Thea Paeffgen, Tine Lehmann and Mareike Feseker
The ability of companies to develop organizational resilience before, during and after crises is crucial for their development and growth. The future forecasts increasingly more…
Abstract
Purpose
The ability of companies to develop organizational resilience before, during and after crises is crucial for their development and growth. The future forecasts increasingly more crises, thus this paper aims at identifying key topics around organizational resilience in COVID-19 times, differentiating them of pre-crisis literature and synthesizing them into a research framework.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on Web of Science and Scopus, the authors analysed the content of the only twenty-seven VHB-ranked primary studies discussing organizational resilience during COVID-19, providing a complete survey of this research area.
Findings
Following a content analysis, the authors identified main topics of interest for researchers at the moment of COVID-19, how it differed from before this adversity and provide an outlook on future research. The results presented include in the COVID-19 context: an adapted definition of organizational resilience, key theoretical framework, insights for future research. Some topics have been found to be increasingly more important during COVID-19 (i.e. digitalization, partnerships and learning) while others have been less explored although present in pre-COVID-19 research on organizational resilience (i.e. dynamic capabilities, anticipation and preparedness).
Originality/value
Understanding key issues in global disruptions could help practitioners in fostering resilience as much as researchers in identifying new ways to advance and maintain resilience. This paper differs from other reviews by providing a full text analysis, based on qualitative content analysis, of all ranked published papers in the considered period.
Details
Keywords
Per Christensen, Mikkel Thrane, Tine Herreborg Jørgensen and Martin Lehmann
This article aims to discuss the contradiction between signing an agreement to work for sustainable universities and the lack of practical commitment in one case, namely at…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to discuss the contradiction between signing an agreement to work for sustainable universities and the lack of practical commitment in one case, namely at Aalborg University (AAU). Focus is placed both on the University's core processes such as education, research and outreach; on the necessary inputs and outputs related to transport, food and operation, and maintenance of buildings, and on the university's products counting published results of research and educated students and researchers.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on a desk study of official university documents from the period 1990 to 2007, and a number of student reports that have focused on the sustainability or environmental merits of the University.
Findings
Although adopting an environmental policy and signing the Copernicus Charter back in the early 1990s, AAU soon lost momentum. This was due to reasons defined as: the lack of commitment from top management, the missing acceptance from technical staff, and a narrow understanding of the university's environmental impacts. Obviously, a model of the environmental impacts should not only take into account the environmental impacts related to the impacts occurring in the present, e.g. related to the running and maintenance of buildings and laboratories, but also integrate considerations about the impacts in the processes (education, research and outreach). Thereby, the model shall provide the basis for more sustainable products, such as students considering aspects of sustainability in the solutions and approaches they apply in their future careers.
Research limitations/implications
This article forms the basis for future research identifying how universities can contribute to sustainable development in a more coherent way by implementing new policies and plans. The article takes its starting point in a general model of a university's environmental impacts involving key processes at the university, the related inputs and outputs (emissions), and the transformation of intermediate products such as high school students and existing research results into products such as graduate students, PhDs, and new research results.
Practical implications
The processes and the related inputs, outputs, intermediate products, and end‐products are analysed and discussed in order to illustrate the relevant environmental issues that need to be addressed by universities.
Originality/value
The paper identifies a number of key issues of sustainability that universities need to address and offers inspiration to staff and students on how to push these agendas at their home universities.
Details
Keywords
The Editor and Publishers regret that the prolonged dispute in the printing trade made it impossible to produce the February issue of this journal punctually, and continues to…
Advances in information technology have made it economically feasible to automate small information services and libraries. From single applications interest is shifting to the…
Abstract
Advances in information technology have made it economically feasible to automate small information services and libraries. From single applications interest is shifting to the integrated support of various functions. The main focus at the technical level is on workstations for information professionals and on the communications tools needed such as local area networks (LANs), and interfaces to various external systems. Application software packages are needed for this integration.
Promporn Wangwacharakul, Silvia Márquez Medina and Bozena Bonnie Poksinska
Customers from different cultures might have different expectations and perceptions of quality, leading to different levels of satisfaction. Together with the construct and…
Abstract
Purpose
Customers from different cultures might have different expectations and perceptions of quality, leading to different levels of satisfaction. Together with the construct and measurement equivalence issues of cross-cultural surveys, this raises the question of the comparability of customer satisfaction measurements across countries. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the survey method of anchoring vignettes as a tool for improving the comparability of customer satisfaction measurements across countries and to shed some light on cultural influences on customer satisfaction measurements.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the models of American Customer Satisfaction Index and European Performance Satisfaction Index, the authors designed and conducted a survey using the method of anchoring vignettes to measure and compare customer satisfaction with mobile phone services in four countries – Costa Rica, Poland, Sweden and Thailand. The survey was carried out with young adults aged 20–30 years, who were mostly university students.
Findings
This study demonstrates how anchoring vignettes can be used to mitigate cultural bias in customer satisfaction surveys and to improve both construct and measurement equivalence of the questionnaire. The results show that different conclusions on cross-cultural benchmarking of customer satisfaction would be drawn when using a traditional survey compared to the anchoring vignettes method.
Originality/value
This paper evaluates the survey method of anchoring vignettes as a potential quantitative research method for studying customer satisfaction across countries. The results also contribute to customer satisfaction research as these shed some light onto how culture influences customer satisfaction measurements. The practical implication for firms and managers is that allocating resources among different countries based on traditional customer satisfaction surveys may be misleading.