Elaine O’Connor, Cathal Cowan, Gwilym Williams, John O’Connell and Maurice Boland
The objective of this study was to determine the level of acceptance by Irish consumers of a hypothetical genetically modified (GM) dairy spread that offered a specific…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this study was to determine the level of acceptance by Irish consumers of a hypothetical genetically modified (GM) dairy spread that offered a specific, consumer‐oriented benefit, reducing cholesterol.
Design/methodology/approach
Some 300 spread consumers, representative in terms of age, gender, and socio‐economic group, completed a questionnaire. Conjoint, cluster and factor analyses were among the main methods used in the analysis.
Findings
The hypothetical GM product was rejected by a majority of Irish spread consumers. Cluster analysis identified four segments of consumers who differed in their purchase intentions towards such a product, depending on demographic factors, on whether they had their cholesterol level tested, on the attitudes that influenced their food choice and on their willingness to try different GM foods. Two segments were pro GM; the other two were anti.
Research limitations/implications
In terms of limitations, questions about GM foods are hypothetical and the conjoint design did not allow for interaction effects.
Originality/value
The results imply that a GM spread, conferring specific consumer benefits, could capture a share of the Irish market for dairy spreads. Such information is of value to both existing market players and companies considering opportunities in this market.
Details
Keywords
Computer based accounting information systems (AIS) have been a major force behind the current wave of corporate downsizing and reengineering (Deloitte & Touche LLP, 1996). While…
Abstract
Computer based accounting information systems (AIS) have been a major force behind the current wave of corporate downsizing and reengineering (Deloitte & Touche LLP, 1996). While greater economy and competitiveness is typically associated with these changes, conventional AIS literature usually eschews a counter‐hypothesis: that this new technology may also degrade both the quality and quantity of work, and therefore people’s working lives. The advent of Accounting, Management, and Information Technologies in 1991, with an espoused aim of “critically analyzing the relationships among our information systems designs, the qualities of our social and economic life, and our practices of management and control” (Boland and O’Leary, 1991, p. 2) presents a major opportunity to redress this deficiency. This paper reviews the journal’s inaugural issue and ancillary literature to assess its likely contribution. This literature is found to lack a sufficient appreciation of the social and historical context of AIS developments and thus compromises the new journal’s ability to achieve its espoused aims. The paper calls for a better understanding of the upheavals currently under way in the accounting workplace and ways in which AIS technology (and ethnographers) may compound these instabilities. A different kind of ethnographic research is called for: one capable of recognizing the dysfunctionalities of AIS‐induced downsizing and restructuring, and more politically and socially self‐aware of AIS agency in social and technological change.
Details
Keywords
Renata Couto de Azevedo de Oliveira and Maurice Patterson
This paper aims to address what it means to brand a city as “smart”. In other words, what ideas, understandings and actions are mobilized by the discourse of smart cities in a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to address what it means to brand a city as “smart”. In other words, what ideas, understandings and actions are mobilized by the discourse of smart cities in a particular context.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking a brand interpretive approach, this paper uses deconstructive criticism to understand the performativity of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities and to expose hegemonic power structures and the various colonizations that disenfranchise consumers and citizens of the Global South.
Findings
This paper finds that the branding of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities is largely performative and rhetorical in nature. The authors identify those dimensions of the smart city that are materialized by this branding performance. For example, the authors identify how the Charter calls forth issues around technological solutionism, sustainability and social inclusion. At the same time, the analysis draws attention to the dimensions of smart cities that are disguised by such performances.
Research limitations/implications
The implications of the work suggest that the authors need to understand the designation “smart city” as a branding performance. More research is required in context to determine in exactly what ways smart city projects are being implemented.
Practical implications
Rather than adhering only to the rhetoric of smartness, cities have to work hard to make smartness a reality – a smartness constructed not just on technical solutions but also on human solutions. That is, the complexity of urban issues that are apparently addressed in the move to smartness demand more than a technological fix.
Originality/value
The research offers a novel lens through which to view smart cities.
Details
Keywords
In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of…
Abstract
In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.
Details
Keywords
Since the late 1970s, research in accounting has been colonized by positive accounting theory (PAT) despite strong claims that it is fundamentally flawed in terms of epistemology…
Abstract
Purpose
Since the late 1970s, research in accounting has been colonized by positive accounting theory (PAT) despite strong claims that it is fundamentally flawed in terms of epistemology and methodology. This paper aims to offer new insights to PAT by critically examining its basic tenets.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper subjects the language of the Rochester School to a deconstruction that is a transformational reading. This uncovers rhetorical operations and unveils hidden associations with other texts and ideas.
