Search results

Further understanding of structural hierarchy is critically needed to assess the usefulness of different alliance structures. This study goes beyond transaction cost reasoning and incorporates social exchange theoretic perspective with the aim of capturing the concurrent relationships of alliance type and specific alliance experience with hierarchy of alliance structure.

Logistic regression analysis of data on 402 strategic alliances is used to test the two hypotheses advanced in the paper.

The social‐exchange‐based hypothesis is supported – specific alliance experience is negatively related to hierarchy of alliance structure. The transaction‐cost‐based hypothesis is not supported – hierarchy of alliance structure is not greater in horizontal alliances than in vertical alliances.

Strategic alliances with different purposes, such as R&D, supply procurement, marketing, co‐production, and co‐development, may have different industry norms of structuring alliances. This study does not account for these underlying differences within strategic alliances.

The social exchange theory‐based variable (i.e. specific alliance experience) has a more salient influence on alliance structure than does the transaction cost‐based variable (i.e. alliance type). The findings signal the relative importance of communal harmony compared to competitive rivalry.

The paper shows that results suggest that high bureaucratic costs of more hierarchical structures diminish the transaction cost economizing benefits of such structures. This is especially the case when alliances are not expected to experience very high levels of relational hazards (usually in vertical alliances). It appears that partnering firms' concerns with high bureaucratic costs may at times exceed the marginal benefits of control and coordination of exceedingly hierarchical alliance structures.

A decision to terminate a project can demoralize project managers and team members, and increase concerns about job security. For these reasons, managers tend to delay project termination decisions. However, such delays can put a damper on the normal operation of a company. Therefore, corporations have been seeking to develop a number of methods and techniques to assist with decision making in project evaluation. Benchmarking has gained increasing acceptance as a technique that enhances business processes. This paper is concerned with the development of a model using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for the evaluation of project termination or continuation, which is based on the benchmarking method. The benchmarking of project evaluation, the operation of AHP, is presented along with a case study. A R&D case study in Taiwan is used to illustrate the approach, the framework of which was entered on an Excel spreadsheet. This approach has provided the decision maker with an alternative for evaluating the status of a project and making the right call.

The purpose of this paper is to bring the concept of a “hierarchy of action”, as it is currently being used in other fields, into library and information science (LIS).

Hierarchy theory is adopted to describe three hierarchies of action, which include the human processes of semantic and social innovation, as well as a system of biological interpretence, from which human processes are thought to have evolved as a development of biosemiosis in nature. By way of example, it is argued that a text is a complex achievement, and hierarchy theory shows how to account for this complexity; the everyday definition of “text” is augmented with accounts from different levels of observation.

The concept of a hierarchy of action enables a person to account for a text as a meaning/symbolic product; include in that account the processes whereby texts are produced and used; and say why these processes are important to the health of the biosphere that is called home.

“Hierarchy of action” has been developed as a concept in biology and ecology; it belongs to a way of thinking whereby human reality, like nature, is construed as dynamical processes operating in symbiotic relationship with each other; it has not yet been adopted in LIS with reference to hierarchy theory and its potential is yet to be explored.

The current study seeks to provide predictions for task conflict in supervisor‐subordinate dyads and to test empirically the mediation effects of task conflict between organizational culture/subordinate values and subordinate outcomes.

Structural equation modeling was employed to test the theoretical model.

It was found that task conflict mediates the relationship between a clan culture and intention to quit. Additionally, support was also found for the mediating effect of task conflict on the relationship between individualistic values and intention to quit.

More research is needed to take into consideration the variables influencing task conflict in both vertical and horizontal dyadic relationships. A dynamic view of conflict may further contribute to the existing literature.

More remedies are needed in organizations to foster positive employees' attitudes and wellbeing through the generation of task conflicts. For example, fostering a clan culture instead of a hierarchy may be vital.

The current study demonstrates that organizational culture/subordinate's values may be linked to different subordinate outcomes through task conflict.

This paper aims to explore changes in communication networks during organizational crisis. In the literature, various terms such as organizational mortality, organizational death, bankruptcy, decline, retrenchment and failure have been used to characterize different forms and facets of organizational crisis. Communication network studies have typically focussed on nodes (e.g. individuals or organizations), relationships between those nodes and subsequent affects of these relationships upon the network as a whole. Email networks in contemporary organizations are fairly representative of the underlying communication networks.

The changing communication network structure at Enron Corporation during the crisis period (2000-2001) has been analyzed. The goal is to understand how communication patterns and structures are affected by organizational crisis. Drawing on communication network crisis and group behaviour theory, three propositions are tested: communication network becomes increasingly transitive as organizations experience crisis; communication network becomes less hierarchical as organizations are going through crisis; and communication network becomes more reciprocal as organizations are going through crisis.

In this research analysis, the support of these three propositions was noticed. The results of tests and their implications are discussed in this paper.

