Search results

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to offer a discussion on the role played by Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in enhancing financial inclusion. The central interest of the study is to place CBDC on the financial inclusion landscape and provide insights on potential opportunities and barriers in making CBDC a strong building block of financial inclusion, as well as the digital financial system.

Design/methodology/approach: This chapter is a conceptual work that builds on relevant literature. This study identifies and suggests potential aspects that can help in the adoption of CBDC as a tool for financial inclusion.

Findings: This chapter analyses opportunities, barriers, and concerns for CBDC in the context of financial inclusion and discusses how critical functions of blockchain technology can lead to the acceptance and adoption of CBDC. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated how CBDC can pave the way for financial inclusion and benefit the existing financial system taking more people from financial exclusion towards financial inclusion.

Originality/value: This is evident that CBDCs and financial inclusion need to be intertwined to support upcoming technological transformations happening in the digital financial ecosystem. Therefore, CBDCs must be viewed from varying lenses to understand the relevance of including CBDCs in the financial system can be expanded. Further, repercussions from the given framework are suggested.

At a time when societal issues of inequality and hidden privilege are consistently pervading our media channels, the drive for gender balanced leadership across UK sports organisations has arguably never been more necessary and the importance of effective, relevant development opportunities for women in sport has never been greater. Yet, despite decades of programme interventions from sports councils and other governing organisations providing such development and support for females in the sector, sport in the UK continues to be led predominantly ‘by men, for men’. Drawing on personal experience and relevant research into gender equity in sport, alongside connected doctoral research, this chapter will highlight such inequity and present a case for an alternative approach that challenges the sector to adopt a different perspective on gender inequity in sport. The benefits of a more diverse and balanced workforce will only be achieved when the cultures throughout sport are truly inclusive and embrace difference. In a world where change is an inevitable part of everyday life, readers will be encouraged to contemplate how they can play their part in delivering the range of solutions required for creating the inclusive environments that will actively enable women to take their places alongside men and be recognised as authentic, capable and effective leaders.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) has become the norm for many employees and their families in Germany. Although WFH has been suggested as a form of flexible work to foster work–life integration (especially for workers with greater care responsibilities), studies have also pointed to its risks when the boundaries between these two life spheres become blurred. To help disentangle these inconsistent findings in relation to work–family conflict, this study focuses on two main concerns: the relevance of additional forms of flexibility for those who work from home (i.e., temporal flexibility, job autonomy, fixed rules about availability) and the implications of WFH for employees’ social relationships with co-workers and supervisors. Based on linked employer–employee data collected in the spring of 2021, the study examined work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC) among a sample of 885 employees who worked from home. The results indicate that three factors – temporal flexibility, job autonomy, and fixed rules about availability as a way to set boundaries between work and family life – are important predictors of fewer work–family conflict. This equally applies to employees with caring obligations who overall experience more work–family conflicts while WFH. For those who cared for relatives, autonomy contributed even to fewer work–family conflicts. Supportive relationships with supervisors and co-workers are certainly directly beneficial when it comes to avoiding conflict, but they also reinforce the positive implications of flexible work, whereas poor relationships counteract the benefits of such flexibility. Thus, employers need to provide additional forms of flexibility to employees who work from home and should pay attention to social relationships among their employees as a way to support families and other individuals.

Organisational commitment has been studied for several decades. Research on the human resource side of mergers and acquisitions has typically emphasised the human resource ‘problems’ related to integration, such as low motivation, increased dissatisfaction, low commitment and performance, stress, leadership and power struggles, and high employee turnover. However, there is scant research on organisational commitment in the context of acquisitions. Yet, based on prior research, organisational commitment is important in terms of employee retention, commitment to change and post-acquisition performance. The model developed in this chapter explains what influences organisational commitment in acquisitions and how to build organisational commitment towards the acquirer. A number of propositions are derived from the model, and the implications for M&A research and practice are discussed.

How companies orchestrate the activities surrounding the development and launch of a new product or service has been shown to have a critical impact on new service performance. Most service companies, including those in the industrial financial sector, have little in the way of a highly developed new service programme. Reports the results of a major empirical investigation of 106 new industrial financial services where the factors which define the new service development process were the primary focus of study. The findings indicate that six basic factors, comprising the technical activities required for design and launch and the type of corporate environments that nurture success, define the service development function for new industrial financial services. Four factors, including the quality of execution of the up‐front activities and of the launch programme, an expert‐driven process and, in particular, a supportive and high‐involvement corporate culture, were shown to have a critical impact on new service success.

An overview of the success/failure literature in new product development points to a long list of critical success factors (CSF), which define what should be done to enhance new product success rates but not how to do it. The net result is failure rates which are marginal improvements on previous decades. The basic tenet of this paper is that the effective use of market information throughout the new product development process (NPD) can enhance the success rates of new products. We examine the contingencies affecting the perceived utility and use of market information in the NPD process and develop propositions describing these contingencies. The outcome of our discussion is a conceptual framework, which can aid research in this critical area of organisational activity.

Today′s British building societies face intense competition in the marketing of financial services to consumers, and accordingly the risks attached to new product failure are high. Nevertheless, a study of these financial institutions demonstrates an alarming lack of strategic planning in their attempts to gain larger shares of an increasingly volatile and sophisticated market. Reviews the strategic focus of new product development, examines related management issues, evaluates the new product screening and preliminary assessment techniques, and explores market research practices. The results of this study suggest that, although approaches to new product development vary, building societies do not make extensive use of commonly accepted development procedures.

This study examined the relationships of normative and affective facets of organizational commitment with experienced burnout within the framework of the Confucian‐based Chinese culture. Data for this exploratory work were collected through a questionnaire survey of 147 employees of a Chinese‐owned bank in Hong Kong. The questionnaire consisted of scales on experienced burnout, organizational commitment, and work perceptions. Results showed that the mean score for normative commitment was significantly higher than the mean score for affective commitment. Regression analysis indicated that when age, tenure, organizational level, and work perceptions were controlled, normative commitment had a significant positive effect on experienced burnout, whereas affective commitment had no significant impact. Results are interpreted in the context of a Confucian‐based Chinese managerial ideology and implications are drawn for future research.

In this chapter, we review the literature on the relationship of work–family conflict with health outcomes and well-being. We discuss the meaning of work–family conflict and then present a theoretical model that depicts the psychological process by which work–family conflict affects negative emotions, dissatisfaction with life and its component roles, health-related behavior, and physical health. We conclude with suggestions regarding the development of a future research agenda.

Business plan writing seems the panacea to gain stakeholder legitimacy and financial backing. Our chapter explores the contributions and disconnections between business plan writing and the start-up process for incubated technology entrepreneurs. The study is set in the South East Enterprise Platform Programme (SEEPP), an incubator programme for technology graduate entrepreneurs in the South East of Ireland. Using a purposive sample of technology entrepreneurs in start-up mode, we took a qualitative approach consisting of content analysis of 40 business plans and in-depth interviews with 25 technology entrepreneurs. Our research found that writing a detailed business plan constrains the technology entrepreneur’s natural penchant for action, compelling them to focus on business plan writing rather than enactment. Technology entrepreneurs favour a market-led rather than funding-led operational level document to plan, and learn from, near-term activities using milestones.