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The effect of actual workplace learning on job satisfaction and organizational commitment: The moderating role of intrinsic learning motive	[ "Organizational commitment", "Job satisfaction", "Actual learning effect" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Many management scholars and practitioners have acknowledged that workplace learning is a crucial source of high-performance organizations (Pfeffer and Veiga, 1999) and a key strategic element for corporate innovation (Spicer and Sadler-Smith, 2006). However, organizations are having difficulty meeting requirements for skill and knowledge development since employees' learning needs have become more diverse in recent years (Ellinger, 2004). As a result, many organizations have attempted to build learning infrastructures, such as e-learning courses, where employees can easily access professional learning opportunities without the limitation of time and space (Confessore and Kops, 1998).\nLiterature review: Connecting the effect of workplace learning on positive job attitudes\nMethods: Research design and samples\nResults: Preliminary analysis\nDiscussion: Currently, many companies that seek a comparative advantage over their competitors are eager to provide various types of learning infrastructure - such as offering e-learning courses and in-house learning programs, financial support for academic programs, and so forth - for self-directed learners, believing that such opportunities will enhance job competencies (Ellinger, 2004). Nonetheless, little research has examined the actual effect of workplace learning programs on employees' attitudes regarding job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Furthermore, to our knowledge, no research has examined the moderating effect of intrinsic learning motive with workplace learning experience on employees' positive work attitudes.\nConclusion: Workplace learning program participation and intrinsic learning motive matter in terms of enhancing job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Importantly, however, the current research found that intrinsic learning motive has no synergy effects with actual learning experience on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. This finding may indicate that having an autonomous extrinsic learning motive is better than having a purely intrinsic learning motive in an organizational setting. In a practical sense, managers and supervisors should coach their subordinates to improve job-related skills rather than simply wait for them to be self-motivated to do so. In future studies, researchers should identify a mechanism for enhancing autonomous extrinsic learning motives through leaders' coaching behaviors.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine the effect of workplace learning experience and intrinsic learning motive on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. In addition, the study examined the moderating effect of intrinsic learning motives on the relationship between learning experience and job satisfaction and organizational commitment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The current research used the Human Capital Corporate Panel survey data set, which aimed to explore how human resource development practices influence corporate performance. In all, 10,003 samples from 441 companies were used for data analysis.\nFindings: Results indicate that taking part in workplace learning programs positively affects job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Likewise, intrinsic learning motives are also positively related to work attitudes. However, no interaction effect between the intrinsic learning motive and the learning experience was found, which may imply that an autonomous extrinsic learning motive is a better predictor for explaining job satisfaction than is a purely intrinsic learning motive within an organizational context.\nOriginality/value: Little research has examined the actual effect of workplace learning programs on employees' attitudes regarding job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Furthermore, to the authors' knowledge, no research has examined the moderating effect of intrinsic learning motive with workplace learning experience on employees' positive work attitudes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Trust and the psychological contract	[ "Psychological contracts", "Trust", "Employee relations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The psychological contract has achieved prominence as an investigative paradigm within organisational research (Marks, 2001), providing a broad explanatory framework for understanding employee-organisation linkages (Rousseau, 1989; McFarlane Shore and Tetrick, 1994; Guest, 1998a). Despite this, there remains much debate around its terms (Roehling, 1997) and there have been a number of critiques of the concept (Guest, 1998a), which have led to calls for more rigorous theoretical and empirical examination of it (Guest, 1998b).The empirical data presented in this paper is intended to contribute to theoretical development of the psychological contract, particularly in respect of trust and the psychological contract which is argued to be under-explored (Robinson, 1996). Arguments are presented in respect of the transactional/relational nature of the contract and the cognitive/affective bases of trust and the relationships between the constructs are explored. To support this, the study draws on Guest and Conway's (2002) definition the psychological contract which is argued to consist of the perceptions of both parties to the employment relationship, organisational and individual, of the reciprocal obligations implied in that relationship. This definition is adopted as it supports exploration of multiple perspectives of obligations within the contract, those of both employer and employees, in three case study firms.In summary, this paper addresses a research question that considers the bases of trust within transactional and relational psychological contracts in order to provide theoretical development of psychological contract literature.\nConceptual overview: Trust is argued to be fundamental to the psychological contract (Guest and Conway, 1998), albeit there is limited consideration of trust in respect of the nature of the psychological contract, that is, the extent to which it is transactional or relational, such nature being considered by many to be central to the understanding of psychological contracts (MacNeil, 1985; Rousseau, 2004). Consideration is thus given here first to the nature of the psychological contract, so that the implications of transactional and relational contracts for trust can then be further explored.The nature of the psychological contract\nMethodology: The work of early writers on the psychological contract (Argyris, 1960; Levinson et al., 1962) was characterised by a qualitative perspective (Rousseau, 2000), although more contemporary work has tended to adopt a quantitative perspective (Conway and Briner, 2002). Work in the field of trust has been similarly dominated by a quantitative perspective (Bijlsma and Koopman, 2003). Increasingly, however, there have been calls for a more qualitative approach in both fields (Tyler and Kramer, 1996; Robinson and Morrison, 2000; Atkinson and Butcher, 2003).The psychological contract is perception based (Guest et al., 1996), idiosyncratic (Rousseau, 1989), context dependent (Conway and Briner, 2002; Pate et al., 2003) and a social construction of reality (Rousseau, 1995). The literature on trust similarly establishes the notion of trust as a social construction (Bijlsma and Koopman, 2003). This paper argues for adopting a qualitative methodology to effectively explore these constructs, as such an approach generates data that provides well-grounded, rich descriptions and explanations of processes in identifiable local contexts (Miles and Huberman, 1994), putting an emphasis on explicating the perspectives of the participants in a given social situation (Shaw, 1999).The research reported in this paper adopts a case study approach (Yin, 1994), investigating trust and the psychological contract within three small firm case studies, each employing between 60 and 95 employees. Each case study is analysed and findings presented separately to preserve the context in which the data was collected (Pate et al., 2003). Semi structured interviews (Breakwell, 2000), using a critical incident technique (CIT) approach (Herriot et al., 1997), were conducted. CIT has been used in the investigation of both the psychological contract and trust and requires that respondents cite incidents that they believe are relevant to the issues under discussion, in this case, fulfilment or breach of obligations within the psychological contract (adapted from Herriot et al., 1997) and trust (adapted from Butler, 1991). A total of 41 interviews lasting 30-60 minutes were conducted, 12 interviews taking place in case study one, 14 in case study two and 15 in case study three. An owner manager was interviewed in each small firm, in order to investigate the employer's perspective, and a sample of employees was selected, from volunteers, in each firm to reflect a variety of job roles and lengths of service to present the employee perspective.The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using a template approach (King, 2004) to coding and analysis which establishes a coding book that is used to structure data analysis and identify key themes. Codes were allocated to segments of text that, according to the researcher\"s interpretation, were relevant to the issues under consideration, that is, obligations within the contract and trust. The interviews from the second case study (14 in total) were separately coded by an independent researcher and a coding match of 85 per cent is argued to provide evidence of reliability in the coding process (Easterby Smith et al., 2002).Analysis was enhanced by use of a software package that facilitated not only code and retrieve searches, but also searches to identify intersections of descriptive and interpretative code (Miles and Huberman, 1994), rendering possible more complex levels of analysis. Data is thus presented in this paper not only via rich descriptions drawn from interview transcripts, but also by numerical representation in data display tables of critical incidents cited in interview (Lyons, 2000). However, no statistical significance is claimed for the data displayed in this way, rather it is a numerical representation of the researcher's interpretation of themes within the data which also makes an assumption that because an obligation was cited by a larger number of interviewees, it had more salience to the respondents as a whole (Cassell and Walsh, 2004). It is argued that the patterns thus demonstrated are highly relevant and beneficial in enriching the interpretation of data collected.\nFindings and discussion: The interviews yielded a number of critical incidents in respect of the perceptions of both parties of employer and employee obligations (Table II). While the identification of these obligations is discussed and justified in significant detail in the broader research project (Atkinson, 2005), the focus of this paper is the links between obligations and the bases of trust and the obligations will thus be taken as given for the purposes of examining issues of trust in more depth.The rest of the findings are presented within the case study context as it is argued in this paper that this is fundamental to understanding of the psychological contract. It is worth noting, however, both that the obligations identified are not fully consistent with those identified by Rousseau (1990), which may derive from her very specific sample of MBA students. Further, in comparing the employer obligations across the three case study firms, a variety of obligations are perceived to exist within the different contracts.The categorisation of these obligations as either transactional or relational was made initially according to Rousseau's (1990) categorisation (Table I). In some instances, however, this categorisation did not cover the obligations identified and, in others, it did not \"fit\" the obligation under consideration. In these instances, categorisation was made by researcher inference and, as can be seen, resulted in a number of variations from Rousseau's categorisations. These will be discussed in the findings that follow.Case study 1: Steel Co.\nConclusions: The socially constructed nature of the psychological contract is evidenced within this paper, especially in Steel Co., where there is low mutuality in perceptions of obligations, leading to perceptions of breach of such obligations. The importance of mutuality in avoiding breach of the psychological contract and building a positive relationship is also apparent, primarily in Insurance Co.It further seems that there is no definitive set of obligations that form the content of the psychological contract (Millward Purvis and Cropley, 2003). These vary by individual and by organisation, recognition for example being present in the contract at Steel Co. but not Insurance Co. and training in the latter but not the former. While it seems possible that generalisations can be drawn within an organisation as to what the obligations are, across organisations this \"deal\" is likely to vary widely. This reinforces the need for a robust theoretical framework with which to analyse psychological contracts within specific contexts and also underlines the importance of qualitative research methods, which again work within specific contexts to tease out nuances within the employment relationship.The data also supports argument that transactional obligations act as hygiene factors, rendering the development of relational obligations difficult until they are fulfilled. For example, the transactional contract at Steel Co. limits the meaningful development of relational obligations, most being cited in breach rather than fulfilment. This further explains the seemingly low salience placed by employees at Insurance Co. on transactional obligations, although intuitively it would seem that issues such as pay must be of importance. It may be that such obligations act as hygiene factors, losing salience once fulfilled and the focus then moving onto relational, or \"motivational\" obligations.The real contribution of this study, however, is in exploring the nature of trust within the psychological contract, having earlier indicated that it is under-researched. Using economic and social exchange perspectives, it was proposed that transactional obligations would be situated in cognitive trust and relational obligations in affective trust. The findings presented suggest that trust is indeed present in all psychological contracts, albeit that it differs in nature. Cognitive and affective trust is demonstrated to prevail to different extents across contracts that differ in nature, clear links being evident between relational obligations and affective trust and transactional obligations and cognitive trust.The findings presented also seem to confirm suggestions in the trust literature that cognitive trust needs to develop prior to affective trust being possible, but that once established, affective trust can continue in the absence of cognitive trust. Affective trust also seems to be linked to employees enhancing their contribution, clear examples of extra role behaviour being presented at Insurance Co., whereas breach of the work obligation is perceived, at least by the owner manager, to be frequent at Steel Co.The links between trust and breach of the psychological contract are also in evidence and shed light on this under-researched area. Failure to fulfil perceived obligations leads to breaches of both cognitive trust and affective trust. Breaches of cognitive trust seem to render an already transactional contract even more so, but such breaches seem less likely to impact on a relational contract. Breach of affective trust within a relational contract, however, seems likely to lead to strong emotions of violation and a consequently more transactional contract, as evidenced at Technology Co.A further point of note is in respect of the lack of clarity over the categorisation of obligations as transactional or relational. The obligation of career progression is suggested by Rousseau (1990) to be transactional, on the basis that career issues are situated in economic exchange perspectives, an employee taking what he or she can from the organisation and then moving on when appropriate, having developed \"employability\". In Insurance Co. and Technology Co., however, career progression seems to be firmly situated within affective trust (or its breach). This develops from social exchange perspectives where employees see themselves having a long term ongoing relationship with an employer who values them and invests in them, developing them into new roles. While it seems likely that certain obligations will always be situated in a particular basis of trust, for example, pay having a cognitive base, it is possible that other obligations may depend for categorisation on the basis of trust that underpins them, and that this may change by context. This would certainly help to explain the existing lack of clarity over the categorisation of obligations, again suggesting that such issues are context dependent.In summary, this paper presents empirical data that demonstrates that trust is present in all psychological contracts, but may differ in nature and that this has implications for the transactional or relational nature of the psychological contract. Understanding the bases of trust that operate in the psychological contract and the implications of their manner of operation may well have practical implications for the management of the employment relationship. For example, an employer is unlikely to be able to develop and benefit from affective trust if there are frequent breaches of cognitive trust. Cognitive trust and transactional obligations appear to operate as hygiene factors that must be adequate before the relationship can move to a more relational/affective level.While the study has limitations, in that it is small scale and the critical incident technique adopted raises issues of salience but may not cover all issues comprehensively, it makes a valuable contribution to the debate on trust and the psychological contract, while raising areas for further investigation. Further examination of the link between the nature of trust and the transactional or relational nature of an obligation, and the extent to which the two are interdependent would be of value, as would an exploration of these issues in other contexts. It seems that trust is a key element within the content of the psychological contract and understanding this more fully can only help in exploring and perhaps managing the employment relationship.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to contribute empirical data to the under-researched relationship between trust and the psychological contract.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A case study approach is used carrying out 41 interviews in three case study firms, adopting a critical incident technique (CIT).\nFindings: - Trust is present in all psychological contracts and its different bases, cognitive and affective, underpin transactional and relational obligations respectively.\nResearch limitations/implications: - A small-scale study using CIT which identifies especially salient issues but is not necessarily exhaustive. Provides a base for more detailed study of the relationship.\nPractical implications: - Demonstrates the impact of the differing bases of trust on the employment relationship. This information could contribute to better managing the employment relationship.\nOriginality/value: - There are few extant empirical data on this relationship and a contribution is made to debates on the role of trust within the psychological contract by providing detailed empirical data.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Inter-firm customer knowledge sharing in logistics services: an empirical study	[ "Customer information", "Customer relations", "Logistics management", "Business‐to‐business markets", "Supply chain collaboration", "Customer knowledge", "Logistic services" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: A number of firms have recently outsourced their logistics operations to logistics service providers (LSPs) in order to provide efficient services, offer the potential to add value, and enhance customer relations (Sinkovics and Roath, 2004; Power et al., 2007). However, due to outsourcing of logistic services, companies have lost some of the central touchpoints to their customers. Previous research in logistics, marketing, and information systems areas has shown many benefits from sharing customer knowledge (CK) in the supply chain such as reducing transaction costs, lowering stock levels, and improving cash flows (Rai et al., 2006; Howard and Squire, 2007). Mithas et al. (2005) find that gains in CK are enhanced when firms share their customer-related knowledge with their supply chain partners. Gadde and Hulthen (2009) conclude that when managing third-party logistics relations increased interaction between buyer and LSP would be beneficial to the outcome of outsourcing. Stiess (2010) reports that increased information flow between supply chain members increased material flow through the supply chain. Pekkarinen and Ulkuniemi (2008) bring forth an interesting issue in relation to the role of LSPs which through outsourcing and partnering could be the role of integrator only assembling customer solution through modular processes actually produced by other companies. This creates many challenges such as how to manage information sharing and learning within the dynamic inter-firm context.The vast majority of work concerning knowledge management and knowledge sharing is restricted to intra-firm topics (Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Alavi and Leidner, 2001). There is a severe lack of empirical research on managing knowledge, in particular, sharing customer-related knowledge, in the inter-firm context (Mithas et al., 2005). Whipple and Russell (2007) found collaborative transaction, event and process management capabilities important and concluded that the managers have to develop collaborative strategies across a broad spectrum of relationships in order to determine which type of collaboration best fits each business relationship. The present study aims at contributing to the current literature of knowledge sharing in inter-firm context. We focus on examining the mediating effects of communication and collaboration between customer knowledge sharing (CKS) and satisfaction in a logistic service relationship.This paper is structured as follows. First, we will discuss the conceptual background of our study and after that present our research model and hypotheses. Second, we will discuss our methodological choices, and then present our results. Third, we discuss our findings and present managerial implications. In conclusion, we will discuss the limitations of this study and the avenues for the future research.\n2 Conceptual background: Organizations create value through information sharing and exchange. The knowledge-based view of the firm provides a theoretical base for explaining situations where knowledge needs to be transferred across the firms' boundaries (Grant, 1996a, b). Knowledge-based theories of the firm emphasize the strategic importance of leveraging knowledge such as market information and business intelligence to support and enhance firm performance (Esper et al., 2010). In many studies knowledge-based view is viewed as intra-organizational phenomenon (Argote et al., 2003). We apply knowledge base view of the firm for knowledge sharing via inter-firm relationships across the members in the supply chain (Pillai and Min, 2010). Our study examines sharing CK between two firms, the customer (supplier or buyer in supply chain) and LSP.The knowledge-based view has its roots in the resource-based view of the firm (Argote et al., 2003; Penrose, 2008; Ahrend and Bromiley, 2009). In the resource-based view knowledge is treated as a generic resource whereas in knowledge-based view, knowledge is seen as an important resource creating value to the stakeholders where the ease of communication the explicit knowledge across boundaries of the firms (Grant, 1996b; Kogut and Zander, 2003; Chen, 2005). Alavi and Leidner (2001) explain that information technologies and systems can play an important role in the knowledge-based view; these systems can be used to \"synthesize, enhance, and expedite intra- and inter-firm knowledge management\" (Alavi and Leidner, 2001).Based on knowledge-based view, the managing CK may help LSPs who offer expertise and solutions to the operational processes in network organizations to achieve high performance in fulfill the needs of the whole network (Armistead, 1999). The knowledge-based view of the firm provides a starting point for our research model (Figure 1).\n3 Hypotheses: Figure 1 shows our research model. It shows the effect of CKS between the buyer and provider of a logistic service (CKS) on the buyer's satisfaction with the LSP (SAT). We also propose the mediating roles of communication (COM) and inter-firm collaboration (COLL) as well as the moderating effect of the relationship (REL) between CKS and the buyer's satisfaction with the LSP (SAT). Next, we discuss our hypotheses.3.1 Customer knowledge sharing\n4 Methodology: 4.1 Sampling and data collection\n5 Results: 5.1 Measurement model: confirmatory factor analysis\n6 Discussion of the results and managerial implications: In this study, we have empirically examined inter-firm CKS in the logistic service relationships. We have also explored the roles of communication and inter-firm collaboration in the context of inter-firm CKS. Table VI summarizes the results and implications from this study.Our findings demonstrate the importance of building close relationships in inter-firm knowledge sharing. We found that sharing CK with the LSP has a positive influence on the buyer's satisfaction with the LSP through the close relationship that is formed between the two parties. We did not find the support to the direct link between CKS and satisfaction with the LSP. This finding contradicts the current view on the positive impact of knowledge sharing in inter-firm context in general (Mithas et al., 2005). Our findings suggest that the closeness of the relationship may even play a larger role than previously thought in inter-firm knowledge sharing (Tu et al., 2004).Based on our findings, we suggest that is essential that the buyer and seller of logistics services work together in CK management issues and build trust before implementing CKS practices. It can also be argued, if a buyer of logistic services shares a considerable amount of customer-related knowledge with its LSP, this may raise expectations of the service level considerably. We suggest that it is essential that the logistics partners be incorporated into the communication processes of the buyer as open and fluent communication support. Knowledge management processes in order to deliver superior value to the end customer. In addition, both the buyer and the seller of a logistic service, the LSP, should derive some rewards for investing in the relationship.Our findings emphasize the role of open and fluent communication between the buyer and the LSP in sharing CK. Our findings point to the importance of communication as one of the mediating mechanisms that explains the association between CKS and satisfaction with the LSP. Open and fluent communication has been found to have an essential role in inter-firm CKS in many studies (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990). We recommend that LPS should create the avenues for the open communication with their customers. In addition, from the LSP's point of view, open communication with the buyer might also promote customer satisfaction.In our study, preconditions for inter-firm collaboration of the relationship such as relationship-specific investments were not positively associated with CKS or satisfaction with the LSP. One explanation for this finding may be that our research focused on the social aspect of the inter-firm collaboration only (Ruy et al., 2008), excluding the traditional transaction cost analysis aspects such as costs associated with acquiring resources or monitoring exchange partners (Das and Teng, 2000).\n7 Conclusions: Our study explores inter-firm CKS in the context of logistic service industry. Data were collected from the buyers of logistic services in Finland and multiple regression and confirmatory factor analysis were used to analyze data. Our findings show that building close relationships and open and fluent communication in inter-firm knowledge sharing between a buyer and provider of logistic services is more beneficial than relationship-specific investments. In addition, both buyer and LSP should invest sharing CK.This study has limitations that need to be addressed and some of these limitations open a number of avenues for further research. The first limitation is our data collection design. We used key informant method in data collection, e.g. same person answered all the questions in the questionnaire. The second limitation is our study focus; we examined the CKS from the buyer's perspective only. Future research could compare the views of CKS from both sides of the dyad, from LPS' and buyer's perspectives.We would like to call for more empirical research on CKS in the inter-firm context among supply chain partners. For instance, the future research could explore in more detail how and to what extent CK is actually shared in the logistic service sector and what kinds of performance applications this might have for the companies involved. In addition, an interesting research topic could be the organizational challenges from IT systems and human resources perspectives faced in CKS in inter-firm context. Further, future research could also explore the power balance between the buyer and the LSP and its effect on CKS between them.The role of customers and continuous interaction in the customer interface in developing new services has caught the attention of researchers (Chapman et al., 2003; Flint et al., 2008; Pekkarinen and Ulkuniemi, 2008). From the new service development perspective, future research could explore how CK generated and shared among supply chain partners facilitates creating new innovative logistic services. The concept of modular logistics services also creates many future research avenues in inter-firm CKS (Pekkarinen and Ulkuniemi, 2008). For instance, future research could explore the modular services offerings and modular process systems.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine customer knowledge sharing between a buyer of a logistics service and the logistics service provider (LSP). The authors attempt to fill the gap in current research by investigating inter-firm customer knowledge sharing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A survey study was conducted. Data were collected from buyers of logistic services. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression were used to analyze data and test hypotheses.\nFindings: - Results suggest that open and fluent communication mediates the relationship between customer knowledge sharing and satisfaction with a logistics service provider. In addition, the close relationship with the logistics service provider is needed to strengthen the relationship between customer knowledge sharing and satisfaction with the logistics service provider.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study provided new empirical evidence concerning inter-firm customer knowledge sharing. The authors suggest that logistic service providers should be incorporated into the customer knowledge management process to ensure open and fluent communication about customers.\nPractical implications: - This study provides practical insights for companies that sell logistic services.\nOriginality/value: - Customer knowledge sharing has been largely studied in an intra-firm context, for instance information sharing between marketing and research and development departments. This research extends the concept of customer knowledge sharing to the inter-firm context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Efectos de la realizacion de un megaevento deportivo sobre una economia local. El caso de los Juegos Mundiales 2013 Cali	[ "Economic impact", "Sporting mega-events", "World Games", "Cali", "L83", "C67" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduccion: En el articulo se presentan los resultados del impacto economico a corto plazo, sobre la ciudad de Santiago de Cali[1] y su area metropolitana (en adelante AM), asociado a la celebracion de la IX edicion de los Juegos Mundiales (World Games). Los Juegos Mundiales estan constituidos por las federaciones de disciplinas deportivas que no participan en el programa de los Juegos Olimpicos. La IX edicion de los Juegos Mundiales se llevo a cabo entre el 25 de julio y el 4 de agosto de 2013 y ha sido la primera organizada por una ciudad de habla hispana y situada en un pais de America del Sur[2]. Los Juegos Mundiales, como megaevento deportivo, involucraron la competicion simultanea en 31 disciplinas deportivas[3], el desplazamiento de 2.929 deportistas y de 1.903 delegados de 97 paises de los cinco continentes. Adicionalmente, la novedad y la diversidad que implica la presencia de atletas de elite en deportes poco conocidos y practicados como el sumo, el wushu y el korfball, por mencionar algunos en el contexto de America Latina.\n2. Los Juegos Mundiales como megaevento deportivo: De acuerdo con la literatura de la economia del deporte (Roche, 1994; Llopis-Goig, 2012), los megaeventos deportivos se caracterizan por ser eventos a gran escala con un profundo significado internacional; tener una duracion breve y perfectamente acotada; estar organizados por un pais o ciudad que generalmente compite por ser sede; atraer un importante numero de participantes (deportistas) y espectadores, tanto locales como extranjeros; ser cubiertos por un amplio numero de medios internacionales de comunicacion; requerir alta inversion en infraestructura, logistica y seguridad; y ser regentados por un Comite Local Organizador integrado por autoridades de gobiernos nacionales y locales y organizaciones y federaciones deportivas internacionales.\n3. Metodologia: En el articulo se utiliza la metodologia de efectos, propia de los Estudios de Impacto Economico --en adelante EIE--. La literatura empirica de estudios de impacto economico aplicada al sector deportivo esta concentrada en paises desarrollados situados en Europa, Estados Unidos y Asia. Una aproximacion detallada de la metodologia empleada, sus limitaciones y aplicaciones se encuentra en: (Baade and Matheson, 2016; Zimbalist, 2015; Barajas et al., 2012; Matheson, 2012; Porter and Chin, 2012; Barget and Gouguet, 2008; Gratton et al., 2006; Matheson, 2006). Para el contexto de America Latina (Devesa et al., 2012; Avalos, 2011).\n4. Estimacion del numero de espectadores y de su gasto: Los Juegos Mundiales se desarrollaron durante 10 dias, los seis ultimos del mes de julio y los primeros cuatro del mes de agosto de 2013. Las competiciones tuvieron lugar en 25 escenarios con capacidad para albergar a 108.259 espectadores[9]. Los tres escenarios de mayor capacidad son el Estadio Olimpico Pascual Guerrero (25.486)[10], la Plaza de Toros de Canaveralejo (19.000) y el Coliseo El Pueblo (18.700) que representan el 58 per cent del total de la capacidad. El 25 de julio se llevo a cabo la ceremonia de inauguracion (no hubo competencias) y el 4 de agosto se realizo la ceremonia de clausura. El calculo de los espectadores requirio usar distintas fuentes de informacion, a traves de un conjunto de matices y especificaciones que procedemos a explicar.\n5. Impacto economico: El objetivo de este apartado es presentar los resultados de la estimacion del impacto economico de los Juegos Mundiales sobre la economia de Cali y AM. El impacto economico se mide como la suma de tres efectos. En primer lugar, los efectos directos derivados del gasto/inversion en que incurrio el Comite Local Organizador de Cali para garantizar la celebracion de los Juegos. En segundo lugar, los efectos indirectos, derivados del gasto que los espectadores de los Juegos realizan en la ciudad, en la medida en que son inherentes al hecho de su celebracion. Por ultimo, los efectos inducidos derivados de la dinamica que genera el impulso de las dos demandas anteriores, via relaciones intersectoriales (compras a otros sectores) y de consumo (nuevos ingresos), sobre toda la economia local.\n6. El legado de los Juegos Mundiales para Cali: De acuerdo con Ron Froehlich, presidente de International World Games Association (IWGA) los pasados Juegos Mundiales 2013 Cali son \"la mejor de las nueve versiones de los Juegos, por eso la medalla de oro es para Cali y Colombia[18]\". Este exito inicial de los Juegos Mundiales 2013 Cali no garantiza que en el largo plazo los efectos positivos se mantengan. Lo que podemos denominar \"el legado de los Juegos\", depende de un conjunto complejo de factores e interacciones que no son capturados por las relaciones monetarias entre agentes y sectores que se describen en la Figura 4. Con el objetivo de que perdure la ventaja competitiva generada por la realizacion del megaevento deportivo, se requiere de una adecuada gestion por parte de los actores clave (sector publico --local, regional, nacional--, sector deportivo, las empresas privadas y la comunidad) que mitigue los riesgos identificados (ver la Tabla IX).\n7. Conclusiones: En este articulo se estimo el impacto economico a corto plazo asociado a la celebracion de la IX edicion de los Juegos Mundiales sobre la ciudad de Cali y su area metropolitana. En conocimiento de los autores, este seria el primer estudio de esta naturaleza aplicado a un megaevento deportivo en Colombia. En resumen, la celebracion de los Juegos Mundiales significo para la ciudad de Cali:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: A summary of the economic impact resulting from the celebration of a sporting mega-event in the city of Cali, Colombia, is carried out in this article.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The impacts are estimated by means of the systematic effects produced by the activities of investment/expenditure of the identified agents and the consequent multiplying effects captured from an input-output model.\nFindings: The World Games represented a new income flow to the city of Cali of $101.036 million pesos ([?]US$53.4 mill.) and 9.598 jobs were created ([?]7,711 full-time jobs). Additionally, 2,174 foreign tourists and 11,250 national tourists were attracted to the city.\nOriginality/value: The article contributes with innovative aspects methodologically speaking, useful for future studies of economic impact in cities with low tourism located in developing countries.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Workplace environment, employee satisfaction and intent to stay	[ "Hospitality industry", "Employee retention", "Customer satisfaction" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The hotel industry is the biggest service industry across the world. In India, it becomes one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. The success of every hotel industry is based on their employees, because employees are accountable for delivering service to customers and eventually determine the service quality the customer receives. So in the hotel industry, employees are the main performer in delivering service quality, machine cannot replace the quality and service provided by the hotel employee (Bettencourt and Brown, 2003; Chung and Schneider, 2002; Schneider et al., 2005). Thus, employee attitude and behavior is important to the quality of the product that hotel industries sell to the customers, and consequently, enormously influence the level of customer happiness (Bitner et al., 1990; Parasuraman et al., 1988; Rust et al., 1996; Schneider and Bowen, 1992). In this dynamic and competitive environment of the hospitality industry, only the outstanding service provided by employees to the customers should help to build a sustainable competitive advantage (Jones et al., 2013).\n2. Literature review: A plethora of studies has also identified the benefits of workplace design to occupants performance, health and satisfaction (Birt and Newsham, 2009; Choi et al., 2012; Frontczak et al., 2012; Garland et al., 2013; Kamaruzzaman et al., 2011; Lee, 2013; Rashid et al., 2012; Rashid and Zimring, 2008; Thayer et al., 2010; Zhang and Altan, 2011). The other relevant studies done by Kato et al. (2009) and Singh et al. (2010) revealed how occupiers identify and evaluate the role of workplace environments. The studies suggested that workplace design proffer healthier psychological profit, employee health and well-being.\n3. Conceptual research model and hypotheses: For our conceptual model we choose the four distinctive construct to analyze how workplace design influence the employee intent to stay through job satisfaction. The conceptual framework is composed of four key variables workspace (WSP), departmental space (DSP), job satisfaction (JST) and intent to stay (ITS). Based on the literature review we posit the following hypothesis and conceptual model as shown in Figure 1:\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Measurement\n5. Data analysis and results: 5.1 Sample characteristics\n6. Discussion: The results confirmed that employees show their harmony on that the workplace design features are significant factor which decisively affects the nature of employee job satisfaction and intent to stay. In this study, it is evaluated that the predictors of job satisfaction elucidate almost 45.9 per cent of its variance and that the predictors of ITS elucidate 53.5 per cent of its variance. So it estimated that JST and ITS have strong positive and significantly relationship with each other (b = 0.732, p < 0.05).\n7. Conclusion and recommendation: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between workplace design features, employee job satisfaction and intent to stay. The results reveal that both the individual workspace features and departmental space features had a substantial influence employee's job satisfaction. Findings also revealed that these two features were important predictors of an employee's intent to stay in the industry.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The hotel industry suffers from retaining its employees, and to retain their employees is a big challenge to the hotel industry. So, the purpose of this study is to examine the causal relationship between workplace design features of hospitality industry with employee job satisfaction and their intent to stay through empirical validation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: As per the objective of the study, three hypotheses were proposed based on a comprehensive literature review on workplace design features of the hospitality industry. The proposed relationships were examined by using structural equation modeling approach with AMOS 18 as prescribed by Hair et al. (1998).\nFindings: Significant evidence was found in favor of proposed hypotheses. The result of hypothesis testing showed workplace design features of hospitality industry to positively influence employee's intent to stay through job satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: While the employee satisfaction and commitment has been a significant research topic for more than decades, barely any research has been conducted that focuses specifically on workplace design features of a hospitality industry. This study tries to make a link between workplace design with the employee intent to stay through employee satisfaction. These links are rare from an Indian perspective.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Future proofing of tourism entrepreneurship in Oman: challenges and prospects	[ "Factors impeding tourism entrepreneurship", "Omani tourism students’ perceptions", "Role of tourism for sustainable economic development of Oman", "Tourism entrepeneurship in Oman", "Tourism in Oman" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Sultanate of Oman is one of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the Middle East whose economic growth is steady and progressive. It is a predominantly oil-based economy. But the distant threat that Oman will run out of its oil resources in less than 20 years has stimulated the government to diversify its economy (Al Shanfari, 2012). Official statistics shows that the oil production, which was 960,000 barrels a day, reduced to 800,000 barrels a day in 2010 (Middle East Economic Review, 2010). In fact, all the GCC states are striving toward economic diversification through various projects and investments. As pointed out by Cook and Nielson (2011), Oman is building its service and tourism industry. His Majesty Sultan Qaboos during his 29th National Day address emphasized that the tourism industry is well capable of serving the aims of regional development, since its benefits will cover all regions. On the 38th National Day of Oman, His Majesty once again reaffirmed the necessity to give tourism priority. He stated that it is well qualified to offer career opportunities to Omanis (Al Balushi, 2014).\nReview of literature: It is argued that a country's development and economic growth can be achieved by promotion of enterprise among students - a trait which requires knowledge of entrepreneurship, financial resources and favourable business environment (Milius and Sarkiene, 2008). With more tourism and hospitality projects being undertaken in both the cities and the rural areas, there is a lot of potential for starting up small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which cater to the burgeoning tourism sector. Given the fact that tourism has huge potential to create employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, development of tourism becomes vital for Oman's economic development (Sokhalingam et al., 2013). According to Kirby (2004), entrepreneurial activity should not be seen only as a creation of new small firms but as something which operates much more broadly in all sectors of the economy. Entrepreneurship is the product of a belief of a potential entrepreneur and his/her ability to activate and undertake this belief (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), 2009). Entrepreneurship toward tourism sector nowadays called entrepreneurship tourism is a welcome approach that caters to the needs of the growing tourism industry. Tourism is one of the economic sectors in which a great degree of involvement is needed by the entrepreneurial community (Chilembwe and Gondwe, 2013). There are many factors that lead to entrepreneurial development, but \"viable\" and \"profitable\" opportunity is seen as a prime factor for breeding prospective entrepreneurs (Burrow et al., 2008). Additionally, according to Ryan et al. (2012), entrepreneurs play an important role in tourism development due to shared culture for tourism. This in turn can lead to success in tourism development. They refer to the claim made by Koh and Hatten (2002) that a community's quantity and quality of supply of entrepreneurs significantly determines the magnitude and form of its touristscape. The argument being that a tourism entrepreneur is the persona causa of tourism development. In fact, they even believe that a well-endowed tourism industry would never evolve successfully without tourism entrepreneurs. According to Hvidt (2013), Oman like its GCC counterparts is striving to steer its citizens (both men and women) by educating and preparing them to compete for jobs in the private and public sectors. The tourism sector has a wide of range of jobs, including travel agencies, tour operations, accommodation facilitations, catering services, transportation, etc. Yet it is observed that Omani students are not keen in taking up profession in the tourism and hospitality industry even though there is very good scope and enormous job opportunities in tourism sector. Even the parents of the students, especially those coming from a semi-traditional context believe that the jobs in this industry is \"servitude\" by nature and have little prospects of promotion from rank and life (Pang, 2010). The perception is driven by the fact that the tourism employees are often seen as being uneducated, unmotivated, untrained, unskilled and unproductive (Pizam, 1982). This is confirmed by O'Mahony and Sillitoe (2001) that many positions within the tourism industry need only little experience and low skills. Even according to Roney and Oztin (2007), though the tourism industry is credited with employment generation, the jobs themselves were low paid and mostly needed low skills. In order to understand this, Kusluvan (2003) deems it important to understand it from the perspective of tourism students who are currently undertaking their course or those who have recently graduated. Casado (1992) found that the basic expectations of these students to be \"fairly realistic\" before their graduation period. But as they progressed into their degree course, the students' perceptions of the industry deteriorate (Jenkins, 2001). Thus, it is argued that commitment to tourism and hospitality industry will be affected by the fact that the future potential employees have a negative image of working in the industry (Aksu and Koksal, 2005). The same was confirmed by Richardson and Anthony (2009) when their study showed that Australian students studying tourism and hospitality studies believed that the industry does not offer them the attributes necessary to make it attractive as a future career. It seems students did not consider starting their own business in tourism as a career option.\nResearch methodology: The survey was conducted among the students from various colleges offering tourism and hospitality management studies in Oman (namely, Oman Tourism College, German University of Technology and Gulf College). The students studying in these colleges came from various regions of Oman. Only students who had registered for graduate studies were taken into consideration. The samples were selected on simple random sampling basis, and 223 questionnaires were distributed. To confirm accuracy, the questionnaires were personally handed over to the students, and unbiased responses were collected. The respondents were also aptly assisted by way of translation and supplementation wherever required.\nData analyses and findings: From Table II the demographic details of the respondents are observed.\nResults: Among the respondents, 84.8 percent of them have joined the tourism courses on their own interest. Females are the majority of the students (95 percent) motivated toward joining tourism studies. It can be observed that most of the tourism students are from Muscat followed by those from Sohar. According to the ranking by the respondents, among the reasons for selecting tourism studies, \"a future career in tourism\" ranked first followed by the factors \"getting a scholarship\" and \"the only major I was offered.\" The personality trait toward tourism is \"like to meet people\" followed by \"like to work with people with different culture\" and \"like to travel.\" The prime reason for selecting a tourism job is \"good starting salary\" followed by \"a society-respected job\" and \"a job acceptable by family\". The main motivating factor affecting the students toward selecting tourism course is \"no sex discrimination in the tourism industry\" - this is the prime reason due to which more female students from the city and urban areas were joining/willing to join tourism studies.\nConclusion, discussion and managerial implications: It is clear from the above that interest in tourism studies did not seem to sustain and motivate the students to take up tourism as a career. Similarly, starting a tourism business is also not an option for the students. The main impediments seem to be society and cultural pressures. Also, the spirit of tourism entrepreneurship is subdued by perceptions that they are not equipped with enough knowledge and capital. This lack of awareness of the career path within tourism and the government steps to promote it as the next big industry only adds to the above impediments. According to Rampton (2014) entrepreneur must have five striking personality traits, which include passion, resilience, a strong sense of \"self,\" flexibility and vision. But the passion declines gradually and risk aversion is developed. In spite of tremendous supporting programmes offered by Omani governmental organizations and other institutions, such as Sanad, Intilaaqah, Jusoor, etc., in the development and promotion of entrepreneurship and tourism, the number of SMEs emerging in this sector is very limited. Omani students prefer to work in time-specific, sophisticated white collar jobs. They are not prepared to take risk in venturing into tourism sector. In fact, the dropout rates in tourism studies are high in the initial years in Oman. Tourism students who join initially with full zest lose their initiative just because of their lack of awareness about the future of the industry. This may be because of gaps in the way and medium of communication of the promotional campaign and initiatives by the government. This calls for an urgent relook into the targeting and delivering strategy of the campaign. Majority of the tourism sector business in Oman is controlled by non-Omani-dominated multinational companies. Thereby, there is leakage of national income from the tourism industry as well. This makes it reason enough for the sponsoring organization and the government to pay immediate attention to entrepreneurial tourism to sustain competition. There seems to be an international awareness to this (Cooper, 2015). She further added that the \"fear to fail\" attitude, \"lack of a mature venture capital market\" as well as \"lack of education.\" She proposed more involvement from the government, banks and other financial institutions as well as mentoring to encourage a sustained growth of tourism entrepreneurship. Gellner and Moog (2008) argued that the overall planning by the relevant authorities should be balanced in such a way that the availability of financial capital is provided to make entrepreneurship in the tourism sector more attractive (Figure 1).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the various factors that inhibit tourism student's inclination toward tourism-related entrepreneurial activities in Oman.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study was conducted with 223 students of tourism studies who were selected on simple random sampling basis and were contacted through a well-defined questionnaire.\nFindings: The study reveals that the factors like non-discrimination of gender, promotion opportunities and physical working conditions play a crucial role in motivating students to take up tourism-related career. The empirical results also reveal that the high risk of accidents, non-tourism spouse preferences and Omani traditional values discourage tourism. Thus, a natural growth toward setting up of such tourism-related entrepreneurial activities is thwarted.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study was restricted to undergraduate students of tourism studies in and around Muscat, Oman. The study could be extended to know the insight of the personnel involved in the entire tourism sector in Oman.\nPractical implications: The study demonstrates that there is a strong association between the motivating factors and the various reasons that encourage studying tourism. The main factors impeding entrepreneurship tourism are the insufficiency of capital, lack of awareness about the ongoing programmes as well as the lack of entrepreneurial skills.\nSocial implications: There exists necessity for the government and the related sponsoring institutions to create an ecosystem that facilitates and encourages tourism entrepreneurs. This will in turn help in the process of diversifying Oman's future economy toward tourism.\nOriginality/value: Very few studies have examined the entrepreneurship tourism in Oman for sustainable development, and it is a first-hand study of its kind.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Organizational justice as buffer against stressful job demands	[ "Turnover intentions", "Job satisfaction", "Organizational justice", "JDC model" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Job-related stress is generally accepted as an important problem for individuals, companies and the society at large, leading to absenteeism, sick leave and turnover (Griffeth et al., 2000; Schaufeli et al., 2009). Job satisfaction, on the other hand, is considered a context-specific measure of employee well-being (Lawson et al., 2009) and has been found to be an important factor in performance enhancement and reductions in sickness absence (Parker et al., 2001; Roelen et al., 2011). Keeping employees satisfied and reducing voluntary turnover therefore represents an important challenge to human resource managers to keep the organization healthy (Wilson et al., 2004).\nJob demand-control model: The JDC model (Karasek, 1979) states that occupational stress results from the joint effects of job demands and job control. While the strain hypothesis suggests additive effects of job demands and job control on well-being, the buffering hypothesis states that job control can buffer for the negative effect of job demands on well-being but received only limited empirical support (Van der Doef and Maes, 1999).\nOrganizational justice as a moderator: Having high job demands might be appraised as stressful, but this relationship might be moderated by perceptions of overall organizational justice. According to several authors (Ambrose and Arnaud, 2005; Hauenstein et al., 2001; van den Bos and Lind, 2002), employees form justice perceptions on the basis of a holistic judgment of organizational justice (Greenberg, 2001; Tornblom and Vermunt, 1999), which consequently drives people's behavior (Lind, 2001). Therefore, they call for a stronger focus on overall justice, instead of the different justice dimensions (see Colquitt, 2001).\nOrganizational justice as a precondition for the buffering role of job control: According to the JDC model (Karasek, 1979), employees can cope with high job demands through job control. More recently it has been shown that job control might not be a sufficient condition to cope with job demands. For example, employees need to believe that they are competent to exert the control and that the control provided is useful in coping with high job demands (Schaubroeck and Merritt, 1997). Poor use of control might even increase strain because it raises negative self-appraisals and negative internal attribution (Schaubroeck and Fink, 1998).\nMethod: Procedure and participants\nResults: Descriptive statistics and correlations between the variables are reported in Table I.\nDiscussion: Until now, organizational justice has not been the focus of research on managing job satisfaction and reducing turnover. The present study, however, showed that organizational justice can play an important role in weakening the positive relationship of job demands with turnover intentions. Also the buffering role of organizational justice with respect to job satisfaction was in line with our expectations but was not significant at the 5 percent level. In addition, organizational justice also appeared to strengthen the buffering role of job control for the unfavorable effects of job demands, both with respect to turnover intentions and job satisfaction.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of organizational justice in the context of Karasek's job demand-control model. It is suggested that employees benefit from organizational justice in order to cope with high job demands. Furthermore, it is argued that justice perceptions are a precondition for the buffering role of job control with respect to job demands.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional study on employees (n=197) in nursing houses was used. The hypotheses were tested by hierarchal regression analysis.\nFindings: Results showed that organizational justice buffered for the positive effect of job demands on turnover intentions and for the negative effect of job demands on job satisfaction. Furthermore, the results showed that justice serves as an important precondition for the moderating role of job control on the effect of job demands on job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Justice appeared to strengthen the role of job control as a buffer for high job demands.\nOriginality/value: The importance of organizational justice with respect to job design and personnel practices has been demonstrated. New is the finding that justice can strengthen the role of job control as a buffer for high job demands.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A new spirit for fostering organizational success: Achieving a balance between business results and relationships	[ "Engagement", "Motivation", "Productivity", "Human resource strategies", "Organizational development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Many people in the modern world feel that their work is not valued and that work itself has lost its value. A new approach aims to address this issue, focusing on the balance between business results and relationships.\nAttracting the best talent: Some enlightened organizations have responded to the challenge of providing work which meets the needs of individuals. They have decided that they want to attract the best talent and maximize their productivity and growth.Nonetheless, many organizations are still soulless places where there is an obsession with profitability and growth, with performance driven through short-term targets. People are seen as commodities to be hired and fired as business volumes fluctuate. The result is that people become motivated either by fear of job loss, or greed in the \"bonus culture\". Consequently, people do not feel they can be themselves at work and they become alienated.\nLinking employee engagement, motivation and productivity: Yet research - such as that by Gallup - has shown that there is a strong link between employee engagement, motivation and productivity.The challenges of today's world of work are both readily acknowledged and often analyzed. Among the analysts' conclusions are that financial results will be better, customers will be delighted and staff will thrive where the business can find the right balance between two management paradigms: the dominant economic - finance based, short term, zero-sum, process, rational, controlling - and the emerging social paradigm based around relationships, ethics and inspiration.As yet, few businesses have been able to implement this successfully. It is possible that:* businesses know they are underperforming in certain areas - in delivering change and getting the highest performance from their employees;* knowledge exists about how to address this underperformance but business leaders have been unable to apply these lessons consistently because they are too firmly rooted in conventional wisdom; and* by considering the social paradigm, businesses can break with conventional wisdom and develop the path to greater performance.\nDelivering sustainable change: The issues that businesses have with delivering sustainable change have the same root cause as those that reduce performance, believes John Kay, formerly a partner at PA Consulting Group, specializing in leadership, people development and change management and now one of the team at Ecumenical Partnership Initiatives Compassion in Change (EPICC).EPICC - part of Workplace Matters, an ecumenical charity which takes Christian values into the workplace - represents a way of working which deals with social-paradigm-related business issues.\"Some business leaders think that nurturing their people is simply the right thing to do,\" John Kay explained. \"Some think it adds business value. Some are just frustrated by current ways of working. Most have struggled to find the right way to link their people's energy to business success. EPICC believes that a successful solution can only emerge from within the organization itself, and our approach both helps the organization to thrive and enriches everyone's understanding of the route to success.\"\"The challenge is taking this new thinking to organizations and applying it in practical ways to overcome resistance to the word 'spirit' and misconceptions of what it means,\" believes EPICC team member Keith Williams. \"To overcome this, we offer collaborative partnership to leaders, using action-research approaches to create a practical bridge to the new paradigm with a focus on purpose, experience and 'person'.\"Keith Williams explained these three areas, part of EPICC's activity, by saying that, to be engaged and motivated, staff need to believe in the value of the work they do and what the organization does overall. Next, when staff are at work they have - and create for others - an experience, either positive or negative, based on the way people behave to them and with each other.Finally, Gallup surveys have found that only 20 percent of employees in large organizations felt their strengths were used every day and eight out of ten employees felt miscast in their role. However, the world's best managers treat people as individuals. They help individuals to build their self-belief and confidence rather than use fear to drive them. They also recognize their personal needs and aspirations as whole people. People who have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.\nAdopting a broader measure of \"success\": \"Business needs this new way of thinking; whether it knows it or not,\" commented John Kay. \"Businesses need to adopt a broader measure of success and support it with a wider range of techniques and reporting tools. It is important to accelerate the development of businesses so that people thrive, customers are delighted - and, thereby, society is enriched.\"\"Businesses can release their full potential by challenging 'conventional wisdom' and moving towards a more social and engaging way of working. By concentrating on inspiration, relationships, ethics and knowledge - alongside finance - their responsiveness to their ever-changing environment will improve and their performance increase.\"\nUnrealized potential in business: John Kay continued: \"Most businesses - even those whose current performance seems satisfactory - can achieve much more than they do now. Underperformance across business is exemplified by such things as: low success rate with change projects; poor productivity; boredom at work; stress and other forms of chronic sickness; low well-being; lack of engagement; public-relations issues; selfish and 'siloed' behavior, as well as corporate bureaucracy.\"\"Underperformance in the long term is often correlated with insufficient attention to social systems within organizations. For many, the social system - looking after people, all stakeholders and the wider community - is simply the right thing to do. Indeed, many of the ways of moving towards this balance have been around for several years - and have been implemented by some organizations. However, most businesses have not found this balance in their own context.\"\"We believe that this is because solutions are piecemeal rather than systemic, perhaps dealing only, for example, with the senior leadership, with junior staff development, with corporate social responsibility or with customer relationships. The business system is dominated by a conventional wisdom, based on the industrial, financial, process-based model, that limits freedom of action; it creates a set of expectations of the style of business leadership (and of management-control systems) that few but the most committed and convinced leaders can challenge - especially given the short-term emphasis of both the stock market and the business press. There is little guidance in how to operate a more balanced management system - so it is easier simply to continue with well-established spreadsheets, management-information systems and personnel processes.\"\nTwo paradigms: Sue Howard, author and personal and holistic-learning specialist, agrees. \"In our book The Spirit at Work Phenomenon, David Welbourn and I outlined the difference between the two paradigms in 'management science',\" she said (Howard and Welbourn, 2004).\"Many business leaders can recall occasions when a management consultant came to their firm, analyzed what was going on, related it to one of many predetermined model-categories and prescribed accordingly. This contrasts with the new paradigm approach that regards every organization and situation as unique and refuses to prescribe a set answer - because there is none.\"Crucially, when dealing with business issues within the social paradigm, it is important to be open to things of the spirit, and recognize the complexity in systems.\"At EPICC, we realize that spiritual insights offer the greatest wisdom and our unique selling proposition is that we are people who can bring a spiritual perspective and resources into organizations,\" Sue Howard said. \"This is coupled with our experiences of organizational change and development.\"\nTreading a fine line: \"While we, as the EPICC team, appreciate the significance of the spiritual as a perspective to bring new life and vitality to leadership and organizations, we tread a fine line between offering reassurance about deliverables and genuinely creating space for God's grace to be at work - filtering God's light into the world.\"\"For me the tension between 'ideas' and material realities is part of the spiritual battleground we are in,\" she added. \"For EPICC, I think the parallels between the new paradigm and Kingdom of God are interesting food for thought.\"EPICC consultant Alan Harpham commented: \"EPICC is a Christian-based consultancy - but open to listen to, and learn from, other faiths - that helps organizations wanting to bring about the conditions which make the workplace a better place to be; where people want to work because it gives them real meaning and purpose; which enable people to develop to their full potential in body, mind and spirit and to come to work as their complete selves, while being creative, innovative and empowered but sensitive to the needs of their colleagues, customers and stakeholders.\"\"EPICC exists because there is a real need - so far recognized by only a minority of organizations - that needs help in becoming fulfilled,\" he added. \"We believe that this is doing Christ's work in the world.\"\nRemoving the obstacles to realizing potential: EPICC emphasizes developing both the organization and its people together, rather than separately as most current methods do. Moreover, because EPICC believes that answers to most questions already lie within an organization and its people, EPICC operates in an explicitly catalytic way.\"In this way, we will release the latent energy in an organization to shape its future, decide how it wants to get there and create a sustainable state when it does get there,\" said John Kay. \"We help people to come to their own conclusions - and then, perhaps more importantly, we help them to shape implementation and, often, the engagement of all their staff as well as that of their external stakeholders.\"\nPractical dialog rooted in academic rigour: EPICC's approach is based on a series of established academic models that enable EPICC to devise sets of questions such as:1. Full potential: institutional strength (community to be proud of):* Is there a force that binds our organization together?* Do we encourage people to realize their full potential?* Can people influence what happens to them?* Can people be themselves at work?* Is our reward system divisive, or could it be seen to be unfair?1. Identity: moral strength (people to be proud of):* Do we have a common view of what is right?* How many of our people have set the organization's moral code against their own?* Do they share their conclusions inside and outside the organization?* Are immoral actions dealt with well?1. Unity: relational strength (diversity to be proud of):* Do we value the contribution and presence of all our people?* Do we know how lack of trust affects the bottom line?* Do we know how much the human costs of poor relationships drain our energy?1. Inspiration: spiritual strength (purpose to be proud of):* Are people inspired by the organization's purpose?* Do employees have strong feelings of participation and engagement?* How well do our people see the big picture; do they see how their decisions and actions affect the organization as a whole?* Do we really have success criteria that are more than economic - or is it just the economic criteria that influence behavior?1. Service: impact strength (legacy to be proud of):* Are we open and reliable in all our dealings with the community?* Do we have a positive impact on society?* Will our grandchildren be proud of what we have done?EPICC uses this approach in program-definition workshops, constructive audits of current major projects, staff training, organizational and individual development, as well as appraisal and feedback processes.\nContacts: EPICC: www.workplacematters.org.uk/consultancy-approach and www.workplacematters.org.uk/consultancy-team; Tel: +44 (0)1727 818144; Workplace Matters: www.workplacematters.org.uk/\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Outlines and reports on a radical new approach to developing both an organization and its people to enable those people to be themselves in body, mind and spirit while at work and so feel fulfilled - and, in the process, enable the organization to be more successful.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Outlines the philosophy of Ecumenical Partnership Initiatives Compassion in Change (EPICC), a part of Workplace Matters; summarizes key industry trends identified in relevant research, and sets out EPICC's question-based approach to achieving its clients' goals.\nFindings: - Reports research findings that only 20 percent of employees in large organizations feel their strengths are used every day and eight out of ten employees feel miscast in their job. Outlines a new way of business thinking with regard to human resources and development. Reports that, when dealing with business issues within the social paradigm, it is important to be open to things of the spirit.\nPractical implications: - Describes how people can \"take their whole selves to work\" and how organizations can reap the full benefits of encouraging this policy.\nSocial implications: - Contends that financial results will be better, customers will be delighted and staff will thrive where the business can find the right balance between two management paradigms: the dominant economic - finance based, short term, zero-sum, process, rational, controlling - and the emerging social paradigm based around relationships, ethics and inspiration.\nOriginality/value: - Contains important insights into how this balance can be achieved.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Morgan Stanley raises women's interest in investment banking: Firm seeks to overcome misconceptions about the sector's macho culture	[ "Gender", "Banking", "Awards", "Equal opportunities" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: \"Creating and work environment is a business imperative. Our clients demand it of our teams, our global footprint requires it to succeed in a range of cultures and our ongoing pursuit of the best talent depends on it.\"\nCross-divisional networking opportunities: Morgan Stanley also developed a career advisers' toolkit to help support students, program alumni and schools throughout the academic year. Information on insight programs was marketed through partnerships with external organizations. This ongoing initiative culminates in a three-day insight program, Step In, Step Up, for girls in years 12 and 13. The program strives to solidify the educational foundations and relationships that have been built over the academic year.\nLeading the way: networking sessions: In 2012, Morgan Stanley held 13 Leading the Way tailored female skill and networking sessions at campuses across the UK and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. These are sponsored by the organization's Internal women's business alliance and led by a senior female role model. Employees who are alumni of Morgan Stanley's various female talent programs attend and share their experiences. Additionally, students receive a newly developed female-specific brochure detailing how the firm strives to attract, retain and develop female employees as an integral foundation of the culture.\nNote: David Pollitt, Human Resource Management International Digest editor, wrote this article.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to observe how Morgan Stanley is seeking to overcome misconceptions about the nature of investment banking, concern over work-life balance and fears of the existence of a glass ceiling.\nDesign/methodology/approach: It outlines the bank's various initiatives to connect with women during their studies or at an early stage in their careers.\nFindings: It highlights the importance of outreach work with schools and universities, plus the key role played at the bank by women's networking groups.\nPractical implications: It reveals that the company won the 2013 Opportunity Now inspiring the workforce of the future award for its initiatives aimed at increasing the proportion of women in its top jobs.\nSocial implications: It reveals how a major investment bank is seeking to challenge the macho image of investment banking.\nOriginality/value: It explains that Morgan Stanley reached more than 1,600 women at female-specific events in 2012 alone. It views this approach to building a female talent pipeline as a multi-year strategy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Clustering analysis prioritization of automobile logistics services	[ "Automotive industry", "Distribution channels and markets", "Channel relationships", "Cluster analysis" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Automobile and components manufacturers recognize the strategic importance of integrated delivery systems for the global market. Current research over the last decade has demonstrated many ways to integrate and synchronize materials and information flows, enhance supply chain efficiency, and reduce logistic management costs for supply chain intermediaries. An important development is the outsourcing of logistics services. Researches show that third party logistics (3PL) providers enhance the availability of products and materials on-demand and facilitate the consolidation of orders (Sohail and Sohal, 2003; Carbone and Stone, 2005; Kim et al., 2008). Using good quality 3PL services, the supply chain intermediaries increase information sharing, build more robust working relations, and decrease the uncertainty of the product life cycle (Trappey et al., 2007; Govindan et al., 2010). The scope of logistics management has been extended from intra-organization coordination to inter-organizational coordination and combines customized services for the building of long-term customer loyalty (Wang and Sang, 2005; Gol, 2007; Sihn and Schmitz, 2007).This research provides a methodology for 3PL companies to customize services for the automobile and components manufacturers. For the first phase of the study, the industrial customers for 3PL firms are surveyed to collect the outsourcing status quo of logistics activities, logistics service preference attributes, and general industrial demographic information. For the second phase, a two-stage clustering method classifies customers into distinct clusters so that specific logistic services can be defined for members of a given cluster. Once the customers' preferences and product distribution attributes are known, the data clustering provides decision support for logistic services that will improve logistics effectiveness and lower distribution costs. A survey is used to collect the customer and service preference data and the K-means algorithm clusters customers into sub-segments according to their logistics service attributes. The 3PL then uses the clusters to create customized delivery and distribution services that better satisfy the requirements and preferences of each customer group.This research paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews and discusses the background literature. The proposed two-stage clustering method and the decision support methodologies are described and discussed in Section 3. Section 4 presents the case implementation. The concluding remarks for implementation and further design of customized services are provided in Section 5.\n2 Literature review: The literature related to customer relationship management (CRM), clustering for market segmentation, and the logistic management processes for the automobile industry channel intermediaries are reviewed and discussed in this section. The importance of these research outcomes to 3PL service providers is highlighted.2.1 Customer relationship management\n3 Research method and theoretical framework: This section provides a systematic approach that can be used by 3PLs to customize service offerings for industrial customers. A two-stage clustering method, combining hierarchical clustering with non-hierarchical clustering (Punj and Steward, 1983), is used to analyze the customer survey data and, afterward, prioritize their logistic services. Ward's minimum-variance method (hierarchical clustering) and the K-mean algorithm (non-hierarchical clustering) are introduced and the survey method used for data collection is also discussed in this section.3.1 Two-stage clustering\n4 Case implementation: The case study analyzes the data collected from the 3PL's customers that include automobile manufacturers and parts suppliers. The logistics case company, the clustering of customer service preferences, and the customization of logistics outsourcing are introduced in this section.4.1 Profile of the case company\n5 Conclusion: This research proposes the provision of customized logistics services derived from customer preferences. The study provides detailed observations about customers in four clusters and their preferences. According to the cluster results, the implementation of real-time logistic data and decision management (e.g. RFID tags and readers) will best facilitate real-time merchandise and service tracking, a quicker response to customers' requests and complaints, and provide service crew information and support. As a result, the 3PLs can support standardized services for specific customer cluster to enhance customer's satisfaction.The satellite manufacturing partnership is regarded as the central manufacturer with warehouses and many satellite suppliers that implement JIT for reducing logistics and production time and cost. The ability to better understand and customize the needs of logistic services is greatly desired industry innovation. The automobile industry and other manufacturing industries as well, require these types of innovations to enhance productivity and reduce costs across the supply chain. In summary, even though most logistics activities between channel intermediaries are currently managed by manufacturers, these services can be outsourced to better enable manufacturers to focus on their core business operations. This paper provides the method to segment the 3PLs' potential customers in automobile industry (AM, OES, OEM suppliers and central car makers) while identifying and prioritizing their logistic service needs. Thus, 3PLs can improve their service offering, particularly for high-priority services, with the support of information systems that apply the advanced analytical tools described in this paper. As indicated in the survey reports of Lieb (2008) and Lieb and Butner (2007), the three challenges for 3PL providers are to find and keep managerial talent, invest in information technology, and reduce the cost of services. Confronted with these challenges, building long-term collaborative working relationships between 3PL providers and their industrial customers via prioritized or customized services are critically important for the success of 3PL operations and the supply chains they serve. The objectives of future research will study the advancement of logistic services that match the diverse needs of segmented customers in industrial domains.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to provide a clustering approach to segment supply chain partners in the automobile industry and prioritize services offered by third party logistics service (3PL) providers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In total, 98 automobile and auto-parts manufacturers are surveyed to identify service needs, preferences, and outsourcing commitments. By applying a two-stage clustering approach combined with Ward's minimum-variance method and the K-means algorithm, the logistics companies prioritize their services to better satisfy groups of customers with specific preferences.\nFindings: - Four distinctive groups of manufacturers are identified using the two-stage clustering approach. The clusters separate logistic preferences and outsourcing patterns of after market parts suppliers, original equipment service parts suppliers, original equipment manufacturer parts suppliers, and tier one car makers. The paper finds that distribution and delivery services hold the highest percentage of services outsourced among the manufacturers.\nOriginality/value: - This paper models logistic services as customizable services and develops a data system methodology to define the profiles of automobile manufacturers and their preferred logistic services. Through the analysis of service preferences and clustering, the paper identifies the key logistic services that can be customized for members of the automobile supply chain. A case is provided which demonstrates how a logistics company can provide customized service designs for specific target markets and customers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impacts of sector growth and monetary policy on income inequality in developing countries	[ "Monetary policy", "Income inequality", "Kuznets hypothesis", "Panel data approach", "B22", "C22", "C23", "E52", "O11", "O23", "Q02" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: An interesting observation in developing countries has been that economic growth is often correlated with increases in income inequality. On the surface, this seems to be problematic because it counters the assertion that \"a rising tide lifts all boats.\" But, this general observation raises some important questions. The association between growth and inequality is almost certainly nonlinear because inequality does not continually increase with growth. What is the degree of nonlinearity? Moreover, because these countries derive growth from different economic sectors, are there differential effects from these sources of growth on inequality? Finally, given the impacts of monetary policy on growth, what impact do these policies have on inequality?\n2. Literature review: Analysis of the phenomenon of income inequality, has attracted much attention from policy-makers in the central banks around the world. In the academic literature, a lot of researchers have studied the factors that influence income inequality in several aspects. For example, Bound and Johnson (1992) and Acemoglu (2002) have referred to technological progress as a key factor in the growth of labor productivity to explain poverty and income distribution. Dao (2008) analyzed the impact of the components of human capital on poverty in a sample of 40 developing countries and found that poverty is related to gender differences in education, child malnutrition and mortality, maternal mortality, and access to prenatal and obstetrics healthcare. Using another sample of 35 developing countries, Dao (2008) found that income inequality linearly depends on the same explanatory variables plus the infant mortality.\n3. Data: We used annual data for a sample of 92 developing countries from 1990 to 2014, which were obtained from the World Bank data portal, the IMF, and the countries' central bank websites. We collected information on the GINI index as a measurement for income inequality (GINI); real agricultural value added per capita at constant 2005 US dollars (AGR); real industrial value added per capita at constant 2005 US dollars (IND); 40 real services value added per capita at constant 2005 US dollars (SER); aggregate inflation (p): the annual percentage change in a consumer price index; Brent crude oil spot price (OILP); urbanization index (UR) as a percentage of the population living in urban areas; openness to international trade (OPEN); and the unemployment rate (UN). The time series data for the GINI index include a considerable amount of missing values. We replaced missing values using interpolation and moving average techniques over specific period. Table AI provides the list of developing countries studied in this research.\n4. Methods: The contribution of economic sectors in income inequality\n5. Results: It is necessary to ensure stationarity of all-time series variables of the model before any estimation. The results of panel unit root tests for all variables in the model showed that they were stationary in level. Then, we used Johansen's co-integration method for testing whether co-integration exists. As shown in Table III, using SIC criteria, the panel Kao residual co-integration test for variables (the ADF t-statistic at the p-value equal to 0.0523 is -1.6229) reject the null hypothesis of no co-integration. Therefore, there is a long-run relationship between the variables and we can estimate a VECM for analyzing the short- and the long-run relationships. Estimated empirical models are presented in the next two sections.\n6. Conclusion: The results of this analysis point to several important conclusions. First, our results provide more evidence of existence of a nonlinear relationship between growth and inequality. Although we examined growth on a sectoral basis, there still appeared to be some level of growth that promotes inequality, but that inequality tended to decline as growth continues. Additionally, the general finding of a \"U\" relationship between aggregate inflation and inequality, even after controlling for differential effects of sectoral economic growth, was also consistent with the broader literature. The policy implication is that central bank attempts to control inflation to low levels in developing countries, while perhaps contributing to broader policy goals, is likely increasing income inequality.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of growth in different sectors of the economy of developing countries on income inequality and analyze how inflation, as a proxy for monetary policy, makes a proportionate contribution for setting a binding national target for reducing income inequality. The paper examines the existence of a linear or nonlinear effect of inflation and sectoral economic growth on income inequality using a balanced panel data of 92 developing countries for the period of 1990-2014.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Methods section includes several steps as below: first, the functional form of the model using panel data for investigating the contribution of economic sectors in income inequality; second, to estimate the relationship between income inequality and sector growth: testing the Kuznets hypothesis; third, to estimate the relationship between inflation and income inequality base on general functional form of the model proposed by Amornthum (2004); fourth, a panel Granger causality analysis based on a VECM approach.\nFindings: The statistically significant finding shows that first agricultural growth and then industrial growth have a dominate impact in reducing income inequality in our sample. But, the service sector growth has positive effects. The results confirm the existence of Kuznets inverted \"U\" hypothesis for industry growth and Kuznets \"U\" hypothesis for service sector growth. The findings show that sector growth and inflation affect income inequality in the long-run.\nOriginality/value: This research is an original paper which analyzes the effect of growth in different sectors of the economy of developing countries (agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors) on income inequality and test the Kuznets hypothesis in terms of sector growth and at the same time, examine the existence of a linear/nonlinear effect of inflation and sectoral economic growth on income inequality and test Granger causality relationship between income inequality and sector growth and inflation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The relation between school climate and preschool teacher stress: The mediating role of teachers' self-efficacy	[ "Preschool", "School climate", "Teacher stress", "Teachers’ self-efficacy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Research shows that teaching is one of the most stressful professions (Au et al., 2016). Preschool teachers, among teachers of all grade levels, face unique challenges and job stress that requires urgent attention from professionals and researchers. Previous research suggests that school climate is associated with teacher stress (Pearson and Moomaw, 2005; Skogstad et al., 2014); as a stable and typical characteristic of schools (Halpin and Croft, 1963), school climate contributes greatly to teaching, effectiveness at work and children's learning (Sancar, 2009). Specifically, teachers in schools with supportive climates, characterized by high levels of principal collegial leadership and professionalism, perceive themselves as having lower levels of stress. Although the literature has indicated that both school climate and teacher stress are associated with teachers' self-efficacy, few studies have investigated the mechanism through which school climate indicators impact teacher stress, let alone for preschool contexts. To address this gap in the literature, in the present study we examined preschool teacher self-efficacy as a potential mediator of the relationship between school climate and teacher stress.\nTheoretical background: In previous studies, the stress process has been singly viewed as an external or an inner psychological occurrence (Fisher, 2011; Gold and Roth, 2013; Grayson and Alvarez, 2008; Hobfoll, 2001; Klassen and Chiu, 2010; Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2007). However, the conservation of resources (COR) theory states that the formation of personal stress is envisioned as an integrative process of both internal and external occurrences (Hobfoll, 2001). Positive individual characteristics like self-efficacy, good family relationships and colleague or leader support constitute stress-resistant resources; these resources are linked to each other (Hobfoll, 2001). For instance, stronger social support is associated with a higher level of personal self-efficacy and the linkage between the two constitute a \"resource caravan\" against stressors (Hobfoll, 1998; Thoits, 1994). Based on the conceptual framework of COR (Hobfoll, 2001), we investigated the relationship among school climate, teacher self-efficacy and stress.\nResearch questions and hypotheses: The present research aimed to examine the relations among school climatic factors, teacher self-efficacy and teacher stress in the Chinese preschool context. The two following research questions guided the research:\nMethod: Participants and procedures\nResults: Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis\nDiscussion: Teacher stress has been increasingly attracting researchers' attention. However, few studies have focused on preschool teachers' stress, and an even smaller pool of studies have looked into the joint effect of school climate and teachers' psychological features (e.g. teacher self-efficacy) on preschool teachers' stress. Studies with such a focus in China have been even further undervalued. In the present study, we advanced the discipline by applying two mediation models to examine whether preschool organizational climate featuring principal collegial leadership and professionalism exerted an effect on teacher stress through the mediation of teacher self-efficacy. The findings of the present study confirmed that preschool teacher stress was indirectly influenced by principal collegial leadership via the mediation of teacher self-efficacy, whereas preschool teacher professionalism can also affect teacher stress indirectly through the mediation of teachers' self-efficacy. In all, the principal, as the head person in charge of constructing the preschool organizational climate, can do a lot to relieve teachers' stress (Dipaola and Tschannen-Moran, 2014). Our study has enriched school organization theories in terms of how teacher occupational psychological features interact with school climatic factors. Specifically, the present mediation analytic results have provided theoretical knowledge for researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders on how preschool principals should pursue leadership endeavors to support teachers in enhancing psychological well-being when these teachers are facing teaching challenges in the modern classroom. In the following sections, we discuss the findings in light of the previous literature while also foregrounding the unique sociocultural context of Chinese preschools. Moreover, we make specific recommendations for assisting ECE practitioners to relieve stress by optimizing preschool organizational climate as a momentum to improve teacher self-efficacy.\nLimitations and recommendations for future studies: This study has several limitations. First, this is a cross-sectional study with teacher survey data collected at one point in time. Therefore, no causal relationship can be drawn from the findings. In the future, a cross-lagged model analysis could be employed to further explore the cause-and-effect relationship among preschool climate, teachers' self-efficacy and stress. Second, although we used a stratified random sampling procedure, caution must be taken when generalizing findings outside of the Guangdong province, especially in areas where different levels of socio-economic challenges are present (e.g. central and western China). Third, we acknowledge that we have adopted instruments that were developed and previously used in different contexts. Although we have performed a solid translation and backtranslation of the items as well as having demonstrated good internal reliability, future studies need to consider cultural relevance of these instruments for varying contexts and employ item response theory to examine differential item functioning of responses from participants of various cultural contexts. This is because people with a different cultural background may interpret the same item differently, even though the item was accurately translated.\nImplications: The current study contributes to the literature by providing a better understanding of how school climate acts as a mechanism in reducing preschool teacher stress. When teaching surrounded by a positive school climate, teachers will perceive a higher level of collegial leadership and professionalism. A higher level of collegial leadership and also a higher level of teacher professionalism within preschools result in an increase in teachers' participatory opportunities in preschool decision making (Dondero, 1997). First, such a meaningful discovery offers a new insight into maintaining and enhancing teachers' individual well-being through a more collegial leadership style. Therefore, the first recommendation we make is for principals to honor shared decision making. In order to accomplish this outcome, principals need to be open-minded and fulfill their leadership responsibilities by viewing teachers in the preschools as colleagues and not subordinates. By sharing leadership power with teachers and considering teachers' suggestions before making important decisions for the preschools, principals can help empower teachers and increase their self-efficacy; such an approach to leadership will reduce teachers' occupational stress (Bush, 1997). As we know, in a collectivist-centered society like China, leaders play powerful roles in creating positive working atmospheres, regardless of the work context (Forbes et al., 2009). When Chinese preschool principals learn to adopt collegial leadership styles, they will begin to simultaneously improve teachers' self-efficacy and reduce stress. According to Ho and Tikly (2012), collegial preschool principals distribute their authority and power to teachers through teacher-principal cooperation that includes extending the teachers' role from within the classroom to throughout the school context, which brings about tangible benefits for teachers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between school climate and teacher stress. Specifically, the authors construct two parsimonious models to test two main hypotheses. First, whether preschool collegial leadership predicts teachers' job stress through the mediating role of teacher self-efficacy; second, whether teacher professionalism influences teachers' perceptions of occupational stress through the mediating role of teacher self-efficacy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors conceptualized the mediating role of teacher efficacy as an important mechanism that can help to explain the effect of school climate on teacher stress. School climate consisted of two dimensions: principal collegial leadership and professionalism. Therefore, the authors constructed and examined two mediation models by using Bootstrapping mediation modeling: first, preschool teacher self-efficacy as a mediator between preschool collegial leadership and teacher stress; second, preschool teacher self-efficacy as a mediator between preschool teacher professionalism and teacher stress.\nFindings: Results from two mediation analyses showed that principal collegial leadership exerts a significant negative effect on preschool teachers' stress through the mediating role of teacher self-efficacy. Moreover, professionalism was also a significant predictor of preschool teachers' stress through the mediating role of teacher self-efficacy.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study contributes to the literature in terms of understanding the mechanism of how school climate helps to reduce teacher stress. First, the authors found that teachers' individual well-being can be efficiently enhanced through a more collegial leadership. Second, the preschool leadership teams can create a supportive climate to reduce teachers' stress by improving teachers' professionalism.\nOriginality/value: This study offers a new perspective about understanding the internal and external mechanism of teacher stress. The authors discussed the results in light of the recent push by the Chinese Government to teacher quality improvement in early childhood education. The authors argued for prioritizing support for building a supportive school climate for teachers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Maintenance strategies: Decision Making Grid vs Jack-Knife Diagram	[ "Maintenance management", "Decision Making Grid", "Jack-Knife Diagram" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: 1.1 Problem statement\n2. The DMG: The DMG acts as a map on which the performances of the worst machines are located according to multiple criteria. The DMG model was initiated by Labib (1996). During subsequent research, it was integrated into CMMS by Labib (1998), into AHP by Labib et al. (1998a) and into fuzzy logic by Labib et al. (1998b). It has since become widely implemented in the industry (Fernandez, et al., 2003; Labib, 2004; Burhanuddin et al., 2007; Tahir et al., 2008; Shahin and Attarpour, 2011; Aslam-Zainudeen and Labib, 2011; Tahir et al., 2014; Mc Leod et al., 2015).\n3. JKD: The use of the JKD was initiated when Knights (2001) and Knights (2004) applied it to prioritise the unplanned downtime data for electrical failures in a fleet of 13 cable shovels at an open pit copper mine in Northern Chile. In a more recent study, Jardine and Tsang (2013) use the JKD to prioritise the downtime of 695 minor components for a fleet of 14 mobile assets in an underground mine. For their part, Pascual et al. (2009) extend the JKD technique of considering three key performance indicators, reliability, maintainability and unavailability, to include explicit economic effects. Finally, Wijaya et al. (2010) visualise failure data by using interval estimation instead of point estimation in a JKD.\n4. Examples: The three examples given in this section compare the DMG to the JKD.\n5. Discussion: This paper discusses two tools for allocating maintenance strategies while prioritising machine downtime according to two important downtime criteria: frequency and length of downtime. The DMG and the JKD allocate appropriate maintenance strategies depending on the location of the machines within the diagrams. To this point, the JKD has been used to prioritise machine downtime, whilst the DMG has been used to allocate maintenance strategies.\n6. Conclusion: To be competitive, maintenance organisations must provide timely delivery of quality products. Adopting the right maintenance policy is key to achieving this objective; it reduces costs by minimising downtime and leads to improved quality and productivity. A practical maintenance policy selection method is preferable, but the various maintenance strategies are incomparable. The findings of this paper suggest that the DMG and JKD are suitable tools to allocate appropriate maintenance strategies based on two downtime criteria: frequency and length of downtime.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Maintenance management is a vital strategic task given the increasing demand on sustained availability of machines. Machine performance depends primarily on frequency and downtime; therefore, ranking critical machines based on these two criteria is important to determine the appropriate maintenance strategy. The purpose of this paper is to compare two methods, using case studies, to allocate maintenance strategies while prioritising performance based on frequency and downtime or Mean Time to Repair: the Decision Making Grid (DMG) and Jack-Knife Diagram (JKD).\nDesign/methodology/approach: The literature indicates the need for an approach able to integrate maintenance performance and strategy in order to adapt existing data on equipment failures and to routinely adjust preventive measures. Maintenance strategies are incomparable; one strategy should not be applied to all machines, nor all strategies to the same machine.\nFindings: Compared to the Pareto histogram, the DMG and JKD provide visual representations of the performance of the worst machines with respect to frequency and downtime, thus allowing maintenance technicians to apply the appropriate maintenance strategy. Each method has its own merits.\nResearch limitations/implications: This work compares only two methods based on their original conceptualisation. This is due to their similarities in using same input data and their main features. However, there is a scope to compare to other methods or variations of these methods.\nPractical implications: This paper highlights how the DMG and JKD can be incorporated in industrial applications to allocate appropriate maintenance strategy and track machine performance over time.\nOriginality/value: Neither DMG nor JKD have been compared in the literature. Currently, the JKD has been used to rank machines, and the DMG has been used to determine maintenance strategies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Contested territories: Subject English, teacher education and professional standards in Australia	[ "Teacher education", "Constructions of English professional standards", "Preservice English teachers", "Professional accreditation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: English education goes beyond mere knowledge transactions; it involves an excitement that must be caught, imaginations that must be set ablaze and worlds that must be shared together. (Denis, preservice English teacher)\nIntroduction: Many of the Discourses within the subject of English reveal ongoing struggles over its origins, meanings and contents and about the varying ideological positions adopted by its epistemic community. The somewhat fragile and intangible qualities of English that continue to provoke much debate and contestation are typified in Denis' statement presented above. His words convey a merging of the affective and the poetic, echoing the fervent and personalised educational purpose displayed in the identities and views of many of the experienced and beginning teachers considered in previous research (O'Sullivan, 2005, 2007, 2008). The purpose of this article is to identify and examine some of the current governmental policies and institutional requirements affecting future English teachers undertaking their tertiary studies in Australia. In addressing these issues, it explores the contested territory of subject English, factors influencing initial teacher education and the effects of national professional standards and accreditation. As a preservice English teacher, Denis' voice provides an interesting counterpoint to the focus here on the increasing regulation, policy imperatives and drive for standardisation occurring within the Australian educational context.\nSubject English: a complex territory: For English educators, passionate argument about the identity, importance and role of the subject of English is ongoing. Challenges arise from \"the contentious nature of their subject, its competing traditions, and the emerging influences of new and somewhat unstable epistemologies\" (O'Sullivan, 2005, p. 89). Definitional problems occur because there is \"always a ceaseless interplay between what English is and is not\" (Moran and Peim, 1989, p. 103). Medway (2005, p. 20) considers that it is the \"the very vacuity of 'English' that allows the word to serve as a useful arbitrary signifier for a set of practices we all recognise\". Its conceptual complexity is signalled in Eaglestone's (2009, p. 147) description as \"a very diffuse subject\" and in the proposition that \"English is not a straightforward thing, but an idea\" (p. 7).\nSites of contestation for subject English: One of the most significant areas of contestation in respect to English is the debate over whether a study of language or of literature is at the heart of the subject. Of course, this is an artificial dichotomy, but nevertheless, attempts to reframe English as literacy are prevalent in contemporary contexts. Understandings about the ways in which both of these concepts are constructed and characterised, their relationship and the space that each may claim are central to current scholarship.\nDemanding standards: Australia and USA: Neoliberal discourses about educational reform are exerting power over educators across the global landscape. Zipin and Brennan (2006, p. 333) claim:\nAccess to and literacies in tertiary study in Australia: As all educators experience pressure to produce results targets and to build economic productivity, institutions offering teacher education in Australia are under particular scrutiny about the nature of their student cohorts, their preparation, standards and capacities to address the plethora of expectations required of them. We are in a period where Australian universities seek wider student participation and offer pathways for greater access, especially for those not traditionally afforded an opportunity for tertiary studies. Federal government policy promotes inclusion and sets targets for increased student diversity. The Review of Australian Higher Education, (December 2008 DEEWR (2008), known as The Bradley Review) recommended increased funding to support higher participation rates from students of low socio-economic backgrounds, and in Transforming Australia's Higher Education System (DEEWR, 2009), reforms include financial assistance for access to university based on merit not on the ability to pay. Students from diverse backgrounds with a range of educational and life experiences are increasingly enrolled in tertiary institutions.\nTeacher education and meeting standards: Initial teacher education programmes face increasing politicised demands, a situation that continues to intensify in Australia. The following observation by Cochran-Smith (2005, p. 179), although written 10 years ago, has immediate resonance. Not much has changed:\nQuestioning the framing of high stakes expectations: The importance of excellent teachers and of quality learning and teaching for all students is supported by a substantial body of research (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Hattie, 2003; Ayres et al., 2004; Zammit et al., 2007) that reinforces the significance of the teacher in relation to student achievement. Confident, knowledgeable and effective communicators are vital for the profession, and the need for many essential capabilities is not in question. Language proficiency and learning are intertwined. Moon (2014, pp. 113-114) reminds us that [...] \"language and literacy are not merely adjuncts to the curriculum content: they are the media through which subject knowledge is codified and transmitted\". Even so, Sellar and Lingard (2014, p. 17) argue that the focus on teacher quality and performance means \"context has been made an absent presence by new policy technologies and in new spatialities of education governance in Australia\". Significant contextual factors related to social inequality, including the gaps in educational outcomes between groups of differing socio-economic backgrounds, and culture and indigeneity are often overlooked in discourses constructed around teacher quality and a focus on teaching standards.\nConsidering some ways forward: This paper has discussed the Australian tertiary context of initial teacher education at a time of increased regulation and professional standardisation. It reflects the broader educational and global contexts that are characterised by neoliberal discourses of economic production, accountability and formalised measurement. There are tensions between the sorts of individualised and expansive visions teachers might possess of subject English and the authorised institutional versions promoted in current policy directions. Accreditation demands can serve to constrain the rich, multimodal practices and creative, collaborative pedagogies that enhance educational experiences in the twenty-first century. The challenge is to find a balance between external expectations, contemporary pressures, professional aspirations and personal values.\nConcluding thoughts: [...] the ability to live with uncertainty, a plurality of views and a tradition of questioning is one of English's great strengths (Peel, 2000, p. 4).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Increasing government regulation of educational practice with public accountability through a national curriculum and external testing, the establishment of professional teaching standards and associated teacher accreditation requirements are strong forces in contemporary Australian education. This paper aims to identify and examine some of the current governmental policies and the associated institutionalised requirements for initial teacher education within this particular context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: It focuses particularly on preservice English teachers, and in addressing these issues, there is an exploration of the contested territory of the subject English, the key factors affecting initial teacher education students and the effects of professional standards on educators.\nFindings: It is argued that there is a need for a much broader vision of educational purpose, a richer construction of subject English than is defined by the testing of traditional literacy skills and productivity outcomes, with a greater empowerment of teachers whose achievements are increasingly limited by narrow accountability measures.\nOriginality/value: Formal accreditation demands appear to constrain the various multimodal practices and creative, collaborative pedagogies that enhance educational experiences in the twenty-first century. The challenge ahead for educators is to find a balance between the contemporary pressures of a global society, external expectations, professional aspirations and personal values.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Investigating the factors influencing the adoption of m-banking: a cross cultural study	[ "Australia", "Thailand", "M-banking", "Mobile banking adoption", "Self-service technology", "Technology acceptance theory" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Rapid innovation and increasing competition has revolutionised the services landscape, resulting in providers shifting from traditional face-to-face encounters, to ones that are technology-based, in order to increase efficiency and decrease operating costs (Laukkanen and Lauronen, 2005; Leung and Matanda, 2013). Over the past decade, the emergence of mobile self-service technologies (SSTs) has provided banking organisations greater opportunities to capture new markets (Gummerus and Pihlstrom, 2011). Recent studies have posited that consumer preference for mobile banking (m-banking) over incumbent forms doubled from 2008 to 2012 (Spertus, 2012), with Asia predicted to have the largest number of m-banking users by 2017 (Shen, 2012). Importance of the Asian market is demonstrated by growth in bank marketing research from within this region (Hong and Lee, 2012; Lee, 2009; Phan and Ghantous, 2013).\nLiterature review: The service encounter has been conventionally defined as a social, interpersonal dyadic human interaction between a customer and front-line staff (Soloman et al., 1985). However, a broader conceptualisation of the service encounter has emerged; that being the period of time during which a consumer directly interacts with a service (Zinn, 1993). This definition focuses less on the interpersonal interaction and suggests that service encounters can occur without any human-to-human interaction. These new encounters have generally been accompanied by supporting technologies, referred to as SSTs (Swartz and Iacobucci, 2000).\nMethod: The samples were drawn from two panels based in Thailand and Australia. A screening question identified respondents' prior knowledge with m-banking applications and respondents were incentivised through the collection of points. Like previous studies of mobile services, a web-based questionnaire survey was employed to collect data from 348 respondents, split across Thailand (n=175) and Australia (n=173) (Constantiou et al., 2006). This method offered flexibility, ease of use and enabled the researchers to reach large and dispersed samples (Epstein et al., 2001; Albaum et al., 2010; Evans and Mathur, 2005). Moreover, their anonymous nature reduces social desirability bias (Epstein et al., 2001). Respondents were aged 18 and over, living in urban centres in Australia and Thailand and were aware of the availability of m-banking services. The questionnaire was initially developed in English; using previously validated scales (see Table II).\nResults: Sample characteristics\nDiscussion: There were two overarching research questions that prompted this study. First, what are the key motivators and inhibitors that influence consumer ITU m-banking services? Second, do the motivators and inhibitors of m-banking use differ between predominantly collectivist (Thai) and individualistic (Australia) national cultures?\nTheoretical and managerial implications: It has been argued that existing user acceptance models still have room for improvement, as a result of their limited explanatory powers and inconsistent relationships, leading to additional factors being taken into account (Sun and Zhang, 2006). Our study is perhaps the first to examine the acceptance of m-banking in Thailand, and responds to calls for additional research that generalises m-banking and m-services acceptance across national cultures (Agarwal et al., 2009; Dahlberg et al., 2008; Laukkanen and Kiviniemi, 2010; Wang et al., 2012). Further, we employ Hofstede et al.'s (2010) cultural dimensions to identify two countries with different national cultural dimensions in order to test the SST Intention to Use Model, finding that the model constructs do not hold across diverse national cultures. As such, this study has proposed and validated additional constructs that are not present in the original SST Intention to Use model. Specifically, in an Australian context our study confirms that the re-inclusion of SI into TAM2/TAM3 is justified, and which aligns with both original conclusions from TPB (Ajzen, 1991) and more recent findings (Chong et al., 2012; Hsu and Lin, 2008; Toh et al., 2009). Finally, this research has indirectly highlighted the importance of developing measurement scales that can be used in a global context (Cavusgil and Das, 1997; Malhotra et al., 1996). In summary, this study has furthered the understanding of technology acceptance literature by developing and validating two theoretical models that explain and predict consumers' intention towards m-banking within an Australian and Thai context.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Little is known about the adoption of mobile banking technologies in emerging Asian economies. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the motivators that influence a consumer's intentions to use mobile banking.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A web-based survey was employed to collect data from 348 respondents, split across Thailand and Australia. Data were analysed by employing exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, path and invariance analyses.\nFindings: The findings indicate that for Australian consumers, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived risk (PR) were the primary determinants of mobile banking adoption. For Thai consumers, the main factors were PU, PR and social influence. National culture was found to impact key antecedents that lead to adoption of m-banking.\nResearch limitations/implications: The actual variance explained by the study's model was higher in Australia (59.3 per cent) than for Thailand (23.8 per cent), suggesting future research of m-banking adoption in emerging Asian cultures.\nPractical implications: The authors identify the important factors consumers consider when adopting m-banking. The findings of this research give banking organisations a foundational model that can be used to support m-banking implementation.\nOriginality/value: The study is perhaps the first to examine and compare the intention to adopt m-banking across Thai and Australian consumers, and responds to calls for additional research that generalises m-banking and m-services acceptance across cultures. This study has proposed and validated additional constructs that are not present in the original SST Intention to Use model.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
