Split (2)

train · 145k rows

title stringlengths 6 301	keywords listlengths 0 23	messages listlengths 2 2
How are foresight methods selected?	[ "Research methods", "Design", "Forward planning", "Strategic planning", "Creative thinking", "Decision making" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction, hypotheses, case studies and approach: This paper is based on the various outputs of the EFMN[1] monitoring activities (see Popper et al. 2005, 2007a, b; Keenan et al., 2006) and a sister initiative carried out in Spanish by the SELF-RULE network[2]. After four years of systematically researching nearly 2,000 foresight exercises from around the world, these monitoring activities have built up databases[3] of case studies that offer tremendous potential to better understand global foresight practices. This research process, hereinafter referred to as mapping, has consisted of four major activities:1. In the first instance, foresight studies were identified by dedicated network partners, who continuously searched the internet, public reports, etc. In addition, national correspondents were mobilised and invited to suggest studies on an annual basis.2. The second activity was the actual mapping or data entry, using a set of indicators to capture the different elements of a foresight process (e.g. methods, country or world region, territorial scale, time horizon and type of sponsorship, among others). From the almost 2,000 cases identified, about half have been fully mapped against the majority of indicators.3. The third activity was the quality control of the data. This task involved sending automated e-mails with a direct link to the database so that national correspondents could update and improve the quality of mapped cases. This approach had mixed results, so that some exercises are much better mapped than others.4. Finally, the fourth activity involved processing, experimentation and analysis of the data set. These analyses have been used to prepare annual mapping reports which have been openly shared with the foresight community and have set the basis for the questions and hypotheses addressed in this article.To begin with, this paper is based on a sample of 886 foresight studies: 36 cases looking at Europe, Africa or Asia as a whole, thus considered supra-national studies, and 850 cases linked to specific countries and including a mix of sub-national, national and supra-national experiences. But given that much foresight is increasingly embedded (see Salo and Salmenkaita, 2002) in wider research and development (R&D) policies, in this paper the country-related studies are clustered into seven geo-R&D contexts - taking into account the country's geographic location and its gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) as a percentage of GDP (European Commission, 2007)[4]. As a result, the country-related sample includes:* 313 cases from three high-R&D groups with R&D intensities above 2.4 per cent of GDP - consisting of 174 cases from Europe (Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Sweden and Switzerland), 109 cases from North America (Canada and the USA), and 30 cases from Asia (Japan and South Korea).* 313 cases from two medium-R&D groups with R&D intensities between 1.5 per cent and 2.2 per cent of GDP - consisting of 299 cases from Europe (Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway and the UK), and 14 cases from Australia.* 224 cases from two lower-R&D groups with R&D intensities below 1.5 per cent of GDP - consisting of 110 cases from Europe (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey) and 114 cases from South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela).However, the reader should be aware of limitations with the databases. To begin with, the mapping of foresight has to contend with inevitable biases, such as language and the high visibility of national-level activities. These have implications for the mapping data collected, with some types of activities, for example sub-national foresight, under-represented in the database. Moreover, data has been collected by a network of correspondents, which, given that some of the indicators used are open to interpretation, has sometimes resulted in a lack of consistency in mapping. Some of these challenges are difficult to fully resolve, but the data could be much improved if a more targeted monitoring strategy was undertaken to better cover the sub-national level, for example. At the same time, some countries where foresight is also practised have been insufficiently monitored so that their foresight activity is under-represented in our data, for example China, India, Taiwan and Mexico. There are other limitations of the mapping that have motivated the above-mentioned quality control. Some have to do with problems of inclusion (where very small visioning or strategic planning studies have been mapped as foresight); others with problems of exclusion (where the body of work in a particular sector is underrepresented, such as private sector foresight, work on skills, jobs and occupations, or studies on the military and defence sectors, for example).Having both these possibilities and limitations in mind, the mapping still offers a unique opportunity to unlock information on a wide range of issues about foresight practices in the world. This information is here used to address a challenging topic, which has been widely discussed in both academic and professional literatures, but mainly from one single angle - that is, how to select foresight methods. From that perspective researchers and consultants promote (even if unintentionally) the use of particular methods. Instead, in this paper, the question of selection is raised from a different viewpoint: how are foresight methods selected? The guiding \"theory\" is that a better understanding of the fundamental attributes of foresight methods and their linkages to the core phases of a foresight process, together with the identification of possible patterns and relationships, will provide useful insights as to how the selection of methods is carried out.Two interconnected hypotheses are tested in this article:* The first hypothesis is that methods are chosen based on their \"intrinsic attributes\", such as their nature (i.e. qualitative, quantitative or semi-quantitative) and their capabilities (i.e. the ability to gather or process information based on evidence, expertise, interaction or creativity), for example.* The second hypothesis is that methods are chosen based on fundamental elements and conditions influencing the foresight process; in other words, foresight process needs matter. This idea is not radically new, but has remained no more than a reasonable conjecture up until now, mainly \"validated\" through practice or tacit knowledge and yet to be proven.Of course, in both futures and foresight literatures there have been plenty of discussions about processes, generations, challenges, classifications and various \"styles\" of forward-looking practices and methods (De Jouvenel, 1967; Boucher, 1977; Coates, 1985; Jungk and Mullert, 1987; Cameron et al., 1996; Bell, 1997; Glenn and Gordon, 1999; Godet, 2000, 2001; Georghiou, 2001; Masini, 2001; Miles, 2002, 2008; Cuhls, 2003; Voros, 2003, 2005; Kaivo-oja et al., 2004; Bishop et al., 2007; Barre, 2008; Popper, 2008; Popper and Medina, 2008; Johnston and Sripaipan, 2008; Keenan and Miles, 2008; Keenan and Popper, 2008). Even though these and many other contributions provide a huge \"knowledge base\" of definitions, frameworks and experiences using a wide range of real - and occasionally hypothetical - examples, up until now there has not been a systematic and organised effort to explain \"how foresight methods are selected\" using such a large number of case studies.With this in mind, a deductive approach will be taken to analyse the mapping data and to present it in various ways so that the hypotheses above are confirmed or rejected. The paper is structured around four sections. After this introduction, there is a section describing the above-mentioned attributes of foresight methods and their expected contribution to the five core phases of a foresight process (pre-foresight, recruitment, generation, action and renewal). Here is where the 11 elements considered and analysed throughout the paper will be introduced (section 2). This is followed by a section on key findings, which uses a sample of 886 case studies to show how the previously described elements influence the selection of foresight methods (section 3). Finally, section 4 concludes with a snapshot summary of major findings.\n2. Definitions and frameworks: This section provides definitions and frameworks related to the hypotheses tested in this article. It basically sets the context for the various assumptions made in the paper by describing and exploring the various influencing factors on the selection of foresight methods.2.1 Fundamental attributes of foresight methods\n3. So, how are foresight methods selected?: Having described the attributes of foresight methods and the elements of a foresight process, it is now time to recall the main question of the paper: how are foresight methods selected? The answer requires tackling 11 equally complex questions, two of which are related to the attributes of methods:1. How is selection influenced by the nature of methods?2. How is selection influenced by the capabilities of methods?The other nine are more closely related to the elements of foresight processes:1. How is selection influenced by the geo-R&D context?2. How is selection influenced by the domain coverage?3. How is selection influenced by the territorial scale?4. How is selection influenced by the time horizon?5. How is selection influenced by the sponsorship?6. How is selection influenced by the target groups?7. How is selection influenced by the participation scale?8. How is selection influenced by the codified outputs?9. How is selection influenced by the methods mix?But before embarking upon this journey, let us first present the results of the basic frequency count data on the extent to which 25 foresight methods are used in 886 cases. In Figure 3, the number of times each method was used is indicated in parentheses next to the method. For example, expert panels was applied 440 times. The frequency of use of methods clearly shows three blocks or groups:1. the widely used methods are LR, expert panels and scenarios, all of which are qualitative;2. the category of commonly used methods includes extrapolation/megatrends, futures workshops, brainstorming, other methods, interviews, Delphi, questionnaire/survey, key technologies, scanning, essays and SWOT; and3. the group of less frequently used methods include roadmapping, modelling/simulation, backcasting, stakeholders mapping, structural analysis, bibliometrics, morphological analysis, citizen panels, relevance trees, multi-criteria and gaming.While the data suggests that this group of methods is rarely used, some of the numbers here are lower than might be anticipated and can probably be assigned to biases arising from the mapping. For example, methods such as structural analysis and relevance trees have been occasionally applied in Spain and France at the sub-national level. But because mapping at this level has been weaker than at the national level, the data does not do justice to the likely higher frequency of their applications.This information could raise one additional question: how many methods are used in an \"average\" foresight study? Figure 4 shows that on average, five or six methods are used per initiative. However, the variation is high, so it can be concluded that the diversity of methods used is also high. But, these numbers should not be taken for granted. As we have already mentioned, foresight exercises tend to use multiple methods in their methodological designs. There are other factors considered in the remainder of this paper that need to be added to the equation. In any case, knowing the level of use of methods and the \"average\" number of methods used in a project is a very good starting point for the eleven-question journey!3.1 How is selection influenced by the \"nature of methods\"?\n4. Concluding remarks: The findings in section 3 collectively confirm the two hypotheses of this paper: foresight methods are selected in a (not always coherent or systematic) multi-factor process. So far this process has been dominated by the intuition, insight, impulsiveness and - sometimes - inexperience or irresponsibility of practitioners and organisers. When Slaughter (2004) suggests that \"it is the depth within the practitioner that evokes depth and capacity in whatever method is being used\", practitioners should also bear in mind that part of this \"depth\" requires the acknowledgement of foresight as a process (Popper, 2008), together with the recognition of the fundamental attributes of methods. In this paper the influence of 11 factors on the selection of foresight methods has been described and analysed objectively in order to avoid - or at least reduce - the typical prescriptive tone of most available literature on the subject. But given the amount of information presented in previous sections, these concluding remarks will only provide a \"snapshot\" of the main findings (see Figure 18):* The factors most influential in the selection of methods are their nature and the methods mix. The former shows that qualitative approaches are definitely favoured while the latter shows that some methods go practically hand-in-hand, such as the apparent use of brainstorming as an input for Delphi.* Three factors show a relatively high influence: the capabilities of methods - showing a bias towards methods gathering and processing information based on expertise and evidence; the geo-R&D context, showing, for example, that foresight methodologies in lower-R&D contexts tend to be more demanding in terms of number of methods; and the codified outputs, given that some common outputs are largely derived from the use of particular methods (e.g. scenarios, roadmaps and lists of key technologies).* Four factors show a more moderate influence: territorial scale, where role-related and technical constraints tend to better explain some selections; time horizon, showing, for example, that the use of methods could increase or decrease when the time horizon gets longer; participation scale, revealing that some resource-intensive and participatory approaches (e.g. Delphi) are not very much of a choice in projects with participation levels below 50 people (however, low participation in a study could also be because these methods were not used); and the type of sponsorship, showing, for instance, that studies sponsored by non-state actors are more demanding in scope.* Finally, factors like the domain coverage and the target groups tend to have low influence on the selection of methods.Overall the findings have revealed that foresight practices are under-exploiting existing methods based on creativity and interaction. For this reason, the paper would like to conclude with an open invitation to futurists and foresight practitioners to contribute to the development of a more innovative research agenda on the future of foresight methods themselves (Miles et al., 2008) and the balanced promotion of more prospective and participative techniques.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper addresses a challenging topic, which in both academic and professional literatures has been widely discussed but mainly from one single angle - that is, how to select foresight methods. From that point of view researchers and consultants promote (even if unintentionally) the use of particular methods. Here the question of selection is raised from a different perspective: how are foresight methods selected?\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The guiding \"theory\" is that a better understanding of the fundamental attributes of foresight methods and their linkages to the core phases of a foresight process, together with the identification of possible patterns in the selection of methods, will provide useful insights as to how the selection of methods is carried out.\nFindings: - So far the selection of foresight methods has been dominated by the intuition, insight, impulsiveness and - sometimes - inexperience or irresponsibility of practitioners and organisers. This paper reveals that the selection of foresight methods (even if not always coherent or systematic) is a multi-factor process, and needs to be considered as such.\nPractical implications: - The results can be utilised by lecturers and students to describe and understand better the use of foresight methods, and by organisers of foresight (including practitioners) to better inform decisions during the design of (hopefully) more coherent methodological frameworks.\nOriginality/value: - The paper combines practical concepts and frameworks (such as the Foresight Process and the Foresight Diamond) with innovative analyses to represent and visualise better the combination of methods in 886 case studies, for example introducing the Methods Combination Matrix (MCM) to examine the dynamics of a mix of methods.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The health decentralization process in Greece: the insiders' perspective	[ "Health policy", "Governance structures", "Management", "Qualitative research", "Health law or regulation", "Political strategy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Decentralization involves the transfer of authority in planning, management and decision making from the national to the sub-national level (i.e. to the regional or municipal level) of government (Saltman et al., 2007). It is a popular, yet controversial aspect of health care reform and, as such, it is a basic aspect of health systems governance (HSG) (Peckham et al., 2008). HSG can be approached through an examination of the structures of government and the health system or through an institutional frame that \"refers to making, changing, monitoring and enforcing the rules that govern the demand and supply of health services\" (Abimbola et al., 2017). Albeit, HSG is a relatively new concept, which is multidimensional and difficult to assess, since there are several, and differing, frameworks which can be used to evaluate it at national or subnational level (Pyone et al., 2017).\nMethods: Study design\nResults: The data contained in the transcript of each of the 36 interviews were organized into categories within tables by theme to compare and analyze the perspectives of the directors of the health regions. The four themes we identified in the analysis and are discussed below with anonymized quotes are: conceptual framework of health decentralization; type of health decentralization; personal experience and relations with local stakeholders, Ministry of Health and other health regions; and achievements and failures during the tenure of the participants.\nDiscussion: In broad terms, decentralization entails the transfer of fiscal, political and administrative responsibilities from a central authority (usually the national government) to a local institution (Litvack et al., 1998). However, decentralization is not without problems; it is not a panacea for all the problems of health care delivery and may have its own disadvantages: it is not always effective, it leads to a loss of economies of scale and it reduces the control of central government on the flow of financial resources. Also, inadequate managerial or technical competences at the local level may lead to inadequate health care delivery in some regions and to inequalities between them, while transfer of responsibilities to local entities without sufficient financial resources may exacerbate inequalities. Decentralization may also render the implementation and coordination of national policies more complex (Litvack and Seddon, 1999). Regarding the Greek experience of health service decentralization, the directors of the health regions considered that the transfer of power was limited to an administrative decentralization, rather than a political and economic decentralization. This classifies it as a deconcentration of administrative powers, rather than a complete decentralization. According to Vrangbaek's (2007) typology for health care decentralization, it could be argued that the Greek case was indeed an attempt toward vertical deconcentration, referring to the transfer of responsibility and power from a smaller number (Ministry of Health) to a larger number of administrative actors (health regions) within a formal administrative structure.\nLimitations: The restrictions of the study could be summarized first in the difficulty in locating the participants, and the refusal of several directors to participate in the research. Another difficulty was the limited time the directors had at their disposal to conduct the interview. Furthermore, there is the possibility that the participants have given vague, inaccurate or distorted responses or adapted their responses to what they consider acceptable from the point of view of the professional or scientific community to which they belong. This possibility cannot be ruled out, despite the efforts to tackle it. Another limitation is that the current research did not include other actors of the health care system, such as the Ministers and Deputy of Health, the Secretaries General of the Ministry and civil servants in senior positions in the Ministry, although we fear that it would be almost impossible to glean responses from this group of potential elite interviewees. Extending this approach, our research did not include actors at the local level, such as physicians and nurses working in the hospitals, especially in positions of responsibility, such as \"head physician\" or \"head nurse,\" hospital administrators and persons in positions of authority in local government. Finally, no attempt was made to elicit the attitudes of the users of the health care services, i.e. the patients and healthy persons who come into contact with the health system. We can surmise that their attitude would reflect indifference about the details of how the system is governed, as long as they receive the services that they require.\nConclusions: The value of the present study lies in the fact that it examines the issue of health decentralization in Greece by attempting to analyze and explain the reasons why the process never fulfilled its initial aims as viewed by the persons who were entrusted with implementing the process. The fact that a large number of former directors of the Greek health regions who were called to put into practice the regional organization and decentralization of health services in Greece between 2001 and 2009 agreed to share their experiences with a wider audience provides evidence that the whole process had an underlying support and raised expectations that were never fulfilled. In this context, we hope this analysis of the Greek experience and its pitfalls would be useful for other countries who would be tempted to embark on a process of decentralization of the governance of the health system, especially if it is done in isolation of the overall governance of the political and administrative system.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Greece has legislated health decentralization several times since the 1920s, but none had been implemented until 2001. Even so, the decentralized system was subsequently modified several times, curtailing the powers that were initially delegated to the health regions, while the whole process has been criticized as limited in scope. The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons that the decentralization process did not fulfil its initial aims.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Elite interviews were conducted with 37 of the 50 directors of health regions who served between 2001 and 2009. Interview transcripts were divided into four themes and analyzed using thematic analysis.\nFindings: The participants agreed that health decentralization in Greece was only administrative rather than political and did not include fiscal decentralization. They described problematic and competitive relations with party officials and civil servants. They blamed their short tenure for the inability to fulfil their plans. Findings indicate that decentralization in Greece did not achieve its objectives because of the dominant mentality of centralized control, the lack of political support, the discontinuity in health policies and opposition from vested interests.\nOriginality/value: The value of the present study lies in the fact that it examines in depth the issue of health decentralization drawing on the experiences of the former directors of the Greek health regions, i.e. the persons who were called on to put into practice the process of regional decentralization.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Behavioral approach to food waste: an experiment	[ "The Netherlands", "Emotions", "Food waste", "Behavioral intervention", "Information campaign" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Consumers in high-income countries waste food because they can afford to plan poorly, purchase too much, cook too much and throw away edible food when not fitting their momentary consumption preference (Ventour, 2008; Silvennoinen et al., 2014). This is in contrast to consumers in low-income countries who are budget constrained and \"buy today - consume today.\" In the long chain between production and consumption, there are multiple stages at which some form of loss, spillage, waste or loss of food might take place, be it in production, storage, distribution or during actual consumption. Nevertheless, the most influential factor of food waste in rich countries is consumer behavior (Gustavson et al., 2011; Secondi et al., 2015).\nMaterials and methods: We implement a field experiment in a university restaurant selling ready meals. The restaurant is the main food serving facility on the campus, selling hundreds of hot meals every day. It offers two hot meals daily, one non-vegetarian and one vegetarian, that are served fresh at the service counters. The self-service system implies that every customer collects his/her own meal from the cooks. However, customers cannot fill their plates themselves. A meal is usually composed of three elements (side, vegetables and main component). These elements are ready, and the cooks compose the plates on demand. Customers have direct eye contact with the cooks serving their food and can talk to them. This offers the possibility to make small modification requests toward the standardized food portions served to them, or to leave out an undesirable component. We observe decisions of the consumers during regular opening hours of the restaurant, without them being aware of the experiment.\nResults and discussion: We evaluate the impact of our intervention by analyzing the demand for smaller portions at the serving counters, the actual food waste reduction at the conveyor belt, and by demand for behavior change revealed in the questionnaire via a response to a hypothetical question. While the first two measures assess the actual impact of the intervention, the questionnaire data give insights into factors that might drive the behavior change, but remain in the domain of intentions rather than actually observed behavior.\nConclusions: In developed countries, consumers are responsible for the largest share of the food waste in the chain from food production to consumption. Therefore, solutions to the food waste problem in these countries have to target end consumers, and improve their poor planning of food consumption, as well as increase their awareness of the food waste problem. The end consumers make their consumption decisions in private sphere, often inaccessible to monitoring. Therefore, it is expected that this reduction of the food waste will have to be achieved by behavioral interventions and nudges, without relying on monitoring or direct monetary incentives like fines for generating waste.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of behavioral interventions and nudging in dealing with the food waste problem. In particular, the authors implement an information campaign aiming to increase consumers' awareness of the food waste problem.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In the period of three weeks, the authors observe intentions to prevent food waste and actual food waste of the consumers in a university restaurant serving ready meals. During the intervention period, consumers are exposed to an information campaign, designed to avoid consumers' insufficient planning problem.\nFindings: Consumers are willing to pay the same price for less food more often during the campaign than before the campaign, but the approximated impact on the food waste is not significant. Social emotions of guilt and shame are linked to consumers' intentions to prevent food waste, suggesting channels to be included in a successful information campaign nudging consumers toward food waste reduction.\nResearch limitations/implications: The authors were not able to measure precisely food waste, but observed consumers in a real-life context. Consumers were not aware of the study, and made daily purchase decisions before and after the information campaign.\nSocial implications: Consumer behavior is at the core of the food waste problem in developed countries. It is important to understand how consumers can be nudged at low cost, using an information campaign, to change their attitude to food waste, and to decrease food waste.\nOriginality/value: The authors collected an original dataset on the impact of an information campaign, observing behavior of consumers in a real-life context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Enhancing the usability of maintenance data management systems	[ "Maintenance", "Usability", "Information communication technology", "Computerized maintenance management system", "User interface" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Maintenance is important for the well being of all industries. Good examples of how maintenance uses information technology (IT) based solutions to assist in the planning and execution of maintenance are found in the pulp and paper, mining, and aerospace industries. These computerized maintenance management system's (CMMS) provide services to assist the whole maintenance process, e.g. maintenance management, maintenance support planning, maintenance planning, maintenance execution, maintenance assessment, and maintenance improvement (Kullolli, 2008) while, supporting maintenance personnel in developing work orders, registering on-going tasks, getting instructions for maintenance tasks, registering completed tasks, reporting deviations/problems, etc. This information is necessary for improving the maintenance process. The CMMS used today are designed to work well, containing necessary information to conduct the task at hand although there is always room for improvement.\n2. Maintenance data management system: A typical interface between eMaintenance solutions and the user of eMaintenance data is a CMMS. A CMMS organizes many different functions, such as work orders, inventory control, asset management and integration towards other management systems. Operators, technicians, as well as, management may be typical users of a CMMS (Labib, 2004). A CMMS provides work orders to plan and schedule inspections, preventive maintenance and maintenance of machine breakdowns. This includes assigning personnel, reserving materials, recording costs and tracking information history. The CMMS is a standalone system that is used anywhere larger maintenance operations are conducted within a factory or in the maintenance of fleets of equipment. The benefits of a CMMS are to assist in the management of maintenance alarms, work orders, actions, data storage, completed tasks, status reports, etc. Although, a CMMS with a poorly designed user interface (UI) can add to the risk for user error and user mistakes.\n3. Method: This paper aims to gain an overarching knowledge concerning usability issues in CMMS. Since earlier research has shown that maintenance actions can be improved if the CMMS is used more effectively but some criticism has come to light hinting that usability issues hinder the users to wholeheartedly adopt the system. All the users studied have experience of several different CMMS and this is common since one system alone is not capable to handle all the tasks necessary for maintenance needs. The study concerning the usability issues of the CMMS was approached in three steps, first, were users recruited from several industries to give their view of the CMMS, second, a focus group study was conducted where the participants presented issues for improvement based upon their most relevant concerns, and, third, a workplace study was conducted with observations and in-depth interviews. Of the industries chosen for study, paper, mining, and aerospace, was aerospace unique in that it requires the highest standards concerning maintenance issues, and therefore, it was chosen as the industry for further study. Within the aerospace industry are the most advanced and rigorous methods used in following the maintenance guidelines and requirements, therefore, were both military and civilian aircraft maintenance personal chosen as a best-case scenario for CMMS users. Based upon the requirements placed upon aerospace should the maintenance personnel be the best trained and most fluent in use of the CMMS.\n4. Results: 4.1 Industrial needs\n5. Discussion: 5.1 Recommendations for CMMS development\n6. Conclusions: The study looked into the domain concerning usability for maintenance personnel using CMMS. To fulfill the objective of the paper a list of recommendations for what improvements should be implemented, based on three user studies is provided:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore and study the aspects of usability related to eMaintenance solutions. The study aims to expand the domain of eMaintenance by increasing the usefulness of the computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) through improved usability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper opted for an exploratory study using interviews, one expert focus group discussion, and observations.\nFindings: The paper provides insights on specific usability characteristics that can be adapted to eMaintenance solutions for industrial usage, e.g. aviation and process industry. The findings show that the current implementations of eMaintenance solutions in CMMS, in many cases, suffer from an insufficient level of usability. This has led to usability issues resulting in errors and mistakes. The result is a call for a more user-based focus, in which, the system needs to be easily understood, easily navigated, containing the necessary information to conduct maintenance tasks, tracking of the work conducted and who was involved, and the system needs to be compatible with other systems so that necessary information can be accessed via the CMMS.\nResearch limitations/implications: Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.\nPractical implications: The paper includes implications for the development of a CMMS, which could have positive effects for maintenance tasks.\nOriginality/value: This paper fulfills an identified need to study how CMMS actually fulfill the task they are designed to do.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Knowledge management in international organisations	[ "Information management", "Knowledge management", "International organizations", "Case studies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Since the pioneer work of Nonaka and Takeuchi (Nonaka, 1991; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) in the field of information and knowledge management (KM), the subject has been analyzed from a multitude of angles. This however, only holds true for private companies. Less research has been done on the public sector (cf. Willem and Buelens, 2007), where KM tends to be judged less important due to fixed employment structures that are filled by civil servants. When it comes to the examination of KM systems in international and supranational organizations, only few pieces of literature and anecdotal evidence can be found.Knowledge and the use thereof are of prime importance for the daily work of these institutions. International organizations have a high intake and a high output of information. Most international and supranational bodies have realized the value of knowledge sharing and have set up information and knowledge management programs. In spite of their ongoing activities, many organizations consider information management as part of their internal procedures and remain comparatively tacit about their activities.This contribution intends to fill the gap and shed a light onto knowledge management in international bodies by presenting case studies on various international institutions. For the analysis, the special features of international organizations in terms of knowledge needs and sharing are analyzed in chapter 2. Here, test criteria are developed to determine in which phase international bodies are in implementing information and knowledge sharing. Chapter 3 presents case studies on six international and supranational organizations that can serve as a representative basis for the analyses. The conclusions are drawn in chapter four.For the purpose of this contribution, we will stick to a wide definition of knowledge management, comprising information and knowledge management, as put forward by the OECD (2005):Knowledge management involves activities related to the capture, use and sharing of knowledge by the organization. It involves the management both of external linkages and of knowledge flows within the enterprise, including methods and procedures for seeking external knowledge and for establishing closer relationships with other enterprises (suppliers, competitors), customers or research institutions. In addition to practices for gaining new knowledge, knowledge management involves methods for sharing and using knowledge, including establishing value systems for sharing knowledge and practices for codifying routines.\n2. Special features of knowledge management in international organizations: Owing to their legal status, public administrations and international organizations are usually put separately from private companies. While this is correct in many fields, there are certain arguments that suggest that in terms of the need for information and knowledge sharing, a certain number of similarities can be found. In fact, the definition of a multinational enterprise as being a corporation or enterprise that produces or delivers services in more than one country (Pitelis and Sugden, 2000), holds true for many international organizations, especially in the development sector where a large number of field offices are in place to provide for aid locally.In addition, there are some other interesting parallels. In the traditional literature, knowledge and information sharing are regarded as means to use resources more effectively in order to reduce costs and gain a competitive advantage (cf. Chuang, 2004; Johannessen and Olsen, 2003; Ringel-Bickelmaier, 2000; North, 2005). The same is valid for most international organizations. As a common feature, all international organizations work within the restraint of a tight regular budget that needs to be managed as effectively and efficiently as possible. Almost all international organizations have accordingly installed controlling systems or redefined their tasks as business cases. In some instances, the characteristic of competition shows up, especially in the development sector. Here, international bodies compete with national, local and private organizations to get their projects implemented, which is often referred to as donor duplication or donor fragmentation (OECD, 2003).Like multinational enterprises, international organizations are formed by highly diversified staffs, which in many instances are recruited locally. Here, too, an effective knowledge management needs to take into account possible cultural barriers to knowledge sharing (De Long and Fahey, 2000).A final and quite decisive parallel to multinational enterprises is the fact that international organizations often hire specialists for a limited period and who are internationally highly mobile. Albeit few organizations are outspoken about this, institutions like the bodies of the European Union where a large part of staff has the status of European civil servants, remain the exemption. Generally, a large part of staff in international organizations is employed on fixed-term contracts which generally run up to three years with the possibility, but not the obligation, of renewal. This increased staff mobility underlines the need for active codification of information and the sharing of explicit and implicit knowledge to allow new staff a smooth take-up of their posts and to avoid \"knowledge drain\", i.e. store the acquired knowledge permanently. Taking the example of the United Nations' Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), a survey showed that a majority of staff (48 per cent) were working less than two years in their present job, with 16 per cent of respondents less than one year in their positions (cf. Figure 1).These figures are mirrored when looking at the number of years that staff has worked with UNESCAP (Figure 2). Again, there were 16 percent of respondents recently joined UNESCAP and worked there for less than a year. Evenly, 18 percent of respondents had been with UNESCAP for one to two years and three to four years. Finally, half of respondents had worked with UNESCAP for more than five years.A similar pattern can be seen with the OECD, due to relying on a regular turnover of a large part of staff. Here, annual turnover rates sometimes as high as 40 per cent for certain staff segments can be witnessed.Since the framework conditions in international organizations in terms of the need and possibility of managing knowledge are comparable to those of multinational private enterprises, it seems justified to apply similar criteria for a first assessment of where international organizations are in terms of managing information and knowledge (see Table I). However, these criteria should not hide the fact that after all, differences between international organizations and multilateral enterprises exist.To the extent that information is accessible, we will analyse these aspects by looking at case studies from the United Nations Development Programme, the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the World Bank, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the OECD and the European Commission. A summary of the application of the test criteria will be given in chapter 5.\n3. Case studies: knowledge management in international organizations: 3.1 United Nations\n4. Conclusions: room for improvement: Summing up the findings of chapter three allows drawing first tentative conclusions on the introduction and the use of knowledge management in international organizations. Checking the test criteria established in chapter two shows strong similarities in the KM implementation strategies chosen by the international organizations presented. All bodies opted for a staged approach for the introduction of information and knowledge management rather than for a \"big bang\" introduction of KM tools. The specific features of the KM systems in place tend to depend very much on the organizational structure in place and the extent and possibilities of the ICT available. Here, the KM system of the IAEA stands out as a special case where the open and proactive sharing of knowledge needs to be limited due to security concerns. Again as a general picture, special provisions for managing cultural diversity and dealing with cultural aspects in knowledge sharing do not seem to be in place.All institutions covered in this contribution have transgressed the first phase of information and knowledge management. An information sharing and managing culture is established both via the creation of an information management system and human resources policies that favor an open information and knowledge sharing culture. In most cases a responsible person/unit for information and knowledge management is in place. The management of explicit knowledge - the second introductory phase of knowledge management - is as well in place to a larger or lesser extent in all institutions examined. Thanks to the progress of ICT, all international organizations offer search and index tools and have created thematic knowledge networks internally and externally. In most cases, knowledge mapping is undertaken actively. However, a structured and systematic intake of external knowledge can be found to a lesser extent.Finally, only few international organizations like UNDP or the World Bank have pushed their KM systems to integrate both internal and external explicit and implicit knowledge, recurring to instruments like online-communities, wikis or storytelling. This is mirrored in the broad absence of international organizations in the final positions of international KM awards like MAKE.The results show clearly that most international organizations still have large rooms for improvement as regards their information and knowledge management system. However, these conclusions can only serve as tentative result, as they rest on selective samples. In order to fully highlight the topic, more research is still needed. This remains extremely difficult, as especially those organizations who have not or only partly invested in information and knowledge management remain very tacit. On the other side, the group of the frontrunners like UNDP or World Bank offer promising models how to successfully implement KM strategies. Altogether the chances are high, that these models will be taken up as blueprints for other organizations as they can be copied and adapted easily.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to review the approaches of international organizations to fostering knowledge management.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Two different approaches are used: First, presenting case studies on the United Nations Development Programme, the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the World Bank, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the OECD and the European Commission. Second, evaluation of the progress of the respective approaches by using common test criteria for knowledge management implementation established in the literature.\nFindings: - It was found that all the institutions covered in this contribution have passed the stage of information management and have put active knowledge management systems in place. However, a structured and systematic management of implicit and external knowledge can be found to a lesser extent. Only a few international organizations like UNDP or the World Bank have pushed their knowledge management systems to integrate both internal and external, explicit and implicit knowledge. The results show clearly that most international organizations still show much room for improvement regarding their information and knowledge management system.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study was the first of its kind to look into information and knowledge management in international organizations. The contribution can be used as a starting-point for further in-depth work and as a blueprint for designing knowledge management systems in other international bodies.\nPractical implications: - The findings from the study may be used by various practitioners including knowledge managers in international organizations, knowledge management professionals and university researchers.\nOriginality/value: - The paper represents the first documented attempt to review information and knowledge management in international organizations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effect of highly emotionally intelligent teachers on their students' satisfaction	[ "Education", "Emotional intelligence", "Customer satisfaction", "Students", "Teachers" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) aces managerial discussions (Goleman, 1995) and catches fire in the corporate world, the educational institutions that play the role of backyard kitchens for future executives should seek to play their role in the constant evolution process. This research paper focusses on the importance of EI as a factor affecting the human, managerial and educational fields and highlights the necessity of having high emotional intelligent teachers in the universities to be able to increase students' customer satisfaction (SCS).\n2. Literature review: EI attempts to study why a person succeeds and another fails in life, regardless of their cognitive abilities, and how some with less skills and abilities perform and succeed more than some of the better equipped (Bradberry and Greaves, 2009). As the missing link is neither intelligence nor education or knowledge, researchers are looking into other dimensions. Psychologists are looking into determining and measuring behaviour and personality traits, while others are suggesting EI as the answer.\n3. Methodology: Based on the above literature review, higher EI of teachers might lead to higher EI of students (Woodruff, 1997). In this study, we test the postulated and not yet tested relationship between the EI of teachers and their respective students' satisfaction, to see whether it is mediated by the SEI. A quantitative study is deployed for this social research, employing empirical statements and methods (Cohen and Manion, 1980) and deductive reasoning (Hair et al., 2007). The courses selected in this sample are those that teach theory such as management, marketing and economics and not courses of numerical application. The similarity between courses helps the researcher in comparing the performance of low EI teachers to the ones with high EI. Using numerical data and mathematical-based methods (Creswell, 1994), and following a positivist approach, the following research question (Figure 1) is tested. The researchers are resorting to a positivist approach, as they believe that EI is a skill that people can learn and acquire, adapt and change their behaviour accordingly. Moreover, the researchers are looking for correlations or relationships between variables, all of which take them away from interpretivism and closer to positivism:\n4. Results: Data are collected during the Fall semester of the academic year 2015, through contacting and visiting universities that follow the American liberal educational system (credits). Only four universities took part in the study. The researchers were introduced by the teachers, introduced their research and collected the data on site. For a proper data entry, the researchers labelled the received questionnaires with the initials of the teacher; thus, they were able to relate the data of the students to their respective teachers in the various locations of data collection. SPSS 23.0 is used for data analysis, including reliability and validity of the scale. The KMO test results for all the parts of the scale used range between 0.705 and 0.809 (see Table I). The values of Cronbach's a range between 0.684 and 0.892 and are considered acceptable. The Bartlett's sphericity test value ranges between 0.04<p<0.000. The eigenvalues scale variation explained for SEI is 3.439 (cumulative 57.381 per cent) and 4.222 for teachers (cumulative=3.976), SCS is 5.344 (cumulative=77.681 per cent), all being acceptable at p<0.05, allowing the researchers to reject the null hypothesis. Construct, content and criterion validity are analysed through scale development process and data collection and entry steps, to conclude satisfactorily.\n5. Discussion: These results highlight a general trend in the business education circles, where corporate entities are looking into what can improve the performance of managers and employees. The proof that EI has affected the analysed relationships is by itself a standing statement that understanding and managing the emotional state of the employees is adamant to its introduction to the corporate world as a manageable factor of high importance in human behaviour.\n6. Research contributions: This study contributes to the academic and practitioner knowledge. Education is important in our days and has an important economic contribution to the labour markets. Lebanon is the educational hub for the Middle East. Lebanon has had a yearly growth in its university enrolment of 3 per cent of its population over the last two decades (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2015, interview with Dr Ahmad Jammal, General Director of Higher Education Department). Therefore, it could be concluded that TEI affects a large percentage of its population and largely affects its upper-education market. Therefore, this study will have an impact on many fields - academic, managerial and social. First, the model tested in novel by itself, and no previous study has dwelled on the Lebanese environment, where EI is emerging in the human side of management, educational management and marketing fields. Second, it highlights the importance of EI in the academic field, proving that creating a positive class environment conducive of motivation and communication boosts openness, understanding and other social skills through interaction, leading to essential educational and developmental benefits. The human communication factor is portrayed as a tool for educating future executives toward problem solving, conflict resolution and communication. When EI of students increases, the behaviour of students in class improves, they will be more motivated, participate more, surf less on the internet, show less misconduct behaviour which leads to better interaction with the teacher. All of this will improve the academic and social behaviour of the students which help the teacher in reaching their goals and the university in achieving its mission.\n7. Limitations: The limitations of the study do not affect its integrity or reliability. The researchers are aware of the sample's size of 283 students and their teachers, out of a total population consisting of approximately 190,000 students, representing only 1.5 per cent of the population. Second, the sampling or sample selection process relied heavily on personal contacts in receiving the permissions to conduct the study in these specific universities. Although the universities are sampled randomly, the researchers aimed at larger participation to improve the sample's representativeness, especially that the universities whose branches are in rural areas were not approached for limitations in budget, weather and time.\n8. Conclusion: The results of this confirmatory study on the role of teachers' EI on the relationship between the students' EI and their SCS are laid. The proof is that in the environment where the study is unfolded, the effect of this relationship is supported. Moreover, the role of TEI in enhancing SEI is established as well as the effect of TEI on the students' feeling of customer satisfaction as university students using the services of these upper educational institutions. These results have many managerial implications. Managing staff and faculty in upper-level educational institutions needs to focus more on the importance of SCS as a factor to be used in recruitment planning. The changing effect of TEI on SEI is an eye-opener for those whose daily job involves dealing with students as customers, where the study proves the existence of this sentimental interchange of student-customer, and which becomes a tool that can be built upon in university branding, customer expectations, brand equity as well as employability investment. Moreover, the role that TEI plays in raising SEI is of essence in the recruitment of faculty members who first believe in the role of EI; second, who possess an acceptable level of EI; and third, who have an adequate tenure of teaching experience, and finally who can bring added value through their previous working experience. All these factors that compose a faculty's curriculum vitae become essential tools that are vested in the creation of a classroom atmosphere incumbent toward allowing discussion dynamics and opportunities for learning and expression among students, leading to their feeling of value learning where their benefit from all the presented components of the class session including the teachers' EI that nurtures the students' emotional development and intelligence.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to answer the basic research question \"Do highly emotional intelligent teachers increase student's satisfaction in the universities?\"\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is a quantitative study using self-reporting questionnaires applied on 283 students and 10 faculty members.\nFindings: The paper shows the importance of having high emotional intelligent teachers in the universities to increase students' emotional intelligence (EI) and, therefore, their satisfaction. The results show that the primary factor that will increase the EI of students is not what most of the scholars mentioned, the EI of teacher, but the class interactions.\nPractical implications: The paper makes a recommendation to universities to hire emotionally intelligent teachers who stress on increasing the EI of students. Universities, by increasing the EI of their students, will improve their business situation, since if students are happy they will remain in the universities, spending, therefore, more money and encouraging other students to do so.\nOriginality/value: No such research was previously conducted in Lebanon where still few people understand the meaning or the importance of EI. This study, therefore, is fulfilling a gap, a brick in the wall of knowledge on class interaction in bridging the link between teachers and students.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Public participation in decision-making on the coverage of new antivirals for hepatitis C	[ "Hepatitis C", "PPI", "Agenda-setting", "Direct-acting antivirals", "Priority-setting", "Public and patient involvement", "Sofosbuvir", "DAAs" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In 2013, the Food and Drug Administration in the USA approved sofosbuvir and simeprevir for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C infections (US Food and Drug Administration, 2014). The regulatory agencies of other countries soon followed and the use of sofosbuvir was approved by the European Medicines Agency in January 2014 (European Medicines Agency, 2015). These medicines, along with a third called daclatasvir, were hailed as a breakthrough in the treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis C as they are considered to be highly effective antiviral agents that, for the first time, attack the hepatitis C virus (HCV) directly. These drugs are not only more effective in achieving sustained virological response (SVR) - effectively curing patients - but also have fewer side effects than previous treatments. Unsurprisingly, there has been high demand for these new \"cures\" for hepatitis C among patients - especially given the alternative prospects of deteriorating liver function and possible liver transplantation or death, alongside the psychological distress and social stigma attached to the disease (Vietri et al., 2013; Younossi and Henry, 2015).\nHealth priority-setting and PPI: Setting priorities in health care holds a prominent place on the policy agenda in countries around the world, particularly as countries seek to achieve universal health coverage. The advent of this agenda, including the creation of health technology assessment (HTA) organizations, has brought about an increased interest in the role of PPI in health prioritization (e.g. Martin et al., 2002; Abelson et al., 2007) because decisions involve making difficult choices that cannot be made solely on technical grounds and hence need to be justified and legitimized in the context of social values and procedural justice (Clark and Weale, 2012; Daniels and Sabin, 1997).\nMethods and data: The paper employs a comparative case study approach. Its main units of analysis are the country-specific processes of public participation in the case of sofosbuvir. We focus on sofosbuvir because it has received substantial attention in media outlets worldwide. The country case selection was informed by the aim to include countries with conventional and unconventional modes of public participation in health prioritization (Weale et al., 2016). For reasons of data availability, the selection was restricted to the countries represented at the Brocher Foundation workshop entitled \"Improving equitable access to health care through patient and public involvement in prioritization decisions\" in Switzerland in November 2015. The represented countries were Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the UK and the USA.\nNew HCV medicines: \"Hepatitis C is a virus that can infect the liver\" (NHS Choices, 2015). Long-term, and potentially life-threatening complications from chronic hepatitis C infection include liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. More than 185 million people are affected by hepatitis C and approximately 350,000 people die each year as a consequence (World Health Organization (WHO), 2014, p. 25). Hepatitis C is transmitted through contact with infected blood specimens (WHO, 2014). There are several types and subtypes of the infection, so-called genotypes.\nPublic participation in the case of sofosbuvir: Brazil\nDiscussion and conclusion: Examining PPI in the case of sofosbuvir across multiple and diverse settings highlights that none of the countries included in this paper diverted from their established modes of involving the public and patients. These modes need to be viewed in the political and historical contexts of the respective countries. They led to different, yet very important, questions that need to be addressed. In England, stakeholders stressed the controversies that arise when cost effective medicines are not covered within the statutory timeframe due to budget impact concerns, even though such a delay is statutorily permitted in certain circumstances. This suggests that the methodological approach employed by NICE does not sit easily with stakeholders. The public consultation process highlighted this issue, but it cannot be resolved in the currently available PPI forums. It is a political question that needs to be addressed in the wider public space.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: New hepatitis C medicines such as sofosbuvir underline the need to balance considerations of innovation, clinical evidence, budget impact and equity in health priority-setting. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of public participation in addressing these considerations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper employs a comparative case study approach. It explores the experience of four countries - Brazil, England, South Korea and the USA - in making coverage decisions about the antiviral sofosbuvir and involving the public and patients in these decision-making processes.\nFindings: Issues emerging from public participation ac tivities include the role of the universal right to health in Brazil, the balance between innovation and budget impact in England, the effect of unethical medical practices on public perception in South Korea and the legitimacy of priority-setting processes in the USA. Providing policymakers are receptive to these issues, public participation activities may be re-conceptualized as processes that illuminate policy problems relevant to a particular context, thereby promoting an agenda-setting role for the public.\nOriginality/value: The paper offers an empirical analysis of public involvement in the case of sofosbuvir, where the relevant considerations that bear on priority-setting decisions have been particularly stark. The perspectives that emerge suggest that public participation contributes to raising attention to issues that need to be addressed by policymakers. Public participation activities can thus contribute to setting policy agendas, even if that is not their explicit purpose. However, the actualization of this contribution is contingent on the receptiveness of policymakers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Social capital in Japanese-Western alliances: understanding cultural effects	[ "Japan", "National cultures", "Social capital", "International business", "Partnership", "Strategic alliances", "Destructive acts" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The alliance literature has elevated trust and commitment as forms of relationship bonding that are key to managing partnerships with the Japanese (Arino et al., 2001; Parkhe, 1998a). Trust is a belief or expectation about a partner's trustworthiness that results from its credibility or benevolence, whilst commitment concerns a partner's intention to continue and make the necessary efforts in an alliance (Cullen et al., 2000). Due to cultural misunderstandings in Japanese-Western alliances, however, relationship bonds can go wrong for these ventures (Gulati et al., 2008). Understanding Japanese-specific cultural effects is essential for building productive relational governance processes in Japanese-Western alliance relationships.Relationship bonds between alliance partners have collective action benefits, such that they reduce opportunism costs and increase information exchange (Cullen et al., 2000). Nevertheless, relationship bonding is necessary but not sufficient for resolving collective action problems in alliances. Alliance partners are motivated by the underlying logic that integrating activities in a collaborative fashion would enable them to accomplish more together than they could alone. Cross-border alliances though are a uniquely complex form of organising due to internal tensions between forces of cooperation and competition (Robson et al., 2006). Collective action problems thus involve partner destructive acts (DAs), which refer to situations where an exchange partner has engaged in actions or has adopted policies that are viewed by the other as destructive to the working relationship (Hibbard et al., 2001).Japanese business culture utilises social capital to embed collective action problems in pre-existing networks, organisations or ongoing relationships amongst individuals. The Japanese model is unique in the way social structure has historically guided alliance decisions (Fukuyama, 1997), since the social capital framework incorporates the whole of Japanese society. Japanese culture distinguishes sharply Japanese-Japanese and Japanese-Western interactions (Alpert et al., 1995). Yet, the literature is silent on the types of collective action that may or may not emerge from social capital in Japanese-Western alliances.Considering the institutional challenges faced by Japanese firms, we define social capital as features of social organisation such as trust, commitment, norms of reciprocity and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating collective action (Putnam, 1993). Social capital theory considers the way social units (e.g. alliance partnerships) engage with other social units and how such engagement leads to collective action responses. The concept thus incorporates but also conditions alliance relationship bonding. Specifically, our study emphasises three tenets of social capital the Japanese bring to alliance routines: bonding, denoting the strength of ties internal to the alliance partnership; bridging, or strength of external ties that characterise the partners' network like structures; and correcting, or processes of sympathy and forgiveness in response to DAs, which are effects of manifest internal and external ties (Hibbard et al., 2001; Adler and Kwon, 2002).The study makes three contributions to knowledge. First, whilst practitioners understand that positive socio-psychological variables, such as trust, assist in managing international alliance exchanges, far less is known about implementing relational processes in complex cultural settings (i.e. Japanese-Western relationships) (Voss et al., 2006; Gencturk and Aulakh, 2007; Bianchi and Saleh, 2010). We develop a social capital framework for understanding nuanced Japanese culture-influenced processes of relational governance. Not only does social capital encompass trusting and committed ties within an alliance, but it has the capacity to facilitate resolution of collective action problems (Putnam, 1993; Griffith et al., 2006). The study is novel in asserting that a correcting cycle, in response to DAs, is potentially crucial to the effective functioning and deepening of Japanese-Western alliances. We theorise that bridging of the alliance and network structure of the partners and relationship bonding shape DA correcting in these partnerships.Second, previous studies have provided important insights into the role of cultural distance as a source of difficulty in international alliances. Ren et al.'s (2009) review of alliance performance research concluded that cultural distance between the partner firms is an antecedent of trust, conflict and cooperation. Instead, we posit that the level of cultural erosion of a Japanese alliance partner is a key consideration for the administration of bonding, bridging and correcting social capital mechanisms. Contemporary, second-generation social capital theories (e.g. Ostrom and Ahn, 2001) acknowledge the existence of multiple types of cultural orientation and cognitions of exchange even within a single national framework. We define cultural erosion as a process in which changes in national culture are driven by external forces. Our study is novel in theorising a pervasive and ultimately complex role for culture within alliance management practices.Third, prior work asserts that firms should minimise managerial complexity and opportunism threats by choosing alliance partners with similar (compatible) cultural values (Park and Ungson, 2001; Kaufman and O'Neil, 2007; Roy and Oliver, 2009). We posit that as a result of cultural erosion, different types of Japanese partner, eroded vs traditional, require different screening strategies. Whereas a threat-minimising strategy might be appropriate for the former, an opportunity-maximising strategy could work better for the latter. The logic is that the dominance and predictability of the Japanese loyalty style may lead to synergistic longer-term gains, as opposed to a race to learn.\nLiterature review: Alliance relationships with the Japanese\nFramework of Japanese social capital management: Western managers need to understand how a Japanese partner might perceive and interpret DAs, before these situations escalate into conflict and effectively unravel relationship bonds. Importantly, eroded firms using second-generation social capital could be expected to exhibit Westernised behaviours in Japanese-Western relationships, but conform to the traditional Japanese social capital perspective in alliances with other Japanese (Dyer and Chu, 2000).Japanese-Japanese alliances\nDiscussion: The main intent of this study was to develop an expansionist, collective action theory (e.g. Putnam, 1993) conceptualisation of Japanese social capital processes of alliance management. We extend prior work on Japanese alliances (e.g. Lohtia et al., 2005; Voss et al., 2006) by theorising a comprehensive set of social capital processes that shape alliance performance satisfaction and strategic integration. Due to the managerial complexity of such cross-border alliances, for instance, relationship bonding is not a naturally occurring phenomenon and can be difficult to leverage productively (Park and Ungson, 2001). The traditional Japanese solution to collective action problems is to harness the more powerful concept of social capital, which entails bridging (across the network) and correcting (invest responses to partner DAs) to protect relationship bonds of trust and commitment. The alliance literature has not emphasised examining processes dictating whether or not partners' mistakes weaken trust (Dyer and Chu, 2011). Our incremental contribution is to theorise bridging and correcting mechanisms as necessary for fastening alliance relationship bonds.The paper is also novel in distinguishing between network effects of first- and second-generation social capital (Ostrom and Ahn, 2001). Second-generation social capital addresses the role of cultural erosion in creating greater unpredictability of Japanese responses to DAs. We assert that different types of Japanese partner - with traditional or eroded culture - necessitate different alliance screening and configuration approaches. At first glance, eroded partners would seem more straightforward to deal with due to their sharing of context with Western partners (cf. Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). Closer inspection, however, reveals that building their loyalty and a rewarding, integrative social capital system can be difficult for a Western firm. Cultural erosion within the Japanese business setting is making it increasingly difficult for Western alliance partners to predict what might constitute a correct DA response, either from itself or the Japanese counterpart. Eroded firms using second-generation social capital might exhibit Westernised behaviours in Japanese-Western relationships, but conform as far as possible to the traditional Japanese social capital perspective in alliances with other Japanese (cf. Dyer and Chu, 2000).Unlike prior alliance research (Ren et al., 2009), we theorise not only that culture has a pervasive influence on social capital, but also that culture evolves. Second-generation frameworks of social capital are supplanting first-generation conceptions (Ostrom, 2000) even within idiosyncratic countries such as Japan, where the impact of culture on the business decision-making process is pronounced and complex. One of the greatest problems that managers face is learning to strike a balance between the way they manage and their approach to dealing with change. Fresh thinking is needed to ensure that dated experiences of Japanese culture are not automatically used as solutions to deal with emerging collective action problems (Chung et al., 2006). The traditional loyalty cycle - strong relationship bonding leading to sympathetic attribution of fault for a DA and to a reconciliatory invest response that safeguards relationship bonding - may be less than sacred where a Japanese partner has experienced significant erosion. Were a Western firm to require a particularly supportive partnership, wherein relationship bonding more reliably leads to mutual benefit, a traditional Japanese partner might be optimal. Yet, selecting a traditional Japanese partner would seem to eschew the tenet of minimising managerial complexity and cooperation costs by choosing alliance partners with similar organisational cultures (Park and Ungson, 2001).When diagnosing the alliance opportunity, a logical starting point for managers is an assessment of the role that Japanese culture could potentially exert on alliance decision making. Were a Western firm to crave stability and predictability within a vertical alliance, or have strong learning ambitions within a horizontal alliance, it would ideally require a traditional Japanese partner with an invest tendency. But is its own need significant enough to forge a long-term deal, or is it too short termist to gel with a traditional Japanese partner? Later when selecting a partner, the key question would be how can a Western firm diagnose the level of Japanese cultural erosion? Because cultures are not static, it is necessary for managers to search for ongoing points of erosion. Western managers might investigate who else is in the Japanese partner's network structure (i.e. Japanese-driven vs Western-driven arrangements) or the status of the partner itself (i.e. level of globalisation and economic development). A caveat is that Japanese firms using second-generation social capital have the flexibility to adjust social capital approaches across their network connections. Measuring the cultural erosion of these firms is not straightforward.An intensive partner selection process that involves issues such as cultural similarity, international reputation of the partner, transparency of the partner, previous inter-firm cooperation, firm size and firm financial capabilities could lead to a more Westernised Japanese partner. However, such a deal might be shorter-term with a quicker Japanese withdrawal response. In effect, cultural erosion means that the Japanese firm is more likely to perceive a DA as intentional. Nevertheless, it is possible to harness existing relationship bonds with a less traditional Japanese partner - ex ante bonding opportunity may have been elevated through previous cooperation.Were the Western partner to seek a more traditional Japanese collaborator, it might place emphasis on their enthusiasm for the tie-up and other issues that signify longer-term synergy potential. Still, it is important that partner selection ensures that the level of cultural distance is not so large that DAs are recurrent and relationship bonds perennially truncated. Moreover, as Hamel et al. (1989) point out, Japanese firms may believe \"collaboration is second best\" (p. 191) when it involves the non-Japanese. Western partners should not expect to forge long-term relationships with traditional Japanese firms unless they have significant proprietary skills. And active management of social capital to achieve a higher level of understanding between the partners will be crucial to safeguarding the relationship.In terms of establishing and managing the alliance, firms should note that the way an alliance agreement is put into action can encourage the Japanese partner into the invest response category. For example, Western managers might target improving the bonding opportunity directly. In setting up the venture, a firm could push for a comprehensive alliance structure, such as a formal joint venture, in order to elevate opportunity, motivation and ability of alliance managers to harness social capital. Cross-cultural training could be used to ensure that key managers understand fully the way national culture influences management style. Prior research (e.g. Hamel et al., 1989) suggests that Western partners often hesitate to commit substantial managerial resources to their Japanese alliances, creating imbalance in the way alliance staff perceive the two sides.As discussed, the post-erosion Japanese view of a DA may be less collectivistic and more individualistic, leading to enhanced perceptions of Western betrayal. In contrast, traditional Japanese firms are less likely to perceive DAs as intentional because the response repertoire will be driven by collectivism and long-termism values. Here, it is important for the Western firm not to seek change aggressively once they have earned insider status. If assessment of the alliance reveals potentially high harmony and loyalty levels, both sides are expected to invest in order to bridge DAs and augment the reservoir of trust and commitment. But where there is low harmony and loyalty (e.g. due to contextual changes), Western managers should expect a more adversarial climate of exchange and ongoing negotiations - the Japanese partner could be more easily provoked into agitating to gain alliance advantage.This conceptual paper has certain limitations. First, our theorising is limited to Japanese-Western alliance relationships, and great caution should be applied in attempts to generalise the current set of concepts and arguments to different cultural settings. It is important that research commences empirical testing of the set of propositions outlined in this paper within the Japanese-Western setting. Nonetheless, other southeast Asian economies may have traditional network structures and trust-oriented approaches that are also facing forces of cultural erosion. A cross-cultural comparative study of different southeast Asian settings would provide an intriguing test and extension of our theoretical assertions. Second, our theorisation of alliance social capital processes only partially captures the expansionist view of social capital (e.g. Putnam, 1993; Ostrom, 2000). The conceptual model might be expanded to directly incorporate other elements of the theory.Third, for reasons of theoretical simplicity, we make the fundamental distinction between Japanese cultural orientation and cultural erosion. We assert that traditional Japanese partners hold strong collectivism, long-termism and sympathy values. However, the fact that these firms have established alliances with Western counterparts could mean that they also possess diverging cultural values and behaviours (e.g. moderate collectivism though strong long termism). Future research might investigate the implications of partnering with Japanese firms that are at different points on a more intricate erosion continuum.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to explain the culture-driven role and effects of social capital in Japanese-Western alliances. The authors move beyond narrow conceptualizations of relationship bonding (i.e. positive socio-psychological aspects such as trust and commitment) to explore the broader role of social capital (e.g. in destructive act recovery processes) in such alliances.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The conceptual paper adopts a theory development approach.\nFindings: - The authors advance a process model and propositions that explain the way social capital networks and processes influence relationship-based contracting and performance outcomes in alliances with the Japanese.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study assists international marketers in their efforts to overcome cultural barriers to success in Japanese-Western alliance relationships.\nPractical implications: - It can be argued that erosion of Japanese business culture potentially clouds the picture for implementing governance through social capital. The study furnishes managers with an understanding of how to take the cultural context of the partnership into account to build appropriate and productive social capital with Japanese partners.\nOriginality/value: - The study is novel in addressing the issue of how to implement relational bonding mechanisms in complex cultural situations. As a result of cultural erosion, different types of Japanese partner, eroded versus traditional, may require different alliance screening and management strategies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Transformational leadership and personal outcomes: empowerment as mediator	[ "Transformational leadership", "Empowerment", "Self‐efficacy", "Meaning in life", "Subjective wellbeing", "India", "Manufacturing industries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Creating and maintaining sustainable businesses require an understanding of the role of leadership in addressing personal outcomes of employees. Happiness is a common goal of everyone and most other things are possibly means to that goal. Personal outcomes of employees like meaning in life and subjective well-being have become an important concern for organizations in the intense competition for attracting and retaining talent. Meaning in life makes one's life purposeful and subjective well-being is about being happy; these are important dimensions of anyone's life, and people expect work organizations to contribute to them. Focussing only on work-related outcomes may not be sufficient anymore. There is a need to better understand the processes by which desirable personal outcomes of employees can be enhanced.\nTheory and hypotheses: Burns (1978) identified two types of leadership based on the nature of leader-follower interactions: transactional and transformational. The more traditional transactional leadership involves an exchange relationship between leaders and followers, but transformational leadership is based on leaders' shifting the values, beliefs, and needs of their followers. It is known to result in superior performance in organizations facing renewal and change.Transformational leadership\nMethod: Data were collected from a random sample of 285 managers (69 females and 215 males) of a large manufacturing organization in western India. All responses were anonymous, and this was made clear to every respondent. The median age of the respondents was 35 years and the median organizational tenure was two years. They responded to questions about their superior's transformational leadership and their own empowerment, meaning in life and subjective well-being. Most of the respondents had been working with the superior they rated for at least one year.Measures\nResults: The means, standard deviations, and Cronbach's a of and correlations between all variables are given in Table I. All the variables were significantly positively correlated to each other.The method suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986) was followed to test the hypotheses. The regression results are presented in Tables II-V for the four factors of transformational leadership. First, transformational leadership affected empowerment in the first equation; second, transformational leadership affected meaning in life in the second equation; and third, empowerment affected meaning in life in the third equation while transformational leadership was present in the model. Thus, all the three conditions of mediation held in the predicted direction. Moreover, the effect of transformational leadership on meaning in life was less in the third equation than in the second. Sobel's test was done, and it showed that this decrease in the effect of transformational leadership was statistically significant. Thus, empowerment mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and follower's meaning in life.The above procedure was repeated to test the mediating effect on follower's subjective well-being. The regression results are presented in Tables II-V for the four factors of transformational leadership. First, transformational leadership affected empowerment in the first equation; second, transformational leadership affected well-being in the fourth equation; and third, empowerment affected well-being in the fifth equation while transformational leadership was present in the model. Thus, all the three conditions of mediation held in the predicted direction. Moreover, the effect of transformational leadership on well-being was less in the fifth equation than in the fourth. Sobel's test was done, and it showed that this decrease in the effect of transformational leadership was statistically significant. Thus, empowerment mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and follower's well-being. All the three hypotheses were supported.\nDiscussion: Burns (1978) considered transformational leadership to be focussed mainly on development of followers and lifting them to a higher state of moral development. The results of this study shed some light on the mediating role of empowerment in transformational leadership predicting follower's personal outcomes like meaning in life and subjective well-being. Findings reveal that transformational leadership is positively related to follower's meaning in life and subjective well-being and this relationship is mediated by empowerment. There is also a direct effect of transformational leadership on well-being. Thus, the effect of transformational leadership on well-being is only partially mediated by empowerment.Burns (1978) conceptualized that transformational leaders lift followers to higher levels of motivation. Earlier studies have shown that followers of transformational leaders are willing to exert more effort and they also display OCB. However, this study adds to the existing body of knowledge by showing that followers of transformational leaders see greater meaning in life and are also higher on well-being. Followers of transformational leaders not only exert more effort but also experience higher levels of personal outcomes. The findings of this study expand our conceptual understanding of the effects of transformational leadership.The findings of this study provide important pointers to managers and organizations. Employees who are happy and see meaning in life are the best contribution to organizations in a competitive world. The difference in effectiveness between organizations will not be based on how much employees work but how happy they are in doing their duties. A happy workforce is the best that an organization can ask for. Transformational leadership is crucial in achieving this.The link between transformational leadership and empowerment was one of the basic premises of Bass (1985). He elaborated the role of Pygmalion effect or self-fulfilling prophecy in transformational leadership. Followers' performing beyond expectations is a consequence of transformational leaders having high expectations from their followers (Priyabhashini and Krishnan, 2005). Earlier studies have documented the effect of transformational leadership on follower self-efficacy. However, this study contributes to the body of knowledge by including the further outcomes of empowerment also. While enhancing follower self-efficacy is a desirable goal by itself, this study shows that enhancing self-efficacy might be a useful means to enhance meaning in life and subjective well-being. Managers need to be trained to continuously focus on making their subordinates feel confident about their ability to do their job. The goals set for employees should be challenging but realistic so that striving toward them does not result in reducing the confidence of employees.The strong and positive relationship between empowerment and meaning in life sheds light on making followers see greater meaning in life. Attempts to enhance meaning in life should first focus on increasing self-efficacy. If followers do not have faith in their own capability to do their job, it may not be possible for them to see meaning in life. Meaning in life is a higher level of motivation (Burns, 1978), which is possible only if self-efficacy or belief in one's own capabilities is already present. This study adds to the existing literature by clarifying the process by which transformational leaders enhance followers' meaning in life and subjective well-being.The most significant finding of this study is perhaps that transformational leadership enhances followers' meaning in life and subjective well-being through enhancing empowerment. Burns (1978) claimed that the secret of transformational leadership is lifting followers into their better selves. Enhancing meaning in life and subjective well-being could be an indication of being lifted into one's better self. Transformational leadership will not only enhance organizational outcomes, but it will also make employees happier thereby making the entire work environment more invigorating.Limitations and suggestions for future research\nConclusion: The multiple changes occurring in the business world and the heavy competition for talent in the new economy have created a greater need to focus on the personal outcomes of employees. The secret of transformational leadership is lifting followers into their better selves (Burns, 1978). Transformational leadership plays a crucial role in enhancing followers' meaning in life and subjective well-being. The effect of transformational leadership on followers' meaning in life and subjective well-being is mediated by empowerment. This study provides initial support for the mediating role of empowerment in the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' personal outcomes. As further research provides greater support, the process of enhancing followers' meaning in life and well-being could focus on training leaders to be more transformational, and persuading transformational leaders to concentrate on empowering followers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Creating and maintaining sustainable businesses require an understanding of the role of leadership in enhancing personal outcomes of employees, and of the processes by which they can be enhanced. The purpose of this paper is to report a study on analyzing how transformational leadership is related to followers' meaning in life and subjective wellbeing, with psychological empowerment being a mediating variable.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data were collected from 285 managers (69 females and 215 males) of a large manufacturing organization in western India. They responded to questions about their superior's transformational leadership and their own empowerment, meaning in life and wellbeing.\nFindings: - Empowerment mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and follower's meaning in life and wellbeing.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Same-source bias is a possible limitation of the study. Leader's self-rating on transformational leadership could be taken, but it would not be as valid as the rating given by followers. Another limitation is the collection of all data at the same time.\nPractical implications: - The strong and positive relationship between empowerment and meaning in life sheds light on making followers see greater meaning in life. Attempts to enhance meaning in life should first focus on increasing self-efficacy. If followers do not have faith in their own capability to do their job, it may not be possible for them to see meaning in life.\nOriginality/value: - This study adds to the existing literature by clarifying the process by which transformational leaders enhance followers' meaning in life and subjective wellbeing.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Discovery, difference, careers and change. Part 1: an approach to self-discovery	[ "Careers", "Personality tests", "Jungian psychology" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction to the three parts: Part I - Discovery\nIntroduction: According to the great German philosopher and psychologist Carl Jung (see Jung, 1971), there are four critical areas or dimensions that have a major impact on how we live our lives and how we manage our relationships. These are:1. obtaining energy and focus - extroverted or introverted preference (E-I dimension);2. gathering and using information - practical or concept preference (P-C dimension);3. taking decisions - logical or harmony preference (L-H dimension); and4. operating in the outside world - structured or flexible preference (S-F dimension).Each of us is born with a natural preference. Taking the first dimension, we can either prefer to obtain our energy from and focus on the outside world of people and activity or prefer to obtain our energy from and focus within our inner world of thoughts, ideas and experiences. We can have an E=Extroverted preference or an I=Introverted preference. We cannot have both an E and an I preference.In this first part, we look at the definition of each natural preference in each of the four dimensions and set out the beliefs and behaviors that flow from our choice (see Tables I-IV). Next we consider what it means to have a natural preference. Incidentally, in the text I refer to TOP. This stands for The Other Party in the relationship. We then look at how our natural preference can be suppressed or repressed. Suppressions occur on the \"obtaining energy and focus\" (E-I) and the \"taking decisions\" (L-H) dimensions and result in us believing and behaving at the conscious level, as if we lived on the opposite side of those dimensions. This causes us considerable stress and inner tension. Repressions occur on the other two dimensions (\"gathering and using information\" (P-C) and \"operating in the outside world\" (S-F)) and mean that we do not play to our natural strengths. We do not cross-over to the other side, because we are not capable of so doing.We then ask you, the reader, to determine what your true profile is and set out how you will benefit from the knowledge gained. We conclude with the benefits organizations gain from having a clear picture of employee strengths and weaknesses.\nA natural preference: Looking first at the concept of preference, I would like you to become active for a moment and grab a pen and piece of paper. First of all write your signature with the hand you normally write with. How did that feel? Then shift to the other hand and attempt to write your signature again. How did that feel? Assuming you are not ambidextrous, then typical responses are:1. Preferred handFeels natural.Didn't think about it.Effortless, easy.Looks neat, legible - adult.1. Non-preferred handFeels unnatural.Had to think about it.Awkward and clumsy.Looks childlike.So all the behaviors in our chosen preference come easily and naturally to use are \"right-handed\" behaviors and all the behaviors on the other non-preferred side are \"unnatural\" and, when we are young, tend to be avoided. By \"natural\" I mean that we are born with them. All young children I have met have shown their natural preferences by following the behaviors that flow from those preferences.\nSuppressions: Our extroverted or introverted preference for obtaining energy and focus or our Logical or Harmony preference in taking decisions can be suppressed into our subconscious by key influencers in our childhood, usually a parent or parents. The result is that, at the conscious level, we both believe we have the \"other\" side preference and behave as if we had. For example, if our introverted preference is suppressed, we behave as an E; if are our Logical preference is suppressed, we behave as if we were an H and so on.However, as we get older, the suppression, given that it is our natural preference, commences a battle royal with the conscious usurper. Increasingly, over time, the behaviors we manifest are driven by the suppression. Beliefs are also changed to confirm with the new behaviors. Beliefs drive behaviors, but once a new behavior becomes a habit, a way of life, (which it will do if it is a behavior driven by a natural preference which is getting stronger and stronger as time passes) the conscious belief switches through 180 percent to support and underpin the new habit. It is very slow working example of Saul's conversion to St Paul on the road to Damascus.Eventually the suppression wins in that the balance of conscious beliefs and behaviors tips over into the suppression's favor. As questionnaires can only assess what we consciously know, it is only at this stage that a suppression can be identified. This is why self-discovery is the preferred approach to determining your true preferences and hence profile.As it is difficult to for us to decide whether we have had our E,I,L or H suppressed, I conclude this section with short real-life case studies, which should assist in the determination of any suppression that is currently sitting in the subconsious, and now struggling to get free (see Jung, 1966).Suppressed E - William\nRepressions: Repressions occur on the practical-concept dimension of how we prefer to gather and use information and on the flexible-structured dimension of how we prefer to operate in the outside world.Taking the P-C dimension to start with, you can have a natural preference to be a P or a C repressed as, say, both your parents live on the other side of the dimension. If you are P, with parents who are both Cs, then your inability to be innovative and rebellious like them will mean they will ridicule you. You will learn to behave like a P only your own and generally, of course, will be very unhappy. So your natural preference is repressed. You do not, however, become a C or vice versa. In fact, once individuals are presented with the differences between P and C, which is their true preference becomes instantly apparent.As regards the S-F dimension, the focus of repression is on the poor F, e.g. at some appraisal; \"Your time management is poor and you consistently miss deadlines. I have arranged for you to attend a course on effective planning and self-organisation\"Now two parental Ss will go over-the-top on neatness, tidiness, everything in its place and so on and will thoroughly disapprove of and nag F children. These children will be repressed (put on the appearance of tidiness and kick their clothes under the bed) but not suppressed i.e. become an S. Because the way we operate is a conscious, individual activity, if we are a repressed F as soon as we break the parental shackles, we will revert back to our natural F preference.Repression of S is very rare indeed. Family, social and business norms and conventions are that you should get to meetings and events on time, plan to meet deadlines, and plan for events that involve a group of people. Fs just get it in the neck all the time. Fs are affected by these norms and conventions and so, if one or more of their children happens to be very neat and tidy, well organized and structured i.e. an S, they may raise an internal eyebrow, but they don't insist that these children become like them - such is the power of norms and conventions.One consequence of these particular norms and conventions I have discovered is that very repressed Fs find it difficult to determine their true F preference when presented with details of each dimension and the differences between them, unlike repressed Ps or Cs. This is the power of guilt and the strongly held belief that they should be Ss and so they are Ss! Their S parents have made them believe it is wrong to \"be spontaneous, keep things lose and open to change, be casual, have variety and freedom to decide\".\nYour profile: Now it the time to time for you to determine your profile i.e. decide what your four preferences are. To help you with this, we set out in Appendix 1 the profiles that summarize the key characteristics and in Appendix 2 the core strengths and weaknesses of each profile.Before you do this, there are four important points to make.1. Please go back to the \"Preferences in the four dimensions\" and initially read only the top lines that define each preference. Hopefully, in the light of reading the sections on suppressions and repressions, you will now make a decision with crystal clarity.2. When you look at the description of supporting behaviors and beliefs, then because of a repression or suppression, you may find that some of the behaviors and beliefs lie on the other side of your chosen preference. This is because one or more of those non-preferred behaviors and supporting beliefs has become a habit, as you have never used the potentially preferred behavior. You may also prefer another side behavior, not because of any suppression or repression, but because upbringing and experience has meant that you have never practiced the preferred behavior and often practice the non-preferred behavior.3. When you look at the description of supporting behaviors and beliefs, you may come across one or two, where you say to yourself. \"I indulge in both these behaviors and I am comfortable with both\". If that is the case, then step back and ask yourself the question. \"If I could only indulge in one of the two different behaviors and have total freedom of choice, which would I choose?\"4. Finally, if you are not completely clear then read more than one profile. For example, if you are not sure whether you are a P or a C, but convinced that your other preference letters are ILF then read the profile descriptions for IPLF and ICLF. In fact, what would be much better is to ask your nearest and dearest to read the two profile descriptions. She or he will undoubtedly be able to resolve any dilemma for you with crystal clarity!\nThe benefits to you: There are four important benefits to knowing your natural preferences and resulting profile:1. You will improve the relationship with yourself by reducing the gap between conscious and subconscious self (see Jung, 1966).2. You can apply the perceptions you have gained in enhancing self-awareness to all the people you know and hence improve your relationship with any TOP.3. You will know whether you current job plays to your strengths, and if not, be able to switch into a more appropriate role or different job.4. You will be able to play the political game with more skill than any of your colleagues, which will enable you to rise to the top of any organization you serve.\nThe benefits to organizations: The existence of suppressions and repressions, not consciously recognized and therefore assessable, means that many staff in any organization are operating as squares pegs in round holes. If there can be a shared discovery process of the true preferences and profiles and hence the core characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of an employee, the organization can ensure that there are many more staff operating as round pegs in round holes. This will reduce stress, improve motivation and competence as well as assist in creating desired current and future cultures. Profitability will increase.In part 2, we look within each dimension at the reality of difference, how it impacts on career prospects and the importance of valuing difference. We conclude with relevant techniques that will enable the reader to improve their relationships and their careers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of part 1 of this paper is to provide the reader with the definition of the preferences on the four Jungian dimensions and the nature of suppressions and repressions so that they can determine their true preferences and hence psychological profile.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper defines each of the preferences in the four dimensions \"obtaining energy and focus\", \"gathering and using information\", \"taking decisions\", \" operating in the outside world\". It details each preference in each dimension: extrovert and introvert, practical and concept, logical and harmony, structured and flexible, and set out the beliefs and behaviors flowing from each preference. It is indicated that suppressions occur with the Extrovert/Introvert and Logical/Harmony preferences and result in the individual believing in and behaving as the opposite preference. The paper provides case studies to assist the reader in identifying any suppressions they may have. Advise that repressions occur with the Practical/Concept and Structure/Flexible preferences and result in abilities not being developed, but no migration to the opposite preference. The paper sets out the profiles that summarize key characteristics and the profiles detailing strengths and weaknesses. It details the benefits to the individual and the organization that result from employees knowing what their real psychological profiles are.\nFindings: - Unrecognized suppressions and repressions result in individuals following job choices that do not play to their natural strengths, causing stress and demotivation, as well as having a negative impact on relationships and career management. The process of self-discovery is superior to the use of questionnaires, as they do not determine suppressions until they have become dominant in the consciousness of the individual.\nOriginality/value: - The paper introduces the concepts of suppression and repression, enabling the reader to determine where their natural preferences and strengths lie, thus helping them make better choices for careers and improve their relationship and career management.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
