This purpose of this paper is to present a tool for facilitating personnel selection when multiple heterogeneous human resource managers use multiple criteria. Two problems result…
Abstract
Purpose
This purpose of this paper is to present a tool for facilitating personnel selection when multiple heterogeneous human resource managers use multiple criteria. Two problems result from such a situation. First, when multiple criteria are applied, it is unusual for one candidate to dominate the other candidates in all areas, which requires assigning weights to the different criteria to be able to rank the candidates. Second, in a heterogeneous selection committee, finding weights that accurately reflect the individual preferences of all members is difficult.
Design/methodology/approach
To deal with the multidimensional setting of selecting personnel, this paper introduces data envelopment analysis with assurance region (DEA-AR) to determine individually optimal weights for each applicant.
Findings
DEA-AR leads to a score for each applicant that can serve as a signal for productivity and, thus, for evaluating the candidate. Based on linear programming, DEA-AR not only aggregates multiple dimensions into a single score but also incorporates managers’ preferences. In addition, the procedure is transparent and fair. It seems to be highly appropriate for selecting personnel. Based on a simulated dataset of applicants, the use of DEA-AR for selecting personnel is illustrated and discussed.
Originality/value
DEA-AR provides a tool for supporting personnel selection or pre-selection. This model is based on a mechanical procedure and considers managers’ ideas about weights.
Details
Keywords
Drew Martin and Arch G. Woodside
Using brand netnography (analyzing consumers' first‐person on‐line stories that include discussions of their product and brand use), this article aims to probe how visitors…
Abstract
Purpose
Using brand netnography (analyzing consumers' first‐person on‐line stories that include discussions of their product and brand use), this article aims to probe how visitors interpret the places, people, and situations that they experience while traveling in Japan.
Design/methodology/approach
Through analysis of online consumer stories about their trip experiences, Heider's balance theory is applied to visitors' trip experiences. Follow‐up contact with the consumers allows application of autodriving methodology to gather additional post‐trip insights.
Findings
The results show immediate and downstream positive and negative associations of concepts, events, and outcomes in visitors' stories. Maps of consumer stories identify kernel concepts and include descriptions of how visitors live a specific destination's unique promises (e.g. distinct cultural history). Using the kernel concepts as a basis, Holt's five‐step strategy for building icons is applied to the travel destination to show how a destination can create a brand identity.
Research limitations/implications
Bloggers reporting their travel experience may not be representative of the population of travelers. On the other hand, travel blogs potentially can influence trip planning by other visitors collecting travel information.
Practical implications
Blog reports represent an unobtrusive method of collecting emic interpretive information from consumers. Emic reporting provides deep insights about consumers' trip interpretations. Tourism and hospitality managers can use this information to improve service experiences and design communication strategies to strengthen positive iconic imagery reported by consumers.
Originality/value
Emic and etic interpretations of travel experiences create a bricolage of the travelers' experiences. Autodriving methodology is extended to tourism research to gather additional insights and to better clarify informants' interpretations. This article also expands on a revisionist proposal to Holt's five‐step strategy for building destinations as iconic brands and suggestions for tourism management.
Details
Keywords
Prominent corporate scandals involving companies like Wirecard, Enron, VW and Tyco underscore the corrupting influence of power, with leaders often engaging in antisocial…
Abstract
Purpose
Prominent corporate scandals involving companies like Wirecard, Enron, VW and Tyco underscore the corrupting influence of power, with leaders often engaging in antisocial behaviors. Provoked by this, this study investigates the relationship between supervisory responsibility and one specific dimension of altruistic behavior. Understanding the dynamics of how structural power, particularly supervisory responsibility, associates with altruistic behavior is essential for organizations, given the well-documented advantages of altruistic leaders in terms of performance, innovation or ethical leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing upon the approach-inhibition theory of power, this article proposes that individuals with greater structural power in terms of prolonged duration and greater scope of supervisory responsibility will show diminished altruistic behavior. Following theoretical considerations, power influences leaders’ behavior by decreasing attentiveness, reducing empathy and increasing self-focus. The study uses recent German linked employer-employee data to test the relationship between supervisory responsibility and one specific dimension of leader altruistic behavior (n = 2,752).
Findings
The results support that a prolonged duration and a greater scope of supervisory responsibility correlate negatively with the dimension of leader altruistic behavior under study.
Originality/value
The research empirically validates the findings on behavioral consequences of structural power from experimental settings for organizational leaders by explicitly focusing on the duration and the scope of supervisory responsibility. The findings provide useful insights for organizations concerning leader selection and leader governance mechanisms.
