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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 18 April 2023

Tommi Pauna, Jere Lehtinen, Jaakko Kujala and Kirsi Aaltonen

The aim of this research was to understand how governmental stakeholder engagement facilitates the sustainability of industrial engineering (IE) projects. A model for governmental…

2117

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this research was to understand how governmental stakeholder engagement facilitates the sustainability of industrial engineering (IE) projects. A model for governmental stakeholder engagement activities is presented.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors relied on a single-case study of a mining project in Northern Europe, where a novel collaboration and engagement approach with governmental stakeholders was piloted in the project's front-end phase. The analysis focused on the collaborative practices through which the IE project investor engaged governmental stakeholders during the project's front-end phase and how the engagement contributed to solving challenges in the early planning and permitting process and achieving project plans that balanced economic, social and environmental aspects.

Findings

The findings show how four collaborative engagement practices reduced uncertainty and equivocality related to the legal sustainability requirements, enabled the development of sustainable design solutions and overall accelerated the permitting process without compromising the quality of final project plans.

Practical implications

The findings can be used to plan governmental stakeholder engagement and understand related challenges that need to be overcome. The study highlights the need to develop established practices and guidelines for governmental stakeholder engagement.

Originality/value

This study complements prior research on stakeholder engagement and project sustainability by developing an understanding of how governmental stakeholder engagement can be a key mechanism enabling the sustainability of IE project's end product. This research contributes to stakeholder theory by elaborating on a new stakeholder role, intermediary stakeholder.

Details

International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, vol. 16 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8378

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 April 2023

Ata Babaei, Giorgio Locatelli and Tristano Sainati

Transport megaprojects often struggle to offer social value (SV) that meets local communities' needs. This problem is embedded in how local communities' views are captured and…

Abstract

Purpose

Transport megaprojects often struggle to offer social value (SV) that meets local communities' needs. This problem is embedded in how local communities' views are captured and incorporated into SV plans through local community engagement (LCE). By problematising the literature, this article aims to identify LCE issues and their impacts on SV plans at the front-end of transport megaprojects.

Design/methodology/approach

The theoretical lens of the study is the practice theory developed by Schatzki (2016, 2005). The authors conceptualised LCE as a practice and conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with UK practitioners. The authors collected data in three steps from three types of practitioners involved in LCE practice and SV planning: project managers, LCE experts and SV experts.

Findings

The authors identified 18 LCE issues with thematic analysis and clustered them into five themes. These issues impact LCE with five mechanisms. Findings show that a weak link between LCE and SV plans due to the issues reduces LCE to a tick-box exercise and presents a distorted view of local communities. This reduces SV plans to the bare minimum for project approval instead of offering relevant SV to local communities. Addressing the issues goes beyond changing the approach of project teams to engagement (from instrumental to normative) and requires changing the practices.

Originality/value

For the first time, the study uses practice theory to conceptualise LCE as a practice, following the notion of project as practice. The study problematises the literature to address the under-represented link between LCE and SV plans.

Details

International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8378

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 May 2023

Dorothea Kossyva, Georgios Theriou, Vassilis Aggelidis and Lazaros Sarigiannidis

This study aims to explore talent retention in knowledge-intensive industries by investigating the mediating processes between the existence and application of human resource…

1231

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore talent retention in knowledge-intensive industries by investigating the mediating processes between the existence and application of human resource management (HRM) and employee turnover. Toward this end, drawing on the conservation of resources and job demands–resources theories, a three-dimensional model is examined, which includes the relationship between HRM, knowledge management (KM) and change management (CM), as well as their relationship with employee engagement and employee turnover intention.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed research model has been studied with a sample of 168 talented employees in over six European countries, using a quantitative approach, involving the structural equation modeling method. All data were gathered by a multidimensional questionnaire via prolific, an academic crowdsourcing platform.

Findings

Results indicated that knowledge-intensive services firms may achieve higher talent retention through the interaction of HRM with KM and CM practices, which may lead to enhanced employee engagement.

Research limitations/implications

Possible limitations of the study include the relatively small sample size, the self-rate questions for the collection of data and the use of cross-sectional data.

