Morten Lund Poulsen, Per Nikolaj Bukh and Karina Skovvang Christensen
This paper studies how performance funding of education is perceived by principals, teachers and administrative staff and management. The dysfunctionality of performance measures…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper studies how performance funding of education is perceived by principals, teachers and administrative staff and management. The dysfunctionality of performance measures often reflects how the measures prevent an organisation from achieving its goals. This paper proposes that perceptions of dysfunctionality can be analysed by separating the perceptions of the programme's intentions, of the school-level actions and of the outcomes for students.
Design/methodology/approach
Following a qualitative methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers, school management, staff specialists and top management in a large Danish municipality when outcome-based funding was introduced.
Findings
The performance-funding programme affected teaching by changing educational priorities. Different perceptions of the (dys)functionality of intentions, actions and outcomes fuelled diverging responses. Although the performance measure was generally considered incomplete, interviewees' perceptions of the financial incentivisation and the dysfunctionality of actions depended on interpretations of the incentivisation and student-related outcomes of the programme.
Research limitations/implications
Dysfunctionality can be contested; the interpretations of the intention of a performance-funding programme affect the perceived dysfunctionality of reactions. Both technical characteristics of funding schemes and administrators' and principals' mediating roles are essential for the consequences of performance funding.
Originality/value
The paper examines conditions for dysfunctionality of performance measures. We demonstrate that actions can be perceived as dysfunctional because of a measurement's intentions, actions themselves and the actions' outcomes. Further, the paper illustrates how the reception of performance funding depends on how consequences are enacted based on educators' interpretations of the (dys)functionality of intentions, actions and outcomes.
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Christian Nielsen, Morten Lund and Peter Thomsen
Two drawbacks to current management information practices are identified. First, the level of abstraction from which internal management disclosures are constructed using current…
Abstract
Purpose
Two drawbacks to current management information practices are identified. First, the level of abstraction from which internal management disclosures are constructed using current frameworks is too generic; and second, the current process of identifying relevant management disclosures is outdated. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to discuss whether contemporary conceptions of value creation from the field of business models can improve the currently applied frameworks used for generating internal management disclosures on intellectual capital. Hence, this paper offers a timely critique of the balanced scorecard, and other performance measurement concepts developed over the last 25 years.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews contemporary literature on the balanced scorecard, and related concepts, for generating internal management disclosures relating to intellectual capital. Furthermore, the problems that balanced scorecard type frameworks have as vehicles for constructing relevant internal management disclosures are explored.
Findings
This essay argues that internal management disclosures need more precise underpinnings of value creation than offered by current frameworks. An empirically validated structure that establishes alignment between value creation and internal management disclosures, through the mechanism of business model configurations, is applied to overcome the two identified drawbacks of current practices.
Research limitations/implications
This is a conceptual/normative offering.
Practical implications
Following the critique, this essay prompts a new way forward for identifying internal management disclosures and performance measures, their validation, and subsequent benchmarking by expanding upon the concept of business model configurations. This concept offers a value driver platform with related clusters of KPIs connected to each of the 71 identified business model configurations as a starting point for management’s identification of relevant KPIs, and their analysis, benchmarking, and application for performance management.
Originality/value
The arguments offered in this essay illustrate how it is possible to enhance the relevance of internal management disclosures by challenging and changing the normative level of abstraction applied.
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Morten Brinch, Jan Stentoft and Dag Näslund
While big data creates business value, knowledge on how value is created remains limited and research is needed to discover big data’s value mechanism. The purpose of this paper…
Abstract
Purpose
While big data creates business value, knowledge on how value is created remains limited and research is needed to discover big data’s value mechanism. The purpose of this paper is to explore value creation capabilities of big data through an alignment perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a single case study of a service division of a large Danish wind turbine generator manufacturer based on 18 semi-structured interviews.
Findings
A strategic alignment framework comprising human, information technology, organization, performance, process and strategic practices are used as a basis to identify 15 types of alignment capabilities and their inter-dependent variables fostering the value creation of big data. The alignment framework is accompanied by seven propositions to obtain alignment of big data in service processes.
Research limitations/implications
The study demonstrates empirical anchoring of how alignment capabilities affect a company’s ability to create value from big data as identified in a service supply chain.
Practical implications
Service supply chains and big data are complex matters. Therefore, understanding how alignment affects a company’s ability to create value of big data may help the company to overcome challenges of big data.
Originality/value
The study demonstrates how value from big data can be created following an alignment logic. By this, both critical and complementary alignment capabilities have been identified.
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Morten Bach Jensen and Anna Lund Jepsen
The purpose of this paper is to state a case for consideration of low attention processing when advertising in industrial markets.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to state a case for consideration of low attention processing when advertising in industrial markets.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a critical description of low attention processing the paper demonstrates how this framework can be applied in industrial markets. A case is made that it is relevant to consider low attention processing in industrial markets. Content analysis is subsequently applied to 48 advertisements for products that are deemed to invoke low attention. In the analysis, focus is on whether the advertisements employ emotional appeals in connection to brands and/or use intuitively understandable messages as would be advisable for attitude change through low attention processing.