State emergency service local controllers' attitudes towards disaster planning for cultural heritage resources	[ "Attitudes", "Disasters", "Culture (sociology)", "Australia", "Surveys", "Design and development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Much of the focus on the study of natural disaster hopes to increase our understanding of how and why these events occur, and how the effects of these events can be best mitigated. As the study of natural disasters moves beyond the scientific boundaries, a holistic approach is being adopted that also acknowledges the sociological impacts. Professionals and researchers of disasters are no longer limiting their focus to these physical processes, but apply this understanding to our social word (Blong, 1997; Bogard, 1994; Chapman, 1999; Dolan, 1995; Kates, 1994; Quarantelli, 1994; Waugh, 2000; White, 1994).Cultural heritage resources as physical manifestations of our past play an important role in reflecting an Australian identity (AHC, 1999; Pearson and Sullivan, 1995; Kerr, 1996; Marquis-Kyle and Walker, 1996). Cultural heritage resources, however, are particularly vulnerable to effects of natural disasters (Look and Spennemann, 2000, 2001; Nelson, 1991; Stovel, 1998). This vulnerability has lead to an increased awareness for the need of disaster planning (Tweedy, 2000; Nelson, 1991; Spennemann, 1999a, b; James, 1993).Existing anecdotal information (Stovel, 1998) and pilot studies (Spennemann, 1998a) indicate the existence of attitudinal barriers for disaster planning for cultural heritage resources. In attempt to investigate this a self-administered postal survey was designed and distributed in 2001 to provide a cross-sectional view of the current range of attitudes. This is the first attempt to quantify the extent of these issues. The focus of this paper will be on the responses of local controllers of the state emergency service in Australia. As the state emergency service is involved in a diverse range of disaster situations, it was felt that their local controllers could provide a valuable insight into the attitudinal barriers. Other samples assessed in the study were the Brigade Captains from the Rural Fire Service (Graham and Spennemann, 2006) and heritage managers employed by the local governments (Graham and Spennemann, n.d.). Although the results of the study are specific to Australia, the findings are relevant to most industrialised nations.\nUnderstanding cultural heritage: Cultural heritage resources are those places and sites, which individuals, communities and heritage professionals consider as important - which therefore, can mean different things to different people (Hall and McArthur, 1996; Pearson and Sullivan, 1995). Cultural resources are finite, scarce, valuable, and non-renewable (Spennemann, 1998a, b, c, d). Kerr (1996, p. 4) defines cultural significance as \"its purpose is to help identify and assess the attributes which make a place of value to us and to our society\". Values reflect why we consider a cultural heritage as important.The impacts of natural disasters on cultural heritage resources\nMethodology: Dillman's (1978) total design method (TDM) formed the frame of reference to develop the survey. Having evaluated the past theoretical writings on social exchange such as Homans (1961), Blau (1964), Tibaut and Kelly (1959) and Dillman (1978) was able to develop a variable form of social exchange theory. Understanding the costs, rewards and trust relationship is the premise of TDM. This methodology is highly regarded in the field of social science and has been used for thousands of surveys (Dillman, 1991; Axford et al., 1997).The sampling frame was provided with the assistance of the State Emergency Service, which enabled a personalised approach to be developed. Sampling methods drew on a number of techniques, but all reflected non-random paradigms. The overall aim was total or saturation approach (Sarantakos, 1998) which would involve 100 per cent of the total population. Aspects of area sampling (Sarantakos, 1998) were also necessary due to the regional variations of cultural heritage resources and the occurrence of natural disasters. Owing to the use of these non-random sampling techniques, the results below reflect the attitudes of those who participated in the study, not the entire population. A high response rate increases the credibility of these findings.Limitations\nDiscussion: The cross sectional nature of this research provided a snap shot (Neuman, 2000; Babbie, 2001; Sarantakos, 1998) of the current range of attitudes towards disaster planning for cultural heritage held by the SES local controllers. The collection of this empirical data, can now be integrated with the previous anecdotal information to provide a greater understanding of the attitudinal barriers towards disaster planning for cultural heritage. This information is an important step in the recognition the range of attitudinal barriers towards disaster planning for cultural heritage. Only once we understand these barriers, can they be adequately addressed. Although the results of this study are for New South Wales, their implications reach beyond this geographic boundary, as similar problems are being experienced throughout the industrialised world (Stovel, 1998; Spennemann and Look, 1998a, b).Recognition of cultural heritage\nConclusion: Anecdotal writings have indicated that a number of attitudinal barriers exist for disaster planning for cultural heritage resources. This study is the first of its kind to qualitatively investigate the nature and extent of these barriers. Emergency managers play an important role as decision-makers in the event of a natural disaster. For disaster management for cultural heritage to be effective it is important to identify and understanding any existing attitudinal barriers. Areas identified include a lack of communication between emergency and heritage managers; an acknowledged need for but decided absence of disaster planning for cultural heritage assets; and a need for education. The voluntary nature of the organization results in large time demands placed on members. The desire to understand more about disaster planning was indicated by some respondents. However, outside work and home commitments make this difficult highlighting a need for the provision of information through training and materials.If our past is to have a future then such programs need to be developed and implemented to ensure that these barriers are addressed.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Natural disasters exert a continual toll not only on property and public infrastructure, but also on places and items of cultural heritage value. Whereas infrastructure and modern buildings can be rebuilt, archaeological and heritage sites cannot be restored without loss of integrity and authenticity. Often, the impact of management decisions during and following a disaster is greater than the physical impact of the disaster itself. Aims to assess attitudinal barriers that may exist among disaster management professionals, a study of local controllers of the state emergency service of New South Wales (Australia).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - All local controllers of the state emergency service of New South Wales were surveyed by a mail-out questionnaire as to their knowledge of cultural heritage and their attitudes to the protection of cultural heritage assets during bushfires.\nFindings: - Key areas identified are a general lack of awareness of the special needs of heritage places, a lack of communication between emergency and heritage managers; an acknowledged need for but decided absence of disaster planning for cultural heritage assets; and a need for training and education.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The study considered the local controllers of the state emergency service of New South Wales. Given the observed attitudinal barriers, there is a need for future research looking at the attitudes held by the various levels in the vertical decision making and authority tree.\nPractical implications: - The awareness of SES controllers regarding cultural heritage in disaster situations needs to be improved as are the communication channels both in the disaster preparedness and the disaster response phase.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first time research has been carried out into assessing the attitudes and awareness of local controllers of the state emergency service of New South Wales with respect to cultural heritage asset management.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
From transactional to transformational: Exploring the role of leadership style on CEO succession outcomes	[ "Commitment", "Engagement", "Leadership style", "Alignment", "Learning culture", "CEO succession" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) have a pivotal role in guaranteeing that organisations achieve their strategic aims (Hutzschenreuter et al., 2012; Quigley et al., 2017; Quigley and Hambrick, 2015). CEOs are in a unique position; they enjoy greater decision-making discretion than other employees, but are also accountable for strategy formulation and implementation, and for organisation-level productivity and sustainability. Research suggests that a CEO's role explains as much as 30 per cent of the variance in organisational performance (Mackey, 2008).\nTheoretical review: CEO leadership styles\nMethod: Participants and procedure\nResults: Qualitative analysis\nDiscussion: The qualitative statements across the four surveys verify that the outgoing CEO exhibited a transactional management-by-exception style, contrasting with the new CEO's transformational style. These comments also reflect a preference for the new CEO's leadership approach, patent in increased motivation and positive experiences of the organisation following the succession. The quantitative findings complement to these insights and show that the significant improvements in employee experiences of the organisation following the CEO succession were noted primarily around motivational, affective, and cultural outcomes (e.g. engagement, learning culture), and to a lesser extent on operational variables (e.g. alignment).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore whether Chief Executive Officers' (CEOs) discrepant leadership styles are reflected on CEO succession outcomes, operationalised as changes to employee views of the organisation following the succession.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 230 employees who completed an online survey at four time points over a three-year period. Linear mixed models analyses tested for significant changes to alignment, participation, learning culture, organisational commitment and engagement perceptions over time. Qualitative data were content-analysed to ascertain the CEOs' leadership styles and explore employee views of the organisation.\nFindings: While alignment and participation scores did not significantly increase following the CEO succession, learning culture, organisational commitment and engagement increased significantly.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study adds to the limited research on CEO succession. It suggests that what renders a succession adaptive or disruptive may be contingent on the leadership styles of outgoing and incoming CEOs.\nPractical implications: The transition from a transactional to a transformational CEO may have a stronger impact on motivational and attitudinal outcomes (e.g. engagement) than on operational outcomes (e.g. alignment).\nOriginality/value: This study is the first to longitudinally examine a range employee outcomes of CEO succession considering the incoming and outgoing CEOs' discrepant leadership styles. It extends the leadership literature by empirically showing that, despite the disruption underlying a succession event, employee views of the organisation improve significantly following the transition from a transactional to a transformational leader.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Management systems and improving supply chain processes: Perspectives of focal companies and logistics service providers	[ "Empirical study", "SCM", "Standardized management systems", "Logistic service providers", "Focal companies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Supply chains are forced to look for new concepts and ideas influencing, for example, the minimization of costs, improvement of the quality of services provided, reduction of harmful impact on the environment and improvement of customer service (Wong and Boonitt, 2008; Gandhi et al., 2017; Hamister, 2012; Cudzilo et al., 2018). The emerging systems from these competing supply chain needs are standardized management systems. These systems contain a set of solutions conducive to accelerating technical and organizational progress, reducing production costs, improving customer service and eliminating barriers to trade and functioning on international markets (Castka and Corbett, 2015; Dubey et al., 2015; Fonseca et al., 2019). Standardized management systems and supply chain management (SCM) have convergent goals and common priorities. We see an opportunity for more research to help understand the capabilities of these systems. The improvement of customer service and the quality of manufactured products is the overriding objective of the functioning of enterprises in the supply chain. The views presented above are shared by Talib et al. (2011) and Kuei and Madu (2001), who emphasize that standardized management systems and SCM are mutually complementary, and combining these concepts provides a number of benefits, both internal and external to a firm. According to Zu and Kaynak (2012), the implementation of standardized management systems in the supply chain is necessary for the production of high-quality products and the smooth implementation of logistics processes. The same view is made by Sila et al. (2006), who recognize that standardized management systems play a key role in manufacturing products that meet customer requirements and support their flow in the supply chain. A similar opinion is held by Kim et al. (2016), who emphasize that quality management in the supply chain supports its effectiveness, leads to minimization of errors and production and delivery of high-quality products. Attia (2016) has the same view, claiming that improving quality in the supply chain significantly affects its performance.\n2. Research methodology and social-demographical characteristics of the sample: The main objective of this study is to examine the impact of implementing standardized management systems on processes related to competitiveness. We also want to better understand how this creates value for a client in organizations co-developing supply chains operating in Eastern and Central Europe. The overriding motives of taking up the subject matter include but are not limited to:\n3. Presentation and analysis of the results of the research: The empirical data in this study were from the use of a survey instrument. Each question in survey represents one variable (shown in Methodology section). There were 79 valid survey responses in our sample - both from LSP (LSP=44 respondents) and FC (FC=35 respondents). Figure 1 presents our first look at the impacts of the standardized management systems on the implementation of selected processes in the supply chain. The evaluations were presented with the division into logistic operators and manufacturing companies, with a collective assessment also presented. Respondents were rated on a five-point scale from 1 no impact to 5 very strong impacts.\n4. Discussion: The increasing emphasis in SCM on dynamic relationships has been noted for managing quality, environment and safety (Sroufe and Curkovic, 2008; Zimon and Domingues, 2018; Halldorsson et al., 2007). This results both from the integration of these relationships and the ever-growing importance and scope of these practices collective impact on performance. Standardized management systems can therefore be considered as an important determinant of the effectiveness of practices in the supply chain. This study and its primary research questions help to confirm the implementation of standardized management systems, which can stimulate positive effects in many attributes of efficiency in SCM. de Sousa Jabbour et al. (2014) speak in a similar tone. Recognizing the current conditions of the consumer market, where comprehensive service depends largely on the purchase decision, and a need to implement standardized management systems in supply chains. The implementation of these systems will allow supply chains to ensure a timely, flexible and high-quality logistics service. A similar view is presented by Tomic and Spasojevic Brkic (2018), who emphasize that there is a need in the supply chains to build and implement integrated quality management systems that will positively affect the quality of the products and services delivered. Robinson and Malhotra (2005) point out that the implementation of modern management concepts (subject to adapting their requirements to changes taking place in the supply chain) leads to increased efficiency of the supply chain and improved customer service. In turn, according to Domingues et al. (2017), implementation of the requirements of international quality and environmental management standards (ISO 9001, ISO 14001) allows organizations to more deliberately identify and analyze risks in the sphere of product quality assurance, and also in areas related to its impact on safety and cooperation in the supply chain.\n5. Conclusions: The study of the impact of the implementation of standardized management systems on SCM is interesting, significant, complex and rarely addressed in the literature. The full impacts of these systems contain many attributes and levels of research, whose overall approach goes beyond the scope of this publication. Nevertheless, the results of this study allow us to answer important research questions while making several contributions to the field and to formulate the following conclusions:\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of implementing standardized management systems on processes related to competitiveness. The authors also want to better understand how these systems create value for a client in organizations co-developing supply chains operating in Eastern and Central Europe.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This is an empirical study utilizing a survey methodology with two groups of respondents, logistic service providers and focal companies. Data analysis was based on descriptive statistics and on analysis of variance (ANOVA) with organization type as a stratification factor. Deeper investigation of latent relationships between variables was performed with factor analysis with principal component analysis as the main method for factor extraction.\nFindings: The research shows standardized management systems are useful in supply chain management (SCM) regardless of the role that the organization plays in the supply chain. However, the strength of their positive impact varies.\nPractical implications: The results and new insights presented within this study should prove useful for organizations co-creating supply chains in Europe. Decision makers considering the implementation of guidelines for standardized management systems will find multiple benefits and innovative outcomes within supply chains when choosing to implement. For researchers, the results of this study fill a gap in this area of research on SCM and standardized management systems while providing a path for continued and emerging research.\nOriginality/value: The results obtained help to fill a gap in the literature regarding a lack of research in the context of Easter and Central Europe and contribute to the advancement of knowledge about the impact of standardized management systems on SCM that includes the importance of both environmental and social performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effect of environmental CSR issues on corporate/brand reputation and corporate profitability	[ "Environmental CSR", "Climate responsibility", "Natural resource utilization", "Corporate reputation", "Corporate profitability" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Over the past decade, customers have been putting more weight on [corporate] brands' social quality, rather than simply focusing on technical matters (Gugler and Shi, 2009). Werther and Chandler (2005, p. 318) examine a study on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and state that \"at least two-thirds of 25,000 consumers in the USA, Canada, and Western Europe form impressions based partly on a company's ethics, environmental impact, and social responsibility\". This means consumers will partly rely on social-dependent factors which affect their life directly, rather than focusing solely on quality-dependent factors such as brand's name, quality, price, packaging and labeling. Research has found that customers may be more likely to purchase goods and services from socially responsible firms (Sprinkle and Maines, 2010) because consumers perceive these companies as being socially responsible. This perception results in a more favorable corporate image, which, in turn, leads to an increase in consumers' positive attitudes toward the companies' brands (Brown and Dacin, 1997; Klein and Darwar, 2004). More broadly, this can result in increased profitability for firms.\nLiterature review: Climate responsibility\nConclusion and discussion: Attitudes regarding the roles of companies have undergone a dramatic shift during recent decades. Failure to be a \"good corporate citizen\" can devastate executive careers, organizations and deliverables for all stakeholders. These ever-changing social attitudes and rapidly evolving global contexts are reshaping the competitive landscape, forcing brand managers to elevate stakeholder CSR concerns to strategic considerations (Werther and Chandler, 2005). This means that it is not enough to simply look at how environmental CSR issues (climate responsibility and natural resource utilization) affect corporate reputation and profitability; we also need to know how it impacts on health and life expectancy.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) (climate responsibility and natural resource utilization) on corporate/brand reputation and corporate profitability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Building on extensive literature, a conceptual model of environmental CSR-corporation that includes three factors of consumer behavior is proposed.\nFindings: The study highlights that environmental CSR has a positive effect on corporate/brand reputation and corporate profitability.\nPractical implications: The findings of this study highlight the importance of managing environmental CSR for corporations that intend to gain reputation and profitability.\nOriginality/value: This paper is one of the first to highlight the effect of environmental CSR on corporate/brand reputation and corporate profitability.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Organizational antecedents of exploration and exploitation in SMEs: The role of structural and resource attributes	[ "SME", "Exploration", "Exploitation", "Organizational structure", "Slack resource" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The seminal paper of March (1991) concerning organizational learning paved the way for extensive research on the duality of knowledge management in organizations. Researchers have acknowledged that a firm's success depends on its ability not only to explore new competencies and opportunities but also to exploit its existing skills and capabilities (Lavie et al., 2010). The literature has thus widely recognized that both exploration and exploitation are necessary for firm performance and survival (Gupta et al., 2006; Lavie et al., 2010). This simultaneous need for exploration and exploitation has given rise to a specific field of inquiry concerning the concept of \"ambidexterity,\" referring to firms' ability to both explore and exploit, which has become a subject of great interest (Koryak et al., 2018). Scholars have notably paid most attention to the conditions likely to generate ambidexterity (Chang and Hughes, 2012; Jansen et al., 2009; Kamasak and Bulutlar, 2010; Koryak et al., 2018).\n2. Theory and research hypotheses: 2.1 Exploration, exploitation and ambidexterity challenges in SMEs\n3. Research method: 3.1 Sample and data collection\n4. Results and discussion: Our hypotheses rely on the assumption that several organizational characteristics have distinct impacts on exploration and exploitation. Therefore, we needed to discriminate between the influences that a given explanatory organizational antecedent may have on the two dependent variables. To this end, we built two models that were estimated simultaneously following the seemingly unrelated equation method. While seemingly unrelated regressions with identical explanatory variables provide the same estimates as OLS regression, this method has a main advantage for our analysis: considering the equation system as a whole, it provides fit indices and correlations between residuals that apply at the system level. The models estimated with this method are presented in Table II. Models 1 and 2 aim at explaining exploration and exploitation, respectively. The results are shown in Figure 1.\n5. Conclusion: While SMEs' formal hierarchical systems and lower level of slack resources have often been seen as factors that impede their ability to simultaneously explore and exploit (Abebe and Angriawan, 2014; Bierly and Daly, 2007; Lubatkin et al., 2006), few studies have tested the effects of these organizational antecedents (Prajogo and McDermott, 2014). Our study thus contributes to the literature on the antecedents of exploration and exploitation by highlighting the contrasting impacts of structural and resource attributes in the specific context of SMEs. It constitutes an effort to unpack ambidexterity, which is usually seen as an inclusive construct. In doing so, we address the call from Koryak et al. (2018) to identify which antecedents are integrating and which are differentiating to help firms deal with ambidexterity.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Scholars have recognized that formal hierarchical structures and slack resources are at the core of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) attainment of ambidexterity. Surprisingly, few studies on SMEs have analyzed the extent to which these structural and resource attributes are associated with exploration and exploitation. This study aims to examine how two structural attributes, formalization and structural empowerment, and two resource attributes, financial slack and human resource slack, affect exploration and exploitation in SMEs.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were gathered from a survey administered to the chief executive officers of 522 French SMEs. The research hypotheses were then tested using seemingly unrelated regressions to investigate the contrasts between the two components of ambidexterity.\nFindings: The results show that structural empowerment and financial slack may be conducive to exploration and exploitation at the same time. By contrast, formalization and human resource slack impact only one of these two ambidexterity components in significant ways: the former may be a powerful lever for exploitation, while the latter may be a powerful lever for exploration.\nOriginality/value: Relying on a dual structure-resource perspective, this study allows us to discuss the distinct impacts that several organizational antecedents have on exploration and exploitation in the specific context of SMEs. It thus addresses the recent call to identify which antecedents are integrating and which are differentiating to help firms deal with ambidexterity.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Organizational commitment and governance for supply chain success	[ "Supply chain management", "Corporate strategy", "Organizational structures" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the mid-1990s, many industry pundits looked to the future, claiming that competitive success would depend on collaborative supply chain teams (Blackwell, 1997; Christopher and Ryals, 1999; Elliff, 1996; Harps and Hansen, 2000). For example, Harold Sirkin, Vice President at the Boston Consulting Group, noted that, \"As the economy changes, as competition becomes more global, it's no longer company vs company but supply chain vs supply chain\" (Henkoff, 1994). This vision has yet to become a reality. More often than not, companies have struggled to achieve the collaborative breakthroughs envisioned a decade ago (Fisher, 1997; Lonsdale, 1999; Morehouse and Bowersox, 1995). Part of the reason for the struggle arises from the very nature of supply chain management (SCM) is resource intensive, requires dramatic change in entrenched mindsets and practices, and depends on a yet to emerge governance structure (Lambert and Cooper, 2000).The key to achieving desired collaborative breakthroughs is to establish strong managerial commitment to SCM (Akkermans et al., 1999; Lummus et al., 1998). Commitment must come from all levels of the organization as well as from key channel \"partners.\" Top management, all the way to the CEO, must endorse SCM initiatives and provide the necessary resources (Marien, 2000; Stalk et al., 1992). Only the most senior levels of management can dedicate the resources and realign the incentives to develop true cross-functional capabilities. At the same time, lower-level managers and workers across a variety of functions who must implement the initiative must buy into the SCM program or it cannot succeed (Blackwell and Blackwell, 1999; Bowersox and Closs, 2002; LaLonde, 2000; Tyndall, 1998).Commitment must also be shared by channel members - even though they may not share fully in the rewards of a successful initiative (Thomas, 1999). The cross-functional and inter-organizational nature of SCM make broad-based commitment a prerequisite (Kuglin, 1998). Establishing widespread commitment is a challenge few companies are prepared to overcome, but it is vital to build a governance infrastructure capable of cultivating collaboration (Fawcett and Magnan, 2002). Therefore, our goal here is to gauge existing managerial commitment to SCM and identify governance mechanisms that can enhance not only commitment but also the communication and collaboration that enable excellence.\nAssessing supply chain commitment: Much has been written on the need to focus on supply chains and create more cooperative and integrative relationships with key organizations in the supply chain (Bechtel and Jayaram, 1997; Cooper et al., 1997; Fawcett and Magnan, 2001; Scott and Westbrook, 1991; Tompkins, 2000). However, little has been written concerning the commitment levels among those involved in the supply chain or the types of governance structures that should be utilized within a given organization or along the supply chain. Cooper et al. (1997) described several paths than can be taken to supply chain integration. In the \"dyadic management\" path, organizations focus only on those channel members with whom they have immediate contact. For the \"channel integrator\" path, one party, a channel leader, plays the key role of setting the overall strategy for the channel and in getting members involved in and committed to the channel strategy. In the \"analytic optimization\" approach, an organization, the channel leader, uses some sort of computerized modeling to determine the best supply chain configuration. Lastly, in the \"keiretsu\" approach, there is also a centralized channel leader; however, the control or leadership is greatly empowered by partial ownership of the other channel members. While these integration strategies are theoretically useful, few companies have moved beyond the dyadic path (Barlas, 2004; Wathne and Helde, 2004). Lambert and Cooper (2000) lament that \"much friction, and thus waste of valuable resources, results when supply chains are not integrated, appropriately streamlined, and managed.\"To gain insight into the level and nature of commitment for supply chain initiatives, an empirical investigation was carried out. The goal was to answer three questions:1. What types of commitment are required to achieve high levels of supply chain collaboration?2. Is this organizational commitment in place?3. What type of governance infrastructure is needed to enhance commitment and promote effective collaboration?Because SCM is process management across functional as well as organizational boundaries, a multi-method approach involving both surveys and case study interviews was employed. The surveys focused on examining functional perceptions while the interviews evaluated channel perspectives with a special emphasis on defining commitment requirements and exploring governance structures.An advisory board, consisting of practitioners and academics helped modify the survey, and a pre-test was conducted. The survey was further revised, and another round of data collection was undertaken with a new mailing list. Members of the Institute for Supply Management, the Council of Logistics Management, and APICS were surveyed. The survey process followed Dillman's (1978) Total Design Method and yielded usable surveys from 588 managers. Non-respondents were telephoned and asked to provide demographic data so that respondent and non-respondent profiles could be compared. No response bias was found.The case studies answered the what, why, and how questions related to commitment and governance. Over 50 in-depth interviews were conducted across the supply chain: 14 retailers, 13 finished goods assemblers, 12 first-tier suppliers, 3 lower-tier suppliers, and 9 service providers. The study participants were selected based on their reputation as leading implementers of supply chain practices. A structured interview protocol was used to assure comparability while allowing the flexibility to pursue greater insight into unique practices. The notes form each interview were transcribed and a standardized interview write-up performed. These write-ups were then coded and content analyzed. When managers mentioned commitment, or the lack thereof, as critical to SCM success, they were asked to describe the types and levels of commitment that were needed. Insight from these interviews provided the basis for the following discussion of the essential dimensions of commitment and governance.\nDimensions of supply chain commitment: Overwhelmingly, the interviewed managers emphasized that \"real\" SCM cannot deliver exceptional value without the highest levels of managerial commitment both within their companies as well as up and down the supply chain. They note that \"real\" SCM is not a software package; rather, it is the \"collaborative management across organizational boundaries of seamless value-added processes designed to meet the needs of the supply chain's end customer.\" This perspective, they argue, demands deep, wide-ranging managerial commitment. Unfortunately, even among companies recognized for their advanced supply chain practices, levels of commitment to SCM vary greatly.At a few companies, managers passionately highlight their organizations' commitment to greater supply chain integration. They comment that SCM \"is here to stay,\" \"is critical to survival,\" and \"is surely the future of business.\" A majority of managers, however, are less enthusiastic and point out that SCM \"lacks credibility with top management,\" \"has no top-level champion,\" and \"is something you have to constantly sell in-house.\" Many managers talk about their own personal commitment to SCM while expressing frustration that managers in other areas of the organization \"just don't get it\" or are not yet \"on board.\" A content analysis of all the interviews reveals that four distinct types of commitment are vital to SCM implementation: top management commitment, broad-based functional support, channel support, and a commitment to infrastructural development and governance. Table I reports the percent of companies where managers felt confident that needed support was present along each of the four commitment dimensions. Interestingly, managers paint a consistent picture regarding the difficulty of obtaining all four aspects of commitment simultaneously - one piece of the commitment puzzle is almost always missing. And the missing piece differs from company to company.Top management commitment\nSupply chain governance: Managerial commitment must be supported and reinforced by an effective governance system. Jeff Trimmer, former Director of Operations and Strategy at Daimler/Chrysler, identified the challenge of supply chain governance when he said, \"It's not good enough to optimize the firm - we have to optimize the supply chain. But no one is king of the supply chain\" (Nelson et al., 2001). Without a \"king\" to govern - that is, to make holistic decisions for the supply chain and see that they are carried out - it is easy for each member of the supply chain to follow its own course, pursuing a strategy of myopic self-interest. The challenge is to establish a governance infrastructure to enhance communication and coordination among supply chain partners. This infrastructure must drive strong operational excellence and corporate competence while simultaneously promoting inter-organizational process collaboration.While none of the interview companies has set up a governance structure fully capable of achieving these goals, proactive practices were observed. Figure 2 brings these best practices together as part of a composite governance model. The model consists of three main components: functional excellence, cross-functional and inter-organizational teams, and a modified reporting structure. Certain aspects of the model are not new, having been widely considered for years. For example, best practice in supply chain governance is built on the foundation of functional prowess at the company level. Functional expertise precedes operational excellence, enabling a company to bring real value to the supply chain team. The challenge is to become more process focused while maintaining and enhancing functional expertise. Back in 1996, Mike Wells, VP Logistics at Hershey, commented on the challenge, \"If you ask me what I stay awake at night thinking about, it is cross-functional processes.\" For Hershey, and others, the cross-functional team has been the vehicle for driving cross-functional integration and agility. Over the past decade, much experience with new product development, commodity management, process redesign, and customer relationship teams has been gained. Increasingly, personnel from supply chain partners are included as team members. And the use of \"guest\" engineers/managers who work on-site at a partner's facility has become common at leading companies. The more uniquely supply chain aspects of the model such as governance councils and executive reporting structures are discussed in greater detail below.Executive governance councils\nConclusions and implications: Achieving competitive advantage through collaborative breakthroughs will require higher levels of sustained managerial commitment than are typically in place in today's business world. The survey and interview findings both indicate that comprehensive commitment to SCM is lacking. Top management has SCM on the radar screen but often does not fully comprehend how, or perhaps why, to support specific supply chain initiatives. Broad-based functional support for SCM is also inadequate, especially in the domains of marketing, information systems, and manufacturing. Assembling cohesive supply chain \"teams\" is difficult given the prevailing functional bias and tepid channel support that was identified. Opportunistic behavior up and down the supply chain will be difficult to subordinate to a broader, more encompassing, but less tangible supply chain goal. Institutional valuations of a company's performance such as the company's stock price do not recognize or value broader supply chain participation. This reality promotes a continued focus on leverage rather than collaboration. The confluence of these factors yields an environment where supply chain commitment is often ad hoc and fragmented.The good news is that many companies have established sufficient commitment to pursue pilot projects that document the value of SCM organizational structures. Corporate and supply chain governance has been a beneficiary of this organizational experimentation. Leading companies have shortened new product lead times, increased process efficiency, and enhanced customer service via supply chain teams. They have used high-level governance/steering councils to identify and drive key strategic initiatives. They have leveraged customer and supplier advisory councils to increase channel trust, improve relational processes, identify joint initiatives, and increase the learning that takes place up and down the supply chain. Finally, they have instituted new organizational structures to increase process visibility and mitigate functional conflict. With each success, greater commitment emerges and momentum for supply chain collaboration is built. Organizational inertia to SCM is diminishing at the best companies as commitment and governance reinforce each other to create a cycle of collaborative success. Future commitment to SCM will depend on how creatively and persuasively supply chain champions leverage current commitment and emerging governance mechanisms.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - To examine the nature and extent of commitment to supply chain collaboration. Also, to explore the state of supply chain governance structures.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A multi-method survey and in-depth interview methodology was employed to gather data. Content analysis was then used to identify the types and extent of managerial support for supply chain initiatives.\nFindings: - Four types of managerial support are needed to achieve the highest levels of supply chain success: top management support, broad-based functional support, channel support, and infrastructural/governance support. None of the interview companies have put all four types of support in place. Leading-edge governance relies on cross-functional/inter-organizational teams, executive governance councils, customer advisory boards, supplier advisory councils and a modified reporting structure that overseas all value-added activities from product conceptualization to customer relationship management. Again, none of the interview companies have established all aspects of an effective supply chain governance structure.\nOriginality/value: - Much has been written on the need to focus on supply chains and create more cooperative and integrative relationships with key organizations in the supply chain; however, little has been written concerning the commitment levels among those involved in the supply chain or the types of governance structures that should be utilized within a given organization or along the supply chain. This paper bridges this gap, providing a benchmark for managerial commitment and presenting a composite governance structure based on observed best practices. Both academics and practitioners can use the insights provided to work toward a better understanding of supply chain commitment and governance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Transforming the public sector: 1998-2018	[ "Theorization", "Neoliberal", "New public sector", "Public sector research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the closing years of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first century, public sector organisations were fundamentally transformed on an almost global scale. This took place in countries as diverse as the as the UK (Hood, 1991, 1995) and Ghana (Uddin and Tsamenyi, 2005), and in sectors as diverse as healthcare, universities and prisons. Much of what we now observe in terms of managerial structures and processes in these settings would have been unrecognisable and possibly unpalatable even two decades earlier. To examine this transformation, we have been selective in terms of both the overall period and the contributions considered. The period 1998-2007 suits us, at least as a starting point. The exact start date is somewhat arbitrary, the year in which a special issue of this journal and on this topic was published. The ensuing decade was such an important time of transformation for the public sector around the world, notwithstanding earlier changes, that we focus our attention primarily on this period. However, in the interests of assessing the maturing of the field as well as innovations within it, we also consider the subsequent decade, albeit in less detail.\nResearch design: The focus of this paper is on a critical evaluation of the literature on public sector accounting. In this study, we define the public sector literature as publications on government (national, state or local), government agencies, state-owned enterprises, major public sector institutions (such as health services) and sectors which work closely with, and which receive funds or managerial directives from, government (such as universities). There are a wide range of public interest organisations which are variously described as non-profit organisations, associations, charities or non-governmental organisations. These are excluded from this study on the grounds that this sector of the economy exhibits considerable heterogeneity and merits a study in its own right. This study includes a review of theoretical approaches, identifying key areas of the public sector which have been researched and the findings of these studies.\nTheorising public sector transformation: The diffusion of neoliberal ideas, together with their accompanying toolkit of devices, has transformed the public sector and attracted much attention from accounting scholars. For the purposes of exegesis, we identify five somewhat distinct sets of writings, as follows: new public management (NPM); governmentality; reform processes; actor-network theory (ANT); and institutional theory. We examine the key concepts of these different sets of writings, together with some of the criticisms that have been levelled at them. We also include exhibits of key articles, which we highlight as illustrations of these different research approaches.\nThe transformation of the public sector, 1998-2007: In this section of this paper, we review articles published from 1998-2007 in AAAJ, AOS and CPA. We use FAM as a reference point. Of these four journals, FAM is the leading journal dedicated to the publication of public sector articles (see Broadbent and Guthrie, 2008). The distribution of public sector articles is shown in Table I.\nThe transformation of the public sector, 2008-2018: In this section of the paper, we review articles published from 2008 to 2018, in the same set of journals, namely AAAJ, AOS and CPA. Again, our focus in this period was informed by using FAM as a reference point (see Table I). We comment on both continuity and evolving research agendas by examining the papers selected for this section from the perspective of research focus, theorisation and key findings.\nConclusion: The principal aim of this paper has been to provide a structured overview of the accounting literature that has addressed the multiple transformations of the public sector across the period 1998-2018. We began by examining the phenomenon that has been termed neoliberalism, a somewhat over used term that none the less offers a useful shorthand descriptor for the events we are concerned with. During this period, markets and the metrics of accounting became firmly entrenched in all manner of public services, notwithstanding earlier and subsequent reforms. We then described the key findings in the literature published during the first decade covered here, organised according to four sectors or categories: universities, government, audit and health care. Using those same four categories, we then considered the multiple and varied modes of theorising deployed in those studies, noting where relevant when researchers have deployed dual or even multiple theoretical frames.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of public sector research in the 1998-2018 period.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper uses the extant literature of this era to study the theorisation of, and the findings of, public sector research.\nFindings: This is a vibrant field of a study in a wide range of study settings and with many interdisciplinary studies. The influence of new public management is pervasive over this period. There are numerous instances of innovations in study settings, in key findings and the approach taken by investigators.\nResearch limitations/implications: This is not a comprehensive review of all literature in this period.\nPractical implications: This study also explored the relevance of academic research of this era to policymaking by governments.\nOriginality/value: This paper offers a distinctive critique of theorisation of public sector accounting research. It reveals the dominant theoretical reference points in use during this period and observes the increasing tendency for theoretical pluralism to investigate complex study settings.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Learning on the move: how m-learning could transform training and development	[ "Learning", "Flexible learning", "Action learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: For learning and development managers, the emergence of mobile technology represents a massive change in the provision of skills training.\nWhat do we mean by mobile learning?: Mobile learning (commonly referred to as m-learning) is the ability to learn independently of place and time, facilitated by a range of mobile devices, such as the iPod, mobile phone and MP3 player.\nWhich devices can be used?: While the mobile phone is the most common device used to access mobile learning, MP3 players, PDAs, pocket PCs and blackberries are becoming increasingly popular. These devices allow consumers to access \"bite-sized\" pieces of information, such as online quizzes, assessments and skills checks which are some of the main forms of mobile learning. Other forms include the use of online reference materials, such as Wikipedia, and audio/video-based learning, often designed to provide the user with \"tips\" on a particular subject. For example, audio sales tips relevant for a specific type of customer and delivered via iPod, can be accessed en route to a client meeting. In each of these cases, the information needs to be bite-sized because they are likely to be accessed in situations that are prone to interruptions.Although these devices play an invaluable part in accessing mobile learning, it is worth noting that mobile learning itself will rarely be the primary delivery platform for learning. It is far more common to be used as part of a blended approach or in extending a course offering, often through ongoing access to tutors and further learning support.For instance, employees at a manufacturing plant completing online courses in literacy and numeracy skills will require an understanding of how to put these new skills to the test in a work-related environment. Through regular face-to-face interaction with on-site course tutors, employees can receive real time appraisal and a more comprehensive understanding of what has been learnt online.\nHow can mobile learning be used to overcome organizational challenges?: The pace of change in the twenty-first century and the need for constantly updated information is a challenge that all organizations need to respond to. Mobile learning can overcome this challenge by delivering key data at the point of need - particularly relevant for workers who need access to updated product specifications.Lack of time is also another challenge for many organizations. Time pressures on staff mean an ever decreasing window of opportunity for formal training, and mobile learning can circumvent this by allowing staff to use periods of downtime to learn. For instance, an employee on the way to a meeting may have a ten-minute window to catch-up on learning in what can otherwise be wasted time.\nWhat are the design considerations for mobile learning?: Given the devices available to access mobile learning, organizations need to think carefully about the format of training materials for these devices.For organizations who want learning to support the performance of staff, mobile learning is best provided in the form of text and sms service on a mobile phone. For instance, if a field engineer needs to get step by step guidance on a particular procedure. Mobile access can be particularly effective for rarely used or complex procedures that are unlikely to be memorised.Stand-alone mobile learning, such as that offered by many universities for particular courses, makes iPhones, iPods and MP3 players a more obvious choice. They allow the user to engage with content on a much longer timeframe. Several schools and universities are already using audio learning modules as revision aids as a part of their curriculum.\nWhich sort of content is best suited to mobile learning?: The ubiquitous nature of mobile learning makes the type of information we receive for this purpose vitally important.In general, simple, self-contained processes, where specific knowledge can be retrieved/accessed in a certain moment (e.g. definitional or quick hit \"top tips\" information) are the most common type of content for mobile learning.For location specific learning intended for performance support, the content received must add value at an exact time or place. For instance, reviewing tips for effective presenting en route to a sales pitch must be short enough to engage the learner effectively.As a part of a pilot approach to mobile learning, we investigated the use of a video asset featuring two well-known UK actors, Dawn French and John Cleese. The video provided interview tips for job seekers via a video-enabled iPod. In particular, we looked at what type of learning was feasible on this device, and how we could re-package our learning content to ensure maximum benefit for the end user. The pilot was developed in partnership with a rapid e-learning specialist.As a part of the process, question screens with voiceover were added to the original video, asking the learner to pause and consider the answers to questions about interview techniques. Also included were some exercises on how to sit in an interview, including the importance of eye contact and responding well to questions. The video asset and new screens were designed to be mutually reinforcing (see Figure 1).The results of the pilot were clear. Portable to different devices, the video of interview techniques worked best as a short five to six minute clip - perfect for somebody on their way to an interview. In addition, the video compressed extremely well to the device (the iPod) and it was straightforward to add further interview techniques to the video if required, thereby enhancing the learner's experience.The \"interactivity\" of the video deployed to an iPod or MP3 player through well scripted reflective questions, encouraging the learner to pause and reflect, was also well received.Finally, like most forms of mobile learning, the video asset was used to best effect as a part of a blended approach to learning. It was a valuable component to help reinforce existing course content.\nWhere to next: the future of mobile learning?: With mobile technology growing at such a rapid pace, the developments we have outlined in mobile learning are just the tip of the iceberg as we head further into the twenty-first century.In a recent report from Ufi entitled The Skills Evolution: A vision into the future of workplace skills, we asked some of the world's leading futurologists to predict what the future of learning would look like in 2020 and what technologies would make this happen. One of the standout uses for this technology is Augment Reality (AR) devices, which utilise GPS, to provide location specific podcasts (e.g. a tourist accessing multimedia information about a landmark wearing Head-Up Display (HUD) spectacles). Developments in mobile learning such as this are exciting as they offer learners a \"context\" to the information they take in.\nConclusion: The emergence of mobile technology represents a massive change to the way in which organizations will be able to provide development opportunities to staff in the future. As workers become increasingly location independent, a growing number of mobile devices will be called upon to provide location specific information and training.Given this change, learning and development managers will need to carefully consider the design and content of their preferred choice of mobile learning in order to successfully target their learners (Box 1).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to aim to help those in the learning and training community understand the potential applications and practicalities of mobile learning, and how it can be exploited to improve competitiveness - particularly important in this difficult economic climate.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Based on recent academic research and on piloted initiatives, the role of mobile learning in improving organizational performance is explored in a step-by-step guide.\nFindings: - In today's highly mobile and competitive world, organizations need to change the way in which they provide skills training for employees. As traditional forms of learning become less common, mobile devices, such as MP3 players and PDAs, will increasingly be used to help train and support the performance of staff.\nOriginality/value: - This article is of considerable practical importance to learning and development managers, as it outlines the most important aspects of mobile learning and how it can be used to improve organizational performance.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Training and organizational effectiveness: moderating role of knowledge management process	[ "Training", "Knowledge management practices", "Organizational effectiveness", "Manufacturing firms", "Malaysia", "Knowledge management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: About 50 percent of the investments in training and development result in organizational or individual improvements in American companies (Jodlbauer et al., 2011) and companies all over the world spend billions of dollars on training its employees. Training enables employees to gain skills and knowledge but there is no guarantee that training results in improved performance. This is especially true if knowledge gained through employee training is not applied, shared and documented for organizational use. Considerable amount of money is invested by companies in training the employees and failure to reap the full potential from the trained employees is still being reported by the practitioners (Abd Rahman and Bennett, 2009; Lager and Frishammar, 2010). There are companies that are still facing a dilemma whether to invest in training as the outcome is usually underestimated (Tzafrir, 2005). It is logical to assume that investment in training produces some negative effects especially if the employer does not have a reciprocal commitment from the employee. In addition, Tzafrir (2005) also argues that there will be a risk in investing in the training if the employee decides to leave the organization.\nTheoretical framework and hypotheses development: According to resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, resources possessed by a firm can be a source of competitive advantage if the resources are unique, rare, inimitable, and cannot be substituted with another resource by competitors (Wernerfelt, 1984). Based on RBV, human capital can be considered a resource and training can be viewed as an investment in human capital that provides employees with unique knowledge, skills and abilities and these enable the firm to achieve positive outcomes (Jodlbauer et al., 2011). Few researchers have tested interactions (moderators) between training and organizational outcomes. They have specifically used contextual factors such as business strategy and capital investment and configuration factors such as human resource factors (Tharenou et al., 2007). Based on RBV, we test the moderating effects of individual components of knowledge management process on the relationship between training and organizational effectiveness.According to Chow et al. (2005), knowledge management (KM) can be defined as the set of activities that enables the creation, storage, distribution, and application of knowledge in organization. The KM process consists of four dimensions from the organizational capabilities perspectives and the dimensions are: knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion, knowledge application, and knowledge protection (Gold et al., 2001). The four dimensions are sufficiently broad to permit complete analysis of organizational KM capabilities. Marques and Simon (2006) have studied the importance of KM as a source of sustainable competitive advantage for firms and they have found a strong and positive relationship between the adoption of KM process and firm performance. In a similar vein, Chadha and Kapoor (2010) has mentioned that knowledge that is transferred and shared effectively within an organization can considerably affect its competitive ability and business performance. KM is said to be effective if it contributes to increase in productivity by making available the right information to the right people (Gunasekaran and Ngai, 2007).Ziarnik and Bernstein (1982) and Cullen (2000) have argued that the staff training alone is insufficient to achieve enduring change. This is because not all knowledge obtained from the training is properly transferred and applied to the organization. Singh et al. (2006) have claimed that the cornerstone to the long-term survival of a firm is recognizing the value of the knowledge that is a key to innovative thinking and investment. Hence, if there is no application of the learned knowledge on the job, then there will be little or no impact on the organization performance (Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Roberts, 2000). Having a knowledge management process will strengthen the relationship between training and organization effectiveness because skills and knowledge acquired from the training is the organization's knowledge asset that can be stored and shared.At this point, it is useful to understand the negative aspects of training to an organization. There are several problems faced by employers after providing training to their employees. According to Haines et al. (2010), training is one of the specific human resource designs that have relation to turnover rate. Trevor (2001) has argued that the market signaling theory proposed by Spence (1973) is consistent with the view that training provided by the employer has unintended effect by increasing a person's external marketability and ability to leave the employer. Obviously, steps are needed by the employers to ensure that their investment in training is worth and the knowledge needs to be converted and applied in the organization before the employees leave the company.Dibella and Nevis (1998) have stated that KM facilitates acquisition of new knowledge. In other words, an organization with knowledge management process has a clearer picture on what is lacking in the organization and the training programs will have more relevance than the organizations without such a process. An organization benefits the most only when the knowledge is transferred (Ranft and Lord, 2002) and the knowledge transfer occurs when the knowledge-based assets are acquired and used. Alvesson (2000), who claims that a firm must be able to learn continually and apply the knowledge in order to be successful, supports this. Hence, the ability of acquiring skills (training) is not sufficient to compete effectively unless the knowledge acquired through training is converted, applied and protected in the organization.Based on the above arguments, our hypotheses are as follows:H1. There is a positive relationship between training of human resources (individual/managerial skills and process skills) and organizational effectiveness.H2. Knowledge management process (individual dimensions) moderates the relationship between training and organizational effectiveness.In this research, we study the moderating role in detail by considering the individual dimensions of training and knowledge management process. The conceptual framework is given in Figure 1.\nMethodology: Participants\nMeasures: Training\nResults: The central theme of this research is to study and validate the relationship between training, knowledge management process and organizational effectiveness. In detail, we tested the moderating effect of individual components of knowledge management process (knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion, knowledge application and knowledge protection) between the two types of training skills (individual/managerial skills and process skills) and organizational effectiveness.Validity tests\nDiscussion: It is a well-established fact that training investments do not always result in the desired outcomes (Jodlbauer et al., 2011) and the current study looked at this problem by focusing on different types of training based on the skills (individual/managerial and process) and individual dimensions of knowledge management process (acquisition, conversion, application and protection). It is essential to analyze the effects in detail for the following reasons: not all kinds of training result directly in organizational effectiveness (Gegenfurtner, 2011); not all dimensions of knowledge management process have a direct impact on organizational effectiveness. For example, unless knowledge acquisition is coupled with conversion and application, knowledge cannot be developed into a sustainable competitive advantage (Lee and Lan, 2011) and dimensions of knowledge management process may interact with training skills differently to result in organizational effectiveness (Tharenou et al., 2007). Previous studies have discussed the interaction effects between training and constructs like HR practices, organizational variables and external environmental factors (Fernando et al., 2005; Tharenou et al., 2007) but have not discussed the effects of knowledge management practices. Our study is unique in that it tests the moderation effect of knowledge management practices between training (individual/managerial skills and process skills) and organizational effectiveness. Many studies have addressed the transfer of knowledge at the individual level (Gegenfurtner, 2011; Gegenfurtner and Vauras, 2012) and our study is one of the few at the organizational level (Tharenou et al., 2007). We espouse that the knowledge management practices, which is handled by the organization, can significantly influence the transfer of knowledge. Motivation to transfer at the individual level alone is not sufficient to ensure effective knowledge transfer.Model I - Individual/managerial skills, knowledge management process and organizational effectiveness\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Training alone is not sufficient to enhance organizational effectiveness to a greater level because not all knowledge obtained from the training is properly transferred and applied to the organization. This study aims to investigate whether efforts invested by Malaysian manufacturers in employee training and knowledge transfer affect organizational effectiveness.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This study adopted a quantitative research design. The questionnaire developed for this study captured the training related to individual/managerial skills, the knowledge management process in place to capture and apply the knowledge obtained through training, and the organizational effectiveness. A closed-ended online survey was sent to 1,000 members of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) throughout Malaysia and 88 manufacturers responded. The unit of analysis was an organization.\nFindings: - The study found the following: training employees to acquire individual/managerial skills and process skills helps in improving organizational effectiveness; knowledge application and knowledge protection interact with individual/managerial skills training to improve organizational effectiveness; and knowledge acquisition, knowledge application and knowledge protection interact with process skills training to enhance organizational effectiveness.\nPractical implications: - Organizations are urged to devise training modules depending on the needs of individual employees, create an environment that will encourage the trained employees to apply their skills (knowledge), and develop policies to retain these employees.\nOriginality/value: - This paper addresses an important and not so well researched issue. It analyzes the interactions between the dimensions of knowledge management practices and type of training in improving the organizational effectiveness of manufacturing firms in Malaysia.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Factors fostering students' spin-off firm formation: An empirical comparative study of universities from North and South Europe	[ "Comparative study", "Entrepreneurial University", "Academic entrepreneurship activities", "Students’ spin-off firm formation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: At a time when society is facing global challenges which extend well beyond the economy, innovation and entrepreneurship provide a way forward by building sustainable development, creating jobs, generating renewed economic growth and advancing human welfare (Volkmann et al., 2009).\n2. Factors fostering the Entrepreneurial University: 2.1. Entrepreneurial University results\n3. Research design: The unit of analysis is the major entity that the researcher is analyzing in his/her study. It is the \"what\" or \"who\" that is being studied. Units of analysis are essentially the things that the researcher examines in order to create summary descriptions of them and explain differences among them. Specifically, in social science research, there are several units of analysis that are commonly used, including: individuals, groups, organizations, social artifacts and social interactions (Babbie, 2001).\n4. Empirical analysis: 4.1. Descriptive statistics\n5. Discussion and conclusions: This paper represents an attempt to empirically explore the differences between Northern and Southern European universities on Entrepreneurial University results, specifically on students' spin-off firm formation, and analyze which factors promote this result.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The university is an institution with a long history and, over the course of the centuries, it has gone through several stages in its development. While initially conceived as an institution with a teaching \"mission,\" the university later adopted a knowledge generation function (research). In recent years, the idea has emerged that the university is assuming a \"third mission\": contributing to society and economic development more directly; turning the university into an Entrepreneurial University. What, however, constitutes this Entrepreneurial University? Are all Entrepreneurial Universities composed of the same factors? The purpose of this paper is to answer these significant questions, through an empirical analysis performed on a sample of 59 Northern and Southern European universities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Empirical analysis performed on a sample of 59 Northern and Southern European universities.\nFindings: The findings show that students' spin-off firm formation is the only different result for an Entrepreneurial University between Northern and Southern European universities and that the core internal entrepreneurship support factors are different for both geographical locations.\nOriginality/value: Besides, regarding external entrepreneurship support factors, results show that a supportive institutional context is a core element for promoting internal entrepreneurship support factors and in turn for increasing students' spin-off firm formation in both Northern and Southern universities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
HathiTrust: digital access at the intersection of interlibrary lending potential and the protection of intellectual property rights	[ "Intellectual property", "Interlibrary loan", "Interlending", "Digital repositories", "Libraries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: While ILL is not a substitute for materials in a local collection, it is a necessary supplement to library resources. The benefit to sharing our materials is that we in turn are able to borrow items for our own researchers. As interlibrary loan (ILL) departments work to find new ways to enhance library collections, some libraries are trying to connect people with free resources online, such as open access digital repositories, rather than via typical library-to-library transactions with physical books or onsite scanning. With the increased availability of digital collections, we in the ILL community need to examine our current resource sharing models: reciprocal agreements, cost distribution, cooperative collection development and, with the aid of our general counsels, copyright law. By participating in open access digitization and pushing the legal boundaries of digital copy usage, we can continue to complement our library collections and begin to borrow and lend in a different way. HathiTrust is a recently created digital repository that provides an opportunity to examine the possibilities inherent in lending resources across national borders and examine how intellectual property laws complicate access to this resource.\nBarriers to sharing physical resources internationally: Our legal ability to share will always lag behind our technological abilities. Despite having the capability to send documents inexpensively online, physical books are still shipped across national borders. The recent statement on international interlibrary lending put forth by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) indicates that publishers are concerned with international sharing of resources (International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, 2011). They would like to see international digital sharing regulated by direct negotiations with publishers rather than through ILL. Different intellectual property laws, \"fair dealing,\" \"fair use,\" and licenses must be considered, no matter how far our technology advances towards new ways of sharing. So for the present, shipping a physical copy is inefficient but avoids the tangle of intellectual property law.\nResearch climate - what do scholars expect?: Online transactions are such a daily experience in our lives that we expect anything online should be available instantly and electronically. We can bank online, arrange travel plans online; naturally we expect the library to be as easy to reach online. In conversations with friends and colleagues we have heard numerous times the misconception that since Google has scanned the library collection at the University of Michigan (hereafter, Michigan), every digital book will be openly available to everyone online. Contrarily, 73 percent of the HathiTrust collection is digitized but locked to any type of access except keyword searching; these books can only be read by going to the printed volume on a library shelf. When we explain to our colleagues that there is no access to scans of books within copyright people continue to believe that we as Michigan employees must have special access. Clearly our environment and patron expectations are pushing towards online lending systems, we are just not there yet.\nOverview of HathiTrust: There have been a number of very successful digitization projects in recent years that have inspired ILL librarians to experiment with sending digital books. As we experiment and begin to formulate best practices, we should also look at digital archives such as the HathiTrust and evaluate them based on our needs for ILL. HathiTrust is a good candidate for evaluation because of its size, diverse contents, and reliability as a digital repository[3].\nThe easy answers: What people want to know the most about HathiTrust is, \"Can I see the book or not? And if yes, how can I download it?\" The easiest \"black and white\" copyright determination is the date 1871. The current standard in use by HathiTrust is that if a title has a publication date of 1871 or earlier, it should be public domain anywhere in the world no matter who is viewing it or where it was published. The next easy copyright answer is pre-1923. Anything published before 1923 is viewable to anyone trying to access the document from a US geographic location. However, if the book was published between 1872 and 1923, inclusive, by a non-US publisher it will be blocked to people attempting to access it from a non-US geographic location. This conservative approach to intellectual property rights was a decision made by HathiTrust which ensures that no rights are violated. Certainly, there are books which could be open and are not. As they develop the ability to make finer grain distinctions and to research the copyright rules of other countries, they will be able to implement a system which will take into account all of the geographic and legal factors (Table I).\nJust make everything open ... what's the harm?: About 73 percent of HathiTrust items are either not in the public domain or have not yet been determined to be in the public domain and therefore not viewable except under special circumstances as the law allows. The non-public domain items are text searchable, which assists researchers in identifying pages or chapters of potential interest which they can then order through traditional resource sharing methods. When we think of how much is behind the copyright barrier in HathiTrust, it is very tempting to look over the wall with impatience. All the books are from a library after all, and libraries are equated with free and open resources. It is frustrating to maintain a digital library where over half the books cannot be read by anyone at all.\nDigital books and the interlibrary loan environment: With digitization, books have become more discoverable through keyword searching, leading to increased demand for ILL. At Michigan we have been gathering feedback as we consider when delivering a link to a HathiTrust book might be an appropriate and effective substitute to delivering a physical book. We have seen patrons place orders for loans or scanned chapters based on keyword search results found through HathiTrust. Often the patron is not sure what they will receive since the page number results do not give any context. Researchers could evaluate search results more easily if HathiTrust could make the table of contents viewable for copyrighted works. Context of keywords is also important, and before putting forth effort to obtain a physical book, researchers would be better able to decide relevance if they were allowed to see snippet views surrounding their keywords. Of course, for our users who have print disabilities, the HathiTrust is an unprecedented opportunity to use the library the way others have been using it for centuries.\nThe changing role of interlibrary loan in a mobile society: As mobile technology becomes commonplace, researchers and students expect that their library access will follow them wherever they go into the field or on sabbatical, detached study, or vacation. It is much easier to gain access to materials through your home institution partly because of trust and privileges that come with being part of a local community, and because the institution is working with a known entity. A researcher\nBenefits of collective membership: Many libraries are making the decision to partner with HathiTrust and begin contributing digital collections and in some cases staff time to this effort. Shared stewardship of a scholarly digital collection has payoffs for both the member institutions and for the public good. The combined effort of members enables economy of scale and distribution of storage costs[6]. HathiTrust brings together developers to work on interface usability, APIs and improve access to the collection. HathiTrust manages the data security in the web systems and has mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access of in-copyright works. By bringing together various scanning projects under one roof, HathiTrust is able to increase the discoverability of many digitized works through collaboration with OCLC WorldCat and by making the API available for inclusion in local catalogs Together the partner libraries work to push new developments and copyright review. Overlap with a library\nIntellectual property rights and the legal use of Works in the HathiTrust: The sharing of resources through ILL has always been a balance between the interests of education and research, and the rights of copyright holders to benefit from their intellectual property[8]. Libraries have been supporters of both individual rights and laws made for the common good. We walk a balance between the freedom of information that comes with public domain and respecting the rights of intellectual property holders. Some fair uses are made of information in HathiTrust, even when the work is still under copyright, every month items are reviewed and opened up. In June 2011, the Michigan Library announced that it would be opening orphan works in HathiTrust to the U-M Community as a legal and responsible \"fair use\" of books held in the local collection[9]. If a rightsholder (or anyone else, for that matter) steps forward to establish a connection between a book and a rightsholder, that book would no longer be an Orphan Works Project candidate. This process has been a successful way of beginning to research unclear copyright statuses while respecting the interests of rightsholders and has the potential to open up resources.\nInternational partners and the future: International partners are just beginning to come on board with HathiTrust. In general, the issues facing international libraries joining HathiTrust are largely coordinating communication over time zones and legal jurisdiction (HathiTrust, 2011c). The HathiTrust is growing so rapidly that the copyright review team cannot keep up but other partner institutions have volunteered to be trained in the copyright review process. If more international members are in the partnership it will diversify and better represent the voice of scholars outside the US in terms of developing copyright research and systems.\nNext steps for the resource sharing community: There are some next steps we should be talking about as the resource sharing community to help make this resource or any other digital collection useful for international resource sharing. First, we do not know enough about what patrons need and want in an e-book: when is an electronic copy sufficient, and what circumstances require access to the physical book? Rather than making assumptions on behalf of patrons, this idea could be researched by looking at patron technical abilities and behavior in using e-books. With a better idea how to evaluate patron preferences on delivery speed, cost, and format, we can help improve service through the use of digital book delivery. ILL librarians have insights into patron behaviors and we collect data on resource sharing needs and costs. We need to identify and share relevant feedback that could help inform the development of HathiTrust digital repository and impact the access to international scholarly materials. With our experience in setting up reciprocal resource sharing agreements between libraries, we should be the ones beginning to discuss how we could make in-copyright electronic books available in a reasonable and equitable way that publishers can embrace. In the future we would love to see a global resource sharing environment where digital copies of books could be opened up for full view regardless of country. Keep this vision in mind as you encourage your library to join HathiTrust and take each step to advance digital resource collaboration worldwide.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim is to provide an overview of the HathiTrust digital repository and assess the impact that intellectual property rights may have on its utility for ILL operations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors use a case study approach based on their professional experience.\nFindings: In order to make digital repositories such as HathiTrust useful for international ILL purposes, librarians need to know more about users\nOriginality/value: HathiTrust is one of the newest and yet largest digital repositories in the world. The impact of such digital collections upon ILL is still unknown. The authors present highly original work that is sure to help ILL professionals navigate what is as yet uncharted territory.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Condition-based maintenance modeling for a two-stage deteriorating system with random changes based on stochastic process	[ "Condition-based maintenance", "Non-homogeneous Poisson process", "Non-stationary gamma process", "Random change", "Stochastic deterioration" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The increasing complexity of modern systems has put forward higher requirement for system safety and reliability, especially in engineering systems and structures such as nuclear power plants, transportation systems and civil structures. As one of the effective means to ensure a satisfactory level of system reliability, maintenance can really reduce system failure rate and running cost (Yasin, et al., 2011; Parida et al., 2015). The growing importance of maintenance has led to an increasing attention to the research of maintenance modeling and optimization. The earlier researches on maintenance modeling appeared in literature mainly focused on the time-based maintenance (Ahmad and Kamaruddin, 2012), which is usually a periodical or non-periodic maintenance approach based on the service time of the system. With the development of reliability and maintenance engineering, reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) was put forward and carried out widely in practice (Srikrishna et al., 1996). However, RCM policy rarely pays attention to the failure mechanisms of components or structures. It is not suitable for those systems that usually suffer underlying deterioration progresses. What is more, opportunistic maintenance strategy as a novel idea considering the opportunities of maintaining other units simultaneously while conducting maintenance for a certain unit, has also attracted wide concern recently (Zhou et al., 2015). With the development of measurement technology and information technology, maintenance programs are undergoing further research. The condition-based maintenance (CBM) (Grall et al., 2002; Tan et al., 2010; Prajapati et al., 2012; Moura et al., 2014; Hong et al., 2014) gradually attracts more and more attention. Based on the information of system deterioration collected through continuous or intermittent monitoring, maintenance actions are recommended only when the system state has deteriorated to a pre-determined alarm threshold. Such a maintenance policy is referred to as CBM (Liu et al., 2013). Compared with the traditional RCM, CBM is more effective in reducing the occurrence of catastrophic failure.\n2. System description: We consider a system that is assumed to be an observable system. Stochastic deterioration may occur in different regions called deterioration pits of the system in this paper. For example, considering a system suffering corrosion, there may be different deterioration pits gradually corroding at the same time. As we all know, any system has self-protection ability that helps to avoid external disturbance and damage to some extent. These systems can keep running for some time at a new state, until their self-protection abilities are destroyed. From that moment on, there are deterioration pits initiating ceaselessly and growing till the system failure. In this paper, we regard the deterioration process as a two-stage deterioration process including the deterioration pitting initiation process and the deterioration pitting growth process, as described in Figure 1.\n3. Modeling of the deterioration: 3.1 Modeling of the environmental changes\n4. Presentation and evaluation of maintenance policy: Based on the deterioration model in Section 2, a CBM policy is put forward to obtain the optimal inspection interval by minimizing the long-term expected maintenance cost rate.\n5. Analysis and discussion of the numerical results: This section presents an example to illustrate potential applications of the proposed two-stage deterioration model. The two-stage deterioration model and a single-stage deterioration model are numerically compared to emphasize the differences between them. At the end, the effect of environmental changes on the system life distribution is discussed. The bootstrap estimation is used to calculate the system life distribution with approximate 95 percent confidence interval of a single-stage deteriorating system and the two-stage deteriorating system.\n6. Conclusion: This paper presents a CBM model for those systems subject to the two-stage deterioration including a deterioration pitting initiation process and a deterioration pitting growth process. Considering the effect of the environmental change on the system deterioration process by introducing environmental change factors, a two-stage deterioration model is proposed to describe the system deterioration. The model includes a periodic inspection and a condition-based replacement policy. The proposed model optimizes the inspection interval by minimizing the expected cost rate.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a condition-based maintenance (CBM) model for those systems subject to the two-stage deterioration including a deterioration pitting initiation process and a deterioration pitting growth process.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Regarding environmental changes as random shocks, the effect of environmental changes on the deterioration process is considered. Then, non-homogeneous Poison process and non-stationary gamma process are introduced to model the deterioration pitting initiation process and the deterioration pitting growth process, respectively. Finally, based on the deterioration model, a CBM policy is put forward to obtain the optimal inspection interval by minimizing the expected maintenance cost rate. Numerical simulations are given to optimize the performance of the deteriorating system. Meanwhile, comparisons between a single-stage deterioration model and a two-stage deterioration model are conducted to demonstrate the application of the proposed approach.\nFindings: The result of simulation verifies that the deterioration rate is not constant in the life cycle and is affected by the environment. Furthermore, the result shows that the two-stage deterioration model proposed makes up for the shortage of single-stage deterioration models and can effectively reduce system failures and unreasonable maintenance caused by optimistic prediction using single-stage deterioration models.\nPractical implications: In practical situations, except for normal deterioration caused by internal factors, many systems are also greatly influenced by the random shocks during operation, which are probably caused by the environmental changes. What is more, most systems have self-protection ability in some extent that protects them to keep running as new ones for some time. Under such circumstances, the two-stage deterioration model proposed can effectively reduce system failures and unreasonable maintenance caused by optimistic prediction using single-stage deterioration models. In the combination with the bootstrap estimation, the paper obtains the life distributions with approximate 95 percent confidence intervals which can provide valuable information for practical system maintenance scheduling.\nOriginality/value: This paper presents a new CBM model for those systems subject to the two-stage deterioration including a deterioration pitting initiation process and a deterioration pitting growth process. Considering the effect of the environmental change on the system deterioration process, a two-stage deterioration model with environmental change factors is proposed to describe the system deterioration.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effects of old-age stereotypes on organizational productivity (part one)	[ "Self-determination theory", "Old-age stereotypes", "Organizational productivity", "Selective optimization", "Socio-emotional selectivity theory" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In most industrialized economies, the average life expectancy has increased. People do not want to retire early, diseases are curable, people are healthier than ever before and hence the age of the workforce is growing quickly. In Canada, for instance, by 2021, people aged 55 and over are projected to represent nearly 24 percent of the working age population, the highest proportion on record (Statistics Canada, 2011). Moreover, the outlook for the USA is an increasing proportion of workers of 55 years and older (21.2 percent in 2014) (Silverstein, 2008). This increase in demographics is explained by 78 million births between the 1940s and 1960s (i.e. \"baby boomers\"). Furthermore, the population will not be offset by the proportion of people in succeeding generations (Silverstein, 2008).\nStereotypical beliefs about older workers: Attitudes and beliefs about older workers have been characterized as \"ambivalent\" (Barth et al., 1993, p. 162) and \"mixed\" (American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), 1995, p. 19). In other words, several studies agree that older workers are viewed as having both positive and negative attributes. According to Kenrick et al. (2002), negative stereotypes about one's group make it more difficult for people of that group to give their 100 percent performance. In the long run, however, the distancing of older employees from their workplace will produce, among other things, less involvement, less interest, and less enthusiasm (Roberson and Kulik, 2007). Some of the most common stereotypical beliefs are described below in more detail.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine common stereotypes regarding old-age workers and the effect of these stereotypes on organizational productivity, as well as to suggest practical solutions for accommodating old-age workers and increasing productivity in all employees.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This three part paper will present a thorough review of relevant literature (1991-2014, with the exception of two studies from 1976) that were conducted on the topics of old-age stereotyping, the effect of old-age stereotyping on organizational productivity, and methods for adequately motivating and managing old-age workers. Studies concerning psychology theories are also examined in order to provide a framework for practical solutions, as well as demographic statistics on population age and employment trends.\nFindings: This paper identifies a number of old-age stereotypes that have decreased organizational productivity in empirical studies, including reluctance to change, decreased learning ability, intelligence and memory, poor health and accidents, higher organizational costs, decreased motivation, and low innovation and productivity. Findings also suggest that old-age workers can positively affect productivity, and that low productivity is often a result of stereotyping.\nResearch limitations/implications: The prevalence of old-age stereotyping and its impact on organizational productivity may differ by culture, industry, type of employment, education level, and other factors, and thus further research may be necessary. The literature reviewed may not adequately represent worldwide organizational trends, as the literature is largely comprised of studies performed in North America and Europe.\nPractical implications: Solutions based on these findings are taken directly from the literature or derived from literature on psychology theories, which include self-determination theory, socio-emotional selectivity theory, and selective optimization and compensation theory. The practical solutions proposed address work environment, motivation, rewards, flexibility, and the loss and gain of resources in old-age workers.\nSocial implications: The proportion of old-age workers is increasing and it is therefore necessary to determine ways to adequately integrate old-age workers in the workforce. Furthermore, this can raise productivity in all employees.\nOriginality/value: This paper demonstrates that old-age stereotyping is both prevalent and detrimental within an organizational context. These findings and solutions can potentially be used by organizations in order to increase individual and overall productivity.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Analysis on the operation mechanism of the ecosystem of crowd innovation space based on grounded theory	[ "Crowd innovation space", "Economic relationship embeddedness", "Social relationship embeddedness", "Value cocreation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Since the 18th national congress of the Communist Party of China, China's economy is undergoing a transformation from tradition to innovation; in the meantime, the economic growth rate has been shifted from high speed to medium-high speed. At the critical time of China's economic transformation, crowd innovation space has turned into an indispensable of China's \"mass entrepreneurship, mass innovation\" strategy, bearing a vital mission of innovative development (Li et al., 2017; Lin et al., 2016). Crowd innovation space changes the traditional innovation and entrepreneurship mode from top to bottom, which makes the innovation and entrepreneurship subject diversified. Through resource integration and professional services, crowd innovation space makes innovation and entrepreneurship faster and easier, which plays a great role in China's \"mass entrepreneurship and innovation\" strategy (Li et al., 2016). With the strong support of governments at all levels, the development of crowd innovation space presents a prosperous scene, but in fact, there are serious homogenization problem in field of crowd innovation space. In addition, most of the crowd innovation spaces are lack of resource integration ability and self-generating ability and the like (Li and Chen, 2017). Through investigation, our research team found that many crowd innovation spaces failed to grasp the pain points of entrepreneurs, failed to solve the core problems for the entrepreneurial team, leading to low incubation efficiency. It has aroused the attention of the government and the operators of crowd innovation spaces - how to establish a crowd innovation space ecosystem for the national innovation-driven strategy and make it sustainable? These are two of our research questions.At present, there are many researches on the components of crowd innovation space ecosystem. Studies have shown that crowd innovation space ecosystem is a complex adaptive system with multiple participants, including entrepreneurs, crowd innovation space, government, universities, intermediary service institutions, financial investment institutions and so on. (Roundy et al., 2018; Li et al., 2014). Xie and Liu (2018) drew lessons from the ecosystem of \"makerspace + incubator + Living Lab\" and concluded that China's crowd innovation space is a comprehensive service platform integrating the functions of \"innovation\" and \"entrepreneurship\" and \"investment\" and \"incubator\" (Xie and Liu, 2018). Neck et al. (2004) revealed that the entrepreneurial ecosystem consists of two parts via a two-stage research. The first part is related to the incubator; the second part is the formal and informal networks, infrastructure and community culture composed of universities, government, professional support services, capital services, intellectual resources and large enterprises. Therefore, based on the literature review, this study believes that the crowd innovation space is a center of the ecosystem with the goal of incubating innovation and entrepreneurship and connecting with the government, universities, enterprises, intermediary service organizations, social investment institutions and related environmental supporting elements in specific geographic space. There are few researches on the operation mechanism of the crowd innovation space ecosystem (Chen and Li, 2018; Autio, Nambisan and Thomas, 2018). After development over more than four years, the crowd innovation space ecosystem has not yet formed a theoretical system for the operation mechanism.This study is based on the perspective of social network theory, combining relevant policy documents, media reports and other second-hand materials of crowd innovation space to design an interview outline (Ahuja, 2000). Our researchers obtained first-hand information through face-to-face interviews with the founders or principals of crowd innovation spaces, then, sorted out the text of the recordings and selected effective sentences centering on the connection between the crowd innovation space and other elements of the ecosystem. It is of theoretical and practical significance to explore the internal operation mechanism of crowd innovation space ecosystem by means of grounded theory and three-level coding.\n2. Research design: 2.1 Data\n3. Case study and discovery: 3.1 Open coding\n4. Model implications: In order to make the crowd innovation space ecosystem run effectively (effective), it is needed to form a relationship embeddedness with all elements of the crowd innovation space ecosystem. The tie between crowd innovation space and entrepreneur is embedded with more attributes of social relationship, while the tie with government, universities and other elements is embedded with more attributes of economic relationship. Li et al. (2017) proposed the duality of relationship embeddedness, which is divided into economic embeddedness and social embeddedness according to its nature. Among them, economic relationship embeddedness refers to the formal interest connection between the two parties due to the input of tangible capital such as material and human resources. Social relationship embeddedness refers to the intangible affective connection formed by the two parties in the process of carrying out a series of cooperative activities centering on the relationship embeddedness. The degree of interaction between enterprises in repeated transactions determines the strength of social relationship embeddedness [11].The social relationship between the crowd innovation space and entrepreneur is the start. In the interview, when describing the connection with incubated enterprises, the leaders of crowd innovation space emphasized the interaction, the fusion and mutual trust between the two sides. The crowd innovation space selects high-quality projects in familiar fields and interacts frequently and comprehensively with the project's founding team to get detailed information about founders, technical field, product market, financing demand and many other aspects. The project team also got to know the basic information and service ability of the crowd innovation space and other important aspects in the interaction process. On the basis of mutual trust, the two sides communicated frankly and effectively to form in-depth interaction. Depth of interaction is not only in the beginning period, but also throughout the growth of the project until the crowd innovation space exits the equity investment of incubated enterprises. During each period of project, both sides should maintain in-depth interaction, so as to facilitate the crowd innovation space to provide accurate and practical services for the project and promote the project. In a series of cooperative activities, a strong affective tie is formed between the crowd innovation space and the entrepreneurs (Vargo et al., 2008).The tie between the crowd innovation space and the government, universities, social investment institutions and other elements of interest generated by the input of tangible resources such as material, human and capital is equally important. The economic behaviors of both sides are affected by the network relationship between each other to varying degrees, forming the economic relationship embeddedness (He and Zhang, 2017).In the face-to-face interview, the leader of crowd innovation space mainly mentioned the interaction and connection with the government, universities and investment institutions, but rarely mentioned the in-depth interaction with the third-party service institutions. The ability of a crowd innovation space is limited, which leads it difficult to maintain frequent interaction with every network node of the ecosystem, therefore, for some social network relationships that cannot make the crowd innovation space form unique competitiveness, they can spend less time and energy to acquire and maintain, for example, the crowd innovation space with third-party service institutions often need only through the contract in the form of the connections in a business, without the need for frequent interaction. Both sides of the economic behavior are affected by weak relationships embeddedness (Soda et al., 2018).The crowd innovation space is embedded in the relationship with all elements of the ecosystem and has frequent interactive behaviors with some them, which provides a foundation for value cocreation (Alves, 2013; Christian and Annika, 2011). The core point of value co-creation is \"direct interaction,\" without direct interaction, there is no value cocreation (Kaushik et al., 2015).The innovators and entrepreneurs are the value source of the crowd innovation space ecosystem (Spilling, 1996; Spigel, 2017). The value of crowd innovation space is generated through direct interaction with the innovators and entrepreneurs. Through direct interaction with other elements of the ecosystem, crowd innovation space can obtain entrepreneurial resources needed for the growth of entrepreneurial enterprises and integrate government, universities and other resources to provide incubation services for projects. The value increment of a start-up comes from the process of value creation involving multiple parties (Wang and Liu, 2017).Therefore, the value generating mechanism of the crowd innovation space ecosystem can be described as: the entrepreneurs and innovators and crowd innovation space form social relationship embeddedness, and the government, universities and other institutions form economic relationship embeddedness, in the coupling relationship between embedded in the direct interaction, then, value appreciation is generated, so as to realize the value of the crowd innovation space ecosystem.\n5. Discussion: 5.1 The management suggestion for the crowd innovation spaces\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the operation mechanism of the ecosystem of crowd innovation space. Though the crowd innovation space is a new product of China's innovation-driven strategy, there are some barriers in operation. So, this problem is worthy of study.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this study, data were obtained through four-month field investigation and semistructured interview, then classified and analyzed through grounded theory, because grounded theory is conducive to the exploration and discovery of new theories.\nFindings: This study finds that the relationship between makerspace and entrepreneurs is strong social relational embeddedness. The relationship between crowd innovation space and governments and investment institutions is economic relational embeddedness. Under these social network ties, entrepreneurs, crowd innovation space, social investment institutions and so on can interact directly with each other to different degrees, carry out value cocreation activities and improve the benefits of all elements in the ecosystem and the ecosystem itself.\nOriginality/value: This study researches the operation mechanism of crowd innovation space ecosystem and identifies the ties between various elements in the ecosystem on the perspective of social network, which is conducive to improve the self-generating capacity of crowd innovation space and enhance the success rate of entrepreneurship.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Analysis of counterfeit fashion purchase behaviour in UAE	[ "United Arab Emirates", "Counterfeiting", "Fashion", "Consumer behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Counterfeiting is a worldwide problem across industry sectors and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with its open economy has also felt its impact. OECD (2008) estimates that counterfeit products sized by customs worldwide amount to over $200 billion each year and are of the opinion that that this is only a fraction of what is in circulation. BASCAP (2011) estimates that the value of internationally traded counterfeit goods will reach an astounding level of $770-$960 billion by 2015. The UAE is an open economy and mainly a trading hub rather than a manufacturing one and as a result almost all the counterfeits come into the country via international trade. Havocscope (2011) estimates the counterfeit market across industries in the UAE to be around $1.02 billion a year with counterfeit auto spare parts having the highest share at 48 per cent. It is estimated that 8-10 per cent of the products in the beauty industry sold in the UAE are counterfeit (KPMG, 2008). There are no estimates of the extent of counterfeiting in the luxury fashion industry in the UAE. According to a survey by ACNielsen one in three consumers in the UAE buys a luxury brand making it an attractive market for all the top luxury brands (Tradearabia, 2010). The UAE government is concerned about its image as a tourist retail-shopping destination and is striving to eliminate the availability of counterfeit products which may deter high-end customers from shopping in the UAE.A number of initiatives have been introduced by the UAE government to reduce counterfeiting from the supply side. These include strict monitoring by Dubai customs to prevent the import of fake products (Shaaban, 2011) and raids by the Dubai's Department of Economic Development (UAE Interact, 2011) which resulted in confiscation and destruction of over 245,000 fake items mainly fashion and beauty products. Controlling the spread of fake products is one part of the puzzle, the other would be to stymie the demand for counterfeit products. This would involve understanding what motivates a buyer to knowingly buy a counterfeit product? This study will seek to understand consumer behaviour with regards to knowingly purchasing counterfeit luxury fashion products which include beauty products, clothes, shoes, handbags, fashion accessories and designer jewellery and watches.For the purposes of this study counterfeits are defined as \"those products bearing a trademark that is identical, or indistinguishable from, a trademark registered to another party, thus infringing the rights of the holder of the trademark\" (Bian and Moutinho, 2009, p. 368). The focus of this study will be on non-deceptive form of counterfeiting where the consumers are typically aware they are buying counterfeit products (Wilcox et al., 2009). This non-deceptive form of counterfeiting is largely prevalent in luxury markets where the consumer knows it is a counterfeit good based on differences in price, distribution channels to the quality of the product (Nia and Zaichowsky, 2000).A number of studies have been conducted to understand voluntary purchase of counterfeit products across countries. Swami et al. (2009), Bian and Moutinho (2009), Furnham and Valgeirsson (2007) analysed consumer behaviour for counterfeits in the UK. Penz et al. (2009) did a cross-country study of counterfeit purchases in Slovenia, Chez Republic, Austria and Mexico. Teah and Phau (2008) studied the attitudes of consumers towards counterfeit luxury brands in Singapore. Phau et al. (2009) examined the effects of personality factors on the willingness of consumers in Australia to purchase luxury brands. Commuri (2009) investigated the impact of counterfeits on the purchase of genuine products on consumers in India and Thailand. In the USA, Wilcox et al. (2009) studied social motivations for buying counterfeits, Walthers and Buff (2008) compared counterfeit purchase behaviour across a decade and Kim and Karpova (2010) examined consumer motivations based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).It is our understanding that there have been no studies to identify the determinants of counterfeit purchases in the UAE. This study will hopefully contribute towards this end which will enable brand owners, policy makers and anti-counterfeiting groups to develop a strategy to tackle the reduction of counterfeiting from the demand side. The objectives of this study are to identify the factors that influence the intention to purchase counterfeit products and determine whether there is a difference in response to the factors identified between those who are more likely to purchase and those less likely to purchase counterfeit groups.