John, 2010; Harper, 2002; Sarma and Mehta, 2013) and there are studies that have solely focussed on SHGs such as (Tankha, 2010) and on JLGs such as (NABARD, 2014a, b). While most of the studies done so far have emphasized upon socio-economic variables explaining the demand for loan by microfinance borrowers (either SHGs or JLGs solely) and its repayment aspects, but this paper makes comparative account using regression technique of SHG and JLG members in explaining demand for credit/loan by them and finds that loan demand by microfinance borrower is reciprocated positively if group member is having older association with their microfinance groups/MFIs. In both the cases of (JLGs and SHGs), it becomes clear that financial variables have bearing while SHG/JLG borrowers demand for loan as both group members SHGs and concerned MFIs would not risk by giving loans to erring and financially weak borrowers but would incentivise and encourage honest and serious borrower to participate in loan programmes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore what determines the loan size/demand in a micro-finance group and makes comparative account of self-help groups and joint liability groups.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using primary data and carried out survey (questionnaire and focus group discussion) for data collection. While for econometrics OLS regression has been used.\nFindings: The study finds that employment, landownership and years spent by members in group has positive impact on loan demand by micro finance borrowers.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study points out the fact that economic variables along with group characteristics has positive implication on loan demand by borrowers.\nPractical implications: This study would propel further research in group dynamics in micro-finance area.\nSocial implications: This study attempts to bring out the fact that economic position of micro-finance members along with its group status has bearing on its loan demand position.\nOriginality/value: The authors conducted this study using primary data, and all the collected data and study bring out the fact that older membership in groups are positive for loan demand by borrowers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Effects of organisational culture on organisational innovation performance in family firms
|
[
"Organizational culture",
"Family SMEs",
"Organizational innovation",
"Organizational innovation performance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Family firms play a vital role in most economies; a review of the state of family businesses worldwide highlights their predominance, economic importance and significance (Laforet, 2013b). Family firms are also the backbone of the British economy, representing more than 65 per cent of enterprises in the UK (Institute for Family Business); they contribute over 30 per cent of the UK's GDP and account for an estimated 70-90 per cent of annual global GDP. With the increasing concern about sustained economic recovery in the Western world, the importance of the family firm for recharging stagnant economies should not be ignored. However, not all family firms are successful or innovative. One of the challenges for these firms relates to their failure at succession planning. Research conducted in this area suggests that only 30 per cent of family businesses survive to the second generation, and only 10 per cent survive successfully to the third, the rest being either sold or closed down. Furthermore, most family firms are small or medium sized and the reason for their failure in their first year of business is their lack of potential for growth (Van Gils et al., 2008). Innovation can stimulate a firm's growth and is a key aspect of a firm's survival and success. Innovation is important to a family firm's competitive market position (McCann et al., 2001). It can lead to profitability and growth, particularly for family firms which are committed to the long term (Zahra et al., 2004). As in other small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), besides finance and the lack of resources, such as qualified personnel to manage the innovation process effectively, attitude to innovation could be a barrier to family firms' ability to innovate. Owner-managers of SMEs and family businesses alike often have many roles within the business; this situation offers little opportunity to cultivate innovation, which can result in low management commitment and an organisational culture (OC) that does not support innovation. These firms also tend to be reluctant to change (Flinders et al., 2010). Thus, fostering a corporate culture open to innovation has previously been highlighted as crucial to innovation success in SMEs (Ledwith, 2000; Laforet and Tann, 2006; Pullen et al., 2009) and to innovativeness in family firms (Naranjo-Valencia et al., 2011).\nLiterature review and hypotheses: This section is comprised of two parts: the first part is a general review of the family firm innovation literature and the second part is a review of the literature based on which hypotheses are formulated.\nMethodology: Sampling and data collection\nResults: The results show that company age, size and business sector do not have an effect on OIP (Table III). Therefore, the results are not biased by firm age, size and business sector. This finding correlates with those of Rothwell and Zegveld (1986), Laforet and Tann (2006), Nieto and Santamaria (2010) and Laforet (2013a, b, c). Laforet (2013a, b, c) also shows that young and old family firms do not differ significantly in their innovation performance, because innovation does not affect the growth rate of sales and turnover in young firms more than in old firms. As mentioned above, innovation performance is also determined by an increase in the growth rate of a company's sales resulting from the introduction of a new product or process. Similarly, Laforet (2013a, b, c) finds that family companies operating in an industry that is active in NPD are no more innovative than those operating in an industry that is less active in that area. Generally, research into SMEs and family businesses also suggests that firms differ in their innovation endeavour (Pullen et al., 2009) because of the innovation type they pursue, and because of other factors unrelated to firm age, size and business sector (Rothwell and Zegveld, 1986). Likewise, generation does not have an effect on OIP. This finding concurs with Van Gils et al. (2008) who found that the generation variables had no statistical significant results. Regarding family involvement, the results suggest that CEO owners (or family CEOs) have a positive effect on OIP. This is also consistent to some extent with Van Gils et al. (2008), who found family CEOs have a positive influence on product and process innovation except for management, admin and human resource practices.\nDiscussion and conclusion: Previously, scholars have suggested that OC is a determinant of family firm innovativeness (e.g. Naranjo-Valencia et al., 2011). They have also claimed that family firms profit from their OC, which tends to have fewer issues with principle agent problems and reduced reliance on formal controls and coordination. These traits make family firms a more efficient innovator when it comes to the effects of OI (Kraus et al., 2012). However, there has been little research that examines the influence of OC on the innovation process of family firms, and the issue remained which family cultures would bring about innovation and which would hinder it. This study has focused on this and has sought to find out which type of OC lead to high innovation performance in family SMEs. In the main, as opposed to past research, which suggests that pro-activeness influences family firms' innovation output (Craig et al., 2014), the findings of this study further show that an externally oriented family business culture has a positive effect on family firms' innovation performance; an externally oriented OC refers to market orientation, firm's adaptability and interaction with the external environment. In the case of family firms, this includes interacting with customers, competitors, suppliers, stakeholders and non-family employees. Furthermore, the findings show that an open family business culture has a positive effect on family firms' innovation performance. In contrast, a paternalistic and a founder culture do not have a positive effect on family firms' innovation performance. This finding tends to concur with research which suggests the later-generation CEO influence higher innovation output than the founder CEO (Duran et al., 2015). A paternalistic culture is synonymous to a closed culture, with this culture the firm is not able to foster change and generates value over time (Chirico and Nordqvist, 2010), which is also one of the conditions for innovation. The founder culture would increase the family firm inward focus culture (Westhead and Cowling, 1996; Zahra et al., 2004; Chirico and Nordqvist, 2010) and impedes innovation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of organisational culture (OC) on organisational innovation performance (OIP) in family small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It seeks to establish the type of culture that lead to high innovation performance in family firms.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A postal survey of family SMEs across sectors in the UK is conducted. The study employs multiple regression analyses to test which family business culture has an effect on OIP. Among the family business cultures tested are: an external cultural orientation, a flexible and open OC as well as an organisational climate based on open communication and trust, the founder culture, and a long-term cultural orientation.\nFindings: The findings show that a paternalistic and founder culture type do not have a positive effect on family firm innovation performance, but an entrepreneurial-like culture does, i.e. one that is externally oriented, flexible, proactive (refer to an open culture) and long-term oriented. Similarly, an inward focus culture such as, the founder culture impedes innovation; while an outward focus culture such as, an external orientation culture has a positive effect on family firm innovation performance.\nOriginality/value: This study makes valuable contributions to the understanding of theory and practices of innovation in family businesses. It provides future research directions.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Promoting knowledge sharing in academic environments using non-monetary factors
|
[
"Self-efficacy",
"Reputation",
"Interpersonal trust",
"Humility",
"Knowledge-sharing behaviour",
"Enjoyment of helping others"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Knowledge is important and vital in organizations, but when shared it can be a competitive advantage and of an increasing value. Nowadays, knowledge sharing has become a resource for profit generation in business organizations (Cheng et al., 2009). Knowledge sharing revealed that in business organizations, managers used to pay incentives to encourage employees to share their knowledge so as to improve the group's performance (Choi et al., 2008; Yi, 2009). Similarly, knowledge sharing is important in non-profit organizations such as academic institutes and universities (Isika et al., 2013; Jolaee et al., 2014). Only a limited number of studies have investigated knowledge-sharing practices of students, mainly focussing on university students (Majid and Panchapakesan, 2015). On the same line, Berends (2005) stated that to enhance the organization practice among members in academic institutions, management should focus on knowledge sharing among them. Ali et al. (2014) suggested that there is disproportionately little knowledge sharing research in higher education compared to the commercial sector. Their comprehensive review of literature revealed that research on knowledge sharing in commercial and higher education in developing economies such as Africa, the Middle East and South America was found to be limited. Moreover, most of the prior studies focussed on rewards and monetary incentive factors to encourage knowledge sharing (Nooshinfard and Nemati-Anaraki, 2014; Majid and Panchapakesan, 2015), whereas this paper examines the non-monetary factors that increase the willingness to share knowledge. Owing to the importance of knowledge sharing for organizations, particularly higher education institutions as knowledge-intensive organizations (Ali et al., 2014), the objective of the study is to examine knowledge-sharing behaviour among postgraduate students in public universities and analyse whether the non-monetary factors induce them to share their knowledge.\nLiterature review: Knowledge has been recognized as an essential strategic source for organizations to sustain competitive advantage (Choi et al., 2008; Wasko and Faraj, 2005). However, knowledge is embedded within individuals who create, acquire, store, access and use knowledge when they are performing a particular task (Bock et al., 2005). Knowledge has a dynamic dimension, as it is created in a social interaction environment among individuals, as well as organizations. Knowledge also has a humanistic dimension, as it connects human actions and activities (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). This importance of knowledge encourages managers to pay more attention to knowledge management in organizations (Choi et al., 2008). Moreover, various studies have proved that knowledge sharing has an essential influence on the achievement of knowledge management efforts (Lin, 2007). Therefore, the interaction and social relationship among employees play a vital role in enhancing knowledge-sharing behaviour. Knowledge sharing has been defined as \"a social interaction culture, involving the exchange of employee knowledge, experiences and skills through the whole department or organisation\" (Lin, 2007, p. 315). When knowledge sharing is applied within the domain of the organization's routine work, it will become behaviour (Bock et al., 2005). Because knowledge sharing has become a focussed area for many researchers, we need to have more understanding about its concept and definition and then go in depth to investigate the factors that influence the individuals within the organization to share their knowledge.\nHypotheses development: The humility construct has been derived from social and psychological science (Tangney, 2000). The Aristotle theory of virtue and moral ethics explained that virtue is a character trait that shows how a person acts and behaves. Moreover, humility has been regarded as a virtue in many religions and cultures (Morris et al., 2005). Generally, humility is the lack of feeling of superiority, arrogance and haughtiness of a person towards other people. It is treating all people regardless of who they are, with respect, gentleness, kindness and forgiveness. Humility could be looked upon as a virtue and personal strength, as has been described by some writers (Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004). According to Exline and Geyer (2004), many people looked at humility, positively from a social view, as facilitating the role to cooperate and share, especially with closed ones such as colleagues, friends and family. In the theory of virtue of Aristotle, he mentioned that virtue is a characteristic trait of a man that affects his behaviour and actions (Sherman, 1991). In the same way, the behaviour of one who has high level of humility might serve as a potential promotional basis for him/her to share knowledge with others (Mallasi, 2012). Morris et al. (2005) referred to humility as willingness found in a person to see oneself accurately and to put oneself in a position which involves neither self-abasement nor overly positive self-regard. Therefore, the H1 is proposed:\nResearch methodology and data analysis: Measurement and data collection\nDiscussion and conclusion: This study provides a theoretical expansion in the area of knowledge management and particularly in knowledge-sharing behaviour. The increased attention on knowledge sharing as a critical success of knowledge management led to the investigation of this study, to have a better understanding of the intrinsic motivators that encourage postgraduate students to share their knowledge. The paper is a laudable attempt to collaborate, refine and advance knowledge production endeavours in universities. The paper formulated a theoretical framework to reflect the relationship between non-monetary factors and the behaviour of knowledge sharing. It may germinate and motivate similar studies in other contexts so that knowledge sharing may mature from simple preaching to vital practice. Based on prior studies in knowledge sharing and knowledge-sharing behaviour, this study proposed that non-monetary factors motivate and encourage postgraduate students to share their knowledge with colleagues. The findings of this study assert that the non-monetary factors (humility, interpersonal trust, reputation, self-efficacy and enjoyment of helping others) are associated with knowledge-sharing behaviour and consistent with prior studies (Hsu and Lin, 2008; Isika et al., 2013; Jolaee et al., 2014; Kankanhalli et al., 2005; Lin, 2007; Nooshinfard and Nemati-Anaraki, 2014; Wasko and Faraj, 2005; Wu and Zhang, 2015).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Knowledge sharing is very important in non-profit organizations such as academic institutes and universities. This research is a laudable attempt in this vital area to collaborate, refine and advance knowledge production endeavours in universities. The purpose of this study is to formulate a theoretical framework to investigate the non-monetary factors that encourage knowledge-sharing behaviour among postgraduate students.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A field survey was conducted among postgraduate students in Iranian public universities to obtain empirical evidence. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the collected data.\nFindings: The results revealed that knowledge-sharing behaviour is influenced by humility, interpersonal trust, reputation, self-efficacy and enjoyment of helping others.\nOriginality/value: Most of the prior studies focussed on rewards and monetary incentive factors to encourage knowledge sharing, whereas this paper examines the non-monetary factors that increase the willingness to share knowledge.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The toxic politicising of the National Minimum Wage
|
[
"Social partnership",
"Living wage",
"Minimum wages",
"Wages councils"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Will Britain's National Minimum Wage (NMW) be killed by its own success? Despite the extreme scepticism that greeted the introduction of Britain's first universal statutory minimum wage in 1999, it was quickly accepted. Its success owed much to the politically independent, social partnership constitution of the Low Pay Commission (LPC) that designed and ran it, and to the rigorous attention to evidence with which they operated. After 15 years, this was put at risk by increased political interference. The first threat came when the Labour Party's unsuccessful election manifesto for 2015 promised to fix the NMW by decree. The threat became real when, later that year, Conservative Chancellor Osborne announced the level at which a new minimum wage for those aged 25 and over, which he called a National Living Wage (NLW), would be introduced from April 2016. Have the Commission, and consequently the NMW, been fatally compromised?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: After 15 years of successful operation, the British Low Pay Commission's management of the National Minimum Wage was threatened in 2015 by the government's introduction the National Living Wage. The purpose of this paper is to consider the underlying principles of previous minimum wage fixing, and the additional thinking of the Living Wage Foundation and the review of the issue by the Resolution Foundation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws on the 2016 reports of the Commission to argue that the two statutory wages are unavoidably interlinked and are tied to incompatible criteria.\nFindings: The paper concludes that the predicted eventual impact of the National Living Wage on the labour market will be unsustainable.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper is relevant to minimum wage research.\nPractical implications: The paper is relevant to minimum wage policy.\nSocial implications: The paper is relevant to low pay policy.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides original analysis of minimum wage policy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A note on the interpolated or real-valued h-index with a generalization for fractional counting
|
[
"Citation analysis",
"Bibliometrics",
"Fractional counting",
"h-index",
"Interpolated h-index",
"Rational h-index"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Definition: the standard h-index (Hirsch, 2005)\n2. Observations on the standard h-index - problems A and B: In this section we raise some questions about the h-index.\n3. Solutions for problem A: The rational h-index\n4. Problem B: Now we come to problem B. If the lowest magnitude value of the whole source collection is strictly larger than the number of elements in this collection (denoted as NS), then, by definition the Hirsch index is equal to NS. This is the case for the sequence (20, 14, 10), where NS=3 and hence the h-index of (20,14,10) is equal to three. A real example is the journal ANNU REV ASTRON ASTR which published 15 reviews in 2004. Today they have each received at least 51 citations, so that this journal volume has an h-index of 15. One may rightly say that in such situations the standard h-index construction is not meaningful. In Rousseau et al. (2008) we proposed to use the lowest value of the corresponding magnitude set in such cases and to refer to it as a pseudo h-index. A pseudo h-value is by definition always larger than the number of elements in the source collection (which is equal to the h-index in such cases). For example: the pseudo h-index of (20, 14, 10) is 10, while the pseudo h-index of ANNU REV ASTRON ASTR (2004) is 51 (on 2012-12-30).\n5. Problem C: This problem has to do with the possible occurrence of magnitude values smaller than 1. If the largest occurring magnitude is smaller than 1 then neither the standard h-index nor the interpolated one are defined. How can this problem be solved?\n6. Meaning of the generalized, interpolated h-index: Given the sequence (x\n7. An example: the city of Ostend: Ostend is a small city on the coast of Flanders (Belgium). It has no university but nevertheless some institutes performing scientific research: VLIZ (Flanders Marine Institute), ILVO (Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research - Fisheries unit), KHBO (the university college Bruges-Ostend, which has a faculty of engineering technology in Ostend) and two hospitals: Damian hospital and St Jan Hospital Bruges-Ostend, campus Serruys. Moreover, after his retirement from Damian Hospital, Professor Baeyens kept his position as an associate professor of Luxemburg University, but uses his home address (in Ostend) on his publications.\n8. Conclusion: A logical extension of the h-index in the context of a rational or even real framework is presented. This approach is especially useful when magnitude values smaller than one can easily occur. This is, for instance, the case for Amez's (2012)\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to extend the h-index framework to the case that articles are counted fractionally.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Three restrictions related to the standard h-index are explained: as the standard h-index is a natural number it is a rather coarse indicator; if a scientist has published a relatively small number of publications then the h-index is completely determined by the number of publications; the standard h-index cannot be applied if publications are counted fractionally, or when magnitude values smaller than one occur.\nFindings: We recall solutions we proposed in earlier publications regarding the first two problems (the use of the interpolated h-index and of the pseudo h-index) and add a new proposal to solve the third problem. The relation between the recently introduced window/field-normalized h-type index (hwf-index) and the interpolated h-index is described. A real-world example proves the feasibility of this proposal.\nResearch limitations/implications: Colleagues have shown that the h-index and its variations have fatal flaws and hence should never be used. Yet, not everyone agrees with this opinion.\nOriginality/value: Assuming that the h-index still has some value, this paper introduces a refinement of the interpolated h-index, called the generalized interpolated h-index. In this way the h-index framework is extended to incorporate, for instance, the case that fractional counting for publications and citations is applied.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Linking supervisor feedback environment to contextual performances: The mediating effect of leader-member exchange
|
[
"Leader-member exchange",
"Organizational citizenship behaviour",
"Supervisor feedback environment",
"Workplace deviant behaviour"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: When supervisors provide an advantageous feedback environment for their employees, this can result in the improvement of employee task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) (Norris-Watts and Levy, 2004; Rosen et al., 2006; Whitaker et al., 2007). Since the redefinition of feedback environment to include the contextual aspects of daily supervisor-subordinate and coworker-coworker feedback processes, feedback environment has been applied by over 100 studies (Steelman et al., 2004). These studies mainly examined the relationships among supervisor-subordinate, the coworker-coworker feedback environment, and other organizational outcome variables such as job satisfaction, turnover intention, job performance, and organizational commitment (e.g. Norris-Watts and Levy, 2004; Rosen et al., 2006; Whitaker et al., 2007). However, only a handful of studies have examined the indirect effect of the feedback environment on these organizational outcome variables. For instance, previous studies investigating feedback environment mediation mechanism on employee work performance focus primarily on employee work attitudes (e.g. affective commitment and job satisfaction) (Norris-Watts and Levy, 2004; Rosen et al., 2006).\nLiterature review and the scope of the study: Feedback environment\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: SFE and LMX\nMethod: Data collection\nResults: Measurement model\nDiscussion: Similar to the findings of previous studies (e.g. Norris-Watts and Levy, 2004; Rosen et al., 2006), we found SFE is positively related to OCB. Hence, if supervisors can provide subordinates with clear and immediate information about organizational terms and expectations, subordinates will be likely to show affective attachment to their supervisors. Our study also confirmed that SFE is negatively associated with WDB. The connotation of SFE stresses that supervisors should not only make provision of high-quality and immediate feedback, but also indicate a praise, support, and concern for an employee. It is only when employees perceive that the feedback information provided by supervisors assists in resolving work-related problems and does not amount to malicious criticism, ridicule, or abuse of power; that the employees can produce a positive, mutually beneficial emotional attachment, and this subsequently reduces the incidence of deviant behavior. Thus, we can reasonably infer that supervisors' ability to provide good SFEs for employees improves the relationship between them (LMX), and thus reduces the incidence of employee deviant behaviors (WDBs). In addition, this study verifies that LMX mediates the relationships between SFE and OCB as well as SFE and WDB. We believe that when employees obtain optimal quality feedback in the form of constructive supervisory support, this facilitates the development of employee-supervisor relationships, and therefore, ensures higher quality LMXs. The mutually beneficial responsibility perspective of the social exchange theory states that employees who fulfill their own needs during exchanges with their organization are likely to engage willingly in hard work as a form of reciprocal behavior. This positive, mutually beneficial principle causes employees to exhibit greater OCB and reduces the occurrence of deviant behavior.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among supervisor feedback environment (SFE), leader-member exchange (LMX), organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and workplace deviant behavior (WDB). Specifically, it analyzed the mediating role of LMX.\nDesign/methodology/approach: With the data collected from 258 subordinate-supervisor pairs at various organizations in Taiwan, the authors examined the hypotheses by conducting structural equation modeling analyses.\nFindings: The results revealed that: SFE is positively related to LMX; LMX is positively related to OCB, and negatively related to WDB; furthermore LMX fully mediates the relationships among SFE and both OCB and WDB.\nResearch limitations/implications: This data are collected in Taiwan, hence it may affect the generalizability of the results.\nPractical implications: Previous studies investigating the relationship between the feedback environment and organizational outcome variables focus on positive outcome variables. Thus, studies examining whether there is a negative effect on negative outcome variables such as WDB are insufficient. The study addresses this deficiency by including WDB as an outcome variable. The results empirically indicate that SFEs are negatively related to WDBs, but the effect diminishes when LMX is controlled.\nSocial implications: This study presents the following practical implications for managers. To reduce employee deviant behavior, to improve employee supplementary performance, and further improve overall organizational operating performance, organizations can adopt methods for implementing SFE that promote good interpersonal relationships between supervisors and employees, and thus increase employees' positive expression of OCB, and reduce deviant behavior.\nOriginality/value: It can be argued that when supervisors and subordinates form good relationships, the supervisors would provide favorable feedback that may result in more OCBs and less WDBs. It is also possible to argue that the traditional LMX theory suggests that supervisors are dominant in determining the quality of LMX, and therefore good LMX relationships cannot be developed based on supervisory feedback. This study shows otherwise, and addresses the rival hypothesis by drawing from previous studies and theories as well as in comparing the proposed alternative model by conducting kh2 differences.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Editorial: the importance of the snappy title
|
[
"Publication",
"Positioning",
"Article title",
"Research findings"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: We learn in Marketing 101 that positioning is a key part of developing a marketing strategy. Positioning is the foundation of a branding strategy, and a branding strategy is necessary to differentiate your service from the market. The positioning statement is commonly known as a slogan or tag line and is a direct line of communication with the target market: it says what you stand for and why you should buy the brand. In the same way, a journal article title is the slogan for the paper; it is the first line of communication between author and reader that says what the paper stands for and why the reader should download the article.\nTitles are a headline: In 1963, advertising guru David Ogilvy wrote that, on average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. If that statistic remains true today, then there are lessons for scholars in writing journal article titles that grab attention. Titles work in the same way as a newspaper or online story headline; they are a simplification mechanism to summarize content and direct attention (Andrew, 2007). Headlines perform the function of relevance optimization; they provide readers with the optimal ratio between effect and effort (Dor, 2003). Headline readers tend to disregard conventions in terms of length, clarity and information in favor of creative style (Ifantidou, 2009). So, with this in mind, authors of articles need to understand how to convey relevant information via their title in an optimal and creative manner,\nTitles are your hook: In an editorial for the Academy of Management Journal, Grant and Pollock (2011) talk about \"setting the hook\" in the introduction of an article. In this era of social media and short attention spans, we believe that setting the hook starts before the reader gets to the introduction. It starts with the title. In many instances, the only glimpse a reader has into the world of the article is the title. This is all that appears in a database search, journal search, in a twitter feed, Facebook status post, table of contents (TOC), RSS feed, and so on. So what tips for setting the hook are offered by Grant and Pollock (2011)?\nIntroducing the snappy title: An interesting title that engages a reader is what we call a \"snappy title\". A snappy title is one that catches the eye, conveys a mental image of the main contribution of the paper in an interesting and creative way and is succinct. A Google search of the term \"snappy title\" reveals some interesting definitions as well as a random academic essay title generator where you enter a topic, for example \"how to publish an academic article\", and receive an auto-generated substitute that makes no literal sense but provides a moment of levity in the day (www.besttitlegenerator.com).\nHow to write a snappy title?: Start with writing a title that sets the hook; who cares, what puzzle is solved and what will readers learn? It is likely that this will take more than ten words, but Rome was not built in a day. Underline the key terms in your draft title - these are the ones on which to focus. Then start playing with some techniques from creative writing; we have outlined a few below.\nCaveat: Make sure your article lives up to the \"brand promise\" of the title. A brand promise is the values or experience a brand guarantees to deliver to a customer; it conveys honor and when a promise is broken, there is betrayal. Customers disengage with a brand when there is lack of alignment between the brand messaging and customer expectations (Timmerman and Shields, 2014). Reader disengagement occurs, therefore, when the promise of the title is misaligned with the journal article content.\nConclusion: Different editors have different views on the type of title that should be used in their journal. Some editors detest a snappy title, while others, like us, have a preference for them. It is important therefore for potential authors to familiarize themselves with the editorial position of a journal to understand the style required. The editorial position of Journal of Services Marketing on titles is that they must be 8-10 words long, convey the key theoretical contribution of the paper and be interesting/attention-grabbing.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the role that journal article titles play in engaging the reader.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper build on previous commentaries to provide evidence for the role of the title.\nFindings: A snappy title acts as a device to capture attention and generate interest in an article. This is the first step to engaging the reader with the article content.\nOriginality/value: This editorial focuses attention on a crucial aspect of an individual's publication strategy which can easily be overlooked or simply not given sufficient consideration.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Moving from irrelevant intellectual capital (IC) reporting to value-relevant IC disclosures: Key learning points from the Danish experience
|
[
"Regulation",
"Disclosure",
"Intellectual capital",
"Reporting",
"Integrated reporting",
"Disclosure channels"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: There has been much discussion in recent years about whether or not current accounting standards and corporate financial reporting practices are sufficiently informative with respect to the different users of such information. The accounting scandals of a decade or so ago, of which Enron is the most infamous, and the emergence of the so-called \"new economy\" in which intellectual capital (IC) has become a central component of the business models of both public and private sectors, are two of the notable influences affecting the expectations of the users of accounting information. As a consequence, traditional financial reporting practices have come under pressure. Increased information requirements from professional users have proved particularly challenging. Despite this, accounting and reporting practices have largely failed to keep pace with the changing environment (see e.g. Canibano et al., 2000).\n2. Theoretical underpinning: 2.1 Disclosure vs reporting\n3. Research design: The research undertaken here adopts a case study approach (Eisenhardt, 1989; Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007) to shed light on the relationship and possible tensions between reporting and disclosure of IC information. The case study approach is specifically applicable to exploring new ground, here in the form of challenging existing propositions of the relevance of IC reporting.\n4. Principal findings: In the theoretical section, a number of themes relating to the intersection between IC reporting and IC disclosure were identified. In line with the objective of the present paper, the empirical discussion below focusses on the three themes:\n5. Concluding remarks and future perspectives: In accordance with the structure of the theoretical underpinnings in Section 2 and the principal findings in Section 4, these concluding remarks follow the same organising structure before the contemplation of future perspectives commences this paper.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Informed by the findings of a follow-up research study of companies originally involved in the Danish Guideline Project (DGP) for intellectual capital statements (ICS), the purpose of this paper is to provide valuable insights for a potential shift from intellectual capital (IC) reporting, largely informed by an accounting perspective, towards IC-related disclosures.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws on data obtained from 21 semi-structured interviews with respondents in 16 companies. The respondents were contacted following a genealogical exercise carried out on the 102 companies involved in the DGP between 1999 and 2003.\nFindings: The interviews suggested a rather critical perspective towards IC reporting using the ICS framework. Despite the attempt of the DGP to establish a reporting standard, a range of experiments resulted in changes to the framework's original structure. Overall, a trend towards more integrated forms of reporting was discernible, in some part being motivated by the need to reduce the levels of reporting overload. Examples of integration designed to legitimise IC or corporate social responsibility reports, involving issuing them in tandem with a recognised reporting vehicle such as the annual report, were also encountered.\nResearch limitations/implications: The implications of this study are that timely, value-relevant IC disclosures and compliant reporting, primarily for accountability purposes, have the potential to coexist. In addition to the usual limitations of a semi-structured interview research design, respondents' difficulties in clearly recalling events during the project after some 10-12 years is a further potential limitation. Additionally, the use of internet-based communication channels for disclosure purposes was in its infancy at the time of the DGP.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides important insights into the mechanisms of IC disclosure and IC reporting as seen from a practitioner perspective. Implications relevant to the continued development of integrated reporting are also identified.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Stable trajectory planning and energy-efficience control allocation of lane change maneuver for autonomous electric vehicle
|
[
"Autonomous electric vehicle",
"Energy-efficient control allocation",
"Lane change maneuver",
"Stable trajectory planning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Autonomous vehicles (AV) and electric vehicles (EV), wherein in-wheel motors (IWMs) are adopted to drive wheels, have attracted increasing attention from both industrial and academic communities recently. Autonomous driving technology has tremendous potential in reducing vehicle casualties, and IWM EV can immensely enhance energy efficiency and lead to flexibility actuation which considerably enhances vehicle maneuverability, stability and safety (Li et al., 2013; Jin et al., 2015; Yin et al., 2015). Numerous studies have revealed that A-IWM EV is an effective option that can increase traffic safety and decrease emissions and energy crisis (Li et al., 2017; Potluri and Singh, 2015).\n2. Stable lane change trajectory: In this section, a new lane change trajectory that can guarantee the stability of A-IMW EV and keep the vehicle running smoothly is proposed. To establish this trajectory, the fifth-order polynomial function is first used to realize smooth lane change and the maximal comfortableness of passenger. Then, by founding the rational vehicle stability bounds and introducing those constraints into the trajectory equations, the stable lane change trajectory is created.\n3. Vehicle model for A-IWM EV: 3.1 Dynamic model\n4. The establishment of controller: In light of the obtained reference trajectory and vehicle model, in this section, a novel autonomous lane change control system that can ensure precise dynamic tracking control and optimal energy consumption is proposed. The structure of the control system is shown in Figure 7.\n5. Simulation and results: To verify the capability of the proposed control system, simulation analyses is carried out. The simulations are implemented based on the CarSim-Simulink platform with a high-fidelity and full-vehicle model. The simulation parameters are listed in Table I.\n6. Conclusion: In this paper, a novel lane change control system for A-IWM EV that can enhance vehicle stability and reduce energy expenditure is proposed. The whole control system consists of stable trajectory planning level, high dynamic control level and low EECA level. In the planning level, to ensure the feasibility of the generated reference path, vehicle dynamics is considered and stability boundaries are established. The MPC and KKT-based algorithm are adopted to guarantee the precision of dynamic tracking and resolve the nonlinear optimization problem in the high and low levels, respectively. Simulation results on an autonomous vehicle with in-wheel motors based on a full-vehicle model in CarSim show the effectiveness of the proposed control system.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate problems in performing stable lane changes and to find a solution to reduce energy consumption of autonomous electric vehicles.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An optimization algorithm, model predictive control (MPC) and Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions are adopted to resolve the problems of obtaining optimal lane time, tracking dynamic reference and energy-efficient allocation. In this paper, the dynamic constraints of vehicles during lane change are first established based on the longitudinal and lateral force coupling characteristics and the nominal reference trajectory. Then, by optimizing the lane change time, the yaw rate and lateral acceleration that connect with the lane change time are limed. Furthermore, to assure the dynamic properties of autonomous vehicles, the real system inputs under the restraints are obtained by using the MPC method. Based on the gained inputs and the efficient map of brushless direct-current in-wheel motors (BLDC IWMs), the nonlinear cost function which combines vehicle dynamic and energy consumption is given and the KKT-based method is adopted.\nFindings: The effectiveness of the proposed control system is verified by numerical simulations. Consequently, the proposed control system can successfully achieve stable trajectory planning, which means that the yaw rate and longitudinal and lateral acceleration of vehicle are within stability boundaries, which accomplishes accurate tracking control and decreases obvious energy consumption.\nOriginality/value: This paper proposes a solution to simultaneously satisfy stable lane change maneuvering and reduction of energy consumption for autonomous electric vehicles. Different from previous path planning researches in which only the geometric constraints are involved, this paper considers vehicle dynamics, and stability boundaries are established in path planning to ensure the feasibility of the generated reference path.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Certification of cheeses and cheese products origin by EU countries
|
[
"European Union",
"Protected Designation of Origin",
"Cluster analysis",
"Cheese and cheese products",
"Protected Geographical Indication",
"Traditional Speciality Guaranteed"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the last decade, there has been an increasing demand for artisan and home-made cheeses and cheese products manufactured using the traditional procedures strictly linked to the territory (Aquilanti et al., 2013; Di Cagno et al., 2007). These products are characterized by unique features that make them worthy of being protected and distinguished from similar products produced on an industrial scale. According to Regulation (EU) No 1151/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council on quality schemes for agricultural products and foodstuffs, \"consumers in the Union increasingly demand quality as well as traditional products. They are also concerned to maintain the diversity of the agricultural production in the Union. This generates a demand for agricultural products or foodstuffs with identifiable-specific characteristics, in particular those linked to their geographical origin\" (European parliament and Council of the European Union, 2012, p. 1). Also Teuber (2011) highlights a growing consumer segment that is concerned about food safety and food quality issues and values the origin as a useful quality cue. This consumer trends has led to an interest in the definition of cheese safety, quality and typical cheese characteristics (Aquilanti et al., 2013).\nPDO, PGI and TSG quality scheme specification: The EU quality scheme is known as PDO, PGI and TSG and identifies agricultural products and foodstuffs farmed and produced to exacting specifications. This scheme was established since 1992 in order to allow producers to use the added value of their products, to protect the names of their products, to provide consumers clear information on the product origin or speciality character linked to the region and enable them to make more informed purchases (Verbeke et al., 2012).\nThe EU cheese market: The EU cheese market is the largest in the world (TheDairySite, 2011). Trends in EU cheese production, consumption, imports and exports are shown in Table I. EU cheese production and consumption is continuously slightly growing. For 2014, EU cheese production is estimated to expand by 1 percent to 9,250,000 ton, the EU domestic consumption of cheese is expected to be 8,500,000 ton. Imports of cheese declined from 84,000 ton in 2009 and 2010 to 75,000 ton in following years, for 2014 are expected to stay at the same level. A slight grow was registered only in 2012 (4 percent). EU exports of cheese have been notable for their growth, rising from 578,000 ton in 2009 to 800,000 ton in 2013. For 2014, total EU cheese exports are predicted to grow by 3 percent to 825,000 ton (Foreign Agricultural Service/USDA, 2013).\nStrategy focussed on cheeses with a link to the region: The EU cheese market already offers a diverse range of products and it appears that most options to innovate the product itself have already been exhausted. Therefore, cheese producers need to reconsider their traditional business models and develop new strategies for targeting further growth and profitability, e.g. to incorporate new growth areas, either in new geographic areas or in value-adding services in retail market (TheDairySite, 2011).\nMethodology: Previous researches deals with analysis of EU quality scheme in selected countries, analysis of PDO (or PGI, TSG) utilization, customer loyalty and buying intention for PDO products, consumer awareness and perception of labels (generally), etc. There is no comprehensive research study of PDO, PGI and TSG labels devoted to their utilization on cheeses and cheese products market. It was intention for our research study.\nResults and discussion: Frequency of cheeses and cheese products registered as PDO, PGI and TSG according to EU countries\nConclusion: Nowadays, the EU quality schemes, represented by PDO, PGI and TSG, play important role for customers who can recognize easily an additional value of a genuine and traditional food product. The PDO, PGI and TSG scheme is seen as useful for conveying information on the product's origin and method of production. It enables customers to reduce the uncertainty and make more informed purchases and the best possible choices of food products. Labels can also facilitate repeat purchases when satisfaction has occurred (Bredahl, 2004; Verbeke, 2005; Verbeke and Ward, 2006).\nLimitations and future research: Aside from the theoretical and managerial contribution of the study, there are some limitations. The sample size of product names from DOOR database is related to the date of May 18, 2014, but number of PGI, PDO and TSG labels registered in the DOOR database is continuously increasing, and the distribution of the labels between countries may change slightly. The attention is given only to cheeses and cheese products market, not to other products categories. Further, we used only cluster analysis in the study and the comparison is based only on three selected criteria. There are many other statistical methods for analyzing and comparison of the labels utilization.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) utilization on European Union (EU) cheese market.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Secondary data comes from the database of origin and registration. In total, 235 product names registered in the database for cheeses and cheese products were analyzed according to type of label and country of origin. To discover a dependences between the variables, kh2 test and contingency coefficients were calculated. Hierarchical clustering method enabled to identify the clusters of countries with similar distribution of products in the database.\nFindings: More than 80 percent of cheeses and cheese products are certified with PDO. Leading countries in number of certified products are France and Italy. Taking into account all product classes in the database, only 6 percent of all PGIs, 33 percent of PDOs and 15 percent of TSGs were awarded for cheeses and cheese products. A middle weak correlation between the number of certified products and the country of origin was confirmed.\nResearch limitations/implications: The number of certified products is continuously increasing, their distribution between countries may change slightly over time. Only cluster analysis and two criteria of comparison were used.\nPractical implications: To local food producers, the findings provide a more deep insight to the EU cheese market. It could stimulate their effort in products certification.\nOriginality/value: The paper brings findings about PDO/PGI/TSG utilization for cheese products in EU countries. There is not research study carried out from the same perspective.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Managing job performance, social support and work-life conflict to reduce workplace stress
|
[
"Job performance",
"Workplace stress",
"Social support",
"An organizational stress screening tool (ASSET)",
"Effort–reward imbalance (ERI) theory",
"Work–life conflict"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Collectively, business leaders are spending billions of dollars annually related to employee lost time claims, increased health costs and decreased employee productivity due to work-related stress (Burton et al., 2012; Nasr, 2012; Spurgeon et al., 2012). Stressful workplaces result in: \"employee tardiness; absenteeism; low productivity; high employee turnover; wasted investment in training; increased costs due to training replacements for sick leave; depression; aggression; and violence\" (Foy, 2015, p. 23; Khoury et al., 2010, p. 487). Dealing with workplace stress makes good business sense because lowering stress levels can: reduce absenteeism; improve job satisfaction; increase productivity; enhance the organization's image; and improve performance outcome satisfaction (Kobussen et al., 2014; Swayze and Burke, 2013).\nJob performance: Workplace stress is a major issue for organizational leaders because of its significant economic implications and impact on productivity, organizational performance, and the health and well-being of employees (Bucurean and Costin, 2011; Leung et al., 2011). Unrealistic demands, lack of resources and constraints on employees lead to stressful workplaces and can negatively affect performance (Sinha and Subramanian, 2012). Prolonged exposure to workplace stress will negatively affect job performance by reducing interest in work activities and initiatives and can lead to physical ill health and psychological symptoms of distress (Spurgeon et al., 2012). Conversely, regular interactions between managers and employees have a direct positive effect on employee work output (Evers et al., 2014). Leaders of high-performing organizations foster and nurture a climate of social interaction where managers and team members embrace meaningful engagement and team members participate in organizational activities and decision-making processes (Abugre, 2012).\nSocial support: The exploration of social support and its relationship to workplace stress remains an underdeveloped topic (Gachter et al., 2011; Kossek et al., 2011; Pridgeon and Whitehead, 2013). Social support is a critical feature of the workplace because good relationships are necessary between employees and between employees and leadership (Chandra, 2012). Social support refers to an individual's belief that he or she is: valued; informed; communicated with; emotionally cared for; and part of a relationship group or network (Fernandes and Tewari, 2012). Social support is critical in most contexts in organizational life. In particular, support from leadership and coworkers has a positive impact on well-being; employees who feel supported feel less stressed and believe themselves fairly rewarded for their efforts (Demerouti et al., 2014; Fischer and Martinez, 2013; Thi Giang et al., 2013).\nWork-life conflict: Everyday, individuals engage in many divergent roles that come with different responsibilities and challenges, which can lead to work-life conflict (Cheng and McCarthy, 2013). Work-life conflict does not have to be about one having supremacy over the other; work-life conflict can be about how work and non-work responsibilities can coexist in harmony (Lisson et al., 2013). As Foy (2015) and others (Jang et al., 2011; Murphy and Doherty, 2011) have noted, the relationship between work and life is, for example: family friendly; balanced; conflicted; and flexible. Individuals have limited time, energy and resources to deal with their multiple responsibilities; at times, one role can spill over into the other, which gives rise to conflict and high ERI (Cheng and McCarthy, 2013). Psychological capital relates to employee well-being, such as when individuals cognitively appraise stressful situations and adapt positively by maintaining resources (Avey et al., 2011; Luthans et al., 2013).\nTheoretical framework: For this quantitative correlational research, ERI theory, expectation theory and equity theory formed the theoretical framework. Self-regulation is important for health and well-being and is dependent on successful social exchange (Siegrist, 2001). Since the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between perceptions of social support, work-life conflict, job performance and workplace stress, the social reciprocity and social exchange principles inherent in ERI theory made this theory appropriate. Social reciprocity and social exchange reflect the norm of return expectancy in which separate rewards reciprocate efforts (Ganster and Perrewe, 2011). Failure to reciprocate this norm will lead to negative emotions and sustained stress. However, reciprocity will lead to positive emotions that will promote positive health and well-being (Parker, 2014). Based on the principles of ERI theory, a lack of reciprocity between costs and gains elicits negative emotions with a propensity to sustained autonomic and neuroendocrine activation (Siegrist, 1996).\nMethodology: The participants for this paper were the full-time and part-time academic, research and support staff of an Irish HEI. A data use agreement with the subject institution, provided access to the employee population through the subject institution's standard operations, including access to institutional data sets. The institution's staff included: academic staff (teaching assistants, lecturers, senior lecturers and professors); researcher staff (research assistants, postdocs, research fellows and senior research fellows); and support staff (leaders, managers, information technology professionals, librarians, administrators, laboratory technicians, grounds staff and catering staff). Participants of the study voluntarily completed the confidential online survey.\nResults: In model 1 (as outlined in Table II), the strength of the relationship (as shown in Table II) between the independent variables and the dependent variable was weak (R = 0.121, p< 0.05). In model 2, the strength of the relationship (as shown in Table I) between the independent variables and the dependent variable was moderate (R = 0.504, p < 0.01). The regression equation for model 1 (as shown in Tables II and III) was statistically significant: R2 = 0.015, adjusted R2 = 0.009, F(4, 649) = 2.418, p < 0.05. The regression equation for model 2 (as shown in Tables II and III) was statistically significant: R2 = 0.254, adjusted R2 = 0.246, F(7, 646) = 31.429, p < 0.01.\nDiscussion: The theoretical framework for this research consisted of a combination of ERI theory, expectancy theory and equity theory. The theoretical framework reflects the expectations of employees and managers of an equitable reward and recognition for expended effort (Al-Zawahreh and Al-Madi, 2012). Researchers using the ERI model have directly linked ERI with negative impacts on health (Olejniczak and Salmon, 2014). Social reciprocity and social exchange reflect the norm of return in which separate rewards reciprocate efforts (Ganster and Perrewe, 2011). Researchers have predicted that failure to reciprocate this norm will lead to negative emotions and sustained stress (Branham, 2012). However, reciprocity is likely to lead to positive emotions that will promote positive health and well-being (Parker, 2014).\nConclusions: Based on the principles of ERI theory, a lack of reciprocity between costs and gains elicits negative emotions with a propensity to sustained autonomic and neuroendocrine activation (Siegrist, 1996). Therefore, the social reciprocity and social exchange principles that are inherent in ERI theory made this theory appropriate for this study. The expectancy and reward aspects of ERI is consistent with expectancy theory, which also formed part of the theoretical framework of this study. Vroom (1964) proposed expectancy theory to explain the decision-making process of individuals based on behavioral alternatives. Further to this, equity theory, Adams (1963) explains the motivation of individuals in the context of their perceptions of the extent to which all individuals in the organization receive fair treatment by management (Kivimaki, 2014; Skiba and Rosenberg, 2011).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Workplace stress costs PS3.7bn per annum in the UK and in excess of $300bn per annum in the USA. The purpose of this paper is to examine the existence, strength and direction of relationships between perceptions of social support, work-life conflict, job performance and workplace stress in an Irish higher education institution.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The selected theoretical framework consisted of a combination of reward imbalance theory, expectancy theory and equity theory. An organizational stress screening survey instrument was used to survey the staff (n = 1,420) of an academic institution. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to evaluate the relationships between the independent variables (social support, work-life conflict, job performance), the covariates (staff category, direct reports, age, gender), and the dependent variable (workplace stress).\nFindings: The results showed a negative correlation between social support and workplace stress, a positive correlation between work-life conflict and workplace stress, and a negative correlation between job performance and workplace stress (p < 0.05). The results also revealed significant relationships between the covariates direct reports and gender and the dependent variable workplace stress.\nPractical implications: The findings from this research can trigger an organizational approach where educational leaders can enable workplace change by developing and implementing social support and work-life strategies, and potential pathways to reduce levels of workplace stress and improve quality of life for employees and enhance performance.\nOriginality/value: The examination and establishment of particular relationships between social support, work-life conflict and job performance with workplace stress is significant for managers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
No more heroes... as all managers become leaders at Lancashire County Council
|
[
"Leadership",
"Local government",
"Management consultancy",
"Organizational development"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The traditional view of the leader is a charismatic individual who, by sheer force of personality and will, drives through change and makes things happen - a heroic figure. An organization can have only one such leader. This approach to leadership does not encourage partnership working and co-operation.\nTwo consultants used over four years: The unusual aspect of this management-development program has been the way in which two management consultants have been used over four years. Andrew Paterson and David Plater have almost become additional members of the senior-management team. They have had a unique insight into the team dynamics of the senior-management team and access to the thoughts of individuals who make up the top 30 managers in the Directorate of Community Services.The initial involvement of Andrew Paterson and David Plater was around team building for the senior-management team. They helped us to shape our early thinking about what type of team, and directorate, we wanted to be. They won a competitive tender for the executive-coaching program. They facilitated the initial leadership-forum meetings and helped us to identify the \"elephants in the room\". They took a consistent message about all managers as leaders into their coaching session and learning sets.Throughout they offered a challenge. They probably know more about us individually and collectively than we are comfortable with, but their professionalism means that we have been able to trust them with this information. Most management consultants come in to do a quick piece of work and then go. This arrangement was about building up a long-term relationship as part of an experiment in organizational development.There are 500 managers in the Directorate of Community Services. The management-development program is based around executive coaching, leadership-development groups, mentoring, shadowing and the aspiring-managers program. The origins of the program arise out of the corporate management-development initiative. This sought to emphasize that all managers, irrespective of their areas of responsibility or professional background, require the same management competencies, and that one of these is good people-management skills.\nThe executive-coaching initiative: The corporate management program was a corporate \"sheep dip\" approach in which all managers were exposed to the same experiences, encouraged to recognize that they shared common challenges and had common skills and to promote more working across directorates. In the Directorate of Community Services we chose to build on this corporate program by seeking to identify further management development that was more tailored to the individual's needs. The executive-coaching initiative was designed with this in mind.The aim was to provide the top 30 managers in the directorate with the opportunity of having detailed feedback on their performance as a way of helping them to gain insight into the impact of their behavior, and then specific guidance or coaching to improve their performance.The detailed feedback was provided by one of two management consultants who would observe the individual in a range of management settings and activities over the equivalent of two working days.After each observation session one-to-one feedback was provided. The information from these sessions was supplemented by 360-degree feedback questionnaires completed by the individual's manager, colleagues and the staff he or she manages.For most senior managers this type of direct feedback was not something they had experienced since they started out in their professional career. Despite some initial anxieties, the evaluation showed that people found the experience positive and helpful.The idea of 30 top managers in the directorate acting as a leadership group grew out of the shared experience of executive coaching. The leadership group became a formal forum for discussing the type of organization we wanted to be, the type of management behavior we wanted to encourage and a way of getting out into the open some of the difficult management issues that people felt were being avoided. These were referred to as the \"elephants in the room\".\nRolling out the program to the next tier of management: The executive-coaching initiative was considered a success. The next challenge was how to roll out this program to the next tier of management.The numbers of managers at the next tier (70 plus) meant that, for reasons of cost and logistics, it was neither affordable nor practical to offer the one-to-one approach. Instead we used learning sets or management-development groups facilitated by the two management consultants.Four sets were organized. Each met six times. The aim was the same - to develop a shared understanding of the role of managers as leaders and to gain insight into how their behavior affected others.A simplified 360-degree feedback questionnaire was developed, based on the key competencies within the individual's job description and a one-to-six scoring system. Between meetings, participants were expected to record their personal leadership experience and bring it to the next meeting, inviting others to comment as a way of reflecting on their leadership experience.An evaluation event was held to mark the completion of the executive-coaching program and management-development group sessions. The event was an opportunity to recognize how far we had moved as a directorate during the previous two years, examples of which were obtaining Investors in People accreditation and achieving three-star status. The event was also used to identify lessons learned and agree how we would roll out the management-development program to first-line managers.\nManagement-development groups for first-line managers: We were very conscious that we had invested considerable money and time in senior and middle managers, but first-line managers had simply had the traditional short courses around recruitment and selection, disciplinaries, health and safety. We agreed that the management-development program would now focus on the 300-plus first-line managers and that we would take this forward through the management-development groups, this time facilitated by volunteers from the top 30 managers working in pairs.A total of 14 volunteers came forward and the aim is to run seven groups in this financial year. We recognize that it will take us two or three years to complete this program for all first-line managers.\nBuilding on these initiatives: The evaluation event was used as an opportunity to reinforce the message that management development was not a one-off exercise and that we would build on these initiatives by further developing management mentoring with the aim of offering every manager the opportunity of a mentor. The aim is that this year all the top 30 managers and volunteers from the next tier down will offer themselves as mentors. We hope in this way to have 50 mentors available.While all this is going on, the world is not standing still. The role of managers continues to change to take account of our increased emphasis on partnership working. More managers are being expected to get involved with Lancashire Locals - 12 area committees made up of local politicians with the aim of increasing the influence local people and their representatives have on how local public sector services are delivered and developed - and local strategic partnerships. The manager's role is increasingly about influencing and shaping agendas like social inclusion, community cohesion and well-being and to accept responsibility for the wider community, not only those receiving a service. The management-development program is designed to equip managers for this changing world.Andrew Paterson and David Plater report: \"It would be fair to say that we have felt trusted by the senior-management team and by individuals and other groupings of people within the organization. Therein lies the challenge for consultants - to have the very necessary backing and trust of, in this case, the senior-management team, while at the same time remaining objective and sufficiently 'separate' to say the things that need to be said and to have the space and credibility to work with senior managers in ways that respect the need for confidentiality. Individuals need to be able to trust us with their explorations of the situations they find themselves in and with the sense of vulnerability that can so often arise as we seek to expand our capability.\"We believe that the process of development of individuals, groups and the organization needs to be ongoing and sustained; it follows that a longer-term relationship might be seen as the only effective way of learning together. On the down-side, there are risks - of over-familiarity and complacency, of collusion and a loss of objectivity, of 'knowing best'. That is when professionalism, and attention to - and respect for - boundaries, count most. The fact that we have worked with individuals and groups has kept our feet on the ground and provided us with some very powerful insights - in the first instance, in relation to what we need to be doing and how we need to be behaving for and with the organization.\"\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to advance the view that, as organizations realize the limitations of working in isolation and accept the need to develop partnerships and coalitions, they seek a new type of leadership model in which the charismatic individual who, by sheer force of personality, drives through changes and makes thing happen - the hero - is replaced by a type of leadership in which all managers are leaders.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Provides a case example of how Lancashire County Council's Directorate of Community Services introduced this new leadership through management development.\nFindings: - Describes the origins and implementation of the directorate's executive-coaching initiative, and how this was rolled out to the next tier of management through learning sets or management-development groups facilitated by management consultants. Following this, the program focused on the 300-plus first-line managers, by using the management-development groups facilitated by volunteers from the top 30 managers working in pairs.\nPractical implications: - Reveals how management development in the Directorate of Community Services is being used to equip managers for the fast-changing world of local government.\nOriginality/value: - Highlights the way in which two management consultants have been used over four years, in contrast to the usual model of hiring consultants for short-term assignments.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Reversing the flow of international migration
|
[
"Economic growth",
"Immigration",
"Wealth",
"Innovation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Background: All the countries in the world are striving for economic growth and development and this is more so in the case of developing countries. Various economic theories, development models, polices, plans and programs have evolved in this connection and have been implemented with divergent results. In addition to the domestic efforts made by individual countries, bilateral, multilateral, regional and global initiatives have also been in place to reduce the poverty and achieve higher economic growth and overall development in the world. However, the pace of growth has not been same for all the countries in the world due to various reasons. Some countries have developed faster and others have lagged behind. The gap between rich and poor countries has widened (Sala-i-Martin, 2002). Same has happened between the poor and rich sections of the population within the same country.The economic convergence theory suggests that the economic growth rate of poor countries will be generally higher than that of a developed country and hence the per capita income of all the countries, developed and developing, will converge in the long run. Practical evidences show that although some conditional convergence is taking place, such as the convergence of OECD economies, there is no evidence of a convergence of the income of poor and rich countries (Sala-i-Martin, 2002; Banerjee and Duflo, 2004). Based on this fact, it can be argued that the income of poor and rich countries is not going to converge, at least within another few hundred years, if the growth trend remained the same as that at present. A generation cannot wait for 100 years to enjoy the benefits of economic growth because as rightly put by J.M. Keynes: \"in the long run we are all dead\". In this regard, a big bang type approach to the world economic growth and development is the need of the century. This paper proposes \"reverse migration\" as a new approach to achieve economic growth and prosperity at a faster pace.This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 of this paper presents the world economic growth scenario. Section 3 sheds light on various aspects of traditional international migration which is south-to-north migration. Section 4 discusses the rationale for reverse migration. The feasibility of reverse migration is analyzed in Section 5. Section 6 outlines the reverse migration policy implementation process, specifically highlighting the role of various agencies. Finally, Section 7 presents the concluding remarks.\n2 World economic growth scenario: How long will it take for poor countries like Zimbabwe, Burundi, Nepal and Bangladesh to be a prosperous country like today's Singapore or Luxembourg? Statistically, the annual average gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate in Nepal and Bangladesh during the last ten years (1998-2007) remained at 3.6 and 5.6 percent, respectively, while the annual average per capita GDP growth rate stood at 5.6 percent in Nepal and 3.3 percent in Bangladesh. During the same period, the average annual GDP growth rate of Singapore was 5.3 percent and the average per capita GDP growth rate was 3.9 percent. If the current growth trend is continued, other things remaining the same, it will take 81 years for Nepal to reach the current per capita income level of Singapore (US$34,152) from its current per capita income level (US$400). Similarly, it will take 134 years for Bangladesh to reach the same level. Moreover, it is possible that the current level of the per capita income of Singapore after 100 years may still fall below the poverty line of that time. On the other hand, Burundi and Zimbabwe recorded a negative average per capita GDP growth during 1998-2007. If the same growth trend is continued, these countries cannot progress toward achieving Singapore's income level even in the distant future. Instead, the economic condition of these countries may further deteriorate (Table I).\n3 South-to-north migration and economic growth: International migration flows can promote economic growth and enhance technological progress in the destination country and at the same time the source country also can benefit from the remittance sent by the migrants. According to Schrover (2004), migration has always been a central characteristic of the world's most dynamic and productive economies. Throughout medieval Europe, states at the forefront of economic progress hosted entrepreneurs and labourers from across the continent. When The Netherlands led the world economy during the 1600s, 10 percent of its population was of foreign birth. In Amsterdam, migrants totalled as much as a quarter of the population. During the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mass migration of tens of millions of people took place from Europe to the Americas and Australia, which made these countries world's most prosperous societies (Goldin and Reinert, 2007) (Table II).In 2005, around 191 million people or 3 percent of the world's population were living outside their country of birth. This figure is gradually increasing. Today, in spite of restrictions and controversies, the world's richest countries continue to import labour from abroad. In Singapore, Southeast Asia's richest state, migrants make up around on quarter of the workforce. In Europe, those countries with the highest number of migrant workers - Switzerland and Luxembourg - are also the wealthiest. The Arab Emirate of Dubai, which is probably, currently, among the world's fastest expanding areas of economic activity, has nine times as many migrant workers as it has native workers (Goldin and Reinert, 2007).\n4 Reversing the flow of international migration: In the contemporary literature, international migration by and large means workers' migration from poor or developing countries to rich or developed countries. This sort of migration is also known as south-to-north migration. Recently, some initiations have been taken to maximise the benefits of south-to-south migration. However, \"reverse migration\" or north-to-south migration so far has not received attention in the context of international migration.According to Sibley (2001), \"reverse migration\" refers to a phenomenon in which migrating individuals orient in the direction opposite the normal one. This term so far has been used to refer to the migration of birds and in computer science, to refer to switching from one system to another. The term \"reverse migration\" is used in this paper to denote international migration of human beings from north to south or from rich countries to poor countries. Reversal of the flow of international migration from north to south can increase total world output through the synergic effects and also help in promoting income equality across the globe. From this point of view, reverse migration is not only for \"sharing the pie\" but it will also \"enlarge the size of the pie\".Reverse migration contains two components. The first component is the migration of people from rich countries to comparatively less rich countries. North-to-south migration in fact is not a new phenomenon. Most of the part of present America was grassland not inhabited. After Columbus arrived here in 1498, the Europeans migrated to this land. As a result, economic growth and development accelerated in this continent. Australia became a developed country because English people migrated in 1700s. When these migrations took place, they took their wealth with them, mainly skills, technology and to some extent physical wealth.The second component is the \"return migration\", which refers to return of the migrants from destination countries back to source countries. Historically, the return migration was 30 percent of the gross inflow between 1890 and 1914 while such ratio was nearly half among Italians and Spaniards (Hatton and Williamson, 1998). According to the estimates by Rosenzweig (2005), at least 70 percent of migrants educated in the USA returned to their countries in the case of four out of the six Caribbean countries and 45 percent of such migrants returned in the case of two out of the three African countries.4.1 Reverse migration and economic growth\n5 Why would people migrate from north to south?: Decisions on migration can be explained using the concept of utility maximisation, which assumes that the ultimate goal of all human beings is to maximise their personal utility or sense of happiness. According to Goldin and Reinert (2007), people generally will opt to migrate only if they are reasonably confident that the sum of all these changes will increase their overall level of satisfaction or personal, family, or community utility.South-to-north migration is taking place at an ever increasing rate mainly for the wealth and opportunity-related attractions such as high salary, education, health facilities, safety and security, modern facilities, exposure, etc. Reverse migration would be possible only if there are sufficient factors that maximise the personal utility or sense of happiness of the migrant. The opportunity costs of migrating to a developing country by abandoning the residency of a developed country are very high. Therefore, the utility maximisation by north-to-south migration may seem difficult. However, various elements of attraction attached to such migration, the changing interpretation of wealth and happiness and changing world systems and life styles combined with effective implementation of appropriate reverse migration promoting measures by the destination country can make the reverse migration policy possible and beneficial.5.1 Elements of attraction for reverse migration\n6 Implementation of reverse migration policy: Reverse migration currently is taking place in the world in a slower pace without conscious efforts as it has not been recognised so far as a possible growth strategy. If implemented effectively, this strategy may bring a significant change in the level of world economic growth and prosperity. However, the implementation of the policy is a difficult task and needs a concerted effort from various agencies such as governments, international agencies and central banks.Reverse migration policy can be implemented in a country only if the government of that country accepts it as a growth and development strategy and prepares itself to make all the necessary arrangements and create favourable environment for such migration. Such arrangements include legal arrangements, infrastructure development and other incentives while favourable environment include stable political and macroeconomic environments. Similarly, the prevailing systems should allow private individuals and firms to produce and to reap the rewards of their production. Instable political and macroeconomic conditions create uncertainty and pose threat to the physical and financial security of people. In such a situation, reverse migration cannot take place.Poor countries normally are found to be suffering from various structural bottlenecks and malpractices. Rule of law, openness, free and fair competition and transparency are the factors that are normally missing in most of these countries. These factors cannot be restored or developed overnight. However, committed efforts toward restoring these things may pave the way for reverse migration and in turn reverse migration can help in achieving further improvement in the above factors. In the initial phase, governments can implement focused programs aimed at reverse migration flow. For example, to attract the aging population from developed countries, governments will need to invest heavily in related infrastructure, human capital development and various systems development such as building of high-quality age care centres, nursing homes, hospitals and recreational facilities with all the modern facilities; developing human capital skilled in nursing, age care and various other services; and setting up of competent legal and institutional systems for the security, safety and quality services.International agencies can play a crucial role in implementing the reverse migration policy as a growth strategy in poor countries. Governments of many poor countries may be unwilling to implement this policy due to the vested interest of the people in power and resistance to change although it may bring huge benefits to their people and the country as a whole. International agencies can encourage countries to be more open, transparent and market oriented by putting forth some key requirements as preconditions attached to development programs. Initially, reverse migration program can be implemented in selected poor countries as pilot projects. The program should include substantial funding for physical and other infrastructure development and also needs to be synchronised with various other ongoing and upcoming developmental programs in the country. From the experience of pilot projects, the program can be improved as per the context and practical necessities of the concerned country. In this process, an international standard practices for reverse migration will be developed eventually.\n7 Concluding remarks: This paper argues that reversal of the flow of international migration from north to south can increase total world output through the synergic effects and also help in promoting income equality across the globe. Reverse migration is different than the traditional migration in the sense that in traditional migration, labour or one factor of production moves from south to north, while in the reverse migration, migrants take along with them their physical wealth and technology.When reverse migration takes place, the financial and human capital will accelerate the innovation and also help reduce current widening gap between rich and poor countries. Moreover, reverse migration can play a key role in speeding up the world integration since world harmony can be better achieved and maintained through the complete integration of world population of diverse backgrounds.Reverse migration would be possible only if there are sufficient factors that maximise the personal utility or sense of happiness of the migrant. In this regard, various elements of attraction attached to such migration, the changing interpretation of wealth and happiness and changing world systems and life styles combined with effective implementation of appropriate reverse migration promoting measures by the destination country can make the policy possible and beneficial. Since the implementation of reverse migration policy is a difficult task, it needs a concerted effort from various agencies such as governments, international agencies and others.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The role of international migration, mainly south-to-north migration, in economic growth has been well recognised. This paper aims to explore the possibility of reversing the flow of international migration from north to south or from developed countries to developing countries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The historical development of international migration is reviewed linking the migration with economic development and the possible impact of the reversal in the international migration is analyzed.\nFindings: - The paper argues that reversing the flow of international migration from north to south will increase total net world opportunities through synergic effects, help close the gap between rich and poor countries through sharing the world prosperity and increase the world harmony through the integration of diverse population.\nOriginality/value: - Unlike the main stream scholarly works in the field, this paper views the international migration from a different perspective and discusses the possibility of implementing reverse migration policy as a development strategy in the least-developed countries.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Leadership style and negative work-home interference in the hospitality industry
|
[
"Autocratic leadership",
"Charismatic leadership",
"Negative work-home interference",
"Overtime",
"Transactional leadership",
