Daniella G. Varela, Kelly S. Hall, Ya Wen Melissa Liang, Angelica Cerda and Laura Rodriguez
The purpose of this study was to understand perspectives of doctoral students about their compulsory online experience and aspects of their compulsory online experiences which…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to understand perspectives of doctoral students about their compulsory online experience and aspects of their compulsory online experiences which were strongly associated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a disorienting dilemma.
Design/methodology/approach
Exploratory descriptive survey research was the approach taken. Notable descriptors and associations were interpreted based on statistical analysis complimented by respondent comments.
Findings
Respondents included students who were at various stages of completing their doctoral degree. Overall findings indicated preference for face-to-face classes, the switch to online learning was well-received, primarily as a result of perceptions of quick and supportive communication from doctoral program leadership, strong student and instructor connections, and high-quality collaborative opportunities.
Research limitations/implications
The COVID-19 pandemic represented a disorienting dilemma provoking cognitive dissonance among doctoral students who were compelled to move from a hybrid to a completely online learning model. Fear, anger and discontent induced by broken assumptions were mitigated through shared experiences creating new meaning and habits of mind in the process of adjusting to new expectations. Study results reveal that engagement, collaboration and support among instructors and classmates eased the transformative process transitioning into online learning.
Practical implications
The results of this study provided real-time understanding of students' needs in order to be successful in the quest and persistence of doctoral study online. Though the process of seeking official and state approvals to move the educational leadership doctoral program fully online, program faculty made a series of teaching and program adaptations informed by these results.
Originality/value
Research about doctoral student experiences during a compulsory transition from a hybrid to online delivery model has not been explored and offers original perspective to improve future practice transitioning into online programs for student acceptance, engagement and retention.
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Keywords
Yung-Cheng Shen, Crystal T. Lee and Wen-Ya Lin
The proliferation of digital communication on social media provides new opportunities for businesses to take advantage of Internet memes to boost customer engagement. Academic…
Abstract
Purpose
The proliferation of digital communication on social media provides new opportunities for businesses to take advantage of Internet memes to boost customer engagement. Academic literature on digital communications mostly focuses on popular forms such as selfies, branded posts, and branded emoticons. Less attention has been paid to brand memes and their implications for brand management. Based on the cue utilization theory, this research aims to investigate the informational cues of brand memes foster brand partnerships.
Design/methodology/approach
The structural equation modeling and importance-performance matrix analysis were used to empirically validate the research hypotheses with 595 respondents to an online survey.
Findings
Three informational cues of brand memes (i.e. comprehensibility, novelty, and meme-brand congruity) stimulated consumers' attitudes, which in turn impacted consumer-brand relationships. Another brand meme informational cue, sarcasm, negatively moderated the relationships between the three informational cues and consumer-brand relationships.
Originality/value
Our findings indicate that a brand can engage consumers in conversations on social media and foster long-term consumer-brand relationships through brand memes.
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Maretno Agus Harjoto, Indrarini Laksmana and Ya wen Yang
This paper aims to examine the relationship between the nationality and educational background diversity of directors serving on corporate boards and the firms’ corporate social…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the relationship between the nationality and educational background diversity of directors serving on corporate boards and the firms’ corporate social performance (CSP).
Design/methodology/approach
This study measures nationality diversity by directors’ national citizenship and measures educational background diversity by countries from which they earned their undergraduate and post undergraduate degrees. It measures firms’ CSP using the MSCI ESG ratings. The study uses both univariate and multivariate analyses to empirically test the hypotheses.
Findings
Using a sample of US firms, the authors find that board nationality diversity and educational background diversity are positively associated with CSP. The findings suggest that improving director nationality diversity and educational background diversity could improve firms’ social performance.
Originality/value
This study shows that the increasing trend of foreign nationals in the US boards could shift the focus of US corporations to be more stakeholder-oriented.
Details
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Maretno Harjoto, Indrarini Laksmana and Ya-wen Yang
This study identifies the factors that influence companies to obtain the B corporation certification. Drawing from institutional isomorphism, gender socialization theory, the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study identifies the factors that influence companies to obtain the B corporation certification. Drawing from institutional isomorphism, gender socialization theory, the ethics of care and social identity theory, the authors examine the impact of geographic locality, product market competitions and owners’ demographic characteristics on a firm’s decision to be a certified B Corporation.