\nLiterature review: This paper uses the TPB (Ajzen, 1991) as the theoretical framework to explain the purchase of luxury fashion counterfeits. There is a high correlation between attitude and intention which can be a good predictor of behaviour (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980). In addition to attitude, the individual's perceived subjective norms (Ajzen, 1991) and self-identity (Shaw et al., 2000) can have an influence on the purchase behaviour.Academic research has focused on a number of reasons as to why consumers purchase counterfeit products (see Eisend, 2006 for an extensive survey), these include psychographic characteristics such as information susceptibility, value consciousness, integrity, status, materialism. Demographics factors such as gender, income, age, employment, education and ethnicity have been studied. Product features such as type of product, brand image, product involvement and knowledge have been examined to explain the purchase behaviour of counterfeits. Based on the factors identified in previous studies we have selected fashion consciousness (Penz and Stottinger, 2005; Lee, 2009), subjective norm (Augusto de Matos et al., 2007), ethical judgement (Lee, 2009; Nguyen and Biderman, 2008), value consciousness (Ang et al., 2001; Kim and Karpova, 2010) and self-identity (Penz and Stottinger, 2005; Kim and Karpova, 2010) renamed as self-ambiguity in our study as factors that are relevant for this study. Demographic factors such as age, education, income level and education will also be considered to examine if these are significant.Fashion consciousness\nMethod: To collect data for this study a questionnaire was distributed amongst students at a business school in the UAE. Of the 320 questionnaires distributed 190 were returned and of these 172 were usable. The survey was voluntary and there were no incentives provided for participation. The business school consists of a mix of nationalities that reflect the ethnic mix of the population of UAE. Questions regarding nationality were not asked as this may have biased the answers as some participants may give wrong answers in order not to reflect that their nationality were purchasers of counterfeit goods. The SPSS statistical package was used to analyse the results and the \"Enter\" method was used in estimating the regression equations.Measurement of variables\nResults: The correlation between the variables is given in Table III and is on expected lines. Subjective norm is significantly correlated to fashion consciousness given that fashion is more about the acceptable style (other people's point of view) at that point in time. Ethical judgement and value consciousness are significantly correlated with purchase intention giving us a clue that these could be a significant factors in the purchase of counterfeits.To test the impact of independent variables on the purchase intention two regressions were estimated one for the less likely to purchase counterfeits (LLPC) and the other for the more likely to purchase counterfeit (MLPC) group. Results are given in Tables IV and V.Table IV shows results for the LLPC sample and indicates that ethical judgement and value consciousness are the only significant variables having an impact on the counterfeit purchase intention. The negative sign for ethical judgement denotes that the more ethical the consumer is the less likely are they to purchase counterfeits. The results for the MLPC in Table V reveal that surprisingly fashion consciousness is not significant. In line with our expectations ethical judgement, subjective norm, value consciousness and self-ambiguity are significant.Based on the regression analysis the results for H1-H5 are given in Table VI.\nDiscussion and conclusions: This study examined the factors that impact on the likelihood to purchase counterfeits in the UAE. The results as shown in Table VI indicate that for the LLPC group, ethical judgement, which has the highest standardized b, is a key factor in their decision in their decision not to purchase counterfeits. Value consciousness is also significant indicating that even the ethically inclined customer is value conscious and luxury fashion products brands need to keep this in mind and offer the right price-value proposition.For the MMPC group Ethical judgement is also significant. implying that an improvement in the ethical judgement is likely to lead to a fall in the purchase of counterfeits. Our results support the views of Norum and Cuno (2011) and Kim and Karpova (2010) who called for consumer education to bring about a change in attitudes to deter the demand for counterfeit goods. Brand owners of fashion luxury products must concentrate on how to bring awareness to consumers that it is ethically wrong to purchase counterfeit products. A sustained awareness campaign which emphasizes that buying a counterfeit product is equivalent of buying a stolen good is required. No religious or moral standard sanctions purchase of stolen goods and a campaign that makes this link may have some impact. Perhaps this is an aspect that companies and industry groups looking to prevent counterfeiting can focus on. One such study was commissioned by the brand protection group (KPMG, 2008) which highlighted the dangers of counterfeiting and its negative impact on the UAE economy. The luxury goods industry should raise awareness that not only the purchase of counterfeits is harmful to the economy but is also immoral. Public awareness campaigns similar to advertisements run by International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC, 2011) \"When you buy counterfeits you support child labour\" and \"When you buy counterfeits you support organized crime\" are likely to have a positive impact.Fashion consciousness is not related to the likelihood to purchase counterfeits for either group and this is a surprising result that requires further investigation. Value consciousness is positively related indicating that more value conscious consumer is the higher is the likelihood to purchase counterfeits. The b for value consciousness is the highest (0.610) for the likely to purchase counterfeit group indicating that this is the most important reason that consumers purchase counterfeits. Similar results were obtained by Kim and Karpova (2010), Ang et al. (2001) and Tom et al. (1998) and suggests that for this group the perceived utility of counterfeits when compared to the price was better than when compared with originals. Fashion brands should concentrate on raising the perceived utility of original luxury products compared to price. This could be done either via reducing prices or educating the potential buyer of the superior physical attributes of the product. Equal emphasis should be given to improving the physical quality of the product rather than just the brand image via marketing communications. A counterfeit logo and design may convey the brand image but if the original product is far superior in quality it will be difficult for the counterfeit to pass off as an original. Luxury products have huge margins and the luxury brands seem to want to increase this further by setting up manufacturing operations in low-cost countries which may have an impact on quality and may inadvertently provide technology know-how to potential counterfeiters.Subjective norms are a significant factor for the group that is likely to purchase counterfeits indicating that the pressure of significant others is likely to influence purchase of counterfeits. Campaigns by fashion luxury goods brands that raise awareness of intellectual property rights and the consequences of violating the law may perhaps deter consumers of counterfeits from being easily swayed by the opinions of others.Self-ambiguity is positively related to likelihood to purchase counterfeits. The poorer the sense of self-ambiguity the more is the likelihood to purchase counterfeits. Here too an education campaign by fashion luxury brand manufacturers which links the use of counterfeits with low self-esteem may deter consumers from purchasing counterfeits.\nLimitations and future research: The sample for this study consists of undergraduate and post-graduate students and further studies should take into consideration more heterogeneous groups. Additional variables such as easy availability or counterfeits, less likelihood of legal action, lesser embarrassment factor especially for the expatriate consumer need to be investigated.It would also be interesting to see how different nationalities and cultural backgrounds differ in their perception of purchasing counterfeits. This is more pertinent with regards to the perception of different cultures about what is considered as ethical and what is not ethical. The link between self-identity and fashion consciousness and how it impacts on the intention to purchase counterfeits should be explored. Also over ten million tourists visit the UAE annually and it would be worth investigating whether tourists are more likely to purchase counterfeits when on holiday and what are the factors that determine this behaviour.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purchase of counterfeit fashion products in the UAE is increasing and government agencies have focused mainly on the supply side. To curb demand for counterfeit products would require an understanding as to what motivates a buyer to willingly buy a counterfeit product. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that influence the demand for counterfeit products.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The theoretical framework was based on Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior and relevant variables identified from previous studies. The questionnaire was designed based on established scales and administered to students at a business school in Dubai, UAE. The Cronbach alpha test is used to test the reliability of the constructs and the hypotheses are tested using correlation and regression.\nFindings: - Lack of ethical judgement, self ambiguity, value consciousness and being susceptible to the opinions of others are some of the key reasons for purchasing counterfeits.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The perceived value of the original product should be enhanced either by reducing the price or preferably educating the potential buyer of the superior physical attributes of the product. Educational campaigns on the ethical issues of buying counterfeit products are required.\nOriginality/value: - The study is the first of its kind in understanding the counterfeit purchase behaviour in the UAE. Policy makers and companies can have a better idea on the areas they need to focus on in order to reduce the demand for counterfeit products.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Biodiversity and threatened species reporting by the top Fortune Global companies	[ "Content analysis", "Biodiversity disclosures", "Corporate disclosures", "Fortune Global 500", "IUCN Red List", "Threatened species" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A scientific analysis published by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)[1] states that the current species extinction rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural (non-anthropomorphic assisted) extinction rate. The main factors behind today's loss of species are the introduction of invasive alien species, rampant pollution, the exploitation of resources (including water, soils, and wild flora and fauna) at unsustainable levels, and the conversion of natural areas to farming and urban development[2]. The IUCN Red List now includes 79,837 assessed species. More than 80 percent of the assessed species are suffering habitat loss or habitat degradation, and nearly 30 percent are under threat of extinction[3].\n2. International calls on biodiversity and the prevention of species extinction: The United Nations, IUCN, a number of national governments, and several NGOs have sought to address the issue of biodiversity loss and species extinction. The IUCN is the largest global conservation body committed to preserving the natural environment. It came into existence in 1948 and has 1,300 members (both government and NGOs) and its central mission is to conserve biodiversity. In 2003, the IUCN launched the Global Business and Biodiversity Program, with the aim of engaging and educating business to ensure \"business practices at landscape and seascape levels are transformed to generate benefits for biodiversity and natural resource-dependent livelihood\" (see Footnote 6).\n3. Organizational biodiversity accounting and reporting: Although biodiversity reporting research has increased recently (Atkins et al., 2014), it is still a nascent area of research. To date, only a limited number of studies (Boiral and Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017; Boiral, 2014; Cuckston, 2013; Freeman and Groom, 2013; Van Liempd and Busch, 2013; Rimmel and Jonall, 2013; Siddiqui, 2013; Tregidga, 2013) have exclusively analyzed the biodiversity reporting practices of companies. While some prior studies have included the concept of biodiversity when analyzing organizations' environmental disclosures (Bebbington et al., 2008; Clarkson et al., 2008; Cho, 2009; Samkin and Schneider, 2010), these studies have not analyzed the content of biodiversity disclosures. Van Liempd and Busch (2013, p. 835) further state:There exist a number of studies on overall corporate environmental reporting and disclosures, which include biodiversity, some in the accounting literature, but most in CSR, business ethics and other business literature. However, even though these studies include biodiversity, it is but one (general) category out of many categories of environmental reporting. In these, the focus is rarely (if ever) on the specific contents of biodiversity disclosures.\n4. Research method: The sample for this study consists of the top 150 companies listed on the Fortune Global 500 in 2014. Every year the Fortune Global 500 ranks the world's largest companies in terms of gross revenues. The top 150 firms were selected because they represent the world's largest businesses and are considered to be leaders in their industries. Furthermore, being the world's largest companies, these firms gain more attention from the general public, media, NGOs and the capital markets. The reason for limiting the sample to the top 150 companies is that biodiversity reporting is rarely undertaken by the remaining Fortune Global 500 firms.\n5. Findings and discussion: Biodiversity disclosures were observed to be scattered across companies' sustainability reports, annual reports and websites. Out of the 147 Fortune Global companies studied, 28 companies (19 percent) scored zero (did not report) on biodiversity and threatened species. Furthermore, 58 companies (39.4 percent) scored between 0 and 10, 22 companies (15 percent) scored between 11 and 20, 11 companies (7.5 percent) scored between 21 and 30, 13 companies (8.8 percent) scored between 31 and 40, eight companies (5.4 percent) scored between 41 and 50, five companies scored between 51 and 60 (3.4 percent) and two companies (1.4 percent) scored above 60. Remembering that the index's range is 0-84, more than 90 percent of the companies scored below the index's midpoint.\n6. Conclusion: The reporting on biodiversity and threatened species by the top 150 Fortune Global companies is quite limited, with very few companies providing any substantial reporting. Over 90 percent of the companies scored below the midpoint of the theoretical range of the index used to measure companies' reporting. In general, the companies appeared mostly interested in reporting about their involvement in afforestation activities and biodiversity assessment of their activities. They were much more reticent to report on biodiversity/species/habitat loss due to their operations and the effects their operations are having on IUCN categories I-IV protected areas. Even among the highest reporters, there was a lack of consistent reporting across the entire set of index items. As such, the present study's results are consistent with the literature (see e.g. Boiral, 2014) and support the idea that for most companies their reporting is an exercise of indulging in impression management (Boiral and Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2017; Deegan and Rankin, 1996).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the biodiversity and threatened species reporting of the top 150 Fortune Global companies. The paper has two main objectives: to explore the extent to which the top 150 Fortune Global companies disclose information about their biodiversity and species conservation practices, and to explore the effects of biodiversity partners and industry on companies' biodiversity and threatened species reporting.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study's sample is the top 150 Fortune Global companies. Each company's fiscal year ending 2014 annual report, its 2014 sustainability report, and its company website were content analyzed for evidence of biodiversity and threatened species reporting. This content analysis is supplemented by a detailed analysis that focusses on the sample's top five reporters, including a phone interview with a senior sustainability manager working at one of these companies. Finally, a regression analysis was conducted to examine the associations between companies' biodiversity and threatened species reporting and the presence/absence of biodiversity partners and a company's industry F&C Asset Management industry category.\nFindings: The reporting on biodiversity and threatened species by the top 150 Fortune Global companies is quite limited. Few companies (less than 15) are providing any substantial reporting. It was further observed that even among the high scoring companies there is a lack of consistent reporting across all index items. A subsequent empirical examination of these companies' disclosures on biodiversity and threatened species showed a statistically positive association between the amount of reporting and companies' holding of biodiversity partnerships. It was also observed that firms categorized as red- and green-zone companies made more disclosures on biodiversity and threatened species than amber-zone companies.\nOriginality/value: This is the first study to systematically analyze corporate disclosures related to threatened species and habitats. While some prior studies have included the concept of biodiversity when analyzing organizations' environmental disclosures, they have done so by examining it as one general category out of many further categories for investigating organizations' environmental reporting. In the present study, the focus is on the specific contents of biodiversity disclosures. As such, this study has the twin research objectives of seeking to illuminate the current state of biodiversity and threatened species reporting by the world's largest multinationals and provide an appreciation for how certain organizational and industry variables serve to influence these reporting practices. These multiple insights offer companies, and potentially regulators, understanding about how to include (or extend) disclosures on biodiversity loss and species under threat of extinction.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How virtual team leaders cope with creativity challenges	[ "Virtual team", "Project teams", "Team creativity", "Team norm", "Technology-mediated communication", "Virtual team success factors" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Increasing globalization and the availability of information technology enables today's organizations to collaborate remotely among team members using technology-mediated communication tools (Algesheimer et al., 2011; Leung and Wang, 2015). Collaboration helps to solve complex problems by sharing different perspectives when conducting a team project (Funk, 2014). However, there seems to have been little attention given to studying the ways members create an effective team environment for their work where collaboration enables creativity. This study examined the ways team members create a safe environment for collaboration and share the leadership role to unleash the creative capability of their virtual teams.\nProblem statement: Team creativity is essential when team members collaborate to generate new ideas, and teams synthesize different members' ideas to ensure team creativity (Campbell, 1960). While there are many studies on team creativity in a face-to-face setting, very few studies have explored successful contextual factors on creativity in a virtual team setting (Shin et al., 2012). This is a critical omission from a theoretical standpoint because team creativity may require several conditions, such as working in a psychologically safe environment (Zhang et al., 2010) and sharing empowerment among team members (Kirkman et al., 2004), even in a virtual setting. However, we do not know how team creativity is achieved in a virtual team setting.\nLiterature review: We examined the existing literature on team creativity, psychological safety and shared leadership to investigate team interactions that enhance virtual team success. Definitions on team success, virtual teams, team creativity and other constructs are also discussed in the following sections. Levi (2016) defined team success as completing the task, developing social relations and benefiting the individual team members. In addition, virtual teams are defined as geographically and/or organizationally dispersed members, who work toward a shared goal by using various kinds of technologies (Ale et al., 2009). The four distinctive features of virtual teams include temporary, culturally diverse, geographically dispersed and reliant on computer-based communications (Hertel et al., 2005).\nMethods: We explored effective and ineffective behaviors of team leaders and members when working virtually on a team project to foster team creativity. To pursue the purpose of our study, we obtained institutional review board approval, recruited participants, interviewed them and analyzed the interview results. We used a general inductive approach as our methodological framework (Thomas, 2006). Each step will be discussed in greater detail in the next section.\nFindings: In this study, we found how virtual team leaders cope with challenges that they face when fostering team creativity. Our participants shared ineffective behaviors of team leaders or members, which we captured as inhibitors of virtual team success. In addition, effective behaviors that participants observed in past virtual team meetings were reported as strategies for overcoming these inhibitors.\nDiscussion: As businesses continue to grow globally and perform tasks through the advancements of technology, virtual teams increase in popularity (Mukherjee et al., 2012). In this study, participants have reported several challenges and strategies to facilitate virtual team creativity and success. Coping strategy is defined as an individual's specific effort in behavior that reduces, tolerates or minimizes stressful situations, events and psychological conditions (Carver et al., 1989). Regarding coping strategies, an interesting observation is that most strategies adopted by our study participants tended to focus more on relation-oriented processes toward relationship building rather than task completion. This finding is controversial compared to previous research, which places more value on task-oriented strategies than relation-oriented strategies. For example, some studies show that task-related communication and information sharing help generate creative ideas and enhance virtual team creativity (Mesmer-Magnus and DeChurch, 2009; Smith et al., 2005). However, other literature supports our finding that task-oriented strategies, such as monitoring a team's goals, assigning tasks and communicating team expectations, may not be helpful with virtual team creativity. Negative relations between supervisors' controlling behaviors (i.e. close monitoring) and team creativity have been shown in previous studies (George and Zhou, 2001; Zhou and George, 2003). Therefore, the lack of participants' comments between task-related strategies and creativity in this study seems surprising; however, some of the results do align with the aforementioned studies.\nLimitations and suggestions for future research: The contributions of this study must be understood with certain limitations. One of the limitations of this study was that we interviewed most participants virtually by using a conference phone call. Phone interviews can prohibit the researcher from capturing facial expressions and gestures from the participants as they answered the open-ended questions. Future research may include face-to-face interviews to observe more detailed expressions. In addition, this study was bounded within a convenience-based sample. Any generalization outside of this boundary may be inaccurate. Therefore, the participants' experiences should be understood with this specific context in mind. All participants shared the higher education background because they were graduate students pursuing the same degree. Other disciplines, such as hard sciences, may lead to different findings. We urge future research to include a diverse sample.\nConclusion: Many researchers and practitioners understand the importance of promoting team creativity to enhance team learning and performance, especially socio-emotional relations among team members and a positive interpersonal environment, which may enhance team creativity. Relations among team members should be foundational when collaborating in a project to achieve creative goals even in a virtual world. We hope that this study will stimulate future research to advance the theoretical and practical understanding of virtual team creativity at all levels of organizations.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: As technology-mediated communication improves, many organizations increasingly use new types of collaborative online tools to promote team-based learning and performance. The purpose of this study is to explore how virtual team leaders cope with process challenges in developing a context for team creativity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors interviewed nine leaders who have worked for more than five years and managed virtual teams in different fields.\nFindings: This research uncovered distrust, personality differences, generational differences in views, scheduling issues and technology difficulties as the top five inhibitors for virtual team creativity and success. The authors identified seven main strategies for developing virtual team creativity and success. The authors found that building \"team norms\" and guidelines to encourage positive interactions between team members can facilitate team creativity. In addition, a concept of trust-based open communication was identified as one of the important strategies when teams actively use technology-mediated communication tools.\nPractical implications: Organizational practitioners can use the results of this study when developing knowledge to establish assessments regarding which employees possess the appropriate characteristics to lead virtual teams and implement virtual team training.\nOriginality/value: This study emphasizes the importance of technology in professional lives by showing how technology-mediated work leads to success in learning and producing creative ideas and performance in a virtual team environment.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Group affiliation and North American firms' value	[ "Corporate ownership", "Companies", "Market value", "Canada", "North America" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The recent world wave of mergers and acquisitions has put questions about the advantages and costs of affiliation with a group back on the agenda. Although large conglomerates were formed in North America in the 1960s, a period characterized by less-developed capital markets, the renewed interest in groups raises some new questions, given the current level of capital market development. In the context of less-developed and inefficient financial markets, one of the main advantages of group affiliation is the creation of an internal capital market among affiliated firms that fulfills the limitations of external markets. However, in the presence of developed and well-organized financial markets, this advantage is not obvious and could even vanish, since external markets effectively allocate capital among market players. Several empirical studies also seem to indicate that group affiliation inflicts a loss of value to affiliated firms, because of the anticipated expropriation of minority shareholders. If this is effectively the case, its benefits could be considerably reduced. The net impact of firms' affiliation to groups, then, is far from evident. While group affiliation can be perceived as positive because of the benefits of internal capital markets, the fear of expropriation of minority interests by large shareholders can mitigate such benefits.The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of group affiliation on the value of the affiliated firms, using a sample of North American firms. In particular, we try to answer the following questions: Does group affiliation appreciate or depreciate the value of affiliated firms? What is the role of separation or divergence between ownership and voting rights (a proxy for anticipated expropriation of minority shareholders) in explaining the change in affiliated firms' value? Our analysis is conducted through a sample of 3,825 US and 200 Canadian firms. Our results indicate that group affiliation has a positive and significant impact on affiliated firms' value, and more specifically, on US firms' value. Moreover, the negative effects of the anticipated expropriation of minority shareholders mainly come from the divergence in ownership and voting rights between the first and second ultimate owners, rather than through divergence in ownership and voting rights of the first ultimate owner.\nConceptual framework and research hypotheses: Leading corporate governance systems\nData and methodology: Data sources\nResults discussion: Descriptive statistics\nConclusion: Group affiliation is not a marginal fact in North American firms, since it affects 57.07 percent of Canadian firms and 29.41 percent of US firms. Thus, it is important to analyze the impact that it has on firms' value, which is the goal of this paper. Our results indicate that group affiliation has a positive and significant impact on firms' value, and specifically, on US firms' value. For all US and North American firms (full sample), group affiliation has a positive and significant effect (1 percent level for the USA, and 5 percent level for the full sample) on firms' value. These results suggest that for North American firms, and specifically for US firms, benefits of group affiliation surpass their costs, and generate a positive net impact on the value of affiliated firms. On the other hand, the divergence between ownership and voting rights of the first ultimate shareholder does not seem to accentuate the negative effects of group affiliation, which reinforces the idea that group affiliation is more profitable than costly for affiliated firms. The negative impact of the anticipated expropriation of minority shareholders mainly comes from divergence between the voting rights of the first and second ultimate shareholders, rather than divergence between ownership and control rights of the first ultimate shareholder. Khanna and Palepu (2000) argue that in emerging markets, most diversified business groups add value by replicating the functions of institutions that are missing, and make it costly for individual firms to deal with product, labour and capital markets. Our results show that even in countries where well-functioning institutions exist, group affiliation is still profitable. This may explain the continuing trend toward mergers and acquisitions.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to assess the impact of group affiliation and anticipated expropriation on North American firms' value.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The net impact of firms' affiliation to groups is generally far from evident. While group affiliation can be perceived as positive news because of the benefits of internal capital markets, the fear of expropriation of minority interests by large shareholders can mitigate such benefits. This commands some empirical investigations, which are done in this paper through statistical analyses.\nFindings: - The results indicate that group affiliation has a positive and significant impact on North American firms' value and, more specifically, on US firms' value. The negative impact of the anticipated expropriation of minority shareholders mainly comes from divergence in ownership and voting rights between the first and second ultimate owners. Group affiliation, then, is valuable, even in countries with well-organized capital markets. The results may explain the current wave toward mergers and acquisitions.\nOriginality/value: - The paper provides useful information on the impact of group affiliation and anticipated expropriation on North American firms' value.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The rise of transnational higher education and changing educational governance in China	[ "Authoritarian liberalism", "Regulatory regime", "Market accelerationist state", "Regulatory regime", "State-corporatist regulatory regime", "Transnational higher education" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The effects of globalization have inevitably intensified the competition between countries. Against this highly competitive background, nearly every nation worldwide, particularly developing and underdeveloped nations, have recognized the importance of improving national competitiveness and have placed great emphasis on education (Mok, 2007). China is no exception to this trend. To meet the increasing demand of citizens for higher educational opportunities and to provide a high-quality labor force to ensure economic growth, the Chinese government has conducted a series of education reforms. Transnational higher education (TNHE) is one of the reform measures that the Chinese government has taken to respond to the trend of globalization.\nTNHE as a global trend: TNHE, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (2001), is defined as \"all types of higher education study where the learners are located in a country different from the one where the awarding institution is based.\" It may appear as many forms including branch campuses, franchises, articulation, twinning, corporate programs, online learning and distance education programs and study abroad (Global Alliance for Transnational Education, 1999; cited from Huang, 2007, p. 422). Researchers also adopted other terminologies to describe this kind of students, faculty and education programs' movement from one country to another, in real or virtually, such as cross-border education, offshore education or borderless education. Specifically, our current study employs TNHE to denote all the equivalent terms adopted by individual countries except the ones which ignore the existence of boarder like \"borderless education\" since the latter neglects the existence of border, which plays a key role in regulatory work and quality assurance part (Knight, 2006).\nBrief policy background for TNHE in China: The Cultural Revolution revealed the importance of HE for its contribution to both economic development and social progress to the government in Post-Mao China (Ngok, 2007). Recognized the inadequacy of its rigid regulation and the heavy financial as the sole funding provider (Hawkins, 2000, 2006), the central government conducted the education reform from over-centralization to decentralization to protect the \"the initiatives and enthusiasm of educational institutions\" (Mok and Chan, 2012). The \"democratic parties, people bodies, social organizations, retired cadres and intellectuals, collective economic organizations and individuals subject to the Party's and governmental policies\" were thus encouraged to \"actively and voluntarily to contribute to developing education by various forms and methods\" (Wei and Zhang, 1995). Minban colleges, second-tier colleges and transnational cooperations have thus emerged and become more popular.\nVarieties of regulatory regimes for TNHE: Due to diverse politico-economic contexts when TNHE is developed, we should examine the different considerations of the states when developing TNHE, respectively, hence a variety of governance and regulatory systems have put in place between the state and TNHE providers. As for the theoretical framework of analysis, we basically draw from Mok (2008), as shown in Table II.\nRecent development of TNHE in China: A recent study related to TNHE in China revealed that there were about 712 transnational cooperation activities across 28 cities/provinces in the mainland by the end of 2002. When compared with the data in 1995, TNHE had increased nine times during the past ten years. By the end of 2007, about 31 countries/regions in different continents had signed agreements with the Chinese authorities for transnational collaborations. In the latest list of approved transnational institutions/programs from the MOE in HE area (including both undergraduate and postgraduate levels), among eight Sino-foreign cooperation universities in the mainland, the University of Nottingham-Ningbo in Zhejiang was the only one HEI which was not founded through collaborations between overseas institutions and Chinese public HEIs. As the first Sino-foreign cooperation university in China, the University of Nottingham-Ningbo was established jointly by the University of Nottingham from the UK and the privately owned Zhejiang Wanli Education Group in 2004.\nManaging and governing TNHE in China: Theoretical focus and methodology\nMajor findings: increasing autonomy: Our fieldwork conducted in 2014 and 2015 reveals the governance model toward Sino-foreign cooperation universities could be categorized as predominantly decentralized with the sum as 45. Specifically, we listed the most obvious aspects showing the different level of autonomy enjoyed by different cooperation types below: the internal administrative structure, the enrollment capacity, the criteria of admission and the quality assurance method.\nDiscussion: Market accelerationist state and state-corporatist regulatory regime in TNHE\nConclusion: In conclusion, the case studies of TNHE in China has offered us new insights and perspectives to understand how the Chinese government has tried to adapt to the changing socio-political and socio-economic environments and the growing challenges of globalization by adopting pragmatic approach in promoting Sino-foreign cooperation in education. Our above analysis of changing educational governance and management of TNHE has interestingly presented how tactical and strategic of the Chinese government by making use of external educational resources and experiences to transform its HE sector and diversifying student learning for creating more globally competent talents for the globalizing world, while the central government would still maintain a certain level of control over educational governance. Under tremendous pressure of global market forces and the prominence of neo-liberalism outlined above, like many developing countries, China has gradually released its rigid central control to improve economic growth and national competitiveness, adopting decentralized governance and even using market forces to mobilize different stakeholders at subnational levels and markets to take care of provision of public goods and social protection arrangements (Tong, 1989; Zhang, 1999; World Bank, 2002). Conceptualizing the state is under tremendous pressure to balance different competing but conflicting social, economic and political demands, we have seen the transformation of the Chinese state from primarily assuming the role of provider to become more like the state with \"entrepreneurial,\" \"corporatist,\" \"market-facilitating\" and \"regulatory\" nature/function. Such changing roles of the state reflect not merely alternative explanations of state behaviors arising out of different normative and intellectual starting points, but, more significantly highlight deeper problems of fragmentation in government processes in a context of rapid economic and institutional change and heightened global integration (Howell, 2006).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Although the existing literature indicates the strategy of decentralization adopted by the Chinese government has permitted the introduction of transnational higher education (TNHE) into mainland China at its very beginning in the 1980s, relatively little research has been conducted to explore the effects of the ensuing-released policies on the development of TNHE after then, especially at institutional level. The purpose of this paper is to fill this research gap by presenting data/information about recent development of TNHE in China and analyzing teachers'/students' perceptions of autonomy enjoyed by the newly emerging cooperation type, Sino-foreign cooperation universities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based upon the purposive sampling method, we chose University A and B as case studies in this research to ensure the representativeness, since they cooperate separately with the major exporters of TNHE in China. In addition, key informants and snowball sampling were adopted to select our respondents. In total 5 administrative staff and 12 students were interviewed to evaluate their working/ learning experience there. The detailed information about the interviewees are listed as Appendix.\nFindings: The fieldwork conducted in 2014 and 2015 reveals the governance model toward Sino-foreign cooperation universities could be categorized as predominantly decentralized. Specifically, the authors listed the most obvious aspects showing the different level of autonomy enjoyed by different cooperation types below: the internal administrative structure, the enrollment capacity, the criteria of admission and the quality assurance method.\nOriginality/value: This paper critically explores how local education bureaus regulate these TNHE programs in general and monitor the operation of the overseas university campuses being founded in China in particular. In addition, this paper also reports the field interviews with faculty members and students, particularly their evaluation of working/learning experiences in the field of TNHE. Most important of all, this paper critically reflects upon the changing educational governance and explores what regulatory regime could better conceptualize the changing state-TNHE relations in China.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The relationship between marketing mix and retailer-perceived brand equity	[ "Marketing mix", "Brand performance", "Retailer-based brand equity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Brand is one of the most important company assets which plays an important role to improve the lives of consumers and also contributes to the financial equity of the firm (Kotler and Keller, 2006). A stronger brand is the primary source of competitive advantage which ultimately generates revenue to enhance the liquidity of the firm (Baldauf et al., 2003). Therefore, companies must continue to build and enhance brand equity for their products to ensure longevity of success for the firm in the long term.\nConceptual framework: The conceptual model of this study comprise of antecedences and performance consequences of RPBE. Initially, the dimensions of RPBE constructs were focused and based on previous studies in the context of B2B branding (Baldauf et al., 2009; Yoo et al., 2000; Glynn, 2012; Luo and Kumar, 2013), potential antecedents of RPBE were identified. Finally, the impact of RPBE on brand profitability performance was envisioned (presented as Figure 1).\nRPBE: Brand equity can be assessed from the perspective of retailers as it has three conceptual perspectives (Baldauf et al., 2009): the equity associated with the retailer's brand (e.g. Walmart, Carrefour, Tesco, and Aldy stores), the equity associated with retailer's store brand (also known as private label products), or retailers' perception of the brands they sell. In this research, we focused on the third issue, i.e., how do retailers perceive the equity of the brand they sell?\nRetailer-perceived quality of a brand: Zeithaml (1988) defined perceived quality as the consumer rating (subjective) about the overall performance of the product (the service). From the point of view of retailers, retailer-perceived quality of a brand is the retailers' perception of overall quality or superior products or services linked to the objectives or benefits compared to alternative products (Aaker and Equity, 1991). In this context, the retailers are seen as professional marketers - to have the ability and knowledge of the brands in the market. Therefore, they should be able to provide accurate reports about the actual quality of a particular brand as compared with alternative brands available in the market (Baldauf et al., 2009).\nRetailer loyalty to a brand: Javalgi and Moberg (Raj et al., 1997) defined brand loyalty based on consumer behavior, attitudes, and choices. Behavior perspective is based on the total purchases for a particular brand, while attitude perspective incorporating consumers' preference and disposition toward brands. From the choice perspective, it focused on the reason for the purchase or factors that can influence the choice. That definition of brand loyalty has been examined empirically in three main categories: multi-domain approach, behavior approach, and attitude approach (Rundle-Thiele and Bennett, 2001).\nRetailer's awareness of and associations with a brand: Aaker defined brand associations as \"anything linked in memory to a brand.\" The associations are stronger when they are based on many experiences or exposures to communication, rather than a few. Brand associations, which resulted in high brand awareness, is positively associated with brand equity as they can be a signal of quality and commitment and they help buyers consider when to purchase a brand, which direct to the behavior that benefits to the brand. In this research, brand awareness and brand associations combined into one-dimensional form after an empirical test and proved significant to use (Yoo et al., 2000).\nMarketing mix: Yoo et al. (2000) stated that brand equity can be created, maintained, and enhanced by strengthening the dimensions of brand equity. Superior brand is usually based on substantial long-term investment (historical) in building a brand. Historical investment, which captures all aspects of the marketing mix (4Ps), protects from imitation and makes a brand difficult to substitute, so that ultimately creates barriers to entry or competitive advantage.\nSupplier image: According to Baldauf et al. (2009), the supplier image is an important influence on RPBE. Supplier here could be manufacturers, distributors, or wholesalers. In this study, we use the image of the manufacturer because the direct influence on brand equity is a company that produces the product. This is supported by the findings of study conducted by Ross-Wooldridge et al. (2004) which stated that company image role as brand equity.\nDistribution: In industrial markets, branding is dependent on the surrounding distribution network (Kuhn et al., 2008), making the role of distributors particularly important in building brand equity. According to Yoo et al. (2000), the consumers will be more satisfied when the products are available in a greater number of stores because they will be offered the product where and when they need it. Intensive distribution can reduce the time needed by customers searching the stores and traveling to and from the stores, provide convenience in purchasing, and make it easier to get services related to the product.\nPrice level: The price level is generally assumed to provide important extrinsic cues for buyers to assess products (Kotler and Keller, 2006). For consumers, higher prices could be an indicator of a higher quality product and can be expected to have a positive relationship with brand equity (Yoo et al., 2000). On the other hand, retailers are considered experts and expected to have a profound knowledge of all brands in the market (Baldauf et al., 2009). They are likely to know the (true) quality of the products they carry in their assortment and do not have to rely on extrinsic cues such as price level as much as consumers (Maheswaran, 1994). In a competitive market, price is an extremely valuable tool to influence customers (Danziger et al., 2014; Yoon et al., 2014) - the positive perceptions determine consumer choice.\nPush strategy promotion: One of the producer's strategies to push their retailers to sell their products continuously is through push strategy promotion. Along with many product categories that have been matured, managers find themselves increasingly concerned with improving the \"push\" programs, i.e. into a sale and personal sales efforts directed to the retailers or wholesalers (Balmer et al., 2006). According to Kotler and Keller (2006), push strategy happens when firms use trade promotion and sales force to persuade intermediaries to carry, promote, and sell products to end consumers. This strategy is appropriate when brand loyalty is low in category product, a brand choice made at the store, products are impulse items, and product benefits are well understood. Sales promotion activities in the form of selling contest or prize offered to the retailers will increase retailers' perception of quality, loyalty, awareness and association to the brand and ultimately affect the profitability of the brand (Baldauf et al., 2009). Therefore, push strategy promotion creates value for retailers and should be considered by companies as an essential element of the brand building.\nPull strategy promotion: Pull strategy promotion is executed when companies use advertising and promotion to lure consumers looking for products in intermediaries so that intermediaries will order the products to the producers (Kotler and Keller, 2006). This strategy is appropriate when a high brand loyalty and high involvement in the product category, when people can feel the difference between one brand to another, and when people choose a brand before they go to the store. According to (Baldauf et al., 2009), promotional activities directed to consumers are creating demand for products without adding efforts from retailers to sell products. Pull strategy promotion can be either giving free samples or tester, coupons, raffle prize, exhibition, sponsorship, or publicity that can simultaneously affect retailers' perceived quality, loyalty, brand awareness, and association about their knowledge of the product without any additional costs.\nBrand profitability performance: From retailers' perspective, strong brand provides attractive financial benefits because of the brand to produce a higher profit (Keller and Lehmann, 2006). The higher quality of product or brand that sold by retailers, the greater the effect would be on profits. Retailers would not be loyal to a brand if it is financially unattractive to them. The same thing applies at the level of awareness and association, as retailers would not include a specific brand if they feel the brand does not lead to more sales. In accordance with Keller and Lehmann (2006) concluded that brand profitability performance, defined as financial contribution of a brand to the profit of retailers, is a result of retailer-perceived quality of a brand, retailer loyalty to a brand, and retailer's awareness of and association with a brand.\nResearch hypotheses: The core objective of this study is to investigate the impact of marketing efforts on RPBE. On the basis of literature, we hypothesize directional relationships among marketing efforts, the dimensions of RPBE, and brand profitability performance. The relational paths among the constructs are summarized in Figure 1.\nResearch methods: Scale development\nResults: The core aim of the study was to identify the impact of marketing efforts on dimensions of RPBE and ultimately to brand profitability performance. To test our research hypotheses, we estimated a structural equation model using LISREL 8. The completely standardized solutions are reported in Table II. Most path coefficients were significant (p<0.05). The p-values of the estimates for hypotheses testing were determined in one-tailed t-test. Because of the directional hypotheses, the rule of 1.65 t-value was used as the critical value at 0.05 significance level.\nDiscussion: The core aim of present study was to examine the impact of marketing efforts on dimensions of RPBE and ultimately to brand profitability performance. In the following, the implication of our findings for managers and researchers as well as limitations and future research directions are highlighted.\nLimitation and future research: This study has limitations in which the product used as the stimuli is only one which is ready-to-drink tea in PET bottle, which means that the result of this study can only represent a small fraction of the fast-moving consumer goods industry. Future studies may use other categories of consumer goods product to better represent the results of research in fast-moving consumer goods. In this study, we surveyed medium to large retailers. Further research can separate the study of the medium retailer and a large retailer. Thus, it can gather a more specific point of view of medium retailers and large retailers of marketing efforts undertaken by the company and their relationship with their assessment of brand equity. There are many variables not examined in this study in relation to the impact on brand probability performance. Other variables that could be further investigated in future research include brand trust, brand commitment, brand knowledge, and brand satisfaction.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: A huge investment launching the marketing program is made by the manufacturers to establish brand loyalty with retailers and other supply chain partners; however, what is the impact of these efforts on retailer-perceived brand equity (RPBE) is scarcely investigated in a business-to-business (B2B) context. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of Nu Green - a brand of tea as a manufacturer's marketing efforts on RPBE.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on the positivist paradigm, the authors followed a survey-based approach to collect data from 125 retailers of Nu Green Tea brand from Indonesia. The collected data were rigorously analyzed by means of structural equation modeling.\nFindings: The results reveal that elements of marketing efforts such as supplier image, distribution strategy, and push and pull promotions have a significant impact on the RPBE of Nu Green.\nOriginality/value: This research extends the understanding of retail marketing in a B2B context by investigating the impact of marketing efforts on RPBE.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Knowledge management and human language: crossing the chasm	[ "Knowledge management systems", "Semantics", "Language", "Information management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In the cycle from scientific discovery through new technology development to market exploitation there is often a wide gap between the response of early adopters and that of mainstream buyers (Moore, 1995). A similar \"chasm\" exists between knowledge management systems and the natural language materials that form something approaching 80 percent of corporate data stores (Perna and Spector, 2004). This paper is about crossing that chasm using recent scientific results in the fields of the semantic web and ontology-based information extraction.Gartner reported in 2002[1] that for at least the next decade more than 95 percent of human-to-computer information input will involve textual language. They also report that by 2012 taxonomic and hierachical knowledge mapping and indexing will be prevalent in almost all information-rich applications. There is a tension here: between the increasingly rich semantic models in KM systems on the one hand, and the continuing prevalence of human language materials on the other. The process of tying semantic models and natural language together is referred to as semantic annotation. This process may be characterised as the dynamic creation of interrelationships between ontologies (shared conceptualisations of domains) and documents of all shapes and sizes in a bidirectional manner covering creation, evolution, population and documentation of ontological models.Work in the semantic web (Berners-Lee, 1999; Fensel et al., 2002; Davies et al., 2002) (see also other papers in this issue) has supplied a standardised, web-based suite of languages, e.g. Dean et al. (2004) and tools for the representation of ontologies and the performance of inferences over them. It is probable that these facilities will become an important part of next-generation KM applications, representing a step up from the taxonomic modelling that is now used in much leading-edge KM software. Information extraction (IE), a form of natural language analysis, is becoming a central technology to link semantic web models with documents.The rest of this article:* describes application scenarios for KM tools that exploit IE to populate ontological knowledge models (see section 2);* gives a high-level introduction to IE and ontology-based IE (see section 3);* discusses the parameters that condition IE performance in application settings, including the issue of how to adapt IE systems to varying information needs (see section 4); and* presents a new ontology-based IE system under development in the SEKT project[2] that addresses both the type of extraction needed to support the application scenarios given in section 2 and the adaptability requirements described in section 4 (see section 5).\n2. Semantic annotation for knowledge management: This section contains some scenarios that illustrate how KM applications software can exploit information extracted from natural language text by IE systems. To mediate between text and the structured information needs of users current KM applications typically use a combination of keyword-based search and taxonomic navigation facilities. Semantic annotation will enable applications to add another layer of sophistication to document spaces, tailored to the particular requirements of diverse types of users.In each case the user specifies an information need to IE development staff, who then prepare a custom extraction system. The input materials are increasingly defined as subsections of the world wide web[3], either the formal materials of news, company sites (both inter and intra-nets), etc., or the informal Web of weblogs, mailing lists and wikis. The IE developers must analyse the problem according to the dimensions outlined in section 4.1 below, and determine how to combine human and machine processing so as to attain the required performance profile (see section 4.3 below).2.1 Marketing strategists\n3 IE by example: 3.1 Extraction and retrieval\n4 Deployment in KM systems: An important outcome of the last 15 years' work on IE is that the community now understands reasonably precisely the various parameters that influence the performance of the technology in diverse applications settings. (In other words, the scientific work has laid the basis for the engineering of practical systems.) The next section looks at these parameters.4.1 Complexity vs specificity\n5 OBIE in practice: The work reported in this section builds on the ANNIE extraction system that is part of GATE (Cunningham et al., 2005). ANNIE is a rule-based system supported by the GATE development environment. The system described here:* adds learning capabilities that both complement ANNIE and are suitable for embedding in end-user tools (tailored to small and dynamic sets of example data); and* supports OBIE and semantic annotation relative to ontologies.Section 5.1 introduces the basic system and preliminary experimental results; section 5.2 discusses its evaluation in the Pascal Challenge; 5.3 looks at the performance of the system in the context of classifying entities with respect to a class hierarchy.5.1 Support vector machines for IE\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Seeks to explore the gap that exists between knowledge management (KM) systems and the natural language materials that form almost all corporate data stores.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A conceptual discussion and approach are taken using recent scientific results in the fields of the semantic web and ontology-based information extraction.\nFindings: - Provides a high-level introduction to information extraction (IE) and descriptions of application scenarios for KM tools that exploit IE, a form of natural language analysis to link semantic web models with documents. The paper presents some examples of ontology-based IE systems, one of which, KIM, is under development in the SEKT Project. KIM offers IE-based facilities for metadata creation, storage and conceptual search. The system can be used by diverse applications for annotating and querying documents.\nOriginality/value: - Focuses on technologies and facilities that will become an important part of next-generation KM applications.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Conditional volatility nexus between stock markets and macroeconomic variables: Empirical evidence of G-7 countries	[ "Stock market volatility", "VAR models", "G-7 countries", "Macroeconomic fundamentals" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Over the past few decades, as international stock markets have surged significantly, the issue of stock market volatility has become more prominent, especially during high volatility periods. The analysis of financial market volatility is crucial for asset pricing, risk management and fund allocation (Martens and Zein, 2004). Officer (1973) mentions that US stock market volatility was unusually high from 1929 to 1939 when compared to periods before and after. This view is supported by Schwert (1989), who reports that stock market volatility was high during major episodes in US economic history such as WWI, the great depression of 1929, Second World War, the OPEC oil shocks and similar events. Karunanayake et al. (2010) and Manda (2010) also report similar results regarding stock market volatility during the global financial crisis of 2008. Apart from such major events that significantly affect stock market volatility, noise trading and investor overreaction to macroeconomic news can also impact such volatility (Liljeblom and Stenius, 1997; French and Roll, 1986). Thus, understanding the relations between stock market and macroeconomic volatility is of importance to investors and other stakeholders, including policy makers, in order to know which factors affect stock market volatility and of any subsequent impact on the economy (Corradi et al., 2013). This issue forms the focus of the paper.\n2. Data: 2.1 Data and variables\n3. Methodology: To analyze the dynamic relation between stock market volatility and macroeconomic risk factors we use a vector autoregressive (VAR) model. A significant body of the literature (Liljeblom and Stenius, 1997; Errunza and Hogan, 1998; Morelli, 2002; Chinzara, 2011; Kumari and Mahakud, 2015) has previously considered this approach. Prior to the application of the VAR model, we first capture the stock market and macroeconomic volatilities using a GARCH model.\n4. Empirical results and discussion: 4.1 GARCH models results and discussion\n5. Concluding remarks: This paper considers the relation between stock market and macroeconomic volatility for the G-7 markets using monthly data over the period July 1985 to June 2015. In conducting the analysis, we take explicit account of two major crisis periods (the dotcom crash and the global financial crisis). We obtain the conditional volatilities of both stock market and macroeconomic variables by estimating GARCH-type models. The volatilities are then used in a VAR model in order to consider the linkages. The GARCH models reveal the usual characteristics of volatility persistence, with asymmetric behavior in the stock market returns as well as some of the macroeconomic variables (industrial production, short-term interest rate and oil price). Furthermore, the GARCH results reveal a significant impact of the crisis periods on the majority of the volatility series.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relation between stock market volatility and macroeconomic fundamentals for G-7 countries using monthly data over the period from July 1985 to June 2015.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The empirical methodology is based on two steps: in the first step, the authors obtain the conditional volatilities of stock market returns and macroeconomic variables through the GARCH family of models. The authors also incorporate the impact of early 2000s dotcom and the global financial crises. In the second step, the authors estimate multivariate vector autoregressive model to analyze the dynamic relation between stock markets return and macroeconomic variables.\nFindings: The overall results for G-7 countries indicate a weak volatility transmission from macroeconomic factors to stock market volatility at individual level but the collective impact of volatility transmission is highly significant. Although, the results of block exogeneity indicate a bidirectional causality except UK, but the causal linkage is quite weak from stock market to macroeconomic variables. Moreover, the local financial variables excluding interest rate are closely integrated, and the volatility of industrial production growth and oil price are identified as the most significant macroeconomic factors that could possibly influence the directions of stock markets.\nOriginality/value: This research establishes the nature of the links between stock market and macroeconomic volatility. Research to date has been unable to satisfactorily establish the empirical nature of such links. The authors believe this paper begins to do this.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
One life to live: A business viewpoint and book review	[ "Management attitudes", "Leadership", "Coaching", "Workplace learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Richard Teare talks to Jack Collis, author of One Life to Live, Pennon Publishing, Victoria, Australia (2004), ISBN 1 877029 80 7, pp. 320.\nOn leadership ...: Radical leadership requires much more than job seniority. In fact, many CEOs are not leaders in the sense that they are unable inspire others. To lead well, takes courage, conviction and humility. Good leaders are not self important people, they inspire trust in others who willingly follow. At the heart of this issue is the ability to connect with people, without this gift, a CEO is more likely to be a follower than a leader. Next, a leader has to \"perform\" as a person and this requires the ability to turn action into career-long learning. I have met many managers who are genuinely good managers, but they cannot lead because they have limited their own capacity to learn and grow. I recall working for an inspirational leader who always had time for people. He never had anything on his desk except a telephone and he would listen carefully and reflect back what he heard. His philosophy was \"managing\" rather than \"working\" and he got things done by supporting, coaching and learning from others - rather than \"doing\" the work himself.\nOn leaders coaching others ...: A second impressive leader was a man who had the habit of asking me: \"Jack, what did you learn today?\" He was genuinely interested in my answer because he believed in the value of shared insight and learning as a means of self-development. Although he was my boss, he invited me to attend regular informal seminars with a small group of leaders from other businesses and during the 40 minute walk back to the office, he would quiz me on \"best answers\" from this group as we shared our business challenges. I have never experienced a better way to teach or coach others.I also worked with a divisional manager who was responsible for more than a dozen managers and almost 20 sales agents. Collectively, our job was to make sales and although we were all doing similar jobs, each had different problems. To help each other, we would get away from the office and present our current challenges to each other. My task was to synthesize the discussion outcomes and circulate a precis of the suggested solutions to the whole group. In effect, we were coaching each other and all the participants felt secure enough to share openly in order that each might succeed.\nOn applying these principles ...: To be a good leader you also have to be a good speaker and so early in my career I got involved in speaking to as many different types of groups as I could. The challenge is essentially to encourage and motivate the listener - a speaker's job is to help the listener to feel better than they did beforehand! I gradually felt drawn to speaking professionally and in my first year, spoke at 33 events. By year four, the number of engagements had grown to 150 and as I reflect on the role, there are three key elements to effective communication. First, a speaker must connect with the audience, second it is essential to empathize with the listener and try to think, present and respond in a way that engages with the audience. Third, it is vital to relate the topic to human need and emotions.In business speaking, the purpose of making a connection is to help the audience to envision for themselves, the action(s) that they need to personally take to solve a current problem. You certainly know if you have accomplished this from the informal conversations that take place during the breaks. This process is rather like turning on a light switch - I can see various emotions on the faces of audience members as they make connections between the topic and their own situation. Later, during breaks people sometimes tell me about the actions that they are planning to take at the end of the seminar. This is the most rewarding aspect of business speaking - knowing that a connection has been made and that in the inner mind of the listener a solution and a plan of action has emerged.\nOne Life to Live by Jack Collis: Jack's most recent book One Life to Live ably demonstrates his ability to engage with human needs and aspirations in a practical \"can do\" style. First, he connects with the reader via a series of questions such as: do you feel that you are working harder than ever and are sometimes so exhausted that you have little time for your family, or for the things you want to do? Next, Jack states his purpose: to show you how to give up without giving in. The book itself is easy to read and follow, presenting in a series of logical steps the key issues that underpin themes like work-life-balance, individual choice, purpose, self motivation and fulfilment. It also contains lots of practical steps and tips to help the reader to address the specific challenges that they might like to resolve. In so doing, Jack has produced a really useful book. It is positive, helpful and rich in insight, reflecting as it does the author's long and varied career. The message of the book is perhaps best summarized by the statement on the back cover - change your thinking and you (can) change your life.One Life to Live is an excellent toolkit for busy people as it provides an accessible, action-oriented review framework for those who feel the need to re-align career and lifestyle issues - challenges that affect most of us from time-to-time.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Provides experience-based reflections on the dual challenge of learning and leading that tends to characterize inspirational and effective leadership.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is an interview and a review.\nFindings: - Contains practical insights on the tasks of managing, leading, coaching others, business writing and speaking.\nOriginality/value: - The viewpoint contains career-long observations on the process of managing and leading organizations from one of Australia's best-selling business writers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Integrated strategy of industrial product suppliers: Working with B2B intermediaries	[ "Automotive industry", "Electronic commerce", "Intermediaries" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The rapid growth in information technology (IT) has opened up new channels for exchange of industrial products. Industrial products are defined as direct materials, raw materials, and purchased parts for end use products for original equipment manufacturers (OEM). In the past, the sales and purchase transactions of industrial products was heavily influenced by personal relationships of buyers and sellers that were culminated over the years. As more products are being offered through internet-based exchanges and reverse auctions, the personal influence will play a less significant role and the face of industrial product purchases/sales will be changed forever. Third-party providers of technology enablers serve as a middleman between the buyers and sellers of goods.Instead of dealing with a familiar person on a face-to-face basis, the virtual transaction involves an electronic exchange of information removing the non-verbal cues and communication that aided or affected the purchasing decision. Although this electronic mode of operation is now another distribution avenue, it may soon become the prevalent reality of the future where practically all transactions include minimal human interaction.The discussion will focus on the several concepts and dimensions of an integrated strategy that a supplier should emphasize to successfully operate in a business-to-business (B2B) environment. The B2B channels will focus primarily on independent, industry-specific or affiliated trading exchanges (OEM owned and operated). The sales side has unique challenges that may not be experienced by the buying operations. However, there are some attributes that are common amongst selling and buying entities that will be addressed.An analysis of several third-party providers along with a company specific site will be evaluated to judge how well they will meet the needs of suppliers. The issues associated with the buyers present another set of variables that will not be discussed. Because of the rapid innovations and the focus on value creation in e-commerce and internet-based operations, there are numerous issues that were to be researched and discovered as a result of this study. This study forms the conceptual and theoretical foundation through the development of models to be empirically tested through the development of a survey questionnaire to users of third-party B2B in the automotive supply industry.\n2. Related literature and research model: Organizational theory construction provides the foundation for identifying variables and attempting to develop a set of rules for examination of the relationships (Blalock, 1969). Theories are established to explain and predict events (Bacharach, 1989). Theory development requires obtaining a comprehensive view of the different dimensions associated with variables. From theory, hypothesis can be constructed to empirically test the validity of the theories.A thorough literature review of the existing e-commerce and e-business specific publications, along with associated information technology and business management journals, was completed to identify key variables associated with the pursuit of conducting business online from a supply perspective, either through a trade exchange or individual company site. The search identified several concepts and dimensions that support an integrated model for physical and/or virtual operations.These concepts and dimensions can assist companies in identifying the most appropriate and logical path to travel when engaging in trading through electronic means. An integrated approach will focus on the best of both worlds, both physical and virtual, for industrial products suppliers.2.1 Concepts and dimensions\n3. Methodology: Case study methodology can be applied to both qualitative and quantitative studies. The primary focus of this study was to address issues surrounding suppliers' choice into new and different distribution channels associated with trading exchanges, affiliated or independent. The factors and issues studied were of a qualitative nature as opposed to quantitative, where hard facts and data would be available. Qualitative research focuses primarily on the inquiry and information gathering to help understand and explain the meaning of particular phenomena (Merriam, 1992). A case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context (Yin, 1994).There are a limited number of empirical studies that address the issues associated with electronic trade exchanges on the internet (Lieb and Bentz, 2004; Min and Mentzer, 2004; Sakaguchi et al., 2004; Soliman and Janz, 2004). There has also been some case analysis (Clark and Lee, 2000; Dai and Kauffman, 2002; Versendaal and Brinkkemper, 2003; Themistocleous et al., 2004). Before a quantitative study can be initiated, it is necessary to develop the foundation of grounded theory and to formulate a proposed business model after thorough investigation of the phenomenon through literature reviews. Although there are numerous theories that have been posited by several researchers (Walters and Lancaster, 1999; Bovel and Martha, 2000; Cross, 2000; de Figueiredo, 2000; McWilliam, 2000; Reichheld and Schefter, 2000; Taylor, 2000; Wise and Morrison, 2000; Lee and Whang, 2001), several studies have focused on the how-to, barriers, myths, and assumptions (Brache and Webb, 2000; Oliver, 2000; Venkatraman, 2000; Williams and Cothrel, 2000; Czuchry et al., 2001; Rangan and Adner, 2001) without applying or testing these theories. As the numbers of companies expand their distribution channels, quantitative data can be gathered regarding the various concepts and dimensions identified in this study.In this study, the phenomena being investigated involve suppliers' integrated business model, the related concepts and dimensions, and whether the trade exchange distribution channel will serve them well. Because this area of research is rapidly developing, the literature review focused on studies and related concepts as well as specific information on the topic.The integrated business model developed from the literature review serves as the basis for evaluating the trade exchanges. Three trading exchanges were evaluated. Two independent and one affiliated trade exchanges were evaluated. One of the independent trade exchanges was initially an affiliated exchange until the subsequent sale to an independent company.\n4. Background and history of key B2B intermediaries: Prior to comparing each of the B2B intermediaries to the variables and criteria a supplier considers for an integrated strategy, it is necessary to provide some background and history about each of the companies.4.1 Covisint LLC\n5. Case study comparison of integrated strategy to B2B intermediaries: Based on a review of secondary data, as opposed to primary data, a comparison was conducted of different B2B intermediaries focusing on the model elements and how it supports the industrial product suppliers (Table I).\n6. Discussion: 6.1 Analysis of comparison\n7. Conclusion: The world of supplying in any industry is rapidly changing. No longer can suppliers of industrial products use traditional face-to-face relationships to sell its products. Technology facilitates the exchange of goods and services in a global marketplace. By failing to recognize and expand on these opportunities, suppliers will not be able to serve. There will be a transition period where suppliers will still be able to operate in the traditional tiered model. Over time they will be required to communicate and transact most of the business through a trade exchange. This will require an initial investment for infrastructure and continuing long-term strategy to integrate existing business processes with necessary future technology. It may require suppliers to make significant business decisions regarding the customers they want to continue to do business with and whether they can support operating through more than one trade exchange. These are challenges that are faced by most business, and to succeed, they must have a well thought out integrated business model.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The primary purpose was to learn about different variables of an integrated strategy associated with choosing to supply through business-to-business (B2B) intermediaries and apply the variables to a series of cases.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A literature review served as a basis to develop an integrated model. A combination of primary and secondary research was conducted to apply the concepts of the model to different internet trading exchanges.\nFindings: - Each trade exchange offers a different set of customers and suppliers vying for business opportunities. There are no common platforms for software and hardware. If a small company is interested in trading through an internet exchange, they want to select based on the variables identified that best meet their needs and integrate with their business strategy.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The focus was on industrial products and may not be applicable to consumer products.\nPractical implications: - Suppliers must carefully operate in the future by evaluating each customer and determining which trade exchanges will provide them with the greatest benefit at the lowest cost. The infrastructure investment is an unavoidable cost that cannot be forgone unless the supplier wants to discontinue providing to most of its customers. The supplier needs to look at all aspects identified in the integrated business model and the foundation and facilitation for success lie in the information management of the entire entity.\nOriginality/value: - This paper takes the existing body of knowledge and applies it to the development of an integrated e-business model for industrial suppliers used to compare different internet trading exchanges.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Social value judgments in healthcare: a philosophical critique	[ "Social values", "Health care", "Moral values", "Bioethics", "Philosophy", "Health policy" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The purpose of this brief review is to consider some philosophical and bioethical issues both behind the framework discussed at the initial Social Values and Health Priority Setting Workshop (Clark and Weale, 2012) and in priority setting more generally. There is, of course, a great deal of overlap between the wider literature and the social values framework (referred to henceforth as \"the framework\"), but there are also some additional issues and questions raised in philosophy and bioethics that have not been discussed. This review provides a starting point for considering whether the framework might be supplemented with insights from this literature, and underscores the need for representatives of different fields - such as moral philosophy, political science, bioethics, economics, law and medicine - to work together to ensure that the framework for priority-setting benefits maximally from their varying perspectives.This review begins by looking first at how the term \"social values\" is used in the framework and how it is understood in the relevant philosophical literature, in contrast to related terms like \"moral values\". We then follow the structure of the initial framework in considering first what this literature has to say about procedural (\"process\") values and then about substantive (\"content\") values. The distinction drawn in the framework between these two classes of values, and the relationship between them, tracks an on-going debate in philosophy and bioethics about the political and moral aims served by these kinds of values and the extent to which either is suited to and sufficient for the policy context. Criticisms about the importance and adequacy of procedural values suggest that it may be important for the framework to remain neutral about whether procedural values should be the dominant normative component to priority-setting, as this is a hypothesis that the framework can evaluate as it is tested in different contexts. Similarly, debates about which substantive values are relevant and how they should be integrated and ordered suggest that it is important for the framework not to endorse one particular set of principles or values over another, but rather be structured so that it can incorporate a variety of morally relevant values and principles, which can then be balanced accordingly as the framework is employed in different contexts.\n2. What are social values?: It is important to begin by clarifying the framework's intended definition of \"social values\", to avoid confusion with related ways in which we may encounter this term in the philosophical literature. For the purposes of the framework, \"social values\" might be defined as the values of the public or of society, including their moral values. This can be easily contrasted with a philosophical description of \"moral values\", which may (under some accounts), include values not necessarily held by a given society at a given time.The attempt by the framework to include social values within priority setting processes reflects the view that moral values, and not only scientific and medical data or facts, play a central role in health priority-setting, and these values are those of society or \"the public\". The concern here relates to the justificatory force of priority setting decisions. The view taken by the framework is that, given the public are those most directly affected by priority setting, the framework should strive to incorporate values which are, broadly speaking, held by those to whom a justification is owed - even if gathering information about the public's values presents certain practical difficulties, especially when they form a complex and diverse set.Given the definition of \"social values\" intended by the Social Values and Health Priority-Setting project, it is easy to understand why the initial framework places such a strong emphasis on procedural approaches to priority-setting; for there are some obvious ways in which procedural approaches incorporate social values into priority-setting decisions. For example, as discussed below, the framework stresses the importance of \"participation\" - that is, allowing members of the public and other stakeholders to participate in priority-setting decisions, thereby ensuring those decisions track the public's moral values (or, at the least, the values of those members of the public who participate). One of the aims of this paper, though, is to stress that a commitment to social values does not, in itself, imply that procedural approaches to priority-setting should be more dominant than approaches relying upon substantive principles. Rather, these two approaches to priority-setting form a complex, interconnected whole.In the remainder of this piece, we consider some salient issues in philosophical discussions of both procedural and substantive approaches to priority-setting, and highlight some implications of our discussion for the initial framework.\n3. Procedural values: In moral and political philosophy, considerations of process or procedure are generally introduced in discussions of the legitimacy of political structures. Democratic processes such as voting, for example, allow individual citizens to express their preferences for and against particular aspects of government, thereby contributing to the legitimacy of the political structures that are eventually agreed upon, and the decisions made within them. The framework identifies three specific procedural values it takes to be importantly connected to the legitimacy of priority-setting decisions: accountability, transparency and participation.The philosophical work on procedural values and priority-setting has been heavily influenced by Daniels' and Sabin's work on \"Accountability for reasonableness\". This approach grew out of Daniels' Rawlsian theory of justice and health that, as Daniels acknowledged, provided little practical guidance on questions of how to allocate scarce resources, despite helping to clarify some important theoretical issues about health inequality. In the absence of societal consensus about principles for resolving disagreements about rationing, Daniels suggests that a \"fair process\" is needed to ensure that priority-setting decisions are legitimate and fair (Daniels, 2000, p. 1300). According to Daniels, this process should include the following elements:* transparency about the grounds for a decision;* appeals to rationales that all can accept as meeting health needs;* procedures for revising decisions in light of challenges and appeals; and* methods of enforcement.Two of the three procedural values incorporated into the framework are present in Daniels' and Sabin's approach: transparency is met through the requirement that reasons behind decisions be made public and accountability is met through the requirements that the procedures be regulated and enforced and include opportunities for appeal and revision.There is much to be commended about the attempt to ground priority-setting decisions on considerations of procedural justice. There is little doubt that values such as transparency, accountability and participation enhance the perceived legitimacy of such decisions, and that greater public awareness of the grounds for decision-making is an important step towards ensuring there is greater public understanding of the various constraints on decision-making that exist. But a number of concerns have been raised about the limits of the procedural approach, and it is important to bear these in mind when putting forward a framework for priority-setting. These concerns can be grouped into three categories: concerns that procedural values might be emphasised at the expense of substantive values; concerns about the practical and cultural effectiveness of procedural values in improving priority-setting; concerns about the specific values of \"accountability\", \"transparency\" and \"participation\".3.1 Process over content?\n4. Substantive values: towards a multi-principle framework: One alternative to constructing a decision-making framework around procedural values is to ground decision-making in a set of substantive values and principles. The thought here is that the fairness and legitimacy of a decision will be guaranteed not by the procedures by which it was reached and implemented but the extent to which it accords with an appropriate set of specified values.Substantive approaches to making decisions about priorities - just like procedural approaches - face a number of challenges, some of which are noted in the social values and health priority-setting framework paper (Clark and Weale, 2012). The framework identifies five \"content\" values: clinical effectiveness, cost effectiveness, justice/equity, solidarity and autonomy. In the philosophical and bioethics literature on priority setting, justice is generally put forward as the dominant substantive principle. Competing accounts of justice differ in the extent to which they are inclusive of values like clinical and cost effectiveness, solidarity, and respect for autonomy; depending on the specific priority setting context, these accounts may offer more or less guidance (Daniels, 2008; Powers and Faden, 2008). Important puzzles currently unresolved in the philosophical literature include:1. What are the relevant goods to attend to when setting priorities in healthcare?2. What constitutes a just distribution of goods across a population?3. If we take multiple goods or distributions to bear some sort of value, how can we best balance their competing claims against one another or resolve conflicts between them?In what follows, we consider each of these questions.4.1 What are the relevant goods to attend to when setting priorities in healthcare?\n5. Conclusion: From this brief review of the philosophical and bioethical literature, it is clear that the social values framework is situated within a multitude of on-going debates about how best to ensure priority setting decisions are made fairly and in a justifiable manner. There may be the temptation to shy away from these deeper questions; especially as so many remain unresolved. However, there is much to be gained by engaging with the arguments presented in the philosophical literature; for it is through such engagement that the framework may be further refined. For example, as we have seen, following arguments presented on a purely theoretical level, one can reasonably conclude that the framework should remain neutral in respect to the importance of procedural values in different contexts; moreover, that it should not necessarily give normative priority to procedural approaches over substantive principles, and should be as inclusive as possible in respect of the principles it might seek to encompass. Importantly, this relationship between the framework and disciplines such as moral philosophy and bioethics is reciprocal. For, in turn, the framework makes clear the need for philosophers to articulate the kinds of social values that should be included in any priority setting process and, perhaps more importantly, provides a space in which future debates about procedural/substantive values can play out and - hopefully - be resolved.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to consider some of the philosophical and bioethical issues raised by the creation of the draft social values framework developed to facilitate data collection and country-specific presentations at the inaugural workshop on \"Social values and health priority setting\" held in February 2011.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Conceptual analysis is used to analyse the term \"social values\", as employed in the framework, and its relationship to related ideas such as moral values. The structure of the framework (process and content values) is considered in light of current debate in philosophy and bioethics about the political and moral aims served by these kinds of values, and the extent to which they are either suited to, or sufficient for, the policy context.\nFindings: - There is much to be gained by engaging with the arguments presented in the philosophical literature in order to further refine the framework. The framework should remain neutral in respect of the importance of procedural values in different contexts and should be as inclusive as possible in respect of the principles it includes. Further development would be best served by taking a multidisciplinary approach. The framework could provide a valuable space in which future debates about procedural/substantive values can be considered.\nOriginality/value: - The paper brings philosophical and bioethics perspectives to bear on a new framework proposed for the analysis of social values in health priority setting. It identifies how such a practical, policy-focused framework might be informed by engagement with deeper, and often unresolved, questions or principle around resource allocation in health.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Collaboration time: Understanding the full benefits of employee cooperation	[ "Cooperation", "Employee collaboration", "Information-sharing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nReview: There will come a time, probably in the fairly distant future, when not everything from a UK or European perspective will be seen through the proverbial prism of Brexit, whether it is immigration, economics, foreign policy or simply where to go on a holiday. The period in early 2019 when Brexit negotiations were at their height seemed to consume everything - not at the least, journalists' search for a handy analogy to explain almost anything else that was going on in the world. In this period, it was simply too difficult to conceive of anything else as important, or for many as bleak.\nTwo to tango: In this period, another dyad was also at play, which was of course between the UK and the European Union. At times, both sides said referring to the other's intransigence that it took \"two to tango.\" This cliche, of course, is one of the key characteristics of professional relationships that anyone within an organization can relate to. We all appreciate people who are willing to keep in step with us and are frustrated by those who keep their own time - or perhaps, choose another partner.\nFour play: To gain some real insight into anticipation and perceived costs and benefits of proposed collaboration, the authors put forward four central ideas they wanted to test:\nHow selfish are we?: Referring back to the four tests that the authors set for themselves, they found out that after analyzing the results from the experiment, people did indeed insist on more equal contributions over the long term. Time, however, did not seem to affect the behavior of people whose partners defected during the work and withdrew their cooperation. On the second proposal, people are more likely to help their partners in the short term rather than the long term, and if the partners are helpful, then that support is likely to be reciprocated in the longer term.\nComment: The article \"Collaboration time influences information-sharing at work\" by Moser and Kammer (2018) offers confirmation of what many HR managers will have seen in the behavior of their colleagues when it comes to collaborative working. While most would admit, objectively, that cooperation is a good thing, few would actually exhibit such behavior during their daily working lives. This is a key challenge for HR managers, and this article should help them to shift the focus of their colleagues to a longer term and more collaborative perspective.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.\nFindings: There will come a time, probably in the fairly distant future, when not everything from a UK or European perspective will be seen through the proverbial prism of Brexit, whether it is immigration, economics, foreign policy, or simply where to go on a holiday. The period in early 2019 when Brexit negotiations were at their height seemed to consume everything - not at the least, journalists' search for a handy analogy to explain almost anything else that was going on in the world. In this period, it was simply too difficult to conceive of anything else as important, or for many as bleak.\nPractical implications: This paper offers strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.\nOriginality/value: The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Apparel employees' creative, analytical and emotional intelligences and their job and career satisfaction	[ "Emotional intelligence", "Career satisfaction", "Job satisfaction", "Apparel industry", "Analytic intelligence", "Creative intelligence" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The global apparel industry poses a unique workplace environment consisting of diverse team members across borders working together toward one goal - to satisfy customers' apparel needs and wants (Ha-Brookshire and Hawley, 2013). These working organizations and teams are within the organization (intra-organization) and across the globe (inter-organization), creating the most globalized yet fragmented supply chain (Ha-Brookshire and Hawley, 2013). The industry has two distinct functional areas where employees would have to be highly analytic or creative to complete their job duties. For example, creativity is highly desired for job functions related to designing and developing products and analytics is typically for functions related to producing and selling the products (Stone and Farnan, 2017). In the apparel industry, the people who create and design products usually study fashion design and are creatively inclined, while the people who produce and sell the product tend to study merchandising and business operations and are analytically inclined (Stone and Farnan, 2017).\nLiterature review: Analytic and creative intelligence\nResearch methods: Research design\nResults: Sample characteristics\nConclusions: The research study examined the role of apparel employees' analytic, creative and EI on their JS and CS. Given the unique nature of the industry that requires strong creative and analytic intelligences in different job functions, an understanding of the role of analytic and creative intelligences on overall JS and CS is important not just to understand the apparel industry, but for educators of future apparel employees. The result of the regression-based conditional process analysis with bootstrapped confidence intervals based on online survey responses offer insights into how apparel employees gain their JS and CS by utilizing multiple intelligences.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how apparel employees' analytic, creative and emotional intelligence (EI) influence their job (JS) and career satisfaction (CS) from the theory of EI perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An online survey was administered to apparel employees with a response of 135 participants. Regression-based conditional process analysis using bootstrapped confidence intervals was employed to analyze the study's hypotheses.\nFindings: Findings indicated that, using EI, overall participants had higher JS and, therefore, CS. However, the degree of such relationships was different for the analytic and creative groups. Specifically, when the analytic group has high EI, the direct effect of EI on JS and CS was higher than the creative group had on high EI. That is, EI seems to help the analytic group to achieve their JS and CS more directly and, respectively, while the creative group gets more indirect benefit of JS between EI and CS.\nOriginality/value: This study is one of the first to empirically investigate the apparel work environment by assessing employees' analytic, creative and EIs and their relationships with JS and CS. Implications for the apparel industry and academia show that apparel companies and educators may need to enhance EI for their current and future employees to help create a more positive and long-lasting career in the apparel industry.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Science and technology at the Bibliotheque nationale de France: a new policy, a new electronic library and a new access to information	[ "National libraries", "Document delivery", "Electronic document delivery", "France" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF) is divided into 14 \"departements de collections\"; four sections were structured on a disciplinary basis in the early 1990s, one section specialises in bibliography, while the other nine collect and preserve the special collections, rare books, photographs and engravings, manuscripts, music, etc.The Science and Technology section is a very young one as it was created in 1995 and became one of the four new \"departements thematiques\" to collect and preserve books and serials in every scientific and engineering field for a nationwide public. Its size and its budget made it, from the very beginning, one of the most important and significant scientific research libraries in the country. For years, it has been developing print collections and enriching the national collections with high priced and valuable items, some of them unique.The year 2009 is definitely one of great changes and evolutions to this traditional role, and to the traditional shape of this library. It is a year of great challenges too: one of them is the birth of a new electronic policy that tremendously expands the ability of the library to reach patrons outside its premises; the other is the new perspective offered by some reforms regarding the reproduction facilities and a new will to become one of the great French content providers.\nThe electronic library: from Gallica to remote accessed contemporary collections: A wide access to resources: Gallica\nScience and Technology collections: the big switch, from paper to e-only, the new frontier for archives and current subscriptions: For years, the Science and Technology Section (Departement des Sciences et technologies) has been developing a strategy of remote access to its collections and has been the most significant supplier of electronic serials within the library.A new frontier was reached in June 2009 with the implementation of free remote access to the electronic collections for any patron of the research library (Le Rez-de-Jardin) It is now possible to access a wide range of electronic resources from the patron's laptop outside the library walls whenever they are searching both for older material and current research journals and books.Until 2008, the Science and Technology Section purchased almost exclusively print materials, with an average of 8,000 books and 1,800 serial titles annually. Back then, the electronic resources were purchased through a special budget common to all the sections of the library after debates amongst librarians from other sections. The ST section could not easily develop its own policy and strategy as it was dependent on wide collective decisions.From 2009 on, things have changed in quite a dramatic way: for the first time, the ST section is able to purchase new electronic collections from its own budget and negotiations with publishers could begin on the basis of two major objectives:1. the collecting of rare electronic material; and2. to widen access to the collections.\nCollecting electronic material: This first objective was the reinforcement of the national role by collecting e-books that can be accessed and read from outside the library premises. We are no longer concerned here with just non-current material made available in Gallica, but also current documents published from the 1990s and about books to be published from 2009 onwards.Nowadays, our users are very local, with more than 90 per cent of them living in the Ile-de-France region, especially those working in the scientific and technological fields: most are academic, a few are information professionals, even fewer are health professionals. At the same time, small and medium-sized academic communities further away can rarely get access to large collections of electronic books as their academic libraries usually cannot afford them.Discussions were recently held with both the administration responsible for the academic libraries (Mission pour l'information scientifique et technologique et le reseau documentaire; MISTRD) and the board of Couperin, the French academic consortium for electronic information. It was very important to everyone that the BnF, a newcomer on the playing field, would offer very high added value to a national documentation policy by only purchasing costly collections that were rare, not to say totally absent within France. It was also agreed from the beginning that the sole beneficiaries of this new offer would be the patrons of the BnF: this was an important issue and ruled out for the time being the question of a national licence policy where discussions were about to begin with publishers of appropriate journals.On this basis, a first contract with the German publisher Springer was signed in July 2009 that provided access to all their electronic books published between 2005 and 2008. A second contract was signed in October 2009 with the Dutch group Elsevier BV which provided access to all electronic books published between 1995 and 2008 - all major reference works and all the archives of the book series. This new collection of almost 14,000 e-books can be accessed via the publishers' platforms, and all of them will be stocked in SPAR, the new data storage facility BnF is now building.Of course, every patron of the BnF can have remote access to all those books and reference works; BnF also gained the right to distribute them through a document supply service yet to be developed.The very same patterns will shortly apply to serials. The BnF purchased the Elsevier archives in 2007 and is now the major French repository for these archives. Talks are already being held with other publishers in order to extend this archive policy to other subject areas both on a smaller disciplinary basis (chemistry for instance) and on a much larger and wider scale within the Bibliotheque scientifique numerique (BSN) yet to come. (BSN is a new cooperative project, created by a board of decision makers chosen from academic and cultural ministries and aimed at the creation of a large nationwide virtual library.)The entire collection of books to be published in 2009 and 2010 are already part of the signed contracts with Springer and Elsevier. This is important news and most of all a tremendous change of habits and professional skills for many librarians working in the ST section. The calculation was simple: without increasing the global budget to serve new populations by saving money on space, storage and the maintenance of printed collections.\nWidening access to the collections: The second objective is to reinforce the role of the BnF as a nationwide information provider to any scholar, scientist, or just plain citizen who could use its valuable (and costly) research-oriented collection of current serials. Here again, the answer to ubiquity is the electronic form of what used to be collected as print materials.A significant step was taken in September 2009 when it was decided that all serial subscriptions (around 1,500 titles) should switch to e-only within three years, beginning in 2010.This was a very courageous decision to make but also a real challenge for everyone as everything still needs to be done, from the first talks with publishers to the marketing of this announcement, not to say the tremendous financial gap (evaluated at EUR435,000), a consequence of the additional VAT of 17.5 per cent between print and electronic.\nNew thoughts about the reproduction service ...: The BnF created its Reproduction Service (Service de la reproduction) in 2004 as a response to a vast demand for mostly graphic and illustrated materials to be copied and used for commercial purposes (editors and publishers) rather than demand from academics. It was never designed as a large-scale duplication facility for traditional print materials such as out-of-print books or relevant research serials; but for delivering very high quality images for special publishing needs.This has been working fine for years, as long as we accepted the wait of a few weeks for the job to be completed to these high standards. But as budgets have become tighter there has been pressure to find ways of generating more revenue. So the library is now looking for new perspectives and has launched a large study to define a new structure, new goals and a new future for its Reproduction Service.Preservation of the library collections represents about 50 per cent of the time spent by the service. This will remain a very strong mission attached to the Reproduction Service as it is considered absolutely vital for conservation issues. Indeed, every damaged document is scanned or photographed. Therefore, patrons can access its copy and the original item is preserved from further damage (only very rare and precious items are totally restored). Every scanned document is stored in different databases according to its copyright situation; out of copyright documents may then rejoin Gallica or may be purchased by the general public through the Banque d'images[3]; others will be stored and used again as facsimiles whenever a reader asks for them.The other part of the activity (documents directly delivered to customers) should be dramatically changed by the new defined strategy. Until now, the general public and the publishers asked the Reproduction Service directly for their own copies. This led to extensive administrative costs in processing the requests and raising pro forma invoices and also led to long delays between each and every step of the whole procedure.The study underlined the interest shown by many commercial companies in distributing the very valuable collections of the library, and contracts may soon be signed with some of them. The commercial partners may be domestic (e-braries and national museums, for instance) but also foreign ones as the information market is nowadays clearly global. The general public should then request their own private copies from these partners for which the BnF will receive a payment; the reproduction service will then concentrate on the requests for high-quality facsimiles issued by the publishers.Diversity is now the rule: different solutions need to be identified for already scanned materials that can be easily distributed by others and for print materials that still need to be scanned by the library specialists themselves.One might think that quantity is part of quality, and in these matters, the Bibliotheque nationale de France has obviously nothing to teach anybody, but the key to the success of this reform is now speed. And the plans are quite ambitious as it is expected to reduce the average processing time of 41 days for the reproduction of an item to only five by October 2011.This might look like a very faraway milestone to reach, but the changes to be made are tremendous. The complete chain of production, from the items being taken from stock to the file being sent to the customer, needs to be reshaped in order to eliminate every cause for delay.It may be seen as a very high price to pay, but it is definitely the right price in order to enter the document supply world on a large scale.\nA new document supplier? New talks with INIST-CNRS ahead: The new perspectives offered by the fast development of a very large electronic library, both non-current and current, and the very strong reforms that will reshape and speed up the delivery of facsimiles, both print and electronic, facilitate the revival of ancient talks with INIST about interlibrary loan and document supply.A general agreement between the BNF and INIST on reproduction and document supply dates from 2005; in fact, this agreement operated very little in practice. For example in 2006 only 150 requests were made by INIST, half of which were actually satisfied and generated less than EUR1,000. Back then, 90 per cent of those requests were focused on medicine, pharmacology, engineering and technology and concerned contemporary French periodicals. Humanities and social sciences were almost totally left aside, even though BnF is clearly the largest and richest library in the French-speaking world as far as those disciplines are concerned. In return, the BnF issued no requests to INIST. To say the least, a little work could just improve these results!For a fresh new start, as science and engineering are what the research community is mostly looking for, the Science and Technology Section may be the leader of a new set of talks to be started shortly concerning a dramatic change in its strategy as a major content provider to INIST. Procedures are not quite agreed yet and details such as pricing still need to be talked about at the highest level, but both parties agree on their mutual wish to become major partners for one another.CNRS and BNF need to renew their general agreement on cooperation by the end of spring 2010; no doubt the new convention will emphasise the shared will for a new beginning in the document supply field.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to describe developments in electronic reproduction and delivery at the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF), and in particular in science, technology and medicine (STM) subjects.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper takes a descriptive approach.\nFindings: - Radical changes are taking place at the BnF, especially in widening access and in document supply.\nOriginality/value: - This is one of the very few papers in English to describe the strategic developments at the BnF to service its customers, both onsite and remote.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Leader-member exchange, safety climate and employees' safety organizational citizenship behaviors in container terminal operators	[ "Safety climate", "Container terminal", "Leader-member exchange", "Safety organizational citizenship behaviour" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Safety is always a concern in the operations of container terminal and maritime transport. Despite that, there are thousands of fatalities in maritime accidents, many losses of vessels and billions of dollars in marine claims (Talley et al., 2006; Talley et al., 2008). Several reports and studies indicate that about 75-96 per cent of most maritime casualties are attributed to human errors (Lu and Tsai, 2010; Rothblumr, 2000; Ung and Shen, 2011). The causes of crew injuries or fatalities and vessel accidents are not always clear. Given these reasons, researchers have devoted much effort to examine safety behaviors.\n2. Theoretical background and research hypotheses: 2.1 Leader-member exchange, safety climate and safety organizational citizenship behavior\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Sample\n4. Results: 4.1 Exploratory factor analysis results\n5. Discussion and conclusions: Given the prevalence of accidents and unsafe behavior in container terminal operations, this research sought to examine the relationships among LMX, safety climate and employees' SOCB in the container terminal context. Theoretically, this study highlights the importance of LMX and safety climate in explaining the SOCB of employees. Moreover, the study answers several important questions: how LMX and safety climate influence employees' SOCB in container terminal operations. In particular, this study revealed the mediating effect of safety climate on the relationship between LMX and employees' SOCB.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Container terminal operation is one of the most risky industries. Many of the accidents that occurred were found to be caused by human errors. However, it seems relatively little research has been conducted to examine the influence of leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship on employee safety behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of leader-member exchange and safety climate on employees' safety organizational citizenship behaviors (SOCB) in the container terminal context based on the social exchange theory.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A structural equation modeling was used with confirmatory factor analysis, and survey data are collected from 265 employees in major container terminals in Taiwan.\nFindings: Results indicated that LMX is positively associated with safety climate, whereas safety climate positively influences employees' safety citizenship behavior. Specifically, results indicated that safety climate mediates the effect of LMX on employees' SOCB.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study was limited to LMX dimensions adapted from the studies of Li and Liao (2014) and Vidyarthiv et al. (2014). Future research could examine the linkages between LMX, ethical climate, safety performance and supervisor leadership influence. Furthermore, this research focused specifically on employees from the container terminal operators in Taiwan. It would be valuable to collect data from employees from other countries to obtain a balanced view of the relationship between LMX, team-member exchange (TMX), safety climate and employee SOCB in container terminal operations.\nPractical implications: This research provides a useful implication for container terminal operators to enhance LMX qualities and employee safety behavior through organizational participation, employee-helping behaviors and informing workers to obey safety rule and regulation.\nOriginality/value: Given the prevalence of accidents and unsafe behavior in container terminal operations, this research sought to examine the relationships among LMX, safety climate and employee SOCB in the container terminal context. Theoretically, this study highlights the importance of LMX and safety climate in explaining the SOCB of employees.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
