Search results

A task force at Rutgers University Libraries was charged with exploring ways to develop more effective liaison relations with teaching departments. As a preliminary step the working group surveyed Rutgers liaisons to identify preferred practices and to solicit comments on trends in liaisonship in academic libraries. Based on this survey, we examine changes in the information profession and how they have effected the reference and instruction that departmental liaisons provide to faculty and students. Particular emphasis is placed on the impact of the Internet. Generally, electronic resources have made faculty and students less reliant on liaisons for help with their research, while electronic communication, especially via e‐mail, has the potential to make liaisonship more efficient and effective. We offer a number of recommendations for effective liaisonship, including concise and purposeful e‐mail messages and making direct and personal contact with faculty and students whenever possible.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the need for libraries and rural community knowledge centers using appropriate technology.

A case study discussing new ideas.

An alternative to traditional libraries is proposed for the dissemination and teaching of agriculture, literacy, health information, etc.

The paper requires the development of prototypes and grant funding.

Although the article discusses Liberia, the information represents any rural community in developing countries where often electricity, libraries, and internet connectivity do not exist.

Rethinking existing ideas and creating new ones.

This article aims to summarize recent outreach efforts at The Washington State University Libraries. Taking outreach beyond the traditional library liaison relationship produced unexpected partnerships across campus with such diverse groups as New Student Programs and Residence Life.

The Library Instruction Department at Washington State University was looking for areas where expanded efforts would be most beneficial to the majority of its students. Connection was resumed with liaison areas, which had been previously established, to bring a focus to student needs. Offices centered on student life, such as Residence Life and New Student Programs, were the focal point of these efforts.

WSU's Library Instruction Department was welcomed as a partner program most everywhere it went. Consequently new areas of outreach have been established where none had existed previously and the library's reputation has been boosted campus‐wide.

Results include a more visible library presence across campus as well as opportunities for future collaborative relationships that bring research, education and university life together. Discussion of various programs and activities provide details about the challenges of making these connections and the rewards in making new contacts that publicize library services in non‐traditional means.

Because so much is on the web, marketing the academic library in a personalized manner has become increasingly important on a large university campus. Establishing alternative marketing strategies geared towards the primary student audience will help build relationships across campus and consequently bring students through the doors.

If ethical or legal mandates have failed to compel organizations to manage diversity in meaningful ways, competition has emerged as the new impetus to do so. A recent cover story in Nation's Business by Sharon Nelton, “Winning with Diversity,” outlines successful business experiences with a diverse workforce that responds more effectively to developments in the marketplace. Nelton reports that a 1992 survey of 578 companies indicated that over one‐third of the organizations polled felt that employees with multicultural communication skills were necessary for doing business in other nations and communicating with a diverse workforce.

Few areas of reference services seem to be as shrouded in fearful mystery as those of patent searching. For many librarians, the very word “patent” conjures up images of strange individuals with equally strange ideas. Some think of endless tedium in selecting from among incomprehensible classifications leading to huge lists of meaningless numbers. Still others are repelled by the notion that many inventors and patent searchers are seeking assistance with what may be expensive legal matters.

The changing reference environment and reference staffing have been the topic of several articles in the library literature, discussions at the American Library Association conferences and a recent conference offered twice by Library Solutions Inc. of Berkeley, California, entitled Rethinking Reference. Libraries are looking closely at the model at Brandeis University of eliminating the reference desk and replacing it with an information desk with research consultations with librarians taking place in an office. Larry Oberg urges librarians to stop thinking of the reference desk as a key reason for being a librarian. He contends that paraprofessionals can and do perform well at a reference desk, freeing librarians to concentrate on higher‐level tasks. These discussions and examples demonstrate a variety of solutions academic libraries have taken regarding the changing face of reference, and the evolving roles of reference librarians in moving towards the electronic library. The electronic library brings us new options and new opportunities and as a result librarians need to develop new ways of thinking and organizing reference services.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevant sayings and stories of the ancient Chinese sages in relation to the style of Chinese human resource management (HRM).

