Search results

The aim of this paper is to suggest and demonstrate how anchoring vignettes, as a survey instrument, can be applied to study quality management (QM) across cultures. Cultural differences may create challenges in QM. Quantitative surveys are commonly used to study QM practices but do not consider the cultural bias in the survey results. An important question is how to study QM so that the results are comparable across cultures. Herein, the use of anchoring vignettes is suggested to reduce the problem of cross-cultural incomparability.

This paper focuses on developing and testing vignettes for studying QM. Based on previous survey studies, two vignettes for each QM dimension are developed. The vignettes are then tested with two pilot tests on the web-based survey platform.

The paper provides a concrete example of how a survey using anchoring vignettes could be designed and used to deal with cultural bias in QM survey Based on hypothetical examples from Swedish and Indian cultures, the results from pilot studies evaluating vignettes are promising and show the applicability of the proposed method. Anchoring vignettes may help to provide more accurate survey results and thereby contribute to understanding of cross-cultural differences in QM practices. One of the challenges is the design of vignettes, which requires high precision and several tests to make the method work.

The paper discusses the potential of using anchoring vignettes to study QM practices across cultures. This may contribute to better understanding of QM practices in an international context, and thereby help improve QM practices in multinational organisations.

Anchoring vignettes have become a popular method to adjust self-assessed data for systematic differences in reporting behaviour to aid comparability, for example, of cross-country analyses. The method relies on the two fundamental assumptions of response consistency and vignette equivalence. Evidence on the validity of these assumptions is equivocal. This chapter considers the utility of the vignette approach by considering how successful the method is in moving self-assessed reports of health mobility towards objective counterparts. We draw on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and undertake pairwise country comparisons of cumulative distributions of self-reports, their objective counterparts and vignette adjusted reports. Comparison of distributions is based on tests for stochastic dominance. Multiple cross-country comparisons are undertaken to assess the consistency of results across contexts and settings. Both non-parametric and parametric approaches to vignette adjustment are considered. In general, we find the anchoring vignette methodology poorly reconciles self-reported data with objective counterparts.

The authors examine whether or not applicants and recipients of federal disability insurance (DI) inflate their self-assessed health (SAH) problems relative to others. To do this, the authors employ a technique which uses anchoring vignettes. This approach allows them to examine how various cohorts of the population interpret survey questions associated with subjective self-assessments of health. The results of the analysis suggest that DI participants do inflate the severity of a given health problem, but by a small but significant degree. This tendency to exaggerate the severity of disability problems is much more apparent among those with more education (especially those with a college degree). In contrast, racial minorities tend to underestimate severity ratings for a given disability vignette when compared to their white peers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Using technology to meet national security expectations and requirements is not new. Nations attempt to strike a balance between security and the (expressed or otherwise) privacy needs of citizens. Attacks (physical or cyber) on citizens shift the equilibrium point towards security. In contrast, civil liberties organisations act to preserve or increase privacy. The purpose of this paper is to explore Australian attitudes towards privacy and surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, this paper aims to discover what (if any) factors contribute to societal acceptance of privacy encroachment implicated by surveillance programs.

Data collection occurred during 2021 using a cross-sectional survey comprising a variety of self-assessment questions. In addition, anchoring vignettes were introduced as a means of contextualising complex concepts, i.e. privacy and security. Finally, latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify homogenous patterns within the data, referred to as “classes” for the analysis of trust.

First, the survey revealed that citizens appear to be unconcerned about surveillance in public and private spaces (although this may be a temporary effect resulting from the pandemic). The potential for identification, however, does raise concerns. Second, LCA surfaced a specific group that were more likely to trust entities and showed less concern about surveillance in society. Finally, even this latter group displayed a “trust deficit” in specific organisations (private businesses and social media firms).

The tension between security and privacy remains, even in a post-pandemic world; therefore, the authors consider that the results, whilst interesting, are preliminary. Notwithstanding this, the findings provide insight into Australian attitudes towards privacy and surveillance and, consequently, provide input into public policy.

This is the most recent survey of the Australian public concerning this issue. The analysis of the effect of the pandemic on attitudes provides further value.

The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2016 shows Pakistan as among the more corrupt nations in the world with a ranking of 117 among 176 countries surveyed. This situation raises concerns about members of the society and especially about the business communities. This paper aims to examine whether the tendency to corruption is also prevalent amongst business students, the future leaders and executives of business organizations.