"Work-home arrangements"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: An increasingly important topic in the hospitality industry, which particularly concerns highly educated staff, is a negative work-home balance due to negative work-home interference (Boyar et al., 2003; Bloom and Van Reenen, 2006; Deery, 2008; Parris et al., 2008; Veiga et al., 2004). Here, \"highly educated\" staff comprise employees who have successfully completed a higher education programme at Master's and Bachelor's level (cf. Blomme, 2006; Hoque, 1999a, b), and we use the term \"home\" instead of \"family\". More than \"family\", the definition of home encompasses a variety of possible home situations that are more in line with today's changing home domains. The term includes the growing number of dual-earner couples, couples living apart together, single parents, co-parenting couples and individuals who care for friends or (elderly) relatives (Kossek, 2005). We describe negative work-home interference as a form of inter-role conflict (cf. Bellavia and Frone, 2005, p. 115).\nOvertime and work-home arrangements: Time spent on the job is one of the most important precursors of negative work-home interference (NWHI) and can be operationalized in the amount of hours of overtime or the number of hours worked per week or (Taris et al., 2006). This is a particularly relevant for the hospitality industry, where long and irregular hours occur frequently (e.g. Kusluvan et al., 2010). The long and irregular hours, common in the hospitality industry, lead to experiences of conflict among its employees (Mulvaney et al., 2006). Empirical studies indicate that especially working overtime leads to negative work-home interference (Dikkers et al., 2007b; Taris et al., 2006; Tromp and Blomme, 2012). The effort-recovery theory of Meijman and Mulder (1998) explains this finding by stating that effort expenditure on the job is associated with short-term psychological and physiological costs. When there are enough opportunities for recovery, these costs are not detrimental. Albeit, a downward spiral may occur for employees who, while not yet fully recovered from previous workdays as a result of having to work overtime, must invest extra effort on the following working days (Sonnentag, 2001; Taris et al., 2006). This process may result in serious negative health effects for the employee concerned when this situation persists for a long period (De Croon et al., 2003). The conservation of resources theory (COR) explains that stress emerges when individuals experience a loss of resources. Resources are entities that have intrinsic or instrumental value, such as certain conditions (parental roles, being embedded in supportive social networks) and energy resources. The experience of stress follows from a process in which resources slowly bleed away without being counterbalanced by resource gains or replenishments (Hobfoll and Shirom, 2001). In their study among hotel employees, Wong and Ko (2009a, b) found that enough time off from work is a determining factor that affects the overall perception of a good work-home balance. We hypothesise the following:\nLeadership: Over the past two decades, researchers have proposed many new leadership theories. These include transformational, charismatic, value-based and servant-based leadership, all of which have made an important contribution to our comprehension of effective leadership (cf. Bass, 1985, 1997; Den Hartog and Koopman, 2001; House, 1977, 1996; Yukl, 1999). Similarities between these models have been discussed extensively in many theoretical works (Boerner et al., 2008; Den Hartog and Koopman, 2001; Levay, 2010; Yukl, 1999). In addition, recent empirical work has demonstrated strong similarities between transformational and charismatic leadership (cf. Judge et al., 2006; Rowold and Heinitz, 2007). For this reason, we will refer to this genre of theories as charismatic leadership theories (cf. De Hoogh et al., 2004b).\nMethod: Sample\nResults: Table I lists the mean scores and correlations of the study variables. It can be seen that WHA is negatively related to both measures of NWHI and that working overtime is positively related to time-based NWHI. Both charismatic and transactional leadership styles are related to working more overtime and a positive opinion towards the offered WHA. The perception of an autocratic leadership style is related to more strain-based and time-based NWHI. The table also shows that age and gender are related. Of the females, 67 per cent were in the age category of 22 up to 32 years. The males were equally divided over the three age categories (22-32, 33-44 and 44+). Thus, the older people in the sample (45 years and older) were mainly men. Age, gender and their interaction were found not to be related to the perception of leadership styles and work-home interference.\nDiscussion: This paper studied the effect of leadership style, working overtime and work-home arrangements on how higher-educated hospitality employees experience negative work-home interference. Autocratic leadership style was found to contribute to employees' experienced strain-based negative work-home interference. In addition, working overtime as well as offered work-home arrangements showed to be significant precursors of negative work-home interference. Almost half of the employees in our sample operating in the hospitality sector reported working an additional overtime of 11 hours a week - or more. In most cases, they also worked full-time. With the paper's outcome that working overtime is a strong predictor of negative work-home interference, we advise the hospitality industry that this is an important issue that should be taken into consideration.\nConclusion: The larger the number of overtime hours and the smaller the number of work-home arrangements offered, the more employees experience negative work-home interference. Also an autocratic leadership style may exaggerate the conflict even further. In contrast, transactional and charismatic leadership styles have a positive effect on perceived work-home arrangements and flexibility. Our results explained the points of attention for HRM policies in the hospitality industry to reduce negative work-home interference among their employees. This is important since it is clear that the experience of work to home conflict negatively affects the well-being of employees and the organisation, in terms of organisational commitment, sick leave and employee turnover. Our recommendations are aimed at facilitating the search for effective solutions to these challenges.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact of leadership styles on negative work-home interference among highly educated employees in the hospitality industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted among a sample of 126 highly educated hospitality employees working in various different companies. Hierarchical regression analyses were carried out to examine the effects of leadership styles, work-home arrangements and overtime on perceived negative work-home interference.\nFindings: Autocratic leadership style, working overtime and a lack of work-home arrangements contributed significantly to negative work-home interference.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study was conducted with a limited sample in a relatively limited part of the sector. Further research is needed in other layers of hospitality organisations.\nPractical implications: The findings provide insight into the impact of leadership on negative work-home interference. A variety of studies have identified negative work-home interference as an important precursor for employee turnover, and this study helps managers in developing beneficial management styles as well as HR policies to address negative work-home interference and its subsequent organisational effects.\nOriginality/value: What is new in this paper is the measurement of leadership style in relation to negative work-home interference in the hospitality industry. In addition, next to charismatic and transactional leadership styles, autocratic leadership style is taken into account.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Summer nights: A review of the evidence of seasonal variations in sexual health indicators among young people
|
[
"Sexual behaviour",
"Youth",
"Abortion",
"Sexual health",
"Seasonality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: Seasonal variations in births are persistently observed in populations across the world (Lam and Miron, 1994). Environmental and biological explanations, such as the effect of luminosity and temperature on reproductive processes (fundamental to seasonal breeding typical of many mammals) are dominant in the literature (for example see Roenneberg and Aschoff, 1990; Levine et al., 1990; Lam and Miron, 1991). Suggested social influences include factors such as seasonality of marriage (Grech et al., 2003) and pregnancy planning (Rodgers and Udry, 1988). Studies of birth seasonality have, however, tended to examine aggregate population level data (Bobak and Gjonca, 2001). Less attention has been paid to differences in birth seasonality among sub-groups of the population, for example among teenagers, or to adverse outcomes of sexual behaviour such as abortion and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). In this paper we bring together the literature on seasonal variations in sexual health indicators among young people and consider whether greater consideration should be given to the timing of interventions within the calendar year. The focus is on outcomes of social or public health interest including, first intercourse, teenage births and abortions and sexually transmitted infections, and on behavioural factors which may be amenable to intervention.\nMethods: There were four stages to the identification and retrieval of studies. First, we searched three electronic databases, namely PubMed (which includes Medline), Embase and Popline. The MeSH terms we used were: \"periodicity\"; \"sexual behaviour\"; \"coitus\"; \"abortion, induced\"; \"reproduction\"; \"sexually transmitted diseases\" and \"adolescent\". All terms were \"exploded\" to included those terms falling underneath in the MeSH tree. The free text search terms we used were: \"season*\" or \"temporal\" or \"periodicity\"; \"first intercourse\" or \"sexual debut\" or \"coitarche\"; \"sexual behaviour\" or \"coitus\"; \"abortion\"; \"births\" or \"reproduction\"; \"sexually transmitted diseases\" or \"sexually transmitted infections\" and \"adolsecent\" or \"teenage\" or \"youth\". Second, we searched the reference lists of articles we had retrieved for other potential studies. Third, we manually searched appropriate journals for any additional studies that had not been identified by the other two methods. Last, we traced citations of the articles included in our review via the Social Citation Index.Studies were included if they reported the outcome of interest temporally (either by month, quarter or season). Initially we aimed to include only those studies that reported information on young people, either solely or separately within the results, but as few studies were found we extended the criteria to include all ages. An exception to this was made in the case of seasonality of births, as there is a larger literature in this area. We did not restrict the search either by publication date or geographical location. Studies were, however, limited to those written in English for practical reasons.The literature on each of the outcomes is reviewed separately, and the findings summarised, concentrating specifically on young people, in Table I.\nFindings: First intercourse\nDiscussion: The evidence reviewed here indicates that first intercourse, conceptions, abortions, births and STIs among young people are not distributed evenly across the year but rather they peak and trough in a non-random way and that the patterns are consistent year on year. Further, in the case of conceptions there is evidence that the seasonal pattern among young people is different to that of adults.The circumstances of first intercourse are of considerable public health interest and the literature reviewed here indicate that a significantly higher number of young people experience the event during the summer (June and July specifically) and over Christmas (December) than expected. Further, the data suggest that the seasonal peak is more pronounced for those aged under 18 years at first intercourse, and that there are differences in the seasonal pattern by relationship status and ethnicity. These findings are potentially important for the timing of sexual health interventions but a number of questions remain unanswered. In particular, none of the studies reported use of contraception and whether it varies by month of first intercourse. Research has suggested that if first sex is not planned or results from a causal encounter then it is less likely to be protected (Manning et al., 2000). Lack of contraception at first intercourse has, in turn, been associated with subsequent non-use (Buston et al., 2007) and adverse outcomes such as unwanted conceptions and STIs (Svare et al., 2002). Given this, and the August peak in abortions observed by Parnell and Rodgers (1998), we may speculate that contraception use during the May - June peak associated with non-romantic partners (Levin et al., 2002) could potential be lower than at other times. Also, the studies reviewed here are based on data from the northern hemisphere and, with the exception of the small Israeli study, come from the USA, which has a strong school \"prom\" and summer camp culture not seen in other countries like the UK. A natural experiment to test whether this is a summer phenomenon would be to see whether the pattern is reversed in the southern hemisphere (i.e. we would expect to see the peak in first intercourse in the summer months of December, January and February).That late Spring and Summer may be a time of increased sexual activity, particularly among young people - and young people in education especially - is supported by the different patterns of conceptions observed in this group as compared to adults. The evidence reviewed here points to a December peak in conceptions among all women (Petersen and Alexander, 1992; Tita et al., 2001; Scafetta, 2003; Weerasinghe and MacIntyre, 2003), and a secondary May - June peak only among students (Tita et al., 2001), those aged under 18 years (Petersen and Alexander, 1992) and unmarried teenagers (Scafetta, 2003). These findings may not be explained purely by biological process, unless we accept that women of different ages experience seasonality in libido and/or fecundability at different times of the year.The literature also indicates that there are persistent seasonal patterns in STI surveillance data, interpreting such patterns, however, is problematic. Many STIs can be asymptomatic for considerable lengths of time (months, even years in the case of Chlamydia) and patients may experience long waiting times in accessing genitourinary medicine services. In addition, patients may choose particular times to request sexual health screens or, when symptoms are tolerable, may choose when to seek help. An analysis of temporal trends in HIV diagnosis in America found that patient choice might have a strong influence on the timing of diagnosis such that \"late-year procrastination and new year initiative\" could be responsible for producing a surge in health care seekers in January (Bacchetti, 1994). In the UK, demand for HIV tests is consistently highest in the first quarter of the year (Wellings et al., 1999). The seasonal patterns, therefore, can be more accurately described as seasonality in diagnoses of STIs, which may or may not be linked to seasonality in acquisition of STIs.So how are we to understand the patterns described here and what opportunities might they present for better targeting, tailoring and timing of sexual health interventions? In terms of conceptions, births and abortions potential explanations can be considered as falling into four main categories: biological; behavioural; social and service-related (see the list below for a summary). As noted above, biological explanations have dominated the literature but they alone may not explain the phenomenon, as teenagers and adults are seen to exhibit different patterns. A non-biological explanation is supported further by the data regarding abortions. The peak in induced abortions is seen in February in North Carolina and Australia, with the conceptions on average occurring 9-12 weeks earlier placing them in December. The main thrust of the biological argument is that summer heat suppresses fecundability, yet the peak in conceptions is seen in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere at the same time: which is Winter and Summer respectively. What December in North Carolina and in New South Wales have in common is that it is a holiday period.The following list is a summary of potential explanations for seasonal variations in conception, births and abortions:1. Biological:* fecundability (sperm quality, ovulation and length of menstrual cycle);* libido (circannual rhythms in androgens); and* fetal loss.1. Behavioural:* frequency of sex;* use and discontinuation of contraception;* new partnership formation;* risk taking; and* help-seeking.1. Social:* festival and holiday times;* weddings; and* preferred season of birth.1. Service-related:* accessing services; and* availability of services.End-of-term celebrations and extra freedom over the holiday periods have been implicated in both increased alcohol use (Smeaton et al., 1998) and sexual activity (Maticka-Tyndale et al., 2003). Low cost travel has meant more young people are travelling abroad and research has found a sizable proportion of them have unprotected sex with people they meet there (Bloor et al., 1998; Bellis et al., 2004). Findings from qualitative research suggest that women are quicker to establish trust in a relationship on holiday and have intercourse with a new partner quicker than they do at home (Thomas, 2005).What we are lacking are reliable estimates for seasonal variations in sexual behaviour. We could find very few studies - aside from those on first intercourse - and what studies we did find suffered from either small sample sizes, lack of statistical analysis or from other generalisability issues. It is surprising, given the large literature on seasonality of births and the debates regarding their determinants, how little research there has been regarding seasonal variations in sexual behaviour and other aspects such as partnership formation and risk reduction practice, given their obvious role in the risk of conception and infection. Analysis underway of the UK National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Johnson et al., 2001) is hoped to help answer some of these questions. We also know little about seasonal variations in health seeking behaviour and availability of health services, both of which may influence the seasonal patterns observed. Parnell and Rodgers (1998) found that gestational age at abortion was higher with conceptions occurring in April, October and November, which suggests that young women may put off seeking help until after exam time (traditionally May and June) and Christmas. It is also possible, however, that women may experience delays in accessing services during holiday periods, which is when staff also take time off.While many questions remain unanswered, the literature reviewed here does consistently point to periods of heightened sexual activity among young people in the summer and over Christmas, and suggest that greater consideration should indeed be given to the timing of sexual health interventions within the calendar year. In relation to school sex education, this may include amongst other things, enhanced curriculum input through collapsed timetable days or visits to or from service providers at certain times of year.Limitations and next steps\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to examine whether greater consideration should be given to the timing of sexual health interventions within the calendar year.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper uses a review of the literature.\nFindings: - The evidence points to seasonality in a number of areas of sexual health among young people, including: the timing of first intercourse and conceptions, both of which peak in the summer and over Christmas; abortions which peak approximately two months later in February and late summer and sexually transmitted infections, which peak over the summer and autumn. In the case of conceptions there is evidence that the seasonal pattern among young people is different from that of adults. Potential explanations fall into four main categories: biological; behavioural; social, and service-related.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Many of the studies included in this review are from the USA, and some are based on either small samples or specific risk groups, which raises questions of representativeness and generalisability. Further, it is notable how little research there has been regarding seasonal variations in other aspects of sexual behaviour, such as risk reduction practice and other potential explanatory factors such as health-seeking behaviour and availability of services.\nPractical implications: - The findings consistently point to periods of heightened sexual activity among young people in the summer and over Christmas, and suggest that greater consideration should indeed be given to the timing of sexual health interventions within the calendar year.\nOriginality/value: - To the best of the authors' knowledge, no other review of this kind has yet been found.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Corporate social responsibility perceptions and employee engagement: role of psychological meaningfulness, safety and availability
|
[
"Mediation",
"Corporate social responsibility",
"Psychological safety",
"Work engagement",
"Psychological availability",
"Psychological meaningfulness"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Prior research suggests that one of the ways through which corporate social responsibility (CSR) can create business value for organizations is by enhancing employee commitment and reducing turnover intentions (Hollingworth and Valentine, 2014). Though employees are critical to the success of any organization and constitute an important stakeholder group, very few studies have examined how employees as an internal stakeholder group are influenced by CSR actions of the organization (Aguinis and Glavas, 2012). To gain comprehensive understanding of a field, it is important to touch upon its micro-foundations ingrained in individual actions and interactions (Foss, 2011; Aguinis and Glavas, 2012). Responding to the need for more research on CSR from employees' perspective, some of the recent studies endeavoured to explore the impact of CSR on attitudes and behaviours of employees and provided empirical evidence in support of the same. For example, CSR was found to affect employees' job satisfaction (Glavas and Kelly, 2014), organizational commitment (Rahman et al., 2016), organizational citizenship behaviours (Chaudhary, 2018), task performance (Chaudhary, 2018) and turnover intentions (Chaudhary, 2017; Hollingworth and Valentine, 2014). Also, it is worth mentioning that the underlying psychological mechanisms linking CSR with employee outcomes are inadequately inspected and understood. Some of the recent studies have made progress in the area by using social identity theory (SIT) (De Roeck et al., 2014) and organizational justice framework (Rupp et al., 2006) as theoretical underpinnings to explain the nature of associations. However, research of this nature is still in the nascent stage (De Roeck et al., 2014; Glavas and Kelly, 2014). Furthermore, the aforementioned investigations have been conducted in developed countries, underscoring the need for evidence from emerging economies to confirm the nature of relationships. Due to this lack of empirical evidence, perhaps companies in developing countries are still not embracing CSR's potential in improving number of positive employee outcomes and ultimately, their bottom lines. When compared to developed Western nations, CSR in developing countries is more developmental and philanthropic in nature (Jamali and Karam, 2018). It is less standardized and is embedded in unique institutional and national business systems (Jamali and Karam, 2018). Feeble institutional constellation in emerging economies besides bureaucracy, corruption and unprofessional management (Balasubramanian et al., 2005) may possibly modify the manifestations of CSR, which can substantially influence the dynamics of its relationships with individual level outcomes. Further, the institutional framework, particularly in economic sector in South Asian countries, is undergoing remarkable change (Arevalo and Aravind, 2011). Therefore, it might be useful to explore the effect of CSR on employee level outcomes in a developing country. Exploring the above relationship in India may offer unique insights as one may expect no added meaning of CSR when it is made compulsory for all organizations after the implementation of new Company's Act 2013.\n2. Review of literature and study hypotheses: 2.1 Corporate social responsibility\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Participants and procedure\n4. Measures: 4.1 Corporate social responsibility\n5. Results: Descriptive statistics and inter-correlations among study variables are presented in Table II.\n6. Discussion and theoretical contributions: The primary research question addressed through this paper was whether and how CSR can create business value for the organizations as measured through employee attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, the study explored the impact of CSR on employee engagement through psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability. By engaging in micro-level investigation of CSR from employees' perspective and establishing it as a determinant of employee engagement, this research bridges the macro-micro rift in the existing literature (Morgeson et al., 2013). By exploring the impact of CSR on employees' work engagement, the study extends the extant CSR literature, which is largely examined from the perspective of external stakeholders. In doing so, this individual level study on CSR also addresses an important gap in the academic literature on CSR which is characterized by dearth of studies connecting CSR with workplace attitudes and behaviours. At the same time, the application of micro-level theories helped in establishing the psychological processes defining CSR and employee engagement relationship. Psychological meaningfulness, psychological safety, and, psychological availability at workplace were found to fully mediate the effect of CSR on employee engagement. Alternatively, when employees perceive their organizations to be responsible corporate citizens, they derived greater meaning and purpose at work, found it psychologically safer to bring their true selves at work, and, made them more psychologically available at work, which ultimately was reflected in their higher engagement levels. Additionally, by examining the psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability as antecedents of employee engagement, this study fills an important void in the literature where none but one study (May et al., 2004) made an attempt to empirically examine Kahn's theory. Further, it advances the extant knowledge base in the domain of CSR which is largely dominated by studies from west by examining an unexplored combination of variables in emerging economy of India. Even after changes in the legislative framework that made CSR mandatory for the organizations in India, which could have made employees perceive no added value of CSR, they felt psychologically safe, were more available and found meaning in working for socially responsible organizations.\n7. Limitations and future work: The study carries three important limitations which provide opportunities for future work. First, the use of self-report measures may bias the observed relationships between the variables. Second, the use of cross-sectional research design limits the degree to which the causation can be inferred. Third, the study sample was obtained from NCR region of India which puts the restrictions on the limit to which the findings can be generalized. Therefore, future researchers are encouraged to test the proposed hypotheses in varied organizational settings using multi-source data and better research designs. Additionally, it would be interesting to explore how public and private organizations differ in terms of CSR-employee engagement relationship as nature of the organization was found to significantly affect the engagement level of employees in the present study.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The primary research question addressed through this paper is whether and how corporate social responsibility (CSR) can create business value for organizations as measured through employee attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, this study aims to examine the impact of CSR on employee engagement through its influence on psychological meaningfulness, safety and availability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In total, 187 business professionals working for a wide variety of organizations in India constituted the study sample. Regression analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses.\nFindings: CSR positively predicted employee engagement. Psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability fully mediated the relationship of CSR with employee engagement.\nPractical implications: The study establishes CSR as an important talent management tool in the hands of management to cultivate an engaged workforce. The results provide corporate managers with the necessary evidence to justify their investment in CSR initiatives.\nOriginality/value: The study by establishing CSR as a determinant of employee engagement addresses the need for micro-level CSR research, and, hence, bridges the macro-micro gap in the CSR literature. In addition, the application of micro-level theories helped to establish the psychological processes defining CSR and employee engagement relationship. In doing so, the study empirically tests Khan's theory of engagement and the underlying mechanisms of engagement.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Find out what your people really think: How to maximize response rates to employee satisfaction surveys
|
[
"Employee attitudes",
"Surveys",
"Feedback",
"Job satisfaction"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: People's feelings about their experience at work matter because they affect the way they perform, how they deal with clients and ultimately the organization's success or failure.\nThe factors affecting response rates: What determines the response rate to a survey?Engagement\nAbout the author: David Lusty worked in local authorities for 11 years, in management services and latterly in personnel management. He joined Avis Rent a Car Ltd in 1978, and stayed for 12 years, ten as head of the UK personnel department. He was director of personnel and management services when he left Avis in 1990 and founded Quantify, which specializes in employee satisfaction surveys, customer satisfaction surveys, 360-degree feedback, internal customer satisfaction surveys, course assessments and leaver surveys. You can telephone him on +44 (0)20 8704 1296.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to describe the ways in which employers can maximize responses to their employee-satisfaction surveys.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper deals, in turn, with each of the factors that determine response rates: engagement; involvement; relevance; experience; expectation; method; convenience; anonymity/confidentiality; the questionnaire itself; contentment; despair; incentives; urgency; reminders; and coercion.\nFindings: - The paper provides examples of good and bad practice, while revealing that there is no single \"best way\".\nPractical implications: - The paper looks, in particular, at the differences between web-based and paper questionnaires.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides plenty of useful information for employers to gain an accurate picture of employees' feelings about their experience at work.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The performance of a blended real estate portfolio for UK DC investors
|
[
"Finance",
"Portfolio management",
"Investment",
"Listed real estate",
"Pension fund",
"Unlisted real estate"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper seeks to provide a better understanding of the performance implications for investors who choose to combine a global listed real estate with an unlisted real estate allocation. Specifically, it provides a detailed investor level analysis of the impact of combining UK unlisted fund and global listed real estate fund exposures to satisfy the requirements of a real estate allocation in a UK Defined Contribution Pension Fund (\"DC\"). The catalyst for this paper was the recent report by the Pensions Institute (2013). This highlighted both the rationale for real estate in DC funds and specifically the use of a blended product, which combined a 70 per cent UK unlisted allocation with a 30 per cent global listed allocation to provide this exposure. For the purposes of this study we refer to this 70/30 mix as the \"UK DC Real Estate Fund\".\nPrior work: There has been a significant body of work undertaken by both practitioners and academics on the beneficial impact of adding unlisted and listed real estate to an investor's portfolio, but there is little available research on incorporating blended real estate exposures.\nData and methodology: As this study seeks to estimate realistic investor total returns from exposure to a UK DC investor pooled fund solution, we have created a sample comprising both existing unlisted real estate and global real estate listed securities (REIT) funds. The unlisted real estate funds were sourced from The Townsend Group database and the global real estate securities funds from the Consilia Capital database. The sample comprises five unlisted UK managed real estate funds and four global listed securities fund. The sample time series data available for all funds was for the 15 years to 30 June 2013.\nResults: Total returns\nMulti-asset context: In similar vein to the analysis above we initially assess the shorter-term periodic risk-return dynamics of both unlisted real estate fund performance and a combined 70:30 allocation to unlisted and global listed securities funds. This is contrasted with UK equity market and UK government bond performance over the same period. First, we consider rolling annual performance patterns:\nConclusions: Given the increasing requirements for greater liquidity from the defined contribution pensions market, real estate portfolios will increasingly need to incorporate listed allocations within them. A number of existing funds have the ability to include listed real estate in their portfolio but choose not to do so. Similarly a number of investors do not regard listed real estate as part of their overall real estate allocation. This study has sought to understand the performance and risk characteristics of a blended real estate portfolio through cyclical phases over the past 15 years. The UK DC Real Estate Fund studied reflects the most prominent real estate solution currently available for UK defined contribution investors. The results and analysis provided reflect the a likely set of investor outcomes by using a sample of UK unlisted and global listed real estate funds which differentiates it from prior work which has typically utilised single country index data.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the performance implications for UK DC pension fund investors who choose to combine global listed and UK unlisted real estate in a blended allocation relative to a pure unlisted solution.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Blended listed and unlisted real estate portfolios are constructed. Investor risk and returns are then studied over the full 15 year sample horizon and distinct cyclical phases over this period using a number of risk-return metrics. Performance is then contrasted with that of a pure unlisted solution, as well as UK equity market and bond total returns over the same period.\nFindings: A UK DC pension fund investor choosing to construct a blended global listed and UK unlisted real estate portfolio would have experienced material return enhancement relative to a pure unlisted solution. The \"price\" of this enhanced performance and improved liquidity profile is, unsurprisingly, higher portfolio volatility. However, because of the improved returns, the impact upon measured risk adjusted returns is less significant.\nPractical implications: Relatively liquid blended listed and unlisted real estate portfolios create efficient risk and return outcomes for investors.\nOriginality/value: This study uses actual fund rather than index data (i.e. measures delivered returns to investors), has chosen a global rather than single country listed real estate allocation and is focused on providing clarity around the real estate exposure for a specific investment requirement, the UK DC pension fund market.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Eight challenges of servitisation for the configuration, measurement and management of organisations
|
[
"Competitive advantage",
"Differentiation",
"Servitization",
"Product-service systems",
"Services management",
"Value-in-use"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the quest for differentiation and competitiveness, service has become ubiquitous (Baines and Lightfoot, 2014). With an increasingly pivotal role in today's knowledge-based economies, services are receiving considerable attention from academics and practitioners (Gronroos, 2000; Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Spohrer and Maglio, 2008). The trajectory of growth of the service economy underpins the notion of servitisation, which increasingly requires a shift in perspective, from value-in-exchange towards value-in-use (Vargo and Lusch, 2008; Ng and Nudurupati, 2010; Neely, 2014). This new emphasis is further echoed in product-service system (PSS) studies (Meier et al., 2010; Lamvik, 2001; Morelli, 2002). Despite an established definition of PSS as offering \"goods and services that are consumed over time in multiple consumption episodes\" (Mittal et al., 1999), there remains a lack of clarity concerning the concept: some researchers refer to PSS as a \"value proposition\" (Tukker and Tischner, 2006), others refer to it as an \"innovation strategy\" to remain commercially competitive (Manzini and Vezzoli, 2003). Additionally, other researchers refer to PSS as a \"concept\", \"form\", \"structure\" or \"platform\" from which to innovate efficient \"systems\" and \"models\" for the benefit of the consumer (Bullinger et al., 2003; Mont, 2002). Regardless, this suggests that, whether the value to the customer is delivered through products or services, the value chain should be viewed from a customer perspective (Wise and Baumgartner, 1999) and how the customer uses the product/service throughout its life cycle (Vargo and Lusch, 2004), including its impact on the environment (Manzini and Vezzoli, 2003; Mont, 2002). It is further argued that the purpose of integrating service with existing products improves competitiveness as well as identifying balance between social, economic and environmental factors (Yang et al., 2009).\n2. Research design: The overall approach comprises a thematic analysis of the content of key contributions to the body of work concerning servitisation. A systematic literature review (Denyer and Tranfield, 2008; Rousseau et al., 2008) was performed on servitisation and PSS subjects (Figure 1). Predefined search strings employed in the key word searches included \"servitisation\", \"product service systems\", \"service design\" and \"service innovation\". These searches were used to identify articles published between 1990 and 2014 in specific databases: Business Source Premier, Emerald Insight and Science Direct. Furthermore, a number of specific journals were chosen for particular scrutiny because they attract a large number of papers in the field of service research. Similarly, papers were also identified through citation tracking from the initial selection of papers. This approach thus facilitated the exploration of a broad range of servitisation challenges from a product-based organisation perspective (as advocated by Bititci et al., 2012).\n3. Integrating products and services: an analysis of the extant literature: The innovative integration of services with products to deliver value-adding customer benefits to enhance competitive advantage has been a developing stream of literature over the last 25 years (Wise and Baumgartner, 1999; Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003; Neely, 2007; Spring and Araujo, 2009; Baines et al., 2009; Baines and Lightfoot, 2014). The principle of a firm offering bundles of customer-focussed combinations of products with services such as support services, self-services and knowledge services has become termed servitisation (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988). The general management literature refers to this impact of services as the \"servitisation of products\" or \"servicising\" (White et al., 1999), suggesting that the old dichotomy between product and service is being replaced by a service-product continuum (Lovelock and Gummesson, 2004; Zeithaml et al., 2006). Consequently, in the services marketing literature, Vargo and Lusch proposed the term \"service dominant logic\" to theorise two premises. First that \"goods are a distribution mechanism for service provision\" and second, \"all economies are service economies\" (Vargo and Lusch, 2004).\n4. Discussion - research agenda and management implications: Our review of servitisation research shows that a considerable body of literature has developed over the past 25 years. This research has emerged independently, from different fields including engineering, marketing, management, environmental and design studies. As a consequence, the extant literature pertaining to servitisation does at times appear fragmented and suffers from three fundamental weaknesses. First, numerous studies are theoretically conceptual in nature with limited practicality (Barrutia and Gilsanz, 2013; Beuren et al., 2013). Second, there are relatively few empirical studies, and often the findings relate to a single case study based on the insights of a limited number of senior managers. This again limits the applicability of the findings across organisations. Third, often the dynamics are insufficiently studied in these organisations as data for most cases are collected post-event. A pragmatic approach might be to develop a multi-disciplinary research framework based on the challenges that product-based organisations must overcome in order to implement effective strategies. With these limitations in mind, though research challenges are discussed in the context of our evaluation of all 60 papers, 12 contributions were chosen for thorough investigation. These papers report research from which the findings are strongly supported by robust empirical studies, and these are the basis of our development of a multi-disciplinary research framework, represented in Table I.\n5. Management implications: Manufacturing organisations are transitioning towards servitisation for a variety of reason: economic, strategic and environmental (Neely, 2014). These include competitive pressures from low-cost rivals emerging in developing counties, coupled with constraints on demand in developed countries caused by an over-saturated product base in many sectors. There is a need to increase product differentiation in such sectors, and a desire to retain customers by locking-out competitors (Neely, 2014). Thus servitisation and the concomitant opportunities, through value co-creation, to lock-in customers and build barriers to entry by rivals, is very close to the notion of how organisations create and sustain competitive advantage through the co-specialisation of complementary assets to create value in new and innovative ways (Milgrom and Roberts,1990; Teece, 1986).\n6. Conclusion: In conclusion, it is not the authors' intention in this paper to criticise the extant literature on servitisation, but the comments serve more to remind the reader of the complex nature of the task ahead of us as researchers. It is, therefore, imperative to pull the various research streams together in a holistic approach with wider participation from industry, i.e. engineering and non-engineering sectors. Furthermore, the frame of reference needs to be widened to focus on the value perceptions and operational interactions throughout servitisation, and lengthened to capture the dynamics of the system across sectors and multiple time periods - longitudinal studies have much to offer here. The themes themselves suggest operational implications for the practice of management in terms of the configuration, management and measurement of organisations. If the academic research community is to develop a more complete picture and understanding of servitisation it needs to move from a disciplinary (silo-based) focus to a more holistic mindset incorporating layers of complementary research outputs. The limitation of this research is that we have clustered our analysis into eight research challenges. Though this is our core contribution, there is a possibility that some richness of previous work is lost. This is based on our interpretation of our analysis of previous research and remains to be tested across wider audience. Hence, the classification and the holistic framework should be carefully interpreted in the contextual needs of organisations in which it is applied. Our analysis provides a robust framework for future multi- and inter-disciplinary research which in itself, would test the themes in practice leading to application in the practice of management as well as the validation of the conceptual framework.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: There is an extensive research literature on servitisation and the related field of product-service systems that has emerged independently from different fields including engineering, management, design and environmental studies. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a structured literature review to explore, identify and synthesise the multi-disciplinary research challenges in the journey towards servitisation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research approach is a systematic literature review using key word searches and citation tracking for research reported between 1990 and 2013 in research databases that cover the fields which have generated the body of knowledge.\nFindings: One of the key findings from the extant literature on servitisation is that it suffers from three fundamental weaknesses. First, numerous studies are conceptual in nature with limited practicality. Second, there are relatively few empirical studies, and often the findings relate to a single case study based on the insights of a limited number of senior managers. Third, often the dynamics are insufficiently studied in these organisations because data for most cases are collected post-event.\nResearch limitations/implications: Based on the literature review and its shortfalls, this paper proposes a holistic framework of eight themes that require further attention from academic researchers in order that a more complete conceptual understanding of servitisation is developed to support practice.\nPractical implications: Each theme in the framework has an associated list of questions that can be addressed through research and presented to managers as a challenge agenda to improve their servitisation efforts. That servitisation is associated with differentiation and competitive advantage makes this a valuable approach for managing corporate performance.\nOriginality/value: Research from multi-disciplinary sources is synergised in order to develop an overarching servitisation agenda that transcends domain-based boundaries. This paves the way for an approach to servitisation that is coherent and harmonious.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Increasing the effectiveness of reward management: an evidence-based approach
|
[
"Loyalty schemes",
"Pay policies",
"Evidence‐based practice"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A failure to evaluate pay and reward practices is a critical blind-spot for many of those involved in reward management. This was noted by Pfeffer (1998, p. 213) who wrote that: \"Little evidence demonstrates the efficacy of rewards, although much evidence indicates that rewards and their design loom large in management attention\". Gerhart and Rynes (2003, p. 1) commented that:Compensation is a complex and often confusing topic. Although compensation costs comprise, on average, 65% to 70% of total costs in the US economy and are likewise substantial elsewhere, most managers are not sure of the likely consequences of spending either more, or less on employees or of paying employees in different ways.The research evidence set out in this paper indicates that managers in the UK appear to be reluctant to evaluate reward. This holds back advances in the field and creates a harmful rhetoric/reality gap. Bevan (2006, p. 3) suggested that this is \"widest in the area of reward management which is heavily driven by fads, me-tooism and history\". We could find only two research studies that systematically addressed this issue (Corby et al., 2005; Scott et al., 2006).The evaluation of training has received much more attention; for example, among others, Aragon-Sanchez et al., 2003; Warr et al., 1999; Yang et al., 1996) and the industrial training boards in the 1960s (Kenney and Reid, 1986). A staged approach to evaluation was advocated by Hamblin (1974) and developed by Kirkpatrick (1994). The significance of return on investment as a means of evaluating training was highlighted by Kearns (2005). A more general \"return on expectations\" method which assesses the extent to which the anticipated benefits of any learning investment have been realised was advocated by Sloman (2007).The lack of interest in the evaluation of reward contrasted with the considerable and continuing focus on training evaluation indicated that further research on reward evaluation was required. Our research question was: to what extent and why is reward evaluation carried out? On the basis of the research evidence available, we also wanted to investigate the possibility of constructing a model illustrating how the effectiveness of reward policies and practices might be assessed. This article is in four main parts:1. methodology;2. research perspectives;3. findings; and4. discussion and conclusions.\nMethodology: We started out with no preconceived hypothesis concerning reward evaluation except that it was \"a good thing\" about which little seemed to be known. A literature review was conducted to establish what was known about the topic, identify existing theoretical frameworks and find out what other relevant research had been carried out. On the basis of this it was clear that, as noted by Corby et al. (2005), evaluation occurs in the context of pay systems whose characteristics vary considerably from organisation to organisation. Although some information on the incidence of evaluation and the methods used could be obtained by a survey, the research would have to rely largely on qualitative evidence obtained from case studies which could, however, be triangulated to a degree with the survey evidence.A grounded theory approach which could be strengthened by this triangulation and used to develop common themes and patterns from the data provided by the survey and the case studies was therefore appropriate. As originally described by Glaser and Strauss (1967) this is an inductive method of developing the general features of a theory by grounding the account in empirical observations or evidence. We took note of comments made by Glaser (1978, p.2) who wrote that: \"Grounded theory is based on the systematic generating of theory from data\" and advised researchers to enter their research with \"as few preconceived ideas as possible ... the researcher's mandate is to remain open to what is actually happening\". He also remarked (Glaser, 1978, p. 142) that the process \"generates theory that fits the real world ... and is readily modifiable\". Turner (1983, p. 1) pointed out that: \"It offers a way of attending in detail to qualitative material in order to develop systematically theories about the phenomena which have been observed\".A survey of 173 HR and reward practitioners was conducted in 2009 by e-reward. The questionnaire covered the extent to which evaluation took place, why evaluation did or did not take place, the evaluation methods used and how effective they were.In planning the case studies we took into account the comment made by Eisenhardt (1989) that the case study is a research strategy which focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings. The dynamics we wanted to examine were how and why evaluative data was collected and analysed by reward or HR practitioners and the ways in which this data was used. We also bore in mind the remark made by Mintzberg (1979, p. 585) that: \"No matter how small our sample or what our interest, we have always tried to go into organizations with a well-defined focus - to collect specific kinds of data systematically\". In the words of Eisenhardt (1989, p. 533) we wanted to \"focus efforts on theoretically useful cases\". When identifying the 13 case study organisations listed in Table I we noted the comment made by Pettigrew (1990, p. 275) that, given the limited number of cases which can usually be studied, it makes sense to choose ones where the processes involved are \"transparently observable\". Our aim was to achieve a reasonable balance between the sectors and to choose organizations which were either known to adopt sophisticated HR and reward practices (seven organizations with which the IES was familiar), or those which had indicated in the survey that they were involved in evaluating reward or at least planning to do so (the six organisations dealt with by e-reward). Face-to-face interviews were used in the IES organizations and telephone interviews in the e-reward case studies. The interviews were structured around the questions used in the survey.\nResearch perspectives: The literature review covered the research on evaluating reward in the two studies we identified. In the absence of other evaluation studies, more general research on the relationship between reward and performance was reviewed to provide some insight into methods of evaluation. Comment and research on the notions of evidence-based management and human capital management was also examined on the grounds that they were both about the gathering and analysis of data and therefore relevant to the process of measuring reward effectiveness.Research on evaluating reward\nFindings: Our findings are described below under the following headings: the incidence of reward evaluation, why organizations do or do not evaluate, evaluation criteria, and the approaches used by case study organisations to assess reward effectiveness.Incidence of reward evaluation\nEvaluation criteria: The criteria used by the 142 respondents to our survey who evaluated reward effectiveness fully or partly are given in Table III.On average, respondents used either three or four methods of assessment, with a range of between one and 14.The criteria used in four of the case study organizations which carried out evaluation formally are summarised in Table IV.Three of the other case study organisations have a particularly thorough approach to measurement and evaluation. RestCo operates with a clear corporate dashboard of key measures related to people. The measures are regularly reviewed and refined, focusing more recently on 90 day rather than total staff turnover once this had been highlighted as a key issue and cost for the business. At IntbankCo the group head of reward feels that it is necessary to have a balance of measures and believes that it is the overall strength of their systematic approach which ensures that employees behave appropriately, manage risk properly and achieve the expected levels of performance. AcServe monitors a set of 13 key performance indicators based on each of its reward strategy principles.Corby et al. (2005) found that 13 of the 15 organisations they studied carried out staff attitude surveys. None of these organisations, however, specifically used that information to evaluate their pay system. Although labour turnover statistics were collected, managers seldom analysed them for the purpose of evaluation. No organisation used quantitative measures to evaluate the impact of the new pay system on employee behaviour, such as absenteeism rates, number of grievances, frequency/severity of accidents or number of employment tribunal claims, although they all collected statistics on at least some of these matters. Only two organisations sought to evaluate the impact of their new pay system on performance.\nHow reward effectiveness is assessed by case study organisations: A number of case study organisations provided insights on the overall approaches used by organizations to evaluate reward effectiveness and the issues they faced when they did so.Overall approaches\nDiscussion: Our research has shown that while many organisations do not seem to be interested in formally assessing the effectiveness of their reward systems, or at least do not feel able to do so, a number are making the attempt using a range of criteria. But there are difficulties. Justifiable doubts can be expressed about the feasibility of linking cause to effect. For example, it may not be too difficult to measure increases in levels of engagement following a reward innovation, and it may be reasonable to assume that higher levels of engagement were caused, or at least strongly influenced, by a change to the reward system. But it is an act of faith to link this to a performance improvement.The research revealed other difficulties, particularly perceived lack of resources or time to evaluate, lack of data, and management indifference - a belief that the benefits of evaluation are not justified by the effort and cost involved.Nevertheless, the arguments for a rational evidence-based approach to reward management seem to be powerful. It appears to be self-evident that reward systems will be better managed if decisions are based on fact rather than opinion, on understanding rather than assumptions, on grounded theory rather than dogma. But Corby et al. (2005) referred to the limitations of the rational managerial decision-making perspective. They cited Buchanan and Badham (1999) who argued that most significant decisions are the outcome of a social and political process only partly shaped by the evidence, which, they add, may be lacking - at least in part.These difficulties and limitations mean that it is hard to construct a model which convincingly prescribes the direction reward evaluation should take. It is tempting to believe that it is possible to develop one which consists of a succession of logical steps beginning at A and continuing through B, C, D etc. to the inevitable conclusion of a well-constructed reward system. The reality is that a process of evidence-based reward management is a much more varied and fluid affair. Our case studies showed that while the organizations concerned generally shared a belief in the importance of reviewing and assessing the effectiveness of their reward practices and most operated or are planning to introduce the processes involved, they use different criteria and measures of reward success, as well as different reward approaches.However, based on the case studies, we have concluded that there are a number of common components to a process of evidence-based reward management, although these are applied in all sorts of ways; sometimes sequentially, sometimes not, depending on the needs of the situation. That is why we call them components rather than stages. The components we have identified are setting strategic objectives, conducting reward reviews of current policies and practices, measuring reward effectiveness, and using the data generated by reviews and measurements to evaluate reward outcomes as a basis for introducing new or improved reward practices.Our model of how the components function in practice is shown in Figure 1. It appears to describe a sequential progress in the form of a continuous cycle from setting objectives and success criteria, through review, measurement, evaluation, and development activities to implementation and further review. This can happen in some circumstances, for example a review by outside consultants. But, as we established from the case studies, in practice the components are not necessarily specified or managed in an orderly sequence. They are closely interlinked and they may overlap. Objective setting, review and measurement affect all the other components, as does evaluation. They can take place at any time (or all at once) and they all directly influence the ultimate activities of development and implementation.The model illustrates the complex and varied ways in which evidence-based reward management works. But we contend that an approach which makes appropriate use of these components will be helpful on many occasions. Using them appropriately means applying and linking the components in ways which fit the demands of the situation. It becomes a way of thinking that reward practitioners can apply by asking themselves:* What are we trying to do here, what is important to this organization, how do we measure that?* How are current reward practices helping or hindering what we are trying to do and what evidence do we have of this?* How might reward changes improve the delivery of the desired outcomes?* How can we best implement improvements and how can we show ourselves that they are working?Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to explore the reasons why many organisations do not evaluate the effectiveness of their reward policies and practices, examines the approaches used by those organizations which do evaluate, and develops a model of evidence-based reward management which describes how evaluation can take place.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper draws on a study of why organisations do or do not evaluate reward and an examination of what organizations taking evaluation seriously were doing about it. The study was based on a survey of 173 reward and HR practitioners and 13 case studies.\nFindings: - The survey found that only 46 per cent of respondents carried out a full evaluation. Other surveys have established that an even lower proportion evaluated. Those organisations which evaluate reward do so because they recognise that it is necessary to obtain value for money from their considerable expenditure on pay. Those who do not evaluate offer a number of reasons, but the most important was lack of resources or time. It was established that while an evidence-based approach was desirable there was no set pattern of conducting an evaluation.\nPractical implications: - Information about the evaluation practices of the case study organisations and the concept of evidence-based reward management as an approach to evaluation provide guidance to practitioners on how they can measure the effectiveness of their reward policies and practices.\nOriginality/value: - The paper extends the pioneering research of Corby et al. to develop new insights into the process of reward evaluation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Inventory leanness, risk taking, environmental complexity, and productivity: A mediated moderation model
|
[
"Environmental impact",
"Inventory management",
"Production management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Inventory management has become one of the most prominent fields in operations management. From the perspective of lean philosophy, inventory is always supposed to be a waste and should be eliminated (Womack et al., 1990; Eroglu and Hofer, 2011). As a result, inventory reduction is believed to be positively related to productivity growth (Lieberman and Asaba, 1997; Lieberman and Demeester, 1999). This conclusion provides preliminary evidence for managers to understand the importance of inventory management for their productivity growth. However, in practice, the presence of demand fluctuation and storage cost may deeply affect inventory management (Nakandala et al., 2017), and, consequently, too low or too high inventory holding may reduce productivity. Inventory leanness, an important indicator of inventory management, has garnered worldwide attention due to the ability to better capture relative inventory reduction for similar size firms within the same industry (Eroglu and Hofer, 2011; Isaksson and Seifert, 2014). Therefore, the relationship between inventory leanness and productivity is of great significance in the context of modern production and operations management.\n2. Literature review and hypothesis development: 2.1 Inventory leanness and productivity\n3. Data and variable measurement: 3.1 Data resource\n4. Estimation results: 4.1 Models\n5. Discussion and implication: The goal of our study is to investigate the relationship between inventory leanness and productivity. We formulate a mediated moderation model to examine whether risk taking would mediate the moderating impact of environmental complexity on the relationship between inventory leanness and productivity. Three key findings of our study advance our understanding of the relationship between inventory leanness and productivity. First, we find that inventory leanness has an inverted U-shaped effect on productivity. Prior conceptual and empirical works generally show that the relationship between inventory reduction and productivity is linear (Lieberman and Asaba, 1997; Lieberman and Demeester, 1999). That is, increasing inventory leanness would be helpful to improve productivity by eliminating waste through optimizing production process. However, the increased inventory leanness may be not always positively related to productivity growth. Our study is based on a sample of Chinese listed manufacturing firms between 2003 and 2014. Empirical results suggest that there is an optimal level of inventory leanness for manufacturing firms to improve productivity. That is, inventory leanness initially has a positive effect on productivity; however, after reaching a threshold, this effect declines. This finding partly lends support to the studies of Eroglu and Hofer (2011) and Isaksson and Seifert (2014), which argues that the relationship between inventory leanness and financial performance is nonlinear, wherein productivity is closely related to financial performance. Second, risk taking is shown to mediate the relationship between inventory leanness and productivity. We find that inventory leanness has an inverted U-shaped effect on risk taking, which, in turn, is associated with productivity. Thus, risk taking may be one of the explanatory mechanisms for manufacturing firms which are more likely to obtain productivity improvement. Along with the work of John et al. (2008), our findings indicate that productivity improvement rests upon the degree to which a firm can enhance its risk taking via increasing inventory leanness. Finally, we find that environmental complexity moderates the relationship between inventory leanness and productivity. Furthermore, risk taking induced by enhanced inventory leanness may also result in more productivity improvement under lower complex environment. Therefore, these findings accentuate the importance of the industry heterogeneity as a boundary condition on the impact of inventory management on productivity.\n6. Conclusion and future research: To sum up, this paper provides a more complete picture of inventory leanness-risk-taking-productivity triangle. This research adds to the theory of inventory management by focusing and exploring the mediating role of risk taking and the moderating role of environmental complexity. As such, this study underscores the importance of inventory management with the broader realm of operations management. In this paper, we first investigate the relationship among inventory leanness, risk taking and productivity based on a sample of listed manufacturing firms between 2003 and 2014 in China. By using the lagged value of inventory leanness as an IV, we apply 2SLS/IV estimator to correct for endogeneity. Furthermore, the three-model system is used to examine mediated moderation relationship among inventory leanness, risk taking, environmental complexity and productivity. We find that risk taking mediates the moderating effect of environmental complexity on the relationship between inventory leanness and productivity.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of inventory leanness on productivity. In particular, the authors explore the moderating role of environmental complexity and the mediating role of risk taking.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In the mediated moderation analysis of the relationship among inventory leanness, risk taking, environmental complexity and productivity, the authors adopt the instrumental variable method to test the hypotheses based on data collected from 1,709 Chinese listed manufacturing firms.\nFindings: The results show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between inventory leanness and productivity. The authors then demonstrate the role of risk taking in mediating this relationship. Furthermore, the authors find that environmental complexity not only negatively moderates the relationship between inventory leanness and productivity, but also negatively moderates the relationship between risk taking and productivity.\nPractical implications: Managers should not be excessively pursuing inventory leanness improvements, so as not to damage the ability to increase productivity.\nOriginality/value: This paper may be the first study to empirically demonstrate the moderating effect of environmental complexity and the mediating effect of risk taking on the inverted U-shaped relationship between inventory leanness and productivity.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
High-performance work systems, joint impact of transformational leadership, an empowerment climate and organizational ambidexterity: Cross level evidence
|
[
"Transformational leadership",
"Organizational ambidexterity",
"Cross-level evidence",
"High-performance work systems"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Studies on organizational ambidexterity show that high-performance work systems (HPWS) can promote ambidexterity and that this results in better firm performance (Junni et al., 2013; Patel et al., 2013). Existing research on firm-level human resources management (HRM) and ambidexterity tends to treat both HPWS and ambidexterity as ambient organization-level phenomena. Moreover, prior studies on HPWS mainly focussed on the design or content of the system and rarely explored the issues related to its implementation or how it was viewed by employees (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004). More specifically, research on HPWS has rarely examined the issue of how the processes of the system will be integrated and implemented (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Liao et al., 2009). Consistent with prior research (e.g. Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Junni et al., 2013; Liao et al., 2009), this study examines the direct relationship between the experience of HPWS as actual functioning systems and organizational ambidexterity at the unit level. Organizational ambidexterity refers to the capacity of an organization to simultaneously utilize existing market opportunities efficiently and to initiate creative and innovative solutions to anticipate and meet future market demands (Andriopoulos and Lewis, 2009; Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004; Tushman and O'Reilly, 1996). Moreover, the earlier literature on HPWS studied outcomes at the organizational level, such as organizational performance (Youndt et al., 1996). More recently, studies on HPWS have investigated the mechanisms by means of which firm-level HPWS affect individual-level employee skills, attitudes and behaviors (e.g. Takeuchi et al., 2009). The present study aims to investigate the mechanisms and boundary conditions through which the unit experience of HPWS affects the unit organizational ambidexterity across all levels.\nTheory and hypothesis: Theoretical background\nMethod: Sample and procedure\nResults: Table I presents descriptive statistics and correlations.\nDiscussion: In this study, we theoretically identified the unit experience and effects of HPWS on unit organizational ambidexterity and boundary mechanisms. We found that a firm-level empowerment climate moderated the relationship between unit HPWS and unit organizational ambidexterity. Furthermore, firm-level TFL exerted a top-down effect on the relationship between the firm-level empowerment climate and the unit level organizational ambidexterity. Ceteris paribus, the results revealed that firm-level TFL plays a vital role in stimulating unit members to simultaneously engage in exploratory innovation and exploitation innovation at the unit level when a firm-level empowerment climate is stronger. Overall, three contributions emerge.\nLimitations and further research directions: This study has several limitations that point to future research directions. First, this study has begun to examine the experience of the effects of HPWS at the unit level and the cross-level boundary mechanisms on unit organizational ambidexterity. Building on this beginning, future research may explore multilevel studies on the interaction between individuals, firms and industries to understand how organizational ambidexterity occurs across industries (Raisch and Birkinshaw, 2008; Raisch et al., 2009). Second, we did not examine how the fit between unit-level HPWS and firm-level HPWS might promote or hamper organizational ambidexterity across levels (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004). For example, the perception of HPWS and of its actual functioning might be different across levels (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004). Third, we did not examine how other types of leadership behaviors, such as transactional leadership, might moderate the unit-level effects of HPWS on unit organizational ambidexterity. It is possible that unit level transactional leadership and firm-level transactional leadership might have different effects on unit organizational ambidexterity. Moreover, the data of this research mainly focussed on computer and electronic sectors in Taiwan. There is a need to explore whether the relationships found in this study especially the positive relationship between empowerment and organizational ambidexterity are due to the specific features of the computer and electronic sectors and/or cultural values embedded in a relatively high power distance society (e.g. Taiwan) from which this study had drawn the computer and electronic sectors sample. Future research could expand more samples from different industries such as manufacturing and different cultures such as low power distance society (e.g. Australia, UK) and this can increase the generalization of this existing results. Finally, the measurements used in this study dealt with organizational ambidexterity at the unit level. While we took steps to assess the validity and reliability of our measurement method, future research may further assess its psychometric properties using additional samples.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test a multilevel model, supported by an ambidexterity perspective, to examine the process linking high-performance work systems (HPWS) and organizational ambidexterity using both unit- and firm-level analyses.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The author collected multisource and multilevel data from 346 employees and 184 managers of 33 electronic engineering firms.\nFindings: The results revealed that unit HPWS were positively related to unit organizational ambidexterity. The author considers that the role of firm-level transformational leadership (TFL) is to create a climate of autonomy that can be delegated to promote organizational ambidexterity within units. Furthermore, a firm-level empowerment climate moderates the effect of unit-level HPWS on a unit's organizational ambidexterity. The author contributes to the research on leadership and ambidexterity by revealing the impact of HPWS as experienced in the unit- and of firm-level TFL. The author also identify boundary conditions for pursuing unit organizational ambidexterity.\nOriginality/value: Responding to the call for more research into the effects of the empowerment climate on employees' behaviors and the behavioral outcomes of employees, this research reveals that not only is the macro perspective of HPWS at the organizational level useful to promote ambidextrous activities at lower levels, but also that the unit experience of HPWS more directly affects employees' behaviors in engaging in the search for new opportunities for new products/services and refining current products simultaneously at the unit level. The broader implication is that the effectiveness of HPWS as an antecedent for organizational ambidexterity (Gibson and Birkinshaw, 2004; Kang and Snell, 2009) depends on the unit experience of HPWS being used to influence autonomous employees to actively undertake ambidextrous activities at the unit level.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Analysis of the content, colourants, fats, nitrate and nitrite in advertised foods and biological fluids of Egyptian children
|
[
"Children channels",
"Fats",
"Food advertising",
"Food colourants",
"Nitrate and nitrite"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Advertising can play a prominent role in influencing children's eating habits (Kelly et al., 2006). The reason for the observed advertising of adult foods (particularly those high in fat, nitrite and nitrate) in some children's channels is unclear. The results of the study by Hamilton-Ekeke and Thomas (2007) suggested that children will make \"healthy choices\" but need the knowledge supporting these \"healthy choices\" in order to affect their attitude towards healthy eating.\nMaterials and methods: Purchasing and sampling AF\nResults and discussion: Impact of colourants nitrate, nitrite and fats on children's diets\nConclusion: Synthetic food colourants, fats, nitrate and nitrite were determined in 26 AF and beverages in the three ECC. Also these parameters were determined in serum and urine specimens of children (eight to 12 years). AF were categorized into four groups: soft drinks, jelly powders, processed meat products and restaurant dishes. Levels of nitric oxide, Tartrazine and total fat were significantly higher in the viewer children of those channels compared to control group. The AF seem to promote foods mainly high in fats, synthetic food colourants, nitrate and nitrite that are precisely opposite of what is recommended for healthy eating for children.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the content and some synthetic food colourants, total fats, nitrate and nitrite in both advertised foods (AF) and serum and urine samples of children (8 to 12 years) and their impact on childrens' diet and health.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Analysis of the content of the AF was done by watching the three Egyptian children's channels (ECC) for 38 hours. Amaranth, Indigo Carmine, Tartrazine, nitrate and nitrite were analysed in all AF and in serum and urine specimens of children. However, total fats were only analysed in the advertised processed meats and in the restaurant dishes. Lipid profile was also estimated in children.\nFindings: The AF accounted for 46-54 per cent of the total advertisements presented. The advertised restaurant dishes were predominantly high in fats, 63 and 55 per cent in restaurant dishes and processed meats, respectively. Tartrazine was the only food colourant found in soft drinks and jelly powders measuring 0.2-15 ug/ml and 25-125 ug/g, respectively. The average levels of total nitrate and nitrite were higher than the acceptable daily intake of the Egyptian and WHO limits (125 mg/kg). Urinary Tartrazine and serum and urinary total nitrate and nitrite were significantly higher in the viewers' children for the ECC and at borderline for lipid profile compared to non-viewers' children.\nResearch limitations/implications: The most harmful effect of these advertisements is the cumulative effect of AF that undermines progress towards a healthy diet for children. AF may expose children to non-communicable disease in the future.\nPractical implications: The local policy context requires action to set clear rules for children's food advertising and monitor processed meat products to tackle exceeded levels of nitrate and nitrite.\nOriginality/value: This is one of the first studies to analyse colourants, fats, nitrate and nitrite in AF and in the serum and urine of children. This research shows a large number of AF (1,112) in the ECC for 38 hours with statistically significant increase of Tartrazine, nitrate and nitrite in AF (p<0.0001) and in biological fluids (p<0.05).\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The contribution of spatial dependency to office building price indexes: A Melbourne case study
|
[
"Market",
"Price",
"Office",
"Autocorrelation",
"Dependency",
"Spatial"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A substantial increase in whole office building transfers has been observed in recent years, especially following the 2007 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) (Lizieri and Pain, 2014), although there has been limited research undertaken in this area. The construction of an accurate and reliable property index is critically important for practitioners to monitor and examine movements in the property market and also in the broader economy in order to limit exposure to risk. Accordingly, this research develops an innovative transaction price index for the office market and tests to what extent, if at all, incorporating spatial dependency issues into the estimation of the index can improve the level of accuracy.\nValue of office property - the role of spatial dependency: The reference to office property is based on the aggregate value of the land component, the structure of the building and other associated infrastructure, e.g. landscaping. Previous studies examined how the transaction price of office property is influenced by different factors which can be separated into three groups: physical characteristics and related factors; locational factors and other related factors such as the performance of the property itself (Henneberry and Mouzakis, 2014); and regulatory factors (Smith et al., 2009). The influencing factors relating to physical characteristics include the quality and grading of the building (Dermisi and McDonald, 2010; Eichholtz et al., 2010), the area of office building space (Nappi-Choulet et al., 2007), the age of the office building (Dermisi and McDonald, 2010) and the design and energy rating (Fuerst and McAllister, 2011; Bonde and Song, 2013; Eichholtz et al., 2010). In addition to the physical characteristics, previous studies confirmed that the office property values can be affected by accessibility to public transport (Kim et al., 2015; Nitsch, 2006) and also the different types of office submarkets within which the building is located (Dunse et al., 2001). The distance to specific locations can also capture some geographical features; however, it cannot effectively control for the issue of spatial dependency (Andersson and Grasjo, 2009).\nDifferences between office units transactional market and office building transactional market: The transaction market for office buildings clearly differs from the transaction market for individual office property units. For example, individual office units located in the same office building are often transacted at a similar price because practitioners and other market participants rely on comparable office unit transactions, after making allowances for positive or negative differences (API, 2015). In other words, the sales of office units within the same office building are usually considered most comparable with reference to their attributes, including the allotment's identical street location and proximity to transport. Therefore, examining the transfer price of office units within the same building provides price guidance for future office property units' transactions, which in turn can lead to the significant statistical test results relating to the existence of spatial dependency. This approach is also supported by a relatively large amount of data associated with the high turnover of individual office units.\nMethodology: Hedonic model\nDescription of data: This research examined data relating to all office property transactions in Melbourne between 2000 and 2015 with a total of 289 observations. The data were provided by Savills research, which collects this information in its industry role. All variables utilised in this database were winsorized before the estimation of regression model to eliminate outliers which potentially affected the accuracy of the model. Table I summarises the statistical characteristics of the data after it was winsorized.\nResults analysis: In this section, we use the database and spatial weights matrix to construct the hedonic model, spatial error model, spatial lagged model and the office building transaction price indexes. We also test for the existence of spatial dependency and use the unit root test to determine whether the issue of spatial dependency should be considered in the construction of office building transaction price index. Table IV summarises the results using a hedonic model, spatial error model and a spatial lagged model.\nFindings and conclusion: This research produced an innovative transaction index for office buildings in the Melbourne CBD and examined data relating to all office building transactions recorded between 2000 and 2015. The analysis combined a spatial weights matrix with a hedonic model to construct: a spatial error model and a spatial lagged model, where both models were utilised to construct office property transaction price indexes. In contrast to the higher turnover of individual office units and increased availability of data, there was a limited turnover of office buildings although this study overcame this barrier based on a longitudinal study of a global city market.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of spatial dependency in the construction of a price index for the transactions of whole office buildings. It examines transactions of office buildings over a 15-year period and addresses an under-researched area in investment property analysis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study examines data relating to transactions of all office buildings in the Melbourne (Australia) central business district between 2000 and 2015. The methodology uses a spatial weights matrix to construct a hedonic model, spatial error model, spatial lagged model and an office building transactional price index.\nFindings: The findings confirm the existence of spatial dependency for the transactions of office buildings. In addition, incorporating the effect of spatial dependency by constructing spatial error and spatial lagged model improved the accuracy of the estimated transactional price index for office buildings.\nResearch limitations/implications: These findings make an important contribution to the literature by highlighting the importance of the issue of spatial autocorrelation in the estimation of valuation models and price indexes for office buildings. Until now the focus has predominantly been on individual office units rather than whole office buildings, where the barrier has traditionally been access to comprehensive data. The analysis did not consider leasing details as this information is not accessible in the Australian market.\nPractical implications: The research will assist stakeholders including valuers, investors and market regulators to improve their understanding of movements in the office property transactional market. The findings provide an insight into trends associated with the transfer of office buildings. It will assist future decisions about the location of a new office building developments in order to optimise their proximity to transport and other buildings.\nSocial implications: The study will assist planners to ensure the location of office buildings are optimised from a social sustainability perspective. This equates to buildings located in close proximity to transport facilities and also supporting the development of office buildings in locations, which are associated with lower future risk.\nOriginality/value: The construction of an accurate and reliable property index is critically important for practitioners to understand the movement in both the property market and also in the broader economy. A substantial increase in whole office building acquisitions has been observed in recent years, especially after the 2007 Global Financial Crisis (Lizieri and Pain, 2014) although there has remained limited research undertaken in this area.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Why KM projects fail: a multi-case analysis
|
[
"Knowledge management",
"Case studies",
"Management failures",
