Search results

This study aims to explore a specific case of the alleged mismatch between higher education and employability by investigating long-term work life outcomes for graduates from a small university college in Sweden, and the associations between these outcomes and the graduates’ social background, academic achievements and study approach in terms of labour market orientation and agency in studying.

The study is based on longitudinal data from initially 2,072 students from bachelor’s degree programmes in 2007–2012. They were surveyed continuously throughout the programmes and then in 2020. Classification and regression tree (CRT) analyses were conducted to identify which subgroups within the population based on the independent variables (e.g. students’ background and study orientation) that were associated with the dependent variables (work life outcomes).

Neither graduates’ social background nor their academic achievement and study approach was associated with employment rate or income. Some dimensions of high labour market orientation and agency in studying were positively associated with holding a senior position at work. Several aspects of high levels of agency and labour market orientation were positively associated with subjective work life outcomes, such as for example perceived mastery of work.

This study contributes to further understanding of alleged mismatches between higher education and employability by using longitudinal data from a university college in a country with low graduate unemployment rates and low earnings dispersions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of value co-creation in complex value networks with many actors. Electronic health records (EHRs) are innovations that warrant deep study to properly introduce such a complex system.

The paper describes a qualitative study based on Grounded Theory to understand value co-creation from multiple actors’ perspectives in a National EHR Service Project: the Portuguese Health Data Platform.

Study results enabled further development of the value co-creation concept in complex environments with multiple actors. More specifically they allowed: operationalizing the value co-creation concept by identifying its factors and outcomes, understanding how value co-creation factors and outcomes are interconnected, and understanding of how value co-creation for each actor depends on his/her own actions and the actions of other actors, in a complex set of interactions and interdependencies.

The findings have implications for service managers seeking to understand how actors participating in the network integrate resources and interact to co-create value. The study highlights the need for designing and managing services to co-create value, not only by enabling dyadic interactions between the customer and the service provider, but also by supporting and enabling value co-creation interactions among different actors in the network.

This study responds to the need for empirical research on value co-creation in many-to-many contexts and for operationalizing the value co-creation concept.

Background Whether termed intellectual capital, knowledge management, or something else, the practice of managing an institution's knowledge base has received increasing attention in recent years. After some of the highly publicized downsizings of the late eighties and early nineties, a number of organizations discovered that an enormous amount of institutional memory and unique knowledge was walking out the door with exiting employees. Further, the nineties have seen tremendous growth in firms with few assets besides what is between the ears of some of their key people. Both trends have focused managers on knowledge as an asset of the firm, to be developed and managed in the same manner as more traditional assets.

Media play a significant role in the process of raising public awareness about autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite an increase in ASD media coverage, there is scarcity of research that examines how the actual frame is constructed and how the news stories are narrated. This study aims to examine the extent to which Finnish print media papers extend medical and societal narration of ASD to other issue domains and the extent to which newspaper stories use a positive, negative or neutral narrative.

The authors analyzed 210 full newspaper reports from the largest daily appearing newspaper by circulation in Finland from 1990 to 2016. The authors used the newspaper’s electronic database to conduct a systematic papers search. The authors then used coding scheme about news story framing, which was followed by a detailed content analysis of the papers.

Approximately two-thirds of the papers consisted of a straightforward informational or clinical lens to educate the public (n = 110). This is in line with international studies. However, the authors’ analysis revealed four additional themes of medical and societal ASD reporting.

The study increases understanding about how the media can shape the public perception of ASD, which in turn might influence how autistic individuals are accepted in the society, as well as how they feel that they belong.

While ASD itself is at the center of neutral news reporting, this study’s results imply how to construct ASD from new paradigms. Linking ASD to a culture, and thus extending it to the more commonly accepted notion of deafness as a culture, might shape the public’s perceptions about ASD.

In the present paper direct as well as indirect relationships between organizational changes and exposure to bullying at work are investigated. Interpersonal conflicts are hypothesized to mediate changes on bullying. Data from a sample of 2408 Norwegian employees confirmed that different organizational changes were moderately associated with task-related bullying at work, and that exposure to more changes increased the likelihood of being bullied. Structural equation modelling supported the assumption that changes were directly related to bullying. However, the hypothesis that changes were mediated on bullying through interpersonal conflicts was not supported. Results indicate that organizational changes and interpersonal conflicts are separate, and mainly independent, precursors of bullying at work.

Numerous data quality (DQ) definitions in the form of sets of DQ dimensions are found in the literature. The great differences across such DQ classifications (DQCs) imply a lack of clarity about what DQ is. For an improved foundation for future research, this paper aims to clarify the ways in which DQCs differ and provide guidelines for dealing with this variance.

A literature review identifies DQCs in conference and journal articles, which are analyzed to reveal the types of differences across these. On this basis, guidelines for future research are developed.

The literature review found 110 unique DQCs in journals and conference articles. The analysis of these articles identified seven distinct types of differences across DQCs. This gave rise to the development of seven guidelines for future DQ research.

By identifying differences across DQCs and providing a set of guidelines, this paper may promote that future research, to a greater extent, will converge around common understandings of DQ.

Awareness of the identified types of differences across DQCs may support managers when planning and conducting DQ improvement projects.

The literature review did not identify articles, which, based on systematic searches, identify and analyze existing DQCs. Thus, this paper provides new knowledge on the variance across DQCs, as well as guidelines for addressing this.

Almost everything consumers buy in a store has a package. At point of purchase, the first moment of truth, the package functions as a silent salesman. Once the purchase is made, the product is consumed in the second moment of truth. The purpose of this paper is to create a better understanding of how customers evaluate different aspects of the package in the first and second moments of truth.

An empirical investigation is conducted on how customers experience three different packages for everyday commodities in the first and second moments of truth. Causal modeling is used to analyze the impact of different benefits of a package onto customer satisfaction and loyalty.

It was found that both benefits and attributes can have different roles in affecting customer satisfaction and loyalty in different parts of the consumption cycle. Furthermore, the results show that there are significant differences for the impacts of customer satisfaction on loyalty in the first moment of truth compared to the second moment of truth.

By applying a consumption system approach, it is possible for managers to design a package that can attract customers in the first moment of truth and at the same time create customer satisfaction in the second moment of truth.

The research shows that the role of certain benefits and attributes can be different in the purchase and use situation. Previously, this has been modeled separately but by operationalizing the first and second moment of truth in the same model the true effects of various benefits and attributes can be identified.

In the Coen Brothers’ film, O Brother Where Are Thou?, set in depression‐era southern USA, one of the three convicts on the run is thrown out of a Woolworth’s shop and told never to come back. “Does this mean I’m banned from just this shop or all Woolworth’s?” Delmar, played by Tim Blake Nelson, worries. The joke reflects the affection that existed then, and does still, for a retailer that is seen by many people as being cheap and cheerful. However, loved or not “Woolies” is in crisis. When Trevor Bish‐Jones was appointed chief executive in March last year he took over a retailer facing huge problems.

In this paper I begin to answer the neglected question of “When to downsize?” Specifically, is downsizing and the associated reskilling of workforces an appropriate response to technological discontinuity? Based on past organizational literature written about technological discontinuity, downsizing, and reskilling, I develop a theoretical framework that indicates when downsizing following a technological discontinuity will increase organizational effectiveness. Propositions are developed based on this framework. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for managers and future researchers.