Search results

This paper reports the result of an exploratory study of the application of Heskett, Sasser and Schlesinger’s service profit chain to a single organisation, one of the UKs leading grocery retailers. The results showed correlations between profit, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, service value, internal service quality, output quality and productivity; however there was no support for the claim that these are driven by employee satisfaction and loyalty. In fact, to the contrary, there was a strong correlation between employee dissatisfaction and store profitability. This research raises questions about the robustness of a central premise of the service profit chain, which is that strong business performance is the result of a mirror‐effect between employee and customer satisfaction. The paper considers the implications for management and calls for the development of a contingency based understanding of the drivers of business success.

This study aims to examine the extent to which UK directors failed to report their share trading in the timeframe required by extant regulations in the run‐up to the changes in insider trading law contained in the Financial Services and Markets Act.

The study investigates the extent of non‐compliance amongst the 7,461 trades reported to the London Stock Exchange by the directors of UK firms in the year 2000.

The results indicate that 1,055 (or 14 per cent) of directors' trades were reported late (or with the transaction date absent), with these being concentrated amongst “buy” transactions in both absolute and pro‐rata terms.

The evidence suggests that non‐compliance in the reporting of directors' transactions was common at the time when UK authorities chose to toughen the legal framework governing the conduct of trading based on private price‐sensitive information. Once sufficient time has elapsed, further studies should be able to provide evidence about the iterative impact of the new legal framework by comparing results with the findings of this study.

This is the first study to report a detailed examination of the extent of non‐compliance in the timing of directors' trades in their own equity.

How does career boundary-crossing affect an entrepreneur’s new venture? When entrepreneurs cross industry or functional boundaries to lead startups, they may lack specific experience needed for performance. Conversely, the diverse experiences they carry can enhance exploration and lead to the emergence of innovation in startups. We highlight important consequences of career boundary-crossing, using a multi-industry longitudinal sample of high-technology firms. We find that entrepreneurs who cross functional boundaries are more likely to lead their startups into new product areas. We also find that entrepreneurs’ industry boundary-crossing is associated with startup failure, but it also increases the probability of an IPO.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a qualitative study of the views of a cross-section of managers and union officials engaged in joint learning projects on the impact more generally on the employee relations climate in those organisations.

Findings are based on an analysis of interview data incorporating the views and experiences of 32 union representatives and managers engaged in promoting learning in a number of case study projects in North West England.

Findings suggest that union-led learning and development has a clear impact on pre-empting potential performance issues for individuals in terms of better equipping them with the skills to achieve expected performance levels, assisting individuals with managing work-related stress and also to prevent discrimination against workers. Collectively, the managing of downsizing in particular through union-led learning support to retrain in order to redeploy effected staff or better prepare them for new employment opportunities was also a significant finding.

The research suggests that successful union-management learning partnerships can also have a positive impact on managing conflict in those organisations. However, further research is needed to test these assertions in other union organised sectors.

There are implications for management in recognising the “added value” that partnership working with their unions on learning can bring in terms of also both pre-empting and resolving individual and collective disputes in the workplace.

The research is one of few studies that focuses on the link between promoting learning through union-management partnerships and managing conflict in organisations and offers a clear insight into how this can be achieved in practice.

This study explored the relationship between perceived peer support, mental health and the well-being of students enrolled in work-integrated learning (WIL) at a Canadian institute of higher education, who were completing remote work experiences.

An online survey and virtual semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The online survey captured demographic information as well as measures of perceived peer support, loneliness, positive mental health (PMH) and stressors associated with the on-going pandemic. The interviews captured narratives regarding peer support, attitudes surrounding remote work, mental health and well-being.

WIL students completing remote work terms experienced only moderate levels of peer support, moderate loneliness, below-average PMH and all the stressors associated with the on-going pandemic. Data also revealed that completing a remote work term negatively impacted work communications, opportunities to build connections with colleagues and overall motivation. On the other hand, WIL students appreciated the flexibility and comfort of working from home, as well as reduced work-related expenses.

With remote work experiences increasing globally and now a reality for many WIL students, the potential negative effects emphasize the importance of providing social and mental health support and resources, especially during stressful times.

