Search results

Recognizing the magnitude of disruption the pandemic caused for academic libraries, this study considers past collection development approaches considering a new post-pandemic landscape. It questions tried-and-true best practices held at our institution for decades with the purpose of seeking clarity and a way forward. Through this collection development self-study, our goal is to identify a new collecting model that meets our students “just-in-time” information needs while also maintaining fiscal responsibility. Our hope is that other institutions of similar size and purpose can apply these new models in their collections.

This study utilizes collection analysis data obtained through the Bowker Book Analysis System (BBAS) to compare our existing collection against Resources for College Libraries (RCL) in addition to EZProxy Analytics and existing circulation data. The qualitative data helped inform conversations among the librarians with collection development responsibilities and sparked conversations and decisions on how to best move forward to rightsize a print collection.

Informed by data from the Bowker Book Analysis System, this article discusses a new approach to collection development which includes a focus on leasing books, rethinking when to permanently add a print title to our physical collection, and the expanded use of demand-driven acquisitions (DDA) to offer students the largest possible access to research.

While the library and information science literature include discussions of collection analysis, the originality of this proposed article is the focus on a collection analysis post-pandemic in a community college environment with new approaches to building a collection with limited financial resources.

While the monetary returns to education are well documented in the economics literature, the studies on non-monetary returns to education are scarce. The purpose of this study is to provide new insights into the non-market outcomes by exploring how education influences the food consumption choices of households and how these effects vary across different socio-economic groups using household-level calorie consumption data from Sri Lanka.

This study uses two waves of Household Income and Expenditure Surveys – 2006/2007 and 2016. The methods adopted in analysing the data were descriptive statistics and the OLS regression model.

The empirical results show that educated poor households pay less per calorie compared to non-educated poor households, highlighting the role of education in improving the ability to make better food choices and manage household budgets more economically.

This study informs policy-makers of the importance of education for formulating food and nutritional policies, which aim to raise the standard of living of resource-poor and vulnerable households in Sri Lanka as well as other developing countries with similar socio-economic conditions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of education on the calorie consumption behaviour of people in the Sri Lankan context using nationwide household surveys.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0007

The 3DCastleBenchy has been developed to facilitate wider adoption and use of additive manufacturing benchmarking artefacts which encourage both technical and non-technical users and designers to connect the growing number of technologies available. This tool will help people working with additive manufacturing to gain understanding of the limitations and design rules for each process.

Benchmarking is of critical importance for additive manufacturing, allowing for comparisons between technology capability, process optimisation and design guidelines. This work presents the 3DCastleBenchy, a design which balances aesthetic appeal and specific, measurable features which can be used for comparing various additive manufacturing processes.

The benchmark design was fabricated with three fundamentally different metal additive processes, laser-directed energy deposition (L-DED), laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) and metal extrusion (MEX). These resulting parts were then analysed, thereby allowing common defects and limitations of each process to be identified, namely, the overhang limitations of traditional L-DED, the cracking that can occur in L-PBF and the deposition tool path artefacts present in MEX.

Existing benchmarks typically focus on either tolerance engineering features, or they are purely artistic/demonstrative pieces. The 3DCastleBenchy has been designed to find a balance between these objectives to facilitate communication of design for additive manufacturing concepts.

This paper examines the relationship between a prime contractor's financial health and its mergers and acquisitions (M&A) spending in the defense industry. It aims to provide models that give the United States Department of Defense (DoD) indications of future M&A activity, informing decision-makers and contributing to ensuring competitive markets that benefit the consumer.

The study uses panel data regression models on 40 companies between 1985 and 2021. The company's financial health is assessed using industry-standard financial ratios (i.e. measures of profitability, efficiency, solvency and liquidity) while controlling for economic factors such as national productivity, defense budgets and firm size.

The results show a significant relationship between efficiency and M&A spending, indicating that companies with lower efficiency tend to spend more on M&As. However, there was no significant relationship between M&A spending and a company's profitability or solvency. These results were consistent with previous research and the study's hypotheses for profitability and solvency. However, the effect of liquidity was the opposite of the expected result, possibly due to the defense industry's different view on liquidity compared to previous research.

The paper provides insights into the relationship between a prime contractor's financial health and its M&A spending, a topic with limited research. The findings can inform policymakers and regulators on the industrial base's future M&A activity, ensuring competitive markets that benefit the consumer.

The purpose of this paper is to chronicle a major curricular change initiative involving BBA and MBA core program reviews and revisions at an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)-accredited College of Business. The authors provide rationales for the change effort that likely mirror those of similar institutions. Kotter’s 8 steps for transforming organizations (1995) are overlaid with the sequence of actions taken by the key change agents. Several examples of specific changes are provided to illustrate how the initiative was planned and completed, aligned with Kotter’s 8 steps.

This paper reports a case study of action research conducted during an extensive curricular change intervention undertaken at the focal institution. It includes details regarding how key change agents collected data to support the initiative, including conducting a survey, meeting with stakeholder groups and collecting information about other institutions.