Design/methodology/approach
Using two sets of data, a hand-collected sample of 743 small businesses receiving a B Corporation certification between 2007 and 2014 and a sample of 902 firms participating in a B Lab survey from 2011 to 2013, the authors examine factors that influence firms’ decision to obtain the B Corporation and their environment, social and governance (ESG) performance.
Findings
Firms in states that are democratic-leaning, have a lower hourly wage rate or have a greater religious population are more likely to be early adopters and leaders of the B Corporation movement than those in other states. On average, states with a higher unemployment rate and more democratic-leaning voters have more B Corporation certified firms in each year and over the years. Additionally, product market competition is positively associated with firms’ likelihood of obtaining B Corporation certification and their ESG scores.
Practical implications
This study brings new insights to the understanding of purpose-driven enterprises and factors that influence firms’ decision to go through the B Corporation verification and certification process.
Originality/value
This study establishes a theoretical foundation that becoming a B Corporation is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) action and shows that existing theories explaining the factors motivating companies to engage in CSR can also be applied to explain firms’ motivation to become B Corporations.
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Hung-Tai Tsou, Ja-Shen Chen and Ya-Wen (Diana) Yu
In the contemporary business environment, companies must constantly consider methods to enhance their competitive advantage and create value for their customers. The purpose of…
Abstract
Purpose
In the contemporary business environment, companies must constantly consider methods to enhance their competitive advantage and create value for their customers. The purpose of this paper is to develop a research model based on a business ecosystem view. Within a business ecosystem, the authors identified the key factors of co-development and the manner in which these factors affect a company’s innovation performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The theoretical hypotheses are confirmed by partial least squares analysis of survey responses collected from information and communication technology (ICT) and hotel industries in Taiwan.
Findings
In both industries, the results suggest that a firm’s co-development within its own ecosystem has positive effects on innovation performance. For companies in the ICT industry, collaborative networks and partner selection have significant impacts on the firms’ co-development, but their information technology (IT) capability does not; in contrast, in the hotel industry, partner selection and IT capability have significant impacts on firm co-development, but their collaborative network does not.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature of business ecosystem and co-development by offering a co-development model. As both conceptual and empirical research on this topic is still underdeveloped, this study provides fresh insights into collaboration management and offers significant theoretical and managerial implications from a business ecosystem perspective.
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Ya Wen, Llewellyn C.M. Tang and Daniel C.W. Ho
This paper aims to propose a space-oriented solution as an interface enabling the knowledge transfer between the building and the facilities management (FM) industry.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose a space-oriented solution as an interface enabling the knowledge transfer between the building and the facilities management (FM) industry.
Design/methodology/approach
The research gap is explored based on practical investigations in six large-scale hospitals in China. The theory of engineering systems integration inspires the proposed solution. A practical scenario is demonstrated to explain the workflow of this solution.
Findings
It is founded that lagging information updates of FM systems in hospital project are one of the main reasons for inefficient and costly FM workflow. Building information modelling (BIM) model could provide accurate building information to the FM systems at the building handover stage. However, few researchers focus on the continuous information transfer solution from the BIM model to FM systems during the building in-use phase. An interface should be established for the “conversation” between the frequent changes of building and the FM systems in the post-construction period.
Practical implications
The information updates in three FM systems due to space changes in a hospital project is considered as a practical scenario in this paper. It is presented with the workflow and the data logic chain.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper is to propose a solution to integrate the space information provided by the BIM model with the parameters of particular FM systems. This solution deploys a BIM model for the FM industry. The solution could allow the FM personnel to ease operations and maintenance workflow by updating the space information in the BIM model.
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Keywords
Ya-Wen Cheng, Su-Ying Hsu and Chu-Ping Lo
Third-party payments were first introduced by the US firm PayPal. Soon after, China developed a localized version of PayPal – Alipay, which became the main payment method for…
Abstract
Purpose
Third-party payments were first introduced by the US firm PayPal. Soon after, China developed a localized version of PayPal – Alipay, which became the main payment method for online transactions in China. Currently, the number of global transactions conducted with Alipay is three times that of PayPal. In addition to online transactions, Alipay also integrates with mobile payment applications to provide offline services, making physical transactions more convenient for users. The authors, in this paper, aim to address how third-party payments technology seems to be playing out an innovation-imitation-catch up story.
