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1 – 10 of 17
Article
Publication date: 20 April 2010

Alex J. Ruiz‐Torres, Jianmei Zhang, Edgar Zapata, Arunkumar Pennathur, Russell Rhodes, Carey McCleskey and Marcella Cowen

The focus of this paper is on reliability and availability design goals. It aims to provide top‐level estimates of the safety and maintainability of future spacecraft systems.

Abstract

Purpose

The focus of this paper is on reliability and availability design goals. It aims to provide top‐level estimates of the safety and maintainability of future spacecraft systems.

Design/methodology/approach

The developed design tool uses basic reliability principles to estimate the probability of a safe mission and the need for repairs/replacement during ground processing, before launch and start of mission, based on the characteristics of the vehicle's main systems: the number of subsystems, the mean time to repair, and the per subsystem average reliability.

Findings

A simple reliability, maintainability and safety model is developed to support the top‐level design process of future space transportation vehicles. It also describes how the developed design tool uses various sensitivity analysis functions to improve design decisions.

Originality/value

The goal of the developed tool is to provide engineers/vehicle developers during the early stages of design with a tool that demonstrates the effect on maintainability of improving component reliability and reducing the number of components.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 27 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 June 2015

Edgar E. Kausel

The purpose of this paper is to offer the author’s view about the conceptualization of scholarly impact, and some of the challenges young Iberoamerican scholars face to have an…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to offer the author’s view about the conceptualization of scholarly impact, and some of the challenges young Iberoamerican scholars face to have an impact.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a personal account based on previous theory and the author’s personal experience.

Findings

The paper presents a short critique of the conceptualization and measurement of scholarly impact, and introduces dimensions and challenges of being a scholar in Iberoamerica.

Originality/value

The paper offers an analytical perspective of scholarly impact in Iberoamerica and offers some insights to help overcome different challenges.

Details

Management Research: The Journal of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1536-5433

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 2 December 2021

Matthew D. Deeg, Andrew Fitzgerald Henck and Doreen Matthes

While a record number of employees work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations are faced with a new demand for human resources (HR) policies and procedures in light…

Abstract

While a record number of employees work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations are faced with a new demand for human resources (HR) policies and procedures in light of this emerging ‘new normal’. It is common for organisations to promote certain behaviours and norms as their cultures develop; however, this can often be significantly more challenging in times of uncertainty. As a result, the strategic and operational focus of HR managers can make a critical contribution to organisational effectiveness in times of crisis, especially when pre-existing policies and procedures are challenged by employees attempting to cope in an evolving reality. In this chapter, we seek to explain how the needs of the organisation, policy enforcement and changes by HR managers, and the behaviours of employees conflict and complement each other in an internal three-way tug of war among these actors. Organisational culture, strategic HR management, and self-determination theories are utilised to discuss implications for norm formation and culture from the top management team, HR managers, and employees during times of uncertainty. Recommendations for practice and additional avenues for research are presented to examine the cultural implications for organisations in the future.

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1953

WE begin a new year, in which we wish good things for all who work in libraries and care for them, in circumstances which are not unpropitious. At times raven voices prophesy the…

Abstract

WE begin a new year, in which we wish good things for all who work in libraries and care for them, in circumstances which are not unpropitious. At times raven voices prophesy the doom of a profession glued to things so transitory as books are now imagined to be, by some. Indeed, so much is this a dominant fear that some librarians, to judge by their utterances, rest their hopes upon other recorded forms of knowledge‐transmission; forms which are not necessarily inimical to books but which they think in the increasing hurry of contemporary life may supersede them. These fears have not been harmful in any radical way so far, because they may have increased the librarian's interest in the ways of bringing books to people and people to books by any means which successful business firms use (for example) to advertise what they have to sell. The modern librarian becomes more and more the man of business; some feel he becomes less and less the scholar; but we suggest that this is theory with small basis in fact. Scholars are not necessarily, indeed they can rarely be, bookish recluses; nor need business men be uncultured. For men of plain commonsense there need be few ways of life that are so confined that they exclude their followers from other ways and other men's ideas and activities. And, as for the transitoriness of books and the decline of reading, we ourselves decline to acknowledge or believe in either process. Books do disappear, as individuals. It is well that they do for the primary purpose of any book is to serve this generation in which it is published; and, if there survive books that we, the posterity of our fathers, would not willingly let die, it is because the life they had when they were contemporary books is still in them. Nothing else can preserve a book as a readable influence. If this were not so every library would grow beyond the capacity of the individual or even towns to support; there would, in the world of readers, be no room for new writers and their books, and the tragedy that suggests is fantastically unimaginable. A careful study, recently made of scores of library reports for 1951–52, which it is part of our editorial duty to make, has produced the following deductions. Nearly every public library, and indeed other library, reports quite substantial increases in the use made of it; relatively few have yet installed the collections of records as alternatives to books of which so much is written; further still, where “readers” and other aids to the reading of records, films, etc., have been installed, the use of them is most modest; few librarians have a book‐fund that is adequate to present demands; fewer have staffs adequate to the demands made upon them for guidance by the advanced type of readers or for doing thoroughly the most ordinary form of book‐explanation. It is, in one sense a little depressing, but there is the challenging fact that these islands contain a greater reading population than they ever had. One has to reflect that of our fifty millions every one, including infants who have not cut their teeth, the inhabitants of asylums, the illiterate—and, alas, there are still thousands of these—and the drifters and those whose vain boast is that “they never have time to read a book”—every one of them reads six volumes a year. A further reflection is that public libraries may be the largest distributors, but there are many others and in the average town there may be a half‐dozen commercial, institutional and shop‐libraries, all distributing, for every public library. This fact is stressed by our public library spending on books last year at some two million pounds, a large sum, but only one‐tenth of the money the country spent on books. There are literally millions of book‐readers who may or may not use the public library, some of them who do not use any library but buy what they read. The real figure of the total reading of our people would probably be astronomical or, at anyrate, astonishing.

