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In an attempt to meet evolving client needs, Southbank Library needed to become more flexible in the way services were delivered. The paper investigates whether providing a short message service (SMS) for students to text the library for information would offer a readily accessible alternative to e‐mail and live chat services.

SMS reference services where thoroughly researched in Australia and overseas to gage their usefulness for Southbank Institute libraries. Demographic statistics of the student population allowed researchers to determine how appropriate SMS reference technology would prove to be for library clients.

The paper finds that implementing SMS reference allowed the library the opportunity to access students via a familiar accessible service. SMS a Librarian has become part of the Southbank Institute Library Ask a Librarian service, which includes e‐mail, phone and live chat access for students and staff. By adding this new technology to the reference services, users are now able to send questions and receive answers from Southbank librarians by using the text messaging facility on their mobile phones.

SMS has become a popular way of communicating particularly among the younger generation. However, it is important that individual libraries evaluate the appropriateness of this technology for their clientele. For Southbank library it was a suitable technology as so many of the students use text messaging. It was felt that a large number of international students would benefit from this service. Often students with English as a second language feel more comfortable texting a question then using more conventional methods of communication. The success of the SMS reference service at Southbank Institute library revolves around three key points: SMS meets our clients' needs instantly; SMS is a relevant form of communication for students; and finally, the ease of providing SMS technology. Originality/value – When researching other educational institutions using SMS reference technology it became clear that universities were leading the field. Southbank Institute of Technology was the first vocational education institute to implement SMS reference and its experience should benefit similar skilled‐based training institutes.

Recent literature on nonprofit boards of directors has extensively investigated the composition, role, responsibilities, and characteristics of boards. Given the growing number of studies on nonprofit boards, which added new impulse to the debate on the role and characteristics of these players, it is time to analyze the state of the art and systematize the current knowledge. On the other hand, despite the presence of some literature reviews, a research comparing the debate among the nonprofit, private, and public sectors is still lacking. Using Gabrielsson and Huse’s (2004) framework, we wanted to identify factors that can influence research on nonprofit boards and compare our results with existing studies on private and public sector.

We conduct a systematic literature review, selecting empirical articles published in international scientific journals from 1992 to 2012.

We found similarities and differences in relation to research on boards among sectors. As a common result, we found that evolutionary studies still remains a neglected area in all of three realms. Finally, whereas input–output studies prevail in the private sector and contingency studies prevail in the public sector, behavioral studies prevail in the nonprofit sector, demonstrating, also, that the sector itself can make a difference in the board’s research.

This literature review provides some suggestion for further research on boards for all of three sectors. For example, we suggest complementing research on boards on all three sectors, especially in relation to evolutionary studies.

This paper fills the need to clarify the status of research on nonprofit boards, in order to address scholars in the understanding of the phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the inter-relationship of dimensions for consumer-based brand equity and brand loyalty with customer satisfaction as a mediator for oral care segment with special reference to Delhi and connecting areas.

For achieving the objective of this study, the theoretical model was tested through structural equation modelling. Research scales from the literature were modified for suitability. Data were collected from 250 respondents.

The results indicate that for the oral care segment, customer satisfaction is significantly related to the perceived quality, brand trust, perceived value of cost and lifestyle congruence. Moreover, customer satisfaction partially mediates the relationship of perceived quality and perceived value of cost with brand loyalty, whereas it fully mediates the relationship of lifestyle congruence and brand trust with brand loyalty. Thus, even for low-involvement products, consumer purchases are based on the attributes of the brand rather than being merely habitual.

The literature supports the direct influence of brand equity on brand loyalty. However, no other study has investigated the mediating role of customer satisfaction on the relationship between brand equity and brand loyalty for low-involvement products.

This work discusses gender issues related to the video game medium, addressing its production, consumption, and media repercussions. It begins with an overview of the emergence of the video game with the targeting of audiences that focused on sales campaigns to consumers along gendered lines that amplified the dominance of men in the space. The discussion then focuses on numerous ways that the gaming industry as a whole perpetuates a culture of misogyny. Empirical examples are provided of harassment, attacks, and the controversial event known as GamerGate. Subsequently, the complicated history of Brazilian video gaming development is presented to draw parallels with the development of the industry and the market in the United States. Finally, the chapter concludes with suggestions to stimulate new producers, developers, and video game scholars who are committed to building a more aware and diverse community.

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.

Bringing together leadership educators from 11 programs in Kansas, the Leadership Studies Summit fostered new initiatives and strengthened collegial networks. The summit responded to local and national expressed needs for intensive dialogue focusing on collaboration and capacity building among leadership educators for advancing the common good. This application brief will share the format and outcomes of this dialogue, including recommendations for future multi-institutional collaborations.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between attitudes towards organizational diversity and towards trans people, correlating them with the levels of transphobia among HR professionals. Drawing upon the Intergroup Contact Theory, we also seek to understand whether the results may be influenced by the contact variable.

