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1 – 10 of 10Ambra Galeazzo, Andrea Furlan, Diletta Tosetto and Andrea Vinelli
We studied the relationship between job engagement and systematic problem solving (SPS) among shop-floor employees and how lean production (LP) and Internet of Things (IoT…
Abstract
Purpose
We studied the relationship between job engagement and systematic problem solving (SPS) among shop-floor employees and how lean production (LP) and Internet of Things (IoT) systems moderate this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
We collected data from a sample of 440 shop floor workers in 101 manufacturing work units across 33 plants. Because our data is nested, we employed a series of multilevel regression models to test the hypotheses. The application of IoT systems within work units was evaluated by our research team through direct observations from on-site visits.
Findings
Our findings indicate a positive association between job engagement and SPS. Additionally, we found that the adoption of lean bundles positively moderates this relationship, while, surprisingly, the adoption of IoT systems negatively moderates this relationship. Interestingly, we found that, when the adoption of IoT systems is complemented by a lean management system, workers tend to experience a higher effect on the SPS of their engagement.
Research limitations/implications
One limitation of this research is the reliance on the self-reported data collected from both workers (job engagement, SPS and control variables) and supervisors (lean bundles). Furthermore, our study was conducted in a specific country, Italy, which might have limitations on the generalizability of the results since cross-cultural differences in job engagement and SPS have been documented.
Practical implications
Our findings highlight that employees’ strong engagement in SPS behaviors is shaped by the managerial and technological systems implemented on the shop floor. Specifically, we point out that implementing IoT systems without the appropriate managerial practices can pose challenges to fostering employee engagement and SPS.
Originality/value
This paper provides new insights on how lean and new technologies contribute to the development of learning-to-learn capabilities at the individual level by empirically analyzing the moderating effects of IoT systems and LP on the relationship between job engagement and SPS.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relevance of Cuba’s medical system, its health tourism and related diplomacy in the context of the recent COVID-19 pandemic for the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relevance of Cuba’s medical system, its health tourism and related diplomacy in the context of the recent COVID-19 pandemic for the global response to disease outbreaks. In addition to Cuba being a destination for leisure tourists in the Caribbean, the renowned Cuban medical system attracts thousands of health tourists seeking low-cost but high-quality treatment. This paper demonstrates how Cuba’s unique response to the pandemic, which included sending thousands of medical staff abroad, can inform structural and global issues and contribute to a more sustainable future.
Design/methodology/approach
The research in this study is primarily drawn from published academic and media sources that address Cuba’s medical system, its health tourism and the government’s response to the recent pandemic. The author, a political scientist and an author of many publications on Cuba, and the PI of a study focused on Cuban tourism, will also draw on her expertise.
Findings
This paper addresses the Cuban Government’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic and places this response in the context of Cuba’s medical system, its health tourism and related diplomacy. It reveals key lessons from Cuba’s response for other tourist destination states and, more broadly, for the worldwide response to global outbreaks and the management of health systems. The findings will further research in diplomacy and tourism as well as inform policy and practice.
Research limitations/implications
This paper explores an ongoing topic and thus further research will be required following the pandemic.
Practical implications
This research note offers important implications for practice including providing accurate, research-based information that challenges misinformation about Cuba’s health system, its medical diplomacy program, health tourism and its response to COVID-19. It offers valuable lessons for public health authorities including the importance of preventative health measures, community medicine and the benefits of working globally to combat outbreaks through the sharing of medical staff and resources.
Social implications
This research note reveals the health, political and social implications of Cuba’s response in this time of crisis. It shows the benefits of a robust but low-cost community-based medicine program, medical diplomacy and how a state’s response during crisis can moderate the global inequities and injustices such as unequal access to care that often accompany disease outbreaks such as COVID-19.
Originality/value
This research note is an early analysis of a response by an important tourist destination country to the pandemic. The author anticipates that the information provided to the international community via this open access journal will offer practical implications for the ongoing global efforts to manage this crisis and contribute to the research on tourism, diplomacy, justice and health policy.
