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1 – 10 of 28This paper examines the organizational resilience of audit firms during the early stages of COVID-19. The unexpected restrictions placed on travel and on-site working created…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines the organizational resilience of audit firms during the early stages of COVID-19. The unexpected restrictions placed on travel and on-site working created unanticipated barriers for auditors in Hong Kong. The authors expect that auditors with greater organizational resilience can respond to unexpected situations and restore expected performance levels relatively quickly.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors utilize a sample of 1,008 companies listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) with a financial year-end of December 31. The authors identify five proxies contributing to organizational resilience: auditor size, industry specialization, diversity, geographic proximity to the client and auditing a new client. The authors use audit report timeliness as this study's main dependent variable.
Findings
This study's full-sample results suggest that larger auditors, industry specialists and auditors with closer relationships to clients issued more timely audit reports during the pandemic. The analysis of a subsample of companies that initially published unaudited financial statements reveals that industry expertise and longer auditor-client relationships significantly reduced the need for year-end audit adjustments. Finally, the authors find that larger auditors were more likely to offload clients, whereas industry specialists were more likely to retain clients.
Research limitations/implications
The results of the paper suggests that audit firm characteristics associated cognitive abilities, behavioral characteristics and contextual conditions are associated with audit firm organizational resilience and, consequently, helps auditors respond unexpected changes in the audit environment.
Practical implications
The findings of the paper are informative for those involved in audit firm management or auditor hiring and retention decisions.
Originality/value
This study is the first to link organizational resilience to the performance of audit firms in a time of unexpected events. The authors connect three auditor and two auditor-client dimensions to the organizational resilience of the audit firms.
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Pernilla Nilsson and Jesper Lund
This study aims to investigate how primary teachers, when taking part in digital didactic design (D3) workshops at the Digital Laboratory Centre at the university, develop their…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how primary teachers, when taking part in digital didactic design (D3) workshops at the Digital Laboratory Centre at the university, develop their insights about how digital tools can be designed and further used in their teaching of science. The research question addresses how D3 can be used to develop primary teachers’ knowledge about teaching science with digital technologies.
Design/methodology/approach
During two semesters, 14 primary science teachers from three different schools participated in an in-service course at the university. Five D3 workshops lasting 4 h each were conducted with the aim to analyze, design and implement digital tools based on the needs of teachers and students. This includes discussions about the technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) framework and further recommendations about how to choose, design, implement and evaluate digital tools for different teaching and learning situations. In between the workshops, the teachers were told to reflect on their experiences with colleagues and students and share their ideas and reflections to support collegial learning.
Findings
The results indicate that D3 has an opportunity to promote deep learning experiences with a framework that encourages teachers and researchers to study, explore and analyze the applied designs-in-practice, where teachers take part in the design process. This study further indicates that having teachers explicitly articulates their reasoning about designing digital applications to engage students’ learning that seems important for exploring the types of knowledge used in these design practices and reflecting on aspects of their teaching with digital technologies likely to influence their TPACK.
Research limitations/implications
This research indicates that the increasing prevalence of information communication technology offers challenges and opportunities to the teaching and learning of science and to the scientific practice teachers might encounter. It offers solutions by investigating how primary teachers can design their own digital technology to meet students’ science learning needs. One limitation might be that the group of 14 teachers cannot be generalized to represent all teachers. However, this study gives implications for how to work with and for teachers to develop their knowledge of digital technologies in teaching.
Practical implications
As this project shows teachers can take an active part in the digital school development and as such become producer of knowledge and ideas and not only become consumers in the jungle of technical applications that are implemented on a school level. Therefore, it might well be argued that in science teaching, paying more careful attention to how teachers and researchers work together in collaborative settings, offers one way of better valuing science teachers’ professional knowledge of practice. As such, an implication is that digital applications are not made “for” teachers but instead “with” and “by” teachers.
Social implications
The society puts high demands om teachers’ knowledge and competencies to integrate digital technologies into their daily practices. Building on teachers’ own needs and concerns, this project addresses the challenge for teachers as a community to be better prepared for and meet the societal challenge that digitalization means for schools.
Originality/value
Across the field of science education, knowledge about the relation between teachers’ use of digital technology and how it might (or might not) promote students’ learning offers access to ideas of how to design and implement teacher professional development programs. This offers enhanced communication opportunities between schools and universities regarding school facilities and expectations of technology to improve teachers’ experiences with integrating technology into their learning and teaching. This pragmatic approach to research creates theory and interventions that serve school practice but also produces challenges for design-based researchers.
