Katja Müller, Hato Schmeiser and Joël Wagner
The purpose of this paper paper is to study effective measures in dealing with the phenomenon of insurance claims’ fraud. In fact, fraud is one of the major industry concerns. It…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper paper is to study effective measures in dealing with the phenomenon of insurance claims’ fraud. In fact, fraud is one of the major industry concerns. It occurs in all classes of insurance and accounts for a substantial portion of indemnity payments each year.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper develops a model framework based on a costly state verification setting in which – while policyholders observe the amount of loss privately – the insurance company can decide to audit incoming claims at some cost. The aim is to derive optimal auditing strategies from the insurance company’s perspective while maintaining contract attractiveness to policyholders willing to adhere to the insurance relationship. The possibility for each stakeholder to adapt its behavioral strategy over the course of several periods is taken into account. Using a numerical approach based on Monte Carlo simulations, the impact of different parameterizations on the optimal auditing range by means of a sensitivity analysis is illustrated and analyzed.
Findings
The central outcome of the model is an auditing range which selects those claims which should be subject to verification.
Practical implications
This paper comes to the conclusion that, given some constant cost per audit, it is optimal to verify the accuracy of claims from the mid-value segment. Furthermore, it can be shown that while the option to adapt one’s strategy might be favorable from the insurance company perspective, it has a negative impact on the policyholders’ position. This disproves the common belief that adapting the defrauding strategy with the help of signals from service providers would be advantageous.
Originality/value
This paper extends the stand of literature on costly state verification and gives indications for optimal auditing strategies in industry practice.
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Katja Zajc Kejžar and Tina Golob Šušteršič
This paper aims to study the decision of multinational enterprises (MNEs) whether to employ a host-country (HCN) or a parent-country national (PCN) manager in their subsidiaries…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the decision of multinational enterprises (MNEs) whether to employ a host-country (HCN) or a parent-country national (PCN) manager in their subsidiaries, focusing on the role of host market contestability.
Design/methodology/approach
We develop an empirical model for the probability of appointing a PCN manager in the population of all foreign-owned firms registered in Slovenia over a nine-year period. We combine four different micro databases: a matched employer–employee database, firm-level inward FDI data, firm-level outward FDI data and firm-level financial data, and apply a heteroskedastic probit model, a random effects probit estimator and a fixed effects panel data estimator. The final, fully merged database contains on average of about 28,000 firms per year.
Findings
We find that the propensity to appoint a PCN manager is higher in subsidiaries that compete with less-productive local rival firms in tacit knowledge-intensive industries with lower competition. The results also suggest that the likelihood of employing expatriates is higher in larger, younger and more export-oriented subsidiaries in less distant locations. In addition, cultural distance between the investing and host countries has been found to be more relevant than physical distance and to account for much of the differences between investors from different regions.
Originality/value
An important advantage of our paper is that we use comprehensive firm-level data on the entire population of firms operating in a host country, including both domestic and foreign-owned firms. This allows us to introduce a wide range of host-country market structure and local rival firm characteristics into our empirical model of the expatriation decision, which have not been previously tested. Additionally, we account for MNE heterogeneity in terms of investor origin, while controlling for investor country characteristics such as cultural, institutional and geographical distance from the host country.
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Katja Maria Hydle and Karl Joachim Breunig
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how practices creating knowing can be enabled in project work.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how practices creating knowing can be enabled in project work.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on an exploratory, in‐depth case study of an international professional service firm (IPSF) and local and transnational project work to deliver services. Project work is investigated through a practice approach.
Findings
In transnational project work, three knowing practices are identified – networking, doing, and sorting – and three practices of creating new knowing – finding, learning, and probing.
Research limitations/implications
Although only one organization was studied, the research presented shows that knowledge creation and project work benefit from a practice perspective to highlight the enacted aspects of knowing and new knowing.
Practical implications
The findings show that different project phases enable the necessary knowing and/or new knowing practices through a differentiated focus on social interaction and contacts on the one hand and the use of materials, documents, systems and infrastructure on the other.
Originality/value
The paper extends earlier research and shows that practices of knowing involve more than doing and practices of creating knowing involve more than learning. A conceptual understanding of knowing‐who, knowing‐how, and knowing‐what is developed to identify the knowing and new knowing while appreciating their interrelations. Further, the paper shows how the project phases and the practices can be better enabled through a differentiated focus on the social and the material use.
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Katja Thillmann, Anabel Bach, Sebastian Wurster and Felicitas Thiel
In Germany up until now, there has been very little research on staff development in schools. The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively assess school-based staff development…
Abstract
Purpose
In Germany up until now, there has been very little research on staff development in schools. The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively assess school-based staff development and to describe the interplay between different instruments of staff development (e.g. classroom observations, development discussions) at the school level.
Design/methodology/approach
Considering that different constellations of organizational management tools may be differentially effective in different contexts (see Mintzberg, 1983/1992), an approach that takes a combination of different staff development instruments into account was chosen. Data were gathered from principals of primary and secondary schools in two federal states of Germany. Using regression, cluster analysis, and analysis of variance, the authors examined different instruments and patterns of staff development used in everyday school practice and determined how these affected the professional development of teachers.