"Project management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The recent decade has seen a proliferation of knowledge management (KM) projects in many organisations. Correspondingly, corporate spending on KM projects has increased substantially over the years (Ithia, 2003). This phenomenon is fuelled by the escalating popularity of the knowledge-based view of the firm in which knowledge is recognised as the key sustainable competitive resource (Kogut and Zander, 1992). As a result, organisations are implementing various KM initiatives to identify, share and exploit their knowledge assets. Several widely circulated KM implementation cases include the Buckman Laboratories' knowledge network (Zack, 1999), Xerox's Eureka database (Brown and Duguid, 2000), Tech Clubs in DaimlerChrysler, the communities of practice among quantitative biologists in Eli Lilly (Wenger et al., 2002), the various KM initiatives in BP Amoco (Hansen, 2001) and the highly elaborated knowledge distillation processes at the Center for Army Lessons Learned (Thomas et al., 2001).Invariably, KM has been presented as a compelling strategy for organisations to improve their business processes and gain competitiveness. Furthermore, the outcome of implementing KM has been reported to be remarkably successful either in terms of financial savings, revenues generated or the level of user acceptance. For example, Xerox was estimated to have saved $100 million from its Eureka database (Brown and Duguid, 2000). Through the communities of practice, Hill's Pet Nutrition enjoyed significant reductions in pet food wastage due to packaging improvements while Hewlett-Packard succeeded in standardising sales processes and establishing a consistent pricing scheme (Wenger and Snyder, 2000).The knowledge base at the Center for Army Lessons Learned was very well received as evidenced by the high weekly hits of nearly 100,000 (Holder and Fitzgerald, 1997).Compared to the success stories, reported cases of KM project failures pale in number. This is despite the estimate that 84 per cent of KM programmes exerted no significant impact on the adopting organisations (Lucier and Torsiliera, 1997). Furthermore, unlike the success stories where the names of the organisations are prominently featured, cases of KM project failure rarely reveal the actual identities of the organisations involved. This suggests that failure remains an organisational taboo even though corporate values such as organisational learning and active experimentation are increasingly espoused in the modern economy. Most people find it difficult to come to terms with failure (Peters, 1987). However, the fear and intolerance of failure go against the tenets of organisational learning and continuous improvements. If failure is ignored, denied or repressed, the opportunity to learn from past mistakes is lost. On the other hand, when failure is embraced as an integral part of learning and development, deeper insights into success can be gained (Thorne, 2000).Paper objectives\nWhat is KM project failure?: It is widely known that most KM projects take the form of developing discussion databases, technical libraries, lessons learned database, starting communities of practice and identifying internal best practices. However, what is less commonly discussed is what constitutes success or failure in a KM project.From an IT project perspective, a failed project can be considered one that has missed the deadline by more than 30 percent, exceeded the budget by more than 30 percent or has an end-product that does not meet the user's requirements (Norton, 2003). However, some argue that KM initiatives are more organic in nature vis-a-vis IT projects and may not even fit into the traditional notion of a project. Even so, most KM projects characteristically involve the use of resources, have specific deliverables and are measurable. Davenport et al. (1998) identified several indicators of KM project success:* growth in the resources attached to the project, including people and budget;* growth in the volume of knowledge content and usage (that is, the number of documents or accesses for repositories or participants for discussion-oriented projects);* the likelihood that the project would survive without the support of a particular individual or two, that is, the project is an organizational initiative, not an individual effort; and* evidence of financial return either for the knowledge management activity itself or for the larger organization.Owing to the multiplicity of perspectives from different stakeholders, it does not seem necessary to develop a single, all-encompassing definition of KM project failure. Hence, for the purpose of this paper, KM failure is simply defined as KM projects that have few, or none of the above characteristics identified by Davenport et al. (1998).\nResearch method: To find documented cases of KM failure, searches were conducted on three popular online databases, namely ProQuest, Ebsco Host and Emerald, using the search terms \"knowledge management\" and \"failure\". Five cases were eventually selected for analysis.The selected cases met two important criteria. One, they had been published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. This ensured that the case studies were of a high quality and that the findings presented were culled from a defensible methodology. Two, they provided sufficient contextual details about the KM projects from their inception to eventual termination.Each case was manually reviewed with the intention to tease out three salient details. The first was the organisational context and the rationale for which the KM projects were conceived. The second was the final outcome for each KM project. The third and final detail was an explanation for the failure.\nCases in KM failure: Case 1: a global bank\nAnalysis of the cases: Inductive analysis, which involves unitising and categorising, was used on the above five cases to uncover a list of KM project failure factors. Through the process of unitising, \"raw\" failure factors were identified and isolated from each case. Subsequently, through the process of categorising, the \"raw\" failure factors derived from unitising were organised into categories on the basis of similarity in meaning. The list of failure factors underwent iterative revisions and refinements until it met three criteria, namely, exhaustion of sources, saturation of categories and emergence of regularities (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Two important observations were made during this process.Observation 1: four categories of KM failure factors\nDiscussion: Based on observation 1 presented earlier, four main findings have been identified.Technology issues are non-trivial\nA model of KM project failure: Table I shows the model of KM project failure. The model is constructed by mapping the various KM failure factors to the specific stages in the KM project lifecycle in which they emerged in the cases.Even though the model represents an aggregation of the five cases and has inevitably obscured the nuances found in individual KM projects, it could help practitioners pre-empt KM failure factors as their projects progress. In particular, the model can be used as a risk identification tool. As highlighted in this paper, KM projects attract an alarmingly high level of risk. Nonetheless, many KM project pitfalls can be avoided if they were identified and discussed before the project commences or better managed during the project itself. For example, if KM practitioners were informed of factor T3 (over-reliance), they would be careful to chart a KM project that deploys technology appropriately rather than excessively. Likewise, factor Co4 (knowledge distillation) serves to highlight the need for a systematic mechanism to cull knowledge particularly for KM projects which involve generative and open-ended discussions.Additionally, since all stages of the KM project lifecycle are susceptible to failure, efforts can be guided through the model to eliminate specific failure factors before they emerge. For example, prior to the initiation stage, practitioners may wish to review if factors such as T1 (connectivity), PM1 (user involvement) and PM7 (external consultants) pose as threats to the KM project. Likewise, factors such as PM4 (roll-out strategy), Cu2 (knowledge sharing), Cu3 (perceived image) and Cu4 (management support) need to be deliberated prior to the implementation stage. Finally, before the KM project becomes institutionalised, attention must be paid to factors such as T4 (maintenance) and PM5 (project cost).\nConclusion: Enticed by the plethora of success stories, many organisations implement KM initiatives with the view that their well-intended efforts, coupled with the presence of success factors, will naturally result in the better management and exploitation of their knowledge assets. Success factors to KM projects commonly cited include the alignment between the knowledge managed and the goals of the organisation, the identification of a specific population that has a specific knowledge need (Dixon, 2000), a clear articulation and commitment to knowledge management (Trussler, 1998), senior management support and technical and organisational infrastructure (Davenport and Prusak, 1999).It appears ironic that the KM projects reviewed in this paper exhibited many of the above success factors. For example, in case 3 (manufacturing company), the projects were conceived with specific corporate cost-cutting objectives. In case 5 (global company), the KM project received top management endorsement, had a specific population with a specific knowledge need and even commanded a reconfiguration to the organisational structure. Yet, all these projects ended in failure because they were plagued by failure factors related to either technology, content, culture or project management. This suggests that the success of a KM project is not only contingent on the presence of success factors, but also on the absence of failure factors.This paper has highlighted that KM project failure is a reality that both practitioners and researchers have to reckon with. For KM practitioners, the model of KM project failure proposed in this paper can be used as a risk identification tool that allows KM failure factors to be pre-empted. By consciously reviewing the four main failure factors against the stages in which they emerge in the KM project lifecycle, the likelihood of failure can be minimised. For KM researchers, this paper serves as a starting point for a few possible future research directions. One is to take a deductive research approach and determine empirically the relative strength of each failure category using the model of KM project failure. Alternatively, more case studies can be reviewed to validate, refine or add to the overall completeness of the model. Another research direction is to investigate the relationships among variables such as the project management skills of a manager, the nature of the KM project and the likelihood of KM project failure. By inviting greater inquiring into the study of KM project failure, hopefully, negative consequences such as lost time, wasted resources and a dampened morale can be averted.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper attempts to understand the reasons for knowledge management (KM) project failure.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Five well-documented cases of KM project failure in the current literature are reviewed. For each case, the authors examine the circumstantial elements of the failure, including the rationale and intended objectives of the KM project, the outcomes of the project and the reasons that led to project failure.\nFindings: - From the review, two observations are made. First, KM failure factors fall into four distinct categories, namely, technology, culture, content, and project management. Second, KM projects can be traced along a three-stage lifecycle, comprising initiation, implementation, and integration.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The findings are discussed and finally synthesized into a model of KM project failure. The model serves as a starting-point for future research in KM project implementation.\nPractical implications: - Practitioners may use the model as a risk identification tool for KM project implementation.\nOriginality/value: - This paper highlights the fact that KM project failure is a reality with which both practitioners and researchers have to reckon. Additionally, it leverages on the experiences of five KM failure cases and develops a model that allows KM failure factors to be pre-empted.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Universities and smart specialisation strategy: From third mission to sustainable development co-creation
|
[
"Higher education",
"Entrepreneurship",
"Sustainability",
"Regional development",
"Smart specialisation",
"Third and fourth mission"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Globalisation and the rise of the knowledge economy have contributed to redefining and extending the roles of universities in society. Together with teaching (first mission) and researching (second mission), the third-mission concept was suggested to identify interactions between universities and the rest of the society (Molas-Gallart et al., 2002). Commonly, practical applications of this concept would mainly refer to entrepreneurial universities, where technological transfer, patents and spin-offs are aimed at \"improving regional or national economic performance as well as the university's financial vantage and that of its faculty\" (Etzkowitz et al., 2000, p. 313).\n2. Theoretical framework: In the current globalised world, knowledge has become the most important resource (Drucker, 1993), able to rethink and innovate economies. Within this context, universities and higher education institutions (HEIs) are asked to reconsider their role in society and their contribution to regional, economic, social and cultural development (Rinaldi, 2012). As Arbo and Benneworth (2007) note, globalisation is being accompanied by a regionalisation process and HEIs are currently expected to contribute to the development of the territory where they are embedded. This concept has been renamed the \"emerging of glocalizing\", that is, a globalising and localising path made of complex, non-linear and dynamic processes of knowledge creation (Carayannis and Campbell, 2012) involving international networks of regions and stakeholders. At a regional level, universities nowadays have to deal with, and are involved in, the development of clusters or groups of geographically related components that can mobilise in a particular way as the economy agglomerates (Gouvea et al., 2013).\n3. Methodology: Within the theoretical debate described in the previous paragraph, a case study approach has been adopted to illustrate the path towards the third and fourth mission implemented by the University of Macerata over the last few years. The selection of a case study methodology allowed for a holistic and comprehensive examination of the University of Macerata's strategy. The case study protocol used is based on Yin (2009), Stake (1995) and Tellis (1997): during the initial phases of the research design an action research approach was adopted (Santini and Cavicchi, 2014). An action research approach aims to reduce the gap between theory and practice and facilitate knowledge dissemination, by stimulating flexibility and responsiveness in research through critical reflection (Cavicchi et al., 2014; Dick, 2002). A case study methodology has been selected because it was necessary to understand social complex phenomena, and this method allows investigators \"to retain the holistic and meaningful characteristics of real-life events\" (Yin, 2009, p. 4). Moreover, four out of five authors were personally involved in the activities carried out by the university in their roles as rector, vice-rector for third-mission activity, delegate for internationalisation at the Department of Education and postdoc researcher organising stakeholder engagement activities. The fifth author, an expert in management education, was spending a visiting period at UNIMC when a brainstorming session on third-mission activities was performed, reflecting on the authors' experience.\n4. The case of the University of Macerata: Within SSH-oriented universities, the case of the University of Macerata can be useful for demonstrating the role of this kind of university in the knowledge society/knowledge economy framework. UNIMC is the only university in Italy exclusively focused on humanities and social sciences.\n5. Discussion: The case of the University of Macerata shows how an exclusively SSH-focused university can indeed support different third- and fourth-mission activities. In line with Kempton et al.'s (2013) findings, it appears that these activities can be related to broader roles universities can assume to support regions and enhance capacities for designing and implementing S3.\n6. Conclusion: Universities' missions moved from merely teaching and research, with some service to the university community, to entrepreneurship, community engagement and sustainable development (Rubens et al., 2017). The emergence of the \"quadruple helix\" model, involving universities, governments, businesses and civil society, recognises a new role for SSH universities: innovation, in fact, does not lie in technology only, but needs to be aware of the nature of demand and should move towards a more societal focus (van Winden and de Carvalho, 2015).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The paper analyses the emerging role of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) universities in contemporary society via third- and fourth-mission activities. In particular, the paper investigates the potential contributions that SSH universities can offer in developing and enhancing capacities, supporting the changing conception of innovation coherently through a Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) approach.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The case study presents multiple third- and fourth-mission activities carried out by the University of Macerata (Italy). The activities are framed according to the roles universities could have in supporting S3.\nFindings: Within third- and fourth-mission activities, SSH universities can play different and broader roles (generative, absorptive, collaborative and leadership), which could support regions in designing and implementing S3.\nPractical implications: The paper shows the important contributions that SSH universities can make in their regions, both to support S3 and enhance the transition to sustainable development.\nSocial implications: The article emphasises SSH universities' multiple contributions to sustainable development and to innovation in the knowledge society/economy framework.\nOriginality/value: This case study captures SSH universities' contributions to S3 and the wider innovation paradigm, by highlighting their transformational effect on regional economies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Servant leadership and proactive customer service performance
|
[
"Servant leadership",
"Customer orientation",
"Contingent self-esteem",
"Harmonious passion",
"Proactive customer service performance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Servant leadership, which is a unique leadership that stresses the responsibility of leaders to facilitate others' development and success (Ehrhart, 2004), has been indicated to be a particularly crucial leadership style in hospitality industry (Brownell, 2010; Ling et al., 2016; Zou et al., 2015). Because the tenet of servant leadership exactly accords with the purpose of creating excellent service in hospitality industry, some hospitality organizations include servant leadership principles as their operation philosophies, such as Ritz Hotel (Brownell, 2010; Ling et al., 2016). Given its importance in hospitality industry, a growing body of research has paid attention to this field and related servant leadership to hospitality employees' work-related attitudes and behaviors, including job engagement (Ling et al., 2017), psychological well-being (Bouzari and Karatepe, 2017; Hsiao et al., 2015), customer-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (Wu et al., 2013), helping behavior (Zou et al., 2015) and service quality (Koyuncu et al., 2014; Ling et al., 2016).\n2. Theory and Hypotheses: 2.1 Servant leadership\n3. Methods: 3.1 Data collection\n4. Results: 4.1 Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs)\n5. Discussion and conclusions: 5.1 Conclusions\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of servant leadership on hospitality employees' proactive customer service performance (PCSP) by focusing on the sequential mediating roles of harmonious passion and customer orientation and the moderating role of others' approval of contingent self-esteem.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study uses structural equation modeling with the four-wave data collected from eight Chinese hotels.\nFindings: This study finds that servant leadership can promote hospitality employees' PCSP by sequentially boosting their harmonious passion for work and customer orientation. Moreover, others' approval of contingent self-esteem strengthens servant leadership's effect on harmonious passion for work.\nOriginality/value: First, this study extends the servant leadership research by extending its outcome to hospitality employees' PCSP. Second, this study enriches the understanding of the mediating mechanism between servant leadership and PCSP. Third, this study advances the research on servant leadership by identifying the moderating effect of employees' others' approval of contingent self-esteem between servant leadership and harmonious passion.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Understanding passwords - a taxonomy of password creation strategies
|
[
"Computer security",
"Strategies",
"Passwords",
"Classification",
"Categorization"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In today's world, information and communications technology (ICT) is tightly integrated with most individual's lives. For our everyday life, using ICT to keep up with friends and family, keep track of personal economy, shopping, work and more is natural. Almost everyone is using their computers for work and in their spare time. One could argue that the online world has come to be a digital mirror of reality. Everything, in reality, has a place online. Much like having a lock and key to protect what is of importance in reality and passports to prove your identity, the ability of identifying yourself and what you are allowed to access is of high importance in the digital world. To prove one's identity online, and thus, proving yourself to be the owner of the account, authentication is used (Nielsen et al., 2014). One of the easiest and, perhaps, most common ways to authenticate to a computer system is to use passwords (Nielsen et al., 2014; Houshmand and Aggarwal, 2017). In the digital world, a user commonly has a multitude of different passwords and when users create their passwords, they often use a strategy to make the password easy to remember (Zviran and Haga, 1990; Ur et al., 2015; Stobert and Biddle, 2014). As discussed by Pfleeger et al. (2015) this could be explained by the users being afraid that they will forget their passwords if they are too complex.\n2. Motivation: As previously mentioned, using passwords is a very common type of authentication. Even with the advances in multi-factor authentication, strong passwords remains of outmost importance to repel attackers. As of today, almost any organization will be supported by IT, and the information security of that organization is, to some degree, dependent on secure authentication mechanisms being used by the users. As such, using various methods to influence or enforce the users to create strong passwords is a common practice that includes establishing written policies, using password meters and more (Wheeler, 2016). Another way to maintain the security of a computer system is by actually attempting to hack it to find weaknesses, an approach commonly known as penetration testing. As demonstrated by Morris and Thompson (1979), this practice has been in use for a long time. In a more recent example, Denis et al. (2016) argue that penetration testing is used to highlight security issues and discusses that one common part of penetration testing concerns attempting to crack passwords.\n3. Methodology: This study was conducted in three steps beginning with a survey among forensic practitioners and analysis of background data gathered from the Internet and the research community. This step was not intended to provide all the information needed to create a complete model of all password creation strategies. Rather, this step provided information that was used to create a draft model used as input to the second step in the research process. In the second step, interviews were used to discuss the draft model with three computer forensic experts before the model was updated based on the information from the interviews. The interviews were held in a semi-structured fashion and then transcribed and analyzed using thematic coding, as described by Robson (2011). This second step was performed in an iterative manner and continued until all participants were satisfied with the model.\n4. Results: This section presents the results of our study. First, the related literature used in conjunction with the survey to craft the draft model is briefly presented. Next, each step in the research process is presented in the upcoming sub-sections.\n5. Discussion: During the interviews held in this study it became evident that even if passwords remain the most common means of authentication, other means such as biometric locks and pattern locks are gaining in popularity. Also, combinations of authentication methods, multifactor authentication, is increasing in use. Considering other means of authentication was an ongoing discussion during this study, however, as the purpose was to study passwords exclusively, other means of authentication has not been considered. While one could argue that surveying patterns, biometrics and more, passwords and password security will remain important and relevant in the future and studying all areas in-depth is, while important, not relevant in one study.\n6. Conclusion: The aim of this study was to develop a model to classify passwords based on strategies used to create the password. The aim was met using a three-step research process that began with a survey that collected information about what types of passwords that had been encountered by computer forensic experts in Sweden. Data from the available literature were also collected in this step that resulted in a draft model that was used as input to the next step of the process.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Using authentication to secure data and accounts has grown to be a natural part of computing. Even if several authentication methods are in existence, using passwords remains the most common type of authentication. As long and complex passwords are encouraged by research studies and practitioners alike, computer users design passwords using strategies that enable them to remember their passwords. This paper aims to present a taxonomy of those password creation strategies in the form of a model describing various strategies used to create passwords.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study was conducted in a three-step process beginning with a short survey among forensic experts within the Swedish police. The model was then developed by a series of iterative semi-structured interviews with forensic experts. In the third and final step, the model was validated on 5,000 passwords gathered from 50 different password databases that have leaked to the internet.\nFindings: The result of this study is a taxonomy of password creation strategies presented as a model that describes the strategies as properties that a password can hold. Any given password can be classified as holding one or more of the properties outlined in the model.\nOriginality/value: On an abstract level, this study provides insight into password creation strategies. As such, the model can be used as a tool for research and education. It can also be used by practitioners in, for instance, penetration testing to map the most used password creation strategies in a domain or by forensic experts when designing dictionary attacks.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Does aging and off-farm employment hinder farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology in the Loess Plateau?
|
[
"Social network",
"Aging",
"Off-farm employment",
"Soil and water conservation technology",
"Technology cognition"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: China is one of the countries with the most serious soil erosion in the world. The Loess Plateau is the most serious area of soil erosion in China. The Loess Plateau is facing serious ecological and environmental problems such as soil erosion. Farmers' unreasonable agricultural production activities aggravate soil erosion and restrict the sustainable development of agriculture. Practice shows that soil and water conservation technology can promote rural economic development, increase land productivity and farmers' income (Shao and Jiang, 2008), reduce soil erosion and poverty (Kuang and Luo, 2010). Therefore, promoting soil and water conservation technology is the main way to control soil erosion in the Loess Plateau. However, in reality, the adoption rate of soil and water conservation technology in the Loess Plateau is low, and the effect is not ideal, which puts the popularization of water and soil conservation technology in a dilemma (Liu et al., 2009).\n2. Theoretical analysis: 2.1 Impact of aging on farmers' technology adoption behavior\n3. Data sources, variable selection and model methods: 3.1 Data sources\n4. Estimated results and analysis: In this section, we use Stata14.0 software to estimate models. The results are shown in Table VI. In Table VI, Model 1 is the estimation result obtained from Formula (1). Model 2 is an estimate of the interaction between aging and social network. Model 3 is an estimate of the interaction between off-farm employment and social network, this model investigates the moderating effect of social network on the impact of aging and off-farm employment on farmers' adoption behavior soil and water conservation technology.\n5. Conclusions and enlightenment: Based on a rural survey data in the Loess Plateau consisting of 1,152 farm households in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces, this article empirically analyzes the effects of aging, off-farm employment, social network and technology cognition on farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. The main conclusions are as follows: first, aging and off-farm employment restrained farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. Social network has promoted farmers' technology adoption behavior. Second, social network has alleviated the effect of aging and off-farm employment on restraining farmers' soil and water conservation technology adoption behavior. Third, aging and off-farm employment restrained farmers' soil and water conservation technology cognition, social network plays a role in alleviating the relationship of aging and off-farm employment on farmers' cognition of soil and water conservation technology. Technology cognition plays a mediating role in the impact of social network on farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Based on the survey data of 1,152 households in three provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia on the Loess Plateau, this paper aims to empirically analyze the impact of aging and off-farm employment on farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. This paper analyzes the moderating effect of social network and the mediating effect of technological cognition in this impact relationship.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on the above analysis, the second part of this paper is based on relevant theories and constructs a theoretical model of the relationship of aging, off-farm employment, social network, technology cognition and farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. The third part introduces research methods, variable selection and descriptive statistics analysis of variables. The fourth part, based on the data of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces in the Loess Plateau in 2016, empirically analyzes the impact of aging, off-farm employment and social network on the farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. This paper further examines the moderating effect of social network and the mediating effect of technology cognition in this influence relationship. Finally, based on the findings of the empirical study, this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions.\nFindings: First, aging and off-farm employment have a significant negative impact on farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology, while social network has a significant positive effect. Second, social network has alleviated the effect of aging and off-farm employment on restraining farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. Third, aging and off-farm employment have restrained farmers' cognition of soil and water conservation technology. Social network has promoted farmers' cognition of soil and water conservation technology. Social network plays a moderating role in the impact of aging and off-farm employment on farmers' cognition of soil and water conservation technology. Technology cognition plays a mediating role in the impact of social network on farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology.\nOriginality/value: This paper integrates the aging, off-farm employment and social network into the same analytical framework and reveals their impact on farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology and its action mechanism, which enriches the impact of human capital and social network on farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. Then taking the social network as a moderator variable, the paper verifies its moderating effect on the relationship of aging, off-farm employment and farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology. Farmers' technology cognition should be included in the analysis framework to examine the impact of aging, off-farm employment and social network on farmers' cognition of soil and water conservation technology. Taking the technology cognition as a mediator variable, the paper verifies its mediating effect on the relationship of aging, off-farm employment and farmers' adoption behavior of soil and water conservation technology.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
It's complicated: a multi-method approach to broadening participation in STEM
|
[
"Gender",
"Organizational culture",
"Higher education",
"Career development",
"Sciences",
"Diversification"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In the sections that follow, we detail what has emerged from our experiences. We begin by presenting a range of data and data sources that shed light on how the various components of the transformation process fit together into a complex, dynamical whole and where the most pressing issues arose. We then introduce several initiatives and programs that emanated from this process, discussing why some of these initiatives were successful while others were not, as well as how the successful initiatives continue to evolve as our institution and its personnel change and grow.\nBackground: The National Science Foundation ADVANCE program aims to increase the participation and advancement of female faculty in academic science, mathematics, engineering, and technology-related departments (www.nsf.gov/advance). The largest and most significant ADVANCE funding mechanism is the Institutional Transformation (IT) award, given to institutions of higher education to support the development of innovative organizational change strategies that produce comprehensive change. IT projects are also expected to contribute new research on gender equity in the STEM disciplines.\nInstitutional data: As part of the ADVANCE program's requirements, UC LEAF gathered institutional data to track not only recruitment and retention, but also faculty movement within the institution (e.g. promotion to tenure or moves off the tenure track into teaching or administrative roles). Initial analysis of these data suggested that at UC, recruitment and hiring are not substantial barriers to broadening participation (BP). Over the past three years, women comprised 38 percent of new hires in the sciences, math and engineering. This was up from a 31 percent ten-year averaged baseline. Moreover, 64 percent of women hired over the past three years were white, down from 73 percent (ten-year baseline period). Data also indicate that UC has neither salary nor space disparities, when controlling for rank, discipline and time at UC.\nData-informed interventions: Our findings, in particular, suggested three strategies to better retain and promote women and URM faculty in STEM: improve professional networks; realign policy documents and departmental practices to better reflect faculty's values (Mitchneck et al., 2016); and improve departmental climates. Importantly, we aimed to make these changes in a way that reinforces rather than subverts faculty's personal and professional goals and allows for institutions to evolve in a more organic way that better reflects the needs, preferences, and commitments of their diverse faculty.\nComplexity in IT: Though we have presented our data and programmatic activities above in a linear fashion, our experiences have shown us that successful initiatives mutually support one another, such that they interact with each other in a dynamic and rather unpredictable way. Consider these two examples: through our mini-grant program, we provided support for leadership training for the woman who then served as the first WIMS chair. Her advocacy for changing the conditions for women in the College of Medicine led to the appointment of an Associate Dean for Women, who then collaborated with WIMS and with institutional partners to alter the family leave policies for those faculty outside the union. The new language describing what heads and faculty should discuss in their initial meetings dovetailed with our creation of the CDP in that it provides both heads and faculty an easy way to initiate their discussions of career trajectory. In several departments now, heads provide the CDP to their new faculty, who then take them to their mentors as a project for them to work on together. Bringing the discussion of career goals out into the open has also fed into the BFA, who are now working with the Provost's office to develop a way to reward URM faculty who spend additional time informally mentoring URM students.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: A lot is known about systemic barriers to broadening participation (BP) in STEM. Empirical research has demonstrated the existence and impact of implicit bias, stereotype threat, and micro-aggressions on a sense of belonging, organizational productivity and leadership opportunities. We also know that achieving greater participation of women and faculty of color in the STEM disciplines is complicated and depends on altering complex and multi-layered interactions between activities and actors. Further, because researcher and institutional goals vary as a function of target population and context, generalizable models can struggle in the face of larger BP efforts. Through the authors experience as an NSF ADVANCE-IT awardee, the authors believe that a dynamic, multi-scaled and organizational level approach is required to reflect the reciprocal dialogue among research questions, best practices, tailored applications and quantifiable goals. The authors describe several examples of research, programming activities and program evaluation that illustrate this approach. In particular, the authors describe both the programming successes and challenges, with the aim of helping others to avoid common mistakes by articulating very broad and, the authors' hope, generalizable \"lessons learned.\" The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To better understand the barriers for women in STEM, the authors utilized an iterative methodology. Specifically, the authors conducted a social network analysis, an exit survey of departed faculty, longitudinal analysis of career trajectories and research productivity, and a survey on the interaction between values and climate.\nFindings: The analyses suggest three strategies better retain women in STEM: improve women's professional networks; re-aling policy documents and departmental practices to better reflect faculty values; and improve departmental climate.\nPractical implications: The pay-off for using this more complex research approach to triangulate onto specific challenges is that the interventions are more likely to be successful, with a longer-lasting impact.\nOriginality/value: With continuous institutional research, metric refinement, and program evaluation the authors are better able to develop targeted programming, policy reform, and changes in institutional practice. The interventions should result in permanent institutional and systemic change by integrating multi-method qualitative and quantitative research into BP practices, which the authors couple with longitudinal analysis that can quantify success of the authors' efforts.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Linking continuous improvement to manufacturing performance
|
[
"Lean manufacturing",
"Kaizen",
"Incremental innovation",
"Routine dynamics",
"Standard operating procedures",
"Toyota motor"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In recent years, the global business environment has become more turbulent and complex and firms must meet increasing customer demands by improving their capabilities related to quality, cost, production lead time and flexibility (Anand et al., 2009; El-Khalil, 2014; Fujimoto, 2014; Singh and Singh, 2015; Teece et al., 1997). These important indicators of competitiveness can simultaneously be improved by the Toyota production system (TPS), also known among western academics and practitioners as the lean production system (LPS), which has been highlighted in several extant studies (Adler et al., 1999; Cusumano, 1994; El-Khalil and Zeaiter, 2015; Fujimoto, 2007; Singh and Singh, 2015). Womack et al. (1990) also stated that the strength of Japanese firms such as Toyota lies in the LPS, which consists of a number of processes and concepts (The more important among these processes and concepts are total quality control (TQC), total productive maintenance (TPM) , set pallet system or set parts supply system (SPS), Seven Wastes and 5S.), and that LPS, or at least its most important components, can successfully be implemented in overseas factories (El-Khalil and Zeaiter, 2015; Womack et al., 1990). However, the improvement of business performance, which is arguably the ultimate measure of success of this implementation, is not always guaranteed, especially, when the LPS is viewed not as a company-wide system but as a mere manufacturing technique that does not affect other organizational functions and activities (Iwao, 2015). In addition, even when the LPS is formally adopted, it may not bring the expected benefits if its basic principles are not deeply rooted in the entire organization and the continuous improvement activities do not significantly increase in number and intensity (Womack and Jones, 2010). Hence, swift and successful implementation of continuous improvement is necessary if firms want to obtain the maximum benefit from LPS (Bessant, 1992). For example, some firms try to benchmark best practices such as LPS in order to facilitate continuous improvement (Hong et al., 2012); however, there appears to be no clear causal relationship between the introduction of LPS and improvement in manufacturing performance driven by continuous improvement.\nLiterature review: In the existing literature, two aspects of LPS have gained the attention of researchers. One is its static aspect, where the system is seen as a bundle of manufacturing methods (Womack et al., 1990), and the other has a more dynamic nature (Imai, 1986; Womack and Jones, 2010), focusing on the improvement capability of the firm (Fujimoto, 1999; Teece et al., 1997). Taiichi Ono, the individual with the largest contribution toward the foundation of TPS, has stated that the true nature of TPS is continuous improvement (Ono, 1988). In other words, the lean way of thinking generates improvements in factories every day, and these improvements in turn lead to better quality, improved production lead time, flexibility and lower cost (Koike, 1998; Monden, 1983; Womack and Jones, 2010). The underlying principles and concepts of continuous improvement are discussed in Shingo (1981) and Imai (1986). However, since continuous improvement is an organizational activity, it needs to be discussed from the perspective of organizational theory as well (Choi, 1995; Boer and Gertsen, 2003; Singh and Singh, 2015).\nMethod: This study chooses a case study methodology as it is the appropriate research strategy when seeking answers to questions like \"why\" and \"how\" (Yin, 1994). More specifically, case studies allow for hypothesis testing using real examples although there are no statistical evidences. However, even if our hypothesis is supported, in the current research setting we cannot state statistically with certainty what factors enable or facilitate the minimization of the range of actions that employees can take. From a methodological point of view (Eisenhardt, 1989), answering this question involves building another hypothesis using inductive analysis of the case (Eisenhardt et al., 2016). This is also one of the goals of this study and this study is not limited to hypothesis testing only.\nCase study: Toyota motor and Matsuo construction: 4.1 Improvement activities at Toyota\nDiscussion: From the above case studies, we conclude that minimizing the range of actions is necessary to ensure that the intended improvement effect of operational change is obtained. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis presented in the literature review section, though it has not been tested statistically. Thus, the range of actions could be an important factor that inhibits or facilitates the contribution of improvement activities toward performance improvement. Moreover, we have obtained sufficient information from our comparative case study that allows us to build a hypothesis regarding a factor that affects the ability of an organization to narrow the range of action available to its members. This factor is the responsibility of performance, or more specifically, whether artifacts or employees are responsible for performance.\nConclusion: Prior research has often argued that TPS encourages improvement activities and contributes toward performance improvement, especially in the field of manufacturing. However, this is not necessarily true, even for Japanese firms that have introduced TPS in their plants with direct support from Toyota. To demonstrate this, we compared cases of two firms: Toyota--a firm with extensive improvement activities that contribute to better performance and where TPS was first introduced--and Matsuo Construction--a firm that has adopted TPS and conducts numerous improvement activities but saw little performance improvement. Thus, we attempt to shed light on a factor that may inhibit or facilitate the contribution of improvement activities to performance, especially at the shop floor. This factor is the responsibility of performance, or more specifically, whether artifacts or employees are responsible for performance. Furthermore, we also pointed out that while the material aspect of organizational routines may sometimes constrain the diversity of organizational behavior, it may also promote creativity in organizations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine factors that inhibit and facilitate the contribution of continuous improvement activities to advance performance in \"lean\" factories.\nDesign/methodology/approach: From the perspective of the routine dynamics theory, this paper considers the possibility of changes in the standard operating procedures (SOPs) made in the course of continuous improvement activities being ignored by employees. This paper builds a hypothesis predicting that firms where employees ignore changes in the SOP cannot achieve the intended improvement effect of these changes. This hypothesis is confirmed with comparative case studies of Toyota and Matsuo.\nFindings: At Toyota there is an incentive to perform operations according to the SOP, while at Matsuo this incentive is not present. This difference means that process improvement activities at Toyota generate changes in manufacturing operations, while at Matsuo, although the SOP has been changed, workers continue to perform operations according to the old SOP and fail to advance performance. This paper argues that the presence/absence of an incentive to perform operations according to the SOP is dependent on whether the responsibility of the performance lies with the SOPs or employees. Additionally, this paper finds that the SOP not only limits employees' creativities but also supports creative activities for the development of continuous improvement as an organizational activity.\nResearch limitations/implications: The generalization of our findings requires statistical support for which an extensive subsequent sampling survey including non-Japanese firms is necessary.\nOriginality/value: This study makes a new suggestion regarding the theory of routine dynamics and the fields of operations management: adequate management of consistency between the three aspects (material, ostensive and performative) of organizational routines is important for lean manufacturing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Gaining, maintaining and repairing organisational legitimacy: When to report and when not to report
|
[
"Case study",
"Sustainability reporting",
"Legitimacy theory",
"Stakeholder salience",
"Direct action"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The purpose of this paper is to examine how a company responds to environmental issues and legitimacy threats through direct actions and/or external reporting. The present study takes a fresh perspective by exploring the behaviour of a company in response to real environmental issues uncovered during the case study investigation. It illustrates how direct action and/or external reporting are strategic choices to manage organisational legitimacy in response to stakeholder salience. A large company in New Zealand operating in an environmentally sensitive industry forms the case study context.\n2. Social and environmental reporting and decision-making: Unerman and Chapman (2014; see also Brown and Fraser, 2006) argue that an important element of research is \"maintaining an openness to review and update theoretical frameworks in use, and to develop novel theoretical framings, if evidence and understandings from new studies are to make ongoing and substantive contributions to evaluating, critiquing and developing policy and practice\" (p. 386). In doing so, we suggest that they highlight an important role for in-depth explorations of the organisational behaviours which underpin external reporting.\n3. Legitimacy and stakeholder relationships: 3.1 Legitimacy\n4. Methods: An in-depth case study (Stake, 1995; Lee and Saunders, 2017) was conducted at the focal case company and involved considerable interaction with employees, senior managers and executives and stakeholders from numerous site locations over nine months. Data collection was holistic with the primary researcher embedded in the context of the company's operations with key staff. The case study can be considered emergent (Lee and Saunders, 2017) in that several issues that form the basis for in-depth analysis in this paper emerged during the course of the investigation. Analysis was interpretive (Yanow and Schwartz-Shea, 2015) combining the primary researcher's own insights into the research context from the time spent on-site. These views were thoroughly discussed with the other researchers involved in the study to refine interpretations in an iterative process.\n5. Case study organisation and legitimacy issues: The case organisation is the New Zealand subsidiary of a large multinational company located across tens of countries. The organisation (and the entire industry) is subject to extensive scrutiny, given high greenhouse gas emissions in its supply chain and the possibility of environmental and aesthetic \"harm\" in particular localities. The subsidiary is subject to regulatory review under New Zealand's Resource Management Act (1991) under which stakeholders have a significant voice in debating (and opposing) the externalities of the company's operations. A large, soon-to-be-obsolete operating site in New Zealand has initiated debate over the company's future in the country. Potentially contested views of the company's legitimacy and the size and shape of its operations place it in a \"debated legitimacy\" context (Deephouse et al., 2017).\n6. Findings and analysis: 6.1 Water overflow on company land (maintaining legitimacy)\n7. Discussion: The preceding vignettes highlight the complexity of legitimacy management and how understandings of legitimacy in accounting need to shift from narrow examinations of external report disclosures towards deeper, fuller explorations of internal \"thinking\", processes and behaviours of firms (Adams, 2008; Dumay et al., 2015). The first two vignettes illustrate how direct action with salient stakeholders is strategically used to manipulate relationships in order to maintain organisational legitimacy. This is demonstrated where the company was able to keep regulators at an arm's length because of the strong relationship key internal staff had built with monitoring officials. Thus, a potential breach at Alpha which may have affected its license to operate was shielded from external scrutiny by managing salient stakeholders close to the site, allowing the company to remedy the issue at its own pace.\n8. Conclusion: This study has shown how a company chooses to report or not to report on several short- and long-term environmental issues. Thus, the study builds on recent literature, developing an important distinction between legitimacy-enhancing actions and legitimating reporting actions. In particular, the novel empirical setting of a large company operating in an environmentally sensitive industry illustrates how direct actions to gain, maintain and repair legitimacy with stakeholders should be distinguished from external reporting as a tool to manage legitimacy. The choice over whether direct action or external reporting should be used in organisational attempts to manage legitimacy is affected by the visibility of the issue, the salience of the stakeholders involved and the stakeholder networks affected.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how legitimacy is gained, maintained or repaired through direct action with salient stakeholders and/or through external reporting, by using a number of empirical case vignettes within a single case study organisation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study investigates a foreign affiliate of a large multinational organisation involved in an environmentally sensitive industry. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with 26 participants, organisational reports and participation in the organisation's annual environmental management seminar and a stakeholder engagement meeting.\nFindings: Four vignettes featuring environmental issues illustrate the complexity of organisational responses. Issue visibility, stakeholder salience and stakeholder interconnectedness influence a company's action to manage legitimacy. In the short-term, environmental issues which affected salient stakeholders resulted in swift and direct action to protect pragmatic legitimacy, but external reporting did not feature in legitimacy management efforts. Highly visible issues to the public, regulators and the media, however, resulted in direct action together with external reporting to manage wider stakeholder perceptions. External reporting was used superficially, along with a broad suite of communication strategies, to gain legitimacy in the long-term decision about the company's future in New Zealand.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper outlines how episodic encounters to manage strategic legitimacy with salient stakeholders in the short-term are theoretically distinct, but nonetheless linked to continual efforts to maintain institutional legitimacy. Case vignettes highlight how pragmatic legitimacy via dispositional legitimacy can be managed with direct action in the short-term to influence a limited range of salient stakeholders. The way external reporting features in legitimacy management is limited, although this has predominantly been the focus of prior research. Only where an environmental incident damages legitimacy to a larger number of stakeholders is external reporting also used to buttress community support.\nOriginality/value: The concept of legitimacy is comprehensively applied, linking the strategic and institutional arms of legitimacy and illustrating how episodic actions are taken to manage legitimacy in the short-term with continual efforts to manage legitimacy in the long-term. Stakeholder salience and networks are brought in as novel theoretical extensions to provide a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between these key concepts with a unique case study.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Healthcare professionals with calling are less likely to be burned out: the role of social worth and career stage
|
[
"Calling",
"Burnout",
"Social worth",
"Aging",
"Career stage"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Burnout among healthcare professionals has reached rampant levels (Dyrbye et al., 2014; Reith, 2018; Shanafelt et al., 2012) with far-reaching implications for healthcare organizations, patients and healthcare professionals themselves (Maslach and Schaufeli, 2017; McHugh et al., 2011; Salyers et al., 2017; Schaufeli et al., 2009). Accordingly, it seems crucial to investigate the factors related to burnout. One relevant construct widely studied in the vocational psychology field is the concept of calling. A substantial body of research has documented robust work-related well-being benefits for individuals with a strong sense of calling (Duffy and Dik, 2013; Duffy et al., 2018). The construct is particularly relevant for those in the healthcare profession, which has been long considered an area of work where callings are prevalent (e.g. Borges et al., 2013; Bott et al., 2017; Duffy et al., 2011; Goodin et al., 2014; Vinje and Mittelmark, 2007).There is an ongoing debate around the relation between calling and burnout and this link is still poorly understood. Despite some indices about increased risks for mental health among individuals with an intense calling (Bunderson and Thompson, 2009; Schabram and Maitlis, 2017; Vinje and Mittelmark, 2007), studies on calling and burnout fail to support these indices and consistently document an opposite finding, namely a burnout-decreasing effect of calling (Boyd, 2010; Gong et al., 2013; Hagmaier et al., 2013; Vercambre et al., 2009; Yoon et al., 2017). A recent meta-analysis (Dobrow Riza et al., 2019) as well as a systematic review (Thompson and Bunderson, 2019) corroborate this evidence by reporting beneficial effects of calling on a variety of mental health indicators. However, previous research did not investigate the specific mechanisms linking calling and burnout; thus, we still do not know why and when calling may reduce burnout.The current study addresses this gap in the literature by testing a model of calling and burnout with social worth as a mediator and career stage as a moderator. We focus on the perception of the current career as a calling (hereafter referred to as calling). We rely on the Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory which holds that individuals strain to protect their resources, while burnout occurs in the context of chronic resources loss (Hobfoll et al., 2018). COR Theory has been applied in prior research to explain the development of burnout (Hobfoll and Freedy, 2017) and could be a fruitful framework to better understand the calling-burnout relation. Based on COR Theory (Hobfoll, 1989; Hobfoll et al., 2018), we identify social worth as an important social resource connecting burnout reduction to calling. Moreover, COR Theory suggests that career stage may play an important role here, as employees in early vs late-career stages may possess different resource levels (Demerouti et al., 2012; Salmela-Aro and Upadyaya, 2018) and gaining resources may have different value. Hence, we conceptualize career stage as an important boundary condition in the relationships between calling, social worth and burnout.By investigating the calling-burnout link, revealing that calling reduces burnout, and ascertaining why and when this happens, our study makes several contributions to the career literature. First, following the rationale of COR Theory (Hobfoll et al., 2018), we analyze the theoretically implied importance of social worth in the relation between calling and burnout. This is a new and valuable contribution to the literature. Although current research predominantly focuses on personal attitudes as outcomes of calling (Dobrow Riza et al., 2019; Thompson and Bunderson, 2019), the interpersonal lens has received less scholarly attention. Yet, an interpersonal lens is crucial in understanding the correlates of calling, as calling strongly relates to prosocial behaviors and shapes the quality of social ties at work, which, in turn, inform about the social value of calling-induced actions (Wrzesniewski et al., 2003). In this way, our study is an important contribution to the knowledge of the relational aspects of calling (Cardador and Caza, 2012; Wrzesniewski et al., 2003).Second, our study reveals career stage as an important boundary condition in the relationships between calling, social worth and burnout. Prior research on calling often focused on one particular career stage, i.e. either young (e.g. Creed et al., 2014; Dobrow, 2013) or mature individuals (e.g. Duffy et al., 2017; Hirschi et al., 2019) but rarely compared age groups in one study. However, as research points to the changing importance of work meaningfulness over career course (Baltes et al., 2012), the perceptions of calling may result in different well-being outcomes depending on the career stage. Thus, in the current study, we use a large employee sample covering the entire career course to determine possible moderating effects of career stage. Finally, the study yields important implications for practitioners, as healthcare is one of the typical professions generally recognized as being closely associated with a notion of calling (e.g. Duffy et al., 2011) as well as burnout (e.g. Reith, 2018).\nTheoretical background: Burnout among healthcare professionals\nMethod: Research context\nResults: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion: Research on calling in different career stages and its links to burnout has been scarce. In this study, we developed and tested a model explaining the negative relation of calling and burnout via perceived social worth and the moderating role of career stage in these relations.We first examined the relation between calling, social worth and burnout. In line with the COR Theory (Hobfoll et al., 2018) and previous quantitative studies (Boyd, 2010; Hagmaier et al., 2013; Vercambre et al., 2009; Yoon et al., 2017), our data showed a negative bivariate correlation, such that individuals with a stronger calling experienced less burnout. Our analyses further revealed that calling is positively related to social worth and social worth is negatively related to burnout. Furthermore, social worth mediated the relation of calling and burnout. The results suggest that individuals with a strong sense of calling may experience less burnout when they feel that their work is valued by others (Bott et al., 2017). Theoretically, individuals with strong callings who dedicate their time to helping others may perceive a positive appreciation (Grant and Gino, 2010), which serves as a valuable resource to cope with work-related challenges and, thus, decrease the risk of burnout (Demerouti et al., 2001; Salmela-Aro and Upadyaya, 2018). In line with the propositions of the COR Theory (Hobfoll et al., 2018), this result shows that social appreciation as a personal resource may be a critical link in the relation between calling and burnout. In addition, this result extends our understanding of the relational perspective on calling (Cardador and Caza, 2012), supporting the role of personal relationships in individual sense-making at work (Wrzesniewski et al., 2003). The sense of being compelled to do meaningful work that helps people has been identified as a feature of calling that can provide benefits but also create vulnerabilities (Duffy et al., 2018). Hence, investigating the role of social worth as mediator of the relation between calling and burnout adds to the previous literature by providing the first empirical evidence for this supposition.Scholars have suggested that perceptions of calling may differ in different career stages depending on diverse environmental forces (Wrzesniewski et al., 2003). So far, only a handful of studies have investigated career stage as a factor in the perception of callings, either by exploring its development over time in younger populations (Dobrow, 2013; Duffy et al., 2011; Praskova et al., 2014; Vianello et al., 2020) or examining career stage as a direct correlate of calling (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997). Using a sample spanning over a broad career course, we found that the perception of calling is stronger for later-career individuals than for early-career individuals. This finding is consistent with Wrzesniewski et al. (1997) but differs from other studies of rather younger adult samples suggesting a declining pattern (Dobrow, 2013; Duffy et al., 2011) or no significant change of calling over time (Praskova et al., 2014). These differences may at least partially reflect the differences in the conceptualization of calling or the variances resulting from using different measures. In the current study, we used a neoclassical conceptualization of calling, which encompasses prosocial aspects that become especially important as people progress through their career course (Grant and Wade-Benzoni, 2009; Kooij et al., 2010). Growing professional experience across the career course may be associated with an increasing awareness about one's core strengths (Baltes, 1997) as well as with a personal identification with one's work (Fadjukoff et al., 2016), which reinforces the perception of calling. In this way, our findings are also compatible with the idea that calling may develop as a result of various life and career experiences (Dalla Rosa et al., 2019; Elangovan et al., 2010).Finally, drawing on career-stage literature (Hall, 2002; Super, 1984), we hypothesized that this complex set of relations between calling, social worth and burnout may depend upon the career stage that adults are in. Confirming our proposition, the relation of calling and social worth was stronger at later career stages. This finding aligns with the argument that mature individuals with increasing prosocial values and guided by their callings (Grant and Wade-Benzoni, 2009) may be more likely to gain accumulated positive feedback from their beneficiaries (e.g. patients) and colleagues. Alternatively, the finding may be also attributed to an increased fit between individual values and competencies and the supplies and requirements of the job. This fit has been seen as an inherent part of calling (Duffy et al., 2018; Hagmaier and Abele, 2012). Late-career individuals who fit job requirements well, may indeed be more valued by their social environment than their early-career counterparts who still need to work on their self-identity (Hall, 2002; Super, 1984). However, consistent with the \"gain paradox principle\" (Hobfoll et al., 2018), our findings also reveal that social worth is a stronger predictor of reduced burnout among early-career professionals. Their resource repertoire is limited (Demerouti et al., 2012), so a resource gain (i.e. increased social worth) has a stronger impact. This finding on the role of social worth enriches the career-stage literature (Hall, 2002) and improves our understanding of the resource-based view of career course (Demerouti et al., 2012).Taken together, our results suggest that social worth may be an underlying mechanism explaining why called individuals are less likely to suffer from burnout. However, this perspective does not rule out other possible underlying mechanisms of the relation, such as amplified expectations toward one's own performance (Bunderson and Thompson, 2009; Cardador and Caza, 2012; Vinje and Mittelmark, 2007) or unhealthy lifestyles (Clinton et al., 2017; Schabram and Maitlis, 2017), which may lead to higher exhaustion when increased work efforts do not yield the expected results. Future research could investigate these alternative mediators in the calling-burnout relation.Practical implications\nConclusion: In sum, this study has provided insight into the hitherto ambiguous relation between calling and burnout by exploring social worth as a mediator and career stage as a moderator within a large sample of healthcare professionals. The results were in support of the hypothesis that professionals with stronger callings are less likely to experience burnout due to increased social worth. We also find this relation is even stronger for professionals in later career stages, while perceived social worth is more vital in reducing burnout at earlier career stages. Thus, the current study provides important implications for mitigating burnout among healthcare professionals and broadens our understanding of calling outcomes at different career stages.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The association of calling with burnout is not well understood. This study investigates how calling influences burnout and what the roles of social worth and career stage are in this relation. Drawing from the Conservation of Resources Theory, we expect that calling may be negatively associated with burnout through increased social worth and that career stage moderates these relationships.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on a sample of 566 healthcare professionals, we conducted regression analyses with bootstrapping procedures to test the proposed hypotheses.\nFindings: The findings show that social worth mediates the negative relation between calling and burnout. Additionally, the positive relation between calling and social worth was more pronounced for late-career employees; yet, the negative relation between social worth and burnout was stronger for early-career employees.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest that searching and pursuing a professional calling is beneficial for individuals. Additionally, social worth is crucial in this relation and could be used to actively prevent burnout.\nOriginality/value: The study advances our understanding of the consequences of calling for employees by explaining the underlying mechanism between calling and burnout and its importance at different career stages.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Evaluating the reliability of component-based software systems
|
[
"Computer software",
"Systems software",
"Quality assurance",
"Markov processes"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Software reliability is defined as the probability that the system will perform its intended functionality under specified design limits. Software reliability techniques are aimed at reducing or eliminating failures of software systems. Existing software reliability techniques are often rooted in the field of reliability engineering in general, and hardware reliability in particular. Such approaches provide significant experience in building reliability models, and advanced mathematical formalisms for analytical reasoning. However, they are not properly gauged toward today's complex software systems and their specific challenges. In particular, existing software reliability techniques mainly address reliability modeling during a system's testing. Similar to hardware engineering, they build models of the system failure behavior by observing its run-time operation. The reliability of the system is then measured by building formalisms that explain the failure behavior of the system. Such treatment of reliability measurement, prediction, or estimation reveals defects late in the development process. Defects detected earlier in the development life cycle are less costly to mitigate (Boehm, 1991). Consequently, following traditional reliability measurement as outlined above results in an increase in the overall development costs, and prevents understanding the influence of early architectural decisions on the system's dependability. Reliability and other quality attributes must thus be built into a software system throughout the development process, and as an innate aspect of system designing. This requires developing and/or adapting reliability models to predict and measure the reliability of a software system early on (DeMarco, 1998).To clarify upcoming discussions, let us define some basic concepts: an error is a mental mistake made by the designer or programmer. A fault or a defect is the manifestation of that error in the system. It is an abnormal condition that may cause a reduction in, or loss of, the capability of a functional unit to perform a required function; it is a requirement, design, or implementation flaw or deviation from a desired or intended state (Goel, 1985). Finally, software failure is defined as the occurrence of an incorrect output as a result of an input value that is received, with respect to specification (Pham, 2002).There are fundamental differences between the nature of failures in software and hardware systems. Consequently, the reliability methods in the two field vary accordingly to accommodate these differences (Lyu, 1996; Pham, 2002). While the failure rate in hardware systems has a bathtub curve, the failure rate in a software system is statistically no increasing. In other words, a software system is not expected to become less reliable as time passes. Moreover, in a software system, failures never occur if the software is not used. This is not true of hardware systems where material deterioration can cause failures even though the system is not being used. Software reliability models are often analytical models derived from assumptions about the system, and the interpretation of those assumptions and model parameters. On the other hand, hardware reliability methods are usually derived from fitting specific distributions to failure data. This is done by extensive analysis as well as the domain experience. Finally, once defects in a software system are repaired, a new piece of software is obtained.\n2 Reliability model: A reliability model represents a vivid picture of the product's functional interdependencies providing a mode to trade-off design strategies and to identify areas for design improvement. The models are also helpful in:* identifying of critical items and single points of failure;* allocating reliability goals to portions of the design;* providing a framework for comparing estimated reliability to product goals; and* trading-off alternative fault tolerance approaches.There has been continuing interest in the policies for systems that are subject to stochastic failures, as the uncalled for failures may prove to be costly and dangerous. In this paper, the reliability behavior of component-based software system using Markov process is discussed.2.1 Background\n3 Evaluation through Markov process: The evaluation is carried out using Markov analysis, which looks at a sequence of events and analyses the tendency of one event to be followed by another. Using this analysis, one can generate a new sequence of random but related events, which resembles to the original. This Markov process is stochastic in nature which has the property that the probability of transition from a given state to any future state depends only on the present state and not based on in which it was reached.If t0<t1<t2, ... , <tn represents the points in time scale then the family of random variables {X(tn)} is said to be a Markov process provided it holds the Markovian property: Equation 1 Markov process is a sequence of n experiments in which each experiment has n possible outcomes x1,x2, ... ,xn. Each individual outcome is called a state and probability depends only on the probability of the outcome of the preceding experiment. The simplest of the Markov processes is discrete and constant over time. It is used when the sequence of experiment is completely described in terms of its states numbered 1, 2, 3, ... , n and this process can be only in one state at a prescribed time. The system is said to be discrete in time if it is examined at regular intervals.3.1 Stochastic transitional probability matrix\n4 Model assumptions: * Based on Markovian property the control flows from one software component to another software component.* The transition process continues till it attains a state called the terminal state. This quarantine the successful completion of the transitions. E-STATE denotes the terminal state and 1, 2, 3, ... , n denotes transition states corresponding to software components numbered as 1, 2, 3, ... , n. Thus, component-based software has state space 1, 2, 3, ... , n, E-STATE. The first software component C1 of the component-based software assumed to be the initial state 1.* The absence of a successful transition from initial software component C1 to E-STATE successively, the process is probable to fail unexpectedly. If such a state exists, then it is denoted by F-STATE.* Each of transient software components 1, 2, 3, ... , n is prone to failure. The component Ci has an associated reliability ri which is the probability that the software component will operate correctly when invoked and will transfer the control to other software component successfully as and when intended by the user.* Hence, the probability of failure to enter from state I to j will be (1- ri). The Markov chain for the imperfect component-based software becomes (1, 2, 3, ... , n F-STATE/E-STATE). Therefore, note that the two states, viz. F-STATE and E-STATE are mutually exclusive and that any of the transient states 1, 2, ... , n will eventually lead either to a E-STATE or a E-STATE. Software system reliability is defined to be the probability that system finally completes its task successfully without failing from transition from one software component to the other till its termination state is reached. When applied to the proposed model it is simply the probability that the Markov chain for component-based software system is finally absorbed into E-STATE rather than the F-STATE. This implies RCBSS=NAB/NSR.4.1 Notations\n5 Algorithm: COM_REL_SIMULATOR: Step 1: Initialize the counter. ST=0Step 2: Inputs a) Total Number of Software Components b) Stochastic transition matrix of Ideal State (IDTPM) for Component Based Software System c) Software Reliability Vector (RVEC) d) Total Number of simulation runs {NSR}Step 3: Evaluate stochastic transition probability matrix of imperfect state IMTPM=RVEC*IDTPMStep 4: Evaluate stochastic transition probability matrix of cumulative state CSTPMStep 5: Repeat NSR from step 6 through step 8Step 6: Initialize the local current state counter i=1Step 7: Generate a uniformly distributed random number (R)Step 8: Choose state transition path using R and CSTPM row corresponding to i. IF (0<R<=CSTPMi1) i=1; GOTO step 7; IF (CSTPMi1<R<=CSTPMi2) i=2; GOTO step 7; IF (CSTPMi (n-1)<R<=TCPMin) i=n; GOTO step 7; IF (CSTPMin <R<=CSTPMIstate) ST=ST+1 ENDIFStep 9: Evaluate the Reliability of Component Based Software Systems RCBSS=ST/NSR\n6 Results and discussion: (i) Inputs. Total number of software components Stochastic transition probability matrix of ideal state IDTPM of order n*(n+1) Software reliability vector RVEC Total number of simulation runs NSR.Table I furnishes a view of the software system reliability computed for different set of values of software component reliability by executing the simulator 100,000 cycles for each set of inputs. It is found that the component-based software system reliability increases as the component reliability increases. The following graph shows the trend related to component reliability and component-based software system reliability using the data mentioned in Table I.(ii) Inputs. Total number of software components Stochastic transition probability matrix of ideal state IDTPM of order n* (n+1) Software reliability vector RVEC Total number of simulation runs NSR.The simulator described in this paper will be of greater importance to evaluate the reliability of component-based software system. The state transition probabilities of software components which are connected directly are considered as zero when ideal transition probabilities for the components are entered. Each state is prone to failure to some extent, thereby making the component-based software imperfect. The simulator is executed using various combinations of reliabilities of software components and it is found that the software system reliability is sensitive to the reliability of individual software components. It is shown from Figure 3 plotted between component reliability and component-based software reliability. It is also evident from Figure 4 that the component-based software reliability increases as the number of simulation runs increases using the data shown in Table II.\n7 Conclusion: Despite the maturity of software reliability techniques, predicting the reliability of component-based software systems before implementation has not received adequate attention in the past. Reliability evaluation techniques are often geared toward the testing phase of the development life cycle, when the system's operational profile is known. In these approaches, defects are primarily identified during testing. However, about 50 percent of these defects are rooted in pre-implementation phases of development, such as architecture and design (Lyu and Nikora, 1992). Studies have shown that early discovery of defects in the software development life cycle results in a more cost effective mitigation process (Boehm, 1991). Reliability prediction early during the software development life cycle is critical in building reliability into the software system. This simulator will act as a tool for software quality assurance team for evaluating the reliability of component-based software system. The reliability evaluation acts as an indicator of amount of software quality assurance needs for meeting the software project quality targets.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the reliability of individual software components in terms of the probability that each software component performs its intended functionality successfully. The overall software system reliability is evaluated.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This paper incorporates the reliability behavior of component-based software system using Markov process.\nFindings: - It is found that the component-based software system reliability increases as the component reliability increases.\nOriginality/value: - This paper explores new directions in evaluating the reliability of component-based software systems for software reliability and offers practical help to researchers and software industries in reliable software development. The proposed software simulation technique will act as a tool for the software quality assurance team for evaluating the reliability of component-based software systems.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The relationship between labour social responsibility practices and reputation
|
[
"Corporate reputation",
"Generalized method of moments",
"Labour reputation",
"Labour social responsibility"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming increasingly important in business because investment in responsible practices has become a sign of differentiation in the market and a source of competitive advantages (Vilanova et al., 2009). This has contributed to the increasing number of companies that consider CSR in their strategies and actions (European Commission, 2001; Lichtenstein et al., 2004; Luo and Bhattacharya, 2006). Consistent with this, CSR has been a relevant concept for research in the scientific field, focusing on the study of its definition, measurement and effects on firm performance.\nThe theoretical framework: Reputation acts as a driver to implement CSR (Maron, 2006; Vilanova et al., 2009), since CSR has its effect on the creation of reputation through the legitimation of their activities by stakeholders (de Quevedo-Puente et al., 2007; Reverte, 2009). The concept of CSR is defined as \"the voluntary commitment of companies with the development of society and the preservation of the environment, from its social commitment and responsible behaviour towards companies and social groups with whom they interact\" (Lizcano and Moneva, 2003). CRS has been considered by the academic literature as a multidimensional construct, as it affects a variety of stakeholders. The European Commission (2001) in its statement \"Green Paper: Promoting a European framework for corporate social responsibility\" has established an internal dimension and an external dimension of CSR. In the internal dimension, responsible management of human resources, safety and health of its employees, managing change, and management of natural resources used in production are included. In the external dimension, practices considered relevant to customers, suppliers, consumers, public authorities, NGOs, community and the environment are included.\nMethodology and data: Sample\nResults: In this section, first, the samples used in this study are described using the main descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, maximum, minimum) (Table II) and the Pearson's correlation coefficients of the variables used in the model (Table III). Second, the model validation and interpretation of the results are presented.\nDiscussion: A company's reputation is a sign of differentiation in the market and source of competitive advantage (Vilanova et al., 2009). Therefore, the study of the creation of reputation has been a topic of interest in the academic literature. The definition of reputation proposed by Fombrun (1996) is one of the most cited in the literature, which says that reputation is formed from the assessment of stakeholders on the firm's performance. Thus, the social performance of a company implies the starting point for building a reputation. Following this line of thought, there are multiple studies that have tested the relationship between CSR and CR, and the relationship between some dimensions of CSR and CR. However, the labour dimension of CSR has not received the same attention. Consequently, this paper has investigated the influence of LSR on CR and on LR. LSR is part of the internal dimension of CSR and the study of its relationship with the reputation covers a gap in the research line of the creation of reputation.\nConclusions: The relationship between business and society has strengthened; largely by the amount of media available for the dissemination of information about CSR, among others. Social investment in CSR practices made by the company has been justified with getting extra business benefits derived from obtaining reputation, such as increased competitiveness, differentiation, better candidates for jobs, attracting investment, creating entry barriers, and reducing transaction costs, among others (European Commission, 2001). Reputation has become an important intangible asset for businesses since it is a non-marketable and inimitable assets signify differentiation in the market.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether labour social responsibility (LSR) practices influence on corporate reputation (CR) and on labour reputation (LR).\nDesign/methodology/approach: LSR is defined as all those labour practices made by a company for the benefit of employees voluntarily and not imposed by labour legislation. An index developed by content analysis was created to measure LRS. CR and LR scores were obtained from the Business Monitor of Corporate Reputation (MERCO) for the period of 2006-2010. Furthermore, based on the previous literature, the study considers other generic variables that influence the process of creating reputation, such as visibility and environmental impact, as well as intrinsic characteristics of each company (size, financial performance and debt). The model was estimated by the generalised method of moments (GMM) on a data panel for the 100 most reputable firms in Spain in each year during the period 2006-2010.\nFindings: The results obtained show that LSR carried out by the company has a direct and positive relationship with the reputation. Thus, corporate and labour reputation and their evolution depend on ability of the LSR strategy of the company to satisfy to future expectations of stakeholders.\nOriginality/value: Previous literature considered the impact of different dimensions of corporate social responsibility on CR, e.g., environmental, communication, quality of products, but did not consider labour practices.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Involving parents in secondary schools: principals' perspectives in Greece
|
[
"Attitudes",
"Communication",
"Parental involvement",
"Principals",
"Collaboration",
"School administrators",
"Receptivity/inclusivity",