How inter- and intra-organisational coordination affect product development performance: the role of slack resources	[ "Product development", "Strategic alliances", "Resource management", "Alliance coordination", "Interfunctional coordination", "Slack resources", "Product development performance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.\n1. Introduction: New product development is a core business process and its outcomes have significant competitive and financial influences on the firm (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1995). Hence, it is crucial to understand how to better coordinate the activities involved in that process. As a result, many researchers have investigated whether inter- and intra-organisational coordination actually affects new product performance (i.e. De Luca and Atuahene-Gima, 2007; Takeishi, 2001).\n2. Research model and hypotheses: To achieve product development objectives, the firm often needs to coordinate various activities inside and outside its boundary (Verona, 1999). Previous research has identified two types of inter- and intra-organisational coordination: alliance and interfunctional coordination (Atuahene-Gima, 2005; Kandemir et al., 2006). Alliance coordination refers to the degree to which a firm actively coordinates its activities, aligns its strategies and shares knowledge with and across alliances (Ireland et al., 2002). In contrast, interfunctional coordination refers to the extent to which a firm's functional units systematically interact, communicate and collaborate with others to gather, disseminate, and use market-related information (Atuahene-Gima, 2005).\n3. Methods: 3.1 Sample and data collection\n4. Data analysis and results: The partial least squares (PLS) approach was used to validate the measures and test the structural model. Compared to variance-based structural equation modeling, PLS is more appropriate for use with small- to medium-size samples and with predictive and theoretical models (Reinartz et al., 2009). Because our sample size was 159, and because the relationship between inter- and intraorganisational coordination and slack resources is largely unexplored, PLS was a suitable statistical method for our research.\n5. Discussion: The present study investigates into the relationships among interfunctional coordination, alliance orientation, slack resources and two product performance metrics (i.e. product innovation and product development speed). The analytic findings confirm most of the study's hypotheses. In the following, both theoretical and managerial implications are advanced. In addition, this study's limitations and future research suggestions are also provided at the end of this section.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to enable a better understanding of the influences of alliance coordination (i.e. inter-organisational coordination) and interfunctional coordination (i.e. intra-organisational coordination) on product development performance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The current study tests a posited research model and its hypotheses using the data from Taiwan's electronics industry. A survey of 159 senior executives is analyzed using a partial least squares approach. The analytic result shows that slack resources may link alliance coordination and interfunctional coordination to two product development performance metrics (i.e. product innovativeness and product development speed).\nFindings: This investigation reveals that both alliance coordination and interfunctional coordination positively affect product development performance, not only directly but also indirectly, through the existence of slack resources they help engender. In addition, it also finds that interfunctional coordination positively relates to alliance coordination.\nPractical implications: The current research provides additional knowledge regarding the associations among alliance coordination, interfunctional coordination and product development performance. This knowledge would be useful for practitioners to achieve a superior product development performance. Moreover, this research articulates the managerial implications of the link between interfunctional coordination and alliance coordination for product development executives.\nOriginality/value: This empirical study tests an integrative model (which is one of only a few to incorporate slack resources) to explain how different types of coordination (i.e. inter- and intra-organisational coordination) may influence product development performance. Moreover, this empirical research provides initial evidence on the association between interfunctional coordination and alliance coordination.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Integral metamap creates common language for urban change	[ "Change management", "Communities", "Urban areas" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper proposes a common language to integrate a network of vital signs indicators for tracking change at the scale of community and city life.In a nation-wide research project examining, Quality of Life in Canada, Maxwell (2002, p. 18) characterized the possibilities of a common language to provide feedback through change indicators. She visualized:... enhancing the collaboration among the various initiatives purporting to monitor elements of quality of life such as standard of living, sustainable development, population health, community health, personal well being, economic status ... [The] integration of existing quality of life indicator models ...[in] a single model ... would lead not only to the creation, but also, more importantly, to the use of a common language, framework and set of indicators by all those interested in quality of life in Canada - including citizens, all levels of government, non-governmental organizations, researchers, academics and the media.Community change profiling is a global, national and urban interest\nValues, the basis for a common language about change?: With a background in both ethnographic research and quantitative organizational change measures, the researcher proposes that a starting point for finding a common language (and a common denominator) to describe community change, resides in a study of values.Hamilton (2003b, c) proposes that values evolve from the co-creation of capacity and life conditions in an evolutionary process. Thus, values are both emergent properties and indicators themselves and can be observed and measured with appropriate indicators.The multiple definitions of the word \"value\" (Random House, 1967; Oxford University Press, 2002) indicate that it has personal, cultural, biological and social meanings. Value also seems to arise both from inside the person and outside the person. Building on Graves (1971, 1974, 1981) work on values, Beck and Cowan (1996) extrapolated the clusters of values across chronological time at comparable levels of complexity, thus identifying value (or v-meme) clusters that emerge in:* individual and family lifetimes;* organizational life cycles (Adizes, 1999);* community legends and stories; and* social histories.Their Spiral Dynamics(tm) model, is firmly founded on Graves' conclusions, that increasingly complex adaptive intelligences emerge in response to progressively more complex life conditions. Change occurs simultaneously in geo-bio-cultural-social life conditions/domains as do increasingly complex sets of values (and their related assets). Table II sets out these value waves (aka clusters, levels, streams (Wilber, 2000a)) with the color codes used by Spiral Dynamics(tm) to identify them in waves alternating between:* individual (express self) values; and* collective (sacrifice self) values.The parallel work of Wilber (1995,1996, 2000a, b, 2002), Wade (1996), Csikszentmihalyi (1993), Barrett (1998), Combs (2002), Kegan (1994) and Torbert (2003) and others, based on a reading of the psychological literature, developed meta-models of similar wave patterns of values development. Moreover, all of these models propose that the waves are holonic; i.e. they include and subsume earlier value sets and capacities, carrying them forward enmeshed in the new wave.Evolution of values\nIntegral change metamap: From the foregoing discussion of values, it becomes obvious that an integrated map of evolutionary values that encompasses subjective/objective and intersubjective/interobjective values would be a useful and powerful tool for researching, planning, tracking and managing change in an organization, community, city or society. The writer proposes a metamap based on Wilber's (1995, 1996) all quadrants, all levels (AQAL) model of reality (Figure 1) meets these requirements. Wilber (2003a, b, Part 1, p. 13) has identified the values related to each quadrant as the values relating to I, we, it and its, which as he notes are reflected by the pronouns that universally arise in all languages to describe the lens of every voice in a social/cultural collective.The four quadrant map also includes an all levels dimension of development, that spirals outward in each quadrant from the centre of the map. Those are the dimensions that effectively map change in each quadrant. Tracking indicators on the developmental dimension allows us to see change \"from what to what?\" (Beck, 2003). The outward flowing spirals represent the eight stages (levels or waves) of developmental change that emerged in Graves' and Beck's research and that Wilber, Wade and others have traced through research of the literature. Therefore, in effect, the integral model encompasses the spiral dynamics change model.Table II summarizes spiral dynamics color codes (Col. 1, Beck and Cowan (1996)), and key values and self/group focus (Col. 3) with the integration of the integral model's developmental dimension (Col. 2, Wilber (2000a)). In Col. 4, it describes characteristics of the complex adaptive intelligences at each level (Stevenson and Hamilton, 2001) and how these are expressed as community values and assets (Col. 5). An example of positive and negative expressions of each value from life in the modern city is noted in Col. 6.Both the integral and spiral model appear to be useful frameworks through which to view changing values using both the lenses of complexity and relevant scales. They seem to provide a framework for examining the micro, meso and macro levels of life conditions, values and assets that emerge large-scale change. Beck (2000) states:The focus ... should be on the process dynamic itself, not on any specific system, level, stage or whorl that has been activated in forming the complex, adaptive intelligences. Each of the emerging value system waves not only addresses the unique problems in the milieu that gave it birth, but also adds texture and quality to the more complex v-meme codes in the future.Integral methodological pluralism\nReviewing taxonomies of indicators as integral vital signs monitors: We have examined four major lenses for tracking change and evolutionary methodological maps for learning about individual, organization and community change. Next we review taxonomies of indicators that (primarily Canadian) communities have used to measure themselves and/or their capacities in some way.Five values-based research studies\nA pilot project for developing a common language: city integral metamap: In 2003, the researcher set out to apply the integral and spiral meta-frameworks, to a pilot project for the Abbotsford Community Foundation (ACF), located in Abbotsford, BC. This was based on approaches used in previous research in an online community and a troubled community in the Pacific Northwest (Hamilton, 1999; Ruder et al., 2001).The research findings were graphically summarized in a single integral metamap (Figure 2) in order to present the data to the ACF Board members at a retreat. The single map brings together key data gathered from the open-ended telephone interviews of a random sample of 202 residents. The data were analysed and themed and coded using an ethnographic codebook to analyze v-meme categories as represented in Table II (Hamilton, 2003a, b).In order to frame the data in a non-academic manner for use by the ACF Board, a metaphor of a four-petalled flower was used to make key learning points about the data (Ruder et al., 2001). This enabled the Board to understand and use the map for exploring the implications for the city of the future represented in the community map's values, capacities and assets.The key points summarized on the map are:1. There are many different ways to foster community. The four petals (quadrants) of the flower show how survey responses cluster into four different but essential categories ... community is made up of all four clusters. In ... Abbotsford the LL petal, representing relationships, family and culture, is viewed as almost three times larger than any of the other three petals (53 vs 16 percent).2. Within the petals ... (quadrants) of community are those capacities that help make community work ... [and] flourish in an integrated manner ... grow and thrive. Arrows in ... each petal illustrate the push for the petal to bloom more fully ... indicat[ing] the natural direction and sequence that values and capacities emerge (Beck et al., 1996; Wilber, 1996, 2001; Hamilton, 1999).3. In the gray background ... are those barriers that prevent the flower from blooming larger ... pushing against the petals [with] negative forces ... barriers, blockages and shadows ... (Sandercock, 2000; Fisher, 2003; Wilber, 2001).4. This flower is a ... rainbow of community values. Each ... color represents a set of values ... ensuring that ... community is as full and vibrant as possible ... each ... color ... creates ... positive contributions ... (Beck et al., 1996; Ruder, 2001; Hamilton, 1999) ...Qualitative and quantitative\nIntegral metamap: a common language for measuring all scales of change: We have examined values as a basis for a common language and a basis for measuring change; the theory supporting the integral metamap; taxonomies of existing indicators; and a pilot project. We can now summarize the value of the integral metamap as a common language for researching, planning and managing change in the urban context.Research\nConclusions: The taxonomy analysis and pilot project demonstrate how necessary a common language is to go beyond merely enumerating indicators (QOL, 2002, 2003) or even developing a \"report card\" (Maxwell, 2002). A common meta-language creates a framework for describing the dynamic value structures that provide the context for change in every community. It gives us a powerful tool with which we can map, track and manage a diversity of different value structures, vital signs monitors and change processes. The spiral/integral values map of Abbotsford could be replicated on any level of scale, thus showing the flexibility, comparability and adaptability of the common integral/spiral language - effectively creating a quadruple bottom line for change.Research in other domains has already demonstrated the utility of the values maps for tracking change in individuals (Tupper, 2003; Smith, 2003; Reams, 2002), groups (Reynolds, 2003), organizations (Hamilton, 1999; Fisher, 2003), communities, bio-regions (Eddy, 2003; Wight, 2002, 2003), and countries (Beck et al., 2002).The researcher visualizes that technology can provide the capability to nest, mesh and/or hyperlink multiple databases to allow a \"weather mapping\" approach to mining and summarizing data and mapping the dynamic complexity of land/bio/mindscapes that Eddy (2003) proposes are converging in the spheres of influence of the modern community, town and city.Moreover, the researcher speculates that communities and cities have a vast meso-scale role to play in supporting change in all scales of life in the modern world. This can only be effectively voiced by an integral common language that translates all the indicators of change between different levels of scale as well as to describe complex interconnectedness within the quadruple bottom lines of the cosmopolis. Such a common language can create opportunities for new participatory planning processes and a framework for choosing, monitoring and improving the quality of urban life.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - An integral metamap creates a common language to dynamically track values-based urban change at multiple levels of scale: individual, organization, neighbourhood, city, bio-region and nation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In a pilot project, using an ethnographic codebook, analysis of data collected from urban residents via telephone interviews, discloses diverse lenses, indicators and values at different levels of complexity. A four quadrant metamap of the data reveals the relationship between four sets of values: (subjective, intersubjective, objective and interobjective) at eight levels of complexity.\nFindings: - A review of taxonomies of indicators shows how multiple existing data bases can be translated into a common integral map. The pilot project demonstrates how the four quadrant-based analysis and feedback methodology creates vital signs monitors for what we value, want to change (stop or improve), and how we can develop processes to influence change.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The scope of application is global, and embedded in a paradigm shift to an integral worldview, implying users share that worldview. However, the methodology can be applied anywhere, on all scales.\nPractical implications: - Conclusions show how metamapping research data, planning and management, contributes to improving choices, monitoring and influencing change and the quality of urban life.\nOriginality/value: - This paper proposes a new integral common language to frame and track urban change.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Learning to fall forward: A study of teacher courage, equity, and freedom in the connected learning classroom	[ "Teacher education", "Educational innovation", "Educational equity", "Connected learning", "Sociocultural perspective" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction and overview: We don't realize we are risk-takers until we have the opportunity to take risks.How do we learn to embrace risk?Teachers need to embrace risk to learn.Educators need to let go of control.The power in talking about fear and failure is that it is a way to challenge and transform the constraints of educational systems.It takes time and bravery to unlearn the normative culture of schooling.We learn to fall, but fall forward.(Connected learning teacher panelists video montage, July 2017)The opening quotes are from a panel discussion of five K-12 teachers speaking about how they used connected learning (Ito et al., 2013) principles to design their classrooms and coursework (Amenra et al., 2017). The teachers had completed a graduate program in connected learning two years prior, and, since that time, had worked with their colleagues and other connected learning practitioners to develop teaching approaches that worked for their particular contexts. At the panel, the teachers talked about being courageous by learning to embrace risk and working to change the culture of their schools. The need for courage is a common refrain in discussions about connected learning with teacher educators as well (CLinTE Gathering, 2017). In this paper, we investigated the phenomenon of courage in connected learning through case studies of six educators who were in a course in the same connected learning program as the alumni quoted above. We used a sociocultural perspective in our analysis in order to look particularly at the social contexts and activities that fostered acts of courage. Our analysis and findings led us to consider broader implications for current teacher-led educational change movements.\nReview of literature: Connected learning: a brief history in teacher education\nTheoretical framework: toward a sociocultural conceptualization of courage: The definition of courage has been under debate since the beginning of history. In Plato's Laches, a discourse on courage, Socrates, Laches and Nikias argue about the definition of courage. Through a wandering dialogue, the three become confounded about how to define it, as they dig deeper and deeper into its meaning. Ultimately, they decide that they cannot define it. In contextualizing the piece, philosophy scholar Darrell Dobbs (1986) suggested that Plato sought to argue that courage was essentially about the search for wisdom. Paradoxically, the notion of courage has long been a concept in which philosophers from Thomas Aquinas to Spinoza to Nietzsche have sought to define and understand. Tillich (2000) has suggested that we can generally categorize the majority of these conceptualizations as either an ethical concept or ontological concept. As an ethical concept, courage is understood as an act; as an ontological concept, courage is universal internal trait which serves to self-affirm one's being.\nContext and methods: This paper focuses on the Year Two cohort of a three-year study on connected learning in teacher education (see Baker-Doyle et al., 2018 for a study on the Year 1 cohort). The study focuses on student experiences in one course that is a part of a graduate certificate program for connected learning. The course is also an optional elective for teaching certification and masters' degree programs in education. Therefore, students in the program are very diverse in experience and placement. The majority of students are practicing teachers that are seeking an add-on degree or certificate. A smaller number of students are either new to teaching K-12 or work in educational contexts outside of K-12, such as afterschool programs or higher education. The overall demographics of the course are primarily white and female, yet this course tends to have more males than other education courses. The university that offers this program is located on the border of a major city in the Northeast USA. Therefore, a majority of students in the teacher education program do student teaching in the city (or are teaching in the city), yet about a third of students teach or do field work in the inner-ring suburbs.\nFrom seeds to sprouts: cultivating courageous acts through connected learning: It's like I have all these ideas and I feel like I get them all down in writing, but then when it comes to implementing, it's scary.(Elizabeth, Interview March 2017)In her interview, Elizabeth shared an ethical dilemma: how to put into action what she felt was best for her students when she feared she would be treated as an outcast (or worse) at her school. She amassed these ideas in writing, in conversation with colleagues, and in her head, yet, a great barrier existed for her in actualizing them in her classroom. Over the course of the 14-week semester, Elizabeth made efforts to break down this barrier in small, careful moves. Similarly, all participants identified ethical dilemmas about their teaching in their written reflections and interviews. We saw that each participant took risks to address these dilemmas and challenge their own ways of thinking, as well as the systems and contexts in which they worked. We came to recognize these dilemmas as seeds of courage. Furthermore, we noticed that certain activities, tools, and social contexts fostered by the connected learning course design and guiding principles acted as a type of nourishment to those seeds, cultivating small acts of courage. Here, we describe the seeds and the nourishment of courageous acts.\nDiscussion: contextualizing the findings within the ethos of connected learning: Much like John Dewey's discourses on the democratic nature of education (Dewey, 1916; Dewey and Barnes, 1929), at the heart of connected learning is an ethical stance about freedom, equity, and participation. In looking closely at what \"courageous acts,\" look like in connected learning, we uncovered the seeds of these acts - identifying and wrestling with the ethical concepts raised by connected learning - and the activities that nurtured the small moves toward larger acts of courage. We take time here to discuss how our findings relate to the connected learning framework and the ethos of the connected learning community of practice in order to contextualize the findings.\nConclusion: courage and networked teacher-led educational change: Our main question for this study was: in the process of bringing connected learning into the classroom, what do acts of courage look like, and what social contexts or activities support acts of teacher courage? Using a sociocultural definition of courage as an action, not an internal trait, we sought examples of times when participants challenged norms and took risks in an embrace of their own ethical ideal, in the face of challenge or resistance. We found that the connected learning framework focused participants' attention on two ethical issues central to the framework, freedom and equity, which seeded their personal efforts to address these issues through their practice. Three activities/contexts that were designed based on the connected learning framework principles served to nurture these efforts. Participants took small, incremental acts of courage toward actualizing and addressing their ethical stances, and, in doing so, introduced new practices and changes to their classroom and/or school.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Connected learning is a framework of learning principles that centers on fostering educational equity through leveraging social technologies and networking practices to connect students with opportunities, people and resources in communities within and beyond their classroom walls (Ito et al., 2013). The framework has been adopted and developed in K-12 education by teachers in professional development networks and introduced to some teacher education programs through these networks. Practitioners of connected learning frequently refer to the need for \"courage\" to develop and introduce connected learning-based practices in their classrooms. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In this study, the authors investigate \"courage\" through a sociocultural lens in the case studies of six educators in a teacher education course on connected learning. The study examines the social contexts and activities that fostered acts of courage during their 14-week course.\nFindings: The authors found that personal reflection on freedom and equity, two ethical concepts raised by the connected learning framework, seeded acts of courage. The acts of courage appeared as small acts that built upon themselves toward a larger goal that related to the participants' ethical ideals. Three types of social activity contexts helped to nurture these acts: seeking models of possibility, mediated reinvention and \"wobbling.\"\nResearch limitations/implications: This study helps to uncover some of the questions that connected learning scholars and practitioners have about why courage is so central, and how to cultivate courageous acts of pedagogical change.\nPractical implications: The theoretical framework used in this study, courage from a sociocultural perspective, may serve to help scholars and teacher educators to shape their research and program designs.\nSocial implications: This study offers insights into patterns of networked teacher-led educational change and the social contexts that support school-level impacts of out-of-school professional networking.\nOriginality/value: Using a sociocultural conception of courage to investigate connected learning in teacher education, this study demonstrates how equity and freedom, central values in the connected learning framework, serve as key concepts driving teachers' risk-taking, innovation and change.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Strategies for impact: enabling e-learning project initiatives	[ "E‐learning", "Institutional strategy", "Projects", "Case studies", "Piloting", "Evaluation", "Learning design", "Learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Supporting and embedding e-learning in institutions of higher education can be a complex exercise. Ensuring that quality outcomes are achieved is even more difficult (Laurillard, 2002; Li, 2009; McNaught et al., 2009; Wilen-Duagenti, 2009). This paper examines strategies employed to support the implementation of funded e-learning projects in the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. These actions were taken in line with university initiatives to promote blended learning and the greater use of technology in the support and delivery of courses. Based on local experience and literature from the wider international field of e-learning in higher education, a process for scaffolding and assisting project development, evaluation and management has been evolving since 2002.In particular this paper focusses on strategies used to enhance and ensure quality outcomes when investing ~US$3,000,000 in 43 e-learning projects from 2006 to 2012. It outlines the guiding principles behind the university's e-learning development and considers key factors in the process of designing, developing and implementing the projects. The significance of piloting, evaluation and formal reporting as well as the value of professional, technical and instructional design support is also discussed. Finally the paper considers constraints and challenges, reviews and reflects on successes and the need to evolve and adjust approaches in response to technological, social and cultural change.\nDesigning: Key factors in the initial stage of deciding upon and designing specific e-learning projects were: the establishment of clear criteria for designing and reviewing all project proposals; the provision of several forms of assistance to academic staff who were drafting project proposals; and a transparent review process for approving projects.Criteria\nDeveloping: Key factors in the development stage included: provision of professional learning design assistance; a requirement to pilot early in the project development process; and availability of specialized design, programming and multimedia assistance.Learning design assistance\nImplementing: Key factors in the implementation stage included: establishment of a framework to guide evaluation; the provision of professional evaluation assistance; and the explicit expectation that even early versions of deliverables be used with students.Evaluation framework\nReview and reflect: In the final stages of completing all projects under the initiative discussed here, we became aware of additional factors that have had an influence on success and impact including: documentation designed to assist quality assurance and thoughtful feedback; expecting and accommodating change as a positive and formative process; encouraging the reporting of challenges and difficulties encountered in the projects.Documentation\nClosing thoughts: We believe the factors described in this paper have made a difference to the success and completion of our e-learning projects. We are happy to report that as of the writing of this paper 42 projects have submitted completion reports and the remaining project is scheduled to complete in 2013. All completed projects thus far have working deliverables that have actually been used with students. And of the projects that have undergone a review for quality from a committee of their peers 100 percent have received a rating of \"satisfactory\" or higher for both quality of deliverables created and on an overall rating on the quality of the project. A showcase containing many of these projects can be viewed at http://eldss.edc.polyu.edu.hk/showcase.We can see in the e-learning project initiatives discussed a \"modified centralized approach\" (Csete et al., 2011) in the sense that there was involvement both of members of the centralized support unit, and faculty leadership, responsibility and participation. Funding of the projects gave project leaders, who were all academic teaching staff, a degree of autonomy to employ and manage their own project staff. However, the projects' requirements, reporting framework and support structure enabled a degree of centralized control and oversight. This arrangement has produced productive relationships in which faculty and support staff have collaborated and learned from each other for the mutual benefit of learning and teaching innovation and enhancement.Having contributed to creating growing awareness, confidence and e-learning expertise in many areas of the university, support strategies are now changing. Since the original e-learning initiatives began in 2006 much has changed in educational technology. The rapid advance of Web 2.0 (and beyond) communication and creative media has been built on easy to use software that allows almost anyone to author materials for the web without specialized skills or training. Possibilities and potential for engaging in e-learning are now much more accessible and less costly. The support team is currently aiming its services at a far wider audience among the university teaching staff as e-learning begins to move toward mainstream acceptance and expectation rather than unusual and specialized innovation. We are arriving at the situation where, \"it is neither practically useful nor intellectually defensible to see technology as separable from the normal, everyday activities of UNIVERSITY students and staff\" (Ellis and Goodyear, 2010). This change in institutional culture is gradual compared with changes in the surrounding technology and society but it is happening, even if more slowly than many of us would prefer. Our challenge is to stay flexible and perceptive enough to be able to make change an opportunity rather than an obstacle that will benefit all who are engaged in learning and teaching.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The paper aims to focus on institutional initiatives to embed e-learning in a university in Hong Kong, from 2006-12, through large-scale funding of 43 e-learning projects. It outlines the guiding principles behind the university's e-learning development and discusses the significance of various procedures and practices in project planning, development and implementation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This longitudinal study combines historical perspectives with process description, analysis and personal observations. Its approach is based in action research. The authors are engaged both as participants/learning designers in particular projects and in management, administration and evaluation of the projects at the institutional level.\nFindings: - It is proposed that e-learning projects need careful planning, scaffolding and managing. Also that piloting, evaluation and formal reporting as well as the availability of professional, technical and instructional design support are significant factors in success.\nResearch limitations/implications: - This paper is preliminary work. Further findings and analysis are expected at the final completion of all projects. A wealth of data is available in accumulated project documentation and reports, including individual project evaluations with quantitative and qualitative data.\nOriginality/value: - Given the commonly acknowledged difficulties in helping e-learning projects continue to completion and actually be implemented, this study can offer strategies that may be widely applied in different contexts. The scale and timeframe of the study and the amount of funding available in one institution are unusual so emerging implications are potentially significant.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Customer engagement with a service provider and context: an empirical examination	[ "Customer engagement", "Engagement platforms", "Engagement with the context", "Engagement with the service provider" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Due to its potential outcomes and ability to improve key marketing metrics, customer engagement attracts substantial attention (Bowden, 2009; Hollebeek, 2011a), especially in recent marketing literature (e.g. Chandler and Lusch, 2015; Hollebeek et al., 2014). Engagement research also spans an extensive array of disciplines, including education, sociology and organisational behaviour (Kahu, 2013; Saks, 2006). Furthermore, customer engagement research, including studies of its drivers, remains a key priority (Marketing Science Institute, 2014). Yet most studies of customer engagement assume a brand construct (e.g. Hollebeek, 2011a; So et al., 2014), ignoring other focal elements, such as service providers or contexts. Service research acknowledges the potential for engagement with other focal objects though, such as a service provider or product (Patterson et al., 2006). By extending the purview beyond any single focal object, researchers and practitioners might gain important understanding of engagement as it occurs simultaneously across multiple objects, as well as the effects of engagement with one object on engagement with others.\nBackground: Customer engagement\nConceptual framework and hypotheses: Interactions between a customer and a focal object are a key tenet of customer engagement (Brodie, Hollebeek, Juric and Ilic, 2011; Hollebeek, 2011a). In an increasingly networked society, where customers can interact with other customers and firms in previously unavailable ways (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010), C2C and customer-to-service provider interactions likely become more important (Verhoef et al., 2010). Through such interactions, firms can build long term, personalised relationships with customers and foster overall engagement (Sawhney et al., 2005).\nMethod: Setting\nResults: Data preparation\nDiscussion: Engagement platforms as facilitators of customer engagement\nConclusion, implications, limitations and research directions: Despite increased practitioner and academic interest, engagement requires more research attention, considering the relatively sparse empirical research to date (Hollebeek and Chen, 2014). The current study has sought to extend understanding of the concept through a quantitative, empirical inquiry that explores engagement with a service provider and context, as well as the facilitation of this engagement through platforms. This research provides several important contributions and a greater understanding of how the uses of engagement platforms can affect engagement with a service provider and a context. Continued theoretical development and testing of platforms and their facilitation of engagement with different focal objects is essential for expanding knowledge about customer engagement further, leading to increased applicability and managerial adoption.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Customer engagement is of critical interest to both academics and practitioners. Extant literature focusses primarily on customer engagement with a single focal object, usually brands; this study takes another view to consider customer engagement with multiple focal objects (service provider and context). In addition to testing the relationship of the individual dimensions of engagement with the service provider and engagement with the context, this research elaborates on their drivers, with a particular focus on distinct engagement platforms. The paper aims to discuss these issues.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A survey captures customer engagement with a service provider and a context in a higher education setting, with 251 responses collected across first- and third-year marketing courses in an Australian, mid-sized university.\nFindings: Engagement with the service provider can drive engagement with the context. In turn, engagement with the service provider can be stimulated through the use of engagement platforms that enable customer-to-service provider interactions. The results show limited effects of customer-to-customer engagement platforms on engagement with the context though. The results are consistent across gender and student grade levels; some differences arise between international and domestic students.\nOriginality/value: This unique study broadens understanding of customer engagement with various focal objects and also details the flow of effects, from engagement with a service provider to engagement with the context. This research builds on conceptual discussions of engagement platforms and empirically examines their ability to facilitate affective, cognitive and behavioural engagement.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
CGIJ review	[]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nChoices in reproductive healthcare: Balancing individual morality and human rights\nUsing regulation to safeguard patient rights: In the field of mental health there is little research into how regulation affects patients' rights. Regulation is defined as externally imposed standards in order to make improvements in care. That regulation in the field of mental health can achieve improvements is clear from the North American literature that demonstrates a reduction in: inappropriate restraints, unnecessary use of medication to subdue rather than to treat, isolation and urinary incontinence. How regulation and the adoption of standards safeguards patient rights is less clear.\nImproving handover in the psychiatric services: Handover is an essential part of good patient care when all information about a patient from medical history to current medication and care plans are handed over from one clinician to another, who then assumes responsibility for the patient. If done well, the handover assures the smooth transfer of care, if done poorly it can put lives at risk. Furthermore, if trainee medical staff do not learn how to do a handover thoroughly and safely, bad practice can be perpetuated.\nUsing the SERVQUAL tool to measure patient satisfaction in Vietnam: Healthcare provision in Vietnam has been shifting toward the free market since the implementation of the \"Open Door\" policy in the late 1980s. When patients can exercise choices about which healthcare facilities to use, service quality moves up to a higher level of importance. Ideally, this should not be the case. Quality provision should be the aim of all health providers in every sector. However, in a market healthcare economy, if service users do not perceive a particular doctor, clinic or hospital as one combining high quality and high value, then revenue will be lost as patients choose alternative healthcare providers.\nModeling supervision: What is it and why do it?\nIs this the end of the human touch??: Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) in medicine and nursing\nCustomer loyalty in a healthcare context: Traditionally customer loyalty in the consumer sector has been perceived as a side effect of satisfaction. This makes sense. Surely, if customers make purchases or use services with which they are satisfied, then it would seem logical that they would return to the same shop or service provider for future purchases. However, a careful examination of the current literature in the service-marketing sector suggests that this is no longer the case. While satisfaction is a precursor of loyalty, it does not necessarily lead to loyalty. The two factors that must be added to satisfaction to achieve loyalty are trust and the perception of value.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the content of the current issue of CGIJ.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This review is prepared by the review editor to highlight key points within each article.\nFindings: Enables readers to scan content and select articles of most interest or relevance to their needs.\nOriginality/value: CGIJ is the only Emerald health journal providing this service to its readers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Verbal and visual reasoning in relation to patterns of Internet use	[ "Internet", "Working patterns", "Reasoning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Internet use is a complex human activity that varies widely across individuals but most typically includes browser-based interactions for purposes of communication, information, and recreation (Agarwal et al., 2005; Shapira et al., 2003; Tubin, 2006). Internet use has been linked to both positive (e.g. social support) and negative (e.g. isolation) human experiences (Joinson, 2003). On the one hand, the Internet is a tool of, for example, education; on the other hand, the Internet is a tool of, for example, aggression (e.g. bullying and flaming). The manner in which tools are used is determined by a range of individual characteristics (Maynard et al., 2005) including variation in intellectual or cognitive ability (Johnson, 2006). Jerome Bruner (2005, p. x) recently reiterated his theoretical assumption \"that our minds appropriate ways of representing the world from using and relating to the codes or rules of available technology\".\nCognitive ability and Internet use: Human cognition is conceptually dichotomized into verbal and visual abilities (Wechsler, 1997). Verbal ability refers to individual capacity to process information in the language centers of the brain which includes language presented both visually (e.g. printed text) and orally (e.g. spoken). Visual abilities involve, for example, the capacity to remember visually-presented stimuli, eye-hand coordination, and visual-spatial relationships such as map skills. Theoretically, various patterns of Internet use require varying degrees of verbal and visual cognitive abilities.Internet use, like computer use, involves primarily visual-cognitive input (i.e. viewing a screen) and most commonly manual output (i.e. manipulation of peripheral devices such as a keyboard and mouse). Unlike Internet use, however, computer use is limited to available software and does not connect users for purposes of communication. While \"research suggests that computer use has changed the balance of cognitive skills from the verbal to the visual\" (Subrahmanyam et al., 2001, p. 96), the cognitive skills required when using the Internet are more complex than those associated with computer use. Further, Tarpley (2001, p. 551) noted that the Internet is not like books or television \"in the sense that it is used primarily for communication, information gathering, and games rather than for passively experiencing narrative stories\".Across all populations and age groups, online communication is the most common use of the Internet (Australian Government, 2005; Statistics Canada, 2004; UCLA World Internet Project, 2004; US Census Bureau, 2005). Currently, Internet communication typically involves reading and typing text in real-time (e.g. chat and instant messaging) or delayed-time (e.g. e-mail and message boards). In this regard, a range of verbal skills are required to communicate online (Crystal, 2001). Merchant (2001, p. 293) conducted a small qualitative investigation of female adolescent language in Internet chat rooms and concluded that \"use of popular electronic communication is resulting in linguistic innovation within new, virtual social networks in a way that reflects more wide-reaching changes in the communication landscape\".Following communication, accessing information is reportedly the second most common online activity (Nie et al., 2005). Typically, Websites contain text and images that require interpretation. Although there are differences in the reading processes involved in decoding printed text and digital text, there are also many similarities, with meaning-making being central to the process (Marsh and Thompson, 2001). Electronic texts are malleable and fluid; they are not firm and fixed in the manner of printed books and magazines (Desmond, 2001). Tarpley (2001) suggested that accessing Websites requires metacognitive processes such as planning, search strategies, and evaluation of information.Playing games is often identified as a particularly popular use of the Internet (Australian Government, 2005; Farley-Gillispie and Gackenbach, 2006; Nie et al., 2005). The majority of North American adolescents (Rotermann, 2001) and half of China's 100 million Internet users play online games (Martinsons, 2005). Satyen (2003) reported that sufficient practice with video games could lead to the enhancement of response time performance. Visual-spatial skills such as mental rotation of shapes are superior in those who play video games (Sims and Mayer, 2002). Green and Bavelier (2003) found that on a range of visual attention skills, video game players outperformed those not exposed to video games. In a comprehensive review of the research, Subrahmanyam et al. (2001) concluded that cognitive skills such as attention, spatial imagery, and iconic representation are improved with video game use and that those who play computer games can improve their visual intelligence.\nResearch questions: Theoretically, because cognitive ability reflects socially-valued behavior (e.g. reasoning or problem solving), the brightest people should use the Internet in ways that are valued by the culture (Maynard et al., 2005). This study explores the relationship between patterns of Internet use during early adulthood and verbal and visual intelligence as measured by individual capacity to solve problems presented in written language (i.e. verbal reasoning) and in visual shapes (visual reasoning). Are there differences in visual and verbal reasoning between individuals who frequently and infrequently use the Internet? Do such differences vary as a function of type of Internet use (i.e. communication, information, and recreation)?\nMethods: Subjects\nResults: There were significant differences in cognitive ability between those who frequently versus infrequently used the Internet in eight of ten assessed uses. With respect to the general Internet use item, \"I am online\", students who selected the rating options a few times a week or every day or almost every day (frequent users) scored, on average, 5.69/8 on the visual reasoning measure. Students who selected the options never or rarely (infrequent users) scored 3.2/8 on the same measure. As summarized in Table II, there was no significant difference in verbal reasoning between students who reported frequently and infrequently reported being online.Table III presents the mean differences in reasoning ability between students who responded frequently v. infrequently to the Internet communication rating scale items. There were no significant group differences between students who reported frequently and infrequently using e-mail. However, significant differences in cognitive ability were apparent between students who reported frequently and infrequently using the Internet for synchronous communication (i.e. chat and instant messaging). In total, 360 of the 406 participating college students indicated that they never or rarely visited chat rooms; 32 indicated that they visited chat rooms at least a few times a week. As a group, students who frequently visited chat rooms scored 2.25/8 on the measure of verbal reasoning while students who reported infrequently visiting chat rooms scored 2.96/8. Conversely, students who reported frequently instant messaging (n=238), compared to those who did not (n=113), scored significantly higher (5.82/8 versus 5.21/8) on the measure of visual reasoning.Table IV presents the mean differences in reasoning ability between students who responded frequently v. infrequently to the Internet information rating scale items. There were no significant differences in verbal reasoning between participating college students who reported frequently versus infrequently using search engines and accessing information online. However, college students who frequently used search engines scored significantly higher on the measure of visual reasoning than students who reported infrequently engaging in such online behavior (5.71 versus 4.54). College students who reported frequently accessing public information online, compared to those who did not, scored significantly higher on the measure of visual reasoning (homogeneity of variance not confirmed, adjusted p=0.043). Similarly, students who reported frequently accessing private information online, compared to those who did not, scored significantly higher on the measure of visual reasoning (homogeneity of variance not confirmed, adjusted p=0.030).Table V presents the mean differences in reasoning ability between students who responded frequently v. infrequently to the Internet recreation rating scale items. There were no significant differences between participating college students who frequently and infrequently download or watch videos online. However, college students who reported frequently, as opposed to infrequently, downloading or listening to music online scored lower on the measure of verbal reasoning (2.72 versus 3.18). Compared to those who reportedly frequently playing games online (approximately 12 percent of the sample), infrequent gamers scored lower on the measure of visual reasoning (6.10 versus 5.48).\nDiscussion: Five college students were classified as infrequent Internet users on the basis of their response (i.e. never or rarely) to the rating scale items \"I am online\". Compared to the overwhelming majority (n=384) who reported frequently being online, the five infrequent users did not differ in verbal reasoning ability. This is not surprising since all college students are required to process information in the language centers of the brain (e.g. read textbooks and listen to lectures). These five infrequent Internet users, however, demonstrated extreme limitations in visual reasoning. To a lesser extent, limitations in visual, but not verbal, reasoning also characterized college students who infrequently use the Internet to access information and play games. At least two explanations are possible:1. individuals characterized by below average, relative to peers, visual reasoning ability avoid using the Internet; or2. Internet use promotes the effective processing of visual information.Contemporary theories of human cognition would argue a spiralling reciprocal exchange such that visual processing ability causes the person to seek out visual stimuli, which in turn enhances visual abilities, which in turn causes the individual to seek out more complex visual stimuli, and so on (Johnson, 2006).Results of the current investigation support the contention that those who frequently use the Internet cognitively process visual information better than those who infrequently use the Internet. Significant differences in verbal reasoning, however, are more difficult to interpret. That is, significant group differences in verbal reasoning emerged between college students who frequently and infrequently visited chat rooms and downloaded music, but not in terms of any other use of the Internet. Why do college students with a verbal reasoning advantage avoid these two specific uses of the Internet? The potential consequences of visiting chat rooms and downloading music require consideration.Visiting chat rooms and instant messaging are both text-based real-time Internet communication applications. Less than 8 percent of the sample of college students reported frequently visiting chat rooms; 58.6 percent reported frequently instant messaging. A fundamental difference exists between these two synchronous communication tools; typically, chat rooms mediate communication among strangers while instant messaging requires an invitation to communicate. In the current investigation, subjects who frequently visited chat rooms demonstrated a verbal reasoning disadvantage relative to subjects who infrequently visited chat room; subjects who frequently used instant messaging demonstrated a visual reasoning advantage relative to subjects who infrequently used instant messaging. Such findings suggest that college students characteristically use synchronous Internet communication but that cognitively more able students avoid online communication with strangers. Anxiety surrounding the Internet as a hunting ground for human predators (Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, 2001) may justifiably be narrowed to concern for individuals with immaturity in both verbal and visual reasoning.The second significant group difference in verbal reasoning scores emerged between college students who reported frequently and infrequently using the Internet to download and listen to music. Approximately 20 percent of the sample of college students reported infrequently using the Internet as a source of music; that minority scored higher on the measure of verbal reasoning than those who frequently accessed music via the Internet. Several interpretations are possible. Perhaps, because music is not processed in the language centers of the brain (Peretz and Zatorre, 2005), those who infrequently listen to music more often engage in linguistic activities such as reading and talking on the telephone. Alternatively, downloading music is illegal and can be dangerous (Out-Law News, 2005). While the Internet is a common source of music for college students, those who are most cognitively sophisticated may correctly interpret the dangers and thus avoid the popular online behavior. Anxiety surrounding illegal and dangerous online activities may be justifiably narrowed to concern for those who lack sophisticated, relative to peers, verbal reasoning ability.Cognitive abilities prerequisite to effective utilization of the Internet constitute an implicit component of contemporary conceptualization of intelligence (Maynard et al., 2005). Results of this investigation provide an element of empirical support for such a theoretical assumption. As a group, college students who reported avoiding dangerous uses of the Internet (i.e. visiting chat rooms) were cognitively superior to those who frequently engaged in such online behavior. College students who reported frequently engaging in a range of Internet activities (e.g. accessing information and playing games) were cognitive superior to those who infrequently engaged in such online behaviors. The distinction between visual and verbal ability may be less important than the conclusion that extensive and appropriate use of the Internet is associated with increased human capacity to reason. Internet use is not simply the ability to manipulate a set of physical tools (e.g. devices and applications); it is the ability to execute a set of cognitive tools (e.g. verbal and visual reasoning).\nLimitations and future research: Albeit modestly, the current findings increase understanding of the relationship between human cognition and patterns of Internet use and also permit comment on assumptions regarding the development of cognition. The study, however, has several limitations, not the least of which is generalization of findings. Jones and Madden (2002, pp. 2, 5) argued that college students are an ideal sample for Internet research because they \"are heavy users of the Internet compared to the general population\" and because they \"have been at the forefront of social change since the end of World War II\". Nonetheless, college students studying introductory psychology do not reflect the general population; future research may explore the relationship between verbal and visual reasoning and Internet use with samples that more accurately represent the general population. Further, the relatively small number of subjects who reported infrequent Internet use casts suspicion on interpretation of findings. That is, college students in a technologically advanced nation who do not frequently use the Internet could be described as idiosyncratic (e.g. 1.2 percent of the sample responded to the rating scale item \"I am online\" by selecting \"never\" or \"rarely\"). An improved research design would include equally large numbers of frequent and infrequent Internet users in order to identify group differences in verbal and visual reasoning ability.Reconciling the need for large sample size with valid measures of cognitive ability and Internet use resulted in a further limitation of the study. Validity and reliability were not established for the subtests modified for administered to large groups of college students. The validity of group-administered psychological tests is generally threatened by individual differences in motivation, attention, and comprehension of instructions (Flanagan and Harrison, 2005). It is possible that such variables were inadvertently measured by the modified subtests of verbal and visual reasoning. Indeed, it is also possible that subjects misrepresented their Internet use on the brief rating scale. Research utilizing individually-administered measures of verbal and visual reasoning and alternate approaches to determining patterns of Internet use may not replicate the findings of the current investigation.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine cognitive differences between frequent and infrequent Internet users. Theoretically, culturally-valued use of the Internet is related to cognitive (i.e. intellectual) ability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A total of 406 college students completed measures of verbal reasoning, visual reasoning, and patterns of Internet use.\nFindings: - Significant group differences in visual reasoning consistently favored frequent Internet users (e.g. in terms of use of search engines and playing games online). With respect to visiting chat rooms and downloading music, however, infrequent users demonstrated better verbal reasoning than frequent users. Findings support the conclusion that extensive and appropriate use of the Internet is associated with increased human capacity to reason.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Generalization of findings is limited because college students may not necessarily reflect the general population. Results require confirmation with other measures of cognitive ability.\nPractical implications: - Internet use is not simply the ability to manipulate a set of physical tools (i.e. devices and applications); it is the ability to execute a set of cognitive tools (e.g. verbal and visual reasoning). Apprehension regarding the potential hazards of Internet use may legitimately be narrowed to individuals with limitations, relative to peers, in cognitive ability.\nOriginality/value: - This is the first empirical investigation that links verbal and visual reasoning with patterns of Internet use.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Learning to co-produce? The perspective of public service professionals	[ "Innovation", "Co-production", "Learning", "Professional", "Public service system" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Co-production has become an eligible and desired tool for developing and delivering public services in many countries around the world (OECD, 2011). Co-production of public services is seen as way to tackle austerity measures, to meet increased public expectations and as a tool to transform outdated public service infrastructure (Durose et al., 2013; Parrado et al., 2013). Although co-production offers huge potential towards transforming service systems, it also challenges the current public sector organisations both organisationally and culturally.\nThe concept of co-production: The concept of co-production was established originally in the 1970s by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues (see Ostrom, 1972; Ostrom et al., 1978). In the 1980s, other researchers have continued to further investigate and develop the concept (see for instance Brudney and England, 1983; Percy; 1984; Sharp, 1980; Whitaker, 1980). Yet, because of marketization of public sector activities in the mid-1980s, the interest on co-production decreased (Alford, 1998). In the following decade, seminal authors, such as Alford (1998, 2002, 2014), brought co-production back to the forefront of the public management discussions as an alternative to marketization and the \"contract state\" (Alford, 1998, p. 129). Alford emphasised the importance of client co-production alongside volunteer co-production in the public service provision (Alford, 1998, 2002; Alford and Speed, 2006). Moreover, the concept of co-production has resurfaced again as an essential part of New Public Governance discussions emphasising partnerships and networks between the service users, the third sector, as well as private and public organisations (Osborne, 2009, 2010; Pestoff, 2012; Verschuere et al., 2012).\nInnovation in the polycentric service environment: Various conceptualisations have been developed to describe the polycentric innovation environment in the public services. The concepts of collaborative innovation and governance innovation, applied especially in the context of the public sector, underline the multi-actor nature of innovation processes. Governance innovations also highlight the interaction between the service provider and the service user. Here, the exclusive power and discretion of public actors is shared in new ways (Moore and Hartley, 2008). As a main approach in this paper, I refer to public service innovation as a process, rather than as public service as a product (see, e.g. Hartley, 2013).\nThe case of co-production pilot in neighbourhood context: In Finland, the idea of co-production of public services has emerged in the last few years. For instance, the Finnish Ministry of Finance refers to the idea of co-production as a key tool for future public services (Ministry of Finance, NN). The City of Tampere, among many other cities, has also started co-production pilots as a \"way forward\", from the rather traditional ways of enhancing citizen participation, such as organising citizen forums or conducting user surveys. New ways include service design, workshops and e-tools such as chats and social media pilots. The idea of partnerships with the users and communities is seen as cultural reform for the whole public service system. Neighbourhood projects especially have been introduced as pilots for applying this framework (City of Tampere, 2013, 2015).\nResearch strategy and methodology: As a research strategy, I applied a case study, emphasising the importance of gaining in-depth understanding of the process of co-production from the viewpoint of professional co-producer. Indeed, according to Ackroyd and Karlsson (2014, p. 24): \"the aim of the [case study] research is to bring to light formative processes which cause particular outcomes, when they operate [...]. Rather than observing the mechanism per se, the researcher follows the operation of the mechanisms. Naturally, case study offers only limited generalizability. Yet, it is possible to learn through case studies, and accordingly, offer valuable scientific knowledge for theory development\" (Flyvbjerg, 2006).\nResults of the study: Professional culture as a precondition\nDiscussion: There is a general understanding in the literature on co-production that public service professionals resist co-production because it involves the ceding of power (see Bovaird, 2007; Osborne and Strokosch, 2013; Verschuere et al., 2012). Although this is surely true in many cases, based on the analysis it can be said that the role of learning is also essential; the professionals do not necessarily know what they are supposed to do differently as they apply their familiar professional framework in the new ways of planning and producing the services.\nConclusions: The key aspect of this paper has been the polycentric service delivery arrangements of public services (Alford, 2014; Osborne and Strokosch, 2013) and the perspective of professionals in those arrangements. The examined case helps us to better understand the world of the public service professional as co-producer and highlights the importance of learning.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on how public service professionals cope with co-production as a way to produce and develop public services.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper draws on the literature of co-production and collaborative public service innovation. The research approach was an explorative case study, presenting a pilot neighbourhood co-production project.\nFindings: Conflicting approaches to co-production with various implications are used simultaneously, causing uncertainly among the professional co-producers. When moving from rhetoric to practice there seems to be a lack of tools and methods for applying and utilising the possibilities of co-production. The processes of co-production and their implications should be thoroughly understood and managed throughout public service organisations, from politicians to frontline workers.\nPractical implications: The paper demonstrates that co-production calls for renewed organisational structures and managerial tools, especially concerning the evaluation of co-production. Focal managerial, organisational, cultural and processual notions for supporting professional co-production are provided.\nOriginality/value: This paper makes an important contribution to the discussion of co-production, examining an important, yet understudied, perspective on public service professionals as co-producers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A compound correlation model for disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery	[ "Knowledge discovery", "Disjoint literature", "Compound correlation model", "Literature", "Vectors" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In 1986, Professor Don R. Swanson from the University of Chicago demonstrated his theory of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery, which provided a convenient, efficient and effective auxiliary method for scientific research. This theory has had a wide influence on the academic world because disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery involves both knowledge discovery technology and specific academic fields. Then during the last two decades, scientists from various fields, including Swanson himself, have been probing into the groundwork of the theory, the algorithm models and their application in different fields. This research has resulted in more discoveries of new knowledge and connections, and the application of KDD technology has extended from the original fields of medical science and biology to those of aeronautics, space technology, engineering, and even the humanities and social sciences.Based on previous research into Swanson's theory of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery technology and Gordon's thought of intermediate literature, this paper attempts to create a compound correlation model and to design a new vector space model (VSM) based algorithm in the mode of the compound correlation model. The traditional two-step knowledge discovery procedures were integrated into the model, which contained the open and closed disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery. To test the validity of the new algorithm, we replicated Swanson's discoveries of Raynaud's-fish oil and migraine-magnesium connections with PubMed as the literature source. Also, we applied the new algorithm to new knowledge discovery in the Chinese science and technology literature in particular. We found several pairs of concepts with meaningful implicit correlations from Chinese agricultural economics literature collections.\n2. Related research: Since Swanson advanced the theory of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery in 1986 (Swanson, 1986, 1987), many algorithms of knowledge discovery have been proposed. Swanson and his colleagues also proposed their own knowledge discovery algorithm - the open and closed discovery processes. In 1997, they designed and developed Arrowsmith, a man-computer interactive software system, which was used to discover new knowledge in biomedical literature. The software was effective in completing a closed disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery process in the biology and medicine literature. With the help of Arrowsmith, later researchers mainly focused their attention on the design of the algorithms of the open discovery process. Some of them probed further into the principles and thoughts of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery. They applied various approaches to their research, trying to discover the hidden connection between concepts from the titles, abstracts or indexing terms of the literature. Most of the algorithms, however, were limited to knowledge discovery in medical fields, using the literature database from Medline. They used the titles from Medline as the object of analysis, while some of them delved further into the abstracts from the database. Many of the researchers made full use of the thesaurus of MeSH and the functions of UMLS.In concept extracting, titles or abstracts from the database Medline as the corpus for KDD are used in most research studies, with stop-list filtering and term frequency analysis as the basic approaches. For example, Gordon and Lindsay (1996, 1998, 2001) used tfidf to extract concepts from texts. Moreover, UMLS and MeSH are widely used as the semantic tool to identify concepts. Srinivasan (2004) relied completely on the MeSH thesaurus; Van der Eijk et al. (2004) used the thesaurus of MeSH 2002, normalised words and phrases, each of which was given an only concept. Hristovski et al. (2005) used the MeSH thesaurus and proposed an extraction method that could help to eliminate the ambiguity in gene symbols in many documents within Medline. Pratt and Yetisgen-Yildiz (2003) used the hierarchical structure of UMLS to eliminate the general concepts acquired. Weeber and Molema (2004) used different semantic types of UMLS at different stages of knowledge discovery to filter textual concepts.Co-occurrence analysis is the most common approaches in the discovery of concept relations. For example, Gordon and Lindsay (1996) used word analysis to discover the hidden links in medical literature. They believed that immediate literature should be selected by the absolute frequency, while candidate terms should be discovered by relative frequencies extracted from immediate literatures. Stegmann (2003) attempted to use co-word clustering analysis to test Swanson's knowledge discovery process. They believed that co-occurrence clustering was one of the most useful methods in knowledge discovery based on literature. Van der Eijk et al. (2004) proposed a new algorithm to discover concept connections among documents by using multi-dimensional space analysis. In this algorithm, if there were more than one connection path in multi-dimensional space, then the two concepts were not directly connected. Padmini Srinivasan (2004) designed a text mining algorithm for hypothesis discovery, which operated on a MeSH-based model. In their experiment, ranked terms by semantic types was a useful approach for end users, because they could delete or concern the whole term group of certain words by semantic type. Huang et al. (2005) developed a new literature mining method for science to predict the hidden links between term A and term C. One most evident innovation of this approach was that it took the hierarchical structure of concepts into consideration and claimed that the relationship between terms B and C was that of sibling, not of co-occurrence. Hristovski et al. (2005) presented an NLP system for interactive literature-based discovery to extract a concept model from the texts to improve the accuracy of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery. Gordon and Dumais (1998) offered an alternative method that employs the singular value decomposing matrix of latent semantic indexing (LSI) in KDD. Kontostathis and Pottenger's (2006) study determined that the secondary co-occurrence might achieve a better result in the performance of LSI. Hu et al. (2006) attempted the mining of concept relationships in the disjoint literature in biomedical fields by building a biomedical ontology. In bioinformatics fields, some research studies improved the effect of literature-based knowledge discovery with the help of some NLP techniques such as named entity recognition, word sense disambiguation, and so on (Weeber et al., 2003; Tuason et al., 2004; Chen et al., 2005).Regarding the knowledge discovery model, Van der Eijk et al. (2004) did not follow Swanson's classic open and closed knowledge discovery process, but got the same result as prior researchers. Weeber (2001) and Srinivasan (2004) used both the open and closed discovery methods of Swanson, while other algorithms only used the open discovery process.It can be concluded from the research mentioned above that the algorithms for disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery proposed by Swanson and later researchers are mostly designed to discover the possible correlations between term A and term C through the links of term A-B and term B-C. This explains why these research studies were focused on the selection and sorting of intermediate term B collection. However, with regard to the present algorithms of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery, major problems still exist, such as overabundance of term B collection and low subject correlation strength (i.e. low accuracy).To solve such problems, based on an analysis of Swanson's A-B-C model of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery and Gordon's intermediate literature theory on the respect of knowledge discovery model, we propose a more comprehensive compound correlation model in disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery. Furthermore, based on the open and closed processes of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery in the mode of the compound correlation model, we also design a new algorithm of vector space model (VSM) based disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery in the mode of the compound correlation model, which integrates several kinds of technology to improve the accuracy of filtering term B and term C. In the designing the algorithm, careful consideration is given to the adaptability of languages and application fields so as to make the new algorithm well applied not only to traditional research in natural sciences but also to knowledge discoveries in humanities and social sciences documents in the Chinese language. With the improvement of the knowledge discovery model and integration of technologies in the new algorithm, our research could greatly improve the automation of knowledge discovery processes and the accuracy of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery, thus reducing human labour to a minimum.\n3. Research questions: In this research, we tried to find a more comprehensive strategy to mine hidden knowledge in disjoint academic literature. The research questions of the paper are as follows:RQ1. Could the compound correlation model proposed in this research and its corresponding algorithm possibly find micro-knowledge in disjoint academic literature?For the different idea of the compound correlation model based strategy, a fundamental question is to evaluate the workability and effectiveness of the strategy, comparing to its classic counterparts.RQ2. Is the new strategy domain and language independent?We hope to expand the application of the strategy to other domains and find hidden knowledge from academic literature writing in other languages rather than in English. If the domain and language independency could be inferred, more unrevealed knowledge would potentially be discovered.\n4. Models and algorithms: Swanson's algorithm for disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery reveals a relationship hidden in the literature database between a pair of concepts that may not be related apparently (disjoint literature) but are related inherently (or related logically). While this relationship that Swanson describes is rather simplistic and idealised, the actual relationships among hidden concepts are much richer and more complicated than Swanson's A-B-C model. The general idea of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery is to use the indirect co-occurrence between words or concepts to discover hidden knowledge, and find a solution (term C in Swanson's model) to the specific question, i.e. term C in Swanson's model. In the open discovery process, alternative solutions are obtained through intermediate term B, and in the closed discovery process, term B is used to evaluate the rationality of a question-solution pair. Therefore, in knowledge discovery process, it is a new idea of one-step literature-based knowledge discovery to utilize term B as the intermediate to discover a set of terms C hidden in documents and judge the reasonableness of the connection between A and corresponding set of terms C within the context of tern B. This is why we have proposed a new VSM-based compound correlation model and designed the corresponding algorithms for the researches of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery.4.1 Conceptual framework\n5. Experiments: In order to test the validity of the model of compound correlation, we experimented with the classic examples of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery by means of the dataset from PubMed. Due to the uniqueness of the Chinese language, where a single character stands for one practical meaning and there is no separator between words, the knowledge discovery of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery in the Chinese corpus is more challenging than that in the English one in terms of micro information processing technology (Gao et al., 2002). To verify the suitability of the compound correlation model and its algorithms to literature collection in a different language, the authors performed an experiment of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery focusing on the literature collection in the Chinese language.5.1 Knowledge discovery with PubMed as the literature source\n6. Discussions: The algorithms proposed by Swanson and later researchers mostly follow the typical A-B-C model of open knowledge discovery, which try to find the possible relation between terms A and C by the connections of A-B and B-C. Therefore, finding and ranking of intermediate term B has long been the focus of their researches in disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery. However, in terms of the previous research of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery reported so far, such major problems are still unsolved as the huge number of terms B and weak subject connection strength. Moreover, the algorithms proposed by Swanson and other researchers are mainly applied at the beginning stage of forming a scientific hypothesis, which in most cases require specification of term A in order to determine the relationship between term A and C. They are particularly applied to forming hypotheses in biomedical research. In comparison, with the help of VSM the algorithm proposed in this paper can complete the traversal of all the relations between terms in the thesaurus and discover several related groups of possible knowledge hidden in a collection of documents at one time, thus expanding the application range for the algorithms of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery. Summarily, the main findings of the paper include: In order to reduce the number of terms B and find strong subject connection strength between pairs of terms, the authors of this paper concentrated on the creation of a compound correlation model for disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery, the design of the VSM-based algorithm for disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery in the mode of the compound correlation. With the algorithm, two of Swanson's classical discoveries of Raynaud's cases were replicated with PubMed corpus as the source literature. Then the algorithm was tested for the discovery of new knowledge with the database of periodical papers on Chinese agricultural economics as the literature source, and several pieces of new knowledge in Chinese agricultural economics were successfully discovered, which proves the feasibility and validity of the model and the algorithm.* Most algorithms of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery proposed so far require the assistance of such sophisticated and powerful semantic tools as MeSH and UMLS while the VSM-based model proposed in this paper, due to its independence of domain and language, is More applicable to different research fields and to literature sources in different languages. The applicability of the model was partly proved by the significant findings of the experiments on PubMed and the database of Chinese agricultural economics.\n7. Conclusions: The most prominent characteristic of the model proposed in this paper is that it broke the traditional A-B-C mode of knowledge discovery by combining the open and closed process into one process. Although the workload was reduced to the minimum under the compound correlation model compared with other algorithms and models, part of the work needed some manual intervention in the process of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery when the VSM based compound correlation model is applied. In our future research, we would like to test the performance of the model in more domains and try to improve the precision of finding real and closely related concepts that have not been found yet.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The algorithm of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery provides a convenient, efficient and effective auxiliary method for scientific research. Based on an analysis of Swanson's A-B-C model of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery and Gordon's intermediate literature theory, this paper seeks to propose a more comprehensive compound correlation model for disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A new algorithm of vector space model (VSM) based disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery is designed to implement the compound correlation model.\nFindings: - The validity tests showed that this new model not only simulated both of Swanson's early and well-known discoveries of Raynaud's disease-fish oil and migraine-magnesium connections successfully, but also applied to knowledge discovery in the agricultural economics literature in the Chinese language.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Although the workload was reduced to the minimum under the compound correlation model compared with other algorithms and models, part of the work needed some manual intervention in the process of disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery with the VSM-based compound correlation model.\nPractical implications: - The algorithm was capable of knowledge discovery with a large-scale dataset and had an advantage in identifying a series of hidden connections among a set of literatures. Therefore, application of the model might be extended to more fields.\nOriginality/value: - Traditional two-step knowledge discovery procedures were integrated into the model, which contained open and closed disjoint literature-based knowledge discovery.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The value of employees who go the extra mile: ... and how to encourage such voluntary, helpful behavior	[ "Performance", "Employee behavior", "Recognition and reward" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: We know them when we see them; the employees who, voluntarily and without expecting any reward, pitch in to help others, step up to solve some problem and go above and beyond what is normally expected of them.\nYou know it when you see it: Available to us as managers, supervisors and human-resource specialists are job specifications, job descriptions and, in many cases, job-task analyses, and/or cognitive-task analyses that relate to a given job or position. We do not normally have clearly identified behaviors of employees who go above and beyond task performance expectations and who are most helpful in goal attainment. We usually do not specify these behaviors because there are so many variations of them and because these behaviors are often situation-dependent.\nDoes it matter?: Over the past 25 years, there have been hundreds of research studies that examined the various forms of CP such as voluntary, helpful behavior, organizational-citizenship behavior, pro-social behavior and extra-role behavior. A few of the studies were able to demonstrate some links between CP and outcomes. For example, it was determined that CP was positively related to organizational performance in areas such as customer service, customer satisfaction, performance quantity and performance quality. In addition, in other research, it was learned that CP was related to greater commitment to the organization, lower employee turnover and increased productivity, including greater efficiencies and lower costs.\nEmployee predisposition for contextual performance: Some individuals have a predisposition to offer voluntary, helpful behavior on the job and/or in other, social contexts. Being helpful is a component of their personality; it is a part of who they are. In practical terms, no reliable means have been found to identify individuals who may have a predisposition to consistently offer CP.\nWhat can be done?: Existing research and commonsense make it evident that CP offered by employees is something that managers and supervisors should encourage. We cannot predict with certainty how management may directly stimulate CP behavior; however, we are aware of situations in which CP is more likely to occur than not. Under certain conditions, we find more evidence of CP than exists in the absence of those conditions. While managers cannot directly manage or control CP, they can create or reinforce conditions that may encourage the desired behavior.\nNote: Randall P. Bandura is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: rbandura@frostburg.edu\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the concept of voluntary, helpful organizational behavior and offer a discussion of research that aims to help managers to encourage such behavior among their employees.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper discusses voluntary, helpful organizational behavior based on a review of recent research, as well as findings from the authors' research.\nFindings: This paper explains that voluntary, helpful organizational behavior could include, for example, taking the initiative to increase one's knowledge about the job, technology, tools, industry, competitors and so on; making constructive suggestions; taking the initiative to help solve unexpected problems; working diligently to meet some deadlines; and volunteering to help with some tasks that are not part of one's normal task duties.\nPractical implications: The authors reveal that for voluntary, helpful organizational behavior to flourish, manager or supervisor supportiveness is important; management should provide and reinforce procedural justice in the workplace; managers should help employees in attaining job satisfaction; and managers should use positive reinforcement.\nSocial implications: A set of behaviors that can be useful not only in the work environment but also in society as a whole has been described.\nOriginality/value: This paper points out that there is little information in practitioner journals addressing the behaviors in pragmatic terms. It also offers practical suggestions for human resource management.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Research shows authentic leadership has positive effect on performance and commitment in Iranian tourist sector	[ "Organizational commitment", "Employee performance", "Authentic leadership", "Iranian tourism industry" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: A study of employees from Iranian tourist agencies has shown that authentic leadership (AL) has a significant effect on both employee performance (EP) and organizational commitment (OC). The study's authors said the results suggested that managers could promote OC, and therefore EP, by adopting an AL style.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The goal was to try to find out if workers in Iranian tourist agencies benefited from the authentic leadership (AL) of their bosses\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors tested out four hypotheses on 216 employees of tourism agencies in the Guilan Province of Iran using a 19-item survey. Out of the 216 questionnaires sent out, they received back 173 valid responses. All four hypotheses were confirmed by the results.\nFindings: The data suggested that authentic leadership (AL) has a significant effect on both employee performance (EP) and organizational commitment (OC). The authors said the results suggested that managers could promote OC, and therefore EP, by adopting an AL style.\nOriginality/value: The authors felt their study contributed to research by demonstrating the mediating role of OC in connecting AL to EP. It was also the first study to explore these relationships in the tourism industry in Iran, a significant part of the country's economy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Occupational commitment from a life span perspective: An integrative review and a research outlook	[ "Review", "Career development", "Occupational commitment", "Career stage" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Occupational commitment (OC), which is broadly defined as the psychological link between a person and her or his occupation (Lee et al., 2000), represents a core concept for understanding an individual's career development and associated attitudes, behaviors and choices (Blau, 1989; Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran, 2005). Past research has shown that OC is related to, for instance, turnover intentions (Blau, 1989), job performance (Lee et al., 2000) and other commitment foci, such as work commitment (Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran, 2005), career satisfaction (Aryee et al., 1994) and work-non-work issues (Okurame, 2012). Hence, OC affects an individual's work and life-related development, and can be a guiding mechanism for meaningful, identity-building career and life planning (Meyer et al., 2008).\nThe concept of occupational commitment: We conceptualize OC as a psychological link between a person and her or his occupation (Lee et al., 2000). Thus, someone with higher OC strongly identifies with and has positive feelings about their occupation (Blau, 1985). Although such an affective OC dimension described as a person's emotional attachment to their occupation (Blau, 2003) or as desire to remain in the occupation (Meyer et al., 1993) was predominant in past OC research, other important dimensions of OC do exist: normative OC is defined as an obligation to remain in the occupation, whereas continuance OC can be seen as a perceived cost associated with leaving the occupation (Meyer et al., 1993). Frequently applied measures for either one or all three OC dimensions include the OC scales from the Blau (2003), or modified versions of organizational commitment measures (e.g. Meyer et al., 1993). Usually, among the three OC dimensions, studies have shown the strongest, but moderately positive relationship between affective and normative OC, followed by a weaker, positive relationship between normative and continuance OC (Meyer et al., 1993). Affective and continuance OC are occasionally negative, or not related (Meyer et al., 1993), although the latest meta-analysis on this topic shows, on average, a positive correlation, with a high variability between studies (Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran, 2005). This overall picture points toward the importance of differentiating between the three OC dimensions within this review.\nA life span perspective of occupational commitment: Life span theories (e.g. Baltes, 1987; Baltes et al., 2014; Carstensen, 2006) provide a useful theoretical lens for understanding OC because they acknowledge the construct's developmental component. Accordingly, OC and an individual's work and life-related progress are interrelated, such that career and life planning affects OC. Its developments, in turn, can guide career and personal life decisions (Baruch et al., 2014; Klein et al., 2012; Ok and Vandenberghe, 2016). The general premise of life span development theories is that individuals face different challenges (e.g. becoming a parent or changing a job) across their life span, which require adaptation and decisions about changing resources, emphasizing individual development as a central aspect of human life (Lerner and Busch-Rossnagel, 1981). Specifically, life span approaches highlight the relevance of different interrelated concepts - which we refer to as life span concepts - for human development and resource adjustment throughout one's life (e.g. Baltes et al., 2014; Carstensen, 2006; Super, 1990): chronological age, career stages, occupational and other life events, and occupational and other life roles. We argue that these interrelated life span concepts are also useful for organizing and integrating research on OC as a psychological link between a person and her or his occupation. The organizing framework for this review is depicted in Figure 1.\nLiterature search and selection: We conducted a web-based search to identify studies that examined OC within the fields of psychology, social sciences and business/management. First, we searched the Web of Science for the terms \"occupational commitment,\" \"career commitment,\" \"professional commitment\" and \"vocational commitment\" within the search fields title and abstract (for a similar strategy see also Lee et al., 2000). We did not restrict our search by publication date, but focused on publications in English. Second, so as not to miss central studies, we also searched central journals in these fields using Scopus (e.g. Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management and Journal of Vocational Behavior). We included only articles in our review that operationalized OC with a content valid measure, according to the definition of OC applied here, and hence, either assessed as affective, normative or continuance commitment (or a combination of these). For example, articles which studied career salience (Mihelic, 2014), career involvement (Gould, 1979), other commitment foci (Brooks et al., 1995), commitment to career choices (Blustein et al., 1989), or career planning, career identity and career resilience (Carson and Bedeian, 1994), were excluded. A full list of measures that were included in the review can be seen in Table AI.\nChronological age as an antecedent of occupational commitment: Chronological age refers to an individual's calendar age (Kooij et al., 2008), that is to say, the time that has passed since an individual's birth. For reasons of simplicity, when we refer to age in the following review, it is in the sense of chronological age. Authors in OC research have proposed that age should correlate positively with OC (Reilly and Orsak, 1991), specifically continuance OC, because of accumulating investments during a career in an occupation (De Vos et al., 2017) and presumably reduced career options for older employees due to limited alternatives (Tempest and Coupland, 2017). This argument builds on side-bet theory (Becker, 1960), which refers to an accumulation of investments that would be lost if the individual leaves the occupation. The theory reasons that side-bets tend to increase over one's life span, as individuals' investments aggregate over time. Therefore, age should be positively related with continuance OC.\nCareer stage as an antecedent of occupational commitment: Different models of career stages exist, but Super's theory of career development can be regarded as the most prominent (Low et al., 2016). Super's (1953) theory proposes that career development is a lifelong process, and that individuals progress through four career stages in their life span, which are related to active involvement in the world of work: exploration, establishment, maintenance and disengagement. Individuals in the exploration stage are discovering their interests and are entering into a new occupation. Individuals in the establishment stage usually increase their commitments to their occupation, aim to establish their competence and focus on advancement and growth. Individuals in the maintenance stage concentrate on maintaining their self-concept and the status quo, whereas individuals in the disengagement stage aim to develop a self-concept that is independent of their occupational life, whereas retirement issues become more salient. Against this background, career stages are frequently operationalized either as age or as tenure (Bishop and Solomon, 1989; Adams, 1999), whereas against the possibility of several types of career mobility, tenure is a closer proxy for career stages than age (Mount, 1984; Stumpf and Rabinowitz, 1981). Furthermore, new career models (Hall et al., 2018; Sullivan and Baruch, 2009; Arthur et al., 2005) highlight that individuals might recycle through different career stages, for example, when they change jobs or occupations later in life, or experience more frequent micro-stages, such as learning cycles within one career stage.