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This paper focuses on the problems inherent in the use of student samples in business research.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper focuses on the problems inherent in the use of student samples in business research.
Design/methodology/approach
The subject is examined through the opinions of prior researchers, and the pros and cons are presented. The issues of internal and external validity are discussed, and the dangers of theory development without proper application are highlighted.
Findings
Business researchers are cautioned, especially in the case of scale development and cross-cultural research, to avoid the use of student samples.
Originality/value
While this subject has been the source of debate for many years, business researchers are still regularly using student samples for their research. The dangers are too great to simply be ignored because the price is right.
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Keywords
Taewon Suh, John Ford, Young S. Ryu and John H.S. Kim
This study aims to enhance the simultaneous utilization of measure in product design by mapping out the possible and potential uses of a measure for both academicians and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to enhance the simultaneous utilization of measure in product design by mapping out the possible and potential uses of a measure for both academicians and practitioners.
Design/methodology/approach
To map out a way for the simultaneous utilization of measure, the authors assessed and portrayed the diverse facets of a four-factor measure for the development of mobile devices by adopting pluralistic techniques through a series of studies and three different study samples.
Findings
This study provided a solution for enhancing the usability of measure in product management, showing that a measure can be developed using a pluralistic methodology so that the results can be incorporated into the practitioners’ design activities that occur and when the gap between theory and practice is a knowledge production problem.
Research limitations/implications
The main positioning of this study involves the science-design interface (Simon, 1992) to bridge the important gap between theory and practice by showcasing a measure development for product design as a strategy of intellectual arbitrage (Van De Ven and Johnson, 2006). Relying on the design scientific approach, the authors focused this study on a prescriptive procedure rather than a more rigorous methodological procedure.
Practical implications
The authors provided product managers with a systematic and synergistic approach to developing a measure and recommended several usages of the developed measure to enhance its simultaneous utilization between academics and practitioners.
Originality/value
Emphasizing pluralistic methodology in the measure development, the authors recommended the concept of intra-examination. The first-order intra-examination, utilizing Bayesian Networks, makes available the thick descriptions of the measure and supports reasoning under uncertainty. The second-order intra-examination examined nomological networks regarding the pragmatic relationships between the four factors that comprise the measure and other important constructs.
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The case opens with the Ford Motor Company seemingly on the path toward bankruptcy. Ford had been bleeding red ink for more than ten years when it decided in 2006 that continuing…
Abstract
The case opens with the Ford Motor Company seemingly on the path toward bankruptcy. Ford had been bleeding red ink for more than ten years when it decided in 2006 that continuing the same turnaround attempts was not going to right the ship. The company was facing significant external challenges, such as intense competition and changing consumer preferences, as well as internal challenges, such as quality and design issues and a stifling level of corporate complexity. As the case begins, CEO Bill Ford has taken the unusual step of hiring an auto industry outsider as his replacement. Alan Mulally, a thirty-seven-year Boeing veteran and principal architect of the venerable airplane manufacturer's own massive and successful turnaround, wasted little time in getting about the business of remaking Ford. He developed a plan to: focus on the Ford brand and divest the numerous other brands the company had acquired over the years; simplify and streamline the company's manufacturing operations; and remake the corporate culture from one of fiefdoms and false optimism to collaboration and facing reality. With an ardent belief in the plan's viability, Mulally raised nearly $24 billion and began to put his plan into motion. The case explores the many causes of this once-great company's decline and the steps it took to beat the odds and get back on the path of profitability.
This case demonstrates that internal issues alone can derail a company and emphasizes the importance of leadership in fostering the right corporate culture to turn a company around. Students will identify the key internal and external factors that can contribute to a company's decline and learn the importance of diagnosing issues within each of three major aspects of a company-strategy, operations, and financials-in order to develop a successful turnaround plan.
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Kristina Marie Harrison, Boonghee Yoo, Shawn Thelen and John Ford
The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of voters’ personal and societal values on presidential candidate brand personality preference. In addition, the research…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of voters’ personal and societal values on presidential candidate brand personality preference. In addition, the research examines which brand personalities are deemed most and least important. This research meets the growing demand to further understand how voters develop preferences for brandidates.
Design/methodology/approach
Voters ranked which presidential brand personalities they deemed most important in a candidate as well as which of the two major candidates they most associated with that trait. Data were collected weeks in advance of the 2020 presidential election from a national online panel representing a balanced mix of voters by party affiliation.
