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The recent lessons of the recession have taught human resources planners to think about controlling people costs before their companies get pinched by a sluggish economy. To do this, business and human resource strategy must be linked in a systematic and quantifiable way.

The study aims to test a measurement scale to examine social business networks (Wasta) surrounding Arab Christians and Arab Muslims.

A 31-item scale was used to capture Wasta, consisting of the following: Mojamala (emotional), Hamola (conative) and Somah (cognitive) tri-components. A total of 149 Christian Arab and 304 Muslim Arab respondents were sampled and multi-group structural equation modeling was used to confirm the concept and test several hypotheses.

The findings from the study reveal that in order for success to occur within the Arab context, a sequential process of first developing Mojamala is necessary, before Hamola can prevail. Christian Arabs are motivated to integrate with society and form relationships via generalized trust. Muslim Arabs meanwhile tend to retain their distinct culture, using social networks to forge particularized trust. Shariah principles may also play a significant role in explaining why satisfaction was not found to be a necessary condition for Arab Muslims in driving relationship performance.

The study suggests that the 370 million Arab population may not be totally cohesive and should be refrained from being grouped together. In-group identification is a major contributor in explaining why business models are different between Arab Muslims and Arab Christians. The findings further support that Muslim Arab business models are based on tribalism or sheikocracy, whilst Christian Arab business models are based on legalistic frameworks and integration.

The study supports prior research associated with Muslim Arab business models based on tribalism or sheikocracy (Ali, 1995). The findings suggest that Arab Muslim business models focus on particularized trust as opposed to generalized trust that is common in Arab Christian business models and in most western countries. The study demonstrates that Mojamala (the emotional construct), Hamola (empathy) and Somah (particularized trust) are useful constructs for building Wasta and they serve a core element for Arab Muslim business models. Mojamala and Somah both directly affect satisfaction. Somah and satisfaction have a direct influence on performance.

The findings provide evidence to support institutional theory. Also from a stakeholder theory perspective, viewing companies, not only through an economic lens, but also building social institutions, can lead to a better understanding of business models drawing on diverse cultures and faiths. The study may therefore serve as a useful reference for academics and practitioners as they grapple to enhance satisfaction and leverage performance advantages within this context.

Using a novel measure incorporating stylistic and acoustic data on recorded music from 1967 to 2017, we search for trends in the evolution of musical diversity in 125,340 albums. We find that temporal patterns of diversity differ for stylistic and acoustic data. We also find that the patterns differ dramatically by genre. Some genres, such as blues, jazz, and pop-rock, decrease in diversity over time; most other genres increase in diversity. The causes of these different trends present a puzzle for future research. We also find different patterns for recordings that made the Billboard 200 charts compared to all recordings, suggesting an association between selection processes driven by consumer popularity and diversity. Moreover, associations of diversity and industry structure found in prior research do not hold when we analyze data beyond the smaller sample of the more popular recordings found in Billboard. These findings have implications for many prior studies based exclusively on best-selling recordings

The purpose of this paper is to assess the programmatic effectiveness of a post-incarceration support service, Jail In-Reach, to rapidly and permanently re-house newly released offenders with a documented history of homelessness, substance abuse and mental health disorders.

Data were obtained from SEARCH Homeless Services using the Adult Texas Recommended Assessment Guidelines survey instrument by the Texas Department of State Health Services. Repeated measures analysis of variance were performed to determine the effects of select predictors on the likelihood of permanent housing, which, for this research, is considered programmatic success.

Results indicate clients exhibited decreased risks of self-harm, employment problems, housing instability, co-occurring substance use, and criminal justice involvement as well as increased social support. Over half of the program participants either disappeared from the program or only secured temporary housing.

This was a small pilot project with limited generalizability. There have been no follow-up studies to examine long term permanent housing success. No data were available as to why participants dropped out of the program.

Intensive advocacy and support services provided pre- and post-institutional release could provide formerly homeless inmates with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues with positive outcomes.

Housing stability and connections to social service agencies are key factors for ensuring ex-offenders do not become re-incarcerated.

This paper contributes to the literature related to reducing homelessness among ex-offenders, to the effectiveness of critical time intervention-based programming, and the need for building social capital amongst this unique and underserved population.

The purpose of this study is to investigate Koreans' preferences for FCDM versus SDM and explored the influence of Asian cultural values on decision-making in the context of managing chronic illnesses, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Shared decision-making (SDM) emphasizes collaboration between providers and service recipients to decide on the best treatment options. However, it may not fully account for the role of families in managing chronic illness, particularly for people from Eastern cultural backgrounds who value active participation from their families in decisions. In response, family-centered decision-making (FCDM) has been proposed as an alternative approach. Using a vignette experiment design, data (n = 316) were collected from Koreans in the US and in Korea who were randomly presented with either SDM or FCDM processes for reaching T2DM treatment decisions. In addition to demographic information, participants reported on three dimensions of their decision-making experience: satisfaction, perceived effectiveness, and perspective-taking. They also rated their Asian cultural values and familiarity with T2DM. Results show better satisfaction, perceived effectiveness, and perspective taking for FCDM compared to SDM when examined in context of treatment types and perceived illness severity. Moderation effects were found for familiarity of illness, with familiarity effects varying by perceived severity. Study findings provided some evidence in favor of FCDM in Asian communities addressing the disabilities and chronic illness of a family member. Although the current study investigated treatment decisions for T2DM during doctor's visits, FCDM has shown potential to be applied in other service settings.