Findings
The analysis shows that emotional appeals are used little in advertisements targeted at the selected market and that advertisements in which the brand clearly is displayed in combination with positive emotional appeals are rare. This combination was only seen in three out of 48 advertisements. In addition, most advertisements are not intuitively understandable and thus require that the message receiver is willing and able to allocate resources to cognitively process the advertisement contents.
Originality/value
This paper states a practical case for increased consideration of low attention processing and the necessity for an increased focus on customers' processing of business‐to‐business (B2B) advertising.
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Scandinavian research in systems development can be grouped into three major traditions, based on quite different ideologies and theories: the systems theoretical school, the…
Abstract
Scandinavian research in systems development can be grouped into three major traditions, based on quite different ideologies and theories: the systems theoretical school, the socio‐technical school and the critical school. The differences between these schools are closely related to the historical and social contexts in which they developed. External political, economic and cultural factors have strongly influenced research in this field. In particular, the basic theoretical differences between the schools reflect their different interpretations of the relationship between capital and labour.
Pawan Budhwar, Andy Crane, Annette Davies, Rick Delbridge, Tim Edwards, Mahmoud Ezzamel, Lloyd Harris, Emmanuel Ogbonna and Robyn Thomas
Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce �…
Abstract
Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.
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Søren Bøye Olsen, Jürgen Meyerhoff, Morten Raun Mørkbak and Ole Bonnichsen
Fatigue effects related to answering a sequence of choice tasks have received much scrutiny in the stated choice experiments (SCE) literature. However, decision fatigue related to…
Abstract
Purpose
Fatigue effects related to answering a sequence of choice tasks have received much scrutiny in the stated choice experiments (SCE) literature. However, decision fatigue related to the time of day when respondents answer questionnaires has been largely overlooked in this literature even though time of day related fatigue effects are well known in the psychology literature. The purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that variations in the time of day when respondents answer an online food choice experiment will translate into observable fatigue effects in the food choices.
Design/methodology/approach
An empirical SCE concerning food choices is conducted using a web-based questionnaire for interviews in a pre-recruited online panel of consumers. Timestamps collected during the online interviews provide knowledge about the time of day at which each respondent has answered the survey. This information is linked with knowledge from a food sociology survey on typical meal times as well as biophysical research linking food intake to blood sugar and mental energy in order to generate a proxy variable for each respondent’s level of mental energy when answering the food choice tasks in the questionnaire.
Findings
Results show evidence of a time of day effect on error variance in the stated food choices as well as the subsequently estimated market share predictions. Specifically, respondents provide less consistent answers during the afternoon than at other times of the day.
Originality/value
The results indicate that time of day can affect responses to an online survey through increased fatigue and correspondingly less choice consistency. Thus, especially online surveys might account for this in data analysis or even restrict accessibility to the online survey for certain times of day.
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Assessment of personality disorders in substance abusing patients may produce important insights. Little is known about the value of routine personality disorder assessment in a…
Abstract
Assessment of personality disorders in substance abusing patients may produce important insights. Little is known about the value of routine personality disorder assessment in a clinical context. Adults with past‐year substance dependence seeking treatment at a centralised intake unit for substance abusers in the City of Copenhagen were randomised to assessment of personality disorders and individual psychoeducation vs. attention placebo (n=75). All patients received psychoeducation for attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and anxiety/depression when indicated. Patients were followed at three and six months post‐treatment. The psychoeducation for personality disorder did not result in improved functioning. Significant differences indicated a larger drop in substance use in the experimental group. Assessing personality disorders and providing psychoeducation is a promising treatment in a clinical context. There is a need for relevant treatment options to improve functioning and quality of life for this group of patients.
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Anne‐Mette Hjalager, Morten Lassen and Tage Bild
This study investigates the collaboration between Danish nurses' shop stewards and workplace management. The aim of the study is to track changes in workplace climate after a…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates the collaboration between Danish nurses' shop stewards and workplace management. The aim of the study is to track changes in workplace climate after a major structural reform of the health sector.
Design/methodology/approach
The data source for the study is a comprehensive survey among union representatives in the health and care sectors.
Findings
Generally, and not surprisingly, shops stewards maintain closer relations and a higher degree of loyalty to the nearest managers rather than management at higher levels in the hierarchy. It can also be demonstrated that more experienced shop stewards, those who have been employed in this position and in the workplace for the longest terms have more affirmative relations to management than less experienced shop stewards with shorter tenure. Those shop stewards who spend much time on the entitled duties are rewarded with positive collaboration with management. Hard times at the workplace and dissatisfied colleagues, who do not support their union representative, often result in less rewarding relations with management. Quite unexpectedly, the intensity of relations with management is not significantly related to structural or other changes that the workplace has experienced over the past two years. Changes are therefore accepted as inevitable and regular occurrences in the health sector.
Research limitations/implications
The response rate is very high in the survey. Further qualitative research may reveal details about the background and implications.
Practical implications
The study suggests that many shop stewards may suffer from a competence gap in terms of more advanced new public management strategies and tools. This gap has not yet been successfully filled by the services and training activities offered by the Danish Nurses Union.
Originality/value
Results from the study are being taken on board in the union's strategies. The evidence is also helpful for the managers in the health sector, as they are seeking to develop a constructive the collaboration with the unions.