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The goal of the research was to check whether the sender communicating in an ambiguous manner can gain the benefits in three aspects: perception of his or her image, evoking agreement with issue stand and intention to support him or her in the election. Impact of ambiguous messages was compared with the impact of messages consistent or inconsistent with participants' opinions.

Two experiments were conducted. Participants were randomly divided into three groups and each of them was presented with (1) a message supporting or (2) opposing given proposition or (3) an ambiguous message not revealing the ultimate opinion of the sender. Participants' initial views on the issues were measured. In experiment 1 an expert message concerned the building of the nuclear power plant was presented. In experiment 2 it was a politician's message about introducing the guaranteed number of parliamentary seats for women.

The results suggest that a strategy of argumentative ambiguity applied by senders may be beneficial if the point is to avoid recipients' objections. However, the consequences of ambiguity for the evaluation of sender's credibility and voters' intentions can be seen to be negative.

This research was looking for the reconcile of the contradictory results of previous research, which may have their source in the various operationalization of ambiguity. It was focused at an argumentative ambiguity (i.e. presenting different points of view without declaring support for any of the options).

For change initiatives to succeed, change managers are required to address recipients’ needs. Although strategies to deal with change recipients and their resistance are widely explored, there is a dearth of studies that consider the different salience of change recipients. This paper aims to propose a framework on the effects of participation and coercion as strategies to deal with change recipients and their impact on change derailment.

Conceptual based upon that change recipients are classified into three levels according to their salience in relation to change. Based upon the recipients’ power and legitimacy in relation to change, stakeholder salience theory constitutes a theoretical provision used in this research to categorize the salience of change recipients.

The framework integrates change recipients’ salience levels (i.e. definitive, expectant and latent) and the effects of participation and coercion strategies on change derailment in times of organizational re-creation. The paper develops six hypotheses, which yield insights that advance the understanding of dealing with change recipients in the context of organizational re-creation.

The paper is conceptual and not yet tested empirically. To empirically test the framework, research adopting survey methodology to gather data from organizations that experience a re-creation change as defined in this paper. The unit of analysis for future research is described in this paper and it is how organizational re-creation is defined in this paper.

Stakeholder salience theory is used to develop a framework that combines three classes of change recipients’ salience, as well as the effects of two strategies to deal with them and their resistance (i.e. lack of involvement and coercion) to examine their influence on change derailment. The potential contribution will expand the current literature discussed in this paper about dealing with change recipients’ resistance to change.

Using Schein’s Descriptive Index (SDI), this paper aims to first examine gender role stereotypes and requisite managerial characteristics among Irish business students over a 10-year period. Then, the paper investigates whether there have been changes in gender role stereotypes during this period and subsequently unpack the reasons behind any changes recorded.

In total, 1,124 students from the same business student population rated men, women and managers in general, using SDI. Data was collected first during the academic year 2008–2009 and again in 2018–2019 to determine stability or change in gender role stereotypes and requisite managerial characteristics. Intraclass correlation coefficients scores were computed to determine the relationship between gender and requisite managerial characteristics and identify differences and similarities between the two samples. To explore the content of gender stereotypes, an examination of the specific descriptive items was conducted by performing a factorial analysis using Duncan’s Multiple Range Test. Finally, the authors adapted the scales developed by Duehr and Bono (2006) to determine whether broad gender stereotypic characteristics with respect to communal and agentic, attributed to men, women and managers, differ by sample.

The overall findings indicate changes in the extent of gender role stereotyping of the managerial role among the male cohorts studied. The subsequent analysis of the descriptive items identified that the change among the male cohort is due to the levels of agency they perceive women to now possess.

The authors contribute to the literature on both gendered and managerial stereotypes by showing changes in the pro-male stereotype of the managerial role and contribute to the existing debate on a shift towards a more androgynous view of leadership.

These findings help understand the content of gender role stereotypes that recent graduates bring with them to their first job post-graduation. The observed changes in the level of agency ascribed to women by their male counterparts could prove to be an important step forward for women’s advancement to managerial positions.