Practical implications

To retain their talented employees, organizations should identify ways to improve their HRM, CM and KM practices. In addition, HR practitioners ought to include their talented employees in all organizational change and KM processes and create mechanisms that successfully support knowledge acquisition, creation, sharing, retention and codification.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine various factors of retaining talented employees in knowledge-intensive services. Furthermore, the study took place in six European countries, i.e. UK, Poland, Italy, Germany, Portugal and Greece, where the research on talent retention is very limited.

Details

Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 28 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1367-3270

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 September 2012

Carol Robinson

The purpose of this paper is to consider recent developments in student engagement practices within higher education institutions (HEIs) and to reflect upon the practical reality…

4713

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to consider recent developments in student engagement practices within higher education institutions (HEIs) and to reflect upon the practical reality and challenges faced by HEIs as they develop such practices.

Design/methodology/approach

Consideration is given to theoretical understandings around institutional and social power relations and to the influence such relationships can have on the development of student engagement practices within HEIs. The work of Giroux, Freire and Foucault is drawn upon to help develop and deepen understanding of the power relationships at play within HEI student engagement practices.

Findings

It is argued that the power imbalance ingrained within student‐tutor relationships serves to constrain how students act and respond in the presence of tutors, and this can have significant implications in terms of the extent to which student engagement practices genuinely capture the perspectives, interests and visions of students.

Practical implications

Thought needs to be given to how HEIs will balance student engagement with academic work. The historical hierarchical staff‐student relationship will need to be challenged and re‐defined as some staff and students move outside of their comfort zones in order to work as partners and develop mutual understandings around, for example, practices of assessment, curriculum and teaching, and seek to improve the quality of student's HEI experiences.

Originality/value

The paper develops and deepens our understanding of the power relationships at play within HEI student engagement practices and opens up debates about the potential of student engagement practices in HEIs and the related dilemmas which surround the development of such practices.

Details

Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, vol. 4 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2050-7003

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 March 2017

Yuri Seo, Carol Kelleher and Roderick J. Brodie

While extant service-centric research has largely focussed on managerial advantages, few studies have addressed how brand engagement emerges in the broader context of consumer…

1203

Abstract

Purpose

While extant service-centric research has largely focussed on managerial advantages, few studies have addressed how brand engagement emerges in the broader context of consumer lives. The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel intersubjective hermeneutic framework that bridges the socially constructed as well as the individualised meanings of brand engagement in the context of service research.

Design/methodology/approach

This conceptual paper adopts a theory-building approach based on recent developments in the service-centric marketing literature.

Findings

The authors offer a novel theoretical perspective that recognises the intersubjective and phenomenological nature of individual and collective consumer brand experiences, and show how such experiences emerge from socially constructed brand engagement practices using the co-constituting lens of value-in-use.

Research limitations/implications

The proposed conceptual framework invites further empirical and contextual investigations of intersubjective brand engagement in both online and offline contexts.

Originality/value

The contribution of this framework is twofold. First, the authors draw on the intersubjective orientation and hermeneutic framework to provide conceptual clarity in relation to the nature of brand engagement practices, brand experiences, and value-in-use, and discuss their interrelationships. Second, the authors address the nature of meaning ascribed to engagement beyond customer-firm-brand relationships, and discuss why any given consumer’s experience of brand engagement reflects a complex dialectic between socially constructed and individualised brand meanings. In doing so, the integrative framework recognises the interplay between the intersubjective and phenomenological natures of consumer brand experiences, and offers insights as to how these experiences are framed by broader socially constructed engagement practices.

Details

Journal of Service Theory and Practice, vol. 27 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2055-6225

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 March 2020

Benjamin Piers William Ellway and Alison Dean

This paper uses practice theory to strengthen the theoretical relationship between customer engagement (CE) and value cocreation (VCC), thereby demonstrating how customers may…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper uses practice theory to strengthen the theoretical relationship between customer engagement (CE) and value cocreation (VCC), thereby demonstrating how customers may become engaged and remain engaged through VCC practices.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopts a problematization approach to identify shared assumptions evident in service-dominant logic (SDL) and CE research. Practice theory, as a higher-order perspective, is used to integrate the iterative and cyclical processes of VCC and CE, specifically through the theoretical mechanism of habitus.

