Obinna O. Obilo and Bruce L. Alford
This study aims to develop a method of segmenting markets by using the functional approach to attitudes. The adopted approach identifies and groups individuals based on what…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to develop a method of segmenting markets by using the functional approach to attitudes. The adopted approach identifies and groups individuals based on what functions their held attitudes serve for them. Specific marketing mixes can, thus, be designed for each functional profile.
Design/methodology/approach
The multi-method approach adopted consists of a qualitative assessment of consumers’ attitudinal functions in the physical fitness context and the development of an instrument to identify the distribution of attitudinal function segments in the same context.
Findings
A valid and reliable instrument that can be used to segment a market based on functional profiles is developed.
Practical implications
The outlined method provides a method for practitioners to identify existing functional segments, thus creating marketing mixes based on these functional segments and, ultimately, maximizing the value created for each segment.
Originality/value
The value in this research lies in the integration of old concepts (functional approach and scale development) to solving a new problem. The functional approach reaches deep to determine “why attitudes are held” vs simply “what attitudes are held”. Operationalization difficulties led to the abandonment of the approach. This research, thus, contributes theoretically by actually operationalizing the functional approach via a scale development, and using the operationalized form as a new means for segmenting markets.
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J. Bryan Hayes, Bruce L. Alford, Lawrence Silver and Rice P. York
The purpose of this paper is to describe research which introduces attractiveness as a moderator of the relationship between the perceived brand personality and evaluations of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe research which introduces attractiveness as a moderator of the relationship between the perceived brand personality and evaluations of the brand as a relationship partner in a product marketing context.
Design/methodology/approach
This research tests hypotheses concerning the relationship between the perceived personality of a test brand and perceptions regarding the quality of the test brand as a relationship partner, and the moderating effects of the test brand's perceived attractiveness. The research is based upon a survey of 142 graduate and undergraduate students attending four universities in the southeastern USA. Reliability and validity of the measures were tested using structural equation modeling and the hypotheses tested using multiple linear regression.
Findings
This research provides empirical evidence, in a product‐marketing context, that perceived attractiveness significantly influences the consumer‐brand relationship development process in meaningful and predictable ways. Results indicate that consumer perceptions regarding a product brand's possession of certain personality traits can influence their opinion of the desirability of the brand as a relationship partner, and that the brand personality‐partner quality connection depends, to a degree, on the brand's perceived attractiveness. The specific role attractiveness plays in the relationship appears to vary across individual brand personality dimensions.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations of this study include use of a student sample, use of a single test brand selected from a single product category, and reliance upon a subset of ten items from the original 42‐item Brand Personality Scale to represent the brand personality construct.
Practical implications
The results suggest that, for relevant product categories, understanding how perceived attractiveness interacts with other brand perceptions can enhance brand managers' understanding of, and thus their ability to foster, consumer relationships with their brands.
Originality/value
This research reveals that it is appropriate to include perceived attractiveness in the discussion of the impact of psychological brand perceptions on consumer‐brand relationship development.
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Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way…
Abstract
Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.
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This paper aims to provide evidence of pro-worker orientation and acceptance of socialist idealism in scientific management, with particular focus on Walter Polakov.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide evidence of pro-worker orientation and acceptance of socialist idealism in scientific management, with particular focus on Walter Polakov.
Design/methodology/approach
A range of original texts have been examined to identify the ideas expressed or accepted by the early scientific managers. These include Bulletin of the Taylor Society and the early publications of the socialist engineer and scientific manager Walter Polakov.
Findings
This paper shows how an avowed socialist is outspoken but unremarkable for the members of the Taylor Society in the 1910s and 1920s, contrary to the views expressed in textbooks and other histories which assert a deep antiworker bias in scientific management.
Research limitations/implications
This is limited to a historical analysis of the role and extent of involvement of the Marxist engineer Walter Polakov in the US scientific management movement in the 1910s and 1920s.
Originality/value
This paper offers insights into the workings of the Taylor Society using a biographical approach. In so doing, it demonstrates, in a new way, the verity of claims that the original proponents of scientific management were not authoritarian or anti-worker in their views or ideals, but, rather, open to progressive and socialist ideals.
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Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some…
Abstract
Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.