The findings indicate that both male and female cohorts in Sample 2 perceived men and women in general to possess the same levels of communal and agentic traits as their managerial counterparts.

This article deals with the impact of ethnic origin on individual employability, focussing on the first stage of the hiring process. Deeply, the authors’ goal is to fathom whether there is a preference for native job candidates over immigrants, decomposing the discrimination against minority groups into its statistical and taste-based components by means of a new approach.

The authors built up a data set by means of an ad hoc field experiment, conducted by sending equivalent fictitious CVs in response to 1000 real online job openings in Italy. The authors developed the discrimination decomposition index using first- and second-generation immigrants.

The authors’ main result is that both first- and second-generation immigrants are discriminated compared to Italians. In between the two categories, second-generation candidates are discriminated especially if their ethnicities are morphologically different from those of natives (i.e. Chinese and Moroccans). This last finding is a clear symptom of discrimination connected to taste-based reasons. On the other hand, first-generation immigrants of all nationalities but Germans are preferred for hard-work jobs.

The authors develop the discrimination decomposition index to measure the proportion of the two kinds of discrimination (statistical and taste-based) over the total one and apply a probit model to test the statistical significance of the difference in treatment between the three groups of natives, first-generation and second-generation immigrants.

Considerable research has shown the value of Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) regarding student engagement and motivation, depth of learning, and cognitive flexibility. Student collaboration is one component of this approach, since students must communicate and work together inside and outside of class time when engaging with an IBL project. Choosing a mobile learning tool can benefit student collaboration in so far as the tool enables anytime/anywhere collaborative learning. This study looked at how 118 Emirati undergraduate students in a government-sponsored university in the United Arab Emirates chose to collaborate in an IBL semester-long assignment. Unlike some approaches that dictate the technology selection to students (Barczyk & Duncan, 2013; Prescott, Wilson & Becket, 2013), in this project course instructors gave the students autonomy to choose the best mobile learning tools for their group. The study used a mixed-methods approach to collect data on which tools students perceived as best for IBL. Participants were surveyed three times about which tool they preferred for university work: a pre-project survey, a mid-project survey, and post-project survey. Results show that students changed their preferred tool to WhatsApp over the course of the semester. A focus group with each course section provided qualitative data as to why students preferred WhatsApp. The students also delivered poster presentations as to how WhatsApp helped them complete their community-based IBL projects. This study will show how WhatsApp can be a successful mobile learning tool for student collaboration in IBL.

The purpose of this paper is to increase knowledge of the role organizational factors have in how health personnel make efficiency-thoroughness trade-offs, and how these trade-offs potentially affect clinical quality dimensions.

The paper is a thematic synthesis of the literature concerning health personnel working in clinical, somatic healthcare services, organizational factors and clinical quality.

Identified organizational factors imposing trade-offs were high workload, time limits, inappropriate staffing and limited resources. The trade-offs done by health personnel were often trade-offs weighing thoroughness (e.g. providing extra handovers or working additional hours) in an environment weighing efficiency (e.g. ward routines of having one single handover and work-hour regulations limiting physicians' work hours). In this context, the health personnel functioned as regulators, balancing efficiency and thoroughness and ensuring patient safety and patient centeredness. However, sometimes organizational factors limited health personnel's flexibility in weighing these aspects, leading to breached medication rules, skipped opportunities for safety debriefings and patients being excluded from medication reviews.

Balancing resources and healthcare demands while maintaining healthcare quality is a large part of health personnel's daily work, and organizational factors are suspected to affect this balancing act. Yet, there is limited research on this subject. With the expected aging of the population and the subsequent pressure on healthcare services' resources, the balancing between efficiency and thoroughness will become crucial in handling increased healthcare demands, while maintaining high-quality care.

Drawing on information processing theory, the linkage between buffering and bridging and the ability on the part of procurement to resolve demand–supply imbalances is investigated, as well as contexts in which these strategies may be particularly useful or detrimental. Buffering may be achieved through demand change or redundancy, while bridging may be achieved by the means of collaboration or monitoring.

