title
stringlengths 6
301
| keywords
sequencelengths 0
23
| messages
listlengths 2
2
|
|---|---|---|
Unpacking the combined effects of job scope and supervisor support on in-role performance
|
[
"Supervisor support",
"In-role performance",
"Job characteristics theory",
"Job scope",
"Social support theory"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Organizations of various sectors are not giving proper attention toward the importance of social context in highly challenging working environment for employees. The social context in highly challenging work settings plays a vital role in shaping employees' proficiencies and behaviors. Social context at work captures the interpersonal interactions that develop as employees perform their jobs, roles and tasks (Chou, 2015; Grant and Parker, 2009). The relational perspective of work design focuses on how the social aspects of a job combined with job roles and/or tasks advance an employee's understanding of the job and how this understanding can impact organizational outcomes (Grant and Parker, 2009). In this regard, social exchange theory is a very useful approach for integrating relational or social work context variables into JCM. The JCM posits that five core job characteristics make jobs intrinsically motivating and satisfying and encourage the achievement of high performance (Hackman and Oldham, 1980). Despite the popularity and continuous use of JCM in job enrichment literature, the model has received multiple criticisms from other scholars (Grant et al., 2010).\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: The JCM framework of Hackman and Oldham (1975) includes the five job characteristics that influence work-attitudes and behaviors: skills variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. They also suggested that GNS, a trait associated with internal energy achievement orientation, acts as moderator in the job characteristics/outcomes relationship. Although JCM continues to enjoy strong support among scholars for the proposed direct relationship between core job characteristics and outcomes, there is mixed evidence confirming the moderator effects of GNS or other related variables such as personality (e.g. Xie and Johns, 1995). We will first briefly review the research on the relationship between job characteristics and job performance and then discuss the proposed moderating effects of supervisor support in shaping this relationship.\nMethod: Data collection and sample\nDiscussion: Overall, there were two hypotheses and these hypotheses were confirmed. More specifically, our results pertaining to the hypothesized relations can be summarized as follows; all predictions related to direct relations of job scope with in-role performance, interaction effects of job scope and supervisor's support were confirmed.\nConclusion: This study proposed that the relational context of jobs, particularly in the form of social support by supervisors, can motivate employees to perform their duties more productively. It also highlights how the structure of an employee's work with the manifestation of social support plays a critical role in shaping the employee's relationships with their supervisors. This study highlights that both job design and in-role performance have a strong link with relational contexts that can motivate employees to achieve their stated targets. Thus, this research improves our understanding of how social context at the workplace can make a difference for employees and their organizations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how the relationship between job scope and in-role performance is contingent upon the level of social support (i.e. supervisor support) received in the workplace.\nDesign/methodology/approach: A total of 640 questionnaires were distributed to employees of Pakistani companies, yielding 328 useable responses for analysis. Regression analysis was used to test for both hypotheses.\nFindings: The results support the role of supervisor support as a moderator in the relationship between in-role performance, a dimension of job performance and job scope. The findings show that a higher job scope would facilitate higher job performance from employees who receive high levels of supervisor support.\nPractical implications: The results provide useful insights for managers and consultants, especially HR professionals involved in job design and redesign. Organizations that encourage high levels of social support can help employees improve their job performance as they foster an environment where employees can get direct assistance and advice from their supervisors.\nOriginality/value: This paper makes three key contributions to the literature on job design. First, this inquiry shows that a strong link does exist between job scope and job performance; previous studies have failed to find a strong relationship. Second, it highlights how social context, especially in highly challenging work settings, can shape employees' proficiencies and behaviors. Third, this paper offers a novel perspective in job design research by incorporating a contextual moderator (i.e. supervisor support).\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Family firms, board structure and firm performance: evidence from top Indian firms
|
[
"India",
"Family firms",
"Corporate governance",
"Firm performance"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Family businesses are the most dominant among publically traded firms across the world (Shleifer and Vishny, 1986; Burkart et al., 2003; Anderson and Reeb, 2003; La Porta et al., 1999). In Continental Europe, about 44 per cent of publicly held firms are family-controlled (Faccio and Lang, 2002). In the USA, the equity ownership concentration is modest; among the Fortune 500 firms, around one-third is family firms (Anderson and Reeb, 2003). The concentration of ownership was found to be higher in other developed nations (Faccio and Lang, 2002; Franks and Mayer, 2001; Gorton and Schmid, 1996). Family businesses dominate many developing economies with about two-third of the firms in Asian countries owned by families or individuals (Claessens et al., 2000). In India, around 60 per cent of the listed top 500 firms are family firms (Chakrabarti et al., 2008). These family firms hold large equity stakes and more often than not have family representation on the board of directors. Family equity stake in Indian firms may be divided across individual holdings by promoters and their family members, privately held firms and through cross-holdings from other listed group businesses. The control and influence exerted by family firms may lead to performance difference with the non-family firms (Anderson and Reeb, 2003).\n2. Potential benefits of family firms: Controlling blockholders like family can have potential benefits and competitive advantage. The extent literature on family firms focuses mostly on the agency problem. The problem in widely held firms includes limited ability to select reliable agents, monitor the selected agents and ensure performance (Fama and Jensen, 1983). An effective monitoring can improve firm performance and reduce agency cost (Fama and Jensen, 1983; Jensen and Meckling, 1976). The principle agent conflict associated with widely held firms may be reduced by concentrated blockholders, specifically the family blockholders, as they have a significant economic incentive to monitor the management (Demsetz and Lehn, 1985). Specifically, the substantial intergenerational ownership stake and having a majority of their wealth invested in a single business, the family firms have strong incentive to monitor the management. The lengthy involvement of family members in the business, in some cases spanning generations, permits them to move further along the learning curve. This superior knowledge allows the family members to monitor the managers better (Anderson and Reeb, 2003). Also, this long-term presence of family members in their firm leads to longer investment horizons than other shareholders and may provide an incentive to invest according to market rules (James, 1999). This willingness of family firms to invest in the long-term project leads to greater investment efficiency (Anderson and Reeb, 2003; James, 1999; Stein, 1988). Another advantage of having a long-term presence of family firms is that the external suppliers, dealers, lenders, etc., are more likely to have favorable dealings with the same governing bodies, owing to the long-term dealings and reputation, than with nonfamily firms. This sustained presence of family necessitates having their reputation maintained (Anderson and Reeb, 2003).\n3. Potential costs of family firms: Family firms are also said to be fraught with nepotism, family disputes, capital restrictions, exploitation of minority shareholders and executive entrenchment, all of which adversely affect firm performance (Allen and Panian, 1982; Chandler, 1990; Faccio et al., 2001; Gomez-Mejia et al., 2001; Perez-Gonzalez, 2006; Schulze et al., 2001, 2003). Expropriation of minority shareholders by large shareholders may generate additional agency problem (Faccio et al., 2001). Concentrated shareholders, by virtue of their controlling position in the firm, may extract private benefits at the expense of minority shareholders (Burkart et al., 2003). Capital expenditure can be affected by the families' preference for special dividends (DeAngelo and DeAngelo, 2000). Employee productivity can also be adversely affected by family shareholders acting on their own behalf (Burkart et al., 1997). Family firms are found to show biases toward business ventures of other family members resulting in suboptimal investment (Singell, 1997). Family shareholders tend to forgo profit maximization activities owing to their financial preferences which often conflicts with those of minority shareholders (Anderson and Reeb, 2003).\n4. Research design: data, variables and analysis: 4.1 Sample\n5. Findings and discussions: 5.1 Summary statistics\n6. Conclusion: In this study, we analyze the interaction effect of the family firms and board governance factors on firm performance in a sample of top publically traded Indian firms. We contribute to the growing literature on family firms by providing a multi-year analysis on the influence of board structure on firm performance in a family firm vis-a-vis nonfamily firm in the Indian context. In this study, we endeavor to expand our understanding of corporate governance and to shed light on the impact of the proportion of shareholding, family representative directors and having a professional CEO in large family firms in India. The result of the panel data analysis shows that the interaction variable (family firms x board score) has a statistically significant negative associated with firm performance measured by both Tobin's q and ROE. This is consistent with the results by Garcia-Ramos and Garcia-Olalla (2011) in the European context. Our result suggests that the incremental effect of the board index score, for family firms with respect to nonfamily firms, is having a negative impact on the firm performance.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Given the prevalence of family-run businesses in India, this paper aims to empirically investigate the impact of family firms on the relationship between firm performance and board characteristics. The effectiveness of board characteristics such as independent directors, chairman independence, role duality, non-executive directors, board busyness, board size, board meetings and board attendance are studied in the Indian context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The sample consists of top-listed firms in India for the period 2002 to 2012. Board index was constructed to capture the governance quality of the firm. The authors also study the relationship between board structure and firm performance by segregating the sample based on family management, family ownership and family representative directors. Random effects model was used for the regression analysis in the study.\nFindings: The authors find a negative effect of board structure on firm performance in family firms compared to non-family firms. Contrary to the most Western literature, family management was not found to significantly affect firm performance as compared to that of professionally managed firms. In the subset analysis of family firms, higher proportion of family ownership and family representative directors did not show any significant impact on the firm performance. Having a higher proportion of independent directors, larger board size or an independent chairman does not appear to improve this insignificant relationship between family firms and firm performance. Also, in family firms, no significant difference in performance is noticed before and during recession period.\nOriginality/value: The study uses a self-defined corporate governance index to measure the governance parameters, specifically the board characteristics. The results documented in this study adds to the debate on the generalizability of the findings in Western governance studies in emerging markets like India with unique institutional development background.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Sustainable organisational learning - a lite tool for implementing learning in enterprises
|
[
"Evaluation",
"Organizational learning",
"Competence development",
"Learning technology",
"Learning transfer"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Unstable and dynamic societal and business environments are making it more imperative than ever that organisations have the ability to operate its learning processes in order to optimise competence development, performance and innovation (Brinkerhoff, 2006). Research-based knowledge on the subject has taught us that for enterprises to optimise the implementation of learning in practice, they need to take care of elements related to the learner, the learning situation and the organisational setting where new knowledge and/or competences are to be integrated and used.\nUnderstandings of learning transfer: Today's learning research focuses on how to understand, design and make learning activities, formal as well as informal, an integral part of the existing organisational HRM and management system and practice. A classical theoretical understanding of learning in organisations and workplaces departs from an idea of learning as a matter of designing a learning and practice situation characterised by mutually shared or identical elements. This behavioural - and later developed within a cognitive frame - theory of transfer and sharing of knowledge typically settled in the common elements theory on shared traits between the learning and practice environments or symbolic representations. Later, Baldwin and Ford (1988) advanced a model that has had an immense influence on theoretical and empirical research contributions within the field of learning studies in adult learning studies and human resource. The distinction between three broad dimensions, the learner's characteristics, the design of the learning situation and the work environment settings, has guided research- and practice-oriented contributions within the organisational and workplace learning field for decades.\nA lite tool for creating sustainable organisational learning: The studied and described tool of this paper (named SuperInsight) is an evaluation and development-oriented organisational learning technology devised with the aim of strengthening a sustainable integration and anchoring of new knowledge and/or competences in practice. The evaluation tool is deliberately designed as a lite version of an evaluation tool in order to avoid, as we often experience, bulky and highly bureaucratized (red tape) procedures when it comes to working with measurement and integration of learning activities in a practice setting. The purpose of the lite tool is two-folded. First, the lite tool aims to reinforce enterprises ability to keep track of, on a running basis, the impact of learning activities in practice based on real-time data. Second, the lite tool intends to support an organisational learning process among the participating enterprises based on continuous input and feedback on the quality of the learning process combined with unique and specific insight on where to intervene - if needed - in order to optimise the learning transfer process and result.\nIllustrations from a case study: Analysis of data from a case study in a large Danish enterprise from the telecommunications industry conducting leadership and sales training shows that participants who are in the red category, usually are drowning in operations and do not have the possibility to focus on learning implementation on new knowledge or competences in a work context. A characteristic comment from a participant in the red category is: \"I will start to work with the new knowledge, when my department get more resources\" or \"We are firefighting all the time\". Here, the role of the closest leader or accountable HR staff is to support the participant in prioritising their work tasks to facilitate the actual use of new knowledge or competences - if the organisation truly wants to be serious about their approach to organisational learning. The analysis shows that constraints in employing new knowledge and competences are not related to the actual course/training activity, nor personal characteristics, but to the concrete work processes and tasks.\nHow to strengthen sustainable organisational learning - lessons learned and recommendations for practice: In this paper, we argue for a double effect from using and deploying the described lite evaluation tools that connect more clearly to the real-time learning processes than a classical \"baseline-midline-endline\" effect evaluation offer. We see in our case study a positive effect on the individual level using new knowledge and/or competence in a work context. In addition, we see a positive effect on an organisational level. Enterprises that employ process evaluation tools with pulse measures learn to develop, create, integrate and share new knowledge and competences, thus creating a foundation for organisational learning through new routines and practices. In the following section, we will elaborate on lessons learned from our case study. Further, we will present recommendations for practice.\nConclusion: We have asked how enterprises are to arrange its learning processes in order to optimise the integration and creation of sustainable organisational learning. Based on a learning evaluation tool that makes a processual real-time evaluation of learning implementation of new knowledge and/or competences, we explored from the case study data how this type of tool influences learning processes and results in organisations.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how enterprises are to arrange its learning processes in order to optimise the integration and creation of sustainable organisational learning. The paper describes a lite learning evaluation technology that makes processual real-time evaluation of implementation of new knowledge and competences in practice context.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The research is based on a case study that is designed and planned as a mixed method inquiry. The empirical case study is based on data from a large Danish enterprise from the telecommunication industry conducting a leadership and sales training programme. Case study analysis uses data drawn from the implemented pulse survey followed up with qualitative interviews with the course participants.\nFindings: The authors show results on two levels. On the individual level, processual real-time lite learning evaluation tools create transparency and adaptability. On the organisational level, tool shapes the organisational capacity to improve routines and practices for how to work with organisational learning and learning data in general. Instead of treating learning and development as something that happens \"automatically\", organisations now have a tool for informed decisions aimed at creating sustainable organisational learning processes and results.\nOriginality/value: The paper prompts insights that call for enterprises to enhance focus and dialogue on how to work in new and smart ways with learning at a multi-stakeholder level in organisations. The design and deployment of a real-time lite evaluation tool in organisations are key to bolster learning and competence development, so that organisations and societies can become more responsive in responding to the challenges posed by today's knowledge economy.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
E-campaigning versus the Public Official Election Act in South Korea: Causes, consequences and implications of cyber-exile
|
[
"South Korea",
"Politics",
"Legislation",
"Elections",
"Internet",
"Social networking sites",
"E‐campaign",
"Election law",
"Cyber‐exile",
"YouTube",
"Network analysis"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In South Korea, restrictions on political speech surrounding elections are more stringent than in many other countries. The Public Official Election Act (hereinafter POEA, enacted in March 1994 as a result of integration of four different election laws corresponding to different layers of public administration) contains a number of provisions prohibiting campaign activities that would be standard practice in most democratic countries. According to Article 59, for example, official campaigns are allowed only during a period from the day following the closing date of candidate registration to the eve of the election. This amounts to 23 days in the case of presidential elections, and 14 days for elections of legislators and local governors. Even within this brief designated period, campaigns are subject to tight protocols prescribed in Articles 58 (\"Definition of election campaign\"), 60 (\"Persons barred from election campaign\"), 68 (\"Campaign sashes\"), 92 (\"Prohibition of election campaign using motion pictures, etc.\"), 98 (\"Restriction on use of broadcast for election campaign\"), 99 (\"Prohibition of election campaign by internal broadcast, etc.\"), and 100 (\"Prohibition of use of recorders, etc.\"), to name a few.Having a more direct effect on individual voters are Article 90 and Article 93, which ban the display or distribution of election-related paraphernalia in the 180 days prior to an election. Section 1 of Article 93 states that \"no one shall distribute or display advertisements, letters, posters, photographs, documents, drawings, printed materials, audiotapes, videotapes or the like that convey endorsement of or opposition to a candidate or a party\" during the 180 days.The already overarching scope of Article 93(1) has been further stretched since the National Election Commission (NEC) and the Public Prosecutors' Office started to apply it to the online context in 1996. Tracking down the author of an online source and enforcing this provision is practically easy in Korean cyberspace, in that all Korean users are law-bound to verify their real identities (by providing their resident ID numbers) when joining major online services. Thereby, numerous bulletin board entries, blog posts, viewer comments on news sites, and user-generated content on Web 2.0 platforms have resulted in legal ramifications ranging from fines to imprisonment.The 2007 presidential election\nLiterature review: when YouTube meets politics: Given the mainstream popularity of Web 2.0 services in recent years, current literature offers extensive discussion regarding the political implications of the increasing practice of digitally mediated social networking and content sharing. Specific interest has been shown in the question of whether such practice increases voter turnout or other forms of political participation in the traditional sense of the term. Research findings have, however, been mixed so far; while some consider that the use of Facebook and other social networking sites (SNSs) for political purposes is a significant predictor of general political participation (e.g. Vitak et al., 2011), others suggest that reliance on SNSs is not necessarily related to the increase in political participation (e.g. Baumgartner and Morris, 2010; Zhang et al., 2010).This broad discussion itself is inconclusive and is in need of further exploration, but for the purposes of this paper, we decided to focus on the political activity on and through YouTube. This commercially successful video-sharing site often features among SNSs in journalistic and scholarly accounts (boyd and Ellison, 2007), and this fact appropriately captures some, but not all, of its characteristics. It indeed provides a range of social networking features, such as \"Comments\", \"Favorite\", \"Share\" and \"Subscriptions\". However, it also stands apart from other SNSs, due to it being a unique hybrid form of social media and mass media. Despite social networks that underlie or emerge from its use (Lange, 2007b; Rotman and Golbeck, 2011; Sifman, 2011), YouTube originally has a character of \"a media distribution platform, kind of like television\" (Burgess and Green, 2009, p. 3). Burgess and Green (2009, p. 3) argue that \"YouTube's ascendancy has occurred amid a fog of uncertainty and contradiction around what it is actually for.