Findings

Habitus acts as a customer value lens and provides a bridging concept to demonstrate how VCC and CE are joined via sensemaking processes. These processes determine how customers perceive, assess, and evaluate value, how they become engaged through VCC, and how their experience of engagement may lead to further VCC practice. The temporally bound experiences, states, and episodes are accumulated and aggregated through an enduring customer value lens comprised of habituated dispositions, interests, and attitudes.

Research limitations/implications

This work responds to calls for research to strengthen the theoretical link between VCC and CE and to take account of customers' lived realities and their contextualized experiences. A key suggestion for future research is the use of a rope metaphor to stimulate thinking about the complex, temporally unfolding, and interrelated processes of VCC and CE.

Practical implications

The customer value lens and CE rope are introduced to simplify the complex, abstract, theoretical research on VCC and CE for a nonacademic audience. To understand how customers' value lenses are formed and change, and how a CE rope is strengthened, firms, service designers, and practitioners need to understand sensemaking processes through customer narratives and to use platforms and feedback to support and trigger sensemaking.

Originality/value

This paper provides a theoretical mechanism to explain the iterative and cyclical nature of VCC and CE processes and how accumulation and aggregation occur in these processes. In doing so, it demonstrates that CE occurs by virtue of, and is typified by, sensemaking processes that reproduce and shape a customer's habituated value lens, which perceives, assesses, and determines VCC and thus provides a basis for further customer engagement.

Details

Journal of Service Theory and Practice, vol. 30 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2055-6225

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 July 2020

Mumtaz Ali Memon, Rohani Salleh, Muhammad Zeeshan Mirza, Jun-Hwa Cheah, Hiram Ting, Muhammad Shakil Ahmad and Adeel Tariq

This study aims to examine the impact of employees' satisfaction with human resource management (HRM) practices (i.e. training satisfaction, performance appraisal satisfaction and…

6406

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine the impact of employees' satisfaction with human resource management (HRM) practices (i.e. training satisfaction, performance appraisal satisfaction and pay satisfaction) on work engagement and subsequently employee turnover intentions. The mediating role of work engagement between employee satisfaction with HRM practices and turnover intentions is also assessed.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from Malaysian oil and gas (O&G) professionals. A total of 442 useable questionnaires were obtained for the final data analysis. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was performed to test the hypothesised relationships.

Findings

The findings indicate that training satisfaction and performance appraisal satisfaction are the key drivers of employee engagement at work. Work engagement in turn has a negative impact on employee turnover intentions. Furthermore, work engagement mediates the relationship between employees' satisfaction with HRM practices (i.e. training satisfaction and performance appraisal satisfaction) and turnover intentions. Nevertheless, it did not have any mediating effect on pay satisfaction and turnover intention.

Practical implications

Training plans should be designed to make the relevant jobs more attractive and fulfilling, thus increasing employees' level of work engagement. Besides, ensuring that the appraisal system is fair is pivotal to work engagement. Work engagement will cultivate a strong sense of emotional attachment between employees and employers, thus reducing the turnover intention of Malaysian O&G professionals.

Originality/value

To date, little has been done on employees' satisfaction with HRM practices with respect to their attitudinal and behavioural outcomes. The present study enhances our understanding of the importance of employees' satisfaction with HRM practices and its relation to employees' work engagement and turnover intentions.

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 42 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 March 2016

Amanda Shantz, Kerstin Alfes and Lilith Whiley

Due to increasing cost pressures, and the necessity to ensure high quality patient care while maintaining a safe environment for patients and staff, interest in the capacity for…

5368

Abstract

Purpose

Due to increasing cost pressures, and the necessity to ensure high quality patient care while maintaining a safe environment for patients and staff, interest in the capacity for HRM practices to make a difference has piqued the attention of healthcare professionals. The purpose of this papers is to present and test a model whereby engagement mediates the relationship between four HRM practices and quality of care and safety in two different occupational groups in healthcare, namely, nurses and administrative support workers.