"Vice-principals"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Schooling involves transmission of knowledge and socialization; and typically it reflects the culture of a society. School administrators are highly instrumental in crafting the culture that schools communicate, because they direct educational efforts, guiding, and coordinating a wide range of school activities (Kapsalis, 2005; Saitis, 2007). Principals in particular are very influential in determining school climate - the \"personality\" of an organization (Halpin, 1967; Hoy and Miskel, 2008). Moreover, investigations of effective schools have shown consistently that there is a significant relationship between students' achievements and the organizational climates that principals establish (Lazaridou, 2011, p. 14). This was affirmed for schools in Greece by Pashiardis and Pashiardis (2006). These investigators, furthermore, found that another significant contributing factor was a higher rate of participation in school affairs by parents and the wider community, which is an important dimension of school climate.\nParents' involvement: The relationships between school and family are, among other factors, of paramount importance for school efficacy (Griffith, 2001; Lloyd-Smith and Baron, 2010). In fact, parental involvement - within certain limits - is considered nowadays to be a sine qua non for school productivity and efficacy. Furthermore, as Igo (2002) reminds us, parents and principals alike have many opportunities to build partnerships and work together. In the following sections we review how parents' involvement in their schools relates to school effectiveness and how principals may nurture involvement by parents.\nTraditional parental participation in Greek schools: Historically parental involvement in the schools of Greece has been very limited and rather formal (e.g. see Papanaoum, 1995). In this, Greek schools have epitomized the traditional patterns of bureaucratic management of schooling that are cumbersome and unresponsive to pressures for change:\nAn investigation to explore parental involvement in Greek secondary schools: Methodology\nFindings: The contexts in which the participants worked are summarized in Table I.\nDiscussion: The problems addressed by researchers are always a matter of inadequacies in available information - gaps, ambiguities, contradictions, currency, and/or limitations occasioned by site and paradigmatic constraints. In this case we were concerned generally about a lack of information regarding parents' involvement in the schools of Greece. More specifically we focussed on school building administrators' perceptions and attitudes concerning this matter. Now we discuss what our findings about parental involvement in Greek schools contribute to extant understandings. The discussion is organized in terms of the general questions that guided our inquiry:\nPostscript: Another perspective on the findings reported here can be gained by comparing them against views about the principalship that were obtained from newly appointed Greek principals by Athanasoula-Reppa and Lazaridou (2008). Such a comparison hints at a continuing shift toward a less centralized, more community oriented conceptualization among school administrators of the principal's roles. The neophyte principals surveyed said, first of all, that the most important role is being a supervisor - an individual in charge of decision making in the school, but in an ethos of cooperation and collaboration. They expressed some support for being a \"manager\" (a special category of civil servant) and \"president\" (a colleague of teachers who guides and monitors teaching processes). But the role of \"inspector\" (an agent of the Ministry of Education) was rejected by 84 percent. The neophyte principals also said that they put paramount importance on gaining and maintaining the approval of colleagues within the school, followed by the approval of parents, and then the local community. And the neophyte principals said they were most comfortable with having exclusive control over decisions about the operation of their schools, and - here is food for thought - almost completely rejected participation by the school's community and parents. Insofar as this parallels our and other researchers' findings (e.g. Brien, 2002), we have mounting evidence that a less-than-desirable level of parental involvement in school governance could be due partly to a \"lack of readiness\" factor that extends to not just parents but also to vice-principals. Just as parents may shy away from devolution of school decision making because they do not have any experience and think they lack the necessary skills, vice principals may similarly feel uncomfortable with managing their schools with the help of the community. Indeed, our finding that principals are more in favor of parental participation than vice-principals suggests that with experience in administration, relevant skills are acquired and receptivity to parental involvement increases. In turn, this suggests that efforts to foster parental involvement must include attention to appropriate preparation for vice-principals - something that is not clearly evident in the literature.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report findings from an investigation of Greek principals' attitudes and perceptions concerning parental involvement in schools - research prompted by the belief that the information will be useful in attempts to make Greek schools more effective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The participants of the study were secondary school principals and vice principals from one Prefecture in Central Greece. The questionnaire used elicited information about the participants' demographics, the main features of the schools they were serving in, and their views concerning existing and preferred school-family partnerships.\nFindings: The principals in the investigation seemed to be not only in favor of parental participation, but also saw a need to increase it. In general, then, the findings support others' reports that parents' participation in schools - in this instance secondary schools - tends to be less than satisfactory.\nOriginality/value: In Greece, the issue of parental involvement in schools has not received adequate attention until recently. The latest school reforms emphasize the notion of parental involvement as a significant factor for the effectiveness of the Greek schools.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Creating a knowledge-sharing culture: six top tips on building and sustaining it
|
[
"Building a knowledge-sharing culture",
"Knowledge-sharing culture",
"Sustaining a knowledge-sharing culture"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: People like to and expect to have information at their fingertips. Many aspects of the modern life are enhanced through the use of technology and accessing the right piece of information. But things can be wildly different when people go to work. Finding the right piece of information at the right time at work can be quite difficult.\nBuilding a knowledge-sharing culture: Organizational culture cannot really be measured, and it is invisible to the naked eye. Yet, everyone feels it and knows it is there and acts according to it. Changing organizational culture - or building one from scratch - does not happen overnight. The first thing to understand about it is that it takes time. Small changes can lead to big results, but only if they are performed constantly over time.\nConclusion: Building a knowledge-sharing culture in a company takes time and effort, and sustaining it takes even more. Those who set out on the journey are neither crazy nor visionaries; they are just aware that having the right people sharing what they know with, again, the right people will move the entire organization forward and set it on the right tracks to success.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to talk about the importance of building and sustaining an organizational culture that supports knowledge sharing between all members of the organization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper provides four tips for managers who want to build such a culture within their company, as well as two further tips on how to sustain one that is already built.\nFindings: Building and sustaining a knowledge-sharing culture in a business organization may take a lot of time and effort on the part of management and employees alike, but it is definitely worth it, as companies can experience low employee-turnover rates and increased profits based on it.\nOriginality/value: This viewpoint is based on the author's personal experience within various organizations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Understanding the mobile payment technology acceptance based on valence theory: A case of restaurant transactions
|
[
"Mobile payment",
"Restaurant",
"Individual difference",
"Near field communication",
"Valence framework"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Smartphones have introduced both convenience and ease to contemporary diners. Paying at the table after eating out via wireless terminals that accept mobile payment (MP) such as Apple Pay, Android Pay (formerly known as Google Wallet) and other near field communication (NFC) tap-to-pay transactions has big implications for the restaurant industry. An MP is any payment in which a mobile device (e.g. smartphone) is used to initiate, authorize and confirm a business transaction. In this research, the usage of NFC-MP systems is examined in the context of the restaurant industry. NFC is a wireless communication technology which allows data transference (e.g. credit card information from a smartphone to a POS) over distances of up to 10 cm (Leong et al., 2013). Most smartphones are now equipped with NFC tags; therefore, they are capable of acting as virtual wallets. This technology enables customers to complete their transactions by pointing their mobile devices to an NFC-enabled payment terminal (Gerstner, 2015).\nTheoretical background and research hypotheses: The valence framework\nNegative valence: Perceived risk\nPositive valence: Convenience\nIndividual differences: Compatibility\nMethodology: To collect the data of the study, a Web-based self-administered questionnaire was developed using the online questionnaire software Qualtrics. The measurement scales were adapted from previous research and some changes were applied to items to reflect the mobile payment context. For perceived risk and privacy concern constructs, a three-item scale was adapted from Featherman and Pavlou (2003). Convenience construct was measured by using a four-item scale adapted from Kim and Bernhard (2014) and Seiders et al. (2007). A four-item scale from Yang (2010) was used to measure utilitarian value. Compatibility was measured with three-item scale adapted from Moore and Benbasat (1991). Finally, affinity was measured by using a five-item scale adapted from Aldas-Manzano et al. (2009). All the research constructs were measured by using a seven-point Likert scale ranging from \"1 = strongly disagree\" to \"7 = strongly agree\". A pilot test was used on December 2014 to ensure questionnaire's clarity and comprehensiveness. The questionnaire was distributed to 20 students and 10 faculty members at a large university in the southeast of USA, who had previous NFC-MP experience in restaurants. Some modifications were made on the wording of the questionnaire on the basis of the feedback received from the participants.\nResults: Confirmatory factor analysis\nDiscussion and conclusions: On the basis of previous literature in the context of innovation adoption and valence theory, this research aimed to explore restaurant customers' NFC-MP technology acceptance. More specifically, this paper examined the impacts of users' negative valence (perceived risk and privacy concern) and positive valence (utilitarian value and convenience) perceptions toward their intention to use NFC-MP technology. In addition, the impacts of individual difference variables (smartphone affinity and compatibility) on users' negative and positive valences and on their behavioral intentions were analyzed.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine factors affecting restaurant customers' intention to use near field communication (NFC)-based mobile payment (MP) technology. More specifically, based on the valence theory, this paper examined the impacts of users' negative valence (perceived risk and privacy concern) and positive valence (utilitarian value and convenience) perceptions toward their NFC-MP technology acceptance. Furthermore, the impacts of individual difference variables (smartphone affinity and compatibility) on users' negative and positive valences and on their behavioral intentions were analyzed.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A self-administered online questionnaire was used to collect the data of the study from 412 restaurant customers. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to validate the measurement model. To test the hypothesized model, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used.\nFindings: The study findings demonstrated that privacy concern, utilitarian value and convenience significantly affected individuals' NFC-MP technology acceptance. In addition, compatibility significantly influenced negative and positive valance constructs and smartphone affinity had a positive impact on positive valance constructs only.\nPractical implications: This study provides valuable practical implications for restaurant operators and hospitality technology vendors in the context of mobile payment systems.\nOriginality/value: This study successfully extended the valence framework by adding individual difference constructs to it.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Meeting objectives and resisting conventions: A focus on institutional investors and long-term responsible investing
|
[
"Social responsibility",
"Short‐term planning",
"Conventions"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Corporate scandals have become a common headline in the financial news across the world over recent years, including high profile collapses such as Enron, Worldcom and Parmalat. At the same time societal expectations of what is acceptable corporate conduct has shifted, with concern expressed about the impact of corporate activities on the environment, local communities, labor standards, human rights and business practices in developing countries. This shift in societal expectations has corresponded with the birth of socially responsible investment (SRI) and increased shareholder activism. This will be referred to throughout this paper as long-term responsible investment (LTRI)[1], defined as the situation whereby investors integrate financial, corporate governance, social and environmental criteria into the investment process in the pursuit of long-term portfolio returns.As a large and powerful investor pool[2], institutional investors could potentially play an important role in promoting more responsible corporate behavior; indeed regulatory changes have been introduced in many countries to encourage their increased involvement[3]. Whilst some institutional investors have become more involved, such activities are still unconventional[4]; unless LTRI becomes more widespread then it is debatable as to whether the investment mechanism will be a viable vehicle for integrating corporate responsibility into the market system. The focus of this paper is to unravel the conventions and herding tendencies that act as obstacles to investing in a long-term responsible manner and to consider if/how these might be overcome.The outline of this paper is as follows:* section 2 begins with an overview of the relevant SRI literature;* section 3 outlines the methodology adopted in carrying out the longitudinal case studies and data analysis;* section 4 presents empirical evidence on the behavioral impediments to LTRI;* section 5 builds on this evidence to explore how internal and external conventions might be altered as a means of mainstreaming LTRI through the institutional herding mechanism; and* section 6 concludes and identifies areas for further research.\n2. Academic contribution and aim of research paper: The academic writings in the SRI field have built a strong case for institutional investor involvement in the promotion of corporate responsibility from the business ethics perspective (Mackenzie, 1997; Cowton and Crisp, 1998; Sparkes, 2001; Sparkes and Cowton, 2004) drawing from the agency problem literature (Berle and Means, 1932; Jensen and Meckling, 1976; Coase, 1988) through to stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984). There is also extensive associated literature on the performance implications of SRI and shareholder activism with varying results[5]. Whilst these studies have produced somewhat inconclusive results as to the benefits of shareholder activism and SRI, they found that there at least does not appear to be a performance penalty from such activities.The vast body of normative studies on the subject of investor responsibility do not address the issue of what \"investor responsibility\" actually necessitates in terms of changing investor behavior (or whether such change is achievable). SRI has been researched from the perspective of individual investors to better understand their behavior (Lewis, 2002), but institutional investors' warrant closer attention given their aforementioned power as significant shareholders. Studies by behavioral financiers are relevant here and there is a need to link this body of research with the investor responsibility literature. Most relevant for the purpose of this paper is the evidence that institutional herding exists (Sias, 2004; Nosfinger and Sias, 1999; Grinblatt and Titman, 1989; Grinblatt et al., 1995; Wermers, 1999, 2000) and the models of investigative herding outlined in Froot et al. (1992) and reputational herding of Scharfstein and Stein (1990). These insights will frame the analysis of the case study evidence presented in this paper to consider how conventions, reinforced by herding tendencies, affect institutional investor behavior and their ability to invest responsibility.\n3. Methodology: The paper draws from qualitative data collected through longitudinal case studies on three institutional investors in the UK who have to varying degrees introduced a policy of responsible investment across the management of their assets. The institutions are large representatives of the UK investor community, together accounting for some PS80 billion of assets as at the end of 2003 and span the insurance and pension fund sectors.The research approach was inductive and set out with the aim of gaining a better understanding of investor behavior, the factors that influence it and how this might affect an institution's ability to invest in a long-term responsible manner. It was therefore important for participants to be free to tell the story from their own perspective and to feel that, as the researcher, I was not there to judge the institution but to act as a co-inquirer of the environment in which they operate and the challenges the institutional investor community face in moving towards integrating LTRI into their investment philosophy and process. With this in mind, the method was influenced by the participatory action research (PAR) approach where participants become involved in both the questioning and sense making that informs the research with respect to a particular issue or development (Reason and Bradbury, 2001).The case studies were carried out over a period of 6-12 months, which provided some degree of longitudinal analysis and insight into how each organization changed and evolved over that time. The data collection process involved: six unstructured \"exploratory\" meetings with individuals across the participating institutions to guide the nature and focus of the research project; textual analysis of documents produced by the participating institutions including investment philosophy documents and the \"statement of investment principles\" (SIP) that amounted to over 250 pages; 20 semi-structured interviews with fund managers lasting an average 1.5 hours that were recorded and fully transcribed for analysis; informal communication and observation of participants through meetings, ongoing e-mail correspondence and telephone conversations; and diary observations and self reflection on my role and the progress of the research.The data was distilled into themes and analyzed through the development of grounded theory and the constant comparative method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Haig, 1995; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). The ground theory data analysis method was infused with elements of PAR in two primary ways: firstly, the participants were involved in the questioning and sense-making of the data at different stages of the research process (double-loop inquiry); and secondly, the diary observations and self reflections were referred to in analysis of the data. Grounded theory allowed the \"data to speak\" and for theory to emerge from the data, whilst iteration with participants and self-reflection as expounded by PAR acted as a means of validating the data and staying true to the research aim.\n4. The case study evidence on institutional objectives and investor behavior: Analysis of the three case study institutions' policy documents revealed that they all use similar discourse when outlining their responsible investment policy; namely, the aim to be responsible long-term shareholders of companies and markets in which they invest. They also invariably refer to the need for fund managers to pay appropriate regard to corporate governance, social, ethical and environmental considerations in the selection, retention and realization of all fund investment, in so far as that is consistent with the institution fulfilling its investment objective and legal obligations.Despite the fact that these objectives exist at the institutional level, it became apparent during analysis of the case study data that there are behavioral obstacles to overcome at the actual fund manager level[6] to meet these objectives. These \"behavioral obstacles\" fall within the following three categories:1. The pull towards short-termism.2. Gravitation towards the defensible.3. The LTRI objective being viewed as separate from the core investment process.4.1 The pull towards short-termism\n5. Conventions and institutional herding: Drawing from the case study evidence, the behavioral obstacles to LTRI all appear to be linked to the prevalence and adherence to dominant conventions - with institutional herding tendencies acting as the mechanism that reinforces these conventions (see Figure 1 for an illustration of this framework).5.1 The herding mechanism\n6. Conclusion: This paper presented evidence to suggest that even in those instances where an institution has a LTRI policy, the influence of dominant conventions on investor behavior makes it difficult to achieve this in practice. The aim of this paper was not to criticize the participating institutions' approach to responsible investment but rather was an attempt to explore and illuminate the complexities and to highlight the areas that might require further consideration. In particular, it raises some questions about the important potential role of collaborative initiatives as a mechanism to mobilize investors through the apparent institutional herding tendencies. Further research on how collaboration might assist in overcoming some of the behavioral obstacles to mainstreaming LTRI is currently underway. Other areas worthy of further research include how internal conventions might be redefined to discourage short-termism amongst institutional investors (such as incentive systems and performance review) and the effectiveness of engagement and collaborative initiatives on changing corporate behavior.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to unravel some of the challenges associated with responsible investment from the institutional investor's perspective, focusing on how dominant conventions influence investor behavior and their ability to invest responsibly.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The research draws from three longitudinal case studies that were carried out on UK institutions that have adopted a responsible investment policy.\nFindings: - Evidence of behavioral obstacles to responsible investing were found, including short-termism, gravitation towards defensible decisions and reluctance to integrate corporate responsibility factors into the core investment process. Based on the case study evidence these appear to be driven by the influence of prevailing dominant conventions, reinforced by institutional herding tendencies.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper introduces some preliminary thoughts as to how conventions might be resisted and changed over time through the institutional herding mechanism. Further research is required (and is currently under way) to more closely examine the potential impact of investor collaboration for challenging dominant conventions.\nPractical implications: - Collaboration amongst institutional investors is key for mobilizing institutional herding tendencies so that responsible investment might get built into conventions.\nOriginality/value: - The research combines responsible investment literature with behavioral finance studies on investor behavior, herding tendencies and the influence of conventions. It also illuminates the complexities in investor behavior from which other institutional investors might learn in implementing a responsible investment policy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Effect of information content and form on customers' attitude and transaction intention in mobile banking: Moderating role of perceived privacy concern
|
[
"Consumer behaviour",
"Empirical study",
"Marketing research",
"India",
"Consumer attitudes"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The banking industry has witnessed a significant shift in service delivery patterns in recent years with the adoption of self-service technologies, which have emerged as substitutes to the traditional retail banking services (Wessels and Drennan, 2010). Among the wide variety of electronic-based self-services, mobile phone banking (M-banking) is an interesting facet, and is an effective platform for delivering automated banking and other financial services (Moser, 2015; Wessels and Drennan, 2010). Mode of service delivery offers in M-banking has raised the service value for customers by providing instantaneous access to customers' financial needs (Lee and Chung, 2009). However, studies in the area of M-banking are very recent and limited. Surprisingly, very few empirical investigations in the services literature have systematically tried to examine the factors which encourage customers to adopt M-banking services (Thakur, 2014). This poses quite a challenge for the managers, who would like to understand the core elements in M-banking, which create transaction intention and repeat usage of this rapidly innovating medium.\nPrior research and hypotheses formulation: M-banking\nResearch methodology: Data collection\nData analysis and results: We tested the proposed set of hypotheses in three interrelated and sequential stages. First, prior to the testing of hypotheses, we carried out a series of confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the psychometric properties of the construct measures. After the measurement model confirmation, we examined those hypotheses (\nDiscussion and theoretical implications: In this study, we answer the call of several studies to further investigate the specificities of users' M-banking adoption and transaction intention (e.g. Kim et al., 2009; Lin, 2011; Luarn and Lin, 2005; Zhou et al., 2010). Drawing on the past literature, in areas such as consumer decision making, information systems and M-banking effectiveness; a conceptual model has been proposed and tested. The model explains the role of M-banking information content and form related elements to create user attitude and transaction intention toward M-banking. The results extend our understanding on the determinants of M-banking in order to develop user attitude and behavior toward M-banking (e.g. Lee and Chung, 2009; Suoranta and Mattila, 2004) and have several important implications for managerial practice.\nManagerial implications: Our findings can provide banks with information relevant for strategic decisions such as, how to attract new or existing customers into M-banking. Our results show that all the information content related factors of M-banking direct customers' attitude and thus influence customers' transaction intention. This suggests that information content related factors should be given priority while designing M-banking content. The information content in the M-banking should be relevant, as users will match the content with the information they need/seek during the information search process. Furthermore, the findings also provide an indication to M-banking portal designers that an ideal M-banking portal should provide information systematically, while being relevant in each stage of user interaction. Information must also be accurate; especially in the precision of information related to financial benefits. This requires vigilant and uninterrupted monitoring of the portal. In addition, while interacting with the M-banking portal, customers must be under the impression that the information provided is recent and up to date. M-banking portal should be designed in such a way that the user can see minute-to-minute modifications (if necessary) and updates of the required information. These informational quality attributes of M-banking platform are found to create favorable attitude and subsequent transaction intention among customers. Therefore, banks should give more importance to these three information content related aspects of M-banking in order to develop favorable customer outcomes (see Cober et al., 2004b). Next, it is important for banks to confirm whether their M-banking portal is user friendly and easy to use. Given the strong effect information form has on customer attitudes, it is crucial to design user friendly portals that provide the information in a quick and efficient manner, without having to search too much and getting easily disoriented. This can be achieved through pre-testing of the portal and having an understanding of the customer perceptions on ease of use. Banks can also introduce the tools such as call-me-now, real-time-chat, real-time-video conferencing, how to use videos, complaints and feedback, etc., which may enhance customers' perception about ease of use of M-banking. We also observe that customers who hold predispositions, such as the information provided in M-banking portal is irrelevant, inaccurate, untimely and non-use friendly might show hesitation and less favorable attitude toward M-banking. Hence, banks can use our findings to target such customers by highlighting their M-banking services as superior to their competitors thereby encouraging them to actively participate in their M-banking services. Traditional and non-traditional media, such as print magazines, TV and radio, as well as advertising campaigns may be useful means for promoting M-banking service to potential customers. Finally, our results show that the effects of information content and form dimensions to create customer attitude and subsequent transaction intention depend on users' perceived privacy concern. This indicates that as more mobile technologies emerge, banks will have to balance customer and member convenience with security and fraud prevention. Moreover, bank managers and M-banking designers are advised to measure their customers' perceived privacy concern with regard to the M-banking usage. Measurement of potential privacy concerns (see: Smith et al., 1996) will help managers devise strategies to attract customers with high privacy concern by advocating the benefits of their M-banking system, which will strengthen customer confidence and in turn improve the usage of M-banking services. For example, banks can educate their customers and members about actively managing their own mobile-device security, address the security concerns of banking customers who remain fearful of using those M-banking apps in 24x7 format, communicate to customers that their personal transaction with others that were not part of the original transaction will not publicize without their consent, and provide a promise that they will not use transaction and demographic data to create consumer profiles without their prior consent (Foxman and Kilcoyne, 1993; Goodwin, 1991), etc. This will help banks target their customers more effectively and motivate them to actively use M-banking services.\nLimitations and directions for future research: The present study provides thorough theoretical foundations and robust empirical results. However, the study is not free from limitations. First, the sample of this research was selected from a specific geographical location (Hyderabad, India). We assume that the socio-economic differences exist across regions which influence user perceptions of M-banking services (Agarwal et al., 2009). Thus, future research can be performed to other regions, so that the findings can be collated and generalized. Second, since M-banking is a relatively new application, users' prior experience with the concerned bank may work as a boundary condition of attitude formation and subsequent transaction intention. This is due to the fact that, in case of high prior experience, customers use more of cognitive resources or rational thinking to process information in order to develop behavioral outcomes. On the other hand, customers with less prior experience may use more symbolic resources to process information (Kang et al., 2012). These differences in resources lead to a different set of behavioral outcomes (Kang et al., 2012). Therefore, further understanding is necessary to assess customers with varying level of prior experience with the concerned bank. Third, our study is limited to the context of emerging markets, with a special focus on India. This restricts the generalization of the findings to other cultural and economic setups, as the information portrayed in the M-banking portal may not be same and indicate disparate pattern in different parts of the world. The processing of information by customers to form attitude and behaviors may differ from country to country depending on the customers' personality characteristics, economic, social and cultural background (Agarwal et al., 2009). Hence, it is advisable to interpret research implications in a country or region specific manner. Finally, in the present study, we collected information based on a survey. In doing so, it becomes highly impossible to control the effect of other contextual and situational confounding variables. To mitigate this problem, future researchers can look into similar objectives by controlling different extraneous variables via an experimental set up.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Although research on mobile banking (M-banking) is an emerging field, the current understanding of the information characteristics of M-banking, such as information content and form and its impacts on customers' attitude and transaction intention toward the same is limited. Furthermore, no study to date has examined how users' privacy evaluation regarding the use of M-banking (i.e. users' perceived privacy concern) influences their processing of information to create attitude and subsequent transaction intention. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to narrow this research gap by investigating the process through and conditions under which the customers' evaluation of M-banking information content and form contributes to the development of transaction intention.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A self-administered survey on the users of M-banking was performed to collect the response. Mediation analyses followed by conditional process analyses were carried out to test the proposed set of hypotheses.\nFindings: The results show that users' favorable evaluation of M-banking information content and form creates transaction intention through favorable attitude toward M-banking. However, this relationship is found to be moderated by their perceived privacy concern, as users with high privacy concern do not process information content and form favorably, i.e., their attitude and transaction intention are found to be less, as compared to users with low perceived privacy concern.\nOriginality/value: Drawing on literature from areas, such as information processing, internet banking, marketing and psychology, the paper develops an understanding of the role of information characteristics of M-banking in determining users' transaction intention via user attitude. Furthermore, this is the first study that shows how information characteristics differently influence users' attitude and transaction intention based on their perceived privacy concern.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Wellbeing and the workplace: How smaller firms are meeting the challenge
|
[
"Wellbeing",
"Workplace wellness",
"Workplace culture",
"Health promotions",
"Small- to medium-sized enterprises"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nReview: The concept of wellbeing is all the rage following the ravages of the Global Financial Crisis, and step-change in people's view of work-life balance on the one hand and how enhancing employees' contentment can increase productivity on the other. This, coupled with much-improved technology such as Skype, and greater access to super fast broadband means that connectivity across regions, countries and internationally has allowed many more workers to work from home regularly and maintain greater contact with family and friends. As a result, wellbeing is no longer viewed by firms as a luxury but rather a necessity.\nFrom workplace to wellbeing: This focus on wellbeing in the workplace and how it affects SMEs was the focus of Rucker (2017) in his study titled \"Workplace wellness strategies for small business\". For his investigation, he looked at a number of SMEs in different sectors and states in the USA, and adopted a case study approach to fully understand a small but significant number of firms in relation to the research topic. The topic itself homed in on what Rucker termed \"workplace wellness programs\" (WWPs), which have been widely adopted in the USA, and further afield as a way to improve the status of employee health and so reduce costs and lost productivity from days absent.\nFive alive: When all the case studies were completed and analyzed, Ruckman identified five key concepts that marked out those firms with both effective and viable WWPs. By effective, the firms stated that the WWPs were effective meeting the firm's goals; by viable, the firms had to agree that the WWPs were viable in terms of their sustainability into the future.\nNow over to you: In practical terms, there are a number of takeaways for HR managers or those implementing wellness programs. For example, the assumption that leadership was a key part of the success of WWPs maybe false, and greater success was seen around leaders being seen to pass autonomy down to employees and being seen as \"servant leaders\". Additionally, looking at VoI rather than RoI can help understand the benefits for the business to a more rounded degree, as is looking to internal resources for SMEs rather than externally. Overall, the evidence across a number of different areas show that WWPs can be effective for SMEs if implemented in the right conditions.\nComment: The article \"Workplace wellness strategies for small business\" (2017) by Rucker does a great job in showing how workplace wellness programs can inform HR strategy in particular. There are numerous different areas where WWPs can exist and be effective, but the underlying play for small businesses here is that they can use their size to strategically enhance their competitive advantage through a holistic program that can have numerous tangible and intangible benefits.\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 concept of wellbeing is all the rage following the ravages of the Global Financial Crisis, and step-change in people's view of work-life balance on the one hand and how enhancing employees' contentment can increase productivity on the other. This, coupled with much-improved technology such as Skype, and greater access to super fast broadband means that connectivity across regions, countries and internationally has allowed many more workers to work from home regularly and maintain greater contact with family and friends. As a result, wellbeing is no longer viewed by firms as a luxury but rather a necessity.\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"
}
] |
Role of lifestyle orientation and perceived organizational functioning in psychological empowerment of IT professionals
|
[
"India",
"Human resource management",
"Information technology",
"Employees attitudes",
"Occupational psychology",
"Lifestyle orientation",
"Perceived organizational functioning",
"Organization diagnosis",
"Psychological empowerment",
"IT professionals"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Organizations are some of the most complex sets of phenomena both conceptually and practically. Intermingled within, is also an intricate interplay between employees' deep personal perception of what is happening in the organization and their emotions which often goes unseen. It would therefore be very pragmatic to question how the dynamics of personal perceptions, orientation, feelings and thoughts impact employees, their work and by implication the entire organization.Empowering information technology (IT) professionals has always been a persistent challenge facing organizations because the effectiveness with which a company can involve, manage, develop, motivate and engage the willing contribution of people who work for them is a key determinant for its success or failure. Studies of workweek have shown that knowledge workers today in comparison to the past eras spend more time not only at the work place but also more time focussed on work issues while outside the office (Amabile and Kramer, 2008). As the proportion of time claimed by work rises, work perception becomes a bigger component of life itself. As far as the IT sector is concerned, it is a dynamic and people centered sector with high demand for knowledge workers and talented professionals who often enjoy a high bargaining power. Knowledge workers are autonomous people who enjoy occupational advancement and mobility, resist command and control culture (Horwitz et al., 2003) and their commitment is more occupational and less organizationally motivated (Despres and Hiltrop, 1995). Besides, IT professionals work in a competitive environment where continuous honing of skills is required (Lee, 2000) hence they may suffer from extensive projects and aggressive timelines (Messersmith, 2007) with a probability of high level of job stress.Within the Indian context, some studies have examined the influence of human resource management practices on organizational commitment (Paul and Anantharaman, 2004), organizational culture and commitment (Mathew and Ogbonna, 2009), culture, work outcomes and performance (Mathew et al., 2012), management in emerging versus developed countries (Nigam and Su, 2011) and empowerment and commitment (Bhatnagar, 2005). Aspray et al. (2006) note that IT research is concentrated in a few countries with the USA contributing to about a third of IT papers and another third by additional traditional centres of concentration of IT research (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK).Looking at the evolution of the Indian IT sector, it began as a US$ 120 million sector in 1990 with 8,500 employees (Heeks, 1996) and is now estimated to aggregate revenues of USD 88.1 billion in FY2011 having generated employment to over 2.5 million people. The industry which is all set to further grow in scale, scope and value add, stands as a global player having presence in 52 countries with over 500 delivery centres, employing over 60,000 foreign nationals, having over 200 cross border acquisitions and over 750 captives (NASSCOM Strategic Review, 2011). Though the Indian IT industry is primarily service oriented unlike China or Brazil and its top players still remain the frontrunners, it has transformed from being a mere body shop for onsite development to offsite development activities and is surging towards product development initiatives from ideation to execution. Professionals are more excited about venturing into entrepreneurship now than before. The domestic market is also expanding due to the growing internet and mobile space with internet users rising from 58 million in 2009 to 81 million in 2010 while mobile subscribers soared from 392 million to 707 million in the same period. In terms of competitiveness, though China, Malaysia, Philippines, Ireland and Eastern Europe are emerging destinations, some distinct factors supporting India's position is the vast reservoir of talent, language skills and availability of a legal and commercial system that is similar to those in the West (Aspray et al., 2006).More so, the cultural differences between India and the developed or other emerging economies have led to differences in management styles, beliefs and values. For instance, a study by Hofstede (2007) about perceptions of the most and least important goals between business leaders across countries has showed that family interests and continuity of business were among the most important for Indian business leaders while these were among the least important for business leaders in the USA. Other findings include that Indians value relationships at workplace and loyalty to an organization (Kanungo and Mendonca, 1994) and most of the time, employees are focused on their personal relationships rather than their performance. As per Sinha (1995), juniors in India tend to have faith and trust that they will be taken care of by their seniors while material wealth and possessions were also found to have less importance in India (Nigam and Su, 2011) compared to Western cultures. These findings call for a deeper understanding and further research in the Indian context to bring out perspectives that could help organizations improvise or initiate planned change efforts to synergise with evolving circumstances.In view of the preceding considerations, the choice of the Indian IT sector as the empirical setting for this study is driven by many reasons. The IT sector in India, over the last few decades has become a key player and a major contributor to the country's growth statistics with contributions having grown from a mere 1.2 per cent in FY1998 to an estimated 6.4 per cent in FY2011 (NASSCOM Strategic Review, 2011) and the sector continues to have a strong and sustainable comparative advantage in software development and services. Keeping in mind that IT professionals bring in with them their distinctive personal characteristics which need to be managed in a unique way and with a dearth of research on human resource management issues pertaining to knowledge intensive firms in India (Aspray et al., 2006; Mathew et al., 2012), this study would also help to explore issues relating to lifestyle orientation, organizational functioning and psychological empowerment in the Indian IT context which would help in bringing out underlying individual and organizational perspectives for implication as well as for future research work.This paper is organised in three parts. First, a brief review of the literature is presented which locates existing studies incorporating the variables being considered based on which the hypotheses have been drawn out. Second, the context of the study and the methods adopted are detailed, leading to the presentation of the findings of the study. The study concludes with a discussion of the findings and implications that these findings may have for theory and practice.\n2 Conceptual background: 2.1 Lifestyle orientation\n3 Methodology: 3.1 Procedure\n4 Empirical results: The results of the study are reported in three parts. First, the descriptive statistics, correlations and reliabilities are reported. Second, the results of the stepwise regression analysis of lifestyle orientation and perceived organisational functioning along with their sub-dimensions on perceived psychological empowerment is presented. Finally, the findings of the ANOVA are presented which indicate the organisational cadre differences among IT professionals with respect to all the three variables.4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5 Discussions and implications: Findings, thus establish the role of employee lifestyle orientation and perceived organizational functioning in influencing psychological empowerment perceptions at work and results were reasonably consistent with the three hypotheses framed. To briefly summarize the findings, lifestyle orientation and two of its sub-types aggressive and individualistic were found to be significantly co-related to perceived psychological empowerment and all its sub-dimensions. Of the three remaining sub-types, resistive was significantly related to psychological empowerment and three of its sub-dimensions while conforming and defensive were significantly related to one sub-dimension of psychological empowerment. In addition, aggressiveness was found to predict psychological empowerment positively while defensive was found to predict it negatively.Perceptions of organizational functioning along with all its sub-areas on the other hand were found to strongly correlate to perceptions of psychological empowerment indicating its criticality in employee empowerment interventions. Among the predictors of psychological empowerment were the sub-area of leadership and helpful mechanisms. Among hierarchical differentiations, lifestyle orientation and psychological empowerment perceptions significantly differed across cadres but it was not so with organizational functioning.Findings highlight that employee dispositions and variability in perceptions of organizational functioning can influence feelings of psychological empowerment among IT professionals which has significant implications for practicing IT managers. First, employees who are aggressive, individualistic and resistive are inclined to feel more psychologically empowered than the other sub-types. The underlying reasons may perhaps be that lifestyle categories of aggressive, individualistic and resistive tend towards being more industrious, enterprising and ambitious in nature vis-a-vis the conforming who are more flexible and the defensive who are self-controlled, hence the former three would be disposed towards feeling more psychologically empowered than the other two categories. Similar conclusions have also emerged from studies that individuals who hold themselves in high self-esteem are likely to extend their feelings of self-worth to work specific sense of competence (Bandura, 1977) and also see themselves as valued resources having talents worth contributing (Gist and Mitchell, 1992). Thomas and Velthouse (1990) have also suggested that individuals with internal locus of control are likely to feel more empowered. Though there has been little research in examining how dispositions influence empowerment (Spreitzer et al., 1997), certain lifestyles orientations being determinants of psychological empowerment are an important factor for organisations to consider.As job roles in the IT sector vary in profile, in requirements and are also mentally challenging and demanding, personality, to a large extent would influence employee behaviour, reactions and perceptions towards oneself and the environment. In view of this, managers could work on strategically segmenting their employees based on their disposition to mutually benefit the organization as well as the employee, especially for the person-job-fit aspect of work. An insight into employee characteristics would also help human resource managers in understanding how to deal with different segments of employees for empowerment purposes. As software professionals also bring with them strong individual characteristics, they need to be managed tactfully to not only get the best out of the employee but also maintain a harmonious work environment.Second, a very important finding surfaced related to organisational functioning and its seven areas of activity which was found to strongly co-relate to perceptions of psychological empowerment and its four sub-dimensions. This clearly spells out the fact that employees in organizations having better systems, functions and environment tend to feel more psychologically empowered thereby enhancing not only their own performance and motivational levels but also that of the organization as a whole. IT companies therefore need to successfully blend technological innovation and organizational functioning since the ultimate test for an organization and its management team is not how fast it can grow in the short-term, but how consistently it can grow over the long-term period in a world where change is relentless and seditious.As leadership and helpful mechanisms were found to significantly and positively predict feelings of empowerment, it is an indication that organizations must look into their leadership issues and also ensure that organizational support mechanisms are effective for employees to feel not only inspired but also empowered. Our research result also strengthens previous findings which show a degree of consensus between organizational structure, policies and empowerment (Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Block, 1987; Blanchard et al., 1999). Wallach and Mueller (2006) too found that supervisory and peer support was associated with stronger feelings of empowerment signifying that support systems in organizations do matter for empowerment.Third, cadre was also found to have an impact on two of the three variables under study. An analysis showed significant cadre differences in lifestyle orientation and psychological empowerment perceptions. This can be further inferred that individual dispositions vary across cadres and sense of psychological empowerment also differs with change in cadre, indicating that employees belonging to different hierarchy level have not only different dispositions but also differ in their meaning and perception about psychological empowerment. In terms of demographics, research has shown that employees with more tenure and greater rank report more feelings of empowerment (Spreitzer, 1995) and when subordinates are motivated, they generate positive thoughts that energize them to enhanced productivity while the opposite is true when subordinates do not feel empowered in their work processes. Since empowered leaders are seen to be inspirational and influencing, empowerment initiatives can help to create an amiable working environment leading to superior outcomes for employees as well as the organization.In the light of above discussions, it distinctly emerges that lifestyle orientation and organizational functioning are important constructs in relation to psychological empowerment perceptions having significant implications for practicing managers but there is also a need for further empirical and theoretical attention in context to IT professionals.\n6 Conclusions and limitations: As the world economy is becoming more complex and dynamic and workforce is becoming increasingly diverse, more educated, ambitious and mobile, firms need to effectively understand their internal environment including their employees and the way the organisation functions in addition to the external environment to stay in contest and attain sustainable growth (Friedman, 2005). This global environment has changed the way business is conducted which holds true in the Indian context too. With many management practices of Indian firms having its roots deep in Indian culture, exposure to foreign management methods and diverse cultures may prompt changes in the traditional style of management (Nigam and Su, 2011) and hence Indian managers need to open their eyes to the diaspora of transformations with a futuristic orientation.Some of the concerns that plague the Indian IT Industry which IT experts have been very vocal about relate to the fact that while Indian software professionals are very competent at their core function, they lack leadership and the softer skills which are required to take on higher roles of decision making, people management, strategizing and the like. Moreover, the human resource function of an organisation needs to play the role of partners in business, strategy, people integration and proactive ascertaining of impending threats to the organisation, innovative processes in addition to their present role so that they can bring out the best from the employees they hold. Studies of such nature eyeing the causal factors of employee and organisational behaviour will go a long way in initiating a research orientated outlook towards impending anxieties so that they do not volcanically erupt in the course of time to impede India's growth curve.Empowerment has always been considered as an effective management strategy leading to psychological enablement and has been broadly applied to organizational settings involving change and innovation (Cho and Faerman, 2010). It can facilitate IT organizations to nurture and develop employees to look beyond defined boundaries, inspire team members and foster a supportive environment thereby creating effective leaders and leadership for tomorrow. By highlighting the significant role of lifestyle orientation and positive perceptions of organizational functioning on psychological empowerment perceptions and its sub-dimensions among IT professionals, this study not only provides insights into complexities of employee perceptions and orientations but also presents both opportunities and challenges for human resource managers in the IT Industry. In short, the IT industry needs to bolster highly skilled professionals' sense of empowerment by delving into their dispositions, treating them as intellectual assets and also by providing a trusting and supporting work environment. Additionally, with the IT sector being a technology and people driven sector requiring continuous focus and expertise, it is important to understand factors that would help employees perform at their optimum capabilities and also examine those underlying factors that may be stagnating the empowerment processes. By doing so, organisations can consequently gain a competitive advantage not only by encouraging performance but also by keeping the employees' skills and experience within the organization rather than outside it.6.1 Limitations and directions for future research\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of lifestyle orientation and perceived organizational functioning in psychological empowerment perceptions of information technology (IT) professionals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This study is a cross-sectional survey of 242 IT professionals across ten software product and services companies based in India. Established scales of the research instruments were used for data collection.\nFindings: - Findings indicate that professionals with aggressive, individualistic and resistive lifestyle orientation are likely to feel more psychologically empowered. Organizational functioning is also found to have a strong effect on psychological empowerment perceptions of IT professionals.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Use of self-reported measures for all the variables may cause desirability bias on the part of participants. Future studies may explore demographic differences and incorporate empowerment climate as well.\nPractical implications: - Insights from the study would help organizations facilitate employee performance using the empowerment tool and consequently gain competitive advantage by retaining skills and experience within the organization rather than outside it.\nOriginality/value: - Studies of such nature being few in the Indian IT context, findings present both opportunities and challenges for IT human resource managers and can also be taken up for future research work.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
The association between learning styles and perception of teaching quality
|
[
"Undergraduate students",
"Student learning",
"Structural equation modelling",
"Learning styles",
"Student perceptions",
"Teaching quality",
"Learning quality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: It is generally accepted that the manner in which individuals approach a learning situation has an impact on performance and achievement of learning outcomes (Cassidy, 2004). Individual learning styles have been subject to much focus, with most research proposing a match between teaching and learning styles to facilitate deeper student learning. Despite important implications of teaching quality evaluations for educational institutions, less research attention has focused on the association between learning styles and perceptions of teaching quality. It is unclear whether learners with particular learning styles perceive their teachers' abilities in a particular way. By combining the extensive research on learning styles and the limited research on perceived teaching quality, this study investigates the association between undergraduate university students' learning styles and their perceptions of teaching quality. Learning styles are discussed first, with students' perceptions of teaching quality discussed before the relationship between the two is presented.\nLearning styles: Learning has been classified into the three levels of deep, surface and achieving or strategic learning. Learning approaches comprise the two components of a strategy (or what the student does) and an intention or motive (what the student is trying to achieve) (Ramsden, 1991). An individual's learning style develops as a result of a particular cognitive style and is related to individual differences and intentions (Ramsden, 1985). Learning style exists independently of, yet is often confused with, ability (Riding and Cheeme, 1991). Some tasks may seem easier for one individual than another simply because the task may be better suited to one individual's cognitive style. Personal cognitive abilities acquired in a long socialisation process may also be referred to as learning styles (Reynolds, 1997). Learning styles are both a stable structural trait and a dynamic process state, as a learning style is to some degree responsive to experiences as well as situational demands to enable change and adaptive behaviour (Cassidy, 2004).\nMethod: As part of a wider study on student attitudes, surveys were distributed in the second week of semester to 320 second and third-year undergraduate business students. Participation was optional and there was no penalty for non-participation. There were 300 surveys returned, a 94 per cent response rate. After removing 48 respondents with missing data, the final sample of 272 included 193 females and 75 males, with a mean age of 21.25 years (SD=2.76).\nResults: Means, standard deviations, Cronbach alpha reliabilities and inter-correlations are presented in Table I. Scale reliability was acceptable at 0.70-0.83 for most scales although a little low for pragmatist (0.67) and theorist (0.65). As expected, many of the scales were significantly correlated with each other.\nDiscussion: The study sought to establish a link between learning styles and student perceptions of teaching quality. Four learning styles were examined in a model with an overall perception of teaching quality that comprised five components. The majority of fit indices indicate a good fit between the theorised model and the data.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Although learning styles and teaching quality have been studied separately, the association between the association between the two has yet to be identified. The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationship between students' learning styles with students' perceptions of teaching quality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study used survey responses from 272 undergraduate students. All 80 items in the Honey and Mumford's (1986) Learning Styles Questionnaire and all 46 teaching quality items (Thompson, 2002) were used to assess learning styles and perceptions of teaching quality, respectively. Structural equation modelling was used to investigate the relationships between learning styles and perception of teaching quality.\nFindings: Results indicate learners with dominant reflector or activist styles are influenced in their perceptions of teaching quality of their teacher or lecturer. No perceptions of teaching quality relationships were found for students with dominant theorist or pragmatist learning style.\nPractical implications: Recognising that perceptions of teaching quality impacts on some students, teachers and lecturers may consider and articulate the type of learning they would prefer students to adopt for a particular class. As an example, a teacher might ask students who would normally see themselves as active learners to relax into the lecture mode of delivery and reflect on what is said in the lecture, to take time to consider what is said.\nOriginality/value: This study combines the two important constructs of learning and perception of teaching quality to provide insight into the relationship between the two.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
A habitus divided? The effects of social mobility on the habitus and consumption
|
[
"Cultural capital",
"Downward mobility",
"Social mobility",
"Habitus",
"Habitus clive",
"Strategic habitus"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Social class shapes virtually every facet of contemporary life, from education to politics, health to family life and community to individual identity (Henry, 2005; Lareau and Conley, 2008). Your social position fundamentally determines who you are and how you live. Research has found that children from different social classes wish for different possessions (Horrocks and Mussman, 1973) and attach different meanings to possessions (Dittmar, 1991). Social class also influences how accurately we perceive the social class of others based on material cues (Belk et al., 1982, 1984; Dittmar and Pepper, 1994). Individuals from different social classes have different modes of thoughts (Henry, 2000) and spend and consume differently (Foxall, 1975; Fry and Siller, 1970; Martineau, 1958; Slocum and Mathews, 1970). In addition to consumption and perception, social class plays a pivotal role in individual identity and behavior (Bourdieu, 1984/2010; Holt, 1998). Social class, often reconfigured as cultural capital, has been found to structure consumption patterns, tastes and habituses both in developed and emerging economies (Bernthal et al., 2005; Carfagna et al., 2014; Coskuner-Balli and Thompson, 2013; Holt, 1998; Moisio et al., 2013; Ulver and Ostberg, 2014; Ustuner and Holt, 2007, 2010).\nTheory and literature: In addressing these questions, Bourdieu's theory of distinction and particularly his notion of the divided habitus are outlined. Then, two other theories are described: a blended taste and a strategic habitus. This is followed by a discussion of additional factors that have been found to impact the adoption of either a divided or a strategic habitus.\nMethod and analysis: To investigate the experience of social mobility, life history interviews were conducted with people who report experiencing social mobility. The richness of the interview method made it an ideal choice for exploring how social mobility affects habitus. While social mobility is most often investigated in large-scale social surveys, there has been an emerging interest in using qualitative approaches (Bertaux and Thompson, 2007; Devine et al., 2005; Irwin, 2015; Miles et al., 2011; Newman, 1988; Reay, 1998; Skeggs, 1997). Such qualitative accounts provide a richly detailed description of social mobility that is particularly appropriate for exploratory research.\nFindings: The most apparent finding was the relationship between the direction of mobility and the habitus. The research represented here finds that for the downwardly mobile, habitus appears to stay the same. Rather than changing, or adapting, it remains rooted in one's former class. The primary reason for this difference between upward and downward mobility is also uncovered. Because downward movement is devalued, there is less incentive for those who experience it to change their thoughts, feelings or behaviors to match their new position. For the upwardly mobile, there is more incentive to change. These findings answer RQ1 and RQ2 that ask which theory best applies to mobility and the conditions that impact the outcome.\nDiscussion: Upward and downward mobility have different effects on taste because they are very different experiences. Downward mobility is devalued, as well as being depressing, exhausting, embarrassing and anxiety producing. It seems only natural that respondents recall the past with preference. The devalued position of downward mobility provides no incentive for those who experience it to change their habitus. Instead, the imprint of the past is evident. The exception to this pattern is when individuals hit a low that they feel represents destitution. In such cases, their habitus begins to change, leaving it divided. This group most closely resembles Bourdieu's notion of a divided habitus. The experience of destitution also draws attention to the importance of the subjective experience of social mobility. The experience of being destitute, regardless of the actual financial circumstances, spurred respondents' habitus to change and become divided.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine social mobility. Social mobility has traditionally been thought to result in a divided habitus. However, recent work has suggested that for the socially mobile, habitus may become blended or even that individuals can choose their habitus in a strategic fashion. Each position has received empirical support, raising two questions. First, does the experience of social mobility result in a habitus that is more divided or strategic? Second, what factors affect this outcome?\nDesign/methodology/approach: These questions are investigated by conducting depth interviews with people who have experienced social mobility.\nFindings: The direction of social mobility determines what effect social mobility has on the habitus. For the downwardly mobile, the habitus appears to remain rooted in one's former class. This is because downward movement is devalued, and so there is less incentive for those who experience it to change their thoughts, feelings or behaviors to match their new position. For the upwardly mobile, the habitus changes slowly. The trajectory and the subjective experience also affect the outcome. Two strategies respondents use to deal with social mobility are noted.\nResearch limitations/implications: Bourdieu's notion of the divided habitus is reconsidered and compared to newer incarnations, and the importance of the direction of social mobility is underlined. This work explains why upward and downward mobility result in different changes in the habitus.\nPractical implications: Investigating the experience of social mobility is particularly important given the frequent, dynamic nature of mobility in European countries. Two strategies used to manage downward mobility are identified.\nOriginality/value: This work reconsiders Bourdieu's notion of the divided habitus and newer incarnations and explains why upward and downward mobility result in different changes in the habitus. Such a finding is not only an invitation to expand on the notion of habitus but also works to draw attention to other factors that play a role in habitus and strategies used to manage change.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Business relatedness in international diversification: Achievements, gaps, and propositions
|
[
"Competitive strategy",
"Subsidiary",
"International diversification",
"Joint venture",
"Business relatedness"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper contributes to international diversification literature by reviewing studies on business relatedness in international contexts and developing a conceptual model. The relevance of business relatedness was originally established in studies of relationships between a firm's product diversification and performance (Hauschild and zu Knyphausen-Aufsess, 2013; Wan et al., 2011). Since the seminal contributions of Chandler (1962) and Rumelt (1974), business relatedness has been a dominant explanation of this relationship (Palich et al., 2000). Similarities among business units along one or more dimensions define business relatedness where, for example, products and resources represent dimensions.\nThe nature of relatedness: Individuals classify objects by identifying and assessing similarities (Tversky, 1977). Hence, similarity judgments are of particular importance not only to a firm's product portfolio but also to the specification of competitors. The judgments constitute a ground for the firm's formulation of a competitive strategy, which may be a cost leadership strategy or a differentiation strategy (Porter, 1980). Similarity may occur among, for example, products, resources and foreign markets. Thus, to formulate a competitive strategy, the firm needs to determine the relatedness among business units along the key dimensions and try to avoid overestimation and underestimation of similarities. In turn, paying accurate attention to relatedness permits the exploitation of synergies.\nStudies of international relatedness: This section presents the process that was used to identify the studies to be reviewed and describes the central characteristics of these studies.\nTheory bases of the studies: This section clarifies theory bases used in the studies and predictions regarding business relatedness (Table III). In total, 11 studies develop hypotheses that are based on variants of organizational learning theory and predict that relatedness between organizational units enables the transfer of knowledge. Four studies build hypotheses on transaction costs economics and predict that relatedness reduces transaction costs. One study follows the industrial organization view and predicts that relatedness conveys economies of scale and scope. Finally, one study draws from institutional theory and predicts that the legitimacy of a foreign unit increases if there is relatedness with a parent firm. Table IV presents the number of studies.\nFindings of the studies: Table IV summarizes the key findings of the selected studies on international business relatedness along the following central themes: antecedents, relationships with performance, relevance of relatedness types and international joint ventures related to one or more parent firm.\nImportant research gaps: Some of the studies reviewed above examine direct associations between business relatedness and the outcome of foreign units in terms of performance (Tang and Rowe, 2012; Luo, 2002) or the ultimate manifestations of performance, such as survival (Li, 1995) and shareholder value (Xu and Lu, 2007). Other studies investigate outcomes that may mediate the effects of relatedness on a foreign unit's performance, including learning (Lane et al., 2001), the parent firm's control (Mjoen and Tallman, 1997) and ownership (Pehrsson, 2008).\nConceptual model and propositions: This section presents a conceptual model and develops propositions that contribute to the closing of the research gaps. Drawing from organizational learning theory, the conceptual model (Figure 1) proposes positive direct links between a foreign unit's type of relatedness with its corporate core business unit and the type of competitive strategy. Competitive strategy mediates the effect of relatedness on performance. This effect is contingent on the number of parent firms in international joint ventures and on the height of competition barriers. These moderating factors originate from transaction costs economics and industrial organization theory, respectively.\nTheoretical contributions: The model and its propositions contribute to the literature on international diversification by closing three major research gaps. First, the models that have been provided by previous studies on the business relatedness of firms' foreign units lack an actionable component that mediates the effects of relatedness on performance - both the relatedness of foreign units that are wholly owned by a firm (Galavotti et al., 2017) and the relatedness with reference to international joint ventures (Dutta and Beamish, 2013). The propositions in this paper suggest that a unit's type of competitive strategy, in terms of cost leadership and differentiation, is an essential mediator because it is nurtured by knowledge coming from other corporate units and, in turn, affects performance. Hence, I argue that an operationalized strategy is required to realize the potential effects of relatedness types on performance. This goes beyond the findings of Pehrsson (2017), which establishes associations between relatedness types and competitive strategies for foreign subsidiaries, but does not examine the strategy/performance link.\nManagerial implications and future research: As a foreign unit forming an effective competitive strategy needs access to knowledge that has been created in the corporate core business unit (Luo and Zhao, 2004), a foreign unit is advised to evaluate how its relatedness enables knowledge transfer. Based on the relationships proposed in this paper, a foreign unit with a cost leadership strategy is advised to secure relatedness between its products and those of the corporate core, while a differentiation strategy calls for resource relatedness. However, an international joint venture also benefits from congruity between the parent firms' goals and resource complementarity. Furthermore, resource relatedness and a differentiation strategy require greater attention if the competition barriers are high.\nConclusions: The review in this paper clarifies the achievements of previous studies on business relatedness pertaining to a firm's foreign unit - that is, pertaining to a subsidiary, a joint venture or another business unit. Treatment of the relatedness construct and data issues are examined and relevant theory bases and key findings are discussed. Based on the review, it is concluded that major research gaps include a lack of attention to a competitive strategy that would mediate effects of business relatedness on the performance of a foreign unit. Also, moderating effects of competition barriers and the number of parent firms are missing.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Business relatedness is important in international diversification because it enables a firm's transfer of resources to business units operating in foreign markets. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model based on a review of the major contributions of studies regarding the relatedness of subsidiaries, joint ventures or any other foreign unit.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper examines theory bases, the relatedness construct, data issues and the key achievements of previous studies. Drawing on organizational learning, transaction costs economics and industrial organization, a conceptual model and propositions are developed that intend to close important research gaps.\nFindings: The model includes competitive strategy as a mediator of the effects of relatedness on foreign unit performance, type of foreign unit - that is, a wholly owned unit or joint venture - as a moderator; and competition barriers as a moderator.\nResearch limitations/implications: In future research, the propositions need to be transformed into testable hypotheses. It is recommended to treat relatedness as a multidimensional concept.\nPractical implications: A firm is primarily advised to evaluate how its relatedness with foreign units enables knowledge transfer. A foreign cost leadership strategy benefits from product relatedness, while a differentiation strategy calls for resource relatedness.\nOriginality/value: The proposed model is unique as it includes an actionable component that mediates the effects of relatedness on international performance, i.e. competitive strategy, and concerns both wholly owned foreign units and international joint ventures.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Global vs local brand perceptions among Thais and Turks
|
[
"Turkey",
"Thailand",
"Consumer behaviour",
"Cross cultural studies",
"Brands",
"Consumer values",
"Local brands",
"Global brands",
"Globalization"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Globalization leads to more openness and interdependence among societies and economies. Global marketers aim to satisfy the consumer's needs and wants by offering goods and services from around the world, with the promise of a higher quality of life. Consumers across the globe increasingly share similar tastes in clothing, music, food and lifestyles. Through integrated media, global images are everywhere, and brands are promoted worldwide. Multinational companies - to a large extent - have learned \"to operate as if the world were one large market\" (Levitt, 1983). However, in many cases, global and local brands co-exist and compete with each other. Especially in many developing countries, local and global meanings are combined in everyday lives.It has been well established in the literature that brands carry and communicate cultural meanings (Aaker, 1997; Aaker et al., 2001; Escalas and Bettman, 2005) and that these meanings help people make sense of the world around them (Batey, 2008; Fournier, 1998). In that sense, global and local brands may have different connotations. While global brands may be perceived as status enhancing tools and vehicles for expressing a desire to be part of the global consumer community, local brands may suggest low status (Batra et al., 2000) and even closed-mindedness (Steenkamp et al., 2003). In some cases, preference for local brands may imply resistance against the forces of globalization (Russell and Russell, 2006).Despite a widespread practice of multinational corporations marketing global brands that compete with local brands, cross-cultural research on the factors that determine consumers' purchase intentions of global versus local brands remains limited especially when it comes to Asian consumers' reactions to such brands. Research in marketing often treats Asian consumers across all cultures as similar (i.e. collectivist) and simply compares them with their Western counterparts. We collected data from Thailand and Turkey because their markets are relatively open and westernized, with diverse consumers who are regularly exposed to both local and global brands. In this study, we propose to address two research questions:RQ1. Are there individual differences among consumers in their evaluations of local versus global brands?Based on a thorough literature review on global and local brand meanings, we identified four theoretically relevant and commonly used consumer values and traits likely to influence consumer purchase intentions: materialism, ethnocentrism, traditionalism and susceptibility to interpersonal influence. We also collected several key demographic variables (i.e. income, gender, education, ethnicity, religion and age) as they may have an impact on brand preferences:RQ2. Do external signals that can easily be manipulated by marketers have an impact on these intentions? More specifically, does priming (through local versus global cues) moderate the relationship between these individual traits and purchase intentions?To our knowledge, no researcher has studied value switching in a local-global brand context using seemingly similar two Asian cultures. We expect that the choice between local versus global brands in the same product category will depend on environmental cues (e.g. commercials, advertisements, salespeople's communication styles).Although individual characteristics explaining people's propensity to purchase global versus local brands have been studied, specific country characteristics have not been adequately explored. Here, we examine whether the connection between personality traits and values and buying intentions of local versus global brands holds across two Asian countries: Thailand and Turkey. Though studying the role of individual difference variables in likelihood to purchase brands is of an apparent value to both theorists and practitioners; the ways in which environmental cues can be controlled to affect perceptions is of a higher pragmatic value especially to marketing managers. With this study, we hope to give specific recommendations to managers as to how to manipulate situational signals (through marketing communications) to influence consumer behavior. Through changing subtle signals such as packaging, logos, slogans, design of stores and content and format of advertising, managers may be able to shift consumers' perceptions, making them more favorable towards their brand.We begin the paper with a review of relevant literature, which serves as a foundation for establishing our conceptual model and hypotheses. Then, we describe and justify our research method, leading to the results, implications and contributions to scholars and managers.\n2 Relevant literature: Below, we review the literature on global and local brand meanings, individual traits and values that are relevant to global vs local brand purchase intentions but first, we start with a discussion on why Thailand and Turkey are selected as our focus of study.2.1 Why study Thailand and Turkey?\n3 Conceptual framework: In this paper, we want to explore whether traits such as consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence, ethnocentrism, materialism and traditionalism affect consumer behavior in two seemingly Asian countries: Turkey and Thailand. We also suggest that not only individual values and traits but also environmental cues (global and local) may impact consumers' purchase intentions in regard to global versus local brands. We posit that when consumers are exposed to marketing cues such as advertisements, packaging and store design including global or local signals, their purchase intentions may change depending on the nature of these signs.Social psychology and consumer behavior researchers maintain that priming or activation of mental constructs may have important consequences on behavior. Environmental cues, even when presented in a subtle way, are effective in changing behavioral intentions (Bargh et al., 1996; Shah, 2003). Thus, we propose that cues associated with globalization or localization should affect consumers' evaluations of global and local products. Individuals acting just like chameleons may adapt to the environment in which they are in. When exposed to local cues such as traditional festivals, popular local landmarks and conventional and folkloric themes, consumers are more likely to act in line with these signals. When given a choice between a global and a local brand, they are more likely to pick the local brand. In a similar vein, when exposed to global cues (e.g. Western icons, modern and urban looks), they are more likely to prefer global brands (Zhang and Khare, 2009). Following are the effects we expect:H5a. Those individuals in the local prime condition are more likely to purchase local brands.H5b. Those individuals in the global prime condition are more likely to purchase global brands.\n4 Research method and analysis: 4.1 Pre-tests\n5 Contributions and suggestions for future research: Although provisional and pending future empirical research, our study shows that consumers from both Thai and Turkish cultures exhibit striking differences when it comes to local and global brand perceptions. Although both societies are perceived as traditional and collective, there are differences in the ways in which individual traits and values impact purchase intentions. For instance, while we saw that traditionalism and susceptibility were important among Thai individuals, ethnocentrism and materialism were at similar levels in both samples. Traditionalism had an important effect on intentions to purchase local brands in Thailand, while it did not have a very meaningful impact among Turks. Similarly, in Thailand, susceptibility affected purchase intentions from Starbucks. However, we did not see a similar pattern among Turks. Since our collection was limited to a one time experimental study in both countries, the information produced is not sufficient to explain the reasons for these differences. More research on the effects of cultural differences is warranted.A further finding is that the ethnocentrism variable did not have an effect on global and local brand evaluations. Past research seems to suggest that quality perceptions may be a stronger factor shaping preferences for global brands. That is, even ethnocentric individuals may prefer global products when they doubt the quality of local brands. Future research should assess the relationship between perceived performance and conformance quality of brands and ethnocentrism in global vs local brand preferences.Recent research has indicated that constructs such as attitude toward global and local products (AGP and ALP) (Steenkamp and de Jong, 2010) and individual difference variables such as chronic global and local identity (Zhang and Khare, 2009) are essential in understanding consumer evaluations of global and local products. Future research on seemingly similar cultures might examine these constructs in light of the findings of the current study to create a fuller picture.Apart from theoretical contributions, there are practical implications of this research. First, brand managers should not readily assume that Asian countries share similar characteristics (values and individual traits) and therefore, would respond similarly to global and local brands. As we documented, there are important differences across Asian countries and a simple categorization of countries as collectivist vs individualistic cannot capture all these variations. Our research also points that external cues that can easily be manipulated by managers may be used to switch consumer brand preferences. That is, when consumers are exposed to global cues, they are more likely to buy global brands and when they are exposed to local cues, they are more likely to prefer local brands. This gives marketing managers an excellent tool to devise marketing strategies, especially the promotional mix and individual product decisions (such as packaging and logo design). Second, there are implications for market segmentation, brand differentiation and positioning. If marketing managers know how values and personality traits impact consumer behavior across countries, they can more effectively communicate with consumers. For instance, if susceptibility to interpersonal influence is the driving force behind consuming a global product, then marketing communications can be designed in such a way to encourage social consumption. If traditionalism is what lies under local brand preference, then the commercials for local brands will emphasize conventions more than say product quality. In some instances, values interact to influence behavior. For example, we discovered that, traditional Thai consumers prefer a local coffee shop even if they are materialistic. Though materialism is thought to impact global brand liking (Alden et al., 2006), it is interesting to see that in some cultures, traditionalism may - in effect - overrule materialism. Current work once again demonstrates how important it is that marketing managers collect data on consumer's cultural values as a part of their marketing research for global/local brand attitudes, acceptance and adoption. Last but not least, our paper has implications for teaching in marketing. Specifically, the paper shows how important for students to be sensitive to cultural values - both to commonalities and differences, and how comparing cultures help individuals (students) understand how and why consumers behave in a certain way in the marketplace.\n6 Conclusion: This research accomplished our goal of a cross-cultural comparison of individual traits and values in the context of global versus local brand preference in two Asian cultures. Researchers should not readily assume that Asian consumer behaviors are generalizable across dimensions. We hope that this paper will present new horizons for discussion and debate on consumer cultures across the diverse Asian region.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: - Market researchers often treat Asian consumers as a single entity and compare them with their Western counterparts. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast consumers in two Asian countries, Thailand and Turkey. Since global and local brands co-exist in many regions of the world today, this study, by examining two Asian cultures, examines the impact of personality traits and values on individuals' intentions to purchase global versus local brands. The authors also investigate the role of priming (local versus global cues) in the relationship between these individual traits and purchase intentions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study involves a series of pretests and an experiment conducted among 240 participants from Thailand and 142 participants from Turkey. Though exploratory in nature, content analysis also suggests interesting avenues for future research.\nFindings: - The findings suggest that although both societies are perceived as traditional and collective, consumers from both Thai and Turkish cultures exhibit some striking differences. There were differences in the ways in which individual traits and values impacted global vs local brand purchase intentions. For instance, while it was discovered that traditionalism and susceptibility were important among Thai individuals, ethnocentrism and materialism were at similar levels in both samples. Traditionalism had an important effect on intentions to purchase local brands in Thailand, while it did not have a very meaningful impact among Turks. Similarly, in Thailand, susceptibility affected global brand purchase intentions. However, a similar pattern was not seen among Turks.\nOriginality/value: - The research is valuable in understanding that two seemingly similar Asian cultures (Thailand and Turkey) are - in effect - dissimilar on key variables such as traditionalism and ethnocentrism and that impacts how these two cultures perceive global and local brands. As marketers aim to satisfy consumer's needs by offering goods and services, it is extremely important to understand consumers' evaluations of these brands and how these perceptions are formed in the first place. Such an understanding will help marketers in their positioning strategies as well as marketing communications design.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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More complex images of women at work are needed: a fictive example of Petra Delicado