Details
Keywords
Susanne Sackl-Sharif, Eva Goldgruber, Julian Ausserhofer, Robert Gutounig and Gudrun Reimerth
The 2013 Central European floods were not only one of the most severe natural disasters in Austria in the last decades, but also constituted a landmark in crisis communication…
Abstract
The 2013 Central European floods were not only one of the most severe natural disasters in Austria in the last decades, but also constituted a landmark in crisis communication. For the first time, social media and online newspapers were important news channels, creating a need for new crisis communication strategies. Based on 20 semi-structured interviews and an analysis of online data, we reconstruct in this chapter the online communication of different stakeholders such as the authorities, rescue organisations and journalists during this emergency situation. The study shows that the use of social media was a weak point in official crisis communication. Through detailed analyses of information flows and the requirements of different stakeholders, the study reveals new challenges and possibilities for crisis communication in the digital age.
Details
Keywords
Susanne Durst, Mariano Martin Genaro Palacios Acuache and Guido Bruns
Crises of any type have become an integral part of business activity and responses to them could make the difference between survival and failure. This applies in particular to…
Abstract
Purpose
Crises of any type have become an integral part of business activity and responses to them could make the difference between survival and failure. This applies in particular to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Taking the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as a starting point, this study aims to investigate how Peruvian SMEs have been coping with COVID-19 so far. Based on that a conceptual framework is proposed which highlights the practice of SMEs trying to deal with a new type of crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on an exploratory qualitative research design involving 25 semi-structured interviews conducted in Peruvian SMEs.
Findings
The findings demonstrate how the Peruvian firms studied to adapt to the new situation and initiate responses to increasing the chance of survival. Furthermore, the role of the companies’ decision-makers, as well as the role of crisis management and other related approaches in the companies are shown.
Research limitations/implications
The paper expands the underdeveloped body of knowledge regarding crisis management in Latin America in general and crisis management in SMEs by providing insight into how Peruvian SMEs perceive and adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Practical implications
The findings presented in this paper have implications for both managers and managerial staff of SMEs but also for the people in charge of the curricula at universities and other teaching-focused institutes.
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study of crisis management on the impacts of COVID-19 with a dedicated focus on SMEs from Latin America. It provides fresh insight into current reactions to the Pandemic.
Details
Keywords
Susanne Becken and Johanna Loehr
The purpose of this paper is to provide contrasting narratives of what the future of Asia Pacific tourism may look like, and to identify how current policy interventions and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide contrasting narratives of what the future of Asia Pacific tourism may look like, and to identify how current policy interventions and recommendations made for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recovery shape the system's trajectory.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on a set of four possible futures emerging from COVID-19, tourism policy responses are analysed and a link to their potential contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals is made.
Findings
A system goal is presented for each scenario, and what this means for the tourism system. Existing policies indicate that tourism is moving towards a “Discipline” future, although evidence for all four trajectories could be identified. Whilst the “Transform” scenario is most aligned with a sustainable future, the findings highlight that sustainability outcomes are possible in the other scenarios as well, if risks are managed adequately.
Research limitations/implications
The limitation is that the core structure of the four futures was not specifically developed for tourism. However, given that tourism is firmly embedded in national and global economies, this limitation is not material.
Practical implications
This paper supports decision-makers to develop adaptability in the face of great uncertainty and complexity. Risks and opportunities associated with each of the four tourism futures are identified, and examples are provided how sustainability outcomes can be maximised in each.
Social implications
Sustainability is a safe and necessary strategy regardless of the trajectory to any of the four scenarios. The long-term health of the tourism system and anyone involved in it depends on significant progress along the Sustainable Development Goals.
Originality/value
This paper explores pathways for system change and how different COVID-19 policy approaches contribute to shaping the system's trajectory. It highlights the risks associated with certain trajectories, and also identifies how short-term recovery priorities might undermine long-term sustainability.
Details
Keywords
Emilene Leite, Cecilia Pahlberg and Susanne Åberg
Building on a business network perspective, the paper addresses the following question: Why do firms move between cooperation and competition in the context of high-tech industry…
Abstract
Purpose
Building on a business network perspective, the paper addresses the following question: Why do firms move between cooperation and competition in the context of high-tech industry? Hence, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the complex cooperation–competition interplay between actors in a business network.
Design/methodology/approach
A single case study within the information and communication technology industry is undertaken and illustrates the cooperation–competition interplay in projects of technology.
Findings
The authors discuss the implications of interdependence on relationship dynamics. The main argument is that business relationships survive despite periods of competition if interdependence is high. Thus, firms move between a state of cooperation and a state of competition within business relationships, rather than ending the relationships when starting to compete.
Practical implications
This study suggests that managers need to pay attention to how different degrees of interdependence lead firms to be embedded in cooperative or competitive forms of relationships.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the ongoing debate about cooperation, competition and coopetition within international business and industrial marketing literature. An interesting aspect in the paper is the cooperation–competition interplay, which is associated with positioning. A centrally positioned actor will choose who to bring into the partnership, with positioning concomitantly changing from project to project. The willingness of being a central actor, i.e. a project leader, places traditional buyer–supplier partners in competition. Thus, cooperation and/or competition becomes contextual.
