Juan Ramón Molina, Francisco Rodríguez y Silva and Miguel Ángel Herrera
The purpose of this paper is to show the evaluation of the learning process to determinate if engineering student marks would be better from sand-table teaching than from…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show the evaluation of the learning process to determinate if engineering student marks would be better from sand-table teaching than from traditional teaching.
Design/methodology/approach
The innovative teaching project incorporating digital sand-table use was evaluated by asking undergraduate and postgraduate students to rate their learning experiences and by analyzing their academic performance.
Findings
The results show that the percentage of students passing the courses, and marks on the course tests were higher for students taught using sand-table, compared to students taught without using this tool.
Practical implications
Engineering curricula are constantly revised to address the demands for undergraduate courses and specialization courses, and the differing needs of actual practice in relation to theoretical knowledge.
Originality/value
The experience at the University of Córdoba (Spain) offers some insights to other engineering degrees and educational institutions that wish to focus on the development of innovative academic programs and student capabilities.
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The use of economic sanctions has grown dramatically in recent decades. Nevertheless, many arguments are presented in the public policy space regarding their effects on target…
Abstract
Purpose
The use of economic sanctions has grown dramatically in recent decades. Nevertheless, many arguments are presented in the public policy space regarding their effects on target populations. The author presents the first systematic analysis of the effects of sanctions on living conditions in target countries.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper provides a comprehensive survey and assessment of the literature on the effects of economic sanctions on living standards in target countries. The author identifies 31 studies that apply quantitative econometric or calibration methods to cross-country and national data to assess the impact of economic sanctions on indicators of human and economic development. The author provides in-depth discussions of three sanctions episodes—Iran, Afghanistan and Venezuela—that illustrate the channels through which sanctions affect living conditions in target countries.
Findings
Of the 31 studies, 30 find that sanctions have negative effects on outcomes ranging from per capita income to poverty, inequality, mortality and human rights. The author provides new results showing that 54 countries—27% of all countries and 29% of the world economy— are sanctioned today, up from only 4% of countries in the 1960s. In the three cases discussed, sanctions that restricted the access of governments to foreign exchange limited the ability of states to provide essential public goods and services and generated substantial negative spillovers on private sector and nongovernmental actors.
Originality/value
This is the first literature survey that systematically assesses the quantitative evidence on the effect of sanctions on living conditions in target countries.
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Francisco J. García-Rodríguez, Desiderio Gutiérrez-Taño and Inés Ruiz-Rosa
The purpose of this paper is to present an explanatory model of the factors that determine parental support for possible entrepreneurial initiatives of the parents' children. This…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present an explanatory model of the factors that determine parental support for possible entrepreneurial initiatives of the parents' children. This is one of the most important challenges to promote the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Design/methodology/approach
A perspective based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) is adopted, and the model is extended to integrate the antecedents of personal attitude toward children's entrepreneurship. The model is tested on a sample of 400 parents.
Findings
Perceived behavioral control (PBC), namely the perception that parents have about the readiness of the children to be entrepreneurs plays the greatest effect on the intention of supporting children's entrepreneurial behavior. In addition, parents' perceptions of how people from the immediate surroundings value the children's possible entrepreneurial behavior are the second most influential variable in the parents' intention to support such behavior. Finally, a parent's personal attitude toward the parent's children's entrepreneurship is the third most relevant variable to explain intention to support, practically with the same weight as subjective norms (SNs).
Practical implications
The results seem to confirm the importance of entrepreneurship development policies that focus on family characteristics and mindsets rather than on more traditional formal institutional support, such as business advice or financial resources. Family emerges as a key mediator to transfer the rules of normative and cultural-cognitive dimensions. Moreover, the results indicate the important role of entrepreneurship education in enhancing entrepreneurship not only due to the positive direct impact on students' entrepreneurial intentions, but also by changing parents' perceptions regarding the children's capabilities and, therefore, influencing the support for entrepreneurial behavior.
Originality/value
Previous studies have analyzed the influence of support from the immediate environment, especially the family, on young people's entrepreneurial behavior and have defined the types of support the family environment can provide. However, there is a missing link in the literature regarding the determinants of family support, despite the determinants' importance in configuring the normative and cultural-cognitive dimensions and the determinants' impact on society, promoting entrepreneurship.
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Francisco J. García-Rodríguez, Esperanza Gil-Soto, Inés Ruiz-Rosa and Desiderio Gutiérrez-Taño
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role that the sociocultural, family and university environment play in the entrepreneurial intention of young people in a peripheral…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role that the sociocultural, family and university environment play in the entrepreneurial intention of young people in a peripheral and less innovative region.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopted the perspective of the theory of planned behavior and made an empirical study with a sample of 1,064 Spanish university students who voluntarily participated in the GUESSS Project answering an online questionnaire. A methodology based on structural equations was used employing the partial least squares structural equation modeling estimation technique.