Data were collected through the administration of a questionnaire to a sample of 184 HR professionals. The questionnaire was comprised of self-constructed questions and previously validated scales, including: Attitudes Toward Diversity Scale (ATDS) (Montei et al., 1996), Attitudes Toward Transgendered Individuals (ATTI) Scale (Walch et al., 2012) and Genderism and Transphobia Scale (GTS) (Hill and Willoughby, 2005).

The results do not show high levels of negative attitudes towards organizational diversity or intolerance towards trans people, being these variables correlated, with higher levels of intolerance in the portion of the sample without contact with trans people.

This article contributes to the increase of knowledge in the field of HR Development Policies focusing on the thematic of Diversity and Inclusion, which is a very current and important topic in organizations today. Also, the relevance and contribution of the study point to the need for Human Resources Management Practices that take on positive discrimination and/or encourage the adoption of affirmative actions by organizations.

Este estudio tiene como objetivo analizar la relación entre las actitudes hacia la diversidad organizacional y hacia las personas trans, correlacionándolas con los niveles de transfobia entre los profesionales de recursos humanos. Basándonos en la Teoría del Contacto Intergrupal, también buscamos comprender si los resultados pueden estar influenciados por la variable de contacto.

Se recopilaron datos a través de la administración de un cuestionario a una muestra de 184 profesionales de recursos humanos. El cuestionario estaba compuesto por preguntas autoconstruidas y escalas previamente validadas, que incluían: Attitudes Toward Diversity Scale - ATDS (Montei et al., 1996), Attitudes Toward Transgendered Individuals (ATTI) Scale (Walch et al., 2012) y Genderism and Transphobia Scale - GTS (Hill and Willoughby, 2005).

Los resultados no muestran altos niveles de actitudes negativas hacia la diversidad organizacional o intolerancia hacia las personas trans, siendo estas variables correlacionadas, con niveles más altos de intolerancia en la porción de la muestra sin contacto con personas transgénero.

Este artículo contribuye al aumento del conocimiento en el campo de las políticas de desarrollo de recursos humanos, centrándose en la temática de Diversidad e Inclusión, la cual es un tema muy actual e importante en las organizaciones hoy en día. Además, la relevancia y contribución del estudio señalan la necesidad de prácticas de gestión de recursos humanos que asuman la discriminación positiva y/o fomenten la adopción de acciones afirmativas por parte de las organizaciones.

Internationalisation is one of the significant manifestations of the ongoing transformation of doctoral education. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the perspectives of Portuguese universities and doctoral students regarding the importance of internationalisation and the strategies to achieve it in doctoral education.

A sample of 118 doctoral programme websites from 27 universities (15 public, 12 private) served as the data source of university perspectives of internationalisation. Doctoral students’ perspectives on the same topic were collected through 31 interviews, 27 conducted in seven focus groups and four individually, with first-year doctoral students from three Portuguese public universities. Content analysis was performed on the two sets of data.

According to university and doctoral students’ perspectives, internationalisation assumes an important role in Portuguese doctoral education and is being integrated through specific strategies. Strategies for attracting and recruiting international students appear to take a back seat compared to strategies which offer students international experience through immersion in international environments in their home institutions. While expressing the potential impediments, undesirable side effects and conditions that internationalisation must meet, students seem to take a critical stance towards it and towards the institutional strategies designed to promote it.

This paper addresses a topic which does not appear to receive much attention in doctoral education research and, to this extent, advances knowledge on the internationalisation of doctoral education.

This paper aims to empirically investigate how knowledge coordination is carried out within and across expert teams in the outsourcing service desk context from the standpoint of the information and communication technologies (ICT) provider.

The authors draw on an embedded case study to unravel the mechanisms used by expert teams to achieve knowledge coordination. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and document analysis over eight months.

Four groups of coordination mechanisms were found according to their nature and role in helping MESA achieve its organizational goals. The authors also identified how this set of mechanisms responds to the task-resource dependency and how it evolves over time to provide reliable ICT services. Furthermore, the analysis of four knowledge coordination dimensions inside each group uncovers the complexity of coordination in the studied context, with the “who” dimension being predominant across the groups. The analysis further reveals that the content (what) and mode of coordination (how) of each group respond to elements in the knowledge coordination process relevant for the different stages of the ICT service delivery process.

The case study addresses how people in outsourced services coordinate their knowledge to manage the interdependencies among the involved organizations and thus, achieving their goals. This study extends previous research that had analyzed the consequences of knowledge coordination for providers and customers by delving into the mechanisms used in this process from the provider’s point of view.