\" It is, so the two authors' argument goes, a new breed of businesses, or an example of what Weinberger (2007) calls \"meta businesses\", where old media heavyweights and amateur content creators form a curious cohabitation (Burgess and Green, 2009, pp. 4-5).Given that its format induces user participation, YouTube along with other Web 2.0 models revitalized the early internet idealism for better democracy (Bruns, 2008; Jenkins, 2006; Weinberger, 2007). As Marwick (2007) also pointed out based on a content analysis of news coverage, YouTube has been portrayed in a rather celebratory tone in the mass media for its democratic (or democratizing) potential. This kind of portrayal has been supported by a handful of anecdotal cases. During the 2006 midterm elections in the USA, a YouTube-publicized gaffe, later called the \"macaca moment\", cost Republican Senator George Allen (Virginia) his re-election bid, despite his huge initial lead in the opinion polls over the Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. This result was attributed to a video clip showing Allen making racially discriminatory remarks, targeting one of Webb's volunteers, during a campaign tour. The incident quickly became a widely publicized issue once the footage was posted on YouTube, which effectively led to Allen's defeat (Sidarth, 2006). Since then, the term \"macaca moment\" has been used to refer to \"high-profile candidate gaffes that are captured on YouTube, receive a cascade of citizen views and contribute to some substantial political impact\" (Karpf, 2010). A further example of such an incident took place in the 2007 Finnish national elections (Carlson and Strandberg, 2008, p. 171).The discussion of the political implications of YouTube intensified around the 2008 US presidential election because that was when Web 2.0 applications started to be incorporated into the mainstream campaign repertoire in the USA. Then-candidate Barack Obama received considerable media attention for his online presence, which outshone that of the rival candidate Hillary Clinton during the primaries and later that of his Republican opponent John McCain. Obama's campaign made heavy use of Facebook and YouTube to engage the attention of younger voters (Young, 2008), securing record campaign contributions mainly through online donations (Cooper, 2008; Carpenter, 2010).The 2008 election is widely considered as having been a pivotal moment in the US campaign history. Carpenter (2010) and Ricke (2010), for example, pointed out that YouTube, particularly its joint projects with PBS (\"Video Your Vote\") and with CNN (\"The CNN/YouTube Debates\"), afforded more room than ever for ordinary voters to participate in the campaign process and consequently served as \"an instrument of 'checks and balances'\" (Carpenter, 2010, 223). Some other scholars focused on how individual candidates made use of YouTube to deliver their messages in this particular election. Church (2010) examined leadership discourse by analyzing YouTube clips, featuring 16 candidates in the race, and suggested that given the emergence of what he termed \"the postmodern constituency\" (Church, 2010, p. 138), as well as the unfiltered nature of the medium (Church, 2010, p. 139), voters' focus shifted from candidates' political experience to their character. Duman and Locher (2008) examined Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton's YouTube campaigns and highlighted how the two presidential hopefuls attempted to create and uphold a conversational allusion through their videos.In regards to YouTube, another growing body of literature is concerned with the patterns of user interaction in this \"viral marketing wonderland\" (Burgess and Green, 2009, p. 3), and the methodological implications of exploring them. Three themes were identified for our research design. First, some studies have focused on what motivates users to share their videos on YouTube in the first place, ranging from perceived usefulness to interpersonal norms (e.g. Yang et al., 2010). Second, from a similar yet more specific perspective, some have established that YouTube is not only a source for information or entertainment for individual purposes, but also a new terrain for social interaction involving acts of \"co-viewing\" (Haridakis and Hanson, 2009), video responses (Adami, 2009), peer comments (Lange, 2007a; Jones and Schieffelin, 2009), and links to Facebook Walls (Robertson et al., 2010). In this sense, Chu (2009) went further to argue that YouTube plays a role as a \"cultural public sphere\".That said, others have taken a cautionary stance regarding YouTube's capacity to function as a public sphere. For example, Hess (2009) suggested there are certain obstacles to public deliberation on YouTube, such as the platform's dismissive and playful atmosphere. Moreover, Carpentier (2009) analyzed 16plus, a YouTube-like online platform provided by the north Belgian public broadcaster VRT, and suggested that the users may not be as appreciative of additional means of participation as expected. Lange (2007a) found that video-based communication on YouTube is no less hostile than faceless text-based communication. Blitvich (2010) added that impolite comments, although sometimes strategically employed, are likely to result in polarization.Chadwick (2009) argued that deliberative processes and \"thick\" citizenship cannot be the sole yardstick for the assessment of the functioning of e-democracy in the Web 2.0 era. However, if YouTube proves to be an unviable site for discussing serious political issues, it is important to ask why that is so. Answers to this question would advance our understanding of its political potential and how to harness it.\nResearch questions: As established in the previous section, YouTube is a uniquely interesting environment for political communication. What merits further attention is how this global platform intersects with local political and cultural dynamics. This is an underexplored line of inquiry, especially in the existing literature, which has been predominantly based on incidents from Western polities. With the aim of contributing to filling this lacuna, we address in the present paper the following three questions.1. What were the salient features of the discussion surrounding the YouTube clip, and how did that discussion develop during the campaign period?2. What were the salient features of the discussion surrounding the Daum clip, and how did that discussion develop during the campaign period?3. To what extent and how did the two discussions differ, and what lessons can be drawn from the differences (if any) in terms of harnessing the political energy of Web 2.0?\nResearch design: Data collection\nResults: Patterns of interactions among users\nDiscussion: Q1. What were the salient features of the discussion surrounding the YouTube clip?\nConclusion and future research: The dialectics between global media and local contexts have indeed been well documented (e.g. Turner, 2005), and the internet has complicated the matter even further. Contrary to the general description of the internet as a supranational network of computers, what we have is, in boyd's (2006) words, \"all sorts of local cultures connected through a global network, resulting in all sorts of ugly tensions.\"What is unique about the case studied in this paper is, however, that users turned to the global space in order to circumvent a local political conflict, not the other way around - hence the neologism \"cyber-exile\". During the 2007 presidential election, Korean voters used YouTube to share election-related information because the laws of their country prohibited them from doing so on domestic websites. YouTube provided them with a higher level of anonymity than Korean sites. This incident of cyber-exile illustrates the tension between internet-mediated grassroots political activity and the authorities' restrictive interpretation and application of existing laws - the POEA in this case - to curtail the activity (see also Lee, 2011).However, the discussion surrounding the YouTube video clip was brought \"back\" to the Korean cyberspace. Korean users are generally known for having a strong preference for local services (Lee, 2009, 312), but more importantly, YouTube could not provide a suitable environment for this particular discussion. Dialogs within YouTube's comment facility, among Koreans as well as non-Korean users, were often off the topic, and in some instances, unexpectedly turned into \"racist flaming\".Zuckerman (2010) analyzed various tools for circumventing the internet censorship worldwide and suggested that circumvention cannot be a long-term solution. His argument is focused largely on technical aspects, but it still leads to important questions of how, and to what extent, we then should go \"beyond\" circumvention.We, the authors of this paper, do not intend to advocate the \"walled garden\" model for online forums, as opposed to the wild of YouTube, nor do we wish to suggest there should be zero government intervention. Our findings indicate that users can circumvent local regulations via the internet and other digital communication technologies (and probably more will do so), but subsequent discussions are likely to become fragmented as a result. Despite the specifics of the case studied, the significance of the present paper lies in the fact that epitomizes the tension between \"old\" laws and \"new\" media. Moreover, our findings clearly demonstrate that an innovative circumvention attempt on the user's part is not enough to harness the potential of online discussion for measured, sustained discourse of the issue at hand.This study has an important limitation. We conducted the analysis on a real-time basis as the event unfolded, and therefore the need to compare YouTube and Daum arose only during the later stages of data collection. As a result, a point-to-point comparison was not feasible, which invites further research.Noteworthy is that on December 29, 2011, the Constitutional Court of South Korea declared the unconstitutionality of the NEC's extended application of Article 93(1) of the POEA to social media, particularly Twitter. With the next presidential election scheduled for December 2012, future research should examine the impact of this court decision on the long-awaited relaxation of restrictions on election-related online communication in the country.\nAcknowledgements: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Oxford Internet Institute's 2010 conference, and some of the findings (answering different research questions) were published in a Korean-language journal. The authors are grateful to Ae-Jie Bae for her assistance in data collection.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - South Korea imposes more stringent restrictions on political speeches during elections than many other democratic countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine the long-standing conflict between citizens and institutions in the Korean electoral environment and the effects of the internet on this conflict.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper provides a case study of the 2007 presidential election in Korea. During the campaign period, two video clips (one on YouTube and the other on Daum, a major domestic web portal) emerged and implicated the then-leading candidate in a financial scandal. The paper investigates how these video clips were shared and discussed among Korean voters, even though the country's election laws restricted the sharing of such information in cyberspace. The paper employs a combination of network analysis techniques, including hyperlink analysis, interaction network analysis, and semantic network analysis.\nFindings: - YouTube served as a medium for Korean voters to circumvent local electoral regulations, thus implying the neologism \"cyber-exile\". However, unlike Daum, YouTube failed to facilitate discussions on the posted video clip. The discussion through its comment feature was often derailed by irrelevant comments from seemingly uninterested parties. The address of the video clip was shared through personal blogs and online bulletin boards in Korean cyberspace, but these efforts led only to a fragmented sphere.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Any comparison between YouTube and Daum should be made with caution because of inherent differences between the two platforms.\nPractical implications: - The results have important practical implications for those interested in designing e-deliberation environments. For example, they should have a clearer understanding of the composition of users and the undesirable consequences of a fragmented public sphere.\nOriginality/value: - This paper highlights how pre-internet institutions shape its members' political activity on the internet. In addition, the results clearly demonstrate that an innovative effort to circumvent barriers on the part of internet users is not enough to harness the potential of online discussions for a measured and sustained discourse on the issue at hand.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Reframing integration: Information marginalization and information resistance among migrant workers
|
[
"Intermediaries",
"Migrants",
"Integration",
"Information behaviour"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: In this study, I present the findings from a qualitative investigation that explored the other side of the issue of integration of migrants; that is, the views and perceptions of information intermediaries working with migrants in Israel about the integration process. The notion of integration has been the focus of academic debate in recent years and has been defined in different ways (Ager and Strang, 2008; Cheung and Phillimore, 2014; Farach et al., 2015; Gilmartin and Migge, 2015; Harder et al., 2018; Phillimore, 2012). In its broadest sense, integration means the process or transition by which people who are relatively new to a country become part of society (Rudiger and Spencer, 2003). Integration is achieved when \"people, whatever their background, live, work, learn and socialise together, based on shared rights, responsibilities and opportunities\" (Ndofor-Tah et al., 2019) while keeping a measure of their original cultural identity (Threadgold and Court, 2005). Integration is being characterized today as a multidimensional and multidirectional (Harder et al., 2018) process that encompasses \"access to resources and opportunities as well as social mixing\" involving adjustments by everyone in society (Ndofor-Tah et al., 2019).\nTheoretical direction and literature review: Social integration of migrants\nMethodology: Population of the study\nFindings: The content analysis of the interviews revealed three major themes: information marginalization includes data that describe the different factors that keep migrants at the social margins and the ways that this marginalization is reflected in their information seeking of everyday life information; information resistance includes data that describe the ways by which migrants hold off or rebuff accessing and receiving information; overcoming resistance includes data that reveal the ways by which migrants and social mediators try to overcome information resistance and ultimately information marginalization (see Table II).\nInformation marginalization: This theme has two main categories: elements of information marginalization that hinder migrants' social integration, and Ager and Strang's (2008) markers and means: three indicators of integration viewed through the perspective of information marginalization.\nElements of information marginalization: The categories comprised in this theme related to Ager and Strang's (2008) facilitators: language and cultural knowledge and safety and security. Findings from the content analysis showed that participants did not view these elements as facilitators of integration, but rather as factors in the migrants' lives that hinder their integration into Israeli society. This theme is comprised of four subcategories: lack of cultural knowledge, lack of language proficiency, living in an unsafe and insecure environment, and discrimination.\nInformation resistance: The second theme in this study is information resistance. Content analysis of the interviews revealed that migrants resist information as a defensive behavior in response to the unstable and unsafe situation they face in their host country and to their lack of cultural knowledge. This theme includes two subcategories: secrecy and disinformation.\nOvercoming information resistance and marginalization: This theme consists of two categories that describe the efforts of social mediators to find new, relevant ways to communicate with migrants as well as the role that social connections play in overcoming information resistance and marginalization.\nDiscussion: This study presented a new and more nuanced understanding of the process of integration of migrants by re-examining Ager and Strang's (2008) framework from an informational perspective told by the intermediaries who work with these populations. Findings from the content analysis revealed that the process of integration is shaped by the inability of both migrants and the institutions in the host society to close the cultural and social gaps that ultimately result in information marginalization.\nConclusion: Phillimore (2012) wrote, \"Integration implies the development of a sense of belonging in the host community, with some renegotiation of identity by both newcomers and hosts\" (p. 3). Findings from the study showed that it is in this oftentimes failed renegotiation that information marginalization emerges. By allowing intermediaries to articulate their views and opinions, I was able to understand how personal, cultural and social factors impacted the lives of migrants, and distanced them from the sources of information and support they need to feel at home in their new country. Findings showed that for integration to be successful, it should be the result of an effort by both migrants and local institutions/structures to reach a middle ground of understanding and compromise. This study extending Gibson and Martin's (2019) notion of information marginalization to encompass both sides of the equation of marginalization and situating it in the social, economic and contextual conditions that create information poverty.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore a different perspective about the role that information plays in the integration process of migrant workers by exploring the views and opinions of individuals and organizations that work with these communities on a daily basis. The study proposes a new perspective of Ager and Strang's framework of integration by looking at its different elements through the perspective provided by Gibson and Martin's (2019) concept of information marginalization and Dervin's sense-making notion of resistance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Ten intermediaries working with migrants were interviewed using semi-structure interviews. They were analyzed using an integrative approach of deductive and inductive content analysis and rendered categories drawn from the theoretical frameworks and categories that emerged from the data.\nFindings: The content analysis of the data revealed that information marginalization is characterized by the lack of cultural knowledge and lack of language proficiency that impact the migrants abilities to fulfill their everyday needs, experience a safe and stable environment. Information marginalization results in migrants experiencing self-protective behaviors such as secrecy and an inability to trust information sources that are not contextualized by insiders. Findings show that information resistance can be overcome by making information available in relevant formats and distributed through trusted sources.\nSocial implications: The study revises the notion of information marginalization by trying to understand the social and cultural gap that from both sides of the issues of integration.\nOriginality/value: The study presents a different perspective of the role of information in the integration process of migrants by examining the views and opinions of intermediaries working with these populations. Also, the study reframes existing notions of information marginalization and resistance by addressing both sides of the cultural and social gap embodies marginalization.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Narratives of (in)active ageing in poor deprived areas of Liverpool, UK
|
[
"United Kingdom",
"Liverpool",
"Elderly people",
"Social policy",
"Poverty",
"Deprivation",
"Active ageing",
"Narratives"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: I see they've been killing cats again [...] \"Better bring mine in, then.\nBackground to the case study: Demographic change has stimulated reviews of concepts of ageing, with \"active\" ageing emerging as an important focus (WHO, 2002; Walker, 2010; DESA, 2011). Activity in older age may be limited by ageism, poverty in its many guises including ill-health (Howse et al., 2011) and policy and resource constraints which inadequately support older people's welfare (Dean, 2012; Lymbery, 2012). Disparities between poverty and wealth prompt examination of social justice and fairness (Harvey, 1973; Rawls, 2001; Barry, 2005; Dorling, 2011). A minority of older people are wealthy; others rely solely on the state retirement pension; others have occupational pensions and some savings, but these may be eroding relative to living costs (HC, 2009, 2012). Internationally and nationally, the elderly are likely to be among societies' poorest (Price, 2006; Walker, 2009; McKee, 2010; DWP, 2012; DESA, 2011).Phillipson (1998) explores changing ideology and social policy relating to ageing post-1945 with ageing's demands becoming individualised in a postmodern setting and generational interdependence being questioned. The complexities of work-retirement transitions, age discrimination and the changing roles of older people in work and society are meriting critical attention (Phillipson, 2004c, a; Macnicol, 2005). Coleman et al. (1993) illustrate negative calculations of age-related costs and changing elder support social networks, including family. Factors converge: global recession; neo-liberal policies of out-sourcing welfare to the private sector and voluntarism; and post-modern discourses of choice and consumerism (Walker, 2005; Coote, 2009). In different cultural settings, older people may find such socio-political change difficult (Moffatt et al., 2011; Miles, 2009).Concepts of ageing\nThe study areas and people: Most participants were primarily dependent on the state retirement pension. Additionally, ageing in poor neighbourhoods confers multiple disadvantages (Scharf et al., 2003) and the study areas are among the most deprived in England (CLG, 2010b; LCC, 2004-2011). During the study period, 2002-2007, Anfield, Clubmoor, Everton, Speke-Garston[3] and Tuebrook-Stoneycroft were among the poorest wards in Liverpool on measures including household income and income deprivation affecting older people, both pointers to other deprivations. Despite improvement since 2003, significant areas in wards remain within the poorest 1-5 per cent in England (LCC, 2011): most (89 per cent) of Everton is within the poorest 1 per cent.High levels of poverty and deprivation persist in Liverpool, the once \"proud second city of empire\" (Belchem, 2006, p. 9). Table I illustrates the ranking of major cities in England on the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) (LCC, 2011). Between 2007 and 2010, Liverpool remained the most deprived major city in England, in depth (concentration) and geographical extent of deprivation.Liverpool's overall weak IMD ranking suggests that low ranking areas within the city are considerably deprived (Table II). Socio-economic polarity within Liverpool is also evident. Among the study wards and Church, a comparator ward, Everton ranks first (worst) in Liverpool on most measures. Within other study wards, such as Tuebrook-Stoneycroft, there are small areas of relative affluence but deprivation and ill-health are more evident; both have been associated with poverty (Howse et al., 2011). Years of male life expectancy range from Anfield (72.9) to more affluent Church (83.8), with Liverpool at 78.8 years and England, 82.0 years. Worklessness, rates of benefit claim, low incomes and weak educational performance suggest current and potential future deprivations.\nThe research methodology: Between 2002 and 2007, ACL commissioned studies in five deprived wards to inform policy-making. Liverpool PCT, part of the NHS, contributed informants. The work focussed on older people's needs, aspirations and barriers to active ageing.Participants and informants\nActive ageing: participation in social and health activities: There are other factors, but lots of exclusion (from social and health activities) results from low incomes [...] though people may be too proud to admit it [...] income maximisation among older people is not only empowering, it can be a life saver. It means less anxiety and depression and more [...] fresh food, keeping warm, getting out [...] (Key informant).This observation was illustrated by comments such as: \"keep-fit sessions cost a quid!\" (widow aged 60); and \"you've to spend PS25 now on a week's shop to get free delivery!\" (elderly couple). The problem here was not cash flow, but long-standing forced economy. The following sections explore participants' understanding of \"active ageing\", patterns in their health and social activities and the implications of the findings for social policy.Active ageing: meanings\nThe home and active ageing: Satisfaction with \"home\" was important to well-being and active ageing. It could be the springboard to outside engagement, a place from which to contact the outside world through reading, telephones, computers in some cases, and somewhere to welcome family and friends. The home could be the repository of memory, an essential feature of personal security and identity, indeed as one participant commented, \"my home is me\".Home could signify loneliness, however, especially if mobility and health were difficult. It could be insecure within, if coping were problematic, and outside in troubled neighbourhoods. Across the wards, between 12 and 18 per cent of participants said they felt insecure in their homes, mainly through fear of burglary. Visits from family and friends were \"cheaper than going out\" but lack of maintenance, cleaning and adequate heating could constrain the reception of visitors. Home help services enabled many to remain in their homes, but there was fear of elder abuse and reluctance to allow help from strangers.Reaction to sheltered accommodation varied, depending mainly upon the previous home's characteristics, health, and whether a partner was alive. Loss of independence could sadden but for others, security and less \"worry\" compensated. The worries included burglary, \"I can open my window now for fresh air\"; organising budgets and home maintenance. Some older residents felt less lonely and happier. Others were ambivalent, liking the greater security, but disliking being observed, within others' structures of time, place and communal living. Some participants were currently homeless, primarily because of poverty and poor health. Homelessness was commonly preceded by intense difficulty, in relationships, mental and physical health and finance, although housing associations appeared generally more supportive than private landlords.