\nOccupational and other life events as antecedents of occupational commitment: Occupational events (e.g. losing one's job or occupational restructuring) and other life events (e.g. marriage or death of loved one) can be defined as \"change events, that is events that precipitate movement from one equilibrium or the steady state to another\" (Holmes and Rahe, 1967, p. 216). Occupational and other life events are often framed as stressful events that necessitate individuals to readjust after the event happened (Holmes and Rahe, 1967), but can also be framed as positive, for example, against the background of positive career shocks, such as getting an unexpected promotion (Akkermans et al., 2018). Events can be categorized in terms of their impact (i.e. desirable vs undesirable) and their controllability (i.e. controllable vs uncontrollable). For example, marriage would be - at least in Western cultures - a desirable and controllable event, whereas losing one's job might represent an undesirable and often uncontrollable event.\nOccupational and other life roles as antecedents of occupational commitment: Super (1980) introduced the concept of life roles within and outside of work to specify the variety of roles that people occupy during their career as they mature. He distinguished among nine major life roles that are likely to be occupied by most people at some point in their lives, which can also be enacted at the same time: child, student, leisurite, citizen, worker, spouse, homemaker, parent and pensioner. The order in which these roles are occupied (with exception of the role of child) might differ between persons, and the type, number, temporal importance and emotional involvement associated with these roles is likely to vary with age and career stages due to the different developmental tasks individuals encounter. Following side-bet theory (Becker, 1960), individuals with higher extra-work responsibilities (e.g. as spouse and parent) should show higher levels of continuance OC because they do not want to lose their side-bet investments, due to the high levels of extra-work responsibilities and associated higher costs when leaving the profession (Howes and Goodman-Delahunty, 2014). Hence, occupying multiple roles or changing roles should affect side-bet evaluations and perceptions of continuance OC.\nOccupational and other life events as outcomes of occupational commitment: OC is not only affected by occupational and other life events, but OC can also affect the extent to which individuals experience such events. OC is a relevant antecedent for these events because it can be seen as a mindset that binds an individual to a course of action (as outcome), which is relevant for a specific target (Meyer and Herscovitch, 2001). In that sense, turnover can be interpreted as an occupational event that is interrelated with other life decisions (e.g. family home movement), and therefore possesses high relevance within a life span framework. In addition, occupational events, such as transitioning into retirement, might also be outcomes of OC (Wang and Shultz, 2010). More generally, event-related intentions (e.g. turnover intentions) that increase the probability of actual events (Cohen, 2000) are of specific relevance in this review. Finally, it is also plausible that all three OC dimensions are related to specific events as outcomes because all dimensions possess a behavioral intention component:\nDevelopment of occupational commitment over time: As the life span perspective describes the evolution of individuals over the course of their lives, and thereby implies OC developments over time, it is of central importance to understand the stability or malleability of the OC construct in this systematic review. Past research already acknowledged that commitment should be malleable due to an individuals' processing of internal and external states, which are considered to develop and change across one's life span (Klein et al., 2012). Furthermore, the previously mentioned new career theories (Sullivan and Baruch, 2009; Hall et al., 2018) suggest that OC might currently not be very stable because a kind of malleability and flexibility is useful for navigating labor markets nowadays, and because impactful life and career events (shocks) occur more frequently compared to decades ago (Akkermans et al., 2018).\nEmpirical studies that integrated different life span concepts: Up to now, we have primarily focused on review results that can be clearly linked to single life span concepts (introduced above) and associated research questions. However, the review framework presented in Figure 1 also refers to more complex integrative models that might account for interdependencies between different life span concepts. For example, a study that investigates a mediating effect from career stages to OC via occupational and other life events or roles would be highly relevant from a life span perspective. Studies that adapted such rationales found, for example, that career stages, in terms of tenure, impact affective OC through valuing leisure (Cunningham et al., 2012; Tang et al., 2012), that an increase in affective OC across career stages might be due to an increase in security needs across career stages (Adler and Aranya, 1984), that work-non-work role enrichment increases OC, which, in turn, leads to higher occupational turnover intentions (Russo and Buonocore, 2012), that different life span concepts predict one's own variance portions in affective OC (Okurame, 2012), or that age relates to affective OC via work engagement, and moderated the effects of the life role of being a parent (Buse and Bilimoria, 2014). Although some studies drew conclusions about multiple life span concept effects and OC, past research primarily investigated the life span concepts (from Figure 1) independently from each other, or treated central life span concepts (e.g. age or marriage) as control variables.\nOverall summary and contribution: Up to now, we conducted a systematic review of the quantitative literature on OC from a life span perspective. Overall, results of our systematic literature review provide a comprehensive overview of the existing literature on the relationship between life span concepts and affective, normative and continuance OC. Specifically, we identified several results that can be subsumed under a priori defined life span concepts that we linked to specific research questions within the organizing and integrating framework in Figure 1: age, career stages, occupational and other life roles and occupational and other life events.\nFuture research outlook: Future research on different life span concepts\nConclusion: This systematic and integrative review organized the OC literature from a life span perspective, thereby providing an alternative viewpoint on the topic, while considering several relevant theoretical approaches (e.g. side-bet theory, life span and career stage theories and new career models). Our review revealed that several studies - either explicitly or implicitly - applied a life span perspective. We hope that our review stimulates future research that can further draw upon theoretical life span approaches together with methodological advancements to foster dynamic career development thinking, in order to move the research field of OC forward in the upcoming years.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this review is to integrate and organize past research findings on affective, normative and continuance occupational commitment (OC) within an integrative framework based on central life span concepts.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors identified and systematically analyzed 125 empirical articles (including 138 cases) that examined OC with a content valid measure to the here applied definition of OC. These articles provided information on the relationship between OC and four distinct life span concepts: chronological age, career stages, occupational and other life events, and occupational and other life roles. Furthermore, developmental characteristics of OC in terms of construct stability and malleability were reviewed.\nFindings: The reviewed literature allowed to draw conclusions about the mentioned life span concepts as antecedents and outcomes of OC. For example, age and tenure is more strongly positively related to continuance OC than to affective and normative OC, nonlinear and moderating influences seem to be relevant in the case of the latter OC types. The authors describe several other findings within the results sections.\nOriginality/value: OC represents a developmental construct that is influenced by employees' work- and life-related progress, associated roles, as well as opportunities and demands over their career. Analyzing OC from such a life span perspective provides a new angle on the research topic, explaining inconsistencies in past research and giving recommendation for future studies in terms of dynamic career developmental thinking.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Human-related problems of information security in East African cross-cultural environments	[ "East Africa", "Data security", "Cross‐cultural studies", "International organizations", "Information management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: The Internal Control-Integrated Framework of Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) (1994) refers to ethnical values as a control environment factor in chapter 2, Control Environment. The section of Foreign Operations says, \"The expansion or acquisition of foreign operations carries new and often unique risks that management should address.\" The risks are mostly due to a different cultural environment.Solms (2005) states that information security management (ISM) should be defined as both technical and non-technical activities. Moreover, Bean (2006) states that 80 per cent of information security breaches are caused by human error. In general, people act on their perception which may be influenced by their culture. According to Hofstede and Hofstede (2004), culture influences people's beliefs and expectations. Schneier (2008) and Komatsu (2008) also state that people's expectations may be one of the causes of misjudgment concerning how to react to risks. Thus, it is natural to think that culture may have some relation to human errors, especially in a cross-cultural environment. There are extensive studies (Carrel et al., 1995; Hofstede and Hofstede, 2004), concerning cultural impact on the way of business in fields like organizational behavior and human resources management. One of the objectives of these fields is to understand better the reasons behind employees' reactions. Thus, unfavorable reactions can be predicted (Carrel et al., 1995). However, no one had carried out a quantitative study on this relationship with respect to ISM until Asai and Waluyan (2008), who studied the cultural impact on ISM and measured its magnitude by applying a measure they developed, called level of potential (LoP).The East African Community (EAC), the regional intergovernmental organization of the Republics of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, is chosen as an investee country in this paper because of its rising attractiveness for foreign direct investment (Chalker, 2008). UK, US, Belgium, China and Japan are selected as investor countries in this study, the first three for being among the top investing countries in the region and the last two for being recently active in the region.If there is a cultural gap between an investee country and an investor country and if foreign managers from the investor country are not aware of that gap, they may face some problems concerning ISM. The purposes of this research are to find what kinds of problems, while implementing information security policy, may take place in foreign companies in the EAC because of cultural differences and to suggest supplemental countermeasures in international frameworks such as COSO and ISO/IEC27001 to protect business information in a cross-cultural environment.\n2 Cultural dimensions: There are a wide variety of theories concerning cultural differences, such as those proposed by Hall (1976), Straker (2002), Hofstede and Hofstede (2004) and House (2004). This research has adopted the Hofstede's framework because his framework is the most comprehensive about how the sense of values in workplaces is influenced by culture and because he analyzed a large database which covered almost all the major countries. Based on the cultural data collected, he identified five dimensions and graded 74 countries on indices for each dimension. Yates (2006) interpreted and summarized Hofstede's definitions which are briefly illustrated in Table I. Table II lists Hofstede's scores for the five investor countries and the East African region.In order to clarify the magnitude of cultural dimensions, each one is divided into five degrees: very low, low, moderate, high and very high based on Hofstede's scores (Table II). For each cultural dimension, the difference between the highest score and the lowest score among the scores of all the countries in Hofstede's list is divided by five equally. Table II shows that UK and the USA have the same cultural degrees, while Japan and China show quite different degrees. East Africa has the same degree of long-term orientation (LTO) as UK and the USA and the same degree of power distance index (PDI) and masculinity (MAS) as Belgium.\n3 Research method: 3.1 Assumption\n4 Potential problems and logical prediction of their potential: Taking into consideration Hofstede's scores for the EAC and the authors' experience of working in foreign companies (one of the authors worked in East Africa and the other used to work for a global company), as well as the analysis in Section 2, a set of potential problems was developed. Table III lists the relationship between East African cultural dimensions and related potential problems in the EAC.The LoP of the five investor countries, as illustrated in Table IV, is calculated by using formula (1). Table V shows overall potential (scores) and their base data. The score of overall potential is calculated by aggregating numbers of levels. Numbers 1 through 5 are given to the lowest level (^) through the highest level (), respectively. Table V is created by marking a country with the mark of the highest LoP if a problem has more than one cause, for example, Problems 4 and 5. It also reveals that UK, the USA and Belgium are more likely to face problems due to individualism (IDV) and MAS. Japan and China are more likely to face problems due to MAS and LTO.\n5 Empirical analysis of potential problems: 5.1 Profile of survey\n6 Conclusions and future work: From the findings mentioned above, it can be deduced for the EAC that: The problems that may arise in British companies may also arise in American companies because of their cultural similarity.* British, Belgian and American companies have higher individualism-originated potential problems than Japanese or Chinese companies.* Japanese companies have the highest potential in facing problems due to MAS. The highly competitive environment that Japanese companies may create can push the workers to be careless about the manipulation and storage of information.* Belgian and Japanese companies which are stricter about the rules are likely to face more UAI-originated problems than American or British companies. Chinese companies have the highest potential to face problems due to LTO.* Overall, British, American and Japanese companies are found to have higher potential to face problems in the EAC than Belgian and Chinese companies.* The problem of \"using a previous company's confidential information\" has been found to have the highest severity.We recommend that ISO/IEC 27001 should state the necessity of managing change in foreign operations more clearly. It refers to the security concerning human resources mainly in regard to employment, but it does not mention anything about the influence of cultural differences. Even though the COSO (1994) framework refers to the influence of cultural differences, it does not offer any practical recommendations. Based on the problems mentioned previously, several actions can be recommended to the potential investor in the EAC as shown in Table VIII.We are planning to carry out more detailed analysis on a larger sample size and find the correlations between potential problems and local workers' characteristics.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to find what kinds of problems, while implementing information security policy, may take place in foreign companies in the East African Community (EAC) because of cultural differences, and to suggest supplemental countermeasures in international frameworks such as Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission and ISO/IEC27001.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Setting potential problems based on Hofstede's scores of cultural dimensions and the authors' experience, this paper predicts potential problems first by using the theory of level of potential. Local employees working for foreign companies were polled to evaluate the severity of the problems. Based on the survey results, the paper finds which problems may take place, what triggers them and how severe they are. Finally, it finds countermeasures to prevent the problems.\nFindings: - Overall, British, US and Japanese companies are found to have higher potential of facing problems in the EAC. The problem of \"using a previous company's confidential information\" has been found to have the highest severity. British, US and Belgian companies have individualism-originated problems. Japanese companies have the highest potential of facing problems due to masculinity. Chinese companies have the highest potential of facing problems due to long-term orientation. In addition, a list of countermeasures is proposed to protect business information.\nOriginality/value: - The paper has identified information security management (ISM)-related problems with their severities for each of the selected investing countries in the EAC, applying a new method to predict potential problems concerning ISM in foreign companies. It has recommended practical countermeasures against the six serious problems identified.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Take-off for Flybe's engineering training: Airline recognized as an awarding body for its own approved qualifications	[ "Airlines", "Aerospace engineering", "Training", "Apprenticeships" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Europe's largest regional airline is confronting the shortage of aircraft engineers head on - by linking with a further education college to train its own.\nBespoke, accredited qualifications: \"We have taken on degree-awarding powers and are now able to offer bespoke, Qualifications and Curriculum Authority-accredited qualifications rather than having to outsource education and training,\" commented the airline's director of safety, quality and training, Simon Witts.In addition to introducing the engineering apprenticeship program, Flybe is also ensuring that the extensive training undertaken by all its new cabin crew will be partly recognized through a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) in Aviation Operations in the Air. This is believed to be the first of its kind to be delivered on a funded basis in partnership with an external academic college.Moreover, Flybe call center employees have been enrolled on to an NVQ in Customer Service. \"This qualification will ensure they have all the skills appropriate for working in this important customer-focused environment,\" said Simon Witts.Chris Lorimer, head of business and marketing at Exeter College, commented: \"These qualifications offer fantastic opportunities for Flybe staff who want industry-leading qualifications and a career with a dynamic and respected employer.\"The engineering course, in particular, offers a great opportunity for all the new apprentices who will gain industry-leading qualifications and a career with a dynamic and respected employer. The course has attracted high-caliber recruits from as far afield as Manchester.\"Both partners believe the program's success will pave the way for other apprenticeship schemes that will have a stronger academic focus in addition to the normal, work-related training currently on offer.\"\nOther airlines may follow the Flybe example: \"With the aviation industry as a whole facing a shortage of engineers, we fully expect this program to be adopted by other major airlines as well as by other transport providers,\" said Simon Witts.Global airline losses exceeded $5 billion last year, with many operators struggling in light of rising fuel prices and economic downturn. Flybe, however, recorded pre-tax earnings of PS12.2 million for April-June 2008 - a 14 percent rise on the previous year.\"In the last year, Flybe has confounded the global aviation-industry trend by continuing to develop and thrive as a business and one of our key areas of focus has been training,\" Simon Witts explained. \"In an industry that relies heavily on having access to a continual supply of highly skilled workers, we fully recognize the critical need for quality training.\"Following its acquisition of BA Connect, Flybe has over 190 routes serving 12 countries, operating from a total of 63 departure points, 34 UK and 29 European airports. Positioning itself not as a budget carrier but as a regional airline for business and other regular travelers, Flybe is the only airline out of 150 leading UK companies to sign the Government's Skills Pledge.The airline, which boasts five times more domestic routes than any other UK airline, is now the biggest mid-market private company in Britain, according to the Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 250 league table. It is majority-owned by the Rosedale family trust of the late steel magnate Sir Jack Walker, and by its staff.Mike Rutter, Flybe chief commercial officer, commented:To be recognized as the No. 1 mid-market private company in the country is a huge testament to the hard work and commitment of all our staff. The significant developments we have made in the last 18 months have created and maintained a thriving and profitable airline. The Top Track 250 achievement is recognition of our long-term strategy, focused management actions and successful business model.Flybe won the 2008 Regional Leadership award at the recent Global Airline Strategy awards and Flight International's Best Management Team award.\nNote: David Pollitt, Human Resource Management International Digest editor, wrote this article.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to describe how regional airline Flybe has teamed up with Exeter College to provide a four-year programme in aerospace engineering, plus training for cabin crew and call-center employees.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper focuses on the engineering training and describes the advantages for the airline and participants.\nFindings: - The paper advances the view that the engineering course is the only one of its kind in the UK where apprentices stay in full-time education to study for a foundation degree combined with hands-on practical aircraft and associated-skills experience. It reveals that the program is possible because Flybe is one of only three companies in the UK to achieve the standards required to be officially recognized as an awarding body for its own approved qualifications.\nPractical implications: - The paper underlines the role the training is providing in helping the airline to expand, even against the background of global downturn.\nOriginality/value: - The paper highlights the critical need for quality training in an industry that relies heavily on having access to a continual supply of highly skilled workers.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Capacity building boost employees performance	[ "Career development", "Employee performance", "Capacity building", "Supervisory support" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Organizational performance could be enhanced by aligning the performance management techniques with HRM practices (Hartog et al., 2004). Employee performance leads to improve overall efficiency and productivity of organization processes. Employee performance refers to the activities and tasks performed by an employee efficiently and effectively. Performance can be measured by managers through different mechanisms (Saleem and Amin, 2013). There are various factors that affect the employee performance such as monetary benefits, training programs, non-monetary benefits, organizational support, organizational support for career development (OSCD), supervisory support and capacity building programs, etc. Resultantly employee performance enhances profitability of the organization (Gul et al., 2012).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Employee performance\n3. Methods: Quantitative research design was followed. A field survey was conducted to create statistically testable sample with the help of significance of relations among variables were measured and hypothesis testing design was followed with the measure of association method. Constructs such as OSCD and supervisory support, employee performance and capacity building were tested with the help of SPSS version 20. Items used in testing were tested in preliminary pilot test phase in order to ensure validity of measures before going for data collection and testing.\n4. Results and discussion: First, we hypothesized that supervisory support and OSCD positively correlate with employee performance. Table I highlight positive b value 0.175, which means independent variable has 17 percent influence on criterion variable, slightly less impact. The t-value indicates the significant impact of independent variables on dependent variable. The t-value of this independent variable is 1.574 that reflects less involvement of supervisory and OSCD on employee performance in Pakistani banking sector. Similarly, it is less significant, as result indicates that p-value is 0.1 levels, which are above than standard value of 0.05 acceptable in social science research. Barnett and Bradle (2007) have also found the positive relation between OSCD and employee performance; however, having results of (b=0.028, p<0.01).\n5. Conclusion: Efficiency and effectiveness in employee performance leads to overall banking growth. In this study, we highlighted prior contribution in which factors that influence employee performance were discussed. Specifically we spotlight on capacity building because skill development of employees contribute to increase productivity. Moreover, this research argued about the role of supervisor support toward his or her team members does not increase employee performance. Research outcomes depict that supervisory support and OSCD does not impact significantly on employees performance of banking sector of Pakistan. Lack of awareness and deficiency is observed in banks about contributions in career development support. This indicates disinterest of banking top management in creating and providing career growth opportunities in their organization.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to conduct to investigate the factors that enhance employee's performance at workplace. To observe intrinsic feature capacity building and extrinsic features such as supervisory support and organizational support for career development (OSCD) role in employee's productivity.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Quantitative research approach was used; middle level employees of banking industry were selected for analyzing this concept. Reliability and validly of 45 items were ensured and SPSS version 20 was used for model testing by multiple regression analysis technique.\nFindings: Research outcomes depict that supervisory support and OSCD development does not impact significantly on employees performance of banking sector, whereas capacity building of an individual employee leads to enhance his/her performance.\nResearch limitations/implications: Capacity building of employee's leads to enhance performance as justified by this research, however, cannot be achieved without providing support for career development to their employees. Therefore, impact of organizational support on capacity building of employee's may be interest corner for researchers.\nOriginality/value: Observed capacity building positive has impact on employee's performance along with the external factors with statistically significant measures.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Subtle but spotted? Influencing factors of customer-perceived weight discrimination	[ "Other customers", "Self-esteem", "Frontline employee", "Overweight", "Marketplace discrimination", "Pre-encounter affect" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Overweight is a severe problem in developed countries. Over 70 per cent of the US population is overweight (National Center for Health Statistics, 2018). Worldwide, the overweight population doubled from 1980 until now, resulting in more than 1.9 billion overweight adults (World Health Organization, 2018). At the same time, society places a strong emphasis on appearance and body image (Rumsey and Harcourt, 2012), so overweight customers run a great risk of being stigmatized and experiencing unequal treatment (Ruggs et al., 2015). Studies find that about 40 per cent of overweight people report frequent weight discrimination by firms and frontline employees in various services industries (Puhl et al., 2008). Be it overt or covert, weight discrimination significantly reduces overweight customers' well-being (Walsh, 2009) and is associated with higher mortality (Sutin et al., 2015). For service firms, discrimination negatively affects customer satisfaction (Baker et al., 2008) and ultimately endangers financial performance (King et al., 2006; Walsh, 2009).\nConceptual framework and hypotheses: Overview\nPilot study: Goals\nStudy 1: Goals\nStudy 2: Goals\nStudy 3: Goals\nDiscussion: Weight discrimination is a recurring experience for many service customers as overweight surges worldwide (Puhl et al., 2008; World Health Organization, 2018). Extant studies on weight discrimination focus on the drivers and consequences of discriminatory behavior by frontline employees (King et al., 2006; Parkinson et al., 2017); however, these studies do not address customers' perception of weight discrimination and the factors influencing their perception.\nManagerial implications: Our study yields beneficial insights for service managers. First, the results show that customers notice covert marketplace discrimination. Therefore, it is best to prevent the occurrence of marketplace discrimination in the first place in order to prevent the negative consequences of marketplace discrimination, such as negative word-of-mouth, decreased customer loyalty, and lower financial returns (Walsh, 2009). Managers are encouraged to train their frontline employees to treat vulnerable customers in an appropriate, nondiscriminatory and inclusive way, conveying a welcoming and positive environment (Fisk et al., 2018). Second, customers seem to rely on a categorization of the frontline employee in terms of similarity when facing a possibly discriminatory incident. In order to maximize instances in which customers consider themselves similar to the employees, managers should pursue a diverse workforce. Diversity as the distribution of disparities among organizational members with regard to a mutual attribute (Harrison and Klein, 2007) can thus contribute to a lower potential for discrimination in service situations. Third, managers should adapt the servicescape in order to influence customers' pre-encounter affect positively so that negative affect diminishes. For example, they could make use of music (Garlin and Owen, 2006) or color (Bellizzi and Hite, 1992) to reduce negative affect.\nLimitations and future research: This study has limitations, which provide direction for further research. First, we designed the study as an online experiment, which besides other limitations has less control compared to experiments conducted in a laboratory (Reips, 2000). However, we used established data cleaning techniques in order to ensure high data quality. A second limitation is the use of pictures as stimulus material. Although research considers pictures as ecologically valid stimuli (Bateson and Hui, 1992), future research may replicate our findings using video stimuli or conducting the study in a field setting.\nConclusion: Weight discrimination is a recurring experience for many service customers as overweight surges worldwide. Drawing on field theory, this paper investigates how two environment factors, frontline employee overweight and frontline employees' neutral treatment of other customers, and two person factors, customer pre-encounter affect and self-esteem, influence customer perception of covert weight discrimination by frontline employees. Across a pilot study and three experimental studies, we find that customers perceive covert weight discrimination. Frontline employee overweight mitigates the effect of covert discrimination, and (state and trait) self-esteem amplifies this effect. Frontline employees' neutral treatment of other customers is insignificant. Customer (state and trait) negative affect influences perceived discrimination independent of covert discrimination. Overall, our findings advance extant knowledge by demonstrating initial drivers and boundary conditions of customer-perceived weight discrimination.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Studies report that frontline employees frequently discriminate against overweight customers, a group of vulnerable consumers that is growing worldwide. However, because most discrimination by frontline employees is covert, the authors ask whether overweight customers perceive discrimination and what influences this perception. Drawing on field theory, this paper aims to investigate how two environment factors (frontline employee overweight and frontline employees' neutral treatment of other customers) and two person factors (customer pre-encounter affect and self-esteem) influence customer-perceived weight discrimination.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In a pilot study and three experimental studies, the authors examine the impact of covert discrimination of overweight customers by frontline employees on customers' perception of discrimination and the influencing effects of environment and person factors. Hypotheses are tested using regression analysis.\nFindings: The authors find that overweight customers perceive covert weight discrimination by frontline employees. Frontline employee overweight mitigates the effect of covert discrimination, and (state and trait) self-esteem amplifies this effect. Frontline employees' neutral treatment of other customers is insignificant. Customer (state and trait) negative affect directly increases customer-perceived discrimination independent of covert discrimination.\nOriginality/value: While extant research focuses on marketplace discrimination triggers and consequences, the perspective of the discriminated customer and what influences his or her perception of covert discrimination has attracted much less attention. Moreover, research rarely addresses overweight as a discrimination trigger. As environment and person influences frequently shape service encounters, the authors contribute novel and relevant insights to the literature. This is of high value, especially in light of the harmful consequences marketplace discrimination entails for customers and service firms.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Using SERVQUAL to determine Generation Y's satisfaction towards hoteling industry in Malaysia	[ "Malaysia", "Service quality", "SERVQUAL", "Hotel industry", "Gen Y" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Global market trend has been changing remarkably in favor of services sector, with businesses striving to provide their best service quality to satisfy their customers. This is highly evident in the hotel industry (Rao and Sahu, 2013). Malaysia aims to become a developed nation by 2020 and tourism is one of its key economic factors to achieve this aim (Roslan et al., 2015). In such a tourism-oriented country, the hotel industry should naturally be one of the most rapidly growing service industries (Huijun et al., 2015). Evidently, travel and tourism have been contributing greatly to Malaysia's economy with a direct contribution of RM 61bn (5.7 percent of GDP) in 2014, and is forecasted to increase until 2025 (Huijun et al., 2015; Turner, 2015). In this regard, the domestic travelers within Malaysia are also found to be the key economic drivers in this sector (Rao and Sahu, 2013).\nLiterature review: Service quality and the SERVQUAL model\nResearch methodology: Figure 1 depicts the relationship between the five dimensions of SERVQUAL (the independent variables) and customer satisfaction (the dependent variable).\nAnalysis, results and discussion: Missing data are a serious problem in data analysis (Tabachnick and Fidel, 2001; Kline, 2011). Although many of the statistical software do account for ways of solving this problem, yet it becomes problematic. Hence, scholars (see e.g. Roth, 1994; De Vaus, 2001; Schafer and Graham, 2002; Kline, 2011) recommend taking special care in developing, distributing and collecting the questionnaires. Keeping in line with the suggestions, the questionnaire was administered by the researcher, hence there were no rejected or false entries and all the 200 questionnaires were usable. Table II shows the demographics of the respondents.\nDiscussion: As the overall p-value for the model is significant (see Table V), hence it is safe to conclude that this model has a predictive validity in finding the influence of service quality on Gen Y's satisfaction toward Malaysian hotel industry. Thus, H1 is accepted. This study supports previous empirical findings on the relationship between SERVQUAL and guest satisfaction (Jones et al., 2007; Hu et al., 2009; Li and Krit, 2012; Saghier, 2013). Therefore, it implies that the higher level of service quality can lead to greater satisfaction which ultimately leads to higher success in Malaysian hotel industry as it will increase the chances to generate and maximize sales revenue. At the same time, higher level of satisfaction of Gen Y will help the hotel industry to increase the retention rate of old customers, help to build word of mouth and increase the referral for new customers. Indeed, service quality is crucial and hotel management should put emphasis on it.\nConclusions and recommendations: This research was conducted to understand and determine the effect of Gen Y's perceived service quality on their satisfaction toward the Malaysian hotel industry. It can be concluded that this study provided sufficient evidence to use SERVQUAL to understand Gen Y's satisfaction toward Malaysian hotel industry. It was found that all SERVQUAL dimensions strongly correlate to customer satisfaction, while four of these dimensions (tangibility, reliability, assurance and empathy) have significant influence on customer satisfaction. This study is conducted on multiple locations in Malaysia to get higher generalizability of the results. Although few cultural differences prevail for location differences, therefore, future study could attempt to investigate how the perception of Gen Y differs in terms of location. It will enhance the understanding and create profound insights in the SERVQUAL literature.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to use SERVQUAL to measure Generation Y's (Gen Y) perceived service quality and its effects on their satisfaction toward the Malaysian hotel industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The required data were collected through questionnaire, distributed to 200 respondents in four areas of Klang Valley. The collected data were put through multiple regression to identify the effect of SERVQUAL dimensions on service quality.\nFindings: The results reveal that all the elements of SERVQUAL, except tangibility, had a significant and positive relationship with customer satisfaction.\nResearch limitations/implications: It is a niche area research which is done on a small population in a specified geographical area within Malaysia, though its research implications are significant and add significantly to the tourism literature with respect to Gen Y.\nPractical implications: This research holds importance in the growing service tourism and hoteling industry in Malaysia, where Gen Y holds a key economic position and is predicted to grow even further in the near future.\nOriginality/value: It is a niche area research done on very specific consumers in Malaysia. It, therefore, adds to the emerging field of tourism in relation to Gen Y.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Accounting for activity development through perspectives in an inbound call centre	[ "Development", "Call centre", "Activity theory", "Salient configurations", "Work perspective" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: The activity theory or \"cultural-historical activity theory\" is an interdisciplinary theoretical framework which involves various trends of research in education (Engestrom et al., 2002), computer science (Virkkunen and Kuutti, 2000; Nardi, 1996), work psychology (Clot, 1999) and French ergonomics. Its main ideas were elaborated by L.S. Vygotsky and his students at the beginning of the twentieth century (Davydov and Radzikhovskii, 1999). Here, the activity theory (AT) refers broadly to the legacy of these Russian scholars as interpreted and further developed in current research. This \"complex of related but heterogeneous proposals\" (Rogoff et al., 1995, p. 125) share certain conceptual communalities that clearly distinguish them from other prominent ethnographic approaches of work (Licoppe, 2009).\nAn overview of activity theory: Challenging the prevailing psychological theories of the time, Vygotsky argued that, to understand consciousness and related psychological phenomenon, the explanatory principle must be sought \"outside\" the mind itself, within the \"socially laden activity\" (Kozulin, 1986) of the individuals. He suggested that higher mental functions must be seen as products of mediated activity through the individual's social and cultural interactions with the environment using psychological and material tools. Historically constituted artefacts \"shape\" human activity, both externally and internally, and enable individuals to control their own behaviour. As Kaptelinin (2005) states it, much of the appeal of activity-oriented approaches, for both practitioners and researchers, lies in its \"view of subjective and objective phenomena as being fundamentally inseparable\" (p. 5).\nSituated action and cognition models: \"Seeing as a situated activity\": The central project of the situated action and cognition models is to capture the \"unfolding character of problem-solving processes\" (Lave, 1988, p. 3) and action in situ. Both of these models offer a radical departure from traditional cognitive science. The \"means of exit\", as Lave (1988) puts it, from a \"theoretical perspective that depends upon a claustrophobic view of cognition from inside a laboratory\" are different. Suchman's well-known \"Plans and situated action\" build upon ethnomethodology and focus on language as a \"central resource for achieving the objectivity of situations\" (Suchman, 1979, p. 50). Lave relies on social theory (namely, the work of Giddens, Cole and Scribner) to grasp practice as an \"open-ended structure-in process\" (p. 148). In other words, the point is to understand how the ongoing activity, at one and the same time, structures and is structured or bound to situational resources.\nFrom professional vision to professional perspectives: However, structuring for human action and cognition, these practices that provide different \"horizons of meaning and relevance\" (Goodwin and Goodwin, 1998) are not studied as a historically shaped evolving systems. Work groups (such as product assemblers, baggage loaders or geochemists) share common objects (i.e. milk cases, planes) that are perceived differently because different attributes are relevant under the practical circumstances of their work. How do professionals come to \"see\" the same physical object differently? In what way the relational character of work activities (division of labour, rules, communities) shapes and is shaped by local work relevant perspectives? How redesigning division of labour bears upon the \"webs of accountability\" that characterize different work positions?\nMaterial and method: A health call centre for three mutual insurance companies\nResults: To support that perspectives are grounded on salient configurations, we focus on two different tasks (opening and sorting out the mails and pre-processing of estimates), which are closely interdependent. To begin with, we describe the pre-processing of estimates and how it relates to the overall service delivered to the users as defined by the quantitative indicators set by the mutual insurance companies (three days treatment for users' estimates and 95 per cent of call pick-up rate). Second, we analyse the opening and sorting out the mails and highlight the \"clues\" that the supervisor is focusing on. These include both textual and numeric components as well as certain physical features of the envelopes. Our aim is to show that these \"salient configurations\" only have meaning and value in reference to the subsequent data entry and analysis. Finally, we briefly present and discuss a \"case of the week\" and a situation where an experienced call operator explains to a novice data entry clerk \"where to look at and why\" when indexing a document in the database. We argue that the social team's perspective on the object of the activity both reconfigures and potentially challenges \"practices of seeing\" by incorporating new \"salient configurations\".\nDiscussion: In this paper, we argued that the relationship between the activity as a system and the situated work practices could be addressed through the notion of perspectives and that of salient configurations, i.e. the distinctive features of work-related objects as \"handled\" by professionals at work. Indeed, situated action and cognition models provide an insight into the way professionals come to \"see\" meaningful events in practice. From this point of view, \"professional visions\" appear as socially situated activity accomplished through the deployment of a set of historically constituted discursive practices: \"all visions are perspectival and lodged within endogenous communities of practice\" (Goodwin, 1994, p. 606). Through highlighting, applying coding schemes or using specific tools, individuals-in-interaction are not merely observing, but (inter)actively \"shaping\" events. The collective, purposeful and deeply relational character of the specific activities at hand is both recognized and insufficiently addressed in the analysis.\nConclusion: Our study aimed at documenting and analysing professional perspectives, the collective stances towards the object of the activity, as supported by salient configurations which are subjects' seeing practices. We hope our approach could give rise to future work on the development of perspectives-oriented approach to organization and activity, especially on understanding how a particular perspective might be hindered or encouraged in an activity system through the analysis of the salient configurations it builds upon and develops. While the results and analysis presented in the paper may appear far from practitioners' concerns, we think that the notions of perspective and that of salient configurations are of relevance for organizational change and work and development intervention. If our work is not directly transferable to other organizations without further development, we can already identify at Health Info the tools that were fruitful for the development of the professional perspectives we were dealing with.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to address the methodological and conceptual challenges arising from the use of activity theory as a theoretical framework in empirical studies of work.\nDesign/methodology/approach: To grasp the relationship between situated action and activity development, the authors build upon the concept of perspective and suggest that perspectives are grounded on salient configurations, which are both emergent in situ and collectively elaborated cultural resources. Empirical evidence for these theoretical considerations is provided through a two-year ethnographic study of the organizational change and collective activity at an inbound call centre for a number of mutual health insurance companies. This research used several data collection techniques such as ethnographic observation, video recordings and interviews.\nFindings: The presented results highlight that seemingly unskilled routine practices such as opening and sorting the mail rely upon a complex set of informational resources that only have \"value\" and meaning in a broader relational context, that of the activity.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this paper is the use of salient configurations as a basis for the operationalization of the notion of perspective and open new avenues of thought (and action) on situated work practices as embedded within activities.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Local governance, corruption, and public service quality: evidence from a national survey in Vietnam	[ "Governance", "Vietnam", "Corruption", "Public service" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Corruption is widely seen as an obstacle for a country development (Kaufmann, 2005). At the national level, corruption deters investment, inhibits innovation, and slows down economic growth (Kaufmann, 2005; Luo, 2002). When it comes to developing countries, there is a strong debate on whether corruption has any negative impact on economic development. A number of studies have found that corruption entrenches hunger and poverty, inhibits innovation, and triggers social instability (Otusanya, 2011; Nguyen et al., 2016).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Effects of corruptions\n3. Data description: The data for the empirical analysis are drawn from the Vietnam Provincial Governance and PAPI surveys during 2011-2014 (CECODES, VFF-CRT and UNDP, 2014). The surveys were conducted jointly by the Centre for Community Support Development Studies (CECODES) under the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Vietnam. This is an annual national survey of citizens' experiences in the three processes across provinces in Vietnam: policy making, policy implementation, and the monitoring of public service delivery. Its sampling method is probability proportion to size to which the selection of districts, communes/wards, and villages/groups is randomized. Therefore, the chance of getting included in the survey is dependent on the population proportions of those geographical observations. Since 2011, the survey has been conducted in all of the 63 provinces in Vietnam. It targets annually some 207 districts, 414 communes/wards, and 828 villages/groups. Each year about 14,000 people/individuals, aged from 18 and above, are randomly selected for direct interviews by the questionnaire-based survey method[1]. We used data from 2011 to 2014 to test our hypotheses. Data were run for each year separately, and the use of multi-year data allowed us to check for consistency of the relationships between interested variables over time.\n4. Estimation strategy: This section describes the benchmark econometric models for examining: the effects of citizen participation, transparency, and accountability on corruption; and the effects of corruption on the quality of public service delivery, specifically in the health care and primary education sectors. The former is based on the individual-level data, and the latter is reliant on the district-level aggregated data. The data used in these two classes of models is in the four-year period from 2011 to 2014.\n5. Result analysis: 5.1 Relationship between transparency, accountability, and citizen participation with corruption\n6. Concluding remarks: In this study, we set out to empirically examine whether or not citizen participation, transparency, and accountability are associated with lower level of corruption, and whether lower levels of corruption relate to better public service quality. To that aim, we utilize PAPI data on provincial governance in Vietnam provided by the UNDP. Our results show that persistent corruption is associated with low-quality education and healthcare services. This means that the \"greasing the wheels\" synthesis is refuted in our sample. Although bribes may speed up some administrative procedures and provide incentives for better services, these effects are largely short term and transaction specific. This insight is important for Vietnam and other developing countries where bureaucratic procedures may induce a temptation for bribery and corruption and cloud the long-term damage of such corrupted acts.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine whether higher levels of transparency, accountability, and participation have a statistically significant association with corruption, and whether corruption is highly correlated with lower public service quality in the context of Vietnam's transition economy.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using individual-level survey data from Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index, the research employs an ordered probit model to test whether greater transparency, accountability, and participation is associated with lower levels of corruption. Moreover, district-level data are used to test the relationship between corruption and quality of public services particularly in healthcare and primary education.\nFindings: Results show that a higher level of transparency, participation, and accountability is associated with a lower level of corruption, and that corruption is negatively associated with public service quality.\nResearch limitations/implications: The use of cross-sectional data does not allow the establishment of causal relationships among variables.\nPractical implications: The research suggests that fostering accountability to citizens and non-state sectors and promotion of genuine participation from these actors are critical for the future anti-corruption agenda.\nOriginality/value: In developing countries, whether corruption enhances efficiency of service provision is highly debatable. This research contributes to this debate by suggesting that corruption significantly decreases the quality of public service, and that improving local governance helps reduce corruption.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Exploring the approaches to care of faith-based and secular NGOs in Cambodia that serve victims of trafficking, exploitation, and those involved in sex work	[ "Cambodia", "NGOs", "Care", "Faith-based organizations" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Faith-based organisations (FBOs) play a major role in providing services to people in developing countries, often filling gaps where services are not provided by the state. Given research over the past 20 years, FBOs are now \"increasingly well-documented\" (Ware et al., 2016, p. 322), and they have been regular participants in global policy debates at the United Nations (Haynes, 2014). Yet, despite their expansive work around the globe, questions remain about how they compare to their secular counterparts. In some cases, FBOs have been perceived to have advantages over secular NGOs. For example, Flanigan (2009, p. 170) stated that staff from FBOs believed faith brought \"added value\" to the services they provided, though these perceptions differed based on country context and religious tradition. Similarly, in Cambodia, representatives from FBOs emphasised that faith traditions put an emphasis on dignity, humanity, and compassion, which was an emphasis perceived to be lacking in development approaches that were secular (Bodakowski, 2009). However, Clarke and Ware (2015) note that, while a perception exists in the literature that a distinction exists between FBOs and secular NGOs, the distinction is often made by the organisations themselves for fundraising purposes. In fact, research has concluded that clear distinctions between these two types of organisations are not always evident, in both developed and developing countries (Clarke and Ware, 2015; Grettenberger et al., 2006; Johnsen, 2014; Kissane, 2008; Leurs, 2012). This begs a question about when, and in what contextual circumstances, FBOs and secular NGOs are clearly demarcated.\nMethods: Cambodia has a thriving sex trade industry, including on-street prostitution and entertainment workers employed at beer gardens, massage parlours, and karaoke establishments. FHI 360 and UNICEF Cambodia (2012, p. 10) reported that most female sex workers in their study had come from \"very poor families where there was reportedly a lack of emotional love and support\". In addition, children and women have been victimized through sexual abuse, rape, and exploited in commercial markets. Virgin sales, for example, have been reported by the US Department of State (2014) as continuing to be a problem.\nTheoretical base and conceptual framework: Ebaugh et al. (2003) wrote of religion as an element that \"infuses\" FBOs, for example, in the ways in which an FBO self-presents, makes decisions, and interacts with clients. They found that the culture of FBOs \"significantly differentiates\" these organisations from their non-faith-based counterparts, with FBOs in their study \"supporting a culture thoroughly imbued with religious values in terms of staff interactions with clients\" (Ebaugh et al., 2003, p. 423). This paper builds on the work of Ebaugh et al. (2003) in a development context, demonstrating that faith infused FBOs in the present study in a way that demonstrates clear demarcation between the approaches to care of FBOs and their secular counterparts. Developing this theoretical understanding of faith infusing some FBOs, the findings examine specific ways in which this was empirically evident, clarifying significant differences observed between the two types. Furthermore, this paper considers the findings in relation to their development context, adding insight to the literature on the importance of the wider context when considering similarities and distinctions between FBOs and secular NGOs. It is argued in this paper that the development context heightened distinctions found between the Christian FBOs and secular NGOs in the study, leading to clear demarcation between the two types. This clear distinction contrasts with other research that problematises the notion of clearly demarcating organisations as \"religious\" and \"secular\" (e.g. Leurs, 2012).\nFindings: All 25 organisations in the study were identified as operating with an approach to care that sought behavioural or recovery outcomes from their clients, though these varied depending on the type of client(s) an organisation served and whether it was faith-based or secular. Table I presents an overview of the types of services organisations offered to victims of trafficking, exploitation, and those involved in sex work.\nThe \"input\" of faith: Along with similarities in the approaches to care of FBOs and secular NGOs was significant divergence resulting from the \"input\" of faith in FBOs and their approaches to care. This finding builds on the notion of faith as an element that can infuse FBOs in clearly evident ways. This \"input\" of faith was a critical element that influenced the services and programmes of FBOs in the study. FBOs were found to use an approach to care that, as Cloke et al. (2005) discussed in their UK-based study, elevated the perceived spiritual needs of their clients alongside other needs. Elevating spiritual needs was connected to the religious beliefs of FBO actors which, as reported in the Methods section, were markedly different from those of secular NGO respondents. While the notion of elevating clients' spiritual needs alongside other needs was described by FBO respondents in various ways, FBO respondents typically understood God as bringing about change, healing, and transformation in clients, though some emphasised the importance of clients' spirituality more than others. Some FBO respondents mentioned the value of faith driving the commitment of staff. For example, one FBO respondent stated:And in terms of client change [...] it's not about the client being Christian, it's about our staff being passionate with what they do because of the motivation they have due to their faith. [...] obviously, there's a lot of issues about skills, as well. But the passion, the motivation, the dedication of the staff who have that strong faith - it really makes a lot of difference with the changes that's happening with the client, particularly when it comes to how much time they spend with the client and how much - you know, what kind of affection they show, keeping them feel secure.\nThe role of religion in secular NGOs: While faith was found to infuse FBOs in this study, and while a Christian ethos drove their approaches to care, secular NGOs prioritised spiritual issues differently, if at all. Without faith as an organisational input, secular NGOs reported a clear separation from religious involvement, emphasising the secular nature of their organisations and their policy not to discriminate. However, religious elements were included in the programming of some secular NGOs, though these were different in nature and scope from the religious elements in FBOs. The religious elements incorporated into secular NGOs were aligned with the development context in which the organisations worked, namely, the state religion, Theravada Buddhism, which is integral to Cambodian society and culture.\nDiscussion: Considering the extent to which faith influences the ways FBOs, serving a particular demographic in Cambodia, work with their clients, this paper used an input-output conceptual model as a framework to evaluate faith as an \"input\" in FBOs, comparing the approaches to care of FBOs and secular NGOs. This study provided insight about the non-resource input of \"faith\" significantly influencing the services and approaches to care of FBOs. Furthermore, this paper considered, theoretically, why similar faith elements were not observed in secular NGOs, given the development context in which the organisations operated. While faith elements were part and parcel of FBOs and their services, a similar relationship between religion and secular NGOs was not observed. While secular NGOs included religious elements that were integral to the (Theravada Buddhist) religious context of Cambodia, the understanding of these elements was wholly different than the (Christian) religious elements that were part and parcel of the programmes and ideologies of FBOs.\nFaith in approaches to care: FBOs maintained a high regard for the spiritual needs of their clients and incorporated faith practices and activities into their programming, believing them to be important for clients' well-being. While this is largely unsurprising, it is a key finding that all FBOs in the study maintained this approach to care, given that incorporating faith-based practices in activities should not be considered standard in Christian FBOs in all other contexts (e.g. Campbell and Glunt, 2006). The study found that the ways in which FBOs operationalised faith practices differed among them, as well as whether and how they intentionally sought spiritual outcomes. Engaging with faith was believed to lead to various changes in client spirituality, including spiritual healing, transformation, and a new awareness of, and spiritual connection to, the Christian understanding of God. While respondents often emphasised that clients were not forced to take part in faith-related activities, a minority of FBOs did expect or assume client participation in such activities. Though they did not mandate conversion from their clients, the nature of some of this programming may complicate the notion of client choice.\nStudy implications and future research: While FBO respondents typically indicated that faith-related programming was voluntary, given the importance of faith practices to the services FBOs provide their clients, FBOs would do well to always ensure that they provide an environment in which clients have complete freedom to choose whether or not to participate in faith-related programming. Echoing the recommendation by Miles et al. (2013, p. 101), it is important for FBOs to assess and balance the \"vulnerabilities, age and context\" of clients when spiritual supports are offered by FBOs, including through discussions with clients that may assist them in thinking about their own beliefs. It has also been suggested that FBOs include the topic of spiritual abuse in their child protection policies, thus willingly and transparently acknowledging to policymakers their practices related to incorporating faith-based programming into their organisations.\nConclusion: The aim of this paper has been to examine the extent to which faith influences the ways FBOs in a particular development context work with their clients. Responding to the desire for \"understanding better the work of the faith-inspired world\" in Cambodia, reportedly expressed by some secular organisations and donors (Delaney and Scharff, 2010, p. 26), the paper analysed FBO and secular NGO approaches to care, finding that all organisations in the study sought behavioural or recovery outcomes in their clients. This paper contributes to the literature by bringing insight into the similarities of, and differences between, FBOs and secular NGOs providing services to a particular clientele in Cambodia, and provides empirical knowledge to address the \"need to explore the difference between religious and secular actors in development practice\" (Green et al., 2012).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Faith-based organisations (FBOs) and secular NGOs provide important services to victims of trafficking, exploitation, and those involved in sex work, yet comparative analysis of their approaches to care has lacked attention in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine these two types of organisations, exploring the extent to which faith influences the ways FBOs work with their clients.\nDesign/methodology/approach: In total, 41 interviews were conducted with leaders of 13 Christian FBOs and 12 secular NGOs in Cambodia, and organisational mission statements were reviewed. An input-output conceptual model was used as a framework to gather and analyse data.\nFindings: While all FBOs maintained a high regard for their clients' spiritual needs and operated with a faith-related approach to care, secular NGOs also, at times, included culturally embedded religious elements into their programming. The nature of FBOs' faith-related programming, however, clearly distinguished these organisations from their secular counterparts. Despite such distinctions, similarities were maintained among both types of organisations in the behavioural or recovery outcomes they sought in their clients.\nResearch limitations/implications: Limitations include the study's focus on organisations that serve a specific clientele in one development context. Research implications include the study pointing to the necessity of acknowledging the development context as critical to the ways in which religion may or may not influence the approaches to care of both FBOs and secular NGOs. The paper also contributes insight into the relationship between the non-resource input of faith, and services provided by FBOs.\nPractical implications: Given that both types of organisations sought change in their clients, practitioners should ensure that their organisational approaches to care are conducive to the outcomes they seek. Though organisational policy may stipulate that clients are free to choose whether or not to participate in faith-related programming, FBOs should always ensure a care environment in which clients feel free not to participate in such programming.\nOriginality/value: Though FBOs and secular NGOs sought many similar behavioural or recovery outcomes from their clients, the development context in which these organisations worked - unlike some other contexts - and the role of faith \"infusing\" FBOs, led to clear, observable differences in their approaches to care. The study highlights the importance of taking into account these factors when seeking to decipher differences that may or may not exist between faith-based and secular non-state social policy actors.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Passive innovation resistance - a conservative consumer perspective	[ "Conservatism", "Product innovations", "Passive innovation resistance" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction and background: New product innovations are often approached as a strategic imperative for securing a competitive advantage in the global business environment (Azar and Drogendijk, 2016, p. 177; Jurksiene and Pundziene, 2016, pp. 431-432). Product innovation concerns the introduction of new technological developments into the market that may either be familiar to the business, but not to the market (line extensions), unfamiliar to the business, but familiar to the market (me-too products) or new to the business and to the market (new-to-the world products) (Galbraith, 1973; Schon, 1967; Lukas and Ferrell, 2000, p. 240). The long-term success of new product innovations, however, remains in question, considering the high product failure rates reported in marketing literature for decades (Crawford, 1977; Kuester et al., 1999; Sivadas and Dwyer, 2000; Heidenreich and Kraemer, 2015a, 2015b, p. 1; Claudy et al., 2015, p. 530; Heidenreich and Spieth, 2013). It seems there is a lack of research to explain why consumers resist an innovation (Ram and Sheth, 1989, p. 6; Laukkanen, 2015, p. 3601). Thus far, most innovation researchers have been concerned with the positive outcomes and motivating factors of product adoption. It is often assumed that all innovations are to the benefit of the consumer, that most consumers will accept an innovation and that late adopters should simply be classified as \"laggards\" (Ram, 1987; Heidenreich and Spieth, 2013). It is further believed that consumers are subject to an innovation adoption process and that their decisions to accept or reject new product offerings are based on their attitudes towards the innovation (Rogers, 1962). Positive and negative product attitudes are generally measured using widely accepted behavioural models, such as the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and the technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989).\nPerspective on conservative consumer sources of threat and attitudes: To address the first research question and obtain insight into why some consumers have a more conservative attitude towards life, the widely recognised work of Wilson (1973a, p. 259, 1973b, pp. 241-242) on conservative behaviour was consulted. It was determined that conservative people have an intolerance for uncertainty and may then develop conservative attitudes to overcome the threats to the safe and secure environment they prefer. Consequently, potential sources of threat to conservative people's secure environment and the types of attitudes conservative people may develop to address these sources of threat were then investigated. The findings are discussed in this section and provide more insight into the underlying reasons why some individuals have a more conservative outlook on life.\nConceptual framework: The conceptual framework proposed in this study is presented in Figure 1.\nResearch contribution and implications: This article attempts to contribute to the less established stream of research on passive innovation resistance. Although considerable research has been done towards understanding the innovation adoption process, much more is required to fully comprehend consumer behaviour relating to new product innovations. It is possible that passively resistant consumers prefer the status quo and are inclined to resist change in general because they are conservative in nature and would want to support traditional and conventional forms of institutions and behaviour that are safe and familiar. The proposed conceptual framework reflects the possible attitudes of conservative consumers and how their approach towards life may affect their thoughts, feelings and actions as consumers in the marketplace. Based on the research findings, it is theorised that the fundamental premises of conservative consumers are expressed in being brand loyal, unwilling to try new options and preferring nostalgic products that lead to lower levels of ambiguity and less disruption of the status quo. Conservative consumers may also act as authoritarian parents, purchase durable materialistic products, support locally manufactured goods and refrain from purchasing products for purely hedonic pleasure in an attempt to preserve their in-group values. These findings offer a more comprehensive understanding of the nature and consequences of passive innovation resistance and could serve as a starting point for further exploration of conservative consumer behaviour and the possible development of a new paradigm in marketing.\nConclusions and suggestions for further research: The purpose of this article has been to offer more insight into the underlying reasons why some consumers are more conservative in nature and how their attitudes affect their thoughts, feelings and actions as consumers in the marketplace. The proposed framework offers a synthesis of previous research from the fields of political science, social psychology and marketing and may serve as a preliminary foundation for explaining and predicting the behaviour of conservative consumers. The research findings also offer greater understanding of the nature and consequences of passive innovation resistance behaviour, which may assist organisations in more appropriately managing their new product innovations strategies, and reduce the high product failure rates that have been reported in the marketing literature for decades.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: More research is required into the underlying reasons for passive innovation resistance. This paper aims to propose that consumers who passively resist innovation may merely be conservative in nature and explore a conceptual framework that could explain and predict such behaviour.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Theories from the political sciences, social psychology and marketing were studied in trying to understand why some consumers are more conservative in nature and how their attitudes may affect their thoughts, feelings and actions in the marketplace.\nFindings: Consumers may develop conservative attitudes, such as a need for cognitive closure, nostalgia, authoritarianism, a social dominance orientation, ethnocentrism and an anti-hedonic approach towards life to combat their fear of ambiguous situations and chaos associated with deviance from in-group values. Ultimately, these attitudes may influence consumer behaviour, such as being brand loyal, unwilling to try new options and preferring nostalgic products that would lead to lower levels of ambiguity and less disruption of the status quo. Conservative consumers may also act as authoritarian parents, prefer to purchase durable materialistic products, support locally manufactured goods and refrain from purchasing products for purely hedonic pleasure in an attempt to preserve their in-group values.\nOriginality/value: The proposed framework offers more insight into the nature and consequences of passive innovation resistance and may serve as a starting point for further exploration on the fundamental characteristics of conservative consumers. The research findings may also assist marketers in managing their new product innovations strategies more successfully.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Responding to crisis through strategic knowledge management	[ "Change management", "Knowledge management", "Strategic planning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: One only needs to talk to a range of managers to discover that, in many organisations, strategic thinking and strategic planning are often replaced with fire-fighting and the reliance on emergent solutions (Spence, 1999). This can be the case with knowledge management (KM) where organisations sometimes develop capabilities piecemeal, perhaps before adopting a strategic approach (Ruggles, 1998; McCann and Buckner, 2004; Ciabuschi, 2005). However, often the need for a strategic approach (i.e. purposefully aligning initiatives with an organisation's strategic imperatives) is only realised when looming crisis forces reconsideration of the organisation's current direction (Collison and Parcell, 2001; Ford and Angermeier, 2004).The imperatives forcing the need for a strategic approach obviously depend on the particular context. On the basis of experience of 16 organisations, we have recently worked with in developing KM strategy (Edwards and Shaw, 2004; Shaw and Edwards, 2005), the crises which encourage their taking of a strategic view included: becoming swamped with data and being unable to forecast accurately as a result; the merging of three organisations which necessitated the new organisation acting differently; needing process change to remain competitive and retaining essential knowledge during site relocation.The organisation which is the focus of this paper, the Mortgage Code Compliance Board (MCCB), was faced with a particular kind of crisis - the impending closure of the organisation, driven by legislative changes in the regulatory environment. MCCB is quintessentially a knowledge organisation and its employees knowledge workers - its regulatory and advisory function relies upon the codification of professional expertise. The importance of the employees' knowledge and the need to manage it effectively was recognised by MCCB and became a strategic central pillar of its organisational change programme. MCCB was forced to take a strategic view of KM because they were closing their operations and a dwindling workforce had to cope with growing stakeholder requirements, thereby necessitating major changes in order to sustain operational effectiveness. Over nearly three years these changes required the balancing of three pillars of KM: people, process and technology (Ahmed et al., 2002; Massey et al., 2002). The MCCB has now closed and this paper provides a retrospective analysis of how the organisation managed the crisis of closure by undertaking a strategically central programme of KM.Our work with MCCB has been discussed elsewhere (Shaw et al., 2003, 2006), but this paper adds to these accounts by providing a more critical assessment of the implementation of KM strategy from a new perspective both of the senior managers who designed and implemented that strategy and the staff who were affected by these changes.The structure of the paper is as follows. First, we review the KM literature and consider what constitutes an effective KM strategy. We ask the question \"what happens to knowledge management in a time of organisational crisis?\" We then introduce the background to the case study and describe the crisis which encouraged MCCB to take a strategic view of KM. We briefly introduce the methodology used to develop the strategy, before examining the change process and reviewing the actions implemented as part of the strategy. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with members of the KM implementation group, together with observations from workshops and meetings, we discuss how MCCB made its KM strategy central to the change process, and we draw conclusions about the role of KM in a time of organisational crisis.Balancing people, processes and technology\nMethodology: The paper is based upon a case-study of an organisation in crisis - that of a UK financial services organisation known as the MCCB. The data are drawn from a number of sources collected over a three year period, including:* Data from three strategy making workshops (each a day long). More on the aims of these workshops is discussed below, but the data collected includes: records from pre-workshop meetings; the model of discussions built during the workshop; computer logs of who shared which opinions; participant feedback on the process and strategy; post-workshop de-brief meetings with the client; final reports of the workshop outcome and a video recording of the third workshop.* In-depth interviews with five members of the change implementation team (September 2004, MCCB ceased its operations in October 2004). These looked back at the group's impact on the organisation.* Documentation collected from MCCB, e.g. monthly staff newsletters and the strategy document.* Details from a web site set up to support communication among ex-staff following closure.* Observations made by one of the paper's authors, who worked at executive director level within the case-study organisation during the period of the research.Findings were arrived at by analysing the interview data and allowing themes to emerge through that analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1994). These themes helped us to appreciate and communicate what the participants experienced and felt.It is important to clarify the role of the authors in the data collection process. Initial contact between the authors and MCCB was through the facilitation of three strategy making workshops (described below). These workshops enabled MCCB to generate its own change management programme, led by a team which became known as the \"Aston Group\" after the university at which the facilitators of the workshops were based. (More detail about the team will be given in the section \"Organising change in MCCB\".) As such the role of the researchers within the change programme was one of facilitation rather than implementation. Design and implementation of the change programme was the exclusive responsibility of MCCB employees. Included in the Aston Group was the third author of this paper, who worked in MCCB for four years at executive director level and led the change initiative. Although he was a manager at the time of the change programme, the role of this manager as author is to reflect post-hoc on the change process.In terms of reflecting on the impact of the actions, there was no use of formal tools such as the balanced score card, or specific key performance indicators against which progress was measured. Instead, there was extensive reflection on the impact of the initiative by the managers who were in the Aston Group. Reflection was a fundamental feature of MCCB's strategic approach to KM as, in monthly progress meetings, reflection was used to assess the impact of recent activities. A major reflective event was a workshop which brought the Aston Group together to reflect on their progress and agree next steps. The reflection took the form of considering the progress towards each action and exploring where more effort was needed.The methodology for this research is therefore case-study based, the authors drawing upon this organisation as an example of KM in times of crisis. Moreover, the authors were predominantly passive observers in the change process, rather than the methodology being one of action research in which researchers adopt a proactive role in implementing change in order to observe its effects. As Eden and Huxham (1996) suggest, it is important not to confuse passive engagement in a case-study of change in an organisation with the more purposeful methodology of action research.Throughout this paper, we make use of quotes from all members of the change implementation team. These quotes are taken from the variety of sources mentioned above.\nThe case study: Introducing MCCB\nReflecting on the change: The paper will now reflect on, from the perspective of members of the Aston Group, the change implemented in MCCB. These reflections were amassed from individual interviews with each Aston Group member and are presented below in terms of: the impact of actions; the implementation of actions; progress since cessation of the Aston Group.Reflecting on the impact of actions\nDiscussion: MCCB was clearly facing a unique crisis which has not hitherto been encountered in the research literature. Following Pitt's (1990) and Kim's (1998) distinction between crisis which is internally or externally evoked, the crisis faced by MCCB clearly falls into the latter category. The impending closure of MCCB was an externally-evoked (Ditto as above) crisis driven by statutory changes in the regulation of the mortgage industry. The case is notable for MCCB's embracing a strategic approach to KM in such circumstances. This is in direct contrast to the case presented by Storey and Barnett (2000) of the international consulting firm which abandoned its KM initiative when crisis in the industry forced the firm to restructure. In contrast, MCCB has used KM as a response to crisis. The case shows that for knowledge-based firms such as MCCB, the management of knowledge is essentially what the firm does, and as such, KM and business strategy should be inseparable (Zack, 1999; McCann and Buckner, 2004; Snyman and Kruger, 2004). MCCB took an holistic approach to its KM strategy, identifying the deficiencies in the attitudes of its people and the processes by which their knowledge interacted and by, then designing a comprehensive and organisation-wide solution.It is interesting in this respect that when the Aston Group embarked upon the course of crisis response, they did not recognise it to be an exercise in strategic KM, but over time realised that what they were doing effectively was KM. In looking at the list of activities and the impact they have had, readers also may not recognise the role of KM in, for example, more efficient use of time, sharing resources, or training. Taking the example of training, the Group came to view this as a KM activity because it involved:* identifying critical knowledge-intensive activities for which there could potentially be a skills shortage;* building a skills matrix to find out who could cover these key activities, and who had the knowledge (and training skills) to train others;* designing MCCB-relevant training sessions which targeted knowledge-intensive activities;* multi-skilling staff to enable them to cover tasks when people left; and* using knowledge already in the organisation.Thus, it was not that KM was used as an umbrella term under which all the businesses activities sought refuge. Instead, it was that the Group decided that the core problem and/or solution to these issues depended on better KM. This was an inherent recognition that MCCB is essentially a knowledge organisation within which all business activities depend upon the effective sharing and managing of knowledge.What features of the case make this a good example of strategic knowledge management?\nConclusion: The lessons from MCCB demonstrate the strategic centrality of KM to an organisation in a time of radical change. There is little precedent for an organisation pursuing such a vigorous and successful KM initiative amid the dissolution of the organisation. MCCB received widespread praise from industry, trade and consumer media and from government for maintaining its operational effectiveness and managing a successful transition to statutory regulation.Within MCCB:... the effort made in establishing the Aston Group and taking it forward was certainly seen as justified even though a diminishing workforce created additional pressures as the organisation's lifespan became ever shorter.Justification is in terms of improving the effectiveness of the organisation through internal communication and process enhancements across all functions - particularly between Registration Services and the Compliance Team. This meant that information on registered firms was more readily captured and shared, and the overall project enabled MCCB to remain fully effective in its operations despite the impact of change and uncertainty experienced in the period up to closure.As the ex-CEO of MCCB said:In most organisations inevitable closure and full redundancies would have led to major crisis, reduction in organisational standards, loss of morale and possible organisational collapse. I am pleased that such a scenario was avoided at MCCB - indeed operational efficiencies, standards, workloads and staff loyalty and satisfaction all increased over the period. We fully met our corporate objectives and the expectations of our very diverse stakeholders. The strategic approach adopted by the \"Aston Group\" and its work in focusing on KM, business processes, service delivery, managing change, enhancing internal communications and concentrating on people issues was undoubtedly one key factor for us during this successful final period.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Many managers would like to take a strategic approach to preparing the organisation to avoid impending crisis but instead find themselves fire-fighting to mitigate its impact. This paper seeks to examine an organisation which made major strategic changes in order to respond to the full effect of a crisis which would be realised over a two to three year period. At the root of these changes was a strategic approach to managing knowledge. The paper's purpose is to reflect on managers' views of the impact this strategy had on preparing for the crisis and explore what happened in the organisation during and after the crisis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper examines a case-study of a financial services organisation which faced the crisis of its impending dissolution. The paper draws upon observations of change management workshops, as well as interviews with organisational members of a change management task force.\nFindings: - The response to the crisis was to recognise the importance of the people and their knowledge to the organisation, and to build a strategy which improved business processes and communication flow across the divisions, as well as managing the departure of knowledge workers from an organisation in the process of being dissolved.\nPractical implications: - The paper demonstrates the importance of building a knowledge management strategy during times of crisis, and draws out important lessons for organisations facing organisational change.\nOriginality/value: - The paper represents a unique opportunity to learn from an organisation adopting a strategic approach to managing its knowledge during a time of crisis.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Dark tourism consumption in Mexico City: a new perspective of the thanatological experience	[ "Mexico", "Dark tourism" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Dark tourism, a term coined by Lennon and Foley (1996), refers to the act of travel to actual or recreated places that can be connected to death, dying, or the macabre (Stone, 2006). Auschwitz-Birkenau, the concentration camp that was the scene of horrific suffering during the Holocaust, has been referred to by scholars as the \"epitome of dark tourism\" (Biran et al., 2011, p. 820), while other, less emotive attractions, such as the London Dungeon, exemplify those places that provide a form of connection with death and suffering but are commodified so that entertainment, rather than remembrance and serious reflection, is the intended experiential outcome (Powell and Iankova, 2016). The common feature throughout is the presentation and consumption of suffering, which is often related to death (although \"death\" is not an essential requirement of dark tourism), presented on the actual sites where the incident occurred (or in some cases, such as slum tourism, is currently taking place) or off-site memorials that have been developed to commemorate past events and atrocities.\n2. Dark tourism consumption from a thanatological perspective: Over the previous two decades, an increasing number of scholars have investigated the production and consumption of dark tourism using a variety of theoretical approaches. Some have sought to investigate the representation of the dead at dark sites, and how this is affected by discord, politics and history, while others have addressed the sociological implications of dark tourism (Stone, 2018). It is not within the scope of this paper to conduct a full literature review regarding the theoretical and conceptual development of the topic, as this has been done recently by Stone (2013), Hartmann (2014) and Light (2017); instead, this paper will focus upon the consumption of dark tourism through the lens of Stone and Sharpley's (2008) thanatological framework, a seminal contribution that focused academic attention on visitor experience at a time when supply side issues dominated the field.\n3. The Mexican perspective of death: Care must be taken when exploring the concept of death in Mexico. While death can be seen, heard and read about frequently in art, music and literature, one must question whether this does indeed reflect the perspective referred to above, or if it is more so a manifestation of cultural tradition within what Hamnett (2019, p. 15) refers to as a \"rapidly changing and dynamic North American society\".\n4. Dark tourism in Mexico: Research concerning dark tourism issues from a Mexican context has been limited (Guerrero Rodriguez et al., 2018); nonetheless, a number of Mexican scholars have recently initiated attempts to resolve this situation by publishing a special issue of the Teoria y Praxis journal which focuses specifically on the topic of dark tourism in Mexico. The first chapter, by Lopez and Van Broeck (2018), provides an extensive sample of dark tourism locations and activities throughout Mexico, some of which are featured as case studies in the collection, which include The Day of the Dead festivities at Janitzio (Alvarado Sizzo and Romero Gallardo, 2018) and Huaquechula in Puebla (Mysyk and Morales Cano, 2018); the Museum of Mummies in Guanajuato (Guerrero Rodriguez et al., 2018); EcoAlberto park in Hidalgo in which a night walking tour involving local actors demonstrates the dangers encountered by illegal immigrants attempting to enter the USA (Lopez et al., 2018); bullfighting at Mexico City's Plaza de Torres (Quintero and Lopez); and \"disaster tourism\" in the city of Chetumal, which suffered the adverse consequences of Hurricane Janet in 1955 (Frausto Martinez, 2018).\n5. Methodology: This paper is based upon research conducted in Mexico City in May and June 2018 and was funded by the Mexican Secretary of Education (SEP). It adopts a qualitative research strategy to permit an accurate interpretation of tourists' thanatological viewpoints and uses the case study as the research method, as this is particularly suited to the descriptive, heuristic requirements of the study. Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews with 15 Mexicans that were visiting the four sites previously mentioned. The participant identification process will be discussed in more detail below.\n6. Results: The thanatological framework from a Mexican perspective:\n7. Discussion and conclusion: The Eurocentric nature of dark tourism research is limiting its perspective (Light, 2017). This study was an attempt to address this situation by testing Stone and Sharpley's (2008) thanatological framework in the context of Mexico. The framework is based on the notion that in Western society death is paradoxically both absent, as a result of \"death denying\" social changes such as the medicalization of the dying process, the professionalism of post-death services and the decline in religion, and present, due to the prominence of death in mediated popular culture. This situation has led to many individuals suffering death anxiety, thus resulting in widespread ontological insecurity throughout society. Dark tourism reintroduces absent death and provides the means for individual reflection and the subsequent \"purchase\" of ontological security.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The Euro-centric nature of dark tourism research is limiting the perspective and restricting the scope of contemporary theory. Hence, this paper aims to explore how dark tourism consumption differs in a society apart from the Anglo/Eurosphere. This is done by testing Stone and Sharpley's (2008) thanatological framework in Mexico, a country whose residents are renown for having a unique perspective on death, to assess whether Mexican dark tourism consumers undergo a similar, or different, thanatological experience to that proposed in the framework.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study adopts a qualitative approach in the form of a case study. The opinions of Mexican dark tourism consumers were gained by using the technique of semi-structured interviewing in four separate dark tourism sites within Mexico City, with coding serving as the form of analysis.\nFindings: The findings show that due to the non-existence of an absent/present death paradox in Mexican society, the research participants experienced a thanatological process that contrasts with those from Western societies, which indicates that the thanatological framework is unsuitable in the context of Mexican dark tourism. At the same time, the study contests the common perception that Mexicans have a jovial familiarity with death, and demonstrates that in this case the thanatological process confirmed an acceptance of death, rather than any kind of intimacy.\nOriginality/value: The research is valuable in that it is a response to recent calls for research in geographical locations not previously considered in a dark tourism/thanatology context.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Boundary conditions to business relationships in China: the case of selling wine in China	[ "Business‐to‐business marketing", "Exports", "Cross‐cultural management", "China", "Qualitative methods" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.\nIntroduction: The importance of personal contacts, relationships and business networks to business success in China is well established (Arias, 1998; Lasserre and Probert, 1998; Schuster and Copeland, 1999; Schutte and Ciarlante, 1998; Thirkell and Ramadhami, 1998). Central to business practice in China are concepts such as Guanxi (\"a special type of relationship that bonds the exchange partners through reciprocal obligations to obtain resources through a continual cooperation and exchange of favors\"; Wang, 2007, p. 81) stress the importance of forming long-term network relationships (based on mutual obligation and understanding). However, relationships and networks may not always be useful under certain market conditions (Achrol and Etzel, 2003; Beverland and Lindgreen, 2004; Joshi and Campbell, 2003; Jap, 1999; Heide and John, 1990; Stump and Heide, 1996), and may also hinder firms in dynamic markets where the \"rules of the game\" constantly shift (Baum et al., 2000; Beverland, 2005a, b). For example, firms locked into networks might gain advantages from the network, but over time may become less focused on global market changes and trends that could result in the destruction of the network (Beverland, 2005a, b). This suggests that there are boundary conditions to the usefulness of business relationships - an area that requires further exploration (Fournier et al., 1998; Parvatiyar and Sheth 2000; Price and Arnould 1999; Varadarajan and Jayachandran 1999). We explore this issue with reference to the actions of Australian and New Zealand wine exporters in China.Arias (1998) proposed that relationship marketing would enable firms to successfully enter the Chinese market and a number of researchers have stated that relationship marketing is an effective way of achieving competitive advantage in international markets (for review see Sheth, 2001). Therefore, do firms entering markets where the culture may necessitate the use of relationships and networks face the paradoxical situation where the very strategies needed to negotiate access lace limits on future viability in highly dynamic markets (Beverland, 2005a, b). Webster (2000) stated that firms could not rely solely on push strategies at a business-to-business level to create value in the marketplace - they must also develop pull strategies at a consumer level to make people aware of their offering and assist their business-to-business partners in selling the product. For Webster, firms must work closely with distributors and agents, but also create brand awareness at a consumer level to ensure market growth. However, within the context of Guanxi relationships this would need to be managed carefully, as creating awareness at a mass level, would not only assist the network, but also competitors, which is hardly in keeping with the requirements of a trust based relationship.We examine the roles and limitations of relationship formation in the emerging Chinese wine market. A recent report on the global wine trade highlighted the importance of developing new markets, particularly in China, and of fostering relationships with distributors and other channel members (Geene et al., 1999), making this industry a relevant one in which to study the boundary conditions of business relationships. China is considered a \"non-traditional\" wine consuming nation and foreign firms have met with only mixed success is developing sustainable market positions in this product category. Firms entering emerging markets or launching \"new\" product categories into these markets face many uncertainties, necessitating the use of a range of transactional and relational activities (Beverland, 2005a, b; Beverland and Lindgreen, 2004). These include managing the competing pressures arising from intercultural interaction, the needs of the seller, the highly uncertain state of the market, the needs of the consumer, and the conflicts between forming long-term relationships and achieving immediate sales growth (see Ford et al., 2003). This suggest that relationship dynamics in these contexts will be complex, and potentially involve a range of short term opportunistic behaviors and long term mutually beneficial behaviors, resulting in the potential for relationship conflict.This article has the following structure. First, we provide details on the interpretive methods employed. Second, we present our findings around two key themes: forming and managing relationships, and boundary conditions of relationships. Finally, we discuss the theoretical, future research and managerial implications of our findings.\nMethod: The complex nature of these relationships, and the need to understand the development and evolution of relationships called for the use of an exploratory research design. Weitz and Jap (1995) supported calls for greater interpretive studies in the area of relationship marketing and channels. Data were collected from interviews with 26 marketing and export managers of large and small to medium sized wineries in Australia (n=15) and New Zealand (n=11). Despite differences in the size of firms and the products sold, there were no differences between the Australian and New Zealand firms in the strategic and tactical approaches used in China. The informants were all CEO's, export or marketing managers who had primary responsibility for market development (73 percent were male, 27 percent female, average age of 38.4 years, averaged 5.6 years commercial experience in the wine industry, and had on average 3.7 years experience in dealing with China). All of these firms currently exported wine to China (the average duration of export to China was three years). While time and resource constraints limited the ability to collect dyadic or network data, seven Chinese based sellers were interviewed via telephone (these represented major wine distributors in China).Questions focused on getting sellers to describe the relationship formation process, their goals in the relationship and any critical incidents in the relationship formation process. Following this, sellers were asked to describe how the relationship had evolved, and whether their own strategic view of the relationship had changed. Again, critical incidents were identified. The distributors and agents were asked similar questions (interviews lasted on average one hour).Following transcription, analysis of the verbatim transcripts occurred soon after the first few interviews, allowing interpretations to inform and direct subsequent interviews. Our analyses were iterative and tacked back and forth between these interpretations and standard grounded theory coding (i.e. open, selective, and axial). Throughout the study, a number of methods for improving the quality of the research were adopted. Based on recommendations from a number of interpretive researchers (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) we applied the criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability, confirmability, integrity, fit, understanding, generality and control. In all situations, case studies and interpretive reports were returned to participants for comment. Secondary data further triangulated the cases, with the authors reviewing over 50 trade documents on marketing wine in China. This process, and the use of multiple sources of evidence, helped improve the quality of the research (Yin, 1994).\nFindings: Two key themes emerged from the findings: forming and managing relationships, and boundary conditions of relationships. The findings will be presented around these two themes. The first theme supports contentions that relationships are important for market access and development in China. The second theme identifies boundary conditions to this relationship, suggesting that niche density (number of firms), market structure (the role of large and small firms), and timing limit the effectiveness of relationships versus more transactional marketing activities.Forming and managing relationships\nDiscussion: This article addresses whether relationship strategies are sufficient in highly dynamic markets, and particularly in new to market product categories. As well, we examine whether sellers may undermine their competitive position with a relationship strategy in dynamic or uncertain markets/niches. This second point is based on a commonly held view that relationship success may paradoxically lead to less flexibility and market success over time (Beverland, 2005a, b; Ford et al., 2003). To these ends, we identify that relationships with buyers are necessary for market entry and ongoing business within the wine category in China, but that they may not sufficient to ensuring ongoing commercial success. Therefore, we address our research question that focuses on boundary conditions of relationships in China, addressing calls for greater understanding of the limits of the relationship metaphor in business (see Fournier et al., 1998).In particular we propose the following boundary conditions that may moderate relationship success for business-marketers in China (future research can examine whether these apply more generally). First, low product category specific knowledge and specialist infrastructure among business buyers and network partners (that drive derived demand) may limit relationship effectiveness for buyers because the brand could be damaged due to simple buyer ignorance. Therefore, for sellers concerned about brand equity, sole reliance on relationships under these conditions may be dangerous. Second, a trading or commodity view of purchasing (by buyers), or generalist buyers (those similar to the ones identified by the informants above as buying many product categories as part of a low margin business) may limit the effectiveness of business relationships because of the short-term nature of such an outlook. Again, although under these market conditions (see below) sellers may have little choice to deal with these buyers, expectations about relationship success should be lowered.The first two boundary conditions address issues of brand equity protection. The next two conditions address issues of market growth. The third boundary condition relates to the effect on relationship effectiveness when the product category is literally new to the market. In these situations, lack of end-consumer knowledge or familiarity and the resulting lack of continual orders may limit the ability of firms to leverage relationship specific investments. Fourth, where firms have limited resources to invest in pull strategies, relationships with sellers may be less effective. Although there is nothing new about this boundary condition, we do note that the informants studied were in a position whereby uncertainty about payback periods meant they reluctant to invest too heavily in relationships. As well, the job of developing a viable wine category among a large non-wine drinking population was something beyond the firms sampled here (wine is a very fragmented market and even the largest firms would struggle to achieve this task alone). This suggests that firms under these conditions may be better off investing in cooperative relationships with competitor firms in order to create a viable category (see Beverland and Lindgreen, 2004). This issue will be addressed in more detail in the managerial implications.\nLimitations and future research: This research has a number of limitations. Firstly, it was not possible to gain dyadic interviews for the whole sample. Also, the development of relationships would best be examined using longitudinal research methods, rather than relying on respondent recall of the phenomena. Therefore, future research should be undertaken longitudinally to investigate the relationship between changing market attractiveness and structure, and the value of business relationships. This work would essentially verify the four boundary conditions identified here. Second, this research was based on a single industry - wine. Importantly, the findings are based on the experiences of firms with highly perishable products and may not transfer to industries selling more durable items. Future research could therefore verify whether such boundary conditions exist in perishable categories under the same market conditions, and whether the findings hold for more durable products. Finally, future research should also examine further boundary conditions of business-market relationships.