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To design effective task-responsive search systems, sufficient understanding of users’ tasks must be gained and their characteristics described. Although existing multi-dimensional task schemes can be used to describe users’ search and work tasks, they do not take into account the information use environment (IUE) that contextualises the task. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

With a focus on English primary schools, in four stages a multi-dimensional task scheme was developed that distinguishes between task characteristics generic to all environments, and those that are specific to schools. In Stage 1, a provisional scheme was developed based upon the existing literature. In the next two stages, through interviews with teachers and observations of school children, the provisional scheme was populated and revised. In Stage 4, whether search tasks with the same information use can be distinguished by their characteristics was examined.

Ten generic characteristics were identified (nature of work task, search task originator, search task flexibility, search task doer, search task necessity, task output, search goal, stage in work task, resources and information use) and four characteristics specific to primary schools (curricular area, use in curricular area, planning and location). For the different information uses, some characteristics are more typical than others.

The resulting scheme, based on children’s real-life information seeking, should be used in the design and evaluation of search systems and digital libraries that support school children. More generally, the scheme can also be used in other environments.

This is the first study to develop a multi-dimensional task scheme that considers encompasses the IUE.

This research is designed to characterize new generic consumers and assess their willingness to purchase generic brands in non‐generic product categories.

A total of 500 generic consumers participated in the study. Participants were customers of two large private chain stores in central Israel, known for their abundance of generic products.

the paper finds that new generic consumers have a somewhat different profile than that of generic consumers of the 1980s. Furthermore, generic consumers are prepared to purchase generic brands even in categories not defined as generic.

The study focused on a market characterized by economic instability, which may contribute to strong readiness to purchase generic brands even in product categories not generic by definition. Future research is needed to study the profile of the new generic consumer from the perspective of cultural differences among countries and not within countries.

The willingness of generic brand marketers and retailers to enter product categories not defined as generic will open new business avenues and a create a relative advantage for them over their competitors, while guaranteeing a larger market segment and an increased volume of sales in the short term.

This research is the only one which has examined generic brand consumers' buying power, on four types of buying behaviors based on the degree of buyer involvement and the degree of differentiation among brands.

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology for medical robot kinematics design developed using a knowledge‐management approach.

A classification of medical robots is proposed based on their kinematic characteristics and 76 robot specifications were collected in a catalogue. Then, having drawn a generic specifications sheet, rules were proposed to choose a structure from these specifications.

Findings are situated at several levels: the catalogue, the classification of robots with respect to their kinematic characteristics, a generic and specific specifications sheet, and an organigram to choose the most relevant structure from the specifications.

This structural synthesis represents a preliminary step in the design of medical robots which will be completed by an additional dimensional synthesis.

This work offers a new methodology for medical robots design distinct from what is usually done for medical or industrial robots design using intuition, expertise and non‐formal knowledge.

Explores the implications of Midland Bank’s attempts in the mid‐1980s to adopt an endorsed corporate identity strategy and to brand its personal financial services. Sets out the reasons why banks have traditionally applied monolithic identity systems and eschewed explicit branding, and presents Midland’s reasons for challenging that paradigm ‐ chiefly the nature of its group structure and its desire to segment its personal market more effectively. While the Midland approach was not a commercial success, it provides some general lessons which help to inform corporate identity theory in general and financial sector identity and branding theory in particular. These include the need for identity to be contingent on strategy, the importance of “soft” as well as “hard” identity features, the conflicts between different identity systems (e.g. firm‐specific versus industry‐generic) and the problems of applying branding theory to products which are in essence no more than contracts.

The purpose of this study is to introduce several metrics that enable universal and fine-grained characterization of arbitrary Linked Data repositories. Publicly accessible SPARQL endpoints contain vast amounts of knowledge from a large variety of domains. However, oftentimes these endpoints are not configured to process specific workloads as efficiently as possible. Assisting users in leveraging SPARQL endpoints requires insight into functional and non-functional properties of these knowledge bases.

This study presents comprehensive approaches for deriving these metrics. More specifically, the study utilizes concrete SPARQL queries to determine corresponding values. Furthermore, it validates and discusses the introduced metrics through extensive evaluation on real-world SPARQL endpoints.

The evaluation determined that endpoints exhibit different characteristics. While it comes as no surprise that latency and throughput are influenced by the network infrastructure, the costs for join operations depend on a number of factors that are not obvious to a data consumer. Moreover, as the author discusses mean, median and upper quartile values, it was found both endpoints behaving consistently as well as repositories offering varying levels of performance.

On the one hand, the contribution of the authors work lies in assisting data consumers in evaluation of the quality of service of publicly available SPARQL endpoints. On the other hand, the performance metrics introduced in this study can also be considered as additional input features for distributed query processing frameworks. Moreover, the author provides a universal means for discerning characteristics of different SPARQL endpoints without the need of (synthetic or real-world) query workloads.

The purpose of this paper is to add to efforts to treat the relationship between accounting, democracy and emancipation more seriously, giving recognition to difference in this context. To open up space for emancipatory praxis vis-à-vis accounting, the authors articulate a delineation of accounting as a differentiated universal and emphasise the significance of an appreciation of accounting as contextually situated. The authors outline implications of a reading of new pragmatism for emancipatory praxis in relation to accounting that takes democracy and difference seriously.