"In-depth" incidental exposure: How processing difficulty and processing style affect evaluations of transparent overlay images	[ "Consumer behaviour", "Perception", "Marketing communications" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Consumers often process marketing communications appearing outside their focal point (Duff and Faber, 2011; Fang et al., 2007; Ferraro et al., 2009; Grimes, 2008; MacInnis et al., 1991; Olson and Thjomoe, 2003; Shapiro et al., 1997). For example, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal often promote subscriptions by superimposing transparent brand logos over online news headlines. The logo images appear to be closer, and the headlines appear through the transparent overlay. Consumers then encounter the same image for several weeks whenever they visit the website. Consumer psychologists call such encounters incidental exposure, indicating that consumers process images passively while most of their attention is on the primary task of reading a news article (Duff and Faber, 2011; Grimes, 2008; Meissner et al., 2016; Sauerland et al., 2012; Shapiro, 1999; Shapiro et al., 1997; Shapiro and Nielsen, 2012).\nConceptual background: Processing difficulty\nExperiment 1: The purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine whether the evaluation of transparent overlay images will depend on the difficulty of the primary task (H1). We predicted that the transparent image would be evaluated more favorably when the primary task is challenging rather than when the primary task is unchallenging. To test this idea, we transparently superimposed on the target words a series of foreign characters (Japanese Hiragana; Figure 1).\nExperiment 2: The purpose of Experiment 2 was to examine whether the inhibitory devaluation depends on whether the primary task and transparent image require similar processing modes (H2). We predicted that the overlay transparent image would be evaluated more favorably (i.e. a reduced level of devaluation) when the primary task and image elicit different processing modes than when the primary task and transparent images elicit similar processing modes. To test this idea, we used two sets of primary tasks and two sets of transparent images. For the primary tasks, we created an arrow-matching and word recognition tasks to evoke perceptual and conceptual processing, respectively. For the transparent images, we adopted abstract figures and brand logos to induce the perceptual distraction and conceptual distraction, respectively.\nExperiment 3: We conducted Experiment 3, while controlling for reaction time, to conceptually replicate Experiment 2 with a more conventional method and to extend our findings to a more extensive set of brand logos. We adopted a more conventional set of primary tasks - feature detection and semantic encoding - used by Gabrieli et al. (1996, 1998) and Walker and Hulme (1999).\nGeneral discussion: To date, studies on fluency and interference effects have been unclear regarding consumers' evaluation of transparent images that appear in front of their attentional focus - an increasingly popular marketing technique in online environments (Morrissey, 2008). The three experiments reported in this article seek to identify factors - on both task-side and image-side - that influence consumers' liking of those images. First, we show higher liking of the images when the primary task is challenging, rather than when the task is unchallenging. This finding suggests that a challenging task reinforces the fluency effect on the transparent overlay image by suppressing inhibitory devaluation that would otherwise prevail if an ample amount of cognitive resources were available for the image processing. Yet we do not have direct evidence of this notion; future research might test this explanation for the effect by asking participants whether the overlay images are actively inhibiting. In Experiment 1, we have only two levels of task difficulty, but the relationship between task difficulty and image evaluation may be nonlinear; an inverted-U relationship may occur between challenging and liking. Studies that conceptually replicate Experiment 1 with multiple levels of task difficulty will shed light on this point.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers' evaluation of non-focal overlay images appearing closer than the focal point (e.g. a transparent brand logo appearing in front of an online news article).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Three experiments identify factors on both task-side and image-side that influence consumers' liking of non-focal overlay images.\nFindings: The findings show that study participants evaluate the non-focal overlay image more favorably when they are engaged in a primary task that is challenging rather than unchallenging, and when the primary task and the non-focal overlay images require different processing modes (e.g. a conceptual primary task paired with a perceptual image) rather than similar processing modes (e.g. a conceptual primary task paired with a conceptual image).\nResearch limitations/implications: A caveat is that Experiment 1 lacked a baseline condition. Another limitation is that we conducted all three experiments in a controlled laboratory environment, without real-world marketing stimuli. Therefore, further research should be conducted in a field setting to validate how extensively our theoretical insights apply to real-world marketing contexts. Future research may replicate the findings on various platforms such as YouTube and The Wall Street Journal to provide immediate, readily applicable suggestions to online marketers.\nPractical implications: The current research provides marketers with a framework for identifying optimal vehicles for the marketing message. Transparent overlay ads can bolster or damage later evaluations of the advertised objects. Online marketers, in their desire to persuade consumers to perceive products positively, must consider what types of activities consumers are pursuing at a target website, what kinds of activities the website promotes and how meaningful are the images.\nOriginality/value: The current work extends to the work on fluency effects and persuasion knowledge model, both of which have typically shown that subtle exposure to marketing communications positively affects subsequent judgments about products and brands. The findings extend this line of evidence by demonstrating that marketing communications may exert even greater influence when the primary task requires greater cognitive processing.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Development of sustainability indicator scoring (SIS) for the food supply chain	[ "Benchmarking", "Framework", "Supply chain", "Sustainability", "Supply", "Food" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Sustainability has been defined in many ways, but can be described as offering, the potential for reducing long-term risks associated with resource depletion, fluctuations in energy costs, product liabilities, and pollution and waste management (Shrivastava, 1995). Another widely accepted definition of sustainability is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This was derived from the Brundtland Commission statement in Our Common Future (World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 1987). Sustainability has also been postulated as the capacity of a system to maintain output at a level approximately equal to or greater than its historical average, with the approximation determined by the historical level of variability (Lynam and Herdt, 1989). Sustainability represents neither a fixed set of practices or technologies, nor a model to describe or impose on the world (Pretty, 1994). Sustainability should therefore first be determined at the highest system level and then proceeds downwards; in the understanding that the sustainability of a system is not necessarily dependent on the sustainability of all its sub-systems (Lynam and Herdt, 1989). Translating this argument to the supply chain level suggests that overall supply chain sustainability is not dependent on every sub-system within that food supply chain being autonomously and individually sustainable. Therefore, supply chain sustainability reflects the sum of the whole, i.e. the capacity of the system rather than all activities having mitigated long-term sustainability risk.\n2. Sustainable products: Sustainable products can be said to generate greater positive or instead lower negative social, environmental and economic impact along the value supply chain than conventional products leading to an active differentiation (Borregaard and Dufey, 2005). This differentiation between commodity and niche products is influenced by the degree of capital investment in developing extrinsic product quality attributes. Product social capital in this case is the trust-based resources associated with a food product that multiply in social networks leading to co-operation among individuals, and collaboration between institutions and community organisations (Muthuri et al., 2006). The challenge for food supply chains and individual businesses within them is to demonstrate quantitatively the value of such social capital for an extended network of stakeholders including governments, non-governmental organisations, shareholders and the general public themselves. As a business driver, it could be argued, maintaining shareholder value is as powerful a force as the requirement for organisations to supply food to the ultimate consumer that is safe, affordable and legally compliant (Manning, 2015). Thus some sustainability indicators and frameworks may be developed primarily in order to mitigate shareholder risk.\n3. Benchmarking mechanisms for sustainability assessment: Giving consideration to the primary, or pre-farm gate, stage of production, Halberg et al. (2005) argued for operational benchmarking that focused on identifying best practice, understanding the reasons for differences between farms and then setting goals that improve operational practice. The UK policy commission report on the future of farming and food (Curry, 2002), as did Ronan and Cleary (2000), highlighted benchmarking at an operational level as a mechanism for identifying how a business is operating compared to others in the same sector. Ronan and Cleary (2000) suggested that comparative farm business analysis was based on aggregate measures of whole farm physical and financial performance, such as yield, efficiency, gross margins and farm profit and that this was a different process to activity based or enterprise benchmarking. They determined that the challenges for implementing benchmarking in the agricultural sector included: professional and industry accreditation of sound benchmarking systems; ensuring appropriate context for farmers' use of benchmarking vis-a-vis complementary to production economic and other financial analyses; achieving greater consistency between different industry systems; lifting participation by farmers in sound industry programmes; and evaluating the impact of benchmarking programmes on their ability to actually improve farm business performance. These factors also influence how to benchmark effectively at secondary and tertiary supply chain levels too. There are a number of reasons for the lack of mechanisms to measure performance across supply chains (Table I). These include but are not limited to lack of understanding, geographical and cultural differences, differing organisational goals and objectives and a lack of cohesion between information systems in the supply chain. Andersen and Pettersen (1994) developed three categories of benchmarking namely internal, competitive and generic, (the latter two both being external types). Bendell et al. (1993) defined four types, which have been extended using additional literature sources (Table II).\n4. Development of sustainability indicators: The purpose of indicators is to simplify real life complex measurements or simulations by models (Girardin et al., 1999). The use of indicators to assess sustainability in primary production has been proposed (Hansen, 1996; Bockstaller et al., 1997; Rigby et al., 2001) as well as methods to construct and assess sustainability indicators (Mitchell et al., 1995; Hak et al., 2012). Bell and Morse (2003) stated that sustainability indicators must be: specific (outcome bound); quantitative (measureable): usable (of practical value); available (data easily collated); cost-effective (not expensive to collect); and sensitive (demonstrate changes in circumstances). This does not preclude the use of qualitative indicators, but by their nature qualitative indications do not drive business performance and continuous improvement. Further, Bell and Morse (2003) differentiated between developing an absolute target for compliance and a target that is implemented that defines the direction of travel and thus drives continuous improvement. In the agricultural context, a sustainability target could be an indicator of best practice, e.g. an absolute level of pollutant such as nitrate levels per litre of fresh water or a series of \"milestones\" designating a need for movement as improvements are achieved, e.g. climate change levy milestones. These criteria may be defined by legislation therefore compliance is mandatory or private market standards whereby compliance affords market entry or maintenance of position within a market or designated supply chain. Therefore, a sustainability target may be developed to deliver a short-term or a long-term goal. This distinction is critical in the understanding of how sustainability indicators are developed and implemented in a food supply chain situation. Bourlakis et al. (2014) differentiate between four supply chain sustainability indicators (efficiency, flexibility, responsiveness and product quality). Measurable indicators such as key performance indicators (KPI) can assist an organisation to demonstrate the implementation of public policy and organisational strategy and identify actual performance against defined sustainable development or corporate social responsibility (CSR) targets. Specific indicators can demonstrate the degree to which the food system is resilient, profitable and competitive (Defra, 2010). These are strategic indicators and directed at the supply chain in its entirety rather than just primary production with pre-farm gate sustainability indicators and desired outcomes (Table III) and post-farm gate and fishing (Table IV). These indicators have been grouped in the synthesis of the literature into four capital groups: financial and physical capital indicators (traditionally reported on the balance sheet), human capital indicators, natural capital indicators and social capital indicators. Although examples for financial and physical indicators are determined in Table III, in Table IV these are not identified because they have not been explicitly derived. Indeed the main influence on these factors post-farm gate is market drivers and constraints such as supply and demand and the type of market accessed by the primary producers. The financial sustainability indicators (Table III) that are suggested in the report include gross value added per person, total productivity factor and total liabilities as a percentage of total assets. Resource management sustainability indicators suggested by Defra (2010) include water source and irrigation, water usage, diffuse pollution such as leaching of nitrate, phosphorous and crop protection products into water bodies, agriculture's contribution to ammonia emissions and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, soil quality, energy use and reducing of waste and GHG emissions, reducing waste. Social sustainability indicators proposed by the report included accessibility and affordability, diet and consumer confidence, traceability of food through the development of assurance systems, management of food-borne disease, control of animal disease and promotion of animal welfare, support for biodiversity and habitat management, investment in training, knowledge and innovation. These themes in terms of financial, resource and social indicators are mirrored in the design of multinational corporation (MNC) annual reports and CSR strategy documents and are used to address sustainability in its wider sense. Therefore it could be argued that such MNCs are often acting in a quasi-governmental role, through setting supply chain standards over and above minimum legislation, in their custodianship of many of the factors that impact on food supply chain sustainability. This could allow a national government to step back in their regulatory role and allow the market to influence the drive for sustainability in food production rather than through social responsibility lying with the regulators themselves.\n5. Development of a framework incorporating SIS: A sustainability indicator framework can be used at both an operational or a strategic level to provide organisational, supply chain and overarching policy measures that define goals and objectives that are measureable, i.e. quantitative. Yakovleva et al. (2010) suggested the possibilities of expanding the application of their framework. Consideration of this and other extant literature described in this paper has led to the development of a simplified conceptual framework using SIS. There are a myriad of SIS systems using mathematical or statistical exercises, or weighting of parameters giving one indicator more significance than another that allow for comparison between entities (organisations, communities) and afford the ability to have comparable information (Taylor, 2012). Differences in weighting complexity include using statistical models, adopting participatory methods and assigning equal weights to the indicators (Kondyli, 2010 cited by Taylor, 2012). The definition of sustainability as highlighted by WCED (1987) takes into consideration the needs of future generations. Hence, it is apt that sustainability can be divided into two components: meeting current needs (current status) and ability to meet future needs (future status).\n6. Conclusion: Significant focus has been placed at national policy level, supply chain and individual business on developing, implementing and meeting sustainability goals such as improving food safety, people and animal welfare, and reducing environmental impact. Market influences have also embedded social requirements into quality assurance standards. The challenge for developing sustainability metrics is to seek to bolster organisational performance and this paper proposes the use of metrics that assess the levels of financial return, efficiency, flexibility, product safety and environmental impact. The development of metrics is a highly sophisticated approach and needs to be given great consideration in order to ensure that the activity provides information that is of value and can underpin both strategic objectives and operational activity.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify mechanisms for using a quantitative benchmarking approach to drive sustainability improvements in the food supply chain.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A literature review was undertaken and then a strategic and operational framework developed for improving food supply chain sustainability in terms of triple bottom line criteria.\nFindings: Using a sustainability indicator scoring approach, the paper considers the architecture for analysis so that strategic goals can be clearly formulated and cascade into specific, relevant and timebound strategic and operational measures that underpin brand value and product integrity.\nOriginality/value: This paper is of value to academics and also practitioners in the food industry.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Human capital development: Problems when employing migrant workers	[ "Human capital", "Social capital", "Rural migrant workers", "China" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Since 1983 state -owned enterprises (SOEs) in China have been encouraged to become more competitive with managers rewarded for developing strategies to increase profits and through the adoption of Western human resource management (HRM) techniques which augment their autonomy and liability. In 2013 the Guangdong provincial government introduced further changes to establish a professional management system, putting in place market-oriented HRM and distribution and incentive control systems. This intensified the goal of increased productivity and provided incentives for management and human capital (HC) development as part of good HRM practice. However, decisions and actions by managers to act in the interests of the SOEs can be an issue when migrant workers are employed leading to a principal-agency problem. Strategies put in place by management to increase productivity clash with the ways rural migrant workers rely on social capital (SC) to resist some aspects of the labor process.\nHuman capital and social capital: HC is viewed as the economic value of a worker's experience, knowledge and skills which companies can develop and invest in to achieve the strategic goals of the organization. SC is concerned with the links, shared values and understandings within social and cultural environments and the way in which these social networks enable individuals and groups to trust each other and work cooperatively. Research has demonstrated the positive effects of different types of capital on employee well-being however, negative effects relating to rural migrant workers have been identified where HC and SC, including kinship networks, have not enhanced job satisfaction or salaries.\nThe relationship between human capital, social capital and management styles as experienced by rural migrant workers: The data collected is analyzed in terms of organization and management, recruitment, pay and performance, participation and performance and motivation.\nPractical implications: The study's findings suggest that similar qualitative research can usefully be undertaken in different work environments. In addition, the relationship between HC and SC could be examined in the growing service industry in China with a focus on the negative effects as well as the positivist framework in which it is usually considered.\nCommentary: The review is based on \"Problems of human capital development when employing migrant workers\" by Sha and Taylor (2019), published in Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management. The purpose of this study is to examine the regulation of human capital of rural migrant workers considering how they develop and mobilize their (SC) and how this interacts with strategies to increase productivity implemented by managers. The results suggest that migrant workers do not view their HC as being valued by the company. Therefore, to maximize pay and minimalize penalties, they work with the system by meeting performance targets and against it by restricting work effort developing SC that challenges management . It is suggested that similar qualitative research can be usefully undertaken in different work environments and the relationship between HC and SC examined in the growing service industry in China focusing on the negative effects as well as the positivist framework in which it is usually considered. This paper has an original approach by considering HC and SC in terms of tensions and counteracting forces as opposed to a the more typical positive framework in which they are considered in terms of contributions to profits.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the regulation of human capital of rural migrant workers considering how they develop and mobilize their (SC) and how this interacts with strategies to increase productivity implemented by managers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Ethnographic research was carried out in ten petrol stations located in Zhejiang Province, Southeast China, which are part of one of China's state owned oil conglomerates. Semi-structured interviews took place alongside background information questionnaires, observations and participant observations at forecourts.\nFindings: The results suggest that migrant workers do not view their HC as being valued by the company. Therefore, to maximize pay and minimalize penalties, they work with the system by meeting performance targets and against it by restricting work effort developing SC that challenges management .\nPractical implications: Similar qualitative research can be usefully undertaken in different work environments and the relationship between HC and SC examined in the growing service industry in China focusing on the negative effects as well as the positivist framework in which it is usually considered.\nOriginality/value: This paper has an original approach by considering HC and SC in terms of tensions and counteracting forces as opposed to a the more typical positive framework in which they are considered in terms of contributions to profits.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Fighting African conflicts and crimes: which governance tools matter?	[ "Africa", "Security", "Governance", "Conflicts", "Crimes" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Crime substantially undermines African development by, inter alia, eroding social and human capital, infringing on social and political stability and driving-up the cost of doing business. Since time immemorial, governments have been expected to improve the quality of life and well-being of their citizens by protecting the lives and property of these citizens from crime and conflicts. Accordingly, a sustainable macroeconomic growth path as a means of meeting the above ends could be seriously stifled by poor government quality, especially corruption (Mauro, 1995). This has led to a recent strand of studies focussing on the fundamental relationship between government quality and well-being (Helliwell and Huang, 2008; Ott, 2010; Yamamura et al., 2012).\n2. Globalization, crimes, conflicts, governance and development: 2.1. Globalization, conflicts and crimes\n3. Data and methodology: 3.1. Data\n4. Empirical analysis: 4.1. Presentation of results\n5. Conclusion: Crimes and conflicts are seriously undermining African development. This paper has assessed the best governance tools in the fight against the scourges. The following findings have been established. First, democracy, autocracy and voice and accountability have no significant negative correlations with crime. Second, the increasing relevance of government quality in the fight is as follows: regulation quality, government effectiveness, political stability, rule of law and corruption-control. Finally, corruption-control is the most effective mechanism in fighting crime (conflicts). The findings are significantly strong when controlling for age dependency, number of police (and security) officers, per capita economic prosperity, educational level and population density.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Crimes and conflicts are seriously undermining African development. The purpose of this paper is to assess the best governance tools in the fight against the scourges.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors assess a sample of 38 African countries. Owing to the cross-sectional structure of the data set, the authors adopt a heteroscedasticity consistent ordinary least squares estimation technique. For further robustness purposes, the authors employ Ramsey's regression equation specification error test.\nFindings: The following findings are established. First, democracy, autocracy and voice and accountability have no significant negative correlations with crime. Second, the increasing relevance of government quality in the fight is as follows: regulation quality, government effectiveness, political stability, rule of law and corruption-control. Third, corruption-control is the most effective mechanism in fighting crime (conflicts).\nPractical implications: The findings are significantly strong when controlling for age dependency, number of police (and security) officers, per capita economic prosperity, educational level and population density. Justifications for the edge of corruption-control (as the most effective governance tool) and policy implications are discussed.\nOriginality/value: The study is timely given the political instability, wars and conflicts currently marring African development.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Economic inequality: problems and perspectives for interdisciplinary accounting research	[ "Inequality", "Interdisciplinary accounting", "Disclosure", "Critical accounting", "Accounting ethics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This paper aims to stimulate and advance interdisciplinary accounting research into economic inequality. By economic inequality, we refer to disparities in how income or wealth is distributed within or between nations (Milanovic, 2016; Wesley and Peterson, 2017). So defined, economic inequality is both narrower and broader than other types of inequity prior accounting research explores, such as gender and racial inequality (Carnegie and Lehman, 2012; Kyriakidou et al., 2016), the experiences of accountants with disabilities (Duff and Ferguson, 2011; Ladva, 2012) and the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender accountants (Egan, 2018; Unerman, 2018). Economic inequality is narrower because income and wealth is just one dimension of inequality. Therborn (2013) distinguishes economic inequality from \"existential inequalities\", like racial or gender prejudice, that persist even when income and wealth are equal. Economic inequity is also broader than these other inequities, however, because where existential inequalities foreground diversity, economic inequality can cut across otherwise heterogeneous persons or groups. For example, the mantra of the Occupy Wall Street movement - \"we are the 99%\" - highlights what an otherwise diverse majority has in common; namely, being denied the spoils of economic growth.\n2. Existing interdisciplinary research on accounting for inequality: In this section we review the nascent interdisciplinary accounting literature on economic inequality and highlight contributions of two new articles in this issue. We find existing literature recognises economic inequality is important, but is missing substantive research commensurate with this recognition. Parker (2008, p. 911) documents a \"strident rage against inequity\" in prior interdisciplinary accounting research, and numerous articles reference economic inequality as an injustice with which accountants ought to be concerned. For example, Lehman (2001, p. 718) writes that \"debates concerning social and environmental accounting impact on the fundamental problem of inequity in liberal-capitalist societies\". Dillard and Vinnari's (2017) review of 25 years of critical accounting research highlights its focus on \"inequality and injustices\" (p. 88). Boyce (2002, p. 591) cites Gonzalez's (1982) view of liberal education as \"a gigantic inculcator of capitalism's ideological core: individualism and acceptance of the naturalness of inequality\", and calls on critical accountants to oppose this ideology.\n3. Interdisciplinary topics and new issues for accounting scholars: We now draw on other disciplines to consider further avenues for accounting research into economic inequality. Our discussion is not exhaustive. Rather, we highlight broader debates with which accounting scholars might productively engage.\n4. Four research frameworks for accounting for economic inequality: In this section we outline four research perspectives that could motivate and frame research into the topics identified above; namely: critical Marxian or post-Marxian (Section 4.1); ethics (Section 4.2); advocacy (Section 4.3) and disclosure studies (Section 4.4). These perspectives are indicative rather than exhaustive, and invariably reflect our judgements. Given our paper is motivated in part by civil society concerns over the growth of economic inequality, we particularly focus on research perspectives orientated towards social change. Fleischman and Radcliffe (2005) remind us to not simply reproduce theories of past \"giants\", but rather \"that we [should] add to them with revelations of our own\" (p. 67). Hence, we present these perspectives as places from which to start, rather than as a final word.\n5. Conclusion: Our paper aimed to advance accounting research into economic inequality. Our review of prior research found a long history of concern about inequality in interdisciplinary accounting, but relatively little substantive research. This gap is puzzling given the emancipatory agenda of many interdisciplinary accounting researchers, especially when prior studies consider facets of inequality, such as gender inequity, in some depth. This is also despite economic inequality intersecting with core accounting issues, and the growing emphasis on economic inequality in other disciplines, institutions and in civil society.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to encourage and advance interdisciplinary accounting research on economic inequality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors review prior research into economic inequality, including two new papers in this issue, to identify topics where economic inequality and accounting research intersect. The authors then draw on prior accounting research to identify frameworks accounting scholars already use apposite to analysing these topics.\nFindings: Economic inequality cuts across major accounting topics, including measurement, reporting and tax. Inequality also bears on an influential agenda in interdisciplinary accounting research to hold corporations and states accountable for their impacts. Four prior research frameworks accounting scholars might apply to this agenda are: critical Marxian or post-Marxian; accounting ethics; advocacy; and disclosure studies.\nSocial implications: A growing body of social scientific research, as well as influential global institutions, social movements and political debates, raise concerns over inequitable global distributions of wealth and income. The authors explore ways accounting scholars can help redress these inequities.\nOriginality/value: While economic inequality affects billions of people, accounting scholarship is yet to give these inequities the attention their scale and social impact merits. The authors suggest ways accounting researchers can make substantive contributions to addressing this issue.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Consumption strategies and motivations of Chinese consumers: The case of UK sustainable luxury fashion	[ "UK", "Sustainability", "Chinese consumers", "Motivators", "Consumer typology", "Luxury fashion" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This exploratory research contributes to knowledge by extending McDonald et al.'s (2006, 2012) consumer typology of \"translators, exceptors, selectors\" and adding a further dimension of \"indulgers\", based on qualitative research undertaken. This typology has been chosen for its prominence and applicability within a variety of different product categories, as well as its applicability to a more service-oriented industry: tourism in Australia (Bergin-Seers and Mair, 2009). The typology allows us to frame consumers in accordance with their ability to identify and relate to sustainability and provides an opportunity for further investigation (McDonald et al., 2016) on whether it is transferable to Chinese consumers purchasing luxury products. We focus on Chinese consumers and their attitudes towards sustainability in the luxury fashion industry - a consumer group that should be investigated further (Kapferer and Michaut-Denizeau, 2014). Additionally, we explore key motivational drivers of this consumer group to purchasing and/or considering \"sustainability\" in luxury products, by focussing on Chinese consumers' purchase experiences. The context of this study was chosen purposefully, as by 2020 Chinese middle-class consumers will account for PS1.16 trillion in incremental spending in China whilst at the same time make up 76 per cent of China's urban population by 2022 (Iskyan, 2016; Kuo, 2016) and are thus becoming an increasingly interesting target group to research. (The) Economist (2016) further highlights that the majority of China's middle class is under 35 years of age and likely to have a higher education degree, characteristics we come back to in the methodology section. Further, Chinese consumers - in more general terms - account for one-third of global luxury sales (Hancock, 2017), which equates to 46 per cent of the global luxury products being bought by this consumer group (Financiero, 2016). Political uncertainty, such as Brexit, have made the UK luxury fashion market a \"go-to\" destination for Chinese consumers wanting to purchase luxury items, due to the devaluation of the PS (Deloitte, 2016; McClean, 2016).\nSustainability and luxury fashion - and its meaning: Sustainability is a fuzzy concept that is often intuitively understood, yet a commonly accepted definition is lacking. It is concerned with environmental, social, and economic aspects and seeks to meet the needs of the current generation, without holding back future ones to fulfil their needs (WCED, 1987). Sustainability in the fashion industry is not a new phenomenon, but rather has seen various waves throughout the past decades, such as anti-fur campaigns, the use of more environmental-friendly materials and less toxins in the manufacturing process, as well as the demand for social responsibility across the entirety of the supply chain and more transparency (Joy et al., 2012; Achabou and Dekhili, 2013; Henninger et al., 2015, 2016, 2017). The latter has received renewed interest in recent years through the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, which witnessed more than 1,000 deaths and many more injured (Parveen, 2014). Organisations, such as Fashion Revolution (2017a), have kept the spotlight on this tragedy by initiating the \"#WhoMadeMyClothes\" campaign that calls for more transparency across the supply chain. At the same time, Fashion Revolution (2017b) draws upon environmental issues in the industry, which were visualised in their True Cost movie, thereby demonstrating that the fashion landscape needs to change. Although progress has been made, the fashion industry remains the second most polluting industry after the oil industry (Gunther, 2016; Remy et al., 2016).\nSustainability in luxury fashion - an idiosyncrasy or reality?: Luxury fashion, as defined in this research (De Barnier et al., 2012) links to sustainability in that their production cycle is slower and smaller batch sizes are produced - compared to High Street collections (e.g. H&M, Primark). In this sense, it could be argued that the overall environmental impact of luxury fashion retailers favours sustainability, yet luxury fashion products often contain questionable raw materials, such as fur, exotic animal leathers, or diamonds, which are both associated with negative social and environmental impacts (e.g. Carmignani and Zammori, 2015; Henninger et al., 2016).\nLuxury fashion purchase motivators: With twofold intentions towards sustainability in luxury fashion, it is important to explore what the underlying motivations are that influence consumer choice purchasing luxury fashion for future strategic development. Ehrnrooth and Gronroos (2013) indicate that consumption is no longer about simply fulfilling ones needs, but rather consumers increasingly create an identity and lifestyle for themselves through consuming luxury goods. A majority of people purchase luxury fashion for its symbolic meaning as an expression of their personality. Tsai (2005) concurs with Ehrnrooth and Gronroos (2013) and identifies four types of consumer intentions to purchasing luxury garments specific to Eastern cultures and luxury consumption: hedonism, self-gift giving, self-identity, and quality assurance, which further complement the seven characteristics of luxury products brought forward by De Barnier et al. (2012). Four underlying motivational factors can influence a consumer's decision-making process to purchasing luxury fashion (Table I).\nTranslators, exceptors, selectors: The previous sections have indicated that the luxury fashion market has seen dramatic changes in its landscape, with sustainability emerging as a trend that fashion retailers can capitalise on (Joy et al., 2012; Henninger et al., 2017). This implies that consumer behaviour and consumption patterns are changing, with growing numbers of consumers seeking more sustainable products. This highlights a key challenge for marketers in terms of identifying these consumer groups and potentially re-positioning products. McDonald et al. (2012) in their research identified three consumer \"types\" and their behaviours towards sustainability. Table II provides an overview of their developed typology.\nMethodology: This research is exploratory in nature as it seeks to understand Chinese consumers and their attitudes towards sustainability in the luxury fashion industry, as well as their motivational drivers to purchase (sustainable) luxury fashion. Extant research (De Barnier et al., 2012; Kapferer and Michaut-Denizeau, 2014, 2015) has predominantly been quantitative and with Western consumers in the Western hemisphere. Yet, research on Asian consumers in a Western market remains limited (Chen and Kim, 2013; Siu et al., 2016), which justifies a qualitative enquiry.\nFindings and discussion: Sustainability and luxury fashion\nConclusion: Our study indicates that Chinese consumers maintain high levels of sustainability awareness. Interestingly consumers did not only highlight environmental and social aspects of sustainability, as referred to in the literature (Henninger et al., 2016), but also suggested that sustainability incorporates well-being. This aspect is novel, in that it does not form part of social aspects of sustainability. It could further be added as an eighth characteristic of what luxury is (De Barnier et al., 2012), as it links to the self-concept and further portrays an emotional response to luxury fashion.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore Chinese consumers' motivations to purchase luxury fashion products in the UK and how far sustainability plays a role in the decision-making process, by extending the consumer typology of translators, exceptors, selectors. The authors further add an additional dimension to defining \"luxury\".\nDesign/methodology/approach: An exploratory design utilising multiple qualitative research tools (semi-structured interviews, focus groups) provides the basis for this research. A grounded analysis was applied.\nFindings: Findings map motivational drivers to purchasing luxury products and establish a fourth consumer type \"indulgers\". Well-being further emerged as a key characteristic that defines \"luxury\".\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample size is limited to Chinese consumers purchasing luxury fashion in the UK, and thus may not be generalised.\nPractical implications: This research helps managers to understand the consumer types and underlying motivations of Chinese consumers purchasing luxury fashion in the UK. As one of the largest target groups, this research informs managers on how to further capitalise on this market.\nOriginality/value: This paper creates a new consumer typology that not only categorises consumers according to their consumption aspects, but further identifies their underlying motivations to do so.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Ethics of blockchain: A framework of technology, applications, impacts, and research directions	[ "Ethics", "Information society", "Decentralization", "Discourse ethics", "Blockchain", "Cryptocurrency", "Disruptive technology", "Peer-to-peer network/file sharing", "Society and ethics", "Emerging technology" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Blockchain first started as the underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT) of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (Nakamoto, 2008). Nonetheless, it is dramatically expanding beyond the financial industry into other domains of the society (Swan, 2015; Underwood, 2016; Rauchs et al., 2018; UN, 2018). Technically, blockchain is defined as a system of \"distributed digital ledgers of cryptographically signed transactions grouped into blocks\" (p. 1) (Yaga et al., 2018). At a higher level, blockchain is a trustless computing infrastructure for large-scale applications that have the potentials to solve fundamental trust issues and allows financial transactions without intermediaries. As revolutionary as the internet and artificial intelligence, blockchain enables disruptive innovations in technology, business models and social governance. Blockchain is also seen as one of the frontier technologies for global sustainable development by the United Nations (UN, 2018).\n2. Research background: Blockchain originated less than a decade ago as the DLT that supports bitcoin (Nakamoto, 2008). By creating a trustless environment, blockchain allows stable, robust, algorithm-ensured data storage and transaction authorization, as well as autonomous processing. Similar to the case of computer ethics (Moor, 1985), understanding of the basic technical concepts is needed for a clear understanding of the ethics of blockchain. The following section presents the central concepts underlying the blockchain technology.\n3. A conceptual framework for blockchain ethics: A framework of blockchain ethics is presented in Figure 4. Since blockchain is developing dramatically, it is impractical to list all its continuously evolving ethical issues. This framework instead provides a concise map for a systematic investigation of major issues. The following three levels of blockchain impacts and their ethical issues are presented. First, technology stack: the underlying DLT stack is the foundation of any blockchain implementation and application. The ethical issues of the technology stack exist within the technological domain. Second, applications: different applications raise distinct ethical challenges. We illustrate such application-idiosyncratic challenges by discussing cryptocurrencies, smart contracts (autonomously executable programs that enable automatic transaction and information processing), and business transformation. Third, institutions and society: a major potential consequence of blockchain to instructions and society is decentralization, although the concept of decentralization is more general than blockchain - which is only a specific implementation of distributed ledger technology. Broader and deeper ethical issues arise from the potential impact of decentralization on institutions and the society.\n4. Implications: Proposed directions for academic research\n5. Conclusions: This paper develops a conceptual framework to structure the study of the ethics of blockchain into three major levels: micro-level (blockchain technology stack), meso-level (blockchain applications) and macro-level (blockchain implications for institutions and society). The fundamental concepts and major ethical impacts are analyzed in detail for each feature. Given the enormous importance of blockchain decentralization, common misunderstandings around it and its ethical consequences to governance, the economy and society are discussed. Finally, potential directions for future IS research on the ethics of blockchain are identified and new understanding, technology, application, regulation (UTAR) principles for the ethical adoption of blockchain are proposed.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is fourfold: first, to provide the first systematic study on the ethics of blockchain, mapping its main socio-technical challenges in technology and applications; second, to identify ethical issues of blockchain; third, to propose a conceptual framework of blockchain ethics study; fourth, to discuss ethical issues for stakeholders.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper employs literature research, research agenda and framework development.\nFindings: Ethics of blockchain and its applications is essential for technology adoption. There is a void of research on blockchain ethics. The authors propose a first theoretical framework of blockchain ethics. Research agenda is proposed for future search. Finally, the authors recommend measures for stakeholders to facilitate the ethical adequacy of blockchain implementations and future Information Systems (IS) research directions. This research raises timely awareness and stimulates further debate on the ethics of blockchain in the IS community.\nOriginality/value: First, this work provides timely systematic research on blockchain ethics. Second, the authors propose the first research framework of blockchain ethics. Third, the authors identify key research questions of blockchain ethics. Fourth, this study contributes to the understanding of blockchain technology and its societal impacts.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Perceptions of Taylorism and a Marxist scientific manager	[ "Management history", "History – USA", "Qualitative research", "Scientific management", "Walter Polakov" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the past quarter century or more, a strong evidence-based assault has been made on the negative portrayals of Taylorism or scientific management by scholars. Nevertheless, many modern writers and scholars continue to assume many of the old assumptions of an anti-worker, control-oriented scientific management. Even within the scholarly discipline of management history, there are varied and competing perspectives about what Taylorism is and was, as is evident from articles in the Journal of Management History (JMH). Yet, far from being a haven for exploitative, managerialist activists, and there is little evidence of that in the Taylor Society, those who formed the foundation organisation of early scientific managers, were rather more plural in their perspectives, and, concomitantly, thoughtful and questioning of their discipline and craft. Many of those early Taylorists who knew or had worked with Frederick Winslow Taylor were engineers and academics who eschewed pro-business ideologies for a commitment, not only to the philosophies of Taylorism and to improving total factor productivity but also to the rights and needs of employees. Indeed, the Taylor Society in the 1910s and 1920s appears to have been a haven for idealists and pro-employee practitioners (van Kleeck, 1936, pp. 287-311; Trombley, 1954, pp. 6-14; Nyland, 1998; Schachter, 1989). Frederick Winslow Taylor's close long-term associates participated in the Taylor Society, many well into the 1920s, including Carl Barth, Morris Llewellyn Cooke and Henry Laurence Gantt (Manning, 1943; Trombley, 1954; Alford, 1934, Copley, 1969). For these early twentieth-century Taylorists, it was unremarkable that one of their fellow scientific managers, Walter Polakov, was a staunch Marxist. It is thus worth exploring the extent to which the Taylor Society recognised and accepted Polakov, and the extent to which he adhered to his Marxism while being committed to the principles of Taylorism. These findings will throw further light on the nature of Taylorism in the early decades of the twentieth century.\nScientific management: definition and context[1]: Many textbooks and scholarly research publications in management and sociology assume that scientific management or Taylorism was deeply flawed, or indeed the quintessential fount of anti-workerism. In such publications, Taylorism is portrayed as simply being, or depending on, forms of job fragmentation and time and motion study. In turn, such techniques are shown to enable employers and their management to increase their control over work and workers, especially through deskilling and degrading work[2]. It is through such \"black-box\" reductionism that the assumptions of anti-worker motivation and managerial exploitation are upheld.\nBehind the negative perceptions: Yet, such assumptions or ideologies were scarcely the case with the Taylor Society members of the 1910s and 1920s. Rather, the negative unquestioning approaches to the philosophies of scientific management noted above have been re-evaluated in recent decades as Taylorism has been revisited by numerous scholars who have investigated scientific management unencumbered by these kinds of value-laden a priori assumptions (Schachter, 1989; Nelson, 1992; Nyland, 1989, 1996, 1998; Nyland and Bruce, 2012; Bruce, 2015). Drawing most notably on the original material of the scientific managers in the Taylor Society[4], these later scholars have shown that the Taylorists can be marked off from what they called the \"stunt peddlers\", who invoked scientific management without any commitment to the Taylorist philosophy. Moreover, close analysis of Taylor Society records, including the BTS and the writings of Taylorists such as Morris Cooke and Harlow Person, highlights just how pluralistic was the Taylor Society of the 1910s and 1920s, and how very different those committed Taylorists were from the kinds of capitalists particularly favoured by the movement's detractors and the textbook writers in business, history and social sciences.\nWalter Polakov: Taylorist: Walter Nicholas Polakov, a Russian immigrant to the USA, was educated around the turn of the twentieth century in Dresden, at the same time as Rosa Luxemburg was editing the SPD journal Sachsiche Arbeiter zeitung amidst the Revisionist controversy (Nettl, 1969; Ettinger, 1987). Polakov's personal papers are untraceable, but given that he often quoted Luxembourg and like-minded fellow revolutionist, August Bebel, it seems possible that Polakov was aware of Luxemburg when he was an engineering student in Dresden. After graduation, Polakov returned to Russia and possibly undertook some postgraduate study in industrial hygiene in Moscow. He was working at Tula Locomotive Works around the time of the 1905 Revolution. He arrived in the USA in December 1906 with his wife Anna and set about learning English, a language over which he had considerable command within five years. Even by 1908 or 1909, he had published his first engineering article and was employed as an engineer by Harrington Emerson, a well-known efficiency engineer with whom Polakov maintained close contact until Emerson's unexpected death in 1931 (Polakov and Russell, 1909; Emerson Polakov, 20 January, 1931). By 1911, Polakov was able to publish a significant series of articles on power plant management in a major engineering journal. These reveal considerable facility with written English and a deep commitment to scientific management (Polakov, 1911). At the same time, Polakov obtained work as an engineer with the American Locomotive Company, where he met Henry Laurence Gantt, whose devoted follower he remained for the rest of his life (Alford, 1934; Elsner, 1967; Polakov, 1921b, 1931, 1933; Wren, 1976a, 1976b; Kodish, 2011, pp. 148-152ff).\nPolakov as a socialist scientific manager: It was the same with Polakov's participation in Taylor Society debates. It was in these rich and lively discussions that Polakov offered his first recorded comments to the Society in December 1916. These are worth quoting, as they demonstrate the inextricability for Polakov of his commitments to both scientific management and socialism, albeit in a somewhat primitive form. In it, Polakov was responding to Robert Valentine's 1916 paper on collective bargaining, \"The Progressive Relation Between Efficiency and Consent\" to the Taylor Society,\nConclusion: This paper has sought to demonstrate that the marriage of scientific management and socialism such as that expressed and practised by Walter Polakov can be acknowledged as an accepted normal part of Taylorism, at least before the 1940s. Given that is the case, then ideas that early Taylorism was anti-worker and management control-oriented also need reconsideration. The paper began by evaluating the assertions and arguments of scholars and analysts who have continued to uphold that scientific management is in essence authoritarian, anti-worker, controlling and demeaning of workers. The paper began with a brief overview of the negative elements underpinning those perceptions and portrayals and considered the more mixed but still contesting interpretations to be found in the JMH in the past decade. This was followed by an exploration of the evident attributes and perspectives of the early Taylorists, those consulting engineers and managers who often knew or had worked with Taylor or had respected the ideas behind Taylor's philosophy. The paper then surveyed the ideas and work of Walter Polakov as a Taylorist and as a Marxist.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to provide evidence of pro-worker orientation and acceptance of socialist idealism in scientific management, with particular focus on Walter Polakov.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A range of original texts have been examined to identify the ideas expressed or accepted by the early scientific managers. These include Bulletin of the Taylor Society and the early publications of the socialist engineer and scientific manager Walter Polakov.\nFindings: This paper shows how an avowed socialist is outspoken but unremarkable for the members of the Taylor Society in the 1910s and 1920s, contrary to the views expressed in textbooks and other histories which assert a deep antiworker bias in scientific management.\nResearch limitations/implications: This is limited to a historical analysis of the role and extent of involvement of the Marxist engineer Walter Polakov in the US scientific management movement in the 1910s and 1920s.\nOriginality/value: This paper offers insights into the workings of the Taylor Society using a biographical approach. In so doing, it demonstrates, in a new way, the verity of claims that the original proponents of scientific management were not authoritarian or anti-worker in their views or ideals, but, rather, open to progressive and socialist ideals.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
On the operation and maintenance practices of wind power asset: A status review and observations	[ "Wind power", "Asset management", "Energy sources", "Operation and maintenance", "Wind energy", "Complex maintenance system", "Dependability", "Optimization models", "Information technology", "Communication technologies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Recently, the global installed capacity of wind power has increased from approximately 2.5 GW, in 1992, to almost 40 GW, at the end of 2003, with an annual growth rate of around 30 percent. However, according to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) (2009) report, only a few sites can compete, economically, with conventional power production in high wind speed conditions, even though the investment costs per kW have decreased due to mass production. The breakdown structure of the total life cycle cost of a wind power plant includes investment cost, operation and maintenance (O&M) cost, and disposal/updating cost. O&M costs constitute a sizeable share of the total annual costs of a wind turbine (WT). For a new WT machine, O&M costs might easily have an average share over the lifetime of the turbine of approximately 20-25 percent of total levelized cost per kW produced; as long the WT is fairly new, the share might constitute 10-15 percent, increasing to at least 20-35 percent by the end of its life, as mentioned by Mathew (2006). Therefore, cutting down O&M cost (includes production losses) is a prioritized objective for many industrial stakeholders. Consequently, the main O&M practices and their contributing and impact factors must be comprehensively identified.The WTs have become larger and heavier; the efficiency of production has increased steadily as well. Due to the improved equipment efficiency and improved turbine site assessment process, the overall efficiency has increased by 2-3 percent annually over the last 15 years.The age and scale of the WT are the main issues that make O&M costs increase over time. There are some claims about the newer WTs that they are not as robust as older ones and are less capable of dealing with unexpected events. Most likely, the O&M costs will be significantly lower for newer turbines than for existing turbines, but that depends on whether the existing trend of up-scaling continually considers increasing the level of dependability.A number of options and conceptual solutions depend on site and seasonal impact. For offshore wind farms, as a special case with site-specific requirements, Zaaijer (2004) and Breton and Moe (2008) reviewed a number of options. Laakso et al. (2003) provided the state-of-the-art of wind power in cold climate regions; the season-specific requirements were clearly stated in their conclusion. Holttinen et al. (2007) reviewed and discussed different preferable characteristics for optimal operations and grid integration. Alsyouf and El-Thalji (2008) reviewed the maintenance practices within wind power and illustrated that effective maintenance practices were impacted by the stakeholders and their involvement, needs and policies. Furthermore, Walford (2006) discussed the life cycle issues.It is clear that WT size is becoming larger and installation sites are being located in harsher environments than the normal onshore ones. Moreover, wind energy statistics about failures, stoppages, faults, support delays, human/organizational errors, and costs, all together justify the need for investigation of the system aspects of O&M practices.Therefore, it becomes a significant necessity to draw up the reference timeline of maintenance technology and practices' development within the wind energy sector. Besides that, the timeline shall be accompanied by system-wide observations in order to illustrate the main system aspects in terms of complexities, interrelationships and gaps. The paper aims to help the researchers and practitioners to tie up the fragmented research contributions and industrial development with a holistic understanding and highlight a number of significant research areas.This paper reviews the O&M practices of the wind energy sector, using a system approach, including the site and seasonal disturbances, stakeholders' requirements trade-off; reliability and failure analysis; diagnostic, prognostic and ICTs applications; and maintenance optimization models. Finally, it observes the system aspects that impact the O&M practices of wind power, and how these aspects are expected to be engineered and managed in both the near and long-term future.\n2. Status quo of scholarly work: Wind power systems provide one of the most complex and multidisciplinary applications of modern renewable energy systems. In particular, a significant part of complexity arises from the O&M practices. One of the most successful approaches to coping with the complexity is a systems engineering approach. Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field aiming to systemically develop and maintain complex systems. Systems engineering methodology enables the identification and analysis of the system-level functional and performance requirements; then it decomposes them into the detailed requirements of the whole life cycle processes (i.e. design, manufacturing, construction, installation, test, operation, maintenance and disposal/update). It also helps to match the extracted requirements with their conceptual solutions and physical and operational system architectures. Systems engineers also rely on contributions from specific engineering disciplines (i.e. mechanical, electrical, etc.), in addition to the traditional design disciplines.Therefore, the review discusses the detailed academic and industrial contributions from a system perspective, in order to be able to define the integrative or system-level aspects and their impacts. In the review carried out by Garg and Deshmukh (2006), a broad classification of maintenance management literature was categorized into six areas: maintenance optimization models, maintenance techniques, maintenance scheduling, maintenance performance measurements, maintenance information systems and maintenance policies. In the wind energy sector, Alsyouf and El-Thalji (2008) reviewed the main maintenance practices and policies in wind power systems (i.e. preventive, predictive, diagnostic). However, over the last three years (2009-2011) a number of papers have been published as shown in Table I. They illustrate new practical and academic experiences within the wind energy domain.Therefore, the authors rely on three main information and data resources: LibHub, specific institutes' publications, and technical reports from specific conferences:(1) LibHub: as a search engine for this review, LibHub[1] includes a number of research databases like Emerald, IEEE, ScienceDirect, etc. The main search keywords are: O&M, asset management, reliability, condition monitoring, maintenance optimization.(2) Specific institutes' publications: the authors consider the publications and reports of specific institutes due to the fact that the research into wind energy is still relatively young, and a number of research initiatives are led by those specific institutes in North America and Europe. The EWEA, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Wind Energy Division at Sandia National Laboratories, the National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy at Riso DTU, the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), and Swedish Wind Energy Research (Vindforsk) are the main high quality refereed publications. However, the author reviewed their up-to-date publications since most of the reports consist of incremental research and development efforts.(3) Technical reports from specific conferences: most practical experience and knowledge in wind energy still lies within the manufacturing and operating companies of wind energy; therefore, most of their technical papers have significant relevance for academic researchers to review. However, there is a great variation in the conferences' publications between high and low quality refereed publications. In this paper, the authors purposefully review selected publications of European wind energy conferences and SKF wind energy conferences.Based on these three academic information and data sources, a total of 138 papers were collected and analyzed. A systematic classification of this literature into five relevant areas in year-wise distribution is given in Table II. These areas are: site and seasonal operations and environmental disturbances; stakeholders' involvement and practical needs; life cycle asset deterioration challenges; Wind power diagnostic, prognostic and ICTs applications; and Physical asset optimization models.\n3. Research outcomes: review and observations: In this section, five main academic contributions within the O&M area are reviewed, and the main outcomes are presented with some critical extracted observations. Alsyouf and El-Thalji (2008) reviewed the main maintenance practices and policies in wind power systems (i.e. preventive, predictive, diagnostic). They presented the life cycle processes of wind power systems (i.e. design and development, production and construction, O&M and system retirement) with relation to the recent contributions and challenges of researchers and practitioners. The review concluded that there was a set of challenges and trends as follows: obtaining a well-adapted maintenance strategy; eliminating the manufacturing and storing problems through improving quality control aspects; developing algorithms for predicting the remaining life of components; integrating condition monitoring systems (CMS) into offshore technology, using intelligent monitoring systems; implementing reliability-centered maintenance (RCM); and other challenges and means, which show the need for further research studies.3.1 Site and season disturbances\n4. Overall observations and conclusions: The publication of studies on wind energy O&M has recently accelerated due to research initiative projects and accumulative industrial experience that has become more viable to be presented in scientific papers. However, within the O&M areas, condition monitoring, diagnostic and prognostic techniques have been the main academic contributions, which rapidly shift technologies, methods, techniques from other industrial domains and develop them to suit the practical needs of the wind energy domain.Site and seasonal operations and environmental disturbances have highlighted two main issues: site and seasonal/environmental disturbances are significantly critical (as illustrated in Figure 1) in coping with dependability challenges and cutting down associated costs; and the scale of the WT affects O&M practices significantly, and the scaling-up design process brings a number of O&M complexities.Stakeholder involvement and industrial needs emphasize a number of issues as follows: the rapid design and development, moving toward larger sizes, make the system more complicated in terms of physical interfaces, especially with new advanced technologies; and new wind farm clusters and topologies bring other physical and operational interfaces with their external systems.Dependability and asset deterioration issues present the main challenges within reliability, maintainability, maintenance support and availability altogether. Furthermore, the research also highlights the effect of organizational factors on dependability program development within the wind energy domain. However, the research spotlight should consider the following issues: first, reliability is the main topic which is discussed within dependability. However, maintainability and maintenance supportability are also main topics within the industry, even though they are lacking within academic research; second, dependability databases are affected by ill-organized, manually documented, incomplete, mis-contextual data; third, fatigue analysis and wear system-dynamic analysis are extremely critical and should be one of the main topics for further research; and finally, the dynamics of WTs are affected by stochastic aerodynamic load, multi-vibration causes, and the lack of technical integrity of aero-mechanical-electrical systems.Monitoring, diagnostic, prognostic and ICTs applications have rapidly developed and transferred from other industrial domains; however the system-level development is still challenging in order to define the cost-effective integrity of maintenance technologies, informatics and wind energy assets. It is clear that CBM is a complex system and its complexity arises from technical, functional, operational and business aspects. Therefore, it is necessary to highlight the following issues: first, CMSs, diagnostic and prognostic tools, and ICTs products are available and mature for other domains, but when it comes to the integrated applications for wind energy benefits, there is a lack of information; and second, a number of maintenance policies which are related to condition monitoring are not yet fully or even partially implemented in the wind energy industry, like RCM, total productive maintenance (TPM) and risk-based inspection (RBI).Physical asset optimization is one of the most complicated areas due to physical system complexities, scalability, interoperability and changeability for technological development. In parallel, it is one of the critical areas that have the potential to utilize maintenance optimization models and techniques in order to provide more cost-effective solutions that could fit with application reality and circumstances.Finally, the review covers both academic and industrial stakeholder perspectives and contributions. The gap between them is also noticeable, and a comprehensive understanding of O&M practices of wind energy application seems to provide future challenges and opportunities, such as modern environmental-dependent maintenance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to review the operation and maintenance practices within wind power applications and to clarify practical needs as gaps between researchers and practitioners.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper collects, categorizes, and analyzes the published literature of both researchers and practitioners systematically.\nFindings: - The paper defines significant issues in operation and maintenance of wind energy related to: site and seasonal asset disturbances; stakeholders' requirements trade-off; dependability and asset deterioration challenges; diagnostic, prognostic and information and communication technologies (ICTs) applications; and maintenance optimization models. Within each category, the gaps and further research needs have been extracted with respect to both an academic and industrial perspective.\nPractical implications: - The use of wind energy is growing rapidly and the associated practices related to maintenance and asset management are still lacking. Therefore, the literature review of operation and maintenance is a necessity to uncover the holistic issues and interrelationships of what has so far been published as detailed and fragmented topics to specific issues. Wind energy assets represent modern renewable energy assets which are affected by environmental disturbances, rapid technological development, rapid scaling-up processes, the stochastic and dynamic nature of operations and degradation, the integrity and interoperability of system-to-support.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides a comprehensive review of research contributions and industrial development efforts. That will be useful to the life cycle stakeholders in both academia and industry in understanding the maintenance problem and solution space within the wind energy context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Firm characteristics and export performance in Portuguese wine firms	[ "Export performance", "Portugal", "Size", "Efficiency", "Age", "Firm characteristics", "Wine firms", "F14", "D22", "L66" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This paper examines the association between export performance and firm characteristics among the Port and Douro wine firms in the Douro region of Portugal. This region is a demarcated wine region since 1756 and is one of the oldest wine regions of the world.\n2. Literature review: In Section 2.1, we review the literature of firm characteristics and export performance association. In Section 2.2, we review the literature of wine export determinants, and we define the main research questions of this paper.\n3. Data, model and methodology: 3.1. Data description\n4. Results: The results are reported in Tables VI-IX. The OLS regression results are reported as the benchmark in Tables VI and VII. In Table VI, the export intensity and in Table VII, the export propensity are, respectively, the dependent variables.\n5. Conclusions, implications, limitations and future research: The goal of this paper is contributing to determinants of export performance literature and providing an empirical evidence on this issue. To achieve this goal, we investigated the effect of firm characteristics on the export performance of the Portuguese wine firms. We consider Douro region, as this region has the highest wine classification in Portugal and undertakes the first position in the Portuguese wine production and export.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the determinants of export performance literature. The authors investigate the effect of firm characteristics on the Douro region wine firms export performance. The authors consider the Douro region, as it has the Portugal highest wine classification, the appellation d'origine controlee and undertakes the first position in the Portuguese wine production and export.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors apply a pooling cross-sectional data set that includes 427 observations. The authors pooled two cross sections consisting of 214 and 213 firms for the years 2014 and 215, respectively. The firm export intensity and propensity are the dependent variables. Moreover, the firm size, age and productive efficiency are accounted as the firm characteristics. The authors use the ordinary least squares regression and the tobit and probit models for estimations.\nFindings: First, size is an influential factor to improve the export performance, and the importance of size is higher for younger firms. Second, there is a positive response from export intensity to age and this response is higher for smaller firms. However, there is a negative response from the export propensity to age and this negative response is higher for bigger firms. Third, there is weak evidence to support a relationship between efficiency and export performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research and the presented results are undoubtedly under some limitations. The main limitation is about the data availability for all characteristics of a firm. For example, it will enrich the result if the authors add some other important variables such as production cost, research and development expenditure and the quality of produced wine by each firm to our analysis.\nOriginality/value: This research reveals that the influence of firm characteristics on the export performance of Portuguese wine firms is missing in the literature. The results provide a basis to Portuguese wineries to improve their export performance by applying the relevant strategies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A holistic view of knowledge management strategy	[ "Knowledge management", "Organizations", "Knowledge transfer" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The emergence of knowledge management discipline has coincided with the development of the global knowledge based economy in which emphasis has been shifted from traditional factors of production, namely capital, land and labour, to knowledge. Parallel to this, Drucker (1992) suggests the classical factors are becoming secondary to knowledge as the primary resource for the economy. Several researchers (e.g., Despres and Hitrop, 1995; Neef, 1999; Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Day, 1994; Edvinsson and Sullivan, 1996; Davenport and Bibby, 1999) argue the effective management of knowledge is becoming a critical ingredient for organisations seeking to ensure sustainable strategic competitive advantages. Davenport and Bibby (1999), for example, point out that in the knowledge-based economy, competitiveness is increasingly based upon access to knowledge in the form of skills and capabilities.Knowledge transfer seems to be one of the main themes of knowledge management which involves the use and creation of value from organisational knowledge (Jasimuddin et al., 2005a). Against this backdrop, successful accomplishment of knowledge transfer within an organisation or between organisations has a great role to play. This paper addresses the way in which knowledge is being transmitted among the members of a case organisation so as to suggest a strategy that may promise to be most appropriate for effective knowledge transfer.\nResearch methodology: Several scholars, most notably Eisenhardt (1989), Bell (1993), and Yin (2003), identify the benefits of employing the case study method. Eisenhardt (1989), for example, argues that the case study strategy focuses on understanding the dynamics exist within a single setting, while Yin (2003) contends that case studies can involve either single or multiple cases, and numerous levels of analysis. The present study describes the actors' experiences in transferring knowledge within an organisational setting. Miles and Huberman (2003) suggest that much qualitative research examines a single \"case\", some phenomenon embedded in a single social setting. In line with this, one large multinational corporation is purposefully drawn from the high tech computer-related field which is accessible and is also considered manageable.In qualitative research, samples are not meant to represent large populations (Miles and Huberman, 2003; Sale et al., 2002; Reid, 1996). Purposeful samples of more than forty interviewees were selected who were given flexibility to discuss the issues as they liked to proceed. The respondents were asked questions like how they perceived the knowledge transfer process at their organisation, which approach they believed to be effective to carry out the knowledge sharing, and why.Data collection\nKnowledge sharing: In the emerging knowledge-based society, major emphasis of organisations is placed on the processes of knowledge sharing, which are increasingly seen as crucial to organisation's success (Barrett et al., 2004). The fact is that organisational success can be based on its ability to share the knowledge embodied in organisational routines from one organisation unit to another (Szulanski, 1996) as well as to improve their capabilities by assimilating new technology (Gilbert and Cordey-Hayes, 1996). This argument is developed by Cohen and Levinthal (1990), who suggest that the knowledge sharing is a critical factor in an organisation's ability to respond quickly to change, innovate and achieve competitive success. A growing body of empirical evidence indicates that organisations that are able to share knowledge effectively from one unit to another are more productive and more likely to survive than organisations that are less adept at sharing knowledge (Argote and Ingram, 2000; Argote et al., 2000; Baum and Ingram, 1998). The significance of knowledge sharing is viewed by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in its Competitiveness White Paper as:Our success depends on how well we exploit our most valuable assets: our knowledge, skills, and creativity. These are the key to designing high-value goods and services and advanced business practices. They are the heart of a modern, knowledge-driven economy (DTI, 1998).Approaches to sharing knowledge\nConclusion: Contemporary organisations seek to acquire new competencies in order to compete effectively. At the case organisation, software development is the outcome of the collective efforts of software developers and computer engineers who are expert particularly in computer technology. Their main work is accomplished by sitting in front of workstations so their main activity goes along with interacting machines. Despite that, there is a great deal of interaction with people and involvement with non technical activities. As a result, sharing their knowledge is found as a part of their job which involves frequent interaction among themselves with and without using technology.As noted previously, the \"soft\" versus \"hard\" argument is actually about the media of knowledge transfer processes. This paper addresses knowledge transfer media in order to deepen our understanding of the strategy that promises to be most appropriate in the new knowledge economy. The study reveals that a hybrid strategy allows organisations to seek an integrated approach to knowledge transfer through the interplay between soft and hard mechanisms. In terms of the iceberg analogy, the benefits of both tacit and explicit knowledge can be gained if soft and hard mechanisms are allowed to interact. The interesting point is that the hybrid between the two mechanisms is found crucial as far as the successful accomplishment of knowledge transfer is concerned. Strictly speaking, a pluralistic stance that hybrid approach to knowledge transfer takes will provide powerful arguments for a more holistic view.However, the present study is not free from any limitation. Since the paper is based on a single research setting, the findings have potential limitations in terms of generalisability and transferability. The UK-based group within a high-tech global corporation is representative of a typical, mature high-tech multinational industry. Inevitably, the character of the case organisation may have a strong influence on the results of the study. As with other qualitative research approaches, the emphasis of this paper is on the perceptions of the respondents, such a research approach is always open to multiple interpretations.Therefore, no claim will be made that the framework being suggested is the best one that can be devised for understanding the knowledge transfer mechanism in the new knowledge economy. Instead, this paper has taken a step towards developing some arguments about the knowledge transfer mechanisms through opening up the possibilities for additional understanding of knowledge transfer strategy based on holistic and integrated approach. Whilst much work remains to be done, this paper lays some groundwork for future research particularly through further field studies in understanding how this model is employed to ensure effective knowledge transfer in an organisation or between organisations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this research is to seek to address the way in which knowledge is being transmitted among the members of a large corporation and suggests a realistic strategy that promises to be most appropriate for effective knowledge transfer in the new knowledge economy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The research involves an in-depth case study of knowledge transfer strategies used in a UK-based group within a high-tech global corporation. which was purposively selected for data collection. A semi-structured instrument was developed based on the review of the knowledge management literature. The data analysis procedure within the case study employed in this research was based on the approach proposed by Miles and Huberman.\nFindings: - Drawing on an empirical work in a large high-tech corporation, this paper suggests a hybrid strategy which recognises the interplay between the soft and hard mechanisms, and falls somewhere between the rather divergent mechanisms.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Since the paper is based on a single research setting the findings have potential limitations in terms of generalisability and transferability.\nPractical implications: - To date it seems that the soft and hard mechanisms are being employed for knowledge transfer. There is considerable variation in the researchers' views about the role of the two approaches to knowledge transfer in an organisation.\nOriginality/value: - The proposed hybrid approach to knowledge transfer provides powerful arguments for a more holistic view in terms of knowledge transfer which is crucial for the succesful implementation of knowledge management.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Cross-country technology gap in Latin America: Growth accounting and non-parametric approaches	[ "Trade openness", "Productivity", "Technology diffusion", "Patent", "Growth accounting approach", "Malmquist Index" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nI. Introduction: Innovation and knowledge is one of the major drivers for economic growth, but countries widely vary in how they manage innovation or knowledge. For example, developed countries pursue innovation or knowledge creation while developing or under-developed countries practice knowledge adaptation through technology diffusion. Grossman and Helpman (2001) indicated that globalization is one of the primary channels for technology diffusion. Not surprisingly, technological absorptive capacity, which can create technology gap, also varies among nations. Thus the primary objective of this paper is to determine the key macroeconomic factors which drive the nations' technological absorptive capacity and provide policy framework to these countries to minimize the variations.\nII. Economic model: Past research has modeled international technology diffusion at the micro and macro levels, but there is no consensus concerning the nature of technology spillover among countries. Many studies confirm that the contribution of foreign countries to domestic productivity is large (Rensman and Kuper, 1999). Hence, the estimation technique for calculating TFP becomes important. There are several ways to estimate TFP for a country including the Solow growth accounting approach, the non-parametric approach, and the parametric approach. This paper concentrates on the two approaches to estimate the TFP and compare the results.\nIII. Data: The sample in this paper consists of eight Latin American countries over the period of 1970 to 2001. The Solow residual or TFP is calculated as the difference between the logs of output and inputs using the growth accounting method. Capital and labor are used as inputs in this production function, weighted by wage share and capital share. The variables used to calculate TFP are derived from the Extended Penn World Table. However, there are missing observations in wage share data; hence the average wage shares from neighborhood years were used[1].\nIV. Econometric model: Each country's aggregate output is assumed to follow the Cobb-Douglas production function. TFP is calculated as the difference between the log of output and factor of input (Schiff and Wang, 2003) from this production function. \"A corresponds to TFP or the Solow residual which is in general, assimilated to technological change\" (Ozyurt, 2009). There are several different approaches to calculate TFP including growth accounting, parametric, and non-parametric approaches. In the parametric approach, the underlying assumptions are the choice of functional form, the structure, and the form of the error term. Alternatively, the non-parametric approach is relying on both linear programming techniques and on these above assumptions (Grifell-Tatje and Lovell, 1995).\nV. Results: The employed data set is primarily based on Latin American countries, however the cultural differences among these countries are surprisingly different. It is reasonable to consider that technology diffusion and/or gap is highly dependent on country's specific cultural context. Hence, providing a common policy framework might not accommodate all Latin American countries' in managing their technology or knowledge gap in a uniform manner. Therefore, a comparative analysis as well as aggregate analysis to segregate the effect of culture and other unobserved attributes which might have a role in managing technology diffusion is necessary.\nVI. Conclusion: Knowledge and innovation management has become much more crucial than in the past. There have been significant number of studies conducted at firm or company levels, however, there is not much contribution in this topic at the country level since knowledge and innovation management vary across countries. We use level of technology to measure country's level of knowledge and employed various methodologies to measure the technology level for a country. This paper investigated the technology gap between the leader country, the USA, and imitator countries employing a sample of eight Latin American countries from 1970 to 2000. It is essential to understand the determinants of the technological gap in order to understand the channels of foreign technology spillover across under-developed and developing countries since these are the ones that benefit from foreign technology sources the most. Various factors including the patent gap, labor productivity, trade openness, FDI, and past technological gap were examined in relation to the current technology gap between the countries by controlling for adult workforce illiteracy rate and GDP per capita growth rate.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors influencing the total factor productivity (TFP) gap between the USA and eight Latin American countries for the period of 1970-2000.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper provides an explicit application of TFP estimation by employing a growth accounting approach (Solow Residual) in the presence of non-constant returns to scale and a non-parametric approach (DEA - Malmquist Index) while relaxing the scale-related constraint. A macro-based economic model of innovator and follower countries is employed to explore the linkage between technology gaps and innovations, labor productivity, trade openness, foreign direct investment, and adult workforce illiteracy rates. A pooled model and a fixed effects model are used to determine the factors of the technology gap between the innovator and the follower countries.\nFindings: The results show that the labor productivity gap, adult work force illiteracy rates, patent filing gap, and trade openness are significant determinants of the technology gap between innovator and follower country.\nPractical implications: Latin American countries would benefit from the technology diffusion from an innovator country; but a minimum threshold of human capital, such as adult workforce illiteracy rates and patent filing has to be met. The authors find government policies on trade openness also have large effects on technology limitations in foreign countries.\nOriginality/value: This paper is of value to researchers, policy makers, and economic development specialists trying to improve the rate of technology adoption and innovation.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Food for thought: analysing the internal and external school food environment	[ "Students", "Ireland", "Health promotion", "Health promoting schools", "Schools", "Health", "Children", "Obesity", "Childhood obesity", "Food and nutrition" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Overweight and obesity is a significant public health problem in Ireland, with rates among school children of particular concern. It is estimated that over 300,000 children in Ireland are overweight and obese, with a projected increase of 10,000 in these rates annually (The National Taskforce on Obesity, 2005). More recent reports demonstrate that between 20 and 25 per cent of primary school children are overweight and obese (Whelton et al., 2007; Layte and McCrory, 2011; O'Neill et al., 2007; Irish Universities Nutrition Alliance, 2005) and 19 per cent of teenagers are overweight and obese (IUNA, 2008). While there is some indication of a decrease in overweight and obesity levels among seven year olds in Ireland, this is not observed among older children (Heinen et al., 2014).\nMethods: Data sources\nResults: Table I presents the basic descriptive characteristics of the schools, by geography, disadvantage, gender and available facilities. The majority of the schools in the sample were urban, not classified as disadvantaged and of mixed gender. Most of the schools had a canteen, while just over half had a school shop and over a third of schools had one or more vending machines.\nDiscussion: Childhood obesity has become the most common childhood disease in Europe (The National Taskforce on Obesity, 2005). School-aged children spend over half of their day at school where they can consume breakfast, snacks and lunch and are also exposed to food premises on their journeys to and from school, making the food available in and around school an important issue for children's health and well-being.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Availability and access to food is a determinant of obesity. The purpose of this paper is to examine food availability within and outside of post-primary schools in Ireland.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data on the internal school food environment were collected from 63 post-primary schools using questionnaires. The external school food environment for these 63 schools was assessed by mapping food businesses within 1 km of schools, using a Geographic Information System (GIS). Food businesses were categorised based on type of food sold.