Findings
Five staff development patterns could be identified. With regard to the extent of professional development activities of teachers, these patterns have been proven to have a different impact. Furthermore, the use of the different staff development patterns seems to be heavily dependent on the type of school.
Research limitations/implications
Further research would be needed that examines if the three most relevant staff development patterns identified in this study can also be proven to be effective with regard to somewhat “harder” criteria than the extent of professional development activities of teachers. Such criteria could be teachers’ teaching skills or even student achievement.
Originality/value
The current study is the first to examine staff development in German schools systematically. The results provide some good leads for further studies in this area.
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It is almost unbelievable that it is already 11 years ago that our most beloved friend and teacher Anselm Strauss died. In 1999 we had a conference in Magdeburg, Germany, where we…
Abstract
It is almost unbelievable that it is already 11 years ago that our most beloved friend and teacher Anselm Strauss died. In 1999 we had a conference in Magdeburg, Germany, where we tried to commemorate his very personal and creative way of doing sociological research and of teaching sociology that established an almost miraculous bridge to the minds of German and other European social scientists even though Anselm Strauss was very American. He was American in the best sense of using and encouraging creative freedom of expression, of showing witty nonconventionality, of relating in an egalitarian way to his interaction partners, of being empathically cooperative and practical in his thinking and in his personal relationships with his European students and colleagues. Today, instead, I would like to talk a little bit about his longer lasting impact on German-speaking social sciences and on other European social sciences as far as I have insight into them.
Jana Besser, Martha Larson and Katja Hofmann
This research aims to identify users' goals and strategies when searching for podcasts and their impact on the design of podcast retrieval technology. In particular, the paper…
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to identify users' goals and strategies when searching for podcasts and their impact on the design of podcast retrieval technology. In particular, the paper seeks to explore the potential to address user goals with indexing based on podcast metadata and automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcripts.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper conducted a user study to obtain an overview of podcast search behaviour and goals, using a multi‐method approach of an online survey, a diary study, and contextual interviews. In a subsequent podcast retrieval experiment, the paper investigated the retrieval performance of the two choices of indexing features for search goals identified during the study.
Findings
The paper found that study participants used a variety of search strategies, partially influenced by available tools and their perceptions of these tools. Furthermore the experimental results revealed that retrieval using ASR transcripts performed significantly better than metadata‐based searching. However, a detailed result analysis suggested that the efficacy of the indexing methods was search‐goal dependent.
Research limitations/implications
The research constitutes a step towards a future framework for investigating user needs and addressing them in an experimental set‐up. It was primarily qualitative and exploratory in nature.
Practical implications
Podcast search engines require evidence about suitable indexing methods in order to make an informed decision concerning whether it is worth the resources to generate speech recognition transcripts.
Originality/value
Systematic studies of podcast searching have not previously been reported. Investigations of this kind hold the potential to optimise podcast retrieval in the long term.
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Hafizah Omar Zaki, Dahlia Fernandez, Omkar Dastane, Aini Aman and Soliha Sanusi
This study unravels the intellectual structure of virtual reality (VR) in digital marketing (DM) research, identifies core research gaps and presents future research avenues. The…
Abstract
Purpose
This study unravels the intellectual structure of virtual reality (VR) in digital marketing (DM) research, identifies core research gaps and presents future research avenues. The study also conducts a performance analysis of publications in the field and identifies the most important stakeholders of the stated topic.
Design/methodology/approach
The Web of Science database was used to retrieve the publications that were relevant to the topic between 2012 and 2022. Biblioshiny, a shiny app for the Bibliometrix R package, is used to conduct a bibliometric analysis by decoding the results into several visual representations.
Findings
This report includes the most prolific contributors, keyword analysis results, productive nations, authors and connections, as well as the most often cited publications on VR in DM. In DM research, numerous perspectives on VR were looked at, explored and revealed.
Practical implications
The findings provide a new perspective and understanding of the issue for researchers in order to improve their research insights in the field. This study will also benefit marketing practitioners in ensuring the sustainability and innovativeness of technology used to run their DM campaigns.
Originality/value
This research provides the first bibliometric analysis of the citation works and productivity in the field of VR in DM using Biblioshiny, identifies core research gaps and provides future research agenda which can be useful to advance the research understanding in this context.
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Janine Burghardt and Klaus Möller
This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance of managers, and employees and can be enabled by sufficient use of management controls. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on bibliometric analyses and a structured literature review of academic research studies from the organizational, management and accounting literature, the authors develop a conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work.
Findings
First, the authors propose that the use of formal management controls in a system (i.e. the levers of the control framework) is more powerful than using unrelated formal controls only. Second, they suggest that the interaction of a formal control system together with informal controls working as a control package can even stretch the perception of meaningful work. Third, they argue that the intensity of the control use matters to enhance the perception of meaningful work (inverted u-shaped relationship).
Originality/value
This study presents the first conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. It provides valuable implications for practice and future research in the field of performance management.