|
[
"Feminism",
"Fiction",
"Narrative analysis",
"Working women"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nFiction and social sciences: earlier encounters: Modern institutions [...] continuously produce fictions, steer their way trough [sic.] fictions, work with fictions and become founded upon fiction.(Knorr Cetina, 1994, p. 8)\nManagement she wrote: One striking analogy between detective stories and organization studies is a preference for realist style dictated by an interest in social life. They are both built around problem solving in a social context. The narratives are constructed in a similar way: there is something amiss, it is neither clear nor obvious what it is (there are many false clues), this \"something\" must be explained (the problem must be diagnosed) and - although this is optional in both detective story and in organization studies - the way of solving the problem ought to be prescribed. When this last condition is upheld, there is often another striking similarity between the main characters - the detective and the consultant.\nWomen and police: facts and fictions: An important event that heralded the increased visibility of women in police work was the BBC series with Helen Mirren, based on the novel Prime Suspect by Linda LaPlante (1991). True, both Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski are older, but they are private detectives, albeit professional ones. And Inspector Tennison was apparently created with a factual policewoman as a model:Heavily based as it is on the real-life experiences of DCI Jackie Malton of London's Metropolitan Police Force, Prime Suspect especially seems concerned with the mechanics of women's entry not just into the workplace but into the professional managerial positions that became available to them during the 1980s.(Tomc, 1995, p. 58)\nPetra Delicado: a rock of a woman!: Armed, erect and closed in armour forth I came - but of terror was the mail-coat cast and of shame. \"I want to meet [...].\"Karin Boye (1927)\nAn ironic, ironically conceived role model?: Petra Delicado is a woman that many women would like to be but are not (see her Italian Facebook fan site!) She chooses her partners and drops them when they demand too much. The cooperation with her subordinate, Fermin, is most successful when they both reveal traits and behaviors atypical for their gender; the most successful way of starting a quarrel is for one of them to utter a statement about men or women \"in general.\" One could call Delicado's attitude \"postfeminist,\" but not in the sense of abandoning feminist demands; rather, in the sense of bringing them to extreme - yet never hiding the related complications.\nA coda: what is fiction for?: I have written so often about the reasons for which social scientists in general and management and organization scholars in particular should be interested in popular culture that, in order not to repeat myself once again, I am summarizing only the most important points.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to convince the readers that more complex images of working women are needed, and that fiction may provide them.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this paper, text analysis is done using a version of close reading.\nFindings: Both media and research tend to simplify the images of working women, either in positive or negative way. Reality and some of its fictive representations offer more nuanced examples.\nResearch limitations/implications: Fiction can be treated as field material.\nPractical implications: Women should dare more at workplaces.\nSocial implications: Researchers should join fiction writers in convincing society of the crucial role women play in contemporary organizations.\nOriginality/value: This paper belongs to the growing tradition of transdisciplinary organization studies.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Transformational leadership, pride in being a follower of the leader and organizational commitment
|
[
"Transformational leadership",
"Affective commitment",
"Normative commitment",
"Pride in being a follower of the leader"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Transformational leadership theory, as a leader-focussed research study, has become widespread among researchers in the last few decades (Bass, 1985, 1999; Lowe et al., 1996; Podsakoff et al., 1990, 1996, 2000). Over the past decades, accumulating evidence suggests that transformational leadership is significantly associated with follower attitudes and performance (Barling et al., 1996; Dvir et al., 2002; Fuller et al., 1996; Howell and Hall-Merenda, 1999; Piccolo and Colquitt, 2006). The psychological states on how transformational leadership behaviors are transmitted to followers' work outcomes have received considerable research attention (Dumdum et al., 2002; Ozaralli, 2003; Yukl, 1989), such as empowerment, and trust in the leader (Kark et al., 2003; Wang et al., 2005). Indeed, Yukl (1989) argued that \"a variety of different influence processes may be involved in transformational leadership\" (p. 328). There is still an area for research to further examine the process of the relationship between transformational leadership and follower attitudes and behaviors.\nLiterature review: Transformational leadership theory\nHypotheses: Transformational leadership and pride in being a follower of the leader\nStudy 1 methodology: The sample of Study 1 included 150 executive MBA students taking classes in one of the local universities in Xian, China. The survey was collected voluntarily and anonymously. The researchers administered survey questionnaires during regular classes and provided instructions to participants. The participants directly returned the completed questionnaires to the researcher on-site, and all were assured that their replies would keep confidential and for research purpose only. A total of 145 out of 150 questionnaires were returned, with a usable response rate of 96.7 percent. For the student sample, 55.2 percent were male and 72.4 percent had had a tertiary education or above. The majority of the respondents were in the age group of 36-45. The mean of organizational tenure and leader tenure were 14.7 and 4.6 years, respectively.\nStudy 1 data analysis: Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs)\nStudy 2 methodology: Although Study 1 supported the notation that pride in being a follower of the leader mediated between transformational leadership and affective and normative commitment, the data was collected in a student sample. It may not be representative of work practice in business organizations. To increase the validity and generalizability of the model, Study 2 aimed to replicate our results from Study 1 by testing the three hypotheses in the Chinese work context.\nStudy 2 data analysis: Results\nDiscussion: This study examined the relationship among transformational leadership, pride in being a follower of the leader, and affective and normative commitment. In Study 1, the results indicated that transformational leadership is positively related to pride in being a follower of the leader, affective commitment and normative commitment. The effect of the transformational leadership on affective and normative commitment was mediated by pride in being a follower of the leader. In Study 2, transformational leadership would enhance the commitment of employees and induce feelings of pride of being a follower of the leader. Both studies demonstrated the same results on the mediating role of pride in being a follower of the leader between transformational leadership and organizational commitment.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship among transformational leadership, pride in being a follower of the leader, and organizational commitment, as represented by affective and normative commitment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from two samples in Mainland China (Study 1 of 145 executive MBA students in one of the local universities located in Xian; Study 2 of 210 employees in a service-based private-owned company located in Shenzhen). Descriptive statistics and regression analyses, Sobel tests, and bootstrapping tests were used to analyze the data.\nFindings: Both studies found that transformational leadership is positively related to pride in being a follower of the leader, and affective and normative commitment. Results indicated that pride in being a follower of the leader fully mediated the relationship between transformational leadership, affective and normative commitment.\nResearch limitations/implications: The main limitation of this study is to collect data from a self-reported single source in a cross-sectional survey design. The findings are susceptible to problems of common method variance of the independent variable, mediator and dependent variables.\nPractical implications: The findings assist managers to better understand the importance of getting the support of their followers. If the followers are pride in being a follower of their leader, they are more likely to be committed toward an organization.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to the existing literature by which pride in being a follower of the leader as a mediator between transformational leadership and organizational commitment in the Chinese context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Does an own-brand produce higher profitability? Evidence from Taiwan's manufacturing firms
|
[
"Profitability",
"SMEs",
"Brands"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Branding strategy has been widely discussed from various perspectives, underpinned by the theoretical concept that brand is a core competence and a key intangible asset of a company[1]. A well-known brand not only signals product quality to consumers but also generates more profits for firms (Kirmani and Rao, 2000; Erdem and Swait, 2004). The role of branding varies between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) contexts. As noted by McQuiston (2004), for industrial products, constructing a brand has multiple functions, including enhancing consumers' impressions of the physical product and services as well as the company reputation. Therefore, branding strategies for consumers may not be directly applied to industrial markets if they fail to account for the purchase behaviors of organizations, buyer-seller relationships and industrial segmentation (Mudambi et al., 1997; Brown et al., 2007).\n2. Own-brand establishment and profitability: 2.1 Benefits and pitfalls of own-brand building\n3. Data and empirical model: The conceptual model of this study integrates two perspectives:\n4. Results and discussion: 4.1 Own-brand determinants\n5. Conclusions and directions for future research: 5.1 Concluding remarks\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: This study aims to investigate the determinants of own-branding strategy and whether branding contributes to higher profitability among industrial firms. Building a strong brand can be a source of competitive advantage. However, brands may not be equally important to all firms, especially in the business-to-business (B2B) context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study develops and empirically tests a conceptual model by considering the endogenous choice of branding strategy in the relationship between branding and financial performance. A large, nationally representative dataset from Taiwan, consisting of 13,098 manufacturing firms, is used.\nFindings: The present study suggests that larger, younger, more innovative and export-oriented firms have a higher propensity to develop their own brands. E-commerce usage is shown to be the strongest predictor of the decision to brand. The positive effect of branding on profitability is evident for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but not for large firms.\nOriginality/value: Research integrating the perspectives of the decision to brand and branding effectiveness is scant. The methodology used in this study makes a theoretical contribution to the link between branding and firm performance. The findings indicate that large firms have more advantages for building their own brands, yet SMEs stand to gain more financially from branding relative to their large counterparts. This provides the important implication that SMEs benefit from building a strong brand in the B2B context.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Research performance and degree centrality in co-authorship networks: The moderating role of homophily
|
[
"Pakistan",
"Research performance",
"Homophily",
"Network centrality",
"Co-author network",
"Degree centrality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Research performance is the quintessential metric for research faculty. Whether one is motivated by career advancement or personal fulfillment, publishing research is a rigorous condition for membership in the scientific community and employment at research-oriented universities. Moreover, while some faculty members consider research their defining characteristic (Crittenden, 1997), some maintain that teaching-oriented faculty also benefit from conducting research (Webster, 1986), as research and teaching activities are considered complementary (Marsh and Hattie, 2002).\nTheory and hypotheses: Network centrality\nMethodology: Data collection\nResults: Table I presents the means/percentages, standard deviations and Spearman correlations for all variables in the analysis. Findings indicate 77.80 percent faculty members are males, 73.40 percent are employed in public sector universities/research institutes, 62.60 percent are juniors and 40.60 percent assistant professors, 17.30 percent are associate professors and 42 percent are professors. Moreover, 32.50 percent of the faculty members in the co-authorship network are from Punjab province, followed by 27.60 percent from KPK, 19.70 percent from Sindh, 15.30 percent from capital territory, 3.40 percent from Balochistan and 1.50 percent from Azad Kashmir. Coming to city affiliation, 14.80 percent of the faculty members are from Islamabad, followed by 13.30 percent from Karachi, 12.80 percent from Peshawar, 10.30 percent from Lahore and Faisalabad, respectively.\nDiscussion: This study investigates the relationship between research performance and degree centrality in a domestic co-authorship network of Pakistani-faculty members in chemistry. Moreover, the moderating role of homophily on the aforementioned relationship is tested. The study first established that prior research performance does precede the degree centrality of an author in the co-authorship network. Results show that regard to co-author networks, the personal characteristics of a researcher do not necessarily precede having high degree centrality, i.e. attributes may not be causal to co-author relationships. Instead, high degree centrality is more so a function of the forerunning publishing output of the researcher. As provided above, the findings according to models 2 and 3 provide indication and strong support for H1. This phenomenon may seem counter intuitive, as it is likely affected by the context of the relationship. The highly specialized nature of scholars in a co-author network may explain this. Such scholars are acutely aware of their research environment and relevant high producers. Moreover, scholars are keenly aware of the research performance expected from them. It is, therefore, plausible that such scholars would not patently look at the personal attributes of others; instead, they look to the past performance of prospective co-authors. This particular finding of insignificance of control variables provides some strength to our first hypothesis. That is, it is actually high research performance which makes authors attracted toward other authors which eventually might lead to establishment of an actual co-author relationship.\n",
"role": "user"
},
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of the relationship between a scholar's research performance (using weighted journal-impact factor average) and their degree centrality; the impact of author-homophily (in terms of gender, institutional sector, academic age, academic ranks, province and city) on this relationship is investigated as well.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using scientific publishing data and journal-impact factors from Thomson Reuters' ISI Web of Science (SCI) and Journal Citation Reports, respectively, the domestic co-authorship network of chemistry researchers in Pakistan during 2002-2009 was constructed then modeled via ordinary least squares regression.\nFindings: Results show that the personal characteristics of a researcher do not necessarily lead to high degree centrality, i.e. attributes may not be causal to co-author relationships. Instead, high degree centrality is more so a function of the forerunning research performance of the researcher: those whom publish more in terms of impact factor, attract more co-authors (high degree centrality). Moreover, the relationship between research performance and degree centrality is positively moderated by age and province homophily and negatively moderated by city homophily.\nResearch limitations/implications: Data are sourced wholly from the Pakistani chemistry research community; results many not be generalizable to other sub-populations or the wider research community.\nPractical implications: The findings provide insights to performance-seeking authors: knowing that their research performance enhances their centrality, which in-turn may lead to increased research performance and various other desirable professional outcomes. In addition, researchers can look toward establishing similar (homophilous) or dissimilar (heterophilous) ties knowing that the relationship between research performance and centrality will likely be stronger when similarity or dissimilarity exists.\nSocial implications: This study supports the idea that high research performance attracts more potential co-authors, which in-turn may lead to ever greater research performance, which suggests that the research community will be fragmented between high- and low-performing researchers. Also researcher will have similar or dissimilar ties in terms of various characteristics which in turn moderate the research performance centrality relationship.\nOriginality/value: This paper counteracts the empirical belief that researchers are attractive as potential co-authors according to their personal and professional characteristics. It is actually their research performance and homophily or heterophily of their ties which matters.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Trust and productivity in Australian construction projects: a subcontractor perspective
|
[
"Australia",
"Trust",
"Collaboration",
"Supply chain management",
"Communications",
"Productivity capacity"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The construction industry is a significant contributor to the Australian economy. It directly employs over one million people (approximately 10 per cent of the working population) and contributes about 8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (ABS, 2013). However, the industry continues to be labelled as a \"serial productivity underperformer\" (PWC, 2013, p. 1) in comparison to other economic sectors such as manufacturing it is also seen as a slow adopter of potentially productivity enhancing technologies such as offsite fabrication, information communication technologies and business information modelling (Loosemore, 2014a). Recently the Australian Productivity Commission published the results of its inquiry into the construction industry's relatively poor productivity performance, arguing that \"There is scope to do much better\" (PC, 2014, p. 6). This finding mirrors the considerable amount of international research into the relatively low productivity of construction industries in many other countries' reaching back over fifty years. For example, in the UK, Horner and Duff's (2001) and Chan (2002) found that the main causes of poor construction productivity were: site welfare; skills and training; continuous overtime; poor site management; poor planning; contractual conflict; poor design; a lack of trust; poor workforce consultation and; difficulties in measuring and monitoring productivity. In Hong Kong, Ng et al. (2004) concluded that overcrowded work areas were the most important factor affecting productivity and in the United Arab Emirates, Ailabouni et al. (2009) determined that the most significant factors were supervisory skills, management transparency and accountability, logistics, communication skills and knowledge of work at an individual level. In the USA, Mojahed and Aghazadeh (2008) and Construction Industry Institute (2008) found that the key to productivity improvement was: technology; measuring productivity; setting productivity targets; incentive programs; staff engagement; better training; improving frontline management and leadership; constructive workplace relations; logistics and; realistic scheduling that respect worker's rights and well-being. Ruwanpura's (2009) National Science Foundation project in Canada produced similar conclusions and Lonngren et al. (2010) argued that a lack of investment in technology compared to other industries such as consumer goods, home electronics and the automotive industry, was a major productivity constraint. In Malaysia, Chia et al.'s (2012) analysis of productivity census data found that the construction sector's relatively low productivity was due to low machine-for-labour substitution. Jarkas and Bitar (2012) argued that a lack of skills and poor supervisory practices were detrimental to construction productivity in Kuwait and in Australia, Fulford and Standing (2014), Chandler (2013) and Master Builders Association (2012) point to poor collaboration, information management, industrial relations, project planning, selection and governance and a lack of performance data as key impediments to productivity growth in the construction industry.\nProductivity and trust in construction: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2001) defines productivity as the ratio of a volume measure of output to a volume measure of input. The simplest measure of productivity is labour productivity (output per worker) which is normally measured as: value added per employee or; quantity produced per employee. \"Multi factor productivity\" is a more complex measure which bundles both labour and capital productivity and \"total factor productivity\" is more complex still since it includes other variables such as management practices and work environments on productivity. However, measuring productivity in construction is both contentious and problematic, especially across international boundaries due to a lack of reliable data and internationally agreed methodologies (Abdel-Wahab et al., 2006; Abdel-Wahab and Vogi, 2011; Abbot and Carson, 2012). Most recently, Sezer and Brochner (2013/2014) show that the measurement of productivity in construction shares many problems with business services and that the persistently low rate of productivity growth reported for the construction industry in many countries can often be put down to measurement errors. In particular, the measurement of construction productivity is problematic because of the heterogeneity of inputs and outputs in the industry and because of the need to measure input and output service quality. Sezer and Brochner (2013/2014) also recognise the problems in making international comparisons because of the absence of international classifications and conventions for measurement.\nMethod: To explore the three research questions posed (RQ1. What is the perceived level of trust that currently exists between subcontractors and main contractors? RQ2. What are the factors affecting trust at the project level? RQ3. Is there any association between trust and productivity?) an on-line survey of tier-1 and tier-2 subcontractors in the Australian construction industry was undertaken. An on-line survey was used for three main of reasons (Rea and Parker, 2005):\nResults: RQ1. What is the perceived level of trust that currently exists between subcontractors and main contractors?\nConclusion: The aim of this paper was to empirically explore, from a subcontractor's perspective, the apparent relationship between trust and productivity which emerged from Loosemore's (2014b) qualitative research. Three key research questions were investigated:\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between trust and productivity from a subcontractor perspective. More specifically it investigates: the perceived level of trust that currently exists between subcontractors and main contractors; the factors affecting trust at the project level; the relationship between trust and productivity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An on-line survey was undertaken with of 112 senior construction managers working for tier-1 and tier-2 subcontractors in the Australian construction industry. The survey was based on a combination of validated questions from Lau and Rowlinson's (2009) interpersonal trust and inter-firm trust in construction projects framework and Cheung et al.'s (2011) framework for a trust inventory in construction contracting.\nFindings: In contrast to the large number of research projects which have highlighted a lack of trust in the construction industry, the findings show that level of trust that Australian subcontractors have in main contractors is generally high. However, bid shopping is a continuing problem in the Australian construction industry which acts to undermine trust. The findings also provide strong evidence that high levels of trust influence productivity on site by enabling greater collaboration, better communication and greater flexibility, agility and informality in project relationships.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research was undertaken in the Sydney metropolitan area in Australia and within an economic boom. It is quite possible that outside this regional context which tends to dominated by larger construction firms and in an alternative economic context that the results of this research could be quite different. This possibility needs to be investigated further.\nPractical implications: The results indicate that this relatively healthy level of trust is down to good communication and empathy on the part of main contractors to the subcontractor's welfare. While the results showed that bid shopping is clearly a continuing problem in the Australian construction industry, subcontractors also felt that their contracts were clearly defined and that they were given sufficient time to innovate on their projects. This suggest that new communications technologies can be used to build trust through the supply chain. Given that much of the construction supply chain is made up of small- to medium-sized businesses, the challenge of diffusing these new technologies into this business environment should be a priority.\nSocial implications: Trust in basis of effective collaboration which has been shown to produce numerous social benefits such as greater equity and justice in business relationships and higher levels of productivity and safety.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this research is in using theories of trust to give subcontractors a greater \"voice\" in the construction productivity debate.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Overview of perceptions of German wine tourism from the winery perspective
|
[
"Tourism development",
"Wines",
"Germany",
"Marketing strategy",
"Wine business"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Thousands of wineries are located in Germany acreages vineyards shape the landscape of many rural areas. Wine production in Germany provides jobs and income for large numbers of the rural populations and is an inherent part of their culture. More recently wine production has become an important component in attracting tourists to these more remote areas. This is a relatively new development in Germany and consequently wine tourism is often not recognised as an economic activity in its own right.The importance of regional attributes was discussed by Sparks et al. (2005) reporting that experiential elements of visitation provide unique points of differentiation allowing regions to capitalise on those elements of the wine tourism experience that can distinguish one region from another. The assertion being that the wine tourism experience consists of a bundle of tangible and intangible attributes, nay of which are connected with the region or destination.Viniculture in Germany generates approximately PS14.85 billion annually. It is responsible for 13.4 per cent of the European wine production which places it third after Italy (21.2 per cent) and France (19 per cent) (Datamonitor, 2009). Wine production in the Northern part of the country is restricted due to the harsh climate. As a consequence 11 out of 13 wine growing areas are to be found in the Southwestern and Southern part of Germany (GNTB, 2010). The regions of \"Saale-Unstrut\" and \"Saxony\" are the only two wine production areas located in the Eastern part of the country. As a result of the geographic dispersal of vineyards this research focuses on the larger wine production areas of Western Germany.1.1 Research problem\n2 Literature review: 2.1 Definition of wine tourism\n3 Research methodology: Prior to undertaking the primary research seminar organised by the tourism academy Deutsches Seminar fur Tourismus (DSFT) in Rhineland-Palatine was attended. The seminar focused on the development of new and individual marketing strategies as well as on the application of new online tools. This seminar was useful in providing the opportunity to make contacts for the online questionnaire as well as to inform the development of specific questions.Data collection involved a survey questionnaire that was sent out via e-mail to 900 vineyards in Germany. The survey was accessible for four weeks and was answered by 232 (25 per cent) respondents. The questionnaire was created, collected, and analysed using the software programme Survey Monkey; this system permitted the questionnaire to be answered and sent back anonymously. The survey was conducted in German and was divided into six sections which along with the rationale for their inclusion, are outlined in Table I.Prior to the launch of the survey three key informants were identified based on their status and knowledge of wine production in Germany. These informants were not only instrumental in the development and piloting of the questionnaire but were also important sources of information. The first interview was with an owner of a family-run winery located in Rhine-Hesse. The second interview was held with a vintner of a castle winery located in the wine production area of Baden. The third interview was held with the owner of a wine tourism hotel in the wine production area of Palatinate. The three informants were deliberately chosen from different wine-producing areas in an attempt to represent the contrasting backgrounds, circumstances, experiences and opinions in terms of wine tourism.\n4 Results, analysis and discussion: 4.1 German wine tourism\n5 Way forward: 5.1 Introduction of the concept \"vinocation\"\n6 Conclusions: The findings of this research show that while wine tourism in Germany has evolved over the last decade, the sole focus on grape growing and subsequent wine sales is no longer enough. A large number of German vintners have recognised this and are looking to wine tourism in order to support their sales (Dawson, D. et al., 2011) recognised that smaller wineries were especially successful in making visitors fell special. In marketing terms this allows a premier priced product to be offered as an exclusive and quality offering. A more personal experience at the winery is more likely to generate an emotional connection between consumers, the winery and the region, which may well lead to brand loyalty.However, the implementation of wine tourism is a difficult task for many German vintners and involves overcoming many obstacles that include the following:* relatively small sized acreages;* small number of workers;* limited time for other business activities;* lack of tourism knowledge;* lack of marketing knowledge and the associated obstacle of a limited knowledge concerning ways to increase brand loyalty;* relatively poor levels of co-operation between tourism organisations and vineyards; and* limited knowledge of wine tourism and the associated benefits that would include increased wine sales.The creation of individual marketing strategies is the main challenge the sector presently faces. Marketing is vitally important to develop wine tourism initiatives but relatively little is known by vineyard owners concerning marketing strategies. Many components of a successful marketing strategy are lacking. These include a lack of awareness of segmentation, e-business marketing and networking. This lack of understanding is a major obstacle that needs to be tackled initially through undertaking market research. Academic writers have contributed greatly to the analysis of New Zealand wine tourism through exploring many aspects related to visitors' winery experiences. These aspects have included the most relevant factors impacting on visitors' decision to travel to wineries, how visitors discover their chosen winery, the value they place on elements of their winery experience, and their overall satisfaction (Alonso et al., 2008a). Such market intelligence for German wine tourism would allow bespoke product offerings to be developed and more sophisticated target marketing to be undertaken.The marked absence of collaboration needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Collaboration is of paramount importance for German wine tourism development. Gomez and Molina (2012) in their contemporary work on Spanish wine tourism conclude that private sector businesses involved with and associated with wine tourism need to find time and a way to develop complimentary tourism products in a regionally joined up proposition. They acknowledge that small wineries do not have the economic capacity to develop suggested actions the need to cooperate with public institutions related to tourism is vital, exhorting these organisations to act mainly in two areas: improving the infrastructures and access to the wineries and route signs and investing in channels that attract wine tourists. Formal collaboration along the lines of the successful NZFWTN is critical in changing attitudes towards winery products that lead to individual and collective innovation and product development. Cooperation amongst, and across, German wine-producing regions can deliver the necessary critical mass for market presence; the credibility to break into distribution channels; and the legitimacy needed to justify the development of these new products.The ultimate aim being recognition in German wine regions that matches that of those established in France. This reaffirms the need to invest to develop customer loyalty; through initiatives like: training courses, chats - which could be on-line, clubs, or the idea of creating one's own wine. Public and private sector initiatives, according to Gomez and Molina (2012) should be directed to achieve collaboration, with agreements between wineries, hotels, restaurants and active tourism companies, among others in the same geographic area, to offer a variety of alternatives for quality tourism that allows not only attracting consumers to wine areas and creating their loyalty but also motivating the recommendation of the wine tourism destination to friends and family.Further developments could also involve regional music and cultural festivals. Co-operation should be developed with other local tourism providers such as hotels. This would involve the provision of accommodation and possibly hosting of wine tasting events, which addresses the hurdle of a lack of accommodation in emerging wine regions as identified by Deery et al. (2012). This would obviously benefit the hotel as well as extending the tourist stay in the region and may go some way to increasing wine sales and establishing a brand loyalty. To further improve the wine sales hotels would obtain buy wine from the vintners of the co-operative.Public sector support for wine tourism would diminish over time, and should be seen as pump priming to grow towards the New Zealand model of success. Until then interventions to address shortfall of marketing skills and time to undertake tourism development activity is vital. Interventions could take the form of: learning journeys for those likely to be leading initiatives to New Zealand, sponsored training courses in the regions, and the use of consultants.There is a real need for some form of destination management organisation(s) or national tourism organisation activity to join up the tourism offering in the wine regions studied. As reported in Dawson, H. et al. (2011) \"wine tourism is most successful in destinations where access to a large variety of activities beyond and within winery operations is facilitated\". The former includes direct links to accommodation, restaurants, and local entertainment, while the latter means product offerings such as proprietary tasting events and packaging of wine tours. Hotels, restaurants and other facilities in the region can coordinate with the wineries to establish \"wine tours\" in the region. Marketers can tailor marketing strategies that are more targeted and therefore more efficient to both potential visitors, wineries and other facilities in the region (Cohen and Ben-Nun, 2009).Successful regional German wine tourism development is dependent on strategic marketing, designed for an emerging region. A route to success can be seen to be through developing and maintaining a reputation for boutique wineries producing high quality wines. Deery et al. (2012) advocate this approach, but warn that the there needs to be a fit between the boutique brand associated with prestige wine and the type of tourist promotional activities that are undertaken.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to consider how German wineries can successfully diversify into wine tourism, in an effort to support their primary business activity of producing and selling high quality wine.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey questionnaire was created, collected and analysed using the software programme SurveyMonkey.\nFindings: - Results indicate that the implementation of wine tourism by German vintners will be a significant challenge as the respondents report a lack of marketing and tourism management skill and knowledge; most are small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - which means they have little time or manpower available to devote to developing wine tourism; and there is a low level of reported co-operation amongst stakeholders.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research could have taken place over a longer period of time, in order to present more reliable data and also it could have included a more representative sample from other sectors of the industry, such as co-operatives. The research is also limited in scope to Germany and further comparative studies could be carried out focusing on other wine tourism-related countries, such as New Zealand, France or Italy.\nPractical implications: - Wine tourism is a crucial element of both the tourism industry as well as the sector of viniculture. Wine tourism marketing strategies fail to meet the expectations of either the vintners or the tourists. However, wine tourism is vitally important for vineyards as it helps to create brand loyalty and to establish customer relationships.\nSocial implications: - There is a strong need to create marketing strategies which strike a balance between developing and promoting wine tourism and the core activity of the vineyards, which is to produce and sell wine.\nOriginality/value: - The availability of literature in English on German wine tourism is scarce and this study is significant, especially because wine tourism in Germany is a relatively new phenomenon. The development of appropriate marketing strategies is therefore required to successfully improve wine tourism.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Evaluating social media presence: A practical application of big data and analytics in information organizations
|
[
"Social media analytics",
"Social media presence",
"Analytics in libraries and information organizations",
"Big data in libraries and information organizations",
"Social media evaluation",
"Social network analysis in libraries and information organizations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Many libraries and information organizations engage in social media activities to engage their public and prove their value to that public. A critical question for management in most organizations is how effective those social media efforts are. While we may feel that it is useful to our communities to tweet about the various activities and services in our organization, it is important to know whether the correct message is being sent and received.\nDoes the metric help you make decisions?: While it is possible to collect many metrics, the ultimate question we have to answer in regard to what we collect is \"So what?\" The reality is that not all metrics are important. If they cannot help us take action to improve our services, they are not useful, and it is a waste of time devoting resources to their collection and analysis.\nUnderstanding growth (and decline) - the trend line: One type of visualization that is commonly used is the trendline. It is helpful in tracking how different variables change over time and in relationship to each other. For example, in Figure 2, we see that while the number of tweets from the organization slowly increases over time, the number of views of those tweets starts increasing dramatically at the 6th time interval but then starts to decline at interval 11.\nHow things are related: scatterplots: Scatterplots, on the other hand, move us into the world of statistical analysis and help us understand how two or more variables DO relate to each other. For example, in Figure 3, we are looking at the relationship between three variables, tweets, likes per tweet and retweets.\nVisualizing reach and sentiment through mapping: More sophisticated analysis techniques, such as social network analysis and geographic information systems combined with text analysis can help us create sophisticated visualizations to help understand complex issues. Text analysis provides the basis for sentiment analysis which provides a base for interpreting how our messages are being receiving in the community. If that analysis is combined with geocoding, we can start to develop a picture of where sentiment is positive, mixed or negative.\nSummary: Analysis of social media presence is a clear and relevant example of a big data problem that is directly applicable to libraries and information organizations. The number of tweets or Facebook posts that occur every day number in the hundreds of millions. Processing that data can be a massive undertaking, but the benefits of doing so are numerous because it provides information that can help us improve and tailor products and services.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical example of how big data and analytics can help answer questions related to a relevant problem many libraries and information organizations have: How to evaluate the effectiveness of social media efforts?\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing upon a number of disciplines, including marketing, consumer decision theory and evidence-based practice, the utility of big data and analytics is applied to a practical application in libraries and information organizations: the evaluation of social media presence.\nFindings: There are a multitude of techniques (social network analysis, statistical analysis, geographic coding) that can be used as part of a project to evaluate the effectiveness of social media presence. Each technique provides its own \"lens\" on the data. By combining techniques, powerful analyses can be performed.\nOriginality/value: Practical applications of big data and analytics to problems in libraries and information organizations are still being developed. This paper provides one perspective on how this emerging area of study can help in understanding and improving the perception of products and services in information organizations.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Family firm innovation strategy: contradictions and tradition
|
[
"Innovation strategy",
"Family firm",
"Organizational development",
"Paradox",
"Contradictions",
"Business family"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: We all know that exposure to small doses of toxins can have beneficial effects. And we all know that water is more useful than diamonds yet is a lot cheaper. These are only two of the many paradoxes that can be observed everywhere in life. In business, a family firm's choice of method for deciding on its innovation strategy is a decision problem in itself. However, the existence of a contradiction does not necessarily mean that a paradox cannot be solved. When studying innovation in family firms, several contradictions appear, as the family and the firm represent different social systems that follow different rules and expectations. Using theory-building principles, we examine three paradoxes here to illustrate the challenges confronting innovative family firms. This will help to explain how different configurations make a family firm unique and innovative.\nFamiliness as unique resource of family firms: Management scholars propose the use of strategic management as an important framework in family firm research. The resource-based view and dynamic-capability perspective are prominent theories in the strategic management literature, providing insights into efficient resource allocation to enhance innovation. Besides firm-specific resources such as family relationships (familiness), innovation management contributes to performance and can therefore be a source of competitive advantage (Lattuch et al., 2013). To enhance those innovative activities, the management of the business family is critical. Poor management of the family system (including tensions and conflicts) may result in poor organizational performance, while a supportive business family may be an indispensable resource for innovation management in family firms. Hence, the business family mat be a source but also a hazard for the firm.\nThe influence of inter-family conflicts on business decisions and strategy: The inevitability of conflict within the business family is often reported as a risk for the firm. Business owners who employ other family members experience significantly higher levels of work-family conflicts in duration and frequency. In particular, different opinions on strategic decisions or the payout of dividends are common sources of conflicts between blood relatives as well as non-blood. Stamboulidis (2009) reported an example where a business owner of a growing family firm felt that he should share his good fortune with his family. Accordingly, the entrepreneur offered his two brothers-in-law the opportunity to become equal partners while pursuing the firm's innovation strategy. Besides different work attitudes, considerable differences of opinions on growth-related decisions led to conflicts and tensions among family members in this case, putting the survival of the firm at a risk. The resolution in this example was that one of the in-laws left the organization after much conflict and stress. However, the family was reported to be divided against itself even in later years. Based on this example Stamboulidis (2009, p. 146) argues that early conflict resolution, with its associated short-term pain, \"should always be viewed as being preferable to the longer term damage that unresolved conflict may inflict upon the firm as well as the family.\" This example is not unusual in family firms and illustrates the influence of inter-family conflicts on business decisions and strategy.\nThe interface of family and firm: Despite the arguments presented above, the business family also represents a critical resource for the firm, as its values influence the corporate culture. Thus, like family members, stakeholders are often valued as important partners within the organization. Values, extraordinary commitment and friendly relationships also represent positive attributes of the firm's familiness. Families' long-term perspective provides a unique freedom for management that enriches its decision options. Compared to publicly traded non-family firms that are often short-term oriented, the influence of families on firms is often a stabilizing feature enhancing long-term orientation. Due to ownership that is concentrated within the family unit, management in successful family firms does not need to respond to pressures imposed by the capital markets and is accordingly able to follow its long-term strategy. Family firms have a longer time horizon and do not have to respond to inappropriate short-term goals, thereby providing an effective structure to manage financial capital. Organizations with such enduring financial capital are able to pursue innovative and creative strategies.\nShareholder decision-making in family firms: Investors in non-family firms usually claim that top management is attuned to shareholder interests. Although the shareholder value approach claims a long-term perspective for organizational growth, shareholder interests in publicly traded non-family firms are often driven by short-term returns. Family firm shareholders are also interested in growing company value. However, they usually favor the long-term survival of the organization instead of short-term returns. Hence, family members are shareholders but cannot also act as investors.\nSustainable rejuvenation is prioritized: Family member interests are generally similar to shareholder interests in publicly-traded firms. They may include identity-creating aspects, especially when the organization is identified by the name of the family (e.g. Bosch electronics, Miele, Dr Oetker food or Stihl chainsaws). Examples of these identity-creating aspects include employee relations, social responsibility, leadership and representation of the firm by top management. The entrepreneurial function of family members focuses on responsible participation when deciding on strategic direction, major investments, recruitment of top management, and securing the family firm's character. These shareholder roles ensure continuity and sustainable rejuvenation of the firm, illustrating that this overall goal supercedes dividend distribution.\nThe long-term perspective on innovation investments: Individual or family interests are often inferior to family firm interests. From an investor perspective, this seems to invert the shareholder-value approach but may ensure the long-term survival of the organization. The long-term perspective of family firms explains how familial investment behavior follows economic rationality. For instance, the Rausing family supported Tetra Pak through more than 10 years of losses as they transformed packaging. Once the company became profitable they ploughed back earnings into the business and \"at a time when after-tax profit was just over $50m, less than $1m was paid out in dividends to the family\" (Miller and Le Breton-Miller, 2005, p. 137). This enabled the organization to lay out a significant amount of money in new capital investment. High-performing family firms often outperform their publicly traded counterparts and realize a higher return on investments. Features such as leadership, socially responsible management, as well as ethical agreements frame a system of sustainable management with promising long-term returns. Acting within these family-accepted borders ensures recognition in the market and in the public view. The long-term perspective on investments may increase the probability of wise economic decision-making, especially in the context of innovation management.\nCombining established practice and innovation: Established practice and tradition are often associated with negative outcomes such as inflexibility, resistance to change and strict adherence to redundant rules. However, in times of uncertainty, established practice and rituals may also serve as coping mechanisms. As an example, the military strongly embraces established practice and rituals that alleviate anxiety and help in the struggle against despair in times of stress. Although family firms in general are often described as having an inward-looking culture where management is constrained by the firm's tradition and history, research on multiple-generation family firms finds that many of these organizations have learned that it is possible to gain strategic advantages by building management systems on established practice, trust and loyalty (Simon et al., 2005). High-performing family firms accentuate the role of tradition and its values as an important foundation for daily activities. At the same time, they adapt structures that enable organizational growth. Therefore, family firms are often cast in a conservative light in terms of flexibility and change, but in fact they display a high variability. Hence, established practice sustains familial identity, but innovation ensures a firm's survival.\nConservatism of family firms and the need for change: Family firms are often characterized as being innovation-savvy. Most of these organizations are founded as a result of an innovation or invention. However, retaining historical success formulas rather than responding to changing market conditions might mislead family firm decision-making. The conservatism of family firms often favors the momentum of continuity but leads to resistance where change is required. Miller et al. (2008) state that high-performing family firms have the ability to distinguish between tradition which needs to be kept and tradition which needs to be questioned in order to adjust to changing market conditions. High-performing family firms not only maintain elements such as management culture or high equity orientation but also question established practices such as disregarding birth order, investing in unknown but promising markets or accepting the formation of other alliances.\nSuccessful integration of established practice and innovation: Carlock and Ward (2001) report high learning aptitudes in family firms by cultivating stable relationships of trust between their major stakeholders such as family, employees, customers and suppliers. Although relationships to customers and suppliers are based on a long-term perspective affecting the organization's established practice, their close interaction also enables the organization to be aware of changing market demands and customer needs. Dynamic responses to these changes may have a positive effect on competitive positioning. This suggests that some aspects of tradition do not necessarily contradict innovative behavior but ensure dynamic market responses. Research on family firms has shown that multiple-generation organizations tend to move from their traditional market in promising new directions based on changing market demands. Even though organizations diversify into completely new arenas, high-performing family firms base their decision-making not only on established practices but on a wisely chosen strategic direction meeting the long-term expectations of the family. Therefore, innovation can be the result of organizational development following the family firm's tradition. Sometimes, it is simply the consequence of serendipitous events and the optimization of opportunities. Examples such as Estee Lauder or Hallmark demonstrate the successful integration of established practice and innovation, as innovative activities are cornerstones in their organization history. Hence:\nEffectively solving common paradoxes in family firms: Practical lessons for family firms include:\nConclusion: Three paradoxes within the innovation context of family firms exist: how the business family might be a hazard and source for the firm; why family members act as shareholders and investors at the same time; and how established practice and innovation can cross-fertilize each other. Family firm research provides at least partial answers and solutions for these contradictions. The suggested propositions provide additional insights into successfully managing innovation in family firms. Family firms that actively manage conflicts within the business family and nurture professional management skills are likely to effectively exploit the business family's resources. Firms that ensure a system of sustainable management are likely to support sustainable continuous rejuvenation. Family firms that base their decision-making not only on established practices are likely to effectively integrate the family firm's identity with innovation. More detailed quantitative analysis on the effects of such paradoxes on the innovation strategy and performance of family firms is recommended.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: When studying innovation in family firms, several contradictions appear, as the family and the firm represent different social systems that follow different rules and expectations. This paper aims to argue that a deeper understanding and effective management of those paradoxes is crucial for the family firm's innovation performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using theory-building principles, this paper has an abductive character; new research propositions are offered to provide insights into the apparently paradoxical aspects of successfully managing a family firm's innovation strategy.\nFindings: Three contradictions are presented and discussed: first, the family can be a hazard and source for the firm; second, family members acting as shareholder and investor; and third, established practice and innovation issues may compete against each other in the quest to sustainably rejuvenate the organization. Inferences are drawn from these apparent contradictions concerning family firm management, providing a basis to form propositions that effectively support innovation.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides a paradoxical perspective on the innovation phenomenon in family firms and offers practical implications to help leaders better shape their organization's innovation strategy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Reforming fire and rescue services: a comparative study of Estonia and Georgia
|
[
"Performance indicators",
"Public sector reform",
"Fire services",
"Performance (public administration)"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Public sector management has seen many changes throughout the last few decades. Most of the literature analysing the essence and results of these reforms on the public sector have been focussing on developed Western (usually Anglophone) countries (Kuipers et al., 2014; Dan and Pollitt, 2015) and a lot less attention has been given to Central and Eastern European (CEE) and other countries in transition. CEE countries have undertaken many reforms in public sector agencies (for a literature overview about the reforms and the results in CEE countries, see e.g. Dan and Pollitt, 2015; Dan, 2015), partly motivated by EU accession requirements. Therefore, this paper compares the public management instruments implemented on two transitional countries: Estonia and Georgia, focussing on the fire and rescue services (FRS).\nTheory and the literature review: The public management literature has seen roughly simplifying three main paradigms: \"Old\" Public Administration (OPA), New Public Management (NPM) and post-NPM paradigms (such as New Public Governance, New Public Service). OPA has the following characteristics (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2000): politically neutral, focussing on direct delivery of services. The best organizational structure would be a centralized bureaucracy, with top-down control mechanisms, limiting discretion as much as possible. Bureaucracies seek to be closed systems to the extent possible, thus limiting citizen involvement. Efficiency and rationality are the most important values in public organizations. Public administrators do not play a central role in policy making and governance; rather, they are charged with the efficient implementation of public objectives. The job of public administrators is described by Gulick's (1937, p. 91) POSDCORB.\nEstonian and Georgian FRS systems: The following section describes the Estonian and then the Georgian public management experiences, focussing on recent reforms of FRS systems and performance management implementation. The goal is to provide insights as to why the structure of the system has been formed as it is and whether there is evidence of the success of the reforms which occurred in these countries.\nComparison: The last reforms undertaken in Estonia and Georgia on FRS are towards the same direction - to centralization and reallocation of resources such as staffing and equipment. The reforms have been realized partially due to the need for horizontal planning and coordination, suggested by the post-NPM reforms. It has resulted in both cases as one unified FRS agency, which is responsible for the planning and implementation of full cycle of FRS. This, however, is rather peculiar compared to the other European FRS systems, which are typically providing services on a local (municipal) level (Espenberg et al., 2013) with little or no centralized planning from the national level. For an overview of the comparison of two states, see Table I.\nConclusion: The current paper analysed the latest reforms of centralization in the FRS, based on two transitional countries: Estonia and Georgia. The public administration reforms are not widely analysed in the context of transitional countries. As the reforms are to some extent the result of the accession process of joining EU, it is crucial to understand whether the reforms have the planned impact on public services.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare the systems of fire and rescue services (FRS) in Estonia and Georgia with respect to recent centralization reforms, especially with performance measurement and management in mind, and analyse their prospects for successful implementations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A desk study, covering all the main publicly available strategic plans of both countries relevant to FRS was conducted by the author. In addition, a meeting with the Georgian officials from the Emergency Management Agency was held in May 2016 and follow-up inquiries to specify certain aspects were made in the following two months.\nFindings: This study demonstrates that Estonia is using performance indicators widely to set the target levels and manage the fire and rescue system, whereas Georgia is still under the process of introducing performance indicators. Therefore, since the systems of both countries are under centralized management in contrast to the typical European system, it would be suitable to learn from the reforms of each country to further understand the best practices.\nResearch limitations/implications: Since Georgia was in the process of reform in 2016, it does not have many performance indicators or impact evaluations of the reform readily available, which makes the possibilities of comparison limited.\nPractical implications: The last reform of the FRS in Estonia and Georgia was similar: the centralization of services to increase the potential of cooperation and standardize the level of service provision. Estonia's FRS system is eager to implement the reforms based on a data-driven analysis, whereas Georgia, still in the process of reform, does not have many performance indicators. As a result, Georgia and other countries aiming to centralize their FRS system in the near future would have the perfect opportunity to learn from Estonia's reforms as well as predict and adapt to the possible bottlenecks of the reforms. For a wider audience, an analysis of the possible challenges of centralizing public agencies in transitional countries are of interest.\nOriginality/value: The public service provision is not widely analysed in the context of transition countries. As the reforms are to some extent the result of the accession process of joining the EU, it is crucial to understand whether the reforms have the planned impact on public services. The current paper analysed the reforms and implementations of public management techniques in the FRS, based on two transitional countries: Estonia and Georgia. FRS has seen relatively few studies analysing and comparing the reforms of different countries.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Marketing strategy selection, marketing metrics, and firm performance
|
[
"Measurement",
"Business‐to‐business marketing",
"Product differentiation",
"Retention"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.\nIntroduction: In order to achieve superior performance in a particular market, firms need two things: an attractive position in that market and difficult-to-imitate resources (Matthyssens and Vandenbempt, 1998). In accordance with the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (Barney, 1991), firms develop a superior position in the marketplace through the use of unique firm resources, which can include such diverse assets as information, inter-firm relationships, the ability to interact with customers, total quality practices and measurement capabilities (Gummesson, 2004; Hunt and Arnett, 2006; Ramani and Kumar, 2008).In the course of developing these unique assets that lead to performance differences, firms can measure performance using a variety of metrics. Recent trends are to look at customer-based measures in addition to traditional financial measures to capture the results of marketing efforts and to examine the ability of a firm to interact with and develop relationships with its customers (Ramani and Kumar, 2008). Customer-based performance measures are measures that are not strictly financial in nature, such as customer lifetime value and retention. The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between customer-based metrics and the firm's strategic market positioning and segmentation decisions. In other words, the research asks whether customer-based measures can be used to investigate performance differences between firms based on strategic choice at the market level to reveal previously unexplored performance differences. This manuscript investigates the following:* What performance differences are based solely on strategic marketing choices?* What role do marketing activities at the customer level and their associated customer-based metrics play in achieving business growth?* What is the role that customer-based metrics play in measuring the overall performance of the business?To answer these questions we first determine how to measure the results of customer-based marketing activities and then compare performance across different marketing strategies.\nLinking customer-based performance and firm performance: Customer-based performance includes issues of customer retention, lifetime value and share of wallet. This performance derives primarily from marketing actions taken at the business unit level. Past attempts to link traditional marketing activities, such as advertising, to firm profitability have been problematic. Most marketing actions have only localized effects - these activities affect performance in just one business unit rather than across the firm in its entirety. Often these marketing activities have been viewed only as short-term influences on performance, in part because of the many interim steps that occur between advertising viewing and ultimate measures of performance such as firm sales and profitability growth (Eastlack and Rao, 1986; Erickson and Jacobson, 1992). Now, however, many firms, including the Marketing Science Institute's member companies, who have made measurement of marketing activities a research priority, believe that it is important to understand in more depth the relationship between marketing decisions, customer-based performance metrics and financial performance.The first step in this analysis is to establish a link between customer-based performance and overall business performance. Business growth is the main objective of the resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991) and the net result of having unique assets and capabilities. The idea is that as firms' marketing programs and great products retain customers over time and gain more of their business, these activities should translate into firm growth. As customer-based performance versus competitors is demonstrated, ultimately, business growth should increase, leading to the first hypothesis of this research:H1. Increased customer-based performance is associated with increased business growth.\nPositioning and segmentation decisions as related to customer-based metrics and business-unit performance: Marketing decisions for positioning and segmentation\nMethodology: Construct and survey development\nResults: Table II clearly shows a positive, significant correlation between customer-based performance and business growth, supporting H1. Regressing CBP on BG results in a statistically significant equation (F=13.7, p<0.001) and coefficient for CBP. However, the equation accounts for only 5.8 percent of the variation in the data (adjusted R2). Further analysis by sub-components of customer-based performance indicates that retention rate and business unit ROI are positively associated with business growth and are statistically significant. When sales growth and net income growth are examined separately, focusing on retention efforts versus the competition is positively associated with sales growth, whereas net income growth is associated with a focus on both retention and ROI. The results differ slightly across the two industries, with the most notable being a positive relationship between retention efforts and lifetime value with net income growth in the insurance industry versus software, and with retention being related to sales growth for software.The analyses show partial support for H2. Services units pursuing a both or differentiation strategy outperform the low-cost and SIM groups in terms of customer-based performance (BT, DF > LC: p<0.05; BT, DF > SIM: p<0.01). Differentiators are better than both low-cost and SIM groups for each of the four individual components of CBP. However, the \"both\" strategy units do not retain customers more than either of the less successful groups, and they do not have higher life time customer value than low-cost business units.In terms of H3, none of the strategic choices provides superior results in terms of business growth performance. Results were similar on the industry level. This hypothesis, predicting no performance, differences, was supported.For H4 and H5, the results of another TwoStep(tm) cluster analysis, in which all three variables (low-cost, differentiation and the segmentation focus) were included in the analysis, produced four distinct clusters. Two groups had a broad segmentation: broad differentiators (BDIFF) and broad both (BBT) groups. One group had a focused strategy but was also pursuing the both strategy (FBT). Regarding H4, the results support predictions of superiority of the both strategy, but less strongly than hoped. The broad both strategy is superior to the focused both and SIM in terms of customer-based performance (BBT > FBT: p<0.10; BBT > SIM: p<0.05). However, the performance differences between broad differentiators and focused both is significant only at the 0.10 level, providing weak support for the hypothesis that in a services context the performance of a broad strategy should be superior to the focused. We find no support for H5; neither the broad nor the focused group is superior in terms of business growth. All groups perform better than SIM at (p<0.05).To help understand these subtle performance differences in more detail, the analysis was performed on the sub-components of customer-based performance. Firms pursuing a broad segmentation strategy and both positions (BBT) are associated with higher levels of all aspects of customer-based performance, whereas broad differentiators (BDIFF) are likely to obtain growth by increasing share of wallet. Those pursuing focused segmentation and the both strategy (FBT) focus on higher lifetime customer value. Although performance differences are observed among these groups, the path to customer-based performance is quite different in each.\nDiscussion: Overall, this research reinforces the applicability of Porter's generic positioning and segmentation strategies in B2B services industries. Importantly, performance differences are observable particularly as they relate to marketing-related measures, which one would expect since positioning and segmentation are marketing measures. These customer-based metrics may provide the missing link in understanding performance differences between positioning strategies and should be investigated further beyond this initial, exploratory study.Marketing has been bombarded by requests from management to demonstrate performance improvements for each and every marketing activity. While this research helps illuminate why performance differences may have been difficult to isolate in past research, the major contribution here is increasing the understanding of the role that marketing activities and their associated metrics play as an interim step to achieving and measuring business growth. These results indicate support for the idea that focusing on longer-term customer metrics such as retention and lifetime value are valuable, as they also contribute to firm growth.In these B2B services firms, general growth performance measures do not capture performance differences related to positioning and segmentation decisions, essentially marketing strategy choice decisions. However, generic positioning and segmentation strategies reveal differences between firms in terms of customer-based performance, which in turn is associated with business growth performance. As predicted for these services firms, differentiation matters for customer-based performance, with firms pursuing a differentiated or both strategy outperforming either low-cost or SIM firms. Differentiation is the heart of services marketing and in these data it is through differentiation that customer-based performance is achieved.When segmentation is included in the mix, it is the \"both\" strategy that is most highly associated with customer-based performance, rather than the \"broad\" segmentation as predicted. Both the \"focused both\" and \"broad both\" strategies outperform the SIM in customer-based performance. In fact, there is only a weak statistical superiority for \"broad differentiators\" versus those pursing a \"focused both\" strategy. It is possible that these firms are not yet sophisticated enough to translate their customer knowledge into other marketing activities that would improve performance. A more likely explanation is that business-to-business services firms appear to need both operational efficiency and differentiation to be successful.Prior research provides weak support for the existence of the \"both\" strategy or for its superiority in terms of performance; however, using customer-based metrics helps tease out differences. Thus, the second major contribution of this research is the support for the superiority of the \"both\" strategy as a viable strategy in the B2B services context, which we suggest could be renamed as the \"strategically excellent\" positioning strategy. The fact that broad-based performance measures such as net income and sales growth do not provide, in these data, the level of detail necessary to uncover performance differences, is consistent with prior research. It has been difficult historically for researchers to support a clear linkage between performance and generic strategy selection based on traditional measures (Campbell-Hunt, 2000); these data provide another way, a customer-based way, to analyze performance differences on the basis of generic competitive strategy.The final contribution of this research is the suggestion that firms that cannot measure at the customer level might be failing to capture the results of successful marketing programs. Firms need sophisticated marketing systems, both operational and analytical, to pursue differentiation and strategically excellent strategies. In particular, differentiators need to meld customer information, purchasing patterns and the results of marketing research to develop customer knowledge based differentiation (Koo et al., 2007). Appropriate customer-based, measures are needed to see the performance differences. In other words, marketing performance measures are needed to see the results of marketing actions (Bonoma and Crittenden, 1988).\nLimitations and future research: This research, like all research efforts, has several limitations as well as several opportunities for expansion. With only two industries and 209 observations testing the hypotheses, additional empirical testing is required to test their generalizability. Other industries should be studied to refine further the measures and scales. Research indicates that self-reports of managerial (subjective) performance, if the managers are at the appropriate level in the organization, are highly consistent with actual (objective) performance levels (Robinson and Pearce, 1988). As our statistical analysis has demonstrated, the professional pre-screening process used personal telephone interviews to careful selected informants able to answer questions across organizational boundaries and to minimize concerns about single informants.Objective measures of performance would also aid understanding of the performance differences based on strategy selection. Since the unit of analysis was the business unit and not the firm as a whole, publicly available objective measures are not available. In spite of research that indicates that self-reports of managerial performance, if the managers are at the right level in the organization, are highly consistent with actual performance (Dess and Robinson, 1984; Robinson and Pearce, 1988), the self-reports used here mean that the research cannot be triangulated by an outside source. A more robust study using publicly-available business growth measures, perhaps with smaller firms where firm performance and business unit performance would be identical, would be a natural extension of this work.\nManagerial implications: Overall, this research bolsters the case of the manager who is under close scrutiny today to justify the results of all marketing efforts and to invest in CRM and similar implementations to increase customer-based performance and performance measurement. Marketing analysis systems, by virtue of the difficult-to-imitate data they collect, allow managers to measure and manage key customer outcomes such as customer retention rate, lifetime value, share of wallet and ROI. Happily for those implementing customer-based systems and for marketing professionals, these and other outcomes of marketing database and analytical programs appear in these data to be related to the firm's sales and net income growth. Customer-based performance metrics may be the \"missing link\" between marketing efforts and firm success.This research contributes to understanding at a more detailed level the relationships between strategy decisions and marketing metrics. As a result of this research, managers might feel more confident that their efforts to collect, store and analyze customer information in a customer-based system are worthwhile to the firm. Managers also might consider the overall role that strategy selection plays in relationship to customer-based performance. This research supports the notion that, in business-to-business services, strategic choice, particularly differentiation, matters. In spite of increased emphasis in customer-based systems as a way of approaching and managing customers, these data suggest that managers ignore basic decisions such as strategic choice at their peril.Clearly, in spite of the relationship between customer-based performance and firm growth, the SIM strategy is unlikely to lead to improved customer-based measures, even with a customer-based system. Managers should carefully consider positioning and segmentation strategy and implement these strategies as well as sophisticated customer databases and customer relationship management processes in their organizations. Continued research in this area is important, since using customer-based measures allows us to see differences in performance based on strategic selection that have not always been clear in the past.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This research aims to investigate the relationship between customer-based performance measures (marketing measures of firm success) and business growth performance (strategy measures of firm success), in the context of strategic marketing positioning decisions and suggests customer-based metrics may play a key role in measuring overall business achievements.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This is an empirical survey of 209 business-to-business services firms.\nFindings: - Customer-based performance (marketing measures) is associated with the choice of generic positioning and segmentation strategies, while strategic positioning choice (i.e. low-cost vs differentiation) is indirectly, rather than directly, associated with business growth performance. The \"both\" strategy, where firms simultaneously pursue both low-cost and differentiated strategies, leads to improved performance in these B2B services firms.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study potentially has industry- and/or service-specific limitations.\nPractical implications: - This research suggests that firms that cannot measure performance at the customer level may be failing to understand the outcomes of successful marketing programs and decisions. In addition, this research suggests that both operational efficiency and differentiation are keys to growth in B2B services.\nOriginality/value: - This study reinforces the continued applicability of Porter's generic positioning and segmentation strategies for B2B services but suggests that performance differences between strategies in this context are best captured using a customer-based measure (share of wallet, lifetime value, retention rate and return on marketing investment) rather than a more general business growth measure.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Enhancing organizational health literacy in a rural Missouri clinic: a qualitative case study
|
[
"Change management",
"Quality health care",
"Qualitative research",
"Organizational change",
"Health literacy"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Imagine the following scenario: on completion of health literacy training, a conscientious physician returns to her clinic enthusiastic to use her newfound skills and hopeful for improved patient outcomes. However, the clinic where she works lacks senior leadership support for health literacy, easy to read health education materials and limited commitment to customer service from front desk staff. In a short time, the physician reverts to her previous communication habits. This anecdote represents the impact of the work setting on a provider's ability to effectively apply skills and practice medicine within the conceptual framework of health literacy, and provides the impetus for this study.\nMethods: Overview and rationale\nResults: Apart from their role in relation to the clinic (i.e. either staff category or patient, described above as the sample), no information was recorded or reported about study participants. The results that follow are those that emerged as prominent themes within each of our priority outcomes as displayed in the logic model. First, we describe findings from our process evaluation outcome, regarding implementation of health literacy best practices. Then we set out impact evaluation results, namely, health literacy awareness and knowledge, health literacy capacity and sustainability of health literacy practices.\nDiscussion: This study contributes to the literature on implementation and sustainability of organizational health literacy. For the organization overall, the impact evaluation indicated an increased and more sophisticated understanding of health literacy, its multi-faceted nature, the responsibility of organizations to address it, and its connections with quality of care and other system priorities, compared to the needs assessment. This expansion of understanding of health literacy has been noted in similar evaluation studies conducted internationally (Groene and Rudd, 2011). Variable implementation of health literacy best practice initiatives at different staff levels conveyed heightened skills and awareness of these best practices, but little in the way of structural shifts. The project had limited effects on formal systems, with no development of structures or policies documenting organizational commitment to health literacy. Nonetheless, we conclude that the project achieved fundamental, moderate and sustainable changes in organizational health literacy in the form of a greater and more nuanced understanding of health literacy, increased interpersonal discussion about health literacy among clinic staff and strong administrative support. Employees indicated new skills and attention to issues related to health literacy, and identified links to quality of care and patient outcomes.\n",
"role": "user"
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"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a collaborative effort between a health care organization and academic institution to strengthen organizational health literacy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The intervention took place at a rural, federally qualified health clinic in Missouri between May 2009 and April 2011. Qualitative interviews of key informants were conducted before (n=35) and after (n=23) the intervention to examine program implementation and success in effecting organizational change.\nFindings: Intervention activities helped establish a comprehensive understanding of health literacy. The project achieved moderate, fundamental and sustainable organizational change. The program successfully integrated health literacy practices into clinic systems and garnered leadership and organizational commitment, helped the workforce improve interpersonal communication and embedded practices making health education materials more accessible.\nOriginality/value: The study points to programmatic, conceptual and methodological challenges that must be addressed for organizations to improve health literacy practices, and suggests change management strategies to advance organizational health literacy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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Women partners leaving the firm: choice, what choice?