\nConclusions: \"(In)active ageing\" relates first to the contrast between narratives of older person as burden in relation to our observations of the pivotal role of many older people in family survival, working part-time, providing family care, or both. Some participants joked about their \"inactivity\", then gave accounts of selective disengagement, from post-employment \"busy-ness\" and \"day-time television\", to re-engagement in following interests: pigeons, local history and gardening were three examples. The title also recognises the barriers to active ageing, significantly built from lifetime inequity, in families and neighbourhoods.Lie et al. (2009) comment that older people's volunteering cannot substitute for funded, sustained and coherent care systems. In the UK, the Government's Big Society project (2010) has been criticised on a number of grounds: as rhetoric and cover for spending cuts (Corbett and Walker, 2012); contributory to the dismantling of the welfare state (Bone, 2011); and illustrative of short-term-ism (Ware, 2012). The \"Big Society\" is a wholly inadequate response to the needs of the deprived neighbourhoods we have studied. Here, the two major barriers to active ageing are long-term ill-health and disability underpinned by poverty. As Table I has indicated, Liverpool's deprivation is severe and persistent, so measures to effect improvement need to be well-supported and long-term.\nOur minimum agenda for concrete action in the UK would include: * The setting of a national minimum income for active and healthy living (O'Sullivan and Ashton, 2011).* Ensuring that incomes at least met this standard.* Emplementing the Marmot proposals (2010) for a \"fair society\" with reductions in health inequity from the beginning of life to the end.* Restoring the retirement pension - Retail Price Index link.* Establishing a National Care Service to address one of the major needs of older people and their carers.* Establishing a clear and effective focus within government for oversight and development of policy affecting older people.* Ensure that urban and rural areas are \"friendly\" to older people (ILC, 2011), which also means that they would be friendly to all.* Providing core funding for a range of opportunities in neighbourhoods for active participation by older people (Deeming, 2009).Lymbery (2012) points out that, especially in recession, an adequate governmental response to older people's needs is unlikely. We share that view. The conditions in the study areas are evidence of lack of social justice and the position is likely to deteriorate with further cuts in spending. Many informants were angered at the likely prospect of deterioration of already inadequate provisions in the wards, which is a fair response. In disseminating knowledge of Liverpool's situation, we hope to contribute to a growing body of knowledge and challenge about ageing in places characterised by these levels of poverty and deprivation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Ageing populations are national and global phenomena. These older residents are likely to be among the most disadvantaged nationally and in comparison with younger neighbours. The benefits of active ageing are attracting attention from policy makers globally, as it is increasingly recognised that age-friendly cities encourage active ageing. Resources to sustain active ageing are becoming scarce. Older people's health, social activity, needs, aspirations and the barriers to realising them are at the centre of this investigation. The purpose of this paper is to explore inclusion and exclusion within some of England's most deprived areas.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Between 2002-2007, over 600 older Liverpool people, key informants and policy makers in five of Liverpool's poorest electoral wards were consulted via semi-structured questionnaires, key informant interviews and focus groups about their needs and aspirations.\nFindings: - Barriers to active ageing arose primarily from participants' poverty, ill-health and deprivation, poor neighbourhoods, ageism, and insecure, gendered, racialised and sectarian space.\nOriginality/value: - This in-depth investigation into active ageing consulted over 600 older people in some of Liverpool's poorest neighbourhoods. In disseminating knowledge of Liverpool's situation, the paper adds significantly to knowledge around the severe challenges to active ageing in localities characterised by multiple deprivation.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Children's perceptions of obesity as explained by the common sense model of illness representation
|
[
"Qualitative research",
"Children (age groups)",
"Obesity",
"Individual perception"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Childhood obesity is a growing global health concern, with physical, emotional and social consequences frequently persisting into adulthood (Daniels et al., 2005; Must and Strauss, 1999; Doak et al., 2006; Reilly et al., 2003). Wang and Lobstein (2006) report that the obesity epidemic seems particularly prevalent among school age children. Accordingly, the World Health Organisation reports that an estimated 22 million children under five years old are currently obese, and that even developing countries are facing a similar problem. For example, in Thailand, the obesity prevalence rate for children aged five to 12 years old rose from 12.2 percent to 15-16 percent over the course of only two years (WHO, 2008). The rate of childhood obesity also seems to be on the increase, even in developed countries. For example, a WHO survey conducted in the USA revealed that obesity in children aged six to 11 years has more than doubled since the 1960's (WHO, 2008). In Australia, recent figures from the 2004 New South Wales Schools Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey (SPANS, Booth et al., 2006), indicate that 26 percent of boys and 24 percent of girls in the state of New South Wales aged between 5 and 16 years were overweight or obese. This is compared to the year 1985, when 11 percent of all young people aged 7 to 16 were overweight or obese (Booth et al., 2006).Childhood obesity has been shown to be associated with an increase in medical complications such as orthopaedic complications (Dietz, 1998), pulmonary consequences such as sleep apnea, asthma and exercise intolerance (Dietz, 1998; Ebbeling et al., 2002), and cardiovascular consequences, such as hypertension, dyslipedemia, chronic inflammation and blood clotting tendencies (Ebbeling et al., 2002). Children who are obese also face increased risks of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (Daniels et al., 2005) and Type 2 diabetes (Daniels et al., 2005; Ebbeling et al., 2002).In addition to these physical consequences of obesity, children who are obese have also been shown to experience more psychosocial disturbances such as decreased social interaction, depression, impulse control problems and decreased perceived cognitive and athletic ability (Ells et al., 2006). Furthermore, Franklin et al. (2008) report a finding that obese boys and girls appeared to have lowered self concepts, with girls in particular experiencing significantly lower perceived social acceptance than their normal weight counterparts (Franklin et al., 2008). Accordingly, normal weight children's attitudes towards obese children or obese silhouettes have been found to be negative (Bell and Morgan, 2000) and unfavourable (Staffieri, 1967).Research has shown that accurate and developmentally sensitive understandings of chronic illness in children is associated with enhanced satisfaction, an improved emotional state, a better quality of life and, most importantly, better compliance with treatment (Veldtman et al., 2000). For children this understanding is contingent on a number of factors such as developmental levels and illness experience. It is a widely replicated and supported view that children's perceptions of illness vary in both content and depth, particularly as a child's understanding of their illness cognitions appear to be linked to their developmental level (Bibace and Walsh, 1980). Thus, attributions that children make about their own illness may be completely different from that of an adult or parent.For example, in the obesity/overweight literature, it has been found that adults understand a wide number of possible causes for obesity. These include junk food advertising during children's television viewing, genetic and endocrine factors, environmental factors, imbalance between energy taken into the body and energy expended, as well as increased calorie intake through diet and sedentary lifestyles (Saelens and Daniels, 2003). In an Australian study of lay persons' understanding of childhood obesity, Hardus et al. (2003) found that the public had similar sophisticated perceptions of the causes and preventions of obesity. Over half of the adults surveyed endorsed a view that media promotion of unhealthy foods and over consumption of fast food were the main contributors to childhood obesity.Despite this, it appears that the only aspects of children's views of obesity that have been investigated are perceived causes In a rare study examining childhood conceptions of the cause of obesity, Johnson et al. (1994) found that elementary school-aged children (in grades 1, 3 and 5) lacked much factual knowledge and held many misconceptions. For example, although children could identify \"junk\" foods as a cause, their definition of junk food included items like bread, pasta, potatoes, bananas and chicken. Many were confused about how fat, meat, salt and cholesterol led to obesity. In fact some thought that cholesterol was a type of food. Only 7 percent identified lack of exercise as a cause of obesity though many had no idea how exercise kept one from getting fat, or how a sedentary lifestyle could make a person fat. Although 4 percent mentioned calories as a cause of obesity, children did not know what calories were. Other causes of obesity identified were drinking too much milk or water and mother to unborn child transmission (Johnson et al., 1994). Thus, factual knowledge seemed to be limited, with children not fully comprehending the content of information, or how certain factors work to contribute to obesity.With regards to examining childhood conceptions of disease, an accepted, holistic and current framework is the common-sense model of illness representation (CSM; Leventhal et al., 1980). The CSM is primarily designed as an explanatory framework for the way people perceive and react to disease threat (Leventhal et al., 2003; Conner and Norman, 2005). It is hypothesised that these \"lay views\" of illness are formed along five dimensions, or interpretive schemas (Hagger and Orbell, 2003). The five dimensions of the CSM of illness representations are:1. Identity. Individual statements, beliefs, and labels for the illness. Leventhal et al. (2003) posit that this domain is critical as it joins feelings of vulnerability to general symptoms.2. Cause. Perceived causative agents of the disease, which may include genetics, lifestyles or infections.3. Timeline. The perceived duration of the illness.4. Consequences. The perceived impact that the illness has on overall lifestyle.5. Control/cure: Refers to perceived efficacy of treatment (Hagger and Orbell, 2003) as well as perceptions of how preventable, controllable or curable a condition is (Leventhal et al. 2003).Empirically, the CSM has been validated as being applicable to many illnesses, as it was developed primarily to apply to the health field (Leventhal et al., 2003). When applied to children, the CSM forms a good alternative to the Piagetian framework which is frequently used in the study of children's perceptions of illness (Eiser, 1989). First, the CSM addresses more domains of illness than simply causative factors, a criticism made of applications of the Piagetian model (Eiser, 1989). Secondly, the CSM allows for these five schema structures to be reshaped and develop in breadth as new information is gained from experience and other sources (Leventhal et al., 2003), a notion especially pertinent to children as they age and become more sophisticated in their cognitions.Empirically, previous studies have found that the CSM can be used to effectively describe children's perceptions of illnesses. For example, Goldman et al. (1991) reported that responses given by children aged four to six about the common cold tapped into the five domains articulated by the CSM. In addition, Paterson et al. (1999) also discovered that seven to 14 year olds' discussions on the common cold and asthma could also be conceptualised in terms of the illness representations model.\n2. Aims: The aim of the current study is to examine children's understandings of obesity. The current study aims to explore childhood perceptions of the identity, cause, timeline, consequences and cures/control of obesity.\n3. Method: The current study recruited a total number of 33 children. Participants were as follows: 12 children aged seven to eight (36.4 percent), 13 were aged nine to ten (39.4 percent) and eight were 11-12 (24.2 percent). Age groups correspond to primary school grades 4, 5 and 6 respectively and are the group for which childhood obesity has shown the greatest increases over time (Behn and Ur, 2006; Wang and Lobstein, 2006). There were 20 boys in the sample. The final sample represented nine overweight/obese children (27.3 percent) and 24 normal weight children (62.7 percent). Children were recruited through the Catholic Schools system as well as a sample who were seeking appetite awareness training in Sydney, Australia. Children in this latter option were included in the study on the basis if their body mass indices fell within the childhood \"overweight\" or \"obese\" range defined by Cole et al. (2000). Children were interviewed using a semi-structured interview protocol which was designed to reflect the five dimensions of the CSM. Ethics approval for this study was granted by the University Human Ethics committee as well as the CEO of an Archdiocese of Catholic Schools in Sydney, Australia.The final sample is shown in graphical form in Figure 1.3.1 Materials\n4. Results: 4.1 Identity\n5. Discussion: In the current study, children of primary school age were interviewed on their views of obesity as guided by the five dimensions of Leventhal et al.'s (1980) common sense model of illness representations. In general, it was found that children were quite knowledgeable in all areas.The most obvious identity feature of obesity depicted by the children was a large stomach. If the negative connotations of stereotyping are ignored, this is encouraging as children may be referring to a large waist circumference, which is associated with the most health complications in obesity (Wardle et al., 2008). However, the other identity features of obesity listed by the children were also primarily negative in nature. Such findings are consistent with previous research that have found negative societal attitudes of overweight people found in adults (Bell and Morgan, 2000; Pingitore et al., 1994; King et al., 2006; Hebl and Xu, 2001), and children (Hill and Silver, 1995; Staffieri, 1967).Children correctly identified consumption of junk food, overeating and a non-engagement in activity and exercise as prominent causes of obesity, reminiscent of findings by Eiser et al. (1983) whereby children were able to identify being \"healthy\" as exercising, having a balanced diet and being energetic in general.Almost half of all children interviewed did not mention sedentary behaviour as a cause of obesity. A similar finding was reported by Johnson et al. (1994). This finding has also been reflected in a recent study conducted by the NSW Schools Physical and Nutrition Survey (SPANS) (2004) (see Booth et al., 2006). The study reported that despite there being a recent increase in school-aged children fulfilling recommended exercise requirements over the year 2004-2005, there was also a corresponding increase in children undertaking sedentary activities such as television, videos/DVDs, and electronic and computer games (Booth et al., 2006). This generally poor understanding of sedentary behaviours is of particular interest as sedentary living is one of the major tenets in recent media campaigns by the NSW government to decrease the childhood obesity rate. Perhaps such interventions need to directly address how sedentary behaviours lead to obesity, and encourage children to identify their own patterns of sedentary behaviours.The majority of children in the current sample stated that the timeline or duration of obesity was reliant on people undertaking positive health behaviours. This could also be interpreted as reflective of an internal locus of control whereby the person is seen as being responsible for their own weight loss. As such, it may be that children believe that by either not engaging in these positive behaviours, or, alternatively having failed in weight loss despite these behaviours, that people may have \"done the wrong thing\". On the basis of their understanding of the causes of obesity, it appears that children seem to believe that the duration is short if people take appropriate action. This internal attribution to weight loss may mean that they fail to capture the multifactorial complexity of the issue.It was noted that normal weight children were more adept than their overweight counterparts at detecting the most severe consequences of obesity. First, it may be possible that the parents of overweight children protect them from such negative consequences, as it is understandable that parents would aim to minimise distress in their children. Second, it may also be that overweight children and their parents underestimate the true risks of obesity, as found by Jeffery et al. (2005).Lastly, the cures/control section of the interview yielded the finding that most children endorsed the idea that exercise was a potent cure for obesity. This finding may be seen as reflecting a general sense of an internal locus of control - in that it is seen as a person's own responsibility to carry out this behaviour to lose weight, and that exercise, being a vigorous, visible activity, is the most obvious behaviour to contribute to this. However, this is also limiting in that exercise is not the only component contributing to healthy lifestyles, and needs to be undertaken in conjunction with other positive health behaviours. Hence, the multiple components of obesity and overweight also seem to be underappreciated by children in the current study. Further interventions should make clear the multifactorial complexity of obesity to children, and further highlight the nature of sedentary behaviours in maintaining this condition.The current study was limited in that most of the sample came from the Catholic education system in Sydney's eastern suburbs, which are more affluent in terms of socioeconomic status and therefore impacts on the study's external validity. Nonetheless, recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (www.abs.gov.au) indicate that obesity and overweight actually tends to be more prevalent in low income households and living areas of greatest disadvantage. Future research in this area should therefore aim to recruit participants from areas of lower socio-economic status. In addition, a broader sample could also be obtained from public education settings. On a related note, the treatment-seeking sample in the current study also presents with limitations in the sense that results may be biased and not representative of the wider population. With this respect, wider sampling in a number of areas would be a further avenue to consider in future studies.In conclusion, this study has qualitatively examined children's views on facets of obesity as pertinent to the common sense model of illness representations. Results found that children do indeed have well developed perceptions of the identity, cause, timeline, consequences and control/cure of obesity but which nevertheless have some qualitatively different deviations from \"expert\" or \"adult\" understandings of these facets. Future obesity prevention interventions should take these childhood perceptions into account when considering improved adherence to regimes.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The aim of this paper is to qualitatively examine the ways in which primary school children, aged between 7 and 12, perceive various facets of obesity as defined by the common sense model of illness representation (CCM).\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study was qualitative in nature. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 33 children on all dimensions of the CSM. Twenty four children were normal weight and nine were overweight. A drawing task formed the methodology for the \"identity\" section of the interview.\nFindings: - Although children identified food intake as a main cause of obesity, almost half did not name sedentary behaviours as a cause of obesity. Duration (timeline) of obesity was regarded by most children as reliant on a person's undertaking of positive health behaviours. Normal weight children were found to list more severe consequences of obesity than the overweight group. It was found that experience contributed to the detailed knowledge of overweight children's perceptions of cures of obesity. Overweight children also spoke of personal incidents of barriers to cures.\nPractical imlications: - The findings suggest that the CSMs can be used to classify children's perceptions of obesity. Future childhood obesity interventions can utilise these findings to create campaigns and strategies that are more consistent with children's understandings of this condition.\nOriginality/value: - To the authors' knowledge, no previous study has examined children's perceptions of obesity beyond perceived causes.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The hegemonic gender order in politics
|
[
"Gender",
"Discourse analysis",
"Politics",