\nFindings: A total of 68.3 per cent of schools had a canteen, 52.5 per cent had a small food shop and 37.1 per cent had a vending machine. A total of 32.7 per cent of schools reported selling chips (French fries) in their canteen while 44.2 per cent of schools reported selling energy-dense nutrient-poor foods in their school shop. Of the schools surveyed, there was an average of 3.89 coffee shops and sandwich bars, 3.65 full service restaurants, 2.60 Asian and other \"ethnic\" restaurants, 4.03 fast food restaurants, 1.95 supermarkets, 6.71 local shops and 0.73 fruit and vegetable retailers within a 1 km radius of the post-primary schools. Findings are presented by geography (urban/rural), disadvantage (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in School (DEIS)/non DEIS), gender (girls/boys/mixed) and food policy in place at the school (yes/no).\nPractical implications: These data will facilitate schools working on the framework for Health Promoting Schools in Ireland.\nSocial implications: This work can contribute to current discussions on restricting accessibility to certain foods and food premises for school children.\nOriginality/value: The study explores the internal and external school food environment. GIS have been used to link the external food environment to specific schools thus allowing a comprehensive analysis of the schools' food environment. To the authors knowledge, this is the first time that both environments are explored simultaneously.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring the MICE industry career path	[ "MICE industry", "Career advancement", "Career path", "Social community", "Social world" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, and Exhibitions (MICE) industry has become a significant component of the modern service sector in China (Daniela et al., 2011). The MICE industry has gradually established a place for itself in most Chinese cities. As the China Tourism Industry's Thirteenth Five-Year Development Plan emphasizes, one of the tourism industry's priorities is to vigorously develop the MICE industry, i.e. the MICE industry in China is beginning to boom.\nLiterature review: Three sets of literature are relevant to the current research. The first area of interest deals specifically with general career path studies, the second summarizes the key work on career paths in the tourism and hospitality sector, and the third is more specific to the study on career paths in the MICE industry. The key factors that influence career paths are reviewed in each of the three sets, and together these background considerations highlight the value of the present study in the context of relatively little existing research.\nMethodology: Framework\nResults: From the collected data and the social community perspective, people's career paths seem to be shaped by the mechanisms of their social world.\nDiscussion and conclusions: Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to explain and resolve the paradoxical situation in China regarding how it is difficult to get an offer of employment in China while people are unwilling to pursue or embark on a career in the Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) industry. Therefore, the MICE industry career path should be carefully explored.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper used semi-structured interviews with more than 30 representative managers from key MICE companies, a social community perspective and conceptions of the social world combined with the traditional career-ladder model.\nFindings: The study's key findings are: a general career path exists in the MICE industry in China; there are three main types of career paths and two different kinds of promotion mechanisms, which vary according to the type of ownership, scale or other characteristics of companies; and a feedback mechanism, linking social-world events and social community characteristics, affects individual employees and their career paths in the MICE industry, leading to promotion in or retreat from the industry. Typically, the mechanism fits high-level employees better than the freshmen, which leads to high turnover in the MICE labor market.\nPractical implications: This paper provides a better understanding of MICE industry and facilitates people's employment choices.\nOriginality/value: This paper provide a new social community perspective for exploring the MICE career path; there are also significant practical implications for MICE elites, which present a new framework for future research and industry applications.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The evolution of business ethics in India	[ "India", "Religion", "Corruption", "Greco – Roman business ethics", "Jugaad", "Vedantic business ethics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Much attention is being directed towards emerging economies, and in particular the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) the four largest developing markets in the world (Das, 2006; Kiggundu and Ji, 2008; Yen et al., 2011). The BRIC acronym captures the reality of a shift in economic power away from the traditionally powerful developed countries to emerging countries. These emerging economies tend to be very heterogeneous in nature on the national, political, economic, cultural, and institutional levels and in their approach to business ethics (LeFebvre, 2011; Luo et al., 2011; Berger and Herstein, 2012). Because the BRIC countries are emerging as dominant economic powers, understanding the direction in which business ethics is evolving in these countries is of great importance for policy makers, academics, and business leaders alike (Hoff and Pandey, 2005; Marques, 2010; Ardichvili et al., 2012). Rapid economic growth may lead to the development of a distorted understanding of capitalism and growth where money, power, survival and profitability at any cost are considered the primary goals of business (Biswas, 1998; Kanagasabapathi, 2007; Birtchell, 2011) to the detriment of the ethical facets of business (Ruhe and Lee, 2008; Jeffrey, 2010).\nThe importance of business ethics: Ethics is a systematic approach to moral judgments based on reason, analysis, synthesis, and reflection of one's environment (Christie et al., 2003; Fernando, 2009). An ethic by definition is a set of moral principles derived from the Greek word \"ethos\" which means the characteristic spirit or attitudes of a community, people, or system (Mittal et al., 2011). Business ethics is the application of ethical principles to issues that arise in the conduct of business activity (Small, 1993; Christie et al., 2003; Parboteeah et al., 2008). Management in its broadest sense is defined as \"getting things done through and with people\". Culture has been identified as a significant determinant of ethical attitudes and management style of business managers worldwide (Weaver and Agle, 2002; Christie et al., 2003). Some researchers have argued that irrespective of culture, western business ethics must be adopted to trade and survive in today's global business environment (Biswas, 1998; Weaver and Agle, 2002; Kanagasabapathi, 2007). However, it has been shown that firms in emerging economies tend primarily to draw on indigenous cultural values and practices to develop corporate strategies, management practices, and business ethics to succeed (Berger et al., 2013b; Viswesvaran and Deshpande, 1996). While western thought promotes the idea that action is propelled by individual drives, the Vedantic philosophy common in India views the role of personality with its internal predispositions for motivation, as secondary to societal considerations in guiding behavior (Kopalle et al., 2010; Doniger, 2011; LeFebvre, 2011). Hence an ethical individual is someone who acts according to acceptable standards of behavior in terms of personal and social welfare within specific cultural boundaries. Thus when applying managerial theories to the Indian milieu, certain adjustments must be made to accommodate for differences in culture and religion (Chakraboty, 1997; Rajeev, 2007; Tsalikis et al., 2008). Research suggests that it makes good long-term business sense to be ethical (Kedia et al., 2006; Seshadri et al., 2007). Hence, to understand business ethics in India, it is crucial to be better acquainted with its culture, history, and religion the form the basis of its business ethical infrastructure.\nBusiness ethics in the Indian context: Vedantic principles: There is a strong interrelationship between religious thought and economic activity in India (Dehejia and Dehejia, 1993; Fernando, 2009). Confucian and Hindu religious traditions have inspired most of the key tenets of the Asian ethical base. These traditions differ in many ways from the Greco - Roman philosophical roots of contemporary western ethics (Christie et al., 2003; Rajeev, 2007; LeFebvre, 2011). The differences in business ethics between west and east are deeply embedded in the differences between national cultures. The rich culture of India, immersed in spirituality and religion, is focused on intuitive ethical decision making and the rule of man, which sets it apart from the western analytical approach to ethical decision making based on norms and the rule of law (Marques, 2010; Ardichvili et al., 2012). Business ethics and compliance is still in its early stages of development in Indian companies (Cappelli et al., 2010; Kopalle et al., 2010; Roy et al., 2011).\nThe origins of business ethics in India: Many foreign firms need to deal with misunderstandings and ignorance of differences in local culture and conditions that derive from socio - political obstacles (Berg and Holtrugge, 2001).\nThe evolution of Indian business ethics: Business history scholars have noted that India has been an important center of international trade since ancient times (Chakraboty, 1997; Agarwala, 2001; Rajeev, 2007). The ancient Indian religious enforcement mechanisms based on Hinduism highlighted the importance of applying ethical principles to all facets of life (Kanagasabapathi, 2007). As a result, business was conducted while adhering to a high personal value system that created a strong business ethics infrastructure. This ethics infrastructure led the Indian economy to prosper until the beginning of the nineteenth century, at which point the effects of Western rule started eroding that infrastructure. While India was highly regarded for its business prowess and prosperity in ancient times, in the recent pas it has experienced a precipitous commercial decline to the point of becoming a marginal economy (Das, 2006). Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, India is once again viewed as a major emerging global economy. India's success in the services sector is worth noting, but its overall economic performance still lags behind that of China (Ardichvili et al., 2012).\nConclusion: responses and challenges: As India integrated into the global economy and new business systems evolved as a result of foreign influences and globalization, business ethics in India deteriorated. Indians, as a whole, may have failed to comprehend that abandoning business ethics based on ancient Indian customs was a major factor in the deterioration of India's economic situation. No Indian company that hopes to globalize in any major way can afford to ignore the transformations sweeping the global business arena on the ethics front (Seshadri et al., 2007). It is important for Indian firms to understand that they can no longer afford to ignore the issue of business ethics (Kedia et al., 2006). Competing to win in the global marketplace will require them to institute ethics and compliance policies that are at globally acceptable standards and build an ethical corporate culture by making ethics and values a prominent part of the leadership agenda (Berger et al., 2013a).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Religion and culture can influence ethical behavior in business. It is suggested that there has been and continues to be, a deep interrelationship between religion, business ethics, and economic activity in India. As India is becoming a major global economic business partner, understanding its unique ethical business infrastructure is gaining in importance. The purpose of this paper is to intend to further the understanding of Indian (\"Vendantic\") business ethics, as opposed to Greco - Roman business ethics, as the foundation of business culture in India. This paper further elaborates on the evolution of business ethics and its implications on doing business in and with Indian companies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors undertook a conceptual approach in order to understand the evolutionary process of Indian business ethics in a holistic view in order to understand better its workings and effect on business interaction.\nFindings: The paper explains the constructs of business ethics in India and shows its evolution over time.\nOriginality/value: This original theoretical paper examines the evolution of Indian business ethics over time in line with environmental changes in the Indian business landscape.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Lean implementation in small- and medium-sized enterprises: An empirical study of Indian manufacturing firms	[ "Small- to-medium-sized enterprises", "Lean production", "Manufacturing performance", "Lean tools" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the present global scenario, manufacturing organizations are mainly facing challenges from two directions. First, advanced manufacturing philosophies are emerging, while the existing methods are becoming obsolete (Jasti and Kodali, 2015). Second, consumer thinking is changing and loyalty goes beyond a rational decision for a superior perceived price-performance ratio. The customers have become more demanding for innovative products and services within a very short period of time and at less price (Tersine and Wacker, 2000; Lau et al., 2002; Ho et al., 2005). Essentially to cope up with such challenges, the core idea behind strategy formulation by manufacturing firms nowadays is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Hence, manufacturing firms operating in such rapidly changing and highly competitive market, for the past two decades, have embraced the principles of lean thinking (Fullerton et al., 2014). The word \"lean\" refers to lean manufacturing or lean production, as it uses less of everything, compared to mass production (Wahab et al., 2013). It only uses half of the human effort in the factory, half of the manufacturing space, half of the investments in tools, and half of the engineering to develop a new product in half of the time (Liker, 1998; Womack et al., 1990). Also, it requires keeping far less than half the inventory on site, results in fewer defects, and produces a greater and ever growing quality of products (Womack et al., 1990). Lean strategy is a management approach to manufacturing that strives to make organizations more competitive in the market by increasing the efficiency and decreasing costs through the elimination of non-value added steps (Garza-Reyes et al., 2012). Lean manufacturing practices enhance manufacturing productivity by reducing setup times and work in process inventory, improving throughput times, and thus improving market performance (Tu et al., 2006). Various methods and tools that aim to improve the performance of organizations are comprised under the lean strategy's umbrella (Bhasin, 2012). The expression of \"continuous improvement\" is quite popular in lean manufacturing, and the concept is mainly associated with total quality management, total productive maintenance, just-in-time, Six Sigma, pull flow, low setup, controlled processes, human resource management and other approaches (McKone et al., 1999).\n2. Literature review: Based on the objective of the paper, a literature review was conducted aiming to collect and analyze all relevant papers in the field by means of a structured search for literature. The same is presented under various focused themes/topics. We first describe briefly the concept of lean manufacturing and its adoption and application in SMEs. Next, we move on to the literature that specifically focuses on the implementation of lean manufacturing practices in small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in India. As we seek to understand the adoption of lean manufacturing practices and its impact on Indian SMEs performance over last few decades, we also review the literature about major lean barriers encountered by SMEs. These articles are summarized in the following themes.\n3. Research methodology: 3.1 Research design and assessment tool\n4. Findings from the survey: analysis and discussions: 4.1 Lean manufacturing implementation status in Indian SMEs\n5. Conclusions: SMEs are commonly recognized as being critical to the health of global economy. The current economic environment in the Indian manufacturing industry is offering a perfect opportunity to SMEs of this country to develop and grow by acting as suppliers of large multinational original equipment manufacturers. Given the importance of SMEs, it can be assumed that the rapid adoption of lean practices by SMEs has become an important determinant of success in the global market place. SMEs must be benchmarked with the best in industry practices for continuous improvement (Jain et al., 2015). \"Cost reduction without compromising on quality\" should be the motto of every manufacturing SMEs to survive in this competitive global economy. To prosper in today's economic environment, any manufacturing firm must be dedicated to never-ending improvement, and more efficient ways to obtain products or services that consistently meet customer's need. Lean implementation practices can be categorized as a roadmap, conceptual/implementation framework, descriptive and assessment checklist initiatives by the manufacturing firms (Mostafa et al., 2013) to pursue operational excellence and gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which lean management practices are adopted by small- and medium-sized manufacturing organizations in India and their impact on firm's operational performance (OP). Also, the paper makes an attempt to identify the barriers and challenges faced by Indian SMEs that are striving to succeed with improvement efforts based on lean manufacturing.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this paper, acceptability and implementation of lean manufacturing in Indian Manufacturing SMEs were analyzed using three constructs, namely, process improvement (PI), flow management (FM) and waste minimization (WM). The responding firms were categorized into \"lean-Beginners,\" \"In-transition lean\" and \"lean\" group based on their phases of lean implementation. Using a survey questionnaire, data were collected from 121 manufacturing SMEs in India. Lean tools and barriers, identified from the literature review, were also included in the survey. The reliability and validity of the practice and performance measures were evaluated. Correlation analysis was employed to investigate the effects of three constructs on OP.\nFindings: The results indicate that all the three lean constructs are significantly related to OP. In the context of Indian manufacturing SMEs, \"PI\" and \"WM\" practices have shown a higher level of significance on OP, compared to \"FM\" practices. \"5S -workplace organization\" was found to be the most practiced lean tool. \"Attitude of workmen\" was highlighted as the main obstacle in successfully implementing lean. The findings suggest overall positive effects as a result of applying lean tools and philosophy in Indian SMEs.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research results may lack qualitative justification because of the chosen research approach. Therefore, the researchers are encouraged to explore the inter-relationship among various lean tools/practices and performance criteria by conducting a qualitative study in the form of a case study or action research.\nPractical implications: This paper is a beneficial source of information that highlights the contribution of lean implementation in enhancing manufacturing productivity. The major tools and techniques used by Indian SMEs have been highlighted and discussed; it could be a genuine source of motivation to lean practitioner and entrepreneurs of SMEs to go in for lean implementation. The findings are also expected to benefit the lean practitioners and entrepreneurs of SMEs to focus on vital issues to facilitate successful lean implementation in an organization.\nOriginality/value: The paper demonstrates that practical implication of lean implementation can bring real breakthroughs in productivity to small- and medium-scale manufacturing firms.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Come rain or come shine: supervisor behavior and employee job neglect	[ "Counter productivity", "Job neglect", "Supervisor behavior" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Research has shown that supervisors can have significant effects on employees, and these effects have been assessed in terms of employee well-being, commitment, job satisfaction, presenteeism, and other outcomes (e.g. Gilbreath and Benson, 2004; Gilbreath and Karimi, 2012; Griffin et al., 2001; Jernigan and Beggs, 2005; Wager et al., 2003). The accumulated results make it clear that employees working for supervisors who predominately engage in positive behavior tend to experience less stress and better well-being, and those working for abusive supervisors experience negative outcomes (Harvey et al., 2007; Tepper, 2000). Yet, with few exceptions (e.g. Amabile et al., 2004; Hetland et al., 2007; Yagil, 2006) researchers have focussed on either the positive or negative aspects of supervisor behavior. And with the exception of Duffy et al. (2002), we found no studies explicitly comparing the role of positive and negative supervisor behavior in predicting employee work behavior. Hence, it is unclear whether positive or negative supervisor behavior is the primary driver of employee work behavior. Indeed, Amabile et al. (2004) suggested in their exploratory study that \"leadership theorists and researchers - who have previously focussed on the occurrence or absence of positive leadership behaviors - begin to incorporate negative leader behaviors into their models and empirical tests\" (p. 28). We address those gaps in the literature, using a comprehensive measure of positive and negative supervisor behaviors to predict an important productivity-related variable: employee job neglect.\nJob neglect: Job neglect (i.e. withholding effort) is a form of what is sometimes referred to as \"withdrawal behavior,\" a type of counterproductivity (Spector and Fox, 2005). Kidwell and Robie (2003) considered job neglect to be \"a destructive, yet passive, response to dissatisfaction with a job\" (p. 542) that manifests in employee behaviors such as giving less effort, avoiding the supervisor, taking more frequent or longer breaks than permitted, and showing up late for work.\nThe supervisor behavior-job neglect link: It has been known for some time that supervisors can have a significant influence on employees' morale and their work behavior (e.g. Fleishman and Harris, 1962; Walker et al., 1956). This is because, for many employees, the supervisor is the most influential workplace psychosocial factor (O'Driscoll and Beehr, 1994). This leads us to expect that how supervisors treat employees will affect the degree to which employees engage in job neglect. Kidwell and Bennett (2001) expressed similar expectations, stating that it is \"likely that elements of the job context, such as [...] an employee's relationship with the supervisor [...] play a role in influencing job neglect\" (p. 64). The general hypothesis tested in this research, therefore, is that supervisor behavior will be associated with job neglect. Furthermore, it is possible that positive and negative supervisor behaviors will have a differential influence on job neglect.\nMethod: Research sites and sample\nResults: A correlation analysis was run to assess associations among the variables. The results, along with means and standard deviations for the variables, are presented in Table I. As shown there, there is a significant correlation between job neglect and both negative supervisor behavior (r=0.48, p<0.01) and positive supervisor behavior (r=-0.34, p<0.01).\nDiscussion: Summary of results\nConclusion: Our findings should be considered in the context of previous research. Researchers have shown how socially sensitive treatment of employees by superiors affects the extent to which they engage in counterproductive behavior. Greenberg (1997) noted that \"to the extent that workers perceive that their superiors have not treated them with the care, dignity, and respect to which they feel entitled, they are unlikely to refrain from the temptation to engage in deviant behavior\" (p. 103). And, after reviewing the research on organizational culture and employee counterproductivity, Boye and Jones (1997) suggest that \"managers should be encouraged to build congenial relationship with employees and to be respectful and sensitive to their needs\" (p. 181). Our findings mesh with those of other researchers, and they support the broader contention that, when supervisors treat employees better, they generally are rewarded with better work behavior. When considered along with those of our predecessors, our results indicate that supervisor behavior can contribute to the prediction of job neglect. Our study leads us to strongly recommend that organizations make use of a variety of methods (e.g. careful supervisor selection, 360-degree feedback, management training, goal setting) to minimize the occurrence of negative supervisor behaviors.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which supervisor behavior is associated with employees' job neglect.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper investigates the extent to which supervisor behavior is associated with employees' job neglect.\nFindings: Results from hierarchical regression analyses support the hypothesis that both positive and negative supervisor behaviors have significant effects on job neglect. Negative supervisor behavior was more strongly associated with job neglect than positive supervisor behavior.\nResearch limitations/implications: Changing the style of supervision might help to reduce job neglect of employees, benefitting the organization by reducing the associated costs of job neglect and counterproductive behavior.\nOriginality/value: The findings provide additional evidence for the important effects supervisors can have on employees. They also indicate that - in addition to studying abusive supervision - there is a need to consider the effects of a broad spectrum of supervisor behavior.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The German guideline for intellectual capital reporting: method and experiences	[ "Intellectual capital", "Financial reporting", "Decision making" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Decision making problems in a knowledge organization emerge as the manager in charge typically lacks the data and knowledge of his expert colleagues and co-workers who are affected by his or her actions. This limits the differentiation of teams as well as growth options, because a \"muddling through\" (Lindblom, 1959) approach to management and decision making supports only small units and does this only for a limited time - not long enough to develop the size of an average multinational company. This will remain as long as knowledge workers are not actively involved in the decision making process because of difficulties with regard to the transfer and assessment of relative value of specific knowledge. Based on intuition and tacit experiences, both of which are hard to describe, knowledge specialists can effectively assess alternatives and thus a decision making process based on de-central involvement of experts might be appropriate.The paper addresses the strategy-oriented identification of intellectual capital and offers a simple assessment of its status quo. The interdependent relations of IC drivers will be highlighted. Thereafter, a model to combine these insights into a more informed decision making process will be described and discussed critically.\nThe decision-making process: Models and theories[1]\nDefining intellectual capital: In the following, the concept of IC will be used in reference to the resource-based view of the firm, as a resource that distinguishes one organization from another. Composition, structure, interdependencies and even meaning of its building blocks vary in relative importance between most industries and even within industries. It is not unreasonable to assume heterogeneous interpretations and weightings of IC within one large organization.To identify the most relevant aspects of intellectual capital, employees of a given organization are confronted with the common concepts of differentiation into human capital (HC), structural capital (SC) and relational capital (RC) (e.g. Edvinsson and Malone, 1997; Stewart, 1997; Sveiby, 1997; Bontis, 1998). They are then asked for further refinement in a brainstorming exercise. The team ideally includes representatives from all functions and hierarchical levels of the organization. Typical questions to the team include:1. In your perspective as a member of this organization, what do you think are the most crucial drivers of our human, structural and relational capital with regard to the corporate strategy?2. What is currently important and what will gain importance in the very near future?3. What constitutes key success factors and what are potential factors of risk?Regularly, this exercise can be done in a few hours, depending on the experience and the heterogeneity of the team.This brainstorming exercise is beneficial in two aspects. First, the knowledge transfer of the concept of IC and its dimensions is supported by the active involvement of question and answer, collection of perspectives and several circles of refinement. Second, it allows for adaptation of otherwise abstract terms and definitions according to the needs of this organization. For each dimension, HC, SC, RC - and preferably even for the desired results of the organization - one round of focused interaction is scheduled. Finally, an overall integration and review eliminates doubles and obvious contradictions.The output of this exercise is an organization-specific list of drivers of IC and a short definition for each one.There are obvious restrictions and limitations to this approach: how is it possible to identify the most relevant drivers? There is no guarantee, but it is reasonable to assume that people who are \"good enough\" to remain within the organization on a sustainable basis have a fairly good knowledge and feeling about what is relevant and what is not.How is it possible to secure comparability of the definitions outside the organization? The focus is to improve the management of this organization and not to do benchmarking - which is an important but completely different task and currently not the first priority. Strategic relevance of specific core competencies and IC drivers implies differentiation by definition.\nAssessment of intellectual capital: A whole body of literature is dedicated to measurement issues (Reinhardt et al., 2001; Andriessen, 2004). However, there seems to be a shared understanding for the purpose of assessment: is the currently available set of IC drivers supporting our strategic objectives or not? Hence, the task of measurement becomes a lot easier - in an SME context, we no longer need to worry about abstract definitions or absolute scales. The simple question is: are we doing quite okay with our current status quo of a given IC driver, or not? What evidence - preferably in the form of already existing indicators - is available to support this perspective? The EFQM Model follows a similar assessment methodology, but focuses - of course - on other dimensions and criteria and a more normative strategic model.Assessment of quantity, quality and systematic management\nDecision making and identification of action items: Pragmatic management of IC encourages organizations to take into account the high complexity of organizations and still be accurate and timely in the interpretation of the analysis. It is not beneficial to elaborate all potentially possible alternatives of interventions but to come up with a short list that takes maximum advantage of scarce resources. In the following, the authors show a methodology that delivers just that. All the data collected so far in the assessment of the intellectual capital (quality, quantity, systematic management) and in the sensitivity analysis are used. These data are combined into one short list that highlights those action items with the highest marginal utility in the organization.The sensitivity analysis allows the identification of drivers with special relevance for the steering and management process. Regularly, their influence within a system is rather high compared to others. In other words, drivers of IC, which qualify as intervention variables, have a high horizontal sum of influences (also called active sum) in the matrix (see Figure 3).We calculate the potential contribution (P) of every driver of IC relative to the desired strategic results (see below). The potential contribution of the driver depends on the assessment of the status quo (see assessment of intellectual capital) and on the Influence within the system (active sum AS), as well as how efficient the driver can be handled for controlled steering, (S; see below).The calculation of the potential contribution works as follows. The starting point is the arithmetic means (A) for each driver from the numeric assessment of quantity, quality and systematic management: Equation 1 where Qn is the numeric value of quantity, Ql is the numeric value of quality, and Sy is the numeric value of systematic management.The mean or average assessment (A) value shows which drivers are developed poorly or well. The average mean value (A) is combined with its importance in the sensitivity analysis. This allows conclusions about the likely impact of an intervention. The relative importance (I) of the driver is approximated by the active sum (AS) from the sensitivity analysis (see above). For better comparability we use normalized values between 0 and 1, with 1 representing the maximum possible value of the system. Hence, the relative influence or importance (I) of a driver is calculated as follows: Equation 2 where I is the influencing weight or relative importance, AS is the active sum, Dn is the driver of IC n, and m (=number(D)) is the total number of drivers.This combination is visualized in Figure 4, where the x-axis shows the mean numeric assessment values, and the y-axis is reserved for the influence. The dotted vertical lines indicate the 30 percent and 60 percent intervals and help to differentiate modest values from excellent ones.Figure 5 offers two standard interpretations: drivers of IC with an average numeric assessment value above 60 percent have only relative low potential for improvement. They are already on a rather high level, while drivers below 30 percent have a larger potential and need development. The underlying assumption is that poorly developed drivers are relatively easier to improve than those on already high levels. This is in line with the Pareto hypothesis.A similar interpretation applies for the y-axis, where two main areas can be differentiated. Drivers with higher influence can be found in the upper segments, while drivers with lower influence are in the lower segments.Further refinement of this portfolio considers the level of control which top management can exercise on specific drivers. In Figure 6, the y-axis shows the level of controlled steering (S) and management intervention: Equation 3 where S(D) is controlled steering, AS is the active sum, and PS is the passive sum (vertical sum of Figure 3). It is a measure of Independence from feedback from within the system. High S-values indicate a strong impact on the system with only few feedbacking forces.The potential for improvement for each driver of IC P(Dn) is mapped on the x-axis and can be calculated as follows: Equation 4 The most important sector is the upper right sector in Figure 6. Here are the drivers with high potential for development, which quite independent and therefore can be more easily controlled and managed. Intervention in these drivers offers the highest benefit relative to all others within the organization.Drivers in the lower left have neither a high potential for development, nor are they easy to control. As a consequence, one should not choose these drivers for management intervention.The iso-lines help to identify drivers of IC with similar comprehensive priority for management intervention. They offer either more potential for improvement (lower right on one line) or the consequences of intervention are easier to predict (upper right on the same line).The following formula generates a weighted list of drivers for management intervention (MI) with a function considering the risk of controlled intervention as well as marginal economic efficiency: Equation 5 Assuming (see above) that: Equation 6 Equation 7 and Equation 8 results in: Equation 9 The result of this calculation is a ranking of IC drivers according to their likely contribution to the development of the organization given the data from the assessment of IC (quality, quantity and systematic management) as well as the cross-impact matrix of the organization. Any intervention should lead to some shifted assessment for the driver in the next period. As a consequence, the distribution of Figures 5 and 6 would change over time leading, of course, to changed priorities too. Hence, the model reflects the dynamic development of the organization and supports the decision-making processes as well as organizational development.\nLimitations and outlook: This methodology was developed for German SMEs. It is characterized by its economical approach and integrates a decision making model. The methodology was tested in research organizations, in knowledge-intensive research networks, in corporate groups and in more than 60 SMEs. The results of the SME case studies are available on the web[2]. The preference for quick wins and clearly defined results lead to limitations in other areas.Like all other methodologies that help to handle complexity in order to support decision making, requirements regarding precision and comprehensiveness are compromised to a certain extent. In an extreme form, it is possible that a relevant and important driver of IC is ignored. Hence, it is crucial that users of self-assessment based approaches are aware of these restrictions and challenge the results accordingly. It is highly recommended to double check drivers of intellectual capital which are felt to be important but do not rank as high priority topics in this analysis. It might be necessary to increase the level of detail in some special cases in order to gain more differentiated insights. This is particularly relevant when the analysis is done repeatedly, as the focus of attention might change over time.The economical implementation of the methodology as well as the focus on developing the whole organization is another priority and imposes intensive use of team workshops. This might lead to some restrictions in validity of the results.Another limitation relates to operative management. Intellectual capital reporting in the format discussed is intended for strategic management purposes. This implies that the level of detail is limited. Precise recommendations are not to be expected from this approach. The methodology offers a priority list for intervention to be implemented and supported by more specialized approaches of knowledge and intellectual capital management.This methodology assumes a rather high maturity level of organizations. Particularly in the SME context, this restriction is important to mention, as sometimes the experiences with general management methods and tools are rather poor. Organizations lacking sufficient knowledge and experience of management methodology should not use the suggested approach right away but focus their resources on the first steps or other more elementary issues.Another limitation arises due to the focus on internal management, and therefore individualized drivers of intellectual capital. Both reduce comparability among organizations. If comparability were desired, additional work would be required in order to develop a homogenous set of drivers of IC supported by a strictly defined set of indicators. A first proposal is currently being tested in Germany. But the result will still be individual to some extent. The reason for this is the clear emphasis on strategic orientation, which, by definition, leads to variations in the focus and weight of IC drivers. However, it is possible to formulate statements regarding the comparative orientation and the level of systematic management of IC of two or more organizations. This offers the opportunity for joint learning and limited benchmarking.Currently, the authors are focusing on extending the available empirical data. A proposal for a standardized IC statement for financial market analysts is being tested for its potential impact on rating and forecast. Additionally, research efforts will be put into testing the concept with regard to the life cycle of organizations as well as the industry dependence of intellectual capital drivers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to describe a methodology for intellectual capital reporting which was successfully tested in Germany. Special focus is on developing a short list of IC drivers for urgent management intervention.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Building on established self-assessment methodologies from quality management and concepts of system dynamics, an action research design was applied to develop an intellectual capital reporting framework.\nFindings: - It is possible to identify and to assess intellectual capital drivers for corporate results and to prioritize them according to marginal economic contribution. Based on concepts from system dynamics, group learning processes and organizational learning processes are stimulated. Investing scarce resources in specific drivers of intellectual capital with high impact on the organization and additional high levels of managerial control supports long-term performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The research builds on self-organizing principles; the quality of intellectual capital assessment thus depends massively on the rigour of the team involved. Comparability of assessments is limited, as the standard reference is the organization's strategy.\nPractical implications: - The suggested methodology builds heavily on methods already established in SMEs and is compatible with general management approaches. It is economical by design and delivers insight into the functioning of the organization as well as insights on future fields for management intervention.\nOriginality/value: - This methodology combines two established concepts of self-assessment and system analysis and applies them to intellectual capital in order to resolve the decision problem of allocating funds based on economic efficiency and impact.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A holistic approach to delivering sustainable design education in civil engineering	[ "Sustainability", "Higher education", "Holistic", "Civil engineering", "Problem-based learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This paper concerns teaching current and future civil engineers about sustainability in Higher Education (HE). The second half of the twentieth century has seen an increase in the discourses surrounding humans' impact on ecology and the rate at which the planet's resources have been and continue to be consumed. The Earth Council (1998) raises concerns over the environmental devastation caused by prevailing methods of production and consumption and the inequity and injustice within the social and political systems in all nation states. The United Nations recognises the significance of growing inequity and calls upon its member states to engage in decisive corrective actions (UN DESA, 2016). The Brundtland Commission's (WCED, 1987) vision of sustainable development cannot be achieved unless policy-makers and the general public act in a manner that reflects dynamic interdependence between human and the natural systems (Dale and Newman, 2005). In this context, HE and Further Education (FE) institutions have a profound responsibility for engendering a deeper understanding of the earth's ecosystems in general and the exact nature of our dependence on the earth's resources in particular.\n2. Sustainable design education: Engineers provide options and solutions to problems that arise out of the desire for an improved quality of life. Developing means and methods for minimising and remediating environmental problems sit at the top of the catalogue of roles that engineers fulfil (ECUK, 2009). There are increasing calls from the scientific engineering community suggesting that we should not settle for the mere minimisation and remediation of environmental consequences, but rather aim for a more regenerative approach to sustainability (Girardet, 2013). Research suggests that at the back end of the United Nations' Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), the implementation and integration of sustainability education worldwide appears slow and fragmented (Ferrar-Balas et al., 2010; Holgaard et al., 2016). This is not a regional problem with local implications, but rather it is a global problem with potentially global consequences. The leadership structures within HE institutions and engineering academics across the developed and developing worlds must pay specific attention to the severity of this matter and take necessary actions to prepare the engineers of the future (Bovill et al., 2011). The globalised nature of our world demands that current and future generations have the ability to understand and solve problems that are transdisciplinary. A large number of these problems are complex, with significant socio-economic and environmental impacts. To resolve these problems, engineers must have a high level of technical competence and a deep socio-environmental consciousness (Beder, 1996; de Graaff and Ravesteijn, 2001; Corcoran et al., 2002; ECUK, 2009; Segalas et al., 2010; Al-Rawahy, 2013; Seay, 2015). This paper discusses a contribution towards endowing students with these skills and understanding in undergraduate modules, which address the need for sustainable engineering to \"be locally relevant and culturally appropriate, reflecting the environmental, economic, and social conditions of your community\" (UNESCO, 2006, p. 59).\n3. Design of sustainable engineering systems: 3.1 Sustainable design education at Newcastle University\n4 Effective teaching and assessment strategies for sustainable design: 4.1 DSES 2 teaching and learning methods\n5. Student feedback, challenges and reflections: DSES2 accounts for 25 per cent of the overall academic credits available for Stage 2 of the civil engineering UG programmes and, thus, contributes significantly to a student's final degree classification. Given the weight of this module (i.e. 30 credits), the student experience and feedback are considered very carefully each year and adjustments are made to the module as and where appropriate. Delivering SDE involves a number of challenges and DSES2 is certainly not unique in that sense. This section explores the challenges encountered in delivering SDE through DSES2. It includes a sample of the comments made by the students via the module evaluation process.\n6. Discussion: The construction industry plays a crucial role in maintaining and improving peoples' quality of life but can also be responsible for a significant proportion of environmental damage. As discussed in this paper, it is crucial and even urgent that the HE institutions engender the teaching of SDE to students through courses that are interdisciplinary and broad. Civil engineering students must develop a deep-rooted understanding of sustainability and acquire transdisciplinary skills to produce design solutions that are sustainable (Harvey et al., 2014). Various teaching methods can be used in the delivery of SDE to achieve international competency among the students and to help them become stewards for global sustainable development (Mihelcic et al., 2008). The use of a real world problem, as a case study, combined with group-based teaching and learning in DSES2 seems to have helped students to embed holistic sustainability thinking within engineering training.\n7. Conclusions: This paper presents a case study of a module, DSES2, taught at Newcastle University between 2010/2011 and 2014/2015. DSES2 contains a number of best practices that maybe used effectively by other academics seeking to impart skills for sustainable development. It provides an approach that supports students to harmonise links between disciplines into a coordinated and coherent approach to considering global sustainability issues when addressing civil engineering problems in a local context. In particular, it should be noted that the use of problem- and project-based learning strategies has helped the academic team to deliver holistic SDE. In general, the open-ended, real-world design problem set by the design brief is received positively by the students. As evidenced by the students' feedback, combining individual and group assessments proves an efficient way of assessing students' knowledge, awareness and perception of sustainability issues. The work presented also illustrates that it requires a collective effort from the academic team to design and deliver education for sustainable development.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present pedagogical approaches developed and implemented to deliver sustainable design education (SDE) to second-year undergraduate students on civil engineering programmes in the (then) School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University. In doing so, the work presented offers an example of how to help students understand the contested and contingent nature of sustainability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research presented takes an action-based approach to the development of a teaching and assessment model centered on problem- and project-based learning in a real-world context.\nFindings: Because of the use of a design brief, which addresses a practical infrastructure problem encountered by regional communities, the academic team were able to make arguments related to the three pillars of sustainability more accessible to the students. This suggests that pedagogical instruments based on problem- and project-based learning strategies are effective in delivering SDE.\nPractical implications: The successful delivery of SDE requires commitment from the senior management teams leading individual departments as well as commitments embedded in the high-level strategies of Higher Education institutions. It was also found that some students need extra support from the teaching staff if their engagement through SDE is to be successful. This has practical implications for the amount of contact time built into undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes.\nOriginality/value: The teaching and assessment model presented in this paper addresses various substantive and normative issues associated with SDE making it relevant and transferable to courses other than civil engineering.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Work engagement, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions: A comparison between supervisors and line-level employees	[ "Work engagement", "Job satisfaction", "Turnover intentions", "Supervisor", "Moderating effect", "Line-level employee" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Work engagement represents a positive working state that improves organizational performance (Sonnentag, 2003). It is considered a key indicator of organizational health because it significantly influences employees' performance, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, customer satisfaction, organizational success and firm profitability (Harter et al., 2002; Richman, 2006). Studies report that highly engaged employees are more positive about their jobs and organizations, treat co-workers with more respect, help others improve work efficacy, continually improve work-related skills, are highly active and demonstrate in- and extra-role performance (Bakker and Demerouti, 2009). Considering these benefits, organizations invest substantial resources toward establishing policies and practices that foster employees' work engagement (Robinson et al., 2004).\nLiterature review: Career adaptability\nMethods: Participants and procedure\nResults: Profile of the sample\nDiscussion and implications: Theoretical implications\nConclusion: This study delves into the significant role of employee positions in shifting work-related variables within the hospitality industry. Findings demonstrate that supervisors exhibit stronger work engagement than line-level employees with respect to vigor, dedication and absorption. Dedication outperforms vigor and absorption in influencing employee job satisfaction and turnover intentions, regardless of employee positions. Although supervisors are less likely to quit compared to line-level employees, they are not necessarily more satisfied with their jobs than line-level employees. This study further reveals the moderating role of employees' positions in influencing the links between work engagement and its outcomes. Hotel managers may pay close attention to supervisors that present substantial absorption but lower vigor and dedication, which may signal poor job satisfaction and strong intentions to quit. Dedication also presents more leverage on suppressing supervisors' turnover intentions than that of line-level employees.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to investigate the influence of employee positions (supervisor vs line-level employee) on work-related variables (e.g. work engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intentions).\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected from line-level employees and supervisors of 29 mid- to up-scale hotels. A series of one-way ANCOVA were performed to test the position differences in work engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the moderating role of employees' positions on the relationships between those variables.\nFindings: Supervisors have significantly higher work engagement and lower turnover intentions than line-level employees, whereas job satisfaction does not differ across positions. Employee positions significantly moderate the relationship between absorption and job satisfaction, and the relationship between dedication and turnover intentions.\nPractical implications: This study provides an in-depth analysis for hotel managers to capture work-related factors (i.e. work engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intentions) across employee positions. Dedication is the primary barometer that significantly leads to job satisfaction and reduced turnover intentions compared to vigor and absorption. Although job satisfaction may be boosted by improving employee work engagement (i.e. vigor, dedication and absorption), increasing absorption is not an effective solution to increase supervisors' job satisfaction. Hotel managers need to carefully monitor supervisors' levels of dedication, given its focal impact on turnover intentions.\nOriginality/value: This study is one of the first attempts to examine the differences between line-level employees' and supervisors' work engagement (i.e. vigor, dedication and absorption) and its consequences (i.e. job satisfaction and turnover intentions). Findings highlight the unique influence of the individual dimension of work engagement on job satisfaction and turnover intentions. This study reveals the moderating effect of employee positions on the links between engagement dimensions and consequences.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Himalayan population at earthquake risk: Strategies for preparedness	[ "Earthquakes", "Risk management", "Hazards", "Tectonics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Earthquakes have devastated the Himalayan seismic belt several times in the past and will do so in the future too. This is because the tectonic evolution of the Himalayas has rendered the terrain highly metamorphosed, faulted and folded and this is reflected in the highly sheared, fractured, jointed and consequently weak rocks that are also prone to erosion. High topographic relief, extremes of precipitation, steep slopes, together with neo- tectonic activity further make the terrain highly vulnerable to natural hazards. Hence, the risk from earthquakes to populations living in Himalayas is increased.Some of the definitions relevant in this paper are given here. Risk is a measure of the expected losses due to a hazard event of a particular magnitude occurring in a given area over a specific time period. Hazard is a phenomenon that poses a threat to people, structures or economic assets and which may cause a disaster. It could be either man made or naturally occurring in our environment. Vulnerability is the extent to which a community, structure, service or geographic area is likely to be damaged or disrupted by the impact of particular hazard, on account of its nature, construction and proximity to hazardous terrain or a disaster prone area. Hence, Risk can be considered as Hazard + Vulnerability. Disaster is a serious disruption in the functioning of society, causing widespread human, material, or environmental losses that exceed the ability of the affected society to cope using its own resources, (NCDM, 2001).Landslides are a common feature in the Himalayas, which proves to be hazardous during earthquakes. Also other crucial aspects of hills like inaccessibility of settlements, narrow hilly roads, poor infrastructure like roads, electricity, water supply, telecommunication and community facilities like hospitals, schools, etc. increase the vulnerability and hence risk of the population living in Himalayas. The risk increases with time because of increase in population, economic activity and infrastructural activity. Hence, every passing day the risk in any particular area, where natural calamities can take place is increasing and mitigation steps should be taken to avoid disasters. This paper deals with risk assessment of human settlements of a densely populated area in the Himalayas, infested with the seismically active main boundary fault (MBF); so that mitigation measures may be taken before the next earthquake takes its toll. It may be emphasized here that the neighboring region infested by the seismically more active main central thrust, has not been considered in this paper.\nStudy area: The entire Himalayan belt lies between Zone IV and Zone V of the seismic zoning map of India (BIS, 2002). Narendranagar block of Tehri Garhwal District in Uttaranchal State of Himalayas is chosen for risk assessment of human settlements (Figure 1) due to several reasons. These are: it lies in Seismic Zone IV, that is the second most vulnerable of all zones identified on seismic zoning map of India (BIS, 2002). Earthquakes of damage potential more than MSK VIII and accelerations of 0.25 g can be expected in this region. Narendranagar block lies within the most vulnerable zone on the seismic micro-zoning map (Sinvhal et.al., 1990, 1991). Narendranagar block is prone to earthquake effects like landslides, ground fissures, damage to human settlements, casualties and injuries (DMMC, 2003). Narendranagar block has the second highest population density in this hilly district. A population of 73,129 is spread in 213 villages (Statistical Handbook, District Tehri Garhwal, 2002). The close proximity of Narendranagar block to IIT, Roorkee, a distance of about 80 km, makes it approachable, which gives an additional advantage in frequent field visits for collection of data.\nData: Narendranagar block extends between latitudes 30deg5'45''N and 30deg18'45''N and longitudes 78deg14'35''E and 78deg35'50''E. The entire block is covered by Survey of India Topographic Sheet Number 53J on scale 1:250,000. Further details of Narendranagar block are available on topographic sheets 53J 7, 8, 11 and 12 on 1:50,000 scale.The micro level seismic zoning map for the area, identified four areas of vulnerability, viz. Zones D3, D2, D1 and D. D3 was the most vulnerable zone followed by D2, D1 and D (Sinvhal et al. 1990). Southern most part of the Narendranagar block lies in Zone D3 (Figure 2).\nTectonics: Narendranagar block is infested by the MBF, which is manifest as several large tectonic elements, e.g. Tons Nayar Thrust, Krol Thrust and Garhwal Thrust (Jain, 1987). The River Ganga winds in a sinusoidal fashion in the southern boundary of the block, indicating its tectonic control in this region (Figure 3).\nA hypothetical earthquake scenario: The close proximity of three mega thrusts in Narendranagar block coupled with the fact that the River Ganga winds in a sinusoidal manner in this area plus the presence of more than 270 micro earthquake epicenters (EQ 86-2, 1983; EQ 87-16, 1987) in the time frame of five years indicates that tectonic stresses are building up in this area. This could be a possible location of a medium to large sized earthquake in the future. The point of inflexion of the Ganga River, which coincided with the micro zone D3, seems to be the candidate area for an earthquake scenario. A hypothetical epicenter is considered near Tapowan at 30deg08'10''N and 78deg20'30''E. Destructive earthquakes in the Lower Himalayas are in the magnitude range 6-8. Earthquake hazards in any region are best estimated by peak accelerations. These were computed (McGuire, 1977) for earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 and 7.5 for different hypo-central distances, to cover the entire Narendranagar block (Table I). The highest peak accelerations for magnitude 7.0 and 7.5 computed for a hypo-central distance of 20 km are 0.30 cm/s2 and 0.41 cm/s2, respectively. This is significantly higher than what is expected to occur in Seismic Zone IV, 0.25 cm/s2. This implies that in Narendranagar block earthquake damage can be expected to be much higher than what is expected as per the seismic zoning map of India. Iso-acceleration contours with these hypothetical earthquake scenarios were plotted for different hypo-central distances. The contours were subsequently elongated parallel to the trend of MBF to account for regional tectonics (Figure 4).The villages and populations at risk within the various contours are given in Table II. Fifty-nine percent of the population of Narendranagar block is at risk of experiencing earthquake hazards of accelerations 0.31 g if a magnitude 7.0 earthquake has an epicenter at Tapowan. This risk increases if the earthquake magnitude is larger, and may be even higher in the vicinity of faults, riverbeds, intersection of fault and river and in the areas of higher population.High altitude villages are expected to be at higher risk due to topographic effects. This aspect has not been considered in this paper. Forty-seven villages and one urban center, viz. Muni-ki-reti, with population of 23,695, which is 32.4 percent of the total block population, are at high risk due to tectonics of the region, as shown in Figure 5.\nRisk: The elements at risk considered in this paper are the people, their houses and roads. Vulnerability of these elements was assessed through several field visits to sample villages Gaja, Kodarna, Malas, Maun, Berni badi, Pukhri, Loyal, Jamola, Kharsad, Timli and Tapovan. Various factors observed during field visits, which increase the risk, are as given below.Construction technology\nStrategy for mitigation: The risk assessment of Narendranagar block leads to the identification of following thrust areas for formulation of strategies.Strengthening of buildings\nPreparedness plan: Preparedness is the crucial aspect of earthquake mitigation. An earthquake preparedness plan can be defined as \"measures, which enables governments, organizations, communities and individuals to act efficiently and effectively in earthquake situations,\" (UNDRO, 1984). Planning for earthquake preparedness is an activity, which is multidisciplinary and multi dimensional in nature, requiring large-scale intervention at short notice. Hence, a logical analysis of activities to be carried out during an emergency situation, vulnerability analysis and resource potential analysis should be carried out which will form the basis of planning (Shankar and Gupta, 2005). An earthquake emergency management plan for any region formulated on this basis should comprise of mainly of a preparedness plan and an action plan. Figure 8 shows the planning process for earthquake preparedness. The earthquake preparedness plan deals with infrastructure, material, manpower and institutional requirements. The action plan deals with all activities to be carried out, time schedules for the activities, all requirements for performance of that activity and personnel/agency responsible to perform that activity.\nConclusions: Risk assessment for the Narendranagar block of Tehri Garhwal District due to seismo tectonic setting in Himalayas was considered on the basis of a 7.0 and 7.5-magnitude earthquake with epicenter at 30deg08'10''N and 78deg20'30''E. Almost fifty-nine percent population of Narendranagar block is vulnerable to damage associated with peak ground accelerations of 0.41 g, in terms of housing stock, roads, infrastructure, awareness, and time of earthquake occurrence. In view of this mitigation measures are suggested for long-term earthquake preparedness and short-term action plan for emergency management. This pilot study carried out for a seismic micro zone has the potential to be extended for the rest of the seismically vulnerable Himalayan region.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Seeks to examine risk assessment of human settlements due to seismo-tectonic setting of a populated area in the Himalayas, so that mitigation measures may be taken before the next earthquake takes its toll.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Keeping in view the seismic vulnerability of the Himalayan ranges, an earthquake scenario is considered for the Narendranagar block of Tehri Garhwal District which lies in Seismic Zone IV of the seismic zoning map of India (BIS, 1893-2002). Damage of MSK Intensity VIII and peak accelerations of 0.25 g are expected here at any time. The hypothetical epicenter is placed near Tapowan at 30deg08'10''N and 78deg 20'30''E on the crest of the meandering River Ganga, where three large thrusts, viz. Garhwal, Tons Nayar and Krol, congregate. Iso-acceleration contours plotted for the entire Narendranagar block for earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 and 7.5 are elongated along the main boundary fault.\nFindings: - Almost 59 percent population of the Narendranagar block was found to be vulnerable to damage associated with higher accelerations of 0.41 g.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The topographic effects influencing the risk of settlements have not been taken into account.\nPractical implications: - Implications of such an earthquake on housing stock; roads; infrastructure; awareness and time of occurrence are discussed. Strategies are suggested for long-term earthquake preparedness and short-term action plan for emergency management.\nOriginality/value: - The methodology evolved can be extended for other Himalayan regions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Managing the risk aspects of the product development process at the Upjohn Company	[ "Product development", "Risk analysis", "Risk management", "Pharmaceuticals industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: W.E. Upjohn, a physician practicing in the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan in the late 1800s, founded the Upjohn Company. The local population included a number of followers of the Seventh Day Adventist faith, whose beliefs discourage meat eating. As a result, there were significant health issues related to iron deficiency anemia. To remedy the situation, the physician started to compound \"iron\" pills to provide the important mineral to his patients who had to rely on vegetable sources.The pills were not Dr Upjohn's primary focus and he assigned the \"pill-rolling\" operation to one of his brothers who implemented sound business practices and hired a sales force. Within several years, the operation spawned a number of competitors. One finding startled the brothers. Some iron pills on the market were so hard that a man wielding a hammer could pound them into a soft pine board. The pills passed through the body without being absorbed. It became a standard technique to arm salespeople with hammers, boards, and competitor's pills and demonstrate their hardness. In contrast, the Upjohn Company's pills could be crushed to a powder by a salesperson's thumb. That demonstration vitalized the company's devotion to purity and quality.\nThe regulatory environment: In many industries, the level of devotion to product quality would be sufficient to insure success. For example, the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission regulate most products and their safety. These agencies have limited enforcement powers and in egregious cases of dangerous products can do little more than sue, warn the public and negotiate a product recall.However, in drug industries worldwide, government regulation is often intense. In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is charged with protecting the population from dangerous or ineffective pharmaceuticals. Accordingly, it possesses extraordinary powers. Every day it seizes and destroys food and pharmaceutical products deemed defective. They may not be dangerous per se but if they do not meet FDA standards, they are in jeopardy. The cost of tainted, defective, or unsafe foods and drugs is enormous. While the producer bears the cost of the product seizure, ultimately the consumer pays.To protect the welfare of the public, the FDA created a complex, highly monitored series of procedures to introduce a new pharmaceutical product into the US market. The process is a highly articulated series of stages and gates familiar to new product developers. Each stage requires a detailed, scientifically designed, and highly measured set of results. The overall process is a scientific experiment that measures the effectiveness, and side effects of a given product. The implications for public health are highly important. The implications for the pharmaceutical industry are staggering.Dick Bost, Vice President for FDA Compliance, once stated that in a production process, the further along in the process a mistake occurs, the higher the cost. For example, if an iron ingot were damaged at the start of the process, the cost would be relatively minor: restricted to the cost of the ingot. In contrast, if the ingot were turned into a rough part, then machined into a finished part, installed into a complex machine and then failed, the cost would include all the manufacturing and assembly steps and would be much higher.The idea he expressed was to increase the success of the drug development and testing process. If possible, he wanted to weed out problem product ideas as early as possible. Bost and other managers decided to hedge their bets as much as possible. To do so, they partnered with European firms to market in the US drugs successfully introduced into Europe. The US drug introduction process remained in place but the likelihood of an accepted drug making it through that process increased. Even if a drug passed through the process successful, the FDA might still order it withdrawn from the market after introduction.Marketing other companies' drugs had limited potential. As an example, Upjohn successfully introduced two generations of antidiabetes agents from Germany's Hoechst Pharmaceutical into the US market. However, Hoechst decided to prepare to assume lucrative US marketing. Thus, Upjohn found itself competing with Hoechst in the third generation introduction. The situation forced Upjohn to look for strategic partners. It found one in Sweden's Pharmacia. Pharmacia had a robust new product development (NPD) and introduction system and the marriage seemed blessed. The new entity, called Pharmacia and Upjohn, was controlled by Upjohn and despite differences in managerial culture; the flow of new products from Europe was attractive.\nRecent changes: Recently the FDA imposed new requirements on pharmaceutical developers. They accelerated the rapidity with which drugs were withdrawn from the market. In the early 1970s, the FDA halted sales of about two to four drugs each year. Twenty years later the average annual withdrawal rate surged to ten drugs. Bost reacted swiftly. In order to minimize the risk of the loss of an expensively tested product, he formed an internal group dedicated to minimizing the risk of losing a product to regulation. The group, a task force, reviewed industry developments and internal policies. There were several strategic changes. Bost realized that this changed marketing and new product development's role as well.To accomplish a successful pharmaceutical introduction, NPD's job was twofold. First it had to shepherd the product through the FDA new drug application process. That process followed a rigidly prescribed series of steps to prove a drug's efficacy and safety. The process can be divided roughly into two parts: discovery and clinical trials. Discovery involves finding targets for the drug and optimizing its composition for the best effects. Clinical trials involve four phases, Phases I to IV. Phase IV represents the stage at which a drug is approved for sale and the research efforts aim at discovering negative and positive effects of its use.As a result, new drug applicants started with a series of tests on animal subjects to gauge safety and toxicity. In the classic stage-gate process, serious problems uncovered using lower animals like rats and rabbits would stop further development. If no problems were encountered, the tests would proceed up the evolutionary chain to other mammals. The detailed studies often took years and involved double blind studies in which some subjects received the drug and others received a placebo. At the end of the process, scientists knew much about how the drug acted on the body, which organs were affected, and whether the drug actually worked. If results merited further testing, human volunteers were included. The road from rats to humans consumed enormous amounts of time and resources. If the drug made it to market, the NPD team would be involved in post introduction surveillance to insure that physicians used the drug safely.The second task the NPD team faced was determining the drug's indications and contraindications. Simply put, an indication is the condition or disease entity for which the product should be used. In contrast, contraindications are warning of situations in which the drug should not be used. If, for example, long-term use of a drug can damage a person's liver, underlying liver disease is a contraindication and those with the condition should use the drug.If the NPD team performed either scientific task less than perfectly, the company could suffer costly problems. Even if their job was done flawlessly, success also depended on marketing. Previously, marketing's job was to achieve peak sales as soon as possible. Companies stressed the need to recover product development investments as quickly as possible. Often the funds were needed to help start the next development cycle. As a result, marketing's focus was early and widespread adoption. It is still an important consideration. However, companies have come to realize that the long-term financial benefits of keeping the drug on the market throughout its lifecycle. In most countries, pharmaceutical firms face a limited period of patent protection until their products become generic. Any competitor can market generic products. While expiration of a patent does not force a company to exit the market, it usually signals a decline in sales.Consequently, the marketing team must focus on both early and long-term sales. It is important to insure that a promising drug is not withdrawn from the market for safety reasons. The development team has done its job and marketers must avoid missteps that prematurely end a product's lifetime. Thus, marketers must focus on risk management.In fact, the Upjohn Company has always been sensitive to promoting its products in the most careful way. Within the company, lawyers play a powerful role. Compliance with all the FDA regulations is recognized as vital to organizational existence. The industry recognizes that pharmaceuticals are highly complex products used in an equally complex environment. Unforeseen factors come into play frequently and must be managed. As an example, the company produced a tranquilizer called Maolate. The product was in the monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitor class. It passed every animal test and was tested on human volunteers, who were prisoners at Jackson State Penitentiary about 100 miles away from Kalamazoo. Results were exciting the product worked with very few side effects. Upjohn released the product with high hopes and good early efficacy. Marketing exploited the information and impressed a number of physicians. About eight months after market introduction, a patient on Maolate died. During the next few months several other Maolate patients died. Upjohn and the FDA investigated and learned that the malt in beer caused an adverse reaction that led to the deaths. The prisoner human volunteers had no access to beer in confinement during their part of the drug tests. The company faced a choice: label drinking beer as a contraindication and keep the drug on the market or, voluntarily pull the product and lose the promised stream of revenue. Upjohn pulled the product to avoid further deaths, even though a warning would have protected it from lawsuits. That episode of laudable corporate responsibility emphasized the need to manage risk.\nRisk management in the pharmaceutical industry: By definition, risk management is the process of minimizing a drug's risk during the product's life cycle. Developing an inherently safe drug is vital. However, marketers must also maximize the drug's benefits while minimizing its risks. In this context, risk management has two key components: risk assessment and risk minimization.Bost convened his task force and started a discussion about how the company could accomplish both components. Immediately, opposition surfaced. Ward Studebaker, the vice president of Sales, complained that the effort was unnecessary. He cited the extensive sales force training that inculcated a culture of caution and concern. All salespeople were trained to promote company pharmaceuticals only in accordance with the FDA approved package insert. The package insert is a document unique to the pharmaceutical industry. It contains information about dosage, indications, contraindications, adverse reactions, and side effects. It communicates all the relevant information about a drug product and is completely supported with fact. It forms an advisory tool for physicians and is the legal protection for the manufacturer.Studebaker was clear that the company enforced compliance with the package insert and had terminated several sales people who were found to violate that directive. In addition, he cited the extensive post introduction surveillance that the compliance department performed. The department monitored the worldwide performance of each product daily. When an adverse reaction occurred, even in New Zealand, the company knew about it almost immediately and prepared an appropriate and timely response. Studebaker described these two mechanisms as double-barreled protection from both lawsuits and FDA intervention. He wanted to use the resources to further marketing and sales.There was a lively and heated debate about risk management, which was not resolved by the end of the meeting. Bost approached Dan Karel, the Harvard Law School trained CEO. Karel immediately saw the need to reduce the company's exposure to suits and seizure and authorized Bost to design a risk management program. He assigned Robert Schleifer, the corporate counsel to help with the design. Schleifer offered several operating principles to guide their efforts. As prescribing experience grows, the medical profession learns more about how a given drug acts in a population. Some times the newly discovered effects can be beneficial. In others, experience can uncover negatives. Schleifer stated that pharmaceutical companies can reduce risk by demonstrating active efforts to warn the public and FDA about any untoward effects of one of their products. In doing so, the company becomes a partner in the public health effort.Schleifer outlined three common elements to aid in risk management:1. traditional education;2. reminder programs; and3. controlled access.Traditional education programs might involve information booklets, letters to doctors, and letters to patients. Reminder programs include things like informed consent agreement documents that spell out potential risks to patients and require a patient signature. The third element, controlled access, limits the distribution of the drug to certain types of patients.Both Bost and Schleifer wanted the aid of an expert. They found one in Frank Paine at the University of Michigan Health Systems Management program. He had specific experience in regulatory compliance. Paine met with both managers and laid out four basic questions that were the foundation of a pharmaceutical risk management effort:1. Who should not use the drug?2. How is the drug used?3. What things do patients need to avoid when taking the drug?4. To what extent are there issues of informed consent?Paine advocated a systematic approach to actions and communications.\nThe design of a risk management effort: When to start the effort\nImplications for marketers and product managers: Upjohn was one of the earliest drug companies to address the risk management issue within the pharmaceutical regulatory process. The basic facts in the case are well documented, but some details have been changed to protect confidentiality. Recently, Pharmacia and Upjohn merged with Pfizer, another proactive player in the market. Presumably, the new entity benefits from groundbreaking work done in the past. It must be stressed that few organizations have extensive experience operating risk management programs. The basic application area is still suffering growing pains and there are no definitive best ways to proceed. The risk management process will become more effective as companies in the pharmaceutical industry learn more about what works and does not.Outside of the pharmaceutical industry, manufacturers face different sources of risk that might be managed with a suitable response. For automobile, toy, or basically any other item, risks in how consumers use products abound. The lessons learned in the pharmaceutical industry show that having a basically safe product does not mean that people will use it safely. There was a famous example of two men who wanted to trim a hedge and did not have hedge trimmers. They used a gasoline-powered lawn mower. To do so they each lifted the unit by holding one side. After a slip, they lost several fingers. The act was foolish but the manufacturer worried about a lawsuit and regulatory involvement. If the company had a functioning risk management program in place, it might have been using at least a traditional education program to alert users to dangers. The important thing to remember is that managers can address most challenges.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to describe an innovative practice that has implication for new product developers within and outside the pharmaceutical industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The case describes an approach to managing the risk inherent in marketing drugs. The organization's original name has been retained, although individual managers' names have been changed at its request. Interviews with former company employees and publicly available data were used to write the case study.\nFindings: - The paper provides information and action approaches to new product developers that may reduce the risk of losing products to regulatory action. The subject company devised a risk management response to its product development. Their results offer direct implications for new product development teams in the drug industry. By extension, the implications may aid traditional companies outside of the pharmaceutical industry.\nResearch limitations/implications: - As in all case studies, the specific conditions found in one organization may not be found more generally in others. Readers are cautioned that the conclusions drawn in the case may have limited applicability.\nPractical implications: - The case depicts an innovative application of the risk minimization to the new product development process. Other organizations may find the technique of value in their own efforts.\nOriginality/value: - The case is the first to describe a successful application of risk management to the product development/product management process. It offers the potential of improving the lifetime of pharmaceutical products in the marketplace, allowing the company a longer time to reap profits.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Complementing consumer magazine brands with internet extensions?	[ "Magazines", "Internet", "Brands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The internet has revolutionized modern journalism by offering speed and interactivity in combination with low distribution costs (cf. e.g. Flavian and Gurrea, 2008). Consequently, firms in the media industry have extended their brands into the realm of electronic media such as the internet and other digital forms (Chan-Olmsted, 2006). Even though the internet provides another opportunity to gain revenue from advertising, the results of a survey conducted by the International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP, 2005) indicated that 81 percent of the magazines surveyed used their internet brand extension to acquire more readers for the print magazine.There have been some studies on the effect of magazine web sites on the demand for the printed magazine. They have shown that during the late 1990s and early 2000s the web sites were actually cannibalizing the sales of the print magazine (e.g. Kadiyali and Simon, 2006). However, web sites have developed since then, and the latest findings have shown that they can be used to support the print versions (e.g. Kaiser, 2006). It nevertheless remains unknown what the key drivers of successful support are.Brands are the main assets in the consumer-magazine market (e.g. Doyle, 2002). In general, research on brands and their web sites has shown that the web sites do have a positive impact on brand attitudes and buying intentions (e.g. Muller et al., 2008). However, in the magazine industry they are easily taken (at least partially) as substitutes for the print magazine because the digital content often overlaps. Kadiyali and Simon (2006) (using data from the years 1996 to 2001) found that the cannibalization effect was greatest when the digital content of the web site was entirely the same as the content in the current issue of the print magazine. Practitioner views also support this notion of complementarity:Duplication of print content on the web is not the answer. Produce original content across different media (FIPP, 2007, p. 11).Researchers in media management have considered media web sites in terms of brand extensions (cf. Ha and Chan-Olmsted, 2001; Nordback, 2005; Chan-Olmsted, 2006; McDowell, 2006), and the prevailing idea is that the use of the same brand name in different channels is an attempt to leverage the brand's equity. Brand equity manifests itself both indirectly as brand awareness and brand image, and also directly as market behavior in the form of brand loyalty as manifested in repeat consumption behavior on the market place (McDowell, 2006). We also approach magazine web sites from the theoretical perspective of brand extensions.Consumer magazines are considered experiential goods in the present study. Even though there is a physical product, the printed magazine, its consumption lies in the experiencing of something new by reading its intangible content. Davidson et al. (2007) describe magazines as having the power to evoke a variety of cognitive and emotional responses. The research on the brand extension of experiential goods has indicated that it is most successful when the goods are sufficiently dissimilar to the parent brands (Sood and Dreze, 2006). Given the findings from the research on magazines and experimental work on brand extensions, the key question is how to use consumer-magazine web sites to complement print magazines and leverage brand equity.The purpose of the present study is to increase our understanding of the effects of web site extension on the parent-magazine brand in the context of experiential goods, and to identify factors that are related to success. The study focuses on the relationship between consumers' experiences on magazine web sites and their loyalty towards the print magazine. We explore different ways in which the web site can complement the print version. The first mechanism is related to engaging in more frequent communication with the magazine's readers, and the second is related to consumer-initiated interaction between other readers. In both cases something is offered that cannot be obtained from the print magazine, but is assumed to complement it.The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In the next section we discuss the nature of experiential goods and the brand-extension concept in order to be able to position the present study among previous research efforts. We then consider the key drivers of brand-extension success in more detail, and present our conceptual model and hypotheses. The subsequent sections describe the research design and the results of the empirical assessment, and the final one presents the results and discusses their implications and limitations.\nThe conceptual model: This section of the paper builds up the conceptual model (see Figure 1) and develops the research hypotheses. First we focus on the experiential nature of magazine brands, and justify our decision to study brand loyalty as the key outcome variable. We then discuss the logic of examining magazine web sites as brand extensions, and finally develop the research hypotheses based on previous research findings and the existing literature.The experiential nature of magazine brands\nEmpirical study: The empirical study reported in this paper focused on the online readers or users (n=3,009) of 34 Finnish consumer magazines. The key data was collected via an online survey during spring 2007 in cooperation with the magazines. The announcement of the survey was published on the magazine web sites, showing a link to an electronic questionnaire. In addition to conducting this primary survey we took information related to the content of the web sites from the Web Survey 2007, which is a survey commissioned by the Finnish Periodical Publishers' Association and was conducted in parallel with the primary survey in spring 2007 by the Nitro FX Oy (2007) media agency. All the focal 34 magazines were included in this survey, in other words the content of their web sites was analyzed and classified accordingly.Measures\nFindings: The results of the models are presented in Tables IV-VI. Tables IV and V presents the estimation results, whereas Table VI shows the results of the comparisons of the six modeling phases. The model-comparison tests (Table VI) were based on the reductions in the deviance statistic of the model, and the results of these tests suggest that the model improvement at each of the stages was statistically significant at p=0.05. Consequently, the interpretations of the final model's (model 6) results given in Tables IV and V are justified.Model 1 (the null model) in Tables IV and V shows a mean value for behavioral brand loyalty of 4.22 (of the range between one and seven), and the level-two variance component is significantly different from zero (p < 0.01). Intra-class correlation calculated from variance-component estimates (see, e.g. Bryk and Raudenbush, 1992) was about 0.078, which means that about 7.8 percent of the total variance in this measure is due to differences between the higher-level units, i.e. the magazine web sites. Following the procedure suggested by Hox (1995), we built the model in parts, and introduced the control variables at the second stage. The model-comparison test (Table VI) suggested a statistically significant improvement in model fit, and the coefficients of both control variables were also significant (see model 2 in Tables IV and V). The robust standard errors were used as diagnostic tools for determining whether the slopes of the control variables should be modeled as random (see Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002, p. 278). Because there were substantive discrepancies in the model-based and robust standard errors of the Readf slope, this effect was modeled as random in Model 3, which improved the fit (see Table VI). H1 was tested in model 4, in which web site-extension loyalty was introduced. The model-comparison test suggests a significant improvement in fit, and the slope of this variable was positive and statistically significant, thereby supporting H1. As expected, the model-based and robust standard errors of the Wloy slope differed, signaling an error in the model specification. The Wloy slope was therefore modeled as random in model 5, which improved the fit significantly. In practice this means that the positive effects of loyalty towards web site extensions on loyalty towards the parent brand differ across magazines.H2a and H2b were tested on model 6, in which the two-level dummy variables (news and chat/discussion) were introduced. Adding these variables improved the model fit (Table VI). The moderating effect of news was statistically significant (p=0.05), which supports H2a (see model 6, Tables IV and V). In practical terms, it seems that loyalty to the web site extension positively influences loyalty to the parent-magazine brand, and this relationship is stronger with magazines that provide news for their readers on their web sites. However, the moderating effect of chat/discussion was not significant, which means that H2b was not supported. In other words, no evidence was found that discussion forums or chat rooms enhanced the positive effect of web site loyalty on magazine-brand loyalty.\nDiscussion: The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of online brand extensions on the parent brand. We investigated the online users (n=3009) of 24 Finnish consumer magazines, and explored the impact of web site loyalty on loyalty towards the parent brand. The results of the study showed that customers who are loyal to the web site will also show more loyalty to the parent brand. Building on the logic of complementarity between the web site extension and the parent brand, we also hypothesized two mechanisms that would moderate the relationship between web site loyalty and parent-brand loyalty. It appears from the results of this study that current content that is updated regularly supports the positive effect, whereas the possibility to interact with other customers does not have a similar effect.This research makes a threefold contribution to the literature on the role of the internet in the media industry, and to the literature on the brand extensions of experiential goods. First, the study increases our understanding of the success drivers of magazine web site extensions. The findings clearly indicate that magazines using their web site brand extensions as a means of complementing their magazines with more up-to-date content, such as news, can gain competitive advantage in terms of increased brand loyalty. This finding is in line with the conclusions of Sood and Dreze (2006) and Habann et al. (2008), indicating that the brand extensions of experiential goods should definitely be related to the parent brand, but also be complementary to them. This finding has several implications for media managers planning the contents of their web sites. It might also be useful to consider whether magazine managers could join forces with newspaper managers. News is core business for newspapers, and in the newspaper industry the Internet is really a substitute for the print version. News is also one of the most heavily used online services (Flavian and Gurrea, 2008). These facts have forced newspapers to compete on the internet, too.Second, this study extends our understanding of brand extensions in the context of experiential goods, in that previous studies have mainly concentrated on FMCGs. Our research builds on the findings reported by Sood and Dreze (2006), who observed that the key drivers of success might actually be different from those of FMCGs.Third, the present study complements the research on the effects of brand extensions on the parent brand in taking behavioral brand loyalty as the focal variable. This approach enables examination of the impact of the extension on consumer choice in the long run. Thus the study clarifies the relationship between the extension and parent brands given the mixed results reported previously (see Balachander and Ghose, 2003; on the reciprocal spillover effect; and Martinez et al., 2008; on the dilution effect). Our results show that consumer loyalty to web site extensions does have a complementary effect on loyalty to the parent print-magazine brand.This finding has broad implications in the media industry in particular. Scholars (e.g. Kadiyali and Simon, 2006; Kaiser and Kongsted, 2005; Kaiser, 2006) have been concerned with the so-called cannibalization question with regard to media web sites, which have been blamed to some extent for the decreasing circulation trends in the industry. Our results indicate that media web sites may have beneficial business implications; in fact, by fostering consumer loyalty to the parent brand they may contribute to keeping up current circulation levels. We could also assume that loyal customers are more likely to become long-term subscribers to the print magazine and thus its most profitable customers. Therefore, media managers would do well to consider their web sites as one tool with which to defend their place in consumers' lives.Finally, no support was found for the proposition that the favorable effect of loyalty to the web site extension on behavioral brand loyalty to the parent brand is stronger when consumers are involved in the brand creation on the web site. However, patterns of consumer involvement are likely to be more complex than hypothesized here, so more research is needed on this topic, too.\nLimitations and future research proposals: The research design of the present study limits the generalization of the results to some extent. First, the respondents were not selected through random sampling, which is likely to have given some selection bias to the sample: people who do not actively spend time on the web site are probably under-represented. The utilized method of collecting data, however, is consistent with a number of recent studies focusing on online context (cf. e.g. Casalo et al., 2008; Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006; Steenkamp and Geyskens, 2006); and the generalizability of measurements were tested among four sub-samples. Second, the inferences on the moderating effects of the web site characteristics are based on only 34 higher-level units (i.e. web sites). Moreover, the measures used in the higher-level units were only dummy variables, which do not accurately distinguish the web site characteristics. For example, one of them only measured whether the web site did or did not have a chat or discussion forum, but was not able to distinguish between popular and unpopular forums. A further possible avenue for research would be to study the existence of different \"types of web surfers\" and their motives for using extension web sites and the original parent brand.The present study increases our understanding of brand extensions with regard to experiential goods, but more research is needed on the factors that are related to extension success, in particular. In the media industry in general the internet has been one of the most widely used ways of extending the established brand. More specific operationalization of the fit between the parent brand and its extensions should be pursued. The multilevel modeling approach applied here seems promising, but future studies should concentrate on collecting data enabling a larger number of higher-level unit observations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the effects of web site extension on the parent-magazine brand in the context of experiential goods, and to identify factors that are related to success.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper focuses on the relationship between consumers' experiences on magazine web sites and their loyalty towards the print magazine.\nFindings: - There are different ways in which the web site can complement the print version. The first mechanism is related to engaging in more frequent communication with the magazine's readers, and the second is related to consumer-initiated interaction between other readers. In both cases something is offered that cannot be obtained from the print magazine, but is assumed to complement it.\nOriginality/value: - The paper increases understanding of brand extensions with regard to experiential goods, but more research is needed on the factors that are related to extension success.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Implementation and challenges of accreditation of prior experiential learning: admissions (APEL-A): The assessors' perspective	[ "Malaysian Qualifications Agency", "Accreditation of prior experiential learning", "Open and distance education" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The population of Malaysia roughly comprises 68.6 per cent ethnic Bumiputera (sons of the soil that includes Malays and the Malaysian Indigenous people), 23.4 per cent Chinese, 7 per cent Indian and 1 per cent others (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2015). Within this multiracial, multicultural and multilingual composition, Malaysia aims to develop, especially in its human capital, to achieve Vision 2020 that would allow Malaysia to attain advanced nation status. In this final leg of Malaysia's journey, one of the six strategic thrusts deliberated in the 11th Malaysia Plan (Economic Planning Unit, 2015) is to accelerate the development of human capital for an advanced nation through lifelong learning. To increase access to higher education to encourage lifelong learning, the Malaysian Government began by establishing private higher education institutions (HEIs) before introducing the Open Distance Learning (ODL) modes of study. The latest measure was the introduction of the newly approved alternative assessment by the Malaysian Ministry of Education and the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) known as accreditation of prior experiential learning (APEL) that allows learners to leverage on their working experience or prior experiential experience to enrol into tertiary education. This allows more learners from diverse backgrounds, conventional or otherwise, to enter into institutions of higher learning for professional development. Wawasan Open University (WOU) is one of National APEL Assessment Centres appointed by MQA.\n2. Literature review: After revamping the Lembaga Akreditasi Negara or National Accreditation Board (LAN) to MQA in 2007, MQA established the Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF). MQF is a form of instrument to classify national academic qualification criteria benchmarked against international practices. These criteria are based on academic learning outcomes, credit and academic load systems that apply to qualifications awarded by all HEIs in Malaysia. This enables individuals to progress towards higher education through an education pathway that links qualifications systematically, including credit transfers and/or recognition of prior experiential learning acquired through formal and informal learning that encourages lifelong learning. According to Kaprawi et al. (2015, p. 146), APEL, under MQF, is defined as \"a systematic process that involves the identification, documentation and assessment of prior experiential learning, such as knowledge, skills and attitudes to determine the level at which an individual has achieved the desired learning outcomes, as access to a programme of study and/or the award of credit\". MQF was later revised and officially released as MQF 2nd edition in 2018.\n3. Theoretical framework: According to Kaprawi (2011), APEL in Malaysia is founded on three main theories: adult learning theory, experiential learning theory and the Johari Window Concept. The adult learning theory and experiential learning theory have long been the pillars of the APEL system (Harris, 2000). The Adult learning theory from Knowles (1990) discusses on the changes that occur when learning happens, particularly in terms of psychology (behavioural and cognitive), anthropology and linguistics. Kolb's (1984) experiential learning theory holistically looks into the combination of experience, perception, cognition and behaviour that have become the methodological hallmarks of the recognition of prior learning. Kolb's experiential learning model, expressed in a four-stage cycle of learning, holds the principle of experiential learning theory as its core where 'immediate or concrete experiences' provide a basis for \"observation and reflection\" where they are considered \"abstract concepts\" that after going through \"active tests\" become new experiences (Kolb, 2016). The Johari Window Concept on which Alan Chapman's (2003 cited in Businessballs.com, Businessballs, 2017) Johari Window Model is based takes into account the candidates' effective aspects of learning including behaviours, cooperation, empathy, personal development and other soft skills.\n4. Implementation and challenges of accreditation of prior experiential learning (APEL): \"Accreditation of prior experiential learning (APEL) refers to the assessment and accreditation of any form of learning that has taken place in the context of either formal or informal education or during work itself\" (Kaprawi et al., 2015). APEL is about giving value to the experience, skills and competencies gathered through formal, non-formal and informal means, and it includes formal schooling, work and life experiences, training, independent study, voluntary work, hobbies and family experiences (Malaysian Qualifications Agency, 2014).\n5. Methodology: This paper is written based on the critical reflection of two APEL-A assessors appointed from a MQA approved assessment centre. Both assessors have been appointed as APEL-A assessors since 2015 and have assessed a combined total of 150 APEL candidates. According to Bart (2011), \"critical reflection is a reasoning process to make meaning of an experience. Critical reflection is descriptive, analytical, and critical and can be articulated in a number of ways such as in written form, orally or as an artistic expression\". This process of reflecting on their experiences is not only good practice for the assessors to improve themselves but also offers a wealth of information that are able to add depth and breadth to an experience that would build connections between the research questions and the content.\n6. Challenges in the implementation of APEL: admissions: Based on the above process, the assessors found the following challenges in the assessment process for admissions.\n7. Recommendations for improvement in the implementation of APEL: admissions: In light of these challenges faced by the assessors, there is a need to look for improvements for the implementation of APEL-A. Transparent guidelines and continuous training for APEL assessors are needed to ensure consistency in practices and fairness to those from conventional learning. Institutions should also strive to integrate APEL into the institution's academic policy. Our recommendations are as below.\n8. Conclusion: To summarise, APEL in Malaysia was created on the backbone of adult learning theory, experiential learning theory and the Johari Window Concept. Together these three concepts create a holistic approach in assessing the experiential learning for tertiary certification. MQA has created a framework that has been implemented across the selected four HEIs to aid in the assessment and standardisation of experiential learning as the foundation of a tertiary education. It cannot be denied that there would exist disputes and challenges in the implementation of APEL, especially due to the subjective nature of its assessment. As such, we would recommend the need for quality assurance for APEL so that it can be held in the same regard as conventional education. Lifelong learning is important to every nation in the world as it leads to developing human capital and increasing economic competitiveness. Therefore, it is hoped that MQA will continue to provide direction and encourage for the effective administration of APEL by the selected HEIs. With APEL, it is hoped that more and more people will be given the opportunity to improve themselves in their career and personal satisfaction.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight how accreditation of prior experiential learning (APEL) is implemented, the challenges faced by the APEL assessors while assessing candidates as well as to suggest recommendations for improving the APEL process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper is written based on the critical reflection of two accreditation of prior experiential learning: admissions (APEL-A) assessors appointed from a Malaysian Qualifications Agency approved assessment centre. This process would add depth and breadth to the study based on the assessor's experience.\nFindings: The study identified five challenges in the implementation of APEL-A. They are limited literature and records of the existing practices, conceptualisation of the APEL process, complicated and time-consuming APEL process, standard of acceptance vary according to discipline and lack of continuous training for APEL assessors. The four recommendations for improvements are as follows: the need for transparent and clear guidelines, ensuring consistency in practices and fairness to those from conventional learning, integrating APEL as part of the institution's academic policy and providing continuous training for all APEL assessors.\nOriginality/value: Until now, not much research has been done regarding its implementation in Malaysia. The number of learners enrolled through this form of assessment may be low but growing. The feedback on the implementation of the APEL-A assessment process would be greatly beneficial to the stakeholders involved in improving its implementation process. The highlighted challenges faced as well as the recommendations put forth may also be useful for the continuous improvement of the APEL-A assessment process. Relevant stakeholders would benefit from this study.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
