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Human capital theory suggests that any increase in skills translates into greater productivity of the workforce. Non-cognitive skills, in particular, play a critical role in many domains in life. The aim of this study is to gain a greater understanding of one such skill, discipline. Viewing discipline as a tool for enhancing learning, personal development and increasing overall achievement, this study offers an alternative way to measure discipline in higher education.

This paper presents the results of an online survey of 537 current students and recent graduates from the United States, South Korea and China. Principal component analysis was used to test the overarching assumption that student discipline is composed of five dimensions. Multiple analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post hoc analyses and t-tests were applied to test for country and gender-related differences between the three country groups. Cluster analysis was used to profile the respondent groups based on similarities across the samples.

The results confirm that student discipline is a construct comprising five discipline dimensions – focus, intention, responsibility, structure and time (F.I.R.S.T). In addition, the identification of low, medium and high discipline levels among the respondents provides support for the recently introduced concept of a layered “threshold of Discipline”.

A F.I.R.S.T. discipline measurement questionnaire for capturing student discipline – underpinned by a conceptual model encompassing self-determination, goal setting, self-efficacy, self-regulation and time management principles – was developed and tested. Suggestions for enhancing graduate work readiness through increasing levels of the skill of discipline are outlined.

The purpose of this paper is to build on the foundational theories of personality and motivation to explore the role of competitiveness and of ethnicity in relation to student academic performance. Survey data from 328 students across four sites (Australia, Denmark, Hong Kong and Korea) provided self-rated responses to items measuring personality, motivation, competitiveness and ethnicity.

Stepwise multiple regression was used to identify the variables that predicated student academic performance, including testing for interaction effect of ethnicity. Both student self-reported data and independently assessed performance measures were used to avoid common method variance.

This study affirmed that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are significantly associated with academic performance. The personality traits of conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion and neuroticism are significantly associated with a student’s competitiveness. The interaction of competitiveness and ethnicity is significantly and positively associated with performance.

The variable of student competitiveness requires further research to better understand its role in academic performance. Researching ethnicity at the micro level allows the acknowledgement and investigation of “intra-national diversity” (Tung, 2008; Tung and Baumann, 2009).

This study is original in its approach in that it combines the concepts of motivation, personality, competitiveness and ethnicity in relation to student academic performance. While previous studies have explored these concepts individually and often at the macro level, a crucial contribution of this study is that competitiveness and ethnicity (as opposed to national culture) are examined at a micro level. The authors demonstrate the combined importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (carrot and stick) in driving performance and introduce the new motivation, competitiveness and performance model which recognises that competitiveness, as a driver of performance, is moderated by the learners’ ethnicity.

This paper reconsiders the approaches to measuring Confucian values, and tests their association with workforce performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine how such values and performances are prioritized across three East Asian societies, but more importantly, identifies how variations across societies might result from the way in which Confucianism has been transformed/appropriated differently across history.

A Best-Worst experimental design is used to measure three aspects of Confucianism (relational, pedagogical, and transformative), and three aspects of workforce performance (mindset, organization, and process) to capture the trade-offs by respondents from three East Asian societies: China (n=274), Taiwan (n=264), and South Korea (n=254). The study employs analysis of variance with post-hoc tests to examine differences between societies. A hierarchical cluster analysis using Ward’s method is utilized to identify clusters based on similarities within the data. And last, multiple regression analysis is applied to determine the explanatory power of Confucian values on workforce performance.

Findings confirm the prioritization of three aspects of Confucianism (relational, pedagogical, and transformative) to differ between Mainland Chinese, Taiwan Chinese, and Korean respondents – producing five distinct clusters based on similarities across three societies. Overall, between 7 and 27 percent of the variance in workforce performance could be explained by the Confucian values included in this study.

This study highlights the “different shades of Confucianism” across East Asian societies, which we coin as Confucian Origin, Preservation, and Pragmatism, and demonstrates the need to take a multifaceted perspective in the measurement of Confucian culture. The study provides empirical support for the link between Confucianism and performance at the micro-level, as originally proposed by Baumann and Winzar (2017), and identifies specific antecedents of behavior for research moving forward.

