Merlin Stone, Neil Woodcock, Yuksel Ekinci, Eleni Aravopoulou and Brett David Parnell
This paper aims to review the development of thinking about the information needed by companies to create an accurate picture of how well they manage their engagement with…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to review the development of thinking about the information needed by companies to create an accurate picture of how well they manage their engagement with customers, taking into account the evolution of thinking and practice in this area over the past three decades towards the idea of data-driven customer engagement. It then describes the evolution and use of an assessment and benchmarking process and tool which provide the needed information.
Design/methodology/approach
Literature review, conceptual analysis and explanation of the management consulting process are used.
Findings
Companies can get an accurate picture of how well they manage customer engagement provided that a careful assessment approach is used where assessors are properly selected and trained and that there is a strong focus on compliance with requirements rather than “box-ticking” based upon managers’ perceptions.
Research limitations/implications
The assessment and benchmarking process was developed mainly for use by larger companies, though the findings could be adapted for use by smaller companies.
Practical implications
Companies whose success depends upon customer engagement should consider using the assessment and benchmarking tool to guide their planning and implementation. They should heed the warnings about the risks of inaccurate assessments which may arise because of the incentives by which managers are managed.
Social implications
The assessment and benchmarking process has been used by the public sector and government, and given government’s desire to engage citizens better, they should consider adopting the ideas in this paper to reform citizen engagement.
Originality/value
This is the only paper which reviews the development of the assessment process for customer engagement.
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Abstract
This study compares and contrasts the clients of two domiciliary care services delivered to elderly people in Darlington, Durham, UK, in terms of their living circumstances, dependency levels and the service inputs they receive. The two services are the Home Help Service managed by the local authority social services department and a Home Care Service managed by the Darlington Health Authority which offers an alternative to long‐stay hospital care for elderly people. The study examined only a sample of the most dependent home help clients and all of the home care clients. The instruments used to measure dependency were found to be limited in their ability to detect crucial differences in the two client groups and suggestions are made about how these might be improved. The main distinguishing characteristics of the Home Care Service clients were that they were, on average, younger and frailer than the home help clients and were far more likely to need help with toiletting, dressing, getting in/out of bed, walkng and making hot drinks. In contrast the main predictor of Home Help Service membership was living alone. It was concluded that although some home help clients were as incapacitated as home care ones, the latter scheme was far more consistently targetted on very frail, and often ill, people.
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Merlin Stone, Eleni Aravopoulou, Yuksel Ekinci, Geraint Evans, Matt Hobbs, Ashraf Labib, Paul Laughlin, Jon Machtynger and Liz Machtynger
The purpose of this paper is to review literature about the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in strategic situations and identify the research that is needed in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review literature about the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in strategic situations and identify the research that is needed in the area of applying AI to strategic marketing decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach was to carry out a literature review and to consult with marketing experts who were invited to contribute to the paper.
Findings
There is little research into applying AI to strategic marketing decision-making. This research is needed, as the frontier of AI application to decision-making is moving in many management areas from operational to strategic. Given the competitive nature of such decisions and the insights from applying AI to defence and similar areas, it is time to focus on applying AI to strategic marketing decisions.
Research limitations/implications
The application of AI to strategic marketing decision-making is known to be taking place, but as it is commercially sensitive, data is not available to the authors.
Practical implications
There are strong implications for all businesses, particularly large businesses in competitive industries, where failure to deploy AI in the face of competition from firms, who have deployed AI to improve their decision-making could be dangerous.
Social implications
The public sector is a very important marketing decision maker. Although in most cases it does not operate competitively, it must make decisions about making different services available to different citizens and identify the risks of not providing services to certain citizens; so, this paper is relevant to the public sector.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first papers to probe deployment of AI in strategic marketing decision-making.
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Merlin Stone, Eleni Aravopoulou, Geraint Evans, Esra Aldhaen and Brett David Parnell
This paper reviews the literature on information mismanagement and constructs a typology of misinformation that can be applied to analyse project planning and strategic planning…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper reviews the literature on information mismanagement and constructs a typology of misinformation that can be applied to analyse project planning and strategic planning processes to reduce the chances of failure that results from information mismanagement. This paper aims to summarize the research on information mismanagement and provide guidance to managers concerning how to minimize the negative consequences of information mismanagement and to academics concerning how to research and analyse case studies that might involve information mismanagement.
Design/methodology/approach
Literature review accompanied by conceptual analysis.
Findings
Information mismanagement is widespread in organizations, so all those involved in managing and researching them need to be far more aware of the damage that can be done by it.
Research limitations/implications
The research is based on the Western society (Europe and North America). The same research should be carried out in other parts of the world. Also, all the case studies could usefully be investigated in more depth to apply the taxonomy.
Practical implications
Managers should be much more aware of their own and others’ tendencies to mismanage information to their own benefit.
Social implications
Stakeholders in public sector activities, including citizens, should be much more aware of the tendency of the government and the public sector to mismanage information to justify particular policy approaches and to disguise failure.
Originality/value
The taxonomy on information mismanagement is original, as is its application to project planning and strategic decision-making.
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Litigation is part of the American policymaking playbook as diverse groups routinely turn to courts to pursue their agendas. All of this litigation raises questions about its…
Abstract
Litigation is part of the American policymaking playbook as diverse groups routinely turn to courts to pursue their agendas. All of this litigation raises questions about its consequences. This essay examines the literature on the political risks of litigation. It argues that this literature identifies four potential risks – crowd out, path dependence, backlash, and individualization – but offers less insight into the likelihood of these risks in practice. It ends by offering suggestions about how to advance our understanding of when litigation casts a negative political shadow in the current age of judicialization.