"Critical feminist perspective"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Despite the ongoing increase of women in the top positions of hierarchy, they continue to be underrepresented in politics occupying 19.5 percent of seats worldwide, 22.8 percent in Europe, 22.6 percent in the Americas and 42.0 percent in Nordic countries (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2017). In 2017, Italy ranks 44th out of 193 in the world classification compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (2017), with a participation rate of Italian women to res public between 28 and 31 percent. Although the number of women elected in central institutions is increased compared to the past, in Italy women are still low represented in politics (Massa, 2013), and the number of women politicians decreases in the hierarchy of power (Fornengo and Guadagnini, 1999; Bonomi et al., 2013). Every president of the Italian Republic has been a man and women who have served in the institutional role of president of the Chamber of the Italian Republic from 1948 to date are 3 out of 14 (Italian Parliament, 2017). This position of women in politics, characterized by both a numerical increase compared to the past and a numerical decrease at the top of the power hierarchy, is well represented by the current government. The XVII Legislature of government, which started in 2013 and close to conclusion, is the legislature with the largest number of women in Parliament, in fact the women account for 32 percent of deputies and 30 percent of senators, but only 16 percent of women cover the roles of leader, president of the commission and the office of the presidency. Analyzing the composition of the Italian Parliament, it is clear that the disparity between men and women in politics is recognizable when roles are more prestigious. This condition is also confirmed at the regional level: women are present in the joint sessions in 29 percent of the councils and hold key positions (departments and offices with greater decision-making power) in 18 percent of the councils, while only 10 percent is president of the region and only 2 percent are leaders of the municipalities in the capital city (Openpolis, 2015).\nGender, power and discourse in politics: The studies on women and politics continue to focus on women' numbers in politics and on sex differences, and with difficulty, they are able to embrace the concept of gender (Kenny, 2007) as a category that structures and makes sense of particular social practices. However, feminist studies have developed complex theories of gender, including both patriarchal and discursive conceptions of power. The power inequality between gender relies on the concept of patriarchy, a system of social structures and practices of domination founded in the subordination of women by men (Walby, 1990). Gender relations are power relations involving formal public structures as politics and private structures as the family. The distribution of power between gender, based on hegemonic patriarchal culture, which associates naturally the female to the house and the male to the labor and political activities, has determined an asymmetry in which the historical forced absence of women from prestigious positions, such as politics, would involve a vicious circle whereby the greater female participation in domestic work has become cause and consequence of their exclusion (Walby, 1990). Through the internalization of gendered norms produced routinely in discourses of everyday life, this gap of power between men and women has become invisible, misrecognized and recognized as legitimate and natural (Bourdieu, 1991), contributing to the consolidation of \"hegemonic masculinity\" that preserves, legitimizes and naturalizes men power and, consequently, women subordination (Connell, 1987, 2016; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). Discourse, therefore, plays a significant role in the reproduction of dominance, which is considered as an exercise of social power by elites, institutions or groups that have the effect of increasing social, political, class and gender inequality (van Dijk, 1993, 2011). Social power is enacted, reproduced or legitimized by the discourse of dominant groups or institutions (van Dijk, 1996).\nMethodology: This study is based on 30 biographical interviews conducted with local Italian politicians, 15 of whom were men, 15 women. We chose to involve local politicians because figures on the number of women in local Italian institutions are lower than those at the national level (ISTAT, 2017).\nWho is to blame for the gender gap in politics?: Data analysis show how the dominant gender order is performed and reinforced through the discursive practices of the politicians interviewed. The participants tell their experience as politicians and produce discourses that clarify the norms that regulate the political field. These discourses are part of a wider social context in which choices, roles and careers are gendered.\nConclusions: This paper explores the topic of the gender gap in politics through a discourse analysis of a group of Italian politicians and shows the patterns whereby a dominant gender order is constructed and reproduced. Discourse analysis discloses some interpretive repertoires used by men and women to confirm and reinforce the hegemonic gender order.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Despite the ongoing increase of women in the top positions, they are still underrepresented in politics. The studies that primarily focus on women's underrepresentation in politics neglect the role of gender as a category that structures and makes sense of social practices. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms that regulate the contemporary gender order in politics through discourse analysis and the contribution of the critical feminist perspective.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The study is based on 30 biographical interviews with Italian politicians and focuses on the account of their political experiences and on the meanings attributed to these.\nFindings: The results of this paper underline the tendency to either absolve or blame women for gender inequality in politics through different interpretative repertoires: \"Women's disinterest toward politics,\" \"Politics as masculine context\" and \"Politics-family unbalance.\" The analysis allowed to unravel the way in which the discursive practices create and reproduce the hegemonic gender order in politics.\nResearch limitations/implications: The research is limited to 30 qualitative interviews, and so results cannot be generalized.\nPractical implications: The findings of this paper highlight the importance of exploring issues relating to the gender gap in politics and stress the need to implement actions to promote gender equality in politics.\nOriginality/value: The paper contributes to an understanding of women's underrepresentation in politics and offers causes for reflection on a phenomenon that has profound implications for our society.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The role of frequent engagement in alliances in firm likelihood to patent: First wave alliances in UK bio-pharmaceuticals
|
[
"Innovation",
"Pharmaceutical industry",
"Strategic alliances",
"Patents",
"Biotechnology",
"C33",
"M10",
"O32",
"D74"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: As the popularity of strategic alliances is increasing and such alliances are becoming an integral component in business development, attention in the research community has moved towards an exploration of their role in firm performance and innovation. Formal and informal interactions with external actors have long being argued to play a fundamental role in firm innovation (Von Hippel, 1988; Frankort et al., 2012; Rice et al., 2012; Colombo et al., 2011; Demirkan, 2018). However, it is accepted that alliances carry coordination costs and risks of misappropriation, and these frequently diminish chances of success or preclude full acquisition of anticipated benefits (e.g. De Man and Duysters, 2005; Gkypali et al., 2017; Faems et al., 2010). A substantial body of literature finds a positive relationship between the extent of alliances and firm innovation performance, whilst other work identifies diminishing and even negative returns (Hoang and Rothaermel, 2005; Sampson, 2005; Laursen and Salter, 2006; Rothaermel and Deeds, 2006). As a result, a growing strand in the literature has examined the factors enabling firms to generate and capture value from alliances. One such factor is alliance experience accumulation: as firms develop greater experience in managing alliances they become better at coordinating cross-organisational tasks and knowledge flows (e.g. Sampson, 2005). Another factor that can improve performance in alliances is developing formal and codified processes and routines for alliance management (e.g. the establishment of dedicated alliance functions), which are argued to capture, or to be reflective of, firm-specific alliance management capabilities (Kale et al., 2002; Kale and Singh, 2009, 2007; Heimeriks and Duysters, 2007; Sampson, 2005; Schreiner et al., 2009; Di Guardo and Harrigan, 2016; Shukla and Mital, 2018). Whilst these contributions offer useful insights, much the greater part of current theorising has been constructed via the use of cross-sectional data. Longitudinal explorations are scarce, thus we lack a nuanced understanding of the type of changes that occur within firms over time with respect to enhanced innovation potential from engaging in alliances.\n2. Theoretical background: alliance experience and alliance capabilities: To explain heterogeneity with respect to firm's abilities to benefit from alliances, the alliance literature resonates strongly with knowledge and capability-based theories of the firm (e.g. Kogut and Zander, 1992; Helfat and Peteraf, 2003). Here, we adopt a perspective that is informed by both evolutionary theory of the firm (Nelson and Winter, 1982) and dynamic approaches to the resource-based view (RBV) (Helfat et al., 2007; Helfat and Peteraf, 2003). These approaches take a dynamic view of organisational development, emphasising the role of experience and knowledge accumulation in supporting improved management and coordination of organisational tasks and activities. Given their dynamic and longitudinal orientation, they are closely aligned with our own analytical approach, informing our exploration of the roles of alliance experience accumulation and frequent engagement in alliances in organisational learning and enhanced innovation.\n3. Alliance experience and firm returns from alliances: Firms with greater experience can draw from a greater pool of situations about what has worked in practice, when making decisions and inferences with respect to the performance of organisational practices (Levitt and March, 1988; Argote et al., 1990). Alliance experience (cumulative number of alliances) improves firms' abilities: to manage and coordinate alliances, to improve coordination of inter-organisational relationships and joint tasks, to form efficient arrangements for knowledge sharing, to deal effectively with unforeseen contingencies and to identify ways to overcome and resolve inter-partner conflict (Anand and Khanna, 2000; Sampson, 2005; Belderbos et al., 2015; Rothaermel and Deeds, 2006). Due to the link between alliance experience and organisational learning, experience is seen as a fundamental antecedent to both alliance and alliance portfolio capabilities (Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015; Kale and Singh, 2009; Shukla and Mital, 2018). Literature suggests that firms may not be in a position to benefit from learning from experience and superior coordination of alliances, when facing power asymmetries and resource dependence in alliances. Conflict is more frequent in such alliances which affects value creation and capture, especially for the weak partner as they are at a comparative disadvantage (Diestre and Rajagopalan, 2012). Power asymmetries are likely in the bio-pharmaceutical sector, as large pharmaceutical firms may be collaborating with small-dedicated biotech firms and due to their longer commitment to alliances and historic investments in downstream capabilities may be at a comparative advantage in deriving value from alliances (Caner and Tyler, 2013).\n4. Frequent engagement in alliances as an antecedent to alliance capability: Deciphering, coding and measuring capabilities is notoriously difficult (Godfrey and Hill, 1995). As a result, the alliance literature has, in the main, relied on identifying alliance management practices (e.g. alliance functions) as a way of documenting alliance capabilities (Kale et al., 2002; Kale and Singh, 2007, 2009). An exception is found in the work of Rothaermel and Deeds (2006). They explore an inverted U-shaped relationship between cumulative alliance experience and new product development. They argue that, as the inflection point of the inverted U-shaped curve corresponds to the level of experience beyond which firms start experiencing inefficiencies in alliance management, it can reflect the level of their alliance capability.\n5. Sample and methods: 5.1 Sample\n6. Estimation and results: Table I presents descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations.\n7. Tests of robustness[6]: The results suggest that there are diminishing returns to cumulative alliance experience. This can signal that ageing experience contributes less to current outcomes and that recent experience may have a higher contribution (Shukla and Mital, 2018; Sampson, 2005). Following Sampson (2005), we explore the contributions of recent and past alliance experience. We develop a set of variables capturing alliance experience between 1 and 6 years prior to our year of observation. So, for example, in 2001 alliance experience of one year corresponds to the number of alliances initiated in 2000 and alliance experience of two years corresponds to those initiated in 1999 and so on. None of these variables appear to be significant, with the exception of alliance experience of four years prior to the year of observation, which appears with a negative and significant sign. Therefore, the diminishing returns to cumulative alliance experience identified in our paper cannot be attributed to decreasing contributions of distant experience. Our results most likely reflect that firms, by just forming more alliances and learning from experience how to improve alliance management and coordination, cannot experience improved efficiency ad infinitum.\n8. Discussion: The paper contributes to the literature on the role of alliances in innovation and alliance capabilities by using a longitudinal analysis which enables capture of the impact of organisational learning in managing and coordinating alliances on innovation. As it is difficult to capture learning, the paper uses a longitudinal approach to capture dynamic changes within firms and it observes learning through its impact on outcome variables such as innovation. The paper adds to a slender body of work exploring antecedents to firm-level alliance capabilities and their impact on enhancing firm's abilities to innovate (for a review see Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015).\n9. Implications for management theory and practice: Our research contributes to the literature on the antecedents of alliance and alliance portfolio capabilities and on the conditions that shape superior firm outcomes from alliances, such as innovation. It suggests a need to delve into the antecedents to alliance capabilities, a thin body of research and to identify nascent factors that provide potential foundations for alliance capability development (Helfat and Peteraf, 2003), shifting attention away from the role played by alliance management practices (such as dedicated alliance functions) that have dominated existing research. This is particularly important as firms may establish such practices during the advanced stages of the alliance capability development process (Kale and Singh, 2009), and as such they may not appropriately reflect the foundational stages of alliance capability development. Here, we echo calls to delve deeper in understanding alliance management capabilities and the antecedents to alliance portfolio capabilities (Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015), especially in the context of alliances involving a higher learning potential (Heimeriks, 2010). Moreover, recent research shows that codification of alliance learning and systematic approaches to alliance management contribute to efficient partner selection and alliance termination, but may restrict flexibility and adaptability which are important for efficient management during the course of the alliance (Heimeriks et al., 2015; Wang and Rajagopalan, 2015).\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of alliance experience in firm innovation; it argues that, while cumulative alliance experience has a marginally diminishing contribution to likelihood of firm innovation over time, frequent engagement in alliances and an expanding alliance portfolio inhabit an enhancing role. This reveals new dimensions to the role of alliance experience as an antecedent to firm learning in managing alliances and to the development of alliance capabilities.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The paper estimates a range of models identifying the relationship between alliance experience and firm innovation. The panel data sample captures the full range of firms active in the UK bio-pharmaceuticals sector during the early stages of its development observing them from 1991 to 2001. An exploratory case study analysis is employed to shed light on the nuanced factors linking frequent engagement in alliances to the development of practices for efficient alliance management.\nFindings: The paper shows that cumulative alliance experience has a marginally diminishing contribution to likelihood of firm innovation over time, while frequent engagement in alliances and the ensuing expansion of alliance portfolios enhance firm innovation. The exploratory case analysis demonstrates a link between frequent engagement in alliances and the development of processes for alliance management that could collectively reflect alliance capabilities.\nOriginality/value: Contribution derives from a longitudinal analysis of an original panel data set that maps the UK bio-pharmaceuticals sector over the initial period of its development. The paper sheds light on factors that can compel firms to form alliance capabilities, and extends a currently thin body of work on the foundations and antecedents to alliance and alliance portfolio capabilities.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Smartphones and wine consumers: a study of Gen-Y
|
[
"Wine",
"M-commerce",
"Social Networks Systems",
"Y-generatio"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: \"Omnichannel\" has become a buzzword in retail for good reason. New technologies, such as mobile devices and social media, combined with better data, bring the long-time dream of a unified cross-channel shopping experience within reach. In practice, however, most retailers still fall short of achieving this vision, especially as it applies to Generation Y (\"Gen-Y\" - those people born between 1980 and 1991) and their use of smartphones. Mobile users are increasingly accessing social media using mobile devices, whether via browsers or apps. A study by Adobe (2013) among mobile users in the USA, Canada, UK, France and Germany found that most had accessed social networks using a mobile device, ranging from 94 per cent for those 18-29 years of age to 75 per cent of those 50-64 years of age. In fact, Facebook was the second most visited Web site/application that was accessed by smartphones and was the top smartphone app in the USA in August 2013 (ComScore, 2013). In countries, such as Italy and Germany, penetration rates of mobile phones exceed 100 per cent, with some consumers owning more than one mobile phone (Kaplan, 2012). Mobile phones and devices are increasingly used in conducting mobile commerce (Venkatesh et al., 2003, Ngai and Gunasekaran, 2007). Reputation is one of the reasons why customers rely on particular Web sites, apps or Web-apps, and some studies have investigated trust and reputation issues in a mobile ad hoc network environment (Lax and Sarne, 2008). Newman (2010) found that some 700,000 people view wine-related videos every month; there are over 7,000 wine tweets per day and > 300 iPhone apps for wine. Breslin (2013) estimated that 90 per cent of wine drinkers use Facebook 6.2 hours per week.\nBrief presentation of Gen-Y's usage of social media embedded on smartphones: Who is a member of Gen-Y?\nConfirmatory study of Gen-Y behavior with social media and m-commerce: Research method\nTime and access to the Internet: Among the 190 respondents, 68 per cent of them connect to the Internet using their mobile and 38 per cent spend between 10 and 19 hours a week on the Internet, whereas 41 per cent spend more than 20 hours a week. Nearly all of them (95 per cent) access the Internet every day.\nPurchase behavior and influence of peers' recommendations: Only 43 per cent purchase on the Internet at least once a month. They mainly use the Internet to stay in touch with friends and relatives (95 per cent), but also to look for information on a product (69 per cent). They also access discussion groups (29 per cent) and chat rooms (21 per cent).\nWine purchase and consumption: Regarding the wine consumption and habits, 7.4 per cent of our respondents are members of a group dedicated to wine. Wine purchases range from \"don't buy wine\" (32.6 per cent) to 36.8 per cent \"buy wine several times a year\". With regards to wine buyers only, they mainly buy it in supermarkets (56.3 per cent) and hypermarkets (19.5 per cent), but also in wine shops (19.5 per cent). They prefer to consume good wines:\nWine purchase and m-commerce: The Gen-Y consumers (56/190) who frequently buy wine (several times a month or more) consider the usefulness of the information regarding a specific wine (3.2/5) as important when looking up information through their mobile. This generation also rates highly:\nDiscussion, limitations and future research: As novice or potential wine consumers, members of Gen-Y are becoming increasingly significant targets for wine marketers (Mueller and Charters, 2011). This paper looks at the current state of m-commerce, the consumption of smartphones and social media and the transformation of the consumer into an omnichannel shopper. It also examines some responses to this emerging way of doing shopping which enriches the in-store experience with digital integrations, especially in relation to Gen-Y consumers. Armed with smartphones and tablets, wine shoppers go back and forth effortlessly between the real (whether in hypermarkets or supermarkets, convenience stores, wine shops, at the estate/winery or during a wine fair) and digital worlds (through the Internet, mobile app, wine club or by mail order). They are using their phones while in stores to research products and compare prices, and they order online and then pick up in person. At the same time, they consult friends near and far whenever they may find themselves contemplating a purchase, such as a nice bottle of wine. Every day, more of them come to expect a mobile or an \"omnichannel\" experience.\nLimitations and future research: This topic is promising because France AgriMer (2012) shows that wine consumption is composed of 45 per cent of occasional drinkers (once or twice a week) for consumers below the age of 25, and between 25 and 34 years, 50 per cent are occasional drinkers. The Wine Market Council has also published data showing that the millennials (Gen-Y) were consuming 24 per cent of the total volume. Finally, based on AC Nielsen (2011) in March, Internet and mail-order are representing 10 per cent of the total sales in UK. Those data show that the Internet is more and more important, that Gen-Y members are occasional drinkers, and therefore to link those occasional drinkers with wine, it is important to develop pleasant platforms and interactive social networks. The advantage of providing good service on an m-commerce Web site translates into satisfied customers who will become brand advocates: they can refer other people to the wine grower. Internet consumers talk to other consumers about a good customer service experience. For a service, such as the purchase of wine from a particular wine grower who is already selling online and thinking of expanding into m-commerce, providing good customer service is a must. When customers tell other people about a bad experience, they do it on social networks to reach a large audience. This is why social networks must also be taken into account when planning an m-commerce strategy to avoid any negative buzz and therefore leverage a good e-reputation.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of m-commerce (mobile commerce) combined with social media for the wine industry in order to reach distinctive customer segments Differences about access to information and shopping habits on the Internet seem to exist according to the cohorts users belong to.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Based on a study of 190 respondents, this paper describes the consumer behavior of the Y generation regarding several variables: level of Internet sophistication and orientation, brand loyalty, risk aversion, involvement, shopping behavior and perception of authenticity.\nFindings: Results of the study show that m-commerce and e-commerce applications using social media platforms may prove greatly efficient in the foreseeable future for wine growers. Different ways of selling and disseminating information about their products are observed.\nResearch limitations/implications: The infancy of m-commerce implies a relative difficulty to gather data about m-consumption. Active users on m-commerce browse and purchase a few items on the mobile web and many brands still don't have the proper interface of their website to fit with mobile screens. As a result, it is not easy to find users with similar interests on the mobile web based on product preferences, directly linked to their browsing and purchasing history.\nPractical implications: Results of the confirmatory study show that m-commerce and e-commerce applications using social media platforms may in the foreseeable future, offer wine growers greater efficiency to expand their selling opportunities and reach a wider audience.\nSocial implications: This topic is promising since various data show that wine consumption is composed of 45% of occasional drinkers (once or twice a week); and between 25 and 34 years old, it is composed of 50% are occasional drinkers.\nOriginality/value: Y-Gens are occasional drinkers and therefore, to link those occasional drinkers with wine, it is important to use social media as a communication tool and maybe a distribution channel to better reach this potential target.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Towards global music digital libraries: A cross-cultural comparison on the mood of Chinese music
|
[
"Digital libraries",
"Cross-cultural",
"Chinese music",
"Mood perception",
"Music digital libraries",