The study uses survey questionnaires in the manner of Parsa and Lankford (1999) to examine the ethical levels of business students. It uses Levene’s (1960) tests for equality of variances and the t-test for equality of means to examine whether there are difference in the ethical perceptions between: bachelors (BBA) and graduate (MBA) students; business students who have taken the ethics course and those who have not; and female and male students. The authors also examine the overall ethical perceptions of business students.

The results show that students seem to make a clear distinction in respect of what they consider as acceptable and unacceptable ethical behavior. They would not indulge in behavior that directly falls within the category of stealing, misusing of company’s resources and undertaking actions that are wrong or dishonest, which may stem from their religious indoctrination. However, they would consider as acceptable behavior the overlooking of safety violations, not telling on peers; and fudging of the truth to get the job done. The latter attitude appears to be in line with business objectives of achieving targets irrespective of the means employed and that inform business education. We do not find any differences between the behavior of women and men which may be the outcome of the same religious indoctrination and educational perceptions. While there is a difference in the ethical perceptions between students who have taken the ethics course and those who have not, the course is not able to counter the lack of ethics among business students. There is a need for some stronger measures to inculcate a set of ethical values within students. However, we did find that some of the unethical behavior is diluted at the MBA level in comparison to BBA students.

This study provides new insights into the ethical perceptions of students in an Islamic emerging country. There is a conflict between ethics conveyed through Islamic precepts, and the ethics of business education with a focus on profits/revenues, costs, performance and competition that endorses a Machiavellian attitude of achieving goals at any cost and the love of money (Tang and Chen, 2008). It is the first study to suggest a differentiation in the ethical behavior of business students that exhibit both ethical and unethical behavior. There appears to be a clear segregation between what students deem as acceptable and unacceptable ethical behavior that may result from their personal/religious beliefs, and their business attitudes that strongly informs their ethical behavior. It provides a basis for developing more customized and effective ethics courses in Pakistan and suggests more importantly that ethics needs to be integrated into business concepts imparted in business programs at universities.

Collaborative filtering based recommender systems (CF–RS) are widely used to recommend products based on consumers' preference similarity. Recommendations by CF–RS merely provide suggestions as “people who bought this also bought this” while, consumers are unaware about the source of these recommendations. By amalgamating CF–RS with consumers' social network information, e-commerce sites can offer recommendation from social networks of consumers. These social network embedded systems are known as social recommender systems (SRS). The extant literature has researched on the algorithms and implementation of these systems; however, SRS have not been understood from consumers' psychological perspective. This study aims to qualitatively explore consumers' motives to accept SRS in e-commerce websites.

This qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews of frequent online shoppers. SRS are currently not very widespread in the Indian e-commerce space; hence, a vignette was shown to respondents before they responded to the questions. Inductive qualitative content analysis method was used to analyse these interviews.

Three main themes (social-gratification, self-gratification and information-gratification) emerged from the analysis. Out of these, social-gratification acts as an enabler, while self-gratification along with some elements of information-gratification act as inhibitors towards acceptance of social recommendations. Based on these gratifications, we present a conceptual model on consumer's acceptance of social recommendations.

This study is an initial attempt to qualitatively understand consumers' attitudes and acceptance of social recommendations on e-commerce websites, which in itself is a fairly new phenomenon.

This chapter reviews the existing empirical evidence on how social insurance affects health. Social insurance encompasses programs primarily designed to insure against health risks, such as health insurance, sick leave insurance, accident insurance, long-term care insurance, and disability insurance as well as other programs, such as unemployment insurance, pension insurance, and country-specific social insurance programs. These insurance systems exist in almost all developed countries around the world. This chapter discusses the state-of-the art evidence on each of these social insurance systems, briefly reviews the empirical methods for identifying causal effects, and examines possible limitations to these methods. The findings reveal robust and rich evidence on first-stage behavioral responses (“moral hazard”) to changes in insurance coverage. Surprisingly, evidence on how changes in coverage impact beneficiaries’ health is scant and inconclusive. This lack of identified causal health effects is directly related to limitations on how human health is typically measured, limitations on the empirical approaches, and a paucity of administrative panel data spanning long-time horizons. Future research must be conducted to fill these gaps. Of particular importance is evidence on how these social insurance systems interact and affect human health over the life cycle.