Findings
The results indicate that life satisfaction, political orientation and postmaterialism are significant and provide adequate explanatory power in understanding which brand personality traits are associated with a presidential candidate. Also, using an importance-performance matrix, the authors find which candidate is most identified with various brand personality traits and how important those traits are to voters.
Research limitations/implications
Using the importance-performance matrix for assessing brand/candidate personality preference by consumers/voters provides researchers with a multidimensional method for analyzing how various dimensions influence selection preference. The explanatory power of the independent variables, i.e. political orientation, comparative life satisfaction and societal values, is very low when regressed against personality attributes in general (not assigned to a candidate); however, they provide meaningful results when regressed against personality attributes when assigned to candidates. Understanding the importance of general brand personality attributes is not as important as understanding their importance when associated with a specific brand.
Practical implications
The importance-performance matrix for brand/candidate personality presented in this research clearly indicated and predicted voter preference for the 2020 Presidential election; thus, this tool can be effectively used by political marketers in future elections. Political orientation so strongly influences voter perception of specific candidate brand personality dimensions that they view their preferred candidate to be universally superior to other candidates. Political marketers can appeal to voters based on their political orientation to strengthen the relationship between candidates and voters.
Originality/value
This research investigates how personal and societal values impact voters’ preference for brand personality traits in a presidential candidate. Voter preference for presidential brand personality traits is assessed generically, i.e. not associated with a particular candidate, as well as when they are linked to a specific candidate, i.e. Biden and Trump.
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Sarah Mady, John B. Ford and Tarek Mady
This paper aims to examine the effect of intercultural accommodation efforts on service quality perceptions among ethnic minority consumers. Specifically, the paper postulates…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the effect of intercultural accommodation efforts on service quality perceptions among ethnic minority consumers. Specifically, the paper postulates that during an intercultural service encounter, the impact of the service provider’s language and ethnicity on the consumer’s service quality perceptions is moderated by the level of service involvement, consumer acculturation and perceived discrimination, which, in turn, influence purchase intent.
Design/methodology/approach
A 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design with an online nationwide consumer panel of Hispanic consumers was conducted where 377 participants were randomly assigned to a series of service encounter scenarios in the banking service context to manipulate accommodation efforts (yes vs no) and the level of involvement with the service (high vs low).
Findings
When such language and ethnicity accommodations were offered, highly acculturated minority consumers regarded the service encounter less favorably than low acculturated minority consumers. Moreover, during low-involvement service encounters, intercultural accommodations positively impacted consumer’s service quality perceptions compared to situations involving high-involvement services. Also, minority consumers with perceptions of past discrimination had less favorable evaluations of the service quality than when such perceptions were nonexistent when intercultural accommodation efforts were made by the service provider.
Research limitations/implications
The findings add to the sparse literature that examines the effectiveness of intercultural accommodation and focuses on the combined use of service provider’s language and ethnicity as a means to enhance service quality.
Practical implications
The study delivers cautions for service firms not to generalize the receptivity of intercultural accommodation efforts. Given the increasingly sizable segments of minority customers, this study offers insights for service providers to develop suitable recruitment strategies and training programs when devising effective ethnic targeting strategies.
Originality/value
This research is among the first to explain why the effect of target marketing is not homogenous by expanding the research on intercultural accommodations toward a new context considering service involvement levels among varied minority consumer groups.
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Keywords
Michel Laroche, Maria Kalamas and Mark Cleveland
To examine the impact of culture on customer service expectations, specifically, how individualists and collectivists use internal and external sources of information to formulate…
Abstract
Purpose
To examine the impact of culture on customer service expectations, specifically, how individualists and collectivists use internal and external sources of information to formulate their service expectations.
Design/methodology/approach
The context was the airline industry and the subject pool consisted of experienced consumers. A survey was employed to measure individualism/collectivism, various internal/external information sources, and the functional and technical dimensions of “should” and “will” service expectations. Hypothesized relationships were tested using a structural equations modeling approach.
Findings
Both individualists and collectivists relied more on external information sources in formulating their service expectations, gave variable weight to the functional and technical components, and used more realistic “will” expectations to judge service offerings. Internal (external) information sources were relatively more important in forming expectations for collectivists (individualists) than for individualists (collectivists), and “will” (“should”) expectations were more diagnostic for collectivists (individualists) than for individualists (collectivists).