\nManagerial implications: The findings have a number of managerial implications. First, the experiences of the informants suggest care is needed when targeting the Chinese market. Much populist literature stereotypes Chinese buyers as long-term focused, relationally oriented, and generally different from their Western counterparts. Yet, the experience of the sampled informants challenges this view under certain market conditions and in this product category. Although the buyers discussed did exhibit the stereotypical behavior attributed to Chinese businesspeople, they also exhibited many behaviors consistent with the simplistic view of Westerners - short-term orientation, transactional focus, and a sales focus. Thus, exporters to China should be open to a far more complex market than the one presented in populist literature (e.g. Schutte and Ciarlante, 1998).Second, the findings suggest that under the market conditions identified herein, sellers would be wise to consider whether entry is desirable, and the nature of that entry. In regards to market entry, for smaller firms the market conditions may simply make entry unviable and relationship investments dangerous (given that relationship exit may be likely when demands for decreased margins cannot be met). As to the nature of entry, cooperative relationships between competitors (in this case other wineries, even wineries of other competitor nations) may be a better investment. These loose \"alliances\" of competitors could then pool resources to raise general awareness about the product among business buyers and consumers, thus creating a more viable product category. At this point, specific relationships between sellers and buyers could then be invested in and leveraged for greater success (without dangers to brand equity).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to examine the role and limitations of relationships between buyers and sellers of grape wine in China. Although networks are believed to be critical for market entry in Confucian societies, they may also dampen the entrepreneurialism necessary to build a sustainable niche, suggesting that under certain market conditions relationships may have limitations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In-depth interviews with 26 marketing managers of Australian and New Zealand wineries exporting to China were completed. This information was supplemented with published comments from importers and agents in China.\nFindings: - The nature and limits of relationship-specific investments in China were examined. Four boundary conditions to business relationships were found that suggest that, with certain product categories and early stage market conditions, close business relationships may undermine brand equity and growth strategies.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The four boundary conditions identified can be examined across other product categories and markets. Also, they can inform further longitudinal work on the interaction between relationship effectiveness and market structure.\nPractical implications: - Managers should be careful about operating on stereotypical views of Chinese business buyers. Also, they should assess the viability of buyer-seller relationships under market conditions of high uncertainty, and instead consider whether competitor relationships that assist with market creation would be more useful as an entry strategy.\nOriginality/value: - The findings identify the limitations of the relationship metaphor under certain market conditions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Learning and praxis for workplace safety	[ "Workplace learning", "Intentionality", "Workplace safety", "Inter-subjectivity", "Learning space", "Relational agency", "Dialogic interaction" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Learning about safety practices in the workplace is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon that is attracting much attention from researchers who are attempting to improve pedagogical interventions as a way of promoting learning and praxis for safe work practices. Historically, safety training has been a serious undertaking, ensuring that appropriate competency development minimises risks and avoids injuries and fatalities (Belwal and Haight, 2009; Yang et al., 2007). The intended curriculum on safety training is stringent and is often used as a deterministic measure of workers' safety competence, commonly demonstrated as organisational records on safe practices. However, even the best of training efforts does not guarantee safety in precarious workplaces, such as petrochemical plants, nor does training alone secure consistency in practices, even within strictly prescribed compliance-driven standards or rules. This is because learning for safety is not just about competence - it is an everyday obligation, embedded in routine work, implicit in the \"being\" of a safe worker. Moreover, safety needs to embody certain qualities, such as commitment to well-being of the self and of the workforce, as well as the community around worksites (Baarts, 2009; Huang et al., 2006; Nahrgang et al., 2011; Vinodkumar and Bhasi, 2010). Therefore, \"being\" for practice needs to be a socially constructed and agreed process where individuals routinely negotiate meanings and agree on how they enact safe practices in response to emerging conditions, especially in petrochemical plants where safety cannot be compromised at any cost. That is, praxis for safety demands engaging, applying, exercising, realising and practising socially agreed actions and processes (Gherardi and Nicolini, 2002). It implies participatory actions that result from instinctive reflection and consensus. Hence praxis for safety needs to be firmly embedded and intentionalised within the social cultural fabrics of workplaces so that individuals maintain coherence in ideologies, values and practices. The concept of intentionalising here refers to applying and realising what is learnt during safety practice training and everyday work as an inherently intentional act - that is, it becomes second nature. Such an outcome can be achieved through processes which foster inter-subjectivity and intentionalising of socially constructed consensus for praxis to sustain safe work practices. However, safety practice as second nature necessitates appropriate social cultural environments, communicative spaces and affordances to nurture inter-subjectivity and intentionality across all levels of the workforce (Matusov, 1996; Strati, 2003). We use the term intentionality here to mean a genuine commitment directed towards safe work practices. The contention here is about knowledge adaptation across different contexts to attain congruence between theory and practice (Billett, 2002, 2004), and reflection and action for praxis. That is, the physical enactment of tasks needs to take into consideration an array of complex contextual, as well as social-cultural imperatives that constitute workplace norms and safety requirements.\nLearning for safety practices: Learning to work safely involves the acquisition and appropriation of knowledge and skills that comply with legislative requirements, as well as commitment and respect for human well-being. It includes both thinking processes and the enactment of appropriate work procedures to sustain safety for individuals, the practice community and society. The intended curriculum includes declarative (or propositional) and procedural forms of knowledge. Learning to identify safety symbols, workplace hazards and the ways in which protective equipment is used are representations of declarative knowledge which present factual and conceptual information that underpins understandings about safety as a subject matter. Procedural knowledge is largely attributed to hands-on tasks and is job dependent. The emphasis is on the technical know-how to perform certain work processes, such as repairing broken equipment or leaking pipelines. Acquisition of such knowledge demands implicit learning necessary for problem identification and decision-making to appropriately respond to risky situations.\nInter-subjectivity and intentionality for safe work praxis: From the social theorists' perspectives, subjectivity entails both conscious and non-conscious conceptions, dispositions and procedures, which constitute individuals' cognitive experience (Billett, 2010a; Valsiner and Van der Veer, 2000). Intentionally or unconsciously acquired beliefs originate from a range of different channels such as personal life histories, education, media and social interactions (Wertsch, 2008) in both private and work life. Beliefs, theories and personal schemas contribute to workers' reservoirs of knowledge and experience. These shape their values about safe practice which are pertinent to guide the way they work (Purnell and Paulanka, 2003). Billett (2010a) introduced a more contemporary orthodoxy about subjectivities, drawing attention to the concept of inter-subjectivity. This stems from the argument that subjectivities, together with safety culture, are reproduced, as individuals are enmeshed and enculturated within the web of complex social structures embodied by norms, practices and discourses in the workplace. Neal et al. (2000) contended that safety culture is influenced by organisational climate and values about safety. Hence leadership support for the climate and values is imperative as the driving force. Because inter-subjectivity is literally between subjects, premised upon human cognition and social interaction (Alterman, 2007; Matusov, 1996; Matusov et al., 2015; Tomasello et al., 1993; Vygotsky, 1978), there can be no inter-subjectivity without interaction.\nThe research study: The findings reported here are from a case study conducted in a petrochemical plant in Singapore. The main aim of the study was to seek understanding of how workplace learning contributes to safe practices. Respectively, the study attempts to examine how safety is learnt as a praxis in workers' everyday work circumstances, and to explore ways that will advance workers' learning for safety. This was achieved through the following research questions:\nFindings and discussion: The analysis highlighted important insights into institutional, group social and personal practices that seemingly influenced the didactics for safety practice and praxis at the site. According to the participants, safety was not merely a specific subject matter to be learnt, rather about instinctively and intuitively enacting safe work practices, principled around the primary goal of workers' well-being. The importance of being adaptive and applying knowledge appropriately to meet circumstantial requirements was reiterated by numerous participants. Maintenance technician Mohammed for instance considered the necessity of working safely to safeguard not only personal safety but also the interests of the work community:\nImplications for supporting learning for praxis: The study provides evidence that learning to work safely is socially constructed using social-cultural artefacts and important intermediaries as clues and cues to guide practices. Thus, it is important for workplaces to leverage that social and cultural impetus to reinforce, refine or re-define workers' understandings and practices. That is, creating and enhancing mutually bounded spaces to support learning and practice. To do so, strong institutional support, as in the case of the petrochemical plant, is necessary to effectively use existing social-cultural spaces to support learning through everyday practice. Opportunities for inter-professional work and dialogic learning through social contexts such as inter-group meetings, investigation outcome discussions and access to critical information that implicates practice provide rich learning to improve practice. Group interactions and partnership at work can encourage and generate mindful learning that the work community recognises, values and shares. Such workplace activities help to provide a common frame of reference as workers participate in shared activities which subsequently serve to guide their practice. In other words, the structuring of workplace activities is pertinent to supporting the transfer of knowledge as individuals participate in goal directed activities.\nLimitations of research: The case study reported here provides qualitative accounts based on participants' experiences of the types of provisions available for them to learn about safe practices in one site. The findings give insights into institutional, individual and group contributions for learning and praxis for workplace safety. Other similar studies with larger sample and in different work settings are needed to verify these findings.\nConclusion: The findings suggest that individuals' learning and enactment of safe work practices are largely influenced by an assemblage of social, material, discursive and historical imperatives. Learning to work safely thus extends beyond acts of conformance to a doctrine of technical rules and standards. There is a need for safe work practices to be understood in terms of the distinct circumstances of the workplace, that is, particular sets of parameters and the array of potential risks, hazards and consequences of unsafe working. The findings show convincing evidence that institutional, individual and group contributions underpin the nurturing of social-cultural spaces that promote inter-subjectivity and intentionality for learning and effective praxis. This also demands commitment and support from leaders.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper aims to present findings from a qualitative case study which investigated how workers engage in workplace learning for safe work in a precarious workplace. The findings from this research suggest that learning to work safely is firmly embedded within the social cultural fabric of workplaces, and is intentionally driven to maintain coherence in ideologies, values and practices for effective praxis.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study was conducted in a petrochemical plant in Singapore. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with 20 site operators who held positions as engineers, plant workers and maintenance technicians. These site operators were directly involved in working with dangerous chemicals and high-risk equipment and processes; their conversations elicited an in-depth understanding of individuals' experiences, providing an account of how participants learnt safe work practices in a precarious work setting. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. Data were coded and analysed using an inductive analytical approach to identify key themes about workers' learning in the workplace.\nFindings: The findings suggest that learning to work safely is a socially constructed and facilitated process - leading to intentionalising what is learnt. The participants' experiences suggest that safe work practices materialise through collective action, shared knowledge and responsibility to generally seek sameness for recursive practice. The significance of inter-subjectivity and intentionality are discussed with respect to how they intersect within the social cultural context of precarious work sites, where learning and praxis are seamlessly commingled to achieve effective praxis in workplace safety. A combination of contributions at organisation, individual and group levels supports the social cultural environment. The study concludes that a combination of mutually bound learning space, relational agency and dialogic interactions provides communicative spaces and mediates learning that nurtures inter-subjectivity and intentionality to work safely.\nResearch limitations/implications: As the study is situated in a particular case context, replication of this research with different occupational groups in other precarious workplaces is needed for further insights on social construction of learning spaces for safety practice.\nPractical implications: This paper concludes that deliberate and cautious efforts are necessary to create contextual conditions for learning and to promote greater inter-subjectivity and intentionality for effective praxis. Group interactions and partnerships at work are advocated to generate mindful learning and a common frame of reference that the work community recognises, values and shares. These social processes provide necessary communicative spaces for clarification and validation of what is learnt and what is being interpreted by individuals. The quality and legitimacy of guidance are also emphasised to validate the expertise of those providing guidance, effective mentorship and intervention for the distribution of knowledge. Furthermore, strong and committed leadership is necessary to sustain the social cultural architectures that will support learning and praxis for safety.\nOriginality/value: This study offers insight about pedagogical contributions to learning about safe work practices in distinct circumstances of work.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
An innovative uncertainty management framework to support contracting for product-service availability	[ "Risk", "Risk analysis", "Service delivery", "Uncertainty management", "Uncertainty", "Services management", "Cost management", "Contracting for availability", "Life cycle cost estimation" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The importance of service delivery is increasing across manufacturing-based sectors including defence while the significance of functional capability is growing (Kim et al., 2007; Erkoyuncu et al., 2011a; Ng et al., 2009). A major driver of this move relates to optimising the use of existing goods, while focusing on advancing the value of utilisation (Morelli, 2002). The provision of services centred around complex engineering systems are referred to as Complex Engineering Services (CES) (Cuthbert et al., 2012), and set the context for this paper. In CES there can be a range of targets such as technical, financial, environmental, and social. It is interesting to note that each of these targets can have direct and indirect influence over each other. Furthermore, contracts serve as means to agree these targets and increasingly promote a collaborative platform, while incentives and penalties are influencing decision making. From a financial point of view, the targets include meeting customer affordability, attaining profitability by the solution provider and supply chain sustainability (Erkoyuncu et al., 2009). From a technical point of view, targets refer to performance-oriented outcomes such as equipment availability or capability. Environmental targets may include sustained alignment with regulations. Social targets may involve reaching a desired level of skill set and employment force. The ability to continuously meet and exceed each and every target introduces challenges within CES. However, there is a lack of research that aims to close the gap between targets and the actual performance level. The gap typically originates from the dynamic nature of service provision that is prone to many uncertainties. For instance, in the case of technical targets, this can be experienced as costs generated from varying resource and material requirements. Thus, it is necessary to identify the various sources that cause the difference between the actual and target figures and strategies need to be developed and applied in order to control or mitigate the impact of uncertainty.\n2. Related research: This section aims to highlight the shift towards the provision of CES. Along these lines, the role of contracts and the associated processes to bid for and deliver contracts are covered. In parallel, the major uncertainties experienced are explained to illustrate that they have a major role in determining the performance achieved. It is emphasised that lack of adequate management of uncertainties can cause projects to fail.\n3. Research methodology: This paper focuses on offering a unique framework to manage the impact of uncertainty on cost in CES. As an outcome the framework supports the development of useful information that can assist with achieving cost targets. Such information can assist with reducing uncertainty, while it involves developing a model that incorporates all the variables likely to influence the decision outcome. This helps to reach an improved understanding of the nature and scale of uncertainty both qualitatively and quantitatively. Additionally, the process of developing such information has a role in reducing assumptions that can create false certainty about the possible consequences in cost. Realising the scale of the uncertainty issue is not sufficient and there is a need to build suitable solutions to facilitate creating a response plan. Figure 3 shows that information has a key role with how much uncertainty is experienced. Additionally, the scale of uncertainty triggers the degree of accuracy experienced with cost estimates.\n4. Uncertainty management framework for the bidding stage: Uncertainty has a major impact on cost estimates and creates challenges with developing robust cost estimates that realistically represent future expectations. For this reason, there is a need for guidance in managing the impact of uncertainty on cost estimates. This in turn will facilitate reaching higher reliability with cost estimates and achieving performance targets. For this purpose, the paper offers a step-by-step framework that is applicable for CES.\n5. Case studies for validation: 5.1 Description of case studies\n6. Discussion: The CES context offers a larger set of uncertainties that industry needs to manage, due to the enhanced scope and complexity of the engineering solution targeted. The list of uncertainties that industry faces in costs varies from a traditional contract because of the activities that are undertaken to sustain performance requirements. This in essence has implications in selecting a suitable uncertainty management approach. The uncertainties in CfA can be interdependent and typically have characteristics which change over time. Thus, this contracting approach requires the assessment of relatively more complex uncertainty management schemes. Furthermore, consideration of the management approach also needs to take account of the new set of challenges that arise from CfA. Some of these include the changing nature of uncertainties, difficulties in assessing the performance and the requirements of the service delivery, dependence on external sources (e.g. customer or supplier), and systematic representation of uncertainty (e.g. homogeneity of approaches).\n7. Conclusions and future work: The innovative cost uncertainty management framework presented in this paper offers a procedure that questions assumptions and enables the assessment of the influence of uncertainty on cost estimates. The context of the study is the bidding stage for CES (focusing on CfA). One of the major contributions of the paper is the identified uncertainties that represent the key factors that influence costs. Also, the framework provides a novel approach to prioritise uncertainties in a systematic manner. Additionally, the framework offers an exhaustive list of strategies to reduce or control/eliminate the influence of uncertainty based on reliability, maintainability, and supportability measures. Overall, the framework provides opportunities to manage performance for the customer and solution provider based on a cost focus. The framework was applied on three case studies in the defence/aerospace industry including naval radar, naval carrier, and aircraft carrier. A major benefit of the framework is the unique guidance in identifying and prioritising uncertainties. Additionally, the principles adopted from reliability, maintainability, and supportability domains have shown, through case studies, to be comprehensive in managing cost uncertainties. Furthermore, the integrated nature of the framework offers a comprehensive approach to enhance the reliability of cost estimates. It is worth recognising that there are limitations to the findings due to solely interacting with the defence/aerospace industry. A further limitation is in the nature of the study, which involved interviews and case studies, where the findings are exposed to some degree of subjectivity. Validation of the findings across participating organisations formed the method to assess and control the impact of the subjectivity.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: In the light of challenges experienced in cost estimation at the bidding stage of complex engineering services in the defence industry (e.g. contracting for availability), the purpose of this paper is to present a framework to manage the influence of uncertainty on cost estimates.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research applied the Soft Systems Methodology and benefitted from interaction with four major organisations in the defence industry through document sharing, semi-structured interviews, workshops, and case studies.\nFindings: The framework is composed of seven stages to plan, identify, prioritise, classify, and manage cost uncertainties. Through the validation of three case studies some of the key benefits of the framework were realised in project planning, uncertainty visualisation, and capability management.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research has been applied in the defence sector in the UK and focuses on the bidding stage. Further research needs to be applied to confirm that the findings are applicable across industries and across the life cycle.\nOriginality/value: The paper builds on the theory behind risk and uncertainty management and proposes an innovative framework that avoids the assumption of \"perfect\" knowledge by raising questions about the validity of the input data.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Implementing cloud learning in an organization: a training perspective	[ "Cloud learning", "Technology adoption", "Training", "Skill development", "Training", "Workplace", "Organizational development", "Employees development" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nUse of cloud computing in organizational training: Cloud computing enables organizations to capitalize on the potential of their employees by optimizing training services. Cloud computing is defined in this paper as a set of computer resources and services that are offered on demand through the internet by an organization. As it is an emerging technological innovation in the way organizations train and educate their employees, cloud computing offers organizations a new way of delivering training services that provides business opportunities to customers. Organizations can use cloud computing to be more flexible and cost effective so that people working for them can have better scalability of information services. Cloud learning occurs on the basis of cloud technology as it supports the use of software in the cloud to learn by providing data, storage and software that can be accessed in an online environment. Cloud learning has been referred to as learning as a service because it can bring about a more extensive cultural change in an organization by integrating training methods by using a variety of forms of education including internal learning through cloud technology and peer training. This paper focuses on the role of the trainer as a way for an organization to succeed from cloud learning initiatives. The contextual factors that affect the use of cloud technology in facilitating cloud learning is identified in this paper. The major research question that this paper explores is: How are your organizations trainers and educators using cloud learning? The practical implications of this paper is to address the issue of how organizations are motivated to use cloud technology in order to improve organizational learning and to explore the need to focus on emerging technologies in training and educational practices.\nBenefits of cloud learning: Cloud learning is a key management skill, which is important for learning and development professionals to understand given the changing technology innovation reshaping the global business environment. The adoptions of cloud learning services are an employee skill needed that can help an organization develop and facilitate training activities. Cloud technologies have been embraced by many organizations as a way to share and disseminate information in any time and geographic location. Some organizations have capitalized on the potential of cloud learning as a way to integrate and share knowledge across the organization in order to bring more cultural change. The rise in cloud-based technology tools has coincided with the increase in cloud-based communication and social collaboration. The traditional tools of education and training such as books, newspaper articles and chalkboards have been changed as cloud technology is integrated into an organization. Organizations' are using cloud technology to foster communication, critical thinking and problem solving. Cloud technology mirrors the real world workforce, by enabling employees to connect through the cloud regardless of physical location. Some organizations have powerpoint slide sets stored on the cloud that can be integrated with mobile phone apps to save employees time learning about new developments. These interactive presentations stored on the cloud allow text and visual training that can be used in conjunction with online courses, so a trainer can track access statistics to see how people are learning through the technology. The trainer can also assess how the learning tool was reviewed through the cloud technology by bringing learning to a dynamic format that can be learnt at different rates depending on a person's workload commitments. Cloud technology means that a number of people from different organization departments can work together in teams by sharing and organizing their learning experience. The benefits of face-to-face contact can be stimulated in a cloud environment as people clarify training expectations and learn in their own timeframe.\nThe reasons why organizations should focus on cloud learning: Organizations are using cloud technologies to engage people and prepare them for training developments through an innovative learning environment. This enables people to take charge of their own learning paths but also engage with trainers to guide and achieve their learning objectives. Trainers can help with the learning process by developing learning expectations and facilitating technology adoption of cloud learning as an efficient development environment. Cloud learning can facilitate a blended learning approach for people of different aptitudes. This is completed as cloud technology enables trainers not having to keep up to date with hardware and software costs thereby making it more cost effective and manageable. Previously traditional computing technology required trainers to invest money in the upkeep of their resources that enabled them to train people. Cloud technology has more appropriate content as it can be easily replaced that encourages a person-centred learning approach and collaborative learning experience. More effective tutorial style training can be conducted on cloud technology that allows for richer context from various global news sources. This provides a better channel for technology transfer for organizations in order for them to focus on more important training developments that can be delivered in a cloud learning platform. In addition, cloud learning complements existing e-learning initiatives from organizations in a variety of sectors including profit and not-for-profit to simultaneously encouraging people to conduct training activities that help them in their workplace.\nLeadership roles to promote cloud learning: The leadership about training initiatives on cloud learning needs to be supported by an organizations management team. Managers can do this by participating in training events and financing cloud technology that can underpin cloud learning activities. Moreover, managers can apply what they have learnt through cloud learning by demonstrating a high level of involvement in new ways of facilitating learning. Senior leaders can set a good example for their employees by participating in cloud learning to teach relevant training skills that can be applied in the organization. By doing this senior managers can use the time and cost benefit of cloud learning to train middle and junior managers in a non-confrontational manner. As cloud technology can be assessed in a variety of different ways and does not require a person to by physically located at their office, cloud learning will involve managerial leadership to go beyond their original training programs. Managers can do this by adopting an open and creative leadership style that promotes organizational change. As existing training programs are usually in-house, cloud learning offers the additional benefit of enacting a different learning design that focuses on imparting information when it is needed rather than on a prescriptive basis. This enables an organization to give consideration to motivational issues and letting employees access information on the cloud at their own pace. Cloud technology embeds a system of learning transfer that gives employees knowledge and skills but can also act as a communication medium within an organization for people to discuss, showcase and apply what they have learnt. The fundamental element of cloud learning is that it understands the complexity of the training role and the applications of it to practice in an organization.\nPractical implications: Managers involved in cloud learning need to ensure that employees are motivated to learn at their own pace but have the competence to understand this technological innovation that can be used in training efforts. This means that employees need to understand the time taken in involvement and the contextual significance of cloud learning. As there are some challenges with providing access to information on cloud technology services managers need to consider how they can facilitate the learning process. For cloud learning to be an important training initiative the leadership of the organization needs to understand the role of cloud learning and allocate workload for this training program. An education program about cloud learning can be provided to employees that can give people the opportunity to voice their concerns and communicate about the emerging technology and its affect on overall workplace training.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to assist those involved with personnel training and training management in the implementation of cloud learning in their organization.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper focuses on practical examples and provides a discussion on the importance of cloud learning as part of the application of new technology in an organizational context.\nFindings: - Managers need to consider a number of factors when implementing cloud learning including: technology adoption, organizational control and participation of skill development.\nPractical implications: - Managers can assist the development of cloud learning activities by focusing on the training of employees who may require additional time spent on technology adoption and job-related information.\nOriginality/value: - This paper provides practical insight into the implementation of cloud learning in an organization and includes insight into how technological innovation is used to support employee training.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Analyzing Workforce 4.0 in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and proposing a road map from operations management perspective with fuzzy DEMATEL	[ "Fuzzy DEMATEL", "Industry 4.0", "Personnel selection", "Workforce 4.0" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Industrial revolutions were always triggered by technological developments in history. First, using steam and water power in industry, and then the use of electricity and moving to mass production, after that the use of IT and automation. All these developments in industry were the key concepts of first three industrial revolutions. Within the last decade, following technologies, such as cyber-physical systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT), has led the new industrial revolution which was named as Industry 4.0 in Hannover Fair Event in 2011. Industry 4.0 has started to transform manufacturing environment completely in developed countries and is expected to spread all around the world during the next decades. This transformation process does not only affect the manufacturing systems but also there is a significant effect on the nature of work, which alters the expectations from employees in industry as well. Especially, in the departments related to operations management, personnel selection criteria are expected to change due to changing job profiles. Therefore, it is important to state new criteria for firms and ways to evaluate them. However, even the research works related to technical aspects of Industry 4.0 are common in the literature, there are only few studies which focus on the changes in workforce and none of them is related to new personnel selection criteria for Industry 4.0 needs. Therefore, the goals of this study are as follows: to present a structural competency model and remark new personnel selection criteria and present an importance order and a causal relationship between personnel selection criteria by using one of the multi-criteria decision techniques, Fuzzy DEMATEL, in a Turkish high-technology firm which has started to modify its processes according to Industry 4.0 and introduce a new department which is responsible for this transformation. The selected method, DEMATEL, is useful for analyzing complex relations by using matrix operations, whereas the vagueness inherent in the evaluations of the experts is handled with fuzzy logic. The main features of fuzzy DEMATEL are to present the prioritization of the criteria and demonstrate causal relations, which give the opportunity to evaluate criteria in terms of their interrelations. Since the aim of this study is not only to prioritize the personnel selection criteria but also to evaluate their interdependencies that may affect the recruitment processes in Industry 4.0, fuzzy DEMATEL method is preferred by the authors. By doing this, research works aim to contribute to the operations management literature by focusing on recruitment process in Industry 4.0 environment and supporting human resources activities with Industry 4.0 related criteria.\n2. Literature review: In this part of the study, overview of related research is presented. First, cores of Industry 4.0 and common concepts are discussed according the previous studies. After that, changes in position of employees in Industry 4.0 environments are presented under the heading of Workforce 4.0.\n3. Proposed competency structural model: The literature of Industry 4.0 and its aspects is developing rapidly; however, there is still a gap in the literature which is related to changes in job profiles and expectations from future employees, in other words features of Workforce 4.0. Even though the new and expected properties of employees in Industry 4.0 are presented in different sources (Dombrowski and Wagner, 2014; Gehrke et al., 2015; Lorenz et al., 2015; Romero et al., 2016), there is no published reports from studies focusing on new personnel selection criteria based on operations management in Industry 4.0. Therefore, this study supports human resources specifically in recruitment process from operations management perspective.\n4. Research methodology: In this study, one MCDM method, fuzzy DEMATEL, is used. In this part of the research, brief explanation of the fuzzy logic and details of fuzzy DEMATEL are given.\n5. Implementation of the study: As it was mentioned in the literature review part, personnel selection is a popular topic for researchers. Therefore, different kinds of criteria have been suggested in the literature so far. It is inevitable that the Industry 4.0 also affects the recruiting processes, especially for the departments which are related to operations management. In that sense, the need for including Industry 4.0 based personnel selection criteria arises. For this study, criteria have been selected according to the changes in job profiles due to Industry 4.0 from operations management perspective. The implementation of the proposed method had been conducted for a high-technology firm, which is planning to transform its processes according to new industrial revolution. According to the literature review which was conducted for this new research area, 11 criteria which were frequently used in the literature are revealed (Dombrowski and Wagner, 2014; Gehrke et al., 2015; Lorenz et al., 2015) and hired in the proposed method. Selected criteria are given below:\n6. Findings and discussions: Proposed method is useful to deal with vague and imprecise judgements since it allows to apply both linguistic variables and a fuzzy aggregation method. Cause group factors point the meaning of influencing factors, while effect group factors represent the meaning of influenced factors. This shows that cause group is difficult to change, whereas effect group can be easily moved. Results show that cause group includes, in descending order, knowledge on IT and production technologies (C4), awareness of IT security and data protection (C8), ability of fault and error recovery (C9), and combining know-how related to a specific job or process (C1); effect group includes flexibility to adapt new roles and work environments (C2), organizational and processual understanding (C5), ability to interact with modern interfaces (C6), ability of dealing with complexity and problem solving (C10), thinking in overlapping process (C11), continual interdisciplinary learning and cooperation (C3) and trust in new technologies (C7). Moreover, the importance level of selected criteria was found in descending order as ability of dealing with complexity and problem solving (C10), thinking in overlapping process (C11), flexibility to adapt new roles and work environments (C2), continual interdisciplinary learning and cooperation (C3), organizational and processual understanding (C5), trust in new technologies (C7), ability of fault and error recovery (C9), combining know-how related to a specific job or process (C1), ability to interact with modern interfaces (C6), awareness of IT security and data protection (C8) and knowledge on IT and production technologies (C4).\n7. Conclusions: Industry 4.0, in other words Fourth Industrial Revolution, has started to transform manufacturing environment completely in developed countries and is expected to spread all around the world during the next decades. These transformation processes affect the expectations from employees as well. Especially, in the departments related to operations management, personnel selection criteria are expected to alter due to changing job profiles.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to present a structural competency model; second, to remark new criteria for personnel selection in Industry 4.0 environment; and third, to contribute to the operations management literature by focusing on recruitment process in Industry 4.0 environment and supporting human resources activities with Industry 4.0 related criteria and point out a new research field in Industry 4.0.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Fuzzy DEMATEL has been used in the implementation. The study is conducted in a high-tech firm, which has started to modify its processes according to Industry 4.0, and introduces a new specific department that is responsible of this transformation. In total, 11 personnel selection criteria were presented and then assessed by experts through a fuzzy linguistic scale. Both importance order and causal relation between criteria are presented at the end of the study.\nFindings: According to the results, the most important criteria in the selected firm are the ability of dealing with complexity and problem solving, thinking in overlapping process, and flexibility to adapt new roles and work environments. While cause group includes criteria such as knowledge on IT and production technologies, awareness of IT security and data protection, and ability of fault and error recovery, effect group includes flexibility to adapt new roles and work environments, organizational and processual understanding, and the ability to interact with modern interfaces.\nPractical implications: Analytical thinking and system approach are the key topics for new supporting personnel selection criteria, which lead to the need for the skills and qualifications in decision making and process management. Results of the cause group criteria also indicate the importance of technical abilities such as coding, IT security and human-machine interfaces. On the other hand, effect group of the study emphasizes on the flexibility and interdisciplinary working structure that suggests the suitability of matrix organization in the companies which follow the Industry 4.0 trends. Moreover, team work comes forward as another key concept for organizations transforming to Industry 4.0.\nOriginality/value: The originality of this study appears on modeling of a competency structural model for Workforce 4.0 which is proposed as a road map, including the suggested set of related criteria and the fuzzy MCDM-based methodology for companies which alter their organizations according to Industry 4.0.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Tacit knowledge: review and possible research directions	[ "Tacit knowledge", "Implicit knowledge", "Knowledge management", "Research" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In the current global landscape, change in organizations and their business environment often occurs at an increasing pace (Blackler, 1995; Ghemawat, 1991; Goh, 2005; Nonaka, 1991). Consequently, insights to manage uncertain economic conditions to create new knowledge perceptions and outcomes are evolving continuously across industries (Kim and Hwang, 1992; Nelson and Winter, 1982). The growing nature of unknown business environments often motivates the necessity for greater understanding of the role of tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1962, 1967) and its dissemination both internal and external to the organization. One way of aspiring to understand tacit knowledge in organizations is from a process perspective that is concerned with accumulation of implicit knowledge acquired over time in organizational routines (Harlow, 2008; Johnson, 2007; Nonaka, 1994). However, attempting to appreciate tacit knowledge from such a viewpoint is obviously less than adequate for understanding all of the intangible dynamics in and around tacit knowledge creation, adoption and diffusion in organizations.Fundamental to the in-depth exploration of tacit knowledge is the need for greater clarity of its significance and application in certain knowledge management domains. These include the impact of tacit know-how in strategic approach to organizational knowledge; the role of tacit knowledge in organizational learning; tacit knowledge transfer via narration and story-telling; the influence of tacit knowledge in intellectual capital; its use in communities of practice, teams and knowledge networks, and finally tacit knowledge relevance in information technology of organizations (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Boland and Tenkasi, 1995; Bontis, 1998; Bush and Tiwana, 2005; Crossan et al., 1999; Hansen et al., 1999; Snowden, 2002; Sveiby, 1997; Tsui, 2005). It is also widely recognized that tacit knowledge is clearly contextual (Busch, 2008) and that the interpretation of it along with its transfer requires multiple stakeholders. Hence, merely discussing tacit knowledge is not only unremarkable but also trite; what is less encountered and more desirable in the scholarship discourse is examining how tacit knowledge may be better made use of. To that end, the authors aim to provide some useful research directions in this paper.The existing literature provides sufficient evidence to support the importance of tacit knowledge and many studies have been conducted in this regard. However, there is lacuna in the literature which will be uncovered through an extensive review in the following sections including how tacit knowledge is perceived in the literature and what its relevance is in multiple domains of knowledge management such as knowledge management strategy, organizational learning, storytelling, intellectual capital, communities of practice, knowledge networks, information and communication technology (ICT). Following on, the authors argue there is a significant gap with regards to the study of tacit knowledge in these domains and a number of pertinent questions are presented for future research inquiry into the understanding and role of tacit knowledge phenomenon.\nRole of tacit knowledge in knowledge management: Kakabadse et al. (2001) note that some postmodernists argue there is no universal foundation for knowledge, rather just the consensus of the community; nevertheless there is at least a widely held view of the \"knowledge hierarchy\" in as much as datum are generally viewed as un-interpreted raw facts. When data collectively is organized in some way, it becomes information. Knowledge in turn is information that has human meaning attached to it (Bhatt, 2001) or has been ascertained from information through tests of proof (Lee and Bai, 2003). Eventually one could consider wisdom as encompassing judicious interpretation and application of knowledge (Sternberg, 2000). The continuum of knowledge discussed so far represents just one dimension of relevance to knowledge management (KM). Given the focus of the paper, the authors have moved away from this relevant and continued debate on knowledge hierarchy.Another interpretation relates to knowledge existing at the level of the individual versus the organization (Merx-Chermin and Nijhof, 2005; Sveiby, 1997; Nonaka, 1991). Individual knowledge mainly includes tacit knowledge that is not typically articulated but may be codified depending upon the circumstances. Organizational knowledge on the other hand usually incorporates greater proportions of explicit knowledge. For example, Bossen and Dalsgaard (2005) regard procedural knowledge as being equivalent to tacit knowledge, whilst others (Colonia-Willner, 2004; Sternberg and Hedlund, 2002) view tacit knowledge as being procedural knowledge of relevance to daily life. Such knowledge may be used for daily activities and is of relevance to the person making use of it, and may be employed in stratagems to actualize or make actionable, the knowledge in question. In turn, this type of procedural knowledge becomes a form of practical intelligence to the organization (Sternberg et al., 1995).Organizational knowledge is very much at the core of knowledge management, and some would argue this consists of the management of knowledge about the company, its operations, competitors, customers and supply chain (Siemieniuch and Sinclair, 2004). Predictably, scholars are usually of the opinion organizational knowledge is both tacit and explicit (Guzman and Wilson, 2005); and furthermore developed from that which resides in the employee's minds and in their interactions in their place of work (Hustad, 2004). As a result organizational knowledge is moderately automatic; meaning employees are somewhat aware of it, yet at the same time, apply the knowledge without adequate reflection to its existence. It is communal in as much as it comprises the knowledge of a number of staff, not just that of the chief executive officer (CEO) or chief knowledge officer (CKO). What is more is that it is obviously evolving over time as opposed to representing a summary of a firm's knowledge. Organizational knowledge like its tacit counterpart is also contextual in that it is typically tied to a firm's context but this does not imply that it is not transferable (Guzman and Wilson, 2005).Arguably, the major constituent of organizational knowledge is the contribution of its staff, for individuals are not silos of knowledge, rather their connectivity to other staff constitutes a considerable component of organizational know-how, in so far as \"the whole is greater than the sum of its parts\". A considerable driver for the recognition of organizational knowledge has been the increasing migration in the workplace from manufacturing to more service based industries. This is especially the case in most of the developed markets that are concurrently evolving from the Taylorist model of specialized work processes (Taylor, 1911) to the workplace of the present-day where individuals seek an increased sense of purpose and belonging with work practices relying on intellectual cooperation between employees with at least a half-open recognition to \"human capital\" (Jorgensen, 2004). As a consequence, there is inundated expansion of market, customer, supplier, competitor, and employee know-how across different industries and regions globally (Goh, 2005); and organizations have started to recognize the importance to develop suitable strategic approaches to manage knowledge effectively.Strategic approach to knowledge\nResearch directions in tacit knowledge: Beginning with the philosophical underpinnings of tacit knowledge, as reviewed earlier there are many studies that examined the meaning and definition of tacit knowledge and very few studies have investigated analyzing tacit knowledge. Fundamentally, the question of whether tacit knowledge may be codified is one that distinctly requires further clarification. In the current literature with reference to \"knowledge\", scholars have defined different types of knowledge such as procedural and declarative to name a few; so the critical inquiry to undertake is on the categories of \"tacit knowledge\" and the potential areas to explore are:RQ1. If tacit knowledge can be articulated, how often can such knowledge still be considered as \"tacit\"?RQ2. Do different types of tacit knowledge exist?RQ3. To what extent can tacit knowledge be articulated?There is much research in the knowledge management literature discussing strategic approaches to knowledge; these comprise models, theories and frameworks on knowledge management strategies. Especially in the context of the strategic management of tacit knowledge, there is very limited evidence in the literature; one such study by Hansen et al. (1999) introduces the concept of personalization focused on strategically managing the knowledge of individual employees collectively. This approach was fundamentally developed from studies primarily based in the services sector; however the applicability of this strategic dimension in other sectors/businesses/departments/teams needs further examination. Therefore the key question/s to investigate are:RQ4. What implications does personalization knowledge management strategy have for specific segments of products, business and/or industry?RQ5. How does personalization knowledge management strategy influence cultural openness towards tacit knowledge exchange in organizations?As reviewed earlier, studies indicate that organizational learning is an essential component in the sustenance of a firm's competitive advantage in the marketplace. One of the ways organizations learn from their past is through their employee skills and know-how (Reber, 1989; Reber and Lewis, 1977). Organizations have recognized the need for investment in developing employee capabilities as part of their work environment; however the influence of employee profile in the use of tacit knowledge is not adequately evident in the literature. On the above basis, the following research questions can be considered to drive further research in this area:RQ6. How does tacit know-how of staff account for an organization's learning capability?RQ7. How important is the use of tacit knowledge more critical to certain organizational roles than others? If so, why?RQ8. How are employee attributes (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, seniority, educational background, experience) a determinant in their use of tacit knowledge?Arguably, one of the main thrusts of KM is improving the flows of tacit know-how within the organizational context. There is strong evidence in the literature regarding knowledge transfer between divisions as well as bodies external to the organization. The composition of staff is also noted to have an effect on the likelihood of tacit knowledge transfer (Busch, 2008; Hansen, 1999); conversely will the flow of tacit knowledge actually improve the employee skill base? For the aforementioned rationale, the following research questions can be examined:RQ9. What are the relationships between organizational context dependent factors (e.g. values, mission, vision, culture, strategy, structure, employee profile and infrastructure) and the flow of tacit knowledge?RQ10. What are the organizational benefits realized in the transfer of tacit knowledge?Typically in industrialized economies, firms have evolved from a manufacturing environment to service based businesses. Besides the obvious competitive advantages gained through lower labor costs for manufacturing offshore, one other reason for the service orientation is due to the increasing importance acknowledged toward individual competencies, know-how and collectively the intellectual capacity of the organization. Intellectual capital comprising not only employee, but also structural, customer and supplier know-how provides a central underpinning to organizational knowledge. In this regard, organizations struggle to quantify the tacit know-how of individual stakeholders; which in turn presents challenges, as such the following research questions present an opportunity to explore:RQ11. How does an organization's intellectual capital shape the creation of tacit knowledge?RQ12. How do structural, social, supplier and customer capital deliver value to a firm's intellectual capacity?Organizations recognize the importance of teams, networks and communities in the workplace. Narration and storytelling are useful mechanisms by which tacit know-how is transferred between individuals and in teams collectively. Equally, tacit knowledge will enrich the storytelling process. What remains unanswered is the extent to which the phenomenon of tacit knowledge residing in team environments and narrative knowing influence one another, hence the following questions are considered to be relevant to explore:RQ13. How does the composition of a team in the workplace influence the transfer of tacit knowledge?RQ14. How are narrative and storytelling mechanisms effective in tacit knowledge transfer for maintaining teams and/or communities of practice?Perhaps one of the most interesting unexplored research issues with regard to tacit knowledge creation and particularly transferal is the impact ICT has in the organization (Goh, 2005). Advocates and critics suggest the influence of information technology in the KM domain support codified knowledge rather tacit knowledge. Yet, there is evidence in the current literature that presents the use of technologies and applications to support the articulation and flow of tacit knowledge between individuals; therefore the following question could be useful to examine:RQ15. How is the storage of descriptive tacit knowledge through ICT significant to the process of knowledge codification?In summary, consideration of the above research questions in future studies can advance the understanding and conceptual clarity that is presently less evident in the literature of tacit knowledge in certain knowledge management areas.\nConclusion: This paper has reviewed the existing literature on the role of tacit knowledge. The authors have highlighted how tacit knowledge is perceived and used in some knowledge management topics such as strategic approach to knowledge, organizational learning, storytelling, communities of practice, intellectual capital, knowledge networks and so forth. In reviewing the extant literature, the paper uncovers a number of possible directions for research in the domain of tacit knowledge. The authors articulate that these directions are pertinent to the relevance of tacit knowledge in different areas of the knowledge management domain. In keeping with this direction, the authors also argue the need for future studies examining the philosophical underpinnings to tacit knowledge. Following on research questions are suggested in the areas of strategic dimension of tacit knowledge; the role of tacit knowledge in organizational learning; the organizational benefits to tacit knowledge transfer; the influence of tacit knowledge in intellectual capital; the transfer of tacit know-how and its use in communities of practice; and the role of information communication technology with regard to tacit knowledge.The authors acknowledge that there are certain limitations to the paper, beginning with exclusively restricting to the examination of the existing literature on tacit knowledge and not on other forms of knowledge. Furthermore, despite the fact that this paper assessed certain areas in knowledge management such as organizational learning, intellectual capital, communities of practice and so forth, the authors have only reviewed the role of tacit knowledge specifically in such contexts. Finally, the paper proposes only future research directions here, rather than providing research (or empirical study) results per se and these possible research inquiries are not exhaustive in nature.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Tacit knowledge is often difficult to define, given its inexpressible characteristics. Literature review highlights the impact of tacit knowledge on certain knowledge management topics and these include organizational learning, intellectual capital, knowledge management strategy and so forth, but some research gaps remain. The paper aims to propose directions for future research in this domain of discourse.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A review of existing studies highlights some gaps in the literature on the role of tacit knowledge, which is followed by questions for future research.\nFindings: - Given the richness of tacit knowledge discourse, the authors believe that the proposed questions offer avenues for scholars to explore and develop greater understanding of the role of tacit know-how in certain knowledge management topics.\nResearch limitations/implications: - The authors acknowledge that there are certain limitations to this paper, namely, focusing on the review of tacit knowledge and not on other forms of knowledge. The review presents the role of tacit knowledge and its use in the context of knowledge management related topics. Finally this study proposes only future research directions that are far from being exhaustive, rather than presenting field study results.\nOriginality/value: - This paper reviews the existing literature on how tacit knowledge is perceived and used in certain knowledge management areas. Reviewing the current literature uncovers a number of gaps regarding the role of tacit knowledge.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The effects of audit client tenure, audit lag, opinion shopping, liquidity ratio, and leverage to the going concern audit opinion	[ "Audit client tenure", "Audit lag", "Going concern audit opinion", "Opinion shopping", "M41", "M42" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A financial statement is one of the media for the management to communicate the financial information to the stakeholders to assess the company's performance. A financial statement must have complete or comprehensive information in disclosing all facts done by the company during one period. The main purpose of the audit is to provide a sufficient trust that the financial statement has been reasonably presented according to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (Boynton et al., 2006). The result of the financial statement audit is an auditor opinion that is regarded as a public trust symbol to the information accountability presented in a financial statement (Aprilia, 2012).\nLiterature review and hypothesis development: Agency theory\nMethods of study: Research approach, type and data sources\nFindings and discussions: The description of the object of the study\nDiscussions: The influence of audit client tenure to the going concern audit opinion\nConclusions and limitations of study: The present study indicated that the opinion shopping and the leverage affected the going concern audit opinion. It showed that the auditor tended to give a going concern audit opinion to the companies applying the opinion shopping and having a high leverage level, whereas audit client tenure, audit lag and liquidity ratio did not affect the going concern audit opinion. Consequently, the auditor tended not to provide a going concern audit opinion over the company's audit client tenure, audit lag and liquidity ratio.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The going concern audit opinion is an audit opinion issued by an auditor to evaluate the company's ability in maintaining the business continuity. The purpose of this paper is to discover the effects of audit client tenure, audit lag, opinion shopping, liquidity ratio and leverage on the going concern audit opinion.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study used secondary data obtained from financial reports and independent audit reports published by Indonesian Stock Exchange (ISE) as well as Indonesian Capital Market Directory. Besides, the population of the study included manufacturing companies registered in ISE from 2009 to 2013. Further, the present study applied purposive sampling technique which resulted in 16 companies used as the sample of the study. Then the hypothesis was examined by applying logistic regression.\nFindings: Results of the hypothesis examination indicated that the variables of opinion shopping and leverage affected the going concern audit opinion, whereas the variables of audit client tenure, audit lag and liquidity ratio did not affect the going concern audit opinion.\nOriginality/value: Results of the hypothesis examination indicated that the variables of opinion shopping and leverage affected the going concern audit opinion, whereas the variables of audit client tenure, audit lag and liquidity ratio did not affect the going concern audit opinion.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Choosing a career in management: an interdisciplinary multicultural perspective	[ "Careers", "Career guidance", "Managers" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: This special issue addresses an important area of human experience - the world of work, as it relates to people who choose management as a career. This issue examines careers from a cross-cultural perspective and illuminates what is the same and what is different across cultures.\nChoosing a career in management: a brief outline of the joint study: The instrument\nBrief outline of the six papers that constitute the special issue: The first article, titled \"The process of choosing a management career: evaluation of contextual dynamics in a comparative study of six countries: Cyprus, Hungary, Israel, Turkey, UK and the USA\" was written by Cem Tanova from Cyprus, and Mine Karatas-Ozkan and Gozde Inal from England. Their aim was to identify the reasons MBA students have for their career choices, and to explore the contextual and gender-related aspects of this career choice. Their article focuses on how cultural values and beliefs as well as gender differentially influence the career choice of MBA students toward managerial or entrepreneurial careers. Their findings reveal differences in influences on career choice and development between women and men. In all six countries, women have a more societal value orientation and tend to undertake more charity work and men are more likely to believe that \"competition is the law of nature\" and to choose an entrepreneurial career route.The second article, entitled \"The role of culture and gender in the choice of a career in management\" was written by Ayala Malach-Pines and her graduate student Oshrit Kaspi-Baruch, both from Israel. The article addresses the influence of culture and gender on the choice of a management career among men and women MBA students in the seven countries. The culture by gender comparison enables an examination of five theories: two focus on culture (Hofstede's, and an adaptation of Schneider's (1987) ASA model to career choice) and three focus on gender (evolutionary theory, social role theory and social construction theory). The five theories have contradictory predictions about the relative influence of culture and gender. Findings show large cross-cultural differences and small gender differences in the influences and aspirations associated with a career choice in management. These findings support Hofstede's (1991) research and social construction theory that predicts large cross-cultural differences. They provide some support for social role theory, which predicts both gender and cross-cultural differences, and very limited support for evolutionary theory, which predicts large and universal gender differences, and for the adaptation of Schneider's ASA model, which predicts no cross-cultural differences. These findings are important in light of the small percentage of women in top management positions and the view of an MBA as a means for breaking through the glass ceiling into top management.Both these articles, as well as the third article that will be presented next, address gender and culture, but they do so from very different theoretical perspectives.The third article, \"Strategies for combating gendered perceptions of careers\", was written by Dorota Joanna Bourne and Mustafa F. Ozbilgin from the UK. It starts by noting that earlier work on career choice has identified gendered processes which lead to differentiated career outcomes for women and men. Although these earlier works document an extensive set of gendered processes in career choice, they remained anaemic in terms of strategies for addressing the negative impacts of these processes. Their article examines the mechanisms which may be utilised in order to counteract the negative impact of gendered perceptions of professions on career choice, exploring the creativity cycle and other tools derived from personal construct psychology (PCP) and other feminist literature as potential means for dissolving gendered perceptions of various professions and organisational practices. They argue that PCP can provide a theoretical and methodological framework for discussing how dichotomous and gender-identified perceptions of professions can be and how might such perceptions be challenged.The fourth (brief) article goes beyond culture and gender to investigate the values shared by MBA students at the start of their education. The article is entitled \"Values and career choice at the beginning of the MBA educational process\" and it was written by Eran Vigoda-Gadot and Shmuel Grimland from Israel. The authors start by noting that with the change in global and local markets and the emergence of new types of careers such as Protean careers (which are values-driven), individual values (such as citizenship behaviours, altruistic standards, and helping activities) seem to have a growing effect on decisions people make about significant choices in their lives such as the choice of a career. Their article describes an exploration of a Protean view of a career and citizenship/altruistic behaviour amongst the international sample of MBA students. While it can be expected that values will lead to career choices in the early stages of vocational search, career choices and development may also affect one's values during the training process, especially during educational and professional schooling. Their findings revealed a positive relationship between the expression of good citizenship in altruistic behaviour and a Protean view of a career. This relationship is solid and generic beyond the effect of gender, age, or culture/national setting. These findings point to meaningful relationships amongst the variables studied and they emphasise the need to direct MBA students to a value-oriented educational program in their fields of expertise. The paper ends with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for future studies in career development.The last two articles focus on certain national samples: the USA and India. The first among these and the fifth in the special issue is a brief article titled \"Career choice in management: findings from US MBA students\", written by Ed Ng from the USA and by Ron Burke and Lisa Fiksenbaum from Canada. It considers the role of values, family and non-family influences on career choice and career goals of US MBA students. The students' career goals are almost equally divided between managerial and entrepreneurial options. Most respondents aspire to careers, not jobs, or callings. There are few gender differences in this sample. There are also few differences between those choosing entrepreneurial versus managerial careers. Neither family nor non-family influences predict career outcomes, indicative of the independent self among US students. Predictor variables generally account for modest variance on most career outcomes, suggesting complexity of the career choice process. There are country differences in the levels of several variables, suggesting the potential importance of cultural values and expectations.The sixth and last article is titled \"Factors influencing career choice of management students in India\" and was written by Tanuja Agarwala from India. Among the factors explored in the article is the importance of different individuals in the family and in work in making a career choice in management. In addition, the study explores the relationship of the cultural values of individualism versus collectivism and the Protean versus conventional career orientations of MBA students from India. Findings reveal that \"Skills, competencies, and abilities\" are the most important factor and the father is the most significant individual influencing the career choice of Indian management students. The predominant cultural value is collectivism, though the students demonstrate individualist tendencies in some contexts. A Protean orientation guides the career orientation of these students.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers in this special issue and some issues surrounding choosing management as a career. A jointly developed questionnaire is also presented.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper is descriptive in nature.\nFindings: - It is crucial for researchers and practitioners to expand their perspectives to include other cultures and other theoretical perspectives beyond those offered by traditional vocational choice theories.\nOriginality/value: - Understanding the antecedents, correlates and consequences of people's vocational choice to become managers will not only help researchers and practitioners and benefit managers, but will improve the understanding of career choice in general.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
What HR can do to give change a chance	[ "Organizational change", "Leadership", "Motivation (psychology)" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Change, as a process, never fails, because things always change. It is more accurate to say that we fail to get the results we wanted, needed or anticipated. Change is a subtle, natural force. It cannot be turned on and off; it has to be harnessed. If we think about how sailors use the wind and tides, or how farmers use rivers to irrigate their fields, we have a better idea of the required attitude.\nPeople will only do what they believe is in their interests: People will only do what they believe is in their interests. Let us deconstruct that sentence, and look at some of the key words. They have to believe it is in their interests. If we fail to cover all three of these bases, people will not \"play\". Taking the elements one at a time:1. They. What staff think and feel is crucial. The opinion of the company or their manager is important only to the degree that they hold influence or power over the individual. The greater the respect, trust or relationship that the manager has, the more it is that he or she will be listened to. However, managers should never short-cut the step of explaining why this is something that employees need to do.2. Believe. This is a bit like a game of Monopoly, where players cannot move out of jail until they have thrown a double. Similarly, managers cannot begin their change program until they have won people over. It may be that managers need to start on something simpler or smaller first, to gain employees' confidence.3. Their. Everybody needs to know what is in it for them. Human beings have been programmed by the forces of nature and evolution to survive. Each time we are asked to do something, some primitive part of our brain checks to see if it helps our survival. If it feels too dangerous, we will not do it. If the environment is one where we are not allowed to make our feelings known, we will say \"yes boss\", and ignore it in every way we can. Managers use this tactic all the time, but it is called \"political savvy\" when managers do it rather than \"resistance\" when it is practiced by employees.Too often, well-meaning managers try to say thank you with shopping vouchers, flowers or activity days. In themselves, these are not bad things, but they are no substitute for showing genuine, unconditional appreciation of individuals and their efforts. Most people are part of a pack and need a leader who inspires them and makes them feel safe. The safest member of the pack is the most valuable one. These are powerful and ancient drives, and not to be ignored. We all long for the approval of parent[1] figures in our world, and bosses fall into that category. However, just saying well done really does not do it. Managers have to mean what they say. People can tell when managers are being insincere[2]. Managers need to show that they have seen the real employee and appreciated his or her unique contribution.After a merger I acquired a new boss who thrilled me initially by his fulsome and frequent \"well done\". After a while, though, I realized that he said the same thing every time, and so I started to ignore it. I ended up almost resenting his inability to differentiate between really good work and work that was simply good enough. HR needs to understand this dynamic and guide and coach line managers in these areas.It is a cliche to say that everyone is unique, but it is true. Deep within us, we know this and we long for people to see, recognize and appreciate our unique gifts. Doing this makes us feel special. It is a heady drug and we will go a long way for more of it. However, I repeat, for it to work, it has to be real.Change is a human process and requires sensitivities and skills that the modern workplace tends not to value or nurture. There are few courses on sensitivity: communication courses deal with slide decks rather than telling your truth. HR specialists have the opportunity, and the training, to be more aware; to help line managers who are less able in these areas and to support staff who are affected by this inability.\nThe accountant's view of people as assets: Too often, businesses regard and treat their people as human resources. This is an accountant's view of people as assets; indeed, we often see in the company accounts \"our people are our greatest assets.\" This leads to a rather mechanistic view of people. The business wants reliable processes, where things happen the same way every time. However, during a period of change, people are afraid, whether they admit it or not. They need to be cared for if they are to perform. There is a huge opportunity for HR to step into this care vacuum. If HR specialists can demonstrate that they, and the business they represent, truly want the best for their staff, and will look after them, the staff will become more trusting and less change-resistant.HR has to become the part of the company that looks after people rather than processes them and their records. I was an accountant for 25 years, and always thought that there was little difference between the accounts department and the HR one, apart from the things they counted. Managers are there to get the job done, but they are subject to all sorts of pressures. HR should be there to catch people when their managers cannot see what is required. They should bring objectivity to the care process. They have the time and should have the skills. However, as long as their prime role is \"hire them and fire them\", they will not be trusted. They will become part of the problem for the staff.By recognizing change as part of nature rather than an industrial process, we are much more likely to approach it with the care and sensitivities we need to make it successful. If you still are not convinced, think back to some of the really good teachers either you or your children had. They were not all about processes, flow charts, slide decks and e-mails; they listened, they got down to your level, they excited and encouraged you and, when necessary, they picked you up, brushed you off and told you, \"never mind, it will be alright next time.\"Many managers feel that they have to check \"the real them\" at the office door and only pick up the mantle again once they get home to their children. However, if they tried using some of these softer skills, plus awareness and intuition, to bring their staff with them, they would be much more successful. Business may need a hard nose, but it also requires a soft heart to make change happen. HR should be at the center of this. A successful change leader knows which organ to use, and when!\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This article presents the view that change is part of nature rather than an industrial process, and that HR specialists are well placed to approach it with the care and sensitivities needed to make it successful.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Highlights the skills and attributes that HR specialists need in order to help an organization to change successfully.\nFindings: - Describes the need for leaders to inspire their employees, help them to feel safe and reassure them that change is in their interests.\nPractical implications: - Contends that HR specialists have the opportunity, and the training, to help line managers who are less able in these areas.\nOriginality/value: - Argues against the \"human resources\" view of employees.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Optimal contract design for dual-channel supply chains under information asymmetry	[ "Electronic commerce", "Game theory", "Contracts", "Supply chain management", "Information asymmetry", "Revenue sharing contract", "Dual-channel" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The dual-channel marketing structure, simultaneously implementing direct sales channels and traditional retail channels, has been increasingly adopted for marketing products (Cai, 2010). Over the past few years, due to the rapid growth of E-commerce and third-party logistics enterprises, many manufacturers (e.g. Nike, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo) have begun selling products directly to customers (Chen et al., 2012). Manufacturers benefit from a web-based direct channel since it helps them reduce costs, increase sales revenue, expand new market segments and avoid retailer domination (Huang et al., 2012). Furthermore, direct sales have changed customers' purchase patterns. Consequently, an increasing number of manufacturers have redesigned their sales structures and adopted direct sales to satisfy different customers' purchasing preferences because traditional retail channels did not meet customers' requirements (Cai, 2010). However, manufacturers face direct competition from retailers in a dual-channel supply chain (Samar et al., 2008). Performance issues regarding dual-channel supply chains have evoked considerable interest from both academia and practitioners (Chiang et al., 2003). Theoretically, channel cooperation and coordination yield greater profits to partners and alleviate channel conflicts (Cachon, 2003; Gundlach et al., 2006; Yan, 2008; Tong and Crosno, 2016).\n2. Related work: This paper addresses the intersection of the dual-channel supply chain and information asymmetry. Related prior literature, including studies regarding dual-channel supply chains, revenue sharing contracts and information asymmetry, are reviewed and analyzed in this section.\n3. The model: We examine a dual-channel supply chain consisting of a direct sale channel and a traditional retail channel, which comprises one manufacturer and one retailer. The manufacturer can sell the products to the retailer and can also sell the products directly to end customers. Therefore, in a way, the retailer and the manufacturer compete on prices in the end customer market.\n4. The value of information sharing: Theorem 2 indicates that the manufacturer may suffer profit loss when the retailer does not share cost information, while the retailer benefits from asymmetric information and the retailer's profit are not less than profits obtained under full information. The value of information sharing to the manufacturer (or retailer) is the profit difference from the asymmetric information case to the full information case. The value of information sharing for an entity in the dual-channel supply chain is the difference between its optimal profits under full information and those under asymmetric information. However, the maximum amount the manufacturer is willing to spend for the retailer's cost information is unknown and the condition that governs the retailer's motivation to share its private cost information (or not) is also unknown. Furthermore, the value of information sharing for the dual-channel supply chain is unknown.\n5. Numerical examples: In this section, we use numerical examples to demonstrate our analytical findings and gain further insight into optimal policies, particularly with varied exogenous parameters. We used a case where r=0.4, a=200, a1=0.8, a2=1.2, b=0.6, cm=15, cr\n6. Managerial implications: These results are highly consistent with our analysis in Sections 3 and 4. Under the asymmetric information case, since the retailer's cost is private information, the contracts offered by the manufacturer hinge on the retailer's cost. However, the direct sale price is constant and unrelated to the retailer's cost and is always lower than the corresponding retail price. Therefore, direct selling channel has the price advantage, consumers will transfer from the original retailing channel to the direct selling channel if we ignore the influence of other channel functions,such as brand positioning and logistics, ect. A possible managerial guideline for the manufacturer is to increase the degree of competition and migration rate between two channels, which was represented by the parameter b. Certeris paribus, as b increases, the competition becomes more intense between the two channels, which results in greater demand and higher prices for both channels; both the manufacturer and the retailer enjoy greater profits. Both operational methods (e.g. emphasizing cost savings and the convenience of direct sales) and marketing methods (e.g. advertising the price differences of the two channels) may intensify the migration of customers, which aligns with Chen et al. (2012). The end customer's heterogeneous preference for the direct channel and retail channel is characterized by r and (1-r), respectively. The profit difference of the manufacturer between the symmetric and asymmetric information cases decreases with r, but the profit difference of the retailer in those two circumstances increases with r due to a negative profit difference from the full information case to the asymmetric information case. The greater the end customer's preference for the retail channel (1-r), the greater the value of information sharing for the retailer; to clarify, the retailer obtains a greater profit from information asymmetry. A crucial managerial guideline is that the manufacturer in a dual-channel supply chain should increase the market share of direct selling and consolidate regular customers to compensate for the profit reduction due to its information disadvantages.\n7. Conclusions: Information asymmetry affects the decisions of the involved partners' and reduces performance of a traditional retail supply chain. This study analyzes the optimal contract design in a dual-channel supply chain that consists of a traditional retail channel and a direct sales channel. We examine a situation where the retailer's cost is either in a high state or in a low state and when this information is kept private. A model has been developed to determine the manufacturer's optimal decisions for the contract design problem. The closed-form expressions are derived under both the asymmetric information case and the full information case. In addition, the optimum decisions are contrasted between the asymmetric information case and the full information case. We analyze the effect of information asymmetry on the profits of each channel partner and quantify the value of information sharing. This study finds that information asymmetry imposes inefficiency on the manufacturer and the entire supply chain, while the retailer benefits from asymmetric information. Our findings show that, in the internet era, it is beneficial to the manufacturer to actively pursue access to the retailer's private information by offering the retailer an incentive mechanism to share this private information. The retailer may share private information if the lump sum side payment that the manufacturer offers offsets any reduction in the retailer's profit. Market estimation is crucial for developing optimal business strategies, specifically when asymmetric information exists. This study develops a model for dual-channel supply chains under information asymmetry and constructs a method to understand how different players involved in a dual-channel supply chain are affected. This study also provides a method to support the marketing decision-making process.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of information asymmetry on revenue sharing contracts and performance in a dual-channel supply chain. First, the authors model the optimum revenue sharing contract in a dual-channel supply chain under both the full information case and the asymmetric information case. Second, they contrast the optimal decisions of a dual-channel supply chain between the full information case and the asymmetric information case. Third, they explore the impact of asymmetric cost information on the performance of a dual-channel supply chain and investigate the information value.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors present two main issues associated with revenue sharing contracts to alleviate manufacturer-retailer conflicts in a dual-channel supply chain. In the first issue, a revenue sharing contract is designed in a dual-channel supply chain under asymmetric cost information conditions, based on the principal-agent model. In the second issue, an optimal revenue sharing contract under full information conditions, based on the Stackelberg game is discussed. They explore the impact of asymmetric cost information on the performance of a dual-channel supply chain and investigate the information value based on comparative static analysis.\nFindings: First, the direct sale price is unchanged and independent of the retailer's cost construct, but the wholesale price increases and the retail sale price does not decrease under asymmetric cost information. The information asymmetry leads to higher direct sale demand and lower retail sale demand. Second, information asymmetry is beneficial for the retailer, but imposes inefficiency on the manufacturer and the whole supply chain. Third, the performance of the dual-channel supply chain is improved if the retailer's cost information is shared and the dual-channel supply chain reaches coordination. The retailer is willing to share its cost information if the lump sum side payment that the manufacturer offers can make up the retailer's reduced profit due to sharing this information.\nOriginality/value: The authors proposed a contract menus design model in a dual-channel supply chain. They examine how information asymmetry affects optimal policies and performance. They compared the optimal policies under symmetric information and asymmetric information. Conditions under which the partners prefer sharing information are identified. They quantified the information value from the points of partners and the whole system.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The challenges of employee resourcing: the perceptions of managers in Nigeria	[ "Nigeria", "Selection", "Recruitment", "Employee resourcing" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: This paper focuses on investigating the challenges of employee resourcing (ER) using Nigeria as the contextual platform. The paper aims to advance the understanding of ER issues from a non-western perspective (Nigeria). Generally, the majority of studies on ER have been undertaken in western countries (Barrett et al., 2006; Catano et al., 2009; Piotrowski and Armstrong, 2006). In a recent study, Dainty et al. (2009) pointed out that ER is one of the core strategic functions of human resource management (HRM). ER focuses on matching human resource capabilities with the strategic and operational needs of an organisation and ensures that the resources are efficiently utilised (Armstrong and Baron, 2002). This includes core HRM activities such as recruitment and selection, which must be carefully managed in order to support strategic objectives (Taylor, 2008). However, organisations across the world are confronted with the difficulties of recruiting and selecting the right candidates for vacant positions. Population explosions exacerbate those challenges. For instance, the population of Nigeria is projected to surpass that of the USA by 2025 (United Nations, 2015). Furthermore, poor recruitment and selection processes can have both short-term and long-term productivity consequences for organisations (Kanyemba et al., 2015). Some of the negative effects of poor recruitment include recruitment costs, a loss of goodwill or reputation, increased labour turnover, high training expenses, and loss of profitability (Chidi, 2013; Robbins et al., 2009). Researchers have highlighted the fact that bureaucratic structures of the African work setting including the ER activities are often influenced by ethno-religious and political contextual issues (Kahn and Ackers, 2004; Nyambegera, 2002). This point is supported by Jenkins (1994) who argues that an ethnic-sensitive society often places a great importance on ethnic categorisation, which has a powerful influence on the criterion that governs the allocation of jobs to the jobseekers - a process that may be ethnically biased. However, while it is difficult to expunge biases completely from the recruitment and selection process, the system can be designed in ways that will make it harder for biased minds to skew judgment (Bohnet, 2016). Drawing on extant relevant literature to this subject (Chidi, 2013; Gunu et al., 2013; Tiemo and Arubayi, 2012), and in response to the call made by Fajana et al. (2011) in relation to the shortage of academic research on HRM in Nigeria, this paper explores the managers' perceptions of the issues and challenges confronting the recruitment and selection process in Nigeria. In order to fill the gap in the literature, the African ER process is explored herein from the point of view of Nigerian managers. Specifically, respondents were asked two broad interrelated questions as it relates to their organisation: first, the issues and challenges associated with the recruitment and selection process; and second, the actual process of employing new employees. Private and public sector organisations in Nigeria have been chosen in order to capture a holistic view of managers' perceptions of the issues and challenges of the ER process. This paper deals with a Sub-Saharan African (SSA) context, wherein Nigeria is the empirical focus. This study improves our understanding of the challenges and processes of recruitment and selection in the context of a developing country and SSA. The research outcomes will be useful for HRM practice in the region. In order to achieve the aforementioned objectives, this study begins with relevant and contextual literature review. The methodology is explained and thereafter the findings presented and discussed. Finally, the implications thereof are highlighted and conclusions drawn.\nTheoretical background: Recruitment and selection in context\nThe Nigerian labour market: The outcomes of the labour market play a crucial role in determining the socio-economic status of individuals and households (Ogwumike et al., 2006). The labour market in developing countries such as Nigeria is characterised by high unemployment rates with a high level of informal sector employment. The wages and conditions of employment in the informal sector are inadequate and productivity is considered relatively low (Ogwumike et al., 2006). However, in order to correct the imperfections that characterise labour markets, countries around the world (including Nigeria) have been urged to adopt a complex system of laws and institutions related to employment issues (Cok et al., 2009). Arguably, the current state of the Nigerian labour market (in which even the gainfully employed are hanging on the precipice of uncertainty) was never imagined by those who witnessed the boom period approximately four decades ago (Asabor, 2012). The volatility in the Nigerian labour market is a result of \"skills mismatching\" (Petters and Asuquo, 2009), three years of civil war in which millions of lives and properties were lost, and the 28 years of military rule that destroyed the economy. In addition, corruption and mismanagement have now become preeminent among the political elites and public office holders, among others (National Bureau of Statistics, 2010). Job security in Nigeria is not guaranteed (Ogwumike et al., 2006). Ogwumike et al. (2002) suggested that individuals with no skills or limited skills and even some of those who are in employment are at risk if any drastic changes occur in the highly volatile labour market. According to Ogwumike et al. (2006) and the National Manpower Board (1998), those who are self-employed dominate the Nigerian labour market. The labour force stands at 53.83 million people, out of which 70 per cent work in agriculture, 10 per cent work in manufacturing, while the remaining 20 per cent work in the service sector. The Nigerian unemployment rate stood at 23.9 per cent in 2011 according to the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook (2015).\nResearch method: This study employs a qualitative research method to explore the managers' perceptions of the issues and challenges in terms of recruitment and selection processes in the SSA context using Nigeria as the empirical focus. This study is inductive in nature; thus, semi-structured interviews constituted the primary and the main data source (following Cassell and Symon, 2004; Mason, 2002); and data-driven thematic analysis was applied (Braun and Clarke, 2006).\nSample: The sampling employed to select participants was purposive and snowballing. The aim was to select participants who would be best able to provide responses that will answer the research questions. Participants were sought from the six geo-political zones of Nigeria in order to ensure a fair representation of managers' views. Considering the large population of Nigeria (181 million people) and the rising rate of unemployment (Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook, 2015), the recruitment and selection process in Nigeria has come under academic scrutiny (Chidi, 2013; Gunu et al., 2013). The research sample consisted of 61 managers of public and private organisations across Nigeria. The interviews were undertaken with either the general manager or the HR managers, depending on who was responsible for the recruitment and selection process of the organisation. These respondents varied in gender, age, marital status, years in service, organisation, and the part of the country where they work (Table I).\nData collection: A total of 41 semi-structured interviews were initially conducted by the first author. In order to improve reliability and to ensure that no important themes were left uncovered, an additional 20 \"confirmatory\" interviews were conducted; therefore, a total of 61 interviews were undertaken. Responses from an additional 20 interviews corroborated the themes found in the previous 41 interviews and no new themes emerged. This means that this study reached the point that Glaser and Strauss (1967, p. 61) described as \"theoretical saturation\". A prepared interview guide serves as a guideline for the semi-structured interviews. This was structured following an exhaustive review of the literature and included the following among others: what are the issues and challenges confronting the recruitment and selection process in your organisation? How do you think the problems could be solved?\nData analysis and procedure: Data-driven thematic analysis, as recommended by Braun and Clarke (2006), Corbin and Strauss (2008), was applied for this study. The recorded interviews were transcribed immediately after the exercise and analysed interpretively. Transcripts were analysed through careful reading and re-reading and recurring themes were highlighted. After a narrative summary of the interviews had been drafted, open coding (the identification of key points and objectives) was applied (Boeije, 2005). The researchers then grouped the first set of codes into categories according to common codes. The researchers did not impose coding categories a priori; rather, the researchers remained open to insights by allowing the categories to emerge from the data in order to avoid missing important themes. The categories were then marked with different colours in order to facilitate analysis of the data and a thematic map was drawn. The main categories were further fine-tuned by frequent comparisons until a representative overview was achieved. Emergent themes from the data became the categories for analysis (prearranged enigmas were verified twice in order to ensure reliability) and investigator triangulation (Polit and Beck, 2004) was applied.\nFindings: Responses to questions about what issues and challenges influence the ER process according to Nigerian managers resulted in emergence of six major themes: discrimination, favouritism, and nepotism; corruption; the FCP and the QSP; resource constraints; and the unemployment rate. In addition, the respondents commented specifically on the recruitment process which was analysed separately (Table II).\nThe process of recruiting and selecting new employees: Managers described the process of recruiting and selecting new employees in both the public and private organisations in Nigeria. However, the valid process only existed on paper as the overwhelming majority of the respondents indicated that there is variance in the recruitment process in their various organisations in terms of the documented process and the practices. One respondent succinctly commented:The process is the same for public and registered-private organisations in Nigeria. Public advertisement must be made for vacant positions, which will be followed by shortlisting suitable candidates on satisfying the job requirements. Shortlisted candidate will be interviewed, and this will be followed by a due process of selecting the most suitable candidate who best satisfy the job requirement and put up an excellent performance during the interview. However, all of these only existed on paper [...] I can tell you that 95% of organisations do not follow the process, not even in this organisation(Respondent Z).\nDiscussion: This paper has provided empirical insights into the realities of the ER process from the points of view of Nigerian managers. Managers expressed concern with regard to the lack of equal opportunities in the Nigerian recruitment and selection process. The current situation is one in which discrimination on the basis of gender, age, ethnicity, and religious affiliation is prevalent. Jobseekers' age and gender play a prominent role in the Nigerian recruitment and selection process. Most organisations in Nigeria consider the demanding familial responsibilities of women, which may often affect their work demands, in the recruitment process. Many organisations (especially private organisations) prefer to employ men for this reason. The discrimination in the Nigerian recruitment and selection process is further exacerbated by ethnic divisions. This could potentially place a job seeker(s) who share the same ethnic group as the interviewer(s) at an advantage. This often results in people getting employed based on their ethnic affiliation rather than merit. Kamoche (2000) acknowledges that ethnicity in African societies has caused a huge damage to the process of recruitment and selection. Furthermore, favouritism and nepotism are inherent in many organisations' recruitment and selection process in Nigeria. Employees are not necessarily employed based on quality and merit, but often based on who they know within and outside a relevant organisation. Managers expressed concerns about the damaging effect of favouritism and nepotism on organisations' development and the nation's image and economy. Keles et al. (2011) argued that nepotism and favouritism may allow for the employment of the wrong people with less knowledge and skills, which negatively affects other employees and productivity. Padgett and Morris (2005) upheld the same assertion, but also argued that nepotism may cause reduced job satisfaction and reduced organisational commitment. All of these discriminatory practices negatively influence the recruitment and selection process. Since the best candidates would most probably not be the candidates who are employed, an organisation's performance would hardly reach its optimum level. These findings support the argument that bad recruiting often affects organisations adversely (Sullivan, 2015).\nConclusion and recommendations: This paper has highlighted the paltry nature of the process of recruitment and selection in Nigeria. The process is overwhelmingly characterised by corruption, favouritism, and nepotism. Many appointments are not based on merit and are not ethical. This study suggests that if the inimitable resources responsible for competitive advantage are to be realised, steps need to be taken to ensure that the right people are employed for the right job. This suggestion agrees with Tyson (2006) and Chidi (2013) who argued that, in Africa, recruiting people who are wrong for the organisation could lead to long-term negative effects (Chidi, 2013; Tyson, 2006). The FCP and the QSP, as presently operated, have been found to hamper managers' ability to hire freely and are responsible for the poor state of the public sector. Since the public sector is a vital component of the labour market, its inability to recruit the best employees could spill over into the entire labour market and could negatively influence national competitiveness. Other factors that have also contributed adversely, directly, and indirectly, to the quality and ultimate success of ER include poor electricity supply and internet infrastructure and the high rate of unemployment. Arguably, with the large pool of potential employable applicants seeking employment, cumbersome recruitment processes can negatively influence the choices that organisations make to identify and recruit the best candidates who would enhance competitiveness.\nImplications for practice: The observed trend does not only affect public sector organisations but also private organisations. In particular, international organisations (such as multinationals and non-governmental organisations) aiming to recruit and select the best employees in order to enhance their competitiveness are faced with serious challenges. Such organisations cannot afford to miss potential candidates in the global search for talent. The prevalence of nepotism, favouritism, corruption, etc., is likely to spill over to international organisations, particularly as there are no equal opportunity laws for private organisations. The challenge is how international organisations can ensure that they avoid missing out on potential employees because of flawed recruitment processes. Osabutey et al. (2015) suggested that, for multinational organisations, headquarters' supervision of the recruitment and selection process is crucial if the organisation, following the RBT, wants to employ the best possible candidates who would influence organisational competitiveness. Indeed, our findings suggest that people who have been employed fairly (on merit) are more likely to give good candidates a fairer chance than those who have themselves been recruited through the \"back door\". Whilst local employment agencies could be the answer, such international organisations should ensure that they have access to the entire pool of eligible candidates in order to preserve their reputation. It is important to also note that some of the tendencies related to recruitment could also apply to local employment agencies since they are subject to the same institutional and cultural tendencies. Therefore, in the SSA context, it would be prudent to employ supervision of a foreign organisation or headquarters, as suggested by Osabutey et al. (2015). In addition, there could be aspects of the assessment and selection processes which are not entirely controlled by locals in order to ensure some level of fairness and competitiveness.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The existing literature on the recruitment and selection process in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) context has not sufficiently revealed inherent challenges. The purpose of this paper is to examine managers' perceptions of employee resourcing in Nigeria.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper uses qualitative data which were generated from the semi-structured interviews of 61 managers across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria.\nFindings: The paper finds that in addition to the Federal Character Principle and the Quota System Policy, favouritism, ethnicity, age and gender discrimination, as well as corruption significantly inhibit the recruitment and selection process in Nigeria. Consequently, the ability to hire the best workers to improve competitiveness is also inadvertently hampered.\nPractical implications: The paper shows that the institutional and cultural variations in SSA require a nuanced approach in the recruitment and selection process in order to enhance organisational competitiveness.\nOriginality/value: The institutional and cultural variations in SSA require a nuanced approach in the recruitment and selection process in order to enhanced organisational competitiveness.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