In pursuit of learning: sensemaking the quality of work life	[ "Quality of work life", "Learning orientation", "Learning strategies", "Context", "Sensemaking", "Learning", "Employees behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the study of organisational work and the perceived quality of life, Rice et al. (1985) discovered that human action and intentionality in a given context are crucial for realizing anticipated outcomes. More specifically, quality of work life as perceived by employees is influenced by how they engage in work, respond to the environment, and conduct specific work activities. The intent and action of employees towards work can influence their perceived quality of work life. Hence, a deeper understanding of cognitive (intent) and behavioural (action) participation could change the way employees perceive and experience their work life. In other words, employees can learn to redefine the quality of their work life by first understanding the value of work activities and their very existence in the organisation.\nA preliminary conceptual framework: This study is exploratory in nature and it would be necessary for us to describe our theoretical contribution through a preliminary framework which serves as a prior theory. Our premise is that the theory of learning orientation has not been extensively researched following Baker and Sinkula\nLiterature review: The literature review1 focuses on the key components of our conceptual framework including quality of work life, learning orientation, learning strategies, context, and sensemaking. In examining these interrelations, concepts related to high-performance work systems and job enrichment become relevant.\nMethodology: Context and data sources\nFindings: A total of 62,529 words constitute the overall text that formed the core of our analysis and interpretation. We did not take into consideration differences in male and female perspectives and other demographic characteristics such as job types and tenures as our main objective was to identify critical issues that contribute to theoretical development on quality of work life and learning orientation. As such, collective views were examined. We next discuss the findings in relation to the research questions.\nTowards a model of quality of work life and learning orientation: Figure 3 illustrates a circular process of connecting learning orientation to quality of work life which also creates tension between the components. The lived and perceived quality of work-life experience within the organisation (context) can modify the way employees engage in knowledge sharing (learning orientation) and the way they make sense of their environment. Sensemaking facilitates the interactions between environmental influences (external factors) and employees\nImplications for theory: Current studies on context focuses on situated learning (Brown et al., 1989) and how context influences experience to create knowledge leading to organisational learning (Argote and Miron-Spektor, 2011). This study extends the organisational aspect of learning orientation by considering the individual level of learning through the process of sensemaking. Quality of work life provides the context for individuals to make sense of their organisational environment. Sensemaking affects learning orientation through cognitive readiness as individuals develop learning strategies to enhance their quality of work life. Sensemaking allows individuals to develop and modify their frames of references drawn from contextual stimuli to engage in learning. This study provides a situational dimension to Baker and Sinkula\nImplications for practice: This study offers several implications for HRD as it deals with the intent and act of learning which in turn modify employees\nConclusions, limitations, and future studies: This study discovered that learning and context are inseparable, and the quality of work life provides the context for employees to make sense of their learning orientation to improve existing work conditions. Employees develop appropriate learning strategies to bridge the gap between their perceived and experienced quality of work life. Sensemaking facilitates the interpretation of this gap through a cyclical process of learning and action. This dynamic process helps to shape employees\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore how employees make sense of their work context and its influence on their learning orientation to improve their quality of work life.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Qualitative data drawn from a dynamic online discussion that spanned three years were used in the content analysis. A total of 137 MBA participants from a university in the southwest of the USA contributed to the online forum.\nFindings: Perception of work-life context influences the cognitive intent of employees in such a way that they change their learning orientation and develop learning strategies to improve their current work conditions. These strategies are in turn influenced by their sensemaking of the context to determine their quality of work life.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study illuminates the relationship between learning and context through the theoretical perspective of sensemaking. It extends the concept of learning orientation as operating at the individual and group levels other than the organizational level.\nPractical implications: Organizational leaders and human resource development (HRD) professionals will recognize how certain contextual stimuli can trigger their employees\nOriginality/value: The study provides a learning context to quality of work life, an area that has not been extensively researched in the HRD literature. By exploring sensemaking of quality of work life in the context of learning, the paper offers a more encompassing perspective of learning orientation and quality of work life contexts.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of psychological safety on transformative learning in the workplace: a quantitative study	[ "Human resource development", "Workplace learning", "Psychological safety", "Transformative learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Transformative learning in workplace research is gaining much attention, as business environments are increasingly becoming more complex and uncertain than ever before. Workforce and customer demographics are rapidly shifting, technological breakthroughs are fundamentally reshaping the nature of work, and increasing demands for corporate social responsibility are being placed on organizations. In this turbulent time, to enhance the likelihood of the success of an organization, it is crucial for organizational leaders to have the capacity to make sense of various ongoing local and global environmental changes and to transform their outdated management styles as necessary. Employees are also expected to think independently, initiate new ideas and constantly develop new products and services that meet the needs of the diverse stakeholders that they are serving, requiring their ability to come out of their comfort zones and transform. However, the practice of human resource development (HRD) in organizations is still heavily focused on knowledge and skill delivery (Franz, 2010), without allowing time and space for deep thinking and questioning: the essential process of transformative learning.\nLiterature review: Transformative learning\nHypotheses: Our proposed model (Figure 1) postulates that psychological safety is positively associated with the transformative learning processes of social support, attitude toward uncertainty and criticality. The model also postulates that transformative learning processes are positively associated with transformative learning outcomes. Below are our four specific research hypotheses:\nMethods: Participants and data collection\nResults: A total of 300 questionnaires were distributed; 129 were returned (43%). The online survey links were sent to 54 employees; three completed (6%). Overall, we had 132 respondents. After deleting cases with missing values, we ended up analyzing the responses of 129 participants. We performed a normality test to examine the suitability of the data by checking univariate skewness and kurtosis values. None of them was above the thresholds of the normality assumptions (Kline, 2006). The sample was comprised of 107 males (83%); the majority of the participants were in their 30's (62%), holding a bachelor's degree (46%). In total, 31% of them were managers. We also compared the mean differences of the responses across the demographic variables using a t-test and ANOVA. The results showed no statistically significant differences.\nDiscussion: The results described above offer several implications for the theory and practice of HRD. From a theoretical perspective, most importantly, we have extended the methodological boundaries of transformative learning research by enhancing the external validity of Cox's (2017) TROPOS in the workplace context, as well as using a quantitative approach to measure and predict transformative learning. Psychological safety was found to increase transformative learning outcomes through transformative learning processes, including social support, attitude toward uncertainty and criticality. This study was the first attempt to use transformative learning as a viable construct in workplace research, and therefore, instrumental in opening up new avenues for HRD scholars to study transformative learning with wider methodological choices.\nLimitations and recommendations for future research: This study has several limitations. First, we used self-reported survey data; therefore, there may exist individual perceptual biases. Although we strived to minimize the issues of common method variance by using both procedural and statistical controls, collecting data from multiple sources could overcome this to some extent. Second, this study relied on cross-sectional data, which prevents us from concluding the causality among the variables. This can be mitigated through the use of a longitudinal research design. Third, the results of our analysis may be limited to a certain group with similar demographic characteristics because we collected employees' responses from only one company.\nConclusion: In today's rapidly changing business environments, the need for transformative learning is increasing in organizations. However, the traditional role of HRD has mainly focused on helping employees accumulate knowledge and skills rather than teaching them how to think. In this study, we found that psychological safety enhances the possibility of transformative learning through social support, attitude toward uncertainty and criticality. Informed by these results, creating training and work environments in which employees can continuously build their capacity to question conventional ideas and approaches, learn from them and take alternative actions will bring about greater creativity and innovation, which will enhance the competitive advantage of and ultimately benefit the organizations that engage in such practices.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of psychological safety on transformative learning in the workplace. This study focused on psychological safety as a specific practice that may or may not independently contribute to transformative learning outcomes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data was gathered from 132 employees in one US manufacturing company through a survey asking about the perception of psychological safety and the experience of transformative learning. A mediation analysis was conducted to test the effects of transformative learning processes - social support, attitude toward uncertainty and criticality - on the relationship between psychological safety and transformative learning outcomes.\nFindings: The results of this study showed that psychological safety led to transformative learning outcomes mediated by transformative learning processes including social support, attitude toward uncertainty and criticality.\nOriginality/value: Existing literature reveals little about the mechanism of how transformative learning occurs in the workplace. This study contributes to the field of human resource development by explaining the relationship between psychological safety and transformative learning, as well as first attempting to use transformative learning as a viable construct in workplace research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A change management perspective on the introduction of music therapy to interprofessional teams	[ "Change management", "Organizational change", "Health services", "Music therapy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: Music therapy is an allied health profession that involves the use of music to achieve therapeutic goals in areas such as communication, self-expression, emotional support, physical rehabilitation, and social interaction (Wigram et al., 2002). Within sessions, music therapy clients are supported to participate in music experiences, such as singing, instrument playing, music and movement, song-writing, or music improvisation, within the context of a therapeutic relationship. Music therapists are qualified health professionals who use their knowledge and experience to assess individual clients' needs and to design, implement, and evaluate appropriate music therapy interventions. Professional requirements vary around the world, but in most countries music therapists need to have completed an undergraduate or masters level degree in music therapy in order to practice.\nLiterature review: What is organisational change?\nUnderstanding music therapy implementation as a type of organisational change: This paper is based on our research which aimed to explore music therapists' service development experiences and to identify strategies for implementing music therapy successfully. A total of 11 narratives were collected from music therapists who had developed new services in healthcare settings and ethnographic fieldwork was undertaken in a hospital where a new music therapy service was being introduced. During the fieldwork, the new music therapist was observed interacting with staff in scheduled meetings and corridor stops and interviews were undertaken with six of the music therapist's interprofessional colleagues.\nPossible strategies for bringing about change: The precise mechanisms through which an organisational change becomes accepted and maintained have eluded clear identification. Buchanan et al. (2005) conducted a review of literature on sustaining organisational change and found that few researchers have addressed this topic. Several explanations for a lack of literature about change sustainability were proposed, including the possibility that periods of change are more interesting to researchers than periods of stability, the need for longitudinal research to address the topic of sustainability adequately, and a prevailing assumption that the ideal organisation is one that is continually undergoing adaptation. On reviewing the small amount of literature available, Buchanan et al. (2005) identified 11 types of factors which may affect sustainability of organisational change: substantial, individual, managerial, financial, leadership, organisational, cultural, political, processual, contextual, and temporal factors. Buchanan et al. (2005, p. 203) were unable to determine the relative significance of any individual factor and suggested that the most important factors are likely to depend on the internal, external, and historical context of the organisation involved. The process of sustaining change was also considered to be dependent on the interplay of multiple factors. They recommended that researchers interested in change sustainability should be \"sensitive to context, complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty, competing stakeholders and to the range of potential interlocking influences\".\nDiscussion: Our intention in writing this paper was to demonstrate how a change management perspective contributes new understandings about music therapy service implementation. In our experience, music therapists tend to view service development from their own perspectives and experience. Music therapists in our study interpreted interprofessional tensions \"personally\" and viewed it as their sole responsibility to develop their music therapy service alone. A change management perspective highlights the important role of others in organisational change and emphasises the impact of change on other workers' values, practices, roles and identities. From a change management perspective, music therapists should expect some resistance to the introduction of a new service, and consider ways in which they can work with others to establish music therapy successfully.\nConclusions and recommendations: A change management perspective offers new and promising ways of understanding music therapy service development, a context in which a new, emerging profession is introduced to a team of more established, historically powerful ones. Organisational change theories and models depict change as a challenging process, which requires shifts in workers' practices and identities, and takes considerable time and effort. When viewed from this perspective, music therapists' experiences of resistance and struggle could be regarded as similar to accounts of change initiatives in other arenas. This new interpretation leads us to make the following recommendations for music therapists, healthcare managers, and interprofessional team members.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a change management perspective contributes new understandings about music therapy implementation processes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Narrative inquiry, ethnography, and arts-based research methods were used to explore the experiences of 12 music therapists who developed new services in healthcare settings. These experiences were interpreted using insights from the field of change management.\nFindings: A change management perspective helps to explain music therapists' experiences of resistance and struggle when introducing their services to established health care teams. Organisational change theories and models highlight possible strategies for implementing music therapy services successfully, such as organisational assessment, communication and collaboration with other workers, and the appointment of a service development steering group.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper offers exciting possibilities for developing understanding of music therapists' experiences and for supporting the growth of this burgeoning profession.\nPractical implications: There is an important need for professional supervision for music therapists in the service development phase, to support them in coping with resistance and setbacks. Healthcare managers and workers are encouraged to consider ways in which they can support the development of a new music therapy service, such as observing music therapy work and sharing organisational priorities and cultures with a new music therapist.\nOriginality/value: Previous accounts of music therapy service development have indicated that music therapists encounter complex interprofessional issues when they join an established health care team. A change management perspective offers a new lens through which music therapists' experiences can be further understood.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Association between leadership style and decision making style in Indian organisations	[ "Transformational", "Transactional", "Leadership style", "Decision-making style", "Dependent", "Rational" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nPreface: The Indian manufacturing sector is the backbone of the economy that strengthens employment as well as other business sectors. It contributes about 17 per cent of India's GDP as compared to the higher contribution made by the manufacturing sector of East Asian economies, e.g. China (35 per cent), Thailand (34 per cent), etc. (Shiba and Balasubramanium, 2011). For further development of Indian economy, even higher levels of contribution from this sector are expected. The transformation of manufacturing industry and economy require appropriate decision-making approaches and leadership approaches of the leaders. In the light of such requirement, this research paper has two fold objectives: first, to study the leadership style (LS) and decision-making style (DMS) of Indian manufacturing executives, and second, to explore the association between the LS and DMS.\nIntroduction: LS\nLiterature review: Leaders are the drivers of their organisation and ultimately of the industry as well as national economic development. Decision making (DM) is one of the important tasks of a leader (Gardner, 1990). The quality of managers' decisions is a key feature in determining performance. The way managers/leaders arrive at decisions - their DMS is also expected to affect performance (Russ et al., 1996). Webber (2002) discussed that organisational team relies on its leaders for creative thinking and innovative ideas. The leaders negotiate and take decisions for proper utilisation of resources as well as play an important role in decisions on selecting the right talent to achieve organisational goals. With a futuristic long term orientation, often ratonal approaches are followed. An example of rational approach by leaders is the rise in number of selection interviews (two, three and sometimes four interviews). Instead of basing the selection on a \"gut feel,\" the leaders adopt structured, behavioural, situational and other interview methods. Better quality individuals get selected due to such thorough analytical approach and these candidates turn up good leaders and ably assist the company survive through the challenges (Cangemi et al., 2011). Bass (1985) marked out a relationship between transformational (TFM) leadership and decision making (five stages - scanning, discovery and diagnosis, search and innovation, evaluation and choice and authorisation and implementation). It is observed that TFM leadership is more likely to take decisions based on facts and after careful analysis. TFM leaders are keen to be incremental, take small steps toward solving a problem without waiting for an assurance of complete success (Bass, 1994). A rational decision maker emphasizes elements properly and this orientation forms the valid basis for intellectual stimulation (Bass, 1994).\nMethodology: Sample and data collection\nData analysis and results: The data about demographic particulars was gathered simultaneously with the responses on the survey scales. The demographic profile was prepared then (Table I). Since it is a survey based research, common method bias (artificial inflation or deflation in relationships between the constructs) could be an issue here. Podsakoff et al. (2003) highlighted a test for common method bias. This Harman's single test was conducted taking all survey items of the current study (i.e. LS and DMS items together). It produced 21 distinct factors (rather than one) having eigen values greater than one accounting for total 83.32 per cent of the total variance. Also, the majority of the variance was not accounted by the first factor. The findings suggested that common method bias is not a concern for this study (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Further the means and standard deviations were obtained to pursue the RQ1. The results are given in Table II. To answer the RQ2, ANOVA (analysis of variance) and independent sample t-tests were performed. The results are shown in Table III. The correlation and model fits analyses (coefficient of determination) answered the RQ3, RQ4 and RQ5 about the association of the three LS with DMS. The results are reported in Tables II and IV.\nDiscussion: Average DMS and LS (RQ1)\nConclusion: The effectiveness of any organisation depends on the managerial approach to decision making (Kaur, 1993). This research paper aimed to study the LS and DMS of Indian manufacturing executives, and the association between their LS and DMS. The last decade's economic growth of India has witnessed remarkable contribution from manufacturing industry and the sustainable development still requires right leadership and decisions. Production goals created in combination with sales as well as the quality commitments towards the customers require manufacturing executives to manage both low level and high level transactions with the followers. They have to ensure faster speed along with higher safety of their subordinates. The prospects of Indian manufacturing sector seem brighter with the foremost rational double-checking of the information sources to be sure of the right facts before making decisions and the back dependent style of seeking the positive support of others for making important decisions. The employment as well as subordinates' nurturing under \"TFM leaders indulged in transactions of trust and respect based Interpersonal relationships and moral values like truth, care, and justice\" and \"TSL leaders indulged in transactions of goods or rights or other tangibles like hours of work or rate of pay\" is also encouraging. Hence, the transformational optimism and search for issue solutions along with the transactional attention on the patterns of deviation, irregularities, mistakes and disputes and successful achievement of activity target with ensured reward, also the attentiveness in the essential decision-making situations with less laissez-faire tendencies of the Indian manufacturing executives is promising for development. Significant differences exist between the rational DMS, TFM LS and TSL LS of middle age and other age groups, and also the rational DMS of middle experience group and high experience group appear significantly different. Despite limitations, the study contributes towards the earlier findings as well as contrasts certain views. It was interesting to find the relationship of interactive and independent rational and dependent DMS with TSL LS. However, ironically no significant association between dependent DMS and TFM LS is observed. The association of LF and avoidant DMS added to the fact that such leaders abdicate responsibility and rescue the decision making tasks. The impact of interactive dms-dependent and avoidant-on LF LS reflected procrastination by such leaders in the name of discussions and rescuing responsibility. This way the study revealed significant facts pertaining to LS and DMS of Indian manufacturing executives and added to the pool of literature on these variables.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the leadership style (LS) and decision-making style (DMS) of Indian manufacturing executives, and to explore the association between the LS and DMS.\nDesign/methodology/approach: For this study the sample was drawn from Indian manufacturing organisations' executives from both public and private sectors. The respondents were lower, middle and senior levels executives involved in leadership and decision-making functions. Correlation, regression and ANOVA were used to pursue the research questions.\nFindings: Indian manufacturing executives have shown highest rational and least avoidant in their DMSs. Transformational (TFM) leaders are found rational, while the transactional (TSL) leaders are observed to be rational and dependent. Laissez faire style has correlation with avoidant decision making and interactive dependent and avoidant styles.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study is a cross sectional research with limitations of self-serving bias and common method variance. However, this limitation has been dealt with a statistical test.\nPractical implications: The study bears significant implications for Indian executives who are working on LSs and decision making. It also provides the details of decision-making behaviours of the manufacturing executives thereby suggesting the associated benefits and drawbacks of particular styles.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to leadership and decision-making literature. In the recent times, no such study in Indian manufacturing context have been reported. Moreover there are few contrasting and contributing findings in this research.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
i2CAT experiences in advanced SIP-based communications	[ "Telephony", "Communication technologies", "Spain" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: IP telephony (ToIP), which uses voice over IP (VoIP) technology to offer telephony services over IP networks, is progressively replacing the public switched telephone network (PSTN). VoIP technology allows quick and cheap service deployment (it reuses IP networks already deployed to transport voice packets) and uses services provided by the IP layer to both enhance current services offered by PSTN and create new ones. IP telephony, thanks to the combination of a flexible application-layer signalling protocol, such as SIP (Rosenberg et al., 2002) or H.323[1], and the services offered by VoIP technology, provides a wide range of new telephony and non-telephony services and applications that make it more attractive to customers and operators.Not only new services are the key benefit of adopting IP telephony, but other benefits are also considered from the operators and end user point-of-view:* By transporting voice traffic over existing data networks, operators reduce both capital expenditures (CAPEX), those funds spent for the acquisition or update of physical assets such as equipment, and operating expenditures (OPEX), those costs related to running a service or system.* Although IP networks were not designed to route real-time services (such as videoconferencing, telephony and so on), nowadays it is possible to mix real- and non-real traffic over the same IP network and guarantee the quality of service (QoS) for both kinds of traffic. The call-quality of PSTN (measured in mean opinion score (MOS)) is achieved in IP telephony by the use of real-time-specific protocols (RTP, RTCP and so on) together with QoS protocols (RSVP, MPLS and so on).* VoIP technology provides location-independent access to services. Unlike PSTN call routing, where calls are statically routed and network intelligence is on the user terminal, call routing in IP telephony is based on application-layer addressing, which provides a dynamic mapping of phone numbers to physical addresses (IP addresses) regardless of the user location.* IP telephony provides more cost-effective scalability of both the operators' and the customers' (enterprise) networks.All new features and services that IP telephony offers are only feasible if the call is routed on an end-to-end basis by an IP network. With the growth of IP telephony traffic, an increasing necessity to exchange traffic between operators has emerged and some solutions have been proposed and adopted to face this issue. Currently, most operators use PSTN as an intermediary to terminate calls in other operators (ToIP peering), so that most of the cost feature and quality benefits provided by IP telephony are lost (QoS, enhanced services - such as videoconference or presence, cost saving and so on). A more suitable solution is required to preserve these features when ToIP traffic exchange is performed between operators.This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 studies some approaches for ToIP peering, showing the advantages and disadvantages of each one. In section 3, the PUNTO platform for delivering ToIP peering is presented as an example of multilateral peering. This section defines key design requirements for a ToIP peering platform and presents an overall architecture, focusing on a description of its sub-platforms. Next, in section 4, testbed results about stress- and functionality-testing are presented.\n2. Avoiding ToIP islands: interconnection of VoIP domains: The interconnection of ToIP networks is necessary to route traffic through other networks for performing call termination. At this point, peering concept appears to be the most suitable solution for the interconnection of VoIP domains. Basically, peering defines a relationship between two or more operators in which they agree to exchange traffic on a settlement-free basis. Some approaches adopted to exchange traffic based on peering agreement are (Figure 1):* Bilateral peering. This approach proposes that operator establishes a peering agreement with each other operator to which it would peer. Bilateral peering is a suitable solution with few peered carriers (note that calls are always routed by IP networks, so that all features and enhanced services of IP telephony can be achieved). However it is not a scalable approach with hundreds of peered carriers, due to the high maintenance and operational costs.* Peering through a wholesaler. In this scenario, the traffic exchanged between two VoIP domains is performed through a third-party network. Many operators use PSTN for delivering VoIP exchange, a solution that requires both signalling and media gateways to solve the interoperability between the VoIP and PSTN domains. Due to the digital-analogue digital conversion required, call and service quality is worse than that provided by IP networks. As well as PSTN, TSPs use VoIP wholesalers to terminate calls in other operators. This approach avoids the digital-analogue-digital conversion between VoIP and PSTN domains that, as mentioned above, degrades the call- and service-quality, but increases the OPEX.* Multilateral peering. Finally, in this scenario traffic exchange is carried out through the network of a ToIP neutral operator (TNO), which guarantees the neutrality of access to the services and resources deployed in its network. TNO networks provide services intended to guarantee the interconnection of multiple VoIP domains regardless of the signalling protocol, codec supported or address schema used by the peered operators. TNO are also called ToIP Exchange Point (TXP).\n3. Software-based TXP approach: Nowadays some network infrastructure providers have developed black boxes (usually hardware-based solutions) that aim to provide a solution for the interconnection of ToIP operators. On one hand, TXP hardware-based platforms usually guarantee high availability and performance of services, but on the other hand they are very expensive and do not provide a scalable solution (unless you buy high performance equipment from the beginning, usually known as vertical scaling). It is also very difficult (almost a utopia) to deploy customised services.The paper proposes a software-based TXP platform using open-source or ad hoc (developed by ourselves) applications that allow us to customise the services provided to operators connected to the TXP. The platform offers easier the deployment of new services and reduces the investment on infrastructures, making the deployment of the peering service cheaper. Keeping in mind this philosophy of design, we have integrated some well-known open-source software (listed later on in this chapter) in order to deploy an advanced ToIP platform (called PUNTO) with the aim of implementing a commercial TXP that, initially, will provide to TSPs in Catalonia a new way of performing ToIP peering. Some key design requirements considered are:* Signalling interoperability. A ToIP call has two functional planes: a control/signalling and a transport/media plane. The control plane is responsible for the establishment, maintenance and release of ToIP calls, playing an important role when it comes to determining the success of a ToIP call. Due to the existence of multiple signalling protocols (mainly SIP (Rosenberg et al., 2002) and H.323), it is necessary to deploy a protocol inter-working service to ensure interoperability in the control plane. A signalling normalisation between the SIP and H.323 protocols is depicted in Table I.* Media interoperability. The PUNTO platform must also guarantee interoperability in the transport/media plane. This feature is carried out by a real-time transcoding service, which re-codes a voice packet when various peered operators do not support a common codec. Call codec negotiation between end-users is performed during call establishment.* Multi-domain addressing. This requirement is focused on proposing a protocol to discover user location in a multi-domain scenario. When an operator connected to PUNTO receives an incoming call from its customers, by analysing call establishment information it determines whether the call is terminated in its network or not. If the called user does not belong to its network, the operator resolves the called user location by performing a query to an electronic numbering (ENUM) (Faltstrom and Mealling, 2005) directory located in the PUNTO infrastructure (which contains all information related to call routing). If the called user information is found in the directory, PUNTO provides information to the operator about the port and proxy/gateway that it should use to route a successful call. If call routing information is not found in the ENUM directory, the operator can route the call through PSTN or reject it. Each operator that exchanges traffic through the PUNTO infrastructure must publish information periodically about the location of its users. Figure 2 shows an overview of the different messages involved in the user location procedure.* Peering policy. Defines under which conditions an operator can exchange traffic through PUNTO infrastructure. These requirements involve both technical and administrative issues.* Security issues. Although user authentication and identification is performed on the peered network side, PUNTO must deploy a set of mechanisms aimed at protecting the integrity of sensitive data from intruders (such as ENUM registers) and at guaranteeing service availability by protecting the PUNTO infrastructure against malicious attacks (denial-of-service).* Scalability and reliability of the peering service. Two of the most important factors that influence the design of a telecommunication network are the scalability and reliability of the network and services deployed in it. Scaling network deployment to support few to thousands of simultaneous calls requires thorough knowledge of the limitations of the platform, so it is necessary to perform load and stress tests to identify bottlenecks and to get the maximum number of simultaneous calls that the platform can support using a certain network topology. Service scalability not only involves good design and implementation of the PUNTO exchange network, but it also determines design and implementation of the operation support subsystem (OSS). Highly reliable service is achieved by implementing advanced clustering solutions (like load-balancing) that avoid single-point-of-failure of the most critical elements.Overview of the TXP architecture\n4. Test bed implementation and results: The PUNTO test bed helped to put into practice all the implementations developed in the project (and presented in the TXP approach chapter). The testbed implementation was addressed to face the following issues:* Interoperability. Addressed to fully test signalling and media interoperability between TSP connected to the platform. Interoperability tests were successfully performed using two operators connected to the platform.* Capacity. Addressed to test the performance of the TXP in a high-load scenario. Tests were performed using astertest software[6] to generate both signalling and media traffic. The results are shown in Table III.If we compare the results obtained with a hardware-based solution (which can support thousand of simultaneous calls), it is obvious that redundancy of services together with load-balancing mechanisms should be deployed to increase the capacity of the platform.\n5. Conclusions and further work: This paper describes a fully-operational TXP approach for delivering ToIP peering. There is no doubt that direct ToIP peering will be one of the best solution to avoid the use of the PSTN as the intermediate network to exchange ToIP traffic between operators. Benefits of using TXP refer not only to service-quality aspects, but also to the economics: avoiding the routing of calls through PSTN and bilateral agreement among TSP produce both CAPEX and OPEX savings.This paper has also examined the requirements needed to create a TXP based on ToIP peculiarities. According to the requirements identified, a neutral network architecture has been proposed based on open source applications. Finally, a testbed implementation has been described together with its validation results. The results obtained clearly show the correct interoperability in both signalling and data plain. Related to load tests, results have concluded that open source implementation greatly limit the number of calls that TXP can route, so reliability and redundancy mechanisms are needed to increment its capacity.Planned further work and research include the following topics:* performance of multi-domain addressing based on carrier ENUM;* the design and implementation of a videotelephony peering service;* the study of call termination in PSTN and mobile networks;* the study of and proposal for business model use cases; and* the attraction of new operators to test PUNTO performance.\n6. Related projects: Some of other ToIP peering platforms that are being deployed (or have already deployed) in Europe are: Cesnet IP telephony network: CESNET, the Czech academic network operator, deployed an IP telephony platform to provide peering between the universities and research centres in the Czech Republic. It also uses open-source IP telephony systems such as Gnugk, Sip Express Router or Asterisk. Its core network is H.323-based, and uses ENUM protocol to solve multi-domain addressing.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to examine the design and implementation of an advanced ToIP platform for the interconnection of ToIP operators based on the concept of multilateral peering, with a special focus on the design requirements and implementation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Based on the key design requirements of a ToIP peering platform analysed at the beginning of the document, an open source-based network architecture is proposed. Subsequently, a detailed explanation of the elements and their functionalities that integrate both core platform and management platform is presented.\nFindings: - The paper finds that open source-based ToIP platforms provide a cheap solution for deploying ToIP services such as ToIP peering. Although not as stable as hardware-based ToIP platforms, software-based platforms provide a very scalable high-performance solution for delivering customised ToIP services.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper studies the implementation of advanced VoIP services such as video telephony and the call termination in public switched telephony network or mobile networks.\nOriginality/value: - The deployment of an experimental ToIP peering platform in Catalonian will help to the large-scale adoption of ToIP by both enterprise and residential customers. Furthermore, operators can reduce both capital and operating expenditures if they exchange traffic through the ToIP peering platform, reducing, thus, the cost of ToIP calls to end users.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Evaluating performance characteristics of electricity use of British historic buildings in Malaysia	[ "History", "Buildings", "Malaysia", "Electricity", "Performance monitoring", "Benchmarking" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Historic buildings, in the Malaysian context, are defined as buildings that were built over 80 years ago (Laws of Malaysia, 1976; Majid, 2003). These building have certain building characteristics that are remarkable and unique in certain ways. Malaysia was under British rule for many years and as such our old buildings reflect the influence of British architecture. This can be seen mainly in Penang, Malacca and Kuala Lumpur. In favour of Ahmad (1997), British historic buildings can be classified into several architectural styles including Moorish, Tudor, Neo-Classical and Neo-Gothic. Most of the buildings are still in their original state but are retrofitted with electricity, water supply as well as air conditioning. Some of the buildings were also upgraded or renovated to more advanced services system, which have high-energy consumption levels. This is due to the fact that building services are normally fitted according to functionality and aesthetics without taking account of energy efficiency matters. Without the commitment to energy efficiency, in successive installations owners have been faced with escalating costs. This ad hoc retrofitting is one cause of the high electricity consumption levels in Malaysia. Furthermore, with the increasing economic growth in the region, the demand for electricity has also increased.The primary objective of this study is thus, to investigate the electricity use characteristics in British historic buildings. An attempt to breakdown the electricity uses was further investigated and a benchmark comparison was performed with the aim of:* providing a first indication on how well the buildings are performing;* in particular to identify any wastage of energy; and* identify any scope for improvement..\nElectricity data gathering/methodology: A total of four historic buildings were chosen in this study. However, different type of building uses were selected but restricted to one architectural style, British. This would ensure more energy pattern could be investigated. The buildings comprised of two offices, one hotel and one church. Two of the buildings were located in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur and the other two were in Penang. In order to retain the individual building anonymity, they are designated as Historic Office 1, Historic Office 2, Historic Church and Historic Hotel. In favour with BRECSU (2000), each building selected are based on their size and types which represents air-conditioned standard (2,000-8,000 m2), naturally ventilated open plan (500-4,000 m2), mix mode cellular (100-3,000 m2) and air-conditioned prestige (4,000-20,000 m2), respectively.A site survey was conducted during the month of June-August 2004 to basically investigate the energy characteristics in historic buildings of Malaysia focusing on electricity. This survey consisted of site observation/monitoring, gathering electricity bills, meeting with the maintenance officers/staff and local authorities to collect as much background information about the buildings studied as possible. Building owners were approached for information on the electricity use during the 12-month period.The overall energy performance of a building can be crudely expressed as an energy performance indicator, usually in kW h/m2 for fossil fuel and electricity (CIBSE, 2004). Performance indicators for buildings are generally rated in terms of floor area, building volume and the amount of trade. With the correction on floor area, weather and hours of use, a \"Normalised Performance Indicator\" can be obtained. This \"normalisation\" is intended to improve comparison between buildings in different climatic regions or with different occupancy patterns (CIBSE, 2004). The analysis was performed on annual data, allowing comparison with published benchmarks to give an indication of efficiency (EEB, 1994).\nBuilding description: A summary of key building features is shown in the Table I. The number of storeys varies from one to four with a total gross floor ranging from 4,625 to 745 m2. Most of these buildings were between 80 and 100 years old and were built under the British government rule or during the pre-independence era. These buildings were all British Colonial with architectural style of the Moghul (also known as Moorish or Indian Muslim style) influence, Tudor, Neo-Classical and Neo-Gothic.\nElectricity usage: Building owners were approached for information on the electricity use during the 12-month period. Some building owners had completed billing records and were pleased to provide the requested information while others simply did not keep a complete record of their electricity bills. As the result, electricity consumption data were estimated based on information obtained from building owners and the incomplete duration bills. Electricity use was found mainly to be air-conditioning and ventilation and electric lighting. Electric lightings mainly consist of fluorescent tubes, track lights, tungsten halogen lamps and energy saving light bulbs. Lighting density loads and the corresponding electricity consumption varied, depending largely on functional and aesthetic requirements and the operating hours. There was also electrical equipment such as audio/visual and office equipment.From the 12-month metre readings gathered, an electricity use profile was plotted. Figure 1 shows the monthly electricity use profiles for the four historic buildings.From Figure 1, the electricity consumption only varied slightly and an almost a constant usage of electricity over the year can be observed. The slight difference was mainly due to the variation in building use and operations especially during the occasional overtime work period, holiday seasons, religious and wedding ceremonies. It was also probably because Malaysia enjoys a tropical climate with plenty of sunshine throughout the year. From Figure 1, the church had a very low consumption of electricity mainly due to no provision of air conditioning system in that building. On the other hand, the high consumption of electricity on the other buildings especially the hotel was mainly due to the cooling requirements and the excessive use of electric lighting. Cooling was basically required throughout the year mainly because of the fenestrations and intense internal loads, such as people, electric lighting and office and other electrical equipment. The total building electricity consumptions were 262.4, 11.9, 35.3, and 652.7 MW h, respectively.\nNormalised performance indicator: The total annual energy use of a building can be used to calculate a measure of energy performance known as the \"Normalised Performance Indicators\" (NPI) (CIBSE, 1991). NPI is basically the energy use per unit floor area and also known as the energy use index (BRECSU, 2000). The NPI for the four historic buildings is shown in Table II.It can be seen from Table II that the total annual electricity use per unit gross floor area (i.e. total floor area) ranges from 22 to 141 kW h/m2, with a mean NPI of 81 kW h/m2. The Historic Church was found to have a lower NPI of 22 while the Historic Hotel was found to have a larger NPI of 141 kW h/m2. The lower NPI was merely because of the short number of hours of building usage and less building services system. On the other hand, a much larger NPI for the hotel was mainly due to the provision of air conditioning and it was on a 24 h operation.\nBreakdown of electricity use: Total electricity use in buildings varies depending on original building envelope design, operational efficiency of the HVAC system, fresh air load for maintaining the indoor air quality required, types of lamps and their efficacy, internal plug loads (e.g. office equipment), special equipment like mainframe computers, which require special environmental control, and building operation and maintenance (Lam et al., 2004). In the case of Malaysia, no heating system has been used in any of the buildings due to the climate condition.In producing a breakdown of energy, the first step is to establish the main services or end-uses (CIBSE, 1991). In this study, three major end-uses namely air-conditioning, lighting and electrical equipment were identified. Internal load densities of each major end-use were also investigated. This was done by a walk through exercise as well as discussions with the building representatives. Owing to inadequate energy sub-metering in the buildings, this attempt was found substantially difficult. However, some of the data gathered were obtained from original drawings/documents as well as standards and guidelines.Lighting\nSummary of electricity breakdown: A summary of three major electricity end users is shown in Figure 3. It can be seen that in average, AC was, by far, the largest electricity end user, except for the church ranging from 28 to 68 kW h/m2. On the other hand, lighting was the second largest in most buildings except for the church, which have the highest consumption of lighting amongst all buildings. This is because the church has no air conditioning system where it relies totally on natural ventilations. Overall electricity consumption for lighting varied from 18 to 60 kW h/m2. Electrical equipment consumption in four historic building basically depends on the function of the buildings. As for the two offices, equipment consumptions are 15 and 9 kW h/m2. The church electrical consumption is 5 kW h/m2 that is merely for the sound systems. The highest consumption of electrical equipments is the hotel, which is 43 kW h/m2. The reason behind this is that the hotel operates 24 h, and most of the equipments were considered running within guestrooms.\nComparison with benchmarks: Comparisons at a more detailed level are important. A comparison with benchmarks of annual energy end-use per square metre of floor area will allow the standard of energy efficiency to be assessed and enable remedial action to be taken. For this reason electricity consumption for lighting, electricity equipment and air conditioning was compared with energy benchmark.With refer to an existing energy benchmark (CIBSE, 1991, 1998, 2004), it was found that lighting energy consumption for all buildings met or exceeded typical consumption levels for the particular building type. As for air conditioning, the same performance level as per lighting was observed except for the church building. Electrical equipment varied significantly in terms of building types ranging from good to average. The high usage of office equipment and guestroom equipment were probably the cause of the high figures for electricity consumption in this study. However, this figure could also be reduced by using low energy star rated equipment as well as more energy efficient equipment. Energy star office equipment helps eliminate wasted energy through special power management features. When equipment is not in use, it automatically enters a low-power \"sleep\" mode. For example, an energy star qualified computer in sleep mode consumes about 80 per cent less electricity than it does in full-power mode. Overall, energy star qualified office products use about half as much electricity as standard equipment. And using less energy keeps utility costs down.With respect to Malaysian condition, a further comparison was conducted to the Guidelines for Energy Efficiency in Buildings, Malaysia. Surprisingly, air conditioning consumption of electricity was still within the range but lighting consumption of electricity was slightly above the recommended range. Being a maritime country close to the equator, Malaysia naturally has abundant sunshine and thus solar radiation. It is anticipated that with abundant of daylight in Malaysia, it is an advantage to make use of it in providing a more effective savings on energy consumptions. This could be a major attribute in refurbishment of lighting in buildings towards energy efficiency.\nConclusion: A study was conducted on electricity consumption in four historic buildings comprising offices, a church as well as a hotel in Malaysia. It is interesting to found that electricity consumption varied slightly and an almost constant usage of electricity over the year could be observed. The constant energy pattern revealed shows that the approach used in achieving energy efficient building for modern buildings could also be implemented in such old buildings. This gives wider opportunities towards newly achieved energy saving approach including energy management program, energy refurbishment scheme as well as energy star equipment.As this study specifically refers to historic buildings in Malaysia, further comparison to Guidelines for Energy Efficiency in Buildings, Malaysia revealed that air conditioning consumption of electricity was still within the range but lighting consumption of electricity was above the recommended range. For this reason, lighting should be the priority area in any energy efficiency programme. It is believed that by reducing lighting energy consumption, cooling load could be reduced as well. With abundant and constant daylight hours in Malaysia, savings on lighting energy consumption in buildings could easily be rationalised and implemented. It is anticipated that with abundant of daylight in Malaysia, it is an advantage to make use of it in providing a more effective savings on energy consumptions. This could be a major attribute in refurbishment of lighting towards energy efficiency in historic buildings. Nevertheless, careful measures need to be taken into consideration in dealing with historic buildings. This is a complex process and it requires in depth understanding of its concepts and implementation process. Above all, this study has been able to identify opportunities and provide guidance for improvement of electricity consumption in historical buildings in Malaysia.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To present the findings of the investigation on the electricity use characteristics of British historic buildings in Malaysia, identifying where the design needs further modification as well as pin-pointing recurring problems within this building type.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This research work was conducted on four British historical buildings by gathering electricity bills, original drawings/documents, meeting with the staff and local authorities to collect as much information as possible on the building, such as occupancy pattern. Based on materials collected, a \"normalised\" calculated electricity consumption was established to allow comparison between buildings in different climatic regions or with different occupancy patterns.\nFindings: - Comparing energy consumption against established benchmarks provides the first indication of how well the buildings are performing and opportunities for improvement. It was expected that this study would give a good indication of the electricity consumption characteristics of historic buildings in Malaysia.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This work was done on historic buildings in Malaysia restricted to only British Colonial architectural buildings, which perhaps limits its application in the region. However, it may apply to other British architectural buildings elsewhere.\nPractical implications: - This provide useful information for architects, engineers as well as building owners on the current state of energy consumption apart from creating energy savings awareness.\nOriginality/value: - It is expected that this study would give an initial benchmark of the electricity consumption characteristics of historic buildings in Malaysia as well as British colonial buildings elsewhere.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Predictors of burnout among middle managers in the Turkish hospitality industry	[ "Job satisfaction", "Hospitality", "Middle managers", "Turkey" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The hospitality industry is characterised by a requirement for close cooperation between departments and personnel, time pressures, elastic demand, and labour-intensive functions. As such, work in the hospitality industry can be tiring for employees who are faced with a demanding work tempo, complex procedures, and intensive interpersonal relations at every step of their working day (Birdir and Tepeci, 2003). The present study investigates the relationship between these factors and the phenomenon of \"burnout\" among middle managers in the Turkish hospitality industry.The Turkish hotel sector has been developing rapidly since the mid 1980s. According to statistics provided by the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies (TURSAB, 2007), the total number of four- and five-star hotels in Turkey rose from 417 in 2003 to 573 in 2005 (a rate of increase of 37.4 per cent), whereas the total number of hospitality enterprises in Turkey rose from 2240 to 2412 (a 7 per cent increase) in the same period. The rapid growth in four- and five-star hotels compared with general hospitality accommodation has led to the employment of unqualified or semi-qualified persons in the hotel sector. Moreover, the hospitality industry in general is facing a chronic labour shortage, an unacceptably high level of staff turnover, and long and unsociable working hours (exacerbated by having to work under considerable pressure for extended time periods), all of which have the potential to cause dissatisfaction, stress, and burnout (Buick and Thomas, 2001; Prabhu, 1996).For middle managers in the hospitality industry, the work situation is especially demanding. In general, their hours of work are longer and their remuneration is lower than that of middle managers in other professions. Moreover, middle managers in hospitality organizations are often \"caught in the middle\" when faced with the competing requirements of customers\" demands, employees\" needs, and company policies (Tabacchi et al., 1990). According to Teare and Bowen (1997), \"burnout\" is the second most pressing issue in human-resources management in the US hospitality industry, with the problem being especially common among middle managers.It is thus apparent that there is a need to understand the nature and causes of burnout among hotel managers. Increased knowledge in this area has the potential to make significant contributions to research, policy, and interventions that aim to increase the longevity of middle managers in their hospitality careers.There are several studies on the subject of burnout in the hospitality industry in Turkey (Akoglan-Kozak, 2001; Birdir and Tepeci, 2003; Tepeci and Birdir, 2003). However, there is a paucity of literature on burnout of middle managers in the hospitality industry, especially in Turkey. In response to this clear need for research in this area, the aim of the present study is to determine the factors that lead to burnout among middle managers in the Turkish hospitality industry.The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. The next section presents a review of the relevant literature with particular emphasis on:* the definition and dimensions of burnout;* the antecedents of burnout;* the consequences of burnout; and* burnout in the hospitality industry.The paper then presents an empirical study of a sample of middle managers in four- and five-star hotels in a major tourist resort in Turkey. The significance of the findings is then discussed. The paper concludes with a summary of the major findings and recommendations for management practice.\nLiterature review: Definition and dimensions of burnout\nMethodology: Participants and procedure\nFindings: Table I shows the means, standard deviations, and minimum and maximum values for burnout (all three dimensions) and job satisfaction. The emotional exhaustion (EE) and depersonalization (DP) levels of the middle managers of this study were found to be average (Means=2.11 and 2.32 respectively on four points scale), and their personal accomplishment (PA) and job satisfaction levels were found to be more than the average, but not very high (Mean=3.10 on five points scale).Relationships between job satisfaction and each of the three burnout dimensions were measured by Pearson's correlation coefficient. The results are shown in Table II. It is apparent that statistically significant negative relationships of moderate strength were found between EE and job satisfaction, and between DP and job satisfaction. These negative correlations imply that diminished job satisfaction among the middle managers was associated with higher levels of burnout. There was also a statistically significant positive relationship between PA and job satisfaction. This shows that greater job satisfaction was associated with an increase in the personal accomplishment of the middle managers. These findings are consistent with previous research results (Lee and Ashforth, 1996; Tsigilis et al., 2004).To determine the factors that affect burnout in hotel middle managers, logistic regression was employed as a multivariate regression analysis. In the logistic regression analysis, the independent variables were sex, marital status, age, education level, industry experience, managerial experience, period of working in the same hotel, weekly working hours, department, job satisfaction, and job characteristics. The variable of \"job characteristics\" included sub-variables of ambiguity of industry future, career ambiguity, task complexity, work tempo, workload, role conflict, lack of support from senior management, and role ambiguity. Each of the three burnout dimensions (EE, DP, and PA) was taken as the dependent variable in three separate logistic regression models. Analyses were performed using SPSS. The results are shown in Table III. As shown in the last four rows of Table III, model fit was assessed by U2Log likelihood, Wald statistics, Cox and Snell R-square, and Chi-square values. These indicated that all the three logistic regression models were good models (Hair et al., 1998).With regard to the EE dimension, the variable of \"job characteristics\" was found to be the most effective predictor. Other predictors of EE were department and job satisfaction. ANOVA analysis revealed that food and beverage (F&B) and front-office (FO) managers had greater levels of burnout (F=3.333, p=0.07) than managers from other departments. This latter finding is in accordance with earlier studies, which have established that:* F&B is the most complex area in the hospitality sector (Anafarta and Cizel, 2003);* FO and F&B managers have greater levels of burnout than other managers (Buick and Thomas, 2001; Krone et al., 1989); and* F&B managers have less support from supervisors than other middle managers and are more emotionally exhausted (Tabacchi et al., 1990).With regard to the DP dimension, Table III shows that the most important predictors were job satisfaction (b=-0.403, p < 0.01) and managerial experience in the sector (b=-0.113, p < 0.05). It is thus apparent that middle managers who had greater job dissatisfaction and less managerial experience were more burned out.With regard to the PA dimension, job satisfaction, job characteristics, and industry experience were important predictors. It is apparent that:* the personal accomplishment of middle managers increased as they gained greater industry experience; and* middle managers who were satisfied with their jobs perceived themselves as being more successful.Demographic characteristics (such as age, sex, marital status, and education level) had no significant effects on burnout. The effect of sex on the three burnout dimensions was analyzed by t-test, and this indicated women appeared to be more emotionally exhausted and more depersonalised than men; however, the findings were not statistically significant.\nDiscussion: The burnout levels of middle managers in the present study were moderate, but not very high. Job satisfaction was found to be an important predictor for all three burnout dimensions. The results of the study are in accordance with previous studies in the literature (Happell et al., 2003; Lee and Ashforth, 1993; Pines and Keinan, 2005).Cherniss (1992) examined the long-term results of burnout and found strong negative relationships between job satisfaction and both EE and DP. It thus apparent that improving the levels of job satisfaction among hotel middle managers is likely to diminish the likelihood of burnout. The significance of this finding is that hotel owners and general managers would benefit from a successful intervention strategy designed to enhance job satisfaction among middle managers. Greater satisfaction among managers would facilitate positive relationships with customers, enhanced problem solving, and the delivery of higher-quality services. In contrast, \"burned-out\" managers are more likely to deliver lower-quality service and have greater levels of tardiness and absenteeism (Acker, 1999).It was also found that job characteristics (such as work tempo, ambiguity of industry future, attitudes of senior management, support from senior management, workload, responsibility, task complexity, role conflict, and role ambiguity) have important effects on both EE and DP. These findings are in consistent with previous studies in the tourism sector, which have found that:* irregular working hours and excessive workloads in the tourism sector can cause family problems (Toros et al., 1997);* excessive workload is one of the predictors of emotional exhaustion (Maslach and Leiter, 2005);* excessive workload, role conflict, and fatigue are significant causes of stress among hotel workers (Matyushchenko, 2006); and* F&B managers who receive less support from their superiors are more emotionally exhausted and more depersonalised (Tabacchi et al., 1990).It is thus apparent that senior managers in the Turkish hospitality sector would benefit from a strategy of providing greater support to their employees. Such support from supervisors is likely to cause a decrease in emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation and an increase in personal accomplishment. Supportive managerial relationships, shared organizational goals and group decision-making can help organizations prevent burn out of their employees (Vallen, 1993). Top management can create a less stressful and more satisfying work environment for their middle managers.Finally, the results of the present study revealed that managers who had greater industry experience perceived themselves to be more successful; however, managers who had less managerial experience in the sector were found to be less depersonalised. These finding are in accordance with those of Demir et al. (2003), who conducted a study among 333 nurses and found that experience influences personal accomplishment but has no effect on emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation.\nConclusions and recommendations: This investigation of the factors that predict burnout among hotel middle managers in Turkey has demonstrated that the Turkish version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is an adequate instrument for assessing burnout in this context. Moreover, the study has shown that organizational factors are more important predictors of burnout than are personal characteristics. The most important predictor for emotional exhaustion in the present study was the factor of \"job characteristics\". For depersonalization, the most important predictor was job satisfaction. The most important predictor of personal accomplishment was \"job characteristics\", followed by job satisfaction and experience. Burnout levels were higher in some departments than in others. Managers of food and beverage and front-office operations had greater levels of burnout than did managers of other departments. Improving the working conditions and shortening the working hours would reduce the burnout levels of managers in these departments.In summary, because middle managers have an important function in the hierarchy between top managers and workers and because they have significant face-to-face contact with customers, they play an important role in the hotel industry. To minimize burnout levels among these important personnel, senior management should institute strategies that ameliorate adverse job characteristics and enhance their job satisfaction. Such strategies should include:* non-excessive workloads;* reduced role ambiguities and role conflicts;* supportive managerial relationships; and* the creation of an agreeable working atmosphere.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of job satisfaction, job characteristics and demographics on levels of burnout among middle managers in the Turkish hospitality industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Using a questionnaire survey of 139 middle managers in four- and five-star hotels in a major tourist destination of Turkey, data were collected on: the Turkish version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory; job satisfaction; job characteristics; and demographic characteristics. These data were then analysed for evidence of relationships among the variables.\nFindings: - The burnout levels of the middle managers are found to be moderate. Job satisfaction and job characteristics are found to be important predictors of burnout. Certain job characteristics (such as excessive workload, lack of support from senior management, task complexity, and role ambiguity) increase the emotional exhaustion of middle managers and decrease their performance levels. Burnout levels among managers of food and beverage and front-office operations are found to be greater than those of other middle managers.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The factor of \"job characteristics\" was assessed according to the perceptions of the respondents, rather than by objective quantitative assessment.\nPractical implications: - Job satisfaction and job characteristics are clearly identified as strong predictors of burnout among middle managers in the hotel industry. The practical implication is that senior management should support middle managers by relieving them of task complexity, role ambiguity, and excessive workload.\nOriginality/value: - The study identifies some important predictors of burnout, thus facilitating the development of strategies to reduce burnout and its adverse consequences in the hospitality industry.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Antecedents of attitudes toward the website: The moderating role of long-term orientation and individualism	[ "Individualism", "Perceived usefulness", "Attitudes towards the web site", "Long-term orientation", "Message involvement", "Satisfaction online" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The internet, as a medium registering over 2,400 million users world-wide by the end of 2012 (Internet World Stats, 2013), has transformed the purchasing environment (Varadarajan and Yadav, 2002). Customers will browse a web site only if they perceive it to be entertaining, informative and useful as they do not want to waste their time. The main mission of web site designers is therefore to develop sites on which customers can easily find the information they are looking for while also being entertained (Mazaheri et al., 2011).\n2. Conceptual framework: 2.1. The influence of site features on attitude toward a web site\n3. Experimental design, data collection and measures: 3.1. Independent variable\n4. Findings: 4.1. Standardization of cross-cultural studies and manipulation check for the cultural factor\n5. Discussion: 5.1. Conclusions\n6. Limitations and future research: The main limitation of this study is the comparison of only two cultures, Spain vs the UK. However, this limitation is justified by the complexity of the experimental design and the cost of extending the study to other cultures. Importantly, much of the cross-cultural research of the last few years has been based on comparing two cultures presenting different cultural dimensions (Benet-Martinez et al., 2006; Jin et al., 2008; Mazaheri et al., 2011;\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the moderating role of the cultural dimensions of long-term orientation (LTO) and individualism (IND) on the relationships between satisfaction online, message involvement (MI) and perceived usefulness (PU) of the web site on attitude toward the web site.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors chose a between-subjects experimental design, using culture (Spanish vs British) as the independent variable. Two versions of a web site for a fictitious tourist destination were created - one written in Spanish and the other in English. The sample comprised 491 users.\nFindings: The findings indicate that the LTO dimension moderates the relationship between satisfaction online and PU on attitude toward the web site. The relationships between MI and attitude toward the web site could not be confirmed.\nResearch limitations/implications: The main limitation of this study is the comparison of only two cultures, Spain vs the UK.\nPractical implications: The key implication is that if marketers and web site designers can better understand how national cultural differences moderate the attitude formation and change process among tourists, this will enable them to market their destinations and services more effectively. National cultural differences explain the differences found in the effect of satisfaction and PU on attitude toward the web site.\nOriginality/value: This study is one of the few analyzing the moderating effect of LTO and IND on three antecedents of attitude toward the web site. The original cultural values established by Hofstede (2001) were tested among the present sample to establish the extent to which they remain true today. To create an authentic browsing scenario for the experiment, a web site was specially designed for a fictitious tourist destination, with its own domain name (buyada.org). Subjects were invited to browse the site freely while carrying out the task assigned to them. This approach contributed added value to the research by simulating the real behavior of tourists who are faced with a range of choices when putting together a tourism package for a given destination.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Outsourcing strategies for apparel manufacture: a case study	[ "Process planning", "Supply chain management", "Decision making", "Textile industry", "Outsourcing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The year 2005 marked the end of a 30 year stretch of the textile quotas (Editor, 2005). As the industry enters the global \"free market\" competition, many developing countries fear the uncertainty in the competition that exists (Ballestero, 2004). This said, the question becomes, how can any company establish a sustainable competitive advantage in the market where the competition is not confined to local markets?This paper attempts to answer this question by briefly looking at the current state of the apparel market with a focus on the USA along with its growing needs. The paper later examines the impact of outsourcing strategies of an apparel manufacture on a US apparel producer supply chain. Furthermore, elaboration will be made on the execution of these strategies along with the example of some companies. Finally, all this information will be consolidated to enforce the significance of supply chain strategies in light of the current situation of the apparel market.The focus of this study is to analyze the use of an improved supply chain management system in making logistic operations more cost efficient and integrated between an apparel manufacturer in the USA and its overseas manufacturing partner in South East Asia. The study is based on manufacturers of apparel products while indirectly dealing with customers as well. Ocean freight movement and associated lead-time between an overseas manufacturing partner and an apparel product manufacturer in the USA was considered in the supply chain simulation model. The analysis does not take into consideration a domestic transportation infrastructure (and associated time) within the USA in order to support the logistics involved in the transportation of the final product from the US manufacturer to the ultimate customer such as a distributor or retailer within USA. Among the main reasons for not including the domestic transportation lead-time is the fact that it is relatively small and random compared to lead-time for ocean freight movement. In addition, by not including the domestic lead-time, the complexity of the supply chain model is minimized. The ocean lead-time used was 5-7 weeks long (Brown et al., 1989). This was reaffirmed by a UPS Logistics Executive and thus it was treated to be fixed.\nLiterature review: The review of professional literature relates to the current market conditions and filling up the gaps in the apparel industry. Details on these two major issues are presented in the rest of this section.Current market\nMethodology for analysis: Finding secondary sources on the lead-time for apparel production was not an easy task. Especially, considering that the lead-time would differ based on the order's length. For this case study, multiple sources for lead-time and cost were used, but before going into the details of these lead-times, it is crucial to understand the system shown in Figure 1, drawn in Microsoft Visio.As shown in Figure 1, there are four major entities to be recognized here:1. Customer. For the study purposes, customer is the first source of originating the request for the order.2. Parent facility. It is the company primarily responsible for managing the outsourcing and conducting all the dealings with the customer. In our case, we chose this parent location to be in the USA.3. Outsourced facility. This is the facility to which the orders are outsourced to by the parent facility. The example of LCL country for this purpose was chosen to be located in Pakistan.4. UPS supply chain services. This service delivers the ocean freight from the outsourced location to the parent facility.As mentioned before, the entire process begins with the customer order and then the order is further processed at the manufacturing locations (order processed) for checking operational planning, material constraints and the completeness of the order. The order continues to be processed at the outsourced location. This step to continue to process order at the outsourced location could be eliminated if the parent and outsourced center have their IT systems in sync. However, it is reasonable to assume that the parent and outsourced facility may have different order entry systems and the outsourced center may take time to process, confirm and to properly ensure the smooth transfer of order related information. Once the order is acknowledged at the outsourced center, the order is scheduled for production. Upon completion of production at the outsourced location (production complete), the order is then shipped via UPS supply chain service for ocean freight to the parent facility for final checks. After quality assurance and packaging (quality check/packaging), the product is then shipped to the customer from the parent facility and this step is the only one that is not measured in the study for the pure reason that the customer has control of the service level for the order shipment from the parent facility to their warehouse or facility. This timeline involving the entire supply chain for apparel outsourcing (beginning with a customer order till the order is shipped to the customer) is also shown in Figure 2. Various components of apparel supply chain lead-times shown as statistical distributions in Figure 2 are described later in Table I.Total average customer lead-time (various components shown in Figure 2) is the sum of individual lead-time required for each stage: Equation 1 Table I illustrates the different lead-time distributions used in the study. Lognormal distributions for three major process components - order process, order acknowledgement and final quality check and packaging - were chosen for the principle reason that lognormal distribution is applicable when the quantity of interest must be positive. For the other two process components - production and ocean freight - normal distribution was used based on the previous research studies cited in Figure 3.The statistical distributions for various components of apparel manufacturer supply chain lead-time, shown in Figure 3, were incorporated in the @Risk simulation model. Both inputs used for lead-times and outputs obtained from the @Risk simulation model for various business entities which are part of apparel manufacturer supply chain are shown in Figure 4.Figure 3 shows the stage (for example, order processing), the type of distribution used for the analysis, the mean and standard deviation set for the analysis. The output value is just one sample of output produced by the @Risk simulation.Let us again take a moment to understand how cost structure was distributed based on the total cost of 1,000 (base of 1,000 is used to avoid decimal digits). This is outlined in Table I.Though Table I shows the distribution of cost difference achieved through an outsourcing model, it is important to perform a sensitivity analysis on the assumptions used for this calculation. Percentage cost reduction distribution ranges were used for various cost components at each supply chain level as shown in Figure 5.The cost distributions for various supply chain levels were run using @RISK Program (2006) Monte Carlo simulation model, from Palisade Corporation, with 100 replications; each simulation replication processed 1,000 orders. Latin hypercube random number generation was used in the Monte Carlo simulation. Latin hypercube sampling stratifies the input probability distributions, which divides the cumulative curve into equal intervals on the cumulative probability scale (0 to 1.0). A sample is then randomly taken from each interval of the input distribution. Sampling is thus forced to represent values in each interval, thereby recreating the input probability distribution. With Latin hypercube, the samples more accurately reflect the distribution of values in the input probability distribution (Palisade Corporation, 2004, p. 194).As shown in Figure 4, the cost reduction varies in different environments; hence it is important to use a range of cost reduction for analysis. By using these ranges, the model is tested for best and worst case scenarios. The results from the study are discussed in the next section.\nFindings: The study found that the customer lead-time was averaging around 57 days at three-fourths of the original cost (average total cost was 747 and the original cost was set at 1,000). As can be seen in Figure 5, the total cost varies between 689 and 804 relatively much less compared to original cost set at 1,000. Similarly, customer lead-time varies between 48 and 71 days with significant variability introduced due to ocean freight transportation time. A sample distribution for both the total cost and customer lead-time for one simulation (based on 1,000 customer orders) are shown in Figure 6.Even after running the 100 simulations replications, on average the new total cost range came out to be between 74.4 and 75 percent of the original cost (Figure 7). Figure 7 shows distributions of minimum, average and maximum values for customer lead-time, total cost and cost savings obtained from the simulation.Figure 6 is a typical output from @Risk simulation. It shows the following two major findings:1. Longer lead-time. Though the outcome may seem obvious for an outsourcing facility, it is important to note that statistically the mean lead-time fluctuated between 41 to 91 days, which is an enormous variability. This highlights one fact that the responsiveness for an outsourced manufacturing plant depends heavily on the efficiency and timeliness of the freight carrier used.2. Cost savings. A minimum of 18 percent cost savings is captured in the worst case scenario, thus emphasizing that cost savings exists even after covering the extra charges for ocean freight.It is also worth mentioning that when covering the cost factors, as many elements were included as possible while staying within the scope of the study, suggesting that outsourcing to LCL countries comes at a cost of freights, quality control and a higher lead-time. However, it may also be noted that while the model predicted a 3 month lead-time (refer to the top-right graph in Figure 7), it also predicted a feasible response time of 41 days (refer to the top-left graph in Figure 7). Thus, it suggests that synergies from cost savings (refer to the bottom-left graph in Figure 7) along with improved lead-time can form a strong winning combination for a US apparel producer, who desires to mark its place in the market through the use of outsourcing strategy in its apparel supply chain.\nConclusion and research limitation/implications: This paper is an attempt to take a simplistic approach to the entire apparel supply chain for a US apparel maker involved in outsourcing and treat each step in the supply chain as a bundle of processes. This essentially provides a high level view of an apparel supply chain, where apparel manufacturing is outsourced to a LCL. @Risk simulation software was used to model such an extended apparel supply chain.It is important to note that the model developed in this paper supports the notion of 26 percent cost-savings realized through outsourcing. It may also be noted that statistically the minimum customer lead-time was 41 days (which is 16 days less than the mean customer lead-time of 57 days). The minimum customer lead-time of 41 days could not be achieved for various reasons. One, being the variability in ocean freight transportation time (standard deviation = 3 days and 3 x standard deviation = 9 days), and the other reasons are order processing and manufacturing time inefficiencies. Thus, it goes on to also support the theory that better IT systems could greatly minimize order processing and manufacturing times.There were studies found in the literature on textile industry on topics such as perturbation problems in the cloth industry (Latecoere et al., 1976), the yarn wastage problem in the carpet industry (Westwood, 1979), a stabilization policy for the cotton textile cycle (Zymelman, 1965) and quick response supply chain alliances in the Australian textile, clothing and footwear industry (Pery et al., 1999). However, the authors were unable to locate a study that utilized a simulation to measure the supply chain in the textile and apparel market. We were able to locate only one simulation study for the US textile industry done at Duke University in 1967 (Naylor et al., 1967). We believe that the apparel industry has a deep need for accessing and simulating the supply chain involved in outsourcing as no simulation studies of this kind have recently been executed for a US apparel producer. As it is a fascinating topic of study, with more data and better understanding of the industry, this simulation could be expanded to obtain a deeper understanding of supply chains of a US apparel maker involved in apparel manufacture outsourcing to low-cost labor countries in Asia or elsewhere.There are two main inferences that can be derived from this study. First, the cost savings through outsourcing could be enormous (up to 26 percent according to our study), however, the lead-time is quite substantial. As a result, outsourcing is not a viable solution for meeting short-term market demands (such as fads). However, for large seasonal orders, outsourcing could be a big cost-saver. Second, the lead-time of the entire apparel supply chain for the US apparel producer could be improved if certain controllable factors (such as, order processing) could be made as efficient as possible.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The redesign of a product supply chain, in terms of production, cost and delivery capabilities can be effectively accomplished by mapping, analyzing and simulating the changes in the supply chain prior to implementation. The case being discussed pertains to the apparel industry in the USA. The beginning of 2005 marked the end of a 30-year old quota on the apparel market in the USA. This has led many western apparel manufacturers to outsource their production to low-labor cost countries. This in-turn has led to increased customer lead-times. This paper aims to discuss how the implementation of proper IT systems and supply chain measures can reduce lead-times and also reduce total cost.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - An integrated approach is utilized to model the impact of apparel outsourcing added to a US apparel producer supply chain by studying the process map, data analysis, and simulation of the supply chain using Visio, Excel and @Risk simulation software. Using Monte Carlo simulation, the hypotheses on responsiveness and relative costs were tested with and without the outsourcing feature in the US apparel producer supply chain.\nFindings: - The cost savings through outsourcing in the low-cost labor countries in Asia for the US apparel producer supply chain can be huge and the lead-time is quite substantial. Thus, outsourcing is not a viable solution for meeting short-term market demands. However, for large seasonal orders, outsourcing could be an enormous cost-saver. The lead-time of the US apparel producer supply chain could be improved if certain controllable factors such as order processing could be made more efficient.\nPractical implications: - Recent studies by Acaccia, Conte, Maina and Michelini as well as the Leadership for European Apparel Production From Research along Original Guidelines (LEAPFROG, www.leapfrog-eu.org/), were reviewed. However, no recent study that uses Monte Carlo simulation to measure the supply chain in the apparel market for the USA was traceable in the existing literature except one done by Naylor, Burdick and Sasser at Duke University in 1967. The process modeling of the US apparel producer supply chain with the outsourcing feature will be a useful decision analysis tool. With more data and better understanding of the industry, this simulation model can be easily expanded to obtain a more in depth understanding of any US apparel producer supply chain with an outsourcing capability. Even with making some realistic assumptions in the model, one can easily see the potential benefits of outsourcing. The study found that the customer lead-time was averaging around 57 days at three-fourths of the original cost with the minimum customer lead-time being 41 days. Improved IT and logistics capabilities can minimize the variability recognized in major components of customer lead-time, such as ocean freight transportation time, order processing time and manufacturing time.\nOriginality/value: - The contribution of the research results from the apparel industry application, where simulation studies of this kind have recently not been executed for a US apparel manufacturer. It also showcases an innovative approach in analyzing outsourcing strategies for a US apparel producer supply chain. The study makes a business case that process improvement can be effectively accomplished with an integrated approach of using widely available inexpensive and user-friendly computer-based tools.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Understanding and mitigating cynicism in the workplace	[ "Job attitudes", "Core self-evaluation", "Organizational cynicism", "Supervisory support" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin (H.L. Mencken).\nOrganizational cynicism: Recent conceptualizations of cynicism have moved beyond earlier trait and emotion-based perspectives (e.g. Cook and Medley, 1954) and focus on the construct as an attitude (e.g. Dean et al., 1998). Specifically, Dean et al. (1998) define organizational cynicism as an attitude characterized by: (a) negative beliefs about the organization (i.e. the organization lacks integrity); (b) negative affective reactions to organizational experiences; and (c) organization-directed behavior that is consistent with affect and cognition (e.g. making concrete statements regarding lack of honesty of organizational members). Researchers have demonstrated that organizational cynicism is distinct from negative affect (Wanous et al., 1994) and that specific organizational experiences contribute to the development of cynical attitudes (e.g. psychological contract breach; Andersson, 1996; Johnson and O'Leary-Kelly, 2003; downsizing; Pugh et al., 2003).\nStudy 1: Method\nStudy 2: Method\nGeneral discussion: The aim of this paper was to understand how self-views, specifically in the form of CSE, contribute to the development of organizational cynicism and how supportive supervisors might mitigate both the development of cynicism and its negative effects on job attitudes. Across two studies, we demonstrated that people with a negative self-view (i.e. low in CSE) are predisposed to view an organization's actions with cynicism. However, some of the negative effects of CSE on organizational cynicism are moderated when employees believe their supervisors are supportive. We also found that supervisory support moderated the effects of organizational cynicism on job satisfaction. The nature of this interaction suggests that although individuals who express cynical attitudes about their organizations are also less likely to be satisfied with their jobs, supportive supervisors can mitigate some of these negative effects.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Organizational cynicism is on the increase. The purpose of this paper is to explore how dispositions promote cynical attitudes and how to mitigate the negative impact of organizational cynicism for employees.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The data consisted of two samples (n=312 and n=529) of employed adults. All participants completed online surveys containing the variables of interest. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling.\nFindings: Low levels of core self-evaluation (CSE) predict organizational cynicism which, in turn, mediates the relations between CSE and job attitudes. Importantly, the authors find that supervisory support moderates both the relations between CSE and organizational cynicism and organizational cynicism and job satisfaction.\nOriginality/value: Little research has directly assessed the role of dispositions in the development of organizational cynicism. The authors suggest that CSE contributes to the development of cynical attitudes. Further, the authors demonstrate that a supportive supervisor can serve as a buffer to mitigate the expression and effects of organizational cynicism on workplace outcomes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The role of felt obligation to mentor in mentor performance: An exploration of generalized reciprocity in mentoring	[ "Mentoring", "Generalized reciprocity", "Mentor performance", "Mentoring benefits and costs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Over the past several decades, there has been a great deal of research on mentoring in organizations (Allen et al., 2004; Eby et al., 2013; Ghosh, 2014; Ragins and Kram, 2005). Mentoring has been defined as a developmental relationship between a less experienced employee (the protege) and a more experienced individual (the mentor) (Haggard et al., 2011; Kram, 1985). Mentors in these relationships focus on supporting and encouraging the professional and personal development of the protege. Proteges gain knowledge, skills and a number of organizational benefits as outcomes of the relationship (Eby et al., 2008).\nDevelopment of hypotheses: We are interested in the influence of a mentor's felt obligation to mentor on the relationship between mentoring functions received along with mentor-perceived benefits and costs of mentoring and the protege's assessment of mentor performance. In order to explore the interactive effects, we must first establish the importance of the three identified predictors of mentor performance.\nMethod: This study is a part of a larger study on mentoring in a fire department within a city in the Southwestern USA. The organization required all new employees to be mentored and care was taken so that each new employee found a mentor. Experienced firefighters volunteered to serve in a mentoring role. Beyond mentoring at organizational entry, employees often sought out new mentors as they pursued advancement through the organization. However, these relationships were not originated or assisted by the fire station. Within the fire station, it was expected that individuals seeking promotion would have served as a mentor in addition to having experience as a protege. The top managers of the organization encouraged employees to engage in mentoring relationships in order to meet these expectations. As a result, new entrants to the organization were paired (as proteges) with current employees who had been mentored in the past and then chose to become mentors themselves. Our interest was in the mentoring pair. We used only data that were complete for both dyadic partners for the analyses presented here. Proteges in these dyads were both new entrants to the organization and individuals pursuing higher positions who indicated they were being mentored. We included only a subset of the measures from the larger study that were relevant to this research.\nResults: Prior to beginning the regression analysis, the intercorrelations among the study variables were computed (see Table II). As can be seen from Table II, the assessment of mentoring functions performed (as rated by the protege) was positively related to protege-rated mentor performance and the cost of mentoring (as indicated by the mentor) was negatively associated with protege-rated mentor performance. The benefit of mentoring perceived by the mentor is negatively correlated to mentor-perceived cost of mentoring, but positively correlated with felt obligation to mentor as reported by the mentor. This latter relationship was unexpected, as felt obligation is a normative construct, whereas mentoring benefits are incentives as perceived by the mentor.\nDiscussion: The present research was conducted in order to explore the influence of felt obligation to mentor in a sample of mentors, all of whom had previous experience as a protege, paired with their protege. Within this sample, we wanted to determine if the protege's report of mentoring functions provided as well as the mentor's perceptions of costs and benefits of mentoring would interact with a measure of generalized reciprocity in order to predict the protege's assessment of mentor performance. As a result, a new measure of felt obligation to mentor was introduced. Felt obligation to mentor taps into a generalized reciprocity with respect to benefits received as a protege and this generalized reciprocity in interaction with mentor functions received affects protege-rated mentor performance.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The authors introduce a new measure of felt obligation to mentor in order to explore generalized reciprocity in mentoring. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether felt obligation to mentor adds prediction to mentor job performance in combination with mentoring functions provided and mentor-assessed benefits and costs of mentoring.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Hypotheses were tested in a sample of firefighters in the Southwestern USA using moderated regression analysis.\nFindings: Protege reported mentoring functions provided predicted mentor performance, but neither mentoring benefits nor costs predicted mentor performance. Felt obligation to mentor interacted with mentoring functions reported such that mentor performance was highest when both mentoring functions provided and felt obligation to mentor were high.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results indicate that the new measure may prove to be of value for exploring generalized reciprocity in mentoring. Further, more research using mentoring benefits and costs is merited. Findings are limited by use of a new measure of felt obligation to mentor as well as the fact that the research was conducted in a setting in which employees were expected to serve as mentors.\nPractical implications: Organizations may leverage felt obligation to mentor in order to support effective informal or formal mentoring relationships, whereas focusing on the benefits of mentoring may be a less valuable strategy.\nOriginality/value: The research offers a new measure to help to understand generalized reciprocity as a motivation to mentor as well as suggesting that more empirical attention should be given to the perceived benefits and costs of mentoring.