Search results

Several studies have shown benefits of peer mentoring on wellness among medical students and health care professionals. Peer mentorship has also been pointed as having interesting potential for International Medical Graduates. However, the literature on peer mentoring at the residency level is very limited. The purpose of this paper is to assess the benefits of a resident-led pilot peer-mentoring initiative at McGill University.

Over 2 years, 17 residents from various residency programs were put in contact with a volunteer peer mentor by e-mail. The structure of the mentorship was flexible. A survey using Likert scale and free text responses was sent to all the participants.

There were response rates of 65 percent for mentees and 59 percent for mentors. The majority of mentees thought the service was either moderately helpful (18 percent) or helpful (36 percent). Several residents noted that communication by e-mails and lack of in-person contacts were a limitation in the mentorship experience. The most frequent challenge that led to consult the service was immigration or arrival from another province.

The results show that the program can be helpful to medical residents, is cost-effective, flexible and could be adapted and replicated elsewhere. In the future, the program will adjust to tend toward a more structured frame, highlighting the importance of in-person contacts. The small sample size of participants and the recall bias are some limitations of our study.

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of the links between the representativeness of the local community by those drafting and elaborating the specification of the geographical indication (GI), the market access and the use of the GI.

The present study followed a comparative research design, building upon primary data from the field works dealing with the elaboration and development of GIs worldwide, from legislations on the protection of GIs and from secondary data, i.e. literature dealing with the elaboration of the GI specifications at case level or national/international level.

The GI is permeable to a multitude of objectives and the management of controversies represent the “price of participatory democracy”, which still needs to be under the umbrella of the justice of peace, the State authority. Representativeness does not necessarily conduct to equity and fairness. It depends on the heterogeneity of the value chain, which might lead to the dilution of the GI specificity. Mandatory membership might not be always the best option Transparency to guarantee the producer’s group works for the common good is essential.

The controversies in the elaboration of the GI product specification are directly induced by the controversies in the management of the GI either by the collective organisation of producers or by the public authority. Issues such as representativeness, mandatory membership, transparency and heterogeneity of the value chain are deeply analysed to understand the functioning of GI producers associations and their limits. The state intervention as justice of the peace appears necessary.

Thermal phenomena that occur in operating integrated circuits can disturb their functioning and even cause failures. In order to prevent such dramatic issues, it is necessary to study these phenomena by developing high‐resolution thermal mapping of electronic devices. This can be done by using the thermoreflectance technique. The principle of thermoreflectance measurements is reviewed and various experimental setups are described. Experimental results show that this technique allows the mapping of both low and high frequency thermal phenomena at submicron scales.

The purpose of this paper is to study the factors influencing doctors’ involvement in Lean change initiatives in public healthcare organizations in Canada.

An inductive research was conducted over a three-year span studying Lean implementation across three healthcare organizations in Canada. Various interviews were conducted with healthcare actors. Through analytical induction, analysis of the data allowed for multiple factors to be triangulated from which a conceptual model was developed.

Fifty-four interviews with 18 Lean healthcare actors allowed for the identification of ten factors possibly influencing the commitment of doctors towards Lean change. These factors are categorized into pre-change antecedents and change antecedents. Also, the level of transformational leadership demonstrated by a project manager was shown to potentially moderate the effect of medical behavioral support for change on change outcomes. These findings allowed us to develop a conceptual model of medical commitment and its impact of Lean change outcomes.

The paper investigates the role doctors play in Lean implementation, currently an important issue discussed among healthcare actors and researchers. Yet, very little academic research has been published on this subject.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the difficulties encountered in the hybrid roles of physician−managers (P−Ms), examine the impact of organizational constraints on the role conflicts experienced by P−Ms and explore the different ways their two roles are integrated.

A qualitative approach was adopted, using six focus groups made up of clinical co-managers, medical directors and P−Ms. In all, 43 different people were interviewed to obtain their perceptions of the day-to-day realities of the role of the P−M. The data collected were subsequently validated.

Although the expectations of the different groups involved regarding the role of P−Ms are well understood and shared, there are significant organizational constraints affecting what P−Ms are able to do in their day-to-day activities, and these constraints can result in role conflicts for the people involved. Such constraints also affect the ways P−Ms integrate the two roles. The authors identify three role hybridization profiles.

The results afford a better understanding of how organizational constraints might be used as levers of organizational change to achieve a better hybridization of the dual roles of P−Ms.

This paper seeks to reach beyond a simple identification of constraints affecting the dual roles of P−Ms by analyzing how such constraints impact on these professionals’ day-to-day activities. Results also enable us to further refine Katz and Kahn’s (1966) role model, in addition to identifying hybridization profiles.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a system that provides the driver or the driving assistance system with the lateral position information of the vehicle on the lane in order to detect as early as possible run‐off‐road and then prevent a foreseeable crash.

A magnetized tape deposited on the road in the middle of the lane generates a magnetic field which is detected by on‐board sensors. Depending on the distance between the tape and the sensors, accurate positioning information can be estimated.

The use of at least five sensors makes it possible to obtain a 2 mm‐lateral‐positioning accuracy.

Magnetized tapes are relatively cheap to install and provide an accurate vehicle lateral positioning with low ‐cost magneto‐resistance on‐board sensors. In addition , a magnetization variation along the tape would allow information to be coded which could be then transmitted to the driver.