Details

New Library World, vol. 54 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Article
Publication date: 5 April 2022

Edgar Nave and João J. Ferreira

International entrepreneurship (IE) has received a considerable amount of attention in the recent decades as a result of globalization enabling access to new international markets…

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Abstract

Purpose

International entrepreneurship (IE) has received a considerable amount of attention in the recent decades as a result of globalization enabling access to new international markets and business opportunities. Despite the growing increase in academic publications, IE still faces certain inconsistencies, with doubts remaining as regards its boundaries and the thematic groups making up the field. The purpose of this article is to systematically analyse the IE, mapping the intellectual territory and the evolution of the field.

Design/methodology/approach

Indexed to Web of Science( WoS) database until 2021, from 52 journals, 130 articles were selected, applying content analyses techniques to identify the main research lines.

Findings

The results reveal that IE presents four conceptual themes/clusters: (1) international business networks and opportunities; (2) institutional environments; (3) the characteristics and motivations of entrepreneurs; and (4) internationalisation drivers and processes. Extant analysis show that IE has progressed immensely, concentrating a good diversity of subtopics and research trends. An integrative framework bringing together 27 years of publications and 67 future research lines, detailed by cluster, were also presented in this study to improve understanding and guide future studies.

Originality/value

This review makes a broad contribution to the IE literature, assisting in consolidating the academic field, expanding and complementing the results of previous theoretical–conceptual studies. We reflect and individually discuss the state of the art of the four streams that characterize IE to identify key themes, points of convergence and advance new subfields.

Details

Cross Cultural & Strategic Management, vol. 29 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2059-5794

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Social Constructions of Migration in Nigeria and Zimbabwe: Discourse, Rhetoric, and Identity
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83549-169-0

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 March 2021

Mohammad Rezaur Razzak, Golam Mostafa Khan and Salem AlAbri

This study investigates the influence of inclusion of nonfamily employees in family firms on their intellectual, social and affective engagement at the workplace. Furthermore, the…

Abstract

Purpose

This study investigates the influence of inclusion of nonfamily employees in family firms on their intellectual, social and affective engagement at the workplace. Furthermore, the framework proposed in the study considers the possible moderating influence of procedural justice in the above relationships.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual framework is developed with the support of the self-determination theory (SDT) and the social exchange theory. The study tests a set of hypotheses using survey data from 654 nonfamily employees working in private family firms in Malaysia.

Findings

The results reveal that inclusion has a positive and significant relationship with intellectual, social and affective engagement. While procedural justice moderates the association between inclusion and intellectual and affective engagement, it does not moderate the relationship between inclusion and social engagement.

Research limitations/implications

The outcome of this study presents a nuanced understanding on how perceptions of inclusion of nonfamily employees by the dominant work group (DWG) (i.e. employees related to the firm owners) lead to positive firm-centric behavior among nonfamily employees.

Practical implications

The study provides clues to family firm managers for creating a work environment where nonfamily employees perceive a sense of belongingness while their uniqueness is appreciated in order to be more engaged at the workplace.

Social implications

Little is known about how diversity created within family firms by inclusion of nonfamily employees impacts organizations. The outcome of this study may reinforce the positive effects of inclusiveness in any social context.

