Search results
1 – 9 of 9Marco Macchi, Adolfo Crespo Márquez, Maria Holgado, Luca Fumagalli and Luis Barberá Martínez
– The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology for the engineering of E-maintenance platforms that is based on a value-driven approach.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology for the engineering of E-maintenance platforms that is based on a value-driven approach.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology assumes that a value-driven engineering approach would help foster technological innovation for maintenance management. Indeed, value-driven engineering could be easily adopted at the business level, with subsequent positive effects on the industrial applications of new information and communication technologies solutions.
Findings
The methodology combines a value-driven approach with the engineering in the maintenance scope. The methodology is tested in a manufacturing case to prove its potential to support the engineering of E-maintenance solutions. In particular, the case study concerns the investment in E-maintenance solutions developed in the framework of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system originally implemented for production purposes.
Originality/value
Based on literature research, the paper presents a methodology that is implemented considering three different approaches (business theories, value-driven engineering and maintenance management). The combination of these approaches is novel and overcomes the traditional view of maintenance as an issue evaluated from a cost-benefit perspective.
Details
Keywords
Vicente González‐Prida Díaz, Luis Barberá Martínez, Juan Francisco Gómez Fernández and Adolfo Crespo Márquez
The purpose of this paper is to present a brief summary of quality and contractual aspects for the improvement of the warranty management. Together with this, the present work…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a brief summary of quality and contractual aspects for the improvement of the warranty management. Together with this, the present work will show also some of the best practices followed by companies in order to manage properly those kinds of issues related to warranty, as well as some indications to assess the implementation degree of such practices in the whole organization. Basically, the global objective of the study is to present to the reader and in few words the importance of taking into account legal and quality aspects, when a company offers a technical service for the warranty assistance of any of its products, together with the maturity level that this company achieves applying some best practices currently available.
Design/methodology/approach
The study starts by mentioning some antecedents related to warranty, in order to summarize a reference framework, proposed for proper warranty management, and how the information exchange should be performed among the different departments of a generic company. Then, it will be suggested how to apply this according to a strategic management which is divided in phases, taken from the product life cycle concept: Front‐end, Design and Development, Production, Marketing, and Post‐sale Support. These phases are included in three higher stages considered as Pre‐Launch stage, Launch and Post‐Launch stage, where different decisions play important roles. Afterwards, it will be shown how warranty management is viewed from the contract and legal point of view, in order to link the above mentioned topics on generic management, with those best practices currently presented in actual markets. Finally, once analysed, all those aspects related to best practices and its application on the reference framework, it is required now to quantify how a company manages the warranty assistances by a maturity assessment on warranty management.
Findings
The paper observes what today's companies are doing in this field, that is, their best practices in warranty management covering the quality and contractual aspects already mentioned, in order to round off the development of a completed framework for such management.
Originality/value
The paper presents a review, a framework and a practical application of the framework for the management of warranty contracts, including a maturity assessment or evaluation.
Details
Keywords
Jason Scott Entsminger and Lucy McGowan
This paper aims to investigate associations between firm resources and reliance on entrepreneurial marketing (EM) channels among agrofood ventures. It accounts for agropreneur…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate associations between firm resources and reliance on entrepreneurial marketing (EM) channels among agrofood ventures. It accounts for agropreneur gender and racial/ethnic status in the context of marketing channel portfolio composition. The authors examine the established assumption that resource limitations drive EM and whether socially disadvantaged status of agropreneurs is associated with marketing strategy beyond standard resourcing measures.
Design/methodology/approach
Using 2015 Local Foods Marketing Practices Survey data, the authors apply linear regression to investigate differences in the use of EM channels, accounting for resources, social status and other factors.
Findings
Limited-resource ventures rely more on consumer-oriented channels that require EM practices. Socially disadvantaged entrepreneurs favor these channels, even when accounting for resources. Notably, ventures headed by men of color rely more on the most customer-centric local foods marketing channel.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should investigate how social and human capital influences the use of EM.
Practical implications
Entrepreneurial support policy and practice for agropreneurs should be cautious about the “double-burden” folk theorem of intersectional disadvantage and review how to best direct resources on EM to groups most likely to benefit.
Originality/value
This paper uses a unique, restricted, nation-wide, federal data set to examine relationships between resource endowments, social status and the composition of agrofood enterprises’ marketing channel portfolios. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to include racial- and ethnic-minority status of agropreneurs and to account for intersectionality with gender.