This research sheds light on behavioral change by demonstrating the transformative power of a brand on the process of eating behavioral change. The selected brand is Three Times a Day (a culinary blog whose mission is to encourage a healthier diet). This study aims to identify food-related behavioral changes as a result of consumers’ relationship with this brand and identify antecedents to such changes.

A netnography of the brand online community and 14 individual in-depth interviews were conducted.

Netnography results identify four categories of behavioral changes emerging from the relationship with the brand (e.g. choosing healthier/more varied foods, developing an interest in cooking and adopting a healthier lifestyle). Analysis of the individual interviews substantiate the role of brand attachment as a driver of positive change and identify three antecedents: brand-self connection (through past, actual and ideal self), brand exposure and satisfaction of individual needs (i.e. autonomy, competence and relatedness).

Results enrich the literature on behavioral change and highlight the positive role of a brand in the context of improving eating habits. Findings extend the understanding of the consequences of attachment beyond its influence at the attitudinal level by focusing on concrete consumer behavior.

It is recognized that despite good intentions, individuals keep making poor food choices. This important issue is associated with several diseases and increasing social costs. This research explores how to influence consumers in adopting better eating habits.

This study is one of the first to examine the power of a food-related brand to enhance positive eating practices and improve diet.

This paper aims to determine one explanation for how the self-brand connection is associated with brand loyalty through the brand experience. Brand experience should verify the self-brand connection by acting as a mechanism through which a self-brand connection is associated with brand loyalty.

Data were obtained from 317 adults through paid Facebook Boosting of an online survey and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Analyses confirm that brand experience fully mediates the association between self-brand connection and brand loyalty.

Ensuring a positive brand experience is critical for brand managers opting to maintain consumers’ self-brand connections and brand loyalty. Causality suffered owing to the cross-sectional design of the study.

Self-brand connection is viewed as consumer-driven. However, by identifying the brand experience to verify the self-brand connection and as a factor that mediates the self-brand connection–loyalty relationship of consumers, brand experience is recognized as a new factor which brand managers can control to manage self-brand connections and brand loyalty.

This paper is the first to apply the self-verification theory to the self-brand connection–loyalty relationship by explicating brand experience as a mediator of this relationship. This paper argues self-verification is not context-specific and lived experiences with the brand, irrespective of context, establish consumer–brand relationships. This paper confirms the second-order factor structure of the brand experience scale (Brakus et al., 2009) as a mediator in this self-brand connection–loyalty model.

This paper aims to clarify the persuasion mechanism of chief executive officers (CEOs) and employees as endorsers of brand advertising and helps discern consumer attitudes toward internal endorsement.

The exploratory character of the present research required a qualitative approach combining focus groups and face-to-face interviews considered as both meaningful and complementary.

The findings suggest that while the celebrity endorsement ensures familiarity and likability, internal endorsement supports credibility and congruity with an important role of storytelling. Moreover, employee endorsements induce an internalization process based on the real-self, while the endorser CEO induces admiration grounded in the ideal self. More fundamentally, the study reveals how the internal endorsement modifies the meaning transfer model and involves a process of meaning translation, which affects the corporate brand image rather than the product brand image.

The present paper reveals that CEOs and employees can be strong levers for gilding the corporate brand image compared to the celebrities who enhance the product brand image. Moreover, the authors show that the CEO is a character who can be admired without the threat of upward comparison at the opposite of celebrities. Finally, this research highlights the specific role of employees bringing authenticity because of their anchorage in real life.

The cultivation and maintenance of a brand is becoming increasingly important as politicians seek to connect with constituents. Through the lens of social cognition and group dynamics, this paper aims to understand the impact of evaluations of politician brands on voter intentions.

Three studies utilize the social cognition constructs of warmth and competence from the stereotype content model (SCM) and Brands as Intentional Agents Framework (BIAF) to evaluate the impact of brand perceptions on voting intentions, comparing fit between the models. The first study establishes the impact of these perceptions on existing politicians. The second study replicates these effects while controlling for party affiliation and extraneous factors and explicitly studies politicians as brands. The third study examines the formation of perceptions and assumptions when full information is unavailable.

Social cognition and group dynamics drive responses to politician brands. The data herein support perceptions of warmth and competence as significant predictors of voting intentions. Dependent upon whether the politician is being evaluated as a brand or a person, BIAF or SCM predicts the dimension that will be most impactful. These patterns persist in the absence of full information. As expected, voting intentions increased significantly when the voter was of the same (vs opposing) party as that of the candidate.

Conducted during an election year, evaluations of politicians are susceptible to the current political climate and the predominantly two party political system in which the studies were conducted. The design of Studies 2 and 3 addresses some of these limitations. Results point toward the interrelated nature of warmth and competence perceptions and the usefulness of applying both BIAF and SCM to understand how voters view politicians and the drivers of voting intentions.

This study evidences the depth to which perceptions of candidates impact voting intent, establishing politicians’ unique position as both brands and people. These findings prove useful in interpreting the outcome of elections this year, and beyond.

Expanding a limited body of existing research, this work contributes to our understanding of the application of SCM within the context of politician brands. As the first concurrent investigation of SCM and BIAF, these findings are of value to political strategists and academics alike. The contribution is augmented by the consideration of the impact of party affiliation and missing information.