Design/methodology/approach
Krugman (1966) proposed a general-equilibrium model of product cycles under perfect competition where high-tech products are innovated by an “advanced” country and imitated by a “developing” country. The competition between US–China online technologies (e.g. third-party payments) seems to be playing out this innovation-imitation-catch up story.
Findings
The USA has already put a lot of effort into the operations of credit cards and checks, as well as other infrastructure such as human resources and installation of relevant systems. China lacks the infrastructure for payments made with credit cards and checks, and therefore China’s opportunity cost of moving directly from cash transactions to third-party payments is much less than that of the USA, which is why China holds follower advantage in third-party payment markets.
Originality/value
The third-party payment technologies appear to be a good example of the argument made by Krugman (1966) regarding the US–China competition on advanced technology, which states that an imitator can catch up with an inventor when the former acquires comparative advantages against the latter.
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Jian Wang, Jing Feng Shen and Ya Wen Fan
The spherical hybrid sliding bearings (SHSBs) can be used in ultra-precision and heavy-duty machine tools. However, there is little related research for these bearings. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The spherical hybrid sliding bearings (SHSBs) can be used in ultra-precision and heavy-duty machine tools. However, there is little related research for these bearings. The purpose of this study is to investigate the static characteristics and effect factors affecting SHSBs by fluid lubrication.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the theories of fluid lubrication, the Reynolds equation of general Newtonian fluid is derived to obtain the steady-state lubrication equation. The system is solved by the finite difference method and the relaxation iterative method on the staggered grid to obtain the thickness and the pressure distribution of the oil film. The radial and axial load capacities of SHSBs are determined by the pressure field integration over the spherical surface.
Findings
The results show that the parameters such as oil supply pressure, bearing clearance, eccentricity ratio, rotating speed and orifices’ number affecting the static characteristics of bearings are significant and the cross-coupling effect exists.
Originality/value
The lubrication model of SHSB is established to analyze the pressure distribution with a variety of oil film thickness. The laws of oil supply pressure, bearing clearance, eccentricity ratio, rotating speed and orifices’ number on the load capacities are researched.
Details
Keywords
Ching‐Chong Lai, Wen‐tzong Hsiao and Wen‐ya Chang
Traditionally, international monetary economists focus their attention on the framework of either a pure fixed or a pure flexible exchange rate system. With the demise of the…
Abstract
Traditionally, international monetary economists focus their attention on the framework of either a pure fixed or a pure flexible exchange rate system. With the demise of the Bretton Woods system, many countries have begun to use an intervention policy in the foreign exchange market and adopted the regime of managed floating exchange rates. Such a change has encouraged many economists into the field of this system. Although the contributions in this area are very rich, there is no systematic analysis concerning whether intervention policy will enhance or weaken the effectiveness of macroeconomic policies. That is why this article is written.
Wen-Ya Chang, Hsueh-Fang Tsai and Juin-Jen Chang
This chapter, by virtue of a generalized specification, examines the equilibrium growth paths under two distinct scenarios, namely, a small open economy and a small semiopen…
Abstract
This chapter, by virtue of a generalized specification, examines the equilibrium growth paths under two distinct scenarios, namely, a small open economy and a small semiopen economy in a two-sector, endogenous growth model of money. We show that these two scenarios end up with very different characteristics of equilibrium and the steady-state effects of inflation targeting (IT). In a small open economy, there is a nonbalanced-growth path equilibrium (hence, great ratios are nonstationary), while in a small semiopen economy there is a balanced-growth path equilibrium (great ratios are stationary). This provides a convincing reconciliation of the discrepancy in the empirical literature on great ratios. In addition, our steady-state analysis implicitly suggests that a lower inflation target gives rise to a positive GDP growth effect only for those IT countries which are more open to international trade. This enables us to explain why IT countries are relatively open to the international market and why some IT countries with a high degree of trade openness continuously lowered their inflation targets in the 1990s.