Search results

The paper aims to fill this gap by positing a framework that considers the service automation decision as a matter of knowledge management: a choice between human resident and codified knowledge assets.

The paper is a conceptual paper, grounded in the knowledge-based view.

The paper uses the information processing theory, which argues that the level of uncertainty in a process should dictate the type of knowledge deployed, as the contingency for the automation choice, and customer interaction uncertainty as the driver of that contingency. From these ideas, propositions are generated relating customer interaction uncertainty and service automation. Further implications for artificial intelligence (AI) are also explored.

The framework illuminates and informs the strategic choices regarding service automation, including the use of AI in professional services, a timely and highly important topic. It offers a valuable model for practitioners and contributes to the academic literature by pointing the way for future directions for scholarly research.

Shifts in the nature of wealth will change the way people manage their financial and career assets and the way corporations manage risk.

Customer experience management is the managing of customer interactions, feelings and emotions at every touchpoint. These interactions and feelings define the customer's future behaviour and perceptions about the offering. Companies can use these touchpoint interactions as a source of competitive advantage. Companies can embark on a journey of experience management by understanding needs and insights about customer's behaviour. These are gathered through interactions, observations and structured surveys. Such feedback from customers is called Voice of Customer (VoC). Another source of understanding customers is employees who are involved in these interactions and also product and service delivery. Understanding employees is equally important. Companies need to even collate their feedback regarding problems in delivery and servicing, customers' expectations versus perceptions. Organisations committed to creating superior customer experience invest in tools like surveys, employee interactions both in formal and informal context to gather voice of the employee (VoE). Finally, both VoC and VoE have to be evaluated in a business context to define processes and measure the effectiveness of these processes. The voice of the process or VoP helps to understand the difference between customer perceptions and process performance. It gives an estimate of error and suggests methods for improving process efficiency.

This chapter explains the three essential ingredients that go into experience management, the tools used to collect information and how can these be used to design a superior and fulfilling experience for customers.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of online social networking by entrepreneurs in the Arabian Gulf.

A descriptive research is conducted by interviewing a number of entrepreneurs in the Arabian Gulf who use online social networks as a method of promoting their products.

It is found that social networking is a cheap and easy method of advertising and gives all entrepreneurs a better chance of reaching their target market and, thereby, in succeeding in their ventures.

With the rise in the use of social networking, entrepreneurs can now target their markets using online social networks. Social networking web sites allow businesses to introduce their products to specific market segments, with low expense, and with a low chance of failure. This rising phenomenon of web‐based social interaction can change the way businesses operate in future.

The paper explores the possibilities of entrepreneurial success with this new element, in electronic media, within integrated marketing communications.

Appearing at The Planning Forum's 1992 International Conference, was a “faculty” that included many of America's most respected strategic thinkers. They urged attendees to take daring steps into strategic management's wild beyond:

The concept of institution has been used by scholars from across a number of disciplines to explain a wide variety of phenomena. However, the philosophical roots of this concept have not been well examined, nor have implications for contemporary institutional analysis been fully appreciated. Returning to the works of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty reveals a depth of thinking that has otherwise been overlooked by institutional theorists. In particular, the author’s analysis reveals two critical insights. First, whereas organizational scholars have closely linked the concepts of institution and taken-for-grantedness, these two concepts were originally understood to be phenomenologically distinct. Second, a detailed examination of Merleau-Ponty’s later work poses the concept of flesh – the twining of the visible and the invisible – as the basis for the interplay of institutions. In turn, the idea of flesh as the foundation of institution invites a more radical reimagining of the growing bifurcation between microfoundations and macrofoundations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Chris Argyris's ideas from an Islamic perspective.

The main approach is a literature review combined with an analysis based on Islamic principles. At the end, there is a short case study that demonstrates the possible application for practitioners.

Chris Argyris's work touches on a fundamental point: the lack of congruence between espoused values and theories‐in‐use. Such incongruence is amplified by the existence of organizational defense routines. From an Islamic perspective, such an incongruence is very problematic. The paper discusses two mechanisms in the Islamic tradition – sincerity to others and mutual consultation – to overcome this problem. The case study also suggests that more modern techniques can be useful as well. The implications for management education are discussed.

It is proposed that the points raised by Chris Argyris should be taken very seriously by all researchers. Generally, it is proposed that management education should concern itself more with the congruence between values and behaviour.

The case study demonstrates that there are techniques that can be used to overcome organizational defence routines.

This is the first time Argyris's ideas have been examined from an Islamic perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine affective commitment, normative commitment, and continuance commitment in a cross-national context to identify if the effect of country-specific cultural orientation on organizational commitment of faculty in higher education functions invariably in different countries.

The work expands on Meyer and Allen’s (1991) three-component model of organizational commitment. It includes relevant literature review on ten countries and the results of a survey of university faculty members, assessing their institutions’ human resources practices and their effect on organizational commitment. Basic descriptive statistics were performed on nominal and interval data, means, medians, and standard deviations were computed, and tests of mean equivalence, including ANOVA tests, were performed. In certain instances, Pearson and Spearman correlations were computed to ascertain correlation, and χ² tests for randomized response were used, while Cronbach’s α test helped to establish survey instrument validity.

Though certain differences may exist between different countries and cultures with respect to the three-component model of organizational commitment, there is strong evidence of the existence of invariance and, thus, generalizability of the model across cultures.

Cultural studies have focused on differences in organizational commitment at national levels. Further attempts to identify the universality of factors leading to organizational commitment should account for culture in the study of employee-related globalization issues in higher education institutes. Knowledge of cultural impact is also useful from a managerial perspective, and for the design of relevant strategies.

National context plays a major role in shaping the nature of educational institutions. This study brings out the need for a deeper understanding of invariance in organizational commitment (inter-alia, through the three-component model).

This study contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between organizational commitment and its various antecedents, including human resources management practices, for faculty in higher education institutes.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.