Samuel M. Lopez and Paul K. Wright
The impact rapid prototyping (RP) can have on the design process and the product development process as a whole is demonstrated in this paper. The speed and flexibility of RP…
Abstract
The impact rapid prototyping (RP) can have on the design process and the product development process as a whole is demonstrated in this paper. The speed and flexibility of RP technologies decreased the overall time to complete the new product. This also ensured that the final mechanical enclosure of the new handheld video game incorporated the ergonomic design features that users desired.
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Edgar Romero-Jara, Francesc Solanellas, Samuel López-Carril, Dimitrios Kolyperas and Christos Anagnostopoulos
In a dynamic, continuously evolving sports landscape, social media have become an indispensable tool for sports organizations to cultivate meaningful connections with fans. The…
Abstract
Purpose
In a dynamic, continuously evolving sports landscape, social media have become an indispensable tool for sports organizations to cultivate meaningful connections with fans. The rapid pace of technological advancements has elevated these digital platforms from a supplementary role to a pivotal position within strategic management frameworks. The existing literature explores how football clubs can utilize social media, but analyzing social media strategies within the context of football leagues is lacking. The absence of comparative studies benchmarking clubs across different geographical regions while simultaneously analyzing multiple social media platforms is especially noteworthy. In this study, a comprehensive analysis of social media engagement is undertaken within esteemed football leagues spanning Europe, South America and North America.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on relationship marketing and employing content analysis as a methodological tool, the study examined 10,772 posts from the official accounts of eight football leagues on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Findings
Across the leagues, the findings reveal that content quality drives engagement more than frequency. In addition, several format combinations were identified that facilitate engagement and Instagram emerged as the top social media platform for generating fan engagement.
Originality/value
This is one of the first empirical studies focusing on optimizing the use of social media to amplify fan engagement across various geographies and social media accounts and formats simultaneously.
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Erika López-Quesada, María-del-Mar Camacho-Miñano and Samuel O. Idowu
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of corporate governance practices on firms’ financial performance, as measured by comprehensive income (CI).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of corporate governance practices on firms’ financial performance, as measured by comprehensive income (CI).
Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of 237 firms from the Standards & Poor (S&P) 500 index during the years 2004-2009, multivariate statistical analyses are conducted to confirm the authors’ main hypothesis.
Findings
The results indicate that having high levels of corporate governance culture has a positive impact on a measure of firms’ financial performance, namely, CI. Furthermore, they indicate a positive correlation between a higher percentage of external directors and financial performance, and a negative relationship between number of board meetings and financial performance.
Originality/value
The main contribution of this research is that good corporate governance strategies deliver superior financial performance for businesses in terms of CI. This serves as a method of value creation, which is the ultimate goal of a business. In addition to the use of CI as an indicator of financial performance, a unique measure of corporate governance level is tested.
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Alexandra L. Ferrentino, Meghan L. Maliga, Richard A. Bernardi and Susan M. Bosco
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in…
Abstract
This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.
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Robert James Thomas, Gareth Reginald Terence White and Anthony Samuel
The purpose of this research is to understand what motivates 7–11-year-old children to participate in online brand communities (OBCs). Prior research has concentrated on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to understand what motivates 7–11-year-old children to participate in online brand communities (OBCs). Prior research has concentrated on prescriptive product categories (games and gaming), predominantly adolescent groups and the social aspects of community engagement and actual behaviour within communities, rather than the motivations to participate with the OBC. This has ultimately limited what has been gleaned, both theoretically and managerially, from this important segment.
Design/methodology/approach
An interpretive, longitudinal position is adopted, using a sample of 261 children (113 male and 148 female) from across the UK, using event-based diaries over a 12-month period, generating 2,224 entries.
Findings
Data indicate that children are motivated to participate in a brand community for four reasons: to support and ameliorate pre-purchase anxieties, resolve interpersonal conflicts, exact social dominance in terms of product ownership and perceptions of product knowledge and to actively engage in digitalised pester power. The study also reveals that certain motivational aspects such as conflict resolution and exacting dominance, are gender-specific.
Research limitations/implications
Knowledge of children’s motivation to engage with OBCs is important for marketers and brand managers alike as the data reveal markedly different stimuli when compared to known adult behaviours in the field. Given the nature of the study, scope exists for significant future research.
Practical implications
The study reveals behaviours that will assist brand managers in further understanding the complex and untraditional relationships that children have with brands and OBCs.
