Karlene T. Clark, Holly M. Gabriel and Kristen Borysewicz
This paper aims to describe both the development of a peer research consultant program – using student assistants to staff the reference desk with minimal supervision while…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to describe both the development of a peer research consultant program – using student assistants to staff the reference desk with minimal supervision while providing high-quality research assistance to their undergraduate peers, and the steps taken to create buy-in for the program from campus and librarians.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors provide a description of peer reference services and describe how a remodel of the library building facilitated a redesign of services. The paper covers the process of developing program guidelines, securing funding, expectations of peer research consultants, the training process and lessons learned from a medium-sized academic library.
Findings
The findings after the first year demonstrate that undergraduates are highly skilled at providing high-quality reference services when provided with quality training and support. In addition, undergraduate students are now seeking out peer researchers for assistance with research items such as topic formation, keyword development in databases and proper citations.
Research limitations/implications
No formal research or assessment of the program has been completed as of this time.
Practical implications
Well-trained Peer Research Consultants (PRCs) provide valued assistance to librarians in freshman composition classes, at the Ask Us reference desk, and to their peers. The program has allowed librarians to provide more outreach to their subject areas.
Social implications
Students prefer going to their peers for research assistance rather than a professional librarian when given the choice. The training the PRCs are provided by librarians provides credibility and trust, which encourages undergraduate students to approach PRCs for assistance.
Originality/value
This paper draws on multiple iterations of peer reference models to create an original program, involving training student employees to provide reference services at a paraprofessional level, as well as providing the methodology for other academic libraries to develop and launch a similar program.
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Roger Bennett and Helen Gabriel
Respondents in 86 UK companies known to engage in the sponsorship of schools and school activities participated in a survey designed to investigate the extent to which sample…
Abstract
Respondents in 86 UK companies known to engage in the sponsorship of schools and school activities participated in a survey designed to investigate the extent to which sample firms perceived and managed their schools sponsorship programmes as commercial investments rather than as philanthropic donations. The study also examined the reasons for schools sponsorship, how closely it was integrated with other forms of marketing communications, the location of responsibility for its administration, whether it was leveraged by other marketing communications instruments and how it was monitored and evaluated. Cluster and multiple group discriminant analyses were completed to identify the characteristics of the sample businesses which adopted materialistic as opposed to altruistic approaches towards the practice.
Balkrushna Potdar, Tony Garry, John Guthrie and Juergen Gnoth
The purpose of this paper is to explore how interactional justice within a retail context may influence employee organizational commitment and how this may evoke guardianship…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how interactional justice within a retail context may influence employee organizational commitment and how this may evoke guardianship behaviors that manifest in shoplifting prevention.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses a phenomenological approach conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews with 26 shop-floor employees of two major national supermarket chains in New Zealand.
Findings
The findings suggest that interactional justice in the workplace is important in shaping organizational commitment amongst employees. Additionally, heightened organizational commitment may have a significant effect on employee propensity to engage in shoplifting prevention/guardianship behavior. A conceptual model is developed based on these findings.
Practical implications
Retail managers may promote and exercise interactional justice practices with employees to improve their organizational commitment and consequential shoplifting prevention/guardianship behaviors.
Originality/value
The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, and from a theoretical perspective, it offers both a conceptual foundation and empirical-based evaluation of interactional justice and its effect on organizational commitment and, specifically, on guardianship/shoplifting prevention behaviors. Second, and from a pragmatic perspective, the conceptual model derived from this research may assist retailers in developing interactional justice strategies that encourage organizational commitment of employees that consequently leads to employees’ guardianship/shoplifting prevention behaviors. Finally, it explores significance and role of employee perceptions of interactional justice, employee workplace attachment and organizational commitment within the context of retail crime prevention.
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A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balanceeconomics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary toman′s finding the good life and society enduring…
Abstract
A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.
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Timothy Dombrowski, R. Kelley Pace and Rajesh P. Narayanan
Portfolios of mortgage loans played an important role in the Great Recession and continue to compose a material part of bank assets. This chapter investigates how cross-sectional…
Abstract
Portfolios of mortgage loans played an important role in the Great Recession and continue to compose a material part of bank assets. This chapter investigates how cross-sectional dependence in the underlying properties flows through to the loan returns, and thus, the risk of the portfolio. At one extreme, a portfolio of foreclosed mortgage loans becomes a portfolio of real estate whose returns exhibit substantial cross-sectional and spatial dependence. Near the other extreme, almost all loans perform and yield constant returns, which do not correlate with other performing loan returns. This suggests that loan performance effectively censors the random returns of the underlying properties. Following the statistical properties of the correlations among censored variables, the authors build off this foundation and show how the loan return correlations will rise as economic conditions deteriorate and the defaulting loans reveal the underlying housing correlations. In this chapter, the authors (1) adapt tools from spatial statistics to document substantial cross-sectional dependence across house price returns and examine the spatial structure of this dependence, (2) investigate the nonlinear nature of correlations among loan returns as a function of the default rate and the underlying house price correlations, and (3) conduct a simulation exercise using parameters from the empirical data to show the implications for holding a portfolio of mortgages.