|
[
"Women",
"Role conflict",
"Professional services",
"Employee turnover",
"Employee behaviour"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Concern over the relatively high numbers of women managers leaving organizations has been growing. Many organizations have developed initiatives with the specific aim of supporting women's career progression to the higher echelons of corporate life, such as mentoring programmes and women's networks. The retention of valued talent is recognized as a priority and organizations strive to brand themselves as an employer of choice. Such strategies have had some success and higher proportions of women are found in more senior positions, arguably having broken through the glass ceiling. Despite this progress, women continue to leave organizations in higher proportions than their male counterparts at senior levels, and there is little in the literature examining this phenomenon. This paper attempts to fill this space.The aim of this paper is to explore discursively how women partners represent and describe their decisions to leave a professional services firm. This context is important in that the nature and structure of these services (usually project-based) place demands on senior staff, particularly partners, in return for high levels of extrinsic and some intrinsic rewards. The demands include not only high levels of professionalism but also extreme commitment, such as the ability to travel nationally and internationally on demand, to work around the clock at whichever premises whenever necessary, and to provide speedy and efficient solutions to the clients' problems. Kumra and Vinnicombe (2008) provide an account of the nature of such firms. This study begins by considering the very limited literature on women leaving organizations followed by an examination of the discourse of choice within the work-life balance literature. After outlining the methodology for our study of 31 women partners who have left a global management consultancy firm, we present empirical evidence from the women themselves. We next discuss the implications of such evidence and make suggestions for further research in this important area.\nWomen leavers: Despite the level of concern expressed in many organizations, and Belkin's (2003) \"opt-out revolution\" article which discussed the push of job dissatisfaction and the pull of motherhood, a search revealed very little extant academic literature on senior women who have left organizations. Of course, the decision to leave an organization does not necessarily mean that women wish to permanently turn their backs on corporate life. Many women take career breaks at some stage in their careers, and Hewlett and Luce (2005) point out the ease with which women can \"off-ramp\" and the difficulties they face when planning to return to organizational life. The kaleidoscope career model (Mainiero and Sullivan, 2005) focuses on the \"fit\" of work and family, and offers an explanation for the large numbers of middle management who leave corporate life. Women talked about opportunities and possibilities as well as the blocks experienced in creating their own path, which provide challenge and allow specific needs to be met.Mallon and Cohen (2001) studied women's transitions from careers within organizations into self-employment, seeking a further understanding of how women themselves experience and make sense of changing careers. Dissatisfaction with organizational life, changes in organizations, which contradicted personal values and principles, and an imbalance of personal and professional life were key factors in the decision to move to self-employment. Looking at more senior women leaving organizations, Marshall (1995, 2000) identified no single pattern, but emphasized the complex nature of such decisions, each of which is individual and multi-faceted. Factors identified by Marshall regarding women's decisions to leave employment included leaving changed roles that had become untenable, blocked promotion prospects and wanting a more balanced life. One particular theme was their experience of difficulties with inappropriate and often hostile interpersonal behaviour, often for the first time in their careers. It was not that they could not cope, but that they did not respect or want to work in such unproductive environments. Several such factors contributed to individual decisions in accumulating and complex ways. In particular, the choice relating to work-life integration emerged from these studies as a key explanatory factor.\nWork-life integration and choice: Work-life balance or work-life integration?\nDiscursive approach: In this study, the discursive approach is viewed as an examination of how language (in the form of spoken interaction) is used to construct and change the social world, while challenging the accepted ways of looking at the world (Dick, 2004). We use Watson's (1995, p. 816) description of discourse as a:[...] connected set of statements, concepts, terms and expressions, which constitutes a way of talking or writing about a particular issue, thus framing the way people understand and act with respect to that issue.So it is a form of sense making, both on the part of the interviewees, who here make decisions about the information to include and to omit in their accounts of their decision to leave the firm (Potter and Wetherell, 1987), and also on the part of us, the interviewers and researchers. We examine the varied discursive constructions used by the participants to achieve their particular purposes, whether this is their portrayal of themselves as valued partners or of making sense of what is happening within the firm, particularly with regard to the number of women partners leaving. As Watson points out, these discursive constructions are similar to interpretative repertoires (Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984, cited in Edley, 2001, p. 197) which are \"quite separate ways of talking about or constructing\" a given topic. Similarly, Clarke et al. (2009) refer to \"antagonistic discourses\" where individuals present self-narratives, which incorporate contrasting positions.\nMethod: Following an approach from an international management consultancy firm, we sought interviews with women partners who had left the firm over the previous three years. Access was provided by the Head of Diversity who contacted the 47 women leavers in that period to see if they would be willing to be interviewed. The project arose as a result of the women partners leaving in higher percentages than male partners, causing concern within the firm, not least because of a range of initiatives, which had been introduced over the preceding years to support women's career progression. The 36 women who responded were contacted by the project manager to set-up semi-structured interviews, and 31 female partners eventually participated, a response rate of 66 per cent. Only one interview was undertaken face-to-face in the UK, as most of the women were resident overseas. We therefore continued using telephone interviews over a period of about a month, after piloting the method to ensure that an open and frank discussion would be possible. The interview schedule was e-mailed to the respondents the day before the interview. Interviews lasted about 45 minutes and were recorded with the permission of the interviewees. Anonymity was guaranteed, and raw data were not given to the firm, although a report was delivered including recommendations for good practice.The first step in the analysis involved the reading and re-reading of the transcripts by all three researchers and then a discussion to identify discursive patterns within the text. The discursive approach to analysis requires a familiarity with the data (Kelan, 2008) and this continued through the use of NVivo, organizing and categorizing the data, focusing on the similarities and differences in the ways participants talked about choice and the decisions made during their employment with the firm and their decisions to leave. Further discussion occurred, leading to deeper understanding of the concepts invoked by the texts. In reporting the findings some demographic detail will be supplied to provide some context to the quotations used, but the aim of this paper is to understand how the women made sense of the choices they made, rather than to seek any connection between choices made and factors such as gender, parental status, etc.The sample\nContrasting discourses: Loyalty\nDiscussion: About half of these women had children under the age of 18, yet the issues of motherhood were not about coordinating childcare arrangements or dividing up parenting with a partner, but about wanting to spend time with children at varying stages in their lives. Several of those without children, or with grown up children, talked of wanting the opportunity to have broader experiences in their lives, mentioning wider family and friends. Unfortunately, many tended to see the issue as very clearly defined in terms of either their role within the firm or a life outside the firm.The women in this sample were not necessarily off-ramping but seeking to work in a way, which gave them control over their lives, especially with respect to minimizing the amount of travel, which took them away from home on a regular basis. Although there was evidence of the pull of motherhood mentioned by Belkin (2003), these women did not express dissatisfaction with organizational life per se. On the contrary, they stressed positive elements of much of their careers, expressing loyalty and commitment to the firm, which many still held in high regard.As is common with discourses (Watson, 1995), two dominant themes co-existed in the accounts of these successful women leavers, i.e. loyalty and choice regarding work-life integration. Yet the hegemonic positioning of the choice discourse meant that other alternatives were suppressed. Women showed loyalty and affection towards their firm, but this was not reciprocated in the form of some temporary control over their personal lives or some flexibility so that they could manage less stressfully their non-work responsibilities. The flexible working offerings for women lower down the hierarchy were much celebrated by the firm, but there was no flexibility in the partner tier. These women perceived that the firm was expecting all or nothing, and did not seem to recognize the paradoxical nature of their loyalty to the firm and their decision to leave.Although there were combinations of factors, which contributed to the women's decisions to leave the firm, the focus of this paper has been the discourse of choice with particular emphasis on lifestyle. There was little evidence of either balance in the sense of division of time between the work and non-work domains, or of integration or the blending of work and personal life. The discourse presented was of a forced and extreme choice.However, it is clear that the women partners had certainly gained satisfaction and fulfillment from their jobs over a long period of time. The issue was not about \"wanting to care\" and \"having to work\", therefore demonstrating support for the inaccuracy of such a claim, pointed out by Eikhof et al. (2007). The financial package available at the point of departure and high levels of remuneration, often over a period of many years, enabled them to leave, given that they felt unable to continue to work within the firm because of the extreme demands that the partner role required.The \"personal control of time\" and \"workplace flexibility\" (Lewis et al., 2007) were both absent, highlighting \"work life imbalance\". These women clearly did not fit the \"ideal worker\" norm. Many were single or in a relationship with another full-time worker, hence the lack of the \"other\" adult based in the home and needed by the ideal worker to be able to maintain their level of dedication to the job role. Also these women had an increasing desire to attend to demands from outside the work domain.\nImplications and conclusions: This study adds to what is known about the importance of family life for women, with many of those who were not mothers still experiencing a tension between the demands of day-to-day organizational life at partnership level and the need to give attention to extended family and friends. Importantly, this study uses data from women who have left the same organization within a relatively brief period of time, providing unique data and valuable insights into what is known about women in senior positions who choose to leave and yet display tremendous loyalty and affection to the firm. These findings therefore strengthen the choice discourse, which serves to neutralize and suppress feelings of discontent over the constraints imposed by the firm's cultural expectations of those in the role of partner. This effectively removes the responsibility from the organization of the need to facilitate the work-life integration of partners.The study has several limitations. First, we only talked to women partners who had left the firm and left at a particular time of economic downturn when a significant financial package was available to them. Speaking to women partners who had maintained their partner role in the firm during the same time period would have produced a useful comparison. Similarly, the inclusion of men in the sample would allow useful gender comparisons and this provides an opportunity for future research.Understanding the factors, which led these valued women partners to leave the organization, not withstanding the initiatives and support which had facilitated their achievement of such positions, will allow the organization to review the demands placed on partners. The extreme expectations, particularly involving excessive travel and time away from the family, should be reviewed in the light of these findings, if the firm wishes to stem the flow of women partners.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - This paper is based on the experiences of 31 women who have recently left partner roles within an international management consultancy firm. The purpose of this paper is to explore discursively their perceptions of choice within their decisions to leave.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data were collected from 31 women using semi-structured telephone interviews, a 66 per cent response rate. A discursive approach to analysis was adopted.\nFindings: - The decision to leave is the culmination of many interacting factors at a time when a financial incentive for resignation is available. Findings present here focus on discourses of loyalty to and affection for the company and work-life integration.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Limitations include access only to women who have left the firm, allowing for no comparison with those who were still partners. Additionally, we were unable to speak to any of the male partners who have left the firm in the same timescales, although in smaller proportions.\nPractical implications: - The findings indicate the need to review the excessive time demands placed on partners and provide further support for policies, which enable greater flexibility.\nOriginality/value: - This paper uses data from a rare sample of women, those who have actually left senior roles within one organization.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Calling in Black: a dynamic model of racially traumatic events, resourcing, and safety
|
[
"Resourcing",
"Black Lives Matter",
"Black employees",
"Event system theory",
"Racial trauma"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: \"Have you ever just wanted to call in Black? You realize something [...] another unarmed Black person was assaulted and or murdered. As I was driving into work with water pouring from my eyes, I realized something: I was grieving [...] Sometimes I need a minute! And that's where calling in Black (would be so clutch[1]. Oh no, it's not contagious, I just need a solid day to reaffirm my humanity to myself, so, see you tomorrow.\"Evelyn from the Internets, 2015).\nDefining racial trauma through EST: Diamond Reynolds live streamed the shooting death of her fiance Philando Castile via Facebook Live on July 6, 2016. Castile, a 32-year-old Black man, was shot seven times by police officer Jeronimo Yanez after he was pulled over in a suburban neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the video, Castile lay bleeding in the car as Reynolds and their four-year-old daughter watched from the passenger seats. Within 24 hours, the video had 3.2 million views and was a top news story of every media outlet (Stelter, 2016). This video surfaced only one day after police footage showed several officers shooting Alton Sterling as he lay face down and handcuffed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Both videos were featured on national news sites and social media applications across the nation.\nResourcing to reduce feelings of threat: Organizational entities - including employers and employees - may counteract the negative effect of racially traumatic events through generating resources. Resourcing refers to the creation in practice of assets and qualities of relationships (Feldman, 2004, p. 296). Essentially, social (e.g. people), cognitive (e.g. knowledge), and material (e.g. money) resources and generative aspects of relationships (e.g. complementarity) are made into resources when they are being used (Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011). Furthermore, the way that resources are used can change the type of resource that exists (Sonenshein, 2014). We identify organizational and social-identity resourcing that may generate support for alleviating racial trauma.\nCultivating identity and psychologically safe workplaces: Organizations that seek to support their Black employees experiencing racial trauma must foster workplaces that affirm Blacks' sense of humanity. Black employees working in companies where they feel safe being Black, and potentially expressing their feelings regarding police violence toward Blacks, may suppress desires to call in Black. Thus, in the following section, we discuss how organizational and social-identity resourcing contribute to a sense of identity and psychological safety at work for Black employees.\nImplications and future research directions: In this paper, we consider resources that may enable Black employees to feel safe at work after witnessing police violence against Blacks. Specifically, we propose that these external events negatively impact Black employees, particularly those who perceive that their organizations lack resources to reduce their feelings of racial identity threat. Using EST allows us to explore how racially traumatic events enter organizations, and the impact and duration of the event through the experiences of Black employees. We identified calling in Black as a signal of an organization that lacks safety for Black employees to cope with threats to their racial identity. One mechanism that may buffer the impact of racial trauma on Black employee's well-being is resourcing current organizational and individual practices to alleviate feelings of identity threat. Our model proposes a dynamic model of organizational and social-identity resourcing facilitating identity and psychologically safe workplaces through fostering a compassionate, diversity-focused company culture and Black employees equipping themselves with knowledge from participation in social movements like Black Lives Matter. Collectively, Black employees may be less likely to call in Black or suffer other negative consequences of trauma when their workplaces affirm their racial identity through reinforcing identity safety in their organizational culture.\nConclusion: Ultimately, using a resourcing perspective, organizations may become spaces that integrate learning about Black employees' experiences into organizational practice by acknowledging the impact of external, racially traumatic events on their well-being. In addition, activist movements such as #BlackLivesMatter offer needed events, information, and opportunities to connect with other members of one's social groups, which may be beneficial for individuals in need of reaffirming their humanity by gaining resources to combat identity threat. In a time when racially motivated violence is consistent, unexpected, and readily shared via social media throughout one's day, resources that create an ethics of care and identity-enhancing tools for Black employees to navigate their workplaces are critical. It is our hope that more organizations will create resources to support employees who face racial identity trauma, ameliorating the need to call in Black.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Racially traumatic events - such as police violence and brutality toward Blacks - affect individuals in and outside of work. Black employees may \"call in Black\" to avoid interacting with coworkers in organizations that lack resources and perceived identity and psychological safety. The paper aims to discuss this issue.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper integrates event system theory (EST), resourcing, and psychological safety frameworks to understand how external, racially traumatic events impact Black employees and organizations. As racially traumatic events are linked to experienced racial identity threat, the authors discuss the importance of both the availability and creation of resources to help employees to maintain effective workplace functioning, despite such difficult circumstances.\nFindings: Organizational and social-identity resourcing may cultivate social, material, and cognitive resources for black employees to cope with threats to their racial identity after racially traumatic events occur. The integration of organizational and social-identity resourcing may foster identity and psychologically safe workplaces where black employees may feel valued and reduce feelings of racial identity threats.\nResearch limitations/implications: Implications for both employees' social-identity resourcing practice and organizational resource readiness and response options are discussed.\nOriginality/value: The authors present a novel perspective for managing diversity and inclusion through EST. Further, the authors identify the interaction of individual agency and organizational resources to support Black employees.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Pricing risk and its use in modelling real estate market yields
|
[
"Commercial real estate",
"Real estate pricing",
"Risk pricing",
"Risk sentiment indicator",
"Yield modelling",
"Yield spreads"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Property investment and total returns have been profoundly influenced by the economic turmoil that has impacted on the world's financial markets since 2007. The crisis, which started in a seemingly niche part of the residential lending market turned out to be one of the most severe economic shocks experienced in decades from which no economies in Europe or indeed the world were immune. Furthermore, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has served to emphasise the inter-relationship that exists between property markets, financial markets and the economic performance of countries.\n2. Literature review: Finance theory argues that the price of assets traded in relatively frictionless markets reflect estimated risk-adjusted discount rates and future income streams (Geltner and van de Minne, 2017). The key macroeconomic and financial fundamentals underpinning the theoretical context of this paper relate to the interrelationship between yields, pricing, market sentiment and risk analysis in the property investment process. The role played by the investment markets is influenced by the performance profile of real estate assets relative to bonds, equities and other commodities such as gold. Furthermore, investment theory postulates that capitalisation rates are determined by the risk-free nominal rate of return, plus the risk premium less the expected rate of growth minus depreciation (Crosby et al., 2016), for example, models based around the principles of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). In real estate markets, heterogeneous properties trade in illiquid, highly segmented and informationally inefficient local markets. Consequently, a key challenge from a property perspective is the pricing of property in the context of volatility and risk in the financial and real estate markets (McAllister and Nanda, 2016). The GFC brought a sharp shock to real estate markets with the result that interest rates and government bond yields fell in response whereas real estate yields (capitalisation rates) initially rose across the spectrum (Jones et al., 2015).\n3. Measuring market sentiment for risk and risk pricing - the risk multiplier: From the literature review, it is clear that the main area of yield modelling incorporates cost of capital combined with market expectations and market volatility measures (a basic CAPM model). In this paper, we augment the traditional approach to yield modelling, by adding an explicit risk multiplier as an additional explanatory variable. In so doing, we aim to capture first, the swings in market sentiment - so for example - is the market in a situation of being risk averse or risk loving; and second the \"pricing of risk\" which impact on international investors willingness to pay for financial assets, including commercial property. This market sentiment to risk, we will call the \"risk multiplier\". If the multiplier is higher than 1 then risk is disliked and thus assets which are riskier than the government bond will have a higher premium than historically the case. If it is below 1 the converse is true.\n4. Conclusion: The basic modelling example in this paper looked at incorporating a variable (the risk multiplier) that explicitly considers whether the spread investors require (the price) to invest in assets riskier than the government bond is above or below its longer-term average. Evidence showed that it was very significant and improved the explanatory power of the model employed. This implies that, it is not just the government bond rate, it is not just a risk premium or corporate spread on top of that, but it is the appetite for riskier assets in the financial market that clearly impacts on the pricing of property.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: In the light of past financial and economic turmoil, there has been a marked increase in the volatility in real estate markets. This has impacted on the pricing of property assets, partly through market sentiment and particularly concerning risk. It also limits modelling accuracy model accuracy. The purpose of this paper is to create a new variable and model to enhance analysis of what drives real estate yields incorporating market sentiment to risk.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper specifically considers the modelling of property pricing within a volatile economic environment. The theoretical context begins by analysing the relationship between property yields and government bonds. The analytical context then moves on to specifically include a measurement of risk which stresses its role and importance in investment markets since the Global Financial Crisis. The model thus incorporates macroeconomic and real estate data, together with an international risk multiplier, which is calculated within the paper.\nFindings: The paper finds the use of measurements of market sentiment and risk are more powerful tools for modelling yields than previous techniques alone.\nResearch limitations/implications: This is an initial paper outlining the creation of sentiment and risk measurements in the financial market and showing an example of its application to a commercial real estate market. The implication is that this could add a major new explanatory variable to modelling of yields.\nPractical implications: The paper highlights the importance of risk in the pricing of commercial real estate, over and above normal variables. It highlights how this can help explain over and undershooting of yields within commercial real estate which would be of great importance in the investment world.\nOriginality/value: This paper attempts to explicitly measure market sentiment, pricing of risk and how this impacts real estate pricing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Putting Dreyfus into action: the European credit transfer system
|
[
"Europe",
"Qualifications",
"Competences",
"Vocational training"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The mutual recognition of qualifications is seen as a basic requirement for increasing the mobility of vocational training and for the development of a European job market. Amongst other things[1] a system that would make it easier to combine and transfer contents of education and training and certain competencies is necessary. This is a central goal of the \"Bruges-Copenhagen Process\" wherein the EU countries have declared their willingness to strengthen cooperation in vocational education and training (VET)[2].. In the course of the process, the intention is to create a system for VET similar to the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), which for years has been successfully used for student mobility in the field of higher education. In 2002, a Technical Working Group (TWG) was implemented by the European Commission in order to develop a proposal for a European credit transfer system in VET (ECVET). This working group has meanwhile presented their concepts in several papers without proposing detailed models[3]. At the same time, projects and initiatives have been promoted and they are working on the exemplary development of some kinds of credit transfer systems, especially within the framework of the Leonardo da Vinci Programme[4].The objectives of these projects, initiatives and of the working group of the European Commission reach beyond the simple transfer of a university credit point system on vocational education and training. In order to consider the special requirements of the internationally very differing educational field, the Commission thinks that we need a system which is oriented towards the learning outcomes[5] in terms of knowledge, skills and competencies. The core idea of actual approaches is to focus on the comparability of learning results. For this purpose - the European discussions stated - learning units must be split up into small, standardised units described in the form of learning outcomes. These units of learning outcomes thus function as a kind of learning atom or molecule, i.e. small, isolatable and individually revisable units forming our learning worlds. Although this approach does not openly aim at a unification of learning processes and contents it is to be feared that it will strongly influence the latter and will thus become a universal construction set for curricula. In any case, the comprehensive aspect of competency for employed persons is neglected.Another - and not a completely different - approach, aims at considering the incomparability of training contents (due to clearly different training concepts) via the comparability of occupations and/ or work processes for which training is carried through. It is assumed that the occupational requirements in each country can be better compared than the training courses on which they are based.As, however, the persons to be trained are in the focus rather than the skilled workers who are already coping with the task profiles, the preparation of such task and competency profiles is not sufficient. If details of training courses should be underlined, also \"partial profiles\" must be set up albeit imbedded in a comprehensive concept. These profiles reveal two dimensions in a simple and a prevailing form: The depth and the level as well as and the width and the scope of the acquired knowledge and skills. In other words: In order to carry through a \"development logical\" differentiation of a competency profile (empirical or normative), a competency development model (also: competency acquisition model) is required.The following chapters will refer to the competency acquisition model of Dreyfus and Dreyfus as a basis for the further development of this approach. We like to suggest a new formulation of the core problem as a basis for the development of an ECVET system in a way that an international discussion cannot lead to misinterpretations and false estimations.\nHow the application of the Dreyfus model shows the way to a solution and which new problems are emerging: The most popular and in our case most promising model for the acquisition of competencies[6] is the model designed by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986a). The model describes the competency development in five levels from the novice to the expert. In order to mark the multi-dimensionality of competency development we choose the description in Figure 1, highlighting the characterisation of situations, abilities and actions at each of these levels.Based on the competency profile of, e.g. a skilled worker (description of his/her abilities, his/her \"expertise\"), five development levels can be characterized which have to be run through. Each of these levels is marked by certain characteristics (kind of perception, dealing with rules etc.).If this approach is also taken into consideration during the training this leads to abandoning the specialized systematic structure of curricula in favour of the development of a logical structurisation[7]. The \"analysis of work processes and work tasks in their situatedness\" is crucial for an adequate description of the development levels (Rauner, 2004). This includes the descriptions of the objects of occupational work, the tools, the work organisation, the methods as well as the requirements.The application of the Dreyfus model for vocational education helps to better considering the practical knowledge central for these training courses (experience knowledge, know-how, know-that) and additionally points at didactical implications which may lead to curricula structured in a development logical way. In order to solve the initial problem, the model offers starting points for an adequate description of the development of competencies within the framework of a training course. Training specialisations and/or individual competencies may - according to the initial idea - reflect competency requirements in competency levels as soon as they maintain holistic and occupationally oriented links to work processes. In spite of this process the approach still faces some problems, which will be sketched below.a) Area of application\nHow these problems can be solved and to which extent Dreyfus and Dreyfus themselves give the decisive hints for a solution: Dreyfus and Dreyfus also provide decisive hints for the solution of these problems. These hints have so far not been considered in the model as it was not necessary for an application in sections for certain occupational and every-day competencies. We think that Dreyfus and Dreyfus are only interpreted in a correct way (and that their model can be correctly applied) as soon as the following statements are taken seriously. They are all related to a few pages of introduction to their model concept (Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 1986a, p. 19):One is not generally an expert as a person but only for certain areas of competency!\nThe role of examples and development tasks respectively: After discussing the form of the structurisation of descriptions of competency acquisition, the question remains how the descriptions of the respective competency areas and the related levels themselves have to be realized. Decisive hints have already been given: The description should be oriented to work process and/or work process oriented tasks and should be related to the objects of work, the tools, the work organisation and the methods as well as the requirements in order to avoid to be \"haunted by de-contextualisation\".The most efficient means in this connection seem to be \"good\" examples, which can safeguard a consequent link to the context, the domain and the application. It is amazing that the literature on the application of the Dreyfus models hardly contains any discussions about the role of the examples although no reasonable description of competency can do without them. Benner's analysis exclusively relies on the tasks, on \"real\" examples, i.e. reports of real cases given by nurses. She also abstracts the different competencies for the sake of structurisation. These abstracts, however, only serve as titles whereas the real descriptions of the practice are to be found in interview quotations or their paraphrases. In this context Benner speaks of \"paradigmatic cases\" (Benner, 1994, p. 31). Dreyfus and Dreyfus as well deem the examples central but do not explicitly pick them out as central themes. A thorough analysis of examples and their importance for the acquisition of implicit knowledge can, however, be found in the book \"Impure Reason\" by Janik (2002). He writes - and you could not put it more clearly:Tacit knowing refers to a wide variety of things whose only common characteristic is precisely that they have to be learned by doing rather than by studying. For this reason it is very hard to say anything about it except by referring to concrete examples and case studies. Most misunderstandings with respect to tacit knowledge arise because people forget about the case studies and examples in whose terms alone it can be profitably discussed, and try to imagine it in the abstract. This is always disastrous. Tacit knowledge means little apart from examples and case studies.And Janik speaks out even more clearly: \"In practical activities examples play the role that definitions do in theory formation\" (Janik, 1995, p. 2). One is tempted to continue and amend:[...] and when it is a good description of practical actions, examples cannot be omitted less than ever. Examples are not simply an illustrating element of descriptions but they are playing a constitutive role. Also in the case of the car mechatronic, the empirical examination of the domain is in the focus of interest and numerous examples characterize the different competency levels and the expertise necessary to cope with tasks. Only concrete links to the world of work, to the work processes can characterize the multi-dimensionality of the challenges behind the tasks (Rauner and Spottl, 2002).In the case of teaching and curriculum construction, we speak of development tasks (Gruschka, 1985) instead of precedence, paradigmatic cases or canonical examples. The simple basic idea is that competency development takes place by the coping with certain tasks. These tasks have the property to logically support the development of the professional competencies of the individual. The immanent difficulty is to identify and describe the supra-individual logic of development. The approach to a solution is marked by the fact that only central tasks can be identified within a domain or a profession that can be used in terms of development tasks (Figure 2). These development tasks maintain in any case the link to the real requirements of professionals (this is underlined by the grey areas which mark the depth and the width of core work tasks). Partly, they go beyond these boundaries and take into consideration that competencies for a certain task (e.g. Task D) require certain competencies for another task (e.g. Task B) and cannot be developed by starting at the level of a novice (cf. last chapter).For our arguments it is crucial to mention that examples in the form of central professional actions are important both for learning (acquisition of competencies/development of competencies) and for their description. It is a frequent and completely false conclusion to think that although they do play a role for the acquisition of competences they could be omitted in the description of the acquisition of competences.\nExample of a competency matrix: By considering all these hints and nevertheless maintaining the Dreyfus model, one can shape the instrument of a competency matrix[19]. Competency requirements of different competency areas are described with the aid of examples and/or development tasks in a sense of work process oriented tasks. Within the framework of the project VQTS, financed by the European Commission, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Economy and Work, such a competency matrix was developed for the occupational profile of a \"mechatronic\" and will serve as an example.In the first column the competency areas or groups of competencies linked to work process oriented tasks are listed (Figure 3). Based on core work tasks, a varying number of competence areas are defined, depending on the complexity, range of activities or job opportunities.This table merely serves as a rough overview and does not show the acquirable or actual competencies available to a person in training. In order to be able to show these, a description of the specifications of the individual competency areas is necessary: Therefore, 2 to 6 steps of the competency development (SCD) for every competency area are described in the second column of the row. Figure 4 is an example of the description of competency steps for the competency area \"D. Manufacturing mechatronic parts, components and systems\".In earlier chapters we have already mentioned some of the basic principles for the creation of such competency descriptions, which highlight the context of professional action within a domain: the reference to objects of work, tools, the use of examples. By considering these principles, it becomes evident, how difficult it is to draw up a \"good\" competency description. Even the examples we have developed in the mechatronics area do not yet live completely up to these demands. This is especially true for the use of examples.It is also clear that - in particular with a view to the last set of dimensions described - not always all aspects can be considered in a competency description. Rather pragmatic paths will have to be stroken and it will only show in practice how comprehensive these descriptions have to be. Furthermore, specific expert knowledge is needed, in particular methodical know-how to be developed in order to moderate processes for the setting up of competency descriptions.\nOpen questions and conclusions: We have shown exemplarily that standardised descriptions of different phases of competency development of individual persons undergoing training and individual training programmes respectively can both as a principle and in practice be carried through with an orientation to domains and contexts. The contents of such competency matrixes can thus be set up by making use of research instruments - above all of work process analyses (Spottl and Becker, 2005b). Expert workshops and national consultations of the bodies responsible for training can increase the acceptance at political and branch levels[20]. The amount and the grade of detailing of the descriptions can be coped with as it may be assumed that the descriptions will possibly not exceed two pages. The expenditure for the preparation and the continuous review - for all member states - may be assumed to be of lesser importance than the expenditure which is currently necessary for the preparation and the implementation of \"Certificate Supplements\". In addition, the certificate supplements are summaries of curriculum descriptions which are problematic for the mutual recognition of competencies and are rather suitable to increase the transparency of national training contents.Although the feasibility may be taken for granted, there are some questions which we have partly already raised and which we have not yet raised. Finally, we would like to raise some important questions:Is all this worth the trouble or are there easier ways?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this article is to look closely at the development of a European Credit Transfer System for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET). The European Commission, together with the member States, are working on it and several pilot projects have been initiated within the Leonardo da Vinci Programme of the European Commission. The problem of the transfer as well as a convincing transparency of vocational competences has yet been developed. The aim is to discuss this in the article.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This contribution illustrates a model using the Dreyfus/Dreyfus approach of acquisition of profiles in such a way that the levels of competence development are not applied to overall professional actions (as shown for pilots, nurses, teachers and others), but to smaller entities of professional profiles.\nFindings: - While strongly taking into account work related tasks and contexts (objects, tools, work organisation) the authors define \"groups of competencies\" and apply Dreyfus' ladder to these new entities. That means the authors adopt Dreyfus' model in two ways: by applying the model to groups of competencies (corresponding to specific core work profiles) instead of using it for overall competency profiles (corresponding to professionals/ experts); and they make the model flexible and dynamic by not restricting it to a certain number of levels, but only defining the differences between levels.\nResearch/limitations/implications: - The background of the paper is the so-called work process analysis to identify the work related tasks and related groups of competencies.\nPractical implications: - The article offers a new concept for the European discussion of the Qualification Framework as well as the Credit Transfer System.\nOriginality/value: - This article provides an alternative to existing European policy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Adaptable design in Olympic construction
|
[
"Sustainability",
"Olympic Games",
"Urban design",
"Architectural design",
"Building adaptability",
"Post-games use"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Modern Olympic Games are a unique and prestigious sporting event that serve as a platform to marvel the incredulity of the evolution of the human body; to make good relations between nations, and provide the host country with the opportunity to showcase, via the media of contemporary architecture, its modernity, economic stabilisation, and social cohesion as a nation, to a global audience (International Olympic Committee, 2012; Olympic Museum Educational and Cultural Services, 2013). Deeply rooted in historicism (Girginov and Parry, 2005), the Olympic movement is underpinned by a principal philosophy to promote human health and well-being through sport, culture, art and education, with a sense of unity and community. Since their inception in 1896, the Modern Olympic Games have proliferated exponentially in size and scope, with the Summer Olympic Games becoming the largest International Mega Sporting event (MSE) of its type. The event lasts for less than three weeks, but the urban and infrastructural legacy that remains after the Games has ended has a much longer duration, and whilst construction for the Games has been used for the benefit of the wider community in some cities, there are several existing examples of \"negative\" legacy outcomes in Olympic host venues, resulting in some criticism and resistance towards the notion. For example, all except one of the Olympic Venues of the Rome 1960 Games remain in use to date, on the contrary, the Helliniko Olympic Complex, Beach Volleyball Arena, and Softball Arena constructed in Athens for the 2004 Olympics were lying derelict by 2008 after geographical and cultural factors inhibited their continued use, and hosting the Olympic Games reportedly contributed to the collapse of the Greek economy, causing animosity amongst Greek citizens (Kissoudi, 2008). With the increasing societal and economical costs of hosting the Olympic Games, it has become a rising priority to address the issues of adaptability for post-use in Olympic construction; and to prevent negative legacy outcomes after the Games have ended.\nThe Olympiads: a social and cultural background: Cultural significance\nMethodology: As part of a broader research project examining the urban and architectural legacies of the Summer Olympic Games, as the Winter Olympic Games is a very different cultural product with disparate infrastructural requirements, in post-Second World War Europe. The historical and geographical limits are crucial to this research as the disparities between Europe and other continents, or before and after the end of Second World War are so huge that a comparative study would be impossible. This paper seeks to identify what adaptability means in relation to Olympic design, construction and their legacy, highlighting some historic examples of adaptability in Olympic venues.\nLondon 2012: a case study: The London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, aimed to benefit existing residents (Davis, 2014), by achieving a legacy unprecedented in previous Olympics. Implementing a strategy to deliver 300,000 temporary seats, London 2012 delivered 32 competition venues: seven new temporary venues, eight new permanent venues and 17 existing venues with overlay and minor permanent works. But whilst the notion of temporality appears to resolve many resounding legacy issues in practice, given the technical requirements and scale of venues for London 2012, the temporary arenas were delivered as bespoke solutions with the same performance specification as for a permanent building (Nimmo et al., 2011); removing the benefits of reduced costs and delivery timescales that the use of temporary building implies. The major permanent venues of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, designed by a variety of International architects rather than the same architect throughout, were not predetermined in terms of aesthetics or materiality.\nRome 1960: a case study: Another example of adaptability in Olympic venues was provided by Rome in 1960. Only 15 years after the end of the Second World War, Italy was still in its economical, and physical, phase of Ricostruzione (Reconstruction). The stringent limits of time and financial means, and the opportunities provided by the classic heritage of the city were turned into an advantage by the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (CONI) - Italian NOC). Indeed some of the Olympic disciplines were hosted within some outstanding archaeological sites. So, for example, Wrestling was performed in the Basilica of Maxentius and Gymnastic in the Caracalla's Baths. This smart and light approach avoided the costs of new constructions and provided an evocative background for the sport performance. However, even for the new sport venues, as the Palazzetto dello Sport and the Palazzo dello Sport (previously named the PalaEUR and now PalaLottomatica) both designed and built by Pier Luigi Nervi, adaptability was embedded in their design process.\nConclusions: The socio-cultural, economic and environmental costs of Olympic development emphasise the requirement for better solutions for adaptability in Olympic design. Olympic buildings must continuously evolve to fit functional, technological and aesthetic metamorphoses in society (Schmidt et al., 2009), and to transition from event-mode to legacy mode and their lifecycle beyond. Post-use of Olympic infrastructure demonstrates a mix of both successful and unsuccessful post-Games legacy, and previous research has evidenced the difficulty of attributing level and causality of success due to the nature and complexity of legacy and sustainability (Brown and Cresciani, 2015). The case studies of Rome 1960 and London 2012 demonstrate that adaptability in those buildings has had a positive impact on their post-Games use. All four of the venues remain in use today subsequent to their post-Games adaptation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The Olympic Games is the largest sporting mega event of its type, with deep cultural and historical roots. The event is short lived compared to the lifespan of the infrastructure required in host cities. The purpose of this paper is to examine models of adaptability in Olympic construction, using case studies in previous Olympic host cities of the Summer Olympic Games (Rome 1960, London 2012), to assess the impact of adaptability on future legacy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A mixed methods approach (archival research, direct observation), was used in two case studies: Rome (Palazzetto dello Sport, Palazzo dello Sport), and London (London Olympic Velodrome, London Aquatics Centre). The case studies examined how adaptability was used in design to secure legacy.\nFindings: In the selected case studies (Rome 1960, London 2012), adaptability has had a positive impact on the post-Games use of venues, all four of which remain in use today. However, there are multiple factors that contribute to post-Games legacy, and further research is necessary.\nResearch limitations/implications: Whilst some positive results were observed in this study, more research is necessary across a broader spectrum of sites and venues to make conclusive recommendations for architects designing for Mega Sporting events.\nSocial implications: The significance of this study to architectural practice, academia, and society is its potential to benefit future Olympic Games, International Olympic Committee policy, and be extended to other Mega Sporting events.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this research lies within its analysis of Olympic infrastructures and sustainability, of which there is a current lack of comparative studies in academic research.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Analyzing the barriers to purchase intentions of energy efficient appliances from consumer perspective
|
[
"Subjective norm",
"Risk perception",
"Green claims",
"Scepticism",
"Price sensitivity",
"Energy efficiency gap",
"Barriers to energy efficient appliances",
"Perceived product risks",
"Inconvenience",
"Societal norms",
"Energy labels"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Energy is essential and a secure and steady supply of energy is vital for sustaining modern societies (Asif and Muneer, 2007). The world heavily relies on fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas to satiate its energy requirements. The usage of fossil fuels has had an adverse impact on the environment by causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; GHGs pose a serious threat to the environment. This environmental threat is predicted to increase as enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) are pumped into the atmosphere by emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) trying to catch up with developed ones (Polley, 2017). Energy consumption of BRIC nations has increased as compared to that of the world (Song et al., 2013). Increased GHG emissions have become a universal problem. The growth in CO2 emissions from 27.1 Gt CO2/year in 2008 to 40.4 Gt CO2/year in 2030 can be attributed to the developing countries like China and India (Kaygusuz, 2012a). As the economy of these nations progresses, the demand for fossil fuels to generate energy to carry out anthropogenic activities increases (Raut et al., 2016).\n2. Literature review: EE for an appliance could be defined as, all things being constant, less energy consumption in using the appliance and reduced GHG emissions and other air pollutants (Shwom, 2011). This definition of energy efficient appliances closely matches that of pro-environmental products. Pro-environmental products or environmentally friendly products (EFPs) are those that cause minimum harm to the environment (Ottoman, 1998). As energy efficient appliances reduce emissions and avoid the need for further extraction and combustion, they may be categorised as EFPs.\n3. Data analysis and results: 3.1 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)\n4. Discussion and conclusion: 4.1 Managerial implications\n5. Conclusion: This research paper predicts the impact of the barriers identified on the purchase intention of the consumer towards energy efficient appliances. Indian consumers are conscious about conserving energy which can be observed by their habit of switching off the lights and using natural resources to perform chores like drying clothes, reading (Shrinivasan et al., 2013); however, in terms of investing in an energy efficient appliance, the Indian consumer is reluctant. This could be attributed to the subsidised cost of domestic electricity which the consumer fails to consider while using appliances. The identification of barriers is expected to aid managers and policy makers in designing and framing not just one standardized policy like Bureau of Energy Efficiency in India, but multiple incentive and information-based programmes capable of interacting with different stakeholders in the appliance value chain and enabling the adoption of energy efficient appliances. Communication in terms of product labels may be focussed on the amount of energy saved and backed by government guarantees to increase consumer trust.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the barriers to consumers' intention to purchase energy efficient appliances. It uses multiple regression analysis to predict the factors that deter consumers' purchase intention.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Five barriers to consumers' intention to purchase energy efficient appliances were identified through an exhaustive literature survey. Data were gathered from 300 respondents from Pune city from the state of Maharashtra in India through a survey. The items were measured on a five-point Likert scale. Validity and reliability of the scale were established. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to predict consumers' intention to purchase energy efficient appliances based on factors identified.\nFindings: Findings revealed that some degree of uncertainty was associated with energy efficient appliance purchase. In addition to possessing lower degrees of awareness on energy efficient appliances, consumers tend to disbelieve claims made on labels of energy efficient appliances. Consumers also feel inconvenience in identifying these appliances, spending time to know about them and paying the price to purchase them. Hence, the factors - scepticism towards label claims and perceived personal inconvenience - were found to have negative impact on consumers' purchase intention. Societal norm was found to have a positive impact on consumers' purchase intention. Interestingly, price sensitivity and perceived product risk (which were expected to have a negative relationship with consumers' purchase intention) displayed a positive relationship.\nResearch limitations/implications: The model proposed here is based on the researcher's identification of the barriers. There might have been unidentified barriers that were not considered. The research does not account for manufacturing or policy-based issues that might also pose as barriers. The study encourages marketers to re-examine marketing and communication policies associated with the sale of energy efficient appliances.\nOriginality/value: The paper provides insights into the external barriers faced by consumers while purchasing an energy efficient appliance. This research enables managers to understand consumer's preference for conventional products over energy efficient ones. It attempts to check the presence of barriers to energy efficient appliances, identified from literature in a tier 1 city of India. Tier 1 city is the city with population greater than 1,00,000 as per 2001 census of India.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The mutuality metaphor: understanding healthcare provision in NHS Scotland
|
[
"Definition",
"Communication",
"NHS Scotland",
"Mutuality"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The role and definition of the \"third sector\" in public service provision continues to be a hugely contested terrain (Macmillan, 2010; Howieson and Hodges, 2014). Central to these debates is whether there is, in fact, a coherent sector (Alcock, 2010) and, if so, what it should be called (Billis, 2010). With regards to one of the sector subcomponents - social enterprise - Teasdale (2011, p. 99) notes a \"bewildering array of definitions and explanations\". The context of healthcare represents a case in point for such potential ambiguities and disputes as the sector sees the rise in social enterprise, cooperatives, mutuals, and charities as a possible means to deliver services (e.g. Millar, 2012).\nDefining mutuality in the provision of Scottish healthcare: The Scottish Government offers a vision of mutuality which values stakeholders as co-producers of healthcare with a \"common sense of purpose\". However, many professionals within NHS Scotland - and the public in general - struggle to define what a mutual NHS means for them (Howieson and Fenwick, 2014). This \"definitional problem\" is echoed by the Scottish Partnership Forum (2009) who commented on the difficulty of staff understanding mutuality. In order to explain better what \"mutuality\" means, the Forum indicated that the government may need to move away from that term in explaining to the public and staff why mutuality is important.\nHow a mutual health policy is communicated and how a mutual health policy should, perhaps, be communicated: In their reflections on public participation in service delivery, Barnes et al. (2003, pp. 396-397) raise a number of interesting points regarding whether or not we are seeing new forms of mediation between the state and its citizens. In looking to move beyond the established typologies of \"consumer/customer\" or a \"client in an administrative state\" as citizens become more involved in public service provision, they argue that the terms upon which they engage may become rather amorphous and fluid. In other words, the point is not, as Birchall (2011, p. 93) has it, that \"it should be up to users as much as to the providers as to where on the map of possible relationships they want to be\", rather, the reality is that users may engage in services through an unpredictable range of possible interactions.\nConclusion: As an approach to democratisation in healthcare management, and in healthcare generally, a mutual health policy remains relatively under-developed, especially at the operational and strategic levels of state healthcare systems. This mutual philosophy and policy, then, may be consistent with this publicly funded body in terms of the funders having a greater say in their service, and making decisions about the shape and structure of healthcare across Scotland.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Better Health, Better Care Action Plan (Scottish Government, 2007) sets out how the Scottish Government intends to strengthen public ownership of the National Health Service in Scotland. The purpose of this paper is to advance extant knowledge by understanding how a state-led mutual health policy may be interpreted, and importantly, communicated.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The definitional problem of mutuality will be discussed and analysed in terms of how it is (or perhaps should be) communicated? will be offered.\nFindings: It actually may be more instructive to think of, and communicate, mutuality as a metaphor to aid understanding of the openness and fluidity found in NHS Scotland.\nResearch limitations/implications: The existence of paradox and ambiguity does not, however, negate the usefulness of the term \"mutuality\". Quite the opposite in fact: it is precisely by examining healthcare and its delivery through the lens of mutuality (rather than rejecting its complexity as a failure) that this amorphousness can be better appreciated.\nPractical implications: There is a need for more public, professional, and academic debate to explore and clarify its implementation, and how it is to be led. This must be provided whilst recognising the daily imperatives that NHS leaders must face. This would suggest, therefore, that a dual development path may help.\nOriginality/value: Although Better Health, Better Care Action Plan was published in 2007, some eight years on there is still confusion and misunderstanding as to what mutuality in healthcare is, not only in policy and theory, but also in practice. It is hoped that this analysis will help address, in part, some of this confusion and misunderstanding.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Teaching and learning cooking skills in Home Economics: What do teachers for students with mild intellectual disabilities consider important to learn?
|
[
"Teaching",
"Cooking skills",
"Home Economics",
"Sociocultural theory on learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: From a sociocultural approach on learning and knowledge (as described by Cole, 1996; Wertsch, 1991; Saljo, 2010a), cooking can be seen as a cultural, situated practice where the use of artifacts plays a significant role in acquiring cooking skills. Artifacts are a repository of knowledge passed down from previous generations and are a part of the culture they belong to (Saljo, 2010b; Habib and Wittek, 2007). Artifacts can be both linguistic, such as language, numbers or metaphors (Cunliffe and Shotter, 2006), or physical (Cole, 1996), such as kitchen utensils. Consequently, to acquire cooking skills is to be socialized in the kitchen context and be able to master different contextual artifacts, both linguistic and physical. According to some researchers, a clear, consistent definition of cooking skills is lacking (Begley and Gallegos, 2010; Lyon et al., 2003; Mcgowan et al., 2015), although some descriptions and definitions do exist. For example Short (2003) describes cooking skills as both task-centered, such as in whipping or frying, and also on a more abstract, contextual, situated and person-centered level. Hartmann et al. (2013) argue that cooking skills are \"the ability to prepare different foods\" (Hartmann et al., 2013, p. 129) while Stead et al. (2004) claim that cooking involves much more than the actual meal preparation, and includes aspects such as planning and budgeting. Fordyce-Voorham (2011) even uses the term meal skills to include not only specific cooking skills but also the preparation of the meal, as for example interpreting recipes and planning.\n2. Methods: 2.1 Interviews\n3. Findings: A general finding was that the teachers often shifted perspective between what they considered important for the students to learn, how they teach and different factors that influence the learning situation, such as prior experience by the students or the use of different artifacts. In a comprehensive analysis of the elements of cooking skills that the teachers thought should be included in HE education, a combination of the language of cooking, following recipes and having a broad \"know how\" emerged.\n4. Discussion: When the teachers described their teaching practice and what they found important for this specific group of students to learn regarding cooking and cooking skills, a rather uniform picture emerged of what was considered important and what was not mentioned. Indeed, there was some dissimilarity regarding certain aspects of teaching but in general it was apparent that, in this HE context, cooking and cooking skills are culturally oriented. The fact that the teachers chose to highlight certain cooking methods and specific dishes as being more important for the students to master reflects how cultural norms and traditions influence not only views on cooking, but also how the teaching is organized. The analysis of the interviews also showed a focus on expressions concerning which elements of cooking skills the students need to learn. This is a rather task-centered approach to cooking skills as opposed to discussing for example how the students learn and how the teaching can be arranged to improve the learning outcome.\n5. Conclusion: According to the teachers interviewed in this study, the teaching and learning of cooking skills within the school subject HE to students with mild ID appear to be a distinct culture with a specific content of task-oriented knowledge. The priorities that the individual teacher has to make in relation to the syllabus content are seemingly somewhat non-reflective, both regarding what is included in the teaching practice and the specific needs of the actual student group. Instead of conscious choices, the teaching culture is characterized by what is practically feasible (baking and consuming) alongside a theorizing element, focusing on the subject specific language and the ability to measure. In order for this group of students to acquire cooking skills based on the goals stipulated in the syllabus, a more conscious prioritization of what should be included in the HE education, together with a student-centered and situational teaching practice is required.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore which elements of cooking skills Home Economics (HE) teachers in schools for students with mild intellectual disability (ID) consider important for their students to learn.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In total, 22 qualitative interviews with HE teachers of students with mild ID were conducted. The transcripts were analyzed thematically using the sociocultural approach on learning and knowledge as a theoretical framework.\nFindings: The elements of cooking skills that were emphasized included mastering the language of cooking, measuring, following recipes, representing an instrumental and task-centered - knowledge on cooking.\nPractical implications: The results of this study provide an insight into cooking lessons in HE in schools, not only regarding the focus that teachers give to cooking skills, but also to how cooking skills can be understood on a theoretical level. This has implications for both regular schools and schools for students with mild IDs since the elements that teachers consider important then guide what the students are given to learn. Teachers should be conscious that the planning of lessons should also be based on the students' specific circumstances and context.\nOriginality/value: To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that provides knowledge about how HE teachers reason regarding which cooking skills they consider important for students to learn. HE is taught to both children and adolescents, and it is important to investigate teachers' perceptions about the subject and how the teaching is organized, including cooking skills.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Volunteers' knowledge activities at UK music festivals: a hermeneutic-phenomenological exploration of individuals' experiences
|
[
"Communities of practice",
"Knowledge management",
"Knowledge sharing",
"Volunteering",
"Hermeneutic phenomenology"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Managing knowledge within organisations has been linked to improved skills and competencies, and thus opportunities for enhanced innovation, increased business performance and ultimately towards achieving competitive advantage (Argote and Ingram, 2000; Brown and Duguid, 1991; Gorelick and Tantawy-Monsou, 2005; Kogut and Zander, 1992; Song et al., 2003). The management of organisational tacit and explicit knowledge is an important activity that has the ability to impact organisational performance and \"the bottom line\" through strategically aligned and effective knowledge management policies, plans and practices (Dalkir, 2011; Jashapara, 2011; Newell et al., 2009). Similarly, commercial or not-for-profit organisations that are reliant on free labour through the act of volunteering have the opportunity to encourage and leverage knowledge activities (including sharing and retention) among volunteers to reduce the \"wasteful cycles of relearning\" and the possibility of organisational failure (Ragsdell et al., 2014). In such volunteer-reliant organisations, the possibility of high turnover of (free) resources and the transient nature of volunteers results in a fragmentation and lack of cross-fertilisation of knowledge (Lettieri et al., 2004).\n2. Literature review: Knowledge Management Studies, or the study of human knowledge, has a long and rich history, beginning with classical philosophers (Dalkir, 2011; Hislop, 2009; Jashapara, 2011; Newell et al., 2009). In contrast, the study of organisational knowledge management is a relatively newer and evolving field of study commencing in the 1960s (Dalkir, 2011) that has progressed in three distinct phases (Cooper, 2006):\n3. Research methodology: The researcher adopted an interpretivist approach, influenced by hermeneutic phenomenology, to gain understandings of behaviour (Bryman and Bell, 2007; Saunders et al., 2009) and interpret meanings. Interpretivism is suitable to the study of individuals in a social world, and it is complex and unique (Saunders et al., 2009). In-depth interviews and written diaries methods were chosen because of the potential for exploring deeper into the complexity of multiple realities and \"explaining phenomenon that is integrative and complex\" (Grant et al., 2001, p. 68). Both methods enable the necessary depth of insight and allow the researcher to interpret meanings, experiences and understandings (Smith et al., 2009). In combination, interviews and diaries facilitate the exploration of \"deep, personal and experiential aspects\" of volunteering (McIntosh and Zahra, 2007, p. 545).\n4. Research findings: The research exposed the importance of knowing the conditions that enable or prevent knowledge activities, which are similar to conditions that create an environment conducive to an optimum volunteering experience. From an organisational perspective through the improvement of the volunteering experience, it is suggested that knowledge activities will be enabled and enhanced. Through the research process, four distinguishing themes emerged from the data, i.e. the distinctiveness of (festival) volunteers, motivation to volunteer, the knowledge environment created through communities of practice and the type of knowledge shared in the organisational context of volunteering at festival events. The themes emerged as representations of the phenomenon, and were presented by two linked and overlapping categories, namely, the experience of being a volunteer and the experience of learning to be a volunteer.\n5. Discussion: The research discovered that the \"why\" and \"how\" of knowledge sharing are intrinsically linked to the \"why\" and \"how\" of volunteering. That is, knowledge sharing is enabled (and knowledge barriers diminished or removed) in the optimum circumstances when an individual's motivation to volunteer (\"why\") is satisfied, and the resultant volunteering experience is agreeable. The subsequent impact on knowledge activities necessitates volunteer management to encourage and promote the knowledge-enabling context through the connected volunteering experience. Figure 1 below demonstrates the indicative optimal experience of volunteering and knowledge. This author-generated diagram was derived from the findings, and the model conceptualises the optimal circumstances that represent a \"good\" experience of a (festival) volunteer, which this paper suggests is central to knowledge activities. The model diagrammatical shows the connected nature of experiences and conditions of volunteering and engagement with the organisational purpose together with knowledge sharing and related knowledge activities.\n6. Summary and conclusion: This paper aimed to reveal an interpretation of volunteers' lived experiences of knowledge sharing during the festival lifecycle, and through these insights assist the management of volunteers' knowledge and effective performance, which are attributed to improved business performance and competitive advantage. While not generalisable, the lessons garnered from this research make a contribution in the following areas: first, it fills a gap in the area of the organisational knowledge management of festival volunteers in Festival and Event Studies. Second, this research recognises the impact of pulsating and temporary organisations on knowledge activities, in so much as the volunteer resources expand and contract in line with the event, and thus with each refresh of the organisation, a new cycle of situated (re)learning occurs. In addition, combining \"old-timers\" and newcomers within the community gives rise to knowledge sharing activities, where conditions are conducive. Finally, this research uses festival volunteers' experiences to explore motivations and barriers to tacit knowledge sharing. Motivations to knowledge sharing are typically to conform to the community's routinisation of knowledge practices reinforced by a common purpose and a sense of belonging, whereas there were few evident barriers. Seemingly, where barriers exist, it is due to individuals not conforming to the community's routinised behaviours. This behaviour is typically a manifestation of dissatisfaction with the act of volunteering, that is, the intent to volunteer was not volunteering itself but rather to gain access to the festival. As a result, these (small number of) individuals did not gain membership to the community through legitimate peripheral participation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explore how and why volunteers share knowledge and engage in other related knowledge activities. The paper offers an interpretation of participants' multiple realities to enable a better understanding of managing volunteer knowledge, which ultimately underpins organisational performance and effectiveness.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological study of volunteers (n = 28) at UK music festivals was conducted through in-depth interviews (n = 9), diaries (n = 11) or both (n = 8). This interpretivist approach adopted purposive sampling to recruit participants through (social) media.\nFindings: The findings illustrate how and why volunteers share knowledge that is attributed to a successful process of volunteering, which enables effective knowledge management and knowledge reproduction. Where volunteers' motivations are satisfied, this leads to repeat volunteering. Knowledge enablers and the removal of barriers create conditions that are conducive for knowledge sharing, which have similar characteristics to conditions for continuance commitment. Where volunteers do not return, the organisation leaks knowledge.\nResearch limitations/implications: Although high-quality research standards were maintained, participant self-selection may result in overly positive experiences. Future research might explore the impact on knowledge sharing of negative volunteering experiences.\nPractical/implications: Practical recommendations include factors that contribute to effective volunteer co-ordination and volunteering experiences, which are enablers for knowledge sharing. These fall within two categories, namely, areas for continuance (i.e. those aspects that should be maintained because they contribute to effective volunteer co- ordination and experiences) and areas for improvement (i.e. those aspects of volunteer co-ordination that are either currently lacking or require development or enhancement).\nOriginality/value: This paper's original contribution is demonstrated through the use of hermeneutic phenomenological methods in the exploration of individuals' perspectives of knowledge sharing in the context of temporary organisations. This paper provides value to academics studying knowledge management and volunteer management, and practitioners managing volunteers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Do service providers adopting market segmentation need cooperation with third parties? An application to hotels
|
[
"Cooperation",
"Market segmentation",
"Hospitality",
"Service providers",
"Dynamic pricing",
"Hotel room management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: With the rapid development of business-to-customer e-commerce, an increasing number of consumers want to purchase products and services online (e.g. flight tickets, hotel rooms and car rentals), as they can make reservations in advance according to their travel or business plans. For instance, in the hotel industry, according to a survey of 249 leisure travelers, more than half of them book hotel rooms through hotels' host Web sites or third-party Web sites (Toh et al., 2011). Then, to facilitate the reservations of consumers who have Internet access, service providers have used the online reservation systems (ORS).\n2. Theoretical background and literature review: We consider two distinct streams of related literature, i.e. pricing strategy based on market segmentation in service industries (especially hospitality industry) and cooperative relationship between hotels and third parties (especially the travel package).\n3. Analytical model: We discuss the tradeoff between market segmentation and cooperation with third parties for service products through the example of a hotel and a travel agency in the current study. We first model the strategy of market segmentation respect to the reservation time, and then describe the model of market segmentation after cooperating with the travel agency. To make the model easier to understand, we use a legend to list the important variables used in our analysis, as shown in Table I.\n4. Numerical studies: To show the profitability of each strategy described in the previous section and elaborate our findings, we present a numerical example. A hotel with Q = 50 rooms, and each room's variable cost each day is v = 10. In addition, we ignore the fixed cost each day. Furthermore, we assume that the additional operational cost for each segment per day is K = 50. The cost to bundle rooms with the other service products for the travel agency is c = 20.\n5. Discussion and implications: This study explored the influence of cooperation with third parties on profits of service providers using market segmentation respecting to reservation lead time. The findings may provide both theoretical and practical implications.\n6. Limitations and future research directions: This paper is a preliminary research involving the tradeoff between two marketing strategies for hotels. Several limitations, which could be streamlined into interesting directions for further research, are identified. First, we suppose that the demand functions of both hotel and travel agency are linear. Random demands could be more realistic. Second, we did not consider the loyalty of the customers, which affects the decisions and the competitiveness between hotels and travel agencies. Third, many customers may need a long-term period of stay, and some customers may cancel prior to the target day. Although more challenges will be encountered in adhering to these directions, such initiatives would yield potentially interesting insights.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This study aims to analyze the tradeoff between two potential marketing strategies for service providers, namely, market segmentation on the basis of reservation lead time and cooperation with third parties.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper proposes an optimization model to describe market segmentation strategy after cooperating with third parties by taking hotels for example.\nFindings: The results show that the profitability of adopting two strategies simultaneously is lower than that with market segmentation alone under some cases, which is relevant with attributes of travel agencies, such as switch rate and market share.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study indicates that cooperation with third parties has a negative impact on profitability of hotels using market segmentation in some cases. However, randomness of demand, customer loyalty and existence of cancellation should be considered in further research.\nPractical implications: In an e-commerce era, hotels with market segmentation based on reservation lead time, are not required to cooperate with third parties under a number of situations (e.g. high switch rates and small market sizes of travel agencies). In addition, hotels should revise the segmentation strategy based on the change rate of potential demand of individual customers. Furthermore, hotels should enhance customer loyalty, strengthen cooperation with travel agencies that possess large market shares or small switch rates.\nOriginality/value: The study preliminarily formulates the optimal market segmentation strategy on the basis of reservation lead time after cooperating with third parties, which contributes to the revenue management.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Leader derailment: the impact of self-defeating behaviors
|
[
"Leader derailment",
"Self‐defeating behaviours",
"Problems with interpersonal relationships",
"Leadership",