"Music mood"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Music seeking and consumption are no longer confined by the boundaries of country, region or culture today (Lee et al., 2013). Music, as a cultural object, may be perceived differently by people from different cultural backgrounds, imposing a challenge on music digital libraries (MDL) in meeting the needs of a diverse audience (Weissenberger, 2015). Consequently, an increasing number of researchers have started to investigate various cross-cultural issues in the music information retrieval (MIR) and MDL fields. As people often seek music for emotional goals (Lavranos et al., 2015), music mood[1] has increasingly become a popular access point for music information in many MDL and online music services (Hu, 2010; Hu and Downie, 2007). This trend has raised questions regarding the applicability of music mood across cultural boundaries. Probably due to its subjective and context-based nature, music mood perception is often regarded as culture-dependent (Wong et al., 2009). A number of previous studies have compared mood perceptions of music in various cultures by listeners from different cultural backgrounds (e.g. Balkwill and Thompson, 1999; Fritz et al., 2009; Hu and Lee, 2012; Lee et al., 2013; Singhi and Brown, 2014; Egermann et al., 2014). Although specific findings vary, a general trend found in these existing studies is that listeners' perceptions of music mood can be influenced by their cultural backgrounds.\n2. Background and related work: 2.1 A brief history and types of Chinese music\n3. Mood representation models in MIR: There are mainly two kinds of models to represent mood in music psychology and MIR: categorical and dimensional. The former uses a set of discrete terms (e.g. \"passionate,\" \"cheerful\") to represent the mood of a piece of music. The most classical model of this kind is Hevner's (1936) adjective circle where eight mood categories placed in a circle, with a set of terms in each category. The dimensional models, in contrast, represent mood with continuous values in a low dimensional space. Different models may have different dimensions, yet valence (i.e. level of pleasure) and arousal (i.e. level of energy) are among the most popular dimensions. The dimensional model used very often in MIR is Russell's (1980) model. The categorical and dimensional models have their own pros and cons. Yang and Chen (2012) summarize that categorical models are more user-friendly as they only consist of terms in natural language; whereas dimensional models are advantageous in terms of quantifying the intensity of moods. Notwithstanding the importance of dimensional models, categorical ones are more suitable for this current study, for the purpose of validating and comparing the values of mood metadata in the context of cross-cultural MDLs.\n4. Research design: 4.1 The participant groups\n5. Results: 5.1 Characteristics of participants\n6. Implications for cross-cultural MDL/MIR design: As advocated by Weissenberger (2015), a flexible organization system is needed for MIR/MDL to meet the needs of different musical traditions. The results of this study have important implications for designing MDL of this kind.\n7. Conclusion and future work: This study compares Hong Kong and US listeners' mood perceptions of 29 Chinese music pieces, with the goal of investigating whether and how mood perceptions of the two groups of listeners differ, and how the differences can inform the design of cross-cultural MDL. Music mood was modeled with the MIREX five mood clusters and the results suggested further refinement of this model. The selected music pieces included six genres and styles of Chinese music, ranging from traditional folk music to several sub-genres of C-pop.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to compare music mood perceptions of people with diverse cultural backgrounds when they interact with Chinese music. It also discusses how the results can inform the design of global music digital libraries (MDL).\nDesign/methodology/approach: An online survey was designed based on the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX) five-cluster mood model, to solicit mood perceptions of listeners in Hong Kong and the USA on a diverse set of Chinese music. Statistical analysis was applied to compare responses from the two user groups, with consideration of different music types and characteristics of listeners. Listeners' textual responses were also analyzed with content coding.\nFindings: Listeners from the two cultural groups made different mood judgments on all but one type of Chinese music. Hong Kong listeners reached higher levels of agreement on mood judgments than their US counterparts. Gender, age and familiarity with the songs were related to listeners' mood judgment to some extent.\nPractical implications: The MIREX five-cluster model may not be sufficient for representing the mood of Chinese music. Refinements are suggested. MDL are recommended to differentiate tags given by users from different cultural groups, and to differentiate music types when classifying or recommending Chinese music by mood.\nOriginality/value: It is the first study on cross-cultural access to Chinese music in MDL. Methods and the refined mood model can be applied to cross-cultural access to other music types and information objects.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
An integrative model for understanding team organizational citizenship behavior: Its antecedents and consequences for educational teams
|
[
"OCB",
"Educational teams",
"Team innovation"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Today schools operate in dynamic environment, each struggling to gain a competitive edge (Orr and Orphanos, 2011). This environment reinforces the understanding that schools should strive to employ teachers who are willing to go the extra mile, namely to engage in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). OCBs are behaviors and actions that go beyond the formal role and what is laid down in the teacher's job description, and contribute to the achievement of the school's objectives (Oplatka, 2006). OCB in schools is commonly taken to be an individual phenomenon, namely a personality trait or a social response to the behavior or attitude of superiors or to other motivation-based mechanisms in the workplace (Zeinabadi, 2010). This individual approach seems wanting: teachers perform or fail to perform OCBs not in a vacuum but in an organizational context, which most probably serves to encourage or discourage them (Somech and Drach-Zahavy, 2004). Only in the last two decades have some scholars studied OCB as a team or organizational-level concept (e.g. Ehrhart, 2004). Put otherwise, the individual approach probes the possibility that teacher OCB can be better understood as a team or an organizational feature that thrives in a context. This development is important because the aggregate OCB level, not sporadic actions by some individuals, influences organizational effectiveness (Organ, 1988). Moreover, the several studies that have captured OCB as a collective phenomenon examined either its antecedents (e.g. Hu and Liden, 2011) or its consequences (e.g. Yen et al., 2008). Very few researchers, if any, have explored the mediating role of team OCB in relation to specific antecedents and outcomes. The present research seeks to address this deficiency by examining OCB as a team phenomenon. The first premise of the research model is that it is important to measure OCB as a collective structure. Next, the mediating role of team OCB is investigated. Specifically, the research model posits that the contextual variable of a team's justice climate, and the team's collective psychological state (psychological capital), will be positively related to team OCB. Furthermore, team OCB will be positively related to the outcome of team innovation. The model also suggests that team OCB will mediate the relation between the antecedents and the outcome.\nTheoretical background and hypotheses: Teachers' OCB is defined as \"[...] teachers voluntarily going out of their way to help their students, colleagues, and others as they engage in the work of teaching and learning\" (DiPaola and Hoy, 2005, p. 390). OCBs are essential because formal in-role job descriptions cannot cover the entire array of behaviors needed for achieving school goals (Zeinabadi, 2010). They operate indirectly: they influence schools' social and psychological environment, enhance school effectiveness by freeing up resources for more productive purposes, help coordinate activities within the organization, and enable teachers to adapt more effectively to environmental changes (Sesen and Basim, 2012). Teachers manifest OCB, for instance, by staying after school hours to help a student with learning materials, aid a colleague with a heavy workload, volunteer for unpaid tasks, or make innovative suggestions to improve the school (Somech and Oplatka, 2014).\nMethod: Sample and procedure\nResults: Table I shows the means, standard deviations and correlations for the study variables.\nDiscussion: The present study explored team OCB from a context perspective. This course is important because to date most studies on OCB in schools have focused on teacher OCB as an individual feature, without regard for its contextual nature (Somech and Oplatka, 2014). Put simply, although OCB is performed by individuals, willingness to engage in OCB is not generated in a vacuum, and the team context most likely serves to encourage or discourage people in respect of exerting these extra-role behaviors (Vigoda-Gadot et al., 2007). In this regard, our findings highlighted the importance of team-level antecedents and outcomes for better understanding how between team differences in OCB are developed and what their consequences are. The results contribute to the educational administration literature in several respects.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to use a model to broaden the understanding of the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) phenomenon in educational teams and examines team OCB's mediating role in the relation of the contextual variables of team justice climate (distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice) to team psychological capital (PsyCap) and team innovation.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Data were collected through a survey consisting of validated scales. The sample covered 78 disciplinary teams, 78 coordinators and 13 school principals at 13 junior-high schools.\nFindings: The PROCESS test confirmed the mediating role of team OCB, showing positive relations between team procedural justice and team PsyCap and team OCB, and also between team OCB and team innovation.\nResearch limitations/implications: By taking a team perspective, the findings offer evidence that despite the usual approach treating OCB as an individual phenomenon; it may be regarded as shared norms of behaviors at the team level.\nPractical implications: The team-level approach may urge principals and other educational leaders to realize that teachers' willingness to invest extra effort in school is mainly the result of an appropriate team context, which can be shaped and developed.\nOriginality/value: The present study explored team OCB by from a context perspective. This is important because to date most studies on OCB in schools have focused on teacher OCB as an individual phenomenon, disregarding its contextual nature.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Decision '08: event marketing or product sampling?
|
[
"Sampling methods",
"Marketing strategy",
"Product trials",
"Target markets",
"Direct marketing"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Recent trends in the evolution of marketing have delivered return on investment (ROI)-driven brand managers to an important crossroads. Should they choose event marketing or consumer sampling? Can it ever be both? If so, under what circumstances?\nIf sampling results are strongest when the trial opportunity is the greatest for the product category, why are so many brands risking the positive ROI of a targeted, direct-to-consumer sampling program, to invest in event marketing programs?: Most marketers believe they need to do something more to win over today's young adults - the target of most brand samples. Many marketers developing promotion plans hope to make a mark on the business by creating \"cool\" newsworthy promotions. Some brands choose to sample at events in the hope that interest in the event will deliver additional brand loyalty. Some marketers believe that integrating all elements of the marketing plan will deliver optimal results. This leads them to believe that their sampling results will be strongest in a program that has tied various promotional activities together.\nIs the added expense of an event necessary?: More importantly, does it provide a better ROI? Here are some instructive case studies.Situation no. 1\nSummary: Even when a targeted, direct-to-consumer sampling program has higher distribution costs, due to using a highly targeted list or having to mail the sample, it is unlikely that an event-sampling program could return a better ROI. That's because sample controls are not as good and trial numbers are likely to be lower, resulting in lower purchase numbers. It is also highly unlikely that any other benefit derived from an event could increase ROI enough to cover the substantial trial and purchase differences.What steps should marketers take to achieve the highest ROI behind product sampling?\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine commonly relied upon product sampling strategies, direct-to-consumer sampling and event sampling, to determine which method can deliver the greatest return on investment in a variety of situations.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The paper explores information and data collected via case studies in actual programs presented to brands. The trial, sample, and purchase numbers were actual averages from sampling effectiveness studies for these types of programs.\nFindings: - The paper identifies and segments different types of products and the method by which the products are most effectively implemented into trial and sampling programs. ICOM reveals hard statistics on the return on investment of programs utilizing multiple methods of sampling including point-of-use, direct mail and event sampling.\nPractical implications: - Marketers should follow the STEPS outlined in this study to apply the best brand sampling strategy for a given product. Knowledge of targeted consumer base along with careful pre-event analysis will deliver the best return on investment for a trial campaign.\nOriginality/value: - The paper reveals reasons for a growing shift in corporate budgeted marketing dollars from event marketing to direct consumer product sampling. While event sampling is not always an ineffective or inferior marketing method,the reader can discover methods for a pre-event return on investment analysis that will reveal the sampling strategy sure to deliver the most \"bang\" for the marketing \"buck\".\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Future employment selection methods: evaluating social networking web sites
|
[
"Selection",
"Recruitment",
"Social networks",
"Internet"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n__NO_TITLE__: Within the past few years, the phenomenon of social networking web sites (SNWs) on the internet has exploded into the mainstream. Further, this online information has begun to be used for purposes beyond its intended use. Owing to the vast amount of personal information on these web sites, employers have begun to tap into this information as a source of applicant data in an effort to improve hiring decisions. This study evaluates the use of the SNWs in employment selection. Specifically, can trained judges consistently and accurately assess important organizational characteristics such as personality, intelligence, and performance using only a target's SNW information? In addition, the use of this information may lead to discrimination against applicants, given the wide range of available personal information such as gender, race, age, religion, and disability status otherwise illegal to use when making employment decisions.Social networking web sites\nMethod: Participants and procedures\nResults: The as for the judge ratings of personality were calculated for each of the six ratees. These six as were then averaged for each of the big-five to estimate the overall internal consistency of the scales. In order to assess H1, interrater agreement in the form of average measures intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for the judge ratings are included in Table I. The scaled scores for the big-five personality traits and the single item scores for IQ and performance were evaluated for interrater agreement. The 378 total ratings (63 ratersx6 ratings each) were used to calculate the ICCs. The ICC values were all adequate, ranging from 0.93 for extroversion to 0.99 for conscientiousness and performance. Since ICCs are expected to be higher with a larger number of raters, Table II also includes the number of raters for each characteristic which would be necessary to achieve a 0.50 ICC value. Although there are no guidelines for level of agreement, 0.50 was used in the analyses as it should provide a minimum level of acceptable agreement across judges. The Spearman Brown prophecy formula was used to determine how many raters would be required to obtain an adequate (0.50) ICC value. Based on the 63 raters from this study, it was determined that between two (for conscientiousness and performance) and six (for emotional stability and extroversion) raters would be required to obtain a satisfactory level of interrater agreement.H2 was evaluated by conducting t-tests on score means in order to determine whether or not the means are statistically different from one another. In order to determine which means to test, the true scores (self-reported big-five personality scores, intelligence scores, and GPA) of the six rated subjects were evaluated. For each of the seven characteristics, the individual with the highest true score and the individual with the lowest true score were selected for analysis. Judge mean ratings for these subjects were then compared to determine whether or not raters are able to distinguish individuals high on a characteristic from those low on the same characteristic. This method also allows for evaluation of the direction of the relationship, such that (in addition to evaluating mean differences) the judge rating of the subject with the higher true score should be higher than the judge rating of the lower true score. Results demonstrate that the mean judge ratings for the subject highest on the seven characteristics were statistically different from the subjects lowest on those characteristics. In addition, with the exception of openness to experience, the judges mean ratings were higher for those with the highest true score, indicating the ability of judges to distinguish the traits of conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness, extroversion, intelligence, and performance by evaluating SNWs[6].Post hoc analyses were conducted to determine the impact of intelligence and personality on judge consistency and accuracy. Prior research has demonstrated mixed findings related to the impact of personality traits of the rater on rating accuracy. Ambady et al. (1995) found that less sociable (extroverted) raters were more accurate, while Lippa and Dietz (2000) found that only openness indicated more accurate raters. In addition, narcissistic raters have been found to be less accurate (John and Robbins, 1994), which may be relevant to the big-five since narcissism relates strongly to neuroticism. Finally, intelligence has also been reported to positively relate to rater accuracy (Lippa and Dietz, 2000). In the current study, the 63 judges were asked to take the same intelligence and personality tests as the SNW subjects. The analyses conducted above were then re-evaluated based on high versus low groups based on intelligence and the big-five. Results show no difference in interrater agreement based on these characteristics. However, judges who are more intelligent and more emotionally stable were shown to be more accurate in their judgments. More specifically, when the raters were split into high and low groups based on intelligence scores (the 31 highest scores versus the 31 lowest scores), the high intelligence group significantly and more accurately differentiated between high and low characteristics for conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness, and performance. For example, with all 63 raters combined, the difference between rater means for conscientiousness in Table II is 0.38 (8.03 for the high ratee score and 7.65 for the low ratee score). When assessing high and low intelligence raters independently, the mean difference for the 31 high intelligence raters is 0.61, but only 0.14 for the 31 low intelligence raters. Thus, more intelligent raters seem to be more capable of assessing this trait than less intelligent raters. Similarly, raters who are the most emotionally stable also rate more accurately for conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness, and performance. For example, the mean difference across raters for high and low ratee conscientiousness is again 0.38, but is 0.73 for the 31 raters who are the most emotionally stable and 0.03 for the 31 raters who are the least emotionally stable. These results indicate the potential need for researchers to consider intelligence and emotional stability when selecting individuals who will serve as raters of characteristics such as personality.\nDiscussion: Based on the large volume of personal information available on SNWs, judges' ratings of the big-five dimensions of personality, intelligence, and global performance were consistent across the 63 raters in this study, demonstrating adequate internal consistency reliability and interrater agreement. In addition, the trained raters were able to accurately distinguish between individuals who scored high and individuals who scored low on four of the big-five personality traits, intelligence, and performance, providing initial evidence that raters can accurately determine these organizationally relevant traits by viewing SNW information.As stated earlier, other rated personality has been shown to predict job performance. Considering that other methods of other-reported personality are unlikely to be viable in an employment selection context, SNW ratings of personality may be a practical approach. Owing to the theoretical and methodological differences between self-reported and other-rated personality, it is likely that ratings of personality via SNWs will provide a context for incremental prediction of job performance beyond the predominant self-report approach. In addition, the differences in context between SNWs and a job interview (i.e. socially desirable responding in the job interview as well as the unique nature of information contained in SNWs) should similarly allow for unique prediction of job performance beyond what can be evaluated through personality assessment in the employment interview. This approach may be particularly valuable since these assessments take only a fraction of the time involved with other selection methods.This study is not without limitations. Although the analyses testing the consistency of the relationships of SNW ratings are based on 378 judge ratings from 63 raters, the analyses testing rater accuracy were conducted by testing for significant differences between the high and low performer on the seven characteristics for only six subjects. Future research should assess accuracy over a larger sample of subjects.We hope that the results of this preliminary study will not be used by organizations to support their use of SNWs in employment selection. Without further validation in a variety of studies, with larger samples and in a variety of organizational contexts, caution should be used when interpreting the implications of this study. This is particularly true given the potential for employer legal liability due to the vast amount of personal information available on SNWs. Information regarding gender, race, age, disabilities, and other criteria which should not be used when making hiring decisions will most certainly, consciously or not, influence who gets hired. Even if this information does not bias the hiring decision, disparate impact issues may still exist. Future research should also examine the potential issues of adverse impact and potentially illegal information in hiring decisions using personal information from SNWs. In addition, research should be conducted to compare assessments of SNWs to other employment selection methods, such as personality assessment, intelligence testing, and employment interviews.Based on the relative absence of research evidence in this newly developing area, particularly regarding the potential for adverse impact and the lack of validity evidence, we believe the most important practical implication of this paper is for organizations to use SNWs with these issues in mind. Organizational representatives assessing SNWs should ask themselves two important questions. First, is the organization assessing (or could be perceived as assessing) information which could lead to discrimination against a legally protected group? Second, is the specific social networking information used to help make a hiring decision valid in determining who will perform better on the job? The approach used in this paper of assessing personality traits, intelligence, or general performance begin to provide answers to these questions.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The use of social networking web sites (SNWs), like Facebook and MySpace, has become extremely popular, particularly with today's emerging workforce. Employers, aware of this phenomenon, have begun to use the personal information available on SNWs to make hiring decisions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the feasibility of using applicant personal information currently available on SNWs to improve employment selection decisions.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - A total of 378 judge ratings (63 ratersx6 subjects) are evaluated to determine if raters can reliably and accurately determine the big-five personality traits, intelligence, and performance based only on information available on SNWs. Interrater reliability is assessed to determine rater consistency, followed by an assessment of rater accuracy.\nFindings: - Based solely on viewing social networking profiles, judges are consistent in their ratings across subjects and typically able to accurately distinguish high from low performers. In addition, raters who are more intelligent and emotionally stable outperformed their counterparts.\nPractical implications: - Human resource (HR) professionals are currently evaluating social networking information prior to hiring applicants. Since SNWs contain substantial personal information which could be argued to cause adverse impact, academic studies are needed to determine whether SNWs can be reliable and valid predictors of important organizational criteria.\nOriginality/value: - This paper is the first, as far as the authors are concerned, to address the use of SNWs in employment selection, despite their current utilization by HR practitioners.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
What factors influence firm perceptions of labour market constraints to growth in the MENA region?