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Minna Martikainen, Antti Miihkinen and Luke Watson
Negative disclosure tone in 10-K annual reports has economic consequences, yet relatively little is known about how it is generated. Boards of directors play an important…
Abstract
Purpose
Negative disclosure tone in 10-K annual reports has economic consequences, yet relatively little is known about how it is generated. Boards of directors play an important governance role with respect to mandatory disclosures and personally sign off on Form 10-K, leading us to expect directors to influence financial reporting narratives. This study investigates whether the negative tone of firms' narrative annual report disclosures is associated with the human and social capital of its board of directors.
Design/methodology/approach
Multivariate regression analyses of negative disclosure tone (Loughran and McDonald, 2011) on board members' average age, gender, education, financial expertise and turnover is performed. A host of supplemental tests to corroborate our primary analysis, including using Sarbanes-Oxley's financial expert mandate as an exogenous shock to board composition, impact threshold for a confounding variable, placebo analysis, portfolio tests of more and less negative disclosing firms and portfolio tests of “loud” versus “quiet” boards are conducted.
Findings
Evidence that directors' gender, education, financial expertise and board turnover are associated with more negative disclosure tone, while directors' age is associated with less negative disclosure tone is found. The study also looked within the board to differentiate whether these findings are driven by characteristics of inside directors or outside directors serving on the audit committee, or both, as these are the specific groups of directors we would expect to play a role in disclosure. It was found that negative disclosure tone is associated with a lower bid-ask spread, so this study interpreted more negative tone as containing more descriptive information.
Originality/value
This study helps decode the “black box” of annual report disclosure tone, which Loughran and McDonald (2011) show has important economic implications. The results help inform stakeholders such as policymakers, executives and capital market participants as to how board member traits are associated with disclosure. The findings are particularly important as this study bears witness to the increasing prominence of gender/diversity mandates (e.g. Israel, Norway, California) and financial expertise mandates (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley).
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The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.
Design/methodology/approach
The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.
Findings
The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.
Originality/value
In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.
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Hikaru Komatsu, Iveta Silova and Jeremy Rappleye
Humans remain unsuccessful in their attempts to achieve environmental sustainability, despite decades of scientific awareness and political efforts toward that end. This paper…
Abstract
Purpose
Humans remain unsuccessful in their attempts to achieve environmental sustainability, despite decades of scientific awareness and political efforts toward that end. This paper suggests a fresh conceptualization, one that focuses on education, offers a fuller explanation for our lack of success and calls attention to alternatives.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors first critically review mainstream approaches that have been used to achieve environmental sustainability, then introduce an alternative that the authors call the cultural approach. The authors finally discuss how educational research should be re-articulated based on the cultural approach.
Findings
The authors identified three mainstream approaches – the technological, cognitive approach and behaviorist – all of which function to reproduce modern mainstream culture. In contrast, the cultural approach assumes modern mainstream culture as the root cause of environmental unsustainability and aims to rearticulate it. To elaborate a cultural approach, the authors recommend education scholars to (1) bring attention to the role of culture in sustainability and (2) identify education practices that are potentially useful for enacting a cultural shift, primarily developing richer synergies between qualitative and quantitative research.
Originality/value
Unlike many previous studies in the field of education, the authors’ account highlights how current mainstream approaches used for current global education policymaking often merely reproduces modern mainstream culture and accelerates the environmental crisis. It thus proposes to redirect educational research for a cultural shift, one that allows human society to move beyond the comforting rhetoric of sustainability and face the survivability imperative.
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Darius-Aurel Frank, Lina Fogt Jacobsen, Helle Alsted Søndergaard and Tobias Otterbring
Companies utilize increasingly capable Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to deliver modern services across a range of consumer service industries. AI autonomy, however…
Abstract
Purpose
Companies utilize increasingly capable Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to deliver modern services across a range of consumer service industries. AI autonomy, however, sparks skepticism among consumers leading to a decrease in their willingness to adopt AI services. This raises the question as to whether consumer trust in companies can overcome consumer reluctance in their decisions to adopt high (vs low) autonomy AI services.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a representative survey (N = 503 consumers corresponding to N = 3,690 observations), this article investigated the link between consumer trust in a company and consumers' intentions to adopt high (vs low) autonomy AI services from the company across 23 consumer service companies accounting for six distinct service industries.