Originality/value
This study makes a novel examination of a hitherto little-explored segment of consumers. In doing so, it uncovers the theoretical and practical characteristics of child consumers that contemporary, adult-focussed literature does not recognise. The paper makes an additional contribution to theory by positing four new behavioural categories relating to community engagement – dependers, defusers, demanders and dominators – and four new motivational factors which are fundamentally different from adult taxonomies – social hegemony, parental persuasion, dilemma solving and conflict resolution.
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Marga Marí-Klose, Albert Julià and Pedro Gallo
Despite the increasing evidence on the effects of the economic crisis and austerity policies on the health of the population, we lack knowledge of how the young population is…
Abstract
Despite the increasing evidence on the effects of the economic crisis and austerity policies on the health of the population, we lack knowledge of how the young population is being affected. High unemployment rates, labour instability, high housing costs and cuts in public policies have placed the young in a vulnerable situation. We explore changes (2006–2017) in the both physical and mental health of young people in Spain using a selection of health indicators. By doing so we draw the reader’s attention to three elements with a close relationship to neoliberalism: the prominence of social determinants of health, the importance of inequalities and the accumulation of multiple sources of disadvantage in certain groups and individuals which ultimately condition the course of their lives; and the use of medicalization as a common and legitimised response to poor mental health.
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Ernesto López-Gómez, Raúl González Fernández, Antonio Medina and Samuel Gento
Recent decades have witnessed increasing interest worldwide in educational quality. Many international organisations and national education systems have conducted studies on the…
Abstract
Recent decades have witnessed increasing interest worldwide in educational quality. Many international organisations and national education systems have conducted studies on the meaning of quality, the various ways in which it can be measured and the factors that promote it as a basis for designing education reforms and rendering good practices visible. In this chapter, the authors explore conceptual perspectives on educational quality that are informed by various pedagogical approaches and examine the initiatives implemented in Spain to improve educational quality in non-university contexts, analysing education legislation over the past 30 years. The authors also propose basic elements or strategies that the authors believe would further promote educational quality in non-university settings in Spain and elsewhere. These proposals revolve around the educational project, teacher training and professional development, diversity and inclusion in education and community leadership.
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Serge-Lopez Wamba-Taguimdje, Samuel Fosso Wamba, Jean Robert Kala Kamdjoug and Chris Emmanuel Tchatchouang Wanko
The main purpose of our study is to analyze the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on firm performance, notably by building on the business value of AI-based transformation…
Abstract
Purpose
The main purpose of our study is to analyze the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on firm performance, notably by building on the business value of AI-based transformation projects. This study was conducted using a four-step sequential approach: (1) analysis of AI and AI concepts/technologies; (2) in-depth exploration of case studies from a great number of industrial sectors; (3) data collection from the databases (websites) of AI-based solution providers; and (4) a review of AI literature to identify their impact on the performance of organizations while highlighting the business value of AI-enabled projects transformation within organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
This study has called on the theory of IT capabilities to seize the influence of AI business value on firm performance (at the organizational and process levels). The research process (responding to the research question, making discussions, interpretations and comparisons, and formulating recommendations) was based on a review of 500 case studies from IBM, AWS, Cloudera, Nvidia, Conversica, Universal Robots websites, etc. Studying the influence of AI on the performance of organizations, and more specifically, of the business value of such organizations’ AI-enabled transformation projects, required us to make an archival data analysis following the three steps, namely the conceptual phase, the refinement and development phase, and the assessment phase.
Findings
AI covers a wide range of technologies, including machine translation, chatbots and self-learning algorithms, all of which can allow individuals to better understand their environment and act accordingly. Organizations have been adopting AI technological innovations with a view to adapting to or disrupting their ecosystem while developing and optimizing their strategic and competitive advantages. AI fully expresses its potential through its ability to optimize existing processes and improve automation, information and transformation effects, but also to detect, predict and interact with humans. Thus, the results of our study have highlighted such AI benefits in organizations, and more specifically, its ability to improve on performance at both the organizational (financial, marketing and administrative) and process levels. By building on these AI attributes, organizations can, therefore, enhance the business value of their transformed projects. The same results also showed that organizations achieve performance through AI capabilities only when they use their features/technologies to reconfigure their processes.