|
[
"MENA region",
"Labour regulations",
"Labour skill shortages",
"Labour market constraints",
"Bivariate probit model"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: Stringent labour market constraints are expected to pose serious obstacles to firm performance and economic growth. A wide range of literature finds that rigid labour regulations would induce lower labour force participation and higher unemployment rates (e.g. Botero et al., 2004; Besley and Burgess, 2004; Amin, 2009; Djankov and Ramalho, 2009), and would prevent labour markets from being efficient leading to losses in productivity (e.g. Kaplan, 2009). Another strand of literature inspects the problem of labour skill shortages or \"skill deficits\", which can be defined as the divergence between the educational attainments of workers and the skill requirements of jobs (Kiker et al., 1997). This literature regularly indicates that accentuated labour skill shortages impose significant restrictions on employment creation and economic growth (e.g. Pissarides and Veganzones-Varoudakis, 2007; Bhattacharya and Wolde, 2012), and could eventually inflict severe impacts on economic performance and labour market outcomes (e.g. Allen and van der Velden, 2001).\n2. Review of related literature: 2.1. Labour regulations\n3. Some considerations about data: The empirical analysis is carried out for the perceived levels of labour market constraints as reported by the respondents (e.g. senior managers, business owners) through the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys database. Pierre and Scarpetta (2004, 2006) examine the relationship between the perceived and actual stringency of labour regulations using national labour protection indices (i.e. de jure labour laws). They find that the reported perceptions are closely related to the actual levels of labour regulations' constraints. Specifically, countries with higher national indices on the stringency of labour regulations are associated with higher proportions of firms perceiving labour regulations as being significant constraints.\n4. Data description and variables: We use a data set sourced from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys database. This database represents a comprehensive source of firm-level data in emerging and developing economies. It covers firms operating in the manufacturing, service, and other sectors. It contains information on various aspects of the business environment such as, access to finance, corruption, workforce characteristics, innovation and technology, and trade. It should be noted that one of many advantages of using data from these surveys is that the questions are identical through firms across all countries. The basic data set used in this paper covers 5,052 firms located in eight developing Arab countries of the MENA region: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Syria, and Yemen[5].\n5. Empirical specification: Consider a given firm j (j=1, ..., J) belonging to sector k (k=1, ..., K) and located in country c (c=1, ..., C). Firm perception levels of constraints related to labour regulations and those related to labour skill shortages are depicted through the latent variables (Equation 1) and (Equation 2), respectively. These latent variables are not observed. However, we observe the perceptions of firms through dichotomous responses on whether labour regulations and labour skill shortages do or do not pose major/severe obstacles on firm operations and development. Let R\n6. Benchmark empirical results: Table III presents the marginal effects from the benchmark bivariate probit estimation carried out for the pooled data set covering existing firms' perceptions of labour market constraints. The Wald test rejects the null hypothesis of zero correlation between the errors in the two labour market constraints' equations and, hence, it indicates that the model should be estimated through the bivariate probit estimator rather than through the univariate probit estimator. The estimated coefficient of correlation between the errors in the two equations is positive and statistically significant at the 1 per cent level. Table III displays the unconditional marginal effects for Pr(R\n7. Empirical results by sector and by country: 7.1. Empirical results by sector\n8. Conclusion: Labour market constraints are often identified as main business obstacles facing firm operation and development in the MENA region. Therefore, they are naturally listed through the primary items on the labour policy agenda of the MENA countries. The comprehension of the factors influencing the perceived severity of labour market constraints is essential in the design of policies aiming at improving labour market conditions and enhancing business environments. This paper examines the implications of firm characteristics, national locations, and sectoral associations for the perceptions of firms located in the MENA region concerning two primary labour market constraints: labour regulations and labour skill shortages. The empirical analysis is carried out using firm-level data set sourced from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys database. A bivariate probit estimator is used to account for potential correlations between the errors in the labour regulations' equation and labour skill shortages' equation. The empirical results are generated through overall estimations and by implementing comparative cross-country and cross-sector analyses.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: Labour market constraints constitute prominent obstacles to firm development and economic growth of countries located in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of firm characteristics, national locations, and sectoral associations for the perceptions of firms concerning two basic labour market constraints: labour regulations and labour skill shortages.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis is carried out using firm-level data set sourced from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys database. A bivariate probit estimator is used to account for potential correlations between the errors in the two labour market constraints' equations. The authors implement overall estimations and comparative cross-country and cross-sector analyses, and use alternative estimation models.\nFindings: The empirical results reveal some important implications of firm characteristics (e.g. firm size, labour compositions) for firm perceptions of labour regulations and labour skill shortages. They also delineate important cross-country and cross-sector variations. The authors also find significant heterogeneity in the factors' implications for the perceptions of firms belonging to different sectors and located in different MENA countries.\nOriginality/value: Reforms in labour regulations and investment in human capital are important governmental policy interventions for promoting firm development and economic growth in the MENA region. This paper contributes to the empirical literature by analysing the factors influencing the perceptions of firms located in the MENA region concerning labour regulations and labour skill shortages. It provides policy-makers with information needed in the design of labour policies that attenuate the impacts of labour market constraints and enhance the performance of firms and the long-run economic growth.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Shared brands and sustainable competitive advantage in the Brazilian wine sector
|
[
"Marketing strategy",
"Qualitative research",
"Competitive strategy",
"Brands",
"Interviews",
"Geographical indications",
"Sustainable competitive advantage",
"Shared brands",
"Collective brands",
"Sector brands"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A brand can be seen as a strategic asset that helps a company to be more competitive. In the same way that companies invest in brands, countries can also be seen as such (Anholt, 2005; Huang and Tsai, 2013; Kotler et al., 2006). In considering the role that the image of a country can play in a buyer's behavior, constructs such as the country's brand, the country's image and the country of origin may be attributes that offer the potential for companies to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage (SCA), both in the internal and external market (Baker and Ballington, 2002; Hakala et al., 2013).\n2. Literature review: 2.1 Sustainable competitive advantage\n3. Methodology: This study was based on a qualitative approach that, for Bauer and Gaskell (2000), aims to understand in detail beliefs, attitudes, values and motivations regarding the behavior of people in specific social contexts (Malhotra, 2006). The research was exploratory and the field study was conducted with in-depth interviews (Bardin, 2011; Cooper and Schindler, 2014; Sampieri et al., 2010).\n4. Results: 4.1 C1 - valuable\n5. Conclusions: It can be concluded that the proposition that shared brands - GI, collective brands and sector brands - provide SCA, according to the VRIA, can be confirmed, thus fulfilling the four conditions that form the acronym VRIA - valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable/replaceable and association. The value added to the product through the information contained in the shared brands facilitates the establishment of a relationship of trust between producer and consumer, being a source of competitive advantage.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate if shared brands provide sustainable competitive advantage according to an adapted valuable, rare, imitability/replaceability and organization (VRIO) model to the Brazilian wine sector in the opinion of the government agencies, associations and managers of the wineries.\nDesign/methodology/approach: This study was based on a qualitative and exploratory research, based on in-depth interviews. Fine wines that have geographical indications and are located in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul were analyzed and content analysis was used to explore data.\nFindings: It was concluded that shared brands in the Brazilian wine sector can be considered a source of sustainable competitive advantage according to the resource-based view.\nResearch limitations/implications: Qualitative research has the aspect of the subjectivity of the researcher when analyzing the data.\nPractical implications: The government agencies, associations and wineries can improve the production process and seek certified products for commercialization in the domestic and foreign markets. These contributions may also, in practice, be used by other sectors and countries.\nOriginality/value: This work contributes to the understanding of the shared brand's concept, including geographical indications, collective brands and the sector brands. The proposition that shared brands provide sustainable competitive advantage, according to an adapted VRIO model was confirmed. Barney's VRIO framework (Barney, 1991, 1995) hitherto thought for individual companies, has the letter \"O\" of Organization replaced by the letter \"A\" of Association, becoming VRIA. The authors found that the four conditions that form the here proposed acronym VRIA are valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable/replaceable and association.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
The role of the marketing function in small and medium sized enterprises
|
[
"Marketing strategy",
"Small to medium‐sized enterprises",
"Competitive advantage",
"United States of America"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: A precept of the marketing concept contends that business achieves success by determining and satisfying the needs, wants, and aspirations of target markets. Few would argue that this determination and satisfaction of target market wants and needs is critical for firm success. These concepts, traditionally thought to be part of the marketing function of the firm, have fueled scholars' interest in the role of marketing within the firm (e.g., Becherer et al., 2003; Berthon et al., 2008; Moorman and Rust, 1999; Simpson and Taylor, 2002; Webster, 1981, 1992, 2003; Webster et al., 2003).Scholars have identified significant differences between large and small organizations. Large organizations tend to use a structured framework with a clear hierarchy in decision making. On the other hand, small firms tend to feature processes that begin with and highly involve the entrepreneur or owner. Furthermore, the entrepreneur or owner's personality and style help to shape decision making (Sadler-Smith et al., 2003).The small-firm sector plays a significant role in the world economy. In the United States a recent analysis of employment changes between September 1992 and March 2005 showed that 65 percent of the net new jobs created during that time are attributed to firms with fewer than 500 employees (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005).Research investigating the competitive advantage of small firms has consistently emphasized the importance of marketing, strategic positioning, and entrepreneurship as key factors in business survival and growth. The ability to identify and operate in a particular market niche enables the firm to exploit a range of specializations and offers protection from larger competitors. Yet despite the widespread acceptance of the importance of the marketing concept, the precise marketing activities and competencies that contribute most strongly to business performance must be identified for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).Our study of SMEs revisits many of the questions Homburg et al. (1999) posed in their study of the marketing functions of large firms, but we direct our attention to SMEs. The definition of what precisely constitutes an SME differs widely. For the purposes of this paper, we follow the Journal of Enterprise Culture and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperative (APEC), who define US-based SMEs as companies with fewer than 499 employees (APEC, 2003). In this research, we seek to answer the following questions:* Relative to other business functions, how important is the marketing function in SMEs?* Does marketing in SMEs enjoy the same influence found in larger firms?* What internal and external factors influence the role of marketing in small firms?This paper reports the results of a study that employed an activity-based approach whereby demonstrable marketing competencies were related to the entrepreneurial orientation evident in the firms. The analysis demonstrated that certain competencies were more strongly associated with a marketing orientation, whereas others were associated with an entrepreneurial orientation. The results show differences in the role of marketing in small firms as compared with the role of marketing in the large firms that were studied by Homburg et al. (1999). SME marketing functions have a way to go before they enjoy the same degree of influence their counterparts have in large firms.\nLiterature review: Inquiry into departmental influence (such as marketing) is based on Cyert and March's (1963) work on subunit power. Cyert and March (1963) argued that managers have conflicting goals and seek satisfactory solutions as opposed to optimal solutions to business problems. The concept of \"dominant coalition\" has been used to explain differences in the power of firm subunits (Thompson, 1967). The relative power of subunits is a function of strategic choices made by dominant coalitions (i.e. power members) within an organization. Influence has been defined as \"a change in one party that has its origin in another party and this embodies the successful exercise of power\" (Stern and Scheer, 1992, p. 260). Our study focuses on the marketing department subunit. Various authors have examined the role and influence of marketing in firms (e.g. Becherer et al., 2003; Berthon et al., 2008; Moorman and Rust, 1999; Simpson and Taylor, 2002; Webster, 1981, 1992, 2003; Webster et al., 2003) and since the 1980s, the marketing department has been shown to have varying levels of influence in the firm. Homburg et al. (1999) directly studied the influence of marketing in large firms and uncovered a number of situational factors that affect the level of marketing's influence. These situational factors include a firm's strategic orientation (differentiation versus cost leadership) and background of the CEO. Although their study helped to define the relative level of influence of the marketing function for business, the authors focused on large organizations - firms with more than $25 million in sales.However, SMEs have characteristics that differentiate them from large organizations (McCartan-Quinn and Carson, 2003). These differences include advantages such as greater flexibility, innovation, and lower overhead costs. In terms of disadvantages, SMEs are limited by their market power, and capital and managerial resources (Motwani et al., 1998). These differences raise the question, \"does the marketing function in SMEs enjoy the same influence found in larger firms?\" Compared with the literature stream surrounding the role of marketing in larger firms, inquiry on this topic has been more limited for SMEs. Many studies have attempted to define marketing and outcomes of marketing for SMEs. Carson (2001) and Sui and Kirby (1998) traced the evolution of marketing and the various approaches to SME marketing. Other authors have attempted to develop hypothetical and empirical models of marketing for SMEs. Sui et al. (2004), Julien and Ramangalahy (2003) and Berthon et al. (2008) showed how strategic marketing practices such as knowledge of current market conditions and consumer tastes were positively related to SME performance. Becherer et al. (2003) examined internal environmental factors such as the background and decision processes of CEOs. One aspect of marketing, promotional efforts, was found to be a key influence in performance of SMEs (Wood, 2006). Market orientation as a driver of SME business performance has also generated scholar interest (Blankson and Stokes, 2002; Fillis, 2002; Pacitto et al., 2007). Finally, authors have studied underlying reasons for the characteristics of SME marketing practices. Simpson et al. (2006) examined drivers of marketing effort such as the presence of a marketing department and marketing representation at the board level. SMEs lack the resources to compete head-to-head with larger rivals and thus cannot do traditional marketing (Gilmore et al., 2001).Because SMEs lack the resources to compete head-to-head with larger rivals, some scholars have questioned whether SMEs formally practice marketing at all (Carson et al., 1998; Gilmore et al., 2001; Shepherd and Ridnour, 1996). In a typical argument, Hogarth-Scott et al. (1996) considered most marketing theories to be inappropriate for SMEs and not helpful in the understanding of their markets. However, in the same article, the authors found that the marketing function contributed positively to small business success and the ability to think strategically. Clearly, marketing department exert influence in SMEs, especially in SMEs that succeed. Larger firms achieve better competitive positions than smaller firms when they have greater marketing capabilities (Grimes et al., 2007), so SMEs must maintain strong marketing departments to effectively compete.Evidence has shown that although marketing activities in SMEs may be different, marketing departments are still critical to firms' success. Many firms carry out business via highly informal, unstructured, reactive mechanisms, whereas others develop, over time, a proactive and skilled approach where innovation and identification of opportunities gives them a competitive advantage (Fillis, 2007). Romano and Ratnatunga (1995) observed that \"small firms face marketing challenges which can and will ultimately determine their future.\" Furthermore, Hill (2001) found that SMEs still engage in many traditional marketing functions, especially marketing planning. A widely cited marketing activity for SMEs is networking. Wincent (2005) showed that the size of a firm matters in regard to how a company conducts its networking activity. Networks are important during the establishment, development, and growth of SMEs. Siu (2001) found that SMEs rely heavily on their personal contact network in marketing their firms. Traditional economic structures favor size (large firms). However, today's economy is earmarked by relationships, network, and information, which play to some of the characteristics of SMEs.Our research adds to the SME literature stream by examining outputs and attributes of marketing (e.g. sales, percent of sales spent on marketing) and by considering how these are related to firm characteristics such as entrepreneurial orientation.\nConceptual foundation and hypotheses: Two theories provide a conceptual framework to explain the differences in the influence of the marketing function: institutional theory and contingency theory. Institutional theory states that organizational structure and design is inexorably linked to social networks and is shaped by conformity and legitimacy pressures (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Firm structure does not necessarily reflect efficiency but legitimacy (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Thus the influence of a firm function such as marketing is a function of conformity/legitimacy pressures.Alternatively, contingency theory states that organizational structure and design is a function of external factors. Firms must \"fit\" to their environment, and characteristics of firms such as subunit power are a function of environmental determinants. Research on subunit power has explored relationships between environmental factors and organizational structures/power (Boeker, 1989; Hambrick, 1981; Hinings et al., 1974; Salancik and Pfeffer, 1974).This research tests elements of both theories. Hypotheses H1 and H2 are based on the contingency theory argument, and hypotheses H3, H4, and H5 are based on institutional theory.Consumer versus industrial markets\nResearch design: Sample\nFindings: The results from the two samples were analyzed (t-tests) and no statistical difference was found in means across all measures. Accordingly, the results were pooled.The role of marketing\nDiscussion/limitations: Our data suggest that marketing is not as well developed or influential in SMEs as it is in large firms. Marketing's scope or extent of responsibility is more limited compared with large firms. Two factors, type of market (consumer) and firm orientation (hierarchal), facilitate marketing's influence within a firm. These results indicate that both underlying theories - institutional and contingency - received support and neither theory can be dismissed, suggesting the influence of marketing is a multidimensional construct. Individual traits (e.g. charisma, power, authority) were not considered in this study. However, our findings show marketing's influence can vary systematically as a function of institutional and external factors.Although our analysis sheds light on some internal and external factors that influence marketing's role in a firm, a major portion of variance remains unexplained. Additional research is necessary to explore other potential influences on marketing's role in a firm. These might include personnel factors (background and experience of marketing department personnel) and firm politics. For example, Reijonen and Komppula (2007) studied SMEs in Finland and found the motivation of entrepreneurs are not solely financial and often are based on job satisfaction, control, and family concerns.Although this research fills a gap in the literature relating to the influence of marketing in SMEs, there is much work to be done. We did not address the relationship between marketing's influence and the performance of firms. Analyses done and conclusions reached in this research were based on a very limited sample of SMEs located in one region of the country. Sampling across all regions of the United States would help in generalization of the findings.\nConclusions: The results of this study are particularly troubling because marketing resources are one driver of competitive advantage, and although the studied firms have a formal marketing function within the firm, it would appear the function has not proven its value to the firm. For marketing to increase in influence, individuals leading this function must gain a seat at the table. Our findings would suggest that changing the influence of the marketing function might take considerable effort. One barrier to changing marketing's influence is the firm's entrepreneurial orientation, which can be a deep-seated cultural factor that typically requires time to change. An Indian proverb cautions: \"Under a bright lamp, there is great darkness.\" Although marketing departments have a responsibility to market the firm's products and services, the task of marketers marketing themselves to internal stakeholders remains unanswered. Marketing departments must do more to ensure that the voice of marketing is heard when key decisions are being made.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - The purpose of this paper is to examine marketing in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), its role as a driver of competitive advantage, and, therefore, its importance to the firm.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - The study is conducted with 100 SMEs located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.\nFindings: - The marketing function is not as well developed or influential in SMEs as it is in large corporations. Two environmental factors, type of market (consumer) and firm orientation (hierarchal), facilitate marketing's influence within a firm.\nResearch limitations/implications: - Analyses conducted and conclusions reached in this research are based on a very limited sample of SMEs located in one region of one country. Broader sampling would help in generalization of the findings.\nPractical implications: - The results of this study are particularly troubling because marketing resources are one driver of competitive advantage. For marketing to increase in influence, individuals trained in marketing must gain a seat at the management table. Although marketing departments are responsible for marketing the firm's products and services, the job of marketers themselves internally remains unclear. Marketing departments must do more to ensure that marketing's voice is heard when key decisions are made.\nOriginality/value: - This research fills a gap in the literature relating to the influence of marketing in SMEs. More importantly, the findings differ from conclusions raised by a similar study conducted for larger firms.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Multivariate robust estimation of inequality indices
