Search results

Service research holds that as services become more technology dominated, new service provider roles emerge. On a conceptual level, the potential impact of different roles has been discussed with regard to service provider readiness, job performance and overall experience. However, as yet, there is sparse empirical support for these conceptual interpretations. The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the new service provider roles that emerge due to the increase of technology mediation in services.

This study follows a qualitative methodology. Insights are drawn from in-depth interviews with 32 junior and senior health-care service providers (across 12 specialties) and 5 information governance/management staff.

This analysis illustrates that new service provider roles include those of the enabler, differentiator, innovator, coordinator and sense-giver. By adopting these roles, health-care service providers reveal that they can encourage, support and advance technology mediation in services across different groups/audiences within their organizations (e.g. service delivery level, peer-to-peer level, organizational level). This paper further shows the relationships between these new service provider roles.

This study contributes to theory in technology-mediated services by illustrating empirically the range of activities that constitute each role. It also complements prior work by identifying that service providers adopt the additional role of sense-giver. Finally, this paper provides an understanding of how by taking on these roles service providers can encourage, support and advance technology mediation in services across different groups/audiences in their organization.

This paper offers a comparison of local government accounting and auditing in the U.S. and the U.K., including descriptions of the wider environment of the two governmental systems. The paper identifies two major differences in accounting. The first is that, in the U.S., the standard-setter makes requirements, whereas the U.K. policy-maker issues recommendations, which are sometimes not followed. The second is that, in the context of public reports outside the audited financial statements, the U.K. government has mandated the preparation and publication of performance measures by local governments.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the journal entries of study abroad students from a college of business that participated in four separate nine-day study abroad programs to identify whether the development of intercultural maturity is possible in a short-term study abroad program and if learning and development differ based on race/cultural background.

This study used content analysis of student journals. The journal entries of 33 students from four different short-term study abroad trips served as the data from which a qualitative content analysis using nvivo was conducted.

Development of intercultural maturity can, in fact, occur from a short-term (10-day) study abroad program. Student development progressed through the first two levels of the Intercultural Maturity Framework, with multicultural students progressing further. All students achieved first and second levels of the Developmental Trajectory of Intercultural Maturity on the King and Baxter Magolda (2005) framework in all three areas, including cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal.

The author realizes the limitations of one form of data, the journal, and thus proposes for the future both pre-travel questions to encourage further critical thinking and learning and additional methods of obtaining data.

This study suggests that it might be advantageous to re-design the experience, whereby the students are guided with particular questions before or at the start of the study abroad program, to propel them forward in the process of critical reflection and development of intercultural maturity.

This study specifically applies the framework of King and Baxter Magolda’s (2005) Intercultural Maturity framework to examine the extent to which intercultural maturity of business students can be developed within the constraints of a short-term (nine-day) study abroad program. It also adds the dimension of comparing multicultural student development to non-multicultural student development.

June Pallot was a very warm, kind person with an infectious, bubbly laugh. We last spoke on 5th October 2004, one month before she passed away. I still remember her warm, friendly voice from that last conversation. Behind this warm persona, there was a first class mind, an outstanding intellect. We met the way many academics do – I was an anonymous reviewer of her work and I was impressed by its quality and the thoughtfulness of her responses to the issues raised. Subsequently, we met when June Pallot was on a visit to Scotland with her husband, Graeme Craigie, a New Zealander of Scottish descent. June Pallot visited me at Stirling, where I was then professor of accounting. We had a very detailed discussion of governmental accounting, in which her depth of knowledge was impressive. We became so engrossed in this discussion that June almost forgot that Graeme was waiting patiently for her in the car park.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what impacts university students perceived from their short-term intensive international courses as part of undergraduate multidisciplinary education.

The study design was informed by interpretative phenomenological analysis. Semi-structured interviews explored informants’ views of their experience to elicit key themes of their experience.

The analysis resulted in four major themes: personal development, generic skills, global perspectives and subject-specific matter. Some text segments were coded with multiple themes, which suggests that the impacts of short-term international courses are multifaceted.

Academic topics of the courses substantially centred around humanities and social sciences at a particular university. This paper furthermore primarily depended on students’ self-reported answers, and it is possible that the participants who chose to enrol in the elective international courses may be principally willing to acquire global competence. Therefore, this study did not set out to present the generalised impacts of any short-term international courses.

The findings could be used as a conceptual tool for the design and evaluation of new and existing courses. In addition, the four major themes that this study elicited are useful as a cue for students’ self-reflection about their own learning experiences.

There have been significant efforts devoted to increasing the quantity of short-term international programs, but there has been less focus on the quality of these programs. This study supports the findings of existing literature but also identified one of the potential unfavourable impacts that short-term international courses may have on students’ development.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the key risks and challenges of Short-Term Study Abroad (STSA), so higher education practitioners and global mobility providers can design effective and safe STSA programmes. The Institute of International Education defines STSA as programmes of up to eight weeks in length, with this standard now widely accepted by both practitioners and scholars (Iskhakova and Bradly, 2022).

This study draws from a comprehensive review of STSA risks literature, cases of published “incidents”, “safety practices”, “risk lists” and examples by global mobility professionals. The paper also draws upon the extensive practical experiences that the authors have acquired through their management of risks while delivering numerous STSA international business programmes for undergraduate students across seven different global destinations (India, USA, UAE, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia and Vietnam).

Through the analysis, the authors identify 42 types of risks and challenges that may be encountered in the delivery of STSA programmes that we group into 12 categories.

The results serve as an effective guide for planning, designing and delivering effective and safe STSA programmes for global mobility practitioners worldwide. The authors also provide an agenda and specific directions for future research on the topic to global mobility scholars.

For those designing STSA programmes, an in-depth understanding of the nature and range of risks during study tours is needed, including how to ensure in-country experiences are safe for all participants while achieving the intended learning outcomes.