Research limitations/implications
Generalizability of the findings is limited due to the specific industry under study (airlines), the sample (two geographically‐proximate sub‐cultures), and the scope of the cultural variables considered (individualism/collectivism).
Practical implications
Whether managers should leverage the functional and/or technical components of services depends in part on the cultural orientation of their customers. Managers should also recognize that customers’ usage of various information sources in forming service expectations is also, in part, culturally determined.
Originality/value
In this era of globalization, researchers and managers alike need to consider the subtle influences of culture on marketing theories and the formulation of service expectations respectively.
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Kateryna Kravchenko, Tim Gruchmann, Marina Ivanova and Dmitry Ivanov
The ripple effect (i.e. disruption propagation in networks) belongs to one of the central pillars in supply chain resilience and viability research, constituting a type of…
Abstract
Purpose
The ripple effect (i.e. disruption propagation in networks) belongs to one of the central pillars in supply chain resilience and viability research, constituting a type of systemic disruption. A considerable body of knowledge has been developed for the last two decades to examine the ripple effect triggered by instantaneous disruptions, e.g. earthquakes or factory fires. In contrast, far less research has been devoted to study the ripple effect under long-term disruptions, such as in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
This study qualitatively analyses secondary data on the ripple effects incurred in automotive and electronics supply chains. Through the analysis of five distinct case studies illustrating operational practices used by companies to cope with the ripple effect, we uncover a disruption propagation mechanism through the supply chains during the semiconductor shortage in 2020–2022.
Findings
Applying a theory elaboration approach, we sequence the triggers for the ripple effects induced by the semiconductor shortage. Second, the measures to mitigate the ripple effect employed by automotive and electronics companies are delineated with a cost-effectiveness analysis. Finally, the results are summarised and generalised into a causal loop diagram providing a more complete conceptualisation of long-term disruption propagation.
Originality/value
The results add to the academic discourse on appropriate mitigation strategies. They can help build scenarios for simulation and analytical models to inform decision-making as well as incorporate systemic risks from ripple effects into a normal operations mode. In addition, the findings provide practical recommendations for implementing short- and long-term measures during long-term disruptions.
Details
Keywords
John Donaldson, J.H. Arkell and R. Davies
November 9, 1972 Master and Servant — Redundancy — “Dismissal” — Employees taken to and from work free of charge — Transport discontinued by employers because uneconomical …
Abstract
November 9, 1972 Master and Servant — Redundancy — “Dismissal” — Employees taken to and from work free of charge — Transport discontinued by employers because uneconomical — Employees' notice — No evidence diminished requirements of work — Whether proper test to consider future availability of work if transport continued — Redundancy Payments Act, 1965 (c.62),s.l(2). Industrial Court — Judicial precedent — Whether decisions of Divisional Court binding — Whether Industrial Court bound by own decisions.
Cangaço was a form of banditry that occurred in the North-East of Brazil between 1870 and 1940. The movement has inspired many films over the years. This chapter explores the…
Abstract
Cangaço was a form of banditry that occurred in the North-East of Brazil between 1870 and 1940. The movement has inspired many films over the years. This chapter explores the contribution of Cangaço-inspired productions to Brazilian cinema, as well as the particular characteristics of what constitutes the Cangaço genre.
Following a historical survey of the Cangaço, the films were divided into different categories and ranked in terms of relevance. Only the most important are discussed in this chapter.
The Cangaço has been portrayed in Brazilian cinema through the decades in diverse ways, dating back to the 1920s. After becoming a consolidated film genre in the 1950s, then known as Nordestern, the Cangaço finally acquired a proper structure, featuring multiple Western references among its common characteristics. In the 1960s, Glauber Rocha, one of the most prominent filmmakers of the Cinema Novo avant-garde movement, added his own symbolism to the genre. Eventually, the Cangaço was also revisited by directors who combined it with other genres such as comedy, documentary, and erotic films. Another relevant reinterpretation came in the 1990s, when filmmakers of the so-called New Brazilian Cinema offered a new view on the subject.
Despite its strong association with Brazil, the Cangaço has not been thoroughly investigated by researchers. This chapter presents a historical survey and analysis of Cangaço films, highlighting their relevance to Brazilian cinema.