|
[
"Development",
"Distributive justice",
"Income distribution",
"Welfare economics"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1. Introduction: A single \"extreme\" observation can make an inequality index estimator uninformative, i.e., meaningless. Frequently, survey data are used to calculate inequality within an economy; we expect that survey data will contain both outliers and so-called contamination points. The main purpose of this research is to provide a new methodology to estimate inequality indices robustly; that is, to provide an estimator of inequality that is not severely affected by atypical data (outliers/contamination points). Our procedure uses information from multiple variables (e.g. socio-economic and geographic variables) to eliminate the effect of atypical observations. To our knowledge, in the inequality literature this is the first methodology that is able to identify outliers and contamination points in more than one direction[1].\n2. Relationship to the existing literature: In an inequality framework, Cowell and Victoria-Feser (1996) used the concept of the influence function (IF) (Hampel, 1974) to assess the influence of an infinitesimal amount of contamination upon the value of an inequality statistic. They found that most inequality measures are not robust, i.e. a single arbitrary large observation can make an inequality index totally uninformative. This implies that the quality of inequality estimates derived from classical statistical procedures can be quite poor. It is therefore necessary to develop robust procedures in order to estimate confidently how the total income in a given society is distributed.\n3. Methodology: This research will produce robust inequality estimates by first trimming the \"raw\" data using robust procedures, and then calculate classical inequality indices using sample moments' analogues in the \"clean\" subsample (i.e. after dropping atypical data). This is an innovation in the literature. The next subsections explain the methodology applied to do this and the very last subsection in this section briefly discuss some alternative approaches.\n4. Results: Before applying our methodology to real data, we would like to compare our procedures vs the other robust inequality estimation (OBRE). Therefore, we conduct the same simulation that Cowell and Victoria-Feser (1996) proposed. The next subsection will describe that simulation exercise. We also performed artificial contamination exercises with real data to show that we can effectively tag contamination points, see Appendices 1 and 2 for those results.\n5. Conclusions: In this paper we consider the estimation of income inequality indices (such as Gini, Theil, Coefficient of Variation) using data with some atypical observations. It is shown that even when a small portion of the data are atypical, classical statistical procedures are not reliable in estimating income inequality indices. We propose two procedures to solve this problem: MCD trimming and LTS trimming. Both methodologies use all the information from a multivariate data set to remove atypical observations in order to estimate inequality indices robustly.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: The data employed to measure income inequality usually come from household surveys, which commonly suffer from atypical observations such as outliers and contamination points. This is of importance since a single atypical observation can make classical inequality indices totally uninformative. To deal with this problem, robust univariate parametric or ad hoc procedures are commonly used; however, neither is fully satisfactory. The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology to deal with this problem.\nDesign/methodology/approach: The author propose two robust procedures to estimate inequality indices that can use all the information from a data set, and neither of them rely on a parametric distributional assumption. The methodology performs well irrespectively of the size and quality of the data set.\nFindings: Applying these methods to household data for UK (1979) and Mexico (2006 and 2011), the author find that for UK data the Gini, Coefficient of Variation and Theil Inequality Indices are over estimated by between 0.02 and 0.04, while in the case of Mexico the same indices are over estimated more deeply, between 0.1 and almost 0.4. The relevance of including atypical observations that follow the linear pattern of the data are shown using the data from Mexico (2011).\nResearch limitations/implications: The methodology has two main limitations: the procedures are not able to identify a bad leverage outlier from a contamination point; and in the case that the data has no atypical observations, the procedures will tag as atypical a very small fraction of observations.\nSocial implications: A reduction in the estimate of inequality has important consequences from a policy maker perspective. First, ceteris paribus, the optimal amount of resources destinated to directly address inequality/poverty. Those \"extra\" resources can be destinated to promote growth. Notice that this is a direct consequence of having a more egalitarian economy than previously thought, this is due to the fact that poor people will actually enjoy a bigger share of any national income increment. This also implies that, in order to reduce poverty, public policies should focus more on economic growth.\nOriginality/value: To the knowledge, in the inequality literature this is the first methodology that is able to identify outliers and contamination points in more than one direction. That is, not only at the tails of the distribution, but on the whole marginal distribution of income. This is possible via the use of other variables related to income.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Learning about environmental issues: Postgraduate and undergraduate students' interpretations of environmental contents in education
|
[
"Environmental engineering",
"Education",
"Higher education",
"Learning"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\nIntroduction: Looking across Swedish higher education, the last few years have seen an increase in the number of environmental courses being offered at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. According to a survey conducted by the National Agency for Higher Education (2001), 3 of 37 universities and university colleges offer introductory courses in \"sustainable development\" that are open to all students. Fourteen educational institutions offer specific environmental introductory courses to a select group of undergraduate students and another 16 universities give undergraduate courses that include environmental issues or sustainable development. Moreover, several Swedish universities offer programmes in \"Environmental science\" leading to a BSc or an MSc degree, and there are also a number of civil engineering programmes that focus on environmental engineering.In this paper, the results of which draw from a doctoral thesis (Lundholm, 2003), students' perspectives on environmental education are presented. It is based on three case studies in which the aim was to explore the students' conceptions of ecology and environmental issues, and the learning process. Learning is viewed from an intentional perspective, which means that the students' aims in their studies, here defined as \"projects\", are explored through analysis of their actions and utterances in educational settings or interviews.\nResearch on learners and learning about environmental issues: Previous research on learners and learning in environmental education has focused mainly on the learners' knowledge, attitudes and behaviour in relation to environmental phenomena and environmental problems[1]. A number of studies on young people's understanding of environmental problems were concerned with investigating their scientific knowledge (Gomez-Granell and Cervera-March, 1993; Gambro and Switzky, 1996; Ivy et al., 1998). Boyes and Stanisstreet (1993, 1994, 1998) have studied young people's knowledge of the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion in particular.Research on students' learning has focused on the effects of environmental education, and has often been conducted as pre-test and post-test studies. Only a few investigations have been concerned specifically with students' personal interpretations and experiences of environmental education (Lai, 1999; Rickinson, 1999) or with the learning process (Emmons, 1997; Mason and Santi, 1998; Grace and Ratcliffe, 2002).Research on subject-related knowledge in environmental education has had its primary focus on the natural sciences, whereas the social science disciplines have received little attention from researchers in this field (Rickinson, 2001).Within much of this work there is a very strong science education influence. The environment phenomena that have been investigated are ones from school curricula, the research participants are often from science teaching groups, and the implications drawn often take the form of strategies for science teachers (Rickinson, 2001, p. 219).\nPurpose of the study: The purpose of the study was to investigate and describe students' interpretations of various tasks concerning environmental issues and of course content in ecology. The purpose was also to investigate the students' learning, defined as a process of differentiation between contexts.The thesis attended to the following research questions:RQ1. How do six first-year civil engineering students interpret a course content in ecology and environmental issues; i.e. how do they contextualise the content?\nTheory: Learning as a process of differentiation\nMethod: Case studies\nFirst-year civil engineering students' interpretations of a course content in ecology and environmental issues: The engineering students' interpretations can be described in terms of a theoretical context in the sense that the students related the content to concepts and different academic subjects within the natural sciences[3]. The content also raised issues concerning human beings in relation to nature. The students discussed the notion of humankind as being within or outside the eco-system, and this seems to have led them to consider the moral aspects of human actions and the effects of these actions on nature. This means that the students' interpretations of the course content can be said to be embedded within a cultural context of values and norms. The students seemed to believe that the teacher had, implicitly, expressed the viewpoint that human beings have affected nature only in a negative way and that the teacher had neglected to highlight the positive effect which that impact has had on humans. In talking about these aspects of values, the students showed irritation and indignation and seemed to find the whole issue quite provoking.In the analysis of the different ways in which the students interpreted the course content, the results show that during the lectures the engineering students posed questions to the teacher concerning possible solutions to various environmental problems and whether these solutions were good or bad and could eventually lead to improving the environment. Finally, the students also focused on different aspects of the course content, such as the water cycle; they also stated that learning about such matters as the chemical formulas of the phosphorus cycle was irrelevant for their future profession as civil engineers.The students' different contextualisations of the course content, as well as their questions and focused aspects of the content, were analysed from an intentional perspective. The students' actions and utterances become meaningful if we interpret them in relation to their future goals, i.e. their projects. Their interpretations and reactions to the course content become intelligible and possible to understand in view of the professional project of becoming a civil engineer. As civil engineers they will inevitably affect nature in some way, good or bad. An ecocentric perspective that places a higher value on nature than on human beings, together with a view that implies that the effect humans have on nature is harmful, may come into conflict with the very notion of being a civil engineer. The questions that were posed in the classroom concerning solutions to environmental problems can also be understood as being both part of a professional project and a possible project related to a more general interest in wanting to know what could be done to improve the environment. Finally, the two students who stated that certain aspects of the content were irrelevant were arguing with reference to the civil engineering profession.\nBiology students' interpretations of a task on environmental reports: When the students were working on a task concerning environmental reports, different contextualisations as well as different problems were brought to the fore. The students decided to work on a problem about environmental reports as a general phenomenon and to collect reports from different companies and analyse and study the text they contained. While the students were working on that problem, another problem, this one concerning the environmental work of certain companies was brought to fore. In the students' discussion, this problem meant that the students analysed and discussed the companies' work as such, and not the texts presented in the reports. In particular, one of the students in the group, Hans, clarified and stressed this difference.The students' work on analysing the texts was contextualised into an academic and cultural context. By setting up 15 criteria for analysing the 14 reports, the students' aim was to describe the reports' content concerning the companies' environmental work and how these routines were presented to the reader. While solving the problem, the students' personal judgements about, for example, the environmental education given to the staff became a topic for discussion. One student in particular emphasised the importance of keeping judgements out of the discussion, and argued that the group should try to describe the reports in terms of \"what\" content was being presented and \"how\" it was being presented to the reader. He also stressed that the group should not evaluate the different aspects presented in the reports, for example, concerning environmental education, as being good or bad. Eventually, on the last day of working on the task, the students discussed the difficulty of trying to keep their values and judgements as well as their feelings about the different companies separate from the analysis.In analysing the students' interpretations of the task from an intentional perspective, the different contextualisations, as well as the different problems, can be discussed in relation to the students' projects. A possible project that can be ascribed the students is a concern for the environment and an interest in promoting and working towards a better environment. Whether this is a project of interest or of profession, or perhaps both, is difficult to say. The students' apparent interest in working with a problem that concerned the companies' business as such, and not just what was stated in the reports, is understandable in light of an environmental interest in finding out what is being done within the companies and if this will eventually improve the environment. The students' difficulty in differentiating between, on one hand, a cultural context of values and judgements about the companies' environmental work as it is described in the reports, and, on the other, an academic context can also be explained in relation to a project. If the students' project of interest is to promote environmental change, their will to not only describe environmental reports, but also analyse and judge them in terms of good and bad, becomes reasonable.\nPostgraduate students' interpretations of environmental research: For the six postgraduate students the task of writing a doctoral thesis raised different problems, which were possible to analyse in relation to the students' different projects. Firstly, the thesis was interpreted as an assignment to be attended to within the university and the scientific community. This problem can be understood as being part of the students' educational project. Second, for five of the six postgraduate students, the task of writing a thesis was commissioned by a company outside the university, and the research results were to serve as a means for companies to take action; writing a thesis was thus interpreted as a question of more or less producing a plan of action. Third, writing the thesis was a project of personal interest in the sense that the students felt they could contribute to improving the environment. Three of the students also stated that their postgraduate studies would benefit them in their professional work and that this was a contributory reason for their taking on postgraduate studies.In solving the problem of writing a doctoral thesis within the educational project, some difficulties arose. To be able to answer their research questions, two of the students, Elisabeth and Sofia, had to acquaint themselves with subject areas in the social sciences. These subjects were quite new to them, as were the qualitative methods they were expected to use in their research. They realised that knowledge about how to conduct qualitative research was scarce at KTH. Therefore, the students had to learn on their own and try to overcome this obstacle in different ways. Another student, Mikael, stressed that he had chosen to narrow down his research and exclude questions that would lead him too far afield into other subject areas. He argued that too wide a research question could not be handled in a doctoral research project.The field of environmental research evoked thoughts about identity and feelings of uncertainty. Elisabeth discussed the fact the her background was in civil engineering and that civil engineers traditionally had not engaged in the kind of environmental research that she was now conducting. Sofia, on the other hand, was not a civil engineer and was worried that her natural science background would pose problems. However, she stated that any student entering her research field and having to learn a new subject, in her case macroeconomics, would have been confronted with the same difficulties regardless of whether their backgrounds were in civil engineering or natural science.In working on her thesis, Elisabeth had come to realise that she and the Hydropower Company that had given her the assignment interpreted the concept of \"sustainability\" in different ways. She also discussed the fact that she had personal beliefs and values about the issues she was writing about and was worried that these would influence her research in an inappropriate way.\nComparison of the results in the three case studies: Contextualisations and differentiation\nDiscussion: The findings raise the question of how affects can influence the learning process, and the students' possibilities of differentiating between various conceptual frameworks. In relation to research on cognitive development as a process of conceptual change where the student abandons conceptions due to \"dissatisfaction\" (Posner et al., 1982, p. 214) and finds new conceptions \"intelligible\" and \"plausible\" (Posner et al., 1982, p. 214), it can be questioned if learning is such a rational and intellectual process. If we consider an intentional perspective when looking at learners and learning we can perhaps better understand the rationale and logic of their way of reasoning and understanding environmental issues.The results can be discussed in relation to educational practice and the content, as well as the purpose, of environmental education. If environmental education can raise these kinds of moral and ethical conceptions concerning nature and man's behaviour, as well as judgements about companies, ethics or discussions concerning values should be part of the curriculum or in some way highlighted and recognised. Perhaps the engineering students would have benefited from a discussion on different ethical perspectives on nature as well as the ethics of professional engineers and possible dilemmas they will meet in their future career. Furthermore, the students' focus on solving and finding solutions to environmental problems is an issue to consider in education. Whether the content includes aspects of the ways in which environmental problems are dealt with in society or not, this focus of interest will probably affect the learning process.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - To present results from a research project on postgraduate and undergraduate students' learning about environmental issues in education.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - Three cases were carried out with civil engineering students, biology students and postgraduate students. Discussions in classroom were tape-recorded, as well as discussions while working with assignments, and interviews were carried out.\nFindings: - Shows how differently environmental issues can be interpreted, i.e. scientifically, existentially and politically, and the way values and emotions become an aspect of the learning process and reveal the students' difficulties in differentiating between values and descriptions of phenomena. This is analysed and explained in relation to the students' various projects that come into conflict in the educational setting.\nPractical implications: - The paper can be of use to those who are engaged in environmental education and raises questions regarding the content of today's environmental education.\nOriginality/value: - Gives an insight into students' learning processes and experiences in environmental education and the difficulties they can experience when studying such a subject.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