Findings
The results confirm a significant and positive relationship between consumer trust in a company and consumers' intentions to adopt AI services from the same company. AI autonomy, however, moderates this relationship, such that high (vs low) AI autonomy weakens the positive link between trust in a company and AI service adoption. This finding replicates across all 23 companies and the associated six industries and is robust to the inclusion of several theoretically important control variables.
Originality/value
The current research contributes to the recent stream of AI research by drawing attention to the interplay between trust in companies and adoption of high autonomy AI services, with implications for the successful deployment and marketing of AI services.
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Serena Galvani and Roberta Bocconcelli
This paper aims to analyze the digital servitization (DS) process with the paradox theory lens. The purpose is to catch how intra- and inter-organizational tensions generate…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the digital servitization (DS) process with the paradox theory lens. The purpose is to catch how intra- and inter-organizational tensions generate complexity along a DS journey to find “where” and “when” industrial companies can intervene to face them.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology is a qualitative, in-depth single case study, which longitudinally explores the DS strategy of a manufacturer along with three phases of development: design, implementation and assessment.
Findings
The analysis reveals six intra- and inter-organizational tensions in DS and provides insights on tensions’ origin and how to face them. A theoretical framework on DS complexity and an empirical framework on tensions’ origin is produced.
Originality/value
The research combines service and organizational paradox literature. Together with a longitudinal methodology, it results in a spatial and temporal analysis of DS, from which theoretical and managerial implications are drawn.
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Haya Al-Dajani, Nupur Pavan Bang, Rodrigo Basco, Andrea Calabrò, Jeremy Chi Yeung Cheng, Eric Clinton, Joshua J. Daspit, Alfredo De Massis, Allan Discua Cruz, Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo, William B. Gartner, Olivier Germain, Silvia Gherardi, Jenny Helin, Miguel Imas, Sarah Jack, Maura McAdam, Miruna Radu-Lefebvre, Paola Rovelli, Malin Tillmar, Mariateresa Torchia, Karen Verduijn and Friederike Welter
This conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and…
Abstract
Purpose
This conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and becoming of entrepreneurial phenomena in business families and family firms.
Design/methodology/approach
Because of the novelty of this research stream, the authors asked 20 scholars in entrepreneurship and family business to reflect on topics, methods and issues that should be addressed to move this field forward.
Findings
Authors highlight key challenges and point to new research directions for understanding family entrepreneuring in relation to issues such as agency, processualism and context.
Originality/value
This study offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring.
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Giovanna Gavana, Pietro Gottardo and Anna Maria Moisello
The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of structural and demographic board diversity as well as board tenure on family firms' environmental performance, by analyzing the…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of structural and demographic board diversity as well as board tenure on family firms' environmental performance, by analyzing the differences between family and non-family businesses and within family firms.
Design/methodology/approach
Tobit regressions are applied to investigate the effect of independent directors, CEO non-duality, board gender diversity and board tenure on environmental performance. The study also controls for other board and firm characteristics, as well as for time, industry and country-fixed effects. In doing so, the authors rely on a sample of non-financial listed firms from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal over the period 2014–2021.
Findings
The authors find that women on the board positively influence environmental performance and this effect is significant only in family firms, although board tenure negatively moderates the relationship. Board independence significantly affects environmental performance only in non-family firms. A strong presence of family directors has a negative effect on family firms' environmental performance, especially when directors' turnover is low.
Originality/value
This paper examines the unexplored relationship between structural board diversity and environmental performance in family companies. This study provides empirical evidence on the association between gender diversity and family firms' environmental performance focusing for the first time on a European setting. Moreover, this study provides evidence of a different effect of board tenure in family and non-family businesses.
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