This study builds on an emerging stream of research area that applies social network analysis to organizational interaction data to study various questions related to organizational change and disintegration. These findings could help managers in designing an effective approach to monitor regular functionalities of their organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of product and customer dimensions in the contribution of brand experience to the formation of true brand loyalty. The dimensions included are brand credibility, affective commitment and involvement. Synthesising past studies, the researcher proposes brand credibility and affective commitment to mediate the relationship between brand experience and true brand loyalty. Furthermore, the researcher investigates the variation in hierarchical pattern, i.e. brand experience-brand credibility affective commitment-true brand loyalty, under different levels of involvement.

The variations in hierarchy were compared by design. The authors investigated the variations in hierarchy on the basis of products which belong to different level of involvement, on the basis of individual differences in involvement, and on the basis of the interaction of product involvement and subject involvement. Multi-group invariance tests in SEM were used to explore model variations.

The hierarchy-of-effect model was found to vary based on the level of product involvement, subject involvement and interaction involvement. Three patterns of hierarchy have been observed: the first pattern was observed in high-high groups (both product involvement and subject involvement were high), the second pattern was observed in low-low groups (both product and subject involvements were low) and the third pattern among high-low or low-high groups.

The variation observed highlights the need to segment the market by interaction involvement. This would be useful for managers engaged in building sustainable consumer-brand relationships.

This study considered the interaction of product approach and subject approach in defining involvement which is rarely attempted in research. The study also integrates the variations in the role of customer dimensions, namely involvement, brand credibility and affective commitment with the relationship between the central constructs brand experience and true brand loyalty. The variations observed are among a socio-economically homogeneous sample of respondents.

The use of supportive digital technology – the provision of supportive services and self-management health tools using digital platforms – by marketers is increasing alongside research interest in the topic. However, little is known about the motivations to use these tools and which tool features provide different forms of social support (informational, emotional, instrumental, network or esteem). The purpose of this paper is thus to explore consumer perceptions of supportive healthcare self-management and preferences for different levels of interactive features as social support in a health services context.

A qualitative approach involving 30 semi-structured interviews with consumers interested in two common preventative health services that use supportive digital tools (SDTs) (skin-cancer checks and sexually transmitted infection checks) was undertaken. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the verbatim transcripts.

This research identified there is a lack of motivation to initiate the search for SDTs; consumers are motivated by a desire to control and monitor health concerns and avoid overuse of the health system. The findings showed a preference for social support to go beyond informational support, with a need for interactivity that personalised support in a proactive manner.

SDTs are positively perceived by consumers as part of health services. The motivation to use these tools is complex, and the social support needed is multifaceted and preferably interactive.

This research assists service marketers to better design informational and instrumental support for preventative self-managed healthcare services.

This paper extends knowledge about the motivation and social support required from SDTs in a preventative health service context.

Given its importance in the brand management of sport teams, the present research initiative primarily concerns the investigation of the formation process of sport team loyalty. By integrating a hierarchy of effects model into a relational perspective, the study aims to investigate the role of sport consumers' involvement, self-expression, trust and attachment with a sport team in building loyal relationships. A conceptual model is proposed and tested in the context of professional soccer teams.

The data of the study comes from 287 consumers of a South East European country. The fit of the model is tested using structural equation modeling and the statistical program LISREL.

The results confirm that: all the hypothesized constructs constitute either direct or indirect determinants of sport team loyalty; a hierarchy of effects approach, cognition-affect-conation, can explain how strong consumers-team relationships can be developed; and team attachment acts as a partial mediator in the relationship between the cognitive components of the model (team involvement, trust and self-expression) and team loyalty.

The findings provide several implications to marketing managers of sport teams in how to go about and develop loyal sport fans.

No previous investigation has integrated relationship marketing with a hierarchy of effects in order to explain loyalty to a sport team.

Reports results of an attempt to test temporal order of awareness, attitude and behaviour using the cross‐logged panel correlation technique — a method for establishing probabilistic causality by non‐experimental data. Tries to replicate, in this study, one by O'Brien, examining loyalty of new residents in an area developing loyalty to restaurants. Questionnaires were distributed to new students in Bergen, Norway for the autumn semester in 1974, in all 200 students received 2 questionnaires over a four‐week period and 126 completed the questionnaire both times, discusses results of these. Concludes that results give little support for the concept of a ‘hierarchy‐of‐effects’, postulating the sequence of awareness, attitudes and behaviour.

The mechanistic-organic assumptions of SF address those organizational factors related to structural arrangements, contextual factors, job-task work activities, and human resources management policies. Organizations adopt structures and procedures in search of legitimacy and institutionalization (Riebero & Scapens, 2006, p. 96). Structures manifest themselves in centralized (mechanistic) and/or decentralized (organic) forms. These structures can be loose or tightly controlled; they can involve independent or interdependent tasks. These conditions have a direct impact on the operation of management information and control systems that will, in turn, impact organizational learning and process innovations, which, ultimately, affects organizational performance.