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Invested resource, competitive intellectual capital, and corporate performance	[ "Intellectual capital", "Business performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In today's market, a noticeable increase in the gap between a firm's market value and its book value exists. Lev (2001) pointed out that between 1977 and 2001 the market-to-book value ratios of Standard and Poors (S&P) 500 companies increased from slightly above one to over five, implying that company financial statements may not represent their true value. Several scholars have explored the discrepancies between financial statements and the relative market value of companies. Edvinsson and Malone (1997) suggest that the difference between a company's market price and its book value is related to its intangible assets. Intellectual capital (IC), considered a synonym for \"intangible assets\", are often not reported on financial statements; yet they are considered very important and may constitute 80 percent of an organization's market value (Fornell, 2000). IC includes human, structural, and customer capital, and has been shown to play an increasingly important role in a company's competitive advantage, which can increase profit of a company (Hazlina and Zubaidah, 2008).In 1984, Wernerfelt used economic theories to demonstrate that modeling a company according to its resources, leads to coherent diversification decisions by defining common non-financial links (Chatterjee and Wernerfelt, 1991). According to the resource-based theory (RBT), in order to develop a competitive advantage a company must have resources and capabilities that are superior to those of its competitor(s). RBT focuses on resources and their deployment in organizations, leading to value creation, and strategic management disciplines (Peppard and Rylander, 2001). This shows that competitive advantage and superior performance are related to acquiring, holding and subsequently using strategic assets (both tangible and intangible) that are vital to developing a competitive advantage and achieving strong financial performance. Traditionally, the tangible physical assets which were examined in RBT, were land, machines, and or financial capital.Recently, IC has been identified as a key resource and driver of organizational performance and value creation. IC has shown to be necessary to firms for both achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage (Wu et al., 2006), attracting attention among both academics and managers (Edvinsson and Malone, 1997. This new understanding shows that the management and development of IC confers greater competitive advantage thus, improving company performance. Consequently, IC has replaced tangible physical assets and capital as the primary basis of creating value (Wu et al., 2006). The combination of the well-balanced components of IC implies high value creation potential and anticipated future income. (Hermans and Kauranen, 2005). Thus IC, in an RBT framework, increases an organization's competitive advantage due to the superior value created by its unique resources and capabilities.Although RBT and the competitive advantage theory can describe relationships between resources and value creation, they are unable to illustrate relationships between individual resources. However, using an IC perspective enables us to do so. Many empirical studies of IC, like Bontis (1998), Bontis et al. (2000), Tseng and Goo (2005), and Chu et al. (2008), use different methodologies to analyze the relationships between different kinds of IC. Our research seeks to incorporate IC into an RBT-based complete value creation process that includes factors ranging from resource or capital input to performance output. Section 2 will explore the reviewed literatures that aided us in formulating our research hypotheses, followed by section 3 which discusses the research design and methodology. Section 4 describes the empirical analysis, and section 5 contains discussion and conclusion of this study\n2. Literature review and research hypotheses: This section briefly describes and then integrates two principal theories regarding the creation of value in organizations: the resource-based perspective and the IC framework.2.1 The resource-based perspective\n3. Research design and methodology: Previous studies of IC, have been based on questionnaire data that analyze subjective managerial measures of behavior perceptions (Bollen et al., 2005; Tseng and Goo, 2005; Chen et al., 2005; Martinez-Torres, 2006). These questionnaires collected data from behavioral attitudes, which is an indirect method, and investigated the relationships between IC perceptions and company value (Baxter and Matear, 2004; Bollen et al., 2005; Tseng and Goo, 2005; Martinez-Torres, 2006). In this study, the authors draw behavioral perceptions from financial measurements. Using the results from prior questionnaire based research as a framework; the authors attempt to find financial data that can represent questionnaire items. The advantages of using financial data lie in their directness, transparency and accuracy, as confirmed through audits carried out by Certified Public Accountants (CPA). Adopting real financial data also allows us to attempt to compensate for the subjectivity and quantitative insufficiencies of the managerial behavior perceptions found in prior research.3.1 Conceptual model\n4. Analysis and results: 4.1 Descriptive analysis\n5. Discussion and conclusion: The relevant literature surrounding IC, used perception-based questionnaires (Baxter and Matear, 2004; Bollen et al., 2005; Bontis, 1998), but few studies have used financial data. For investors, financial measurements of IC are more useful when making decisions. This study also adopted financial data to find value drivers. Using different components of IC data to investigate the same subject can yield different results. Evidence from this study indicates that from the resource input concept, innovation and operating processes play antecedent roles.Both types of capital affect performance via the intermediary components of maintainable customer relationships. These results are different from previous research, because the authors adopted a distinctive input-process-output concept. The results presents that efficient operating processes and maintainable customer relationships have a significantly inverse relationship. This phenomenon implies that by reducing spending, managers can increase the maintainability of customer relationships. Yet at the same time, by maintaining customer relationships, managers can strengthen the efficiency of execution in addition to rising promotional and advertisement budgets.According to our results, IC significantly influences company performance. An input-process-output concept shows that innovative capacity and efficient operating processes are antecedent factors which represent input invested resources. Two other IC components, human value added and maintainable customer relationships are also factors in the competitive advantage of a company. Innovative capacity and efficient operating processes indirectly affect company performance via maintainable customer relationships and human value added resources.This study used short-term turnover as an indicator of a company's efficiency. Therefore, efficient operating processes can be used as a proxy indicator of maintainable customer relationships. Short-term turnover will deepen the positive image of a company held by customers and improve a company's customer relationships. This is an important message to business managers: if companies want to use IC to improve their performance, innovative capacity and increased efficiency of operating processes must be considered. This implies that managers that wish to quickly improve corporate value should begin with innovative capacity and efficient operating processes.In summary, the six hypotheses were accepted, indicating that the six value-creating paths are useful for guiding efforts to enhance corporate performance through IC management. This study cannot describe the relation between markets and financial performance, because the authors simultaneously considered market and financial performance. Future research can divide performance measures into two segments, market and financial performance, and investigate their relationship.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - On the health care industry, the paper aims to study the effects of intellectual capital, identify using an input-process-output concept of human, customer, innovative and process capitals, on company performances.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - From a resource-based and intellectual capital perspective, the structural path model is applied to financial data to analyze the six-value creation relationships among the four components of intellectual capital, as well as the causal effects of intellectual capital on company performance.\nFindings: - Empirical findings suggest a significant relationship between intellectual capital and company performance. These results also suggest that innovative capacity and process reformation shall be considered first, and through the human value-added of human capital, firms can improve their company's performance.\nOriginality/value: - There have been many arguments as to whether intellectual capital is quantitatively measurable. This paper provides a tangible means of quantifying intellectual capital.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Work-family interference, emotional labor and burnout	[ "Stress", "Government departments", "The Netherlands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Although the role of emotional experiences in our physical and psychosocial well-being has long been recognized it has only recently received consideration within the broader framework of organizational behavior (Brief and Weiss, 2002; Barsade et al., 2003). An area that is receiving increased research attention is emotional labor, a construct first defined by Hochschild (1983, p. 7) as the \"management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display\". To date, the issue of emotional labor has been studied both qualitatively (James, 1989; Rafaeli and Sutton, 1990; Stenross and Kleinman, 1989; Sutton, 1991; Tolich, 1993) and quantitatively (Brotheridge and Grandey, 2002; Brotheridge and Lee, 1998; Mann, 1999; Morris and Feldman, 1996; Wharton, 1993). Indeed, a recent quantitative review of emotional labor (Bono and Vey, 2004) indicates that it is associated with poor physical and psychological health. In regard to outcomes, Bono and Vey (2004) review 87 independent samples in their analyses, but none of the reviewed research specifically links emotional labor and work-family interference (WFI).. To date, the link between the two issues has been rarely studied (with the exception of Montgomery et al., 2005; Wharton and Erickson, 1995; Wharton, 1999).\nThe link between emotional labor and WFI: WFI is experienced when pressures from the work and family roles are mutually incompatible, such that participation in one role makes it difficult to participate in the other (Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985). Studies of work-family relations have identified a range of both objective and subjective demands associated with WFI (Geurts and Demerouti, 2003), but little is known about the management of emotion and their consequences for work-family linkages (Wharton and Erickson, 1995). Indeed, according to Wharton and Erickson (1995), WFI should be highest when work and family both require high degrees of emotion management and are governed by dissimilar display norms. The link between emotional labor and WFI has been demonstrated most recently by Montgomery et al. (2005), who found that emotional labor, as measured by surface acting at work, was positively related to WFI among doctors, and surface acting at home was positively related to family-work interference among nurses. Additionally, Smith and Kleinman (1989), in a qualitative study of medical students, found that medical training created as many problems as new meanings for the body and for body contact that \"go home with them at night\" (Smith and Kleinman, 1989, p.65).There is good reason to believe that for employees whose work particularly involves emotional labor, the need to adhere to job-mandated emotional display rules will exacerbate their feelings of WFI. For example, Schulz et al. (2004), in a daily diary study of couples, demonstrated an interesting example of emotional spill-over, in that negative emotional arousal at work predicted angrier marital behavior for women and more withdrawn behavior from men. Additionally, Montgomery et al. (2003), in a sample of Dutch newspaper managers, found emotional job demands to be the most significant predictor of both WFI and burnout in comparison with both quantitative and mental job demands. So, while there is a considerable amount of evidence identifying job demands as an antecedent of WFI (e.g. Aryee, 1992; Geurts et al., 1999; Voydanoff, 1988; Wallace, 1999), there is little research evaluating emotional labor/display rules as antecedent of WFI (with the exception of Montgomery et al., 2005). The present study is consistent with a recent review of the field that calls for researchers to identify more specific antecedents of WFI (Geurts and Demerouti, 2003).\nTheoretical background: Grandey (2000) provides a comprehensive review of the theories underlying emotional labor, and defines emotional labor as the process of managing both the experience and expression of feelings to support or achieve organizational goals. In terms of linking emotional labor to burnout or psychosomatic complaints, emotional labor can be conceptualised within the rubric of theories on emotional inhibition and emotional repression. Several studies have shown that inhibition of emotions is associated with increased physiological arousal, which if it becomes chronic can have an adverse effect on health and well being (Gross and Levenson, 1997; Panagopoulou et al., 2002). Based on this research paradigm, hostility and anger suppression have been related to essential hypertension and coronary heart disease (Redford and Barefoot, 1988; Weidner et al., 1989). Empirical evidence has related inhibition of emotions to cancer progression (Temoshok, 1985; Temoshok et al., 1985) and to reduced immune function (Schwartz and Kline, 1995). Additionally, the regulation of emotion for social interaction can lower behavioural activity, but has been found to increase autonomic nervous system activity (Gross, 1998a; Pennebaker, 1985).So, the continued management of emotions for social situations can be toxic. Gross (1998a, b) has proposed a process model of emotion regulation, whereby emotional regulation can occur at two points in the process; antecedent-focused and response-focused. According to Grandey (2000), these processes correspond with the emotional labor concepts of deep acting and surface acting (employee-focused emotional labor), respectively. In this conceptualization, deep acting refers to changing the focus of personal thoughts and changing appraisals, and surface acting is concerned with modifying expression. Congruently, job-focused emotional labor or display rules such as displaying positive emotions and hiding negative emotions are postulated as processes of emotional control that reduce the feelings of emotional autonomy from the employee.The present study will examine the direct relationship between emotional labor and burnout. In this sense, emotional labor is postulated as a stressor in this study and this is consistent with the research by Brotheridge and Grandey (2002), who argue that employee-focused emotional labor and display rules are stressful because they create the need to manage emotional states.\nEmotional labor as a predictor of burnout: Originally, burnout was measured in the human services (for reviews see Schaufeli and Enzmann, 1998), but recently a general measure has been developed to access burnout outside the human services: the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS). Accordingly, burnout is viewed as a syndrome of exhaustion, cynicism and decreases in professional efficacy. Burnout, referring to the draining of energy and resources caused by chronic job stress is considered a work-related indicator of psychological health (Schaufeli and Enzmann, 1998).The common explanation of burnout suggests that it is the frequency or quantity of interactions with clients/customers that contributes to role overload and burnout (Cordes and Dougherty, 1993), but such interactions can also involve the need for employees to regulate their emotions in a mandated way (Rafaeli and Sutton, 1989). A recent meta-analysis examining the relationship between emotional labor and burnout (Bono and Vey, 2004), indicated significant associations with both emotional exhaustion (weighted mean correlation=0.30) and depersonalization (weighted mean correlation=0.23). This need for emotional displays to be regulated is an important component of employees who work in the Dutch Government department being studied, where a high level of formality needs to be maintained at all times. The employees in the present study are in constant contact with high-ranking government officials, and their job is characterised by the need to perform ceremonial tasks and observe strict behavioural codes on a daily basis. The fact that the present sample involves employees whose job is almost entirely ceremonial means that they represent a unique sample to be studied.Display rules and emotional-focused labor\nWFI as a mediator: In general, a given variable is said to function as a mediator to the extent that it accounts for the relationship between the predictor and criterion variables. According to Baron and Kenny (1986), a variable functions as mediator when its inclusion in an analysis results in a significant reduction in the relationship between the independent and outcome variable. Theoretically, the definition of WHI/HWI implies mediation, as there will be no WHI when there are no demands at work. Conceptually, WHI fits the characterisation of a response variable as suggested by Holmbeck (1997). In essence, variables such as WFI cannot exist in isolation. One cannot experience WFI if there are no job demands in the first place.In general, the role of WFI as a mediator has been suggested by many studies (Frone et al., 1992; Geurts et al., 1999; Kinnunen and Mauno, 1998; Montgomery et al., 2003, Parasuraman et al., 1996; Stephens et al., 1997). However, the link between emotions, WFI and burnout has not been clearly indicated to date. Such a situation can be explained somewhat by the fact that while there is broad acceptance that employers have the right to ask employees to perform physical behaviors or engage in cognitive activities, emotional behavior might be outside what employers can reasonably demand (Briner and Totterdell, 2002). Therefore, it seems more likely that emotional demands will spillover from work to family. Empirically, this is indicated in the work of Schulz et al. (2004), which demonstrated negative emotional spillover on a daily basis. Consistently, Maslach (1982), pays special attention to making the transition from work to home by introducing the notion of \"decompression\". Maslach argues that people working in an emotional and demanding environment need to \"decompress\" before moving into the normal pressure of their private life. Additionally, Grandey (2000) views emotional labor and display rules as a proximal predictor of stress, and this is consistent with the idea that people bring the emotional stress from work to home. Additionally, the idea that WFI may serve as a mediator between emotional labor and burnout is indicated by the study of Wharton and Erickson (1995), who found that women's well-being on the job was threatened more by their involvement in family emotion work than by their actual performance of emotional labor.In the present research, it follows logically that WFI is an important variable that mediates the ability of individuals to \"decompress\" from the work domain to the home domain.H3a. WFI will mediate the relationship between showing positive emotions and burnout/psychosomatic complaints.\nMethod: Participants and procedures\nResults: Confirmatory factor analyses and analysis strategy\nDiscussion: The current research made the following contributions:* it expanded on our knowledge of the relationship between emotional labor, WFI and burnout;* it examined the mediational role of WFI between emotional labor and burnout/psychosomatic complaints; and* it provided data on a rarely studied phenomena within governmental workers.In terms of the first hypothesis, the need for employees to hide negative emotions was consistently related to all three outcomes. The results in the present study were in contradiction to the Brotheridge and Grandey (2002) study, which found that the hiding of negative emotions was only related to the personal accomplishment dimension of the MBI. This difference in findings may be a reflection of the different samples studied, with the Brotheridge and Grandey (2002) focusing on a variety of different occupations and the present study looking at \"ceremonial\" workers, who operate in a highly idiosyncratic and highly formalized environment. Additionally, in the present study, showing positive emotions was related to exhaustion and psychosomatic complaints, but the correlations were weak. Taking these results together indicates that the need to regulate the display of emotions was most probably experienced at a proximal level.In terms of the second hypothesis, surface acting was significantly related to all three outcomes. Such a result is consistent with the research of Brotheridge and Grandey (2002), who found surface acting significantly related to emotional exhaustion. Additionally, this result is consistent with the idea that suppressing anger can be costly to physiological and immune functioning (Gross and Levenson, 1997; Pennebaker and Beall, 1986). The consistent relationship with all three outcomes confirms that idea that surface acting represents a way of detaching from others while at work. In contrast, deep acting was not related to any of the outcomes. This is consistent with work of Brotheridge and Grandey (2002), who did find that surface acting was related to emotional exhaustion beyond deep acting. In terms of the occupational group studied, this result makes sense as compared to other occupational groups (e.g. police officers) the need to use impression management in a formal setting (e.g. government offices) is more important than the need to internalize emotionally difficult situations (e.g. a police officer who needs to internalize difficult interactions).Limited support was found for the third hypothesis. This result is consistent with the considerable body of literature denoting the role of WFI as a mediator (see Geurts and Demerouti, 2003 for a review). The mediating role found for both surface acting and hiding negative emotions provides a new perspective regarding the way that work can spill-over into non-work. This suggests that for employees inhibited emotional states are more likely to be decompressed within the family environment, which presents more opportunities for emotional expression, relative to their workplace. This is consistent with recent research that has found a positive association between emotional labor and WFI (Montgomery et al., 2005), and with the work of Wharton and Erickson (1995), who suggest that emotional demanding environments (at both work and home) contribute to WFI.Emotional labor as a demand\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of the current study is to examine the relationship between emotional display rules/job focused labor, work-family interference (WFI) and burnout among a sample of workers in a Dutch governmental organization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The research is a cross-sectional study of 174 workers from a Dutch governmental organization.\nFindings: - Emotional display rules and job-focused labor were related to burnout and psychosomatic complaints. More specifically, the need to hide negative emotions and engage in surface acting was related to negative outcomes. In addition, WFI partially mediated the relationship between the hiding of negative emotion/surface acting and burnout/psychosomatic complaints.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The present study is cross-sectional and thus the postulated relationships cannot be interpreted causally.\nPractical implications: - In terms of training and/or interventions, there is a need for the worksite to provide structured opportunities for employees to decompress from the emotional demanding aspects of their jobs.\nOriginality/value: - Emotional labor has been rarely examined as an antecedent of WFI. In addition, while emotional labor has been studied with individuals in the service sector, it has been rarely examined among individuals whose jobs are highly ceremonial in nature.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Country-of-origin versus brand: consumers' dilemma when choosing between generic and branded drugs in emerging countries	[ "Emerging countries", "Country-of-origin", "Conjoint analysis", "Generic drugs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Compared to branded drugs developed by the big pharmaceutical laboratories, generic medicines have major advantages. With the same functional value (i.e. the same formula and same active principle), they are cheaper and better refunded (Griffiths, 2008; Schuiling and Moss, 2004; Sanyal and Datta, 2011). However, since their introduction in the early 1970s, the sale of generic drugs seems to be suffering from consumers' negative beliefs about their value, effectiveness and relative risk (Carroll et al., 1987). Since then, despite significant improvements in the production quality of generic drugs, problems related to trust and credibility still prevail (Guido et al., 2011). Even though consumers' willingness to buy generic drugs remains generally low (Shrank et al., 2009), there are important geographic differences in terms of consumers' acceptance. More specifically, there are differences between emerging and developed countries, as well as across European and North American nations [...].\n2. The effect of country-of-origin on product evaluation: The theoretical framework dealing with COO is broad and goes beyond the particular case of drugs. Hundreds of studies have indeed been published since the seminal article of Schooler (1965); these continue to attest to COO being one of the most significant phenomena influencing imported products (Kumara and Canhua, 2010). COO brings a \"guarantee\" of qualitative know-how and improves the brand effect (Thakor and Katsanis, 1997, Herz and Diamantopoulos, 2013). It allows consumers to deal better with the rapid progress of technology, facilitating the evaluation of the intrinsic quality of new products (Andaleeb, 1995). COO also gives consumers the opportunity to quickly discriminate between alternatives, enhancing its role as a decisional heuristic cue (Chang, 2004; D'Alessandro and Pecotich, 2013).\n3. The country-of-origin effect in emerging countries: Beyond the particular case of drugs, the studies about COO in emerging countries suggest that consumers in these countries prefer foreign imported products (Hamzaoui-Essoussi and Merunka, 2007; Kaynak et al., 2000; Zhang, 1996) - in contrast with consumers in industrialized countries, who favor domestic products (Chinen et al., 2000; Knight and Calantone, 2000; Orbaiz and Papadopoulos, 2003). Consumers from emerging countries perceive products imported from Western countries as more reliable and of better quality. This preference is attributed to several factors: the industrialized country's superiority in terms of technology, innovativeness and qualitative know-how; the social desirability of these products (due to their high cost and scarcity in emerging countries); and the attractiveness of the Western lifestyle (spread through movies and media) (Belk et al., 2003; Ger and Belk, 1996; Kumara and Canhua, 2010). However, the salience of COO in these economies may find its origin in other factors, of a more cognitive nature, specifically, the low familiarity of consumers in emerging countries with product categories, attributes and intrinsic benefits; the poverty of the informational environment in these countries; and consumers' lack of experience with foreign products, particularly when these are complex, durable and expensive (Batra, 1997; Swoboda et al., 2012; Zhang, 1996). COO researchers seem to confirm these results for several product categories, but not specifically for drugs, which have not been investigated yet. This void in the literature led us to propose a set of hypotheses explaining the effect of COO on drug consumption in emerging countries. This is presented in the following section.\n4. The specific case of the country-of-origin effect on over-the-counter drug consumption in emerging countries: OTC drugs are subject to rational buying behavior (Jun and Choi, 2007). They require potential consumers to gather a considerable amount of information to identify their benefits and to evaluate their effectiveness. However, because of the complexity of drugs, consumers are unable to infer their intrinsic benefits. To solve this problem, they may request the pharmacist's expert advice and/or activate stereotypical beliefs. Beliefs relating to generic drugs are still strong. Shrank et al. (2009) note that even if these beliefs are no longer associated with poor effectiveness and value, generic drugs are still not preferred to branded ones. Generic drugs still do not benefit from a well-known brand name likely to bring a \"guarantee\" and reduce perceived risk; plus, they are characterized by limited media exposure and a neutral or even unfavorable brand image (Bearden and Mason, 1980; Carroll and Wolfgang, 1991). Consequently, consumers usually prefer branded drugs to generic ones (Shrank et al., 2009). To reach a better comprehension of how COO may affect drug buying in emerging countries, we propose hereunder a set of more precise hypotheses.\n5. Research methodology: Burgess and Steenkamp (2006) invite researchers interested in emerging countries to use qualitative research in conjunction with follow-up quantitative data collection. We consequently observed this methodological approach. After a preliminary qualitative study to better understand the particular setting of this research (Tunisia), a survey was conducted among a sample of 200 Tunisian drug consumers. We tested our hypotheses via a conjoint analysis of consumers' preference structure and an analysis of variance. Details about data collection and analysis are given below.\n6. Results: 6.1 The relative importance of country-of-origin, brand status and price to consumers\n7. Discussion and implications: Our results bring a confirmation to an already known result about the COO effect in emerging countries, and this applied to the specific case of OTC drugs. COO has indeed a significant effect on consumers' perceptions of drug quality, trust in the drug and purchasing intentions (Fregidou-Malama and Hyder, 2014; Jun and Choi, 2007; Zbib et al., 2010). The evaluation of OTC drugs originating in Western countries is higher than the evaluation of local drugs. Companies and governments from emerging countries should make more communication efforts targeting both professionals and consumers to build trust in the local production of drugs. Pharmacists can play a key role in promoting OTC drugs, as they are significant prescribers and a major source of trust. Today, in several emerging countries facing a severe economic crisis (as it is the case for post-revolutionary Tunisia), drugs imports are extremely costly, and reestablishing trust in the local production reveals to be crucial.\n8. Limitations and future research: Several opportunities to refine and expand our findings may provide promising research perspectives. The artificial conditions of the experiment and the limited number of factors (three factors with two modalities each) may be one limitation of this study. In line with previous studies, we focused on purchasing intentions as a proxy for purchase. Nevertheless, intentions do not always translate into actual buying behavior (Chandon et al., 2011). Consequently, further research studies may address this limitation by integrating the actual purchasing behavior in the experimental design. Our results also point to a preference among Tunisian consumers for branded drugs (over generic ones), which fits with the findings of studies carried out in other countries. This study suggests that the price advantage usually associated with generic medicines is, in fact, not as important as COO. For more generalizability, it would be interesting to test consumers' preferences for generic versus branded OTC drugs, in higher price-differential scenarios (40 to 60 per cent, as in highly competitive markets). This may bring information on consumers' sensitivity to price and may help us to better understand the role of price versus COO (or other decisional attributes) in consumers' preferences.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Taking an emerging country perspective, this paper aims to investigate consumers' preferences for over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, regarding three attributes: country-of-origin (COO), brand status (branded versus generic) and price. The second purpose is to test the effect of COO and brand status on consumers' perceptions of quality, trust and purchasing intentions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: After a preliminary qualitative study, consumers answered a follow-up questionnaire to evaluate eight product combinations (COO/brand status/price) for three categories of OTC drugs. Conjoint analysis allowed assessing the importance of COO compared to brand status and price, while ANOVA was used to test the effect of COO and branding status on consumers' responses.\nFindings: Findings show that, in an emerging countries context, COO is less important than brand status in consumers' preferences. COO and brand status have a greater effect on consumers' perceptions of drug quality and trust than on purchasing intentions.\nResearch limitations/implications: The limited number of factors (brand status/COO/price) could have amplified their relative importance.\nPractical implications: Pharmaceutical companies from industrialized countries, exporting generic drugs to emerging markets, can benefit from the favorably perceived COO of their drugs and thus help the acceptance of generic drugs in these markets.\nOriginality/value: The study has two major contributions. It aims to contribute to a better understanding of consumer behavior in the pharmaceutical field. It also transposes the framework on COO to the context of an emerging country: Tunisia.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Love motels: oriental phenomenon or emergent sector?	[ "Hospitality services", "Sexual behaviour", "Hotels", "Ethics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Some people in the hotel business claim they sell sex. Others believe that what they do is furnish the stage for sex. In reality, they sell sleep (Robinson, 1996, p. 36).Hotels around the world perform a number of different functions, primarily the provision of food, beverage and accommodation. This paper, however, provides insight into an overlooked, but growing, sector of hotels that aims to deliver on all three of the possibilities that Robinson (1996) identifies, the Taiwanese love motel. Love hotels (Caballero and Tsukamoto, 2006) are well-established providers of specialised accommodation in Japan and have been for over 400 years. In Japan alone the love hotel industry is worth some 4 trillion yen and some 500 million visits are made to love hotels every year (Chaplin, 2007). Love hotels are also found in Korea, Hong Kong and, the focus of this research, the emergent and rapidly growing sector in Taiwan. This sector is separate from any concept of a so-called \"sex hotel\" or brothel (Brents and Hausbeck, 2005; Ford and Wirawan, 2005), or part of the sex tourism industry where resident prostitutes are provided (Clift and Carter, 2000); love hotels are for couples and not sex for hire.The sector is omitted from many of the standard hospitality industry texts (Brotherton, 2003; Jones, 1996; Medlik, 2003); even Hing et al. (1998) in a review of the hospitality sector in Asia do not refer to love hotels. This omission is, perhaps, understandable given a somewhat uneasy relationship between the bulk of the hotel market and sex. Hotels, however, also occupy a unique place in the \"social imagination of the West, in many ways they are synonymous with sex, romance and adventure\" (Pritchard and Morgan, 2006, p. 763). It is, perhaps, the sense of freedom engendered that makes hotels the ideal place for \"transgressive behaviours and illicit sex\" (Pritchard and Morgan, 2006, p. 763). These activities, at least in a Westernised context, are undertaken within a furtive, and somewhat seedy, context. In particular the link between hotel management and prostitution is well documented (Harper, 2008; Pritchard and Morgan, 2006; Robinson, 1996) and represents, perhaps, the limits of liberalism in Western hospitality (Harper, 2008). This paper identifies a significant and rapidly expanding hotel sector that provides a formalised, commercial context for sexual activity.Japanese love hotels\nThe study of love motels: Because of the absence of any research on love motels in hospitality literature a two-stage data collection strategy was adopted using exploratory focus groups and semi-structured interviews. The resultant data were analysed using a template analysis method.Exploratory focus groups\nSummary of findings: Growth of Taiwanese motels\nDiscussion on interview outcomes: The phenomenon of the original love hotels in Japan and the more recent love motels, explored in this research, comes down to a question of culture. The discussions of the uses of private space and how this relates to the need for spaces such as love motels is somewhat of a falsity (Bornoff, 1991; Pritchard and Morgan, 2006; Richie and Silva, 2001; West, 2005). Despite the need for intimate space being cited by Lam (2003) as the reason for facilities like love motels emerging, this is possibly only half of the equation. When it is considered that the birthplace of the love hotel is Japan (Caballero and Tsukamoto, 2006), a country larger than the sexually liberal UK, there must exist an element other than simply space that drives the apparent necessity for such products. It would appear that the answer to this question lies in South East Asian culture. The consideration of space and sexual liberty in the public domain together, combine a more comprehensive perspective on the love hotel phenomenon. Public intimacy is strictly frowned on in South East Asian culture, indeed it is said that the only people one will see kissing in public in South East Asia are Western tourists. This further points to the question of such a product's viability outside this particular cultural context. When sex and intimacy are considered to be extremely private matters it is understandable why couples are reluctant to engage in sex in the family household.Products like love motels provide anonymity, but in Western cultures anonymity does not hold currency for the general population. Therefore, it seems unlikely that the love hotel product will find a market beyond its existing host countries. Anonymity remains the pivotal factor in the future of the love hotel product therefore. The development of more diversified and augmented love hotel products resonates the shift in cultural attitudes amongst the younger generations in Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia. It seems that the anonymity the product once traded on moves further towards being a redundant feature as sexual attitudes evolve. However, despite the cultural necessity for love hotels showing signs of ceasing, the \"Disneyfication\" of love hotel products illustrates the industry's willingness to evolve in order to continue to stimulate the market. Despite more liberal attitudes, the tradition of using love hotels and the quality of the products on offer may result in these products continuing to find success. For this reason such products could be commercially viable in other cultures if the product was targeted effectively.Even in Western contexts there is some evidence of hotel companies using sexual messages and erotic subtext when marketing their products (Robinson, 1996; Harper, 2008). The research identifies that, despite an explicit and legitimate environment within which sexual activity and exploration can take place, there is still something of a general social stigma attached to the use of a hotel for exclusively sexual aims. Despite increased social acceptance some love hotels in Japan use a slot machine system for paying for rooms to ensure total anonymity suggesting that, despite the liberal and formalised setting, this is not considered a conventional hospitality transaction. The somewhat seedy and furtive Westernised attitude towards sexualisation in hotels and other formal settings identified earlier may suggest that the introduction of such specialised hotel product offerings in the West would be unlikely.However, the success of this product lies in the facilitation of a taboo activity in Asian culture. This highlights the parity between love hotels and products like the \"Bunny Ranch\" in Nevada, USA, where a socially contentious pursuit is anonymously catered for. However, the basic love hotel model could be arguably obsolete in a Western context due to contemporary sexual attitudes. If the appropriate consumer markets were discerned and targeted a love hotel-style product that created an otherwise unattainable venue for people to pursue taboo activities could be successful in the West. In liberal Western cultures themed love hotels with high levels of service and quality accommodation could also be successful. Indeed the techniques that have been developed to ensure guests' anonymity in the love hotel sector could be applied to a basic hotel model that ensures the anonymity of guests, something that could be of interest to businesses in what is the tabloid culture of the West.At first glance love motels seem to be creating an inauthentic experience, with the themed rooms satisfying sexual desires, whimsies and caprices. Rather than catering for seedy peccadilloes, or even the darkest innermost desires, love motels can also be seen to provide a genuinely escapist activity (Pine and Gilmore, 2000; Williams, 2006) which successfully transcends authentic experience (which at the sexual level it probably is) into a truly fantastic experience; one which allows couples to enter into and explore their fantasies. Themed rooms around various sexual fantasies is probably not what Gilmore and Pine (2002, p. 88) had in mind when they suggested \"multiple dimensions of one's hospitality business as distinct theatrical events\", however that is exactly what the love hotel concept achieves whilst also creating an authentic fantasy experience.\nConclusion: This paper has looked at the development of Taiwanese love motels that have developed from the combination of the Japanese love hotel and American motel concepts. The growth of this market in Taiwan and its economic importance in other Far Eastern countries suggests that Western interpretations of the international hotel industry should not continue to ignore this emerging sector.The love motel industry in Taiwan has capitalised on a combination of changing attitudes and a developing difference in values between older and younger generations. This leads to questions about the longevity of the sector and concerns about the possible decline of love motels as the younger population grow up and attitudes continue to become more liberal. The apparent change in attitudes towards these products in Taiwan highlights considerable scope for further study in this field. Therefore, further research addressing issues raised in this and other work could further establish this phenomenon as an accepted area of study in the international hotel management sector. In particular, investigating how hotel customers view the product as a sexualised setting may prove valuable in ascertaining the potential for the future growth of the love hotel product.There is potential for the love hotel product to add a new and exciting dimension to a growing industry throughout the world. However, it could be argued that Western morality may not allow the emergence of such a sector beyond the Far East. Conversely, Western morality may also be so accepting of sex that the need for such an overtly sexualized product does not exist. Since sexual attitudes are already liberal in the West (more so in Europe rather than the USA), the need for a remote space, like a love motel, to engage in sexual activity may not be required. It is space that has acted as the catalyst for the development of motels in Taiwan and space is not an issue in the West generally. The difference in attitudes between the old and the young in Taiwan has also fuelled the development of love motels; but attitudes have been shown to be fundamentally different in the East from the West therefore this product may not work in the West. It is accepted in the West that hotels sell a stage for sex but the difference in the West is that sex is also available everywhere.The paper has shown that due to space and more so generational differences sex and sexually related pursuits cannot be accessed readily in Taiwan thus love motels cater for this need. However, in the West people do not necessarily need to pay for a location where they can view pornography, sleep with prostitutes, partners or even their spouses to nearly the same extent as they do in Taiwan. It seems that society's attitude currently feeds the market for the love motel product in Taiwan but as the new generation takes over will the demand for motels die-out? Perhaps further research or even the passage of time will prove whether motels and love hotels in general have simply been a stop-gap during a shift in attitudes in the East; or if they will become an inherent aspect of Oriental culture.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to explore the \"love motel\" concept by examining the changing attitude of consumers in Taiwan. This will increase knowledge of the sector and define love motels.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The literature review charts the development of Taiwanese love motels from a dual origin: American motels and Japanese \"love hotels.\" This is followed by an empirical qualitative study consisting of a two-stage collection strategy: focus groups of hospitality and tourism professionals to gather a wide range of opinions on the subject area, followed by semi-structured interviews with consumers.\nFindings: - The findings split into three interrelated areas: growth of Taiwanese love motels due to more liberal attitudes towards sexual practice; a change in the public perception of motels due to increased standards and an increased satisfaction with the personal consumption experience; these hotels are designed for couples.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The empirical element of the study is an exploration of consumer experience in Taiwanese love hotels. Because of the sensitive nature of some of the data that were gathered a qualitative approach has been adopted.\nPractical implications: - The sexual associations with this product appear almost coincidental. If the love motel product is considered in its purest form it is simply a hotel product that provides complete anonymity for its guests. Therefore, despite its application in South East Asia, this hospitality concept has potential to be applied in a variety of guises.\nOriginality/value: - The phenomenon of \"love hotels\" is absent from the hospitality management literature; the paper begins to fill that gap by beginning a discussion on this possibly controversial sector.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Brand cultural symbolism, brand authenticity, and consumer well-being: the moderating role of cultural involvement	[ "Brand authenticity", "Brand image", "Brand meaning", "Brand heritage", "Consumer psychology", "Brand cultural symbolism", "Indexical cues", "Iconic cues", "Consumer hedonic well-being", "Consumer eudaimonic well-being" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Achieving comprehensive well-being is the ultimate goal of all human activities, and for this reason, numerous studies in the fields of psychology, economics and sociology have been dedicated to well-being or happiness (Diener and Seligman, 2002). Throughout the years, as studies on well-being progressed, researchers of consumer behavior have also begun to explore the concept of consumer well-being (Mogilner et al., 2012). They demonstrated that consumer well-being can influence consumers' brand choice, brand loyalty, hedonic consumption and word-of-mouth behavior (Mogilner et al., 2012; Seinauskiene et al., 2016; Schnebelen and Bruhn, 2016). At the same time, researchers looked at various drivers of consumer happiness and the effects of phases of consumption (Hedhli et al., 2013), the object of consumption (Bhattacharjee and Mogilner, 2014), the manner of consumption (Aaker et al., 2011) and the personality of consumers (Belk, 1984) based on factors and situations related to consumption. Other researchers focused on the impact on consumer well-being of various brand-related factors, such as brand experience (Bettingen and Luedicke, 2009; Brakus et al., 2015), brand relationship quality and brand self-congruence (Schnebelen and Bruhn, 2018).\nTheoretical background and hypotheses development: Brand cultural symbolism and consumer well-being\nMethodology: Sample and procedure\nConclusions: Summary of findings\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to improve knowledge regarding the complicated relationship among brand cultural symbolism, consumer cultural involvement, brand authenticity and consumer well-being. Although some literature has mentioned the relationship between the above concepts, these relationships have not been confirmed by empirical studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on the self-determination theory and the authenticity theory, a causal model of brand cultural symbolism, consumers' enduring cultural involvement, brand authenticity and consumer well-being is developed. The structural equation model and multiple regressions are used to test the hypothesis. The primary data are based on an online survey conducted in China (N = 533). A total of six brands from the USA, France and China were selected as study samples.\nFindings: The data reveal that brand cultural symbolism has a positive relationship with brand authenticity and consumer well-being; brand authenticity partially mediates the relationship between brand cultural symbolism and consumer well-being; and find a weakening effect of consumers' enduring cultural involvement on the relationship between brand cultural symbolism and brand authenticity.\nResearch limitations/implications: The weakening effect of consumers' enduring cultural involvement on the relationship between brand cultural symbols and brand authenticity should be further verified through experiments and the model should be tested in different cultural backgrounds from a cross-cultural perspective.\nPractical implications: The present study offers novel insights for brand managers by highlighting brand authenticity as the fundamental principle that explains the effect of cultural symbolism of brands, consumers' enduring cultural involvement, as well as eudaimonic and hedonic well-being.\nOriginality/value: The findings suggest that cultural significance of a brand is closely related to brand authenticity and consumer well-being; however, on consumers with a highly enduring cultural involvement, the effect of brand culture symbolism and brand authenticity is weakened. This is an interesting finding because in this case, consumers may measure brand authenticity more based on the brand actual behavior (e.g. brand non-commercial tendency and brand social responsibility) rather than the symbolic image.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Development and validation of the Expanded Mindful Eating Scale	[ "Sustainability", "Scale development", "University students", "Nutrition education", "Health of the planet", "Mindful eating" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Many researchers and practitioners have increased their attention to mindful eating in recent years. One of its definitions is that of \"nonjudgmental awareness of internal and external cues influencing the desire to eat, food choice and quality of consumption\" (Hanh and Cheung, 2010). Decreasing body weight and improving food choice quality have been studied in previous research on mindful eating intervention (Tapper and Seguias, 2020; Artiles et al., 2019; Mason et al., 2016; Timmerman and Brown, 2012).Fung et al. argued that the concept of mindful eating can be expanded to encompass broader issues related to food and nutrition, spurring them to advocate an expanded model for mindful eating (Fung et al., 2016). It is different from existing models in its emphasis on the \"health of the planet,\" meaning that it focuses on the preservation of the environment in addition to the improvement of individual health (Fung et al., 2016). This concept is intimately related to both sustainability and mindfulness, as all involve behaviors aimed at preserving the environment that are consistent with behaviors aimed at improving individual health (Stanszus et al., 2019; Hallstrom et al., 2015). Therefore, sustainability is an important keyword for this expanded model because of its crucial role in preserving the environment. For example, reducing the consumption of animal products as a food choice impacts the environment and animal welfare in addition to the health of individuals (Castane and Anton, 2017; Pan et al., 2012). Also, an individual's understanding of appropriate portion size can positively affect personal health and minimize food loss (Conrad et al., 2018). Through such awareness and understanding, mindful eating practitioners can provide themselves with additional motives to accustom themselves to healthy eating habits.Although several scales to measure mindful eating have been developed and utilized in many cross-sectional and intervention studies, no scale has yet been developed that accounts for the concepts noted by Fung et al., who have, indeed, stated that it is necessary to develop a scale to accurately measure the concept of mindful eating covered in the expanded model (Fung et al., 2016). To measure the level to which mindful eating is practiced, several scales were developed in previous studies in the past several years. The most common scale is the Mindful Eating Questionnaire (MEQ) (Framson et al., 2009). It is composed of 28 items, as well as five subscales: disinhibition, awareness, external cues, emotional response and distraction. Many intervention and cross-sectional studies have validated the use of the MEQ (Chung et al., 2016; Hutchinson et al., 2017; Moor et al., 2013; Stites et al., 2015), and other studies have adapted the MEQ to use with pregnant women and children (MEQ-C) (Apolzan et al., 2016; Hart et al., 2018). The Mindful Eating Scale (MES) was developed to measure mindful eating with due consideration given to concepts of mindfulness, a dominant conception regarding mindful eating (Hulbert-Williams et al., 2014). The MES is composed of 28 items and six subscales: acceptance, awareness, nonreactivity, act with awareness, routine and unstructured eating. This scale was based on the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and the Philadelphia Mindfulness Scale, though it was tested on a relatively small sample size of 127 university student participants (Baer et al., 2008; Cardaciotto et al., 2008). Winkens et al. reported on the development of an additional scale, the Mindful Eating Behavior Scale (MEBS), which aims to measure attention to mindful eating and is composed of 17 items and four subscales (Winkens et al., 2018). They focused on several components of mindful eating, such as eating with attention and awareness. However, they did not recommend calculating a total score on the MEBS because there was a low correlation between such subscales as focused eating, hunger and satiety cues, eating with awareness and eating without distraction.Furthermore, most of the existing scales that measure mindful eating are only composed of items related to individual health (Framson et al., 2009; Hulbert-Williams et al., 2014; Winkens et al., 2018). Additionally, though several scales include items related to awareness and appreciation for food, there are no scales that assess an individual's habits of savoring seasonal and celebration-specific food, which are food types typical in Japanese culture. With consideration to the background and for the reasons outlined above, we aim to develop and validate the Expanded Mindful Eating Scale (EMES), an expanded model of mindful eating for the promotion of health and sustainability.\nMaterials and method: Study design\nResults: Participant characteristics\nDiscussion: In this study, we developed and validated the EMES , which is a new psychological scale applied as an expanded model of mindful eating for the promotion of health and sustainability. The EMES consisted of 20 items, as well as five factors: \"health of the planet,\" \"awareness and appreciation for food,\" \"nonreactivity,\" \"nonjudgmental awareness\" and \"hunger and satiety cues.\" Construction validity, criterion validity and internal consistency were confirmed by analysis based on a questionnaire survey targeting 1,388 female university students.A scale was developed to measure mindful eating including individual behaviors that consider the \"health of the planet,\" or preserving the environment, as suggested by Fung et al. (Fung et al., 2016). Several items were shortened in order to cover an array of mindful eating concepts and to provide ease of use for many practitioners and researchers, and we set an appropriately low number of items to measure mindful eating as applied to the expanded model. There are several scales dedicated for measuring sustainable and environmentally friendly food choices and eating behaviors, such as sustainable and healthy eating (SHE) behaviors(Zakowska-Biemans et al., 2019). Additionally, a dietary assessment method to measure sustainable and healthy dietary patterns using mobile food records was developed in Australia (Harray et al., 2015). This method assessed the intake of ultra-processed and individually packaged foods, beverages, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, eggs, meat and amounts of plate waste. Impressively, most factor 1 items of the EMES scale overlap with SHE items (for example, \"Whenever possible, I buy organic food,\" \"I buy locally produced foods\" and \"I choose free-range eggs.\") and mobile food record methods developed by Harray et al.(Harray et al., 2015), including assessments of common eating patterns with items included in EMES factor 1. Moreover, previous studies have reported that sustainable food choices were associated with existing models of mindful eating (Hunecke and Richter, 2019). These similarities between previous studies that measure sustainability may imply the validity of items in EMES factor 1, although we deleted an item that assessed food choice's impact on decreasing food loss as a result of CFA.We deepened items in \"awareness and appreciation for food\" in factor 2 of the EMES. No existing scale had items that assessed one's desire to savor seasonal ingredients and celebration-specific foods, types of food that are typical in Japanese culture and that, in Japan, have their roots of Buddhism. Awareness regarding the savoring of seasonal ingredients and celebration-specific meals and the appreciation for food in general is intrinsic to Japanese culture and they are closely related. In our previous study targeting children, appreciation for food was associated with attitudes toward healthy food, recommended food preferences, recommended food intake, breakfast consumption, indefinite complaint and BMI (Kawasaki and Akamatsu, 2019). Similar to the previous study, body image, which is the psychological factor directly relate to eating behavior, was correlated with the EMES. Therefore, it is important to compare the mindful eating status, especially the subscale of\"awareness and appreciation for food\" with those of other countries, while conducting further research.In this study, we found that the EMES had an acceptable fit index by EFA, Cronbach's a, and a low correlation of BMI, MAAS, EDI-BD, EDI-DT and SWLS. Although it is debatable whether to calculate a total score because several inter-factor correlations were low, we consider a total score of EMES to be meaningful because of the moderate Cronbach's a. These significant correlations with BMI and psychology scales were consistent with several previous studies that developed scales to measure mindful eating. For example, negative correlations with BMI were reported by validation studies of MEQ, the abbreviated version of MEQ and MEBS, and the Intuitive Eating Scale (IES), which is a conceptual kin of mindful eating (Framson et al., 2009; Smith and Hawks, 2006; Winkens et al., 2018). MAAS was also used by MES validation and reported a similar degree of correlation and the correlation of the various factors was not significant (Hulbert-Williams et al., 2014). Significant correlations with weight and life satisfaction were reported by the validation of the MEBS (Winkens et al., 2018). Additionally, a total score of each factor of the EMES was significantly correlated with BMI, MAAS, EDI-BD, EDI-DT and SWLS. Although several factors were not significantly correlated with several criteria, we believe the results to be valid because they indicate a qualitative difference between each concept of the expanded model. Factors 3-5, which cover overeating, were correlated with the indices that directly influence body shape, such as BMI, MAAS and EDI-DT. On the other hand, factors 1 and 2 were correlated with body dissatisfaction and satisfaction with life and reflect quality of life. We can interpret these results through our hypothesis that attention to individual health gradually expands to attention to the health of the planet through an intermediary of awareness and appreciation for food, and finally leads to a high level of happiness based on individual health, as Fung et al. also mentioned (Fung et al., 2016).In addition, we first targeted the Japanese population to measure participants' mindful eating status. Although several scales have been developed and used in the USA (Framson et al., 2009; Apolzan et al., 2016; Hart et al., 2018) and Europe (Hulbert-Williams et al., 2014; Winkens et al., 2018), there are very few cross-sectional studies data targeting Asian populations, such as Korean nurses, Iranian women and Pakistani people (Choi and Lee, 2019; Abbaspoor et al., 2018; Khan and Zadeh, 2014), despite the fact that mindful eating originates in the Buddhist concept of \"mindfulness.\" Our study contributes to this lack of data.Limitations and practical implication\nConclusions: We developed the 20-item and five-factor (\"health of the planet,\" \"awareness and appreciation for food,\" \"nonreactivity,\" \"nonjudgmental awareness\" and \"hunger and satiety cues\") Expanded Mindful Eating Scale to measure the mindful eating attitudes of participants by applying the expanded mindful eating model suggesting by Fung et al. Construction validity, criterion validity and reliability were confirmed.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: To develop and validate the Expanded Mindful Eating Scale (EMES), an expanded mindful eating model created for the promotion of health and sustainability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional study using self-administered questionnaire surveys on Ochanomizu Health Study (OHS) was conducted. The survey was provided to 1,388 female university students in Tokyo, Japan. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a partial correlation analysis were used to confirm construct and criterion validity. Internal consistency of the EMES was confirmed to calculate Cronbach's alpha.\nFindings: The response rate was 38.7 % (n = 537). Mean BMI was 20.21 +- 2.12, and 18.8% of them were classified as \"lean\" (BMI < 18.5). The authors listed 25 items and obtained a final factor structure of five factors and 20 items, as a result of EFA. Through CFA, the authors obtained the following fit indices for a final model: GFI = 0.914, AGFI = 0.890, CFI = 0.870 and RMSEA = 0.061. The total EMES score was significantly correlated with BMI, mindfulness, body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness and life satisfaction (r = -0.138, -0.315, -0.339, -0.281 and 0.149, p < 0.01, respectively). Cronbach's alpha for all items in this scale was 0.687.\nPractical implications: The authors suggest the possibility that practitioners and researchers of mindful eating that includes this new concept can use authors' novel scale as an effective measurement tool.\nOriginality/value: The EMES, which can multidimensionally measure the concept of the expanded model of mindful eating was first developed in this study.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Explaining scientific networking with b2b network theories: the cases from the EU and Russia	[ "Networking", "Knowledge management", "Russia", "European Union" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Numerous advantages of flexible organisations for turbulent business environments attracted attention of managers and policymakers in as far as 1980s, and this was carefully documented in research (Miles and Snow, 1986; Piore and Sabel, 1984). Networking became a fashionable topic (Jarillo, 1988), and since then recognition of value and unique flexibility of many-faced interorganisational networks has been spreading within business community with a tremendous speed (Chesbrough and Teece, 1996). Following rapid amplification of managers\" interest towards networking, some scholars have even declared these structures as a prototype of the organisational form of the future (see Snow et al., 1992).In search of new keys to national economic prosperity, policymakers were swift to place networks at their own service. The Danish Ministry of Labour pioneered to implant SME networks in 1989, soon thereafter British Commonwealth countries followed (Chaston, 1995), while UNIDO made SME networks a pillar in its industrial development programmes for two dozens of developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America in 1990s (Ceglie and Dini, 1999; UNIDO, 2001).However, as their use in business practice increased, network configurations gradually delivered new challenges for both managers and business researchers. Despite there is a certain consensus regarding understanding networks, i.e. their definitions, classifications, success factors and areas where these organisational forms are best applied and are most successful, there is a debate on how they should be managed (see Ritter et al., 2004). The specific skills and competences that bring success to network managers, the ways networks are managed and the rules for evaluating their effectiveness remain largely uncovered, especially for those networks that are emerging value systems (Moller and Rajala, 2007).Networking is an important up-to-date issue for non-profit sector as well. By now, education alone can boast of proliferating international academic exchanges, joint educational programs and joint-venture schools gradually becoming routine practices. Governments have a keen sense of the pulse of partnerships between business and scientific institutions, which are crucial for technology development and commercialization. Moreover, one might recall that at its early days, the emphasis of the studies of interorganisational networks was on non-profits (Thorelli, 1986, p. 37). Alas, it seems to be out of current account of the management thinkers, judging from the fact that recent research on network collaboration between non-profit organisations is comparatively rare. Notable exceptions are several articles on health and social care sector (Page, 2003; Provan and Milward, 1995, 2001; van Raak and Paulus, 2001) and charities (Galaskiewicz et al., 2006). Hence, we feel it necessary to draw attention to collaboration phenomena in non-business settings, and to induce new research on networking with a focus on non-profits.We devoted our study to formal interorganisational alliances implanted in science and higher education sector by various policy initiatives. In spite of already being widespread for years, they have not yet been analysed, except for in few papers on public policy (Fisher et al., 2001; Luukkonen et al., 2006). This paper's main purpose is to lay ground for the network view of these alliances, to demonstrate how they are designed and implemented, and to reveal new challenges they bring to the theory and practice of managing networks and relations. We reveal a paradox between what can be derived from b2b network concepts about knowledge management practices in these alliances and their actual knowledge management practices. We try to elucidate this paradox by combining perspectives.We keep focus on cases of networks related to studying organisations and relationships: we believe that the analysis of such networks is of double importance for relationship marketing researchers who are also studying organisations and relationships. What's more, some argue that science is marketing (Peter and Olson, 1983), and so it may be a logical explanation that contemporary practices of relationship marketing now penetrate into processes of scientific inquiry.In the subsequent section we discuss the theoretical basis and methodology of the study: the business network concepts and the qualitative approach employed to put these concepts to trial. The plot of the paper consists of two cases of collaboration in science and education. This discussion leads to insights into mechanisms of value creation through alliance relationships in science and education and to propositions to extend existing theories of b2b networks. The final section is devoted to comparisons, policy implications and conclusions for further research.\nConcepts and methods: Theoretical framework\nCase 1: European networks of excellence: In this section we discuss the case of network facilitation trough recent European science and technology policy. We structured it into subsections of \"Design\" that is dedicated to contextual factors and \"Implementation\" that is devoted to case analysis. We devote substantial space to describing contextual factors for three reasons:1. to provide some background information about these networks;2. to explain the reasons why these networks were stimulated; and3. to emphasize the design dimensions of these networks that are decisive for their functioning.Together this supports systematic understanding of these networks, and hence, the subsequent case network. After explaining the context using concepts and terms from the policy documents and associated policy studies, we translate the argument into the language of relationship marketing and management. This brings a perception of paradox which is further revealed through the case study and examined in \"Discussion\" section at the end of the article.Design\nCase 2: NoE made-in-Russia: In this section we outline the case of facilitating a research network in Russia. We structure it in the sections of \"Design\" and \"Implementation\", similar to the first case. Conclusions and propositions follow in the \"Discussion\" section.Design\nDiscussion: To summarise, the two cases support that some current practices in non-profit academic networks can be considered exceptional in business network settings and contradict to concepts of b2b networks we reviewed.First, both cases validate that open exchange of technological knowledge, not just the \"product samples\" as mentioned by Peter and Olson (1983), actually took place in both cases, and that this practice ultimately benefited to both networks. There is evidence of some progress in research excellence of PRIME members, although it is unclear if all members in fact gained the kind of benefits which would otherwise be unattained. But the results associated with open knowledge exchange, such as means of such exchange, e.g. ENID, were supposed by PRIME members to be the most valuable outcome of joint activities, since this provided the feeling of self-accomplishment.Second, both case networks grew in numbers very fast, which is not a rule for b2b networks. Whereas the Russian NoE aimed at fast growth from the beginning, PRIME grew in numbers contrary to recommendation set by the European Commission, and actively engaged non-members into cooperation. It seems that open knowledge exchange was conducive to growth of both networks. However, this suggestion needs further investigation.Open knowledge exchange seems to be a \"negative case\" in the sense that it contradicts to practices of b2b networks. It is not a \"unique NoE effect\", since organised knowledge and skills exchange via rotation of personnel, joint training programmes and regular knowledge dissemination activities improved reputation of NCE members (Fisher et al., 2001). Neither it is an exclusive effect of scientific networks: open knowledge exchange is supposed to characterise customer communities (see von Hippel, 2006) and communities of creation like Open Source Movement (see Sawhney and Prandelli, 2000), which are normally interpersonal not-for-profit networks. Moreover, large corporations have come to nurture and merge their customer communities and developer communities (such as IBM Alphaworks, Linux and Microsoft.NET), with opening knowledge exchange to capitalise on community innovation potential and reap additional benefits from innovations developed internally. Finally, it seems that the practices of exposing privately developed knowledge to the general public can be applied by strategic networks of the future (see Miles et al., 2005).From relationship marketing perspective, open knowledge exchange and protected knowledge access are alternative norms of firm behaviour. Under certain conditions, these norms turn into industry standards. The prevailing norm in most industries and in most settings is protected knowledge access, however switching is possible. The case helps to identify three sources of benefits from sharing for those who switch: reputation gains, reciprocation of exchange and recipients' positive actions on the knowledge absorbed. Efforts to introduce the open knowledge exchange standard require mobilising industry players to abandon old practices of retaining valuable knowledge and to accept new practices of free dissemination. This task is challenging, and obviously requires a number of initial conditions to be met.Costs and risks of exposing knowledge to public depend on its character. The focus of our discussion is on technological knowledge and know-how that can be productively used to deliver value; we assume uniformity in the ways all other kinds of knowledge are exchanged between organisations. For example, neither tacit insights, nor defence technologies can be shared at all, but everybody advertises its products and services, or personal strengths; the science is no exception (Peter and Olson, 1983). Sharing all other knowledge is potentially valuable unless it can be used against its originators. Non-profit orientation of such knowledge or its originator, as well as the originator's absolute advantage in producing new knowledge can counterbalance this risk. Originator's advantage can be caused by its excellence in technology or by its position in the value chain (Sun and IBM are relevant examples from business); we are more concerned with its non-profit orientation.We defined non-profit orientation of an organisation as the extent to which its actions, including actions of its members, are guided by non-profit goals. In relation to strategic network this comprises common and individual members' goals, the goals of employees as well as non-profit motivation to cooperate. We suggest that the employee having non-profit goals well suits the accepted definition of a volunteer (see US Department of Labor, 2009). We assume that strategic network theories can apply to non-profits, subject to their extension with concepts of non-profit orientation of a strategic network. Our cases of non-profit networks support that and open exchange of technological knowledge was taking place. Thus, we derive a proposition regarding strategic network of any kind:P1. The extent of volunteering in common activities of strategic network members, the extent of non-profit motives in motivation of individual actions of strategic network members, and the extent of non-profit motives in motivation of strategic network members to cooperate with each other positively influence their propensity to introduce the practice of openly exchanging technological knowledge.In some respect, non-profits emerge \"in response\" to some public demand or need, motivated to spread their best practice in order to fulfil this need. For the non-profits, public needs are what business opportunities are for the for-profits. Non-profits spread it in hope that somebody would act on it and produce something that would contribute to their own mission. It is natural to assume that the recipients (the public in need), or in marketing terms, the end customers will be first to act on the knowledge they get, and to some extent, they are the only group that ultimately creates value from the experiences exchanged (Vargo and Lush, 2004). Next, customers may not only consume, but actively innovate and advertise their achievements (von Hippel, 2006). To summarise, apart from being volunteers, the customers usually are first to act on the knowledge that is valuable for them. Thus, the more the customers are involved in value creation, both in for-profit and in non-profit settings, the more beneficial the practice of open exchange of technological knowledge can be to knowledge originators. We hypothesise, that:P2. The extent of customer involvement in common activities of strategic network members positively influences their propensity to introduce the practice of openly exchanging technological knowledge.\nSummary and conclusions: Comparisons and policy implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to extend existing theories of b2b networks over non-profit networks.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper sheds light on the network organisational forms recently implanted in the academic community. the analytic induction method is used to extend b2b network concepts to a non-profit context. The concepts of b2b networks are critically analysed and applied to explorative case studies of networks in academia. The paradox of open knowledge exchange in these networks is revealed and an attempt is made to elucidate it.\nFindings: - B2b network concepts should be modified before being extended to non-profits. Propositions are suggested to adapt b2b network concepts to explain non-profit networks. Questions to address in further research are developed.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The main conclusions are only applicable to specific types of networks. Only academic networks are reviewed. The case study approach does not allow for generalizing the findings and deriving a set of concepts for non-profit networks, and thus, calls for further research.\nPractical implications: - There may be space for achieving excellence in research by facilitating interpersonal rather than interorganisational research networks. This is important, since by facilitating interpersonal networks one can escape from organisational bureaucracy.\nOriginality/value: - The study reports networking between the non-profits, an issue largely neglected by marketing researchers, and contributes to its understanding in the frame of existing b2b network concepts.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Identifying variables that predict clients' propensity to end their checking accounts	[ "Banking", "Customer loyalty", "Relationship programs", "Client retention", "Checking account", "Change mediators" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The changing of a company or brand by the client may be considered as a common event in the current market. It may be motivated by dissatisfaction towards one or various services' aspects, however dissatisfaction is not a necessary condition nor a sufficient one to generate it (Stewart, 1998). According to Roos (1999), not all the clients who change are dissatisfied. For Ferreira (2004), a very satisfied client may change simply because he wishes to test or experiment a new company or because he is searching for a better business. In case the client opts for changing, whatever the reasons, this decision will necessarily pass by considering points such as the availability of alternatives, the involved switching costs and the eventual loss of benefits.Losing a client may represent a bigger risk for the companies than simply the reducing of a single client in their portfolio. According to Bateson and Hoffman (2003) those companies which are not able to retain their clients have the tendency of committing in recurrent manner the same mistakes. Because of that, the causes which have led to the abandonment must be identified and one must seek to avoid them in a retention plan. So that effective strategies may be formulated and implemented in client retention in the banking sector it is needed to know the reasons or behaviors which most influenced the clients' propensity to close their checking accounts.In the banking sector, the dispute over the client has been intense. The regulations established by the authorities show that the objective is to stimulate even more the competition, in such a manner that the client may compare the prices given among institutions. So, a few rules have appeared for portability of applications and loans aiming to ease the changing of institution. In this sense, the present study aimed to point the prevailing variables in identifying clients' propensity to close their checking accounts, being taken the following research question: which are the variables which predict clients closing a checking account in a commercial bank?\n2. Theoretical reference: Berry (1983) has defined relationship marketing as the action of attracting, maintaining and improving relationships with clients, while Gummesson (1999) highlighted the application of this concept in the services area showing the importance of client retention and maintenance and not only acquiring new ones. In the vision of Berry and Parasuraman (1995, pp. 161-8) the relationship marketing has three different levels. In level one it is used the frequency or retention marketing, being offered monetary incentives for stimulating clients to have more dealings with the organization. In this level the organization passes in the relevance to the client test, but loses in market differentiation. In level two, the social links are given more priority over the financial links, through the emphasis on providing personalized services and transforming customers into clients, considered by the authors as being the \"[...] product of the soul and of the science [...]\". In this level appears the one-on-one relationship. In level three, the relationships are consolidated with structural links, beyond the financial and social links. The structural links are the ones created to make the services valuable to the clients, but which are not always readily available in other sources. This makes the switching cost high and uninteresting and has as basis the information technology.2.1. Loyalty and satisfaction\n3. Methodology: The present work may be classified as a descriptive quantitative case study. Due to its sample and procedures, which will be explained further, this research is not attitudinal, but behavioral. The logistic regression statistical technique was utilized with the objective of discriminating individuals, because the desired known answer was one of binary nature (yes or no). In order to do so, it was necessary to determine the groups to be compared and make a sampling schedule for application of the methodology which will be explained in the following.3.1 Hypothetical model\n4. Results presentation and analysis: 4.1 Logistic regression model results\n5. Conclusions: Going from the elements presented in the hypothetical model, it was possible to identify that the client's age, account time, investor/taker profile, internal relationship, long term assets contracts, risk in other banks, amount of products, product cancellation, average amount of entries and the existence of joint client are the variables which best identify the clients with propensity to ending the relationship in the banking market. In its most relevant aspects, the research has shown that people with higher ages, with more account time, without risks in other banks, with more products and with more than one joint holder have a smaller probability of closing the checking account. Under the theoretical point of view, it was noted that there is a parallel with the studied literature and that the strategy of increasing the relationship with the client tends to generate satisfaction and/or increasing the switching costs. It may be assumed that client retention will come to be a consequence of an increase in the products utilized by the client. In this meaning, the present work has achieved the objectives which it has proposed to itself.By analyzing the obtained results in light of the studied theoretical basis it was possible to ascertain that they are both in tune. The contributions here presented can help the conception of relationship programs consolidated with structural links, beyond financial and social, as Berry and Parasuraman (1995) classified as level 3. The utilized methodology offers good estimates regarding consumer behavior as to the process of closing a checking account. The presented elements are, therefore, relevant because they point to where should be focused the marketing actions which stimulate satisfaction, loyalty and which amplify the switching costs as a form of client retention. As managerial contribution, this information is of fundamental importance for the effectiveness of the actions close to the target public, resulting in smaller expenditures for the organization.The limitation pertaining to a case study done in one institution may be attenuated by the fact that a sample with 4,000 people was used for the model construction and then the client database in all Brazil was utilized to test the obtained model. Though the effectiveness of this study is evident, it is worthwhile to recommend its application in other institutions, products and economical segments. Such questions may fit in: which are the motives of ending a relationship in other institutions and/or segments? It is also interesting to test other variables and tools so that the adjustment may be verified and compare them to the CHAID Neural Networks and Association Models methods. In the field of conceptual investigations, it is recommended to deepen the studies on young adults, in the beginning of the professional life and their reasons for changing a banking institution. It is one question which surfaced in the investigation, but was not deeply explored in the present research.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This study aims to investigate which variables can predict clients closing their checking accounts in a commercial bank and to validate the model used in this research.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The theoretical basis of the study has contemplated satisfaction, loyalty, change mediators, switching costs and client retention. A total of 2,000 account holders plus 2,000 clients who closed their checking accounts were selected by simple probabilistic sample. The samples were probabilistic, without repetition, with an error margin of approximately 2.2 percent and trust interval of 95 percent with random drafting of the account holders' database from a large institution based in all Brazil. The variables were tested using the Binary Logistic Regression and the variables between the account holder and former account holder groups with indication of checking account closing request were compared.\nFindings: - Account holder's age, time of the account, investor/taker profile, internal relationship, long term assets contracts, risks in other banks, quantity of products, product canceling, average amount of entries and the existence of a joint client are the variables which better identify clients' propensity to end their relationship.\nPractical implications: - The obtained results make it possible to identify the clients' propensity to abandonment and contribute to directing future marketing actions.\nOriginality/value: - The model is relevant on the theoretical point of view because it can measure the importance of each independent variable and provides elements to compare all of them in the same base (meta-analysis). It deals with 14 independent variables and had a good adjustment once was capable to classify correctly 89.8 percent of the account holders and 87.2 percent of the former account holders. The K-S value was 79 percent with p<0.005 and value of ROC curve was 0.947. Models like this are unknown.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
One-unit repairable systems with active and standby redundancy and fuzzy parameters: Parametric programming approach	[ "Nonlinear programming", "Active and standby redundancy", "Fuzzy approach", "Mean time between failures", "System reliability" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Component redundancy plays a key role in engineering design and it can be effectively used to increase system performances. There are two common types of redundancy, namely active redundancy, which stochastically leads to consideration of maximum of random variables, and standby redundancy, which stochastically leads to consideration of the convolution of random variables. In active or parallel redundancy, the redundant units are in parallel and working simultaneously. This method is usually employed when a system is required to operate for a long period of time without interruption. In standby redundancy, one of the redundant units (i.e. spares) begins to work only when the active unit failed. This type of redundancy is used when the replacement takes a negligible amount of time and does not cause system failure. Standby redundant repairable systems have been studied extensively in the past (Kumar and Agarwal, 1980; Osaki and Nakagawa, 1976). A number of authors have investigated the two-unit redundant systems under different assumptions (de Almeida and Campello de Souza, 1993; Gururajan and Srinivasan, 1995; Subramanian and Anantharaman, 1995; Rajamanickam and Chandrasekar, 1997; Billinton and Pan, 1998; Seo et al., 2003). Almost all of the research works consider perfect coverage for failure, which means detection and recovery from failure has been successful. In practice, however, it may be impossible to replace the failed unit with a spare and then recover from a failure which means imperfect coverage (Jain and Gupta, 2013).\n2. Model description: System reliability is generally defined as the probability that a system performs its intended function under operating conditions for a specified period of time (Meeker and Escobar, 2014). In practice, we apply mean time to failure (MTTF) to show the system reliability. On the other hand, this concept changes its meaning from MTTF to MTBF for repairable systems. System availability is the probability that a system performs its intended function at time t under operating conditions. In general, reliability is used when the system is not repairable and availability is for the repairable system.\n3. Fuzzy repairable system: In this paper, we extend the applicability of the repairable system by allowing the system parameters to follow fuzzy specification. Let the failure rate of an operating unit l, the failure rate of standby unit th, and the repair rate of failed units u are approximately known and can be represented by the fuzzy sets\n4. Parametric NLP: We adopt Zadeh's approach, which relies on a-cuts to re-express the membership function\n5. Numerical example: We consider an example motivated by a real-life system to demonstrate the practical use of the proposed solution. An electric power plant has two main coal power generators that operate in parallel system and one light-diesel turbo generator for standby use. The capacity of each coal power generator is 300 MW and the capacity of the light-diesel generator is 150 MW. The standby generator may fail while a failure detection device continuously monitors it. Operating and standby generators are repairable. If an operating generator fails, it is immediately detected, located, and replaced with a coverage probability c with a standby if one is available. It is assumed that replacement is instantaneous (Wang et al., 2005). For efficiency, the management wants to get the system characteristics such as MTBF and availability.\n6. Discussion: From the results, we observe that these recorded data of the parameters are approximate values. It is not appropriate to analyze the characters of the system with a single crisp mean value. In Section 5.2, the estimations of the failure rate for the operating unit, the standby unit, the repair rate of the failed unit, and the reboot rate are\n7. Conclusions: In this paper, we extend the concepts of a-cuts and fuzzy algorithm to a repairable system with two primary units in parallel as an active and standby redundancy with imperfect coverage. The proposed method constructs membership functions for MTBF and availability using paired NLP models. Following the proposed approach, a-cuts of the membership functions are found and their corresponding interval limits inverted to attain explicit closed-form expressions for the system characteristics. We illustrate the validity of the proposed approach by an example, which is presented in Wang et al. (2005). The proposed procedure is for a one-unit repairable system with active and standby redundancy. Future work will focus on the generalizability aspect of the method for M primary units and S standbys. It is worth mentioning that in this paper, we assume that time to failure and time to repair followed the exponential distribution. However, when the distribution of time to failure or repair is not exponential, it can still be implemented if the system characteristics are obtained explicitly in terms of parameters. Moreover, the coverage factor for an operating unit failure may not be the same as a standby unit failure and time to repair can also be dependent on the number of units waiting in the queuing system. In this paper, we use the trapezoidal membership function; however, others such as triangular can be tested to find the best fuzzy membership function to show system characteristics in real-world application.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a procedure to construct the membership functions for a one-unit repairable system, which has both active and standby redundancy. The coverage factor is the same for the operating and standby unit failure.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The a-cut approach is used to extract a family of conventional crisp intervals from the fuzzy repairable system for the desired system characteristics. This can be determined with a set of non-linear parametric programing using the membership functions.\nFindings: When system characteristics are governed by the membership functions, more information is provided to use by management. On the other hand, fuzzy theory is applied for the redundant system; therefore, the results are more useful for designers and practitioners.\nOriginality/value: Different from other studies, the authors' model provides more accurate estimation compared to uncertain environments based on fuzzy theory. The research would help managers and manufactures to make a better decision in order to have the optimal maintenance strategy based on the desired mean time to failure and availability of the systems.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Evaluating critical success factors for implementing smart devices in the construction industry: An empirical study in the Dominican Republic	[ "Information systems", "Construction industry", "Technology", "Internet of Things", "Construction", "Strategic management", "Interview", "Smart devices", "AEC sector" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Smart devices are considered objects capable of communication and computation which range from simple sensor nodes to home appliances and smartphones; they are usually the objects present in the network of the internet of Things (IoT) (Stojkoska and Trivodaliev, 2017). They are the core devices in the integration of the paradigm of the IoT in current industries, playing a fundamental role in the implementation of digital solutions in the construction industry.\n2. Smart device in the construction industry: The concept of smart device defines how we consider the IoT in this study. Many authors use different terms to address smart devices such as \"mobile devices\", \"smart mobile devices\" and \"smart metering devices\". The key features that authors in the literature allocate to smart devices were grouped in the following terms: autonomy, connectivity, context-awareness and user-interaction. This paper considers smart devices as the objects present in the pervasive network of the IoT, following the theory of Stojkoska and Trivodaliev (2017). Therefore, the ability to interact with users is not necessarily required from smart devices, since as per Miller (2015) IoT connects devices with devices, meaning that some devices within this network might never interact with users. Nevertheless, network connectivity is upmost required.\n3. Research problem: Going back two decades, the construction industry compared badly against other industries in terms of capital cost, product quality and client satisfaction (Egan, 1998; Latham, 1994). More recently, Farmer (2016) categorised the symptoms of failure and poor performance in the UK construction industry as low productivity, low predictability, structural fragmentation, leadership fragmentation, low economic margins, dysfunctional training, workforce size, lack of collaboration, lack of research and development, and poor industry image. Box (2014) reported that the construction industry has the highest mobility rate, highest collaboration rate between parties and highest decentralisation of information. Consequently, the AEC sector presents a prospective scenario for the implementation of smart devices and the paradigm of the IoT, which would attempt to enhance communication between stakeholders and boost efficiency and mobility in the AEC sector.\n4. Research methodology: This section describes the methodology implemented for collecting data in the Dominican Republic construction industry regarding the critical factors for a successful implementation of smart devices. Since there is no background theory in this field, a qualitative research approach was selected following the theory of Creswell and Poth (2017). This paper inherits and applies this theory of Streubert and Carpenter (2011) and Lincoln and Guba (1985), which states that transferability or possible generalisation of qualitative studies relies on potential users of the findings and instead of the researchers.\n5. CSFs for a successful implementation of smart devices in construction projects: This section discusses the six CSFs to embed and implement smart devices in organisations within the construction sector. These CSFs emerged from the content of the interviews. The generation of CSFs was based on a qualitative content analysis approach which produced common themes among respondents. This study addresses the most common themes considered to be relevant for the AEC sector. Interviewees were asked for the critical factors for successfully implementing smart devices in construction projects. Analysis of the qualitative data revealed the perception from the industry which was divided into the following categories: leadership, technology awareness, company size, usability of proposed solution, cost of implementation and interoperability. Table III shows the interviewees responses obtained via semi-structured interviews, and presents the response rate of the CSFs based on the comments of ten interviewees. This table provides an idea of the relevance of each CSF. Following these results, the CSFs are explained by order of relevance, with leadership being the most mentioned CSF (four interviewees), and interoperability, cost and usability the least relevant (one interviewee each).\n6. Conclusions and recommendations: The construction industry is one of the main components of the worldwide economy. Thus the embedding of new technologies such as the IoT promises a more efficient sector with more centralised information exchange between stakeholders. The literature showed various benefits in the implementation of smart devices and the paradigm of the IoT in construction projects such as a more efficient management of the workforce and reduced risks and liability on the job site (Liu et al., 2017).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The decentralisation of information and high rate of mobile content access in the construction industry provides an ideal scenario for improvement of processes via the implementation of the paradigm of the Internet of Things (IoT). Smart devices are considered as the objects interconnected in the IoT; therefore, they play a fundamental role in the implementation of digital solutions during the execution of construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to assess the critical factors for a successful implementation of smart devices in the construction industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An empirical study was performed in the Dominican Republic. This country, located at the heart of the Caribbean, presents an economy that strongly relies on the construction industry. Following a systematic approach, a qualitative data collection and analysis was performed based on semi-structured interviews and content analysis to professionals of construction companies in the Dominican Republic, enquiring the concept of smart devices and critical success factors for implementing the devices in the industry.\nFindings: The key success factors obtained from the contestants were leadership, technology awareness, company size, usability of proposed solution, cost of implementation and interoperability.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides information to clients of the construction sector regarding the benefits of embedding smart devices into their business activities. Furthermore, this study provides a better understanding of the key factors to be considered by construction organisations when embedding smart devices into their projects. This study also provides recommendations for distinct stakeholders of the construction sector, such as policy makers, clients and technology consultants. Policy makers should especially consider factors such as technology awareness and leadership to develop the right policies for the integration of the IoT in construction projects. Technology consultants should be aware of the latest case studies of successful implementation of smart devices and IoT systems in the world in order to adapt and implement smart devices and IoT in their projects.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Is (the study of) mobile phones old wine in a new bottle? A polemic on communication-based acculturation research	[ "Social inclusion", "Digital divide", "Mobile communications", "Interpretivist research", "Critical theory" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: [...] we must not resolve discourse into a play of pre-existing significations; we must not imagine that the world turns towards us a legible face which we would have only to decipher; the world is not the accomplice of our knowledge; there is no prediscursive providence which disposes the world in our favor. We must conceive discourse as a violence which we do to things [...] (Foucault, 1981).\nIntroduction: There has been a visible surge in studies related to international migrants' communication practices in the last two decades. More specifically, labor migrants' usage of mobile phones has received increased focus in studies on transnationalism and migrant identities (Dekker and Engbersen, 2013; Fortunati et al., 2008; Nedelcu, 2012). Starting from the first wave of mobile phone diffusion, which was restricted to voice call and text messages (Vertovec, 2004), to the current wave of data usage, applets and applications, research has focussed on a wide range of affordances used by labor migrants for information and entertainment. While rising cross-border movements of migrant workers in a globalized world is one of the prime reasons for this increased research attention[1], how can this phenomenon be understood from the point of view of critical discourse? Indeed, there have been a range of critical engagements on migrants' use of mobile phones, linking the phenomenon with social support (Chib et al., 2013), resistance to employer control (Thomas and Lim, 2011), negotiation of identities and familial roles in a migration context (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, 1997) and so on. From the point of view of universal human rights too, an improvement from the indenture system of colonial period (Desai and Vahed, 2010; Lal, 1985) to the present day state-assisted migrant movements has been lauded as positive and emancipatory (Albin, 2014; Carmel, 2013; Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014). However, can this surge in studies and an awareness based on universal justice, as compared to the relative exclusion of labor migrants in early acculturation research[2], be understood as an advancement toward a more inclusive approach? Is it any indication that the labor migrants, with temporary work statuses and low-economic standing in the host country, have finally made their presence visible and henceforth become worthy of research attention?\nAcculturation: beyond typology: The primary objective of acculturation studies[4] has been to evaluate the two dimensions of cultural orientation of migrants: first, to what extent migrants would like to retain their cultural heritage; and second, to what extent they want to relate to other cultures. Depending on the positive and negative answers to these questions, migrants' acculturation orientations or attitudes have been described as assimilation, integration, separation and marginalization. Indeed, migrants' communication relations take a center stage in both these dimensions of cultural retention and/or cross-cultural interactions (Christiansen, 2004; Croucher et al., 2009; Cui et al., 2004). Scholars have developed a range of models, based on the two dimensions of cultural relations, as mentioned above, to evaluate the bi-cultural engagement of migrants. For instance, acculturation, assimilation, fusion and alternation models have variously explained cultural retention as well as multicultural engagement leading to migrants' bi-cultural competence and psychological well-being[5] (LaFromboise et al., 1993).\nExclusion in discourse and practice: Exclusion from and through discourse is a very subtle idea, which often works in reverse and counterintuitive ways. Consider the social reform movements of nineteenth century, which focussed on the eradication of evils like sati[6], child marriage and denial of education to girl child in colonial India. Most of these problems were confined to upper-caste women, and the reforms were thus criticized for being a new strategy of patriarchy: \"Embedded in the explicit programs of the reform movement were massive ideological reconstructions of patriarchy and gender that underwrote the consolidation of imperial power\" (Tharu and Lalita, 1991, p. 152). An apparently emancipatory discourse of reforms not only excluded the already oppressed women with low-socio-economic status, but also the very 'beneficiaries\" (the upper caste women) the reforms claimed to have emancipated.\nMethods: As mentioned, this paper is a self-critical reflection on a research project that investigated low-skilled male migrant workers' usage of mobile phone to acculturate to Singapore. The project followed a mixed methods approach, constituted by both quantitative questionnaire survey (n=440) and qualitative interviews (102), conducted between March 2011 and September 2014. During this period, the author interacted with the community of male migrant workers from South Asia (restricted to India and Bangladesh), belonging to four ethnic communities - Bangla, Malayali, Tamil and Telugu. While Bangla is from north east India as well as from Bangladesh, the remaining three ethnicities are from the southern states of India. The theoretical framework of the project (the acculturation models) that undergirded the quantitative survey has been critically examined in the previous sections. This paper reexamines the qualitative data, going beyond the frameworks of mobile phone appropriation and acculturation followed by the original project. Of the total 102 interviews, 48 were with Malayali, 26 with Bangla, 17 with Tamil and 11 with Telugu. The respondents had been in Singapore for varying amount of time: from one month to 19 years.\nMigrant workers: an ethnography: Singapore is an island nation in Southeast Asia with a total area of around 700 sq. km. Among the 5.5mn total population, 1.6mn are non-residents, of which around 60 percent are low-skilled workers (Sing Stat, 2015), which provides an ideal situation to study the acculturation issues, both in discourse and practice.\nTemporary status and/as marginality: While temporary status and low-economic standing excluded labor migrants from discourses on acculturation, they had to constantly negotiate these discourses in their daily life. As mentioned, most of the respondents were in Singapore on renewable work visas, which did not entitle them to seek permanent residency in the country. However, the discourse on temporariness was often overlapped with discourses like lack of productivity and racial inferiority:\nSingularity of voices vs Epistemic determinations: Singularity of migrant voices and communication practices relates to attempts that go beyond the centeredness imposed by typologies, defying the originary conceptualizations of identity. This is quite different from the singularity of a genius that Foucault (1991) identified as being wrongly juxtaposed with \"average forms of knowledge\" (p. 62). Singular voices are more akin to \"events,[13]\" rather than the \"lived experience\" category used by phenomenology. The following quotes juxtapose two patterns of migrants' perception of civic activities and political participation. An open-ended question from the author - \"In what all ways do you use mobile phone to engage in public affairs,\" - evoked the two answers with potentially diverse consequences:\nCritique and conclusion: This paper analyzed the discourses that are discriminatory toward labor migrants in their use of mobile technology. It identified the discourses, always with a political import, that supplied the object of research to mobile communication studies in the last one decade or so. The objective of this paper was not to explore whether mobile phone facilitated cultural adaptation of migrants or whether it led to tensions between the host society and migrant groups. Comparing the indicators that are traditionally used in acculturation research among well-entrenched populations and those used in studies on mobile phones and labor migrants, this paper argued that there existed a visible divide in the framing of the prospects and potentialities of mobile phone in the acculturation phenomenon.\nLimitations: The data analyzed in the paper were originally collected for a research project that approached the phenomena of acculturation and mobile phone appropriation from a positivist perspective, whereas this paper analyzed the data to critically examine the discourses that supported the premise of the project itself. More than the practical applicability of the findings presented here, the paper promoted a self-critical stance that identified the power of discourses in constituting the very problems for this research or any research, for that matter. The findings presented in this paper, thus, have limited scope for generalization due to their non-verifiability using empirical means.