Related texts generated from the quotations and stories from four Chinese sages, Guanzi, Hanfeizi, Xunzi and Yanzi, were translated and analyzed and their thinking regarding ruling the state and managing the people was discussed in line with the thoughts from the mainstream and modern Western management gurus such as Warren Bennis, Peter Drucker, Mary Parker Follett, Douglas McGregor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Elton Mayo and Jeffrey Pfeffer.

It was found that there were striking similarities in thoughts and call for actions to address key issues in HRM by both old and contemporary, east and west thinkers across 2,500 years. The main concerns are to select the right leaders and managers and recruit the right people; create attractive organisational culture and environments that promote a participative management approach to encourage, empower and engage employees to achieve desirable outcomes; uphold the people‐centred management principles; and focus on designing reward schemes that emphasise service and contribution instead of position and profits.

There is much to be learned from the past to address the present people management issues among modern organisations both inside China and perhaps from other parts of the world. It was as difficult to take seriously the principles‐based ruling and management approaches in ancient times as it is today. However, if these principles had been put into practice, the world would have had fewer of the corporate corruption scandals and less of the mischievous behaviour in the state that are manifested in today's society, but more productive population, effective organisations, ethical governments and harmonious environment; hence less global human suffering.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate small business owner/manager’s exposure to unethical behavior, and to examine the influence of unethical exposure on organizational intention to implement ethical policies and practices.

Using a sample of 209 Australian small accounting firms with a path analysis, this paper adopts a modified ethical decision-making model to test the relationship between exposure and personal attitudes toward unethical behavior, and the relationship between exposure and intentions to implement ethical policies and practices at firm level.

The results show that increased exposure to unethical behavior triggered stronger personal attitudes with small accounting firm owners/managers tending toward accepting unethical behavior. In contrast, at the firm level, more exposure to unethical behavior creates cautious overtones and motivates owners/managers to take action and implement more ethical policies, with the underlying aim of addressing serious ethical issues.

The study tests the ethical decision-making model but focuses only on three constructs (i.e. exposure, attitude and response). The aim is to examine whether extensive exposure to unethical behavior would change personal attitudes toward accepting such behavior, and whether unethical exposure would trigger firm owner/managers to take action and address the ethical dilemma by establishing some ethical guidelines. Other important variables (such as subjective norm, personal locus of control) embedded in the ethical decision-making model should be included in future research.

The study draws attention to ethical dilemmas encountered by many small accounting professionals and their organizations. It addresses the importance of upholding the ethical standard and avoiding the extensive exposure to unethical behavior. It also emphasizes the needs for small businesses to establish some ethical policies and practices.

The paper is purposely set out to reduce the gap in studying how small accounting firms make decisions in implementing their ethical policies and practices to address the rampant ethical dilemma faced by their employees as a result of many corporate scandals and financial crises of the past decade. The results are particularly valuable for small accounting firm owners/managers. The findings also have educational and policy implications.

This study aims to investigate what motivates nurses who live in a rural region with many vacant positions to choose a longer commute to work in a more populous capital region.

A qualitative descriptive design was used for this study. Nineteen commuting nurses were recruited through purposeful and snowball sampling and interviewed over the telephone. The interviews were analyzed using a manifest and latent content analysis.

The findings showed how the participating nurses' motivations to work in the capital region far away from their home were grounded in reaching the unique opportunity for work as a part of the unique organizational conditions, the unique positions and the unique work environment. The analysis showed how the nurses believed in better possibilities for themselves regarding opportunities for careers, specialized positions, development and education, as well as a lower hierarchy in management.