"Interpersonal relations"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Leader derailment occurs when the career trajectory of a high-potential leader stalls at a lower level than expected, or when the leader is either demoted or asked to leave the organization (Lombardo and McCauley, 1988). In such cases, the skills required for the job and the leader's skills are not matched (Van Velsor and Leslie, 1995). This phenomenon is costly to individuals, as well as to organizations, in at least three areas: the impact of derailment on the career of the person who is derailed, the organization's loss of potential talent, and the impact on the people who are harmed by the outcomes of the poor leadership exercised by the person who is derailed (Gentry et al., 2007a). With estimates of the rate of executive derailment reaching as high as 50-75 percent (Hogan and Kaiser, 2005; Van Velsor et al., 1993), the derailment of high-potential employees is a problem that is both relevant and important to organizations. However, there is still only a small amount of empirical work on leader derailment, the majority of it conducted through one organization, the Center for Creative Leadership (Benson and Campbell, 2007; Hogan et al., 2009; McNally and Parry, 2001).Summarizing the research on leader derailment, Van Velsor and Leslie (1995) identified four themes that appear across time and across cultures as reasons for leader derailment: first, problems with interpersonal relationships, second, an inability to lead and develop a team, third, the inability to adapt during an organizational transition, and finally, failure to meet business objectives. Subsequent studies of leader derailment have built upon and added to those themes; for example, proposing that a lack of certain skills contributes to derailment (McCartney and Campbell, 2006) and examining whether the themes apply in areas other than business settings, such as higher education administration (Gentry et al., 2007a). Generally, the themes have had empirical support, with the first theme of problems with interpersonal relationships consistently heading the list of reasons for leader derailment (Capretta et al., 2008) and researchers are now calling for more in-depth exploration of the themes, particularly the first one (McNally and Parry, 2001), and this was one purpose of the current study.Rather than looking at derailment themes, other researchers have called for studies of the negative personal characteristics that might contribute to leader derailment (e.g. Dotlich and Cairo, 2003). Hogan and Hogan (2001) are strong advocates of exploring the relationship between dysfunctional characteristics and derailment, developing a Hogan Development Survey that measures 11 behavioral tendencies associated with derailment (e.g. skeptical). An early researcher in the field of derailment, Bentz (1985), who studied derailment of executives at Sears, believed that derailers possessed a personality defect (e.g. overly emotional) that led to their derailment. Similarly, Finkelstein (2003) suggested that people whose careers derail at executive levels had negative personal qualities such as arrogance, believing that they knew all the answers to problems. Thus, it appears that looking at negative personality characteristics may further advance our understanding of derailment beyond what the leader derailment themes tell us, however, we have found no studies comparing the derailment theme approach with the dysfunctional personal characteristics approach to understanding leader derailment, and that was a second purpose of the current study.Of the many personality characteristics that might be examined in relationship to leader performance, it is the destructive characteristics that most likely relate to leader derailment (Einarsen et al., 2007; Finkelstein, 2003; Hogan and Hogan, 2001). While destructive characteristics, such as self-defeating behaviors (SDBs), have been studied in other contexts, they have only recently been introduced into the management literature (Renn et al., 2005). Because SDBs, by their very nature, are behaviors that result in a counterproductive outcome (Baumeister and Scher, 1988), it seems likely that such behaviors would also be implicated in leader derailment.Prior studies on leader derailment tend to be problematic in that their focus is typically on the potential to derail, rather than on actual derailment, despite the questionable equivalence of potential vs actual derailment. A further problem with previous studies on leader derailment is that leaders have been asked to rate their own leadership qualities and performance, a questionable method, given the likelihood that perceptions of one's own leadership may be incongruent with others' perceptions (Gentry et al., 2007b). For this reason, supervisor ratings of the characteristics and performance of derailed leaders is a more desirable measure than self-ratings (Gentry et al., 2007b) and were, thus, sought in this study.Consistent with the above information and the suggestion by Hogan et al. (2009) that both interpersonal relationship issues and personality issues appear to be important indicators of derailment, the purpose of the present study is to obtain supervisor ratings of individuals who actually derailed, in order to determine whether SDBs are indicative of leader derailment. A further aim of the study is to compare these behaviors with the derailment theme of \"problems with interpersonal relationships\" to determine if there is a difference between SDBs and interpersonal relationship problems.1.1 Leader derailment\n2. Methods: 2.1 Participants\n3. Discussion: The results of this study, exploring ratings on leaders who have actually derailed, and using supervisor ratings rather than self-ratings, provide support for the notion that SDBs contribute to derailment. Gentry et al. (2007a) indicated that personality characteristics and leader derailment are related. The findings of the present study affirm this but only in the case of personal characteristics that are operative during interactions with others. For example, as was reported in earlier studies (Van Velsor et al., 1993), rigidity was one of the SDBs related to leader derailment. However, contrary to the suggestion by Renn et al. (2005) that procrastination would be related to self-management failure, our results did not indicate that procrastination contributed to leader derailment. It is possible that procrastination may indeed be a factor in self-management failure, but is not a prominent issue in managing others. These results suggest that further research is warranted regarding the specific personal characteristics that are related to derailment.Further, the results suggest that while SDBs and the derailment theme of \"problems with interpersonal relationships\" are both related to derailment, SDBs seem to be more indicative of derailment than do problems with interpersonal relationships. This finding provides evidence to suggest that further research is required to test whether SDBs explain derailment above and beyond \"problems with interpersonal relationships.\"It is important to recognize that it is unrealistic to expect leaders to have only \"bright side\" characteristics and be completely free of \"dark-side\" characteristics (Kellerman, 2004). Further research is warranted to study the relationship, if any, between SDBs and dark-side personality characteristics. Additionally, SDBs that can lead to derailment may not be evident in job interviews, as these behaviors generally tend to surface under more stressful situations (Hogan and Hogan, 2001). Therefore, it is likely that organizations will hire and promote individuals who possess dark-side characteristics and SDBs that could lead to derailment and will thus need to assist these individuals to overcome such SDBs.Van Velsor and Leslie (1995) describe derailment as a development issue, implying that the likelihood of derailment can be decreased through training of leaders. Similarly, it is believed that dark-side behaviors can be changed with extensive training (Hogan et al., 1994) and that the desire to improve will decrease the likelihood of derailment occurring (Gentry et al., 2009). Referring to SDBs as they relate to self-management, Renn et al. (2005) recommend that cognitive strategies, such as positive self-talk and positive mental imagery, would help employees both understand and manage their own SDBs. In cases where SDBs are engaged in unintentionally, cognitive strategies may help the leader gain the insight they lack into their own behavior and its unintended consequences. Moreover, assisting leaders in developing their emotional intelligence should directly enhance their ability to interact with others (Bradberry and Greaves, 2005). Future research should look at viable training to prevent or mitigate derailment.The use of concurrent behavioral development strategies that provide feedback when employees engage in SDBs and reward self-management have also been encouraged as a training method for reducing SDBs (Renn et al., 2005). It has been suggested that self-knowledge is critical as one progresses into higher levels of leadership, but that higher-level leaders rarely receive the quantity of accurate feedback about themselves that they need in order to fully understand themselves (Burke, 2006). Further, the nature of SDBs as behaviors that were successful in the past and have been continued into the present, despite their current lack of success, may indicate that the person who engages in SDBs may have trouble learning from past experience (Hogan and Hogan, 2001). Therefore, it may require assistance from others for the leader to understand and change his or her pattern of SDBs. Supporting the idea that an outside observer is needed to help people improve, Gentry et al. (2007b) results indicate that there is a significant discrepancy between self-observations and observations of oneself by others.\n4. Limitations, implications, future research, and conclusions: While the present study provides evidence that encourages further exploration of SDBs and derailment, there are limitations to the study that warrant caution in its interpretations. The low response rate may limit the ability to generalize the results. A second limitation of the study is that no comparison sample of leaders who did not derail was obtained. Therefore, it is difficult to state for certain that the same SDBs are not present, to some extent, among leaders whose career did not derail. Furthermore, data regarding the length of time elapsed since the person being reported on actually derailed is unavailable and hence it is necessary to rely on the memories of the deans in reporting those characteristics and behaviors that led to the derailment.Nonetheless, these results do suggest that further research on SDBs and derailment is warranted. Clearly, larger numbers of responses in future studies would add to the explanatory power of the findings. Self-ratings are unlikely to provide reliable evidence of SDBs since SDBs are sometimes unintentional and social desirability may hinder people from describing their own SDBs, even if they are aware of them (Renn et al., 2005). Therefore, future research on leader derailment and SDBs should rely upon information gathered from sources other than the derailed leader. Additionally, information should be gathered about leaders whose careers do not derail, so that comparisons can be made.Shipper and Dillard (2000) found that a lack of self-awareness is problematic for managers and is a strong factor in the potential to derail. Our research indicates that one area of self-awareness to focus on is dysfunctional behaviors, especially SDBs. Future research could also examine derailment more closely in terms of the specific manner in which a leader derails. In other words, leader derailment may involve being demoted, plateauing at a lower level than expected, being asked to leave the organization, or leaving the organization voluntarily (Lombardo and McCauley, 1988). Future research could explore these different types of derailment and examine whether particular behaviors relate to particular types of derailment.In conclusion, our study found that the derailment theme \"problems with interpersonal relationships\" and SDB's are both predictors of leader derailment. Additionally, we found that of the two measures, SDB's seem to be the more robust measure and leads us to conclude that dysfunctional behaviors such as those identified in the factor one SDBs may be better at predicting derailment than the derailment theme, \"problems with interpersonal relationships.\" If these conclusions can be confirmed by future research, especially when non-derailed leaders are included in the sample, the results can provide valuable information to firms dealing with derailment issues. It could provide guidance during recruitment, selection, training, performance appraisals, promotion decisions, etc. Predictive behaviors that are easily observed and addressed early in a career could go a long way toward mitigating the adverse consequences of leader derailment.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine whether self-defeating behaviors are correlated with leader derailment, and to compare self-defeating behaviors to the previously identified derailment theme \"Problems with Interpersonal Relationships\".\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Deans at AACSB International-accredited business schools were surveyed about \"Problems with Interpersonal Relationships\" and self-defeating behaviors (SDBs) that one to two of their derailed direct reports may have portrayed. SDBs were analyzed for their strength of association with derailment and compared to the derailment theme \"Problems with Interpersonal Relationships.\"\nFindings: - Results indicated that SDBs are multi-dimensional and those behaviors that involve interaction with others were significantly associated with leader derailment. Further, the results suggest that SDBs were significantly more indicative of derailment than were \"Problems with Interpersonal Relationships\".\nResearch limitations/implications: - The small sample size may limit the ability to generalize the results of the study. Further, the lack of a comparison group of non-derailed leaders does not rule out the possibility that they may also exhibit SDBs.\nPractical implications: - As the baby-boomer generation leaves the workforce over the coming years, the demand for competent leadership will increase dramatically. Companies need to understand the underlying causes of derailment and take appropriate steps to minimize its impact.\nOriginality/value: - Previous research on self-defeating behaviors has focused on an individual's potential to derail. This study is unique in that it links SDBs to practicing leaders and relies on supervisor ratings (rather than self-reports) of SDBs.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
A hard habit to break? A role for substance use education in the new millennium
|
[
"Health education",
"Tobacco",
"Alcoholic drinks",
"Drugs"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Can information-based drugs education reduce the prevalence of tobacco, alcohol and illicit drug use amongst young people? The international evidence suggests that most programmes fail to change behaviour, and that even programmes demonstrating some success regularly show effects that are small, uneven, and not sustained over the longer term. Despite recent promising developments in our understanding of how education can influence substance use behaviour (Coggans, 2006), the challenges facing those who seek to prevent substance use in young people, and measure success in terms of changes in behaviour itself, are manifold. Programmes are often based on poorly conceived or outdated conceptual models. Many evaluations have methodological weaknesses, making it difficult to be certain of programme effects. \"Universal\" style interventions aimed at the general population of young people are less likely to be able to address more problematic substance use amongst vulnerable groups. On the other hand, selective targeting of \"at risk\" young people provides no easy solution, owing to the lack of a clear understanding of risk factors that are causally associated with harmful substance use outcomes. This makes probable that \"at risk\" individuals will be over-identified on the basis of known risk factors. This is particularly problematic given that interventions sometimes have the unintended consequence of increasing rather than decreasing substance use. Given all these negatives, should health educators even be trying to change substance use behaviour in young people?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to introduce the five papers comprising this special issue on post-millennium trends in young people's substance use in the UK. The positions taken by the authors of each of the papers in the issue are compared with respect to their conclusions on how best to reduce harmful outcomes for young people in relation to their substance use, and what role exists for health education in this process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The approach takes the form of a narrative review of the papers in the issue.\nFindings: - Across substances (alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs), the authors identify slight downward trends in population prevalence of use by adolescents and young adults since 2000. This downward trend follows some fairly steep rises during the 1990s, resulting in levels of use remaining historically relatively high. The importance of global and demographic changes is identified as being important in understanding the (arguably somewhat limited) scope for changing youthful behaviour. The different recommendations for how to reduce harmful outcomes for young people are discussed: modifying the context/environment of use (for alcohol and tobacco), drugs treatment (for drug-using offenders), tackling inequality and disadvantage (for heroin and crack cocaine).\nPractical implications: - Two key roles for health educators are identified: first, supporting mechanisms already known to be effective in reducing use/harmful use such as smoke-free environments; second, providing an \"expert\" source of information used by the vast majority of young people who both want and require this on their lifelong health and drug \"journeys\". Health education should have a harm reduction role; measuring success in terms of reducing population prevalence of substance use may be inappropriate and unrealistic.\nOriginality/value: - Important insights are gained into substance use trends by young people when UK trends are set alongside international trends, and when all the psychoactive substances consumed are considered together.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Emotion display rules at work in the global service economy: the special case of the customer
|
[
"Emotional intelligence",
"Emotional dissonance",
"Employee behaviour",
"Culture",
"Service industries"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Customer: \"In America, all the cashiers smile.\"Cashier: \"So go to America. What do you want from me?\" (Rafaeli, 1989, p. 263).An assumption in service research is that both management and customers expect front-line staff to be friendly, caring, and perhaps even enthusiastic (Hochschild, 1983). These expectations are communicated via formal internal policies (e.g. selection, monitoring, and training) in addition to informal social rewards and punishments, and guide what are appropriate emotional displays (Hochschild, 1983; Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987). Such display rules for emotional expressions help guide employee behavior and interpersonal performance (Diefendorff and Gosserand, 2003), since there will inevitably be situations when employees do not feel such positive emotions (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2007, pp. 314-5). Such emotional requirements have been proposed to increase employee job strain by requiring emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983). However, to date there is mixed evidence on whether display rule perceptions are associated with job performance and job strain in the ways proposed (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Cote and Morgan, 2002; Diefendorff and Richard, 2003; Diefendorff et al., 2006; Grandey, 2003); we argue that more attention is needed to how workplace display rules vary by emotion, target, and cultural context.First, display rules research often asks about \"positive\" or \"negative\" emotions, but this obscures variability within each category. We focus on display rules for two emotions important for the work environment - anger and happiness - because they motivate anti- and pro-social action tendencies, respectively, (Fitness, 2000; Geddes and Callister, 2007; Sloan, 2004). Second, much of the display rules research (cited above) has either focused only on display rules toward customers or \"at work\" in general. The former ignores the possibility of emotional requirements for within-organization interactions, and the latter obscures variations in display rules by target (e.g. colleagues, supervisors, and customers). According to Hochschild (1983), the customer target involves stronger display rules than would a general norm for \"niceness\" within the organization, but this is rarely tested. Finally, although research on workplace display rules has been conducted across the globe, there is little attention comparing cultural norms in service contexts. Cultural norms create shared conceptions about how members of a given culture should behave (Schein, 1992), and as shown in the opening quote, displays during service interactions may vary by culture.We integrate three perspectives: a dyadic relational perspective, occupational perspective, and socio-cultural perspective, to predict variations in anger and happiness display rules at work. First, social science research has demonstrated that display rules, particularly for anger, take into account relative social power and familiarity in the dyad (Ekman, 1993). Second, we build on the small but growing research identifying distinct display rules by work targets (Diefendorff and Greguras, 2009; Sloan, 2004; Tschan et al., 2005), arguing that customers have distinct display rules due to their unique status and familiarity characteristics compared to other work targets. Finally, literature on cultural norms - maxims and values - are known to influence acceptance of certain emotional expressions, and that this may also depend on the status and familiarity of the target (Ekman, 1971; Matsumoto, 1993; Matsumoto et al., 1998, 2008). We contrast the view that cultural norms explain workplace display rules with the idea that the globalized service culture results in cross-cultural similarity in display rules with customers. These questions have implications for the growing understanding of when emotions are acceptable to be shown at work (Geddes and Callister, 2007), and implications for the increasingly global service economy in which we work.\nDisplay rules for anger and happiness at work: Display rules are norms or expectations that tell individuals whether and how to express emotion in social interactions (Ekman, 1971; Ekman and Oster, 1979). Workplace display rules research has focused on the expectations for integrative display rules: expressing positive and suppressing negative emotions (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; van Maanen and Kunda, 1989), or managing anger emotions with coworkers (Fitness, 2000; Geddes and Callister, 2007). The former approach ignores the role of specific emotions, and the possibility that positive suppression and negative expression may sometimes be warranted. The latter focuses on one emotion and one target to the exclusion of others. We examine display rules for two discrete emotions - anger and happiness - as key emotions of interest in the workplace (Diefendorff and Richard, 2003; Fitness, 2000; Geddes and Callister, 2007; Sloan, 2004). Anger and happiness are similar in that they both comprise high activation or arousal, coupled with an \"approach\" action tendency; however, anger motivates a desire to harm or engage in antisocial actions, while happiness communicates a desire to affiliate or prosocial actions (Averill, 1983; Fredrickson, 1998). Thus, display rules regarding communicating these emotions are critical for workplace dynamics.With a focus on display rules for anger and happiness, we first review how relational characteristics - status and familiarity - are thought to influence these display rules, and how this literature explains display rules with customers versus organizational members. Second, we show how the broader cultural context may influence and interact with those target characteristics to influence display rules. It should be noted that we are examining the display rules from the employees' perspective, since they are the key actors in the service interaction and thus their perception of job expectations are critical.Display rules by target characteristics\nMethod: We conducted a survey in four culturally distinct countries with similar levels of industrialization. The survey asked about appropriateness of expressing felt anger and happiness toward customers, supervisors and coworkers. Consistent with Matsumoto et al. (2008), we recruited college students from four cultures to hold constant status-related factors such as age and education, but due to our research question, we focused our analyses on those who had recent paid employment.Respondents\nResults: We conducted two mixed-model ANCOVA to predict anger and happiness display rules. We included customer, supervisor, and coworker targets as the within-person variables, country as the between-person variable, and age, gender, service experience, and supervisory experience as covariates (Table II). This analytic approach provided an omnibus test for a within-person effect by target (H1), and a target by country interaction (H2-H4). We then conducted univariate ANCOVAs and mean comparisons as more specific tests of the predictions.Anger display rules\nDiscussion: Display rules are a social necessity - they guide human behavior and inform people about appropriate emotional behavior in various situations. In customer service, display rules are presumed to be an economic necessity to create satisfied customers. We consider emotion display rules in an integration of three possible perspectives: relational characteristics (Locke, 2003), occupational/customer service perspective (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1993; Diefendorff and Greguras, 2009), and cultural differences (Matsumoto et al., 2005; Matsumoto et al., 2008; Ekman, 1971). In merging these perspectives we predicted that display rules are unique with customers due to their relational characteristics, and that cultural differences influence customer display rules differently than display rules with supervisors and coworkers.Workplace display rules as a function of target characteristics\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how emotion display rules are influenced by relational, occupational, and cultural expectations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The authors compare these influences by assessing anger and happiness display rules toward customers, coworkers, and supervisors across four cultures.\nFindings: - Overall, the findings suggest that anger can be expressed with coworkers, can be slightly leaked to supervisors, but must be almost completely suppressed with customers. In contrast, happiness expression is most acceptable with coworkers. Moreover, though culture dimensions (i.e. power distance and collectivism) do predict display rules with organizational members, display rules with customers are fairly consistent across culture, with two exceptions. French respondents are more accepting of anger expression with customers, while American respondents report the highest expectations for expressing happiness to customers.\nPractical implications: - The results support that several countries share the \"service with a smile\" expectations for customers, but these beliefs are more strongly held in the USA than in other cultures. Thus, importing practices from the USA to other culturally distinct countries may be met with resistance. Management must be aware of cultural differences in emotions and emotion norms, as outlined here, to improve the experience of employees of globalized service organizations.\nOriginality/value: - The authors integrate social, occupational, and cultural theoretical perspectives of emotional display rules, and build on the small but growing research identifying variation in display rules by work target, specifically speaking to the globalized \"service culture.\"\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
On evaluation of supply chain's ecosilient (g-resilient) performance index: A fuzzy embedded decision support framework
|
[
"Fuzzy set theory",
"Green supply chain",
"Interpretive structural modelling",
"G-resilient (ecosilient) index",
"Resilient supply chain"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: paradigm shift in supply chain management (SCM): Many authors defined SCM in the light of operational terms including the flow of materials and products; others interpreted SCM as a management philosophy; whilst, few viewed it as a management process (Tyndall et al., 1998; Mentzer et al., 2001). Christopher (2016) defined the supply chain (SC) as a network of organizations involved together through upstream and downstream linkages, in the different process and activities, to produce value in the form of products and services to the hand of the ultimate consumer.\n2. State of the art: Chan and Qi (2003) applied a process-based systematic perspective approach in the light of fuzzy set theory (FST) to build an effective model to measure the holistic performance of complex SCs. Lin et al. (2006) developed a fuzzy agility index based on SC agility providers using the fuzzy logic. In this paper, SC agility was defined how fast a SC responds to the changes in environment, customer preferences, competitive forces, etc. In a broad term, agility can be understood as a means for handling change, increasing customer responsiveness, and mastering market turbulence (Van Hoek et al., 2001).\n3. Methodologies: 3.1 Fuzzy preliminaries\n4. Empirical case study: The case study has been made in view of an automotive company located at the southern part of India. In this study, the SC g-resilient performance index of the considered case automotive company has been determined by considering the green as well as resiliency criteria.\n5. Conclusion: An integrated decision support framework has been suggested in this paper to determine a unique index known as \"ecosilient (g-resilient) index\" toward exploring \"greenness\" as well as \"resiliency\" for the case automotive company, simultaneously. The application potential of the proposed ecosilient (g-resilient) index evaluation system has been elaborated through a case empirical study. By following this framework, environmental impacts can be reduced; company can cope up with unexpected disturbances and disruptions. The proposed framework may be used to identify poor (ill) performing SC performance criteria which require future improvement. The unique GRI may be helpful in comparing performance of different companies operating under similar SC construct. In doing so, benchmark g-resilient practices can easily be identified. Organizations can follow those practices in order to boost up overall g-resilient performance of the SC. Additionally, in this work, the inter-relationship amongst various g-resilient performance criteria have been developed (in a hierarchical form) by the application of ISM.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Recently, in turbulent and highly competitive marketplace, organizational sustainability in the long run necessitates the adaptation of appropriate supply chain (SC) strategies. Hence, traditional SC philosophies are being restructured nowadays to fulfill different business goals. Articulation of lean, agile, green and resilient SC strategies could amply be found in the literature; however, integration of those in various modes may definitely improve overall SC's performance. Past researchers have focused on the integration of lean, agile and green paradigms together to ensure an efficient SC construct. But the integration of green and resilient paradigm has been rarely reported in the literature. To deal with the unexpected situations/disturbances in the SC management along with embedded environmental consciousness, the purpose of this paper is to integrate the resilient SC and green SC philosophies; thereof to evaluate of an overall SC \"g-resilient\"/\"ecosilient\" index for a case automotive company.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A consolidated list consisting of supply chain practices (combining green and resilient performance indices) have been articulated in this study. A decision-making group has been assumed; where, the role of the decision makers is to provide individuals' judgment (subjective opinion) toward determining the weight and the rating (performance extent) of various performance indices. The overall g-resilient SC performance has been determined by computing a unique ecosilient (g-resilient) index. The concepts of fuzzy performance importance index along with Degree of Similarity (DOS) adapted from fuzzy set theory (FST) have been applied to rank various performance indicators. In addition to that, the interrelationships amongst various g-resilient indices (performance indicators) have also been established through interpretive structural modeling.\nFindings: By exploring the concept of fuzzy DOS, outlined in the trapezoidal fuzzy numbers set theory, various SC performance indicators have been classified into three distinct performance categories/levels (namely regretful, tolerable, and satisfactory). Such categorization has been found helpful in order to determine ill (poor) performing SC areas, which need future improvement toward boosting up the overall g-resilient index of the company's SC.\nOriginality/value: The study bears significant managerial implications. The decision support framework suggested in this paper is found capable enough to determine a unique index known as \"ecosilient (g-resilient) index\" toward exploring \"greenness\" as well as \"resiliency\" for the case automotive company. Application potential of the proposed ecosilient (g-resilient) index evaluation system has been explored in this reporting. The recommended framework enables the managers to cope up with unexpected disruptions and found helpful in order to reduce the environmental impacts.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
We knew it all along! Using cognitive science to explain how andragogy works
|
[
"Management education",
"Andragogy",
"Adult learning and education",
"Cognitive neuroscience",
"Readiness to learn and immediacy of application",
"Self-directed learning and prior experience"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Some time ago, Forrest and Peterson (2006) called for educators, those preparing future managers in particular, to examine their teaching and the influences upon that teaching by suggesting the thoughtful application of the principles and practices of andragogy. It was suggested that educators adopt the language of andragogy, aligning to its educational practices to fully engage adult students of management education. This call speaks to human resource development (HRD) as a profession, as HRD scholar-practitioners need to have a thorough understanding of the most effective ways of educating upcoming organizational leaders, and their work bridges the gap between adult education and management education. Too, HRD educators need to pay fastidious attention to how they \"train the trainers\" in the use of andragogic principles. Finally, for those HRD educators working at institutions in which HRD courses or programs are housed in schools of management or business, the Forrest and Peterson's (2006) appeal to management educators is of particular interest.\nAndragogy: principles and practices: Until the mid-twentieth century, adult educators relied primarily on research derived from areas of psychology and educational psychology, which were chiefly behaviorist in philosophy, to inform their knowledge of adult learning. Importantly, much of that information was derived from research on children (Merriam, 2001). Thus, the impetus for a push toward a theory that dealt with adults as the central figures in the learning process was an important step toward developing theory on \"the art and science of helping adults learn\" (Knowles, 1980, p. 43, as cited in Merriam, 2001). Andragogy, as defined by Knowles, initially started as a theory, but in response to critique became known as a primarily learner-centered set of assumptions (Hartree, 1984; Taylor and Kroth, 2009) around which a teacher is able to develop instruction.\nAndragogy in the classroom: The core principles of andragogy have long been used in the classroom. And, although it is often referred to as \"pedagogy\", there has been a call to institute the language of andragogy as we design educational experiences (Forrest and Peterson, 2006), as well as a call to better understand the impact of applying andragogy to instruction (Taylor and Kroth, 2009).\nDiscussion: The suggestion that management educators adopt the language of andragogy to both define and guide management education and instruction and to align educational practices to fully engage adult students (Forrest and Peterson, 2006) was a call to action. Andragogy as a topic of study has had both strong advocates and strong detractors (Merriam, 2001), which allows us to look at andragogy with introspection - analyzing it formatively and systematically. At first view, andragogy seems too removed from brain activity for linkage to be quickly apparent. However, some interesting new information is offered by cognitive neuroscience that helps to make a bridge between brain functioning, andragogical principles for adult instruction and instructional techniques.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to link recent findings in cognitive neuroscience to better understand how andragogically informed instructional practices impact cognition and learning.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research questions guiding the study is in what ways can the recent findings in cognitive neuroscience help to inform adult education theory, including andragogy in particular, to deepen our understanding of how andragogical instructional principles and practices can improve learning? We adopted Torraco's (2005) integrative literature review approach of providing enough details regarding the selection of the literature and the identification and verification of emerged themes of main ideas.\nFindings: The core assumptions of andragogy (self-direction, prior experience, readiness to learn and immediacy of application) have a connection to the neural networks related to memory and cognition.\nResearch limitations/implications: First, this study provides fundamental foundations for combining cognitive neuroscience and adult learning to illuminate how cognitive neuroscience contributes physiologically to adult learning. Second, the findings in cognitive neuroscience related to the four assumptions for andragogy help to provide scientific explanations and interpretations for adult learning theories influencing human resource development (HRD), such as self-directed learning, experiential learning and role theory.\nPractical implications: First, HRD practitioners could use the integrative approach between andragogy and the cognitive neuroscience to reduce the issues of learning activities in generation differences. In addition, cognitive neuroscience research may contribute to improving teaching and instructional techniques.\nOriginality/value: The contributions of this study is that it provides an integrative review about why and how anagogical principles work through the lens of cognitive neuroscience. Based on the findings, we suggested a model of adaptive cognitive neuroscience-adult learning structures.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Green supply chain management approaches: drivers and performance implications
|
[
"Environmental management",
"Survey",
"Buyer-supplier relationships",
"Green supply chain management",
"Purchasing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The notion that supply chains play an important role in environmental management is not new (e.g. Wu and Dunn, 1995; Florida, 1996; Min and Galle, 2001). Recent studies, though, suggest a growing interest in Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM), specially with respect to \"greening\" the multiple tiers of supply chains (e.g. Rao, 2002; Lee and Klassen, 2008; Lonzano, 2008; Walker et al., 2008; Seuring, 2011; Chan et al., 2012; Green et al., 2012; Perotti et al., 2012; Sang et al., 2012). On the practitioner's side, this issue is also gaining increasing relevance. For example, Walmart defined clear goals for its supply base, according to which the top 200 suppliers should achieve 20 per cent energy efficiency improvement, and most importantly, \"by 2012, all suppliers that we buy from directly should source 95 per cent of product from companies that have the highest ratings in environmental audits\" (Esty and Winston, 2006).\n2. Literature review and hypotheses development: 2.1. GSCM practices and environmental performance\n3. Methodology: 3.1. Survey\n4. Results: The bootstrap procedure was used to obtain the path relationships (standardized regression coefficients), t-statistics and confidence intervals (CI) to evaluate the significance of the parameters. The results of the parameter estimation are shown in Figure 2 and Table X. As described above, the exploratory factor analysis run before testing the model with PLS-SEM suggested the distinction between two different sets of drivers: coercive and non-coercive. Accordingly, the model depicted in Figure 1 was modified to include these two different types of drivers.\n5. Discussion: The main results of the study can be summarized in two aspects: first, how different GSCM approaches (monitoring vs collaboration) influence environmental performance; and second, the impact of different types of environmental drivers on the GSCM approaches.\n6. Conclusions: From a theoretical viewpoint, this study has two main contributions. First, it contributes to the literature on the relationship between GSCM approaches and performance by contrasting the effect of the monitoring and collaboration GSCM approaches on performance, using quantitative data. In particular, it demonstrates that the monitoring approach by itself has no impact on environmental performance. There is a full mediation effect of collaboration on the relationship between the monitoring and performance. Monitoring is needed to identify areas of joint improvement but it is not enough to improve environmental performance. Collaborative efforts between buying firms and suppliers are needed to improve sustainability. Second, our paper contributes to the literature on the impact of environmental drivers on GSCM by demonstrating empirically that coercive and non-coercive drivers have different effects on GSCM approaches. More specifically, it shows that coercive drivers may be less efficient than non-coercive drivers when fostering GSCM practices. Moreover, results raise an interesting issue: the effect of coercive pressures on collaborative practices may be even negative, laying a potential ground for future investigations on the GSCM area (e.g. exploring to what extent this may occur, under which conditions and why). A possible explanation for this effect was that regulations might make firms be stricter on suppliers' compliance and this could possibly reduce mutual trust, which in turn reduces willingness to collaborate. This should be investigated in the future.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the complex interrelationships among environmental drivers, Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) approaches and performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey was sent to a sample of managers in the field of Purchasing and Supply Management in Spanish firms. Data were analysed using SmartPLS 2.0 to test a model that relates GSCM drivers, GSCM approaches and performance.\nFindings: Results show that coercive and non-coercive drivers have different implications in terms of GSCM approaches. Moreover, monitoring itself is not sufficient to improve performance; firms need to adopt collaborative practices with their suppliers. Results show that whereas collaboration has a direct effect on performance, monitoring has only an indirect relationship through collaboration.\nResearch limitations/implications: One of the main limitations of this study is the use of data from a single country (Spain). The main contribution of the paper is to show that coercive and non-coercive drivers have different effects on the GSCM approaches. Additionally, it quantifies the mediating effect of collaboration on the relationship between monitoring and environmental performance. As further research, the authors suggest the replication of this study in other countries (notably in emerging markets) and industrial sectors.\nPractical implications: This study provides guidance to managers in the implementation of specific approaches of GSCM. For example, it shows that monitoring alone has no direct effect on performance whereas joint collaborative initiatives with suppliers have a significant effect on environmental performance.\nOriginality/value: This study analyses the implications in terms of drivers and performance for each GSCM approach (monitoring and collaboration), using a quantitative approach.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Social networks, age cohorts and employment
|
[
"Social networks",
"Age groups",
"Social capital",
"Employment",
"Older workers",
"Scotland"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As the populations of most developed countries age and the large cohort of post Second World War \"baby boomers\" approach retirement age, concerns about the impacts of and support for this impending large dependent group arise. Powell and Cook (2009) commented that this is a global concern. The potential consequences of this on societies are huge and include increased burdens on health services, lack of national competitiveness, relatively lower GDP and productivity growth, increased public spending demand (especially for pensions and health), labour market shortages and societal change to a grey agenda (Henrard, 1996; Minichiello et al., 2000). Often the resolution is to raise the retirement age, for example, the OECD (2005) emphasised the need for a longer working life, the Turner Report (Turner et al., 2005) proposed raising retirement age from 65 to 67 for the UK Government. Other policies have included the introduction of anti-Age Discrimination Legislation across the European Union, with similar legislation already existing in other developed countries (Glover and Branine, 2001). Such legislation has increased the employment rates of older workers, primarily through them being retained in work rather than through new hires (Adams, 2004). However, low labour force participation rates remain common amongst the over 50 year olds throughout developed and many developing countries (OECD, 2005; McQuaid, 2007).Reasons for older people not being in employment include: welfare benefit systems as a pathway to early retirement (Vickerstaff et al., 2003; Loretto and White, 2004; Powell and Wahidin, 2005); age discrimination from employers in recruiting and training (Taylor and Walker, 1994; McGregor, 2001); failing health (Bacon, 2002; Beatty and Fothergill, 2002); long-term unemployment (Dixon, 2003); self-feeling of inadequacy (Minichiello et al., 2000); caring responsibility (Weir, 2002); opportunities in the informal economy (Jones et al., 2006) and skills gaps (Kodz et al., 1999).In addition to the effect of an individual's age, there may be a cohort effect. People enter work as a cohort and form groups which encounter similar experiences and develop similar attitudes, skills and ability to adapt to changing labour markets. Thus older people may be embedded in types of social networks which lack the advantages to provide support for employment. The consequences of aging in relation to employment is a worldwide issue and McKelvey (2009) observed that globalisation enhances age cohort effects as young workers with relatively high human capital have the ability to relocate to other labour markets.In terms of employability the prospects of some of the older group of \"baby boomers\" might be relatively less advantageous than those of the following smaller cohort. This may be a consequence of an Easterlin type relative generational hypothesis (Easterlin, 1980; Macunovich, 1998) in which if one is born into a populous cohort the excess of labour supply makes achieving aspirations more difficult than if born into a less populous cohort. Alternatively it may be the result of structural changes in the economy or the emergence of new work paradigms, such as job shares, \"24/7\" flexibility and new skills requirements.Added to these general reasons the social networks of these older people may provide further insight to understand older unemployment. A social network is a depiction of the set of contacts an actor has and has been widely applied in employment studies (see for example Granovetter, 1995; Montgomery, 1994; Topa, 2001). By use of a case study from a labour market in Scotland we investigate that in addition to the widely cited reasons of older unemployment, if other explanations lie in an individual's social network characteristics, and if the network properties that are important in explaining employment status, vary by age. First a theoretical overview is presented.\nTheoretical framework: This paper draws insights from two theoretical traditions: social network analysis that highlights the role of interpersonal relations in getting and remaining in employment; and influence of age in employment.Social networks\nThe study area: The study area is the City of Edinburgh in Scotland. Scotland was one of the first industrialised nations but since the 1960s has experienced massive economic restructuring as heavy manufacturing declined, being replaced by new technology-based industries and service sector jobs, notably in finance and retailing. The Scottish population structure has aged rapidly (General Register Office of Scotland, 2004). Since the mid-1970s, there has been a sustained period of sub replacement fertility (currently the total fertility rate is 1.80).One result of this change in age structure is that those aged over 50 are experiencing more dislocation from the labour market than their younger counter parts (Commission of European Communities, 2004). According to the Scottish Household Survey 2003-2004 (Martin et al., 2005), 48.8 per cent of those aged 50 to 65 years were not in employment whereas only 17.2 per cent of those aged 18 to 50 years were not in employment. Indeed, Disney et al. (1997) found that half of all males and one-third of all females retire before the state pension age and economic inactivity rates of those over 50 were averaging more than 35 per cent. While recognising that a significant amount of this is voluntary the largest part is enforced and those in the bottom quartile of the hourly wage distribution are at the greatest risk (Campbell, 1999). Edinburgh is no exception to the national scenario.The City of Edinburgh has a concentration of growing service sector businesses and at the time of the study had a buoyant economy with low levels of unemployment in general but a higher level of non-employment among the people aged over 50 years.\nData and methods: Initially data on social networks in relation to age cohorts and employment status were examined using the Scottish Household Survey 2003-2004 (Martin et al., 2005). This is a continuous survey of over 30,000 households in which a randomly selected adult in each household was questioned. Of interest were their age, employment status and social contact. The yes/no answers from 28,746 adults to questions \"over the previous two weeks have you visited\", \"had visits from\", \"went out with\", \"spoken on the phone to relatives and friends\" and \"have you spoken to neighbours\" were used. These nine questions were summed to create a social contact score.Using a two-way analysis of variance with factors depicting employment status (in employment, and not in employment) and age cohort (under 50 years, and 50 to 65 years) showed a significant variation (at the 0.1 per cent level) in the contact score by age and employment status. Those in the younger cohort and who were in employment had significantly more social contacts (mean contact score = 5.66) than those who were in employment in the older cohort (mean contact score = 5.14). Those who were not in employment had significantly lower mean contact scores at 4.96 and 4.7, respectively, for the younger and older cohorts. Thus there is evidence that in terms of social contacts older people and those not in employment people are in a weaker position. The difference in social contacts between age cohorts and employment status from this initial investigation prompted a detailed micro-study mainly because the SHS 2003-2004 does not provide the data about what properties of social networks are important in explaining employment status.Sample design\nResults: Descriptive statistics\nDiscussion and conclusion: The findings of this research indicate that for those in older cohorts, one's social network is important in order to remain in employment. The more contacts one has who are in employment, the higher their employment prestige and the stronger the ties with these contacts, the more likely that one is to be in employment. The old adage \"it is not what you know but who you know\" seems to be true, especially for older people. The average accessed prestige was found significant in explaining the employment status of 50+ year old people. This measure encompassed the number of contacts, the quality of the relationship and the degree of access to network members. Thus the association of being in a social network with strong relations connected to higher work prestige, has been demonstrated as a network property explaining employment of those over 50. This supports the proposition of Lin et al. (1981) that social capital embedded in social networks is important in understanding one's employment outcome. From the logistic regression models for the 50+ year cohort it is suggested that employment is not just associated to a history of unemployment or to lower academic qualifications but to the social capital embedded in their social networks. The sociograms (Figure 6) further demonstrate the association of resources embedded in social networks to employment status.Second, there is clear evidence of differences in the composition of social network properties between the cohorts. First, from national data (SHS 2003-2004) people in the <50 year old cohort who were in employment had significantly higher contact scores compared to the 50+ year people who were in employment. From the data collected in this study, the <50 year old cohort had more contacts (Table II) and more regular contacts (reflected in strength of ties) with their social network members compared to the 50+ year old cohort. For those in employment, the proportion of contacts who are in employment is also higher among the <50 year old cohort but for those who are not in employment, the proportions are similar between the cohorts. The average accessed prestige is also higher in the <50 year old cohort. Thus younger cohort members possess stronger social network composition in terms of the number of contacts (which gives a wider diversity), strength (quality of relations) and employment prestige (embedded social resource) compared to the 50+ year old cohort. This may be linked to their younger age or a cohort effect with younger people making much greater use of new information and communication technologies, such as the internet and mobile telephones.For the <50 year cohort, employment status is highly associated with the number of contacts, but not with the proportion of contacts who were in work nor with the employment prestige of these contacts.It appears, that the importance of social contacts and the social capital embedded in these networks are extremely important but more so for the older cohort, who had fewer qualifications and probably require more use of \"word of mouth\" referrals to obtain a job. From the perceived barriers (both self and external) to employment, it was found that the 50+ year old cohort cited a lack of people in higher prestige jobs as a barrier more than the <50 year old cohort. Contrary to this, the younger cohort can rely more on their intrinsic merit and on academic and professional qualifications along with higher number of contacts for job information.This research extends the existing literature on employability of older workers, an important global research and policy area, by adding a micro social perspective, social networks, in finding and maintaining employment. The dynamics of how this micro social perspective is positively associated in explaining the employment status of older people is demonstrated, which gives an understanding of how social capital works through social networks. It also adds to the existing literature of social networks in explaining labour market outcomes by comparing the utility of network properties for different cohorts. However, there is a need for qualitative research to reveal just how the mechanisms of network connectedness work and how they are perceived by the individual.Often the criticism of social network analysis is that the network is formed as a consequence of an event. However, if the network has been in existence before the event (in this case, unemployment) then there is support to the proposition that the event may be a consequence of the network if other socioeconomic factors are controlled for. In this paper the networks reported upon were established networks as we found from the modal category of \"duration of knowing\", which is more than 10 years for 50+ year cohort and 3-5 years for the <50 year cohort. This may help deal with the issue of direction of causality as the mean duration of \"not being in employment\" position is 3.08 years for those in 50+ year cohort and 2.74 years for <50 year cohort. In order to guard against spurious effects there is need for further confirmatory research taking a longitudinal perspective following cohorts of employees through their working lifecycle and as this is a global issue there is a need to replicate the research in different societies and cultures. However, irrespective of direction of causality, the social networks of older cohort, particularly those who are not in employment, are weaker in size, strength of ties and embedded social capital compared to the younger cohort and these components are acting differently in each cohort. We therefore recommend considering the inclusion of both social network perspectives and age cohort effects to better understand the employment status of older people. Social policies should also consider compensating for weak social capital embedded in social networks of older disadvantaged people. This is especially important as many employers use social networks in hiring (Erickson, 2005; Flap and Boxman, 2005; Fernandez et al., 2000) and hence there is a high possibility that the unemployed older people would remain out of this searching process and thereby out of work. Employment agencies can play a role in filling the gap resulting from low social capital by helping provide bridges to better support and introduce older unemployed people to job opportunities.Opens in a new window.Figure 1.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association of social networks with being in work, contrasting those under age 50 with those over 50 years.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A case study is undertaken of a local labour market in Scotland. Data were collected by interview using a semi-structured questionnaire from 194 people divided into four groups. Data include information on individuals' socio-economic characteristics and on their networks. A four-way comparison is made by age and employment status.\nFindings: - Those in work have denser social networks populated with members with higher social and human capital. For those over 50 years, the more contacts one has with higher prestige employment positions (a proxy for social capital), and the stronger the ties with these contacts, the more likely that one is to be in employment. For those under 50 years, their own qualifications and the number of contacts are important.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This work adds to both research on employability and social networks.\nSocial implications: - The over 50s tend to be the age group that is most likely to be not in employment and as populations age there is a need to ensure that barriers to employment against those over 50 are reduced. Finding routes to reduce unemployment will also help combat social exclusion.\nOriginality/value: - This is in the combination of a social network approach with age cohort analysis to give insight into how social capital is associated with being in employment.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Brand community identification matters: a dual value-creation routes framework
|
[
"Brand community",
"Brand equity",
"Network centrality",
"Collaborative opportunities",
"Community identification",
"Emotional attachment to the Brand"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: With the recognizable popularity of participant-based brand communities in recent decades, leading firms have come to realize the marketing efficacy of these communities and seek to enhance these community influences even further. Brand community research has gained prominence in the past decade, because of the increasing complexities of modern business operations and the expected goal of profit-gaining (Heere et al., 2011; Madupu and Cooley, 2010). Intensified competition and the high cost of attracting new customers have driven companies to establish long-term relationship with customers. Brand communities represent an effective strategy to develop and maintain strong relationships with consumers (O'Donnell and Brown, 2012). In addition, brand communities may significantly affect important marketing variables such as brand relationship quality, branding co-creation, and brand loyalty (Habibi et al., 2016; Hajli et al., 2017; Hung, 2014). Building and maintaining a strong brand community has now become a crucial marketing strategy for companies (Ozboluk and Dursun, 2017).\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: Community identification\nMethod: Measures\nResults: Measurement model\nDiscussion and implications: Summary\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: A brand community consists of relationships between a brand and consumers; community members' identification with the brand community is a central characteristic of the community. This study aims to provide a comprehensive conceptual framework to investigate how and why such identification-based relationships yield firm- and member-level benefits to participants in the brand community.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This cross-sectional study analyzes data collected through a questionnaire survey of members from the brand community of VW-Golf Club members in Taiwan. The researchers attended the annual meeting of club members and handed out questionnaires directly to the members. The degree centrality of each member was calculated using UCINET 6 for Windows, a social network analysis software application. This study adopts the partial least squares program to evaluate the measurement properties and structural relationships specified in the research model.\nFindings: The findings suggest that when customers' identification with a brand community becomes salient, they strengthen their emotional attachment to the brand and improve their centrality in the network. Consequently, emotional attachment can serve as a guiding principle in decision-making and thus strengthen brand equity and assessment of brand extensions. Central members will also gain greater benefits, including collaborative opportunities and influence, through their advantageous position in the network.\nOriginality/value: This study makes four main contributions to the brand community literature. First, this is the first empirical study to simultaneously examine the relationships among community identification (customer to community), emotional attachment to the brand (customer to brand) and network centrality (customer to customer). Second, the empirical framework depicts dual value-creation routes that explain how identification-based relationships can yield firm- and member-level benefits. With respect to firm-level benefits, this is the first empirical study to examine the brand equity and assessment of brand extension in the brand community research. Third, this study applies the rarely adopted UCINET 6 software to scrutinize the network data from the brand community. Finally, this paper examines three actions that organizations can leverage to enhance consumer identification with a brand community.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting in higher education: An analysis of key internal stakeholders' expectations
|
[
"Stakeholder",
"Stakeholder engagement",
"Materiality",
"Higher education institutions (HEIs)",
"Sustainability reporting (SR)"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Higher education institutions (HEIs) have a fundamental and influential role in society because they provide not only education, research and knowledge transfer but also the structure and values for progressing towards sustainable development (SD). In this context, one of the challenges of HEIs is to reorient their efforts to better satisfy social demands and to reconsider their relationship with their stakeholders (Jongbloed et al., 2008). To achieve this, HEIs should implement the process known as \"stakeholder engagement\", which is defined as \"the process used by an organisation to engage relevant stakeholders for a clear purpose to achieve agreed outcomes\" (AccountAbility, 2015).\n2. Theoretical background: This study reviews various theoretical arguments that support stakeholder engagement and the prominent studies and standards that integrate stakeholder engagement into SR, with a particular focus on the higher education sector.\n3. Methodology: To answer the three research questions empirically, this study uses an exploratory and descriptive approach that relies on two methodologies: content analysis and case study.\n4. Results and discussion: This section presents and discusses the main results regarding the three research questions.\n5. Conclusions: This study contributes to the limited literature on stakeholder engagement in HEI SR by exploring how stakeholders are involved in SR, determining the extent to which the expectations of internal stakeholders align with the material aspects and finding the degree of consensus in the expectations of internal stakeholders for the contribution of various sustainability aspects to HEI management. After reviewing the theoretical framework, the study discusses evidence from the GRI-G4-based sustainability reports of ten HEIs and a case study of a representative Spanish public university.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to improve the understanding of stakeholder engagement in the context of sustainability reporting (SR) for higher education institutions (HEIs), together with the materiality principle and stakeholder expectations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This research uses an exploratory approach based on content analysis, a case study and descriptive and inferential statistics.\nFindings: Three key findings come out of this research. First, the results indicate that HEIs use diverse criteria for grouping stakeholders and that stakeholder engagement is a heterogeneous process. Second, the expectations of internal stakeholders align with the material aspects of SR. Finally, among internal stakeholders, students and academics disagree on the prioritisation of some sustainability aspects, with non-academic staff adopting an intermediate position.\nPractical implications: This analysis improves our knowledge of stakeholder engagement in HEIs. It helps to identify the relevant impacts of stakeholder engagement, enhances the quality of reporting and encourages a real dialogue with stakeholders.\nOriginality/value: The study examines stakeholder engagement and how the materiality principle is adopted by HEIs through SR. Furthermore, it compares these results with stakeholder expectations, considering the discrepancies between stakeholders. The results open the way to future research to explore the potential conflicts and collaborations between and within stakeholders to advance towards more sustainable institutions in the higher education sector.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Implementing the living wage in UK local government
|
[
"Pay equity",
"Trade unions",
"Public sector organizations",
"Living wage",
"Low pay"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: High levels of income inequality and the increasing share of low wage work in many developed economies have led to calls from trade unions, social justice campaigners, and academics for a \"living wage\" for all workers. In contrast with collectively agreed or legally mandated minimum wages which are designed to protect workers against exploitation and extreme low pay, a living wage is calculated explicitly to provide a worker with sufficient income to reach a \"modest but decent standard of living\" based on the cost of accommodation, goods and services within a particular country (Figart et al., 2002). Living wage campaigns began in 1994 in the US city of Baltimore and have spread to more than 150 cities throughout the USA since then (Luce, 2014), and the UK living wage campaigns began in the early 2000s when The East London Community Organisation and one of the UKs largest trade unions, UNISON, began lobbying for a living wage some 30 per cent higher than the UK national minimum wage (UK NMW) (Wills, 2004).\nResearch and methodology: This paper seeks to understand the practicalities of adopting voluntary living wages at the level of the organisation. It seeks to assess the scale of \"first-order\" effects (i.e. the impact on hourly wage rates and pay dispersion), and also the \"second-order effects\" (i.e. the scope for unions to bargain over the restoration of differentials, and the adoption of the living wage for contracted staff).\nFindings: Against the backdrop of public sector austerity and a three year pay freeze (2010-2013) the introduction of the living wage in all four cases appeared to be predominantly a political strategy in order to be seen as a good or \"ethical\" employer (Werner and Lim, 2016). All four councils had a substantial Labour majority, and there was a broad consensus that public sector cuts enforced by the conservative-led coalition government (2010-2015) and the rising cost of living was having a detrimental effect on the lowest earners. At London 1 and North 2, political leaders were instrumental in driving forward the living wage policy, and committing the organisation to full accreditation with the Living Wage Foundation, something which HR and procurement managers recognised might not have happened had it remained a business-case proposal simply to reduce turnover.\nDiscussion and conclusion: The aims of this study were to explore the implementation of the living wage in large organisations and their impact on embedded wage structures and procurement processes. In-line with other research (Luce, 2014; Neumark et al., 2012; Wills and Linneker, 2012), the findings suggest that the first-order effects of living wages for directly covered workers are significant: the hourly living wage represented an increase of more than 20 per cent over the UK NMW and lifted pay rates for a cohort of mostly female workers in historically low paid occupations such as cleaners and catering assistants well above starting salaries for comparable positions in the private sector. Moreover, this was achieved at no direct detriment to jobs or working hours for directly employed staff, despite the additional costs to all four councils studied.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the impact of living wages on organisational pay systems.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research draws on 23 semi-structured interviews with HR managers, trade union representatives, and politicians at four UK local government case study sites.\nFindings: The findings suggest that living wages can have a positive impact on directly employed workers in cleaning, catering and care services, but the research also finds that the localised adoption of living wages can lead to significant wage compression, resulting in a broad band of \"low skill-low wage jobs\".\nOriginality/value: The theoretical contribution is twofold. In-line with earlier research the \"first-order\" effects of living wages are clear: hourly wages for a large number of women in part-time roles increased sharply. However, this is only part of the story as \"second-order\" effects such as ripples and spill-overs are less extensive than suggested by other studies. This is due to the limited scope for trade unions to restore wage differentials through collective bargaining, the slow progress in extending the living wage to contracted staff, and parallel processes of downsizing and outsourcing.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Distributed leadership: Building capacity for interdisciplinary climate change teaching at four universities
|
[
"Communities of practice",
"Distributed leadership",
"Australian sustainability education",
"Climate change teaching",
"Curriculum greening",
"Leadership in universities"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nI. Introduction: Climate change teaching is an integral element in the greening of higher education curricula. Climate change demands innovative, interdisciplinary teaching approaches that emphasize problem-based pedagogy (Dobson and Tomkinson, 2012). However, universities have often struggled to ensure that disciplines work cooperatively to foster coalitions capable of tackling complex problems, especially in relation to teaching. Disciplinary fragmentation in universities is reinforced by hierarchical, top-down modes of leadership, individualized and competitive pathways of career progression, and administrative and financial structures premised on competition between sub-organizational units (Pharo and Bridle, 2012). This means interdisciplinary teaching is often restricted to small organizational units offering niche programs for a minority of students, rather than being embedded across the curriculum and available to all students through collaboration between disciplines.\nII. Distributed leadership: Hierarchical leadership models have long been central to the functioning of higher education institutions. Indeed, recent decades have seen even greater emphasis on \"top-down\", \"command and control\" leadership practices as a way of increasing the accountability and efficiency of these institutions through corporatist and managerial reforms (Readings, 1996; Deem and Brehony, 2005; Bolden et al., 2009). While there is widespread acknowledgement of the need for universities to become more responsive to rapidly changing social contexts, there is also growing awareness of the limitations of conventional forms of \"top-down\" leadership. These limitations include a lack of flexibility and accountability, and they prompt confrontation and resistance, undermine academic freedom and collegiality, and fail to harness the leadership potential of those at levels below senior management (Avolio et al., 2009; Gronn, 2002).\nIII. Approach: developing leadership in communities of practice: In 2010, following a 2008 pilot project at UTAS (Pharo et al., 2013), the four partner institutions commenced a two year program, funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (now the Australian Office of Learning and Teaching) to establish teaching collaborations with the intention of advancing interdisciplinary climate change education through teacher leadership. Each university established its own \"leadership network for climate change teaching\", through structures and group-building activities consistent with what Wenger (2000) describes as \"communities of practice\", and Cox (2001) describes as \"faculty learning communities\". This dimension of the project is detailed in Pharo et al. (2013).\nIV. Outcomes: building capacity for interdisciplinary climate change teaching through distributed leadership: A key preliminary outcome of the project was the establishment of close-knit communities of teaching practice at each participating institution, drawn from a wide range of different disciplines and administrative units. While preliminary, this achievement is not trivial, and there is evidence that using a distributed leadership model is conducive to the success of these communities. The detailed outcomes achieved by each community were tailored to their specific institutional context. General achievements included the transformation of climate change curriculum, professional development in interdisciplinary pedagogy, innovation in student-led learning activities, participation in institutional decision-making related to curriculum reform, and formal recognition of leadership capacities through career advancement. Each of the four institutional communities of practice is described below, before their key outcomes are reported.\nV. Discussion: towards distributed leadership in universities: Across the four case study institutions, the outcomes of distributed leadership development demonstrate several viable possibilities. As indicated, the teams in each participating institution were encouraged to establish intrinsic goals relevant to their context and membership. As a result, four tailored and mutually informing approaches to distributed leadership were developed. The MU and UOW case studies show that motivated early career academics, supported within a multi-institutional framework of mutual learning, can take on leadership roles independent of their positions in a formal hierarchy, with achievements in interdisciplinary teaching that are recognised and celebrated within their institutions. At UTAS, where the community developed for over four years, specific leadership roles evolved over time while demonstrating robustness in furthering the ambitions of members to increase their influence and status within their institutions and advance their careers through sustainability education initiatives. UNSW showed how a community activated by relatively senior staff can create conditions conducive to leadership initiatives and therefore interdisciplinarity across a wide range of academic, administrative and student roles.\nVI. Conclusion: Over coming decades, university graduates will be required to shoulder responsibility during their professional and personal lives for responding to climate change and related sustainability challenges (Burandt and Barth, 2010). In meeting their responsibility to support graduates in this regard, universities need to increase the extent and pace of reforms if they are to embed sustainability education as \"part of the core curriculum across all disciplines\", as is the aim expressed in the 2012 Rio+20 Commitment to Sustainable Practices of Higher Education Institutions (UNCSD, 2012).\nAcknowledgements: Support for this research has been provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd (LE9-1183; 2010-2011), an initiative of the Australian Government. The authors also thank the four participating universities for generous in-kind support.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Interdisciplinary approaches to climate change teaching are well justified and arise from the complexity of climate change challenges and the integrated problem-solving responses they demand. These approaches require academic teachers to collaborate across disciplines. Yet, the fragmentation typical of universities impedes collaborative teaching practice. This paper aims to report on the outcomes of a distributed leadership project in four Australian universities aimed at enhancing interdisciplinary climate change teaching.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Communities of teaching practice were established at four Australian universities with participants drawn from a wide range of disciplines. The establishment and operation of these communities relied on a distributed leadership methodology which facilitates acts of initiative, innovation, vision and courage through group interaction rather than through designated hierarchical roles.\nFindings: Each community of practice found the distributed leadership approach overcame barriers to interdisciplinary climate change teaching. Cultivating distributed leadership enabled community members to engage in peer-led professional learning, collaborative curriculum and pedagogical development, and to facilitate wider institutional change. The detailed outcomes achieved by each community were tailored to their specific institutional context. They included the transformation of climate change curriculum, professional development in interdisciplinary pedagogy, innovation in student-led learning activities, and participation in institutional decision-making related to curriculum reform.\nOriginality/value: Collaborative, non-traditional leadership practices have attracted little attention in research about sustainability education in university curricula. This paper demonstrates that the distributed leadership model for sustainability education reported here is effective in building capacity for interdisciplinary climate change teaching within disciplines. The model is flexible enough for a variety of institutional settings.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Joint optimal periodic and conditional maintenance strategy
|
[
"Replacement control",
"Maintenance programmes",
"Production methods",
"Plans",
"Control"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Many papers dealing with preventive maintenance and replacement strategies have been published in the last two decades (McCall, 1965; Pierskalla and Voelker, 1976; Sherif and Smith; 1981; Cho and Parlar, 1991; Jamali et al., 2002).In this paper, we investigate an extension of block replacement strategy (BRP) (see Barlow and Proschan, 1965). Under BRP, items are always replaced by new ones at kT, k=1, 2,... and at failure. Sometimes, the items which are replaced at kT (k=1, 2,...) are almost new. So far, BRP has been improved in several ways. Cox (1967) considered policy involving idle items. Barlow and Hunter (1960) suggested to perform a minimal repair at failure. Bhat (1969), Tango (1978) and Ait-Kadi et al. (2002) suggested policies to replace failed items by used ones.In this paper, an optimal periodic replacement strategy is examined. According to this latter, a failed item is replaced instantaneously at failure by a new one. Items, possessing age b or less at instants kT (k=1, 2,...) are allowed to remain in service.Berg and Epstein (1976) proposed a similar strategy whose performance is expressed in terms of the average total cost per time unit over an infinite horizon. The proposed strategy takes into account both the cost and availability criteria.The content of this paper is subdivided into three sections. The definitions of the proposed strategy as well as the mathematical model are presented in section 2 - Proposed strategy. Numerical results and comments regarding the strategy performance and its implementation are then exposed in section 3 - Illustrative example.\nProposed strategy: Definition of the strategy\nIllustrative example: If an item's whole lifetime is distributed according to an Erlang distribution of parameterl=1, then the expression for f(t) is given by: Equation 19 Consequently, Equation 20 where Equation 21 Then, from (11), the elements eij (i=1, 2, j=1, 2) of the matrix E are given by: Equation 22 The equations (12) and (13) become: Equation 23 Finally, the expression of the steady state availability (13) is given by: Equation 24 For this particular case, the expected total cost per unit of time over an infinite horizon is given by: Equation 25 A numerical procedure has been developed to determine the best solution(T*, b*). Results are presented in Tables I and II. Calculations have been performed for different values of the ratio. Tc/Tp. It should be noted that the parameters were arbitrarily selected.ABRP(T) is the steady state availability for a basic block replacements strategy BRP.The proposed strategy seems more efficient than the basic block replacements strategy (Ait-Kadi and Chelbi, 2000) aiming to maximize the steady state availability.In Table II, numerical results have been obtained for l=1 and Cp=1,2$, Cc=4,8$, Tp=0.3 u.t., Tc=0.5 u.t. (unit \\;of\\; time). As we can see, the total expected cost is an increasing function with respect to an availability threshold. Furthermore, the system availability is increasing function with the budgetary limits, as expected.\nConclusion: In this paper, a new replacement strategy was considered. The proposed strategy suggests replacing failed items instantaneously after failure. Items having age or less at predetermined instants are not replaced by new ones but are rather allowed to remain in service. The performance criterion for this strategy is the steady state availability or the expected cost per unit of time over an infinite horizon. The analytical model governing this strategy is presented. The proposed strategy seems more efficient than the basic block replacements strategy (Ait-Kadi and Chelbi, 2000) aiming to maximize the steady state availability. It is also easy to implement.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - In this paper, an optimal periodic replacement strategy is proposed. This strategy suggests new items to perform replacements at failure. Preventive replacements, scheduled at instants kT (k=1, 2,...) are carried out only if the item's age exceeds a threshold to be determined. Parameters T and b are derived from an optimization model aiming to maximize the steady state availability under budgetary constraints or to minimize the expected total cost per unit of time over an infinite horizon, while the steady state availability must be higher than some given threshold. Costs and durations associated with replacement actions are supposed to be known.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Employs mathematical models to investigate the expected cost rate and the steady state availability with illustrative examples.\nFindings: - Analytical and numerical results have been obtained for a system whose lifetime is distributed according to an Erlang distribution.\nPractical implications: - The proposed strategy seems more efficient than the basic block replacement strategy aiming to maximize the steady state availability. It is also easy to implement.\nOriginality/value: - This new strategy would appear to be more efficient than the previous basic block replacement strategy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Workplace diversity management in Australia: What do managers think and what are organisations doing?