This study employs a hierarchical regression analysis of a survey of 150 Finnish and Swedish procurement and sales and operations planning professionals, each responding from the perspective of their own area of supply responsibility.

Both the demand change and redundancy varieties of buffering are associated with procurement's ability to resolve demand–supply imbalances without delivery disruptions, but not with cost-efficient resolution. Bridging is associated with the cost-efficient resolution of imbalances: while collaboration offers benefits, monitoring seems to make things worse. Dynamism diminishes, while the co-management of procurement in S&OP improves procurement's ability to resolve demand–supply imbalances. The most potent strategy for tackling problematic contexts appears to be buffering via demand change.

The results highlight the importance of procurement in the S&OP process and suggest tactical measures that can be taken to resolve and reduce the effects of supply and demand imbalances.

The results contribute to the procurement and S&OP literature by increasing knowledge regarding the role and integration of procurement to the crucial process of balancing demand and supply operations.

Justice perceptions describe an individual's evaluation of whether decisions or actions are fair or unfair. These perceptions are important because they affect individual attitudes and behaviors in different situations. Family firms develop and implement governance policies and structures (i.e., governance systems) to diminish the problems that can arise from the overlap between the business, the family, and the ownership systems of a firm. Governance systems help family firms have a clear structure of accountability and a clear understanding of the rights and responsibilities that family and non-family members have toward the family enterprise. Research on governance to date has focused on the practices and policies that exist and their effects on the family firm. However, in the governance context, individual perceptions are important because they are likely to affect the attitudes that family and other members have toward the family enterprise and the likelihood that they will follow the different policies when they are implemented. This chapter takes a receiver perspective to explain how individuals create justice perceptions based on governance mechanisms and the effects of these perceptions. The goal is to understand how we can use this information when developing governance practices in family firms.

The aim of this study was threefold: to examine companies' e-mail handling performance, to ascertain whether companies' view corporate websites and respond to e-mail requests as mutually exclusive or complementary, and finally to gauge the strategic importance of retail investors.

The findings are based on an analysis of the corporate websites and e-mail handling performance of the 77 smallest companies listed on a South African stock exchange. A “mystery investor” approach was employed to measure companies' e-mail handling performance in terms of responsiveness, timeliness and relevance of responses. A disclosure score was calculated for each company based on a content analysis of corporate websites.

The opportunity for improvement exists, as evidenced in the fact that only 53% of companies responded to an e-mail request from a retail investor. The results suggest that corporate websites and the e-mail functionality are not used in isolation but as complementary. Although the results suggest that companies neglect retail investors, companies that provided a dedicated investor relations (IR) contact address prioritised both their corporate websites aimed to a wide range of stakeholders, as well as responding to an e-mail request received from a retail investor.

This study contributes to research on the association between one-way and two-way communication channels, aimed at retail investors. It is the first study to explore these relationships using data from the smallest companies listed on the stock exchange of an emerging economy.

The purpose of this study is to develop a novel general mathematical model to find the optimal product mix of commercial graphite products, which has a complex production process with alternative sub-processes in the graphite mining production process.

The network optimization was adopted to model the complex graphite mining production process through the optimal allocation of raw graphite, byproducts, and saleable products with comparable sub-processes, which has different processing capacities and costs. The model was tested on a selected graphite manufacturing company, and the optimal graphite product mix was determined through the selection of the optimal production process. In addition, sensitivity and scenario analyses were carried out to accommodate uncertainties and to facilitate further managerial decisions.

The selected graphite mining company mines approximately 400 metric tons of raw graphite per month to produce ten types of graphite products. According to the optimum solution obtained, the company should produce only six graphite products to maximize its total profit. In addition, the study demonstrated how to reveal optimum managerial decisions based on optimum solutions.

This study has made a significant contribution to the graphite manufacturing industry by modeling the complex graphite mining production process with a network optimization technique that has yet to be addressed at this level of detail. The sensitivity and scenario analyses support for further managerial decisions.