Details
Keywords
Opeyemi Femi-Oladunni, Pablo Ruiz-Palomino and Israel Roberto Pérez Jiménez
This study aims to identify how Spanish consumers’ extrinsic preferences for food have evolved by examining the extant literature on food preferences in Spain, focusing on…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to identify how Spanish consumers’ extrinsic preferences for food have evolved by examining the extant literature on food preferences in Spain, focusing on food-related attributes and food-related values.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on a synthetic review of the extant academic literature on Spanish consumer preferences for food-related attributes and food-related values from the mid-20th to the 21st century. This study uses key economic and social milestones that are most likely to influence food value chain actors to show how consumer preferences have evolved over the study period.
Findings
Spanish consumer food attribute preferences expanded as the food sector of the nation continued to grow, and value preferences showed a similar pattern from the mid-20th to the 21st century. The drivers of these preferences were trust, lifestyle, education (campaigns), sociodemographic factors and purchasing power.
Originality/value
Evaluating the extant literature’s contribution to consumer preferences for food-related attributes and values is important because it can aid in understanding the hierarchy and variety of consumers’ food preferences as well as the factors that drive these preferences. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore how Spanish consumer preferences evolved between the mid-20th and 21st centuries.
Details
Keywords
Marta Luz Arango-Uribe, Carlos Javier Barrera-Causil, Vladimir Pallares, Jessica Maria Rojas, Luís Roberto Mercado Díaz, Rebecca Marrone and Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos
The concept of sustainable development (SD) is a popular response to society’s need to preserve and extend the life span of natural resources. One of the 17 goals of the SD is…
Abstract
Purpose
The concept of sustainable development (SD) is a popular response to society’s need to preserve and extend the life span of natural resources. One of the 17 goals of the SD is “education quality” (Fourth Goal of Sustainable Development [SDG-4]). Education quality is an important goal because education is a powerful force that can influence social policies and social change. The SDG-4 must be measured in different contexts, and the tools to quantify its effects require exploration. So, this study aims to propose a statistical model to measure the impact of higher education online courses on SD and a structural equation model (SEM) to find constructs or factors that help us explain a sustainability benefits rate. These proposed models integrate the three areas of sustainability: social, economic and environmental.
Design/methodology/approach
A beta regression model suggests features that include the academic and economic opportunities offered by the institution, the involvement in research activities and the quality of the online courses. A structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis allowed selecting the key variables and constructs that are strongly linked to the SD.
Findings
One of the key findings showed that the benefit provided by online courses in terms of SD is 62.99% higher than that of offline courses in aspects such as transportation, photocopies, printouts, books, food, clothing, enrolment fees and connectivity.
Research limitations/implications
The SEM model needs large sample sizes to have consistent estimations. Thus, despite the obtained estimations in the proposed SEM model being reliable, the authors consider that a limitation of this study was the required time to collect data corresponding to the estimated sample size.
Originality/value
This study proposes two novel and different ways to estimate the sustainability benefits rate focused on SDG-4, and machine learning tools are implemented to validate and gain robustness in the estimations of the beta model. Additionally, the SEM model allows us to identify new constructs associated with SDG-4.
Details
Keywords
Mohd Haniff Zainuldin and Tze Kiat Lui
This study bibliometrically describes and depicts the intellectual structure and knowledge progress of CSR studies in the banking industry.
Abstract
Purpose
This study bibliometrically describes and depicts the intellectual structure and knowledge progress of CSR studies in the banking industry.
Design/methodology/approach
Bibliometric analysis is used to quantitatively examine the bibliographic data that gathered from Scopus database. The evaluative and relational techniques are employed to produce the findings and mappings for research themes, impact and directions, as well as collaboration trends. A topical classification is also included to review the results of different types of analysis.
Findings
This study discusses how the CSR literature in the banking industry has evolved between 2009 and 2019. The publications increase significantly from 2015 to 2019 and the top journals, authors, affiliations and countries are identified. Stakeholder, disclosure, financial performance, Islamic banks, corporate governance and international banks are among the popular research and collaboration trends found in the extant literature. Reflecting on the arguments in the previous literature, several key research gaps and further suggestions are acknowledged for future studies.
Research limitations/implications
The bibliographic data used in this study bounds to Scopus database and the methodology itself suffers a few limitations, which integration of other methodologies will be worthwhile to unearth the field beyond the current discovery.