The curricular review and revision process is challenging but navigable with a clear plan. Kotter’s 8 steps provide a solid foundation for such initiatives that can be tailored to the desired outcome(s) and the context within which the change is being pursued. Key takeaways and recommendations are interwoven within the narrative, intending to guide ambitious readers through a similar curricular change process with greater efficiency and effectiveness.

This paper is unique in its focus on a major curricular change initiative within an AACSB-accredited College of Business. It goes a step beyond a typical narrative case study by incorporating action research grounded in Kotter’s well-supported change management paradigm. As such, this paper represents a unique contribution to the literature.

This study aims to examine the influence of board gender diversity on audit quality demand, considering auditor choice and audit efforts within the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries. It further examines the role of political connections and the impact of gender equality policy initiatives on this relationship.

Fixed-effects regression models are employed in a sample of 1,822 firm-year observations for financial firms across the GCC from 2011–2022 to test the hypotheses. Moreover, the two-stage-least-squares and the propensity score matching methods are used for sensitivity analysis.

The study shows a negative relationship between board gender diversity and the demand for audit quality, reflected auditor choice and audit efforts. However, the study shows a positive association between firm’s political connections and audit quality demand, which is more pronounced in gender-diverse boards. Policy initiatives for gender equality show no significant effect on the relationship between board gender diversity and audit quality demand.

The results inform governments, policy-makers, regulatory authorities and corporations by providing new evidence on the relationship between board gender diversity and the demand for audit quality, as well as the moderating role of political connections and policy initiatives in this relationship. To promote the meaningful participation of female directors in board decision-making, the findings indicate that gender stereotypes, both explicit and implicit, that can hinder female directors’ influence in board decision-making need to be addressed. Second, the study underscores for governments, policy-makers regulatory authorities and corporations that the mere appointment of female directors does not necessarily ensure their engagement in board decision-making. The appointment of female directors should go beyond symbolism and translate into meaningful engagement and influence with the board.

This study contributes to the corporate governance literature by offering new insights on the link between board gender diversity and the demand for audit quality. Beyond confirming a negative relationship between board gender diversity and the demand for quality audit, this study provides new insights on the moderating role of a firm’s political connections on this relationship. In addition, existing studies are primarily based on firms in Western countries and cannot be generalized due to differences in governance and legal structures. Given that the GCC countries have different cultures, economies, institutions, governance practices and norms compared to developed and emerging countries, our study offers a pertinent discussion on the relationship between board gender diversity and the demand for audit quality, as well as the moderating role of political connections in this relationship in the GCC countries.

Proposing a strengths-based perspective for innovative work behaviour (IWB), the purpose of this paper is to explore character strengths (CS) as antecedents to IWB. Extending the literature and operating in the framework of positive organisational behaviour, this paper considers creative self-efficacy a crucial link between CS and IWB. The role of growth mindset and learning organisation in facilitating IWB, presented as a conceptual model, contributes to the theory in this field, aiding in developing an overarching theory to understand IWB.

A narrative literature review was performed on the CS, IWB and positive organisational behaviour literature to adapt theories and develop propositions for the conceptual model.

This paper develops a conceptual framework proposing direct relationships between CS and IWB. This study posits creative self-efficacy (CSE) as the mediator between this relationship and growth mindset, learning organisation as the moderators for the link between CS and CSE and CSE and IWB.

The paper presents a conceptual framework focusing on the positive personality traits of employees, precisely their CS. This study explores how leveraging these strengths can enhance their capacity for IWB. The suggested model also prompts additional research in understanding IWB.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the conceptual framework proposed is the first to explore the diverse individual differences factors and the role of contextual facilitation in enhancing employees’ IWB. This study contributes to the growing field of positive organisational behaviour and assists HR managers in tapping into employees’ internal resources. This paper’s theoretical and practical discourse can inspire future research and encourage a strengths-based view of workplace processes.

This study aims to break through the limitations of previous studies that have focused too much on the individual-level effects of humble leadership. Based on the affective events theory (AET), this study provides to construct an individual-team multilevel model of humble leadership focusing on the followers’ affective reaction and attribution of intentionality.

On the basis of subordinates’ attribution of humble leadership, it is believed that there are actually two motivations for humble leadership: true intention (serve the organizational collective interest) and pseudo intention (serve the leader’s self-interest), to which subordinates have different affective reactions, causing different leadership effectiveness. Thus, this study conducted an extensive review based on the qualitative method and proposed an integrated multilevel model of leader humility on individual and team outputs.

Followers’ attribution of intentionality moderates the relationship between humble leadership and followers’ affective reaction, which also determines followers’ performance (task performance, interpersonal deviant behavior and leader–member exchange); the interaction between team leaders’ humble leadership and collective attribution of intentionality influences team outputs (team outputs, organizational deviant behavior and team–member exchange) through team affective reaction; team humble leadership affects individual outputs through affective reaction and team affective climate plays a moderating role between affective reaction and individual outputs.

This study explores the individual-team multilevel outputs of humble leadership based on the AET theory, which is relatively rare in the current field. This study attempts to incorporate leaders’ motivation (such as attributions of intentionality) into the humble leadership research, by confirming that humble leadership affects affective reaction, which further influences individual-team multilevel outputs.