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1 – 10 of 130Peter J. Rimmer AM and Claude Comtois
This study revisits the Great Canadian Grain Logistics Crisis of 2013-14 to explore the competitiveness of the country's grain exports. An approach to comprehending the dilemmas…
Abstract
This study revisits the Great Canadian Grain Logistics Crisis of 2013-14 to explore the competitiveness of the country's grain exports. An approach to comprehending the dilemmas of the international grain supply chain and trade, and national logistics policy in an era of multinational corporations, draws upon the literature on global value chain analysis. This analysis identifies both the grain industry's global and local dimensions. An important literature on the 'politics’ of the supply chain is also called into play to discuss who controls what aspects. This task of interpreting the various steps in Canada's grain logistics chain recognizes the key economic actors - producers, grain companies, railway companies, port terminal operators and export buyers - and political struggles between them as they each seek to maximize their self-interest. Policy implications for streamlining logistics operations are drawn from identifying where changes in the supply chain arrangements have gained or lost opportunities in export markets, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.
Peter J. Rimmer and Claude Comtois
The growth of China’s economy during the 1990s has both shaped and reflected changes in the span and function of the country’s shipping connections both within Asia and with the…
Abstract
The growth of China’s economy during the 1990s has both shaped and reflected changes in the span and function of the country’s shipping connections both within Asia and with the rest of the world. Although sea-land developments within China have been studied, less attention has been paid to the wider global implications stemming from the transformation of the country’s maritime geography during a decade of further market reforms and greater integration into the world economy. Consequently, there is a need to comprehend how China’s state-owned shipping industry has been reorganized during the 1990s to meet the new requirements, with special reference to the country’s liner shipping connections between and within Asia respectively. More purposely, these topics are addressed by examining changes in the organization, approach and set of connections of the state-owned China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (Cosco) and its post-1993 offshoot COSCO Container Lines Company Ltd (Coscon). This review provides a springboard for a detailed analysis of shifts in both extra- and intra-Asian shipping patterns between 1990 and 2000 and consideration of their strategic implications. Finally, short-sea shipping is defined and the phenomenon’s operational strengths and weaknesses discussed.
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Technology-facilitated violence against women (TFVW) is readily becoming a key site of analysis for feminist criminologists. The scholarship in this area has identified online…
Abstract
Technology-facilitated violence against women (TFVW) is readily becoming a key site of analysis for feminist criminologists. The scholarship in this area has identified online sexual harassment, contact-based harassment, image-based abuse, and gender-based cyberhate – among others – as key manifestations of TFVW. It has also unpacked the legal strategies available to women seeking formal justice outcomes. However, much of the existing empirical scholarship has been produced within countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, and there has been limited research on this phenomenon within South East Asia. As such, this chapter maps how technology is shaping Singaporean women's experiences of gendered, sexual, and domestic violence. To do so, it draws upon findings from a research project which examined TFVW in Singapore by utilizing semistructured interviews with frontline workers in the fields of domestic and sexual violence and LGBT services. Drawing from Dragiewicz et al.’s (2018) work on technology-facilitated coercive control (TFCC), I argue that victims-survivors of dating, domestic, and family violence need to be provided with support that is TFCC informed and technically guided. I also suggest that further research is needed to fully understand the prevalence and nature of TFVW in the Singaporean context.
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Cortney Norris, Scott Taylor and D. Christopher Taylor
This research aimed to fill several gaps in the tipping literature which has overlooked the server's perspective in identifying and understanding variables that influence a tip…
Abstract
Purpose
This research aimed to fill several gaps in the tipping literature which has overlooked the server's perspective in identifying and understanding variables that influence a tip amount and therefore where they concentrate their efforts during the service encounter. Furthermore, the extant literature has theorized how or why certain variables influence the tip amount, but these studies fail to capture insight from server's which would supplement the theory and provide a more in-depth understanding of the mechanisms at play.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a grounded theory approach using semi-structured one-on-one interviews with tipped restaurant employees who were identified and selected using snowball sampling. Content analysis is employed to code and categorize the data.
Findings
The content analysis revealed five categories where servers focus their time and effort to earn tips: service quality, connection, personal factors, expertise and food quality. The server's personality was identified as a variable the tipping literature has largely ignored as a determinant of the tip amount. Server's shift their style of service for groups of eight or more people, and for regular customers, who must dine in the restaurant at least once per week. Lastly, despite the many drawbacks associated with working for tips, servers would not want to replace it with any other method of compensation.