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of competitiveness. The authors introduce the concept of Competitive Productivity (CP), supplementing shortcomings of traditional understandings of national, organisational and individual productivity which overlook the nature of competitiveness, i.e. outperforming the competition, or at least bettering one’s own performance. The authors offer definitions, components and construct measurements of CP at three levels: macro, meso and micro.

A review of the literature was conducted to evaluate the need for combining productivity and competitiveness into one new construct. There are theories that combine these ideas – e.g., the resource-based theory of the firm – but the authors are presenting these concepts differently, or in a novel way. The authors’ focus on CP makes necessary a new group of construct measures which are different from that of the strategy literature: the authors measure an agent’s tendency “to be better than the competition” along multiple dimensions. Based on the CP construct, the authors present three testable models to uncover determinants of CP at three levels (macro, meso and micro). Finally, the work around “emergent property” can be applied to examine CP itself as being a determinant for other higher-order outcomes such as welfare, profits and life satisfaction. CP forms a platform to explore likely interplay (bottom-up and/or top-down mechanisms) within the micro–meso–macro architecture.

Three CP models were developed and are briefly discussed in this paper: first, a National Competitive Productivity (NCP) model to capture the components/drivers of national CP (macro level). Second, a Firm Competitive Productivity (FCP) model to capture the components/drivers of firm CP within an industry context (meso). And finally, an Individual Competitive Productivity (ICP) model capturing the components/drivers of CP at the individual (micro) level.

The study provides a combined approach to capture productivity and competitiveness within one innovative concept: CP. It can be used by government and policy makers (NCP model), managers and organisations (FCP model), and individuals such as workers and students (ICP model) to evaluate and enhance their performance. A better understanding of the components/drivers of CP at the three levels and the suggested measurement of CP should provide a stronger theory of competitiveness of nations, firms and individuals. Not least should a focus on the three levels (macro, meso and micro) better prepare citizens, firms, workers and students to effectively function and work in the marketplace and in society. The authors’ work should eventually contribute to more effective benchmarking and continuous improvement in the competitiveness domain. Crucially, this conceptual paper forms the foundation for future empirical testing of CP components in the context of the relative values and moderated behaviour as captured by the ReVaMB model.

The role of discipline in achieving higher academic and workplace performance is receiving increasing attention; however, research into student discipline has historically centred on schools. The purpose of this paper is to explore how university students from multiple faculties and at different stages of academic progression understand discipline in higher education, with the aim to investigate how graduates could become more disciplined and more work ready.

This study adopted a qualitative exploratory approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with university students and analysed using thematic analysis.

The students viewed discipline as internally driven as opposed to being enforced externally, which is often the case in schools. Five main themes were identified as discipline dimensions: “focus”, “intention”, “responsibility”, “structure” and “time” (F.I.R.S.T.).

A new concept of discipline is presented, underpinned by a conceptual framework comprised of self-determination, goal-setting, self-efficacy, self-regulation and time management principles. A “Threshold Concept of Discipline”, a hierarchical four-layered concept that develops over time for every individual with the ultimate level being “Creative Discipline”, is proposed. These findings illuminate learning strategies that higher education institutions can use to further enhance learning and increase the work readiness of their graduates. Such strategies can empower students who aspire to perform at a higher level and to become true professionals.

Brand competitiveness as a brand’s outperformance of competing brands is receiving growing attention in the literature. This study aims to provide a theoretical underpinning for the construct’s relevance, introduce customer-based brand competitiveness (CBBC) as a customer-based perspective and develop a scale to measure the construct.

The scale development process comprises three stages, with a literature search and a qualitative consumer study (n = 20) in the scale construction stage, interviews and a survey with academic branding experts (n = 21) in the scale refinement stage and three quantitative studies with consumers (n = 1,157), resulting in 2,078 brand evaluations across five industries, in the scale validation stage.