Details
Keywords
Gerard Gibson, Elena Apostolaki and Melissa Blackie
Monsters, from ghouls and zombies to shoggoths and Cthulhu, have always fascinated humans and have a prominent presence in cultural production. This is made clear by how much…
Abstract
Monsters, from ghouls and zombies to shoggoths and Cthulhu, have always fascinated humans and have a prominent presence in cultural production. This is made clear by how much people enjoy Halloween events and dressing up as their favourite monster or the most recent trend of horror themed escape rooms, that include haunted houses, a zombie apocalypse or Lovecraftian monsters. Monstrous creatures represent the fears and desires of society and often embody the allure of danger, transgression and power. Monsters have long been used to construct certain images of the different/unconventional and thus represent anything diverse as the Other. Monsters, however, can be employed to invert or even overturn this relationship by empowering the Other and thus provide us with a more critical view on society in regard to our values, fears and attitudes. The stories and folklore about monsters and the monstrous that incite fear and remind us to always check under our beds before we sleep have also found their way into our everyday lives. Within the mainstream media, criminality is indicative of moral corruption, and is attributed with notions of monstrosity. These monsters do not have claws, instead, they are unpredictable, different and deviate from social and cultural norms. Like the mythical creatures in folklore, monstrosity in its human form reminds us to fear the future, the unknown, Others and society. The monstrous is centrally defined by its unfixedness, its resistance to conformity or to convenient schematic identification. It is somatically and intellectually uneasy, a restless disturbing embodied thought that unsettles, and whose greatest value to us is its very indeterminacy. This chapter illustrates the shifting shapes of the monstrous, their makers, and offers insight about what we can learn from studying these cautionary noetic chimeras. Drawing on the diversity of our academic backgrounds, ideological perspectives and the research from our individual chapters, we address the contemporary narrative of the figure of the monster. Rather than an essay style examination, our chapter explores this narrative through a question and answer format. The flexibility of this format allows readers an intimate glimpse into the ways in which the monstrous can be conceptualised and understood in various frameworks.
Details
Keywords
M. Saleem Ullah Khan Sumbal, Irfan Irfan, Susanne Durst, Umar Farooq Sahibzada, Muhammad Adnan Waseem and Eric Tsui
The purpose of this article is to investigate how organization retain the knowledge of Contract Workforce (CWF) and to understand the associated challenges in this regard.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to investigate how organization retain the knowledge of Contract Workforce (CWF) and to understand the associated challenges in this regard.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting an inductive approach, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior managers, project heads and consultants working in leading oil and gas companies across eight countries (USA, Australia, UAE, KSA, Pakistan, UK, Thailand and Russia). Thematic analysis was carried out to analyze the data collected.
Findings
CWF appears to be a significant source of knowledge attrition and even knowledge loss in the oil and gas sector. There are various risks associated with hiring of CWF, such as hallowing of organizational memory, repeated training of contractors, no knowledge base, workforce shortage among others which can impede the knowledge retention capability of O&G companies in the context of contract workforce. Various knowledge retention strategies for CWF have been revealed, however, there is interplay of various factors such as proportion of CWF deployed, proper resource utilization, cross-functional multi-level teams' involvement and strength of transactional ties. Maintaining strong relationships (Transactional ties) is crucial to maintain a virtual organizational memory (partial knowledge retention) and to follow a adopting a rehired when required policy.
Originality/value
The knowledge retention issue in the context of CWF has not be addressed in past researches. This article attempts to fill this gap.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to discuss the roles of social protection in reducing and facilitating climate-induced migration. Social protection gained attention in the international climate…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to discuss the roles of social protection in reducing and facilitating climate-induced migration. Social protection gained attention in the international climate negotiations with the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. Yet, its potential to address migration, considered as a key issue in the loss and damage debate, has not been sufficiently explored. This paper aims at identifying key characteristics of social protection schemes which could effectively address climate-induced migration and attempts to derive recommendations for policy design.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the existing literature, the paper links empirical evidence on the effects of social protection to climate-related drivers of migration and the needs of vulnerable populations. This approach allows conceptually identifying characteristics of effective social protection policies.
Findings
Findings indicate that social protection can be part of a proactive approach to managing climate-induced migration both in rural and urban areas. In particular, public work programmes offer solutions to different migration outcomes, from no to permanent migration. Benefits are achieved when programmes explicitly integrate climate change impacts into their design. Social protection can provide temporary support to facilitate migration, in situ adaptation or integration and adaptation in destination areas. It is no substitution for but can help trigger sustainable adaptation solutions.
Originality/value
The paper helps close research gaps regarding the potential roles and channels of social protection for addressing and facilitating climate-induced migration and providing public support in destination, mostly in urban areas.