Search results

This paper aims to examine the relationship between cultural distance (both perceived and objective), innovation and firm export performance.

Hypotheses were tested here by structural equation modeling using data from 186 export ventures into 23 international markets by Swedish companies.

The results indicate that managers’ perceptions of substantial cultural differences as well as objective cultural differences (gauged using Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) scores for dimensions of national culture) and subsequent environmental uncertainty when expanding into culturally distant markets triggers strategies for interacting and integrating with the market environment. These include producing and adopting innovations to processes and products and to organizational strategy, structure and administrative procedures to cope with the new environment and overcome uncertainties. These innovations and the associated competitive advantages improve firm export performance.

Despite much research into the relationship between firm internationalization and innovation, little attention has been paid to the effect of the characteristics of the foreign markets (specifically cultural differences) on firm innovation strategies. Moreover, much research has been devoted to the effect of innovation on firm export performance, but such research has mainly focused on one type of innovation, i.e. technological innovation, while the influence of organizational innovation on firm export performance has been basically ignored. The present study validates the explanatory of cultural distance (both perceived and objective) in relation to innovation strategies (technological and organizational) and export performance.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize and investigate relationships between disaster preparedness, impacts, and humanitarian response among Eastern Uganda populations affected by the 2010 landslides and floods.

A stratified cluster survey of the disaster-affected populations was conducted five months after the onset of the disasters. Probability proportional to size sampling was used to sample 800 households, including 400 affected by floods in Butaleja District and 400 affected by landslides in Bududa District.

Mortality was significantly higher in the landslide-affected populations as compared to flood-affected populations (deaths reported: 4.5 vs 1.6 percent, p<0.01) whereas injuries were more common in the flood-affected areas (injuries reported: 3.1 vs 1.1 percent, p<0.01). Livelihoods impacts were widespread and reported in more than 95 percent of households. Respondents indicated that the community and government were unprepared to respond in both flood (90.5 and 77.8 percent, respectively) and landslide (95.3 and 74.9 percent) affected areas.

The majority of households felt that both their communities and the government were unprepared to respond to disasters. Given the likelihood for recurrence of natural disasters in these communities, expansion of both community-based disaster preparedness (CBDP) programs and their evidence base should be prioritized.

There is a paucity of evidence on community perceptions of disaster preparedness and on CBDP programs. The paper highlights these issues in the context of two disasters in Uganda and calls for expansion of the evidence based to inform risk reduction strategies in low-income settings.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the professional context of the educator and architects who designed and conceived Woodleigh School in Baxter, Victoria, Australia (1974-1979) and to identify common design threads in a series of schools designed by Daryl Jackson and Evan Walker in the 1970s.

The research was derived from academic and professional publications, film footage, interviews, archival searches and site visits. Standard analytical methods in architectural research are employed, including formal, planning and morphological analysis, to read building designs for meaning and intent. Books, people and buildings were examined to piece together the design “biography” of Woodleigh School, the identification of which forms the basis of the paper's argument.

Themes of loose fit, indeterminate planning, coupled with concepts of classroom as house, and school as town, and engagement with a landscape environment are drawn together under principal Michael Norman's favoured phrase that adolescents might experience “a slice of life”, preparing them for broader engagement with a world and a community outside school. The themes reflect changing aspirations for teenage education in the 1970s, indicating a free and experimental approach to the design of the school environment.

The paper considers, for the first time, the interconnected role of educator and architect as key protagonists in envisioning connections between space and pedagogy in the 1970s alternative school.

The purpose of this paper is to design an experimentally‐oriented program for the training of a new generation of educational a administrators. The rationale for the program is based on selected concepts and propositions of occupational sociology, organization theory, and systems theory. Some of the salient features of the program are as follows: (i) The design is guided by the logic of Campbell's quasi‐experiment. (ii) A principal goal is to stimulate the professionalization of educational administration by increasing (a) the body of systematic knowledge: and (b) the commitment to an ideal of service in education. (iii) Another major goal is to sensitize educational administrators to the dilemmas of organizational change and to strategies for inducing change. (iv) A systems analysis is set forth of five sequentially interrelated processes: goal formation, recruitment of faculty and students, specification of the content of the curriculum, placement of graduates, and an evaluation of the program. (v) A sample curriculum for a three‐year period, guided by six pedagogical conceptions. (vi) A design for an experimental program for four cohorts of students is outlined.