KM governance: investigating the case of a knowledge intensive research organisation	[ "Governance", "Knowledge management" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Knowledge management (KM) is an evolving discipline, which has increasingly gained acceptance in organisations as well as among academics. It borrows from a wide range of organisational disciplines, such as information systems (IS), human resources (HR) and quality management (QM) in order to support the various knowledge related activities in the organisation (Raub and Ruling, 2001). Even though some KM researchers and practitioners focus on a single perspective (such as IT applications) to support the organisational knowledge base, it is the interdisciplinary nature of KM which is becoming increasingly accepted and valued in the business community (Pemberton, 1998).KM's emerging interdisciplinary character not only makes it difficult to ground it in any of the established disciplines, but also poses practical challenges for organisations. Among the main concerns are questions such as: where does KM fit into the organisational structure and how should it be governed to create the expected benefits for the organisation? Should the governance models of the contributing disciplines be adopted or do the particular challenges of KM require a specific form of \"KM governance\", a term which encapsulates the structuring of the KM function as well as the decision making rights and processes regarding KM?This paper addresses some of these KM governance issues by describing and analysing the case of a knowledge intensive Australasian-based research organisation. The aim of the research is to identify the KM governance configuration, which is adopted by the organisation, and its impact on the development of knowledge management in the organisation. In order to achieve these aims, a case research methodology has been adopted with data obtained from interviews with key personnel involved in the knowledge management of the organisation.\nTheoretical concepts of KM governance: Attention to the governance of knowledge management is a new research focus and few studies have looked at this seemingly important aspect of the KM phenomenon. Hence, the notion of KM governance has not been fully conceptualised, in the research literature. KM governance integrates the theoretical concepts of KM as well as the concepts of organisational governance. These are discussed below.Knowledge management\nResearch method: The present research seeks to explore the role of KM governance as the structures and processes that direct and control the organisational knowledge management approach. It aims to identify the specific structures and processes that determine the KM governance configuration in an organisation and also to describe the impact of this configuration on the development of the organisational KM approach. These general objectives lead to the following research questions:* How is knowledge management governed in the participating organisation?* What is the effect of the KM governance configuration on the organisational knowledge management approach?The goal of this research is to demonstrate the importance of KM governance and to contribute to the understanding of how KM governance configurations impact on the way KM is conceptualised and implemented in an organisation. Since KM governance presents a topic of considerable complexity with little prior research on which an investigation may be based, this research is exploratory in nature. To satisfy the exploratory characteristics of the study and to allow for in-depth investigation and rich description, a single-case research methodology has been adopted (Darke et al., 1998; Yin, 2003). Using this methodology, data is drawn from a single organisation with its respective KM governance configuration and KM approach. Even though this case is particularly illustrative the conclusions drawn are limited due to the use of a single case.For this case study an organisation has been selected which has been considerably involved in the various aspects of knowledge management. To assure anonymity the organisation will not be identified and is only described with regard to its core characteristics. Semi-structured interviews with six major stakeholders involved in the KM approach and aspects of its governance have been carried out in this organisation. The interviews were carried out with the head of the Knowledge Coordination Group (KCG), the manager of the information management centre, the manager of the data centre, the head of HR and two KM staff (see Table I). Each of the interviews took between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours, was recorded and subsequently transcribed. The transcripts were returned to the interviewees who approved their accuracy and use for the purpose of this research. The interview questions focused on the organisation's KM governance configuration as well as the nature of its KM approach. Extensive documentation materials were provided by organisational members and these were used as secondary source of data. For the data analysis the techniques of contact summary sheets and initial coding were applied as selected steps of the early data analysis as suggested by Miles and Hubermann (1994).\nFindings: In this section the organisation with its particular characteristics is introduced and its KM approach is outlined. Subsequently, the KM governance configuration is described. Finally, the impact of the KM governance configuration on the KM approach is identified in the discussion section.The organisation\nDiscussion: The way KM has been adopted by this organisation has created an interesting KM governance configuration. The most prominent features include the KCG portfolio, the provision of KM leadership and the communication and coordination patterns that are used to coordinate the KM initiatives.KCG portfolio\nConclusion: Research into KM governance and the way in which KM is structured and coordinated in organisations is still relatively new. Even though a large number of organisations have identified KM as important and have consequently engaged in initiatives in this area, little research has actually looked at the structures and processes that are put in place in order to achieve these aims. The few studies that have been carried out so far suggest that organisations have adopted a wide variety of KM governance forms; however, to date very little is known about the effects these configurations have on the development and success of KM in the organisation. Even though some of the difficulties of KM governance seem to be comparable to findings from the IT domain, a number of issues are unique to KM and warrant investigation.At this point organisations are still experimenting on how to institutionalise KM in order to create maximum benefits. Organisations need to find a way of governing their KM initiatives, as this comment by one of the managers of the knowledge service group indicates:Otherwise [KM] stays on the grass-root level and people might do some really interesting initiatives but it doesn't get recognised as such and it does not enable them or does not help them for the next business case. So yes, KM governance definitely does [matter] (Manager Information Management Centre).This case study has focused on the investigation of the KM governance of an organisation that is very committed to KM. A range of structures and processes were implemented by this organisation in order to organise and support the various KM initiatives. Of particular importance is the portfolio of functions integrated in the Knowledge Coordination Group (KCG), the provision of KM leadership, and the communication and coordination processes employed to support the KM initiatives. It has been shown that these key features create certain benefits as well as drawbacks for this KM approach. What is clear is that the KM governance approach of this organisation balances the circumstances given the prevalent organisational environment.Despite the interesting insights gained from this case study, there are some limitations to it. Even though the data has been obtained from several interviewees, who play key roles in the KM activities of the organisation, and secondary data was accessed, additional interviews with other key players of the KM initiative might have provided additional insights. Unfortunately, some of the personnel originally involved in the implementation of these processes had already left the organisation. Furthermore, a number of aspects commonly discussed in governance research, such as risk management or evaluation reviews, were not considered by the organisation with regard to KM, which limits the governance elements that can be discussed and compared here.This study described a single organisation, which is operating in a particular industry. In order to be able to generalise these preliminary findings, additional studies have to be carried out to identify further KM governance configurations and their impacts on the way KM is approached in different organisations. These studies are currently underway.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The aim of the research is to identify the knowledge management (KM) governance configuration of an organisation and to investigate its impact on the development of knowledge management in the organisation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Case research methodology has been adopted using data obtained from interviews with key personnel involved in the knowledge management of the organisation.\nFindings: - Findings show the particular importance of the centralised structure of the KM function for the creation of synergies among the different KM aspects; and the importance of leadership, communication and coordination to integrate other functions and to promote KM aspects in the organisation.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Even though data has been obtained from several interviewees and secondary data, additional interviews with other key players of the KM initiative might have provided additional insights. This study describes a single organisation operating in a particular industry, which limits generaliseability.\nPractical implications: - Of particular importance is the portfolio of functions integrated in the KM Group, the provision of KM leadership, and the communication and coordination processes employed to support the KM initiatives.\nOriginality/value: - Research into KM governance and the way in which KM is structured and coordinated in organisations is still relatively new. Little research has looked at the structures and processes behind organisational KM\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Contextual leadership development: a South African perspective	[ "Leadership", "Business studies", "Business schools", "Storytelling", "Experiential learning", "South Africa" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The nature and rate of economic, political and social transformation in South Africa today pose a unique challenge to business leaders in the country. They are under pressure to gain an understanding of the current nature of South African society still economically and socially divided, and to run their organizations within a complex and rapidly transforming business environment. Business schools therefore need to address leadership development together with broader contextual education regarding the social, political and cultural environment. For example, to address the resource inequalities and related socio-economic challenges, South Africa needs leaders to work together across sectors and industries with a common vision for the success of the broader political economy.What then about the mandate of South African business within the wider global context? For generations a narrow, economic, individualist view of business has been accepted, focused on profit-making. Global trends in the past decade have indicated that the corporate world is changing, and so is its mandate. Castells (1999) examines these global trends and the profile of this new world, claiming that globalization has given dominant value interests the power to include or exclude people, territories and activities, the result being that at a global level, the ratio of the income of the top 20 per cent of the population to that of the bottom 20 per cent has jumped from 30 to 1 in 1960, to 78 to 1 in 1994, and is still rising. Globalisation has also influenced the role of business, when one observes the detrimental influence of multinationals on fragile economies. The role of the World Trade Organisation, for example, has been heavily criticized, primarily through the protests of activists against the actions of multinational corporations. Companies now realize that to focus only on profit at the expense of anything else, jeopardizes their own competitiveness in the global arena.Locally, too the need to move beyond the economic and to include environmental and social aspects in a company's activities has been recognised. Newton-King, Johannesburg Stock Exchange Deputy CEO, comments on an increasing awareness of and need to measure sustainable business practices, and the debate on triple-bottom line practices (JSE, 2004).Further factors influence the business environment in South Africa. The industry charters supporting black economic empowerment have influenced the way business shares its equity. The Sector Education and Training Authorities require a percentage of corporate revenue to be paid into funds to support grass-root capacity-building within that industry. HIV/AIDS is having a significantly negative effect on the economically active workforce of the country. It is estimated that over 6 million South Africans are infected with HIV/AIDS Investors Guide (AICC & SABCOHA joint initiative, 2005). Because its economy has only recently entered an increasingly competitive global marketplace, South Africa also faces the paradox of trying to compete globally, while locally addressing inequality in a highly unequal world.According to Ackoff (1996) in explaining how we are moving from a mechanistic world to one based on social systemic thinking, analysis has proven to be an ill-equipped method to solve problems: it assumes context to be irrelevant. On the contrary, to solve the societal problems of South Africa, we need to consider the full economic, socio-cultural and political context, and all the conditions and relationships that have created the current reality. The boundaries of the system of business in South Africa have been extended substantially to include political, social and cultural issues, which all influence each other's actions. It is largely an unbounded, complex, open system, exposed to a number of outside influences.To meet the challenge of dealing with these demanding issues, with their underlying diversities, contradictions and tensions, the system of leadership in corporate South Africa needs to create trust amongst groups of peers. Kahane (2004) refers to \"social capital\" built through a cross-sectoral network of trusting relationships, a great source of institutional strength. As example, Kahane, refers to the social capital in South Africa in 1994 which allowed for political change and constitutional settlements.Business in South Africa therefore needs to be more concerned about using the resources at its disposal to solve broader societal problems. Drucker (1994) introduces three assumptions for developing a the theory of the business, claiming that successful organizations match assumptions of their mission, core competencies and external environment with the reality they live. Leadership often focuses on understanding the first two assumptions, but neglects the external environment as it is perceived to be outside the traditional boundaries of business. Business education is therefore no longer only about business effectiveness.\nThe contextual challenge for business schools: Business education institutions have traditionally taken a \"scientific\" approach to leadership education, excluding all notions of human intentionality (Ghoshal, 2005). As a result, leadership education has not necessarily included how social or ethical issues in society affect leadership in business organizations, leading to the situation in which business schools, \"... by propagating ideologically inspired amoral theories [...], have actively freed their students from any sense of moral responsibility\" (Ghoshal, 2005, p. 76). These social and ethical issues are increasingly relevant to leaders in corporate organizations, where the complex and changing environment requires a broader understanding of all socio-economic issues affecting business.Business education in South Africa and elsewhere is being challenged to meet the requirements of the fast-changing business environment. Traditionally, mainly in programmes such as the MBA, business schools have tackled leadership education through \"teaching\" theories and models in the classroom. Participant interaction is limited to the classroom or to syndicate groups, which are often focused on specific assignment outcomes. Boyatzis et al. (1994) claim that business schools need to change their approach from teaching to learning, a process of discovering knowledge through contextual problems, and assuming that the knowledge is \"in the room\" and not only in the head of the teacher. While revamping the curricula of a business school, Boyatzis et al. (1994, p. 49) highlight one of their design principles as follows:Professional graduate education should be liberalizing for the students, getting them to think about issues and situations in novel ways and to develop habits of the mind that stretch and expand their capacity to think and act creatively.Bennis and O'Toole (2005, p. 96) claim the following:MBA programs face intense criticism for failing to impart useful skills, failing to prepare leaders, failing to instill norms of ethical behaviour - and even failing to lead graduates to good corporate jobs.Education is not limited to any formal, institutionalized space but as McNiff and Whitehead (2000), suggest education happens everywhere, not only in the classroom.The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business - AACSB International (2002) recommended that business schools teach more interpersonal, leadership and communication skills. Buckingham (2005) describes these skills as leaders' ability to span differences of race, gender and personality by using stories to discover what is universal. Bisoux (2005) posits that the goals of business schools have changed to create highly personal experiences to help students discover who they are, what they believe, and how their actions affect others. For knowledge creation in general, Wenger (1998) proposes \"communities of practice\" arguing that people learn through the process of social engagement which defines their identity. Ghoshal (2005) searches for a balance in business education by suggesting that a narrow scientific approach to business studies creates a teaching environment where students do not engage with the complex economic, social and moral issues which are important considerations in corporate governance.Critics of traditional business education seem to agree that the business environment is moving from predictability and control towards complexity and messiness. Bennis and O' Toole (2005) talk about the complex messy issues that leaders face. Marion and Uhl-Bein (2001) introduce the concept of the \"complex leader\" who cultivates largely undirected interactions and takes a macro-view of a situation rather than controlling local events. In South Africa, we need these kinds of leaders who immerse themselves in the context and are open to its full complexity (Kahane, 2004). They construct networks of relationships, and learn to manage and develop new networks; they create transformational environments.Teaching in the classroom needs to be balanced with learning - or discovering knowledge - in an out-of-classroom environment, through contact with other \"learners\" and meeting contextual problems. To work towards this balance we explore, in this paper, out-of-classroom learning methodologies, and how effective they are in how people learn, and adapt this learning to their leadership in a changing institutional environment.This paper aims to explore how leadership development programmes can be improved to incorporate a broader understanding of the context of transformation in South Africa.\nNexus as a case study: Nexus was established in 2002 at the University of Pretoria's Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) as an alliance of younger (28-38 years) leaders with the primary purpose of building long-term institutional leadership, which can respond to the country's economic development needs. It is also a response to the limited opportunities to engage meaningfully and develop an understanding across traditional boundaries of race, gender, social strata and economic sectors. It has been set up as a learning network, with the core principles of diversity, dialogue, relationships and learning.Nexus was originally designed to be a three-year programme. The duration of the first programme was for this length of time, after which the programme was reduced to two years, based on feedback from the first cohort who found the commitment too long. Since, January 2002, a new Nexus programme has been introduced at the beginning of each calendar year. There are therefore five groups of participants who have completed Nexus. The programme is not certified, therefore no degrees awarded. However, participants are acknowledged at a graduating event with a programme certificate from GIBS recognizing their participation (Summary of Nexus Evaluations, 2002, 2003, 2004).The composition of the participants has always been well balanced in terms of race, gender and professional background. Roughly 45 per cent of participants of the first few cohorts were women, and 40 per cent were black. Approximately, 30 per cent were from government, NGOs and small business. The representation of black and women participants have steadily increased to 55 per cent representation each for the 2006 intake.Nexus has been operating as a leadership development programme for five years, during which time various evaluation methods have been used to assess its success and impact. The annual programme includes 20 mostly out-of-classroom events during which bring participants together in three ways.Smaller working groups with a specific discussion theme\nRecommendations for leadership development at business school institutions: Many respected thought leaders in business education have commented on the need to change aspects of leadership education. Boyatzis et al. (1994) claim that business schools need to change their approach from teaching to learning, which is a process of discovering knowledge through contextual problems, and they also make the point that knowledge is \"in the room\" and not only in the head of the teacher.Mainstream business education is by-and-large not actively examining perspectives of the broader contextual issues affecting organizations, and thus missing an opportunity for dialogue across sectors amongst emerging leaders by, for instance, incorporating reflection and story-telling inquiry into group work.Kahane (2004) refers to \"messes\" which are problems that can only be understood systemically by taking all the connected relationships into account to make the pieces of a system function coherently. Part of educating business leaders about how the broader socio-economic issues in South Africa systemically relate to their work, is to create learning situations which would lead them to an understanding of these dimensions of complexity.Establishing the purpose of the leadership development interventions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper aims to highlight the importance and impact of leadership education which is contextually relevant. It is based on a case study of an innovative learning programme, Nexus, at a leading business school in South Africa (Gordon Institute of Business Science). South African institutional leaders are under increasing pressure to take on a significant role in guiding the organization in a manner that is in tune with the political mandate of social transformation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Nexus has been operating as a leadership development programme for five years, and various evaluation methods have been employed to assess the success and impact of the programme. This paper therefore has a multi-phased approach which will look at the different stages of the programme's development, what methods were used, and how participants' perspectives have changed over time.\nFindings: - The evaluations show that Nexus contributes to an individual's leadership development, in particular, by understanding the broader issues affecting their organisations and society, how to work in diverse environments, and how to build trust across networks.\nOriginality/value: - This paper highlights alternative, mainly out-of-classroom, learning methods which have been assessed in a specific case study over a period of four years. This case study has informed leadership development recommendations, which in turn hopes to influence the scope of leadership education in business school institutions.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Strategic cost modelling and optimisation for highway asset maintenance	[ "Asset maintenance", "Carriageway", "Condition bands", "Performance condition", "Treatment renewals", "Treatment transition" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The carriageway system is well-thought-out as treatable assets because of their defects and failures which are repairable (Ekpiwhre et al., 2016). The condition of the current state of these treatable assets is the base unit for forecasting and implementing their desired maintenance. A study in the estimation of infrastructure transition probabilities from condition rating data has proven that information on current and future infrastructure conditions are essential for maintenance and rehabilitation decision making (Madanat et al., 1995; Tee and Li, 2011). Maintenance, which is a key function for sustaining long-term profitability of assets by organisations, is defined as a combination of all actions with intent to retain or restore the asset to its original state or a state where it can perform its required function. Due to a paradigm shift in core maintenance, maintenance performance measurement has gained great attention from practitioners and researchers in recent years (Parida and Kumar, 2006; Khan et al., 2013). Performance measurement forms the basis for considering where treatments and most pertinent for maintenance considerations. Performance measurements, with treatment transition, are also used to develop cost models because of the high probability that performance conditions and treatment renewals actions portray the treatable asset, which constitutes for the forthcoming period.\nBackground: A treatable system, also known as a repairable system as defined by Ascher and Feingold (1984), is one which after failing to perform one or more of its functions satisfactory can be restored to entirely satisfactory performance (Fang et al., 2013, 2014). The restoration can be by ways and means other than replacement of the whole system. Repairable systems are often classed into three categories namely minimal repair, normal repair and perfect repair based on the outcome on its restoration level. The most common used models for the failure process of repairable systems are: renewal process ~ perfect/maximal repair; generalised renewal process (correction and rejuvenation)-normal/partial repair; and imperfect/minimal repair (Percy and Alkali., 2007; Wu and Clements-croome, 2005). Maintenance of deteriorating carriageway system can be a great challenge since their process of degradation portrays unpredictable random failures occurring from traffic loads on the carriageway and effect of weather. These uncertainties often lead to typical questions when maintenance is deliberated such as: what is the best maintenance alternative? The frequency of maintenance; and what level of deterioration is acceptable before maintenance is considered? (Carnahan et al., 1987).\nPerformance condition: The asset performance condition is classified using a five-point band, namely, 1 - very good, 2 - good, 3 - fair, 4 - poor and 5 - very poor. The condition band is the starting point (current year) for subsequent planning for the network. The current situation performance status and performance transition are introduced for the current state and performance change for populating the untreated forthcoming year.\nTreatment renewals: Treatment of carriageway can be classified into several treatment types (Dean et al., 2012). In this analysis, the assumption accommodates four treatment types, namely, surface dressing, moderate overlay, deep inlay and reconstruction. The treatment effect and cost variable required for the expected performance condition after treatment intervention can be obtained using the following:\nAnalytical cost optimisation: The optimal treatment level using the most efficient cost estimate for treatment changes from one condition band to another is obtainable from an expert illustration or maintenance records (HMEP, 2012a). The unit cost used for the analysis is an assumption as diverse treatment types does currently exist, at various prices and measurements, depending on the application type. The elicited unit cost is computed with consideration of the desired performance condition band. The treatment transition scenarios, optimal treatment level and cost estimation combination express the forthcoming year repair cost analytically. It is the intent for every asset owner to desire a network operating at an optimal performance level of very good. Thus, the anticipated forthcoming treatment renewal is achievable by applying a treatment intervention that will bring the asset to a state of new. As indicated, for the anticipated optimal level forthcoming state, the treatment strategies portray options for best decision making and implementation.\nConclusions: Cost effective decisions that can help manage a high level of investment is the aspiration for every asset owner. Sound cost and resource decision making by asset managers is essential for the sustainability of the highway network. Better highway investment decisions and choices can be decided from knowledge generated from the strategic cost model. The strategic model application enables asset managers to consider investments that require higher initial investment but ought to yield lower cost and risks and higher performance over the asset life cycle. By considering the various cost scenarios and strategies, it is possible to select an ideal price to renew the system to an optimal steady state. Cost estimations and effective planning are necessary for a sustainable highway network. The evaluations are useful in the determination of future budget allocation and prioritisation as presented using the strategic cost model. The cost model and others developed in literature are helpful in making a strategic-level planning decision. This significant advantage of the strategic cost optimisation model is its benefit to asset managers. The strategic model gives asset owners the insight of the implication of the several likely scenarios. The approach depicts the scenarios that each repair level action can have on the future performance and upcoming asset maintenance. On the other hand, the cost optimisation approach helps to investigate current and forthcoming funding required to define a level of regular service and ideal performance condition practically. Moreover, the whole life cost of the assets is minimised as well as preserved in a more efficient way using an analytical cost optimised approach due to the known identified scenarios of funding required.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose and confer a strategic cost model as a concept for good decision making for highway asset treatment in the transport industry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper is based on asset performance condition and treatment renewals using a five-point performance for developing prospective treatment strategies. The strategic cost model is presented in the similitude of picturesque and its outcomes via an exploratory data analysis.\nFindings: The results articulate the best maintenance plan for the forthcoming and future years. The strategic cost model uses the combination of the current condition band, the sample area and likely treatment cost for proposing the optimal treatment solution based on consideration of desired treatment level.\nPractical implications: The strategic cost model is suitable for outlining the asset performance condition, treatment renewals and analytical cost optimisation. The formulated analytical cost model and developed prospective strategies enable good decision making, long-term contract negotiations and whole life cost maintenance and management.\nOriginality/value: Embracing eminent performance condition from the research area of lifecycle planning and deterioration models of a physical asset, a prospective cost strategy for asset maintenance is proposed in the study. The resultant treatment strategies using the analytical approach portray the ability that enables the adaptation of expected outcomes.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The ties that bind: stakeholder collaboration and networking in local festivals	[ "Festivals", "Collaboration", "Stakeholders", "Networking" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Festivals are held for reasons such as economic gain (Andersson and Getz, 2008; Kim et al., 1998; Kim et al., 2008; Kim et al., 2010), to enhance cultural values (Getz et al., 2010; Isar, 1976), for political purposes (Jeong and Santos, 2004; Sharpe, 2008), as tourist attractions (Getz, 1997; Gursey et al., 2004; Markwell and Waitt, 2009; Savinovic, et al., 2012) or to promote destinations (Boo and Busser, 2005; Buch et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2012; Kim et al., 2016).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Usefulness of collaboration\n3. Conceptualization: Stakeholder relationships in a festival are formed for reasons such as to obtain financial benefits (e.g. sponsors and vendors), information and other resources, and because some decisions cannot be taken by a single stakeholder (Getz, 2007; Kim et al., 2008; Presenza and Iocca, 2012). As stakeholders have varying degrees of power, the interaction dynamics between stakeholders differs (Reid, 2011). Weaker stakeholders need to negotiate and agree with stronger ones, while stakeholders with fewer resources need to negotiate for resources (Tiew et al., 2015). Negotiation is often carried out between sponsors, vendors and organizers, and is intended to ensure mutually acceptable benefits to all parties (Larson and Wikstrom, 2001).\n4. Methodology: 4.1 Instrument development\n5. Results: 5.1 Stakeholder characteristics\n6. Discussion and conclusions: 6.1 Conclusions\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to examine the extent of collaboration and networking between local festival stakeholders by focusing on the differences in how they evaluate themselves and other stakeholders.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A questionnaire directed toward different stakeholder groups involving 1,092 respondents was administered at six selected festivals in Ghana, West Africa.\nFindings: In terms of self-evaluated collaboration and networking, the festival organizers considered themselves to have the highest risk, followed by the sponsors and vendors. However, when the stakeholders assessed each other, most agreed that they experienced higher risk when dealing with vendors. To reduce the risks of dealing with vendors, it is recommended that vendors be registered, accredited and allocated selling spaces before festivals begin.\nPractical implications: It is helpful to understand the nature of decision power or different views of collaboration and networking among stakeholders. Further, this study offers insights to understand stakeholders' motivations to participate in local festivals.\nOriginality/value: The combination of collaboration and networking between local festival stakeholders into a conceptual model allows the current findings to offer meaningful theoretical and practical implications.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Using consumer surveys to determine food sustainability	[ "Sustainability", "Consumption", "Consumers", "Food waste", "Frozen foods" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The development of sustainability criteria associated with food products has been stimulated by the standardisation of the product carbon footprint (British Standards Institute, 2008). The carbon footprint of products can be developed to represent the typical household food consumption using national dietary surveys (Wallen et al., 2004). This approach defines differences in the use of fresh and frozen foods. This is especially challenging because determination of the food use in households that integrates both consumption and sustainability criteria for weekly shopping is often limited by data. Currently, consumer surveys identify taste, value and convenience attributes of different products to define new product development (NPD) in the foods sector. Sustainability research increasingly proposes that increased integration of carbon footprint methods and sustainability measures in manufacturing NPD will occur in future.\nResearch methodology: The requirement for a survey that provides a representative and robust sample that defines how we use fresh and frozen foods in the home was discussed with the technical and sustainability function within the Iglo Food Group in June 2012. This resulted in the development of two questionnaires that determine fresh and frozen food use in the home funded by Iglo Food Group and Sheffield Business School. The initial questionnaire was sent to 255 Sheffield, UK residents on-line using the Survey Monkey on-line system[2]. The sample was made up of Sheffield residents who were panellists on food sensory testing programmes at Sheffield Business School and the questionnaire was designed as a series of \"tick box\" questions so that the demographic, lifestyle and product choice data for households could be determined. The products identified in the questions were selected using the frozen and comparable fresh food product (see Appendix 1 for a questionnaire copy). The number of responses to the questionnaire was 134 (a response of 52 per cent), 100 panellists who used a wide range of frozen and fresh foods were selected to take part in a second survey. The responders to the first survey are shown in Figure 1, and the questionnaire achieved the following objectives:\nResearch results: The waste index for the 83 households (83 per cent response rate to the second questionnaire) derived from panellist data was 5.59 for frozen food and 10.46 for fresh food. This means that 47 per cent more fresh food was wasted as compared to frozen food. The waste index provides a measure of food perceived to be wasted by the panellists. The two tailed t-test probability (fresh weighted against frozen values) for the mean fresh (10.46) and frozen (5.59) food waste was <1 per cent for the whole sample of 83 households demonstrating the mean values for fresh and frozen food waste were significantly different.\nValidating the research methodology: The research reported in this paper is derived from 83 households and while the 5,700 households sampled for the UK's LCF survey is far in excess of our sample it must be noted that the LCF sample is for the whole UK and it is collected in 150 postal regions or n=38 households per region for 5,700 households. Furthermore, this study has selected a population sample within the Sheffield area that utilises a broad range of fresh and frozen foods in contrast to the LCF that considers some 20,000 products. Thus, the method developed has reduced the variability of data by selecting an appropriate study group who are trained in food sensory techniques (n=255 for the initial screening survey) and utilise a broad range of frozen and fresh category products (n=83 for the final questionnaire). The sample is representative of the National Census age structure for the Sheffield city region so that informed statements on the GHG footprint/waste footprint of frozen food consumption can be made. The panellist population sample was used because the participants were practiced in reporting food categories and product types and they were representative.\nThe social implications: The results show that 47 per cent more fresh food is wasted than frozen food and extrapolating this waste headline data to a UK population-wide scenario of 61 million consumers should be viewed with caution. However, considering this scenario a 47 per cent reduction in food waste per individual as a consequence of using frozen food as part of their weekly meal planning can conserve up to 0.76 kg CO2eq which equates to reducing the national GHG inventory by 2.41 million tonnes of GHG each year (i.e. (0.00076x61,000,000)x52=2,410,720 tonnes per year). While this extrapolation is taking the current data set to its limit here it can provide useful for providing policy or strategic insight. The 18.23 kg CO2eq weekly individual consumption footprint in this study which accounts for over one million tonnes of GHG emission per week for the UK's 61 million consumers (i.e. (0.01823x61,000,000) x52=57,825,560 tonnes CO2eq per year). This figure equates well to the 50-60 million tonnes of CO2eq are associated with consumption of food prepared in the household if we consider 50 per cent of current food consumption may be out of the home with a further significant GHG loading being associated with food imports (Defra, 2012).\nResearch conclusion: The research presented shows that frozen food accounts for 12.8 kg CO2eq per week for each household in the sample used and this is equivalent to 17.50 million tonnes of GHG per year in the UK). Meal planning with frozen foods can conserve the GHG emissions associated with food waste by 47 per cent compared to fresh food and reduce GHG emissions by 2.41 million tonnes per year in the UK. This represents an innovative approach to applying market intelligence to sustainable metrics associated with new product design and development which will become increasingly important if manufacturers are to develop sustainable consumption policies. Avoidable food waste in the home is an important target for improving sustainability by reducing it and the research reported here shows the efficient use of frozen food in meal and diet planning will achieve this.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to define the sustainability attributes of frozen and fresh food consumption in a typical household. The reason for writing this paper is that food preservation is often overlooked when developing sustainability strategies.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study uses established carbon footprint data for specific food types and consumer survey data to determine how consumers use fresh and frozen products in the home. Consumption and waste data for 83 households was obtained using a combination of narrative and graphical association questions.\nFindings: The results show greenhouse gas emissions associated with a diets containing frozen food are reduced because 47 per cent less frozen foods is wasted as compared to fresh foods with a typical household wasting 10.4 per cent of fresh food and 5.9 per cent frozen food.\nResearch limitations/implications: This research has highlighted the importance of understanding the waste impacts of catering and food service consumption outside the home.\nPractical implications: This research will guide future product development for frozen foods with regard to dietary planning and portion control.\nSocial implications: The cost and sustainability benefits of meal planning are identified and these will inform policy making and education to improve dietary choices.\nOriginality/value: This work extends the scope of current consumer surveys that assess quality, value and taste attributes to sustainability criteria and it will enable collaboration between fresh and frozen product categories to deliver sustainable dietary options.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Build touchpoints and they will come: transitioning to omnichannel retailing	[ "Convenience stores", "Omnichannel retailing", "Japanese distribution", "Multichannel retailing", "Seven Eleven" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Multichannel retailing (MCR) is a standard business model for major retailers across the world, but the future lies with the seamless integration of channels and touchpoints into an omnichannel retailing (OCR) model. The aim of OCR is to rationalise MCR models in a way that meets customer needs in a world increasingly reliant on technology. However, the complexities of integrating multiple touchpoints, and the scarcity of best practice exemplars, mean risks are high.\nLiterature review: the omnichannel transition process: OCR requires the integration of customer touchpoints to ensure a seamless customer experience, leading to sales based on improved interactions. This goal distinguishes OCR from MCR (Beck and Rygl, 2015; Picot-Coupey et al., 2016). Ideally, OCR is a form of retailing that achieves customer value through efficient and frictionless integration of multiple touchpoints.\nMethodology: Previous research has aimed to determine the value provided by different channels through isolating and modelling the effects of different variables. However, as noted by Krafft et al. (2015), \"Most strategies and decisions followed in practice are based on holistic assessment of all behavioural, economic, and competitive factors. From this perspective, most of the implications for managers flowing from compartmentalised research are highly questionable, and becoming more so as the environment becomes more complex\" (p. 581). An important next step is the integration of factors to determine how companies can manage the high costs and risks involved in the transition to OCR, specifically answering the question: how and why retail organisations transition from MCR to OCR?\nCase background: retailing in Japan: The importance of the Japanese convenience store (CVS) channel\nThe S&I case study: S&I is a large, MCR conglomerate (Deloitte Touche Tomatsu, 2015) that owns Seven Eleven globally. In 2015, the group included 39 separate retail subsidiaries across multiple different formats and brand chains, and maintained multiple online sales and marketing touchpoints (Seven & I Holdings, 2016). SEJ was Japan's largest and most profitable retail chain (Hanbai Kakushin, 2016), accounting for 70.9 per cent of S&I's sales, and generating JPY686.7 billion in operating profit, while the group as a whole reported just JPY352.3 billion due to losses at other subsidiaries (Seven & I Holdings, 2016). SEJ alone operated 18,572 stores nationwide in 2015, making it the largest retail chain by store number.\nResults and implications: An OCR strategy aims to offer a seamless customer experience online and offline and so provide a significant competitive advantage for retailers (Hure et al., 2017). However, the complexity of retail operations, particularly in the case of MCR, presents numerous challenges that make the transition to OCR difficult to achieve in practice. The case takes us beyond operational and logistics considerations of OCR (Hubner, Kuhn and Wollenburg, 2016a; Hubner, Wollenburg and Holzapfel, 2016b) as the extensive nature of the S&I organisation provided a broader perspective that integrates, macro environmental, product category, branding and customer interface considerations.\nAreas for further research: As OCR will most usually be a new model that evolves within an existing retail business, the current study indicates a need for further research into executive commitment and structural resistance across supply chains. As a further extension, OCR strategy appears likely to vary across store format and product category. Thus, the importance of leveraging brands to maintain and grow customer trust and support for OCR is a key area that remains underdeveloped (Verhoef et al., 2015; Picot-Coupey et al., 2016).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of a major retailer's transition to omnichannel retailing (OCR) from an existing multichannel retailing (MCR) base. Using the illustrative case of Seven & I (S&I) Holdings, the paper positions OCR in terms of its goal to provide added customer value through a seamless brand experience.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research uses a case study methodology, based on a series of in-depth interviews. Executives at S&I were interviewed as the core of the case, and supporting interviews were carried out with executives at Yamato Transport, Inditex Japan and Rakuten. Data collected in interviews were cross-referenced to industry and trade press reports, providing an illustration of the motivation and strategic decisions behind the transition to OCR, and of factors that have direct impact on the implementation of the model.\nFindings: The results illustrate the difficulty in achieving OCR in terms of unifying customer experience across multiple channels. The case demonstrates the potential for cross-channel integration through multiple, but integrated touchpoints, and the leveraging of existing multichannel retail infrastructure and systems. In addition to confirming previous conceptual understanding of the transition process, the core findings demonstrate the importance of the strategic implementation process, the importance of the retailer's brand portfolio and brand management, and the need to adjust and leverage existing facilities and infrastructure.\nResearch limitations/implications: The study is limited by the single case employed, although the complexity of OCR implementation does not take away from the practical implications in a broader sense. It could be argued that the Japanese retail industry has some differences to other markets, but the customer-orientated nature of S&I's implementation, and its aim to leverage existing infrastructure, is illustrative for similar strategies of retailers elsewhere in the world.\nPractical implications: The study has value to both researchers and practitioners as a structured synopsis of an actual case of transition, and adds to the literature that relates to OCR and to Japanese distribution. It demonstrates not only the need for robust supply chain, logistics, IT, marketing and retail infrastructure, and integration across distribution systems, but also the importance of the retailer's brand portfolio, which may need significant adjustment to best promote added customer value. The success of S&I is predicated on both the high population densities, characteristic of the Japanese market, and a strong, longstanding MCR base. Similar systems and implementation issues apply to other markets that operate under similar conditions.\nSocial implications: The social implications of the paper relate to the fact that, although the transition to OCR may be a difficult, costly, and time-consuming proposition for a retailer, increasingly consumers are coming to expect both informational and purchasing options for brands to be available as, when and where they want them. The 24-7 nature of omnichannel also generates significant challenges in terms of work volumes and environmental impact. These issues are touched upon this paper.\nOriginality/value: This paper provides a case of a major and well-known retailer and the transition process towards an OCR model, of which there are currently few case studies available. It also adds significantly to the body of literature relating to Japanese distribution and provides insights into strategy not generally known in the English-speaking world.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
The contribution of tangible and intangible resources, and capabilities to a firm's profitability and market performance	[ "Firm performance", "Emerging markets", "Capabilities", "Resource-based view", "Tangible and intangible resources" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Strategy researchers (Ambrosini and Bowman, 2009; Kor and Mesko, 2013; Molloy and Barney, 2015) have suggested that intangible resources (IRs) were considered as the most likely sources of firm success because they are not easily acquired and replicated in factor markets. However, since firms are bundles of IR and tangible resource (TR), it is very unlikely for a firm to compete on the basis of a single IR, important as it may be (Sirmon et al., 2011; Kor and Mesko, 2013). Moreover, since TR and IR are static in nature (Teece, 2007; Helfat and Peteraf, 2015), organisations must use some other mechanisms that can integrate and reconfigure resources, and renew or alter their resource mix to be able to cope with environmental changes. Several researchers (Weigelt, 2013; Wang et al., 2015) suggest that only the capabilities can turn these static resources into dynamic nature and transform them to create a new configuration of resources that can sustain competitive advantage. Therefore, over the last quarter century, a large body of strategic management research which includes theoretical and empirical studies has worked on the understanding of how firms' different sets of resources and capabilities lead to performance variations among firms (Molloy and Barney, 2015; Morris et al., 2017).\n2. Literature review: In the last 30 years, RBV have paid considerable attention to internal firm-level factors to explore unexplained variance in firm performance. Wernerfelt (1984) emphasised the internal workings of a firm but did not entirely dismiss industry structure effects, and further linked firm performance to the idiosyncratic and heterogeneous resources of the organisations and proposed that acquisition of these resources are critical for earning above normal returns. Wernerfelt (1984) described the firm as bundles of resources and argued that \"resources and products are two sides of the same coin\" (p. 171). Afterwards, Barney (1991) suggested that competitive advantage can only be generated and sustained by firm-level resources that are valuable (V), rare (R), inimitable (I) and non-substitutable (N) - the so-called VRIN criteria framework and claimed that only resources that are intangible in nature possess these criteria. Therefore, in considering the heterogeneity among firms in resources as fundamental in explaining why some firms outperform others, the RBV posits such a position (Barney, 1991).\n3. Methods: 3.1 Sample and informant selection\n4. Results: The control variables, industry structure factors and firm-level variables (TR and IR, and capabilities) were entered into regression analysis, respectively, and the contribution of each independent variable was calculated. The abbreviations of the variables are given below:\n5. Discussion and managerial implications: The analysis revealed some noteworthy results. In testing the H1, although the relative contribution of IRs was significantly higher than TRs, the difference was not considerable and TRs were still significantly associated with all performance measures (especially with sales turnover) and offered unique contributions to firm performance. Moreover, the additional explanatory power of IRs on performance measures was significant but limited. These results show that against the dominant effect of IRs on performance, TRs still have a non-negligible impact in contributing firm performance within the context of Turkish business environment.\n6. Limitations and future research directions: Three limitations are highlighted in this study: first, the context-specific nature of firm-level resources compelled the researcher to establish the hypotheses testing the relative importance of resources on firm performance empirically in broad nature. Namely, only general resource categories, TR and IR, and capabilities were used but sub-categories of these resources were omitted. As a future research direction, a construct set that includes a broader but not exhaustive number of resources and capabilities might be helpful for a better investigation of resource and capability and performance relationship.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative contribution of tangible resource (TR) and intangible resource (IR), and capabilities on firm performance based on the measures of market share, sales turnover and profitability.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional survey research design was used in the study. The modified version of Galbreath and Galvin's (2008) resource-performance questionnaire which included a total number of 45 questions was applied on 243 Turkish firms operating in different industries. The data collected were analysed by hierarchical regression analysis.\nFindings: The findings revealed that IRs and capabilities contributed more greatly to firm performance compared to TRs. However, in contrast to the proposition of resource-based theory that views capabilities as the most important skills that underpin the development and deployment of both TR and IR, capabilities offered rather limited additional explanatory power to the prediction of firm performance only with respect to profitability against the combined effects of TR and IR.\nOriginality/value: The vast majority of the empirical resource-based view (RBV) research concentrates on developed countries and very little is known about results outside of this domain. This study employs Turkish business databases to assess the relative importance of TR and IR and capabilities on performance differences among firms in Turkey which was the 17th largest economy in the world trade in 2016. Second, in the RBV literature, limited research tests the contribution of capabilities to firm success after simultaneously accounting for the effects of other resources (namely, TR and IR) available to the firm. Finally, this research offers practical contributions to executives and managers who have to make adequate decisions for firm survival and growth in the competitive business arena.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Local voices and action: concluding discussion	[ "Qualitative research", "Risk governance", "Local knowledge", "Community-based DRRM", "Role of NGO", "Underlying risk factors" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The underlying purpose of this special issue has been to foreground understandings of disaster risk reduction (DRR) from the perspective of local actors, particularly locally based NGOs, leading to consideration of means through which such actors in combination with other local actors can address \"underlying risk drivers\". The study is situated within a body of work conducted by members of GNDR under the titles \"Views from the Frontline\", \"Action at the Frontline\" and \"Frontline\", all concerned with participative action research engaging local voices in collaboration with GNDR member organisations to investigate local perspectives on risk and disaster reduction, taking action on these findings locally and at policy levels. The genesis and development of the above programmes is charted in this issue in Gibson and Scott (2018). A majority of the contributors to the case studies at the heart of this issue were engaged in the co-creation of these programmes as well as in conducting them in their localities. These activities influenced their local level work, which is the focus of this special issue.\nConceptual backdrop to discussion of the case studies and complementary papers: A major challenge to progress in DRR and more broadly in development, of which it is an aspect, is in addressing what UNISDR (2018) call \"underlying risk drivers\" which it defines as \"Processes or conditions, often development-related, that influence the level of disaster risk by increasing or reducing levels of exposure, vulnerability and capacity\" (UNISDR, 2018).\nTheoretical framework: There has been growing consideration of the impact of \"everyday risks\" and \"everyday disasters\". These small-scale shocks and stresses experienced by populations around the world, when aggregated, account for a surprisingly high proportion of losses at a local level. For example, UNISDR (2015) found that as much as 99 per cent of disaster records are attributed to extensive[1] risks, and \"Frontline\" local level research found that these resulted from diverse environmental, social, economic and political factors (GNDR, 2017). The impacts of everyday disasters are disproportionately felt by those in poverty and informality, not wrapped round with social protection:The poorer you are the more losses you experience and the less you are able to deal with adversity.(GNDR, 2013, p. 6)Extensive risk critically erodes development assets.(UNISDR, 2015, p. 94)\nStructures of power and powerlessness: The title of this section acknowledges Gaventa's (1980) early work \"Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley\". Acknowledging his debt to Freire's (1970) analysis of the imposition of power over the powerless extending to an ability to reframe beliefs and behaviour towards acquiescence of a situation of oppression, Gaventa charted these mechanisms in the coal-mining communities of Appalachia. Although a rich region, producing 65 per cent of America's coal in 1974, its people lived in grinding poverty. The region's wealth passed to absentee landlords and Gaventa depicts multiple elements of the structures of power, including complicity of local elites, local authorities and even elements of trades unions, along with manipulation of rules, imposition of sanctions and manipulation of the media resulting in eventual acquiescence and passivity in the face of enduring oppression. The themes of imposition of power to the detriment of local livelihoods, through multiple elements complicit with external locii of power and influence, are very close to our concerns in the present study.\nDiscussion of the case studies and complementary papers: Drawing on the concept of everyday politics as a means of considering how actors engage with the structures of power and powerlessness which configure risk and resilience, we turn to consideration of the case studies at the heart of this special issue and to the three complementary papers.\nLocal voices and action case studies: Discussion of the cases shows particular themes emerging, summarised in the list \"Summary of themes emerging from case studies\". These were identified through considering the eight case studies in four pairs reflecting common elements between the cases. This discussion appears in \"Drawing the case studies together: synthesis of case studies and group discussions\" in this issue (Gibson et al., 2018).\nComplementary papers: Three complementary studies by Briones (2018), Marchezini (2018) and Pandey (2018) contributed to this special issue, providing an additional perspective on the theme of local voices and action.\nZero-order responders (ZORs): Peru and Costa Rica (Briones, 2018): Those faced with disasters often have to deal with the immediate consequences without outside support from \"first responders\". The study demonstrates that far from locally affected populations being victims they are the initial or \"zero order responders\". He draws on examples from communities experiencing El Nino Costero in Peru and Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Costa Rica, both in 2017. Communities faced with dramatically changed situations after a disaster responded cohesively and with understanding of the specific contexts they faced. They employed creativity, improvisation and resilience in the solutions they adopted, including inverting power from car batteries to power appliances where power is lost, and using suspended shopping trollies sliding across dead high tension lines to transport goods across impassable rivers. Their expertise as ZORs would improve the currently top-down approaches to DRR if they were recognised as stakeholders in disaster management programmes.\nThe power of localism during the long-term disaster recovery process (Marchezini, 2018): A study of the experiences of local people - in Luizenses - after the 2010 flooding of the Paraitinga River which struck Sao Luiz do Paraitinga town, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, highlighted the important question \"whose voices are heard\"? It showed that local ZORs, for example, rafters who were not highly respected before the flood, saved lives before the emergency services arrived. Ironically when these services took control, even overriding the municipal authorities, soldiers had to be rescued themselves from the river by the locally re-named \"Rafting Angels\" after the soldiers' boats capsized. Nevertheless, the official and media narrative was of powerless and vulnerable locals and competent authorities. Luizenses had no voice even in consultations, where authorities at the front held the microphone, and did not hand it to local people. Their countevailing actions, for example, publishing their own newspaper and reinstating the church remains as a centre of community reflected everyday politics in action. The study concludes that more effective response demands taking localism seriously, empowering local voices, knowledge and action.\nCommunity engagement in Nepal (Pandey, 2018): The recognition of the role of communities in DDR has been slow being assimilated into DRR legislation in Nepal, according to Pandey (2018). He shows that despite a history of community action to deal with small and large disasters in the country and the emphasis placed on community participation in international frameworks, there is still an emphasis on top-down approaches in the country. Disaster events such as the 2008 Koshi flood and the 2015 Gorkha earthquake have led to fundamental revision of the governance of DRR in the country, but this still fails to recognise the value of community capacities. In some cases, disasters have been so devastating that even this capacity is eroded, and Pandey suggests that stronger local government recognition of community-based DRR and support for building local capacity is needed to counter this and recognise and strengthen the ability of people locally to prepare and respond.\nDiscussion: the risks which are faced and the options for addressing them: To reiterate the research questions at the outset of this discussion:\nConclusion: This study opened with discussion of the UNISDR term \"underlying risk factors\". It is suggested that UNISDR, governments and other institutions and agencies prefer to regard DDR as a programme focussed primarily on large-scale disasters, preparedness and response, rather than addressing underlying risk factors (see e.g. GNDR, 2013, demonstrating that according to UNISDR's own monitoring, progress in addressing underlying risk factors had been extremely limited). In contrast, an underlying theme of the case studies and discussions has been that disasters are a development issue; disasters and development are intimately linked; and therefore it is of primary importance to address underlying risk factors impeding development through social change. It is suggested that the practical mechanisms relevant to local-level NGOs for achieving progress in this, illustrated in the case studies, are based in varying degrees on legitimate subversion through creating local collaborations, stimulating action through innovation, communication and information, and strengthening local voice to influence different scales of governance to address underlying risk factors impeding development.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the findings from the body of case studies offered in the issue, combined with three external perspectives on local voices and action.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Using as its basis the eight key case studies and three external contributions to the special issue, the paper offers a theoretical framework as a basis for discussion of this material. Through this, it identifies possible modes of action understood through the theoretical framework and elaborated through the specific cases. It concludes with proposals for further work.\nFindings: The discussion finds that from a local perspective, the ambitions of local populations and local NGOs to achieve emancipatory change depend on the scope for local collaboration and partnerships to exercise influence on underlying risk factors. It resolves the suggested tension between operating within, and outside the system through the concept of \"legitimate subversion\".\nOriginality/value: It is felt that the original recording of case studies of local level action combined with the process of iterative critical reflection on the part of the contributors offers a novel approach to knowledge creation from practice, and offers insights bridging theoretical and practitioner perspectives into means of addressing underlying risk factors affecting local populations.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Emotions in sensemaking: a change management perspective	[ "Sensemaking", "Emotion", "Change", "Sensegiving", "Affect" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Change is an integral part of everyday life. Change creates disturbances and forces people to re-think their current and future situation. To preserve the ability to act in confusing situations, people develop a subjectively plausible story of what meaning, cause and consequence a certain development has and what an appropriate course of action would be. This process of interpreting inputs is widely known as sensemaking (Maitlis, 2005; Weick et al., 2005). In the context of organizational change, sensemaking outcomes lead to positive or negative stances toward a change proposal, and, subsequently, openness or resistance to change (Bartunek et al., 2011). The literature on organizational change is ripe with examples of how people individually and as groups interpreted a change proposal in a certain and often unintended way, causing it to fail or succeed (e.g. Balogun and Johnson, 2005; Conroy and O'Leary-Kelly, 2013; Ren and Guo, 2011; Shin et al., 2012).\nChange management, sensemaking and emotions: Change as an organizational process\nDiscrete emotions, sensemaking, sensegiving and sensetaking: Discrete emotions in sensemaking processes\nDiscussion: This paper presents a conceptualization of how emotions interact with intra- and inter-individual sensemaking and the propensity to engage in sensegiving activities, both in the form of a generalized model and as specific predictions of human behavior for four discrete emotions. In doing so, I provide a framework necessary to understand the role of discrete emotions in change management processes. The following table summarizes the propositions. The effects of the distinct emotions are quite different as are the implications to be derived thereof. The question for sensemaking research is therefore not how emotions influence sensemaking outcomes but how specific emotions do so (Table I).\nConclusion: Emotions are inputs as well as outcomes of sensemaking processes. As inputs, emotions influence what type of sensemaking account a person or group is likely to develop in a given situation and how strong the motivation to act based on this account will be. As an outcome sensemaking accounts norm the affective response to a particular stimulus. Discrete emotions have predictable effects on the sensemaking process as well as the likelihood that an individual will engage in sensegiving activities and be inclined to accept inter-personal sensemaking accounts. Anger and hope, for example, lead to sensemaking accounts suggesting decisive action, but while anger, due to being an emotion with a strong impetus for action, causes sense-makers to become engaged and motivated, hope, as a relatively low-effort emotion, does not foster such a motivations to act. Regarding sensegiving activity, emotions impact self-efficacy and perceived relevance of a stimulus. Anxiety, for example, triggers avoidance reactions and a state of openness. Anxious individuals will therefore be less likely to engage in sensegiving activities and more likely to accept sensegiving attempts of others, compared to emotionally neutral individuals. Change management and strategy implementation might benefit from active emotion management, although this strategy has the potential to backfire, if not executed carefully. Emotions are important contingencies for implementing a change effort in an organization.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: Following various calls for research, the purpose of this paper is to adopt theories of emotion and action to understand the affective dimension of sensemaking processes in organizational change endeavors.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper is conceptual in nature, introducing theories from psychology, in particular dual processing theory and the somatic marker hypothesis, to the field of intra- and inter-personal sensemaking in change processes.\nFindings: The author discusses how emotions shape sensemaking and thus the perception of change events and how four discrete emotions (anger, fear, anxiety, hope) shape content and motivational strength of sensemaking accounts, influence the likelihood that a person will engage in sensegiving activities and will be willing to accept inter-personal sensemaking outcomes. The author proposes that emotions are an input to as well as an outcome of sensemaking processes.\nResearch limitations/implications: Although this research builds on a strong empirical basis, is conceptual in nature. Future research might test the relationships suggested in this paper empirically.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest that the management of affective reactions of people subjected to change processes might be a field currently not sufficiently accounted for in change management. Active emotion management might be a way to steer change processes in a positive way for all the stakeholders involved.\nOriginality/value: The conceptualization presented here contributes to the often requested development of a conceptual model integrating emotions into the sensemaking perspective. The introduction of distinct emotions and the grounding in multi-disciplinary theory as well as the strong implications for change management theory and practice make this contribution valuable.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Brand extensions : A successful strategy in luxury fashion branding? Assessing consumers' implicit associations	[ "Brand extension", "Implicit association test (IAT)", "Implicit measurement", "Luxury fashion branding" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: \"Today luxury is everywhere\" (Kapferer and Bastien, 2009, p. 311). As basic as this sentence, as complex is the management of luxury brands nowadays. Related to the rising demand for luxury from emerging countries (e.g. India and China) as well as the increased spending capacity of the middle class, since the 1990s, the market for luxury brands has grown considerably (Hudders et al., 2012). These days, luxury does not only serve the desire of the affluent society, but also the demand of people who can occasionally afford the brands of luxury producers (Yeoman, 2011; Wiedmann et al., 2009). Thus, luxury brands are no longer the exclusive domain of the elite (Yeoman and McMahon-Beattie, 2006; Wiedmann et al., 2009). Often described as the democratization of the luxury market (Dubois and Laurent, 1995), luxury became more accessible to a larger audience, which results in the demand for brands to \"re-position themselves to attract the new, niche luxury market that was employing a different way of thinking than those of 'old luxury'\" (de los Santos, 2009, p. 2). To serve this new market trends, vertical brand extension strategies are of particular interest for brand managers (Stegemann, 2006). Especially in the fashion industry, various companies have launched brand (line) extensions addressing the new or casual luxury buyers (Truong et al., 2009). On the one hand, luxury brand managers are interested in downgrading strategies, while, on the other hand, brand managers of premium brands are interested in upgrading strategies (Truong et al., 2009).Although the investigation of vertical brand extension strategies has gained importance, existing research focusses primarily on consumer attitudes to and evaluation of vertical brand extensions and their impact on the \"equity\" of the parent brand (Riley et al., 2004) and, to date, little research has been made on the luxury market (Stegemann, 2006). Moreover, studies on the impact of vertical brand extensions have been limited to explicit measurement methods (McCarthy et al., 2001; Riley et al., 2004; Reddy et al., 2009; Ginman et al., 2010). These results are restricted in their significance as recent findings indicate that perception and attitude change unconsciously in the minds of customers and, consequently, cannot explicitly queried (Scheier, 2007). Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide new insights by focussing on the change of consumers' brand perception related to downgrading and upgrading brand extensions strategies in the luxury market based on an implicit association test (IAT). To investigate the attitude change toward the core brand, the well-known fashion brands H&M and Karl Lagerfeld have been selected using a story telling approach.\nTheoretical background: The luxury concept\nConceptualization: Due to the more and more common assumption that customer behavior is not only driven and regulated by cognitive-rational considerations, the analysis of unconscious and implicit processes moves into focus (Friese et al., 2006; Maison et al., 2001). Such implicit attitudes can be defined \"as actions or judgments that are under the control of automatically activated evaluation, without the performer's awareness of that causation\" (Greenwald et al., 1998, p. 1464), what suggests a spontaneous, rather intuitive decision behavior. Hence, when it comes to the analysis of product or brand choices, it seems appropriate to rely on implicit measurement methods which overcome the disadvantages of classical explicit methods that are based on self-evaluations (Nosek, 2007; Friese et al., 2006). The main characteristic of implicit measures is that the study participants are not explicitly asked for information regarding certain questions because these methods try to solve the problems of slow and socially desirable responses by avoiding direct questioning (Bing et al., 2007; Hofmann et al., 2005). Consequently, there exists a rather low probability that the results will be falsified because the respondents do not know about the applied measurement method (Greenwald et al., 2002).One of the most famous implicit measurement methods is the computer-based IAT, developed by Greenwald et al. (1998), which is particularly applicable to the investigation of attitudes, stereotypes and prejudices (Hofmann et al., 2005; Greenwald et al., 2003). The basic idea behind the IAT is that it would be easier for participants to respond with the same answer key on associated subjective concepts (compatible) than with an opposite response key (non-compatible) (Greenwald et al., 2009). The resulting so-called IAT-effect describes \"the differences in mean latency between these two conditions (non-compatible minus compatible)\" (Greenwald et al., 1998, p. 1468) and is often interpreted as the strength of an associative link (Greenwald et al., 2003, 1998).In contrast to the aforementioned classical IAT, the single target-IAT (ST-IAT), which was applied in the present study, \"measures the evaluation of a target object without the need to simultaneously evaluate a counter-category\" (Bluemke and Friese, 2008, p. 977). Accordingly, respondents are presented only one target object per phase to receive an absolute and not just relative IAT-effect (Bluemke et al., 2010; Bluemke and Friese, 2008). The structure of a ST-IAT is shown in Table I by using the specific contents of our study.In order to fulfill our study objective to investigate the change of consumers' brand perception related to down- and upgrading brand extensions strategies in the luxury market, we have carefully chosen two widely known target concepts so that respondents have no problems in the later word assignment. \"Karl Lagerfeld\" is one of the most successful and recognizable figures in fashion that serves as a source of inspiration for luxury brands. On the other hand, \"H&M\" is one of the world's largest \"fast fashion\" clothing retailers that has achieved popularity, especially among mainstream consumers. Also, the words for the attribute concepts \"luxury\" and \"non-luxury\" were carefully selected to prevent irritations and misunderstandings. Therefore, the key features of luxury goods, defined by Dubois et al. (2001), as well as common terms regarding product values were used. In particular, the attribute \"luxury\" is determined by expensive, high quality, valuable, unique and status, whereas \"non-luxury\" is described by contrasting words such as cheap, substandard, normal, mass produced and ordinary.Based on the presented conceptualization of the ST-IAT, we assume that it should be possible to influence the spontaneous reaction time with reference to the luxury concept by confronting respondents with adequate verbal up- and downgrading stimuli. Against this background the following hypotheses can be derived:H1. After providing an upgrade stimulus, H&M is easier associated with the luxury concept.H2. After providing a downgrade stimulus, Karl Lagerfeld is less associated with the luxury concept.\nMethodology: The collection of the data was conducted in Germany over a period of ten days in July 2012. To recruit potential study participants, we targeted native-speaking, right-handed volunteers with high interest in the domain of fashion and luxury as well as sufficient knowledge about the selected brands H&M and Karl Lagerfeld. A total of 30 individuals participated in the study, one-third of them male and two-third of them female, with a mean age of 26 years. The computer-assisted personal interviews were based on a ST-IAT using Inquisit Web Edition 4.0 Beta by Millisecond Software.The interviews were divided into three parts to allow a before-after measurement and comparison: after a brief instruction focussing on the general purpose of this study, the participants completed the IAT in which the IAT stimulus lists were comprised of the materials as shown in Table II - 50 percent of the sample were exposed to the Karl Lagerfeld stimuli, 50 percent to the H&M stimuli.In particular, the ST-IAT followed the three different blocks as described in Table I. Specifically, in Block 1, for evaluative training purposes referring to the bipolar attribute concept of luxury vs non-luxury, the luxury concept was categorized on the \"E\" key (left key concept), whereas \"non-luxury\" was categorized on the \"I\" key (right key concept). In Block 2, the initial block with 20 training and 40 experiment trials, the luxury concept as well as the stimuli for the brand (unipolar target concept: H&M or Karl Lagerfeld) were assigned on the \"E\" key, the concept for \"non-luxury\" on the \"I\" key. In the reversed block (Block 3) with 20 training and 40 experiment trials, the luxury concept was still categorized on the \"E\" key, whereas \"non-luxury\" and the stimulus material for the selected brand was categorized on the \"I\" key.In a second step, to investigate the effect of a possible vertical brand extension, at the end of the IAT measurement, each participant was asked to read a newspaper article that relates to a trading-up in the case of H&M and a trading-down in the case of Karl Lagerfeld (see material as shown in Figure 1).Subsequently, in a third step, the ST-IAT was performed again to detect possible differences compared to the first measurement.\nResults and discussion: For the analysis of our data, in a first step, the IAT-effect for each participant based on the D-score algorithm of Greenwald et al. (2003) was calculated. Therefore, only the data of the reaction time measurements in the experimental blocks were used in the calculation process. The other blocks were not considered, due to the fact that the reaction time here is usually longer (see Greenwald et al., 1998; Greenwald and Farnham, 2000) and more likely to fulfill the purpose of a training effect. In general, high ST-IAT scores above 0 indicate positive implicit brand associations, whereas low ST-IAT scores below 0 indicate negative implicit brand associations with Karl Lagerfeld or H&M against the backdrop of a luxury concept. In addition, there is a general assumption that a short reaction time suggests that a particular brand is more associated with the concept of luxury. The scores for all subjects (absolute values, sorted by size) are shown in Figures 2 and 3 to illustrate the study results against the backdrop of our hypotheses.Referring to H&M, the reaction time was significantly shorter for 11 out of 15 test subjects after having read the trading-up stimulus. Reasoning that an upgrade stimulus causes the subjects to facilitate the association of the brand with the concept of luxury, the data confirm that H&M was more assigned to the luxury category in the second measurement step. Therefore, H1 is supported.For the case of Karl Lagerfeld and the downgrading stimulus, a reverse effect was revealed. In this context, the results show clearly a higher reaction time in the second stage of the IAT measurement for 11 pre-post values. The result are supportive of H2, suggesting that a downgrading stimulus with a price reduction and a greater availability of the offered fashion items leads to a decreased association with the luxury concept.Comparing the individual reaction times before and after the upgrading stimulus (see Figures 4 and 5), ten out of 15 subjects in the H&M sample recorded a more positive attitude to the brand after having read the newspaper article. Therefore, the information about the luxury collection by H&M led to a stronger implicit association with the luxury category. For the case of Karl Lagerfeld, a more differentiated picture was created: one half of all subjects rated Karl Lagerfeld worse after the downgrading stimulus; however, the other half revealed a more positive attitude to the brand in relation to luxury.Apparently, the results provide no clear picture about the effect of the downgrading stimulus. However, a possible explanation for the ambiguous results might be the lack of experience with the brand Karl Lagerfeld. Due to the fact that in comparison to H&M, the study participants indeed know Karl Lagerfeld, nevertheless are less likely to personally own one of the brand's products. For that reason, the newspaper stimulus led to enhanced knowledge about this brand that was reflected in a stronger association with luxury for some of the study participants - even if the information in the article focussed on a downgrading situation of the brand. Consequently, in next research steps, the focus on participants with actual product experience with this brand might lead to less ambiguous results.\nConclusion: Main contribution\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Although the investigation of brand extension strategies has gained importance, existing research focusses primarily on consumer attitudes to brand extensions, and to date, little research has been made on the luxury market. Moreover, studies on the impact of brand extensions have been limited to explicit measurement methods. Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide new insights by focussing on the change of consumers' brand perception related to downgrading and upgrading brand extensions strategies in the luxury market based on an implicit association test (IAT).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - In this exploratory study context of examining the spontaneous reaction time with reference to the luxury concept by confronting respondents with adequate verbal brand extension stimuli, a ST-IAT was considered for the empirical tests of these hypotheses.\nFindings: - The study results give evidence that consumers' perception of an upgrading or downgrading strategy of a brand varies in accordance to these hypotheses. Hence, the reaction time of the H&M subjects decreased after having read the upgrading stimulus whereby, in the case of Karl Lagerfeld, the ST-IAT reaction times showed that the downgrading information resulted in a weaker association of Karl Lagerfeld with luxury.\nOriginality/value: - The use of implicit measurement methods is becoming increasingly important for assessing consumer reaction to the new product line. Particularly, when luxury brands apply a downgrading strategy, the risks of possible damages to the core brand are much higher than in the case of an upgrade of a basic brand to the luxury or premium segment.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Evaluation of co-branded hotels in the Taiwanese market: the role of brand familiarity and brand fit	[ "Co‐branding", "Co‐branded hotel", "Brand familiarity", "Brand fit", "Brands", "Hotels", "Taiwan" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Several types of branding strategies have recently emerged in the global market, such as brand alliances and brand extensions (He and Balmer, 2006). Brand alliance is a strategy where two or more brands coexist as a whole entity to consumers (Rao et al., 1999). The forms of brand alliance strategies include co-branding, advertising alliances, joint sales promotions, bundling, and ingredient branding (Helmig et al., 2007). One of the most frequently used approaches is co-branding (Walchili, 2007), in which two or more brands are jointly presented to consumers to improve the value of co-branded products and services (Washburn et al., 2004). Firms engage in co-branding to share the expenses of promotional campaigns, to gain access to new markets, to raise brand awareness by alignment with a high-prestige partner (Rao et al., 1999; Simonin and Ruth, 1998), and to transfer the positive image from partners to a newly formed co-brand (Park et al., 1996; Washburn et al., 2000). Relevant concepts for co-branding are joint promotion and bundling. Joint sales promotion occurs when two or more firms jointly conduct sales promotion programs to achieve certain marketing goals (Varadarajan, 1985). Bundling occurs when two or several products and services become a single sales unit, which would become cheaper than selling them separately (Adams and Yellen, 1976).Recently, increased competition in the global tourism market has led to a focus in the international hospitality industry on branding strategies to enhance competitive advantage (Holverson and Revaz, 2006; O'Neill and Mattila, 2010). Many global hotel companies are now seeking innovative ways to leverage their brands to increase market share, enhance customer experiences, and define a niche within the hospitality industry. Sangster et al. (2001, p. 141) stated, \"The big hotel operators now almost universally accept that the right brands can give competitive advantage\". Growth in the prevalence of hotel branding will certainly continue in the future (Bailey and Ball, 2006).Regarding the implementation of branding strategies used in the hotel industry, the recent co-branding agreement between Marriott and AC Hotels indicates the expected growth of co-branded hotels (Marriott News Center, 2011). A local hotel that cooperates with a famous hotel brand can easily be recognized and accepted by consumers, such as international tourists or business travelers. However, most local hotel owners prefer to maintain their own organizational culture and management characteristics without losing their identities when working with international hotel brands (Heung et al., 2008). For example, IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) and ANA (All Nippon Airways) have created three types of co-branded hotels in the Japanese market: ANA-InterContinental, ANA-Crowne Plaza, and ANA-Holiday Inn (Hotel News Resource, 2007). The CEO of the IHG ANA Hotels Group, Japan, commented, \"The co-branded hotels offer guests an international flavor combined with a continuing emphasis on authentic Japanese hospitality\" (IHG ANA Hotels Group Japan, 2008).A global brand usually forms a strategic alliance with a local established brand when entering a new market (Xiao et al., 2008). Venkatesh and Mahajan (1997) indicated that when forming an alliance, the most favorable alliance partners would be branded partners instead of unbranded alternatives. In this sense, a co-branding strategy is suggested as an effective approach for local hotel brands to increase the awareness in the global market and for international hotel brands to gain recognition in the local market (Heung et al., 2008). Usually, a local hotel brand partner with an international hotel brand is a combination of the co-branded hotels such as IHG and ANA. In the Taiwanese market, local enterprises may ally with other local hotels as an alternative to international hotel brands (Taiwan Tourism Bureau, 2011a). It is expected that academics and hotel practitioners can benefit from the insights provided by this study, with respect to the evaluation of local co-branded hotels.Although co-branding is becoming a popular strategy in the marketplace (Keller and Lehmann, 2006) and research on this topic has grown significantly, very few hospitality studies have examined the concept of hotel co-branding. Most hospitality studies mainly focus on co-branding between hotels and restaurants (e.g. Boone, 1997; Boo and Mattila, 2002; Denizci-Guillet and Tasci, 2010) or the use of co-branding strategies in the restaurant industry (e.g. Hahm and Khan, 2001; Lee et al., 2006; Roh and Smestad, 2001; Wright et al., 2007; Tam, 2008). For example, fast food or quick service restaurants are usually allied with non-food industries, such as gas stations or grocery stores (Roh and Smestad, 2001). Lee et al. (2006) investigated the co-branding of restaurants and credits cards for loyalty behaviors toward restaurants and found that customers who had the credit cards allied with the restaurants showed greater attitudinal and behavioral loyalty than non-cardholder customers. Ashton and Scott (2011) indicated that the perceived brand fit has a significant effect on purchase intention in the context of a co-branded hotel restaurant. Thus, it would be interesting to empirically investigate the effects of co-branding on consumer behavior in the hotel setting.An overview of past research on co-branding has illustrated that brand familiarity and brand fit are two important factors that largely affect the evaluation of co-branding offerings. That is, brand familiarity would significantly affect satisfaction evaluations and behavioral intentions of a famous brand partner with an unknown brand (Tam, 2008). Numerous studies have also considered brand fit as an effective way to assess the success of the co-branding strategy (Martinez and Pina, 2005). However, most hospitality studies related to co-branding have focused on the conceptual phase (Wright et al., 2007), and only a few have examined the causal effects of co-branding. Therefore, to fulfill the research gap and highlight the effects of brand familiarity and brand fit on consumer behavior, the present study examined the effects of brand familiarity and perceived fit on co-brand evaluations, in terms of purchase intention towards the offerings of co-branded hotels.\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Brand familiarity in co-branding\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Data collection\n4. Findings: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Conclusions: 5.1 Theoretical implications\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of brand familiarity and brand fit on purchase intention towards the offerings of co-branded hotels.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data were gathered from 198 respondents and two co-branded hotels in Taiwan were assessed.\nFindings: - The findings showed that the fit between co-brands mediate the relationship between brand familiarity and purchase intention. In particular, a well-known co-branded hotel with a high level of brand fit could directly or indirectly affect consumer decision-making processes regarding purchase intention towards the co-brand. Conversely, a less familiar co-branded hotel had a positive effect on purchase intention only if respondents perceived a good fit between allied brands.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Brand fit could be a more important factor than brand familiarity in influencing the success of hotel co-branding strategies. Future research to examine the co-branding concept in different social and cultural contexts and also from different perspectives, such as owners or managers, is recommended.\nOriginality/value: - Most hospitality studies focus on co-branding between hotels and restaurants. This study empirically investigated the effects of co-branding on consumer behavior in the hotel sector.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Does country-level governance enhance ethical behaviour of firms? An African perspective	[ "Corruption and ethics of companies", "Country-level governance", "Ethical behaviour of firms" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Ethics and ethical behaviour play a pivotal role in shaping a firm's identity and reputation, establishing its brand and winning the trust of suppliers, creditors, investors, customers and other business associates (Ferrell et al., 2011; Barrow, 2009; Peggy, 2009; Steger, 2004; Thomas et al., 2004; Beu and Buckley, 2001; Katz and Kahn, 1978). While fidelity, justice and responsibility are critical for putting up a good reputation, a firm that is craving excellence in its area must transcend just satisfying its shareholders. It has to make it a point to be ethically upright by acknowledging other stakeholders interests. Corollary to this, there has been a significant number of calls to introduce higher levels of ethics in corporate organisations because of the recent widely reported corporate scandals, fortuitous cashing of options and bonuses and spectacular bankruptcies across the globe (Kennedy-Glans and Schulz, 2005; Cory, 2005; Beu and Buckley, 2001). From a wider perspective, the current (mis)behaviour is basically a question of insatiability and the absence of accountability in the exercise of power (Vallabhaneni, 2008; Steger, 2004). Greediness, egregious abuse of power and dishonesty were uncovered in corporations, such as WorldCom and Enron in the USA, HIH Insurance in Australia, Ghana Airways and Ghana International Airline.\nLiterature review and hypothesis development: The notion that in terms of government supervision in the free market, the less its involvement, the better, and this is to some extent desirable. However, governments play a significant role in motivating corporate organisations to behave ethically. When businesspeople move to other jurisdictions, they occasionally observe that other business cultures have differing operational modes. For instance, there is a perception that corporate organisations in the USA are not indifferent from those in other economies, and some individuals perceive US firms as superior to firms in other jurisdictions. This perception has been termed as perspective of ethical superiority (Ferrell et al., 2011). However, the question that arises is what is triggering such perceptions? We argue that the possible answer to this question could be good governance that prevails in the USA. Firms facing ethical issues first evaluate the stage of a country's governance structure. To the extent that good governance remains satisfactory, firms can work ethical issues within determined conduits. Where good governance has been steadily compromised or neglected by managers of economies, ethical issues in corporate organisations are largely neglected or compromised, as there are no monitoring mechanisms that can be applied to compel firms to behave ethically.\nSample and data: Because we were interested in examining the association between broad set of country-level governance ratings by the World Bank and ethical behaviour of firms in African economies over time, we focused on economies with the full country-level governance and ethical behaviour of firms data required over the whole period (i.e. 2009 to 2012), available in the World Bank's governance indicators (Kaufmann et al., 2008) and World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report's database. We obtained the full data required for a total of 39 African economies out of the 54 (including the two disputed) over the sample period for our analysis.\nDescriptive statistics: Table I Panel A divulges descriptive statistics for the full sample. We present means, medians, minimums, maximums and number of observations for our variables of interest. On average, the ethical behaviour of firms in the 39 African economies recorded a figure of 3.6 during the period under review. Voice and accountability of the median economy was about -0.495. In regards to rule of law in these economies during the period under review, the weakest country recorded -1.84, while the strongest country chalked 0.95. Regulatory quality of the average (mean) economy was -0.48. In regards to government effectiveness and political stability, the average (mean) economy recorded -0.55 and -0.39, respectively. The median firm among these economies recorded -0.55 in terms of control of corruption during the period under review. In relation to democracy, about 95 per cent of our sample has held a general election within the past ten years. With respect to their corporate governance models, about 49 per cent of our sampled countries apply the outsider-dominated model in their economies.\nOLS (multivariate) regression analysis: To better appreciate the relationship between country-level governance and ethical behaviour of firms, we use the following model:\nRobustness check: The positive relationship between country-level rule of law, regulatory quality, control of corruption and democracy, and ethical behaviour of firms could possibly be misleading. We therefore examine in this section how robust are our results. Countries tend to be at variance in regards to their opportunities and challenges that they face over time. This can lead to a situation where country-level governance and ethical behaviour of firms are jointly determined by unobserved country-specific variables, which simple OLS regressions probably will not be able to capture. Therefore, given the panel nature of our data, we estimated a fixed-effects model to account for endogeneity problems that possibly will arise from the presence of probable unobserved country-level heterogeneity. We do this by re-estimating our model, in which we introduce 38 dummies to represent 39 sampled economies. Our fixed effects model results contained in Table V illuminate that the coefficients on country-level rule of law, regulatory quality, control of corruption and democracy remain positive and significant, a revelation that our results are robust to possible endogeneity problems that may arise from the existence of possible unobserved country-level heterogeneity. On the whole, the results from our robustness test essentially support our hypotheses that enhancements in country-level rule of law, regulatory quality, control of corruption and democracy result in sound ethical behaviour of firms in an economy.\nConclusion: As sound ethical behaviour of firms is vitally important for every country, one possible way in which it could consistently be practiced in firms is by ensuring the existence of good governance in every economy. Prior research devotes attention to finding the impact of internal structures on ethical behaviour of firms. Nevertheless, limited or no studies examine the interplay between external structures (for instance, country-level governance) and ethical behaviour of firms. We attempt to partially fill this research gap by hypothesising that country-level governance affects a firm's ethical behaviour using a sample of 39 African economies from 2009 to 2012. First, we find a significant and positive relationship between country-level rule of law, regulatory quality, control of corruption and democracy, and ethical behaviour of firms. This implies that improvement in country-level rule of law, regulatory quality, control of corruption and democracy tends to be associated with sound ethical behaviour of firms in African economies. We show that our evidence is robust to endogeneity and unobserved country-level heterogeneity.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between country-level governance and ethical behaviour of firms in African countries in the period 2009-2012.\nDesign/methodology/approach: It uses a broad set of country-level governance ratings by the World Bank and data on ethical behaviour of firms by the World Economic Forum's report on Global Competitiveness. Full data of a total of 39 African economies out of the 54 (including two disputed) economies over the sample period were obtained for this analysis.\nFindings: The authors find a statistically significant and positive relationship between country-level rule of law, regulatory quality, control of corruption and democracy, and firm ethical behaviour of firms in African economies. This implies that improvement in country-level rule of law, regulatory quality, control of corruption and democracy tends to be associated with sound ethical behaviour of firms in African economies. However, the authors did not find any statistically significant relationship between country-level accountability, political stability, outsider model of governance and ethical behaviour of firms.\nPractical implications: As a continent that is yet to fully discover its potential, the practice of good governance is particularly germane, as this may not only help ensure sound ethical standards of corporations, but may also aid the continent to attract foreign investors, which will beneficially impact economic growth and development of African economies. In this respect, efforts by governments across the continent to ensuring good governance are laudable. One possible way is to ensure an effective and transparent enforcement of laws to stimulate compliance in a specifically clear-cut manner by crafting costs for non-compliance (for instance, legal costs, investigation cost, imprisonment, dent to image and fines).\nOriginality/value: This paper reinforces the belief that the existence of country-level good governance could provide and enhance cohesive and internally consistent ethical standards of companies.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Food choice motives of different ethnics and the foodies segment in Kuala Lumpur	[ "Kuala Lumpur", "Food choice motives", "Foodies" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Malaysia is a developing nation that takes pride in seamless integration of ethnicities. The three main ethnic groups, the Malays, Chinese and Indians, live in unity despite practicing distinct religion and cultures. As an integrated society they have also adopted unique interests and customs including their food culture. Food culture, in this sense, can be described as an \"inserted mechanism of convention specifically related to food within the broader concept of culture\" (Cronin and McCarthy, 2011, p. 722). However, studies suggest that the inclination and specific preferences toward food vary among the ethnic groups, likely due to hedonistic orientations, health, religious beliefs, family upbringing and social influence (Sheikh and Thomas, 1994).\nFood choice motives: The literature suggests that food choice motives are influenced by external factors (i.e. life course and influence) and internal factors (i.e. the personal system) (Furst et al., 1996). In regards to external factors, it has been argued that a person's previous experience with food heavily influences their future food choices. For example, if a person had a good time with his or her family when eating a particular food, that person is more likely to want to try that food again. Other external factors that influence food choice motives are social norms, economic situation, social role and physical surroundings (Furst et al., 1996).\nEthnic and cultural differences in food choice motives: Different cultures have different varieties of foods, ingredients and cooking techniques associated to them, creating an important link between culture and food. While culture shapes people's beliefs, values, habits and behaviour in general (Axelson, 1986), religion may be a more influential factor in steering people's spiritual path and way of life including their food selection motives. Muslims, for example, are prohibited from consuming pork and drinking intoxicants. They are restricted to eating only \"halal\" food, referring to those that are permissible by Islamic laws. Hindu devotees, on the other hand, are usually vegetarians or vegans and refrain from consuming beef due to the notion that cows are sacred. Similarly, Buddhists also avoid beef and some believers adopt strict vegetarian diets. In Christianity, different approaches to food are applied by the various denominations. Caffeinated and alcoholic drinks are avoided by the Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists while Catholics avoid meat on Good Friday and Lent. Although these religions may enact strict dietary principles, the amount of people adhering to them may vary significantly throughout the world (Bonne et al., 2007).\nFoodies: Foodie is a relatively new concept in the food-related literature. The term foodie was first used in a book entitled \"The Official Foodie Handbook\" by Barr and Levy (1985). It referred to foodie as an elite class of enthusiasts that devote themselves to gourmet food. Foodies, in modern day terms, apply to a much wider circle of people and are broadly accepted as a term defining people with a passion for eating and learning about food (Johnston and Baumann, 2010).