Studies of commuting among nurses are sparsely investigated in the literature and especially through the lens of motivation. The few existing studies report on cross-sectional data, and to the authors’ knowledge, no studies have been investigated using a qualitative design. For future research, it would therefore be relevant to investigate nurses' motivation to commute to work in other countries in a larger sample and perhaps with larger commuting distances. This could contribute to a broader and more nuanced understanding of the factors that motivate nurses to commute long distances to work, not just nationally but also internationally.

The authors have conceptualized which factors most affect nurses' motivation to commute to work from a rural to more populous capital region in Figure 2. Here, the findings of the study are presented alongside the two theoretical perspectives used to frame the study. The figure can be used as a benchmark for organizational leaders who are interested in recruitment and retention of nurses, and in particular whether they are interested in the specific factors affecting nurses' motivation to commute to work. Based on the study findings, the authors suggest that rural hospital organizations can benefit from focusing on building their reputation and including what factors make them unique and desirable. However, this is a balancing act for organizational leaders, as they must deliver on promises made to nurses when they are engaged in recruitment. If they fail to do so, as indicated in the findings, nurses are likely to leave the organization for other job opportunities.

This study contributes to new knowledge on why nurses decide to commute to work from rural areas to more populated areas. Looking at the nurses' reasons and perspective for commuting, the authors must acknowledge the difficulties in retaining nurses in rural regions. From a recruitment and retention perspective, nurse employers in rural regions must increase their offerings of unique work opportunities, including maintaining competitive pay and offering career, development and educational opportunities.

Although humanoid robots are increasingly adopted in many business settings, the dynamic effects of anthropomorphism and the functional perceptions of service robots on consumers’ responses remain unclear. This paper aims to examine the impacts of robot anthropomorphism on consumers’ trust, receptivity and the downstream effect on satisfaction. Furthermore, it examines the mediating effects of perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU) in the relationship between anthropomorphism and consumer responses.

After conducting two separate pilot studies to help design the research materials, this research involves three sequential studies. In studies 1A and 1B, the authors used two distinct humanoid robots (i.e. Connie and Pepper) to test the direct effects of anthropomorphism on trust and receptivity and the mediated effects via PEOU and PU. Study 2 conducted a 2 (robot appearance: machine-like vs. human-like) × 2 (task complexity: low vs. high) between-subjects experimental design to further explore the boundary effects of task complexity on trust and customer satisfaction.

This research theorizes and empirically examines the mediating effects of PEOU and PU in the relationship between anthropomorphism and consumers’ responses (i.e. trust and receptivity) to service robots. Results also demonstrate a moderating role of task complexity, whereby only when the task was complex did anthropomorphism affect consumer responses and customer satisfaction. The parallel mediations of PEOU and PU were also confirmed. However, when task complexity was low, the authors observed no differences between human- and machine-like robots.

First, this research used a scenario-based method by exposing participants to different pictures or videos of service robots and measuring individuals’ responses. Consumers may respond differently upon interacting with robots in actual service contexts. Second, future research could investigate the effects of other aspects of anthropomorphism, such as robots’ voice characteristics (gender, high/low pitch), verbal communication styles and emotional expression. Finally, future research could explore other service contexts to test the generalizability of the findings.

Findings of this study also provide useful insight for companies interested in adopting service robots. First, the authors unearthed several positive outcomes of using human-like versus machine-like robots in service settings. Despite concerns about the perceived creepiness and discomfort associated with human-like robots, managers should not worry about these service agents’ potential negative effects. Second, it shows that human-like robots’ competitive advantage over machine-like robots stands out when task complexity is high. Managers should therefore carefully consider relevant service characteristics and task requirements when deciding whether to adopt robots.

This study provides original and valuable contributions to the growing literature on service robots by addressing scholarly incongruencies regarding the impact of anthropomorphism and disentangling its positive influence on consumers’ perceptions and acceptance of service robots. This study also contributes to research on technology acceptance and service robot receptivity by empirically demonstrating the mediating role of PEOU and PU. Furthermore, this research enriches the body of knowledge on task-technology fit by providing evidence that task complexity is a crucial factor to consider in service robot design.