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the discourses on migrant acculturation and migrants' mobile phone communication, in order to examine the inclusiveness of communication-acculturation research in the recent years.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws on from 102 qualitative interviews (48 Malayali, 26 Bangla, 17 Tamil and 11 Telugu) for a larger research project that investigated the role of mobile phones in migrant acculturation in Singapore. Respondents were selected using a combination of purposive and snowball sampling methods. The respondents had been in Singapore for varying amount of time: from one month to 19 years.\nFindings: The analysis of the discourses on migrant acculturation and mobile phone communication revealed that labor migrants were excluded on the basis of their temporary status and apprehensions on work productivity. The mobile usage prohibitions that existed in work sites were hinged on similar discourses that stereotyped the labor migrants. The emancipatory metaphor that has been at the center of research on migrants' mobile phone usage and acculturation needs to be replaced with a critical discourse perspective.\nResearch limitations/implications: The data were originally collected for a research project that approached the phenomena of acculturation and mobile phone appropriation from a positivist perspective, whereas this paper analyzed the data to critically examine the discourses that supported the premise of the project itself. Due to this, the findings presented in this paper have limited scope for generalization.\nOriginality/value: The paper critiques the research trends in migrant acculturation and mobile phone communication and suggests a possible alternative that goes beyond the \"transcendental teleology\" that underpins discourse and practice.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Brexit: human resourcing implications	[ "Migration", "Labour market", "Brexit", "Employee resourcing", "Human resource practice" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The recruitment and selection of workers, the practice of managing people and the working lives of employees will all be affected fundamentally by Brexit. This paper offers informed discussion of potential implications for human resource (HR) practices that flow from Brexit. It does so by focussing on the economic impact of Brexit, its effects on workers' rights and xenophobia which Brexit has stimulated (Ford, 2016; Hatzigeorgiou and Lodefalk, 2016; Stewart, 2017). The paper identifies four HR issues that are likely to be significantly affected by Brexit, namely employee retention, labour market skillset, increased non-European Union (EU) immigration and increased flexible working. The discussion of these four issues culminates in four propositions that are likely to inform HR practice once the UK has formally left the EU; each of these propositions is likely to shape future work and employment research agendas. While the focus of this paper is on Brexit, wider implications can be drawn regarding the ways that organisations respond to crises and uncertainty.\nEmployee resourcing: Employee resourcing, as an HR practice, focuses on the strategic imperative to ensure that an organisation can access the people necessary to achieve its objectives (Armstrong, 2017). In the absence of detailed policy one notable outcome of Brexit is uncertainty about how the movement of talent within the EU will change. Uncertainty, such as this, presents four challenges for employee resourcing; each is outlined and then summarised in a proposition on employee resourcing.\nDiscussion: Brexit is certainly unprecedented, and the recency and prolific nature of the event positions it as a \"hot topic\" for discussion. To develop the propositions in this paper, it has been necessary to draw on past insight and apply this to the current phenomena, in order to predict future implications (Webster and Watson, 2002). For example, drawing on comparisons from the 2008-2009 recession enables informed discussion of the economic impact of Brexit and potential implications for HR practice. A conceptual approach is useful to address the topic as there is, as yet, no empirical data available (Sutton and Staw, 1995).\nConclusion: This paper has drawn past insight to present an informed discussion about the potential implications of Brexit to HR practice. Four propositions have been offered as a starting point to navigate the uncertainty about how the movement of talent within the UK will change. The 2008-2009 recession, as a significant economic event, was a useful comparison to the present climate; as can be expected established debates have resurfaced, for example the war for talent. To help make sense of what Brexit means in practice, specifically in the case of employee resourcing, Brexit may actually mean \"nothing new\". The \"war for talent\" and changing workplace demographics are not challenges born of Brexit exclusively, rather the shifting political landscape has changed the perspective about how these challenges can be approached. Contextually, however, Brexit is an extraordinary event and thus worthy of discussion. The uncertainty caused by Brexit will continue to spark debate in relation to the implications for people resourcing until negotiations have been completed and fully disseminated. Uncertainty can cause employment relationships to become strained (Jessop, 2011; Wood and Budhwar, 2016), signifying the importance of organisations maintaining positive relations with employees during such ambiguous times.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Three years on from the Brexit vote, while it remains a central topic for debate in the media, there has been limited discussion about the human resource (HR) implications. The purpose of this paper is to provide theoretical evaluation and informed discussion, distilled into four interconnected propositions, on how employee resourcing as a HR practice may be impacted following actual Brexit decisions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Drawing on the employee resourcing literature, the paper adopts a discursive approach which examines how the UK's decision to exit the European Union will affect HR practice. The paper draws comparison with the global recession since 2008, a similarly unprecedented development in its discussion of employee resourcing practices and draws parallels which may help to inform the future of HR practices in the UK, because of Brexit.\nFindings: This paper offers a set of propositions; the flow of talent into the UK may become more restricted and reinvigorate the \"war for talent\" that followed the effects of the global financial crisis on the UK. To attract and retain workers in relatively lower-skilled roles, employers may be faced with a need to re-skill such roles and adopt more flexible working arrangements. Finally, to meet skilled employment requirements, removal of restrictions to recruit from within the European Economic Area may trigger increased global migration of skilled workers.\nOriginality/value: This paper contributes to the discussions regarding the implications of Brexit for HR practice by offering propositions to shape future research agendas.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The market's reaction to unexpected, catastrophic events: The case of oil and gas stock returns and the Gulf oil spill	[ "Event study", "Efficient markets", "Oil and gas industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: On April 20, 2010, the US Coast Guard received a report of an explosion and fire aboard Transocean's Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig[1]. At the time of the explosion, the Deepwater Horizon was being leased to British Petroleum (BP) and was drilling an exploratory well in what is referred to as the Macondo Prospect in the Mississippi Canyon of the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven workers were killed and another 17 were injured in the explosion (Welch and Chris, 2010). Two days later, on April 22, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon collapsed into the Gulf of Mexico. The focus of the media quickly changed from the injured and missing crew to the potential for a major oil spill. Despite BP's efforts, the oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of up to 60,000 barrels per day until the well was successfully capped on July 15, 2010[2]. The resulting spill exceeded the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill as the worst in US history. On July 3, 2015, BP PLC agreed to pay $18.7 billion to settle all federal and state claims resulting from the spill, bringing the total cost to nearly $54 billion (Gilbert and Sarah, 2015). While this disaster had far-reaching effects on the market value of BP, the more interesting question is what valuation effects existed for other oil and gas firms. These effects could have arisen due to the increase in perceived risk for all offshore drilling and the likelihood of an increase in the regulation of the industry.\n2. Timeline of events surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: 2.1 Events surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill\n3. Event dates, data and empirical methodology: 3.1 Selection of event dates\n4. Results: In this section, we first present results for testing H1, H2 and H3 on the individual firms and industry portfolios. Second, we conduct cross-sectional tests to determine what firm characteristics explain how the market differentiated across the sample.\n5. Conclusion: The events surrounding the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig and subsequent oil spill had serious environmental and financial consequences. A unique aspect of this study is that information was revealed piece by piece over a long period of time. The explosion and oil spill represent a series of events in which the market received new information over a period of almost three months. By identifying specific important information events surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and utilizing multivariate regression model methodology, we are able to evaluate the market's reaction to new information as it is released over time.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the stock market reaction to the Gulf oil spill and determine if the markets exhibited rational pricing. On April 20, 2010, the US Coast Guard received a report of an explosion and fire aboard Transocean's Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig. The resulting spill exceeded the Exxon Valdez oil spill as the worst in US history. With the total cost of the disaster reaching almost $54 billion for British Petroleum, clearly the spill had far-reaching effects on its market value. However, the more interesting question is what valuation effects might exist for other oil and gas firms, due to an increase in perceived risk for all offshore drilling and/or the likelihood of an increase in the regulation of the industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Because the new information was released piecemeal over time and has the potential to affect a number of firms simultaneously, Gibbon's (1980) multivariate regression model methodology (MVRM) was used to examine share price reactions of firms in the oil and gas industry in the aftermath of the oil spill. This methodology allows one to test whether significant abnormal returns occur on days where new information is released. Further, one is able to test whether the market reaction was the same for each firm or whether the market differentiated between firms.\nFindings: Evidence of abnormal returns was found for the majority of the information dates in our investigation. Further, the results reject the notion that the market reaction was the same for all oil and gas firms, leading to the conclusion that the market did differentiate between firms.\nOriginality/value: This research is important because the results support rational pricing of the US stock markets following this unexpected and catastrophic event. The market was examined over the period following the oil spill on multiple dates when important new information is provided. This study contributes to financial and economic research on market efficiency and reactions to major risk events.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The impact of communication technology vs human-related factors on classroom performance: a cross-cultural study	[ "Social media", "Non-verbal communication", "Expertise", "Clarity", "Perceived value", "Cognitive learning", "Culture" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Advanced information and communication technology (ICT) in general and social media in particular have received a considerable interest in the education field (Tess, 2013). Recent literature suggests that ICT use in classroom enhances teacher's expertise and student's learning (Urbani, 2016). Previous evidence also shows that technology can have a positive impact on course value (Koeber, 2005). In particular, social media has been confirmed as a driver of student motivation (Kabilan et al., 2010) and engagement (Brady et al., 2010) in some studies. However, while some researchers argued benefits of social media usage in classrooms (e.g. Deng and Yuen, 2011), much uncertainty still exists about its impact in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) (Tess, 2013), which is why academics would benefit from more attention to this specific issue.Alongside this growing area of research on technology effects, there has been renewed interest in more traditional, human-related factors in the education context (Bower et al., 2013; Cavanagh et al., 2014; Weinberg et al., 2015). Accordingly, several lines of evidence (e.g. Gao et al., 2016; Sung et al., 2016) suggest that synergies are necessary between different components of technology applications and teachers' abilities to overcome difficulties that HEIs are currently experiencing. Caspersz and Stasinska (2015) argue that \"effective listening\" implies understanding of not only what is being said verbally but also comprehending non-verbal elements, which are found to comprise up to 90% of the communication process (Gabbott and Hogg, 2000). Thereby, in this new technological area, a number of questions arise regarding the role of teachers and their skills and how can technology serve as a teacher support in knowledge dissemination.The aim of this paper is to test the impact of both technology and human-related factors on different outcomes in university classrooms. More specifically, the effects of social media usage and teachers' expertise and communications skills are examined on performance of teachers (i.e. clarity), students (i.e. cognitive learning) and course itself (perceived value). In particular, understanding the impact of teachers' non-verbal communication (NVC) is critical as interaction between text, speech and gesture can help student understand the content of the class and enhance student performance (Weinberg et al., 2015). Thereby, the need for new contributions that will help to understand the importance and impact of NVC in classrooms is growing. One of the objectives of this work is to address this issue.Further, this study considers the role that national culture exerts on the impact of both technology and human-related factors. As national culture is found to influence students' perceptions and evaluations of technology and human factors (Tarhini et al., 2015), the proposed research model is tested in Universities located in two different countries, one located in Southwestern Europe and another placed in Southeastern Europe.\n2. Literature review and research hypotheses: 2.1 The impact of technology factors in academic settings\n3. Empirical study: method: 3.1 Data collection and sample\n4. Empirical study: results: 4.1 Outer model results\n5. Discussion and conclusion: According to the results of this study, social media is found to influence positively perceived value of the course, although the significance level is not very high (at the 95% level). This means that teacher's usage of social media in classroom will enhance students' interest in the course and their intention to recommend it to other students. Nevertheless, one unanticipated finding of this study is insignificant impact of social media on teacher clarity and student learning. The lack of support of H1 and H3 demonstrates that social media usage even might jeopardize teacher clarity, as a negative (although insignificant) path was obtained in the social media-clarity relationship. In addition, results reveal that social media doesn't seem to exert any significant impact on student learning. On one hand, this result is inconsistent with the findings of Moran et al. (2011), who found positive opinions of faculty members regarding the impact of social media on student learning. On the other hand, the finding is in agreement with the study of Everson et al. (2013), which showed that, according to students' beliefs, social media was not a valuable mean for learning. Therefore, the implication for teachers is that they should use the social media in classroom with caution and pay more attention to their abilities and communication skills in conveying the class topic.In particular, findings of this study show that NVC plays a key role in classroom, as the effects of NVC on clarity, value and learning are the strongest effects of the model. Implication for teachers is that they should take particular care to the most critical elements of NVC while delivering their lectures. According to the results of this study, these are chronemics and vocalics, and more specifically effective time management and variety of vocal expressions, as these items received the highest outer weights, which means that they affected to higher extent the NVC factor. Thereby, teachers should be able to establish the most important aspects of the topic and devote most time to those aspects, rather than trying to cover more irrelevant parts of the syllabus. In addition, they should frequently change in intonation, rhythm and volume of their voice, thus enhancing their clarity. The kinesics dimension should not be neglected, as warm facial expression and smooth gestures are also found to contribute to formation of NVC, while the effect of physical appearance appears to be rather smaller, although still highly significant. Finally, compared to other cues, proxemics seems to play a less significant role in teacher NVC.Furthermore, as hypothesized, teacher expertise influences significantly their clarity and student learning (at the 99% significance level), while its impact on course value is rather weaker (at the 95% significance level). This is consistent with some other studies which also showed a significant role of teacher experience and knowledge in delivering the lecture (e.g. Bromme and Steinbring, 1994) and enhancing student learning (Palmer et al., 2005). However, in the present study, teacher experience was not confirmed as the most important factor in perception of course value, as demonstrated by Hill et al. (2003).All the above discussed findings provide support for dominance of human factors over technological ones in HEIs, despite the cultural backgrounds of students who participated in the study. While the impact of social media is not found to be moderated by national culture, as there were no significant differences between students from the two universities, some cultural differences were observed for the effects of teacher NVC and expertise. In particular, stronger impact of NVC on clarity among students from Southwestern Europe might be explained by dominant communication values of their country of origin. These students come from a country that is placed close to the high-context (Hall, 1976) side of the continuum (Morden, 1999). Thereby, Southwest European students might have valued higher NVC elements in teacher's overall expression than did their Southeast European counterparts, who might have focused more on verbal aspects of teacher's communication in understanding the class topic. However, teacher expertise seems to have a dominant role among Southeast European students. As suggested by Morden (1999), the cultural background of these students might be placed closer to the low-context continuum, compared to the those from Southwestern Europe, which is why they might have paid more attention to formal sources of information, such as the one coming from an expert teacher.To conclude, several lines of research are proposed, as a result of limitations of this study. With respect to technological and human drivers in classroom, some other aspects of social media could be examined, such as perception of social media usefulness and effectiveness, which were neglected in this research. Some additional indicators for measurement of NVC dimensions could be considered, as well as teacher verbal cues. Finally, despite the insignificant role of social media found in this study, future contributions might reexamine its impact on other variables that were not analyzed in this study, such as student attention, motivation or engagement.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper examines the impact of communication technology and human-related factors on teacher, student and course performance, in particular on teacher's clarity, perceived value of the course and student learning.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Communication technology factors are analyzed in terms of social media use, while human-related factors are considered through teacher expertise and communication skills, more specifically non-verbal communication (NVC). The research model is tested on a sample of 303 students from two European universities, one in Southwestern and another in Southeastern Europe.\nFindings: Findings reveal dominance of human factors over technology ones. Culture moderates some of the relationships examined.\nResearch limitations/implications: Notwithstanding the relatively limited sample of students according to their national culture, this work offers valuable insights into the impact of technology use in classroom and teacher communication skills.\nPractical implications: Teacher NVC and expertise override their use of technology-mediated communication in classroom. Findings have raised important questions whether social media applications should actually have place in nowadays education systems. What seems clear from this research is that technology advancements cannot replace teachers, although further research is necessary to re-examine their impact on different student outcomes and in different cultural contexts.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this paper lies in comparing the impact of technology vs human-related factors on classroom performance. An additional contribution is provided by considering the moderating role of national culture within the proposed research model.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Positive emotions boost employee engagement: Making work fun brings individual and organizational success	[ "Employee engagement", "Emotions", "Organizational culture", "Employee well-being", "Performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Organizations want empowerment, engagement and energy from their employees. These come from harnessing emotions. Therefore it is useful to understand more about emotions, particularly the benefits of positive emotions and how we can connect with them for greater personal and professional success.\nThe benefits of positive emotions: Understanding and encouraging positive emotions is now recognized as important in business. These emotions have been shown to drive positive business results and individual well-being. Among the benefits associated with positive emotions are:\nHow much positive emotion is enough?: Three is the magic number as far as positive emotions are concerned; three positives for each negative. Below this level there is not much effect, but after this level there is a profound change of state in our well-being. This \"state change\" has been likened to the state change that happens to water at freezing or boiling point. Above or below those points not much is observable but at freezing and boiling points a massive change happens to water.\nMaking work fun: The term \"organized fun\" may be a bit of an oxymoron and taken cynically. But below are two great examples of making work fun and boosting business at the same time. Remember that employee engagement is a result of a number of things - and almost always involves positive emotions of some sort.\nConclusions: The environment needed for employees to flourish is similar to the environment needed for engaged employees. To have great days at work we need significant amounts of positive emotions - at least three to one. While there is much that the organization can do to encourage this environment there are also actions that an individual can take.\nAbout the author: Suzanne Hazelton is a leadership coach and positive psychologist. She is the author of Great Days at Work: How Positive Psychology Can Transform your Working Life. Read a sample chapter here at: www.thebusinessofchange.co.uk/resources/great-days-at-work plus a bonus free presentation on From Stressing to Thriving at: www.slideshare.net/LearningQueen/from-stressing-to-thriving-presentation\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Highlights the power of positive emotions in helping to build individual and organizational success.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Explores the meaning of positive emotions, how they can be promoted at individual and organizational level and the benefits they can bring to the individual and organization.\nFindings: Advances the view that positive emotions can benefit physical health, mental well-being and the ability to flourish, creativity, resilience, the mood of others, positive memories and relationships.\nPractical implications: Argues that the positive emotions of the workforce can improve the organizational culture and improve organizational performance.\nSocial implications: Demonstrates that around three positive emotions are needed to balance out each negative emotion and shows that positive emotions can be stimulated through having new experiences and through acts of kindness and gratitude.\nOriginality/value: Extends psychological thinking on positive emotions to the workforce and workplace.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The state of institutional repositories and scholarly communication in Nigeria	[ "Librarians", "Nigeria", "Journals", "Open access", "Institutional repository", "Scholarly communication" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Scholarly communication system has evolved, and the dynamic nature of its domain is continually evolving along with changes in technical infrastructure, social practices and the economics of publishing. Czerniewicz (2013) and Chang and Aeernoudts (2015) corroborated the changing landscape of scholarly communications. Prominent among the components of the changing scholarly communication system is open access (OA) publishing which describes resources and materials or scholarly literature that are freely available to everyone and the institutional repository (IR) which describes the digital collections of the intellectual output of an institution. Information on the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) indicates that institutions of higher learning and research in developed nations and some developing countries have embraced these changes by adopting OA publishing models and creating IRs to facilitate research dissemination. The first IR in Nigeria was set up by the University of Jos in 2009; since then, the number of IRs has been on a gradual rise and hence the need to look at the current status of IR and scholarly communication in Nigeria.\nBrief about Nigeria: Nigeria is situated in the West African region and lies between longitudes 3 and 14 degrees and latitudes 4 and 140 degrees. It has a land mass of 923,768 sq km and is bordered to the north by the Republics of Niger and Tchad. It also shares borders to the west with the Republic of Benin, while the Republic of Cameroun shares the eastern borders right down to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean which forms the southern limits of Nigerian territory.\nOverview of open access institutional repository: The OA which is an off-shoot of a wider global movement called access to knowledge is a vital component of scholarly communication. OA focuses on the need to provide free, immediate, online and unrestricted access to peer-reviewed literature. This can be achieved via the Green or Gold paths. Koler-Povh et al. (2011) put it succinctly that there are two basic principles established in the world that provide to the public free OA to scientific publications, frequently called gold path and green path of OA. With the gold path of OA, the public is given free access to publications at a publisher's website. With the green path of OA, the public has OA to available publications kept in repositories or storages and findable with customary Web search engines. Yang and Li (2015) expressed the Budapest position on how to achieve OA goals better by stating that there are two primary means for achieving OA goals, namely, Gold OA or \"author pays\", achieved by publishing in a peer-reviewed, scholarly OA journal in which articles are freely available online, and \"Green\" OA or \"self-archiving\", achieved by publishing in any peer-reviewed journal and then depositing a peer-reviewed version or preprint of the article in an OA repository.\nInstitutional repository: IR has been described differently by different authors. For instance, Jain et al. (2015) recognize IR as a digital research archive consisting of accessible collections of scholarly work that represent the intellectual capital of an institution. IR is generally a system for institutions to manage the digital scholarship their communities produce and maximize access to research outputs both before and after publication to increase the visibility and academic prestige of both the institution and authors. The development of IRs has provided academic and research institutions with a very high level of visibility on the library digital resources electronically. As such, teaching, learning and research are widely enhanced in the society at large today (Ogbomo and Muokebe, 2015). This change has motivated students and faculty members to store their intellectual output in the form of personal collections and to make available the results of their work within and outside the institution through the IR. The aim of IR is to increase visibility, preservation and storage of all types of institutional output, including unpublished literature, support for learning and teaching, standardization of institutional records, ability to keep track of and analyze research performance, breaking down of publishers' cost and permission barriers, help universities to share their knowledge and expertise (Christian, 2008).\nBenefits of an institutional repository: The benefits of IRs have been hyped by many authors. IRs are increasingly deployed in academic institutions to manage a variety of digital content including educational, research and archival materials. Bauer (2005) points out that IRs can gather and provide access to a wide range of gray resources, i.e. material not in a journal article format, such as theses, data sets, presentations, archive documents and images. The Primary Research Group also pointed out that IR allows information to be shared with external and internal users of an organization and helps institutions to gain recognition for their research outputs. Stewardship, efficiencies, showcasing an institution and wider distribution are compelling reasons for establishing an IR (Gibbons, 2004).\nState of institutional repositories in Nigeria: Since 2009, the number of IRs in Nigeria has begun a gradual but slow climb. The websites that track and register all OA repositories, the ROAR and the DOAR provide information on the status of repositories in Nigeria. Nigeria with an estimated population of 182 million has 129 universities, 95 polytechnics, 63 colleges of education and over 100 research and allied institutions (Oguche, 2016) hosts the highest number of institutions compared to any country in Africa. Currently, there are 30 active IRs in South Africa, 15 in Kenya and 20 in Nigeria. Ghana has 3 [Directory of Open Access Repositries Official Website (DOAR), 2017]. Table II shows the current state of IRs in Nigeria.\nChallenges of implementing institutional repositories in Nigeria: The full benefits of IR can be achieved only if stakeholders involved are fully aware of ts potential roles. Ezema (2010) noted that most countries in Africa are yet to use the privilege offered by IRs to internationalize their research sources, despite many opportunities that present themselves. This was why Christian (2008) remarked that there is empirical evidence that the knowledge of OA IR is very low among the major stakeholders including lecturers, researchers, librarians and students in Nigeria. Effective advocacy and promotion is crucial for successful implementation of IR. Corrorarily, Yang and Li (2014) posit that for an IR to be successful and serve its full potential, it is imperative that its constituents be aware of its existence, understand its value and be willing to contribute their scholarship.\nScholarly communication: an overview: There is no single definition of the term scholarly communication. It is sometimes narrowly defined to include only the peer-reviewed literature published upon completion of research, but a broader definition includes all communication among peers (Irwin, 2004). For the purpose of this article, the definition of scholarly communication as provided by the Association of College and Research libraries will be adopted. It defines Scholarly Communication thus:\nScholarly communication in Nigeria: The establishment of colleges and institutes during colonial period in Nigeria constitutes a milestone in the history of scholarly communication in Nigeria. This period birthed the two most revered journals The West African Medical Journal (1920s) and journal of the Nigerian Field Society, Nigerian Field (1931). In Nigeria, scholarly outputs are considerably low. Part of the problem is that scholars are not properly and timely exposed to the publications of their counterparts. This is because their institution libraries are neither able to subscribe to most scholarly journals that they may require from outside the country nor able to keep track of the local publications (Chigbu, 2008).\nConclusion: The benefits of IR cannot be overemphasized. Its potentials are enormous for scholars in Nigeria to exploit. It has the potential of bridging the digital divide, enabling development and innovation; making research outputs in Nigeria get global visibility. By putting research results in IR, discussion is made possible and further innovation enabled. Though libraries in Nigeria especially academic and research libraries are aware of the potential of this innovation, there are still much to be done to actualize these potentials. Unfortunately, academic and research institutions in Nigeria are still struggling to overcome the many challenging issues identifies earlier in this study. In conclusion, IR is a useful vehicle for effective scholarly communication. Its potentials are hindered in Nigeria due to of lack of ICT infrastructure for implementation, insufficient technological skills, epileptic power supply, lack of fund among others. Adequate funding, training and retraining of librarians, creation of awareness among stakeholders, increased bandwidth and power are some of the measures to tackle these identified obstacles. The following could help to achieve appreciable scholarly communication in Nigeria:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the current status of Institutional Repository (IR) and scholarly communications (SC) in Nigeria. The paper also deliberates the benefits of IRs including how it can help libraries in Nigeria to reduce the cost of purchasing articles and journals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Given that the paper is an opinion of the current status of SC, a formal documented methodology is not applicable. However, it gives an overview of SC in Nigeria and traces the origin of open access awareness to 2008 when the first open access sensitization workshop was organized in Nigeria.\nFindings: The study shows that Nigeria currently has 20 IRs listed in the OpenDOAR and tops the list of journals listed in the Africa Journals Online (AJOL) with 221 journal titles followed by South Africa with 96. Of the 221 Nigerian journals listed in AJOL, only 70 are open access journals.\nResearch limitations/implications: This paper is an expression of opinion about current status of SC and particularly IRs in Nigeria. It is not based on any formal methodology. It will be useful for librarians, academic staff and academic institutions generally, especially in developing countries where IRs are still in a developmental stage. Therefore, some of the general recommendations may not be as relevant for those institutions with well-established and flourishing IRs.\nOriginality/value: The paper shows the current state of IR in Nigeria and deliberates on the impediments to successful implementation of IRs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Gender inequality in the work environment: a study of private research organizations in India	[ "Gender", "National cultures", "Developing countries", "Organizations", "Workplace", "Masculinity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Liberalization in India since the 1990s has created jobs, benefitting urban educated women the most (Rustagi, 2010). Although the female labor force participation rate has been declining in India, particularly since 2004-2005 (Das et al., 2015), the number of women workers with an undergraduate degree and beyond increased over the period 2004-2005 to 2011-2012 (Rustagi, 2013). However, a UN report (WISAT, 2012) found that while India has a high representation of women in administrative and managerial positions, it has a low representation of women in decision-making positions. For example, they made up 22 percent of senior officials, managers and legislators with almost no change over the last five years, but their participation on corporate boards was at merely 4 percent and representation in national science academies was at 5 percent in 2010. Thus, the questions that arise are why, despite an increase in women's participation in educated workforce, is there a lack of women in higher positions? Is the liberal organizational space gendered and how is gender constructed in such organizations?\nThe perspective: construction of gender inequality: Gender is an institutionalized system of social practices for constituting social relations of inequality between men and women (Risman, 1998). It is a process that is constantly being enacted in everyday situations (Linstead and Pullen, 2006). According to West and Zimmerman (1987), \"doing gender\" involves a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional and micropolitical activities casting particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine natures. Cultural beliefs play a significant role in doing gender. Shared hegemonic cultural beliefs about gender in various relational and interactional situations maintain and change the gender system (Ridgeway and Correll, 2004).\nIndian socio-cultural context: the educated urban professionals: The ideological separation of public and private spheres is common over the world. However, in the Indian social context, this norm is part of a patriarchal system that combines class, caste and national identity. The scientists here constitute educated urban middle-class professionals. Since the 1990s, liberalization and the growing Hindu nationalist forces have revitalized the ideas of the role of Hindu piety, moralism with the central role of family as being central to the middle-class definition of Indianness (Nielsen and Waldrop, 2014; Radhakrishnan, 2011). The postcolonial notion of Indian culture is gendered as it gives primacy to family and a central role to women in the family (Belliappa, 2013).\nMethods: This study draws data from a research project that aimed to study the position of women scientists and issues affecting them. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted by the author. The schedule comprised of questions on perceptions about formal rules, informal relations, gender, work-life balance and autobiographical questions. Most of the questions were framed in such a manner that they could be answered by both men and women, such as, \"Do you experience conflict between work and family responsibilities?\" or \"Is it important to interact informally in the organization?\" or \"Is there cooperation or competition in your department?\" A few pointed questions about gender issues were common to both men and women respondents. For example, \"Do you think there is gender equality in your organization?\" or \"Do you think men and women differ in capabilities?\" Women respondents were probed deeper on the questions relating to gender. For instance, they were asked if they believed that their male colleagues were aware of a dual burden on women, and what the attitude of colleagues is during the pregnancy of a woman scientist.\nNorms and practices favoring men: The findings indicate that an \"ideal worker\" concept combines with the Indian hierarchical culture and norms of male-female interaction, which affects the position of women in these organizations. Further, some organizational policies are gender-insensitive but are never questioned and certain organizational preferences in recruitment and promotions work in favor of men.\nNorms and practices devaluing women in \"public sphere\": Beliefs reflecting the dual burden assumptions of male colleagues, the manner in which men distance themselves from work-life balance policies and biased treatment of pregnant employees devalue women in the public sphere.\nWomen's leadership: summation of stereotypes: Despite several barriers, the few women that do reach leadership positions face additional gendered challenges. The leadership concept adds further masculine stereotypes to the notion of \"ideal worker,\" creating obstacles for women in their roles as leaders. Leadership is traditionally associated with the masculine traits of being aggressive and ability to take tough decisions (Alvesson and Billing, 2009). Some Indian studies, for example, Gupta et al. (1998) found that women managers were considered less assertive, less competitive and less aggressive.\nNon-discussion of women's issues and gender denial: An \"ideal worker\" is also a \"professional\" who does not discuss gender issues but focuses only on work. This view is held by men and women. For instance, according to Vibha (female, Senior Research Scientist, Private2), \"on professional level we do not discuss gender or women's problems here.\" Similarly, on being asked if talk of gender is irritating, Rajan (male, Principal Scientist, Private 1) said, \"Yes I think so. We should not discuss that much in depth, because we are here to do some kind of job which is pre-defined. I mean we are not restricted to performing job according to gender base. It's an open environment and we are all qualified people here. We have to accomplish the job in time. Discussing gender will not help you to accomplish the work.\"\nConclusions: This study attempts to answer why educated urban women in India find it difficult to rise to higher positions even in reputed organizations. It affirms the earlier research that cultural beliefs about gender are reproduced in the workplace (Ridgeway and Correll, 2004) and adds to the understanding of the various processes that lead to the reproduction of gendered organizational culture. It highlights gender inequalities in this specific socio-cultural context and demonstrates how various beliefs and practices in the organizations create barriers to the rise of women to higher positions. Norms creating gender inequalities in the workplace such as separation of spheres, ideal-worker notion and dual-burden assumptions are similar in India to assumptions in other countries. However, they are enacted in the national cultural context in which the organization is embedded. Thus, the \"ideal worker\" concept has to be viewed in a hierarchical Indian context. Self-promotion and self-enhancement in the presence of seniors acquire significant importance in a high power distance culture. Junior women are affected more than the seniors by masculine and hierarchical norms. While visibility and availability is difficult to achieve for young women with families, they also lack networking and interaction that help to create contacts with seniors. Socialized in patriarchal norms, women are less aggressively self-promoting and have less interaction and networking. As a result, women find it difficult to acquire strategic visibility vis-a-vis the bosses. Thus, the \"ideal worker\" notion assumes greater masculinity in the Indian context.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Since liberalization in the 1990s, India has witnessed a growth in the number of educated middle-class women in professions. However, there are few women in leadership positions and decision-making bodies. While the earlier notion of the ideal woman as homemaker has been replaced by one which idealizes women of substance, a woman's role in the family continues to be pivotal and is even viewed as central in defining Indian culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how and to what extent gender inequalities are reproduced in the organizations employing educated professionals.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on the perspective that gender is socially constructed, this paper analyzes gender inequality in Indian organizations through semi-structured interviews of men and women scientists in two private pharmaceutical laboratories.\nFindings: The findings show reproduction of a gendered normative order through two types of norms and practices: one, norms and practices that favor men and second, socio-cultural norms that devalue women in public spaces which help to maintain masculinity in the workplace. Although these practices might be found elsewhere in the world, the manner in which they are enacted reflects national cultural norms.\nOriginality/value: The paper highlights how various norms and practices enacted in the specific Indian socio-cultural context construct and maintain masculinity at workplace depriving opportunities to professional women which affect their rise to leadership positions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Value cocreation in service ecosystems: Investigating health care at the micro, meso, and macro levels	[ "Electronic health records", "Service ecosystems", "Value cocreation", "Health care services", "System levels" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Complex service systems with supplier networks interacting with customer networks are increasingly common (Gummesson, 2007). These interrelated value networks form service ecosystems, operating together through value cocreating interactions. Service-Dominant (S-D) logic focuses on the value cocreation process occurring in these dynamic environments that are central to the emergence and evolution of service ecosystems (Vargo and Lusch, 2016). A service ecosystem can be defined as a \"relatively self-contained, self-adjusting system of resource-integrating actors connected by shared institutional logics and mutual value creation through service exchange\" (Vargo and Akaka, 2012, p. 207).\nLiterature review: Value cocreation\nMethod: The study adopted a qualitative approach based on Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2006; Strauss and Corbin, 1998) to gain an in-depth understanding of value cocreation in service ecosystems from a multilevel perspective. The Portuguese Health Information Ecosystem and the EHR were chosen as the empirical ground. National health information fits the definition of a complex ecosystem and provides a rich empirical context to study value cocreation. The EHR provided by the Portuguese Ministry of Health enables sharing health information among patients and health care practitioners through the patient and the health professional portals. As such, it enables value cocreation, not so much through dyadic interactions between the service provider and the patient, but mostly by enabling and facilitating resource integration and interactions among actors within the ecosystem.\nResults: Study results enabled better understanding of the nature and dynamics of value cocreation processes in service ecosystems from a multilevel perspective. More specifically, results identified: value cocreation factors and outcomes at the micro, meso, and macro levels. Additionally, the results showed how those levels are embedded and interdependent, thus influencing and shaping each other.\nDiscussion: This health care investigation sought to broaden the comprehension of the relationships among actors for value cocreation in service ecosystems (Akaka et al., 2012; Edvardsson et al., 2012). This advances the understanding of value cocreation at each ecosystem level, as embedded in other levels (Chandler and Vargo, 2011), namely the types of interaction and outcomes (Spohrer, 2011). This study contributes an empirically grounded, in-depth understanding of how value is cocreated at the service ecosystem micro, meso, and macro levels. More specifically, it contributes to research on value cocreation in the context of health care by offering an ecosystem approach for understanding the dynamics of multiple actors' interactions. Furthermore, the paper presents a detailed view grounded in S-D logic of the conceptual domain of value cocreation in service ecosystems by identifying broader dimensions of value cocreation factors and outcomes. As such, this paper also contributes to the development of middle range theories (Brodie Saren and Pels, 2011), bridging the S-D logic high-level conceptual perspective with empirical findings in a specific context. This study suggests that the understanding of value cocreation in a service ecosystem should be seen from a multilevel perspective. This implies disaggregating the system levels to enable detailing and simplifying value cocreation among actors, although it is important to comprehend that levels are intertwined thus influencing and shaping each other. In this sense, this paper extends previous conceptual research (Chandler and Vargo, 2011; Lusch and Vargo, 2014) by providing an empirical study for understanding the nature and dynamics of value cocreation in service ecosystems from a multilevel perspective.\nConclusion: This study enabled a detailed understanding of the nature and dynamics of value cocreation in service ecosystems from a multilevel perspective, uncovering value cocreation factors and value cocreation outcomes. The study also demonstrated that ecosystem levels are intertwined and embedded in one another.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand value cocreation in service ecosystems from a multilevel perspective, uncovering value cocreation factors and outcomes at the micro, meso, and macro levels.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A Grounded Theory approach based on semi-structured interviews is adopted. The sample design was defined to enable the ecosystem analysis at its different levels. At the macro level was the Portuguese Health Information ecosystem. Embedded meso level units of analysis comprised eight health care organizations. A total of 48 interviews with citizens and health care practitioners were conducted at the micro level.\nFindings: Study results enable a detailed understanding of the nature and dynamics of value cocreation in service ecosystems from a multilevel perspective. First, value cocreation factors are identified (resource access, resource sharing, resource recombination, resource monitoring, and governance/institutions generation). These factors enable actors to integrate resources in multiple dynamic interactions to cocreate value outcomes, which involve both population well-being and ecosystem viability. Study results show that these value cocreation factors and outcomes differ across levels, but they are also embedded and interdependent.\nPractical implications: The findings have important implications for organizations that are ecosystem actors (like the Portuguese Ministry of Health) for understanding synergies among value cocreation factors and outcomes at the different levels. This provides orientations to better integrate different actor roles, technology, and information while facilitating ecosystem coordination and co-evolution.\nOriginality/value: This study responds to the need for a multilevel understanding of value cocreation in service ecosystems. It also illuminates how keystone players in the ecosystem should manage their value propositions to promote resource integration for each actor, fostering resource density and ecosystem viability. It also bridges the high-level conceptual perspective of Service-Dominant logic with specific empirical findings in the very important context of health care.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Reducing inappropriate non-steroidal anti-inflammatory prescription in primary care patients with chronic kidney disease	[ "Patient safety", "Clinical audit", "Drug errors", "Quality improvement" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) describes abnormal kidney function and/or structure (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2014a). The definition is based on kidney damage or decreased glomerular filtration rate (GFR<60 ml/minute per 1.73 m2) for three months or more, irrespective of clinical diagnosis (Levey and Coresh, 2012). CKD is a common, frequently unrecognised disease and often exists concomitantly with other conditions (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2014a). Furthermore, CKD risk increases with age. A large primary care study of 162,113 patents in the UK suggests an age-standardised stage 3-5 CKD prevalence of 8.5 per cent (Stevens et al., 2007). In Ireland, the total CKD population is estimated to be around 280,000 (5-10 per cent of total population) with a prevalence in general practice between 1.6 and 3.3 per cent (Glynn et al., 2009). When considering age-specific populations, the prevalence rises to 16.7 per cent in patients over 50 years (Glynn et al., 2009).\nMethods: We followed the widely accepted clinical audit model: standard setting; measuring practice compared to the gold standard; identifying deficiencies; addressing these deficiencies with a view to improving patient care'; and re-auditing.\nResults: The initial at risk group, defined by our criteria, numbered 728 (56 per cent female, 44 per cent male), from a practice population of 7,500. In all, 390 individuals were found to have a most recent creatinine level of 80 or greater. Manually processing the individual creatinine values through the MDRD formula revealed 158 patients with impaired renal function with an eGFR 60 ml/minute or less. This revealed a CKD stage 3 or greater prevalence of 2.1 per cent within the practice. Mean creatinine was 130mmol/l and mean eGFR 47.2 ml/min as (Table I). The group included 146 CKD stage 3, ten CKD stage 4 and two CKD stage 5. Mean age was 75.5 years (SD 9.9).\nDiscussion: We set out to identify patients with CKD at risk of inappropriate NSAID prescription and through a simple yet effective intervention, prevent a further decline in renal function and limit progression to end stage kidney failure. This target was based on recommendations in several key nephrology consensus guidelines (British National Kidney Federation, 2016; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2014b; National Kidney Foundation, 2012). Phase one identified 158 patients with stage 3 CKD or greater. Many of whom had previously been undiagnosed from a total practice population of approximately 7,500 patients. Worryingly, we found that 10.2 per cent of the risk cohort had received NSAIDs in the preceding three months and that 6.3 per cent were receiving NSAIDs on repeat prescription. While it can on occasion be appropriate to prescribe NSAIDs in this group, it is recommended that physicians limit treatment in terms of quantity and duration and when possible, suggest alternatives. We have seen already how CKD status awareness is poor amongst doctors and patients (Paulose-Ram et al., 2003) and consequently NSAIDs are often prescribed inadvertently (Plantinga et al., 2008). Our primary aim was to reduce inappropriate NSAID prescriptions, and highlight its importance among the doctors providing care and their patients. We achieved a significant 75 per cent reduction in NSAID use amongst this at risk cohort and succeeded in reducing the repeat NSAID prescribing by 90 per cent. While the number of patients in the \"repeat prescribing\" subgroup was comparatively small in the context of the practice population (phase one n=10, phase two n=1), it may indeed be our most enduring accomplishment as chronic NSAIDs use in particular is cited as being responsible for rapid progression to end stage disease in patients with established renal impairment (Obrador et al., 2002).\nConclusion: We aimed to address an avoidable consequence of inappropriate NSAID prescription in those with impaired renal function. The primary aim was achieved by significantly reducing NSAID prescription by 75 per cent and repeat NSAID prescription by 90 per cent. Furthermore, in cases where the decision was made to prescribe NSAIDs, the reasons were justified in all cases. CKD awareness among general practitioners and patients is low. Consequently, NSAIDs are often prescribed inadvertently. However, by identifying at-risk individuals and highlighting renal function when prescribing NSAIDs, physicians can reduce potentially detrimental consequences.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to reduce inappropriate non-steroidal anti-inflammatory prescribing in primary care patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Once diagnosed, CKD management involves delaying progression to end stage renal failure and preventing complications. It is well established that non-steroidal anti-inflammatories have a negative effect on kidney function and consequently, all nephrology consensus groups suggest avoiding this drug class in CKD.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The sampling criteria included all practice patients with a known CKD risk factor. This group was refined to include those with an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR)<60 ml/min per 1.73m2 (stage 3 CKD or greater). Phase one analysed how many prescriptions had occurred in this group over the preceding three months. The intervention involved creating an automated alert on at risk patient records if non-steroidal anti-inflammatories were prescribed and discussing the rationale with practice staff. The re-audit phase occurred three months' post intervention.\nFindings: The study revealed 728/7,500 (9.7 per cent) patients at risk from CKD and 158 (2.1 per cent) who were subsequently found to have an eGFR<60 ml/min, indicating=stage 3 CKD. In phase one, 10.2 per cent of at risk patients had received a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory prescription in the preceding three months. Additionally, 6.2 per cent had received non-steroidal anti-inflammatories on repeat prescription. Phase two post intervention revealed a significant 75 per cent reduction in the total non-steroidal anti-inflammatories prescribed and a 90 per cent reduction in repeat non-steroidal anti-inflammatory prescriptions in those with CKD.\nOriginality/value: The study significantly reduced non-steroidal anti-inflammatory prescription in those with CKD in primary care settings. It also created a CKD register within the practice and an enduring medication alert system for individuals that risk nephrotoxic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory prescription. It established a safe, reliable and efficient process for reducing morbidity and mortality, improving quality of life and limiting the CKD associated health burden.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Customer co-creation in service innovation: a matter of communication?	[ "Customer co‐creation", "Innovation", "Service‐Dominant Logic (SDL)", "Communication", "Pro‐active market orientation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: As early as the eighteenth century, Smith (1776/2007, pp. 14-15) identified users as a great source of innovation: \"One of the greatest improvements that has been made upon this machine [was] the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour\". Today, there are many examples of companies attempting to collaborate with their customers in what is commonly referred to as co-creation (Lusch et al., 2007) and viewing them as an important resource when developing new offerings (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004). As Smith noted, an important reason for such attempts is that users have innovative ideas about future offerings (Kristensson et al., 2004). The key question is how companies should design their development processes to communicate with customers in order to gain access to future customer needs and ideas.Despite the general consensus that co-creation with customers is beneficial, there is a lack of agreement regarding how and why (Kristensson et al., 2008; Witell et al., 2011). When describing the essence of the service-dominant logic, Lusch et al. (2007, p. 11) contended that co-creation with customers for the purpose of innovation is a foundational part of modern marketing, and that co-creation involves \"shared inventiveness\". Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004, p. 1) concluded that \"informed, networked, empowered, and active consumers are increasingly co-creating value with the firm\". However, the specific actions and behaviors that make up co-creation have not yet been fully addressed (Witell et al., 2011). Gruner and Homburg (2000) and Lundkvist and Yakhlef (2004) argued that the process of communication and socially rich interactions with customers is one of the determinants for product success. Furthermore, Payne et al. (2008) reported that communication is an important element in a company's ability to manage value co-creation. The research has this far focused predominantly on when to listen to customers (Gruner and Homburg, 2000), rather than how companies should communicate with customers. Therefore, the present study focuses on the communication process between a company and its customers and how this process can improve product and market success.The purpose of the study is to gain a better understanding of customer co-creation in the development process; that is, co-creation for others (Witell et al., 2011). The study applied a four-dimensional communication model that has previously been used to analyze marketing channel communication (Mohr and Nevin, 1990; Bonner, 2010). The four dimensions are frequency, direction, modality, and content. Although previous research has emphasized the importance of communication, both with customers and within companies (Gruner and Homburg, 2000; Gustafsson and Johnson, 1997; Joshi and Sharma, 2004), research that uses communication theories to gain a deeper understanding of customer co-creation has been sparse. The present study also looked at whether all dimensions of the communication model have an effect on product and market success or whether the effect depends on the degree of innovativeness (incremental/radical) of a development project.\nConceptual framework: Service innovation\nMethod: Sample\nResults: The proposed model was estimated using PLS across companies. The first step in assessing the measurement models was to test the reliability of each measured variable to ensure that the measurement variables (MVs) applied accurately to their related constructs. Overall, the MV loadings were all relatively large and positive. As the Appendix shows, most of the loadings exceeded the recommended threshold value of 0.707 (Hulland, 1999). However, the standard research practice is to keep the item in the analysis if the loading exceeds 0.5, as long as there is a good theoretical reason for doing so. In this case, the fact that the study built on established scales for market success made it appropriate to keep all measures in this scale. Figure 2 shows the results of the analysis. All but one of the paths are significant (using adjusted t-tests and p< 0.05). The significant path coefficients were 0.150 for frequency, 0.165 for direction, and 0.205 for content. The non-significant path is modality. Although the model behaved well for incremental innovations, we also wanted to apply a similar model to a dataset that covered development projects of radical innovations.Revisiting the model for radical innovations\nDiscussion: This article has looked at customer co-creation as a communication process that is frequent, bidirectional, and face to face when attempting creative problem solving (that is, innovation). From such a perspective, communication and interaction are among the most important aspects of co-creation to achieve product and market success. This research applied a model from research on market channel communication in order to understand the impact that different aspects of customer co-creation have on product and market success. The four different dimensions, which originated from research by Mohr and Nevin (1990) and Bonner (2010), were frequency, direction, modality, and content.The results of the present study contribute to a deeper understanding of why new offerings developed through market research techniques based on co-creation with customers are more profitable than those developed with traditional market research techniques (Witell et al., 2011). For development projects that aim to achieve incremental innovations, three dimensions of customer co-creation were equally important for product and market success. Good results from co-creation with customers are generally caused by frequency, direction, and content. This means that a company can improve the results of a development project by spending more time communicating with customers. This communication should be democratic; that is, the communication should be between two parties of equal power and should focus on specific types of content during communication. In addition, the study's results support the theory that the way in which information is exchanged between the customer and the company does not explain why co-creation with customers performs better than traditional market research techniques. One explanation of this result is that the ability to interact with customers through social media and discussion panels on the internet has enabled companies to get to know their customers without face-to-face interaction.From a managerial perspective, this suggests that it is beneficial when working with incremental innovation to spend time with customers, or in other words, become immersed in the customer's context as much as possible (Gustafsson and Johnson, 2003). Examples of this can be found within the hospitality industry, where understanding of customer choice has been found to significantly facilitate service innovation (Victorino et al., 2005). The finding also suggests that treating customers as more equal partners in the process increases the chances of product and market success. Therefore, companies must open up their organization to a larger extent, which can be quite a challenge (Olson and Bakke, 2001). Companies should create dialogues with customers during the value co-creation process and meet and communicate with customers in the customers' own environment or through various media, such as social media. The findings also corroborate those of previous studies in that information involving customer contexts or the transfer of sticky information is important in the development process. The results point toward the need for increased understanding of the circumstances surrounding the customers' value-creation processes or value-in-context. Employees, whether front-line or elsewhere in the organization, must communicate with customers in order to understand the experiences that create value for them; otherwise, they will lose their capacity to generate ideas for the next generation of offerings that will serve their customers.However, the communication process of co-creation for radical innovations seems to behave quite differently in that the four suggested dimensions are not entirely applicable in the same way for radical innovation as they are for incremental innovation. The different dimensions in the communication process behave differently in the two conditions, which suggests that companies must apply different communication strategies in co-creation depending on the degree of innovativeness of a development project. The two dimensions that are significant in radical innovation are frequency (positive) and content (negative). Direction and modality did not have a significant impact on product success. This implies that companies should learn from customers through frequent contact, which is the same as in the case of incremental innovations. However, companies should not be overly concerned with suggestions of the content of a potential new offering. Radical solutions can often be considered unthinkable in advance, which can make radical solutions hard to imagine, but customers know a good idea when they see and use it. Customers create solutions based on their previous experiences of usage of different products or services, which makes it difficult to suggest solutions that are truly radically.An example of this point is Apple, which is a leader in terms of offering value-creating radical innovations. In a recent article on co-creation, an Apple designer said, \"At Apple we don't waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love\" (Skibstedt and Bech Hansen, 2011). The demand for something fundamentally new is completely unpredictable. Even users themselves have no idea whether they will like an entirely new product before they start using it (and perhaps then only after years of use). Still, if radical innovations are to succeed, there must be latent customer needs connected to the new solution. The only way a company can form an opinion about the validity of this match between latent need and solution is to spend time with its customers generating knowledge about the context-specific sticky information, which may require a different tool set for companies (Witell et al., 2011).Limitations\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Customer co-creation is becoming increasingly popular among companies, and intensive communication with customers is generally seen as a determinant of the success of a new service or product. The purpose of this study is to analyze customer co-creation based on four dimensions of communication - frequency, direction, modality, and content - in order to understand the value of customer co-creation in service innovation. One of the key aims of the study is to investigate whether all dimensions of customer co-creation have an effect on product and market success, and if the effect depends on the degree of innovativeness of a development project.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The authors conducted a study including 334 managers with experience in new service and product development to examine how development projects applied customer co-creation in terms of communication in order to address future customer needs. Data were analyzed using partial least squares (PLS). The first analysis was performed with a sub-sample of 207 development projects regarding incremental innovations. A subsequent analysis was performed with a sub-sample of 77 development projects on radical innovations.\nFindings: - A total of three of the four dimensions of customer co-creation (frequency, direction, and content) have a positive and equally significant effect on product success when developing incremental innovations. For radical innovations, frequency has a positive effect and content has a negative significant effect on product success. These findings suggest that co-creation and innovation can be combined, but that the choice of methods for co-creation differs depending on whether incremental or radical innovations are developed.\nOriginality/value: - Despite a general consensus that co-creation with customers is beneficial, there is a lack of agreement regarding how and why. The present article addresses this shortcoming and shows that co-creation is largely about communicating with customers in order to understand their future needs. On the other hand, a company working on radical innovations may wish to limit customer input that is too concrete or solution based.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Making sense of team integration practice through the "lived experience" of alliance project teams	[ "New Zealand", "Team integration", "Construction", "Alliance", "Lived experience" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: For centuries, the architecture, engineering and construction industry has been a highly fragmented industry, with multi-disciplinary teams from different types of organisations, with different characteristics, different cultures and organisational practices forming a temporary organisation working in an adversarial and traditional transactional environment (Baiden et al., 2006; Lahdenpera, 2012; Ibrahim et al., 2013). This is especially the case in major and complex projects where broad and increasing expertise, as well as commitments across many national borders, is required. Cross-cultural issues in particular are complex and, hence, further contribute to the difficulty to embrace an integrated environment (Fellows and Liu, 2012).\nThe challenges of integration in project alliancing: Project alliancing is a collaborative way of working on complex projects and involves the joint management of project challenges. Alliances are an agreement between two or more partners who undertake to work collaboratively on the basis of a behavioural set of contract conditions and collective shared risk and reward, for the purpose of delivering a complex project based on best-for-project criterion (Walker and Jacobsson, 2014; Jefferies et al., 2014). It provides a different approach, ranging from decision-making processes to the working arrangements, compared to the more traditional forms of contracting, and allows the owner to have closer, and a higher degree of, integration with project participants (Walker and Lloyd-Walker, 2014). Integration is vital for alliance teams as it promotes a collaborative culture and the continuity of equitable relationships to improve project performance (Che Ibrahim et al., 2013). Walker and Lloyd-Walker (2014) suggested that the success of a project alliance is built upon project teams that consciously integrate in an atmosphere that is open and non-competitive. In addition, the collaborative environment embraced by the project alliance approach will ensure the team is committed to channelling all talent and energy for the best possible project outcome (MacDonald et al., 2013). However, it should be noted that although team members in alliances build an understanding of the underlying alliance principles designed to create an integrated environment, the ability to commit to and sustain such an environment is essential in achieving the breakthrough outcomes (Ross, 2009). Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the desired behaviour and integrated culture will be continuously maintained, as some individuals display a tendency to revert back to their old mentality when things go wrong, due to a lack of insight and experience into the benefits of alliances (Rooney, 2009; Laan, Voordijk and Dewulf, 2011; Laan, Noorderhaven, Voordijk and Dewulf, 2011; Walker et al., 2015). Teams and individuals possessing substantial diversity in skills, knowledge and expertise, but who may not have previously worked together, make integration more difficult to achieve within the construction period (Baiden et al., 2006). In addition, according to Fellows and Liu (2012), given that the multiplicity of expertise comes from a range of organisations, and from several diverse countries, but form a separate entity, there are significant differences in professional values and commitments which are difficult to integrate.\nTeam integration literature in construction research: The subject of project team integration has received widespread attention in construction management research due to the fragmented relationships and adversarial nature of traditional procurement approaches (Zhang et al., 2013). Several scholars highlighted the increasing research interest in understanding the concept, features and elements of team integration practices in construction projects as a way to embrace collaborative environments. Consequently, a number of studies are reported here to provide insight into the extent of team integration research that has been undertaken. A summary of these studies is presented in Table I.\nConceptual framework of successful alliance integrated project teams: A conceptual framework, based on Che Ibrahim et al.'s (2013) KIs of team integration in alliance projects, has been adopted in an effort to better understand what makes alliance teams integrate. The current study is an extension of Ibrahim et al.'s (2013) research on KIs which were developed specifically for alliances. They also went through several rounds of validation and testing (see Che Ibrahim et al., 2016). According to Che Ibrahim et al.'s (2013) findings, which are based on the experience of an expert panel used in four rounds of Delphi questionnaire survey, it can be concluded that the best practices of alliance team integration are characterised by seven ranked KIs (see Figure 1): team leadership; trust and respect; single team focus on project objectives and KRAs; collective understanding; commitment from PAB; creation of single and co-located alliance team; and free flow communication. A brief definition of these indicators is included in Table II.\nResearch method: This study adopted a phenomenological research method in which the purpose is to describe the meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a concept or a phenomenon (Creswell, 2013). In particular for this study, it attempts to understand alliance practitioner's perceptions, perspectives and understanding of successful alliance team integration practice based on an existing framework. According to Merleau-Ponty (2013), phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, action, thought and memory in our \"life-world\". As Van Manen (1990) described, the aim of phenomenology is to reduce individual experiences with a phenomenon to a pure description of the universal essence.\nEvaluation of interviews on the KIs: The phenomenological method involves a rigorous analysis of life descriptions. Based on guidelines from Ekstedt and Fagerberg (2005), some important steps were adopted: careful reading in order to comprehend a sense of the whole; perception of meaning indicators within the chosen perspective, focussing on the phenomenon under study; every indicator was reflected on with free imaginative variation and transformed into a statement that can provide better understanding, the participants' lived experience of the phenomenon (Table IV); when all meaning had been transformed, reflecting on the variations of meanings the analysis brought out an essence of the phenomenon, the insights reached were synthesised and integrated into a descriptive structure comprising seven most significant team integration indicators.\nFramework of leadership for successful alliance integrated practices: Integrated organisations underpinned by integrated teams, such as in alliances, are about maximising the potential of leadership to influence team integration practices. The key to successful alliance integrated practice is the process of developing a vision, guiding and securing alliance team engagement. Drawing from the \"lived experience\" analysis based on the seven indicators, it is proposed that a team-centric approach is necessary to ensure that leadership results in successful alliance team integration practice (see Figure 2); these include: task- and relationship-oriented behaviours; collaborative learning environments; and cultivating cross-boundary networks and collaborative governance. The main purpose of this section is to describe the distinctive nature of the leadership elements influencing successful alliance integrated practices. The way each KI formed a structure of leadership for alliance integrated practice is shown in Table V.\nConclusions: Team integration is a concept that has been widely fostered in alliances as a way of improving collaborative relationships between diverse organisations. However, deeper insights into the leadership practice of high levels of team integration remain elusive. Furthermore, understanding the team integration practice, which is a collaborative process in project-based organisations, is clearly difficult. The research presented in this paper attempts to develop a deeper understanding on fostering team integration through the \"lived experience\" in an alliance environment based on a framework of successful alliance team integration by Che Ibrahim et al. (2013). Based on the lived experiences of 24 alliance practitioners, who are currently working in a number of alliance road infrastructure projects in New Zealand, it has shown that team integration is a relationship practice which emerges from the specific circumstances of activities. The identified indicators of alliance team integration were found to have an explicit and implicit influence in the development of the team towards leadership of successful integration practice. The findings highlight that alliancing gives the project teams flexibility to change and adapt, to advance the collaborative environment and that integration of multi-disciplinary project teams requires the additional attributes of behaviours and orientation of ability and motivation to be committed to collaborate. The findings also indicated that the existing underlying collaborative principles embedded in the alliance model enable project teams to stimulate the integrated environment and, hence, provide a game breaking performance to achieve outstanding outcomes. These findings have led to the development of a framework of leadership for successful alliance integrated practices. It is proposed that to influence the leadership for the purpose of achieving integration practice, four elements, namely, task and relationship-oriented behaviours; collaborative learning environments; cultivating cross-boundary networks; and collaborative governance, are required. The framework will be of use to help academics and industry organisations to respond to the needs and prepare a project team towards achieving successful integration practices especially in collaborative environments.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Team integration is a concept that has been widely fostered in alliances as a way of improving collaborative relationships between diverse organisations. However, deeper insights into the practice of high levels of team integration remain elusive. The purpose of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of team integration through the \"lived experience\" of practitioners in an alliance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study employed a qualitative research methodology. Using a phenomenological examination, via the lived experiences of 24 alliance practitioners, the practice of alliance team integration has been investigated based on the key indicators that foster alliance team integration: team leadership, trust and respect, single team focus on project objectives and key results areas, collective understanding, commitment from project alliance board, single and co-located alliance team, and free flow communication.\nFindings: The findings highlight that alliancing gives the project teams' flexibility to change and adapt, to advance the collaborative environment and that successful integration of multi-disciplinary project teams requires commitment to the identified indicators. These findings have led to the development of a framework of leadership for successful alliance integrated practices. It is proposed that to influence the leadership for the purpose of achieving successful integration practice, a team-centric approach is required which includes four elements: task and relationship-oriented behaviours; collaborative learning environments; cultivating cross-boundary networks; and collaborative governance.\nPractical implications: As team integration is the central tenet of alliance projects, greater understanding regarding the leadership of integration practice is of value in leveraging the benefits of outstanding performance. Also, the results of the study are expected to be informative and provide insight for alliance teams to help them proactively recognise how the context of integrated teams is influenced by specific indicators, impacting on the extent of integration practice.\nOriginality/value: This study contributes to the current body of knowledge concerning the insights from the \"lived experience\" of alliance teams towards achieving a greater understanding of what contributes to the leadership of successful integration practices.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Young Saudi consumers and corporate social responsibility: an Islamic "CSR tree" model	[ "Saudi Arabia", "Islamic", "Corporate social responsibility", "Young consumers", "Private social responsibility", "CSR tree model" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Middle East has distinctive roots and unique expressions that do not always mirror the current understanding and practice in the West(Jamali, 2014, p. 71).Rising public concerns related to climate change and its impact on the environment, and corporate misconduct scandals have encouraged organisations to reconsider their responsibilities towards the stakeholders (Silberhorn and Warren, 2007; Ditlev-Simonsen and Wenstop, 2013). In recent years, the rise of social media, along with almost instantaneous coverage of negative corporate incidents, has resulted in a proliferation of consumer boycotts (Du et al., 2010). Thus, the socially responsible organisation must be prepared to respond to consumer concerns in order to maintain their corporate image and public goodwill (Abd-Rahim et al., 2011). The issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become central to questioning the ethos of how businesses impact upon lives, and whether some corporations have become a predatory force and exert a harmful effect, not only on employees but on whole communities. Manheim and Pratt (1986, p. 9), therefore, argue that \"[s]ocial responsibility activities not only serve the needs of the community, but by enhancing the legitimacy of a corporation's social and political position, further its overall interests as well\".\n2. The research context: Saudi Arabia: The total population of Saudi Arabia is 31.7m (as at 2016) (General Authority for Statistics, 2017). The youth segment (15-24 years) stands at around 4.79m of the total population. Indeed, the population of Saudi Arabia is one of the youngest in the world with 50.35 per cent below the age of 30 (General Authority for Statistics, 2017). The Embassy of Saudi Arabia (2014) describes the country as follows: \"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic State. Its religion is Islam. Its constitution is Almighty God's Book, the Holy Qur'an, and the Sunna (Traditions) of the Prophet (PBUH)\". The two holiest places for Muslims are the Holy Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet Mosque in Madinah, both of which are located in Saudi Arabia. In addition, every year millions of Muslims travel to Mecca to take part in the biggest annual event of Islam which is \"the Hajj\" or \"the Pilgrimage\" (MOFA, 2013). Due to its custodianship of these Muslim holy places, Saudi Arabia is the leader of the Islamic world (Rice, 2004). In addition, it is a \"[...] conservative country where the government and many of its citizens' desire to preserve their religious values and ancient traditions\" (Rice, 2004, p. 60).\n3. Review of literature: The concept of i-CSR is very much unexplored in the marketing literature. A comprehensive search of the EBSCOhost's Business Source Complete database (accessed via Prince Sultan University Digital Library, Saudi Arabia: http://ezproxy.psu.edu.sa/menu) was conducted for the period 1975-2017. In reviewing the status of CSR research from 1980-2015, Lee (2017, p. 211) finds that the amount of CSR research undertaken has increased dramatically since 2006. Jamali (2014) argues that future research needs to look beyond traditional CSR as Middle East countries in fact continue to be profoundly challenged by many structural problems.\n4. Social contract theory: Reviewing the theoretical status of CSR in the marketing literature, Lee (2017, p. 211) argues that \"[a]lthough theoretically grounded studies still do not represent the majority of the research in this area, the stakeholder theory is the one that is most often invoked, followed by legitimacy and attribution theories\". In this study, social contract theory has been used as the basis of the theoretical framework. In terms of social contract theory, Steiner (1972, p. 18) earlier sets the basis for understanding the meaning of CSR:At any one time in any society there is a set of generally accepted relationships, obligations and duties between the major institutions and the people. Philosophers and political theorists have called this set of common understandings \"the social contract\".\n5. Method: Given the primary focus on consumers' perceptions on i-CSR, this study adopts qualitative in-depth interviews (Tsalikis and Lassar, 2009; Aribi and Arun, 2015). Social desirability bias is a characteristic of Middle Eastern cultures (Goby and Nickerson, 2016), and so this study did not use a questionnaire survey, as \"face-to-face interactions are valued over other interactive modes and are therefore more likely to achieve respondent engagement\" (Goby and Nickerson, 2016, p. 172). Non-probability and judgmental sampling were used for this research.\n6. Findings and discussion: 6.1 Perspectives on Islamic CSR (RQ1)\n7. Conclusions and future research direction: Previous empirical research has highlighted the influence of personal values and belief systems on CSR, and mixed evidence on the influence of religious values. Due to the paucity of research on i-CSR, this study explores how young Saudi consumers perceive CSR from an Islamic perspective. Accordingly, the study investigates two related research questions:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In response to the scarcity of research on Islamic corporate social responsibility (CSR), the purpose of this paper is to explore how young Saudi consumers perceive CSR from an Islamic perspective. The study is focused on Saudi Arabia, a Muslim country, and the largest exporter of petroleum in the world.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The present study uses a qualitative methodology with 34 in-depth interviews undertaken in two major Saudi cities (Tabouk and Riyadh).\nFindings: Utilising social contract theory, this study contributes to the literature by developing an Islamic \"CSR Tree\" model (which consists of three parts: \"roots\", \"trunk\", and \"crown\") to increase the understanding of Islamic CSR (i-CSR) and consumer behaviour. The roots are hidden, while the trunk and crown are visible. In particular, private social responsibility (the roots of the CSR Tree) incorporating Sadaqa, or values and intention, is the fundamental component on which organisations should base their CSR strategy from an Islamic perspective. The study also reveals that internal, external, and private social responsibilities are connected, and all are dependent on each other. The higher the level of private social responsibility exhibited, the higher the level of external social responsibility.\nOriginality/value: According to the CSR Tree model presented in this study, an organisation should avoid Riya (showing off) as this would represent shirk or idolatry, which is the opposite of Tawhid. The findings are particularly relevant for advancing the concept of i-CSR and for considering complex perspectives less travelled in the CSR literature. The study suggests that the best strategy for an organisation wishing to pursue an i-CSR agenda would be to balance internal and external responsibilities, and to bear in mind that private responsibility should be the motivation for action, and that CSR should be applied for the benefit of society.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A collaborative programme in sustainability and social responsibility	[ "Competences", "Sustainability", "Higher education", "Social responsibility", "Collaborative programme" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The Spanish Ministry of Education (2009, p. 41) has stated that the conception of social responsibility (SR) in the university system is an expression of its commitment to society. This commitment is intimately linked to public policy objectives regarding sustainable development in its economic, social, environmental and cultural dimensions. Social commitment involves a proposal to change the Higher Education curriculum, which is why this case study looks at the relationship between university and society. For the transfer of knowledge from the university and the successful satisfaction of social demands, Sterling (2007) suggests selecting the path towards education for sustainability, which includes SR specifically. Why? Because SR is the ability to respond effectively to respond to the changes which are necessary to transform society. How? Being responsible for the impact of the actions of the entity through an approach directed to promoting justice, solidarity, social equity and fostering sustainable human development. SR is rather more than the development of a social sector and is, therefore, explicitly complementary to sustainability.\n2. Sustainability and social responsibility programme objectives: The case study detailed in this paper is the result of the implementation of an optional subject entitled \"Educacion Ambiental, Consumo y Salud\" (Environmental, Consumption and Health Education) offered as part of the Teaching Degree. This subject formed part of the curriculum for future teachers of Infant and Primary Education and was offered in the third year of the degree in the 2010/2011 academic year, which was the last year before the implementation of the Bologna Process.\n3. Methodology: The methodological scenarios used for the development of SSR competences were implemented during 21 sessions; 51 students registered for the subject.\n4. Results: The creation of new educational scenarios allowed the development of SSR competences outside the context of the classroom. Objective 1 of the programme was achieved with the holding of the Sustainability Inter- and Trans-disciplinary Day on campus, together with the making of the lip-dub video. The students had taken responsibility (Objective 2) for tasks such as explaining the rationale behind the Sustainability Inter- and Trans-disciplinary Day to all students in classrooms in all six University faculties, leading play-based, informal workshops on recycling and responsible consumption and providing information on marquees based around sustainability and social projects. Participating in the collaborative project, together with the small-group research and class activities, involved critical reflection on their own lifestyles, which led to changes in their consumption habits (Objectives 3 and 4).\n5. Summary and discussion: This study is a contribution to the debate on the concept of competence and SSR in the university in general and in the EHEA in particular, as well as on its implementation in this specific case.\n6. Conclusions: This case study helps to clarify how competences in SSR can be developed in a real context that is also familiar to the participants. It provides practical guidance to universities on how to organize these critical endeavours more effectively and to offer students an additional career perspective (Brundiers and Wiek, 2013).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to collect methodological strategies used in the training of future teachers to develop competences in sustainability and social responsibility (SSR). The proposal in this paper is to show how students learn and develop competences by performing practical activities and through a collaborative experience, conducted in a real-life context in the university campus.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper collects together a selection of competences and sub-competences in SSR, together with the methodological scenarios that allowed their implementation. The results in the acquisition of competences, as well as the efficiency of the methodological strategies employed, were obtained from the qualitative analysis of student questionnaires and of their final academic results.\nFindings: Changing the teaching methods to include collaborative methodological strategies facilitates the acquisition of SSR competences.\nResearch limitations/implications: A methodological limitation of this study is the fact that it has taken place in one academic year. The authors realize that to provide evidence of a profound behavioural change (which goes beyond the improvement of a habit), there is a need to carry out a longer study, which is complex when working with final year students. The authors are suggesting that the University carry out prolonged studies on the implementation and assessment of competences in SSR in the University and afterwards in the work place.\nPractical implications: At the start of the course year, a problem was identified, namely, that future teachers lacked sustainable habit patterns. This was turned into a learning opportunity that led to a collaborative SSR programme on the campus.\nSocial implications: Creating varied practical methodological scenarios has contributed to the development of SSR competences by the pupils. Students have questioned their lifestyles and have modified their consumption habits. Additionally, doing a transdisciplinary collaborative programme in our own campus has played a part in changing our organization for the better and has facilitated combining research and teaching.\nOriginality/value: This paper helps clarify how SSR competences can be developed in a local, real-life context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Corporate governance and audit features: SMEs evidence	[ "UK", "Audit quality", "SMEs", "Audit fees", "Corporate governance", "Audit" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The main aim of this study is to investigate the under-researched relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and audit fees within the SMEs context. Indeed, such relationship has been investigated in large firms (Abbott et al., 2003; Goodwin-Stewart and Kent, 2006; Knechel, 2016), yet we find no evidence of this relationship within the SMEs context. We adopt this framework for different reasons. First, there is growing evidence that governance features are important in SMEs as in large firms. It is found that good corporate governance will bring better alternatives for SMEs and provides SMEs with effective strategies and best practices to access different resources and enhances better management decisions (Drucker, 1992; Sparrow, 1993). Accordingly, we aim to investigate in more details the theoretical and empirical aspects of corporate governance and audit features in SMEs using panel data set and to expand our knowledge of the audit features within the SMEs context. Second, investigating SMEs is very important in the UK, for example, in 2007, 99.9 per cent of the businesses were SMEs. In addition, SMEs are a key employer in the UK with approximately 59.2 per cent of private sector employees. From the macro-level perspective, SMEs represent 50 per cent of the UK gross value added and 51.5 per cent turnover (BIS: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, 2009). Hence, our study has an importance for policymakers and managers for a key sector in the UK. Finally, Afrifa and Tauringana (2015) detect that corporate governance is related to SMEs performance in the UK; however, they reported some differences in the role of corporate governance factors between small and medium-sized firms. Hence, investigating the role of corporate governance in SMEs will be of importance and will add to our understanding of the determinants of audit fees.\nLiterature review: In this section, we aim to discuss the theoretical framework and the empirical evidence regarding the audit features. We start the discussion with the theoretical and economic framework underlying audit features and then we discuss the empirical evidence.\nDevelopment of the hypotheses: In this section, the hypotheses of the internal corporate governance and firm-specific factors on audit fees will be discussed.\nSample and methodology: As mentioned before, our sample consists of non-financial UK SMEs. The sample is derived from FAME database using criteria set forward by Department of Trade and Industry. Following Company's Act 2006 and Collis (2008), as from the year 2008, new thresholds of criteria have been set to define a small and medium enterprise. To obtain the sample of small businesses, at least two criteria have to be met. Based on new thresholds (see Collis, 2008), the number of employees has to be within 50 and 250 employees and turnover should be within PS6.5-PS25.9M (for year 2008 and 2009). Before the year 2008, the number of employees is within the range of 50-250; turnover within PS5.6 and PS22.8M. The initial sample after satisfying the criteria is 341 listed SMEs, after excluding 34 financial firms, the sample being examined in this study is 307 firms. Financial information and information about audit fees, audit opinion and Big 4 are collected from DataStream, and corporate governance data (board size, board meetings, the percentage of independent directors on board, audit committee data) are collected from Thomson One Banker database for the period from 2000 to 2009. This criterion has been adopted so to be consistent with previous studies in the UK SMEs context (see e.g. Belghitar and Khan 2013; Al-Najjar and Al-Najjar, 2017; Al-Najjar, 2015).\nAudit fees model: Following Abbott et al. (2003), Carcello et al. (2002) and Tsui et al. (2001), we use the following model. However, this model is not restricted to the above-mentioned studies as additional corporate governance and control variables are included to find more evidence on the UK listed SMEs data. The standard errors are classified within firms to capture the group effects. It is worth noting that the clustered firms are 126 that we can use to estimate the models. The drop of data is due to the missing corporate governance factors:\nResults: The findings of the audit fees model are reported in Table III where the dependent variable is the natural logarithm of audit fees. There are four models to show the effects of year and industry dummies. Model 1 is regressed without year and industry effects; Model 2 contains year dummies with no industry effect; Model 3 encompasses industry dummies with no year effect; and Model 4 assesses both year and industry effects.\nDeterminants of audit quality: For a further check of our results, we introduce another audit quality variable, which is related to the selection of the Big 4 audit firms. We aim to investigate if our main corporate governance factors (board independence, audit independence, audit diligence, board diligence and board size) affect the decision to go for one of the Big 4 audit firms. We posit that better internal corporate governance will demand more audit quality. Hence, we argue that firms with large boards, and more independent directors, as well as have audit committee independence, and more frequent audit and board meetings are more likely to employ one of the Big 4 audit firms. The positive association between audit quality and corporate governance has been supported by different studies (see e.g. Beasley and Petroni, 2001) and, therefore, our hypothesis is:\nOverall conclusion: This paper is the first major study to investigate if corporate governance tools affect the audit features within the SMEs context. Our sample includes 307 SMEs for the period from 2000 to 2009. We employ different cross-sectional time series analysis, including cross-sectional time series OLS, IV modelling and logit. In particular, this study aims to investigate if internal governance mechanisms, such as board independence, audit independence, audit diligence as well as board diligence and size affect different audit features (audit fees, audit and Big 4 audit firms). Our results show that corporate governance mechanisms are important in determining audit fees. We detect a positive impact of board independence, audit meeting and board size on audit fees. Also, we report some evidence of a negative relationship between audit independence and audit fees, which supports the supply side of audit fees. In addition, we report that governance factors affect audit quality. We detect that independent directors and audit diligence positively affect the decision to select Big 4 audit firms.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate governance factors on audit features, namely, audit fees and the selection of Big 4 audit firms within the UK SMEs context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The author uses different regression models to investigate the impact of corporate governance characteristics on audit features, and employs cross-sectional time series models as well as two-stage least squares technique. In addition, the author has used logit analysis to examine the effect of corporate governance factors on the selection of Big 4 audit firms.\nFindings: The author provides new evidence that governance mechanisms in SMEs affect different audit features. The results show that corporate governance mechanisms are important in determining audit fees. The author detects a positive impact of board independence, audit meeting and board size on audit fees. The author also reports evidence that governance factors determine the selection of Big 4 audit firms. In particular, the author reports that independent directors and audit diligence positively affect the decision to select Big 4 audit firms.