\nMethodology: Data collection and sample\nResults: Descriptive analysis\nDiscussion and conclusion: This study provides fresh insights to retailers and food and beverage operators regarding food choice motives. Since the two main factors driving food choice motives are Price and Convenience, restaurateurs and food producers can redesign their menu and food products to emphasise these factors. As long as the food is reasonably priced, they should be able to sell. Retailers can also source and promote dishes that are easy to prepare. Perhaps microwavable dishes will spark a new food trend among the working population in Malaysia.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the food choice motives of consumers in Kuala Lumpur and the relative importance of these factors; to investigate the differences in food choice motives between the Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnicities and to examine variations in the food selection motives of foodies and non-foodies of the overall sample.\nDesign/methodology/approach: An online questionnaire was employed using a snowballing sampling method with 239 respondents. Food choice motives were measured using Steptoe et al.'s (1995) Food Choice Questionnaire (FCQ) while a new exploratory measure for foodies was developed to examine respondents' attitudes, interest and opinions (AIO).\nFindings: The top three factors of food choice motives were Price, Convenience and Sensory appeal. Ethnicities did not differ in their food choice motives except for Familiarity between Malays and Chinese. Foodies and non-foodies displayed significant differences in their food choice motives, specifically in regards to Balanced diet, Mood and Sensory appeal.\nResearch limitations/implications: This study is limited to only Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnicities in Kuala Lumpur. Future studies should explore motives of other minority ethnic groups and examine differences between age, gender and income groups.\nPractical implications: Suppliers and marketers of the food industry should consider the important aspects of food choice motives to improve the marketing strategies of their products. Products should be reasonably priced, offer convenience and appealing.\nOriginality/value: This paper develops a new exploratory measure to capture the AIO of foodies based on Johnston and Baumann (2010) and Cairns et al. (2010).\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Moderating influence of advisor personality on the association between financial advice and investor stock trading behavior	[ "Financial advice", "Behavioural finance", "Trading", "Chinese stock market", "Advisor personality" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: In recent years, households have become increasingly active in financial markets because of their growing responsibility for retirement financing (Campbell, 2006; Lusardi and Mitchell, 2007; Van Rooij et al., 2011). In the meantime, the complexities of financial markets as well as the number of investment options have increased the households' exposure to financial risk taking (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2011b). Previous researchers have pointed out that many households possess inadequate financial literacy (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2007), lack information regarding financial markets (Guiso and Jappelli, 2006), exhibit behavioral biases (Kahneman et al., 1991) and trade too much (e.g. Barber and Odean, 2001), which often leads to suboptimal financial decision making (e.g. Campbell, 2006; Goetzmann and Kumar, 2008; Polkovnichenko, 2005).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Financial advice and trading behavior\n3. Methodology: 3.1 Participants\n4. Analysis and findings: 4.1 Assessment of the Big Five\n5. Robustness tests: 5.1 Additional control variables\n6. Conclusion and implications: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a unique psychological factor, namely, advisor personality, may influence the trading behavior of stock investors when they choose to acquire financial information from advisors. The study utilized the Big Five personality framework from Costa and McCrae (1992) and examined the survey results from 314 stock investor-advisor dyads in Chinese stock market. We concluded that financial advice from professionals is likely to increase investors' stock trading frequency. We have also controlled for potential endogeneity concerns between financial advice and trading behavior. We followed the 2SLS method of Rivers and Vuong (1988) to address the identification problem. We also conclude that advisor personality moderates the relationship between financial advice and investor trading behavior. The result of our study showed that information acquired from a financial advisor is more likely to increase trading frequency when advisor personality tends toward openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness. On the other hand, financial advice causes less adjustment in investors' portfolio when advisors are extraverted and neurotic.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of financial advice on investor trading behavior by analyzing the influence of advisor personality.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study utilized the Big Five personality framework from Costa and McCrae (1992) to measure personality traits of advisors and examined the data collected from 314 stock investor-advisor dyads. Personality traits of advisors were measured by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1989). Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the fitness of the Big Five model. We followed two-stage least square method for estimating endogenous covariate by employing instrumental variable analysis. Probit model was used to evaluate the moderating influence of advisor personality traits on the association between the usage of financial advice and trading behavior.\nFindings: The authors found that financial advice positively impacts investors' stock trading frequency. The authors also provide empirical evidence that financial advice is more likely to increase trading frequency when advisor personality tends to be openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness. On the other hand, information acquired from financial advisors causes fewer adjustments in investors' portfolios when the personality of advisors is likely to be extraverted and neurotic.\nResearch limitations/implications: The theoretical model in our study seeks to explain that a psychological factor, namely, advisor personality, influences the way an investor interprets information signals from financial advice, which, in turn, influences the investor's decision to trade in securities.\nPractical implications: This research suggests that characteristics of advisors other than those of investors can be of relevance for policy makers in their attempts to improve their business in the financial services industry.\nOriginality/value: Survey-based studies in finance are lacking. This study adds to the existing literature of behavioral finance that accounts for the observed variations in investors' financial decision making explained by psychological factors. No previous study has been conducted so far exploring variations in the impact of financial advice on investors' stock trading behavior by the Big Five advisor personality, and this paper strives to fill this research gap in Chinese stock market.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Retail properties in Hong Kong: a rental analysis	[ "Market position", "Retail trade", "Rental value", "Hong Kong" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Shopping perhaps is one of the most exciting activities in life. As the taste and the preference of shoppers change constantly, retail facilities have evolved in response. It is universally accepted that market positioning plays an important role in the success of a retail facility.Unlike other studies which focus on customers' perception on the positioning of shopping centers in rather philosophical, yet hardly quantified, manners, this study looks at brand/market positioning from another perspective, in the form of major reflection of the performance of a shopping center, and its rental income. This paper provides a macroscopic analysis of the average rents of a bundle of retail facilities.This study aims to bridge this gap by investigating the relationship between a retail facility's market position and its rental level, with the idea being that the detailed design of retail facilities always follows the determination of their market positions. Planners and developers of these facilities are more interested in the broad-brush figure, rather than the specific rent for each shop as the latter is irrelevant to them in the absence of the detailed design.This study is organized as follows: section 2 presents the linkage between market positions of retail facilities and rents, followed by a review of relevant literature. Section 3 briefly discusses the contemporary situations of Hong Kong's retail property market and overviews the components of the Link real estate investment trust (REIT) used for this study. The methodology, along with the source and characteristics of the dataset for empirical study is presented in Section 4. The results and analyses are presented in Section 5. The last section concludes the study.\n2. Literature review: It has been discussed in previous studies that four primary attributes shape the shoppers' perception of shopping malls, among other factors. The attributes are shopping center attributes, product attributes, transport-mode attributes, and consumer attributes.According to LeHew and Fairhurst (2000), shopping center attributes are generally divided into two groups: Fixed/Long-term and Variable/Short-term. Fixed/Long-term shopping center attributes either keep constant over time or require a long time to change, for instance mall renovations. Long term shopping center attributes consist of factors such as location, size, number of car park space, facilities (escalators, elevators, washrooms, drinking fountains), its quality (design, shape, layout, age), shopping atmosphere (lighting, spacious and air-conditioning), availability of other amenities (cinema, food court and restaurants), agglomeration, and visibility.By contrast, short-term attributes can be either shifted or changed within a short period of time (e.g. one year or less), which include a good place for outings with family and friends, flexible opening hours, one-stop shopping, competition and synergy with other facilities and shopping malls in the vicinity, catchments of local, district, citywide or international patronages, cleanliness, security, activities, events and promotions, and services (Ibrahim et al., 2003).Product attributes relate to the individual stores situated in a shopping center, which refer to the variety of goods and services. Ibrahim et al. (2003) suggest that the major considerations include a wide variety of merchandise for sale, the availability of latest fashion and major large clothing stores, high quality merchandise store, a reasonable price level, retail image, store/franchise reputation, and good customer services. Retail image, however, is a concept that shares reciprocity with consumer perception; thus, information on both variables should be attained during measurement to ensure a more accurate result (Leo and Philippe, 2002). Recently, anchor stores start to play a prominent role in shopping centers that feature famous brand names. Anchor tenants, posing externalities on non-anchor tenants, are magnets that draw pedestrian flow to a retail facility. Such positive externalities are internalized in shopping centers under sole ownership, by letting floor space to anchor tenants at lower rents while extracting higher turnover income from other tenants in the same centers. As a result, retail facilities with \"brand\" shops (as anchor tenants) and larger floor areas can enhance the positive externalities through introducing greater variety of shops, thus attracting higher overall rental income.According to Ibrahim (2002) transport mode attributes are a set of attributes concerning the means of transport to the shopping center, and is an attribute that shopping center managers possess little control over. It includes factors such as a short waiting time, short walking distance, ease of travel, low cost of travel, cleanliness of transportation mode, absence of traffic congestion, absence of stress, reliability of the transport mode and the comfort of transport mode.Consumer attributes are factors which describe the consumer themselves, which usually are categorized into three components: needs, behaviors and profile. Needs are the consumers' demand, which consist of functional shopping, experience and lifestyles, convenience, socializing and hanging out. These factors are usually influenced by effective promotions and a country's economic stability. Behaviors are the patterns and trends in shoppers' consumption, generally influenced by the latest fashion and social trends. Swinyard (1993) points out that behavior also includes mood, where consumers in a good mood are more likely to be motivated to go shopping. Profile refers to the consumer's personal information. According to Poon (2001), these include demographics (age, education, occupation, income and social class), personal profile, family profile, and perceived values.However, it appears rather insufficient without paying attentions to other issues such as the brand/market positioning of shopping malls. Some other studies concentrate on this particular issue. Positioning convinces customers to form the perception that a certain shopping center is better than or distinct from the others (Ibrahim et al., 2003). In other words, Market positioning affects the degree of positive externalities in a retail facility. From here, a brand can be formed. The value of brand stems from its ability to gain a meaning, with exclusiveness, positivity and prominence (Cowley, 1991). According to Knapp (2000), a \"genuine\" brand can be recognized as the sum of all internalized impressions of customers which form a distinctive position in their mind, grounded on the perceived and emotional benefits. If properly implemented, a positioning strategy can induce increases in market share and profitability (Ibrahim et al., 2003).Because of the point that the retail market comprises many shopping centers, shopping center managers differentiate their shopping centers from other competitors by the adoption of strategic positioning (Ibrahim et al., 2003). Bollen (1988) raises the point that the determination of how shoppers perceive a shopping center is involved in the positioning of shopping centers and market strategies are developed and implemented in order to achieve the desired position in the market. According to Ibrahim et al. (2003), positioning is of two main stages. The first stage is the actions taken by the managers of a shopping center to position their centers with the customers. After that, it reaches the second stage, which is the shoppers' response of the way the center is positioned.\n3. The retail property market in Hong Kong: Before discussing the data set deployed in this study, the contemporary situations of Hong Kong's retail property market are presented.The retail property sector is an important sector in Hong Kong. According to the Rating and Valuation Department (RVD), this sector includes retail premises and other premises designed or adapted for commercial use, with the exception of purpose-built offices (Rating and Valuation Department, 2005, p.42). By the end of 2004, the retail property stock was 9,407,800 m2. Of these, 32 percent was on the Hong Kong Island, 41 percent in Kowloon Peninsula and the remaining in the New Territories.The demand and supply interplay has been improving. In 2004, there was a take-up of 66,100 m2 of retail property space territory-wide. In the same year, completions were at 91,300 m2, a drop by 23 percent year-on-year. Various large sources of retail spaces available consisted of, for example, Langham Place in Mongkok and Millenium City 5 APM in Kwun Tong.According to RVD, in 2004, vacancy stood at 1,019,400 m2, or 10 percent of total stock, which was comparable to 2003. More than 40 percent of the vacant space was located in three districts: i.e. Central, Western, Yau Tsim Mong and Kwun Tong. This was due to the fact that the new big retail spaces (e.g. IFCII, Langham Place, APM) in those areas, were just completed and leasing activities were in progress.In general, with regard to the recent price/rental adjustments of retail properties, retail property prices leaped by 40 percent in 2004, compared to the last quarter of 2003 (see Figures 1 and 2). Meanwhile, rents increased by 9 percent.\n4. Methodology and data: This paper aims to explore the changes in shopping centers/retail properties' rental levels upon various forms of market/brand positioning. However, a methodology different from conventional studies is required, owing to the idea that previous studies focus on customers' perspectives of a retail center brand's position in a more categorical/philosophical way, rather than practical issues such as rent determinations. Therefore, methodologies such as the use of perceptual maps (Temporal, 2000), factor analysis, discriminant analysis, correspondence analysis, multidimensional scaling (e.g. Barnerd and Ehrenberg, 1990; Dick et al., 1997; Arslan et al., 2000) are not suitable for this study.Empirical test of this hypothesis can be conducted through a regression analysis on the annualized per-area net rental income (R) against a number of exogenous factors, which are divided into three major categories, as in: Equation 1 where X is a vector of physical characteristics of the retail facilities (e.g. age, total floor area, occupancy rate, etc.); P represents the market positions of the facilities; and L represents the location of the facilities. It is hypothesized that retail facilities positioned to have larger catchment areas and more shops inside have higher overall rental income, holding other things constant. Then, retail facilities in the urban areas are expected to have higher rental levels, compared to others. Further, it is hypothesized that older retail properties would have lower levels of rent. Further descriptions of the variables involved in these three categories would be presented in later sections.Rental analysis of retail properties is often hampered with the lack of rental data, mostly due to the non-disclosure of relevant information among privately-owned retail properties. However, in Hong Kong, rental information of 151 retail facilities of different types has been released recently through the initial public offering of a REIT named the Link. The section below provides some details on the components of this unique portfolio.4.1. Overview of the link\n5. Empirical results and analyses: Table IV reports the results of the linear regression of equation (1) on the sample of the shopping malls included in the Link REITs in Hong Kong. The regression is carried out by the least square method. The explanatory variables explain more than 40 percent of the variations in unit rents of the 151 malls scattered in ten districts.The age of a mall has an expected negative and significant impact on the rental level. The effect is about 3 percent per one year older of the mall. If linear age effect is assumed, the rental difference between the youngest (two) and the oldest (29) in the sample amounts to 81 percent, ceteris paribus. The size (GFA) and the number of shops of a mall both have positive effects on its rent. These results are expected and it is implied that shop variety is a significant factor contributing to the success of a shopping mall. Since the dependent variable is the rental level per square meter, the positive effect of size indicates a non-linear relationship between size and total rental income. In contrast to the law of diminishing marginal returns, the positive effects of size and number of shops on rent provide very strong evidence of the variety effect. This implication is further supported by the negative and significant effect of the efficiency ratio on rent. A large mall accommodating a large number of shops provides sufficient variety of commodities and brands. The spacious circulation areas enhance the shopping atmosphere and provide ample space for promotional and amenity purposes. It is also interesting to find that occupancy rate (1 - vacancy rate) has no significant influence on rents.Larger malls attract larger catchments, thus resulting in higher rents. Comparing with estate centers, district centers attract 30 percent higher in rents, while shops in street achieved 45 percent lower in rents. The existence of rent premium of a mall against shops on the street and that of a mall with large catchments are confirmed in this study. However, the rent difference between an estate center and a local center is not statistically significant in this sample. Furthermore, the location dummies are insignificant implying that there is no rent difference among districts in general. However, in view of the small sample size, it requires further studies to confirm this location effect.\n6. Conclusions: Market positioning is generally believed to play a crucial role in determining the success of retail facilities. However, most studies focus on the issue of customers' perceptions which is relatively philosophical and hardly quantified in nature, instead of more substantial issues such as the influence of retail facilities' market positions on their rental income. In the wake of the initial public offering of the Link, the first REIT listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the relationship between marketing positions and rents of retail facilities is empirically studied. It is observed that district centers command the highest average rental levels, followed by local and estate centers. Since the effects of positive externalities for unorganized shops are smaller, the average rental levels for shops are generally lower. The results of this study give planners and developers of retail facilities some insights about the effects of market positioning on a retail facility's performance on the leasing market.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to explore the relationship between market positioning and rents of retail facilities in Hong Kong.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Regression analysis is deployed in the paper to find out the impact of various attributes, in terms of a retail facility's physical characteristics, market positions, and location, on the annualized per-area net rental income. The sample data obtained from the initial public offerings of the Link real estate investment trust (REIT), one of the largest REITs in the world, is used for analysis.\nFindings: - The study finds that district centers command the highest average rental levels, followed by local and estate centers. As the effects of positive externalities for unorganized shops are smaller, the average rental levels for shops are generally lower. In terms of the impact of individual attributes on rents, a retail property's age and its efficiency ratio have negative relationships with rents, while its size (in terms of gross floor area) and the amount of shops positively affect the facility's rental levels.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Although obtaining the largest possible dataset in the Link REIT portfolio for the study, the sample is not considered big enough to detect the impact of the location of a retail facility on its rental adjustments. Further studies are required with regard to this issue.\nOriginality/value: - The results of this study give planners and developers of retail facilities some insights about the effects of market positioning on a retail facility's performance on the leasing market.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Hidden in practice: the management activities that foster employee learning	[ "Coaching", "Engagement and learning", "Organizational learning", "Work-based learning" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: For frontline managers, the practice of facilitating learning and development for their employees appears to be one that focusses, in the first instance at least, on learning and development with the purpose of meeting an employee's job performance, key performance indicators (KPIs) or team target. Generally, it is not about the facilitation of learning simply for the sake of learning rather it is about the development of relevant skills and knowledge, so that the immediate job gets done and gets done well. Given that management jobs are, after all, primarily about overseeing and coordinating the work of others, so that the work gets done, this is not surprising. Nonetheless, typical management activities, centred around getting the work done, do indeed afford frontline managers opportunities to facilitate employee learning. For many frontline managers, such employee learning opportunities are often so deeply embedded in other management activity, they go unnoticed. Accordingly, the opportunity to facilitate employee learning dissipates.\nLearning at work and the role of the frontline manager: According to Gibb (2003, p. 283), \"when frontline managers take a proactive role in the development of employees, there will be a better quality of L&D [Learning and Development] at work for organizations and individuals\" and, for those frontline managers who are able to see the larger organizational learning picture - that is, the one beyond the four walls of a conventional training environment - the creation of opportunities for learning appears limitless. Frontline managers can facilitate formal and informal learning for their employees through the creation of a work environment conducive to learning and by planning for learning to occur.\nInformal learning at work: The fact that informal learning is both contextual and deeply intertwined and inseparable from work practice suggests that informal learning occurs best in organizations where learning is fostered, promoted and facilitated through groups, individuals and organizationally, or as Marsick (2009, p. 271) sees it, \"in workplaces where the individuals can make a difference in what and how they learn; and where attention is paid to environmental culture and structure, often embodied in the workplace's leader(s)\".\nManagement activities that facilitate employee learning: The following provides an overview of some of the practical activities that frontline managers often undertake that can be leveraged to promote and facilitate employee learning.\nComment: For many frontline managers, and a startling number of human resources personnel, employee learning and development has been rather narrowly and dubiously associated within the restrictive confines of the training room. Yet, clearly frontline managers, through the very nature of their roles are gifted with a myriad of opportunities to enhance employee learning at work, simply through common and everyday management activity they undertake.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is in providing guidance to human resource development and frontline managers in shaping employee learning at work.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This paper takes a viewpoint approach.\nFindings: This paper builds on recent discussions on the inseparable nature of working and learning: peripheral management practice that facilitates employee learning (Cohen, 2014) to focus on the practical activities that frontline managers can do to promote and facilitate employee learning.\nOriginality/value: To the best of my knowledge and belief, this paper contains no material previously published or written by any other person, except where due reference is given in the text.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Changing retail scene in India	[ "Retailing", "Shopping centres", "Consumer behaviour", "India" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Organized retailing in India is witnessing a radical transformation. The increase in the number of retail chains across the country is an indication that organized retailing is emerging as an industry and will boom in a big way in the near future. Retailing like any product does follow a life cycle. India is currently at a stage where customers needed variety in products and retail formats. At present, the contribution of organized retailing is just about two percentages to total size of $180 billion. However, studies indicate that organized retail will grow to 20 percentages by the end of the decade. In fact, organized retail is moving from novel experience to innovative scale as shown in Figure 1.According to a report prepared by McKinsey & Co. and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), India's retailing industry has the potential to generate 300 billion per year by 2010. Population growth combined with an increase in disposable incomes is providing the impetus to this boom. Household groceries and apparel are the drivers in organized retail industry. Food retail in particular is the sunrise sector. Research reveals that food retail is expected to grow to $1.6 billion over the next five years. The organized apparel segment is $1.8 billion and is expected to grow at a steady 9.5 percent per annum over the next three years. This means there is enough space for many big players. A number of factors such as income growth, changing demographic profile due to more urbanization, and the socio-economic environment are having its impact on retail scene. Indian retail is currently a virgin territory. This is more important in view of the large number of middle class population and available high-disposable income in the age group 25-35 years. This is more relevant as according to Goldman Sach. Indian economic growth could actually exceed that of China by year 2015 (Goldman Sach, 2005). About 95 percent of more than 12 million retail outlets in India are of less than 500 square feet. With a retail growth in 2006 it touched 400 million square feet. Figure 2 shows the share of the organized retailing compared to other South Asian countries.Almost 21 million people are employed in the retail industry. India is number five amongst 30 developing countries ranked under Global Retail Development Index developed by Kearney study (2006). This study says that India will take over China and Russia as the number one destination for foreign direct investment in retail.Organized retailing has played a major role world over in contributing to the nation's GDP and in providing opportunities for skilled employment. This can be best seen in countries like USA, UK, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Dubai and more recently China. The retail sector, in India, is yet to be allotted the status of an \"industry.\" The sector has more than 12 million retail outlets. It has the highest retail density in the world. In terms of ownership, it primarily consists of independent, owner managed shops. The retail businesses include a variety of traditional retail formats, e.g. kirana stores where the basic necessities of life - grocery are available. Current retailing formats such as street carts, pavement shops, kirana stores (mom and pop stores), public distribution system, and kiosks, weekly markets, etc. are unique to India and have been in existence for a long time.A major contrast to these formats is the emergence of modern large-scale formats such as supermarkets, specialty stores, chain stores, department stores, hypermarkets, factory outlets and discounters. In addition to these formats, the emergence of malls has transformed the retailing environment in India and is expected to push organized retailing into the fast track.Although specialty stores are gaining popularity in India, malls comprise of 90 percent of the total future retail development. The mall market is expected to grow at the rate of 35-40 percent per annum for the next five years. Industry experts believe that as the customers get used to the retail culture, the mall market will grow at a phenomenon pace. Most of the metro cities (Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai) with a population of over two million have good potential for setting up malls.A significant trend in the market is the development of a combination of retail and entertainment centres. While the number of shopping malls has seen a spurt in the recent past, the future development is now increasingly being focused on providing for leisure activities as well. A considerable number of multiplexes are being developed as an integral part of retail malls along with facilities such as food courts, video game parlours, books stores, cinema and theatre.A unique distinction in the mall development in India is that Indian malls have a combination of high-value outlets, as well as mass brands, while in comparison malls overseas either cater to the mass category or are the boutique type. If a city like Mumbai is examined, there are three types of malls in existence in Mumbai.Though malls are on route to be the kings of organized retail in the future, their sustainability is debatable. It will eventually come down to what value proposition a mall can provide with respect to the competition to increase its hold in the market. Given the number of retail malls springing up around the country, only the one that satisfies the Indian consumers' need for value-for-money proposition will survive.With about 11 retail shops per 1,000 persons, India has the highest shop density in the world. That's one shop for every 20-25 families. In cities, the density is much higher. Delhi, for example, has nearly 45 shops per thousand persons. Share spending by rural and urban household as per KPMG Research (2005) study is shown in Figure 3.Americans, arguably the biggest spenders in the world, have to make do with just about four shops per 1,000 populations. Singapore, the shoppers' paradise, has a similar density. England (rather, the UK), once scathingly referred to by Napoleon as a nation of shopkeepers is only marginally better it has nearly five shops for every 1,000 persons. According to industry body FICCI, the total retail trade in India was worth Rs. 11,00,000 million in 2003. In India, shops are many but they are small: kirana stores, vegetable stores and so on. Only about 4 percent of retail outlets are in the organized sector - retail chains and big showrooms. This is shown in Figure 4.Retailing is the final stage in the distribution process. Retailers are responding to growing demands for \"time starved customers.\" According to KSA Technopak (2005) organized retail would reach about 16-18 percent of share (about $65-75 billion) in another five years (Sinha, 2006). Organised retail share as on today is only four percentages. Therefore, retail market will witness entry of many players. India would see formats like hypermarkets, cash & carry and shopping convenience with organized retail format that would be closer to consumer. Time starved customers will find it as great shopping experience. Below we consider a brief description of the retail formats currently found in India.Hypermarket\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - The research presented here aims to build a picture of the changes in retail taking place in India. India is poised to become a retail power house. The paper looks at the changing scene in the retail sector in view of many MNCs and large industries entering into this segment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Data were drawn from industry sources which included national and international published sources from 1993-2006.\nFindings: - The findings presented show that malls in 2006 are more developed in the North and West part of India. Food, groceries and apparel purchase by customers contributed to 52 percent. On average 75 percent of customers spend about 1-3 hours in the mall. Malls with multiplexes such as cinema theatres, food courts, play places for children are becoming the centre for family outings. Small retailers have improved their service to cater to Indian consumers. Credit limits and home service are helping them to hold on to their customers. Retailing focus is changing towards satisfying the different hierarchy of needs of customers.\nResearch limitations/implications: - All are from Indian perspectives which perhaps limits its usefulness else where in the world.\nPractical implication: - A very useful source of information and review of this scenario which should help other retailers across the world, especially in developing economies, to face big giants more aggressively and do better.\nOriginality/value: - This paper fulfils an identified information/resources need and offers guidance to small retailers\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A cybernetic analysis of a university-wide curriculum innovation	[ "Cybernetics", "Curriculum design", "Curriculum framework", "Work‐focused learning", "Work‐based learning", "Online distance learning", "Universities" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: The Interdisciplinary Inquiry Based Learning (IDIBL) project uses an action research approach within the Institution with the aim of raising the capability of teaching staff to develop and deliver new programmes based on the IDIBL Framework. The framework followed the \"Ultraversity\" work-focused approach to learning (Millwood et al., 2008a) developed by Ultralab at Anglia Ruskin University. The approach was intended for students who cannot easily attend university and who wish to make improvement in the work that they do the focus of their study. The approach was developed over the past seven years and offers a personalised experience based on a combination of action research methodology, online community of inquiry for support, and patchwork text for assessment with an exhibition replacing the \"traditional\" dissertation. In the late 1990s, after pioneering on-line learning (Goodfellow, 2003), Ultralab developed two large-scale projects, which exploited the online learning community of practice (Bradshaw et al., 2005; Wenger, 1998) for learning. The first of these was called \"Talking Heads\" which facilitated informal learning online for the headteachers in the England, in the years immediately prior to the establishment of the National College for School Leadership. It proved successful in offering new forms of frequent access to knowledge for busy professionals, unable to readily make use of face-to-face courses to fit their changing needs. The second project was Notschool.net which developed pedagogy and practice to reach adolescent learners \"for who school did not fit\" - their challenges ranged from illness, to mobility and truancy. The project became successful in the early years of the first decade of this century and the online approach developed proved to transform the participants lives. Each of these projects provided inspiration for the Ultraversity project, begun in 2003, which was designed to offer degree level study to prospective students who felt that the current offering from universities did not fit their lives. The IDIBL initiative began in 2007 after 150 students had graduated from Ultraversity.The IDIBL initiative was funded by the university and it is also supported through the JISC Curriculum Design programme and as such is integral to the strategic direction set by the university to develop new streams of income based on different models of higher education (University of Bolton, 2010a, p. 9). In this context, the IDIBL project can be seen as a cross-institutional initiative with support from the senior management team as one of their strategic responses to changing and repositioning the business of the university. One of the key actions of the project was to develop the IDIBL framework that could be, \"readily adapted by departments to their own subject disciplines and professional contexts of potential students\" with the key project aim \"to stimulate development across Bolton University of successful models of e-learning and inquiry-based learning where appropriate\" (University of Bolton, 2007, p.1).In the following sections, we will describe the framework and explain its dependence on the use of online technology. The approach to teaching using the framework is analysed from a cybernetics viewpoint, a position adopted at a recent review stage of the project. The paper will conclude with some observations about the potential of frameworks such as this for supporting institutional change initiatives.\nThe proposed framework: The IDIBL framework consists of a curriculum and a pedagogic approach to learning and teaching which are closely-linked in their design. The curriculum was defined by set of linked module definitions at HE levels 4-7 and the pedagogic approach by a set of practices of teaching, learning and assessment. The approach, was designed, to be highly personalised, to allow students in different work contexts to use it to structure action-inquiries that they identify as a part of their daily work. This paper argues that the creative idea behind the framework, defined by Robinson (2010) as an original idea that has value, was that it was intended for re-use and re-purposing to make the practice of validating new courses a less onerous process across the institution. These resources are published under a creative commons licence on the project web site (http://idibl.bolton.ac.uk) with the following aims:The course will widen participation by satisfying students whose need is for flexibility with time, place and pedagogy. More specifically this could be because:they need to continue in full-time paid employment while they study;they wish to make their study directly relevant to their work;family commitments prevent their on-campus attendance;geographical location or poor transport links makes campus attendance difficult;they seek to develop further their communicative creativity and technological understanding as a complete professional;traditional examinations and academic essay writing are either intimidating or uninviting;they seek the company, support and intellectual challenge of fellow students rather than studying alone; andthey seek the advantage offered by technology to enjoy the possibility of work on joint ventures and studying collaboratively (University of Bolton, 2008a).Bosanquet and Fraser (2006) explore the understanding of the meaning behind the term curriculum in higher education and identify a series of very different understandings or definitions having different foci and requiring different student/teacher responsibilities. The model that we developed can be identified as emancipatory:From this perspective, students are active creators of knowledge. Learning is a social act, which consists of a dialogical relationship between the teacher and student. The educational experience is negotiated, and the curriculum \"emerges from the systematic reflection of those engaged in the pedagogical act\" (Bosanquet and Fraser, 2006, p. 281).The importance of identifying this stance is not only in stating our values and beliefs that led us to develop such a curriculum, but also in recognising that for many it is a view of curriculum that will be unfamiliar and challenging. In terms of the focus of the curriculum and the roles and responsibilities of teachers and students, there was likely to be an uphill struggle to persuade others of the framework's value.Curriculum\nPedagogic approach: The pedagogical elements of the framework are based on previous work (Millwood et al., 2008a, b) and the key elements are briefly described in the following.Student support\nMethodology for evaluation: This evaluative case study draws on empirical data collected from semi-structured interviews of stakeholders in the IDIBL project, documents produced for the validation process (University of Bolton, 2008a), and an evaluation of activities by the project team (University of Bolton, 2010b) working with academic and administrative staff and employers using e-mail and other evidence from personal communications.It is worth drawing a key distinction between programme evaluations that simply seek to ascertain the worth of an action and evaluations that seek to also understand the how - a research led approach, \"The idea is not just to discover whether a programme works, but to explain how it works\" (Clarke, 1999, p. 4). With the latter approach there is the explicit aim to generate findings that are of value beyond the programme or project being evaluated, that is the evaluations purpose is not just to help the decision makers of the programme or project under study. Further, our aim is to identify the underlying mechanisms that are at work along the lines of Realistic Evaluation, \"it is not actual programmes which work but the reasoning and opportunities of the people experiencing the programmes which make them work\" (Pawson and Tilley, 1997, p. 2), extracting stakeholder views, theories, distinctions and experiences of the IDIBL framework.The original theoretical proposition put forward by the IDIBL project was:The framework describes an approach to teaching, learning, and assessment including generic modules will enable staff across the University to readily develop new courses along particular themes without the need to undertake a full-validation event or author new modules (University of Bolton, 2007, p. 1).The evaluation activities were designed to elicit stakeholders' judgements about the validity of this statement and the ways in which they themselves see the university responding to curriculum initiatives.\nFramework analysis and evaluation: Staff and the framework\nThe cybernetic viewpoint: The use of cybernetics theory to explain the workings of HE institutions is not widely exploited although Birnbaum (1998), pp. 177-200) does provide a holistic analysis and practical explanation of the organisation of the university from a cybernetic viewpoint. In addition, Britain et al. (2007) offer an explanation of the application of the Viable Systems Model (VSM) to e-learning in HE which usefully covers the main features of the VSM. This provided the starting point for our analysis, conducted in retrospect in order to reflect on and evaluate the IDIBL framework.Cybernetic explanations are based on a systems analytical approach and can be applied at the micro and macro levels, to mechanical, biological and social systems. They are concerned with feedback loops between a system and its environment rather than identifying every constituent part. This avoids the necessity to understand every detailed causal relationship, which might lead to an over elaborate model which was ineffective as a predictor of real world activity. In turn, this means accepting that we many remain ignorant of the features of the processes within a sub-system and see these as a \"black box\" (Jackson, 2003, pp. 86-7).A key concept in Cybernetic theory is that of variety. \"Variety is a measurement of complexity originating in information theory. It refers to the number of states of which a system is capable of attaining\" (Britain et al., 2007). This idea was developed by Ashby (1956, p. 207) as \"The Law of Requisite Variety\" which states that \"only variety can destroy variety\" and interpreted by Stafford Beer in his Viable System Model (VSM) as \"only variety can absorb variety\" (Beer, 1985, p. 26). The VSM identifies amplifiers and attenuators as mechanisms for control, constituting a feedback loop. An amplifier enhances influence by increasing variety, while an attenuator reduces the variety experienced.A key principle identified by Beer was that the steps taken to absorb variety in an institutional system should be \"designed to do so with minimal damage to people and to cost\" (Beer, 1985, p. 35). Choices made will have intended and unintended consequences that will determine the success or otherwise of the organisation, impacting on factors such as human happiness, creativity, efficiency, productivity, innovation, the capability and capacity of an organisation to adapt to changing environments, etc. (Britain et al., 2007, p. 11; Jackson, 2003, p. 100).In addition, a VSM analysis, would anticipate that there needs to be opportunities for adaptation and self-organisation within sub-systems of the whole:\"parts must be granted autonomy so that they can absorb some of the massive environmental variety that would otherwise overwhelm the higher management levels\" (Jackson, 2003, p. 107).Getting an appropriate balance between the different feedback and control mechanisms is a key challenge of the designer of a system.Cybernetic analysis applied to IDIBL\nConclusions and recommendations: Although the IDIBL framework proved useful to curriculum designers, this was not always in the way anticipated when it was created. Some staff found the framework valuable as a thinking tool to systematically critique current practices, exposing rigidity and assumptions behind curriculum design in the university's existing practice.The framework had a particular view of how new courses could be created which worked best when staff had already identified the problem of relevance to the students' employment and were in ill-defined subjects that were newly emerging or fast changing. For these staff the framework was a valuable source of inspiration and of practical help in validating their own courses.However, the approach does not fit well with the practice of academics developing new courses in a piecemeal way, either around an area of specific interest to them or by re-working old modules and courses. For colleagues who have a very different view of what a curriculum is and what it is to study at higher education, the framework approach can be almost meaningless.Although validated as a framework by the university, this did not accord it with the status of a regulation or even guideline. If the framework is to be established in the \"fabric\" of the institution and to be more than an experiment to develop inquiry-based forms of learning, then more effort would be required to ensure the framework was \"officially\" adopted. This highlights a gap between the university's strategy and implementation.The framework omitted to explicitly address the organisational approach implied by the framework. For example, the notions of team teaching, online community of inquiry for teaching staff and new productivity and management arrangements, which were present in the earlier examples of the approach, were not addressed.This suggests the following analysis (see Table III): Cybernetic analysis is useful to course designers, in particular the notion of \"absorption\" of variety, when considering the impact of choices they make on students and teachers. This involves seeking to minimise the negative impact on both groups and making better use of internal, self-organising, mechanisms for absorbing variety as well as attenuators and amplifiers.For cross-institutional initiatives that seek to promote a particular pedagogical approach, it is vital that at an institutional level there is clarity about what is trying to be achieved. If the purpose is to better understand an organisation and stimulate new ideas and thoughts widely, the framework approach is worth replicating. If however, the immediate imperative is to recruit significant numbers of students, then such activities probably need to be located in a dedicated unit. In cybernetic terms, this unit is it own \"organisation\" on a level containing the course organisation as analysed previously - designed to amplify variety in the university's managerial structures (\"management\") and attenuate variety in the course (\"operations\"). This simpler environment insulates the innovation from the conservative effect of the existing university organisational design.Finally, this paper has not explored fully the problems of explaining the approach to potential students and employers, whose preconceptions of what it is to study in higher education were found not to match the IDIBL framework as we communicated it, despite the learner-centred motivation in our design. This is a challenging problem that the success or failure of the approach ultimately rests on.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - This paper seeks to describe and analyse an approach to course design as part of a strategic, technology-inspired, cross-university intervention to widen participation. A curriculum framework was developed for students who wished to make their work the focus of their study and could not readily access current university provision. A deliberate assumption was made that this would require a technologically inspired response to teaching, learning and assessment.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The approach taken was one of action research, by planning the curriculum framework, validating a course, delivery and review through interviews. Cybernetics was applied post-hoc to analyse the data generated.\nFindings: - Staff found the framework a useful source of inspiration and critique for current practices, although established practice and preconceptions could render the framework meaningless. The ideas in the framework are not enough to change the institution - authoritative sanction may be needed. The cybernetic concepts of variety and its absorption proved useful in analysing the framework, and highlighted weaknesses in the design of the framework regarding the organisation of teaching.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Clarity about strategic purpose when making a change intervention is vital - in this instance raising the level of critical debate was more successful than recruitment. The establishment of an independent unit may be a more successful strategy than embedding university-wide. Further work is required to understand how to market novel approaches. The action research shows that the university has the capability to develop curriculum designs that offer new groups of students access to higher education while improving their work practice.\nOriginality/value: - The findings from interview confirm the value that peers attach to this development. Although the pedagogical design in this action research is based on previous work, the cybernetic analysis and conclusions are new.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Graphic novels: a sure bet for your library	[ "Fiction", "Collections management", "School libraries", "Print media", "Comics" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new (John Milton, 1637 cited in Gardner and Dillon, 2004).\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: - Provides a comprehensive review of the significance attributed to the usefulness, practicality and appropriateness of graphic novels in the school library media center with specific implications for collection development.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A careful review of recent literature provides the school media specialist with an overview of graphic novels including definitions, challenges, benefits, helpful resources, curricular connections and collection development issues. The sources reflect the recent trends in the increasing popularity of graphic novels and their use and benefit in school media centers.\nFindings: - Presents information on the definitions of graphic novels and the challenges and benefits specific to the school media center. Notes that while challenges exist, the benefits of including graphic novels in the school library media center are many, including engaging reluctant readers. Offers practical information for collection development and provides useful sources that serve many purposes.\nPractical implications: - Offers background information for the school library media specialist about graphic novels. Includes advice and practical strategies for building a graphic novel collection in the school media center.\nOriginality/value: - This paper reflects recent trends toward increased interest in graphic novels and offers the school media specialist practical advice on how to best meet that growing interest by including graphic novels in the school media center.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Export barriers as liabilities: near perfect substitutes	[ "Export barriers", "Liability of foreignness", "Liability of newness", "Liability of outsidership", "Liability of smallness", "Metonymy", "Internationalization" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In response to ongoing calls for better theorization (Fillis and Rentschler, 2008; Sy-Changco et al., 2005; Welch and Paavilainen-Mantymaki, 2014), this paper adopts an analogical tool, metonymy, to connect liabilities in International Business (IB) to export barriers. The paper proposes and illustrates that liabilities in the IB map onto (i.e. can substitute) export barriers. Such theorization is critical in IB because it fosters knowledge creation (Buckley, 2002; Peng, 2004), diminishes the need to borrow from other disciplines and allows IB to reduce its academic trade deficit with other disciplines (Collinson et al., 2013).\nThe basis for the liabilities metonymy: Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Morgan (1980, 1983) paved the way for the widespread adoption of tropes and analogical reasoning in organizational theory. Elaborating on this foundational research, Oswick et al. (2002) explain that analogical reasoning encompasses metaphor, metonymy, anomaly and irony/paradox. While anomaly and irony/paradox stimulate creative discourse via divergence, metaphor and metonymy offer pathways to theorization using similarity (Morgan, 1983; Oswick et al., 2002). The remainder of this discussion focuses on similarity tropes (i.e. metaphor and metonymy) and provides rationale for the choice of the latter[1].\nEmpirical setting and research process: Confining the review to Leonidou et al.'s (2010, p. 79) definition of export-focused research, the study conducted a search on abstract, keywords and full document. Search terms encompassed \"barriers to exporting\", \"barriers to internationalization\", \"export barriers\", \"export constraints\", \"export impediments\", \"export inhibitors\", \"export hindrances\", \"export problems\" and \"export stimuli\". Databases searched comprised ABI Inform, JSTOR and ScienceDirect. Also included in the search procedure were publisher-specific databases (i.e. Emerald, Palgrave, Sage, Springer, Taylor and Francis and Wiley-Blackwell). After eliminating book chapters, magazine articles, industry reports and opinion pieces, the review uncovered 130 peer-reviewed articles published in English. Appendix lists all the articles reviewed in this study. These articles encompass three reviews (Leonidou, 1995 and 2004; Tesfom and Lutz, 2006), two conceptual theory development papers (Korth, 1991; Morgan, 1997) and three scale development-based reviews (Arteaga-Ortiz and Fernandez-Ortiz, 2010; Onkvisit and Shaw, 1998; Schroath and Korth, 1989). The remaining 122 articles are of an empirical nature proposing and testing relationships using the export barrier construct.\nMetonymical mapping as an instrument for theorizing: Tsoukas (1993) underlines the importance of methodology in the application of tropes and recommends the use of structure mapping to the process of theorizing. Whereas metaphor requires transfer (Chen et al., 2013, p. 580) as the mechanism for theorizing, metonymy uses mapping or substitution (Arapinis, 2015). The process of mapping is integral to the application of a metonymy because it enhances rigor by enunciating on a trope beyond a scholar's views and biases (Morgan, 2016).\nMapping liabilities to export barriers (A to C): The initial stage of the mapping process involved a search for a definition and common synonyms of liabilities. The study draws an illustrative definition of \"liability\" from the Merriam-Webster dictionary (Liability, 2016). Adoption of a dictionary-derived definition and synonyms as a basis for mapping is acceptable because metonymy relies on lexical semantics and theorizes through the \"etymological disaggregation and delineation\" of phenomenon (Oswick et al., 2002, p. 296).\nMapping liabilities to liabilities in international business (A to B): Lexical semantics provide the basis for the link between liabilities and liabilities in the IB. The study utilizes illustrative definitions to tie the source construct (liabilities) to the target subject (liabilities in the IB). Sensemaking for why \"foreignness\", \"outsidership\", \"newness\" and \"smallness\" are construed as liabilities, originates from, and is adequately covered by, Stinchcombe (1965). This study adopts Stinchcombe's (1965) analogy and substantiates it with a series of indicative definitions. For consistency, the study retains the definition of liabilities employed in the preceding discussion.\nMapping liabilities in international business to export barriers (B to C): The second stage of the mapping process entailed connecting knowledge developed in the previous section on the effects of liabilities in IB to thematic streams on export barrier research. A fundamental input at this stage was the answer to the question \"how do export barriers affect international expansion\".\nConclusions and implications: Breaking ranks with the notion that metaphor is the master trope, this is the first study in the IB to theorize through metonymy and to outline a structure mapping methodology to accomplish this. The study recommends the use of a double mapping approach involving two levels. The first level entailed the use of lexical semantics to connect A (liabilities) to B (liabilities in IB), whereas the second level adopted cognitive semantics to map B (liabilities in IB) to C (export barriers). Further, to add rigor to this mapping process, the paper included a validation step linking A (liabilities) to C (export barriers). This mapping process resulted in the construction of a sturdy and methodologically robust representation of the liabilities metonymy.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This study aims to use analogical reasoning to draw a conceptual link between liabilities in International Business (IB) and export barriers.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Following a review of 130 articles on export barriers, the study develops and applies a \"liabilities\" metonymy to connect the source construct (liabilities in the IB) and target subject (export barriers).\nFindings: Liabilities in the IB map to export barriers, and the concepts of liability of foreignness, liability of outsidership, liability of newness and liability of smallness can substitute export barriers.\nPractical implications: Adoption of metonymy creates new opportunities for enhancing theory development while offering alternative perspectives regarding coping mechanisms for overcoming export barriers.\nOriginality/value: This, to the author's best knowledge, is the first study in the IB to theorize based on metonymy.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
A case of employment services in Italy: From a tentative quasi-market to focused partnership programmes	[ "Public-private partnerships", "Active labour market policy", "Freedom of choice", "Public employment services (PES)", "Quasi-market", "Subsidiarity" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The year 2001 marked a noteworthy amendment of the Italian Constitution which, in addition to increased regional autonomy, introduced the principle of horizontal subsidiarity, which states that public administrations at different levels of government should favour initiatives by individuals and civil society organizations aimed at addressing public needs. The Lombardy regional government was inspired by this principle and the related implications for the provision of public services, and decided to take advantage of the greater autonomy allowed by the national reform in the realm of active labour market policies by planning an employment service system centred on instruments which empower individuals and build a services path tailored on their needs. The focus on freedom of choice was made clear by the use of the so-called dote (literally \"endowment\") as the main instrument to finance the system: beneficiaries were allowed to use this endowment to acquire labour market services supplied by public or accredited private agencies. These developments were also inspired by similar efforts employed by governments in other advanced countries, and aimed at increasing competition between private and public providers as instruments of active labour market policies. This occurred in Australia in 1998, with the replacement of the public employment services with a network of approximately 200 private and non-profit providers (McDonald and Marston, 2008), and in the Netherlands in 2000 (Struyven and Steurs, 2005). Later also the British, Danish, and German governments introduced the possibility for private and non-profit providers to offer employment services target at disadvantaged individuals (Bredgaard et al., 2005; Jahn and Ochel, 2007; Fuertes et al., 2014).\n2. The theoretical underpinnings: quasi-markets and horizontal subsidiarity: The term \"subsidiarity\" in the Lombardy context can be described as \"[...] the idea that matters should be handled by the lowest, or closest possible level to where they will have their effect\" (Colombo, 2008, p. 182). \"Horizontal\" subsidiarity differs from \"vertical\" subsidiarity, which concerns the distribution of powers among different layers of the public sphere, because it relates to the sharing of competences and initiatives between public and private actors. Whereas horizontal subsidiarity shares a number of features with quasi-markets, it also differs because of its emphasis on a combination of freedom and responsibility, both on the demand and the supply side (Brugnoli and Vittadini, 2008). On the demand side, users are given the freedom and responsibility to choose the services and providers who best suit their needs; on the supply side, providers are given the freedom and the responsibility to organize and manage their offering, by tailoring them on users' needs.\n3. Case selection and methodology: As mentioned in the introductory section and further specified below, employment services provision in Italy was significantly influenced by the 2001 constitutional reform devolving the relevant responsibilities to regional governments, and by the National Law No. 30/2003 together with the related legislative Decree No. 276/2003; the latter two, in particular, allowed for the establishment of mixed public-private systems of services provision, and stated the basic conditions for the participation of private suppliers. Following these reforms, all regional governments introduced various forms of private sector participation in the provision of employment services. However, all except Lombardy attributed the main decision-making powers in relation to resources allocation to a public actor, in most cases the provincial governments, who relied on tendering and other forms of contracting-out. Lombardy was unique in its choice to design and implement a system inspired by quasi-market and horizontal subsidiarity principles, where the allocation of resources among public and private suppliers was to be the result of users' choice (Marocco, 2011; Trivellato, 2012). Therefore, the Lombardy system is not illustrative of other Italian regional cases, but rather represents an early case of experimentation that was selected to provide insights in relation to the design choices that were made, and the resulting implementation challenges.\n4. Regional devolution and the reform of employment services in Italy: Established in 1970, Italian regions were extremely weak in the first years of their existence (Colombo, 2008), mostly because their powers and activities were prescribed in detail by national legislation, and regional laws were to be scrutinized pre-emptively by the central government; moreover, regions had little financial autonomy, as their budget was funded by block grants from a central government regional fund. In 1996, the Minister of Public Administration Franco Bassanini proposed a comprehensive reform aimed at modernizing practices and organizational structures; the reform was built on administrative simplification, on the introduction of managerial tools, and on functional devolution to local administrations (Mele, 2010). In 1997, regions were granted more competences together with the income from certain duties, and since 1999 they have control over their own statutes, electoral systems, and forms of government.\n5. The design of Lombardy's employment services system: Following the above-mentioned developments at the national and international level, the Lombardy regional government introduced the Regional Law No. 22/2006 to reform its training and employment policies based on the principles of horizontal subsidiarity. Competences and roles of different institutions were redefined, and specific measures were designed to increase employment.\n6. Lombardy's tentative quasi-market: implementation shortcomings: Previous studies (e.g. Trivellato et al., 2015; Trivellato and Martini, 2016) confirm that a considerable effort was made in Lombardy to apply the principles of quasi-markets and horizontal subsidiarity, and the related conditions for effective functioning. However, the potential benefits of the \"freedom of choice\" principle, which is a paramount feature of both approaches, were not fully achieved. The promises of the endowment system were tainted by unpredicted behaviours by public as well as private actors, such as efforts by public incumbents to exploit their privileged position, and a race among service providers to entice potential beneficiaries matched by cream-skimming (Trivellato et al., 2015).\n7. Experimenting with other forms: the \"Partnership actions for re-employment\": There was a widespread acknowledgement that the endowment system needed reform. Several shortcomings were recognized by ARIFL's management, who also highlighted the following implications: better employment outcomes often result from structured outplacement activities; activities are often more effective when they build on synergies with local actors; and the involvement of various actors (firms, business associations, unions, non-profit organizations, local media) and of partnerships dealing with outplacement allows a better response to citizens' needs.\n8. Discussion and conclusion: As highlighted by Breidahl and Larsen (2015) with reference to Denmark and other countries, \"the hopes for the marketization of public employment services in the political rhetoric have been high, including promises such as reduced bureaucracy, higher quality services (better services) entailing new, innovative methods, better targeted and individual services (with user choice), and higher efficiency (cheaper services) creating better results/effects and cost savings\" (p. 98). Assessing the extent to which these objectives have been reached is challenging, but the authors point out to three dilemmas which have emerged during the complex evolution of the Danish marketization process: first, the aim to reduce prices while providing more customized and innovative services; second, the fact that a transparent and free market involves wide-ranging transaction costs (and this is likely to hold also for a quasi-market, at least to a certain extent); and finally, the negative impact on equity caused by imperfect mechanisms to govern competition among providers. While the Lombardy case shows a different path to marketization, including a lower emphasis on cost reduction, these dilemmas also appear to have played a role, though with certain differences, and to have shaped subsequent experimentation with network forms.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the recent evolution of the employment services system of a Northern Italian region (Lombardy), which was planned according to principles inspired by quasi-markets and horizontal subsidiarity theories, with a focus on its design and implementation challenges. It aims to provide practical and theoretical insights for the design of public services' governance systems that similarly feature public-private competition and/or cooperation and users' freedom of choice.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper reviews and integrates previous empirical research analysing the programmes that are part of the recent evolution of Lombardy's employment services system, in order to draw insights and lessons.\nFindings: The paper suggests areas where closer scrutiny and related intervention is warranted on the part of the institution in charge of the system's design (in this case the regional administration), especially in terms of appropriate design of incentive mechanisms for partnership creation, and adequate consideration of the equity implications of the chosen solutions.\nOriginality/value: The paper may be of interest to public officials aiming to implement systems with similar characteristics (public-private competition vs collaboration, users' freedom of choice), in order to consider challenges and possible implications of their decisions during the planning phase. From a theoretical perspective, this case suggests that reliance on freedom and responsibility, both on the demand and the supply side, may not be adequate to reach the desired outcomes, and may produce negative equity implications. Focused partnerships may be more effective, but may experience similar shortcomings from the viewpoint of equity.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Characterization of the consumer market and motivations for the consumption of craft beer	[ "Marketing", "Differentiation", "Motivations", "Craft beer", "Market segment" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In recent years, there has been a notable change in the behavior of a portion of beer consumers, who have been more aware, sophisticated and demanding about the emerging beverage culture in terms of desired quality and consumption habits. These represent a segment that takes into account the characteristics and quality of the ingredients used in the preparation of the beverage and that is willing to pay more than the conventional market price for these differentiated products, known as craft beers (Ascher, 2012; Assobirra, 2012; Murray and O'Neill, 2012; Aquilani et al., 2015; Sebrae, 2015; Gomez-Corona, Lelievre-Desmas, Buendia, Chollet and Valentin, 2016).\nMaterials and methods: Sample and data collection\nResults and discussion: Demographic characteristics of respondents\nConclusion: The results obtained through the market research carried out with craft beer consumers from the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte revealed that the preferences of this segment seem to be related to the discovery of new flavors and the search for high-quality products as well as craft products and that these factors are gradually changing consumer habits and buying behavior. Demographically, it was found that these consumers are an attractive part of the beer market in terms of age, schooling and, more importantly, in terms of income, since craft beer has a higher price than commercial beers.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the demographic characteristics and habits of craft beer consumers, as well as to identify the motivational factors for consumption.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected through questionnaires applied to 316 Brazilian craft beer consumers, and results were evaluated descriptively and by multivariate statistics.\nFindings: The results of the survey revealed that there is a growing market segment with different buying habits and behaviors compared to traditional beer consumers. Demographically, it was found that these consumers are an attractive part of the beer market in terms of age, schooling and, more importantly, in terms of income, factors that indicate the probability of continued growth in the sector.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research was limited to craft beer consumers in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte/MG, Brazil.\nPractical implications: The results obtained are important, as they can help new craft breweries, as well as help established industry managers to create strategies related to marketing four Ps in order to increase the consumption of its products, with competitive advantages to the market.\nOriginality/value: This research presents the characteristics of the consumers of craft beer, a market segment in evident rise in Brazil, about which there are few studies. In addition, it provides valuable information to both the new beverage manufacturers as well as to the already established entrepreneurs in the market so that they can increase the consumption of their products in a strategic way.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Warning systems as social processes for Bangladesh cyclones	[ "Bangladesh", "Storms", "Cyclone vulnerability", "Warning process", "Warning system" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Bangladesh is frequently labelled as one of the most disaster-prone countries (e.g. Khan, 2008; Shahid and Behrawan, 2008) but it is also touted as being a good practice example for cyclone warning and evacuation (e.g. Akhand, 2003; Haque et al., 2012; Mallick et al., 2011). This explanation is framed through declining disaster mortality despite increasing population numbers: a 1970 cyclone killed at least 224,000 people (Sommer and Mosley, 1972), Cyclone Gorky in 1991 killed approximately 140,000 people (Paul, 2009), and then Cyclone Sidr in 2007 killed 3,406 people (Paul, 2009) followed by Cyclone Aila in 2009 killing about 190 people (Saha, 2015). The cyclone death toll reduction is attributed to a system in which villages are warned of impending cyclones through community-based efforts followed by evacuating to shelters which are integrated into the community.\nFieldwork: Khulna, Bangladesh sits at approximately 22.9degN and 89.5degE and experiences numerous cyclones. Due to local topographic and societal differences, coastal locations can undergo highly differentiated impacts from the same storm. Research was conducted in two villages in Dacope Upazila, Khulna: Kalabogi and Kamarkhola (Figure 1).\nResults: Tables I - IV indicate warning, evacuation, and post-cyclone impacts in the villages for Sidr and Aila. The high rate of timely warnings received contrasts with the low rate of evacuation and the long period of post-cyclone impacts. Those who received warnings but did not go to shelters indicated that it is a deliberate choice. Despite previous cyclone experiences, they did not expect significant cyclone damage to affect them and they also highlighted the difficulty of getting to cyclone shelters due to poor roads. Even the worst case of complete inundation of the village would permit them to reach high land by swimming to an embankment, which they did, with little concern about potential dangers, such as flowing water, dirty water, debris, snakes, inability to swim, fatigue, darkness, and hypothermia. The extensive post-cyclone impacts experienced after Sidr and Aila did not appear to influence this attitude of not needing to evacuate, although Table II does show increases in evacuation rates for Aila just 18 months after Sidr. The reason stated was mainly the higher impacts, as noted above, especially in terms of Kamarkhola flooding which led many more people to shelter on the embankment.\nDiscussion: The highly lauded cyclone warning and shelter system across Bangladesh (Akhand, 2003; Haque et al., 2012; Mallick et al., 2011), notwithstanding other factors lowering cyclone mortality such as coastal ecosystem management (Haque et al., 2012; Paul, 2009), is further indicated by the fieldwork here in small, isolated villages. Yet a significant proportion of the population surveyed does not receive cyclone warnings through formal channels, even though the formal awareness and preparedness programmes had significant reach. Meanwhile, a large part of the population would not necessarily evacuate to shelters because they are not concerned about cyclone-related threats to life. These results indicate the importance of people developing and applying their own warning and evacuation systems for hazards. Even accepted external interventions might not be as effective as internal initiatives.\nConclusion: Examining warning systems as social processes through cyclone experiences in isolated Bangladeshi villages has reaffirmed the importance of contextuality. A single route and form for warning information cannot meet everyone's needs, yet the point of a warning system is to ensure that everyone is included. Therefore, multiple channels, mechanisms, and approaches are required to be fully inclusive. As the evidence here illustrates, even with apparently accepted, accurate, and desired warning information from trusted sources, people will not necessarily continue the warning process (as it was designed) by evacuating and using cyclone shelters. This situation is not necessarily detrimental, but the consequences need to be made explicit.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to connect the theoretical idea of warning systems as social processes with empirical data of people's perceptions of and actions for warning for cyclones in Bangladesh.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A case study approach is used in two villages of Khulna district in southwest Bangladesh: Kalabogi and Kamarkhola. In total, 60 households in each village were surveyed with structured questionnaires regarding how they receive their cyclone warning information as well as their experiences of warnings for Cyclone Sidr in 2007 and Cyclone Aila in 2009.\nFindings: People in the two villages had a high rate of receiving cyclone warnings and accepted them as being credible. They also experienced high impacts from the cyclones. Yet evacuation rates to cyclone shelters were low. They did not believe that significant cyclone damage would affect them and they also highlighted the difficulty of getting to cyclone shelters due to poor roads, leading them to prefer other evacuation options which were implemented if needed.\nOriginality/value: Theoretical constructs of warning systems, such as the First Mile and late warning, are rarely examined empirically according to people's perceptions of warnings. The case study villages have not before been researched with respect to warning systems. The findings provide empirical evidence for long-established principles of warning systems as social processes, usually involving but not relying on technical components.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Can board gender diversity promote corporate social performance?	[ "Corporate social performance", "Corporate governance", "Propensity score matching", "Panel models", "Board gender diversity", "G30", "G38", "J16", "M14" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: One of the European Union's founding values is to foster equality between women and men by promoting equal opportunities in corporate board representation and decision-making. Countries such as Norway, Italy and Spain have already enforced legislations to promote female representation in the boardrooms, while other countries such as the UK have issued strong recommendations to increase female representation on the male-dominated boardroom.\n2. Literature and hypotheses: Behavioral studies have documented that females tend to hold attitudes, beliefs, values and perspectives different from their male counterparts (Pelled et al., 1999). Female directors in business tend to exhibit more risk aversion in their business decisions and less likelihood to flout accounting, financial or ethical rules and regulations than their male counterparts (Pierce and Sweeney, 2010; Kyaw et al., 2015). Moreover, studies have found that increased female representation on the boards has been associated with an increase in the level of charitable givings (Bernadi and Threadgill, 2010), improved connections with the community (Hillman et al., 2002), enhanced organizational practices relating to CSR (Zhang, 2012) and, in particular, environmental performance (Rao et al., 2012) and restraint of disreputable practices such as pollution (Bear et al., 2010). Landry et al. (2016) find that Fortune 500 companies that have a higher female representation on the board are more likely to appear on the list of World's Most Ethical Company. On the other hand, Deschenes et al. (2015) explain that if BGD were to present the firm in a positive light while overshadowing firm's bad environmental practices, e.g. pollution, the presence of women on the board may not necessarily lead to improvement in environmental practices. In faith that firms adopt CSP to address environmental and social issues, we develop the following hypotheses:\n3. Research design: 3.1 Sample and data\n4. Empirical results: 4.1 Descriptive statistics\n5. Robustness checks: 5.1 Endogeneity\n6. Discussions and conclusions: The effect BGD has on CSP is relatively understudied despite a Europe-wide effort to promote gender equality in the corporate boardroom. In this paper, we examined the effect BGD can have on firm environmental, social and overall performances. In line with the previous studies (Rao et al., 2012; Zhang, 2012), we found that BGD benefits the society as an increase in female representation on corporate boards leads to improvements in environmental, social and the aggregate performance of the firm. Therefore, creating equal opportunities for different gender in the corporate boards should result in an improvement in firm CSP. Unlike in the case of financial performance studied in the literature, we showed that firms do not need to have a threshold number of female directors on board to bring about the improvements.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: This paper examines if gender diversity on corporate boards promotes corporate social performance (CSP) across industries and across countries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Fixed-effect panel models are estimated using Europe-wide data from 2002 through 2013. Instrumental variable estimation and propensity score matching are also used to control for potential endogeneity.\nFindings: Board gender diversity (BGD) improves environmental and social performance and consequently the CSP. Although the positive effect of gender diversity is prevalent across industries, the effect is more pronounced for firms in emerging markets.\nPractical implications: The findings suggest that gender law that fosters gender diversity can promote CSP in firms, and the benefit can be enjoyed with just an introduction of one female director to the board. Promotion of gender diversity in Europe is most beneficial in emerging markets.\nOriginality/value: The results provide new insights to the literature, as we find that a critical mass of female directors on boards is not required to promote CSP. The research also highlights that BGD enhances CSP irrespective of the industry, and the effect on CSP is more pronounced in emerging markets where regulations regarding CSR are not so clear-cut.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Enhanced authentication and key exchange for end to end security in mobile commerce using wireless public key infrastructure	[ "AKA", "AVISPA", "End to end security", "PKI", "Wireless communication", "WPKI" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The sustained demand for mobile devices initiates the telecommunications network to build the focus on its performance. Authentication is one of the critical cryptographic problems. It results in authorization to grant system resources or leads to a secure key exchange. Authentication in wireless or resource constrained networks is even more challenging due to various limitations on the resource and platform. For multiple services, the mobile user must be authenticated whenever the user visits the remote network. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) recommended a protocol for authentication and key agreement (AKA) and used foremost in a mutual authentication process, where the mobile phone user and the remote system needs to authenticate. The traditional AKA protocol incorporates symmetric key encryption and a normal Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to verify the digital certificates. A digital certificate binds user public key with the owner.\n2. Literature survey: In this section, the related works carried in the area of mobile networks, authentication and key exchanges with the help of PKI/WPKI are discussed. The emphasis on these areas is laid upon the fact that there are three participating entities in AKA as discussed above.\n3. Problem statement: EAKA is a critical cryptographic problem. Its failure proves to be harmful and expensive in terms of unauthorized access to the system. It might also lead to attacks on the exchanged messages. The cryptographic operations involved in resource-constrained devices are time-consuming. There exists a need to overcome this drawback in the systems that utilize variegated cryptographic services, and the exchanged key is to be used for secure End-to-end communication to protect the resources.\n4. Methodology: Zemao et al. (2012) proposed a novel authentication scheme for telephone networks called OPAKA. In the paper, the authors discussed the advantages of the OPAKA scheme using theoretical discussions and proof. In the current research work, the idea proposed by Zemao et al. (2012) is taken as a base and extended for the End-to-end security with enhanced user authentication. In the proposed work, NTRU is used to obtain the encryption and decryption of the messages in a secure manner and in less time. It is also robust to quantum computers ability to break the system. Table I gives the comparison of traditional algorithms with conventional computers and quantum computers (Waiting for quantum computing: Why encryption has nothing to worry about - TechBeacon, 2019). Section 4.1 describes the NTRU algorithm. Section 4.2 demonstrates the enhanced EAKA.\n5. Implementation and testing of the proposed method: The implementation details and specification of the proposed method are tabulated below. The test environment consists of a smartphone and laptops. The detail of the mobile client is shown in Table II. The CA and server details are given in Table III.\n6. Security of the proposed system: Formal validation using AVISPA: 6.1 AVISPA overview\n7. Conclusion and future scope: The wireless devices are resource constrained and computationally inefficient when compared to the wired counterpart. To address this issue, a novel and efficient approach for authenticated key agreement for mobile networks is proposed. Entity Authentication is a process by which an entity gains confidence in the communicating entity. It is often coupled with the distribution of \"session key\" with the communicating entity. The session key generated is used later to achieve confidentiality and integrity. The proposed scheme increases the speed of authentication process more securely. A comparison is made between contemporary asymmetric key cryptographic algorithms regarding execution time in the proposed EAKA scheme. NTRU is chosen as it is proved to be faster. The symmetric key exchange is achieved using the AES algorithm. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm is compared with the existing method. The formal validation of the proposed scheme using AVISPA demonstrates that the scheme is safe and secure from potential attacks. The performance of the proposed method depicts that it is acceptable.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of the study is to develop a secure, efficient, and enhanced user authentication mechanism to achieve reliable and authenticated connection. In online transactions, users and resources are located at different places, and the sensitive information is to be protected and transferred using the suitable, reliable mechanism.\nDesign/methodology/approach: One of the latest approach to handle the requirement is by a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) or its variant Wireless Public Key Infrastructure (WPKI). Fundamental management techniques are required to be very secure and vital since they are one of the points of attack in public key cryptosystem. Entity authentication and key agreement (AKA) is a critical cryptographic problem in wireless communication, where a mutual entity authentication plays a vital role in the establishment of the secure and authentic connection. This paper proposes an efficient and enhanced AKA scheme (EAKA) with the end-to-end security and verifies the proposed system for protection using automated validation of internet security protocols and applications. An efficient way for the implementation of an enhanced version of the protocol is proposed using a lattice-based cryptographic algorithm.\nFindings: The time consumed for the proposed research work shows that it is practical and acceptable.\nOriginality/value: The proposed research work is an efficient and enhanced user authentication mechanism.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services	[ "Willingness to purchase online mental health services", "Ehealth literacy", "Perceived information quality", "Perceived competence", "Perceived eWOM credibility", "Price perception" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Service providers are no longer relying merely on traditional methods for offering and delivering their services. The rapid growth of internet-based technologies has enabled service providers new ways of conducting their business, contributing to their profitability and growth (Akcura et al., 2015; Campbell and Frei, 2010; Etzion and Pang, 2014; Wymbs, 2000). Medical care services are one of among various service industries that are continuously being shaped by advances in internet-based technologies (Forkner-Dunn, 2003; Gummerus et al., 2004; Lin and Lin, 2018; Steinbrook, 2008). Among various medical care services currently being offered online, mental health services seem to be on the rise (Grech, 2018; Kraemer, 2017). This growth of popularity of online mental health services can be attributed to its convenience, its apparent inexpensiveness compared to traditional in-person therapy in many cases, the popularity of online communications and its usefulness to people who cannot get to an office for various reasons (American Psychological Association, 2018). Although there are a few studies on online mental health services, most of them are from a medical or social perspective (Andersson and Cuijpers, 2009; Barak et al., 2008; Chan et al., 2016; Sucala et al., 2012; Wentzel et al., 2016). In a meta-analysis, Andersson and Cuijpers (2009) showed that the scope for internet-based and computerized treatments for depression is promising. However, their study concluded that these treatments are much more effective when personal support is provided. Another meta-analysis by Barak et al. (2008) also suggest to adopt internet-based treatments for mental illness as a legitimate therapeutic activity as internet-based and face-to-face therapy showed the same level of effectiveness. One qualitative study conducted on 19 university students by Chan et al. (2016) focused on their perceived benefits and concerns regarding internet-based treatments for mental health problems. Their study identified the perceived benefits of online mental health treatments as ease of accessibility and avoidance of stigma, while perceived concerns as privacy and confidentiality, communication difficulty and Web-based resource quality. Another undertaking by Wentzel et al. (2016) focused on the advantages and effectiveness of mixing online and face-to-face therapy for mental health care. They proposed an instrument that assists therapists and patient to mix online and face-to-face therapy for optimal effectiveness. Noticeably, none of these studies focused on the marketing or business aspects of online mental health services, which highlights the research gap. Thus, to fill the research gap, this study aims at proposing a conceptual framework for predicting consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services, embedded with eHealth literacy, perceived information quality, perceived competence, perceived electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) credibility, and price perception. No previous studies so far have attempted to investigate consumers' willingness to purchase and its crucial antecedents in the context of online mental health services. Therefore, the findings of this study will make a significant contribution to the literature and establish pathways for future studies on online mental health services from the marketing or business perspective.\n2. Literature review and hypotheses: 2.1 eHealth literacy\n3. Methodology: The research design was cross-sectional. The survey instrument was developed and refined with the help of an expert panel consisting of three industry experts and three academicians. A pilot survey was conducted among 100 respondents. Initially, 32 items were present in the questionnaire spreading across all the variables. Nine items were later deleted based on the feedback from the pilot survey, and opinions from the expert panel. The revised questionnaire was used in the main survey. Data were collected from various public and private mental hospitals in Bangladesh. Eight research assistants were trained for data collection purposes. Intercept method was used for conducting the survey. The research assistants approached the respondents around the exit areas of the mental hospitals. Filtering questions were used to screen out the respondents. Only respondents with adequate knowledge regarding the online mental health service providers in terms of their offerings were selected. Both a Bengali and an English version of the survey instrument were used, and they were distributed according to the respondent's preference. A total of 400 respondents from Bangladesh participated in the self-administered, pen-and-paper survey. Data were collected between July and November, 2017. Only 367 questionnaires were used in the final data analysis after discarding questionnaires that were either incomplete or lacking variance in responses. Variables controlled for were gender, income, age and education following the stratified sampling approach. Table I summarizes the categories of the controlled variables along with respondent distribution used in final analysis. The questionnaire presented the respondents a set of statements, and seven-point Likert-type scales were used (1 = \"Strongly disagree; 7 = \"Strongly agree\").\n4. Data analysis: Internal consistency, convergent validity and discriminant validity were examined to assess the constructs. To check internal consistency, composite reliability values were assessed. All composite reliability values (Table IV) were between 0.70 and 0.90, which is the suggested range (Nunally and Bernstein, 1994). Average variance extracted (AVE) values of the constructs and outer loadings of the indicators were checked for convergent validity. All the AVE values (Table IV) are over the suggested level 0.5 (Hair et al., 2014). Except for two indicators (eHL3 and eHL8), outer loadings of all the indicators (Table IV) are over the suggested threshold 0.708 (Hair et al., 2014). The two indicators with outer loadings below 0.708 were retained following the suggestion by Hair et al. (2014) since they are over 0.40, and deleting them did not result in any significant improvement of composite reliability or AVE of the eHealth literacy construct. Heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratios were checked for discriminant validity. Discriminant validity was attained as all the HTMT values (Table V) are below the suggested level 0.85 (Henseler et al., 2015).\n5. Discussion and implications: Literacy is considered as a personal capability that has a strong influence on consumer behavior (Jansson et al., 2010; Stern, 2000). Literacy enables consumers to engage in specific behavioral actions, including purchase behavior (Jae and DelVecchio, 2004; Spiteri Cornish and Moraes, 2015). On the other hand, information quality is linked to several consumer behavioral aspects. Many previous studies suggest that information quality regarding a product/service can influence consumers regarding purchasing that product/service (Cheung et al., 2005; Saeed et al., 2003). In addition, consumers purchasing behavior of a service is influenced by their perceptions of the competence of the contact person (s), in services where the quality and completeness of the service is heavily dependent on the skills of the contact person (s), as perception of product/service quality impacts consumer decision making regarding purchasing a product/service (Bitner et al., 1990; Flanagin et al., 2014; Su et al., 2016; Zeithaml et al., 1988). Apart from literacy, information quality, and competence, many previous undertakings have identified both eWOM credibility and perception of price as crucial determinants of consumer purchase behavior (Aschemann-Witzel and Zielke, 2017; Casalo et al., 2015; Erkan and Evans, 2016; Han and Hyun, 2015). Consumers adopt eWOM reviews/comments and subsequently uses them in purchasing decision, when they believe them to be credible (Cheung et al., 2009; Nabi and Hendriks, 2003). Similarly, the price of a product/service has always been conceptualized as a substantial determinant of consumer purchase behavior, as consumers are price conscious (Kim et al., 2012; Kukar-Kinney et al., 2012). Therefore, an understanding of how eHealth literacy, perceived information quality, perceived competence, perceived eWOM credibility and price perception influences consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services provide valuable insights.\n6. Limitations of the study and future direction: Data were collected from only one country. Therefore, the generalizability of the findings is unknown. Future studies may test the proposed model in other countries to validate the findings. Comparative studies may also be conducted between less developed, developing and developed countries to check whether there are any variations in the results. Also, this study only considered selected antecedents of consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services. Future studies may incorporate other possible antecedents such as confidentiality, prior online purchase experience and Web-purchasing risk attitudes in the proposed model.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct effects of eHealth literacy, perceived competence, perceived electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) credibility and price perception on consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services. This study also examines the mediating role of perceived information quality on the eHealth literacy-consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services relationship and the moderating roles of perceived eWOM credibility and price perception on the perceived competence-consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services relationship.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on an extensive literature review, a conceptual model was developed. The research design was cross-sectional. A total of 400 respondents participated in the self-administered survey. After discarding some questionnaires due to incompleteness and lack of variance, a total of 367 responses was used in final data analysis. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the proposed model.\nFindings: eHealth literacy, perceived competence, perceived eWOM credibility and price perception were found to have significant positive direct effects on consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services. Perceived information quality was found to have a significant partial mediating effect on the eHealth literacy-consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services relationship. Both perceived eWOM credibility and price perception were found to have significant positive moderating effects on the perceived competence-consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services relationship.\nOriginality/value: Studies concerning online mental health services from a marketing or business perspective is almost non-existent. Therefore, this study contributes to the scarce literature in that context. This is the first study that has investigated how eHealth literacy, perceived information quality, perceived competence, perceived eWOM credibility and price perception influence consumers' willingness to purchase online mental health services.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]
Familiarity and utilization of open access resources: A study of library users of Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) and Pondicherry University (PU)	[ "Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs)", "Use", "Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT)", "Open access (OA)", "Open access journals", "Pondicherry University (PU)" ]	[ { "content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: The World Wide Web (WWW) has made possible an unprecedented collaboration in the production, dissemination and exchange of information by people all over the world, irrespective of their geographical location. This development has also given rise to various movements aimed at enabling free and open access to information by people, irrespective of their economic, social or geographical background. One of such movement associated with this concept is the open access (OA) movement. The OA movement emerged in response to increasing legal and economic barriers by commercial scholarly publishers which made access to research output and information difficult, especially to people in the developing countries of the world (Christian, 2008).\n2. Objectives of the study: To find out familiarity with concept of OA among library users.\n3. Review of related literature: Sahu and Arya (2013) rightly said that the OA movement has become the center of discussion during the last decade. OA publishing facilitates researchers' and scientists' access to research literature through the internet free of cost. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the awareness of OA publishing among researchers and faculty members of Indian institutions and to evaluate the development of OA initiatives in India. For studying awareness of OA publishing, a survey was conducted among the researchers of IITs and IIMs in July-August 2012 by using a closed-ended questionnaire. The growth of OA initiatives in India is analyzed through data collected from secondary sources. The results showed that India's contribution has increased in the last few years. It was found that the awareness about such OA information sources and initiatives among the research community is increasing.\n4. Methodology: The present study is based on data collected from library users of Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) and Pondicherry University (PU).\n5. Data analysis and interpretation: The data which are collected through questionnaires from library users of CUSAT and PU have been organized and analyzed as discussed below:\n6. Major findings: The major findings of the study conducted among the users of libraries under study are given below:\n7. Suggestions: In the light of analysis of data received, the findings of the survey and opinions received from the respondents participated in the survey, the following suggestions are made to maximum utilization of OA resources among library users:\n8. Conclusion: The study sought to examine the familiarity of OA resources and its utilization among library users of CUSAT and PU. Both the universities under study have their OA repository, namely, Dyuthi digital repository and DSpace at PU developed and maintained by CUSAT and PU, respectively, to provide global access to institutional intellectual output. The study shows that in both the universities, library users are well versed with the OA concept and majority of them are using these resources as well. However, this study also identified some of the impediments faced by library users in using OA resources such as difficulty in screen reading, lack of guidance and training and lack of search skills. Libraries can play very important role in providing access to OA resources as per the user's needs. Libraries may provide links to OA resources on library website to make best use of such resources. Awareness programs about OA resources may also be helpful in promoting OA resources among users.\n", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Purpose: The purpose of the study is to assess the familiarity and utilization of open access resources among library users of Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), Kochi, and Pondicherry University (PU), Puducherry.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data for the study were collected via a well-structured questionnaire. For this study, 250 questionnaires were administered among library users of each CUSAT and PU through incidental sampling. From CUSAT and PU, 180 and 160 questionnaires, respectively, were considered for data analysis.\nFindings: The study reveals that majority of the respondents, i.e. 77.78 and 80 per cent of CUSAT and PU, respectively, believe that they are familiar with the concept of open access (OA). 70.56 per cent respondents from CUSAT and 71.88 per cent users from PU are aware that their library has an OA repository. However, majority of the respondents, i.e. 65 and 70.63 per cent users from CUSAT and PU, respectively, use OA resources. Among OA resources, electronic theses and dissertations are the most preferred ones consulted by 56.67 and 62.50 per cent respondents, respectively, from CUSAT and PU. 60.56 per cent respondents from CUSAT followed by PU (52.50 per cent) cited \"screen reading\" as a main barrier in accessing OA resources.\nOriginality/value: Both the universities under study have created and maintained the OA institutional repository for disseminating their institutional intellectual output. This study explores awareness and use of OA resources among library users of CUSAT and PU. The study concludes with some suggestions for utmost utilization of OA resources among library users.\n", "role": "assistant" } ]

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.