Search results
1 – 10 of 58Simona Cătălina Ştefan, Ion Popa, Ana Alexandra Olariu, Ştefan Cătălin Popa and Cătălina-Florentina Popa
The current study has a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it aims to analyze the extent to which knowledge management (KM) affects the performance of individuals (task and contextual) on…
Abstract
Purpose
The current study has a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it aims to analyze the extent to which knowledge management (KM) affects the performance of individuals (task and contextual) on the one hand and that of organizations (product or service, perceived and financial) on the other hand. Secondly, it proposes to investigate the mediating effect of motivation and innovation in the relationship between KM and individual and organizational performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed in this study, with mediation analysis performed using advanced PLS-SEM techniques. A total of 1,284 respondents from organizations in both the public and private sectors were included in the sample.
Findings
The findings emphasize that KM has a more significant direct effect on individual performance compared to organizational performance. Concurrently, in terms of indirect influence, it is found that KM, through motivation and innovation, has a positive and significant effect on both individual and organizational performances, with a higher influence on the organizational one.
Originality/value
The originality of the work can be noted in designing two different structural models to represent the proposed relationships at the individual and organizational levels. These findings could provide organizational decision makers with empirical evidence, helping them (1) internalize the significance of the KM process in organizations as well as its subsequent effects on individual and organizational performance and (2) identify factors that mediate variable relationships.
Details
Keywords
Marcel Peppel, Stefan Spinler and Matthias Winkenbach
The e-commerce boom presents new challenges for last-mile delivery (LMD), which may be mitigated by new delivery technologies. This paper evaluates the impact of mobile parcel…
Abstract
Purpose
The e-commerce boom presents new challenges for last-mile delivery (LMD), which may be mitigated by new delivery technologies. This paper evaluates the impact of mobile parcel lockers (MPL) on costs and CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions in existing LMD networks, which include home delivery and shipments to stationary parcel lockers.
Design/methodology/approach
To describe customers’ preferences, we design a multinomial logit model based on recipients’ travel distance to pick-up locations and availability at home. Based on route cost estimation, we define the operating costs for MPLs. We devise a mathematical model with binary decision variables to optimize the location of MPLs.
Findings
Our study demonstrates that integrating MPLs leads to additional cost savings of 8.7% and extra CO2e emissions savings of up to 5.4%. Our analysis of several regional clusters suggests that MPLs yield benefits in highly populous cities but may result in additional emissions in more rural areas where recipients drive longer distances to pick-ups.
Originality/value
This paper designs a suitable operating model for MPLs and demonstrates environmental and economic savings. Moreover, it adds recipients’ availability at home to receive parcels improving the accuracy of stochastic demand. In addition, MPLs are evaluated in the context of several regional clusters ranging from large cities to rural areas. Thus, we provide managerial guidance to logistics service providers how and where to deploy MPLs.
Details
Keywords
Michelle Carr and Stefan Jooss
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be…
Abstract
Purpose
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be enacted in the future of the sustainable workplace. The objective of the study is to examine the patterns of management control change in the Big 4 accounting firms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting an exploratory qualitative research design, the authors draw on 42 interviews with directors and associates in the Big 4 professional services firms.
Findings
The findings reveal two pathways of management control change including alignment and displacement. The authors found that relatively minor adaptions to action and result controls were relied upon to respond to substantial cultural and personnel control changes.
Originality/value
The contributions are threefold: the authors take a temporal perspective to (1) unpack the changes to management control arrangements; (2) theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways encompassing pace, scope and longevity of management control change and (3) contextualise management control arrangements in a hybrid work setting.
Highlights
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.
Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.
The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.
Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.
The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.
COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.
Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.
The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.
Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.
The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.
Details
Keywords
This article aims to investigate the financial constraints and nonlinearity of farm size growth.
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to investigate the financial constraints and nonlinearity of farm size growth.
Design/methodology/approach
Farm size growth is measured with land, labor and output using data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) for Hungary and Slovenia. A dynamic panel model is applied to assess financial constraints and nonlinearity of farm size growth.