Originality/value

Diversity researchers have studied the influence of inclusion in areas related to sociology and psychology. However, there appears to be a dearth of studies in terms of how nonfamily employees would behave in family firms when they perceive a sense of inclusion in an organization dominated by employees who are related to the owners of the firm. Hence, this study appears to shed new light on how inclusion of nonfamily employees in family firms influences their behavior.

Details

Journal of Family Business Management, vol. 12 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2043-6238

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 March 2018

María Jesús Rodríguez-Gulías, Sara Fernández-López and David Rodeiro-Pazos

The purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that the female-owned university spin-off organizations (USOs) have a similar resource endowment and, as a consequence…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that the female-owned university spin-off organizations (USOs) have a similar resource endowment and, as a consequence, growth rates similar to the male-owned USOs.

Design/methodology/approach

A unique and original longitudinal data set, which is an unbalanced panel, consisting of 120 Spanish USOs over the period 2001-2010 has been constructed. The methodology includes the analysis of mean differences (t-test) and dynamic panel data models.

Findings

The results confirmed that there are no gender differences in either the firms’ initial resource endowment or in the preference for industries. There is no gender effect on the USOs’ growth, but the initial endowment resources matter. Thus the financial, human and technological resources have a positive effect on the USOs’ growth. This evidence suggests that the USOs’ context may mitigate the initial resource endowment of the female-owned firms and their preferences for traditional industries, showing similar rates of growth than male-owned USOs.

Research limitations/implications

Owners’ gender has been used as a proxy for founders’ gender. Also, only USOs included in the SABI database have been considered as part of the sample; the significant number of USOs that did not reveal information about their owners have been discarded.

Practical implications

It is important to continue supporting academic entrepreneurship, as in the university context, firm growth is not affected by gender differences. However, given that the percentage of female owners in university entrepreneurship is still lower compared to entrepreneurship in general, the universities’ entrepreneur programmes targeting women must adopt a gendered perspective.

Originality/value

Literature on USOs has traditionally analyzed the firm-specific characteristics that impact their growth without considering the influence of the owners’ gender. In this paper, an attempt to fill this gap has been made using a sample of 120 Spanish USOs and by applying the dynamic panel data methodology. In particular, it has been argued that the university context from which USOs emerge allows female-owned USOs to have a similar resource endowment and, as a consequence, a similar growth when compared to male-owned USOs.

Details

Gender in Management: An International Journal, vol. 33 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1754-2413

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 November 2016

Thomas Kenworthy and Jaydeep Balakrishnan

The purpose of this paper is to analyze more than three decades of theory testing published in leading operations management (OM) journals.

1391

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze more than three decades of theory testing published in leading operations management (OM) journals.

Design/methodology/approach

This piece examines the amount of theory testing, the extent to which theories are tested multiple times, and the disciplinary origins of the theories that are tested.

Findings

The analysis revealed that empirical OM researchers have increasingly responded to demands for more theory-driven knowledge over time. OM researchers are developing and using a wide array of domestic theories to understand empirical data. The examination also revealed a substantial focus on theory borrowed from other scientific fields.

Originality/value

The findings here suggest that OM is clearly a maturing discipline. As the discipline matures, it is important to consider to what extent borrowed theories and frameworks can offer value to OM. A preliminary vetting model is advanced in order to critically assess foreign theory. It is hoped that future screening promotes only the most useful non-domestic theory, thereby ensuring sufficient journal space for domestic theory and resulting in effective solutions to the pressing, practical problems of the OM field.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 54 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 August 2018

Abdallah Taamneh, Abdallah Khalaf Alsaad and Hamzah Elrehail

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of human resource management (HRM) practices on the performance of Jordanian banks as determined by using the balanced…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of human resource management (HRM) practices on the performance of Jordanian banks as determined by using the balanced scorecard (BSC) performance measurement system and by testing the effect of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) as a possible mediator variable.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire was used to collect data from the study sample, which consisted of 230 managers working in various banks across Jordan. The study hypotheses were then tested using SPSS and AMOS software by applying structural equation models (SEMs).

Findings

The data set revealed that the use of HRM practices had a significant impact on both employee OCB and bank performance in all the four dimensions of the BSC (financial, customer satisfaction, internal processes, learning and growth). In addition, OCB was found to have a positive significant impact on organizational performance. Moreover, results indicated that OCB partially mediates the relationship between HRM practices and organizational performance.

Originality/value

The authors examine the impact HRM practices on the organization performance through the mediation role of OCB. The results obtained from this study extend the existing literature by providing evidences from non-western country such as Jordan. Based on the findings, the theoretical and practical implications of the study as well as limitations and suggestions for future studies are also discussed.

Details

EuroMed Journal of Business, vol. 13 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1450-2194

Keywords

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