Findings
A new interpretation of the Rochester School discourse is provided. To afford scientific credibility to deregulation within the accounting field, Watts and Zimmerman used supplements and missing links to enhance the authority of PAT. They placed supplements inside their texts to provide a misleading image of PAT. These supplements rest on von Hayek's long‐term shaping blueprint to defeat apostles of the welfare state. Yet, to set PAT apart from normative theories that Watts and Zimmerman claimed were contaminated by value judgments, they made no reference in their text to the tight links between the Rochester School and the libertarian project initiated by von Hayek.
Research limitations/implications
Any reading of PAT cannot present the infinite play of meaning that is possible within a text. Deconstruction involves a commitment to on‐going, eternal questioning.
Originality/value
The paper provides evidence of the relation between PAT and the neoliberal (libertarian) project of von Hayek. PAT is viewed as part of the institutional infrastructure and ideological apparatus that legitimates the hegemony of markets.
Details
Keywords
Jeremy Henri Maurice Veillard, Michaela Louise Schiøtz, Ann-Lise Guisset, Adalsteinn Davidson Brown and Niek S. Klazinga
This paper's aim is to evaluate the perceived impact and the enabling factors and barriers experienced by hospital staff participating in an international hospital performance…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper's aim is to evaluate the perceived impact and the enabling factors and barriers experienced by hospital staff participating in an international hospital performance measurement project focused on internal quality improvement.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews involving international hospital performance measurement project coordinators, including 140 hospitals from eight European countries (Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia). Inductively analyzing the interview transcripts was carried out using the grounded theory approach.
Findings
Even when public reporting is absent, the project was perceived as having stimulated performance measurement and quality improvement initiatives in participating hospitals. Attention should be paid to leadership/ownership, context, content (project intrinsic features) and processes supporting elements.
Research limitations/implications
Generalizing the findings is limited by the study's small sample size. Possible implications for the WHO European Regional Office and for participating hospitals would be to assess hospital preparedness to participate in the PATH project, depending on context, process and structural elements; and enhance performance and practice benchmarking through suggested approaches.
Originality/value
This research gathered rich and unique material related to an international performance measurement project. It derived actionable findings.
Details
Keywords
WE seem to be immediately facing a drive for much more technical education and for many more technical colleges and schools to produce it. In the condition of the world today this…
Abstract
WE seem to be immediately facing a drive for much more technical education and for many more technical colleges and schools to produce it. In the condition of the world today this is an inevitable, an indispensable, process. The reasons are loudly proclaimed and patent to every librarian, and the library must come strongly, as it always has, into the picture but perhaps now more universally and with greater intensity. Dr. Chandler, who is proceeding at a rare pace to specialize his departments, has created a new local council to unify the information work that has already been done at Liverpool. Every technical book costing over five shillings is bought, and the usual collections of periodicals and other material of technical and industrial interest are being increased and a bulletin of additions is being issued soon after the end of each month. The Technical library is one that combines lending and reference activities, telephone and postal services; in fact all the orthodox activities that have been standard in the larger towns since Glasgow began them in 1916, and possibly new and extended ones. The William Brown Library which was destroyed in Air Raids is being reconstructed and the enlarged Technical Library will be developed in it. This is one city only; every large city reports some increase in the services rendered, for example the Telex service is now available at Manchester. It is essential that public libraries everywhere realize the part they may play; if they do not, the suggestion made recently that the lending of technical books should become an activity of the Technical Colleges may become a reality.
David E. Avison and Michael D. Myers
Considers the potential role of anthropology as a source disciplinefor information systems. Although anthropology has been largelyneglected in the IS research literature, it is…
Abstract
Considers the potential role of anthropology as a source discipline for information systems. Although anthropology has been largely neglected in the IS research literature, it is argued that important insights can be gained by adopting an anthropological perspective on information systems phenomena. Illustrates the value of an anthropological perspective by looking at the relationship between information technology and organizational culture. Shows that the concept of culture has generally been used rather narrowly in the IS literature, and argues that a more critical, anthropological view of the relationship between IT and organizational culture is required.
Details
Keywords
Susan E. Myrden, Albert J. Mills and Jean C. Helms Mills
Through the use of critical hermeneutics, the chapter provides a deep analysis and offers clues as to how management, through the power of communication, can contribute to…
Abstract
Through the use of critical hermeneutics, the chapter provides a deep analysis and offers clues as to how management, through the power of communication, can contribute to producing and reproducing embedded gender-based assumptions and values through organizational culture, which can both enable and constrain organizational members. It examines gender discrimination as it relates to employment equity in a well-known airline. We show how an organizational culture, supported by society and communicated through language, can impede progress within an organization through the power of language, and highlight a number of clues as to the processes of gender discrimination at work.