The purpose of this paper is to examine two specific circumstances where UK courts may stay the execution of a judgment to enforce a statutory adjudication decision; where a final decision is sought on a discrete point; and where the winning party is insolvent. In this context, there is consideration of what a “binding” decision means for the purposes of Part II of the Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996.

A black letter, doctrinal approach is adopted, using two High Court decisions as a focus for wider critical reflection.

The cases where a final determination on part of an adjudication decision is successful are rare and will depend on the facts. Despite some unorthodox recent decisions, the likelihood remains that parties will struggle to challenge part only of an adjudication decision. The leading case authorities support the underlying principle of the Construction Act insofar as adjudication decisions are binding and should be enforced or else the Court will impose punitive statutory interest on the debt. This principle applies even in cases where the adjudication decision is successfully challenged in such cases.

This paper also addresses two decisions given by Edwards‐Stuart J. in the High Court, both of which adopt a novel approach to the relevant issues, and hence this discussion of those approaches demonstrates originality.

Firms are increasingly organizing cross-regional R&D collaborations among different units. Such collaborations should promote knowledge flows across distance and bring new knowledge to the local communities. However, the nature of cross-regional collaborations varies widely depending on the organizations within which they are organized. Compared with collaborations within small firms, collaborations in large firms tend to be routinized, which reduces the need for interpersonal interactions and increases the dependence on organizational structure. As a result, additional spillover from cross-regional collaboration is likely to be lower if the collaboration is within large firms. We extend this argument to the regional level and hypothesize that regions with a higher level of cross-regional collaborations tend to generate more valuable technologies, but when large firms dominate the formation of such collaborations, the marginal benefits of cross-regional collaboration are significantly reduced. Using a data set from the pharmaceutical industry between 1975 and 2001, we find support for our hypotheses. We conduct a series of robustness tests to check the consistency of our results.

The analysis of the flow field and heat transfer around a tube row or tube banks wrapped with porous layer have many related engineering applications. Examples include the reactor safety analysis, combustion, compact heat exchangers, solar power collectors, high-performance insulation for buildings and many another applications. The purpose of this paper is to perform a numerical study on flows passing through two circular cylinders in side-by-side arrangement wrapped with a porous layer under the influence of a magnetic field. The authors focus the attention to the effects of magnetic field, Darcy number and pitch ratio on the mechanism of convection heat transfer and flow structures.

The Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer model for simulating the flow in porous medium along with the Maxwell equations for providing the coupling between the flow field and the magnetic field have been used. Equations with the relevant boundary conditions are numerically solved using a finite volume approach. In this study, Stuart and Darcy numbers are varied within the range of 0 < N < 3 and 1e-6 < Da < 1e-2, respectively, and Reynolds and Prandtl numbers are equal to Re=100 and Pr=0.71, respectively.

The results show that the drag coefficient decreases for N < 0.6 and increases for N > 0.6. Also, the effect of magnetic field is negligible in the gap between two cylinders because the magnetic field for two cylinders counteracts each other in these regions.

To the authors knowledge, in the open literature, flow passing over two circular cylinders in side-by-side arrangement wrapped with a porous layer has been rarely investigated especially under the influence of a magnetic field.

The paper aims to investigate current library instruction programs to help business students make better use of library resources and improve their information. However, students’ information acquisition ability, library usage and their perception toward library user education are inevitably changing along with the rapidly evolving information landscape as well as the socio-cultural environment driven by information technologies.

For this study, 90 business students from three different majors at the Faculty of Business and Economics, the University of Hong Kong were invited to participate in the online survey for comparison.

The findings of this study suggest that the subjects, in general, recognized the importance of library user instruction. However, when the subjects encountered difficulties in information searching, they preferred to use search engines (such as Google) and seek help from their classmates.

The results of this study show that there were distinctive differences in library usage and views toward library instruction among students of three different majors. This study sheds light on the feasible actions of academic libraries to enhance library user instruction services and improve the IL skills among business students.

Although there is much research about the library instruction of academic libraries, scant research focuses on library usage and views toward library instruction of business students, especially on the comparison among different business majors.