Critical and analytical argument reflecting upon previous literature in the humanities and social sciences (e.g. Laclau and Mouffe, 2001) and in accounting (e.g. Gallhofer and Haslam, 2003; Bebbington et al., 2007; Brown, 2009, 2010; Blackburn et al., 2014; Brown and Dillard, 2013a, b; Dillard and Yuthas, 2013) to consider further accounting’s alignment to an emancipatory praxis taking democracy and difference seriously.

A vision and framing of emancipatory praxis vis-à-vis accounting is put forward as a contribution that the authors hope stimulates further discussion.

The authors extend and bolster previous literature seeking to align accounting and emancipation through further reflection upon new pragmatist perspectives on democracy and difference. In the articulations and emphases here, the authors make some particular contributions including notably the following. The accounting delineation, which includes appreciation of accounting as a differentiated universal, and a considered approach to appreciation of accounting as contextually situated help to open up further space for praxis vis-à-vis accounting. The authors offer a general outline of accounting’s positioning vis-à-vis a reading of a new pragmatist perspective on emancipatory praxis. The authors articulate the perspective in terms of key principles of design for emancipatory praxis vis-à-vis accounting: take seriously an accounting delineation freeing accounting from unnecessary constraints; engage with all accountings in accord with a principle of prioritisation; engage with accounting in a way appreciative of its properties, dimensions and contextual situatedness; engage more generally in a new pragmatist praxis. This adds support to and extends prior literature. The authors elaborate in this context how appreciation of a new pragmatist continuum thinking that helps to highlight and bring out emancipatory and repressive dimensions of accounting can properly inform interaction with existing as well as new envisaged accountings, including what the authors term here “official” accountings.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the relationship between the qualities of generic drugs perceived by the physicians and brand equity of the branded generics and to examine the physicians' perceptions of prescribing generic drugs for selective medical conditions in India.

The study was carried out across six major cities in Eastern India with 392 physicians. Here components of perceived quality, i.e. intrinsic cues and extrinsic cues are hypothesized to influence perceived quality of branded generics which in turn influence brand equity. It is also hypothesized that respondents' quality experience is assimilated towards their quality expectations, independent of small variations in objective quality of the drug.

Results showed that perceived quality of branded generics significantly, but indirectly, affected brand equity through the mediating variables, intrinsic cues and extrinsic cues. The results also showed that physicians' quality experience leads to quality expectations, independent of small variations in drug quality on five common yet serious diseases in India.

Current research finds that for prescription‐based branded generic drugs, perceived quality mainly depends on intrinsic cues; therefore, managers should be interested in intrinsic cues that increase brand equity and necessary marketing actions should be implemented accordingly.

No other scholarly article has been developed, so far, analyzing the effect of perceived quality on brand equity in the Indian branded generic drug segment. Besides providing evidence from the Indian pharmaceutical context about the impact of quality cues, the paper also presents evidence on physicians' quality observation of branded generics on five common yet serious diseases in India.

Generic products are purchased by price‐conscious, careful shoppers, who are not, however, willing to accept a lower quality and limited selection of non‐brand names in supermarkets. The behavioural differences between generic product users vs. non‐users are compared in the New England region, using hand‐distributed questionnaires to a convenient sample of 150 respondents.

In the process industries, it is essential to have a well-articulated manufacturing strategy within companies. However, to facilitate manufacturing strategy development, it is important to start with a good characterisation of the material transformation system and company production capabilities. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A grounded theory approach, with inspiration from configuration modelling, attempted to characterize the material transformation system as a set of variables. The variable development was based on a literature review and the knowledge base of five industry experts. Two exploratory mini-case studies were carried out, primarily to illustrate the use of the model, but additionally to test its industrial usability.

A set of 31 variables was developed, and related measures and scales were tentatively defined. Two mini-cases supported the usability of the model. The model, focussing on company generic process capabilities, is a conceptual taxonomy and the study’s theoretical contribution.

The lucidity of the definitions and scales for the variables are open to further refinement, and the limited discussions of variable relationships in this study are addressed in an agenda for further research.

The model can be deployed as a facilitative instrument in the analysis of company material transformation systems and may serve as a platform in further discussions on companies’ strategy development.

The model is a new instrument for analysing company generic process capabilities and an effort to build new theory rather than to test an existing one.

The purpose of this paper is to take a close look at competition among the generic entrants during the first three years after patent expiration and examine whether there is a first mover advantage. Pharmaceutical markets experience the entry of numerous generic firms upon expiration of the brand firm’s patent.

A random effect nested logit model of competition that allows for competition between the brand drug and generics, and among multiple generic drugs is specified. The model accommodates the effects of prices, detailing, sampling, journal advertising, time-in-market and molecule-specific characteristics. The model is estimated on cross-section time-series data for 49 molecules in which the brand drug lost patent exclusivity between 1992 and 2000.

Strong evidence that the early generic entrant enjoys a substantial market share and profit advantage over the second and the third entrants, after controlling for differences in marketing activities was found. In addition, evidence suggesting that the advantage is due to the response of the retail pharmacy channel and due to differential effectiveness of advertising and pricing between earlier versus later entrants was found.

This paper is the first to empirically model first mover advantage among undifferentiated products. The findings are useful for regulators in pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. They can also shed light on other industries where there is little or no quality differentiation, such as commodity trading, open-source software distribution and online banking.