The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID), a major UK third sector organisation, on public sector provision. The case…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID), a major UK third sector organisation, on public sector provision. The case examined is that of auditory services (in effect the nature of assessment and provision of hearing aids in England).
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is that of a case study of the actions and approach of the RNID and their engagement with the public sector, in particular with the UK National Health Service.
Findings
The case study shows the very considerable impact, which the RNID had in effecting a dramatic improvement in the quality of the service offered through the move to digital hearing aids and through the improvement of the audiology services themselves. The RNID, through using its expertise, also succeeded in achieving a huge reduction in the unit cost of digital hearing aids. A value chain approach is utilised to examine the effect of the RNID.
Research limitations/implications
The case study furnishes an account of impact on a national level in a key service. It shows how a third sector organisation can use expertise to leverage impact using public sector resources. It shows that even with very large government purchases a key factor is specific knowledge, which if possessed by a third sector organisations, can be used to major effect.
Originality/value
The case study demonstrates impact and the effective operation of a cross‐sectoral partnership. One of the authors (Lamb) is closely involved from the organisational perspective.
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Evan K. Perrault and Scott K. Clark
A planet that can no longer sustain life is a frightening thought – and one that is often present in mass media messages. Therefore, this study aims to test the components of a…
Abstract
Purpose
A planet that can no longer sustain life is a frightening thought – and one that is often present in mass media messages. Therefore, this study aims to test the components of a classic fear appeal theory, the extended parallel process model (EPPM) and to determine how well its constructs predict sustainability behavioral intentions. This study also strove to uncover students’ motivations and attitudes that are not present in the EPPM.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey of 779 college students was conducted.
Findings
Results reveal that both threat and efficacy are significant predictors of behavioral intention, consistent with the EPPM. However, an analysis of open-ended comments reveals that subjective normative influence and incentives also play a key role in students performing future sustainable behaviors.
Practical implications
These findings provide a framework to educators and message designers of sustainability groups on college campuses highlighting the importance of including multiple constructs in their messages to students. Threatening messages will not be enough to increase behavioral intentions. Fear inducing messages must be combined with messages to increase self- and response efficacy. Education is also not the only piece of the puzzle. Students state difficulty in performing some sustainable behaviors as a key barrier, indicating a need to incorporate infrastructure changes at campuses to facilitate greater ease among students to act sustainably.
Originality value
This study tests the EPPM’s utility in helping to find the most effective ways to influence college students’ future behavioral intentions toward acting sustainably.
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Hassan Abu Bakar and Stacey L. Connaughton
The purpose of this paper is to assess statistically the shared cultural values scale that incorporates Malaysia’s multi-ethnic cultural values.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess statistically the shared cultural values scale that incorporates Malaysia’s multi-ethnic cultural values.
Design/methodology/approach
This study involved three phase statistical testing. In the first phase, the authors evaluated the 152 items for the affiliation, community embeddedness, respecting elders, harmony, faith, brotherhood, morality, future orientation, conformity and survival cultural dimensions with a sample of 270 employees from three organizations. In the second phase, 355 employees from two organizations completed a survey test-retest reliability and a factor analysis consisting of community embeddedness, focus on respect, conformity and future orientation as a four-factors solution with 22 items. Confirmatory factor analysis based on data from 310 employees in two organizations verified that the four dimensions correlated with affective commitment.
Findings
The results suggest that shared cultural characteristics is a multidimensional construct and at the individual level makes a unique contribution in explaining employees’ affective commitment. Managers from multinational corporations operating in this emerging market will benefit from this new scale because they can use it to identify specific individual cultural characteristics within their organization and develop a strategy to target employees’ affective commitment.
Originality/value
The new shared cultural characteristics scale for Malaysia’s multi-ethnic society demonstrates adequate reliability, validity and across-organization generalizability for this specific cross-cultural communication setting.
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Hassan Abu Bakar and Stacey L. Connaughton
This study provides a systematic testing of ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) by examining the underlying mechanisms of leader motivation language…
Abstract
Purpose
This study provides a systematic testing of ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) by examining the underlying mechanisms of leader motivation language on ethics through which ethical leadership influences followers’ OCB at the team level.
Design/methodology/approach
A multilevel model was validated via with structural equation modeling (SEM) from hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) based on data collected in a Malaysian organization.
Findings
The perceived leader–member ethical communication at the team-level makes a unique contribution beyond the ethical leadership in explaining OCBs.
Originality/value
Perceived leader–member ethical communication mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and OCB.
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Elizabeth D. Wilhoit, Patricia Gettings, Parul Malik, Lauren B. Hearit, Patrice M. Buzzanell and Brad Ludwig
The purpose of this paper is to use an affordance approach to understand how university faculty use and value their workspace and respond to proposed spatial changes.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to use an affordance approach to understand how university faculty use and value their workspace and respond to proposed spatial changes.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed method survey was given to faculty in the college of engineering at a large public American university. Data were analyzed using an affordance lens.
Findings
The analysis indicates that the majority of engineering faculty highly value private offices and appears resistant to non-traditional workspace arrangements.
Research limitations/implications
The authors performed the analysis with a relatively small sample (n=46).
Practical implications
University administrators need to communicate with faculty and take their opinions on spatial changes seriously. Changes to space may affect STEM faculty retention.
Social implications
This paper could affect the quality of work life for university faculty.
Originality/value
The paper provide needed research on how faculty use and value their workspace while discussing the implications of alternative workspaces within the academy. Theoretically, the authors contribute to ongoing research on relationship between material and social aspects of organizational spaces.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of perceived authenticity of organizational behaviors and types of organization-employee relationship (i.e. communal and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of perceived authenticity of organizational behaviors and types of organization-employee relationship (i.e. communal and exchange relationship) on intangible assets of organizations generated by employees’ communicative behaviors (ECBs) (e.g. megaphoning, scouting).