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Over time, interest in servant leadership has increased manifold both in academic research and the popular press. These rampant developments have set the stage for addressing the…
Abstract
Purpose
Over time, interest in servant leadership has increased manifold both in academic research and the popular press. These rampant developments have set the stage for addressing the worthiness of servant leadership’s theory. Empirical studies undertaken by numerous scholars (Farling et al., 1999; Bass, 2000; Page and Wong, 2000; Russell and Stone, 2002; Sendjaya and Serros, 2002; Dennis and Winston, 2003; Smith et al., 2004; Stone et al., 2004; Dennis and Bocarnea, 2005; Humphreys, 2005) have surfaced significant findings supporting relevance of servant leadership in organizational context; however, an absence of universal definition and its measures impinges on this concept. Noticeably missing from research attention has been the effect of servant leadership in promoting positive organizational behaviour among organizational employees. Thus, this paper aims to explore the available literature on servant leadership with a view to establish a servant leader’s role in instilling and facilitating positive organizational behaviour in the workplace. Moreover, the purpose is also to determine whether the positive organizational behaviour inculcated among the employees through a servant leader helps in reducing their turnover intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Using different keywords, relevant research papers on Google Scholar were selected. Also, several online databases like Emerald Management, Elseiver, EBSCO Host, etc., were accessed for conducting this exploratory study.
Findings
To examine the various convergent and divergent dimensions of the major constructs, numerous definitions and scholarly work of renowned practitioners have been collated through an extensive literature review. To put forth a comprehensive picture encompassing the noteworthy findings of the studies pertaining to the major construct, a tabular representation has been made.
Originality/value
This is the first study wherein the linkage about servant leadership and positive organizational behaviour in organizational context has been talked about. The paper carries value as the literature pertaining to servant leadership in published domain is still in its nascent stage. The repertoire of literature, presented here, will provide a clear direction to the future researchers who wish to pursue their study in this area.
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1994 is the International year of the Family. In Britain, at least, this event has coincided with wide public debate (and moral panic) over a number of issues relating to ‘family’…
Abstract
1994 is the International year of the Family. In Britain, at least, this event has coincided with wide public debate (and moral panic) over a number of issues relating to ‘family’ life. Aspects of this debate are concerned with the changing relationship between the family and the labour market, especially in relation to women's increasing engagement in paid employment. More specifically, discussions have centred on how women, as mothers, can achieve a balance between their family responsibilities and the demands of paid work (Roberts C 1993: 1). Flexible working practices and childcare provision have emerged as the foci of discussion at all levels of this debate, from the national to the local.
Mohamed Kadria and Mohamed Safouane Ben Aissa
This chapter attempts to analyze mainly the interactions between the implementation of inflation targeting (IT) policy and performance in the conduct of economic policies (fiscal…
Abstract
This chapter attempts to analyze mainly the interactions between the implementation of inflation targeting (IT) policy and performance in the conduct of economic policies (fiscal and exchange rate) in emerging countries. More precisely, empirical studies conducted in this chapter aim to apprehend the feedback effect of this strategy of monetary policy on the budget deficit and volatility of exchange rate performance. This said, we consider the institutional framework as endogenous to IT and analyze the response of authorities to the adoption of this monetary regime. To do this, the retained methodological path in this chapter is an empirical way, based on the econometrics of panel data. First, our contribution to the existing literature is to evaluate the time-varying treatment effect of IT’s adoption on the budget deficit of emerging inflation targeters, using the propensity score matching approach. Our empirical analysis, conducted on a sample of 34 economies (13 IT and 21 non-IT economies) for the period from 1990 to 2010, show a significant impact of IT on the reduction of budget deficit in emerging countries having adopted this monetary policy framework. Therefore, we can say that the emerging government can benefit ex post and gradually from a decline in their public deficits. Retaining the same econometric approach and sample, we tried secondly to empirically examine whether the adoption of IT in emerging inflation targeters has been effectively translated by an increase in the nominal effective exchange rate volatility compared to non-IT countries. Our results show that this effect is decreasing and that this volatility is becoming less important after the shift to this monetary regime. We might suggest that this indirect and occasional intervention in the foreign exchange market can be made by fear of inflation rather than by fear of floating hence in most emerging countries that have adopted the IT strategy. Finally, we can say that our conclusions corroborate the literature of disciplining effects of IT regime on fiscal policy performance as well as the two controversial effects of IT on the nominal effective exchange rate volatility.
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Errol E. Joseph and Bruce E. Winston
Aims to explore the relationship between employee perceptions of servant leadership and leader trust, as well as organizational trust.
Abstract
Purpose
Aims to explore the relationship between employee perceptions of servant leadership and leader trust, as well as organizational trust.
Design/methodology.approach
Uses Laub's Organizational Leadership Assessment along with Nyhan and Marlowe's Organizational Trust Inventory.
Findings
Perceptions of servant leadership correlated positively with both leader trust and organizational trust. The study also found that organizations perceived as servant‐led exhibited higher levels of both leader trust and organizational trust than organizations perceived as non‐servant‐led.
Originality/value
The findings lend support to Greenleaf's view that servant leadership is an antecedent of leader and organizational trust, and to aspects of other servant leadership models.