Practical implications
This study is beneficial to potential researchers, scientific journal editors, and bankers to understand the current research progression and evolution within CSR field in the banking sector.
Originality/value
Compared to the existing bibliometric literature, this study is among the pioneer wide-ranging bibliometrics study covering co-word, citation, bibliographic coupling, co-authorship and co-citation for CSR research in the banking sector.
Details
Keywords
Fernando J. Garrigos-Simon, Jose Luis Galdon and Silvia Sanz-Blas
This paper aims to define and demonstrate the importance of crowdsourcing for the improvement of diverse functions of hotels, the advantages and disadvantages of this technique…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to define and demonstrate the importance of crowdsourcing for the improvement of diverse functions of hotels, the advantages and disadvantages of this technique and, specifically, the relevance of crowdvoting for enhancing hotel sales, and diverse hotel performance dimensions.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 45,103 opinions from Booking.com, a sample of 184 questionnaires addressed to hotel managers and partial least squares (PLS)-path modeling were combined to contrast the hypotheses.
Findings
The results empirically show the direct and positive impact of the opinions of the crowd on the amount of hotel sales that do not depend on physical intermediaries, and the impact that this has on the performance dimensions of hotels.
Practical implications
The paper shows the relevance of following strategies addressed at increasing the customers’ recommendations in the main social media or virtual travel agencies, as a mechanism to reduce tourism and hospitality organizations’ traditional weaknesses and increase their long-term performance.
Originality/value
The novelty of crowdsourcing, means that few works (although with an explosive increase and with high impact) have focused on this aspect in the literature, especially in the tourism and hospitality literature. The results of our research open new areas of research and contrast the relevance of crowdsourcing and specifically crowdvoting for the success of hotels. In addition, the methodology employed, by mixing the data from a social media, with a questionnaire addressed to managers, can open new ideas for future works.
Details
Keywords
Birte Fähnrich, Jens Vogelgesang and Michael Scharkow
This study is dedicated to universities' strategic social media communication and focuses on the fan engagement triggered by Facebook postings. The study contributes to a growing…
Abstract
Purpose
This study is dedicated to universities' strategic social media communication and focuses on the fan engagement triggered by Facebook postings. The study contributes to a growing body of knowledge that addresses the strategic communication of universities that have thus far hardly dealt with questions of resonance and evaluation of their social media messages.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the Facebook Graph API, the authors collected posts from the official Facebook fan pages of the universities listed on Shanghai Ranking's Top 50 of 2015. Specifically, the authors retrieved all posts in a three-year range from October 2012 to September 2015. After downloading the Facebook posts, the authors used tools for automated content analysis to investigate the features of the post messages.
Findings
Overall, the median number of likes per 10,000 fans was 4.6, while the number of comments (MD = 0.12) and shares (MD = 0.40) were considerably lower. The average Facebook Like Ratio of universities per 10,000 fans was 17.93%, the average Comment Ratio (CR) was 0.56% and the average Share Ratio (SR) was 2.82%. If we compare the average Like Ratios (17.93%) and Share Ratios (2.82%) of the universities with the respective Like Ratios (5.90%) and Share Ratios (0.45%) of global brands per 10,000 fans, we may find that universities are three times (likes) and six times (shares) as successful as are global brands in triggering engagement among their fan bases.
Research limitations/implications
The content analysis was solely based on the publicly observable Facebook communication of the Top 50 Shanghai Ranking universities. Furthermore, the content analysis was limited to universities listed on the Shanghai Ranking's Top 50. Also, the Facebook posts have been sampled between 2012 and September 2015. Moreover, the authors solely focused on one social media channel (i.e., Facebook), which might restrict the generalizability of the study findings. The limitations notwithstanding, university communicators are invited to take advantage of the study's insights to become more successful in generating fan engagement.
Practical implications
First, posts published on the weekend generate significantly more engagement than those published on workdays. Second, the findings suggest that posts published in the evening generate more engagement than those published during other times of day. Third, research-related posts trigger a certain number of shares, but at the same time these posts tend to lower engagement with regard to liking and commenting.
Originality/value
To the authors’ best knowledge, the automated content analysis of 72,044 Facebook posts of universities listed in the Top 50 of the Shanghai Ranking is the first large scale longitudinal investigation of a social media channel of higher education institutions.
Details