The purpose of this study is to explain when and how organizational respect is related to job burnout syndromes. Using the stimulus–organism–response framework, the authors found that organizational respect is negatively related to burnout via job satisfaction, with job insecurity moderating the relationship. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, the authors proposed and found that job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion sequentially mediate the relationship between organizational respect and depersonalization, and this relationship is also moderated by job insecurity.

Data analysis was conducted using responses obtained from 280 anonymous employees in the postproduction film industry. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, AMOS and PROCESS macro was used for data analysis.

The research findings show job satisfaction mediates the effects of organizational respect for all three burnout syndromes. Organizational respect predicts depersonalization not only indirectly through job satisfaction but also through emotional exhaustion. Job insecurity moderates the relationship between job satisfaction and depersonalization and between emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Organizational respect reduces depersonalization through job satisfaction, but this effect depends on how secure the employees feel about their jobs.

Samples from one industry but from countries under different management cultures may not show the true scale of burnout levels for the industry. Cross-sectional data from one industry may limit the generalizability to other industries. The finding on the reverse effects of organizational respect on depersonalization for satisfied employees could be further investigated.

The findings provide insights for learning organizations on the importance of cultivating a respectful atmosphere and reducing job insecurity to mitigate aspects of burnout.

The authors clarified the moderating role of job insecurity and the mediating role of job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion in the organizational respect–depersonalization relationship.

The Corporation of the City of London are about to appoint a Public Analyst, and by advertisement have invited applications for the post. It is obviously desirable that the person appointed to this office should not only possess the usual professional qualifications, but that he should be a scientific man of high standing and of good repute, whose name would afford a guarantee of thoroughness and reliability in regard to the work entrusted to him, and whose opinion would carry weight and command respect. Far from being of a nature to attract a man of this stamp, the terms and conditions attaching to the office as set forth in the advertisement above referred to are such that no self‐respecting member of the analytical profession, and most certainly no leading member of it, could possibly accept them. It is simply pitiable that the Corporation of the City of London should offer terms, and make conditions in connection with them, which no scientific analyst could agree to without disgracing himself and degrading his profession. The offer of such terms, in fact, amounts to a gross insult to the whole body of members of that profession, and is excusable only—if excusable at all—on the score of utter ignorance as to the character of the work required to be done, and as to the nature of the qualifications and attainments of the scientific experts who are called upon to do it. In the analytical profession, as in every other profession, there are men who, under the pressure of necessity, are compelled to accept almost any remuneration that they can get, and several of these poorer, and therefore weaker, brethren will, of course, become candidates for the City appointment.

Addresses the standardization of the measurements and the labels for concepts commonly used in the study of work organizations. As a reference handbook and research tool, seeks to improve measurement in the study of work organizations and to facilitate the teaching of introductory courses in this subject. Focuses solely on work organizations, that is, social systems in which members work for money. Defines measurement and distinguishes four levels: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Selects specific measures on the basis of quality, diversity, simplicity and availability and evaluates each measure for its validity and reliability. Employs a set of 38 concepts ‐ ranging from “absenteeism” to “turnover” as the handbook’s frame of reference. Concludes by reviewing organizational measurement over the past 30 years and recommending future measurement reseach.

The purpose of this paper is to communicate the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative's goals and activities to an international audience of librarians concerned with using best practices and technology to make library resource sharing more responsive to user needs.

The paper provides a descriptive analysis explaining the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative's mission and the activities it employs to fulfill it.

The paper explains how the activities of the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative contribute to improving the delivery of library information services.

The paper provides examples of innovative strategies, programs and activities designed to advocate for, inspire, and enable successful resource sharing.

Leading up to and now living amid the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers are faced with strong incentives, even pressure to adopt and use digital technologies. Previous research has focused on teaching with digital technologies as a matter of believing in their importance and receiving specific preparation for integration strategies. Further, teaching with technologies must appear “seamless” during instruction to not distract from what is regarded to be the more important subject matter knowledge. In this chapter, I review and problematize digital instruction focused on convincing teachers to integrate strategies that use digital technologies in a “seamless” way and then propose an alternative view emphasizing posthumanist, relational views of integrating digital technologies.