Findings
The results show that the university environment directly influences attitude, self-confidence and motivation, and indirectly the students’ entrepreneurial intention. The social context also exerts a weak direct influence on the perceived attitudes or desires toward the option to start a business and indirectly on the intention.
Originality/value
The main contribution of this paper seems to confirm what previous literature highlighted in the terms of regional specificities on the link between innovation systems, the impact of entrepreneurial potential and economic development. In this sense, the university context can play an important role in generating improvements in the entrepreneurial intention’s antecedents of young people with greater potential for innovation in peripheral regions. Therefore, when it comes to defining policies to improve entrepreneurship in these regions, it seems that the establishment of entrepreneurship education and motivation programs in universities is a very effective tool to increase perceived attitude toward the option to start a new business.
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Inés Ruiz-Rosa, Desiderio Gutiérrez-Taño, Francisco J. García-Rodríguez and Esperanza Gil-Soto
The present research focuses on an understudied field in the entrepreneurial process: the events that transform intention into effective entrepreneurial behavior.
Abstract
Purpose
The present research focuses on an understudied field in the entrepreneurial process: the events that transform intention into effective entrepreneurial behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper a comparative analysis, using the t-test on related samples, is made of the perceptions of these triggering events of a group of graduates who showed entrepreneurial intention in higher education but, up to now, had not taken the decision to start a business with those of a group who had started a business. To do this, a sample of 227 graduates from a medium-sized European University located in Spain, with manifest entrepreneurial intention was used.
Findings
The results show that there are important differences between perceptions of entrepreneurship triggering events of potential entrepreneurs who have yet to start a company compared to entrepreneurs who have actually started a company. In this sense, the overevaluation by those who have not yet become entrepreneurs of events related to access to finance and the greater relevance for those with entrepreneurial experience of having a good team and contacts consisting of other entrepreneurs, mentors and advisers stand out.
Research limitations/implications
Some of the limitations observed in this work are related to the size of the sample analyzed. In the future, the study should be broadened, and different entrepreneurial behavior by academic specialization, gender, sector and/or type of activities should be investigated.
Originality/value
Our study focuses on the phase of the entrepreneurship process in which intention becomes action and, more specifically, on those events that favor this change in behavior.
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Manuel F. Suárez-Barraza and Francisco G. Rodríguez-González
Some manufacturing and service organizations have made efforts to work on continuous improvement in the form of Kaizen, lean thinking, Six Sigma, etc. The elimination of problems…
Abstract
Purpose
Some manufacturing and service organizations have made efforts to work on continuous improvement in the form of Kaizen, lean thinking, Six Sigma, etc. The elimination of problems and waste (MUDA for the Japanese) plays a fundamental role in the reduction of operational costs and quality rejections of finished products both internally in the organization and in the supply chain. Some of these efforts use quality control tools to remedy it. Kaoru Ishikawa proposes seven basic quality tools. In this group of quality tools is the cause-and-effect diagram (CED), also known as “The Fishbone” and “Ishikawa diagram”. Exploring this questioning can shed light on the first indications to ratify the arguments of Ishikawa and Deming, that the main problems of companies are found in their processes and perhaps, in a deep way, in some of these cornerstone root causes that have to do with the way organizations are managed. The purpose of this study is to investigate cornerstone root causes through the application of CEDs in 40 Mexican companies that began an effort to improve some of their organizational processes.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory qualitative study was conducted. As a research strategy, the case study method was applied. Using theoretical sampling, the Ishikawa diagrams of 40 companies were analyzed, and 24 semi-structured interviews in depth were conducted.
Findings
The results of this research confirm the main research question: Are there cornerstone root causes that give way to one or several problems or effects of problems in organizations regardless of their sector? In other words, there were at least seven typical patterns that show the first signs of cornerstones root causes in organizations.
Research limitations/implications
The method itself is a limitation; 40 case studies are not enough to generalize the results. In addition, the research was conducted only in a single Latin American country; in some cities of Mexico. However, 60 per cent of these companies are multinationals.
Practical implications
This paper is fundamental to delve into the cornerstones causes that give rise to the problems of organizations of the twenty-first century. The authors understand that these are the first indications, and that they cannot be considered a conclusion of these causes. However, this first theoretical sampling presents a first light on the subject.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the limited existing literature on total quality management and Kaizen in quality control tools and subsequently disseminates this information to provide impetus, guidance and support toward improving the problems of the organizations of twenty-first century.