This study develops a seven-item CBBC scale, representing a powerful yet parsimonious tool for measuring brand competitiveness. The superiority of the new over the existing brand competitiveness scale was validated through structural equation modelling by comparing the performance in explaining customer-based brand equity and purchase intentions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to develop a brand competitiveness scale following a scholarly scale development process. The CBBC scale advances the relative perspective in brand performance measures, considering the relativity at the individual customer level. This study offers a theoretical underpinning for the construct’s relevance and further insights into brand competitiveness by investigating the customer-based perspective. Finally, this study suggests and empirically validates customer-based brand equity and purchase intentions as outcomes of CBBC, extending research into the nomological network of brand competitiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to combine seemingly unrelated factors to explain global competitiveness. The study argues that school discipline and education investment affect competitiveness with the association being mediated by educational performance. Crucially, diachronic effects of discipline on performance are tested to demonstrate effects over time.

Partial least square (PLS) modelling is used to analyse the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data. The study further draws from World Bank data on Government Expenditure and World Economic Forum data on competitiveness. Five PISA dimensions of school discipline (students listening well, noise levels, teacher waiting time, students working well, class start time) are hypothesised to affect academic performance in reading, math and science, and to ultimately impact competitiveness.

Findings confirm the relative importance of school discipline (88 per cent) in comparison to education investment (12 per cent) on educational performance, with both variables also being found to be significantly associated with competitiveness directly.

This study demonstrates the time effects of discipline, more specifically that discipline dimensions (students listen well in 2003 and students work well in 2009) are associated with competitiveness in 2012. Implications for school policy and further research are discussed.

This paper aims to introduce the concept of consumer-based brand value (CBBV), a change in the perspective of brand-equity and brand value from one where the brand is considered separately from other brands. The purpose of this paper is threefold: highlighting the theoretical difference between brand equity and brand value (Raggio and Leone, 2007); conceptually linking brand equity with brand value and then with brand competitiveness; and demonstrating a straightforward method for scholars and practitioners to measure brand value and then to forecast and simulate brand competitiveness.

On a sample of 190 postgraduate students, the authors apply the conjoint analysis and best-worst scaling to illustrate our CBBV model. Following Keller (1993), the authors operationalise brand equity as the outcome of consumers’ internal mental processes, in the form of brand preference, and show how preferences data can be transformed into estimates of brand value in the form of price premium. Finally, the model allows market share simulation based on manipulation of branding and brand features.

The paper is more a conceptual piece, highlighting the distinction between brand equity and brand value. It also demonstrates a relatively new measurement technique for transforming measures of brand equity, in the form of brand preferences, into estimates of brand value. The paper used airlines as a service-provider example, but the technique can be applied to many hospitality and service environments.

The study demonstrates how brand equity drives brand value via consumer utility, and proposes a CBBV–competitiveness chain. The authors convert individual consumer preference data to brand value with subsequent preference-based market segmentation, and estimate competitiveness in two ways: market share ceteris paribus and price premium for brand indifference. They also demonstrate how market simulation can be performed so that it allows forecasting of competitiveness (market share) based on product attributes that affect brand value.

The CBBV–competitiveness chain constitutes a (new) mindset in the marketing of hospitality, tourism and other services. The study provides a method to measure and test the components of this model and determine brand competitiveness. It used airlines in the example, but the method can be applied to many different settings such as, for example, hotel management group (Starwood, Accor, Intercontinental, Hilton). The authors show how the method allows for benefit-based market segmentation, market-share forecasting and estimation of price premium.

The CBBV chain provides a conceptual link between brand equity, brand value and brand competitiveness. When equity and related constructs are often conceptualised as relative to competition, they are rarely actually measured in that manner. The study shows how brand equity measured as preferences can be transformed into brand value and competitiveness relative to the competition. The combination of conjoint analysis and best–worst scaling is relatively new to the hospitality and services industries. The authors show that these tools can be applied to these industries without depending on costly software or high-priced consultants.