\nOriginality/value: This paper investigates the under-researched relationship between audit features and corporate governance using UK SMEs. In so doing, the author aims to provide new insights into this relationship within the SMEs context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Entity deduplication in big data graphs for scholarly communication	[ "Deduplication", "Information graphs", "Big data", "Scholarly communication", "Scalability", "Implementation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The advent of Open Science has broadened the scope of interest of scholarly/scientific communication beyond scientific literature, so as to include research data and research software and, for monitoring purposes, projects and funders. Researchers, communities, institutions, governments and funders demand integrated and enhanced access to research graphs (Xia et al., 2017), obtained as metadata aggregations of distributed scholarly communication data sources. Their intent differs, ranging from discovery and access of scientific products, to monitoring and evaluating funding efforts or identifying research trends. Examples of research graphs in the scholarly communication domain are the Google Scholar graph [1], the Microsoft Academic graph [2] and the OpenAIRE research graph [3]. Such initiatives collect from different kind of data sources (e.g. libraries, publication repositories, publishers, author directories) and assemble graphs whose objects are authors, organizations, publications, etc. having specific customers in mind. In general, due to the high degree of heterogeneity and independence of such sources, which may preserve objects produced by the same authors or affiliated to the same organizations, such graphs suffer from disruptive duplication rates and require adequate solutions to be adopted. System engineers can easily find general-purpose public/commercial tools for the identification of equivalent metadata records in big \"flat\" collections of objects. Engineers write code to import their collection into the tool of choice, then use the tool to identify duplicates, retrieve the set of object equivalences (typically groups of object IDs) and finally write code to resolve duplication within their collection. If the collection is also \"big\", that is untreatable without parallel computing solutions, then the task becomes more complex as extra big data skills are required. However, merging of records in flat object collections is a rather simple task compared to graph-like scenarios. Graphs introduce two different problems: (1) multiple entities, hence the handling of multiple entity-specific deduplication scenarios, and (2) the relationships between objects, which burden the deduplication phase to preserve the topology of the graph. For such reasons, the adoption of existing tools cannot be easily adapted to the problem of deduplication of big graphs. To implement a full entity deduplication workflow for big data graphs curators end-up realizing patchwork systems, tailored to their graph data model, often bound to their physical representation of the graph, expensive in terms of design, development and maintenance, and in general not reusable by other practitioners with similar problems in different domains.This work, building on literature and tools for duplicate identification in big data flat collections, addresses the more complex challenge of deduplication of entities in big data graphs. In the following text a graph is intended as any digital representation of a set of entity types (structured properties) linked by relationships. Graphs are big when duplicate identification over the objects of such entity types require parallel-oriented approaches to scale up and perform in reasonable time. Entity deduplication is the combined process of duplicate identification, that is efficient identification of pairs of equivalent objects of the same entity type, and graph disambiguation, that is removal of duplicates from the graph, while semantically preserving the topology of the graph.The need of practitioners for implementing a fully-fledged entity deduplication workflow to disambiguate a generic big graph has led us to devise GDup, an integrated, scalable, general-purpose system for this purpose. GDup offers to graph data curators functionalities to manage \"ground truths\", acquire end-user feedback to improve the process, and customize algorithms for the identification and merge of duplicates to return an output disambiguated graph; such functionalities rely on an underlying parallel computing engineering that ensures scalability to graphs of arbitrary size. Therefore, the novelty of GDup is not about improving accuracy of deduplication algorithms for specific entities or beating existing deduplication systems on deduplication efficiency; but rather offering out-of-the-box tools to data curators, who should focus on modeling and customizing their big graph deduplication solutions rather than facing the technical challenges necessarily implied by such tasks. This work extends initial outcome on GDup (Atzori et al., 2018), where the authors sketched the concept and high-level architecture of GDup and described its adoption in the real-case scenario of the big graph operated by the OpenAIRE infrastructure for Open Science Research in Europe [4]. OpenAIRE infrastructure's services populate a scholarly communication big data graph, namely the OpenAIRE Research Graph [5], whose goal is to support discovery and monitoring of Open Science trends and research impact for funders, institutions and researchers in specific disciplines; services like Scopus, Zenodo.org, European Commission's Open Science monitor, the ResearchGraph Foundation and others are today using the graph as main source of information. GDup is the core deduplication service for the production system of the OpenAIRE infrastructure, used today to deduplicate publications, datasets, software and organizations records, in order to ensure sensible statistics are delivered. The contribution of this article, not addressed in previous work (Atzori et al., 2018), is to provide a formal definition of the graph deduplication problem, the formal definition of GDup's architecture, that is the internals of the functions modeling the various deduplication phases, and to report experimental results relative to the usage of GDup in the new OpenAIRE Research Graph, which has since expanded to include new kinds of entities (e.g. research software) and triplicated the size of the data. 1.1 Outline\n2. Deduplication of big data graphs: To describe the problem of big graph deduplication we introduce the OpenAIRE infrastructure system, whose services populate a big graph of scientific publications, datasets, organizations, authors, and other related entities, and whose size and deduplication challenges are representative of this class of problems. The use-case highlighted the lack of solutions in the literature capable of addressing such challenges and provided input for the definition of functional and non-functional requirements leading to the realization of GDup. 2.1 The OpenAIRE research graph\n3. GDup architecture: We have designed and implemented a system for graph deduplication called GDup (Atzori, 2016) (Atzori et al., 2018) whose aim is to address the general lack of tools capable of addressing a complete graph deduplication workflow, from the graph input phase to the materialisation of the disambiguated graph, enhanced by end user feedback and supported by ground truth. The architecture of system is depicted in Figure 2, whose main functional areas support an end-to-end workflow enabling data curators at:Graph import: importing their graph in the system;Candidate identification and matching: configuring for each entity type the relative duplicate identification policy;Ground Truth injection: generation of ground truth from deduplication results and injection of ground truths in future candidate identification phases;Duplicates Grouping and Merging: configuring graph disambiguation strategies;Curators feedback: supporting data curators at providing feedback to the results of deduplication;Graph export: exporting the output deduplicated graph in a standard exchange format.In the following we will first describe the type and object language of GDup based on the Property Graph Model (Rodriguez and Neubauer, 2010), then formally introduce the individual areas of the architecture and the relative functionalities. 3.1 Graph data model\n4. GDup implementation: The implementation of GDup realizes the functionalities described in the previous section by assembling known Open Source technologies (GDup Release 1.0 (Atzori and Manghi, 2017)), as shown in Figure 5. GDup is today used in the production system of OpenAIRE to deduplicate publications, datasets, software, and organizations entities in the information graph. In the following we give an high-level description of the implementation and also report on numbers and performances in the adoption of the tool. 4.1 Graph database\n5. Conclusion: The problem of deduplication applied to Big Data graphs opens actual and interesting challenges. Semi-automatic approaches, based in common general-purpose tools, are needed to reduce as much as possible the manual effort and to assist data curators in solving the domain specific disambiguation issues, repeating experiments, and sharing results with other scientists. This work describes architecture and implementation as a production-ready system of GDup, an integrated and general-purpose system for deduplication of big graphs. GDup is used in the production system of the OpenAIRE infrastructure to ensure the population of a non-ambiguous graph on top of which scientific production and Open Science statistics can be generated. Future development include (i) improvement of end-user interfaces, to make it a more user-friendly product, and (ii) the development of a crowd-sourcing toolkit allowing groups of experts (entitled by delegation) to manually add, remove, validate equality or distinction assertions so as to clean deduplication results and maintain re-usable ground truths.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Several online services offer functionalities to access information from \"big research graphs\" (e.g. Google Scholar, OpenAIRE, Microsoft Academic Graph), which correlate scholarly/scientific communication entities such as publications, authors, datasets, organizations, projects, funders, etc. Depending on the target users, access can vary from search and browse content to the consumption of statistics for monitoring and provision of feedback. Such graphs are populated over time as aggregations of multiple sources and therefore suffer from major entity-duplication problems. Although deduplication of graphs is a known and actual problem, existing solutions are dedicated to specific scenarios, operate on flat collections, local topology-drive challenges and cannot therefore be re-used in other contexts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This work presents GDup, an integrated, scalable, general-purpose system that can be customized to address deduplication over arbitrary large information graphs. The paper presents its high-level architecture, its implementation as a service used within the OpenAIRE infrastructure system and reports numbers of real-case experiments.\nFindings: GDup provides the functionalities required to deliver a fully-fledged entity deduplication workflow over a generic input graph. The system offers out-of-the-box Ground Truth management, acquisition of feedback from data curators and algorithms for identifying and merging duplicates, to obtain an output disambiguated graph.\nOriginality/value: To our knowledge GDup is the only system in the literature that offers an integrated and general-purpose solution for the deduplication graphs, while targeting big data scalability issues. GDup is today one of the key modules of the OpenAIRE infrastructure production system, which monitors Open Science trends on behalf of the European Commission, National funders and institutions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Mobile device security considerations for small- and medium-sized enterprise business mobility	[ "Small- to medium-sized enterprises", "Smartphones", "Small business", "Computer security", "Mobile business", "Tablets", "Security considerations", "4G wireless", "Medium business" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Business mobility capabilities are becoming more critical to an enterprise's everyday business environment. Nokia defined \"business mobility\" as giving employees the \"freedom to collaborate and transact business outside traditional workplaces and times. [Business mobility] is communications on the go, with access to the right information at the right time\" (Nokia White Paper, 2006, p. 2). Employees spend more time interacting with customers and vendors and less time at their desks. Instant communications cause customers to also expect immediate responses to any requests, which require real-time customer support services. Yet, even as enterprises integrate business mobility to leverage flexibility and productivity into their business strategy, they realize that they need new policies to address people, processes, and technology implications from the mobile way of doing business. Without new policies, enterprises find themselves overwhelmed with a mish-mash of various employee-owned mobile devices (referred to as \"bring your own devices (BYOD)\") and multi-vendor services. Also, as a result of the mish-mash, enterprise employees often lack systematic access to enterprise information, impeding their ability to collaborate with each other and their customers.\nSMEs technology adoption: SMEs are very important to the economies of most countries. SMEs play a major role in the USA in terms of the number or enterprises and the number of employees. According to the latest US labor statistics based on enterprise size, 99.6 percent of all enterprises had fewer than 500 employees making up 55.8 percent of the total employment (United States Department of Labor, 2005). Enterprises with one to four employees made up 54.5 percent of all enterprises, but accounted for only 5.2 percent of total employment. On the other hand, only 0.2 percent of enterprises had 1,000 or more employees, but made-up 37.4 percent of total employment (USDL, 2005). There are various definitions of SMEs. The United States Small Business Administration (SBA), Office of Advocacy, defines a small business as an independent business having fewer than 500 employees (SBA, 2011). However, for US contracting purposes, according to the USDL, businesses are considered small if they have under 100 employees and medium-sized with up to 500 employees. The SME definition differs for Europe. The 2003 European Commission for enterprise and industry defined a medium-sized business as having less than 250 employees, a small business as having less than 50 employees, and a micro business as having less than ten employees (Commission of European Communities, 2003). In Europe, SMEs comprise 99.8 percent of all enterprises.\nThe growth of business mobility phones and devices: Smartphones now account for more than 50 percent of mobile phones in the USA and continue to sell at a brisk pace, accounting for over 75 percent of the devices sold in late 2012 (Chetan-Sharma, 2013). As of February 2013, Android accounted for 36.9 percent and Apple's iOS accounted for 27.21 percent of worldwide mobile operating systems (Statcounter, 2013). The average number of mobile devices per household was five and over 6 percent of households had 15 or more devices (Chetan-Sharma, 2013). In 2013, 50 percent of the North American workforce in medium- to large-sized businesses will use smartphones and 25 percent will use tablets (Osterman Research, 2012b).\nPrimary security concerns: Statcounter Global Stats (2013) reports that as of February 2013, Microsoft Windows operating systems account for over 85 percent of the worldwide computers connected to over three million web sites monitored by the company. Besides security experts being more familiar with Microsoft's operating systems, end-users are also more familiar with Microsoft systems. Many end-users are familiar with the need to perform Windows updates and install antivirus and firewall software. The popularity of smartphones and tablets and the use of the newer and less familiar Apple's iOS and Google's Android OS pose new threats to information technology specialists and end-users. The next few sections discuss these new security concerns with Android and Apple iOS mobile devices with a focus on various implications for small, medium, and large enterprises.\nSecurity recommendations: Mobile device management\nDiscussion: Mobile device security concerns create a new business dilemma for innovative SMEs that over the last five to eight years have become early adopters of the latest technology breakthrough - mobile technologies. In the technology evolution timeline shown in Figure 1, technology has evolved from stand-alone PCs to dial up internet, then broadband internet with wireless networks, and finally, the recent introduction of smartphones and tablets. The years shown in the figure represent when the market was saturated with the technology. With the development and adoption of each of these technologies, tech-savvy SMEs were able to gradually improve their global competiveness compared with the largest enterprises. The development and adoption of \"anywhere - anytime\" technologies finally give the SMEs the competitive advantage over the largest competitors as discussed earlier in this paper. However, because of the new security concerns associated with smartphones and tablets, SME's global customer competitiveness will drastically decrease should they decide to forgo mobile devices because of security concerns due to the lack of resources or skills to address said security concerns. Large organizations will also decrease a little, but only temporarily as they take measures to secure their devices.\nConclusion: The biggest difference between large enterprise security and SME security is that the smaller firms have limited or no IT staff and considerably smaller IT budgets. A SME may not be able to implement VPNs with radius servers, perform deep packet sniffing, or completely control the data. The partial solution, though not optimal, is for SMEs to utilize the minimum security recommendations listed above. The security will not be as strong, which leads to the SME dilemma: embrace the mobility business strategy and adopt and invest in the necessary security technology, such as a MDM and MSP solution, take the above minimum recommended precautions with increased risk, or give up their mobility business strategy to protect enterprise and customer data and information.\nFuture research: The SME mobility strategy dilemma described above is serious. We do not know all the potential implications. However, these new technologies and the new security concerns create an opportunity for future research in several areas. How aware are SMEs to the new threats? What are the costs and implications for SMEs to invest in the new security technology solutions, such as MDM? What other security solutions might be more effective at lower costs? What IT capabilities must SMEs acquire to stay in the mobility business? We are continuing our research in this area and invite others to do so as well.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper's purpose is to identify and accentuate the dilemma faced by small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who use mobile devices as part of their mobility business strategy. While large enterprises have the resources to implement emerging security recommendations for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, SMEs often lack the IT resources and capabilities needed. The SME mobile device business dilemma is to invest in more expensive maximum security technologies, invest in less expensive minimum security technologies with increased risk, or postpone the business mobility strategy in order to protect enterprise and customer data and information. This paper investigates mobile device security and the implications of security recommendations for SMEs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This conceptual paper reviews mobile device security research, identifies increased security risks, and recommends security practices for SMEs.\nFindings: This paper identifies emerging mobile device security risks and provides a set of minimum mobile device security recommendations practical for SMEs. However, SMEs would still have increased security risks versus large enterprises who can implement maximum mobile device security recommendations. SMEs are faced with a dilemma: embrace the mobility business strategy and adopt and invest in the necessary security technology, implement minimum precautions with increased risk, or give up their mobility business strategy.\nPractical implications: This paper develops a practical list of minimum mobile device security recommendations for SMEs. It also increases the awareness of potential security risks for SMEs from mobile devices.\nOriginality/value: This paper expands previous research investigating SME adoption of computers, broadband internet-based services, and Wi-Fi by adding mobile devices. It describes the SME competitive advantages from adopting mobile devices for enterprise business mobility, while accentuating the increased business risks and implications for SMEs.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Education and economic growth: an empirical analysis of nonlinearities	[ "Education", "Economic growth", "Nonlinearities", "C32", "C59", "I25", "R11" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: This paper analyses the relationship between education and economic growth in Spain. It makes a contribution to the literature by analysing the existence of nonlinearities in this relationship. The direction of the causality that we account for is from education to economic growth. In some cases, an increase in education might have a positive (or large) effect on GDP growth and, in other cases, the effect might be negative (or small). Because the effect of education might differ in different stages, nonlinearities gain importance in the analysis of the relationship between education and economic growth. Specifically, we hypothesise that a country's economic growth performance differs depending on the evolution of its human capital and hence, on its educational achievement.\n2. Methodology: One common assumption when analysing the relationship between economic growth and education is that of linearity. However, this assumption would mean that the parameters in this relationship do not change over time[3]. Thus, we go beyond the conventional use of linear models by exploring nonlinear specifications that might more accurately explain the relationship between education and economic growth.\n3. Empirical analysis: 3.1 Data and descriptive analysis\n4. Results at regional level: To test whether results are robust to the degree of territorial aggregation chosen, in a first step, we construct a classification matrix to choose a representative sample of Spanish regions for the analysis. We classify regions by regional income per capita and regional government expenditure per capita. The information in Table AII in Appendix 2 is used to determine whether the different Spanish regions are above or below average in terms of both income and government expenditure on education. For example, when income per capita in a specific region is above the average over the analysed period, then this region is considered to be in a different cell of the classification matrix than a region that is below the average. A representative region is selected from each of the four groups of regions constructed (see Table AII, Appendix 2). We select four representative Autonomous Communities: Castilla y Leon, Cataluna, Comunidad Valenciana and Pais Vasco. In three of these regions (Castilla y Leon, Cataluna and Pais Vasco), the average public expenditure on fundamental public services per capita for 2009-2015 was above the average of the communities with a common system (i.e. all Autonomous Communities, excluding Pais Vasco and Navarra, which have a foral system[13]). Conversely, spending on basic public services per capita in Comunidad Valenciana is below the average of the communities with a common system [Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Economicas (IVIE) (2017)].\n5. Conclusions and discussion: In this paper, the assumption of linearity in the relationship between education and economic growth is called into question. We opt for a time series framework (analysing the period from 1971 to 2013) and, more specifically, we estimate STR models for Spain. The estimated models reflect how the variation in education (contemporary or one or two periods before) generates nonlinear effects on current economic growth.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Might a country's economic growth performance differ depending on the evolution of its human capital? This paper aims to consider education as a channel for human capital improvement and then for economic growth. The authors hypothesize the existence of a threshold for education, after which point the characteristics of economic growth change.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To address this question, the authors turn from a linear framework to a nonlinear one by applying smooth transition specifications.\nFindings: This empirical analysis for Spain points to the existence of nonlinearities in the relationship between education and economic growth at country level, for both secondary and tertiary education. Next, as different patterns emerge in different regions, the authors provide a regional analysis for a number of representative Spanish regions. The results show that both secondary and tertiary education matter for economic growth and that nonlinearities in this relationship should be taken into account.\nPractical implications: What is learnt from using Smooth Transition Regression models for the education-economic growth link is that the educational level of the population can be understood as a source of nonlinearities in the economic activity of a country (and of a region). Thus, depending on national and regional educational levels, economic growth behaves differently.\nOriginality/value: Although the importance of nonlinearities has been identified, linearity is usually assumed in this field of the literature. This paper calls into question the linearity assumption by using time series techniques for 1971-2013 in Spain, an OECD country, and testing whether the results at country level hold for different regions within Spain as a robustness check.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Street food traders, farmers and sustainable practice to reduce food waste in the Italian context	[ "Farmers", "Food waste", "Data envelopment analysis", "Outdoor market", "Street food traders", "Unsold food" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Around the world, important development challenges demand innovative suggestions to kick-start changes and processes for achieving economic and social goals (Khalid and Seuring, 2019). Such sustainable development is defined as meeting \"the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs\" (Golini et al., 2017, p. 931). The core premise here is to achieve sustainable development by taking into account three perspectives: environmental, social and economic issues (Christofi et al., 2015). However, until recently, extant literature on the business model paid limited attention to the environmental and social concerns of today's world economy (Pedersen et al., 2018). Research mainly focused on market sustainability rather than environmental and/or social sustainability (Pedersen et al., 2018; Schaltegger et al., 2011). Lately, however, there has been increasing interest in encapsulating corporate sustainability within a conventional business model paradigm (Pedersen et al., 2018). Concepts relating to the societal perspective of business models have been introduced to describe new business thinking that benefits both businesses and society. The objective of this paper is to embrace this embryonic logic, focusing on the food sector, where wasting food is being seen as socially unacceptable.\nLiterature review: Food waste\nMethodology: The DEA model was used to answer this study's research questions by measuring the relative efficiency of individual outdoor market operators and evaluating the major factors that affect it. It measured the relative efficiency of individual operators in the first stage of the study; then the results were analyzed to determine the main differences between farmers and street food traders, highlighting the reasons.\nFindings: Efficiency scores\nDiscussion: This work aims at analyzing how outdoor market fruit and vegetable operators manage their unsold products and if this management can provide a competitive advantage. In theory, food waste generated over different phases of the food supply chain makes food operators' costs increase whether conducting their core business, in terms of production and distribution, or managing waste.\nConclusion: The main operators of outdoor food markets, i.e. farmers and street food traders, can generate unsold food and contribute to produce food waste in the retail phases of the food supply chain. Their approach differs in term of management of the unsold food, on the one hand, farmers are characterized by cultural and rural approach that aim at zero waste, on the other hand, street food traders believe that waste reduction is an opportunity to improve their image. The obtained results in the present study show that these different approaches can be generated diverse business efficiency. Moreover, results seem to underline the importance of strengthening the connection between the local area, products and farming culture to improve the management of unsold and waste food and the need to encourage the different operators to cooperate in waste management more efficiently. Indeed, collecting leftover food which is still usable - especially fruit and vegetables - from the market areas can contribute to creating value. This is the case for individual operators in terms of reducing costs or improving efficiency but also for society as a whole in terms of reducing the negative impact of waste disposal and increasing the positive impact by boosting initiatives in favor of guaranteeing food security. This situation shows that unsold and unsaleable food, even though it has lost its commercial value at market, still has potential that allows it to maintain positive aspects in economic and social terms. An organizational structure that is able to connect all food retailers with all potential consumers seems necessary in order to improve the efficiency of the retail system and advantage everyone involved. The advantages can be economic benefits, reduction in environmental impact and positive ethical-social effects.\nImplications, limitations and future research: Our research makes the following contributions. Building upon this embryonic research area, we offer a critical analysis of the extant literature, as well as some interesting empirical results on the impact of food waste management on outdoor market operators' efficiency. Second, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that analyses outdoor market operators' efficiency, based on the use of food waste as a variable affecting their performance. Third, our findings provide some indicators on how a more rational style of unsold food management can improve an operators' performance and help make a significant social impact. Fourth, we focused on an under-researched sector in which sustainability plays a crucial role toward the development of a competitive advantage, thus, our findings provide the basis for future scholars to build on.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how food waste management can affect both retail and distribution operators' efficiency performance and their ability to create value. In particular, the paper shows how optimizing food waste management characterizes best practices and favors the development of sustainability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on a survey of 196 outdoor market operators (including farmers and street food traders) from 27 outdoor markets, the authors analyzed unsold food/food wastage processes vis-a-vis the operators' behavior and attitude. To provide accurate definitions of the satisfaction levels, a consumer perception survey was carried out, with a usable sample of 2,107 questionnaires. The efficiency performance was evaluated according to data envelopment analysis.\nFindings: The results showed that farmers operate more efficiently than street food traders and that the traditional management of unsold food/food waste is an important competitive element in this sector.\nResearch limitations/implications: The sample represents the Greater Turin Area in Italy, i.e., thus, limiting generalizability of the results. In addition, the variables analyzed were limited to certain aspects of selling processes and food waste management.\nPractical implications: The results provide some indicators on how a more rational style of unsold food management can improve an operators' performance and help make a social impact.\nOriginality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that analyses outdoor market operators' efficiency, based on the use of food waste as a variable affecting their performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Building entrepreneurial knowledge reservoirs	[ "Entrepreneurialism", "Knowledge management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: De Boer et al. (1999) claim that knowledge is the most important resource in terms of a company gaining competitive advantage. This can be accomplished through building a knowledge network (Nordhaug, 1993), which Leonard-Barton (1995) defines as a mutually dependent knowledge system. In the strategy literature, the concept of environmental scanning conveys how companies are more rapidly responding to changes in the environment (Thompson, 1967; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). Environmental scanning occurs through interaction with the environment. Johannessen et al. (1999) emphasize this interaction, claiming that knowledge management must embrace the company's entire knowledge base system, not only the internal knowledge, but external as well. This is, according to Johannessen et al., in contrast to the management literature, known as scientific management.The importance of knowledge in sustaining and enhancing a firm's compositeness makes the acquisition of new knowledge a top managerial priority (Inkpen, 1998; Abou-Zeid, 2002). However, because very few new venture firm enjoy the full range of knowledge and experience needed for timely and cost-effective product and service innovation, firms are increasingly engaging in various forms of collaboration, such as joint ventures, strategic alliances and clusters, in order to access the knowledge and capabilities unavailable internally (Premaratne, 2001; Abou-Zeid, 2002). These collaborative arrangements are embodied in what we refer to throughout this work as building knowledge reservoirs.The concept of knowledge reservoirs is based on how managers build and acquire knowledge (McGrath and Argote, 2000) and has its foundation in resource-based theory (RBT). According to several studies (Chandler and Hanks, 1994; Brush and Greene, 1996) RBT is a central concept in understanding how entrepreneurial firms identify and acquire resources to achieve competitive advantage (Stevenson and Gumpert, 1985). According to RBT, resources can be combined or developed over time to generate unique capabilities that increase competitive advantage (Amit and Shoemaker, 1993). Schumpeter (1934) points to the link between RBT and entrepreneurship and defines entrepreneurship as the activity associated with innovatively combining resources into something that the market identifies as new. In knowledge-based firms, knowledge is the most important resource, and it is in this category we find new technology-based firms (NTBFs). Recently, NTBFs have received an increasing amount of attention, due in part to the fact that these companies represent the biggest potential for economic growth and new jobs (Storey, 1994; Rickne and Jacobsson, 1996; Jones-Evans and Westhead, 1996; Mason and Harrison, 1999). This is why it is important to study these firms, and seek to understand how they can achieve competitive advantage.Entrepreneurship is a multifunctional, multifaceted exercise. It is, therefore, not controversial to claim that entrepreneurs need access to multifunctional knowledge, or business knowledge to manage the start-up. Business knowledge can be defined as multifunctional knowledge comprised of the product, market, organizational, and financing facets. One can assume that entrepreneurs do not personally hold all the business knowledge requisite to gaining competitive advantage (Chrisman, 1999; Premaratne, 2001). Entrepreneurs in NTBFs require knowledge beyond themselves, and thus they must cooperate with other actors that possess this knowledge. One cost-effective way of acquiring this knowledge is by creating knowledge reservoirs. Premaratne (2001, p. 363) refers to these resources as \"... gratis, which are exchanged without economic agreements between the two parties\". The effectiveness resides in getting cost-effective access to the knowledge, by organizing the knowledge in internal, semi-internal, and external knowledge reservoirs. This work attempts to develop a research-based model to assess and to assist the development of NTBFs.\nLiterature review and conceptual framework: A fundamental problem entrepreneurs should ask themselves is: \"What knowledge is essential to the development process needed to achieve competitive knowledge?\"Many studies claim that access to knowledge recourses is essential to gaining competitive advantage, and that setting up networks is the means for this. On the other hand, few studies identify what kind of knowledge is available, and where. Esteemed studies are also static in relation to the time dimension, requiring one to search for fragments in the literature, and put them together to form the conceptual framework.The process of reviewing literature and empirical findings resulted in the development of the following conceptual model, entitled \"Building knowledge reservoirs\" (Figure 1). The introduction of the model at this early stage is advantageous because it illustrates the paper's framework, structure, and focus. The model consists of the following elements: business knowledge, knowledge reservoirs, knowledge management, innovation, and comparative advantage, the main focus being the two first elements.The figure can be explained as follows: within the knowledge management box we find the entrepreneur, who in this setting is a manager in a NTBF. Above knowledge management we find innovation. This represents the entrepreneur undertaking in wealth creation through continuous innovative activities to gain comparative advantage. The comparative advantage in this setting is more a symbol of an ideal than an exact measuring instrument, where the comparative advantage is the objective and the activities beneath are the means. The arrow from comparative advantage to knowledge management indicates that the entrepreneur is getting continuous feedback from the market, and through this should be able to adjust the knowledge management and by that the innovative activity. In the model, we can see that the entrepreneur interacts with the knowledge reservoir. Each of the reservoirs conducts different actors. The knowledge reservoirs are divided into three sub-reservoirs:1. the internal knowledge reservoir;2. the semi-internal knowledge reservoir; and3. the external knowledge reservoir.These reservoirs are where the entrepreneur accesses knowledge beyond that knowledge they themselves possess. Doing business is a multidisciplinary affair, and the model is divided into four main categories (Schneider, 1998; Widding, 2003; Sorheim et al., 2005) related to:1. product;2. market;3. organization; and4. finance.In relation to the figure, the focus of this paper is on building a framework, outlining what knowledge could be relevant for the entrepreneur, and then identifying which actors in the knowledge reservoirs possess this knowledge. This is of primary importance to entrepreneurs because this insight will decrease time spent seeking relevant knowledge, and increase their chances to achieve comparative advantage. To highlight these issues, a review of literature that supports the structure of the conceptual model follows, giving it concrete substance. This review is supported by empirical examples from six NTBFs, originating from the Norwegian University of Technology and Science in Trondheim, Norway.Foremost, the literature review will be used to give an account of the concept of business knowledge, and subsequently fill the knowledge reservoirs with adequate actors.Business knowledge\nMethodology: The empirical base of this study consists of seven entrepreneurs in six NTBFs located in Trondheim and Oslo, Norway. Each entrepreneur was interviewed during the period spanning December 1999-2001, as well as observed in the conceptual setting in which they operate; that is, in their newly established technology-based firm. Beyond this, there has been sporadic contact, wherein factual matters or administrative issues have been the main agenda. In addition, the researcher has reviewed various types of company documentation, such as annual reports, and company web sites have also been closely monitored.The analysis is inspired by grounded theory, wherein one of the main issues is how one can develop theory from data in a systematic manner. This approach enables the researcher to obtain relevant predictions, explanations, and interpretations, in addition to making the research more applicable. It is important to point out that it is primarily the methods of analysis that have been adopted in this work, and not the entire philosophy of science of Glaser and Strauss. The interviews are organized on several levels, from pure reports, through A-categories, and three B-categories. The A-categories are organized according to the different companies involved, whereas the B-categories are organized by entering the relevant A-categories in the model (B1), connecting the different knowledge reservoirs with business knowledge (B2), and further establishing a connection between actors and specific business knowledge (B3).\nEmpirical backing and discussion: As shown above, the literature paints a relatively rough sketch when identifying both knowledge reservoir actors and elements related to business knowledge. The literature lacks the richness of detail, which is both of theoretic and practical interest, especially for entrepreneurs. This is why it is necessary to introduce empirical backing to strengthen the concept.The most important case study contributions were: first, they helped identify concrete actors that can be organized into the knowledge reservoirs, and second, they revealed what kind of knowledge these actors contribute in terms of business knowledge. Table II illustrates the introduction information from the cases, providing a much richer foundation and more detailed knowledge about this topic.One can see that the entrepreneurs have their largest knowledge reservoir within the product business knowledge category. They gain access to knowledge from all three knowledge reservoirs. The cases show that the entrepreneurs use the reservoirs across several phases, from R&D, to production and operation. It is interesting to observe that they use both customers and competitors, research institutions and universities. When it comes to business knowledge related to the market, fewer actors and fewer tasks are identified. The employees and investors are still important actors, while competitors, research institutions and universities have dropped out as contributors. It seems that others actors, which incur cost, also enter the reservoirs at this point, such as agents, consultants, and temporary staff. When it comes to tasks, they vary from identifying new markets, market strategy, marketing, sales, export, and the evaluation of customers.Within the organizing business knowledge category, the picture changes somewhat. There are noticeably fewer actors from the external knowledge reservoir, but new actors that had yet to be identified within the product and market knowledge category emerge. Examples are the chairman of the board and other members of the board. Competitors, that were not found to be actors within the market category, are now back in business and for the first time friends and lawyers are introduced. They contribute on a broad scale, from strategy and innovation, via management and administration, to operations like those of forming mergers and preparing contracts.The finance business knowledge category is the smallest, both when it comes to actors and tasks. For the first time we do not find actors from the internal knowledge reservoir. The actors are situated in the semi-internal knowledge reservoir, and in the external; actors such as friends, lawyers, brokers, and auditor. This result from the fact that these tasks have a formal character; statements of value, fusion, emission, and bankruptcy petition, for example.Internal knowledge reservoirs, actors and contribution related to business knowledge\nConclusions and implications: In RBT, a company's resource base has traditionally been regarded as internal. The treatment of resources has been too restricted and static; resources have been perceived as something that the business already has, and the main challenge has been the management of this resource base. This is why RBT has failed to grasp the challenges of entrepreneurship. This can be illustrated through the following points: firstly, one could argue that entrepreneurship to a high degree is about getting access to resources one does not have, as opposed to managing a set of given resources. Secondly, knowledge as the main resource in new technology-based companies is a very dynamic resource, requiring a different kind of management than that of traditional industrial businesses. Thirdly, the knowledge of newly established companies is often the knowledge of the individual employee (tacit knowledge), and consequently the companies will have a relatively limited ownership of the resource base.One of the interesting findings from this study is that it confirms the phrase that \"the employees are the firm's most important resource\". So it is. They are standing forward as the most central knowledge actor, i.e. when it comes to identifying customers, implementing introductory sales, and handling request for offers, marketing, and looking for new market opportunities. Also within the strategy category, the employees are the most distinguished. Another interesting finding is that investors represented on the board (often business angels) outdistance the other actors within the semi-internal reservoir when it comes to knowledge contribution. Somewhat surprising, including the chairman of the board. When it comes to the external knowledge reservoir, the picture is somewhat fragmented. It seems that the entrepreneurs are shopping knowledge related to emerging challenges. An interesting empirical finding, that has no clear theoretical support, is that friends seem to play an important role for the entrepreneurs.The paper makes four main contributions:1. model generation;2. development of terminology;3. further development of the field of entrepreneurial research; and4. development of RBT.The conceptual model is first introduced as a preliminary framework, and subsequently content is supplied throughout the research process. The content is collected both from the literature and the empirical analysis. In addition, a model is introduced, which inserts entrepreneurial activities (knowledge management and innovation) into a knowledge system. The model could have an implication for further research within the field, because such a framework has been missing. Especially it would be useful to test the conceptual model on larger sample sizes. The second contribution is the development of new terminology. The most important contribution is the term \"knowledge reservoir\", which is developed in an entrepreneurial setting. Further, the term \"business knowledge\" is introduced and defined. This could have both practical and theoretical implications. The entrepreneurs are given a new terminology that can help them increase their understanding of how to gain competitive advantage, and how to build their own knowledge reservoirs. The third contribution is to further develop the field of entrepreneurial research in relation to understanding the entrepreneur as a knowledge manager, while the fourth contribution is to develop RBT to shed light on the processes that take place between input and output in companies.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to add to our understanding of how entrepreneurs can build \"knowledge reservoirs\" to achieve competitive advantage. The study focus upon the following issues: what kind of actors can be found in various entrepreneurs' knowledge reservoirs, and what business knowledge do these actors possess.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The author employs a longitudinal case study approach, involving a sample of seven entrepreneurs in new technology-based firms, each interviewed two times during the period from 1999 to 2001.\nFindings: - Evidence suggests that entrepreneurs should build knowledge reservoirs, segmented into internal, semi-internal and external knowledge reservoirs. These reservoirs should be a means to gain competition advantage.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The conceptual model has both empirical and theoretical backing, but the empirical backing is limited to seven cases. It would be useful to test the conceptual model on larger sample sizes.\nPractical implications: - Practitioners can focus on how to build knowledge reservoirs, while the model helps to increase awareness of the holistic view of entrepreneurial knowledge and which actors can contribute to it. Policy makers should encourage entrepreneurs to build knowledge reservoirs, and support systems could require a plan for this activity before entrepreneurs get access to public funds.\nOriginality/value: - The paper makes four main contributions: model generation, development of terminology, further development of the field of entrepreneurial research, and development of RBT.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Simultaneous output and input hedging: a decision analysis	[ "Input/output analysis", "Hedging", "Pricing", "Financial risk", "Stock options" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The vast majority of the literature that dealt with hedging considered output price and output uncertainty. Many of these papers lacked generality and adopted very restrictive frameworks. For example, Anderson and Danthine (1983) and Rolfo (1980) relied on a mean-variance formulation; Lapan and Moschini (1994) assumed constant absolute risk aversion. Alghalith (2006a) excluded input hedging.Literature that dealt with cost uncertainty is scarce. Paroush and Wolf (1992) included input price uncertainty; but they excluded output price uncertainty. They presented a model where the firm hedges only the input. In addition, their results were based on the assumption of constant absolute risk aversion. Viaene and Zilcha (1998) included cost uncertainty, where the firm hedges both the output and foreign currency. However, they excluded input hedging. Also, they used a single-input production function. Furthermore, they assumed a statistical independence between output price and input price. Moreover, they did not show the impact of the risks on the optimal hedge or the hedge ratio. Alghalith (2003) exhibited similar limitations. Sevi (2004) assumed a statistical independence between the output price and input price and focused on the separation property. The absence of such results constitutes a gap in the hedging literature, since no study generally showed these results. Alghalith (2007, 2006b) excluded output hedging.Adding options would produce a more sophisticated model. However, this would be beyond the scope of this short paper; this could be a good idea for a future study. Also, the inclusion of options will change the results and assumptions. Moreover, it is very common in the literature to exclude options in hedging models.Using a general utility function and general distributions, we present a more realistic and complete model where the firm can hedge both the input and output. Furthermore, unlike previous literature, we relax the assumption of the statistical independence between the output price and input price. The limitations of this assumption are discussed by Sevi (2004). We also adopt a multiple-input technology. In doing so, we show the impact of cost/output price risk or both risks on the optimal output/input hedge and hedge ratios. We also show the impact of output price/cost risk or both risks on the optimal output and risky input.This paper has significant practical implications. The results of the paper can be empirically tested. In real life simultaneous output and input hedging is common. For example, for the electricity companies, futures markets exist for both the electricity price and the gas price.\n2. The model: The firm has the option to hedge both the output and the input. Input hedging is defined as the forward buying of the input; while output hedging is defined as the forward selling of the output. The profit function is specified by Equation 1 where:p~ =the random output price with mean p;f =the production function;x =the input vectorw~1 =the random input price with mean w1;wi =the non-random input price;b =the non-random output forward price;h =the output hedge;z =the input hedge; andg =the non-random input forward price.The risk averse firm maximises the expected utility of the profit p~: Equation 2 where u is a Neumann-Morgenstern utility function.The first-order conditions are: Equation 3 Equation 4 Equation 5 Equation 6 Adding (1)-(4), we obtain: Equation 7 Equation 8 Thus, output is not determined by the probability distributions of the prices or the firm's attitude towards risk. The financial decisions are independent from the production decisions. That is, the separation property holds.\n3. Decision analysis: This section compares the optimal input and output to their certainty-equivalent values (the optimal values with complete certainty). It also compares the optimal input, output, hedge and hedge ratios to the case when there is only one risk.We use the superscripts , -, ^, to denote the optimal values under complete uncertainty, complete certainty, only output price uncertainty, only cost uncertainty, respectively.P1. The risky input x1 is less than (equal to) (greater than) its certainty-equivalent level if g is upward biased (unbiased) (downward biased) and b is unbiased.Proof\n4. Conclusion: We were able to verify the separation property even in the existence of simultaneous output price and cost uncertainty. This is due to the fact that the input forward market acts as a second tool that stabilizes output. When the firm faces two sources of uncertainty, two hedging tools are needed to stabilize output. This result can be extended to the case of multiple input price uncertainty and multiple forward markets; that is, the number of forward markets must equal the number of risks. We found that the impact of one or both risks on the optimal output, hedge, or hedge ratio is determined by the market structure of one or both forward prices. This model can be extended by future studies in several ways. For example, basis risk and/or production risk can be added, or multiple risky inputs can be examined.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to present a realistic hedging model.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper uses a general utility function, general distributions, and a multiple-input technology.\nFindings: - The study finds that the impact of one or both risks on the optimal output, hedge, or hedge ratio is determined by the market structure of one or both forward pieces.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first paper that uses a general, complete, and realistic hedging model.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
R & D expenditures and future innovation: evidence from the chemical industry	[ "Chemical firms", "Innovation effect", "Research and development expenditures" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Under United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), companies are required to expense their research and development (R\n2. Literature review and hypothesis development: R\n3. Research design: 3.1 Measurement of the primary variable - innovation effect\n4. Results: The hypothesis predicts that R\n5. Conclusion: This study investigates the association between R\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to investigate whether research and development (R\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study examines the relation between R\nFindings: Results indicate that there is a significant and positive relation between R\nOriginality/value: This study should be of interest to financial accounting policy makers, R\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Creating the customer-responsive supply chain: a reconciliation of concepts	[ "Supply chain management", "Response flexibility", "Bespoke production" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: In market conditions of increasing levels of product variety and customisation, the ability to respond to customer orders in a timely fashion can provide a critical competitive advantage. Across industry sectors, such as fashion (Christopher, 2000; Storey et al., 2005), personal computers (Kapuscinski et al., 2004), consumer electronics (Catalan and Kotzab, 2003), construction (Arbulu et al., 2003), and automobiles (Holweg and Pil, 2004), companies are contemplating strategies to increase their responsiveness to customer needs by offering high product variety with short lead-times. More recently, the discussion of mass customised products (Lampel and Mintzberg, 1996; Gilmore and Pine, 1997) has shifted the discussion beyond the simple provision of product variety towards individually customised products. While these customer-driven or build-to-order (BTO) strategies have been implemented in the personal computer sector, with Dell being the most prominent example (Kapuscinski et al., 2004), complex manufacturing operations, such as automotive, have been slower in adopting these strategies (Hertz et al., 2001; Holweg and Pil, 2004).The increasing importance of BTO supply chains results from two developments: first, the number of product variants has been increasing across most industries, such as consumer electronics (Catalan and Kotzab, 2003), fashion and sportswear (Fisher et al., 1994), and automobiles (Holweg and Pil, 2004). Second, time has become a factor in competitiveness as customers are increasingly reluctant to accept long lead-times for products and services (Bower and Hout, 1988; Stalk, 1988). The former development creates severe operational problems for traditional make-to-forecast or \"push\" strategies, as firms require large amounts of finished goods inventories to ensure customers find the specifications they are looking for. In the case of the Mercedes E-Class, which is available in more than three septillion (3 x 1024) variations (Pil and Holweg, 2004) for example, a make-to-forecast strategy becomes virtually impossible. While BTO strategies can help overcome the first hurdle, existing auto supply chains are not sufficiently responsive to deal with the second development; impatient customers, who would like their vehicles delivered within 2-3 weeks, rather than the current six weeks (Holweg et al., 2005a).Across industry sectors, the concept of responsiveness has been receiving increasing attention in the operations management literature, and has been advanced as one of the key themes in recent supply chain research. However, we regard supply chain responsiveness (SCR) not as an operations paradigm in its own right, but rather as a concept that can implicitly rest at the core of various operations strategies, such as lean thinking (Womack and Jones, 1996, as described by Hines et al., 2004), agility (Goldman and Nagel, 1993) and more recently, BTO supply chain management (Gunasekaran and Ngai, 2005). Common to all of these is the importance of customer-oriented pull systems, as opposed to traditional forecast-based mass production systems (Skinner, 1969; Hill and Chambers, 1991; Fisher, 1997). Responsiveness thus is a crucial aspect of BTO supply chains, yet not one that is confined to them, as the fashion industry with some highly responsive non BTO supply chains demonstrates (Christopher, 2000).We argue that the importance of responsiveness in today's industry settings, in conjunction with a wealth of contributions that have blurred the boundaries to related concepts, such as flexibility (Slack, 1987; Upton, 1994), agility (Goldman and Nagel, 1993; van Hoek et al., 2001; Yusuf et al., 2004), and lean thinking (Womack and Jones, 1996; Hines et al., 2004), justifies a review of this body of literature, and the subsequent attempt to propose a set of clear definitions. In particular, a key shortcoming of the existing definitions of responsiveness is their unclear separation from the definitions of flexibility. Furthermore, SCR is a goal that can be achieved through multiple means, the appropriateness of which largely depends on various product and market related characteristics. A framework that provides a holistic approach to responsiveness, explaining the interdependencies within and between its external requirements and internal determinants, is still missing. Thus, the main objectives of this paper are:* to propose a clear definition of SCR and its relationship to flexibility; and* to develop a holistic framework, capturing the individual factors that require and enable the responsiveness of a supply chain system.The first section of the paper will define responsiveness and its relation to the concept of flexibility drawing mainly on existing definitions of flexibility and responsiveness, both in manufacturing systems and supply chains, and supported by systems terminology (Ackoff, 1971). The second section will review the literature on the requirements and determinants of responsiveness towards the proposition and explanation of a conceptual framework of SCR. Finally, conclusions, managerial implications and areas for future research will be presented.\n2 Towards a generic definition of responsiveness: There is considerable ambiguity in the existing literature with regards to the differences between responsiveness and flexibility. Furthermore, both terms are often used to describe features of manufacturing systems (Slack, 1987; Gindy et al., 1999) and entire supply chains (Handfield and Bechtel, 2002; Lummus et al., 2003), and are at times used interchangeably, yet do not capture exactly the same concept. In addition, within the last decade two new terms have been introduced, \"agility\" and \"leagility\" (Goldman and Nagel, 1993; Naylor et al., 1999), which postulate flexibility and responsiveness in manufacturing operations, organisations and supply chains as a key tenet of a firm's competitiveness.Historically, the first contributions on flexibility focused entirely on manufacturing systems, and were only later extended to entire supply chains. Responsiveness on the other hand is a term that has only more recently been introduced as a distinct, independent concept in the operations literature. Table I lists the key contributors to the flexibility and responsiveness streams and their respective scope (manufacturing system vs supply chain), which will be discussed in detail below.In this section, we aim to consolidate these concepts into a generic definition of responsiveness, and to define its relationship to flexibility. The literature on the definition of flexibility and its classification is reviewed, initially focussing on manufacturing systems and then extending it to include entire supply chains. Subsequently, the concept of responsiveness in manufacturing systems and supply chains is discussed, reviewing existing definitions. Finally, a generic definition including the relationship between flexibility and responsiveness is proposed and its implications and assumptions are discussed.2.1 Flexibility in manufacturing and supply chain systems\n3 Towards a framework for responsiveness: 3.1 Approach to literature review\n4 Conclusions: In this paper, the literature on operational responsiveness and flexibility was reviewed and consolidated, taking a particular focus on concepts that relate to creating a customer-responsive supply chain system. While seminal contributions have been made (Slack, 1987; Upton, 1994) which have developed our understanding of the underlying theoretical concepts, the definitions used are at times contradictory and generally do not provide the crucial distinction between the \"responsiveness\" and \"flexibility\" concepts. Furthermore, while the individual cause-and-effect relationships provide some insights into selected linkages between the key variables, they do not provide the holistic view required to describe this complex concept. Hence, based on our review, we propose that:* There are different types of responsiveness, both in terms of the unit of change (product, volume, mix and delivery responsiveness) and in terms of the time horizon affected (short, medium or even long-term responsiveness).* A supply chain can (and is even likely to) exhibit different levels of responsiveness, depending on where in the supply chain its responsiveness is measured.* One needs to distinguish between factors that require a supply chain to be responsive and those that enable it to be responsive. This leads to the conclusion that at any point in a supply chain, the supply chain will have a potential and demonstrated responsiveness.Moreover, we argue that, based on the framework developed, individual supply chain partners and their integration with each other can either increase or decrease an overall supply chain's responsiveness. This proposition leads to the conclusion that there are different ways to increase the responsiveness of supply chains, some of which will be more costly than others, yet the real costs and benefits of increasing a supply chain's responsiveness cannot be assessed by considering individual echelons only. As a consequence, a supply chain's responsiveness can only be understood by investigating the responsiveness of its individual members and their interactions, yet such investigations should be specific about the type of responsiveness studied. In particular, we would like to argue for a two-part approach to building responsive and cost-efficient supply chains, a combination crucial to the expansion of BTO supply chains: first, a reduction of requirements at each echelon, and second, an adjustment of the internal determinants of responsiveness in the upstream supply chains. Such an approach will also ensure that - at every echelon - the supply chain's potential and demonstrated responsiveness are aligned, avoiding unnecessary costs.We hope that the definition and framework will inform the further study of SCR by providing both a clarification of the concepts involved, and a guideline to conduct more quantitative, yet holistic investigations in this area.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - While the concept of supply chain responsiveness (SCR) has received considerable attention in the operations management literature, mostly under the auspices of concepts such as build-to-order, mass customisation, lean and agility, so far there is a lack of comprehensive definition of SCR, as well as a defined relationship between \"responsiveness\" and \"flexibility\". Also, the frameworks at hand tend to consider only a subset of factors previously identified in the literature, and thus do not comprehensively portray the cause-and-effect relationships involved. This paper aims to address these gaps.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper synthesises the existing contributions to manufacturing and supply chain flexibility and responsiveness, and draws on various related bodies of literature that affect a supply chain's responsiveness such as the discussion of product architecture and modularisation.\nFindings: - Four types of responsiveness are identified: product, volume, mix, and delivery, all of which can relate to different time horizons, and can be present as either potential or demonstrated responsiveness. It is argued that a supply chain can feature different levels of responsiveness at different tiers, depending on the configuration of the individual nodes, as well as the integration thereof. Furthermore, a holistic framework is proposed, distinguishing between requiring and enabling factors for responsiveness, identifying the key relationships within and between these two categories.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The definition and framework proposed provide novel insights into the concept of SCR as well as a clear terminology that will inform future research. The framework developed in this paper is suitable for both qualitative and holistic quantitative studies.\nOriginality/value: - In addition to a detailed review of the factors associated with SCR, a generic definition of responsiveness is developed. The paper proposes a definition of four types of responsiveness which will support further empirical studies into the concept and its application. Furthermore, a holistic framework is developed that allows for cause-and-effect relationships to be investigated and dependencies to be identified.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Towards ex-centric theorizing of work and learning	[ "Workplace learning", "Globalization", "Empowerment", "Experiential learning", "Knowledge production", "Workers’ knowledge" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This article arises out of a longstanding interest in exploring the nature of informal learning, and in particular knowledge generated in social action contexts. This interest originated in my early involvement in education work with trade unions and in worker literacy, and was fuelled by the realization that the valuable knowledge generated in such informal social contexts has historically been invisible in the eyes of the academy. I have argued elsewhere (Cooper, 2006) that knowledge gained in the course of collective social action can play an important role not only as a fertile springboard for the acquisition of formal academic knowledge, but may also in its own right contribute to and enrich our formal knowledge archive.\nIlluminating hidden knowledge at RWL conferences: Over the past decade, papers presented to RWL conferences have addressed numerous themes related to hidden knowledge in work and learning. For example, many of the papers from the RWL5 conference held in Cape Town (and subsequently published in Cooper and Walters, 2009) focused on the polarization between the new, high-tech economy on the one hand, and the \"generic\", low-skills economy on the other. Among these, Mojab's (2009) paper spoke about the enormous wastage of skill and knowledge that she argues is endemic to the logic of capitalism. Also included in this conference were research papers on the informal or survival economies; for example, von Kotze's 2011 paper was concerned with how technical and vocational education and training can be rethought to address the needs of those working in the informal sector, and be of help in strengthening the livelihood activities of women in particular. Others pointed to large areas of work that are devalued and rendered invisible, despite the fact that they play an essential role in the reproduction of our society. For example, Grossman pointed to domestic workers as a rich source of intellectual life that is generally ignored; Barter (2009) showed how the knowledge of rural teachers is undervalued, while Sawchuk and Kempf (2009) - focusing on learning among guest workers in Canada - showed how migration renders citizenship exclusionary. Anannya Battacharjee's presentation on immigrant, working class communities in the USA and India, and Jennifer's (Hays, 2009) paper on the traditional subsistence practices of San communities in Southern Africa, both pointed to the issues of hidden work and subjugated knowledges (for published versions of these papers, see Cooper and Walters, 2009).\nArriving at the problem: It seemed to me that Rastogi's base in a country in the south may have led him to question the adequacy of conventional theoretical resources to make sense of the life-world of child workers in his country, and this led me to reflect critically on my own work on informal learning within the trade union movement. Theoretically, I have drawn on a few \"canonical\" sociology of education theorists, for example Bernstein, Vygotsky and Lave and Wenger (Cooper, 2005 and 2006). I have tried to work creatively with these theoretical frameworks, challenging and extending them where possible. However, I have often felt as if I were trying to squeeze a round peg into a square hole; in other words, that what I was looking at just could not be adequately captured and conceptualized through these established theoretical frameworks. While I have identified historically marginalized knowledge, and tried to foreground those whose knowledge is often rendered invisible in conventional research, I have not attempted to evolve new theoretical tools.\nQuestioning northern theory: Looking at the research literature on work and learning over the past decade or so, it is clear that like many other fields of social research, there is considerable reliance on theories that have been evolved and developed by theorists working in the context of advanced, industrial economies in the geo-political north[2].\nContributions of theorizing from the south: To demonstrate the potential value of theory generated in the south for our global knowledge archive, Connell (2007) presents a rich array of work from scholars in Latin America, Asia and Africa who seldom, if ever, \"make it\" into the taught curricula of universities - both in the north and south. Some of these perspectives have potential relevance for those of us involved in researching and theorizing work and learning.\nConclusions: In this article, I have suggested that theory acts as a lens, illuminating some things and leaving others in the shadows. Where and how theory is developed shapes it as a lens; in other words, theoretical frameworks reflect - to some extent at least - the social contexts in which they evolve, emphasizing particular values and intellectual and social priorities and de-emphasizing others.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to highlight the value of research contributions that have focused on making visible the knowledge of those historically excluded from formal knowledge-making. It identifies key bodies of theory that have grounded these analyses, and questions whether we can fully do justice to this project if we continue to rely on established \"canons\" of social science theory.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The article reviews research contributions to Researching Work and Learning conferences over the past decade, aimed at identifying those who have been invisible as makers of knowledge. It then considers a body of critique that our dominant epistemologies within the social sciences are rooted in unequal global and local power relations.\nFindings: In the literature on workplace learning, a few theoretical paradigms forged in the global north seem to predominate. The article concludes that we need to re-centre our sources of knowledge-making to what Homi Bhabha has called an \"ex-centric\" site, if we are to develop more inclusive theorizations of work and learning, and more socially just ways of working and learning in the future.\nOriginality/value: The article invites researchers to reflect critically on their use of theory, and to be more proactive in developing theories with an angle of vision outside of the geo-political centre, so as to better understand the diversity of work and learning globally.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Better to be flexible than to have flunked: The mediating role of service flexibility and its determinants for team performance	[ "Behaviour", "Teams" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: In today's complex and volatile markets in which knowledgeable customers demand services that meet or exceed their ever-increasing expectations, the vital role of service teams in achieving many organizational goals has become unquestionable (Christopher, 2000; Stout et al., 1997). Unlike service teams, individual service staffs are unable to coordinate efforts for internal and external service deliveries (Deeter-Schmelz and Ramsey, 2003). Given the critical importance of service teams to organizational success, the requirement for effective teamwork is indispensable.\nResearch model and hypotheses: This study establishes a research model (see Figure 1) based on theories of proactive motivation and collectivism to explain the development of service flexibility and team performance. In the model, team performance is positively related to team efficacy (e.g. Gully et al., 2002; Silver and Bufanio, 1996), service recovery (e.g. Chan and Lam, 2011; de Jong and de Ruyter, 2004), and collectivism (e.g. Dierdorff et al., 2011) through the full mediation of service flexibility (e.g. Molleman and Slomp, 1999). The effects of team efficacy and service recovery on service flexibility and the effect of service flexibility on team performance are hypothetically moderated by collectivism. Note that both team efficacy and service recovery are simultaneously included, because they both represent important and complementary traits that strongly influence service flexibility, demonstrating a service team's \"confidence\" and \"response\" according to the theory of proactive motivation. While the former illustrates a team's collective confidence in its capabilities to regularly organize and execute courses of action aimed at achieving given service levels of attainment (e.g. efficacy) (de Jong et al., 2008), the latter complements the former by dealing with unexpected, sudden problems or irregular incidents for streamlining service (e.g. recovery). The importance of response in service failures is quite evident (e.g. recovery). Appropriate management of service failures involves a team's complex response that allows the members to set up an effective recovery, to learn from their mistakes, and to consequently increase future service flexibility (Santos-Vijande et al., 2013).\nMethod: Respondents\nMeasures: The constructs in this study were measured using five-point Likert scales drawn and modified from existing literature. The scale items of this study were modified by a focus group of five researchers familiar with organizational behavior, including four graduate students and one professor. Inappropriate items were reworded or dropped from our questionnaire after a pilot test using exploratory factor analysis. A total of 72 participants in the pilot study were not included in the actual survey. As a result, team performance was measured using five items modified from Lytle et al. (1998). Service flexibility was measured using seven items from Breu et al. (2001). Collective efficacy was measured with five items from Lin et al. (2012). Service recovery was measured with three items from Boshoff and Allen (2000). Finally, collectivism was measured with three items from Donthu and Yoo (1998). Appendix 1 summarizes all the measurement items and their sources.\nResults: To confirm the full mediation effects of service flexibility on team performance, this research performs an analysis under three steps proposed by Kenny et al. (1998), which has been frequently recommended in the literature (e.g. Frazier et al., 2004). This study tests mediation models with team-level data by simultaneously including three team-level control variables (i.e. a team leader's gender, age, and tenure) (see Table II). The three steps are presented in detail below.\nDiscussion: Although team flexibility and its predictors have been widely discussed in the literature, an important gap remains regarding the full mediating role of service flexibility and the moderating effects of collectivism on service flexibility. A theoretical implication of this study is that proactive motivation (Parker et al., 2010) can be aligned with psychological collectivism to clarify the formation of flexibility in service contexts. For example, this study verifies the proactive state of team efficacy (i.e. a \"can-do\" motivation) and confirms its interaction with collectivism in affecting service flexibility. Furthermore, this study complements prior theoretical aspects of flexibility, such as manufacturing flexibility based on competence and capability theory (Song and Song, 2009), team flexibility based on the theory of dynamic capability (Li et al., 2010), or inventory management flexibility based on transaction cost theory (Arias-Aranda et al., 2011), and offers a unique way to study team performance in the service industry.\nLimitations: There are three limitations in this study. The first limitation pertains to the survey, which took place in a single country setting - Taiwan. As a result, the generalizability of the findings may be limited. Additional research across multiple countries may be helpful in generalizing the findings related to service flexibility. Second, this study focusses on three key exogenous predictors from the collective perspective of teams but does not consider other variables related to job rewards (e.g. sales bonus) or various within-team interpersonal interactions (e.g. cooperation, competition, conflict). Third, the study context is limited to work teams in high-tech service settings, and thus its findings may not be directly applicable in other service environments or settings (e.g. food services). Scholars could test more predictors or team characteristics (e.g. openness) beyond the research scope of this study and compare their explanatory ability with the factors verified in this study.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: High team performance helps achieve several organizational benefits, such as strengthened competitive advantages, enhanced productivity, and higher profits and market share. For these reasons, the purpose of this paper is to propose a model based on the framework of proactive motivation and the theory of collectivism to analyze the formation of service flexibility and team performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To test the hypotheses, this study conducts a survey of service staff in teams from high-tech firms in a well-known industrial zone in Northern Taiwan. These teams provide service for their industrial customers. From the survey, this study confirms the full mediating mechanism of service flexibility among the teams.\nFindings: The test results reveal that service flexibility fully mediates the relationship between team performance and its exogenous factors. Whereas collectivism negatively moderates the relationship between team efficacy and service flexibility, it does not moderate the relationship between service recovery and service flexibility. Furthermore, collectivism positively moderates the relationship between service flexibility and team performance.\nOriginality/value: This study provides important findings that complement previous literature by examining three fresh antecedents for explaining how team performance is motivated by the mediating role of service flexibility and how some of the study's model paths are moderated by collectivism. The mediating role of service flexibility indicates that managers can apply service flexibility as a firewall that calibrates a team's input and output. Managers should encourage the application of agile solutions and advanced technology for facilitating team flexibility, consequently improving team performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Risk reporting by the largest UK companies: readability and lack of obfuscation	[ "Disclosure", "Companies", "United Kingdom", "Risk analysis", "Annual reports" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The effectiveness of the annual report in communicating with readers will, inter alia, be dependent upon the readability of the narrative (Courtis, 1995). This research note details the results of testing the readability of risk disclosures within the annual report for a sample of UK companies.Calls for improved risk disclosures have been made by organisations such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (1998), and respondents to Solomon et al. (2000), the survey of UK institutional investors stated: that directors need to provide more detailed risk information. Additionally, risk information in annual reports is currently judged to lack coherence (Linsley and Shrives, 2005a). The importance of providing coherent and readable risk information is it facilitates assessments of the risk position of the firm and enables stakeholders to manage their own risk profiles (Linsley and Shrives, 2005b).The paper is structured as follows. The second section reviews existing readability literature. The research method is described in section three and hypotheses are developed. The fourth section presents an analysis of the results. The final section discusses the results and draws conclusions.\nAnnual report readability research: Jones and Shoemaker (1994) identify 26 annual report readability studies in their review of literature covering the period from the first readability study (Pashalian and Crissy, 1952) through to research published in 1993. The fundamental question these studies address is \"how difficult are annual reports to read?\". All the studies find the reading level to be difficult or very difficult (Jones and Shoemaker, 1994) with the implication that directors are failing to communicate with significant numbers of readers. Readability studies published after 1993 (Courtis (1995), Smith and Taffler (1995), Courtis (1998) and Courtis (2004)) concur with the findings of these previous studies in their measurements of readability.Although none of the studies has attempted to identify and assess the readability of risk-related sentences it is useful to note that studies testing for an association between reading ease and financial performance have produced contradictory results. Courtis (1986) and Jones (1988) find no support for a profitability-readability relationship while Baker and Kare (1992), Subramanian et al. (1993) and Smith and Taffler (1992) do find support for this association.The method most frequently used to test for readability in these studies is the Flesch Reading Ease formula (Flesch, 1948). The formula is defined as follows and the higher the reading ease score the more readable the text (see Table I):Reading ease =206.835 - 0.846wl - 1.015slwhere:wl =number of syllables per 100 wordssl =average number of words per sentenceTo test for obfuscation Courtis (1998, 2004) measures the degree of variability in Flesch scores within an annual report in addition to measuring the mean Flesch score. Courtis's rationale is that high variability in levels of reading ease can impact on reading behaviour as it irritates and distracts the reader. Thus the presence of both high variability in reading level and a mean reading level that is difficult or very difficult is a stronger indication of obfuscation than the presence of only one of these proxies.\nResearch method and hypothesis development: Sample selection and content analysis\nHypothesis development: Hypothesis 1\nResults: The 25 sample reports contained a total of 2,770 sentences identified as risk disclosures. The mean Flesch reading ease ratings for these 25 companies are all below 50 (Table II). The individual company ratings lie within the range 21.72 to 36.53, and the resulting overall average Flesch reading ease rating for the 25 companies is 30.50. Consequently, as hypothesis one postulated, the level of readability of the risk disclosures is difficult or very difficult.In respect of H2(a) the sample of 25 companies had a mean readability score for good news risk disclosures of 35.23 and mean co-efficient of variation 58.12 per cent, whilst the mean readability score for bad news risk disclosures was 35.68 and mean co-efficient of variation was 58.42 per cent. Therefore, prima facie, there does not appear to be any difference between the reading difficulty, or variability of reading difficulty, for good news risk disclosures compared to bad news risk disclosures. When a Mann-Whitney U test (Tables III-X) was performed this confirmed that there is no statistically significant difference in mean reading ease ratings and variability in reading ease ratings between good news and bad news risk disclosures. Therefore the evidence is that management does not appear to be concealing bad risk news through obfuscation.In respect of H2(b) the sample of 25 companies had a mean readability score for internal bad news risk disclosures of 34.08 and mean co-efficient of variation 54.67 per cent, while the mean readability score for external bad news risk disclosures was 32.47 and mean co-efficient of variation was 67.78 per cent. The Mann-Whitney U test results (see Tables III-X) confirm H2(b), namely that there is no statistically significant difference in mean reading ease ratings and variability in reading ease ratings between internal and external bad news risk disclosures. Therefore management is not obfuscating internal bad risk news relative to external bad risk news. Overall, in accepting H2(a) and H2(b), support is lent to the findings of Courtis (1986) and Jones (1988), as opposed to the results of Baker and Kare (1992), Subramanian et al. (1993) and Smith and Taffler (1992).\nDiscussion and conclusions: This paper has tested for readability and obfuscation in risk disclosures within the annual reports of UK companies. One finding is that the level of readability of the risk disclosures is difficult or very difficult. In the UK there have been suggestions that companies provide greater amounts of risk information (for example, Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, 1998). However, the publication of additional risk information will not necessarily lead to improved risk communication unless directors write with greater clarity when discussing risks.Another finding of the study is that directors do not deliberately obfuscate less favourable risk news. This apparent lack of desire to manipulate the reader's interpretation of the risk narratives suggests that directors may not be averse to communicating risk information more effectively. Because risk communication can be difficult they may, however, require guidance as to how a narrative can be constructed that details the company's risk story effectively.This study is an initial exploration of the readability of risk disclosures. Readability formulae assess style factors. They therefore ignore content, organisation and format, all of which can also affect reader understanding (Courtis, 1998). Consequently there is scope for further risk disclosure research to examine issues such as the usefulness of existing risk disclosures and the impact of alternative risk disclosure formats upon the reader.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine risk disclosures by UK companies within their annual reports. Tests are performed to measure the level of the readability of the risk disclosures and to assess whether directors are deliberately obscuring bad risk news.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper draws upon methodologies developed in prior empirical studies of annual report readability. Thus it uses the Flesch Reading Ease formula to measure the readability of the risk disclosures and coefficients of variation are used to measure obfuscation. A content analysis approach is adopted to identify risk disclosures.\nFindings: - The paper finds that the mean Flesch reading ease ratings for the sample companies are all below 50 indicating that the level of readability of the risk disclosures is difficult or very difficult and this supports prior research examining the readability of sample passages in annual reports. No evidence is found to suggest that directors are deliberately obfuscating or concealing bad risk news through their writing style.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The paper also finds that the Flesch reading ease ratings measure the readability, not the understandability, of disclosures and whilst actions can be taken to minimise problems associated with reliability when performing content analysis they cannot be wholly eliminated.\nPractical implications: - The paper shows that there have been calls for improved risk disclosures to enable stakeholders to better understand a company's risk position. Requiring directors to issue extra risk information will not, however, lead to enhanced risk communication unless the readability of the risk disclosures is also improved.\nOriginality/value: - In this paper it is shown that there have been no prior studies that focus upon testing for readability and obfuscation in risk disclosures. It is important that transparent risk information is provided to the marketplace and therefore this study is valuable in its examination of the clarity of communication of published risk information.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Linking internal market orientation and new service performance	[ "Internal marketing", "Information services", "Innovation", "Critical success factors", "Spain", "Portugal" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: With the increasing importance of the service sector to both developed and developing economies, attention has focused on the problems of managing service organizations. New service development (NSD) is seen as essential for enhancing the viability of existing services through cost reduction and increased sales, attracting new customers and creating loyalty among existing ones (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2000). Improvements in organizational image, staff morale and overall organizational health are also driven by innovation.Many new services, however, fail to achieve their financial, and other, objectives and/or result in customer dissatisfaction with potential long-term consequences. Consequently, in the last 20 years an increasing body of research has begun to examine the nature (Gadrey et al., 1995; Storey and Kelly, 2001; Menor et al., 2002; Bryson and Monnoyer, 2004), types (Gallouj and Weinstein, 1997; Hollenstein, 2003) and success factors (Cooper and de Brentani, 1991; Blazevic and Lievens, 2004) of innovation in services.Vermeulen and van der Aa (2003) observe that, despite the increasing recognition that services drive competitive advantage in modern markets and that employees drive services (Gummesson, 1994), the organization of innovation processes in service firms has not received widespread attention in the literature. Exceptions are the invaluable contributions of Drew (1995), Sundbo (1997) and Tidd and Hull (2002), and work on the importance of frontline employees in services in maintaining consistent levels of satisfied consumers (Ye et al., 2007; Marinova et al., 2008; Clark et al., 2009).Indeed, this internal relationship between service employees and the company is the focus of the internal marketing (IM) discourse. Several researchers have suggested that competitive advantage in service markets may be gained if managers focus attention on satisfying the wants and needs of their employees (Berry, 1981; Berry and Parasuraman, 1991), since the latter are prerequisites to ensuring that these employees provide good service to customers (Gronroos, 1981; Ahmed and Rafiq, 2002).The management of NSD has become an important competitive concern in many service industries (Johne and Storey, 1998; Meredith and Roth, 1998; Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2000; Johnson et al., 2000). Traditionally, NSD has been considered one of the least studied and understood topics in the service management literature (Menor et al., 2002), despite the plethora of rigorous research and models on product development. The characteristics of services (intangibility, simultaneous production and consumption, heterogeneity and perishability) that have been described at length in the services literature (Zeithaml et al., 1985; Normann, 2001) condition the NSD process (de Brentani, 1991; Thwaites, 1992). While the basic processes for developing new products or services share a dependence on advances in technology, they also differ in some important aspects (Tidd et al., 2001; Nijssen et al., 2006). In particular, IM is especially relevant for innovation in services, since success depends on how the employees deal with it.Based on internal market orientation (IMO) as the managerial philosophy underpinning IM plans (Gounaris, 2006), this study is an initial attempt to conceptualize the relationship between an organization's level of IMO and the success of its service innovations. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time this relationship has been empirically tested.Section 2 describes the theoretical foundations and hypotheses, and Section 3 the methods. The findings are presented and discussed in Section 4, and this is followed by the conclusions and the direction of future research in Section 5.\n2. Theoretical foundations and hypotheses: 2.1. Success factors in NSD and the use of IMO\n3. Methods: 3.1. Sample and data collection\n4. Findings and discussion: The principal goal of this study was to determine the extent to which IMO explains NSP. The H1 of a positive relationship between IMO and NSP was supported by the data. The interpretation is that service organizations oriented to their employees are actually facilitating and promoting the success of their innovations in the market, a success factor that has not been considered in previous NSD studies.H2a and H2b exist positive relationships between IMO and NSQ and between NSQ and NSP were also supported by the results. The interpretation is simply that employee and consumer satisfaction are inexorably linked (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2000).H3a and H3b were that IMO reduces TTM (H3a) and that TTM impacts NSP (H3b). While the results confirmed significant positive relationships between these variables, the interpretation is not at all clear because there was no support for any mediating effect of TTM on NSP.Nonetheless, TTM is an interesting construct to explore. The cultural transformation required to turn an organization's orientation towards its internal market may be far from straightforward (Schein, 1992; Bate, 1995; Atkinson, 1997; Cartwright, 1999), so that one might only expect TTM reductions as a consequence of IMO in the long-term. While companies capable of developing new products in a short period of time gain an important competitive edge (Clark and Fujimoto, 1990; Zirger and Hartley, 1996; Swink, 1998; Langerak et al., 1999), there have been few empirical studies demonstrating the inverse relationship between time and success (Miranda and Banegil, 2002), and indeed in the service sector such a relationship is not at all clear (Song et al., 2000). There have been few studies considering speed in service innovation processes' (Roth and van der Velde, 1992) or in the service conceptualization stage in particular (Storey and Easingwood, 1993). H3 (H3a and H3b) has been established in the sub-sector of financial services (Storey and Easingwood, 1993; Drew, 1995; Lopez and Roberts, 2002) and in certain mixes of services (Atuahene-Gima, 1996; Song et al., 2000; Perks and Riihela, 2004), so that, while TTM may lead to competitive advantages in financial services, there is no evidence for such an effect in other service areas (Tufano, 1989; Drew, 1995; Makadok, 1998).While we have found that NSQ is an important mediator of the relationship between IMO and NSP, but TTM is not, there may be other potential mediators not studied here that merit future attention.\n5. Conclusions and directions for future research: In considering the conclusions of this study, certain limitations need to be borne in mind. The results of this study are clearly context specific. Although it is theoretically feasible to extend this study to other contexts, the specific differences between professional services and other services restrict the generalizability of the findings. A useful extension would thus be to conduct this study in other transitional environments.The purpose of the research was essentially exploratory. Future research will require more precise construct measurement instruments, and designing a triadic study (managers, employees, customers) by crossing various respondents from different levels of the same firm together with customer perceptions.Finally, since this study was cross-sectional, panel-data research should be conducted to follow various firms over more than one innovation development process. This would reduce the risk of the reported processes being atypical.These findings contribute to service management theory by providing empirical evidence for the impact of IMO on the success of new services success, and offering an explanation of the mechanism by which this influence operates. They have extended the current literature in three major ways. First, they brought into focus the different impacts of IMO on NSP. Second, they provided insight into the mediating effect of NSQ and TTM in the relationship between IMO and NSP. And third, whereas most previous studies have been conducted in the financial sector, this study has examined these relationships in the business services sector - an economic sector with tremendous potential for growth and profitability in the future.The study also has important implications for managerial practice. The model provides a framework within which to formulate a clear IMO-based strategy for new services. Service project managers need to recognize the critical roles that project members and frontline employees play during the innovation process. Business service managers need to be aware of the potential benefits of IMO. To ensure NSP, managers must work to gain and maintain internal aspects of performance - employee satisfaction, retention and commitment. It is, therefore, important that internal research is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the IMO strategy.Ensuring that IMO is successfully adopted in a service organization requires service managers to understand and subscribe to both marketing and human resources philosophies. Managers who do not believe in the basic tenets of these business philosophies are unlikely to either make the effort to understand the wishes of employees or be flexible enough to seek win-win solutions in designing jobs that meet the needs of employees as well as those of the firm.Finally, within the field of services marketing, research examining the role of employees in delivering quality services to customers has predominantly focused on the interaction between employees and customers. Typically, interactions between employees and their managers have been the remit of human resource managers and researchers (Lings, 2004). The IMO concept provides tools for marketing managers to use in incorporating human resources issues into a marketing plan, and for human resource managers to incorporate marketing practices into a human resources plan.We see this work as just a beginning, and further work on a variety of business services will be necessary if a reliable picture of key success factors for business services is to emerge. Future research can explore how NSD depends on the nature of the service industry. In particular, a service industry's degree of equipment intensity, knowledge intensity and other factors need to be explored with data obtained across various categories of service industries.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to present the first empirically tested model showing that internal marketing (IM) is a factor of success in new services development. It attempts to bridge internal market orientation (IMO) - the philosophical background of IM programs - with successful service innovations represented by new service performance (NSP).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - To explore the link between IMO and NSP a structural equations model was designed considering service quality and time-to-market as mediator variables. Data were gathered from business service firms' senior managers in Spain and Portugal (74 service companies based on a questionnaire).\nFindings: - The results largely support the hypothesized theoretical relationship that organizational effort in the human resources area, supported by the marketing function and implemented through an IMO, is connected with increasing service quality and innovation success.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The results of this study are context specific. In addition, surveys usually present data collection problems such as composing questions properly, key informant bias and non-response bias. However, the actions undertaken - such as pre-testing coupled with personal telephone contact with managers and the good results obtained in verifying the representativeness of the sample - suggested that every effort was made to obviate the limitations.\nPractical implications: - The results suggest that managers must ensure that internal aspects of management, such as internal communication and employee commitment, are taken into account in order to implement successful new services. Managers need to be more proactive, trying to include the marketing function in human capital issues. Understanding internal clients' wants and needs and selling company goals internally would make external efforts in developing a new service much more likely to succeed.\nOriginality/value: - Reflecting the literature which highlights the importance of the internal relationship between service employees and the company in service innovation, the paper pays particular attention to the role of IMO linkages and their effect on service innovation success. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time this relationship has been empirically tested.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Body image dissatisfaction and health-enhancing food choices: A pilot study from a sample of Italian yogurt consumers	[ "Functional foods", "Food choices", "Body image dissatisfaction" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Body image dissatisfaction encompasses a broad spectrum of negative feelings about a person's own body, such as the feeling of a mismatch existing between one's actual body size and the perception of it or how it compares to an ideal figure (Ogden, 2012). These negative feelings can lead to concerns about one's body weight and body shape, causing individuals to engage in compensatory mechanisms (such as extreme diets and unhealthy weight control practices), which increase the likelihood of incurring long-term eating disorders (Thogersen-Ntoumani et al., 2010; Ogden, 2012; Verstuyf, Vansteenkiste and Soenens, 2012). Such compensatory mechanisms can have an overall detrimental impact on food choices (Grigg et al., 1996; Goldfield et al., 2010). Furthermore, social expectations related to having a pleasant body image, such as striving for peers' approval, may generate additional negative feelings, such as self-body shaming, and may exacerbate unhealthy compensatory mechanisms, which neither motivate individuals to select healthier food options (e.g. vegetables) nor promote long-term healthy eating behaviours (Verstuyf, Vansteenkiste and Soenens, 2012; Verstuyf, Patrick, Vansteenkiste and Teixeira, 2012; Markey et al., 2016).\n2. Materials and methods: Data were collected using a virtual shelf. This data collection method increases the realism of choice experiments compared to survey-based choice experiments, which usually employ a limited number of pictorial stimuli, given that the virtual shelf more closely simulate the complexity of a \"real\" choice environment (Burke et al., 1992; Burke, 1996; van Herpen et al., 2016). Also, contrary to the survey-based choice experiments largely used in food marketing literature, methods based on virtual reality allow researchers to capture consumers' variety-seeking behaviour, as participants are free to select and evaluate one or more products from the shelf before making their choices (Simonson, 1990). Additionally, simulated sales data collected with this method are highly correlated with actual sales data (Burke et al., 1992; Burke, 1996; Campo et al., 1999), increasing the external validity of the results compared to those obtainable from survey-based data.\n3. Results: The estimated NB coefficients of Equation (1) are presented in the second column of Table II, along with their standard errors in the third column. The first thing to note is that the over-dispersion coefficient (a) is positive and statistically significant, supporting the use of an NB regression. All the estimated coefficients are jointly significant in explaining the number of functional yogurt packages purchased, as suggested by the results of a Wald test for joint statistical significance. Furthermore, the model shows high accuracy, correctly predicting 95.6 per cent of the outcomes (Long and Freese, 2006).\n4. Discussion: The results illustrated above indicate that the feeling of personal body image dissatisfaction acts as a barrier to purchasing foods with long-term beneficial effects on health. To the best of our knowledge, this is a new finding, one which has not been highlighted in the marketing and consumer science literature so far (for instance, an interested reader can see a recent review of studies on consumer-related aspects and functional food choices by Kaur and Singh, 2017). Thus, food companies and governments may want to design communication and promotion campaigns for food products and habits to account for these individual psychological factors, as they hinder the choice of healthier food options.\n5. Conclusions: In this paper, we present a pilot study that provides some exploratory evidence that a relationship exists between consumers' level of personal body image dissatisfaction and their choices of health-enhancing food products. Additionally, this paper represents one of the first applications of data collection by means of a virtual shelf to analyse the choice of health-enhancing food products.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Psychological factors, such as body image dissatisfaction and the negative feelings associated with it may be related to the adoption of unhealthy eating behaviours. Also, body image dissatisfaction may lower the likelihood of engaging in long-term healthy eating habits and in the level of attention paid to the quality of the food consumed. As a result, body image may be related to consumers' choice to purchase and consume health-enhancing food products. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A pilot study of a small sample of Italian yogurt consumers was employed to explore if there is a relationship between respondents' level of body image dissatisfaction and the number of health-enhancing yogurt choices. The data were collected by means of a virtual-shelf technique and were analysed using a negative binomial regression.