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At the beginning of the 21st century, multiple and diverse social entities, including the public (consumers), private and nonprofit healthcare institutions, government (public…
Abstract
At the beginning of the 21st century, multiple and diverse social entities, including the public (consumers), private and nonprofit healthcare institutions, government (public health) and other industry sectors, began to recognize the limitations of the current fragmented healthcare system paradigm. Primary stakeholders, including employers, insurance companies, and healthcare professional organizations, also voiced dissatisfaction with unacceptable health outcomes and rising costs. Grand challenges and wicked problems threatened the viability of the health sector. American health systems responded with innovations and advances in healthcare delivery frameworks that encouraged shifts from intra- and inter-sector arrangements to multi-sector, lasting relationships that emphasized patient centrality along with long-term commitments to sustainability and accountability. This pathway, leading to a population health approach, also generated the need for transformative business models. The coproduction of health framework, with its emphasis on cross-sector alignments, nontraditional partner relationships, sustainable missions, and accountability capable of yielding return on investments, has emerged as a unique strategy for facing disruptive threats and challenges from nonhealth sector corporations. This chapter presents a coproduction of health framework, goals and criteria, examples of boundary spanning network alliance models, and operational (integrator, convener, aggregator) strategies. A comparison of important organizational science theories, including institutional theory, network/network analysis theory, and resource dependency theory, provides suggestions for future research directions necessary to validate the utility of the coproduction of health framework as a precursor for paradigm change.
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Michèle Morner and Manuel Misgeld
The chapter aims to conceptually explore how to govern public sector organizations in order to create public value. It focuses on the importance of knowledge-intensive processes…
Abstract
Purpose
The chapter aims to conceptually explore how to govern public sector organizations in order to create public value. It focuses on the importance of knowledge-intensive processes in creating public value as well as the challenges in governing such fragile processes.
Methodology
We use organizational theory and respective concepts in the field of organizational design focusing on cognitive and motivational aspects. These are explained by group theories and concepts of conditional cooperation.
Findings
We show the important role and the antecedents of self-governance in creating public value based on knowledge creation, sharing and use, whereas the classical method of hierarchical and bureaucratic procedural-based governance (via rules and direct supervision) as well as the more modern method of output-based governance (via so-called key performance indicators) fails to govern public value in this form.
Research limitations/implications
The heuristic model differentiates between modes of governance. Their mutual interplay and empirical evidence are yet needed for substantiating the findings.
Practical implications
Self-organizing mechanisms require behavioural antecedents of the involved actors: on the one hand there is a need for a minimum of mutual understanding in the sense of ‘cognitive compatibility’ and on the other, a minimum of ‘willingness to cooperate’.
Social implications
Participating public employees and citizens need to cultivate participatory and collaborative governance mechanisms in order to create public value. These can be understood as supplementing and enriching existing ones rather than replacing them.
Originality/value of the paper
This chapter contributes to research in public administration in that the concept of public value with a focus on knowledge-intensive collaboration is specified. A new path is taken, originating from organizational theory and motivational theory that are transferred into public administration in order to show how collaborative governance should be employed and how motivational and cognitive aspects should be considered.
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Kyle Bruce and Peter von Staden
Given managerial choices and the sociocultural context in which they are made are at the heart of management history, then an understanding of both is critical. This paper argues…
Abstract
Purpose
Given managerial choices and the sociocultural context in which they are made are at the heart of management history, then an understanding of both is critical. This paper argues that the “late” North (2005) provides such an understanding.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is a research review synthesizing much disparate but cognate literature across the new institutionalism in organizational sociology/studies and in economics.
Findings
“Late” North (2005) provides an important ontological frame for dealing with the so-called “paradox of embedded agency”, an approach that may afford management historians a more thorough account of how institutions are formed and change over time. North has always maintained that institutional change is the outcome of deliberate or intentional choices made by actors. However, and unlike his earlier work which ignores how humans come to make the said choices, North (2005) explicates the sociocognitive process by which intentionality emerges with expanded consciousness, as humans construct ideas and beliefs about reality, beliefs that shape decisions to alter the said reality via the process of institutional change.
Originality/value
It is rather curious that despite North’s status as a “historian”, management historians – or at least those publishing in this journal from its founding in 1995 – do not seem to be terribly interested in North’s work. Although North rates a mention in rival journals, other than Dagnino and Quattrone’s (2006) study, papers in this journal invoking institutional theory align with the new institutionalism in organizational sociology/studies (NIOS) rather than North’s new institutional economics (NIE). Even in the related sub-discipline of business history, those professing an interest in institutions are more interested in the NIE of non-historians Coase and Oliver Williamson than they are in North’s NIE. And, in recent work analysing the place and significance of institutional theory in historical research, the foundations are unmistakeably NIOS rather than North’s NIE.
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In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of…
Abstract
In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.
Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).