Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the constituents of personal discretionary non-work activities and their influence on the work values ethic (WVE).

The constituents of personal discretionary non-work activities and their relationship to the WVE for 1,349 employees drawn from three manufacturing companies were surveyed. The data was used to test a measure of WVE, to develop a valid measure of personal discretionary non-work activities and to test a model of the relationship between personal discretionary non-work activities and a WVE.

Data obtained from the survey enabled the identification of a valid measure of personal discretionary non-work activities and the components that made up this measure. A measure of WVE was shown to be both valid and reliable, and a model of the relationship between personal discretionary non-work activities and WVE was tested.

A positive relationship between personal discretionary non-work activities and WVE was identified. However, the study was not designed to investigate motivations and such relationships should be the subject of future research.

Personal discretionary non-work activities were shown to be of importance for a major proportion of the study’s respondents and to contribute to the employees’ work ethic.

The study has extended the non-work and work literature and has identified a formative non-work measure that was able to be tested in an overall model.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conditions under which a co-design team comprised of in-house professionals and leading-edge service users can generate innovative service design concepts.

The investigation used a field-experimental design to conduct two studies. Observations and open-ended questionnaires were used to examine cross-comparison matrices with experts rating the generated outcomes and t-tests being used to compare the outcome ratings between teams of different compositions.

The outcomes produced by a co-design team seem to be linked to the team diversity – process facilitation relationship. Bringing a variety of knowledge and skills into the team can lead to original outcomes, while a high disparity between members’ backgrounds can require extensive efforts to facilitate a collaborative process. Separation between users’ objectives can result in a user-driven process and outcomes that are too specific for the broader marketplace. Co-design teams that characterize minimum separation, maximum variety, and moderate disparity are likely to produce the most promising results.

The research was restricted to a narrowly defined study setting and samples. Future research should replicate the current study in other service contexts using different team compositions.

Co-design requires the careful selection of users based on their background and motivations, as well as the facilitation of a process that enables the team to collaboratively transform relevant knowledge into innovative outcomes.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the team composition – process facilitation relationship affecting innovation outcomes. Doing so provides a more fine-grained picture of the co-design team composition and the facilitation requirements for service design.

Many firms use customer co-creation practices with the aim of benefiting from their customers’ knowledge, skills and resources. This paper aims to explore co-creation processes which involve users with different background characteristics and motivational drivers.

The study builds on an analysis of data from six teams in which users collaborated with in-house professionals for the development of new service concepts. Observations and open-ended questionnaires provided insights into the teams’ development processes. Independent experts rated the generated concepts. The data were analysed using cross-comparison matrices.

The findings suggest that the co-creation process and outcomes can be influenced by numerous intra-team factors, including relationship and task conflicts, participation style, team bonding, team identity and cohesiveness and intra-team collaboration. Their occurrence and influence seem to be linked with a specific team composition. A conceptual co-creation process model and six propositions are used to describe the complex relationships between team composition, intra-team factors and key innovation outcomes.

Research that investigates user involvement in teams needs to consider the complexity of intra-team factors affecting the development process and outcomes. The findings are limited to a specific setting, design task and user sample. Future research should replicate this study in different sectors.

Key to customer co-creation is the systematic recruitment of users based on their background characteristics and motivational drivers. For instance, the involvement of users with very specific innovation-related benefit expectations can cause conflict, leading to narrowly focused outcomes. This, however, can be mitigated by the form of facilitation and roles adopted by in-house professionals. Understanding intra-team dynamics can allow the firm to assemble and facilitate customer co-creation so that generated outcomes can align with set innovation targets.

This paper provides original insights into the “black box” of the customer co-creation process and the complex relationship between team composition, intra-team factors and key innovation outcomes.

Labor management cooperation, and the adoption of high-performance work systems (HPWS), are central topics in recent industrial relations research, with much emphasis given to “best-practice” success stories. This paper uses a case study analysis, relying on conventional, and oral history interviews, to explore why managers, union leaders, and workers in two Maine paper mills rejected the cooperation and the HPWS model. It explores how local history and culture, regional factors like the dramatic International Paper (IP) strike in Jay, Maine, instability in industry labor relations, management turnover, and instability in corporate governance contributed to these two mills’ rejection of Scott Paper Corporation's “Jointness” initiative during the period from 1988 to 1995. The study argues that intra-management divisions blocked cooperation on the management side, and that the Jay strike created a “movement culture” among Maine's paper workers, who developed a class-conscious critique of HPWS as a tactic in class warfare being perpetrated by paper corporations.

Develops a model of the factors that motivate women to start their own businesses. Qualitative research involving 25 French women entrepreneurs were used to explore case study situations. The research identified a number of situations that relate to women’s decisions to become entrepreneurs, namely “dynastic compliance”, “no other choice”, “entrepreneurship by chance”, “natural succession”, “forced entrepreneurship”, “informed entrepreneur” and “pure entrepreneur”. The findings do not reinforce the assumption that a majority of women become entrepreneurs for reasons of necessity and identified antecedents to the generalised “push”, “pull” and environmental motives.

Looks at the process of conducting qualitative management research. Concentrates on data collection used in fieldwork, the way in which data is analysed and the various output from the work. Uses a PhD based upon the management of group moves as a case study. Defends the overall research strategy in terms of confirmability, dependability, credibility and transferability of findings.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on war play and aggression. The paper begins with an introduction to play and the theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Corsaro. This is followed by a definition of pretend aggression and the war play debate. Literature is reviewed on how violent television, war toys, and war play shapes children’s imaginary play and aggressive behaviors. Attention is also given to the teacher’s role in war play and the methods used to investigate war play. Suggestions are made for future approaches to the study of war play within the context of the peer culture. The paper concludes with implications for early childhood educators.

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate whether and to what extent economic transactions are influenced by social structures, power distributions, and cultural understandings through an analysis of exchange at a scrap metal yard in Chicago.

Methodology/Approach – Between March 2000 and December 2002, 72 interviews were conducted with collectors who bring metal to City Iron. With 16 of these collectors the author had a working relationship, assisting the collector in all aspects of the job. Data were coded and analyzed with the assistance of NVIVO, a qualitative data management program.

Findings – The author finds that market transactions are not impersonal and that moral characterizations matter. In this universally risky business in which some level of in-market cheating is expected, material and moral appraisals become intertwined as participants look to extra-market cues and clues in evaluating with whom to transact and how. While the ascription of ethnicity serves as a proxy for the particularistic judgment of trustworthiness, this sorting is accomplished and legitimated by an ostensibly universal moral discourse. Actors evaluate each other using a moral yardstick, paying as much – if not more – attention to what one believes the other is doing when not working as to when one is.

Originality/Value of paper – By focusing on exchange-in-interaction and articulating how economic transactions are culturally embedded, this research contributes to scholarship in the sociologies of work and economies, and provides a glimpse into an understudied work world.

Marketing and logistics management are strongly interrelated, since many of the factors that marketing may wish to use to achieve competitive advantage are logistical areas of responsibility. There are, however, some areas of logistical management concern, such as inventory cash flows, which are not currently addressed by marketing managers. Figures are provided to identify aspects of inventory management that marketing managers can use to improve their market planning.

This paper examines the literature relating to tribalism and considers its existence and its relevance to the marketing of sport. Tribal marketing is not a feature of the philosophy dominating today's sports marketing programmes. It is suggested, however, that more focus be placed on the interactions and relationships of groups of sports spectators as tribal members, and this paper presents factors that should be considered by the sports marketer to encourage and facilitate tribalism.