Findings
Results show that, except for land in Slovenia and output in Hungary, liquidity constraints are less important for farm size growth than endogenous factors based on farm size growth expectations and steady farm size restructuring. Smaller farms are growing faster than larger ones. The hypothesis that a higher level of subsidies would increase farm size is not supported for Hungary. When farms reach a certain size, the land area of the largest farms increases. Farm debts in Hungary are linked with land growth and in Slovenia with output growth.
Research limitations/implications
Further research on the impact of liquidity constraints and subsidies can be conducted at a disaggregate farm-type level to examine whether there is variability in the underlying interlinkages at the farm-type specialization level.
Practical implications
The implication that farm size growth is dependent on initial size and that smaller farms are growing faster than bigger ones indicates that it is not necessary to favor the fastest growing smaller farms thus supports the application of a non-discriminatory farm size policy for observing farm size structural changes.
Originality/value
The dynamic panel econometric model that incorporates cash flow as a measure of financial constraints provides insight into farm size growth in cross-country comparison in relation to potential farm liquidity constraints, farm debt and the nonlinearity of farm size, which information is of relevance to policy makers and practitioners.
Details
Keywords
This study applies and extends goal concepts by exploring the roles of goal intention and implementation planning in explaining how consumers minimize food waste (FW). It consists…
Abstract
Purpose
This study applies and extends goal concepts by exploring the roles of goal intention and implementation planning in explaining how consumers minimize food waste (FW). It consists of impulsiveness in a food domain and food waste-related habit strength as obstacles in this motivational process.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey data from 399 Vietnamese consumers and structural equation modeling are used to test the proposed model.
Findings
The results establish a causal mechanism from goal intention to food waste reduction behavior via implementation planning. It also highlights mechanisms in which impulsiveness leads to a weak goal intention and careless implementation planning, consolidates FW-related habit strength and makes consumers fail to achieve food waste reduction (FWR) goals.
Research limitations/implications
Future studies would benefit by investigating FWR behavior in different contexts based on the theory of trying or model of goal-directed behavior with the other traits, such as self-esteem or environmental values.
Practical implications
Businesses should design smaller eating portions to limit consumer impulsiveness in buying food. Food policymakers should educate consumers to form and maintain implementation planning, provide them with useful tools to deal with food habits or stimulate ethical motives to reduce FW.
Originality/value
This study extends goal concepts by exploring different routes, highlighting the competing roles of impulsiveness and habit strength compared with goal intention on FWR behavior.
Details
Keywords
Stefan Prigge and Katharina J. Mengers
This chapter presents the current research status of family constitutions from an economics perspective. It locates the family constitution as part of the family and business…
Abstract
This chapter presents the current research status of family constitutions from an economics perspective. It locates the family constitution as part of the family and business governance structure of a family firm and the owner family. The typical structure and content of a family constitution are introduced. The chapter focuses on the status of research about family constitutions and provides a structured map for future research. With regard to extant research, it must be stated that the stock of literature is small. The contributions to literature are categorized in surveys; conceptual contributions; survey data; small sample, qualitative, empirical studies; and big sample, quantitative, empirical studies. The latter group includes three studies with a separate family constitution variable. This small number symbolizes that the family constitution still is an under-researched area. Therefore, family constitution research is far away from being able to answer central questions of advice-seeking owner families like, for example, whether a family constitution affects family performance, firm performance, or both; or whether the development process of a family constitutions disposes of an effect on family or firm performance separately from the hypothesized effect of the family constitution document.
Details
Keywords
The paper intends to show why farms as we know them today may soon be a thing of the past and that organisational behaviour research has an important contribution to make in…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper intends to show why farms as we know them today may soon be a thing of the past and that organisational behaviour research has an important contribution to make in assisting the upcoming transformation.
Design/methodology/approach
Two strains of literature are reviewed and then synthesised: the literature on robots replacing humans in agricultural production and the literature on vertical integration that shifts decisions to agribusiness. Then the potential contribution of organisational behaviour research is outlined.
Findings
It is shown how the farm is likely to lose both roles for which their geographic entity is important: making decisions and carrying out production. This requires contributions from organisational behaviour research in the realms of decision designs and social systems.
Social implications
It can be anticipated that the most profitable strategy for farmland owners in the future will be collaboration with contractors. Farms as organisations, are increasingly losing their importance. This not only has grave social implications for farmworkers and landowners but also for scholars in organisational behaviour research.