|
[
"Australia",
"Diversity",
"Gender",
"Human resource management",
"Managers",
"Diversity management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the past few decades workforce diversity management (WDM) has evolved to become an increasingly important part of human resource management (HRM) in organisations. It is arguably the case that academic and practitioner interest in the topic has grown owing to the benefits that diversity management (DM) strategies can deliver. According to McCuiston et al. (2004), for example, properly implemented policies to promote workplace diversity can result in an improved bottom line; increased competitive advantage; superior business performance; higher levels of employee satisfaction and loyalty; a strengthened relationship with multicultural communities, and attracting the best and the brightest candidates. Indeed, contemporary scholars concur: having and making use of a diverse workforce is beneficial to organisations (Stewart and Brown, 2010; Ivancevich and Konopaske, 2012; Dessler, 2013; Mathis et al., 2013; Mondy and Mondy, 2014; Noe et al., 2014).\nA review of the literature: The literature review has several objectives. First, it is provided to situate organisational WDM in an historical, social and cultural context. The review sets out the origins and evolution of WDM in Australia and globally. The review also describes some WDM practices, particularly in Australian companies, to highlight how legislation and policy (intent) has been realised in practice both strategically and operationally. The review also highlights the benefits organisations can gain through active implementation of WDM practices. The overall purpose of the literature review is to underscore the importance and value of WDM to organisations and highlight that this topic is deserving of the further attention and understanding that this research project has been designed to provide.\nResearch design: The research design was informed by the desire to investigate several important questions resulting from the literature review:\nFindings: Of the 650 mailed surveys, 198 (30.4 per cent) useable surveys were returned. Of these 114 (57.6 per cent) were completed by women and 84 (42.4 per cent) by men. Women made up 61.4 per cent of the HR managers who responded. 162 (81.8 per cent) respondents were employed in Australian-owned companies and 36 (18.2 per cent) worked in foreign-owned companies. In total, 53 (26.7 per cent) of respondents identified their company as a multi-national. In total, 116 (58.6 per cent) respondents were HR managers and 82 (41.4 per cent) were other managers (Table I).\nDiscussion: The percentage of useable questionnaires returned (30.4) was a pleasing response rate which was likely aided by the inclusion of a reply-paid, addressed envelope and a relatively short questionnaire. Of the 198 questionnaires included for data analysis, there was a satisfactory spread across the demographic alternatives with the exception only of Australian-owned (81 per cent) vs foreign-owned (19 per cent) organisations. As the research project was limited to Australia, this outcome might have been expected. In terms of gender, organisation size and manager classification (HR and other managers) there was sufficient variation within the sample group to validate the comparisons presented in the previous section and the general conclusions forwarded in the following section.\nConclusion: This study was designed as an exploratory investigation and, as such, the primary conclusion is that the findings warrant deeper examination through further research. That said, what is apparent from the present study is that WDM is far from universally understood and appreciated in contemporary organisations in Australia and that includes by HRM professionals. There appears to be sufficient lack of clarity on key points such as the purpose and benefits of WDM to encourage practitioners to review their WDM strategy and practices if they have them or to design and implement them if they do not. Prioritising WDM and aligning it with other business objectives could help raise the profile and importance of WDM and in so doing improve employee understanding of and appreciation for workforce diversity. Organisational leaders also need to talk about WDM as their attitudes serve as indicators of what the organisation values and tend to influence the attitudes of employees generally. The present study found that managers are not talking much about WDM which serves to render the topic invisible.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify Australian managers' attitudes and understandings regarding workforce diversity management (WDM) and the practices and incorporation of WDM in organisations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Methodology is quantitative. A questionnaire in the form of a self-administered survey instrument was mailed to 650 managers (325 HR managers and 325 other managers) in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.\nFindings: The research found that workforce diversity is not especially well understood or appreciated; especially by non-HR managers. Organisations appear generally not to prioritise WDM and levels of senior manager engagement with the topic are tentative. Statistical analysis highlighted considerable divergence of opinion across the surveyed group.\nResearch limitations/implications: As an exploratory study, further research is encouraged to better understand cause and effect relationships pertaining to the findings.\nPractical implications: There are implications for HR managers or those in related roles who might design, implement and promote WDM initiatives. There are implications for consultants, employees and senior managers regarding education, awareness and support of diversity objectives.\nOriginality/value: Addresses a gap in the literature by looking at contemporary attitudes and practices regarding WDM in Australian organisations. Provides the first empirical comparison between HR and other managers on the topic.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Consumer views on "healthier" processed meat
|
[
"Functional food",
"Health",
"Attitudes",
"Focus group",
"Consumer",
"Processed meat"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Processed meat includes meat preserved by smoking, curing or salting, or by addition of chemical preservatives. If preserved chemically, even minced meat can be considered \"processed\" (World Cancer Research Fund, 2007). Processed meat is viewed by many consumers as unhealthy due to perceived high levels of sodium, fat and harmful additives (Cho et al., 2003; Tobin et al., 2014; Van Wezemael et al., 2010). The announcement of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in October 2015 on the elevated cancer risk associated with consumption of processed meat has brought the healthiness of this food category once again into the public eye (WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer, 2015). Despite negative public perception, a large proportion of the meat regularly consumed is in the form of processed meat (Bolger et al., 2016; Linseisen et al., 2006; Verbeke et al., 2010). In satisfying consumers' demands for convenient, cheap, and appealing products, processed meat is likely to remain a staple food in the diet of many consumers (Grunert, 2006; Verbeke et al., 2010). Whether there is a market for \"healthy\" processed meat has yet to be investigated. The current study aims to investigate consumers' attitudes towards \"functional processed meat\": processed meat enriched with healthy ingredients that provide health benefits beyond the basic nutrition of the meat products.\nMethods: Study participants and recruitment\nResults: The analysis aimed to understand how the concept of functional processed meat fitted into participants' overall preferences and expectations around making processed meat healthier. We first present participants' overall ideas on measures that can be taken to make processed meat healthier and then report the four primary themes derived from participants' comments on functional processed meat specifically.\nDiscussion: Recent innovations in the meat industry are focused towards the production of healthier meat products (Toldra and Reig, 2011). Exploring consumer interest and attitudes at the early stage of product development is important (Collins and Bogue, 2015; Rudder et al., 2001). This study exposed the gap between consumers' expectations of \"natural meat\" and the concept of functional processed meat. The participants in the current study expressed more support for the development of \"healthier\" processed meat through using fewer ingredients such as salt, fat and additives, than through the addition of healthy ingredients. This echoes previous studies on consumer acceptance of food processing: more acceptable strategies are characterised by a low degree of technological interference (Korzen et al., 2011; Landstrom et al., 2009). The high appreciation of \"naturalness\" can be attributed to two factors. First, naturalness is perceived to be closely connected with food safety, product healthiness and healthy eating (Drescher et al., 2012; Holm, 2003; Jauho and Niva, 2013; Margetts et al., 1997). In general, from lay perspectives, meat healthiness is believed to decrease with the degree of processing (Verbeke et al., 2010), and healthy eating is conceptualised as eating \"pure\" foods and avoiding additives (Holm, 2003). Second, owing to the increased complexity of the food supply and regulatory systems and the occurrence of high-profile meat safety incidents in the past few decades (e.g. the BSE and dioxin contamination incidents, the horse meat scandal), consumers have less confidence in the meat supply chain (Drescher et al., 2012). Additionally, consumers cite concerns including inadequate food labelling systems (e.g. not being fully informed about the presence of harmful ingredients) (Marotta et al., 2014), and overwhelming and conflicting food risk and benefit reporting (Barnett et al., 2011; Regan et al., 2014). To help cope with this complexity, participants are eager to go back to the basics - the natural and original status of food.\nConclusions: In our study, the strategy of adding healthy ingredients to processed meat did not align with many participants' expectation of \"healthier processed meat\". From our findings, it can be implied that widespread consumer acceptance of functional processed meat faces several challenges: uncertainty and low familiarity with processed meat as a functional food, minimal belief in the impact that additional healthy ingredients would have on the overall healthiness of processed meat, and a lack of trust and perceived risks of the overall functional food concept. However, some participants were open to the concept if the price and sensory quality of the functional processed meat product remained the same as the conventional product. Some participants also saw the value of this product to specific consumer groups. Future research should seek to investigate the findings in the context of the wider population of meat eaters, and test how individual characteristics and product features would influence consumer acceptance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer attitudes towards and interest in enriching processed meat with healthy ingredients (\"functional processed meat\").\nDesign/methodology/approach: Seven focus groups across age and gender were conducted. Discussions were analysed using an inductive thematic approach.\nFindings: Strategies that participants felt as important for improving the healthiness of processed meat mainly included the use of better quality meat and less salt, fat, preservatives and other additives. \"Functional processed meat\" was a new concept for participants. Four themes were constructed to reflect participants' attitudes towards functional processed meat: opposing views on processed meat as a carrier of healthy ingredients; belief in the health benefits of functional processed meat; perceived value of functional processed meat for different consumer groups; and trust and perceived risk surrounding the functional food concept. A large proportion of the participants were unconvinced about the concept of functional processed meat; however many of the participants expressed an openness to purchase this food product if taste and price remained uncompromised.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample size of the current study is small. Complementary quantitative research with a more representative sample should be implemented. Adopting a quantitative approach, the findings from this study should be explored further to investigate their application in a representative sample of the population.\nOriginality/value: This study represents a first exploratory investigation of consumer views on functional processed meat. It can inform further consumer and market research in relation to the development of \"healthier\" processed meat.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Competencies associated with growth of women-led SMEs
|
[
"Entrepreneurial competencies",
"Business growth",
"Female entrepreneurs",
"SME's",
"Women-led businesses"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: There is widespread acknowledgement that the success, performance, and growth of an SME is heavily dependent on the competencies of the entrepreneur. The management structure and independence of a small enterprise places the entrepreneur in a critical position in the business operation (Bird, 1995; Capaldo et al., 2004; Chandler and Jansen, 1992; Olson and Boker, 1995). Further, some researchers have suggested that an understanding of competencies that are exercised by the entrepreneurs leading successful small businesses can be used to support the development of those competencies, and in turn, has the potential to drive business growth (Low and Macmillan, 1988; Churchill and Lewis, 1983). For any business to survive, the owners need a broad set of the abilities, competences, and skills that are crucial to the prosperity and continued existence of their business.\nLiterature review: The importance of female entrepreneurship and the role of competencies\nMethodology: Questionnaire design\nFindings: Respondent profile\nDiscussion: This study demonstrated that those women who led high-growth businesses could be differentiated from those with low-growth businesses on the basis of the importance that they ascribe to the following competencies: being pro-active; formulating and implementing strategies for taking advantage of opportunities; ability to acquire finance; and willingness to take risks. The importance of these competencies is evident from previous studies, as is to some extent, female entrepreneur's limited engagement with these agendas.\nConclusion: This study has found a relationship between business growth and women business owners' attitudes towards being pro-active, formulating and implementing strategies for taking advantage of opportunities, ability to acquire finance, and willingness to take risks - competencies drawn from the following clusters: personal and relational, business and management, and entrepreneurial competencies. However, it is important to emphasis that this does not imply that exhibiting these competencies will lead to business growth, only that these competencies are rated most differently by owners in the two groups of business growth (low and high). It has also demonstrated that women rank personal and relationship competencies, such as the desire to succeed, self-motivation, and perseverance as the most important for their business. There are a number of potential reasons for this gulf between the perceptions of women business owners and the reality, including the need for the development of competencies of female entrepreneurs, unequal access to finance and other resources, lifestyle choices and choice of business sector. It would seem that there remains much scope for policy and practical action, and for further research into women-led SMEs, and specifically the development of the key competencies that women business owners need to succeed and to support business growth.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the entrepreneurial competencies that women SME owners perceive to be important to the success of their business, and the competencies that women with high turnover growth rate deem important, and makes a comparison between the two sets of competencies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A questionnaire-based survey of female entrepreneurs in England and Wales collected data on those entrepreneurial competencies that women perceived to be important for their business, alongside key business performance measures, such as turnover growth rate. A ranking of the top ten competencies that women thought were important for success was generated; this ranking was compared with a list of four competencies identified as being important by those women whose businesses exhibited high business growth.\nFindings: All of the competencies perceived by the whole group to be important to the success of their business were personal and relational competencies. This is in stark contrast to the findings from logistic regression, which shows that high-growth businesses can be differentiated from low-growth businesses regarding the importance assigned to the following four competencies by their owners: pro-activeness, strategic planning and implementation for opportunities, acquiring finance, and risk-taking.\nOriginality/value: This study suggests that women business owners' prioritisation of the key competencies for their business may impact on business growth, and raises the question as to whether women business owners are able to identify the competencies that will drive the growth of their business. The particular contribution of this study is this gap, which poses challenges for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Consideration of future consequence and task performance: The moderating effects of support
|
[
"Personality",
"Resources",
"Organizational support"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In today's fluctuating and uncertain environment, a long-term perspective is crucial to both organizations and individuals to survive and to achieve organizational effectiveness (Shrivastava, 1995). A series of empirical studies demonstrated the positive effects of a long-term perspective on organizational performance and innovation (e.g. Wang and Bansal, 2012), leadership effectiveness (e.g. Zhang et al., 2014), and individual attitudes and behaviors (Joireman and King, 2016). Given the extensive effects on different levels, surprisingly, little is known about the impact of a long-term perspective on employees' performance at the individual level. Therefore, scholars have called for research examining the consequences of individual differences in the perspective of time on job performance (Strathman et al., 1994).\nTheoretical background and hypotheses development: CFCs and task performance\nMethod: Sample and procedure\nResults: The means, standard deviations, and inter-correlations among study variables are presented in Table I.\nDiscussion: Although the importance of a long-term perspective is increasing in the current business environment, few studies have examined the effect of a long-term perspective at the individual level (Graso and Probst, 2012). To advance our understanding of CFC, this study takes trait activation theory to examine the relationship between individual differences in CFC and task performance and situational contexts. The results of this study demonstrated the positive effect of CFC on task performance, and that the impacts of CFC on employees' task performance may depend on contextual cues. Our findings indicated that employees activated the CFC trait to perform their tasks when they perceived a low level of organizational support.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of an employee's consideration of future consequences (CFCs) in predicting employee task performance and its situational contexts (i.e. organizational support and supervisor support) based on trait activation theory.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using a cross-sectional field study design, data were collected from 189 employees and their immediate supervisors in South Korea.\nFindings: Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that employees' CFC has a positive effect on their task performance. Furthermore, this study investigated whether this relationship would be varied by relevant situational factors. Consistent with the hypotheses, the relevance of CFC to employees' task performance would be stronger when they perceive low levels of organizational support based on trait activation theory.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest the importance of employees' CFC on task performance. Also, organizations should pay more attention to the way of compensating for employees with low levels of CFC by fostering supportive environment.\nOriginality/value: Although researchers have been examined long-term perspectives in the business field, a few studies have examined its effect at the individual level. This paper identified not only the main effect of CFC on employee task performance but also the moderating role of organizational support on the aforementioned relationship.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Collaborative governance as a policy strategy in healthcare
|
[
"Partnership",
"Collaborative governance",
"Healthcare policy",
"Collaborative initiatives",
"Collaborative platforms",
"Healthcare coordination"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: \"Collaborative governance\" is seen as a relatively new governance concept applied in several policy fields including healthcare. Although all governance is, to some extent, collaborative, the notion of \"collaborative governance\" refers to governance arrangements that pro-actively include a broad range of stakeholders (both public and private) in collective decision-making processes to reach policy objectives (Emerson and Nabatchi, 2015a; Ansell and Gash, 2008; Sorensen and Torfing, 2007). Collaborative governance may offer new and alternative routes for interaction between actors beyond command and control (Leicht, 2016), through which traditional (i.e. hierarchical and top-down) and managerial (i.e. control and performance based) forms of governance usually operate (Bryson et al., 2014; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). Instead, collaborative governance builds on mutual interdependencies, shared responsibilities and co-production of goals and strategies by partners in a network (Ulibarri and Scott, 2017). Yet, the success of collaborative governance approaches greatly depends on a system's capacity to align different stakes, responsibilities and resources at multiple levels. Such capacity is not easy to build in the healthcare sector, which is studied here, as collaborations beyond boundaries of medical disciplines, between managers and health professionals and different levels of authority (Carey and Friel, 2015; Harvey and Kitson, 2015; Seddon, 2013) are uncommon. Furthermore, the healthcare sector is known for particularly strong stakeholder and interest representation through powerful occupational groups, such as medical associations and academic societies (Freidson, 2001), notoriously resistant to policy and managerial change (Baker and Denis, 2011).\nCollaborative governance: Collaborative governance is characterized as a governing arrangement which engages a broad range of stakeholders from public, private and non-profit sectors in pro-active and collectively orientated decision-making processes on the basis of shared objectives and mutual trust (Emerson and Nabatchi, 2015a; Ansell and Gash, 2008; Stoker, 2006). Such initiatives come in various shapes and forms: e.g. public-private partnerships, strategic alliances and inter-organizational networks (Sorensen and Torfing, 2007). Scholars use many different concepts for collaborative arrangements, including: multi-partner governance; network(ed) governance; new public governance; participatory governance; and public value governance (Emerson and Nabatchi, 2015a, b; Bryson et al., 2014; Emerson et al., 2012; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011; Osborne, 2010; Ansell and Gash, 2008; Sorensen and Torfing, 2007). Yet, elements of both traditional (i.e. top-down and hierarchical) and managerial (i.e. control and performance based) governance models are still prominent in the public sector (Hendrikx and Van Gestel, 2017; Denis et al., 2015; Bryson et al., 2014), promoting hierarchical and competitive relationships rather than collaborative ones. Collaborative governance thus entails major shifts to transform coercive and forced involvement in government policies into persuasive and voluntary engagement, and shift a conglomeration of competing objectives to mutually shared objectives, intentions and strategies (Wanna, 2008). A question is whether and how collaborative governance can achieve this.\nMethods: A qualitative comparative case-study design (Yin, 2015) is used to analyze four cases of collaborative governance in healthcare. The four cases were chosen for the diversity of client and subject focus that they represent. What they have in common is formal involvement of stakeholders at multiple levels. This combination of commonality and diversity makes the comparative case-study approach appropriate for answering the proposed research question and strengthens the study's ability to suggest not only whether, but also how and why collaborative governance as a policy strategy contributes to connecting macro- and micro-level efforts for health innovation. A qualitative case-study design also takes contextual and situational factors into account, allowing for a rich and holistic understanding of the mechanisms and relationships in place. Whereas current research on collaborative governance is mainly composed of single-case case studies (e.g. Koski et al., 2018; Yang, 2017), a multiple-case design allows for comparison both within and across cases, to identify empirical explanations that contribute to theory development on collaborative governance. The four selected typical cases (Seawright and Gerring, 2008) are examples of collaborative governance arrangements initiated by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The ministry engaged in direct multi-actor collaborations with health organizations and other health actors (e.g. representative associations, health authorities, knowledge institutes and others), dedicated to achieving health policy outcomes. Each arrangement facilitated a multitude of collaborative projects in different healthcare settings in the Netherlands from 2003 onwards. The cases were selected due to their variation in program, period, health domain, objectives, involved actors and size (see Table II for an overview).\nResults: Before presenting a comparative analysis along three dimensions of coordination derived from the literature, the cases are first introduced. These are collaborative governance arrangements initiated by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (hereafter referred to as \"the ministry\") in close collaboration with other actors operating at the policy (system) level (e.g. representative associations, sectoral bodies, inspectorates or knowledge institutes), health organizations at the micro-level (such as hospitals, elder care homes and long-term care facilities) and other actors operating at an intermediary meta-level (private sector CEOs, consultants and others).\nDiscussion: The exclusivity identified above is rather unexpected, because inclusion and openness are generally considered important drivers for collaborative governance. Indeed, the contribution of this paper has been to show that the reconciliation of the three elements of collaborative governance involves trade-offs of legitimacy and practicality in terms of representation. Whose voices are legitimate, who has the right to speak for others, and how can governments realistically and efficiently involve various stakeholders in collaborations and new initiatives? Ansell and Gash (2018), among others, identify evolvability, intermediation and open access as key features of collaborative governance platforms. In this vein, this study confirms that collaborative governance as a policy strategy adds to the government's policy repertoire for linking macro- and micro-level efforts to achieve health objectives. Yet, the absence of collective deliberation in shared goal-setting processes and a high degree of selectivity in the studied cases, stand, among other aspects, in contrast to \"open access\" - one of the key features of collaborative governance platforms identified in the literature. Intermediation, in particular for knowledge and resources, in the studied cases performed by CEOs (intermediaries for fresh ideas from the private sector translated into appropriate micro-level solutions to policy issues formulated at a system-level) and employees from the ministry presented as \"buddies\" (intermediaries between regulative bodies and health organizations), could improve collaboration between actors both at the system level and within the field of practice. The remainder of this section elaborates on these and other findings and identifies their contribution to the literature, along three dimensions.\nConclusion: This study investigated the relationship between collaborative governance as a policy strategy and the espoused need to connect macro-level and micro-level collaborative efforts dedicated to healthcare objectives. Four collaborative governance cases in healthcare in the Netherlands are analyzed in which the Ministry of Health, health organizations and other health actors engaged in partnerships focused on a variety of healthcare objectives. The study illustrates how these collaborative governance arrangements were successful in bringing actors and resources together at a meta-level between policy and healthcare practice, by coordinating multiple micro-level collaborative initiatives. However, the governance mechanisms under study also display tactics of selectivity and exclusion that seem to contradict with core values of collaborative governance, hence putting voluntary engagement, shared objectives and mutual trust under pressure. This poses new challenges, as relational bonds and ties are affected by these tensions. By these contributions, the study has provided insight into the way collaborative governance functions as a policy strategy in healthcare, thereby widening the understanding of collaborative approaches in healthcare beyond micro-level processes. Trade-offs were evident in determining the legitimacy of particular representatives, and the practical ability to pull various and sometimes divergent actors together. Ultimately, this study has shown that collaborative governance requires early and explicit negotiation of the very process of representation - that is, which voices will be heard and how they will be involved - to secure legitimacy, practical engagement and the sustainability of its collaborative interventions. Given that ability of various actors in policy design and delivery to advance or thwart particular initiatives, reconciling claims to and means of achieving representation is an important ingredient in translating policy design ambitions to frontline practice.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the enactment of collaborative governance as a policy strategy in healthcare - in particular its effects in coordinating multiple collaborative initiatives dedicated to improve the performance of health organizations. It studies overarching governance mechanisms that serve as platforms at a meta-level between policy and frontline practice.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Four collaborative governance arrangements dedicated to improve health outcomes in the Netherlands are analyzed in a comparative case-study design, based on extensive document analysis (n=121) and interviews (n=56) with key stakeholders in the field, including the Dutch Ministry of Health, health organizations and other actors.\nFindings: The studied policy-based governance mechanisms for the coordination of multiple micro-level collaborative initiatives function partly as platforms in bringing actors and resources together successfully. They do so, by fostering evolvability (the capacity to generate diversity in emergent ways) in relation to goal-setting and intermediation between actors. Yet, they marginalize open access to participants through high selectivity and deliberate exclusion strategies for certain actors, contrary to a platform logic of action.\nResearch limitations/implications: While the collaborative governance literature focuses on these dimensions as independent elements, findings reveal both trade-offs and interdependencies between studied dimensions of coordination associated with platforms, that need to be negotiated and managed.\nPractical implications: Selectivity and exclusion in collaborative arrangements may negatively affect relational bonds and ties between actors, which challenges the application of collaborative governance as a policy strategy in pursuit of health objectives.\nOriginality/value: Responding to recent calls in the literature, this study applies ideas from public administration to the field of health organization and management to avert failures in the translation of policy ambitions into health practice.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
A nanotechnology roadmapping study for the Turkish defense industry
|
[
"Nanotechnology",
"Defense",
"Military",
"Bibliometric analysis",
"Defense industry",
"Roadmapping"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology was established in 2002 in the USA. The institute consists of a three-member team including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Army and Nanomaterials Industry. They work collaboratively to enhance soldiers' survival and protection capabilities. This is done through the manipulation of the brain of the soldiers, to enhance their abilities of war, by using cerebral fluids consisting of nanoparticles and nanochip insertion in the brain. The aim is to enhance certain parts of their brains to ensure sustainability in the battlefield (Jazib, 2016).\n2. Military technology trends and changing war environment: The changing characteristics of warfare have been discussed in detail by Burmaoglu and Saritas (2017). They discuss how the motivations, shapes and sizes of wars have changed drastically over time. A number of definitions have been provided in the literature from Clausewitz (1968), to a more recent one by Kaldor (2010). The main observation is that - whereas the broad conception of war \"violence\" has remained the same across time, the \"means\" and \"ends\" of wars have been fundamentally changed. These changes are mainly due to the transformations in the social, technological, economic, environmental, political and value (STEEPV) systems in wider contexts, as well as in concepts and technologies used in wars. Across the three generations of warfare mentioned with the move from \"tactics of line and column\" to \"artillery\" and \"blitzkrieg\" (Lind et al., 1989), war concepts and technologies have been the main distinguishing factors.\n3. Military nanotechnology applications and the Turkish Defense Industry: 3.1 Military nanotechnology applications\n4. Data, methodology and analysis: 4.1 Data and methodology\n5. Conclusions and discussion: As one of the key pillars of the global scientific competition in the twenty-first century, nanotechnology has enormous potentials to transform peoples' way of living and countries' economies with its civilian and military applications. Like developed countries, developing countries also strive for catching up with the nanotechnology development and exploit economic gains and have less dependency on developed countries for their technologies. Turkey is one of those countries, which invests in nanotechnologies and aims at being a strong global competitor, particularly in the defense industry. The country's science and technology vision 2023, which was prepared in coordination with Turkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik A9 9 ras9 9 ti9 rma Kurumu, i.e. English for Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (9 9 TU9 9 BI9 TAK) in the early 2000s (Saritas et al., 2006), considered that nanomaterial science will be crucial for the development of national security and defense systems. It is acknowledged that the countries that have advanced technology, economy, national security and welfare will be in a stronger position in the global arena of the twenty-first century. Nanotechnology is considered as an opportunity to catch up with the innovations and reduce the technological development lag, which has continuously grown from the industrial revolution up until today. Leading countries in this field have already started implementing their administrative and structural measures for the use of nanotechnology. Creating an awareness in the defense industry is important to keep up with this global technology race.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Technologies are constantly developed to address new demands and provide further opportunities. Owing to a number of potential application areas of nanotechnologies within this sector, the purpose of this study is to take defense as a case and propose a strategic roadmap for the use of nanotechnologies in the Turkish Defense Industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study presented in this paper uses a bibliometric analysis of the most cited publications in the past decade with the aim of identifying the trends in the development of nanotechnology. Interviews were carried out with experts based on the featured words of bibliometric analysis (nanoparticles, nanostructure, self-assembly, drug delivery, graphene, etc.) to reveal the commercialization time of nanotechnology products and applications. After that, a survey was carried out with engineers for determining the possible emergence time of nanotechnology applications and/or products used in military up to year 2035. Finally, a roadmap was created based on the obtained data from bibliometric analysis, interviews and survey results.\nFindings: Nanotechnology roadmap was prepared, one which would contribute to the preparation of the defense industry for the future and help in keeping up with technological developments.\nResearch limitations/implications: Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further. Interviews and surveys have limitation with the bounded rationality of corresponders.\nPractical implications: The paper proposed a nanotechnology roadmap for the defense sector with a data-led foresight practice.\nOriginality/value: Performing such a study is considered to be crucial for the armies of developed and developing countries, so that the military sector also avails benefits from this revolutionary technology. Quantitative and qualitative methods were mixed for developing the roadmap.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Ethical perspectives on e-commerce: an empirical investigation
|
[
"E-commerce",
"Ethics",
"Trust",
"Online marketing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: E-commerce has become an important part of everyday life for consumers during the twenty-first century. The variety of services in e-commerce has broadened in recent years and consumers have adopted those services as part of their everyday lives. An ethical issue such as consumer trust in e-commerce is an individual, local and social matter combined with the technological side. Consumers with horizontal individualism and with horizontal as well as vertical collectivism tend to hold higher awareness of e-seller's ethics. The higher consumers perceive positive consumer perceptions regarding the ethics of online vendors, the more they expect to purchase from the same online sellers (Lu et al., 2013). Utilization of the internet has become one of the important online marketing channels and medium. Every business individual needs to focus on the customer's perception of improving the security, in order to maintain long-term relationship. The customers depend on the internet for gathering the information as well as for purchases electronically and become loyal to the organization or a particular brand of the product they are interested in (Yakov et al., 2005). A majority of studies indicate that over the past few years import and export industries have grown significantly, and, therefore, the impact of e-commerce would be considerable. Unlike consumers who shop at offline stores, internet buyers cannot physically inspect potential purchases (Yen and Lu, 2008). E-commerce will also have a significant impact on the services sector with the greatest prospective for offering online services and transactions. From a business point of view, e-commerce is not restricted to the purchase of a product; it includes communication platforms that a company may offer to its customers over network, from pre-purchase information to after-sale services and support. E-commerce has several cases led to a growth of markets in the direction of perfect markets of financial side. The implication of the internet as a market platform facilitates access to information and reduces barriers to access (Spinello, 2000). Security and privacy is one of the major and important factors of online marketing. For a successful business relationship, security is usually considered as the critical component in the relationship marketing pattern (Hirschheim and Klein, 1994).\n2. Theoretical background: 2.1 Critical theory on trust in e-commerce\n3. Conceptual model and hypotheses: 3.1 Ethics in E-commerce\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Measures\n5. Results: The hypothesized research model was tested using SEM through AMOS 7.0. Hair et al. (1998) stated that the threshold value of Cronbach's a should be 0.70. If the reliability coefficients are all within generally accepted thresholds, the results suggest a high level of reliability of the construct variable and underlying measurement items. The value of Cronbach's a of individual items shows that the construct variables are reliable and valid. The squared loadings (also called communalities) are used in calculating the variance extracted for each construct. Communality is the sum of the squared factor loadings for all factors for a given variable. Communalities report the percentage of variance within each variable that is explained by the resulting factors. The GFI=0.95, AGFI=0.92, NFI=0.93, CFI=0.96, RMR=0.05 and RMSEA=0.02, which achieved acceptable values of a good fit as recommended by Hair et al. (1998). Besides this, the ratio of kh2=244.36 over df=148 was 1.65, which also indicated a good fit of the model. All the hypothesized paths were supported at the significant level of 0.001 except H3 due to survey limitations.\n6. Discussion: 6.1 Summary of the results\n7. Conclusion: This study is able to prove the effect of e-commerce ethics on trust, security and privacy and customer loyalty. The study indicated that complying with ethical principles could develop long-term relationships between customers and sellers as well as promoting online marketing. The e-commerce web sites including Second Life virtual worlds can improve relationships with consumers through the enforcement of the ethical strategy. In e-commerce market, where there is the high competition, e-commerce web sites should differentiate their products or service from other sites by providing the advanced ethical performance. The value achieved by consumers' increases when online practitioners continuously attempt to improve their ethical performance. This study suggested several opportunities for further research. First, this study used a convenience sample from Second Life users, which is only one of various existing virtual world, future research will be urged to use random sampling of regular online consumers. Second, while this study examined the consequences of e-commerce ethics, future study should be extended to a conceptual framework in order to understand potential followers and correlated factors influencing consumers' evaluations of e-commerce ethics. Finally, our findings are also important for e-commerce companies entering virtual worlds and make Second Life as a new channel to interact with customers using new e-commerce channel. Due to the nature of this fast developing internet technology and application, further investigation is needed to understand ethical behavior and e-commerce opportunities and strategies in online platform. Ethical standards and policies will have to be regularly reviewed in the future to keep them up to date with the latest e-commerce technology developments. Although the results of this study are interesting, they are limited to a group of adopters of e-commerce services. For this reason, the attitudes of the non-adopters of e-commerce services should be studied in future research.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the various factors that influence consumer trust and privacy on e-commerce system and identify different ethical factors that affect consumer perceptions toward e-commerce adoption.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The theoretical background used in this study was critical theory on trust in e-commerce. Online survey from Second Life users was conducted to study ethical issues in e-commerce and their influencing factors.\nFindings: The results were focussed on significance of e-commerce ethics on consumer purchase and its influence on online marketing. The ethical performance of the e-commerce web site will facilitate an increase in trust, which in turn enhances customer commitment and loyalty.\nResearch limitations/implications: The survey data in this study has some common method bias. The possibility of the existence of the common method bias cannot be completely eliminated. Security and privacy are the two major aspects that drive online businesses which lead online consumers to develop trust on the digital environment.\nPractical implications: The findings on e-commerce ethical research will be useful for current management practice such as making business policies and strategies and sharing information to managers and organization leaders.\nOriginality/value: With the introduction of internet and e-commerce a large of companies has been performing their business transactions through electronic network. Increasing communication technologies has bought speedy changes in online business transactions. E-commerce networks are playing a pivotal role in online business and consumers are more concerned on ethical issues of e-commerce including security, privacy and trust.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Towards a comparable and harmonised set of performance indicators for Third Sector organisations : The Italian experience
|
[
"Harmonized indicators",
"Global reporting initiatives",
"Inter-organizations comparability"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Third Sector organisations (TSOs) are legally recognised and promoted by Article 45 of the Italian Constitution, which specifically states the socio-economic relevance of cooperation and mutual support. The large increase of TSOs that took place during the last decades generated, however, a boom of different association status and forms, not always defined by a uniform and structured legislation. Social-cooperatives, non-governmental organisations, foundation, voluntary organisations, social enterprises, associations of social promotions and not-for-profit organisations are some of the most well-known[1].\n2. State of the art: When discussing performance measurement in the Third Sector, two levels of analysis have to be considered: the micro and the macro. The micro refers to individual organisations and relates to an internal process to evaluate the individual organisations operating performances and to improve the degree to which the objectives are achieved (Bertelsmann Foundation, 2001; Poister, 2003; Tayart De Borms, 2005; Meffert, 2005). The macro relates to a country's National Accounting System and includes measurements to investigate the overall dimensions of the Third Sector's activities and to quantify their contribution to the socio-economic development.\n3. The Third Sector in Italy: The most recent information on the Italian TSOs is provided by the 9th census of economic activities, which provides data for: for-profit business activities; public institutions and TSOs. According to the data reported in Table I, in 2011, TSOs corresponded to 8.3 per cent of national economic units (5.4 per cent in 2001), accounting for 3.4 per cent of total Italian employment (2.5 per cent in 2001). Around 4.8 million volunteers participating in TSO activities need to be added to these data. Between 2001 and 2011 the number of volunteers increased by 43.5 per cent and the percentage variation in the quantities of TSOs has been larger than those of the other Italian economic activities (Istat, 2013).\n4. Towards the harmonisation between socio-economic and environmental performance reports and official statistics: a sub-set of indicators for TSOs: The Istat together with the CMN Italia launched in 2012 a project oriented to harmonise the system of quantitative performance indicators established in the GRI with the definition and standards of the national statistical system. The main objective was to propose a set of indicators, to be applied both for-profit and for not-for-profit activities, able to improve data collection and inter-organisation comparisons, both on socio-economic and environmental performances (Istat-Corporate Responsibility Manager Network - CMN Italia, 2013).\n5. Conclusion: This paper contributes to the performance evaluation of TSOs by presenting Italian experiences on the development of harmonised indicators. Some attempts and work in progress have already devised sets of common indicators in other countries. However, within the Italian context a clear and legally recognised framework is still missing. Since a limited number of TSOs are legally obliged to complete balance sheets, the contribution provided by TSOs to the overall socio-economic Italian system is presently incomplete. In addition the large number of indicators voluntarily presented and compiled by TSOs and the lack of a harmonised and shared framework generates inconsistencies on analysis and evaluation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to intend as a contribution to the performance evaluation of Third Sector organisations (TSOs). The Italian experience on the development and adoption of harmonised indicators is considered here as an example of problems and possible solutions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Preliminary analysis shows that, in the Italian situation, two main gaps exist. The first one relates to the incomplete statistical information on the magnitude and performance of TSOs; the second is related to the lack of a set of harmonised indicators. To address these problems, two initiatives have been recently set up in Italy. On the one hand, the newly presented \"National Strategy on Social Corporate Responsibility - 2012-2014\" has been oriented to fill the statistical gap, by extending the compilation of socio-economic and environmental accounts to TSOs; on the other hand, a joint initiative of the Italian Statistical Institute and the CSR Manager Network Italia towards the harmonisation of the \"Global Reporting Initiatives-quantitative performance indicators\" and the standards of the Italian statistical system. Within the second initiative, a specific sub-set of performance indicators for TSOs is proposed and presented in this paper.\nFindings: The Italian experiences reported here, together with the set of proposed indicators, can be used to improve data collection and to move towards a common framework for performance evaluation in the TSOs.\nOriginality/value: The main contribution of the proposed set of indicators is to: first, provide standard definitions and clear calculation methods; second, define quantitative measurements allowing for aggregation; and third, promote data collection and performance evaluation in a context, as the Italian one, where statistical information for TSOs is largely incomplete.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
"New beginnings" within a new normal for the four futures
|
[
"Discipline",
"Alternative futures",
"Anthropocene epoch",
"Collapse",
"Continued growth",
"Transform"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nAlternative futures and a new normal: Since the mid-1970s, it has been a hallmark of the \"Manoa School of Futures Studies\" to insist that it is not possible to \"predict\" \"The Future,\" but that instead \"Alternative Futures\" can and should be \"forecasted,\" and \"Preferred Futures\" envisioned, designed and invented, on a continuing basis (Dator, 1979, 2009b).\nFrom Surfing Tsunami to The Unholy Trinity, Plus One: Over the years, I have used different metaphors to capture the essence and power of these issues. For many years, I have used a metaphor that is natural to Hawaii: \"Surfing Tsunami of Change.\" I metaphorically see the future coming toward us in the present in sets of mighty waves that we must study carefully and prepare ourselves to \"surf\" for survival, fun and fulfillment. Unfortunately, the concerns dominating actual political and economic discourse and attention for at least the past 40 years have been entirely petty and trivial compared to the necessity of preparing to surf the onrushing tsunami. We are like picnic-goers, our backs to the beach, complaining about the sand in our sandwiches, the ants in our cantaloupes and who forgot to bring the hot sauce for our hotdogs. Meanwhile, the roar of the surf increases as the tide rises to wipe all of our petty concerns away.\nThe Anthropocene epoch: According to the terminology of contemporary geology, through the 4.5 billion years of its existence, the Earth has gone through many lengthy periods of substantial change, dynamic stability, substantial change, dynamic stability [...], called, according to their relative lengths, \"Eras,\" \"Periods\" or \"Epochs.\" They are related to the origin of the universe, the origin of the solar system, of Earth and our Moon (or two moons that became the Moon), the eventual origin of life, perhaps more than once, followed by a series of extinctions or near extinctions, and flourishings, and extinctions, and ice ages (maybe even when Earth was a giant snowball), until only an eye blink ago when primates and then a special branch of primates eventually self-designated, Homo sapiens, and then more extravagantly self-named Homo sapiens sapiens emerged - namely, us: The current Crowns of Creation and Rulers of the Universe.\nFour futures in the Anthropocene epoch: Once upon a time, these issues were the basis for two of our four alternative futures - either collapse or discipline. From now on, each of the four generic alternative futures that we will develop for clients and ourselves will be based on the new normal that these once-future, now-current and continuing processes present us. There can still be futures of continued economic growth, collapse, discipline or transformation, but each must be built upon the basis of the new normal.\nPreparing a self-sufficient Hawaii for the Anthropocene: Nonetheless, I must confess that the implications of the new normal might be most dramatically felt within the collapse scenario that, as I said, must be anticipated and prepared for as a wonderful new opportunity for humanity to begin all over again. We have explored what this might mean in reality in several projects in the Alternative Futures Graduate Option and Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. One was part of a multi-year project involving faculty members and students in architecture, education and futures studies focusing on futures of higher education (Dator et al., 2013).\nAfterword: So what do you think? Is that a plausible future? A preferred future? Are you preparing to turn the possibly-ongoing collapse of the global political-economic system into a peaceful and prosperous \"New Beginnings\" for you and your community?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: This paper aims to offer real and explicit reasons for viewing the futures of humanity and Earth as positive, fulfilling and meaningful, if humans view it as such and act to make it so. The paper incorporates the results of several recent research projects and activities that were based on the assumptions of an earlier paper titled, \"The Unholy Trinity, Plus One.\" It argues that the conclusions of the original paper are even more obvious and urgent than they were originally, and that while an \"alternative futures\" perspective must always be the basis of any statements about or actions toward the futures, the concerns of The Unholy Trinity, Plus One, are now part of a \"new normal\" that must be incorporated in each of the alternatives. This paper emphasizes that this \"new normal\" is, and must be prepared for as, a splendid opportunity for humans to start on new adventures; that one episode of human history (based on cheap and abundant energy, a benign environment, effective government and continued economic growth) is over, and a world with different challenges and opportunities for New Beginnings has already opened up. It concludes by offering an example of how the transition might be approached and managed positively and effectively.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Both papers relied heavily on a combination of trend analysis and emerging issues analysis viewed through the lens of four generic alternative futures for understanding continuing trends and anticipating new, emerging issues, and for then formulating appropriate anticipatory responses to them.\nFindings: The fundamental findings reconfirm and deepen the original findings - that it is far too late to prevent or postpone the transformative effects of The Unholy Trinity, Plus One; that one must and can prepare for and welcome them as providing humans now and in the immediate futures with an opportunity for innovation, identity, meaning and vibrant lives. The research and practical experiences and simulations illuminated ways in which these positive futures might be achieved.\nResearch limitations/implications: It is urgent that humans now turn their attention from either denying the fact of overwhelming change or trying to prop up old economic, governmental and educational systems, and begin to invent new systems that are appropriate for making the transition from the old environment to new ones.\nSocial implications: At the end of the paper, the authors offer one example of a successful transition, based on the research. It is presented as though humans are in Hawaii in the future, after oil has stopped flowing, along with the imported food, products and tourists upon which humans are now entirely dependent, and Hawaii has once again become entirely self-sufficient and prosperous.\nOriginality/value: The main focus of the paper, in contrast to most that deal with this issue, is to encourage readers not only to consider the inevitability of rapid and extensive social, environmental, resource and institutional change, but also, by viewing the situation as a positive, welcomed opportunity for innovation and improvement, actually to make it so.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Enhancing prioritisation of technical attributes in quality function deployment
|
[
"Quality function deployment",
"Central-limit theorem",
"Confidence interval",
"Folded normal distribution",
"Parametric bootstrapping"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Quality function deployment (QFD) is an important product/service development methodology which provides a way for its practitioners to understand customer needs and demands for a product or service, and transform this information into required or desirable technical attributes (Li et al., 2012). Han et al. (2001) describe QFD as an essential management tool for guaranteeing quality in products. Schaal and Slabey (1991), Griffin and Hauser (1993) and An et al. (2008) argue further that QFD methodology not only helps in manufacturing, it also helps in the planning, designing and processing stages of the product. To approach the process systematically, QFD utilises a collection of matrices and vectors collectively referred to as the house of quality (HOQ). Named after its resemblance to an actual house, the HOQ comprises different \"rooms\" (sections) containing summarised information about customers' requirements, engineering attributes, competitor ratings, etc. Figure 1 illustrates the important sections of QFD HOQ.\n2. QFD framework (HOQ): QFD studies help practitioners to establish a \"HOQ\" with the belief that products will be designed and produced according to customers' desires and tastes (Temponi et al., 1999). The HOQ comprises different sections, which are sequentially and systematically populated by information collected from customers, engineers and competitors. Each section (room) has its own importance to the HOQ, and some (though not all) are mandatory for QFD studies. In the next sections we discuss some of the more important sections of the HOQ.\n3. Enhancing the prioritisation (ranking) of technical attributes: Prioritisation of the TAs is based on FWs derived using Equation (1). The TA with the highest FW receives top ranking, and that with the FW receives the lowest value in ranking. The highest ranked TA will therefore become the highest priority engineering attribute to be tackled, and will theoretically have the largest impact in terms of achieving stated customer wants or needs (expressed as VOCs). According to statistical sampling and significance theory, however, two TAs with different FWs could satisfy one or more VOCs equally. This would occur when the sampling variables (derived from the HOQ sections and used to quantify FWs), belong to the same population and the difference between them is merely sampling (random) error. We can test the difference (d) between two FWs to achieve a test-statistic. One important point to note here is that traditional testing methods cannot be applied, as all the variables used in Equation (1) are Likert scales. The Likert scales have different intervals and their strengths also vary from case study to case study. On the other hand, we do not know about statistical hypothetical population as these rating-scales are qualitative-quantitative and do not follow any assumption of normality. As traditional testing procedures cannot be adopted, we will use a given empirical relationship matrix (I) as the source to generate a theoretical population of scales which represents actual given empirical data (measured through Likert scales). Iqbal et al. (2014) describe how to test the difference between FWs (d) using a parametric bootstrap (based on a Poisson distribution). They demonstrate how the Poisson distribution is appropriate to generate a theoretical population of the size of the relationship matrix. In the next section, we describe the methodology for test-statistic p-values and confidence interval.\n4. Case study and results: A case study to improve hospitality service management has been selected from the literature, (Jeong and Oh, 1998). In Figure 3, the HOQ shows VOCs (the service attributes), TAs (the service design/management requirements), the relationship matrix and FWs (with raw importance weight). There are eight VOCs and ten TAs. The relationship matrix is of size 8x10, with an intensity of \"None\"=0, \"Weak\"=1, \"Medium\"=3 and \"Strong\"=10. The bottom row shows the FWs of TAs that have been computed using Equation (1).\n5. Discussion: Figure 5 and Table IV both show that TA9 has a high significant difference from the other TAs in the parametric bootstrap (Poisson) simulation as compared to bootstrap and permutation sampling, while the results for bootstrap and permutation are almost identical. The above p-value tables (Tables AI-AIII) show that the parametric bootstrap has a high significance level compared to bootstrap and permutation. The reason behind this difference is that for the bootstrap and permutation sampling, the original given data is sampled with and without replacement, while parametric bootstrap generates data using Poisson to represent the original data. There could, however, be a different result for different case studies.\n6. Conclusions: In this paper, we demonstrate how theoretical populations can be simulated from given data used in QFD studies not only for parametric bootstrap (which is used by Iqbal et al., 2014) but also by permutation sampling and bootstrap sampling, in cases where we are unable to identify the actual population or make any assumptions about it. We further demonstrate how statistical inference can be made about the equal importance of two TAs when they have different FWs. We found that the parametric bootstrap (Poisson) method of inference results in a high rate of rejection for the equality of two TAs, but that this rate of rejection can be altered by changing l (the Poisson mean). The bootstrap (with replacement sampling) and permutation (without replacement sampling) both produced the same results. All three methods support large number theory and follow central-limit theorem to obtain the same results by percentile and standard method. The CI method helps us to determine the least significant difference and makes the job of assessing whether two TAs have the same importance easier. It is also important to point out that such optimisation methods, whilst of value in cases where a prioritisation between similarly ranked TAs is required, do not require to be applied in all cases. Other pragmatic factors such as cost, development time, deployment methods, convenience and so on (see Wasserman, 1993) may override the need to utilise a statistical or algorithm-based decision tool.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Quality function deployment (QFD) is a planning methodology to improve products, services and their associated processes by ensuring that the voice of the customer has been effectively deployed through specified and prioritised technical attributes (TAs). The purpose of this paper is two ways: to enhance the prioritisation of TAs: computer simulation significance test; and computer simulation confidence interval. Both are based on permutation sampling, bootstrap sampling and parametric bootstrap sampling of given empirical data.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors present a theoretical case for the use permutation sampling, bootstrap sampling and parametric bootstrap sampling. Using a published case study the authors demonstrate how these can be applied on given empirical data to generate a theoretical population. From this the authors describe a procedure to decide upon which TAs have significantly different priority, and also estimate confidence intervals from the theoretical simulated populations.\nFindings: First, the authors demonstrate not only parametric bootstrap is useful to simulate theoretical populations. The authors can also employ permutation sampling and bootstrap sampling to generate theoretical populations. Then the authors obtain the results from these three approaches. qThe authors describe why there is a difference in results of permutation sampling, bootstrap and parametric bootstrap sampling. Practitioners can employ any approach, it depends how much variation in FWs is required by quality assurance division.\nOriginality/value: Using these methods provides QFD practitioners with a robust and reliable method for determining which TAs should be selected for attention in product and service design. The explicit selection of TAs will help to achieve maximum customer satisfaction, and save time and money, which are the ultimate objectives of QFD.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
How do I know I am valued?
|
[
"SME",
"Shared purpose",
"Servant leadership",
"Altruism",
"Authentic pride",
"Being valued",
"Glaserian grounded theory"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nResearch aim and context: The purpose of this piece of research was to understand the phenomena of being valued as an employee, that is: how employees deduce that they are valued by their organisation; what information tells them that they are valued; and how they come to a \"knowing\" that they are valued. What does \"being valued\" mean? The type of organisation that was of interest was an SME. SMEs provided 59.1 per cent of private sector employment in the UK in 2012, employing 14.1 million people and accounted for 99.9 per cent of all private sector business (BIS, 2012). Across Europe in 2010, enterprises with less than 250 employees are estimated to have accounted for 99.8 per cent of the total number of enterprises, 66.9 per cent of employment, 57 per cent of turnover and 58 per cent of value-added (European Commission, 2012). SMEs have fantastic employment value in Europe (Hill and Stewart, 2000). Indeed they are seen as the \"main source of new employment in Europe\" and \"If the EU is to achieve its goals of speeding up economic growth and creating more and better jobs, it will be SMEs which play the biggest role\" (EUbusiness, 2013). One of the ways that success is more likely to happen is if SMEs can make the most of their workforce and ensure they are working to their highest potential. Employee engagement is seen as a means to this.\nBackground to the study \"being valued\" and employee engagement: The author's interest in the phenomena of \"being valued\" is because it is considered a key driver for employee engagement. The construct of employee engagement was first put forward by Kahn as personal engagement which he describes as \"the harnessing of organisation members' selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.\" (Kahn, 1990, p. 694). It has also been defined as, \"being positively present during the performance of work by willingly contributing intellectual effort, experiencing positive emotions and meaningful connections to others.\" (Truss et al., 2006). Schaufeli et al. (2002, p. 74) define engagement \"as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterised by vigor, dedication, and absorption.\"\nThe importance of methodology: To fulfil the aims of this research an inductive approach was needed where rich data could be collected and analysed. The author considered to what extent the work required the relaying of employees' experiences and how abstract and conceptual the work should be. It was decided it was to produce a generalised theory of what is happening when employees feel valued in the chosen context. For this reason a grounded theory (GT) methodology (GTM) was chosen as this focusses on providing a conceptual account of how people perceive what is going on in the matters that concern them.\nThe method: This current study emphasises the approach of discovery and emergence of theory from the data, which is more akin to Glaser's open approach, than the interpretation of people's experiences. It is not descriptions of what people say but theory based on what they say. Also \"researchers are human beings and therefore must to some degree reify data in trying to symbolize it in collecting, reporting and coding the data. In doing so they may impart their personal bias and/or interpretations - ergo this is called constructivist data. But this data are rendered objective to a high degree by most research methods and GT in particular by looking at many cases of the same phenomenon, when jointly collecting and coding data, to correct for bias and to make the data objective\" (Glaser, 2002).\nFindings and discussion: Concepts for being valued\nImplications and conclusions: This research was conducted in a specific context of a fabrication SME in order to carry out an in-depth qualitative study on what evidence employees gave for believing they were valued by their organisation. It has resulted in a conceptualisation with three dimensions which are the tentative beginnings of a model:\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the phenomena of an employee \"being valued\" in the context of a manufacturing SME.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A qualitative study using rich data from in-depth interviews following a classical (Glaserian) grounded theory.\nFindings: A three dimensional concept of authentic pride enablement, altruistically-orientated shared-purpose and servant leadership explained the reasons people felt valued.\nResearch limitations/implications: The limitations were that this study was in one context\nPractical implications: The implications are that if organisations consider a servant leadership approach, enabling of authentic pride and fostering of altruistically-orientated shared-purpose, this may help employees feel valued.\nSocial implications: This has implications for how organisations can show their employees that they are valued.\nOriginality/value: \"Being valued\" is a concept/construct that is widely quoted as a driver for employee engagement and yet rarely unpacked.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The country of origin as a preparation stage: Towards a holistic approach to migrant exclusion
|
[
"Country of origin",
"Domestic work",
"Migrant exclusion"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper is an analysis of the importance of the country of origin for understanding the process of migrant exclusion. This will be done by looking at the case study of Ukrainian migrant domestic workers in Greece. Migrant exclusion is understood as a long process that is associated with many factors, but, at its core, it involves employment in low-status and low-paid work in the host country which, in turn, drastically undermines occupational and social mobility (Anderson, 2000; Psimmenos, 2000; Xypolytas, 2016b). However, this end result is nothing but a last stop in a journey of deprivation that started many years before in the country of origin. In order to sociologically tackle the exclusion of migrants, one needs to holistically approach this long process and identify important stages within it. The recent migration research in Greece has led to the formulation of a three-stage process of migrant exclusion, namely, preparation, allocation and habituation (Psimmenos, 2013).\nMigrant exclusion as a three-stage process: The migration flow in Greece from the Balkans and Eastern Europe during the 1990s was accompanied by a rather vibrant research activity on the issues of migrant exclusion (Psimmenos, 1995; Lazaridis, 1999, 2000; Emke-Poulopoulos, 2003). There were a variety of topics that emerged such as working and living conditions (Anderson and Phizacklea, 1997), legal status (Triantafyllidou and Kosic, 2004), access to welfare (Psimmenos, 2009), community participation (Fouskas, 2012) and gender relations (Kampouri, 2007; Papataxiarhis et al., 2008). However, it was only fairly recently that the social situation in the country of origin, prior to migration, stepped into the light of detailed academic scrutiny (Xypolytas, 2013; Lazarescu, 2015). This resulted in an elaboration of the mechanisms that lead to migrant exclusion, viewed from a holistic standpoint that acknowledges the importance of the country of origin, the migration process and the experience of life and work in the host country. This approach is comprised of three distinct stages. The first one is the stage of preparation and it concerns the impoverishment in the country of origin and the cultural adaptation of migrants to individualized and low-status work. The second stage is the allocation of the migrant population in specific parts of the labor market of the host country, and the third is the habituation to the characteristics and demands of their occupation (Psimmenos, 2013).\nResearch methodology: The research used the qualitative methodology, and more particularly life histories, keeping in mind the need to collect both factual data, such as events or experiences, and attitudinal data, which are based on the perceptions of migrants themselves (Graham, 2000). Life histories involve collecting and interpreting personal histories and oral testimonies, collected during an interview process and aims at understanding \"[...] the changing experiences and outlooks of individuals in their daily lives, what they see as important, and how to provide interpretations of the accounts they give of their past, present and future\" (Roberts, 2002, p. 1). This technique was seen as the ideal method to approach this particular research for two important reasons. First, social facts are to be understood as the products of the constant interaction between personal consciousness and objective social reality (Thomas and Znaniecki, 1984). It would be simply impossible to sociologically analyze migrant exclusion based on various quantitative indicators - as sophisticated and elaborate as these may be - because it would by definition neglect the perceptions of migrants themselves concerning their social situation. The second reason involves the appropriateness of this method in order to follow in its entirety long social processes such as the three stages of migrant exclusion on both the sending and the host country (Thompson, 2000). Such a long and complicated process - as C.W. Mills would have argued - can be effectively analyzed by tracing the intersections of specific structural forces with the biography of migrants themselves. Given the considerations above, the research was approached biographically, and an interview guide was constructed in order to gather information and perceptions on three crucial aspects of migrants' lives: life and work in Ukraine; the migration process; and the experience of live-in domestic work in Greece.\nLife and work in post-socialist Ukraine as the preparation stage of migrant exclusion: Regarding the importance of the preparation stage for the analysis of migrant exclusion, the case of Ukrainian domestic workers represents an excellent example. Ukrainian women migrated on a later age (35-45-years old), having already established in their country families of their own as well as a fairly long occupational history. More specifically, there are three important aspects in the country of origin that are instrumental for understanding the experience of migration in the host country: first, the close contact Ukrainian women had with casual, low-status work prior to their decision to migrate in Greece; second, the relationships within the family, which have been greatly undermined by the economic crisis accompanying the collapse of the Soviet Union; and third, the urgent need to cover the accumulating costs of loans that were necessary for the migration journey.\nDiscussion and implications for further research: These three aspects of life in Ukraine that comprise the preparation stage appear to be instrumental for understanding the process of exclusion of migrants in the host country, as a result of their continuing affiliation with domestic service. The experiences in the country of origin pave the way for the other two stages of exclusion, notably, the allocation in live-in domestic work and the habituation to the role of the domestic worker (Xypolytas, 2016a). Concerning allocation, the contact with low-status, casual labor in Ukraine was crucial in preparing migrant women for their later role as live-in domestic servants. The means of securing income during the period of the economic crisis undermined the occupational identity of migrant women and placed emphasis on skills of economic survival. This is the context within which the decision to seek employment in live-in domestic service was reached. Similarly, the need to swiftly cover the costs of the journey represents a factor that adds urgency to employment seeking. However, apart from the issue of allocation, the undermining of familial ties in the country of origin is crucially important for the habituation stage. The absence of such relationships is a prerequisite for the establishment of pseudo-familial relationships with the employers' household (Xypolytas, 2016b). The emotional nature of the labor involved in domestic work, along with the need for social and emotional protection, results in the identification of the worker with the demands of the employers and characteristics of domestic service (Psimmenos and Skamnakis, 2008; Xypolytas, 2016a).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of the country of origin for understanding the process of migrant exclusion. Migrant exclusion is treated holistically and viewed as a long process of three distinct stages: preparation, allocation and habituation. The focus will be on the analysis of the first stage, which takes place in the country of origin, and its role for the development of the other two equally important stages.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research is based on 45 life history interviews with migrant domestic workers from Ukraine, living and working in Greece.\nFindings: The research suggests that there are three aspects of life and work in Ukraine that constitute the preparation of migrants for their social and occupational role in the host country and decisively contribute to their exclusion: low-status work in Ukraine, the undermining of familial ties and the need to repay the loans taken for the migration journey.\nOriginality/value: The paper wishes to contribute to the theoretical and empirical discussion on migrant exclusion and stresses the importance of looking at the country of origin as an analytical tool for a sociological analysis of migration.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Step-by-step process analysis for hospital facility management: An insight into the OPIK research project
|
[
"Hospitals",
"Buildings",
"Resource efficiency"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The following introduction and the description of the research projects structure and methodology are comparable to a previous publication by Lennerts et al. (2003).What makes a hospital a special facility? Firstly, it is a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week facility and furthermore, a mistake in a hospital can cost the life of a human being. These characteristics represent unique operating conditions and a bottom-line that involves much greater stakes than the profit-only vision of most business ventures. Hospitals also must constantly update their equipment to meet state-of-the-art standards and if possible to go beyond this service level and offer cutting-edge technologies at exorbitant prices. All these costs are reflected in the price of health care in Germany where the increasing costs of health care reduce the net income of citizens, since health insurance contributions are deducted from gross income. Currently the rate of contribution is approximately 14 per cent (BMG, 2002) of gross income.What possibilities does the field of facility management (FM) offer to help in solving these problems? It is evident that hospitals are moving in the direction of becoming health production companies. Already in 1979, Anderson (1979) poses the question \"Hospital production - can costs be contained?\" and mentions \"productive inefficiencies and underutilized resources\". Others see the hospital as a \"multi-product firm\" (Lave and Lave, 1970; Cowing and Holtmann, 1983). The consequence of this development is shown in Figure 1. A greater number of patients are being treated every year while the number of beds in hospital facilities are steadily decreasing. This directly leads to a significant decrease in the length of stay of patients. These tendencies demand greater efficiency and improved hospital treatment and should result in a parallel rise in the level of professional performance of hospital facilities management.How can greater efficiency be effected? One third of hospital costs are not related to core processes. Based upon data of the German hopital society (DKG, 2000) this corresponds to [?]14 billion annually.\nOPIK research project: To answer the questions mentioned above, the OPIK project was launched in 2001. The University of Karlsruhe in cooperation with the \"Fachvereinigung Krankenhaustechnik\" (FKT), or Professional Association of Hospital Engineering, put together a top-rate selection of hospitals and FM service providers to participate as contributors to overall project success. The project is completely private funded. Funds are made available by the paticipating service providers. The objective of the OPIK research project is to analyse the business processes of the collaborators with a focus on the interaction between primary (medical) and secondary (facility management) business processes. The most fundamental underlying principle of the OPIK partnership was an agreement that a real potential for savings cannot be generated just by focusing on a single process or even a solitary process step. The partners embarked on a strategy emphasising a more holistic approach and a comprehensive framework for analysing business processes. This unique research project and its varied partners make the extensive analysis of processes in hospitals and the generation of a detailed process matrix possible. These, in turn, will enable far-reaching standards for the performance of FM services to be set. Effective benchmarking, an accumulation of synergy effects, and organisational optimisation will be enabled with the help of this precedent-setting standard. In principle, the research project will create a basis for the introduction of efficient, holistic FM structures and processes for German hospitals.A conscious decision was made to involve service providers and hospitals in the co-operative framework of the project in order to ensure a practical (real world) orientation and satisfy the needs of industry and the clinical complexes. Care was taken to select service providers from all the various areas dealing with the operation of clinics. In reference to the selection of the clinic partners, attention was paid to assure a broad and diversified cross-section of the clinical landscape in Germany. Different carriers and various hospital sizes can be found in the sample group chosen by judgement sampling. Thereby, the results of the project have validity in all types of hospitals.\nMethodology: The analysis of the business processes was carried out in seven steps. Scientific research preliminary to the visualisation of processes required necessary information about general conditions, visualisation methods and specific process knowledge to be gathered. Knowledge sources included university libraries, databases as well as the internet and data were collected and structured in the form of mind maps. The advantage that mind maps represented was the dynamic growth of knowledge generation and structural outlines that could be easily developed to support research activities.The delineation of each process took place in expert round tables. The partners to each round table named their experts. This knowledge pool was used to create process models capable of reflecting real world situations and illuminating the features of emergent standard processes.The standard processes that were developed were evaluated in case studies. In selected hospitals, the processes were tested in regard to their ability to adequately reflect and respond to actual conditions. The standard processes were evaluated and modified on site to optimise their applicability.Subsequent expert round tables focused on the process information flow and other process factors. In order to ensure across-the-board results, the interfaces and factors were defined by using standard questions on every process-step.The information flow for each process-step was investigated to determine what kind of information was being transferred, and who delivered and received this information.Processes were categorised according to cost and quality factors. The cost factors were identified by asking the experts, what is the cost generating factor and which value can be used as a reference. The quality factors were determined by asking the experts, which quantitative result reflects divergence from the expected quality?The most labor-intensive work package included extensive data collection in all participating hospitals. A matrix of all existing data points as result of the process definition was generated as preparation for finalising data entry forms. Data that were rated with high impact for the individual process was selected in order to produce clear and manageable data collection forms. The forms were then implemented to document and accompany the execution of each individual process. There were two groups of processes. For example the \"energy management\" and \"construction on existing building sites\" processes were accompanied by a form to be filled out at the end of each day, detailing the tasks and process steps carried out. In contrast, processes like, \"maintenance of medical equipment\" and \"waste management\" were each assigned a representative form to be filled out while the service was being performed in order to provide measurement assessments.The paper-based data collection forms were entered into a pre-programmed database. The database was also used for data preparation and the final analysis. Linear regression was used to analyse data in terms of correlation with cost drivers. Process flow data were collected and compared in order to identify different practices between hospitals.\nResults: Detailing all the results is not within the scope of this paper. The cumulative results of the project are instead the focus. Therefore, a comprehensive insight into two selected processes will follow.Maintenance of medical equipment\nAnalysis: The data entry form created for the collection of real life data on the process also reflects the importance of the information flow. For each process step the labour time was recorded separately for work-time, time for information exchange and travel-time. In Table I, an overview of the analysed data is given.The differentiation shows whether the process step is more characterised by its information-, work- or travel-time. Time for information exchange is more often spent on the process-steps \"damage examination\" and \"repair\". The accumulation of information flow activities must be seen as very critical during the repair process-step. The data showed that over 10 per cent of all process cycles caused information exchange activities during repair. Information exchange during the repair itself means an uncontrolled interruption of the repair process and a disturbance of the core process. Therefore these activities should be shifted towards \"damage examination\", \"cause analysis\" or \"restarting operation\". The number of times each single process step has been activated in the sub-process \"repair\" can be seen in Figure 3.This method has turned out to be very helpful in comparing the performance in different hospitals and directly give suggestions to improve the process flow.Besides the intensive analysis of the process flow and information exchange the determining factors characterising the process were defined. Most interesting is the definition of a correct basis to compare different hospitals.In the Figures 4-5,\nConclusions: The given sample shows that a step-by-step analysis of FM processes is very instrumental in optimising the process itself and its interactions with the core process. The often not considered labour time spent on information exchange is essential for the parallel flow of core and non-core processes. Through better planning the process flow can be significantly improved and interruption of the primary process can be minimised. This is only possible by knowing exactly what the process flow is. This standard process should be adopted by service providing personnel and the customer.The statistical analysis shows that it is reasonable to define a comparative figure that might be used as a clearing unit in an allocation system. Statistically it makes sense and is necessary to broaden the database in order to give a reasonable statement on the correlation between maintenance costs and replacement value. Unfortunately, data on the replacement value was not available in all participating hospitals. Both parameters are capable of being a reasonable reference. Commonly used for the comparison of maintenance costs is the replacement value. A shift towards the number of beds in order to compare hospitals would make comparisons easier. However, scientifically considered the replacement value is closer to being the cause for the maintenance costs.The first phase of the OPIK project proved how beneficial the introduction of professional FM methods in hospitals can be in terms of increased efficiency and a reduction in costs. Some hospitals have already learned from this knowledge and have implemented modern methods and technologies. These hospitals have already identified their processes, the focus on the customer and try to optimise their work flows. The vast potential savings in the field of FM can only be realised by taking a holistic approach towards FM processes. The biggest advantage to be gained is that secondary (service provision) processes are optimised as a result of these efforts and primary processes (medical treatment) can be left undisturbed, but can be enhanced by supporting processes that improve overall process flows. By introducing modern process-based accounting methods for tracking cost allocations, more potential savings can be generated without reducing the quality of the core processes.\n",
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{
"content": "Purpose: - Healthcare systems are very costly and the inpatient treatment in hospitals is a major part of these costs. The question is, how can greater efficiency be effected without influencing the core business of a hospital - the cure of patients. Through improving the process flow of facility management (FM) processes, savings within these processes and less disturbance of primary processes should be accomplishable.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In order to help introducing professional FM methods in hospitals the OPIK research project has designed standard processes for typical FM services. Processes have been field tested and evaluated in terms of interference with the core process as well as cost and quality factors have been determined.\nFindings: - The research has shown that standard processes can be defined and the performance can be improved through restructuring the process flow by having detailed knowledge of the process characteristics. The analysis of data through linear regression shows a significant correlation between product costs and possible clearing units. These results encourage to look for reasonable methods of cost allocation.\nResearch limitations/implications: - In terms of statistical significance the good results can be up valued through increasing the amount of data by applying the method in other hospitals. Future activities should concentrate on this room for improvement.\nOriginality/value: - For the first time a reasonable basis for comparing FM processes in hospitals has been defined.\n",
"role": "assistant"
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] |
Exploring the organizational drivers of sexual harassment: Empowered jobs against isolation and tolerant climates
|
[
"Sexual harassment",
"Organizational context",
"Job parameters"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: While at the beginning sexual harassment (SH) has been treated as a joke, since the 1990s, eradicating occupational SH from the workplace has become a critical target for workers, firms, and administration (Thomas and Kitzinger, 1994). In Europe, the Directive 2002/73/EC is the most ambitious attempt on eradicating SH on the workplace, even if its application has faced some important difficulties and challenges Particularly, the arduousness of finding a clear-cut definition of SH and protecting employers from liability has hindered the total implementation of the Directive (Gomes et al., 2004).\nOrganizational factors and SH: O'Leary-Kelly et al. (2009) distinguish two types of SH antecedents: target-related antecedents (linked to the individual) and organizational antecedents (associated with the firm). In this section, several hypotheses regarding the effect of organizational factors on the likelihood of SH are posited. We distinguish between factors related to: the organizational environment and climate, organizational forms and structure, and job design parameters. Additionally, in the methodological section, the target-related variables are presented as control variables. All words in italics denote that the factor will be included in the empirical analysis as a variable.\nMethods: Database\nResults: Table III shows the marginal effects of the likelihood of being a victim of SH. In the first column, the full sample is analyzed, and in the second and third columns, the sample is restricted to female and male workers, respectively. This division is supported by the effect that gender has on the likelihood of being harassed. Gender is the variable that affects it most. Concretely, all other things being equal, the likelihood of being harassed is higher (0.946) for female workers than for male workers.\nDiscussion and conclusions: This analysis is intended to help organizations to eradicate SH by adequately identifying potential risks and making visible the available measures. In particular, it brings into the equation new parameters and factors forming the organizational context of SH. Regarding the risk of SH, results clearly show that isolated women, with low organizational status or power, and working in hostile environment are the most prevalent victims of SH.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate and identify the organizational drivers of sexual harassment (SH).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing on data from a representative sample of workers in Spain, this paper sheds light on the likelihood of SH influenced by: organizational environment and climate, organizational forms and structure, and job design parameters.\nFindings: The analysis reveals that organizational climates where negative behaviors are tolerated are particularly advantageous for harassers. Furthermore, the profile of the victims of SH is that they work in isolation, are contracted through employment agencies, are not given training opportunities, and have low status in the firm. Analysis also reveals, however, that firms can reduce the risk of SH by empowering jobs and improving time flexibility.\nResearch limitations/implications: The use of secondary data implies some constrains: the type of measure and the failure to control for the role of SH perpetrators.\nPractical implications: Managers should adopt some organizational policies, such as empower job or improve time flexibility, since they reduce the risk of SH.\nOriginality/value: This paper identifies some objective organizational settings where SH is more likely and provides some easy to apply solutions to prevent it.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
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