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The nutritive properties of various dietary components and their effects on health are regularly debated in the scientific literature and popular media. The study of the regular…
Abstract
The nutritive properties of various dietary components and their effects on health are regularly debated in the scientific literature and popular media. The study of the regular consumption of cake in relation to the risk of developing metabolic disorders is however an exciting new development in the field. This chapter suggests that cake consumption is amongst a number of factors that may explain The Ambridge Paradox: the extremely low incidence of metabolic disorders such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes observed in a small Borsetshire village. The chapter identifies 10 dietary and lifestyle habits observed in this population that may be beneficial for cardiovascular health, acting through a variety of mechanisms. Key amongst these may be the synergic properties of several biochemical components of cake, especially the phenolic compounds in varieties with a fruit-based element, such as lemon drizzle. The chapter concludes that the dietary and lifestyle habits of the Ambridge cohort show promise as a model for improving the metabolic health of wider populations. In particular, it suggests that cake consumption may be a promising therapeutic supplement to prevent and even treat metabolic disorders.
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Anthony J. Stone and Carol Rambo
Using a semi-autoethnographic layered account format, we present the voices of 16 Native American adults as they talk about their lives and Native American Caricature Iconography…
Abstract
Using a semi-autoethnographic layered account format, we present the voices of 16 Native American adults as they talk about their lives and Native American Caricature Iconography (NACI). First, we explore their impressions and lived experiences with “racial formation projects” such as tribal identification cards, blood quantum calculations, genocide, child removal, boarding schools, and reservations, to contextualize why some Native Americans interpret NACI as much more than “an honor,” “tradition,” or “just good fun.” Next, we explore the Native Americans' perceptions of sports mascots, cartoons, and sculpture, after exposing them to a series of eight images of NACI. We conclude that NACIs are racial formation projects as well. By unmindfully producing and consuming NACI, we fail to interrupt and reform the racial formation projects that continue to define us all.
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Daniel Clarke, James Bowden and Keith Dinnie
In this chapter, the authors explore the impact of Covid-19 on craft beer in the here-and-now of the pandemic by examining responses of Scottish (UK) brewers to it. The authors’…
Abstract
In this chapter, the authors explore the impact of Covid-19 on craft beer in the here-and-now of the pandemic by examining responses of Scottish (UK) brewers to it. The authors’ aim is to organise their responses to the situation in which they find themselves with the objective of making fresh sense of the dynamics of organising during a global pandemic. In pursuit of fresh insight to all of this, the authors seek to illuminate what Covid-19 can do to/for breweries and to know the world differently (through recognising more than one way of knowing). So, to enrich the reader’s understanding of organising in the haecceity of responding to and dealing with Covid-19, the authors’ method of inquiry involves integrating empirical materials from brewery social media activities with poetic transcription from interviews with brewers. The authors find support for the view that such integration of findings through research poetry clothes the social media content findings and neither approach dominates the other. Potential implications for future beer studies from the field of poetry are discussed in light of the new comings-together in this chapter.
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Hassanudin Mohd Thas Thaker, Mohamed Ariff and Niviethan Rao Subramaniam
The purpose of this paper is to identify the drivers of residential price as well as the degree co-movement of housing among different states in Malaysia.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the drivers of residential price as well as the degree co-movement of housing among different states in Malaysia.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted an advanced econometrics technique: the dynamic autoregressive-distributed lag (DARDL) and – the time-frequency domain approach known as the wavelet coherence test. The DARDL model was applied to identify the cointegrating relationships and the CWT was used to analyze the co-movement and lead–lag relationships among four states’ regional housing prices. The extracted data were mainly on annual basis and comprised macroeconomics and financial factors. Information with regard to residential prices and other variables was extracted from the National Property Information Centre (NAPIC) website, the Central Bank of Malaysia Statistics Report, the Department of Statistics, Malaysia, I-Property.com and the World Bank (WB). The data covered in this study were the pool data from four main states in Malaysia and different categories of residential properties.
Findings
The empirical results indicate that there were long-run cointegration relationships between the housing price and capital gain and loss, rental per square feet, disposable income, inflation, number of marriages, deposit rate, risk premium and loan-to-value (LTV) ratio. While the wavelet analysis shows that (1) in the long run, Kuala Lumpur housing price having strong co-movement with Selangor, Penang and Melaka housing prices except for Johor and (2) the lead–lag relationship also postulates Kuala Lumpur housing price having in-phase category with Selangor, Penang and Melaka housing prices except for Johor.
Practical implications
This study offers relevant practical implications. First, the study proposes an active collaboration between the private sector and government support which may help to smooth the pricing issue of residential properties. More low-cost residential projects are needed for focus groups including middle- and low-income earners. Furthermore, the results are expected to provide real estate investor in Malaysia, an improved understanding of the regional housing market price dynamics.
Originality/value
The findings of this study were obtained from various reliable sources; therefore, the results reflected the analysis of price drivers and co-movements. Furthermore, findings from this study lend some support to the argument on the rise of residential prices and offer several policy implications from a practical point of view with regard to the residential market.