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Manuel F. Suárez Barraza, Francisco G. Rodríguez González and Jose-A. Miguel Dávila
Bashar Abdallah and Francisco Rodríguez Fernandez
This paper aims to study the impact of (regulatory and nonregulatory) liquidity on contingent convertible (CoCo) issuance and the relationship between CoCos and asset quality.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the impact of (regulatory and nonregulatory) liquidity on contingent convertible (CoCo) issuance and the relationship between CoCos and asset quality.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis of this study comprises two stages. In the first stage, the authors used a logit model to test whether banks with riskier assets as well as lower solvency and (regulatory and nonregulatory) liquidity are more likely to issue CoCos. In the second stage, the authors used univariate analysis and fixed effects regression to measure the impact of Additional Tier 1 (AT1) CoCos on the quality of the issuer’s assets.
Findings
The study shows that regulatory liquidity ratios are negatively related to CoCo issuance. This study also finds that the likelihood to issue CoCo is higher when banks have lower regulatory capital or are less risky. Asset quality is found to not change significantly after the issuance. All in all, these results suggest that while solvency regulation is primarily regarded as the main motivation for CoCo issuance, liquidity regulation also matters.
Research limitations/implications
Despite the fact that CoCos have been emerging as an alternative way to help banks meet regulatory capital requirements, the paper argues that the relation between liquidity regulation and CoCos should be taken into account.
Originality/value
This study presents an empirical analysis on the CoCos instrument, focusing on the relationship between AT1 CoCos and liquidity regulation. Therefore, it serves to fill a gap in the literature on the underlying forces behind CoCo issuance. Moreover, this study measures the impact of AT1 CoCos issuance on bank risk, particularly on the quality of the issuer’s assets.
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Constanza Beatriz Veloso-Besio, Alejandro Cuadra-Peralta, Francisco Gil-Rodríguez, Felipe Ponce-Correa and Oscar Sjöberg-Tapia
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of training, applied to supervisors, to face the effects of resistance to organizational change on work motivation and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of training, applied to supervisors, to face the effects of resistance to organizational change on work motivation and organizational climate of their direct employees.
Design/methodology/approach
A quasi-experimental design with a control group was used. The training program was applied in a public organization, which was going through a process of organizational change. The human resources unit formed two groups according to the needs of the organization. A group of seven supervisors received training (experimental group), and another group of eight supervisors received no training (control group). The effectiveness of the training was measured in the subalterns of the supervisors who formed both groups. The training was based on positive psychology and social skills and covered a period of one month and three weeks. The outcomes variables were: work motivation and organizational climate.
Findings
There was a statistically significant increase, from the pretest to the posttest, in the dependent variables registered in the experimental group, compared to the control group. The size of the change (effect size) was moderate magnitude to high.
Originality/value
This research shows an effective training system, applied in supervisors, to improve the work motivation and the organizational climate of the subordinates in processes of organizational change that generate resistance to change in them.
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Manuel F. Suárez-Barraza, Su Mi Dahlgaard-Park, Francisco G. Rodríguez-González and Carolina Durán-Arechiga
Muda is a Japanese term literally meaning futility, uselessness, idleness, superfluity, waste, wastage or wastefulness. The term was introduced by the Japanese engineer Taiichi…
Abstract
Purpose
Muda is a Japanese term literally meaning futility, uselessness, idleness, superfluity, waste, wastage or wastefulness. The term was introduced by the Japanese engineer Taiichi Ohno of Toyota Motor Corporation in the 1960s. Therefore, reducing and minimizing Muda is an effective way to increase the operational efficiency and productivity of an organization’s processes. In turn, the technique known as the affinity or TKJ diagram represents a practical way of sorting data or ideas into groups classified by common patterns; it can be regarded as one of the new seven tools of quality. The purpose of this paper is to discover Muda by applying the affinity or TKJ diagram in Mexican organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory qualitative study was conducted. Using theoretical sampling, the authors identified and analyzed data from a kaizen training course. Each course workshop was organized by the Universidad de las Americas Puebla and consulting firm “Mi Empresa”, and given to employees of various organizations in various sectors over three years from January 2012 to January 2015.
Findings
The research provided the first evidence of Muda in Mexican organizations. The Muda of Ohno’s classification was confirmed, but new common patterns of Muda in twenty-first-century organizations also arose. Furthermore, the TKJ diagram proved to be an effective tool of quality to detect it.
Research limitations/implications
This paper has the same limitations as all other qualitative research, including analysis subjectivity and questionable generalization of findings. It is also important to highlight the seven KJ diagrams, a seemingly abundant figure. However, it is a small sample for the number of companies and processes to be found in Mexico.
Practical implications
This paper may prove to be valuable for practitioners and managers involved in the operations and continuous improvement fields. Getting to know Muda in organizations is of great importance for continuously improving organizational processes. This classification will allow greater insight and easier detection.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the limited existing literature on total quality management, lean thinking and kaizen, and subsequently disseminates this information to provide impetus, guidance and support toward improving the quality of organizational processes.