Research limitations/implications
AI obviously influences the way businesses are done today. Therefore, practitioners and researchers need to consider AI as a valuable support or even a pilot for a new business model. For the purpose of our study, we adopted a research framework geared toward a more inclusive and comprehensive approach so as to better account for the intangible benefits of AI within organizations. In terms of interest, this study nurtures a scientific interest, which aims at proposing a model for analyzing the influence of AI on the performance of organizations, and at the same time, filling the associated gap in the literature. As for the managerial interest, our study aims to provide managers with elements to be reconfigured or added in order to take advantage of the full benefits of AI, and therefore improve organizations’ performance, the profitability of their investments in AI transformation projects, and some competitive advantage. This study also allows managers to consider AI not as a single technology but as a set/combination of several different configurations of IT in the various company’s business areas because multiple key elements must be brought together to ensure the success of AI: data, talent mix, domain knowledge, key decisions, external partnerships and scalable infrastructure.
Originality/value
This article analyses case studies on the reuse of secondary data from AI deployment reports in organizations. The transformation of projects based on the use of AI focuses mainly on business process innovations and indirectly on those occurring at the organizational level. Thus, 500 case studies are being examined to provide significant and tangible evidence about the business value of AI-based projects and the impact of AI on firm performance. More specifically, this article, through these case studies, exposes the influence of AI at both the organizational and process performance levels, while considering it not as a single technology but as a set/combination of the several different configurations of IT in various industries.
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Jianhua Tan, Kam C. Chan, Samuel Chang and Bin Wang
This paper aims to examine the effect of carbon emissions on audit fees. The authors hypothesize that firms in cities with higher carbon emission levels have lower reporting…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the effect of carbon emissions on audit fees. The authors hypothesize that firms in cities with higher carbon emission levels have lower reporting transparency, higher return volatility or are subject to higher reputation risk, causing them to be charged higher audit fees for auditing services.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use panel data of 25,960 firm-year observations from a sample of Chinese firms. The carbon emission data for each Chinese city are obtained from the China Emission Accounts and Datasets for Emerging Economies. This paper adopts a multiple regression model to study the impact of carbon emissions on audit fees.
Findings
The authors find that firms located in cities with higher carbon emission levels and firms with more carbon emissions are charged, on average, a higher audit fee. This audit fee effect of carbon risk is transmitted by lessened information transparency and elevated financial risk within these firms. This paper shows that auditors consider carbon risk in their audit fee decisions and other factors that could influence audit risk and effort.
Originality/value
This study draws a connection between carbon emissions and audit fees. It is especially relevant due to the increasing importance of environmental factors in the audit risk assessment. In addition, the findings suggest that a firm implementing a proactive environmental strategy benefits the economy and decreases the costs to the firm for services such as auditing.
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Tai Ming Wut, Peggy Ng, Hing-Ki, Mike Kan and Chiu, Samuel Fong
A waste charging policy had been implemented in major Asian cities like Taipei and Seoul years ago. Hong Kong is not yet to charge household rubbish, which is one of the major…
Abstract
Purpose
A waste charging policy had been implemented in major Asian cities like Taipei and Seoul years ago. Hong Kong is not yet to charge household rubbish, which is one of the major municipal solid waste sources. Landfill places will be exhausted in a year or two in the city. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of waste charging policies by exploring relationships among social norms, lifestyles, attitudes towards waste charging policy and pro-environmental behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
Purposeful sampling was used in this study to recruit university students to take part in the survey. Purposeful sampling helps to make a “highly credible sample” (Gall et al., 2006, p.185). This study distributed questionnaires to respondents aged over 18 years. Among them, there were 404 valid questionnaires (35.6% male; 64.4% female) that were returned with a response rate of 53.9%.
Findings
It is found that attitude towards waste charging policies affects pro-environmental behaviour through lifestyles and social norms. Female respondents’ pro-environmental behaviours are affected by their lifestyles and social norms. But male respondents’ lifestyle is affected by their attitude towards policy. Attitude towards charging policy does not have an impact on young people's pro-environmental behaviours.
Originality/value
Social acceptance towards any environmental policy is a must for its final outcome. It is because attitude towards any environmental policy is a starting point to affect pro-environmental behaviours. Female respondents are more engaged in pro-environmental behaviour compared to male. Almost all big cities encourage the re-use, re-cycle and reduce of waste. Before designing and implementing relevant policy, stakeholder participation is important. The new environmental policy usually has stricter measures, such as heavier charge on municipal waste. Policymakers are advised to obtain solid arguments and data support to convince stakeholders.