The purpose of the study is to propose a normative approach for market segmentation, profile and monitoring using computing and information technology to analyze User-Generated Content (UGC).

The specific steps include performing a structural analysis of the UGC and extracting the base variables and values from it, generating a consumer characteristics matrix for segmenting process, and finally describing the segments' preferences, regional and dynamic characteristics. The authors verify the feasibility of the method with publicly available data. The external validity of the method is also tested through questionnaires and product regional sales data.

The authors apply the proposed methodology to analyze 53,526 UGCs in the New Energy Vehicle (NEV) market and classify consumers into four segments: Brand-Value Suitors (32%), Rational Consumers (21%), High-Quality Fanciers (26%) and Utility-driven Consumers (21%). The authors describe four segments' preferences, dynamic changes over the past six years and regional characteristics among China's top five sales cities. Then, the authors verify the external validity of the methodology through a questionnaire survey and actual NEV sales in China.

The proposed method enables companies to utilize computing and information technology to understand the market structure and grasp the dynamic trends of market segments, which assists them in developing R&D and marketing plans.

This study contributes to the research on UGC-based universal market segmentation methods. In addition, the proposed UGC structural analysis algorithm implements a more fine-grained data analysis.

Forecasting techniques improve supply chain resilience by ensuring that the correct parts are available when required. In addition, accurate forecasts conserve precious resources and money by avoiding new start contracts to produce unforeseen part requests, reducing labor intensive cannibalization actions and ensuring consistent transportation modality streams where changes incur cost. This study explores the effectiveness of the United States Air Force’s current flying hour-based demand forecast by comparing it with a sortie-based demand forecast to predict future spare part needs.

This study employs a correlation analysis to show that demand for reparable parts on certain aircraft has a stronger correlation to the number of sorties flown than the number of flying hours. The effect of using the number of sorties flown instead of flying hours is analyzed by employing sorties in the United States Air Force (USAF)’s current reparable parts forecasting model. A comparative analysis on D200 forecasting error is conducted across F-16 and B-52 fleets.

This study finds that the USAF could improve its reparable parts forecast, and subsequently part availability, by employing a sortie-based demand rate for particular aircraft such as the F-16. Additionally, our findings indicate that forecasts for reparable parts on aircraft with low sortie count flying profiles, such as the B-52 fleet, perform better modeling demand as a function of flying hours. Thus, evidence is provided that the Air Force should employ multiple forecasting techniques across its possessed, organically supported aircraft fleets. The improvement of the forecast and subsequent decrease in forecast error will be presented in the Results and Discussion section.

This study is limited by the data-collection environment, which is only reported on an annual basis and is limited to 14 years of historical data. Furthermore, some observations were not included because significant data entry errors resulted in unusable observations.

There are few studies addressing the time measure of USAF reparable component failures. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no studies that analyze spare component demand as a function of sortie numbers and compare the results of forecasts made on a sortie-based demand signal to the current flying hour-based approach to spare parts forecasting. The sortie-based forecast is a novel methodology and is shown to outperform the current flying hour-based method for some aircraft fleets.

Normalair‐Garrett Ltd., (Stand No. N31) part of the Westland plc Group of Yeovil, Somerset, is exhibiting a wide range of products which demonstrate the company's diverse capabilities in control systems and precision components for the aerospace industry.

The aim of this paper is to examine the mediating role of employee competencies in the association between human resource management (HRM) practices and organizational effectiveness of the pharmaceutical industry in Ghana.

An integrated research model was developed by combining principal factors from existing literature. The validity of the model was tested by applying structural equation modelling (SEM) to the data collected from 550 employees of the selected pharmaceutical industries. The reliability and validity of the dimensions are established through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and related hypotheses tested using SEM.

The results indicate that some HRM practices influence organizational effectiveness through their impact on employee competencies. The study further revealed that employee competencies mediate the association between HRM practices and organizational effectiveness.

The research was undertaken in the pharmaceutical industry and the analysis based on cross-sectional data which cannot be generalized across a broader range of sectors and international environment.

The findings of the study have the potential to help stakeholders, policy makers and management of the pharmaceutical industry in espousing suitable and well-articulated HRM practices to influence and shape the skills, knowledge and behaviour of employees and inordinately enhance organizational effectiveness.

This study extends the literature by adducing evidence empirically that employee competencies mediated the association between HRM practices and organizational effectiveness of the pharmaceutical industry in Ghana.