Originality/value
This is the first qualitative study focused on understanding the server's role in the service exchange relationship since McCarty et al. (1990) study. The results provide new insights on the often-studied variables from the tipping literature.
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Kevin Wang and Peter Alexander Muennig
The study explores how Taiwan’s electronic health data systems can be used to build algorithms that reduce or eliminate medical errors and to advance precision medicine.
Abstract
Purpose
The study explores how Taiwan’s electronic health data systems can be used to build algorithms that reduce or eliminate medical errors and to advance precision medicine.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is a narrative review of the literature.
Findings
The body of medical knowledge has grown far too large for human clinicians to parse. In theory, electronic health records could augment clinical decision-making with electronic clinical decision support systems (CDSSs). However, computer scientists and clinicians have made remarkably little progress in building CDSSs, because health data tend to be siloed across many different systems that are not interoperable and cannot be linked using common identifiers. As a result, medicine in the USA is often practiced inconsistently with poor adherence to the best preventive and clinical practices. Poor information technology infrastructure contributes to medical errors and waste, resulting in suboptimal care and tens of thousands of premature deaths every year. Taiwan’s national health system, in contrast, is underpinned by a coordinated system of electronic data systems but remains underutilized. In this paper, the authors present a theoretical path toward developing artificial intelligence (AI)-driven CDSS systems using Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database. Such a system could in theory not only optimize care and prevent clinical errors but also empower patients to track their progress in achieving their personal health goals.
Originality/value
While research teams have previously built AI systems with limited applications, this study provides a framework for building global AI-based CDSS systems using one of the world’s few unified electronic health data systems.
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Peter Samuelsson and Lars Witell
This study aims to describe social entrepreneurs' motivation during the social entrepreneurship process and identify different social entrepreneurs in terms of their social…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to describe social entrepreneurs' motivation during the social entrepreneurship process and identify different social entrepreneurs in terms of their social characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach
The descriptive research design uses a directed qualitative interpretative approach based on 17 cases of social entrepreneurs active in healthcare innovation hubs.
Findings
The study describes the social entrepreneurs in a service context. Based on their key motivational characteristics, the study identifies three types of social entrepreneur: discoverers, seekers, and rangers. The study finds that not all of the three types regulate high levels of motivation during the social entrepreneurship process.
Research limitations/implications
Depending on the type of social entrepreneur, the social entrepreneurship process requires different forms of support. In practice, the traditional R&D process deployed by innovation hubs is suitable for rangers; discoverers and seekers commonly regulate low levels of motivation when developing and introducing their social innovations to the market.
Originality/value
Most service research on social entrepreneurship focuses on the outcome; in contrast, this empirical study focuses on the individual entrepreneurs, their motivation and process. While previous research has treated motivation as an antecedent for engagement in the social mission of entrepreneurship, the present study investigates social entrepreneurs’ motivation in relation to the social entrepreneurship process, providing insights in the behavior of social entrepreneurs.
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Alexandra Krämer and Peter Winkler
The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to…
Abstract
Purpose
The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.
Design/methodology/approach
Strategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.
Findings
Drawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.
Originality/value
This framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.
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This paper aims to analyse the different requirements of Practice Direction 15.10 (which governs the process of family mediation in Hong Kong) and Practice Direction 31 (which…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse the different requirements of Practice Direction 15.10 (which governs the process of family mediation in Hong Kong) and Practice Direction 31 (which governs the process of general mediation in Hong Kong), and to highlight the need to incorporate the spirit of family mediation into legislation to better protect children’s interest in a family dispute.
Design/Methodology/approach
The paper reviews and compares the content on Practice Direction 15.10 and Practice Direction 31 issued by Chief Justice of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, and adopts interpretative and analytical approaches to evaluate their impact.
Findings
In an effort to promote parental responsibility-based negotiation in divorce proceeding, a missed opportunity in enacting the Children Proceedings (Parental Responsibility) Bill in 2015 might be a blessing in disguise as it offers another chance for policy makers to consider how to direct parties to negotiate and communicate, to seek and benefit from professional guidance on a continuous basis, and to seek alternative channels to resolve disputes other than the court room. The policy and the law advocating a switch from a “rights-based” to “responsibility-based” approach in handling children’s matters should be revisited by incorporating the spirit of family mediation into legislation.
Originality/value
Analyses are conducted through direct contextual review and documentary research. This paper conducts literal analysis of court guidance and unveils policy implications for the general public. It would be of interest to judicial officers, scholars and government officials concerning children’s rights and parental responsibility in divorce proceedings.
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