Improving ITIL compliance using change management practices: a finance sector case study
|
[
"Information technology",
"Service management",
"Information technology infrastructure library",
"Organizational change management",
"Organizational change",
"Change management"
] |
[
{
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n1 Introduction: Service firms are searching for ways to deliver higher levels of information technology (IT) service as well as demanding more from their information systems (IS) groups, expecting quick responses to new business opportunities, to support critical processes efficiently and to satisfy their customers and internal staff. Hence there is a growing interest in adopting IT service management (ITSM) and best practices such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) (Galup et al., 2009).ITSM is defined as \"the implementation and management of Quality IT Services that meet the needs of the business\" (ITIL, 2007). ITSM is a discipline for managing IT service operations, which is process orientated, sharing this theme with other quality improvement methods and as such it is different from traditional technology-oriented approaches due to its focus on customer relationships (Galup et al., 2009). A main benefit reported by ITSM adopters is an increase in customer satisfaction (Cater-Steel et al., 2009). ITSM concepts are often implemented through the ITIL framework; a sector specific quality and best practice guide on the management of information technologies (Iden, 2012). The operational benefits expected from ITIL implementations are the alignment of IT services with business needs, improved quality of the IT services themselves, and a reduction in the long term costs of service provision (McNaughton et al., 2010).One of the main challenges faced by companies during the adoption of ITIL is the organizational change required to attain a service-oriented culture (Cater-Steel et al., 2007; Spafford and Holup, 2010). Various practices to facilitate organizational change are proposed in the academic and professional literature (Buchanan et al., 2005; Kanter, 2001; Kerber, 2001; Kotter, 1995; Spafford and Holup, 2010), and most of this literature argues that the use of change management practices (CMPs) has a positive effect on the speed and quality of the change process and on results for the organization. Nevertheless, there is little published in terms of these practices as they relate to ITIL implementations.Therefore, this paper presents the findings of a multiple case study investigation, which examines the experience of four Peruvian financial companies implementing the ITIL framework. The cases offer insight into how the organizational change management processes supported the ITIL implementation and identifies which organizational CMPs were more frequently used.The paper is organized as follows; next Section 2 introduces the ITIL framework, followed by Section 3, a review of the literature on CMPs concluding with the study's research questions. Section 4 provides details of the methodology used. Section 5 provides the case profiles, the findings and the cross-case analysis. Finally, the conclusion sums up the findings, presents the studies limitations and offers a direction for future research.\n2 Information technology infrastructure library: ITIL is a framework that describes best practices and provides guidance on the management of IT processes, functions, roles and responsibilities in ITSM. It was first developed in the 1980s by the UK Government agency, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in response to the government's growing dependence on information technologies (Galup et al., 2009), to promote efficient IT operations and to improve IT service delivery and operations within government controlled computing centers (Salle, 2004).Version one of ITIL consisted of 40 volumes covering \"best practices\" in different areas of IT service provision. In 2000, ITIL version one was replaced by the seven volume ITIL version two (ITILv2) consolidating the practices within an overall framework. The two primary components of ITILv2 are service delivery and service support which consist of ten core processes and the service desk function (Table I).In 2007, ITILv2 was further enhanced to become ITIL version three (ITILv3), now consisting of five volumes: strategy, design, transition, operation and continuous improvement, which extend the ITILv2 model and processes by organizing them around a service lifecycle model.2.1 ITIL adoption and implementation\n3 Organizational CMPs: Kerber (2001) identifies three approaches used in organizations to enact organizational change:1. Direct change, which is motivated from senior management, wielded by authority and achieved through compliance.2. Planned change, which originates from any level in the organization but is managed through the top management layer and that seeks the commitment and involvement of the organization through CMPs that mitigate resistance.3. Guided change, arising from the within the organization and the through commitment and the contribution of staff toward the organizational objectives.Kerber and Buono (2005) argue that the effectiveness of the approach to the management of change depends on contextual variables such as:* the complexity of the business environment;* socio-technical uncertainty of the tasks or problems;* the ability to change the organization; and* the risks associated with the alternatives of not changing or changing slowly.Other factors may add complexity to the management of change, for example the cultural context (Martinsons et al., 2009) and the interaction between different agents of change namely; senior management, middle management, external consultants and work teams who have different experiences and perspectives (Caldwell, 2003; Choi et al., 2011). On the other hand, management support is considered key to the success of organizational change (Abraham et al., 1999; Spafford and Holup, 2010), as is the allocation of adequate resources (Becker, 2010). Although, following a change program is not a guarantee of successful outcomes (Choi et al., 2011).Kotter (2007) presents a set of eight sequential CMPs that allow for successful organizational change. Kotter's approach is well known and has been applied frequently (Aiken and Keller, 2009; Smith, 2011) (Table II).CMPs are commonly proposed in temporal sequences such as preparation, implementation and consolidation (Raineri, 2011). Research has found that change agents show a preference for CMPs related to the preparation stage because; it is easier to prevent errors in early stages, which lessens implementation failure at later stages (Holt et al., 2007); they have the ability to place more resources at the beginning of a change project (Raineri, 2011) and; the preparation stage requires more analytical skills of which managers tend to have more training in, compared with the more political and interpersonal skills required in the later stages of implementation (Shipper, 1999). Similarly, Raineri (2011) found a higher frequency of preparation practices in comparison with the implementation stage and that the use of CMPs has a significant impact on objectives and deadlines achievement. Abraham et al. (1999) found that the key factor in achieving change towards a culture of quality is top management support, with the lesser factors of the clarity of vision, participation, communication and appropriate resources. Becker (2010) found that the understanding the need for change, the level of organizational support and training, measuring the change, the positive experience and informal support, a history of organizational changes and the outlook previous expectations and individual feelings are factors that influence adoption.Considering the lack of focused research on ITIL implementation and managed change it would seem useful to investigate this phenomenon by studying firms that have implemented the ITIL framework and assess which organizational CMPs more frequently used and whether their influence on the ITIL implementation outcomes can be observed. Therefore, two research questions were formulated for this study:RQ1. How did financial companies in Peru that have implemented the ITIL framework use organizational CMPs?RQ2. How are the levels of ITIL compliance achieved by financial companies in Peru influenced by the CMPs that were used?\n4 Research method: The study employed the multiple-case design method proposed by Yin (2009) as the principal method to gather data to answer the research questions. The case study is an appropriate research method to analyze a phenomenon in its natural environment when the researcher has no influence over events and when the context is considered relevant (Benbasat et al., 1987; Yin, 2009). The case study methodology allows for in-depth questioning and the capture of important aspects of the complexity of an organization. But it is recognized that the conclusions of an investigation by the case study method can be limited, with the generalization of the findings being a common criticism (Gable, 2010; Lee, 1989). However, the problems of validity and generalisability can be addressed by using competent research methodologies (Meredith, 1998; Eisenhardt, 1989).The case study method was considered appropriate for this study as it allowed the phenomenon, the ITIL implementation, to be studied in its natural setting (Meredith, 1998), to have questions of the \"how and why\" type posed and answered (Yin, 2009) and it is an appropriate methodology for studying new topic areas (Eisenhardt, 1989). The design of the investigation involved four sites each studied in depth using multiple data sources and a range of collection methods (Eisenhardt, 1989).A single industry was selected for the study, in order to control the influence of contexts and for different environments and resource availabilities across industries. Four companies from the Peruvian financial sector that had implemented the ITIL framework were identified. The focus of this study is on the ITILv2 implementation for while the ITILv3 * was recently released, ITIL v2 is still the most commonly used (Pollard and Cater-Steel, 2009). The four companies had each implemented the 11 processes of ITILv2 and in all the cases, the ITIL implementation projects were supported by management and had been allocated sufficient of resources for completion.Data regarding the implementation were collected through separate, semi-structured interviews with various staff involved in the project including, top management, operations and IT managers and users of the IT services. Confirmatory data were gathered through secondary sources such as internal documents and progress reports.Through a review of the literature on research related to ITIL adoption and practice of organizational change management a list of questions based on the change management framework of Kotter (2007) was developed. The survey instrument was developed in the Spanish language by native Spanish speakers and all of the respondents speak and write in Spanish as a normal part of their work. The interviewees were given the set of open-ended questions about their strategy, motivations, problems and use CMPs used during the ITIL implementation, before the interview. During the interview, a discussion following the question format was initiated with the answers to these questions recorded digitally with additional notes taken by the researchers. Raineri (2011) found a likely bias from interviewees who were also project implementers that they would be more inclined to say they had used CMPs. Therefore, to reduce this bias the data were corroborated with other participants of the ITIL implementation.The interviews were transcribed verbatim and underwent content analysis. Responses were coded against the question structure and stages of CMPs implementation following the seven steps allowing the researchers to gauge CMP usage for each case. To guard against bias in the data analysis, each interview transcript was content analyzed twice to verify the results. Each case was then written up and subjected to a cross-case analysis, identifying the similarities and noting differences in themes and patterns across the cases.To determine the level ITIL compliance the researchers selected the itSMF self-assessment tool (itSMF, 2003). The itSMF instrument compares an organizations performance with the ITIL best practices, assessing the level of compliance with the ITIL processes, producing its results based on a framework of capabilities through a five point scale (McNaughton et al., 2010). Case firm IT managers were each given an itSMF questionnaire to complete. The questionnaire results provided each case with a score, between 0 and 5 for each of the ITIL core component's compliance to best practice, enabling case comparison.\n5 Results: 5.1 Case profiles\n6 Discussion and conclusions: This study aimed to investigate the importance of applying managed change as part of an ITIL implementation. To this end four Peruvian financial sector firms were chosen as cases and a multi case study investigation was undertaken. The study undertook to ascertain which CMPs were being used and their level of influence on ITIL compliance.This study finds that not all firms take full advantage of CMPs while implementing the ITIL framework. The cases showed that higher levels of CMPs achieved higher levels of ITIL implementation compliance. This result suggests that the use of CMPs has a positive impact on the outcomes of ITIL implementations. It was also found that the firms that used less CMPs reported the resistance to change during the implementation. However, it important not to discount that the higher scoring firms may have had valuable or rare resources and competencies which they utilized in times of change giving them an advantage over others (Barney, 1991).The case studies also demonstrate that more change practices related to preparation and fewer change practices related to implementation and consolidation were used during the ITIL implementation process. This result may be attributable to institutional strengths of the firm, for as case D showed, it seemed to have institutional policies and practices that supported the ITIL implementation across all of its phases, and case B seemingly having the least commitment in terms of resource allocation, sustainable change and staff involvement. Likewise, the participation of an external consultant during the adoption of ITIL may favor the more frequent use of practices related to all three change stages (Pollard and Cater-Steel, 2009) allowing those firms that used consultants to use more CMPs. In addition, the choice of implementation methodology may contribute to some practices being more evident than others. All of the four case studies presented applied a phased implementations; a strategy, which favors the use of the change practice the \"generation of short-term results\".The main limitation of this study is the small number of cases analyzed, so the findings should be viewed with caution. The cases support the theory that managed change assists the implementation of ITIL processes. However, it was undertaken in a single industry, which tends to have homogenous processes and systems and the firms were all of a similar size. However, when examining cases of different size, system processes and industries divergent results may be produced, but these results are necessary to properly extend the case theory in question (Meredith, 1998). Future research may wish to extend the themes of this paper to design and undertake research on which CMPs provide the most impact to the levels of ITIL compliance using a suitable quantitative research instrument and method.In conclusion this paper makes three contributions. First it provides an exploratory study of the links between ITIL implementations and the use of CMPs. Second in terms of results it provides evidence of a link between ITIL implementation and managed change, which is important information for practitioners who may be planning future ITIL projects. Finally, this study adds to the literature of ITIL implementations, particularly with respect to organizational change.\n",
"role": "user"
},
{
"content": "Purpose: - Although various practices to facilitate organizational change are proposed in the literature, very little is known about how these practices impact on ITIL adoptions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to address this gap in the literature by offering insights on how change management practices impact on levels of ITIL compliance.\nDesign/methodology/approach: - This exploratory research reports on four case studies of completed implementations of IT service management using the process - based ITILv2 framework. The firms studied are from the Peruvian financial sector. Data were gained primarily through semi-structured in-depth interviews with managers involved in the implementation process. Compliance was measured using the itSMF self assessment questionnaire, which assesses the overall process capability.\nFindings: - This study finds that not all of the case firms took full advantage of change management practices while implementing the ITIL framework. The results show that the firms with a higher use of change management practices achieved higher levels of ITIL compliance. Additionally, change practices related to change preparation were used more frequently and fewer practices related to the implementation and consolidation stages were reported.\nOriginality/value: - Few studies have examined change management practices in the context of ITIL implementation projects. This study also uses the levels of ITIL compliance as an outcome measure.\n",
"role": "assistant"
}
] |
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
structured_paper_summarization
A 151 k‑example dataset of chat‐style prompt → structured abstract pairs, built from ~19 000 research papers across business, management, information‑systems and social‑science domains. Each example shows the full paper (body text) being summarised into a five‑section Emerald‑style structured abstract (Purpose, Design/methodology/approach, Findings, Practical implications, Originality/value).
Why this dataset?
Large‑language models (LLMs) frequently struggle to:
- Condense long scientific prose into factual, concise summaries.
- Follow rigid output structures (e.g. subsection headings).
This dataset targets both challenges simultaneously, enabling fine‑tuning or instruction‑tuning of LLMs that must output structured scholarly abstracts.
At a glance
| Split | Rows | Size (compressed) |
|---|---|---|
| train | 145 067 | 626 MB |
| test | 6 650 | 29 MB |
| Total | 151 717 | ≈655 MB |
Counts taken from the Hugging Face viewer on 2025‑04‑29.
Data schema
{
title: string # Paper title
keywords: list[string] # Author‑supplied keywords (0‑23)
messages: list[dict] length ≥ 2 # ChatML‑style conversation
}
messages format
Each list contains alternating dictionaries with:
role: either"user"or"assistant".content: UTF‑8 text.
Typical pattern (2 items):
[
{
"role": "user",
"content": "Summarize the following paper into structured abstract.\n\n<full paper text>"
},
{
"role": "assistant",
"content": "Purpose: …\nDesign/methodology/approach: …\nFindings: …\nPractical implications: …\nOriginality/value: …"
}
]
Some papers are longer and may be truncated to ~8 k tokens.
Loading the data
from datasets import load_dataset
ds_train = load_dataset(
"Neooooo/structured_paper_summarization", split="train"
)
print(ds_train[0]["messages"][1]["content"][:500])
The dataset is stored as Apache Parquet with streaming support; the example above requires ~5 s to start iterating with no local download.
Suggested use‑cases
- Instruction‑tuning chat LLMs for long‑document summarisation.
- Research on controlled text generation and output formatting.
- Training retrieval‑augmented systems that must cite sections of the source paper.
Source & construction
- Full‑text articles were collected via institutional access to the Emerald Insight corpus (open‑access + subscription).
- The canonical structured abstract supplied by each journal was extracted as ground truth.
- The article’s main body was embedded into a prompt of the form shown above.
- Data were converted to Hugging Face
datasets➜ auto‑parquet.
No additional manual cleaning was performed; typos and OCR artefacts may persist.
Licensing & acceptable use
The article texts are copyright their original publishers/authors and are redistributed here solely for non‑commercial research. By using this dataset you agree to:
- Not redistribute the raw paper texts.
- Cite the original articles in any derivative work.
- Abide by Emerald’s usage policy and your local copyright laws.
The metadata & structured abstracts are released under CC BY‑NC 4.0. For commercial licensing, please contact the original rights‑holders.
Citation
If you use this dataset, please cite:
@dataset{hu_2025_structured_prompts,
author = {Xingyu Hu},
title = {structured_paper_summarization},
year = 2025,
url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/Neooooo/structured_paper_summarization},
note = {Version 1.0}
}
Contributions
Feel free to open PRs to:
- Fix metadata errors.
- Provide additional splits (validation, domain‑specific subsets).
- Add scripts for evaluation or preprocessing.
Happy summarising!
- Downloads last month
- 51