Originality/value
The paper challenges an organisational unit that is so familiar to us that it is rarely questioned.
Details
Keywords
Maria Qvarfordt and Stefan Lagrosen
Previous research has identified associations between quality management and employee health. This study's purpose was to (1) examine those associations in a public healthcare…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous research has identified associations between quality management and employee health. This study's purpose was to (1) examine those associations in a public healthcare organisation and (2) explore and describe the association between digitalisation and employee health.
Design/methodology/approach
An online questionnaire including indices to measure quality management values, employee health and digitalisation was answered by 118 managers in Swedish public healthcare. Correlation analysis was used to analyse the data. Based on the survey results, 12 qualitative, in-depth interviews were conducted with healthcare managers.
Findings
The findings show that employee health is associated with quality management and digitalisation. Categories were defined to describe the managers' views of the relationship between digitalisation and health.
Research limitations/implications
Causality was not explicitly tested and cannot be assumed. However, the results strengthen the body of research showing that quality management is related to employee health, and associations between health and digitalisation were identified.
Practical implications
The findings and model should be helpful for healthcare managers in a digitalising environment who aim to preserve or enhance employee health whilst ensuring high service quality.
Originality/value
The results were used to create an integrated conceptual model depicting the association between quality, digitalisation and health. This association has not previously been studied.
Details
Keywords
Anna Kadefors, Kirsi Aaltonen, Stefan Christoffer Gottlieb, Ole Jonny Klakegg, Pertti Lahdenperä, Nils O.E. Olsson, Lilly Rosander and Christian Thuesen
Relational contracting is increasingly being applied to complex and uncertain construction projects. However, it has proved hard to achieve stable performance and industry-level…
Abstract
Purpose
Relational contracting is increasingly being applied to complex and uncertain construction projects. However, it has proved hard to achieve stable performance and industry-level learning in this field. This paper employs an institutional perspective to analyze how legitimacy for relational contracting has been produced and challenged in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, including implications for dissemination and learning.
Design/methodology/approach
A collaborative case study design is used, where longitudinal accounts of the developments in relational contracting over more than 25 years in four Nordic countries were developed by scholars based in each country. The descriptions are underpinned by literature sources from research, practice and policy.
Findings
The countries share similar problem perceptions that have triggered the de-institutionalization of traditional contracting practices. Models and policies developed elsewhere are important sources of knowledge and legitimacy. Most countries have seen pendulum movements, where dissemination of relational contracting is followed by backlashes when projects fail to meet projected outcomes. Before long, however, relational contracting tends to re-emerge under new labels and in slightly new forms. Such a proliferation of concepts presents further obstacles to learning. Successful institutionalization is found to rely on realistic goals in combination with broad competence development at the organizational and industry levels.
Practical implications
In seeking inspiration from other countries, policymakers should go beyond contract models to also consider strategies to manage industry-level learning.
Originality/value
The paper provides a unique longitudinal cross-country perspective on the field of relational contracting. As such, it contributes to the small stream of literature on long-term institutional change in the construction sector.
Details
Keywords
Maria Andreea Tilibașa, Alina Nicoleta Boncilică, Ion Popa, Simona Cătălina Ștefan and Irina Tărăban
The study aims to analyze the different types of risks related to the use of technology and determine their positive or negative influence on teachers' motivation and behavioral…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to analyze the different types of risks related to the use of technology and determine their positive or negative influence on teachers' motivation and behavioral intention to use digital tools.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is based on survey data from 200 teachers in the Romanian preuniversity education system. The data analysis followed a four-step approach, using a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) model for hypothesized relationships among research concepts and a PLS prediction-oriented segmentation (POS) procedure.
Findings
This study showed that increased risk awareness influences both motivation and, consequently, the intention to adopt digital tools in the preuniversity education system.
Research limitations/implications
The scope of research remains constrained with regard to the examined population, considering the substantial number of teachers within the preuniversity education system. Another limit lies in the basic classification of identified risk types.
Practical implications
School managers should design a strategy to increase the level of motivation for integrating digital tools in the educational process.
Originality/value
Little scholarly attention has been devoted to investigating the risks associated with digitalization in the preuniversity education system. In addition, no prior research has been conducted to assess the influence of risk perception on people's motivation and intention to use digital tools in preuniversity education.
Details