\nFindings: Results indicate that body image dissatisfaction is inversely related to the number of yogurt packages with health-enhancing features chosen from the virtual shelf. Also, respondents who read the nutrition label and those with more knowledge regarding leading functional yogurt brands, selected a higher number of functional yogurts from the virtual shelf compared, especially among women.\nResearch limitations/implications: The results indicate that body image dissatisfaction is inversely related to the number of yogurt packages with health-enhancing features chosen from the virtual shelf. Also, respondents who read the nutrition label and those with more knowledge regarding leading health-enhancing yogurt brands selected a higher number of health-enhancing yogurts options from the virtual shelf compared to others, especially among women.\nOriginality/value: The relationship between body image dissatisfaction and health-enhancing food choices has not been investigated in the consumer science and marketing literature. Additionally, this is one of the few papers that use a virtual shelf as a data-collection method.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Bounded awareness and tacit knowledge: revisiting Challenger disaster	[ "Bounded awareness", "Tacit knowledge", "Self‐referential", "Managerial decision making", "Path dependence", "Decision making", "Knowledge transfer", "Knowledge management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Shortly before noon on January 28th, 1986, a powerful rocket carrying the Challenger space shuttle took off from the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida as part of NASA's prestigious space shuttle program. It was the 25th mission in the program that had begun in 1981, and carried seven passengers including an American primary school teacher. A total of 73 seconds into the launch, the rocket exploded and disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all its passengers. Scholars and practitioners have analyzed this disaster from multiple perspectives such as ethical ambiguity and failure (Armenakis, 2002; Boisjoly et al., 1989; Gino et al., 2009), group think and conflict (Dimitroff et al., 2005) and organizational reliability (Heimann, 1993). This paper reflects on the Challenger disaster from the perspective of \"bounded awareness\" - a relatively new concept in the management literature - and offers a set of propositions that relate bounded awareness to tacit knowledge.The term \"bounded awareness\" was coined by Max Bazerman and Dolly Chugh (Bazerman and Chugh, 2006a; Bazerman and Chugh, 2006b) building upon Simon's (1957) notion of bounded rationality from the field of behavioural economics. According to them, decision makers are said to experience bounded awareness when they overlook relevant and readily available information, even while using other available information, and take a decision that is either suboptimal or entirely erroneous.Bazerman and Chugh (2006a) use several business examples to illustrate the idea. Executives at the pharmaceutical company Merck overlooked publicly available information for nearly four years that its pain killer drug Vioxx was possibly causing heart attacks and strokes. By the time they eventually withdrew the drug from the market, it was estimated to have caused extensive harm to its customers and damaged the company's reputation. In another article, Bazerman and Chugh (2006b) note that bounded awareness essentially manifests as \"focusing failures\" that result from the misalignment between information ideally needed for a good decision and the information actually included in the decision-making process. Useful information - though readily available - remains out of focus of the decision maker. They discuss four literature streams from cognitive and social psychology that provide evidence of conditions leading to focusing failures:* inattentional blindness;* focalism and focussing illusion;* affective primacy; and* self-relevant information (for a more detailed discussion see Bazerman and Chugh, 2006b; Chugh and Bazerman, 2007).These researchers also suggest ways in which managerial awareness can be enhanced for better decision making (e.g. Bazerman and Chugh, 2006a).Despite strong roots in several decades of research in psychology and behavioural economics, bounded awareness is a relatively fresh concept in managerial decision-making. This paper addresses the broad question of what makes a manager's awareness bounded, and attempts to posit the role of tacit knowledge in the same. The relationship between bounded awareness and tacit knowledge has not been discussed explicitly earlier. Since both awareness and tacit knowledge are fundamentally individualist cognitive phenomena in that they originate in the mind of the individual, one can intuitively expect relationships between them. Further, while an awareness that is bounded is seen as something that can influence an individual's decision-making negatively, tacit knowledge has been discussed as an asset that improves decision-making quality (e.g. Brockmann and Anthony, 1998) and creativity (e.g. Leonard and Sensiper, 1998). Hence it is interesting to highlight a relationship between them in the context of decision-making. The relationship assumes further significance when seen in light of the understanding that individual tacit knowledge is an important strategic asset that bestows competitive advantage to organizations (Grant, 1996; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).This paper's contribution is a set of three distinct propositions built around the relationship between tacit knowledge and bounded awareness. The authors first argue that managers' dependence upon their existing tacit knowledge and the bounds on their awareness influence each other in a cycle of positive reinforcement. Building on this realization, they then highlight the path dependent nature of the evolution of tacit knowledge to argue that different decision makers in the organization can experience differing bounds on their awareness towards the same piece of information. Finally, they supplement all this by arguing that the past history of success and/or failure experienced by the organization and its individuals also play an important role in the relationship between the two constructs. To provide a real-life context to what is otherwise a purely conceptual discussion, the authors invoke the NASA Challenger disaster of 1986 and argue that NASA managers were experiencing bounded awareness while taking the ill-fated launch decision. The next section describes relevant details of this disaster.\n2. NASA's Space Shuttle Programme and the Challenger Disaster: NASA's ambitious space shuttle programme began in the 1970s and included a series of missions to outer space and back. The Space Transportation System (STS, accompanied by a mission number) was central to each mission (see the Appendix for a description of the STS and a typical mission).2.1 STS 51-L\n3. Discussion: 3.1 Tacit knowledge, experience and judgment\n4. Directions for future work and conclusion: This paper's primary contribution is in proposing connections between individual tacit knowledge and bounded awareness during managerial decision-making in organizations, something that has not been highlighted earlier in the literature. The authors propose that managers' dependence upon their existing tacit knowledge interacts with their bounded awareness in a cycle of positive reinforcement and in doing so, influences the (non-)rationality of their decision making. The authors have invoked details of the Challenger disaster of 1986 to complement our conceptual discussions on the same. They have also argued that different decision makers in the organization can experience differing bounds on their awareness towards the same piece of information and highlighted the roles of success and failure in the development of bounded awareness in individuals. A limitation of this paper is that the authors reflect on a single failure incident in developing its propositions. More nuanced realizations on the relationships between bounded awareness and tacit knowledge may be possible if a cross-section of several such narratives is taken together. Future studies can consider expanding the current study in that direction.4.1 Implications for research\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper's aim is to highlight the relationship between individual tacit knowledge and bounded awareness in managerial decision making.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper reviews pertinent literature on bounded awareness, individual tacit knowledge and decision making as well as that on the NASA Challenger disaster of 1986. The authors then build logical arguments towards three distinct propositions.\nFindings: - The distinct three propositions are: managers' dependence upon their existing tacit knowledge interacts with the bounds on their awareness in a cycle of positive reinforcement; different decision makers in the organization can experience differing bounds on their awareness towards the same piece of information; and the tension between experiences of success and failure influences the development of bounded awareness in individuals.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This study reflects on only a single case of decision-making failure in its analyses. A variegated sample of different failures in multiple contexts might lead to finer insights.\nPractical implications: - These realizations bring to the fore a paradoxical property of dependence on tacit knowledge that it can be beneficial but can sometimes be harmful. This has implications for the field of knowledge management, wherein tacit knowledge is often a central construct.\nOriginality/value: - To the best of the authors' knowledge, the relationship between bounded awareness and tacit knowledge has not been explicitly discussed before. The propositions can open useful new avenues for future researchers on the antecedents of, and remedies for, bounds on managerial awareness during decision making.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Competency based superior performance and organizational effectiveness	[ "Performance management", "Organizational effectiveness", "Competency model", "Competency-based performance management", "Leadership competencies", "Organizational performance and productivity", "Scale development", "Structural equation modelling", "PMS" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The last two decades have evidenced a majority of organizations using competency-based people practices in organizations (Vos et al., 2015; Audenaert et al., 2014; Campion et al., 2011). Of them, many used the competency framework for high potential identification using the assessment center/development center (AC/DC) followed by learning and development (L&D) plans based on competency gaps (Rodriguez et al., 2002). However, only a few organizations integrated leadership competency model (LCM) with other HR processes, including performance management system (PMS) using critical incident and behavioral event interview (Spencer and Spencer, 1993; Boyatzis, 1982; Gorman et al., 2017). The Development Dimensions International study by William Byham found that, for organizations to be effective, integration of a goal-based system and competencies is essential. Byham queried how individuals can increase productivity or cut costs if they are already trying as hard as they can, unless they change their behavior. He concluded that the failure of the goal-based system can be attributed to non-consideration of the competencies and organizations implementing goal-based appraisals communicated the achievement (or lack of achievement) of goals, but failed to communicate why they achieved or failed to achieve them. The dissatisfaction with performance appraisal is at an all-time high (Adler et al., 2016). McGregor (1972) advocated that performance management should be futuristic and not based on the past. Most corporate PMSs do not work nowadays because they are rooted in the models for specializing and persistently optimizing discrete work tasks. These models date back to more than a century ago, to Frederick W. Taylor (Ewenstein et al., 2016). The routine employee conversations on performance and development change the focus to build the workforce competitiveness both today and tomorrow, which is lacking in goal-based evaluations. Cappelli and Tavis' (2016). McKinsey's (2014) report on building capabilities found that 35 percent of the organizations believe that leadership capabilities contribute to business performance and organizations are considering capability building as a top strategic priority. In 2016, TCS, one of the world's largest IT company, abandoned the bell curve system and began focusing on employee feedback and development. This move was started later in 2014, with companies such as Accenture, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, KPMG discarding the annual appraisal process. As a result, organizations introduced a competency-based PMS. The goal of introducing a competency-based approach is to drive business fundamentals with a new performance paradigm and building capability in an accelerated way in working professionals and assisting the organizations in addressing business challenges (Athey and Orth, 1999; Bersin, 2007). However, integrating LCM demands the capability of the HR personnel and the organizational process maturity to build a performance-oriented culture. Therefore, assessing the impact of such competency-based PMS in relation to organizational effectiveness (OE) is vital because LCM is time-consuming, costly and resource-oriented. This research attempts to study the development of the competency-based PMS (as an independent variable) and OE (as a dependent variable).\n2. Research objectives: Competent personnel are the building blocks for nurturing a performance-oriented culture in any organization. Therefore, owning a workforce having the pre-requisite capabilities is vital for effective performance. However, making such an assessment on capabilities is not an easy task. Companies seek to develop measurable, observable systems and tools through which employees' performance can be assessed and developed (Lucia and Lepsinger, 1999). In other words, a competency-based performance approach should enhance employee evaluation and development. As a result, both private and public organizations have shown much interest in using competencies as a tool for management. Hence, the objectives of this research are:\n3. Theoretical background: The term \"competencies\" was first introduced in the 1970s by David McClelland (Boyatzis, 1982; Spencer and Spencer, 1993; Spencer et al., 1994). Competency models consist of knowledge, skills, abilities and other traits necessary for effective performance in an employment position (Pickett, 1998; Lucia and Lepsinger, 1999; Shippmann et al., 2000; Rodriguez et al., 2002; Martone, 2003; Hollenbeck et al., 2006; Levenson et al., 2006; Catano et al., 2007; Vito and Taylor, 2012; Sutton and Watson, 2013; Long et al., 2013). Campion et al. (2011) asserted that a competency model is an important innovation that helps organizations focus on job-related information and personnel skills for managing employees. Parry (1996) and Olesen et al. (2007) stated that these models seek to segregate top performers from average performers. The concept of competency has many facets, but with one common factor: competencies aim at enhancing an individual's performance at the workplace (Hoffman, 1999).\n4. Hypotheses development: 4.1 Competency-based superior performance (CBSP)\n5. Research methodology: The extant literature review on \"LCM\" and \"OE\" enabled to propose theoretical model for hypothesis testing between \"competency-based superior performance\" and \"organizational effectiveness.\" The theory development on \"CBSP\" further assisted in developing scale to measure the competency-based performance management practices leading to \"superior performance\" in the organization. The research method involved 5 phases as elaborated in the Figure 2. The scale for \"OE\" was revisited in context to this research. These constructs were integrated in scale development, contextualization and validation process. The research design highlighting this study is based on the soft positivism approach (Seddon and Scheepers, 2006) using a quantitative cross-sectional survey to study the impact of CBSP (as independent constrict) on OE (as dependent construct.) The collected data enables hypothesis testing via statistical tools, which results in the determination of causality between dependent and independent constructs (Neuman, 2006) (Figure 3).\n6. Data analysis: 6.1 Internal consistency of the scale\n7. Discussions, implications and future research: Although tremendous research and practice over the years has been conducted to improve the performance appraisal and performance management processes in organizations, dissatisfaction with the process is still observed. More than 90 percent of the managers, employees and HR heads are of the opinion that their performance management processes fail to deliver the expected results; many believe the process to be inaccurate and/or ineffective (CEB Corporate Leadership Council, 2012). This study discusses whether competency-based performance meets the expectations of all stakeholders - employee, manager, top management, HR in achieving their objective of performance measurement.\n8. Conclusion: This study provided a theoretical and empirical test of the underlying assumption in the competency literature that competency-based performance practices can enhance effectiveness in organizations. The theory building on the competency-based performance management assisted in creating a scale for measuring the impact of CBSP and OE. The present study has implications for future research when the goal-based appraisal system is diminishing from the workplace. Particularly, when organizations implement competency-based performance practices such as self-assessment on competencies, creating BARS to raise the performance bar of the employee to the next level, providing feedback to employees on the expected behavior, facilitating coaching during performance discussion, distinguishing excellent performers against others and integrating LCM in the performance management process. All these practices need to be measured by the organization to understand which aspects of LCM are influencing performance of an individual and in totality of the organization. LCM, on its own cannot drives performance, unless the above practices are built and measured, not just process measures, but by linking to OE measures like productivity, adaptability and flexibility to get a better picture of the effectiveness of the competency-based PMS. In summary, this multidimensional research concluded that competency-based performance practices influence OE. This new approach on competency-based performance management will continue to advance the domain of the performance management.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between competency-based performance management and organizational effectiveness (OE). It signifies the importance of developing competency-based performance concept in organizations. Since conventional performance management systems (PMSs) are diminishing and as organizations are looking for breakthrough PMSs, this research attempted to fill the gap from stakeholder's perspective - employee, manager and organization in devising new approach in PMS.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research design involved developing scale for \"competency-based superior performance\" and validating scale for \"organizational effectiveness,\" The data for this survey are collected from 292 respondents through structured questionnaire. Hypotheses depicting aforementioned relationships were empirically tested in the context of competency-based performance practices in organizations based in India. Structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used for data analysis.\nFindings: The empirical results provide methods to accelerate the performance management initiatives based on a leadership competency model (LCM), which are necessary for building performance culture in the organization. The paper contributes by developing a new scale for measuring competency-based performance practices. The scale for OE is revisited. A positive relationship between competency-based superior performance and OE with productivity, adaptability and flexibility has been empirically confirmed using SEM.\nResearch limitations/implications: The paper limits the performance measurement concept using leadership competencies.\nPractical implications: The developed model will act as a building block for performance measurement in organizations. This paper promotes LCM to be applied in creating a performance-based culture.\nOriginality/value: This is a unique attempt to test the relationship between competency-based performance management and OE.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Innovation practices in small technology-based companies during incubation and post-incubation periods	[ "Innovation", "Incubation", "Small firm", "Technology-based company", "Post-incubation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Small companies are relevant for the economy and the society due to the large number of ventures, the movement of financial resources, job generation (Berends et al., 2014, Halme and Korpela, 2014; Portal Brasil, 2015) and for developing technology and innovations that serve specific niches and contribute to market dispersion (Klewitz and Hansen, 2014). Small firms have greater flexibility and agility in decision-making as compared to large corporations, but their resources and skills are more limited, and they lack the organizational and marketing capacities of large companies. These features create challenges for innovation efforts (Berends et al., 2014).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Innovation\n3. Methodology: To answer the research question, we carried out an exploratory, qualitative and applied research (Cooper and Schindler, 2016). The technical procedure is a multiple case study with four TBCs located in Sao Carlos, SP, two in the process of incubation and two that have graduate. We collected information on their innovation practices but did not compare the cases to find common features (Yin, 2015).\n4. Innovation practices in TBCS: analysis and discussion of results: The most common type of innovation in companies is the commercial product innovation, through the creation of a new product or the improvement of an existing one, as pointed out by Mortensen et al. (2005). Innovation is incremental, with the enhancement of an existing product and/or reduction of internal costs for its manufacturing (Bhaskaran, 2006; Lipparini and Sobrero, 1994). Incremental innovation of commercial products is common in the researched companies due to their internal characteristics and highly skilled technical employees, proximity to customers, synergy originating from incubators and business contacts, as mentioned by several authors (Carvalho and Galina, 2015; Jong and Marsili, 2006; Lipparini and Sobrero, 1994). Only graduate companies present architectural innovations, through the change of a product's composition, due to the growth and maturity acquired by the firm.\n5. Conclusions: This study addressed the innovation practices of small TBCs in the incubation and post-incubation periods. Small-scale TBCs showed a high degree of innovation. Thus, they depend on it, especially on technological innovation, for their growth and success. With more innovations, and consequently, new products, processes or services, they can get better performance, higher profits and competitive advantage. Innovation comes from their technical character, the need to adapt to the market, proximity to customers and suppliers and their simple communication system.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Innovation is a constant attribute in the management processes of technology-based companies (TBCs), mostly small and young, and plays a relevant role in their competitiveness and survival. However, the authors assumed that the characteristics of innovation practices differ between incubated and post-incubated companies, in such aspects as formality, type, posture and strategy. The purpose of this paper is to report the innovation practices identified in small TBCs in the incubation and post-incubation periods (graduate companies).\nDesign/methodology/approach: To achieve the purpose, the authors carried out a multiple case study with four TBCs, two incubated and two post-incubated (graduate); the study was qualitative and exploratory, and the authors collected data with their managers.\nFindings: The results show that these companies have high levels of innovation, which is a determinant factor for their presence in the business market; they create technological innovations in products and services, mostly incremental, such as improvements in existing products or reduction of internal costs of manufacturing. In addition, the results also show important features of the innovations, such as the interaction with other incubated companies and with universities and research centers.\nOriginality/value: The authors conclude that there were changes in innovation practices, in the transition from incubated to graduate companies, such as the formalization of processes, a shift in focus toward the customer and an increase in resources and in projects' relevance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring the visual appeal of food guide graphics: A compositional analysis of dinner plate models	[ "Communication", "Effectiveness", "Visual analysis", "Food guide", "Plate", "Visual appeal" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) are complex evidence-based nutrition recommendations created to support federal health policies and programming by promoting healthy eating behaviours (Kaufer-Horwitz et al., 2005; Haack and Byker, 2014; Fischer and Garnett, 2016). Key elements of dietary guidelines are presented to the public in the form of food guides, which are specialised graphics that simplify nutrition recommendations in an easily understandable visual format (Brown et al., 2011; Kaufer-Horwitz et al., 2005; Haack and Byker, 2014). Food guides (also referred to as FBDG graphics, or graphical/pictorial representations) are designed to function as simple visual tools or aids that communicate health messages through visual imagery with minimal text (Kaufer-Horwitz et al., 2005). The central challenge of the food guide graphic is to clearly communicate a range of quantitative and qualitative messaging that includes serving sizes and proportions, from small to large (Martinez et al., 2015). Thus, the form, or shape, of the food guide graphic is significant: pyramids and circle variations (e.g. wheels, plates) are two of the most common formats worldwide (Tobey and Painter, 2003; Martinez et al., 2015; Montagnese et al., 2017). However, the dinner plate model is growing in popularity because of its perceived ability to depict \"intake proportions\" (Martinez et al., 2015, p. 995), despite a lack of research on its efficacy (Brown et al., 2011; Talati et al., 2017)[1]. In light of this gap, and the limited research examining the visual attributes (i.e. shape, colour, composition, etc.) of food guide graphics more generally, this study aims to describe and analyse key visual attributes of dinner plate food guide models in order to assess their potential for effective visual communication of nutrition messaging. A better understanding of how the dinner plate food guide model functions as a communicative device will promote improved design and development of this key public health tool by researchers, educators and health practitioners, and can inform future study surrounding food guide understanding and use.\nMaterials: The food guides/meal planners were identified through an organised search of the \"FBDGs\" resources of the website of the FAO of the United Nations, which collects and documents the dietary recommendations of member states (194 countries worldwide) and their food guides (where available) in English (Food and Agriculture Organization, n.d.a). This site was chosen for data collection because it catalogues official government created food guides and supplemental documents, and provides English translations of FBDG information for each country. The search was carried out in July 2017. Each country has its own page entry outlining details of its dietary recommendations (including history, intended audience, key messages and links to individual country's resource websites), and an image of the country's food guide (where available). Included food guides were identified as \"plate models\" following one or more of the following characteristics: a plate is featured in the imagery, the term \"plate\" is included in the image's title, and/or the FAO website description identifies the format as a plate. Country-specific website resources were also consulted when further clarification was required (translating the home pages into English, and/or inputting specific phrases into Google's web-based translator to obtain English phrasing when required) and used to collect additional imagery not available on the FAO website (such as Canada's Eat Well Plate supplementary meal planner which was retrieved from the Health Canada website).\nMethods: This analysis is grounded in the methods of compositional interpretation (Rose, 2007), which is an in-depth approach to the analysis of the visual attributes of imagery guided by the use of focussed research questions. Previous studies comparing the visual attributes of food guide graphics do not employ the use of conceptual frameworks in their assessments, thus this study introduces a model from visual studies that employs a qualitative, descriptive approach to data analysis. Qualitative descriptive approaches are used in qualitative health research (Sandelowski, 2000, 2010; Miller and Crabtree, 1992), and are useful to guide interpretive analyses of emergent themes in data to produce a thematic survey of the findings (Sandelowski, 2010).\nResults: This study identified 18 food guide images (12 official food guides, and 6 supplementary meal planners) featuring plate imagery for analysis. These images are in use in a variety of regions worldwide, including North America (Canada, the USA), Latin America and the Caribbean (Mexico, Panama, Uruguay[2], Colombia, Cuba and Jamaica), Europe (the UK[3], Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta), the Middle East (Oman, Qatar), South East Asia (the Philippines) and Australia[4]. The first official national dinner plate model food guide was adopted in the UK in 1995, with a number of other countries following up to the present (Australia, 1998; Uruguay, 2005; Oman, 2009; the USA, 2011; Jamaica, 2015; Qatar, 2015; and Malta, 2016)[5]. Dinner plate meal planners are a more recent development, beginning with Finland in 2014, and Canada and Sweden in 2015[6]. The food guides/meal planners collected were designed for use by the general population over two years of age (with upper limits of 65 or 95 years of age)[7]. Further, these 18 images communicated a variety of written messages about dietary guidelines: 59 per cent contained directions about consuming specific food/nutrients in specific amounts, 24 per cent instructed the user to consume a variety of foods; 8 per cent included the message to reduce or limit intake of specific foods/nutrients; 8 per cent contained messages about consuming fluids other than milk; and 2 per cent included directions promoting physical activity.\nDiscussion: Research is limited surrounding the effectiveness, understanding and use of food guide graphics (Brown et al., 2011; Garcia and Piche, 2001; Vanderlee et al., 2015; Talati et al., 2017). This study is interested in questions of potential effectiveness as they relate to visual appeal. In other words, it seeks to highlight the challenges might arise from the visual design of the plate food guide with the potential to impact the communication of nutrition messaging. In order to do this, a framework of \"graphic requirements\" is applied to highlight how specific visual elements of the plate model enable or inhibit clear communication of key messaging. The framework is composed of four core elements required of food guide graphics, that is the ability to depict variety, proportionality, moderation, as well as overall usability (Welsh et al., 1992b, p. 16)[8].\nImplications: The discussion above highlights issues related to the efficacy of the plate food guide model in the communication of nutritional messaging in four areas: variety, proportionality, moderation and usability. It is important to note that while this study outlines and examines visual attributes that have the potential to influence nutritional messaging, it does not formally evaluate the effectiveness of plate model food guides. Instead, it points to areas of concern to consider in the design and development of plate food guide graphics to ensure clear communication: in particular, how to effectively depict proportions and portions, represent foods to avoid; and to carefully consider the overall cumulative effects of the graphic's imagery (especially in terms of the use of cultural symbols related to meals and eating practices).\nConclusions: Visual analyses of food guide graphics are limited in public health literature. This is the first study to systematically examine the unique characteristics of the plate model food guide/meal planner. It explores this model's visual compositional elements (content, colour use, spatial organisation, light and expressive content) in order to explore factors related to efficacy in communicating dietary guidelines, highlighting particular challenges in the areas of proportionality, moderation and usability. This detailed visual analysis provides a more comprehensive understanding of how this format functions, highlighting its assets and limitations with implications for design and development, as well as studies of understanding and use more broadly. More evaluation research is needed in the area of plate food guide efficacy to provide researchers, educators and health practitioners with evidence-based knowledge to inform the development of food guide graphics. This will increase its potential to contribute to improved population health.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Food guides are graphic representations of food-based dietary guidelines that support national health policies and programming. They are visual aids simplifying complex nutritional messaging for the public. While pyramid and circle formats are the most common shapes in use worldwide, the dinner plate format is increasing in use due to its perceived effectiveness. However, research examining visual attributes of food guide graphics, and the dinner plate model specifically, is limited. The purpose of this paper is to systematically compare and analyse key visual attributes of plate food guide graphics (across multiple examples) to assess their potential for effective visual communication of nutrition messaging.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study engages in a qualitative analysis of compositional elements of food guide graphics. Data collection and analysis are grounded in the methods of compositional interpretation, which includes a qualitative, descriptive approach to establishing a thematic survey of the data.\nFindings: Unique visual attributes of the plate food guide (including image content, spatial organisation and expressive content) present challenges in the communication of key nutritional messaging regarding proportionality, moderation and overall usability.\nPractical implications: A better understanding of the visual attributes of the plate food guide model will contribute to improved design and development of this key public health tool by researchers, educators and health practitioners. Additionally, the examination of visual attributes has implications for the study of food guide understanding and use.\nOriginality/value: This study highlights the need for critical visual skills in qualitative health research, and to address gaps in health education more broadly.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Principals and the professional learning community: learning to mobilize knowledge	[ "Decision making", "Canadian Principal Learning Network", "Online professional learning community", "Karl Popper", "Objective Knowledge Growth Framework" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In many ways, school administrators have already played an important role in utilizing research knowledge to inform leadership practice. In this study, we propose using the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) in the development and maintenance of a web site called the Canadian Principal Learning Network (CPLN) to assist principals in advancing their knowledge and skills in the area of decision making - knowledge that is more responsive to a wider range of social, political and economic priorities outside of the university than currently exists (Gibbons et al., 1994; Levin, 2011; Phipps and Shapson, 2009; SSHRC, 2005a; SSHRC, 2004). Through the CPLN, knowledge is collectively generated; principals, researchers and other involved stakeholders collaborate in a nonhierarchical, interdisciplinary, applied partnership (Bradley, 2002; Bickel and Hattrup, 1995; Brew, 2003; Department for Education and Employment, 2000; Gravani, 2008) which echoes the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)'s strategic plan of transforming itself into a knowledge council where \" humanities and social sciences knowledge can make a difference, where it can inspire ideas and debate, where it can galvanize individuals, communities, businesses and governments into action\" (SSHRC, 2005a, p. 23). As John and Prior (2003) write, \"Here the centre to periphery model of knowledge creation and dissemination is being challenged so that neither activity is seen as belonging to a separate domain of experts as opposed to others\" (p. 172). The project also seeks to expand this network and to encourage the development of new ideas and relationships so that knowledge produced through this partnership \"cuts across borders and disciplines and brings researchers together with people working outside academia\" (SSHRC, 2005a, p. 7). As Wenger (1998) points out, \"Elements of discourse travel across boundaries and combine to form broader discourses as people co-ordinate their enterprises, convince each other, reconcile their perspectives and form alliances\" (p. 128). Given that the focus of the study is to build and extend a community of practice, as well as to mobilize research knowledge on principal's decision making, it became important to provide a forum such as the CPLN to support and sustain principals and researchers in advancing their knowledge and skills in the area of decision making (SSHRC, 2005b).\nKnowledge mobilization: the CPLN: Much research in leadership points to at least two barriers facing principals with respect to their professional learning. The first relates to the working condition of principals. Principals often work in fragmented and isolated cultures (Ackerman and Maslin-Ostrowski, 2002; Mitgang and Maeroff, 2008; Wagner and Kegan, 2006). Schools tend to be self-contained and complex microcosms with varied needs and pressing demands. Various stakeholders, such as parents, students, teachers, community leaders, school board administrators have high expectations from the school principals in terms of leadership, problem solvers, educators, etc. Faced with difficult and delicate situations, principals rely on their beliefs systems, values, previous experiences and knowledge to make critical decisions. Often, they are too personally involved in the context to take an objective view of the situation (Bradshaw et al., 2002).\nDeveloping the CPLN web site: navigating unchartered territory: Our collective experiences as researchers and principals in developing the CPLN web site did not follow a well thought out plan or logical procedures or set goals typical of empirical research. Instead it involved twists and turns shaped by the new and relatively unconventional nature of interactive online communities of practice.\nThe OKGF for optimizing outcomes: The Peer-to-Peer Network for School Principals (PPNSP) has been adapted from a similar concept originally developed for business contexts. It draws upon several theoretical influences. One is Wenger's (1998) ideas about shared learning and communities of practice. The PPNSP, however, extends beyond these ideas by encouraging the development of new relationships and networks. The most important influence regarding the development of the PPNSP is (Chitpin and Simon, 2009; Chitpin's, 2010) OKGF. The OKGF builds upon Popper's (1979, 2002) critical rationalism, which emphasizes that the dynamic growth of knowledge is stimulated by problems of practice, inconsistencies and intellectual conflicts. Crucial to this process is the users' willingness to reflect and critically revise a hitherto accepted body of beliefs. This method encourages users to discover weak points in their theories and to question their arguments. (In the current context, we focus on the theory's process of systematic and explicit reflection, rather than whether knowledge can be said to be objectively true.)\nOptimizing outcomes: Every time a principal chooses to make a decision such as deciding to give a week's detention to a student who has exhibited violent behaviour in class or to suspend the student for a day from school, (s)he is essentially predicting how the future will proceed and also how this plan will affect the odds for a favourable outcome. This is important for the principal to predict as (s)he connects both the subjective and the objectivity reality. The OKGF does not go as far as Popper goes in asserting that a hypothesis is not scientific unless it can be falsifiable, meaning that it can be tested in the real world by means of a prediction. Instead, the OKGF suggests that principals need to think carefully about the assumptions and beliefs they bring to the process of resolving a problem, because making decision invokes judgment, which introduces the potential of bias as the decision made may be based on personal, social or political beliefs.\nImplications: The CPLN was created as a resource for collaboration among principals and (inter)national researchers in differing fields of endeavour. Interactions resulting from social linkages which develop between researchers and users (principals) (Amara et al., 2004; Cooper et al., 2009; Levin, 2011) assist the latter in advancing their skills in the area of decision making. As suggested in other studies, school districts need to apply research knowledge in a greater and more consistent manner than ever before (Amara et al., 2004: Cooper et al., 2009). There is also a need for more innovative and creative ways of connecting research to practice in school districts. For example, in this study, many of the participants are graduate students who are also full-time school administrators. Knowledge generated through this study can thus be applied more consistently and systematically (Levin, 2011; Cooper and Levin, 2010) to their specific situations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to use the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) in the development and maintenance of the Canadian Principal Learning Network (CPLN) to advance principals' knowledge and skills in the area of decision making. First, the paper presents the inception of the CPLN, to assist principals in making decisions and resolving common problems. Second, the evolution of the CPLN web site is presented and recount the challenges faced and collaborative solved by principals. Finally, the paper describes the OKGF based on the critical rationalism of Karl Popper and how principals, engaging and interacting in an online learning community (CPLN) informed their decision-making process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper mindfully assembled an international team of researchers with administration experience, curriculum knowledge and pedagogy, and whose research interests lay in educational leadership, education administration, change theory, educational policy and professional learning. Also in addition, principals who were current graduate students, and new researchers also joined the research team.\nFindings: The CPLN web site using OKGF, is a step forward in providing principals with a structure and a venue to be reflective and collaborative. However, getting them to interact with each other in a collaborative, reflective online learning community was not an easy feat at the beginning (Lieberman and Miller, 2008; Louis and Kruse, 1995; Schmoker, 2006; Wagner and Kegan, 2006; Bryk et al., 2010; McLaughlin and Talbert, 2002; Stoll and Louis, 2007). The study shows principals find the need for a place to reflect, discuss, experiment, practice and learn and, for this group of principals, that place is the CPLN.\nOriginality/value: This study provides a model for principals' learning in an online learning community using the OKGF. As well, it shows that powerful leadership does not just take place during preparation programmes, but that principals need to continue to learn as they lead in their respective schools (Mitgang and Maeroff, 2008). Sharing of the challenges faced and the learning that occurred principals are capable of addressing not only the challenges posed in their schools but also, as numerous researchers note (Fry et al., 2006; Levine, 2005; Mitgang and Maeroff, 2008), of surviving the job themselves.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A perfect match: decoding employee engagement - Part I: Engaging cultures and leaders	[ "Leadership", "Employee behaviour", "Employee attitudes", "Motivation (psychology)", "Organizational culture" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Time stood still. At least, it felt that way. The night before, flying between Rio de Janeiro and Atlanta, I had visualized a new team building program inspired by old James Bond movies. The program idea was fun, edgy, and powerful. Now I was quarantined in my office, ignoring the outside world and refusing all phone calls. I was in creative heaven. Something had just \"clicked\" - and whatever that something was, it had given me the energy of a marathon runner, the passion of a missionary, and the focus of an arrow. I was fully engaged (personal experience).The word \"engagement\" has lately become the focus of considerable enthusiasm. For instance, Welbourne (2007) said that engagement is one of the \"hottest topics in management\" (p. 45) and Frank et al. (2004) suggested that engaging employees is \"one of the greatest challenges facing organizations in this decade and beyond\" (p. 15).Arguably, the excitement around engagement is not surprising. According to one of the most frequently cited engagement models (Schaufeli et al., 2002) engagement is a combination of vigor, dedication, and absorption. In other words, engaged employees are highly energetic (vigor), feel great pride and enthusiasm (dedication), and are willing to completely focus on the task at hand (absorption). Moreover, because engaged employees are fully \"psychologically present\" (Kahn, 1990), they give their \"all\" to their jobs and are willing to go \"the extra mile\" to achieve success (Schaufeli et al., 2002).While engagement is still a relatively new area of research (Saks, 2006), the evidence so far seems to support considerable engagement-related benefits for organizations. For instance, Harter et al.'s (2002) meta-analysis of 7,939 business units in 36 companies identified significant relationships between employee engagement and improvements in customer satisfaction, productivity, profits, turnover, and safety records. More recently, Saks (2006) found that engagement significantly predicted job satisfaction and employee commitment to the organization.This two-part article introduces, discusses, and connects the myriad factors impacting a person's decision (whether conscious or unconscious) to engage or disengage. Specifically, I will define engagement, summarize the latest research on environmental, leadership, job and individual engagement factors, and make the case for the importance of a \"match\" between individual needs and the general characteristics of the job. This first part of the article will focus on engagement definitions, the connections between engagement and burnout, and the environmental and leadership factors related to engagement. The second part of the article will focus on job and individual engagement factors. I will offer performance improvement implications at the end of Part II. Specifically, I will discuss whether we can or should \"train for engagement\". Can we really create an \"engagement workshop\" for our employees? And if we can't, what can we do?Throughout the article, I will include interview comments from ten colleagues who agreed to participate in a small pilot study on engagement. The interviewees resided in Brazil, Mexico, or the USA. Six of the interviewees were male and four were female. Because some of the interviewees spoke English as a second language, minor adjustments in the language and wording were made to enhance clarity. Nationalities were omitted and names were changed to protect the confidentiality of the respondents.\nWhat is engagement?: It's a feeling of passion - it can even become an obsession. It gives you a huge amount of energy but it's also a double edged sword. You could become a workaholic, ignore important things. On the other hand, that's when you get your qualitative leaps - your \"Eureka\" moments (\"James\", university professor).The term \"engagement\" is rooted in role theory, in particular the work of Erving Goffman (1961). Role theory studies the various roles individuals occupy in society, as well as the social expectations and behavioral boundaries attributed to such roles (Bailey and Yost, 2007). Goffman (1961) defined engagement as the \"spontaneous involvement in the role\" and a \"visible investment of attention and muscular effort\" (p. 94). Later, William Kahn (1990) published findings from two qualitative studies, the first on camp counselors and the second on members of an architectural firm. Kahn (1990) defined engagement as \"the harnessing of organization members' selves to their work roles\" (p. 694). The more of ourselves we give to a role, Kahn claimed, the more exciting and comfortable is our performance. Kahn suggested, however, that individuals could vary how much of themselves they assign to each role.From Goffman (1961) and Kahn (1990) we learn two key components of engagement:1. spontaneity (Goffman); and2. variability (Kahn).First, engagement is \"spontaneous\" and voluntary. We can accept an unwanted role, we can be forced to perform it, but we cannot be ordered to engage. Secondly, engagement is \"variable\". Kahn's (1990) research demonstrated that the same person could be engaged in one role and not in another.I was very excited because it was my first very important project. I was the owner, and I had to create it from scratch. I felt really energized in face of the possibility to create something that could bring valuable input to the company. I felt like nothing would prevent me from going where I wanted to go. Later, however, the project cost me a lot of stress. I had to handle personal interests, political interests, the managers' and my own fears of failures. I had to handle all sorts of conflicts [...]. I became kind of selfish and did not pay attention to the emotional part of the project, which was very important. I finished the project after lots of fights and misunderstandings. I got the results but did not get the leaders' commitment, so I failed in that sense (\"Julia\", training and development manager).Julia's story illustrates both spontaneity and variability. No one ordered Julia to \"get excited\". Her enthusiasm was her own, likely caused by a sense of ownership, challenge, and by the potential significance of her job. Later, however, pride, enthusiasm, and the belief that \"nothing could prevent her from going where she wanted to go\" were substituted by stress and anxiety. She became \"selfish\", lost focus, and ultimately felt that she failed.Julia's testimony also exemplifies a phenomenon often considered the \"antithesis\" of engagement - burnout. Burnout is a complex syndrome involving personal, interpersonal, and self-evaluation components (Maslach et al., 2001).From a personal standpoint, burnout causes an overwhelming sense of stress, frustration, and exhaustion. Individuals may feel like their energies - physical and/or emotional - are entirely depleted. As a result, burned-out individuals may lack the emotional resources needed to deal with their challenges (Zellars et al., 2004).Interpersonally, burnout causes \"cynicism\" (Maslach et al. 2001), which was defined as a generalized \"negative attitude towards work\" (Langelaan et al., 2006, p. 522). A common symptom of cynicism is emotional detachment. For instance, a nurse might separate himself from the patients; a teacher could antagonize her students. When Julia recalled becoming \"selfish\" and not paying attention to the \"emotional side\" of her project, she exemplified detachment. Detachment might sour the relationships between the burned-out professional and her clients (Maslach et al., 2001).Finally the burnout syndrome often includes a negative \"self-evaluation\" component. The person may no longer feel effective and competent. As a result, professional effectiveness and the accomplishment of professional goals could be negatively impacted (Langelaan et al., 2006).The burnout syndrome is not the exact antithesis of engagement (Schaufeli et al., 2002). Even though the energy and passion that characterize engagement are arguably opposite to exhaustion and cynicism, the negative \"self-evaluation\" component of burnout finds no opposing match in engagement. The analysis of burnout, however, is useful for two main reasons. Firstly, burnout and engagement are clearly related, and a considerable body of research on burnout is available. Engagement, on the other hand, is a relatively new field of study (Saks, 2006). Secondly, excessive engagement could lead to burnout. Paradoxically, the very energy surge generated by engagement could lead the employee to ultimate exhaustion (Hallberg et al., 2007). For these reasons, burnout studies will be included in the research summaries presented in the following sections of this paper.After defining engagement and burnout, our next step is to understand the conditions under which both phenomena occur. Why would some people be more \"engaged\" than others given the same environmental and work stimuli? Alternatively, why would the same person demonstrate strong engagement in certain environments and situations but not in others? These questions will be addressed in the section that follows.\nThe roots of engagement: Engagement does not bring benefits to employers only. Individuals could profit as well. Loehr (2005) suggested that individual engagement benefits include enthusiasm, greater value to the employer, improved physical health, and happiness. Reasonably, few employees would choose to be unhappy at work.Even though engagement brings both organizational and individual benefits, however, most US employees are not engaged. Amongst all currently employed US workers, an estimated 25 percent are fully engaged, 50 percent not engaged, and 15 percent are actively disengaged (Branham, 2005). The difference between \"not engaged\" and \"disengaged\" matters - actively disengaged employees are not only \"dispassionate\". Instead, they are disgruntled enough to undermine the work of their team members (Krueger and Killham, 2006).Understanding the conditions under which some would actively engage while others would actively disengage is, therefore, particularly relevant for both employer and employee. This section summarizes the engagement and burnout research that sheds light on these conditions. In particular I will address:* organizational environment;* leadership characteristics; and* job characteristics.Individual and personality factors connected to engagement will be addressed in the second part of this article.\nOrganizational environment: The analysis of various research studies on the organizational roots of engagement and burnout (for a good review of engagement, see Saks, 2006; for a good summary of burnout research, see Maslach et al. 2001), revealed three important environmental factors connected to engagement:1. relationships;2. work-life balance; and3. values.Relationships\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this two-part article is to introduce engagement and review key research on engagement-related factors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The author conducted a literature search on employee engagement and pilot interviews with ten professionals.\nFindings: - Environment, leadership, job, and individual factors are connected to employee engagement. Environmental engagement factors include congruency between organizational and individual values, the quality of the workplace relationships, and work-life balance. Leadership engagement factors include vision and integrity. Job engagement factors include the meaningfulness of the job, itsw level of challenge, and the amount of control the employee has on the job. Finally, individual factors related to engagement include resilience, locus of control, active coping style, self-esteem, neuroticism, and extraversion. The author suggests that the connections (or the match) between organizational, leadership, job, and individual characteristics is particularly relevant for engagement.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The article includes a preliminary investigation of engagement. Further research is needed connecting environmental, leadership, job, and individual engagement factors, and confieming the importance of the \"match\" for engagement.\nPractical implications: - The implications are that leaders should be educated on engagement, that career development opportunities are particularly important, that performance improvement professional should champion work-life balance, and that initiatives enhancing workplace relationships are likely useful to increase engagement.\nOriginality/value: - This paper connects research on various engagement factors, making it easier for performance improvement professional to gain an introductory yet holistic view of the topic.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Estimation of expected years of life lost for patients with ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage	[ "Ischemic stroke", "Intracerebral hemorrhage", "Mean life expectancy", "Expected years of life lost" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nBackground: Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) accounted for 71 percent of all deaths worldwide in 2016[1]. Of these, cardiovascular diseases and stroke are the two leading causes of death and premature death[1]. The years of life lost (YLL), an indicator of premature death, due to cardiovascular diseases increased 16 percent and stroke increased 12 percent from 2000 to 2012 worldwide[2]. Although YLL attributed to cardiovascular diseases is ranked first worldwide, YLL attributed to stroke is ranked first in Southeast Asia[2].\nMethods: This study received ethical approval from the Ethics Committee, Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, No. MURA2015/759/S1 dated August 27, 2018. The target population comprised patients with ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage aged 18 years and above. The lifetime survival estimation is summarized in Figure 1.\nRamathibodi Hospital stroke registry for survival: This study used data of patients with ischemic stroke (ICD-10 code: I63) and intracerebral hemorrhage (ICD-10 code: I61) from the database of Ramathibodi Hospital between January 2005 and December 2013. A total of 5,348 stroke cases were abstracted, with 138 patients excluded due to comorbidities that might shorten LE including lung cancer (47 cases), liver cancer (31 cases), pancreatic cancer (6 cases), leukemia (36 cases) and heart failure (18 cases). A total of 5,210 stroke cases remained to be analyzed. The survival of each case was followed until December 31, 2016. The survival status and date of death were ascertained from the National Mortality Registry. The study cohort was linked to the Thailand National Mortality Registry using patients' identification numbers. The identification information was encrypted before analyzing data to maintain confidentiality.\nGenerating an age- and sex-matched reference population: The life tables of the Thailand National Vital Statistics, acquired from Department of Provincial Administration, Ministry of Interior and Unit of Health Information, Bureau of Policy and Strategy, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand were applied to generate the age- and sex-matched reference population. Interpolating standard model life tables of the reference population from 2005 to 2016, set as one-year intervals by sex, were calculated using the following formula[4]:\nExtrapolating the survival function to a lifetime: After ascertaining the survival status of all cases based on the 2005-2013 follow-up stroke data, the Kaplan-Meier estimator (nonparametric method) was used to generate the survival function for different stroke subtypes from the onset of stroke diagnosis up to the end of follow-up (December 31, 2016). Likewise, the same nonparametric method was used to estimate the survival function for the reference population. Next, the survival ratio between the stroke cohort and the reference population at each time was calculated, and a logit transformation of the ratio was performed and fitted with a simple linear regression (parametric method). This semiparametric method was combined to extrapolate the survival function throughout life after the culmination of the follow-up period of the stroke cohort. A semiparametric extrapolation method only requires an assumption of constant excess hazards in estimating the lifetime survival function. By choosing a negative slope closest to 0, we can project the long-term survival of this cohort from the available survival function to reference the population matched by age and sex. The estimates were carried out using the iSQoL statistical package[5].\nEstimating mean life expectancy (LE) and expected years of life lost (EYLL): The mean LE is the average life that an individual expects to survive after presenting with a specific condition. Correspondingly, the remaining LE conditional on survival at time t can be defined as:\nValidating the extrapolation method: Validating the semiparametric extrapolation method for patients with stroke was performed on the data of patients with a diagnosis of stroke during the first four years. Then, the survival function was extrapolated to 12 years using the semiparametric extrapolation method. The survival data were actually followed until the end of 2016. The mean survival duration within the 12-year follow-up was calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method, which was considered the gold standard of survival analysis. The relative bias was computed to compare the differences in values between the Kaplan-Meier method and the semiparametric extrapolation method.\nResults: A total of 5,210 patients with first stroke were eligible for the lifetime survival estimation. Table I shows the comparison and frequency distribution of general characteristics. About 54.3 percent were male. Of the 5,210 participants, 74.2 percent were patients with ischemic stroke and the rest were those with intracerebral hemorrhage. Within the stroke registry data, patients with intracerebral hemorrhage were about six years younger than those with ischemic stroke. Interestingly, 27.8 percent of patients with intracerebral hemorrhage were below 50 years of age. The median stroke duration among patients with ischemic stroke was significantly higher than that among patients with intracerebral hemorrhage.\nDiscussion: Related studies have reported on the burden of stroke in terms of mortality and prevalence[3, 8]. However, these studies did not stratify the types of stroke nor did they identify the loss of LE after stroke. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to quantify the EYLL of average patients with different types of stroke in Thailand by incorporating the LE information from that of the age- and sex-matched reference population in the estimation process. The EYLL is a measure of the disease overall burden on individuals and society that was widely used in several studies[9-11]. The EYLL reflects the social and economic impact of a disease given the mortality. It may be used as a basis for allocating appropriate interventions in the health sectors. In this study, we calculated the survival probability of the reference population from the average number of Thai national life tables, unlike one related study that applied internationally chosen life tables to calculate the disease burden using the YLL[3]. The relative biases of the extrapolation method based on four years of data to project eight years onward were all less than 5 percent. Thus, it could be concluded that our estimation of survival function throughout the lifetime of patients with stroke was valid and acceptable (Figure 2).\nConclusion: This retrospective cohort study applied the semiparametric extrapolation method to estimate the survival function throughout the lifetime of patients with strokes. The results revealed intracerebral hemorrhage caused more loss of LE than ischemic stroke and the female patients had poorer survival rates after stroke than male patients.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to estimate the mean life expectancy (LE) and the expected years of life lost (EYLL) for ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This retrospective cohort study included 5,210 patients with a diagnosis of first ischemic stroke or intracerebral hemorrhage between 2005 and 2013 from Ramathibodi Hospital, Bangkok, Thailand. The survival of each case was followed until December 31, 2016. A semiparametric extrapolation method was applied to estimate the lifetime survival function relative to an age and sex-matched reference population.\nFindings: Of 5,210 patients, 74.2 percent experienced ischemic stroke. About 54.3 percent were men. Mean age at diagnosis was 64.3 years. The mean LE was 12.5 years for ischemic stroke and 12.0 years for intracerebral hemorrhage. The EYLL among patients with intracerebral hemorrhage was significantly higher than among those with ischemic stroke (10.1 vs 5.7). Women were expected to lose more LE than men for both types of stroke (p-value<0.05), while younger aged patients were expected to lose more years of life than older ones.\nOriginality/value: This study fulfilled an identified need to estimate LE and EYLL among patients with ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions amongst business students in a tertiary institution	[ "Entrepreneurship", "Botswana", "Innovation", "Employment", "Students", "Graduates" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Economic crunch has created an unprecedented high unemployment rate amongst the students, more specifically in developing countries than the developed world (Dvoulety, 2017; Gelaidan and Abdullateef, 2017; Papzan et al., 2013). To alleviate the situation, governments around the world have always encouraged their respective citizens to explore alternative sources of employment and wealth creation in the form of entrepreneurship (Buli and Yesuf, 2015; Papzan et al., 2013). The rationale for entrepreneurship amongst students is due to its recognition as a source of employment and wealth creation (Arrighetti et al., 2016). In addition, evidence suggests that entrepreneurship is a source of economic growth and development, specifically if such ventures mature into real and successful business entities (Arrighetti et al., 2016).\n2. Theoretical foundation and hypotheses development: 2.1 Theory of planned behaviour\n3. Research methodology: This study was conducted at one of the public owned higher learning institutions in Botswana. The institution offers business and management programmes for the students pursuing their career while working through Open and Distance Learning mode. The rationale for the choice of this institution was informed by the facts that, the majority of these students are pursuing careers in business programmes not only to secure jobs but also career progressions as they are already employed elsewhere.\n4. Results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Discussion: The results of the present study answer at least 3 hypotheses and rejected 2 hypotheses. The squared multiple correlation coefficients, i.e. R2, of each path in the model, whereas EI is the dependent, R2 is 0.625 (62.5 per cent) accounting to variations in the independent variable. Thus, the 62.5 per cent of the variation in EI is directly due to the variation in the independent variables PBC, PA and SN. In other words, 37.5 per cent of the variance is unexplained or, due to other factors, not accounted for in the TPB. Nonetheless, this was a significant result and exceeded those found by other comparable researchers (Buli and Yesuf, 2015; Karimi et al., 2013, 2014; Linan and Chen, 2009), which suggest that attitudes toward behaviour (PA), SNs and PBC typically explain 30-50 per cent of the variance in EI, hence leaving out nearly 50 per cent of the variance in the EI unexplained. It can be concluded that this result is highly satisfactory, because most previous research using models typically have only managed to explain between 30-50 per cent (Ferreira et al., 2012; Linan and Chen, 2009).\n6. Concluding remarks: The present study result offers a worthwhile understanding into the landscape of the entrepreneurial setting in Botswana from an ODL tertiary institution students' perspective. We confirm that TPB can partially be applied in other environment in studying entrepreneurial intentions. Our study achieved statistically significant explanatory power of 62.5 per cent of the variations in EI, due to PA, SN and PBC that is considered to be more robust, given most studies have only managed to attain 30-50 per cent of variations in EI.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions amongst open and distance learning students during employment crisis. To achieve the purpose of this study, Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was applied and empirically tested on the sample population.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were taken from a sample of university students pursuing business-related courses in Open and Distance Learning mode. Self-reported questionnaires were handed to a total of 500 students to complete and return. Returned and usable questionnaires numbered 245 in total, giving a return rate of 49 per cent. Descriptive statistics and regression analyses were utilised to analyse data. Structural equation modelling incorporated into SPSS was used to assess the structural model.\nFindings: The key finding reveal that Ajzen's TPB can partially be applied in determining entrepreneurial intentions in the developing economy. The study results also revealed that perceived behavioural control, personal attitude and subjective norm (SN) explained 62.5 per cent of variations in entrepreneurial intention, which surpasses many other studies conducted previously.\nResearch limitations/implications: Present study relied on cross-sectional data using quantitative design, therefore limiting the full understanding of the causal relationship between variables.\nOriginality/value: The study developed a conceptual framework based on literature that was empirically tested, which adds to existing ones, thereby extending the literature in the field. Moreover, the study managed to incorporate SN as an intervening variable, which has rarely been done.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
On the management of retirement age indexed to life expectancy: a scenario analysis of the Italian longevity experience	[ "Life expectancy", "Longevity risk", "Gender gap", "Indexed retirement system", "Model risk", "Pension cash flow", "Indexed pension system", "C02", "G22", "J11" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The ageing of populations and the slowdown in economic growth are putting public finances under pressure in many advanced capitalist societies. As a result, governments of several OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries are facing the challenge of reviewing pension schemes to relieve the burden on public expenditure yet maintaining the sustainability and adequacy of National Security systems (Alonso-Garcia et al., 2018). The most popular solution among the proposed ones is \"live longer-work longer\" (Keese, 2006), in agreement with the new Horizon 2020 principles. In Italy, the current pension system is based on a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) financing mechanism, where pensions for retirees are paid by the contributions of the working-age population. According to Godinez-Olivares et al. (2016), a successful PAYG system requires a balance between the expenditure on pensions and the income from contributions made by the active workers over time, usually termed inter-generational solidarity (see Boon et al., 2019 on the topics). This system is becoming unfeasible due to the lowering of fertility rates and subsequent drop in active population. Starting from the so-called \"Fornero Reform\" passed in December 2011 in Italy, retirement criterion is based on the total amount of contributions paid and no longer on the average salary earned in the past years before retirement. Nevertheless, redistribution is still based on the \"rule\" that current contributors finance current pensioners' benefits, following a PAYG system. In addition, this reform has led to a uniform retirement age for men and women, updated to 66 years and 7 months in 2018. However, any pension policy should carefully manage heterogeneity in longevity risk within the population, as the one implied by gender gap in life expectancy.\n2. The indexation mechanism for retirement age: In this section, we refer to the mechanism for retirement age indexation proposed in Coppola et al. (2019) in the context of the Italian National Social Security System. The methodology links the retirement age to the life expectancy obtained from projected actuarial tables (see Alonso-Garcia and Devolder, 2017 for a discussion on the consequences of referring to current rather than projected tables).\n3. Scenario analysis of retirement age indexation: As anticipated, the proposed scenario analysis is designed to fulfill a twofold goal:\n4. Pension cash flow reduction under flexible retirement schemes for Italy: The study here pursued focuses on the Italian case within the European context, as Italy is suffering from a unique experience in terms of ageing of the population and public debt. Data are taken from the Berkeley Human Mortality Database: being a follow-up of the research carried out in Coppola et al. (2019), the analysis here carried out will consider the same universe: cohorts from 1952 to 2012, with a focus on the age range 55-89: indeed, the problem at hand mainly affect older ages.\n5. Concluding remarks: The present work follows the lead of the proposal advanced in Coppola et al. (2019) and further develops the study of indexation mechanisms for retirement age with a focus on gender gap in mortality experience.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to measure the financial impact on social security system of a recently proposed indexation mechanism for retirement age by considering the Italian longevity experience. The analysis is motivated by the progressive increase in life expectancy at advanced age, which is rapidly bringing to the fore noticeable socio-economic consequences in most industrialized countries. Among those, the impact on National Social Security systems is particularly relevant if people live longer than expected; this will lead to greater financial exposure for pension providers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Referring to the Italian population for illustrative purposes, the authors contemplate different scenarios for mortality projection methods and for the implementation of pension age shift while accounting for gender and cohort gaps and model risk. Synthetic indicators to measure the impact of the indexation mechanism on social security system are introduced on the basis of pension cash flows.\nFindings: An indexation policy that manages gender gap while adjusting retirement age for varying life expectancy is proposed. As a result, sustainability of public retirement expenditure is improved.\nOriginality/value: The paper is a concise scenario analysis of the reduction of costs and risks that pension providers would have if the system resorted to link retirement age to life expectancy. The ideas fostered by the paper follow a recent proposal of the Authors on a flexible retirement scheme that deals with model risk for mortality projection and accounts for gender gap in mortality rates.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Is the glass half full or half empty? An examination of user and provider perspectives towards third-party logistics relationships	[ "Relationship marketing", "Distribution management", "Supplier relations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Virtually unknown in the United States before 1990, the US third-party logistics (3PL) \"industry\" is estimated to currently generate approximately $90 billion in annual revenues. Scholarly research involving third-party logistics was virtually non-existent prior to 1990 (particularly in the US), and the early 3PL literature might be characterized as \"descriptive and demographic\" in nature. Representative \"descriptive and demographic\" topics included the types of companies that used third-party logistics services, the types of 3PL services that were purchased, and the potential benefits associated with using 3PL services, among others (see, for example, Lieb, 1992).\nDefining third-party logistics: As the academic literature continues to evolve, one unresolved issue involves the lack of a uniform or standardized definition for third-party logistics. Indeed, Skjott-Larsen (2000) as well as Halldorsson and Skjott-Larsen (2004, p. 193) have argued that third-party logistics \"has many definitions and interpretations.\" For example, some research studies fail to define or operationalize what is meant by third-party logistics (e.g. Sauvage, 2003; Lieb and Kendrick, 2003). Others, such as Halldorsson and Skjott-Larsen (2004), provide various definitions or interpretations of 3PL without indicating which definition or interpretation will be used in their particular study.Adding to this conundrum, some definitions/interpretations of third-party logistics appear to be quite broad, or inclusive, in nature while other definitions/interpretations have a narrower, more exclusive, focus. With respect to broad, inclusive definitions, McGinnis and colleagues (1995) indicated that 3PL involves offering one or more logistics activities that could be provided by either a buyer or a seller. In a similar vein, Sink and Langley (1997, p. 170) described third-party logistics as a situation where a company utilizes \"...the services of an external supplier to perform some or all of a firm's logistics functions.\" These and similar definitions/interpretations of 3PL appear to view any logistics activity that is not performed \"in house\" as being representative of third-party logistics. In addition, the broad definitions/interpretations appear to make no distinction between short-term and long-term considerations or between transactional and relational exchanges.In terms of a narrower, more exclusive, focus Bagchi and Virum (1996, p. 193) suggested that third-party logistics is characterized by \"A long-term formal or informal relationship between a shipper and a logistics provider to render all or a considerable number of logistics activities for the shipper. The shipper and the logistics provider see themselves as long-term partners in these arrangements.\" Likewise, Murphy and Poist (1998, p. 26) indicated that 3PL involves \"a relationship between a shipper and a third party which, when compared with basic services, has more customized offerings, encompasses a broader number of service functions and is characterized by a longer-term, more mutually beneficial relationship.\" Unlike broader 3PL definitions/interpretations, narrower definitions specifically use the word \"relationship,\" focus on a long-term perspective, and emphasize that multiple activities (functions) can be provided. The narrower definitions/interpretations also suggest that third-party logistics can be strategic, and not just tactical, in nature (Skjott-Larsen, 2000).While the literature supports both broad and narrow approaches to defining/interpreting third-party logistics, this manuscript will take the narrower, more exclusive perspective. To this end, it will utilize the Murphy and Poist (1998) definition of 3PL, which was presented earlier. This definition is preferred because its emphasis on \"a longer-term, more mutually beneficial relationship\" appears to be quite supportive of the manuscript's premise of investigating 3PL from the perspective of relationship marketing.\nRelationship marketing elements: As is the case with third-party logistics, relationship marketing is a relatively new concept in the sense that it did not become prominent in the literature until the 1980s and 1990s (Rao and Perry, 2002). Similar to third-party logistics, numerous definitions of relationship marketing have appeared in the literature (Wong and Sohal, 2002; Harker, 1999), and there is presently no universally accepted definition of relationship marketing. While various definitions could be applied, this manuscript will utilize Morgan and Hunt's (1994, p. 22) widely cited definition of relationship marketing: \"marketing activities directed at establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges.\" Where transactional marketing focuses on a single, short-term exchange between buyer and seller (Gundlach and Murphy, 1993), relationship marketing focuses on the interaction between buyers and sellers and is concerned with multiple exchanges between them over time (Christopher et al., 1991). The goal of relationship marketing (Gronroos, 1990) \"...is to establish, maintain, enhance...relationships with customers and other partners at a profit, so that the objective of the parties involved are met. This is achieved by mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises.\"Although the exact elements associated with a successful relationship can vary from situation to situation, the literature consistently recognizes the following as important: attachment, communication, dependence, investment, opportunistic behavior, reciprocity, reputation, satisfactory prior outcomes, and trust (Barnes, 2001; Wilson, 1995; Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Each of these elements is more fully discussed in the following paragraphs, and the particular items associated with each element appear in Appendix 1.Attachment\nRelationship marketing outcomes: Relationship marketing outcomes historically have been evaluated across three measures (Barnes, 2001; Boles et al., 1997) - customer referrals, customer retention, and service recovery. More recently, a fourth relationship marketing outcome - performance improvements - has been investigated (Janda et al., 2002; Whipple et al., 1999). Each of these four outcomes is more fully discussed in the paragraphs that follow, and the particular items associated with each outcome appear in Appendix 2.Customer referrals\nMethodology: The data discussed in this paper are derived from separate surveys of users and providers of third-party logistics services. More specifically, the responding 3PL users may or may not be customers of the responding providers, and the 3PL providers may or may not supply logistics services to the responding users. However, the survey content for the two parties was coordinated in the fact that the surveys had consistent items that differed only with respect to perspective. With respect to the attachment construct, for example, 3PL users evaluated the statement \"this third party cares for us,\" while 3PL providers evaluated the statement \"this customer cares for us.\"It should be noted that the data from the 3PL users and providers do not represent a matched pairs sample. While matched pairs tend to increase the validity of the associated research, studies involving matched pairs can be difficult to conduct. Indeed, the logistics literature suggests that service providers may be reluctant to identify specific customers; alternatively, users may be hesitant to identify their service suppliers (Murphy and Poist, 2000).Although matched pairs would be preferred, research involving non-matched pairs of logistics service users and logistics service providers can be found in the recent logistics literature. For example, research Lu's (2003) of service attributes utilized a non-matched sample of Taiwanese maritime shippers (users) and Taiwanese maritime companies (providers). Likewise, research Premeaux's (2002) of perceptual differences between shippers (users) and motor carriers (providers) involved non-matched samples. These and other examples suggest that using a non-matched sample of 3PL users and providers is supported by the existing literature.Data collection among 3PL users\nFindings: Relationship marketing elements (outcomes) and their corresponding items\nConclusions and suggestions for further research: The present research examines 3PL users and providers with respect to their perspectives on relationship marketing elements and outcomes. Comparisons between the two parties indicate that they are in general agreement on the communication construct (a relationship marketing element); moreover, each party has a relatively positive assessment of the other party's communication abilities. This result appears to support previous literature (Panayides and So, 2005; Murphy and Poist, 2000) that stressed the importance of communication for maintaining 3PL relationships.The remaining comparisons point towards a strong disconnect between 3PL users and providers. More specifically, there are statistically significant differences between the two parties across 12 of the 13 constructs that were investigated in the present research (i.e. eight of the nine relationship marketing elements; all four relationship marketing outcomes). The intensity of disagreement between the two parties on a number of constructs is also noteworthy. Indeed, several of the relationship marketing elements exhibit mean score differences of greater than one point (on a seven-point scale), and all four of the outcomes show mean score differences of at least 0.90. These disconnects between 3PL users and providers offer a marked contrast to previous research (Murphy and Poist, 2000) that found a high degree of similarity between users and providers in terms of1. key success factors for 3PL arrangements and2. each party's satisfaction with existing 3PL arrangements.The findings also point towards an inverse relationship between a particular party's assessment of relationship marketing elements and its assessment of relationship marketing outcomes. To this end, while 3PL providers appear to have a more guarded or cautious approach than 3PL users towards relationship marketing elements, providers tend to have a more favorable evaluation of relationship marketing outcomes. Alternatively, although 3PL users are more favorably disposed towards relationship marketing elements, they are more guarded or cautious in terms of relationship marketing outcomes.There would appear to be plentiful opportunities for further research concerning relationship marketing and third-party logistics. For example, one limitation of the present research is that the data came from separate surveys of 3PL users and providers; therefore, the 3PL users may not be current customers of the providers and vice-versa. As a result, one suggestion would be to replicate the present research using dyads/matched pairs of 3PL users and providers. Having said this, the relatively low response rates to the separate surveys of users and providers should highlight the potential challenges to collecting data from dyads/matched pairs of 3PL users and providers, although Stank and colleagues (2003) successfully used a snowball sampling technique to generate dyadic data from 3PL arrangements.In addition, the findings from the present research potentially represent a \"best case\" scenario in the sense that the data were based on 3PL arrangements characterized by longer-term, mutually beneficial relationships - two cornerstones of relationship marketing. As demonstrated in this research, these 3PL arrangements exhibit strong disconnects between users and providers in terms of relationship marketing elements and outcomes. If a seemingly best case scenario results in strong user-provider disconnects, what would happen in 3PL arrangements with less of a relationship marketing orientation? With this in mind, another avenue of investigation would be to replicate the current research using alternate definitions of third-party logistics. For example, given that the present research used a narrow definition (Murphy and Poist, 1998) of third-party logistics, further research might use a broader definition such as found in McGinnis and colleagues (1995) or Sink and Langley (1997).Furthermore, there appear to be some counterintuitive findings with respect to the relationship marketing elements and outcomes. For example, although 3PL providers report relatively low attachment to 3PL arrangements, the providers are still quite willing to offer referrals for their outsourcing partners. Alternatively, the 3PL users, while reporting attachment to 3PL arrangements, are more hesitant to offer referrals for their outsourcing partners. These results are counterintuitive in the sense that one might expect a more direct relationship between attachment and referrals, that is, less attachment should be associated with a lower willingness to offer referrals. As such, additional research into these and other counterintuitive findings could be valuable. For instance, although the present study utilized previously validated relationship marketing elements and outcomes, perhaps other elements and (or) outcomes are better predictors of the quality of 3PL arrangements. To this end, interested researchers could examine other relationship marketing elements and outcomes in the context of 3PL arrangements.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper provides a comparison of users and providers of third-party logistics (3PL) services with respect to relationship marketing elements, such as trust and communication, as well as relationship marketing outcomes, such as retention and recovery.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Constructs for the relationship marketing elements and outcomes were derived from the extant literature and modified to reflect the nature of 3PL arrangements. The relevant data were collected from separate, but consistent, mail surveys that were sent to users of 3PL services as well as providers of 3PL services.\nFindings: - The results indicate statistically significant differences between 3PL users and providers across eight of nine relationship marketing elements, with the lone non-significant comparison involving the communication construct. There are also statistically significant differences between 3PL users and providers for each of the four relationship marketing outcomes.\nResearch limitations: - Although the present study utilized previously validated relationship marketing elements and outcomes, future research could examine other relationship marketing elements and outcomes. Future research could also investigate relationship marketing issues through dyads/matched pairs of 3PL users and providers.\nOriginality/value: - This manuscript examines 3PL with respect to theories and/or frameworks that comes from outside the logistics discipline, an approach advocated by Stock. Moreover, the paper adds to Moore's 3PL/relationship marketing research by investigating relationship elements and outcomes. The current paper adds to the rather limited literature that incorporates both 3PL user and provider perspectives.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Librarian as data migrator: a functional pathway from Millennium to Koha	[ "Systems integration", "Koha", "Integrated library system", "Data migration", "Library cataloging", "Millennium" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: While integrated library systems (ILS) are a crucial element of modern library services, many institutions are hampered by expensive proprietary systems with limited access to training or customization. A great deal of professional literature explores the benefits of migrating to an open-source ILS; however, many libraries outsource the more technically challenging migration processes. This case study records the experiences of faculty librarians at a small college library who completed a Millennium to Koha migration without reliance on IT personnel or third-party assistance.\nBackground: The Northern Marianas College Library was first automated in the late 1990s, using grant funding to implement SirsiDynix Horizon as part of a state-wide consortia agreement. After exiting the consortium in 2010, the library migrated to Innovative Enterprises Millennium ILS. In both cases, the data migration was handled by third-party contractors with little input from library personnel.\nProject planning: With a short deadline and no supplementary funding for the project, our only option was to complete the ILS installation and data migration using only library employees. Our in-house migration team consisted of two faculty librarians with no systems experience and only limited ILS training. The college's IT department identified a staff member to handle the server-side installation and updating of the Koha modules. Despite the limited personnel and overall lack of experience, our team developed a functional process that allowed us to complete the migration of over 48,000 MARC records in less than two months.\nMigration preparation: To ensure that our export process transferred all data fields uniformly, we began the migration preparation by surveying our catalog records for internal consistency. This included the standardization of location codes and elimination of cataloging inconsistencies that had accumulated through successive ILS platforms and catalogers. The collection was also heavily weeded to reduce the amount of records that would need to be removed after the migration.\nData export: Prior to export, our team decided on a minimum set of critical MARC tags to retain from each record. Based on the Library of Congress National Level Minimal Requirements, we created an export template including, Author, Title, Edition Statement, ISBN, Call Number, Barcode, LCCN, Description, Publication information, Series Title, General Note, Additional Statement, Location and multiple Subject Headings (Library of Congress, 2010). Because our process exported this information as plaintext without the context of a full MARC-encoded record, it was crucial to record which MARC tag corresponded with each sequentially numbered export field (Table I). This information was necessary for compiling the exported data back into a MARC file later in the migration process.\nData mapping: This deconstructed MARC data was checked for errors and lightly formatted during the Data Mapping phase of the migration. The delimited text was reformatted into a tabular data file that could be easily shared with downstream applications. We used the Calc spreadsheet application in the Apache OpenOffice suite to translate the comma-separated text into tab-delimited text. Calc allows the user to make several important customizations to the raw CSV export file during ingest. The upload dialog box includes an option to identify a non-standard delimiter character (Figure 3). By changing the delimiter to \"%\" our information was cleanly restructured as a tabular data file.\nUpload: Records uploaded to Koha are first held in a \"Staging\" phase, followed by a separate \"Import\" phase. This allows the system to reject any records with MARC formatting errors. We found this to be a straightforward process that is covered extensively in Chapter 9 of the Koha 3.2 Manual (Engard, 2011).\nConclusion: This case study presents a functional model for a fully in-house data migration from Millennium to Koha. While this project presents several challenges, it can be accomplished by dedicated librarians with no prior training and only minimal support from IT. By handling all aspects of data extraction, clean up, and formatting, our library gained an in-depth knowledge of our collection and the underlying principles of digital information management.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This case study aims to demonstrate that in-house integrated library systems migration can be accomplished by a dedicated team of librarians without advanced tools or prior experience with data migration or systems integration.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This migration was accomplished by academic librarians using freely available tools: OpenOffice Calc, MarcEdit and the Koha Integrated Library System.\nFindings: The data migration pathway presented here was developed and successfully used to transfer over 48,000 records in less than two months.\nPractical implications: This case study presents an original process that is particularly effective for smaller libraries.\nOriginality/value: While similar case studies exist, most employ expensive third-party contractors for data migration or rely heavily on institutional IT departments.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Evaluating a physician leadership development program - a mixed methods approach	[ "Relationships", "ROI", "Cohort", "Healthcare", "Kirkpatrick", "Interview" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: US healthcare reform is accelerating tremendous change in the industry. To navigate these changes, strong leadership is needed, particularly from physicians. Improving the patient care experience, decreasing per-person costs, and improving the health of the population are the Triple Aim challenges healthcare organizations face (Berwick et al., 2008). Gone are the days of the physician as super hero where his or her sole focus is patient outcomes. Improvements in healthcare, whether for an individual patient, a specific patient population, team, or the organization, require teamwork and communication across disciplines (Lee, 2010; Morse, 2010; Stoller, 2004). Gawanda (Morse, 2010) calls for a new kind of physician hero who recognizes the need to turn to the team. In addition to teamwork and communication skills, physicians are expected to develop emotional intelligence (EI) and business acumen (financial, strategic planning, industry knowledge). These skills have not traditionally been part of a physician's education (Nowill, 2011; Stoller et al., 2013; Stoller, 2008; Suliman et al., 2013). The implication is not that physicians are more important than any member of the caregiving team, rather that leadership and multi-disciplinary teamwork skills have not been a priority for all physicians.\nTheoretical framework: Understanding the particular challenges of developing LDPs in healthcare as well as how to best design and evaluate such programs helps to ground this research. Evaluation strategy is part of the design of effective LDPs and the Kirkpatrick model is a common framework to evaluate learning programs.\nMethods: This study used mixed methods to evaluate a ten-month Physician Leadership Academy (PLA) developed and implemented at a regional healthcare system in southwest Michigan. The program design is in accordance with Martineau's (2004a, b) five steps, therefore program developers defined evaluation targets and methods prior to program implementation. As advised by Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2007) and Martineau (2004a, b), program stakeholders were consulted in order to target expected program results. A physician development steering committee helped assess needs and developed and confirmed the overall program objectives and the targeted results that would define success. The organizational needs assessment and best practice research resulted in a program that sequenced topics and experiences to build self-awareness/intra-personal, interpersonal, and organizational effectiveness. Figure 1 gives an overview of the program conducted from August 2012 to May 2013.\nResults: In total, 12 surveys were conducted over the course of the PLA with a 51 percent participant response rate. In total, 16 of 21 PLA physicians participated in an in-depth interview following the conclusion of the full program. Coaches and facilitators as well as organization stakeholders were surveyed once at the conclusion of the PLA. Figure 2 provides a summary of the key findings by each of the PLA program objectives and Kirkpatrick levels of evaluation. This serves as an example for how to document an evaluation strategy with program stakeholders. A discussion of the outcomes organized with Kirkpatrick's levels of evaluation follows.\nDiscussion and implications: Given the challenges the healthcare industry faces today and the lack of education physicians have had on leadership topics, LDPs targeting physicians help them meet the demands of working in multi-disciplinary teams that improve quality outcomes, decrease costs, and enhance patient experience. Program designers need strong focus on desired individual, group, and organizational outcomes and how to evaluate them. This study outlined a way to evaluate an internally developed PLA and discussed the program outcomes. Organizing around Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation resonates with both learning professionals and program stakeholders. Other organizations seeking to develop a similar program could apply the evaluation strategy shared in Figure 2.\nImplications for action: An organization development (OD) perspective\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: With the extent of change in healthcare today, organizations need strong physician leaders. To compensate for the lack of physician leadership education, many organizations are sending physicians to external leadership programs or developing in-house leadership programs targeted specifically to physicians. The purpose of this paper is to outline the evaluation strategy and outcomes of the inaugural year of a Physician Leadership Academy (PLA) developed and implemented at a Michigan-based regional healthcare system.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors applied the theoretical framework of Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation and used surveys, observations, activity tracking, and interviews to evaluate the program outcomes. The authors applied grounded theory techniques to the interview data.\nFindings: The program met targeted outcomes across all four levels of evaluation. Interview themes focused on the significance of increasing self-awareness, building relationships, applying new skills, and building confidence.\nResearch limitations/implications: While only one example, this study illustrates the importance of developing the evaluation strategy as part of the program design. Qualitative research methods, often lacking from learning evaluation design, uncover rich themes of impact. The study supports how a PLA program can enhance physician learning, engagement, and relationship building throughout and after the program. Physician leaders' partnership with organization development and learning professionals yield results with impact to individuals, groups, and the organization.\nOriginality/value: Few studies provide an in-depth review of evaluation methods and outcomes of physician leadership development programs. Healthcare organizations seeking to develop similar in-house programs may benefit applying the evaluation strategy outlined in this study.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How global brands create firm value: the 4V model	[ "Marketing strategy", "Global marketing", "Market segmentation", "Brand value", "Consumer culture", "Global brands" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Brands are the lifeblood of companies. They generate market share, increase customer loyalty, amplify channel power, offer the potential for higher profit margins, and guard against competitive attacks. For these key strategic reasons, virtually all marketing activities - ranging from new product development to advertising to retail placement - focus on building strong brands (Aaker and Joachimsthaler, 2000). In a world characterized by rapid globalization, \"brands\" increasingly mean \"global brands.\" This is how Berner and Kiley (2005) describe the global brand imperative in BusinessWeek:\n2. Valued brands: 2.1 What are global brands?\n3. Value sources: What is the source of value that global brands provide to companies? It is natural for marketers to focus on the consumer preference for global (vs local) brands as the source of global brand value. However, that does not explain the fact that many global brands do not tout their globalness and in fact, consumers may not even be aware of the fact that the brand is globally available, or even when they know, they may not care about this. Nevertheless, these so-called glocal brands, many of which can be found in consumer packaged goods (CPG), think about Ariel, Pampers, Pantene, or Dove, undeniably bring great value to their companies (i.e. Procter & Gamble and Unilever). Clearly, a myopic focus on consumer sources of global brand value will underestimate the value of global brands to companies. I distinguish between four types of value sources on which global brands can draw: consumer, economic, marketing, and organizational. A strong global brand ideally excels on at least one of these sources, preferably more.\n4. Value delivery: 4.1 Whom to deliver to?\n5. Valued outcomes: 5.1 Calculating brand value\n6. Conclusions: This paper introduced the 4V model of global brand value creation - valued brands, value sources, value delivery, and valued outcomes. The 4Vs are logically organized around the global brand value chain. I will conclude this paper by discussing how various elements of 4V model line-up for each of the four types of valued brands. While in principle, everything can be associated with everything else, it is useful to focus on the most compelling alignments. Table IV provides the overview. The results are to some degree dependent on the product category in question - e.g., Premium brands in food and household items will call for greater local adaptation than Premium brands in electronics or cars (Alden et al., 1999). Nevertheless, Table IV can help marketing practitioners by providing guidelines and benchmarks against which to evaluate their own decisions, and marketing academics to refine and modify these recommendations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework - the 4V model - for better understanding how global brands create firm value. Organized around the global brand value chain, the 4V model includes four sets of value-creating activities: first, valued brands; second, value sources; third, value delivery; and fourth, valued outcomes.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The approach is conceptual with illustrative examples.\nFindings: The sources of global brand value and the processes through which global brands contribute to firm value differ systematically across types of global brands. This paper highlights interrelations and how different activities built upon and reinforce each other.\nResearch limitations/implications: The 4V model ties together broad strands of research conducted to date and offers insights into ways the paper might better understand and study global brands. It should inspire empirical research on the associations between the 4Vs.\nPractical implications: International marketing managers should be able to develop and evaluate global brand strategies more effectively using the 4V model described in this paper. Linking their strategies to valued outcomes puts marketers more firmly at the level in the organization they deserve, namely, the C-Suite.\nOriginality/value: The framework offered in this paper is unique in that it blends insights obtained from multiple sources, namely, academic research, articles that appeared in the business press, case studies, and interactions with managers and policy makers around the world.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]

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