Design/methodology/approach
A web-based survey was conducted with full-time 528 employees working in medium- and large-sized companies in the USA.
Findings
Results showed that an organization’s authentic behaviors are positively related with employees’ perceived communal relationships, but not with exchange relationships. However, both communal and exchange relationships turned out to increase ECBs: positive megaphoning, negative megaphoning, and scouting. The existence of both communal and exchange relationships was more significant than having only communal relationships in terms of encouraging employees’ active communicative actions.
Research limitations/implications
By building links between employees’ communicative actions and its antecedents, perceived authenticity, types of relationship; this study contributed to the body of knowledge on exchange and communal relationship in the context of employee communication and extended the understanding of motivations of ECBs.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that employees’ communicative actions are highly facilitated by organizations’ authentic behavioral efforts and perceived relationship. To encourage employees’ information seeking and sharing behaviors, for organizational effectiveness, organizations should behave in authentic ways – be trustful, transparent, and consistent – and build both communal and exchange relationship.
Originality/value
This study first attempted to demonstrate the impacts of both communal and exchange relationships for organizations empirically in internal communication and relationship building practices.
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Frank Dardis, Mike Schmierbach, Brett Sherrick and Britani Luckman
In-game advertising continues to increase in importance for both industry and academia. However, game difficulty – an important, real-world factor – has received little attention…
Abstract
Purpose
In-game advertising continues to increase in importance for both industry and academia. However, game difficulty – an important, real-world factor – has received little attention as a specific game-related factor that might impact the effectiveness of in-game advertisements. This study aims to investigate the influence of game difficulty on players’ affective response and subsequent memory of in-game ads, which were presented as either gain- or loss-framed messages.
Design/methodology/approach
Three experiments were conducted. Study 1 and Study 3 implemented a 2 (difficulty: easy/difficult) × 2 (ad framing: gain/loss) design. Study 2 implemented a 2 (background music: calm/stressful) × 2 (ad framing: gain/loss) design. All experiments took place in a research laboratory in which participants consented to the study, completed a pre-test questionnaire, played a video game, completed a post-test questionnaire and were debriefed.
Findings
More difficult game play led to greater negative affective response. A different game-based attribute – background music – did not influence affective response. A significant interaction in Study 1 revealed that brand recognition increased as players in a more negative affective state were exposed to the loss-framed message. The results were explained to occur via the congruency effects that game difficulty exerts on players’ affective and cognitive states.
Originality/value
The studies are the first to incorporate both videogame difficulty and ad framing into one study, which two real-world factors that can influence advertising’s effectiveness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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Jiali Zheng, Han Qiao, Xiumei Zhu and Shouyang Wang
This study aims to explore the role of equity investment in knowledge-driven business model innovation (BMI) in context of open modes according to the evidence from China’s…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the role of equity investment in knowledge-driven business model innovation (BMI) in context of open modes according to the evidence from China’s primary market.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the database of China’s private market and data set of news clouds, the statistic approach is applied to explore and explain whether equity investment promotes knowledge-driven BMI. Machine learning method is also used to prove and predict the performance of such open innovation.
Findings
The results of logistic regression show that explanatory variables are significant, providing evidence that knowledge management (KM) promotes BMI through equity investment. By further using back propagation neural network, the classification learning algorithm estimates the possibility of BMI, which can be regarded as a score to quantify the performance of knowledge-driven BMI
Research limitations/implications
The quality of secondhand big data is not very ideal, and future empirical studies should use first-hand survey data.
Practical implications
This study provides new insights into the link between KM and BMI by highlighting the important roles of external investments in open modes.
Social implications
From the perspective of investment, the findings of this study suggest the importance for stakeholders to share knowledge and strategies for entrepreneurs to manage innovation.
Originality/value
The concepts and indicators related to business models are difficult to quantify currently, while this study provides feasible and practical methods to estimate knowledge-driven BMI with secondhand data from the primary market. The mechanism of knowledge and innovation bridged by the experience from investors is introduced and analyzed.
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Krishnamurthy Sriramesh, Milagros Rivera‐Sánchez and Cheryll Soriano
This longitudinal study aims to analyze the use of websites by a sample of 78 corporations and non‐profits five years apart. In particular, it studies organizational use of…
Abstract
Purpose
This longitudinal study aims to analyze the use of websites by a sample of 78 corporations and non‐profits five years apart. In particular, it studies organizational use of interactive and social media features and use of web sites for building relationships with six stakeholder publics.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors studied the websites of 78 for‐profit and not‐for‐profit organization seeking to learn how they used this new medium as a communication tool to build and maintain relationships with six key stakeholders: the mass media, consumers, investor/donors, employees, the government, and the community in 2004 and in 2009. They also explored for differences in the way for‐profit corporations and non‐profits used their web sites for relationship building given their different missions and cultures.
Findings
First, there was a marked difference in how corporations and non‐profit organizations used their websites. Second, a significant number of organizations used social media applications such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube through their websites in 2009. Third, aside from increased use of social media, in 2009 more organizations used feedback mechanisms such as e‐surveys and e‐polls embedded in their websites, enhancing interactions with a variety of stakeholders. Both corporations and non‐profit organizations generally utilized their websites as information‐dissemination tools, where the information flow is one‐way, although the percentage of both corporations and non profits that used interactive features offered by new media has increased slightly between 2004 and 2009.
Originality/value
This study is among the few that compare web page use by corporations vs non‐profits. A second unique feature of this study is that it is longitudinal in nature, studying web site use five years apart by the same organizations.