Design/methodology/approach

Structural equation modeling was used to analyze questionnaire data collected by the National Health Service in the UK as part of their 2011 Staff Survey (n=69,018). The authors tested the hypotheses for nurses and administrative support workers separately.

Findings

Training, participation in decision making, opportunities for development, and communication were positively related to quality of care and safety via work engagement. The strength of the relationships was conditional on whether an employee was a nurse or administrative support worker.

Originality/value

This is the first paper to examine the mediating role of engagement on the relationship between four relevant HRM practices in the healthcare context, and outcomes important to healthcare practitioners. The authors also add value to the HRM literature by being among the first to use the job demands resources model to explain the impact of HRM practices on performance outcomes. Moreover, the authors provide insight into how HRM practices affect outcomes in the world’s largest publicly funded healthcare service.

Details

Personnel Review, vol. 45 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0048-3486

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 May 2017

Linda D. Hollebeek, Biljana Juric and Wenyan Tang

Despite Schau et al.’s (2009) pioneering research addressing consumers’ community engagement practices, scholarly understanding of the nature and dynamics characterizing…

9880

Abstract

Purpose

Despite Schau et al.’s (2009) pioneering research addressing consumers’ community engagement practices, scholarly understanding of the nature and dynamics characterizing consumers’ engagement practices in virtual (online) brand communities, and their inter-relationships, is limited to date. Building on these authors’ study, this paper aims to develop a refined typology and process model of virtual brand community engagement practices (VBCEPs).

Design/methodology/approach

Using the netnographic methodology, the authors analyze 20 luxury handbag community members’ entries posted on the brand’s particular section of The Purse Forum.

Findings

The authors develop an eight-component VBCEP typology that refines Schau et al.’s (2009) four-component model of brand community engagement practices. The model comprises “greeting”, “regulating”, “assisting”, “celebrating”, “appreciating”, “empathizing”, “mingling” and “ranking”. These practices contribute to and maintain the community’s vision and identity, and strengthen shared community consciousness.

Research limitations/implications

A key limitation of this research lies in its findings being generated from a single, luxury virtual brand community. Future research may thus wish to validate the VBCEP typology and model across different contexts.

Practical implications

The authors provide strategic managerial recommendations designed to leverage virtual brand community performance, which center predominantly on the social (altruistic) and achievement-based VBCEP sub-processes.

Originality/value

The eight-component VBCEP typology refines Schau et al.’s four-component model of brand community engagement practices with particular applicability to virtual brand communities.

Details

Journal of Services Marketing, vol. 31 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0887-6045

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 31 January 2023

Skania Geldres-Weiss, Inés Küster-Boluda and Natalia Vila-López

This paper studies, based on the theory of service-dominant logic, the effect of value co-creation practices (linking and materializing) on engagement dimensions (popularity…

1523

Abstract

Purpose

This paper studies, based on the theory of service-dominant logic, the effect of value co-creation practices (linking and materializing) on engagement dimensions (popularity, commitment and virality). The main objective is to analyze the influence of value co-creation practices on engagement at international trade shows organizer association on Twitter.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper studies the usage of Twitter by the Specialty Food Association, which organizes one of the top five foods and beverage international trade show in the United States. To achieve the research objective, the authors have analyzed 1,608 posts on Twitter from the Twitter account @Specialty_Food. A content analysis was performed using Krippendorff's (2004) recommendations, and the data were analyzed using regression analysis with optimal scaling and Kruskal–Wallis Test.

Findings

According to the results, some materializing practices influence popularity, commitment, virality and global engagement on Twitter. While the usage of some linking practices influences respectively commitment and popularity.

Originality

These results provide valuable information for business-to-business (B2B) contexts and answer a research gap reported in previous literature, which affirms that more research is needed about the relationship between service systems and engagement. From a general view, to generate more engagement on social media in B2B contexts, it is recommended to prioritize posts that incorporate live and online events based on collaborative and dynamic human interactions, following by business ideas and business cases.

Details

European Journal of Management and Business Economics, vol. 32 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2444-8451

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 63000