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Isak Vento, Jesper Eklund and Jonas Schauman
This study explores the effect of language on service satisfaction among Finland-Swedes, a national minority language group in Finland, in the context of early childhood…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores the effect of language on service satisfaction among Finland-Swedes, a national minority language group in Finland, in the context of early childhood education. Models of public service satisfaction hold standard process and outcome related factors, such as availability and quality, as drivers of the satisfaction. However, although research has shown significant variation in satisfaction between different groups of citizens (race, ethnicity, age etc.), research has largely overlooked group specific factors as explanations for the satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
A randomized survey experiment with a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design analyzed the impacts of language, service accessibility, and quality on service satisfaction. The data was analyzed with ANOVA.
Findings
The results revealed that language significantly impacts Swedish speakers’ satisfaction, suggesting that for minority groups, language may override typical satisfaction determinants like quality and accessibility. Interestingly, special linguistic needs are relatively more pertinent in low-quality services than in higher-quality ones.
Originality/value
The study shows how group related factors of public service, in our case language, in an important factor explaining satisfaction with the service. The findings have implications for the literature on citizens’ satisfaction with public services with demographic and identity facets, especially in a typical Nordic welfare state.
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Nathalie Kron, Jesper Björkman, Peter Ek, Micael Pihlgren, Hanan Mazraeh, Benny Berggren and Patrik Sörqvist
Previous research suggests that the compensation offered to customers after a service failure has to be substantial to make customer satisfaction surpass that of an error-free…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous research suggests that the compensation offered to customers after a service failure has to be substantial to make customer satisfaction surpass that of an error-free service. However, with the right service recovery strategy, it might be possible to reduce compensation size while maintaining happy customers. The aim of the current study is to test whether an anchoring technique can be used to achieve this goal.
Design/methodology/approach
After experiencing a service failure, participants were told that there is a standard size of the compensation for service failures. The size of this standard was different depending on condition. Thereafter, participants were asked how much they would demand to be satisfied with their customer experience.
Findings
The compensation demand was relatively high on average (1,000–1,400 SEK, ≈ $120). However, telling the participants that customers typically receive 200 SEK as compensation reduced their demand to about 800 SEK (Experiment 1)—an anchoring effect. Moreover, a precise anchoring point (a typical compensation of 247 SEK) generated a lower demand than rounded anchoring points, even when the rounded anchoring point was lower (200 SEK) than the precise counterpart (Experiment 2)—a precision effect.
Implications/value
Setting a low compensation standard—yet allowing customers to actually receive compensations above the standard—can make customers more satisfied while also saving resources in demand-what-you-want service recovery situations, in particular when the compensation standard is a precise value.
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Vishal K. Gupta, Sajna Ibrahim, Grace Guo and Erik Markin
Entrepreneurship-related research in management and organizational journals has experienced rapid growth, particularly in the last several years. The purpose of this study is to…
Abstract
Entrepreneurship-related research in management and organizational journals has experienced rapid growth, particularly in the last several years. The purpose of this study is to identify the researchers and universities that have had the greatest influence on entrepreneurship research since the turn of the century. Using a systematic and comprehensive study identification protocol, the authors delve into the individual and institutional actors contributing to scholarship in entrepreneurial studies for the period from 2000 to 2015. Examination of top-tier management and organizational journals revealed that a total of 371 entrepreneurship-related articles were published during this period by 618 authors from 303 different institutions. Rankings for the most prolific individuals as well as institutions, adjusted and unadjusted for journal quality, are presented. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations and implications of the research undertaken here.
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Jesper Falkheimer, Mats Heide, Charlotte Simonsson and Rickard Andersson
This study aims, first, to explore and analyze if and how organizational members’ professions or occupations influence perceptions of internal crisis communication. The second…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims, first, to explore and analyze if and how organizational members’ professions or occupations influence perceptions of internal crisis communication. The second, related, aim is to discuss the role of internal communication in creating a strong organizational identity during a prolonged crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is mainly conceptual but uses quantitative data from a survey conducted in a health-care organization in late 2020 to illustrate the theoretical reasoning.
Findings
The results show that the administrative groups perceive factors in the internal crisis communication more favorably than the professional groups. The study suggests that organizational members perceive internal crisis communication differently depending on which intra-organizational group they belong to. This further points to the absence of a “rally-around-the-flag” effect and highlights the importance of working proactively with professionals and in internal crisis communication.
Originality/value
This study highlights the role of professionals in crisis communication, which is an aspect that so far has been ignored. The internal professionalization processes and an intriguing power struggle between professions have obvious consequences for crisis communication. As shown in the overview of earlier research on internal communication, leadership and professional organizations, the prerequisites for creating an increased organizational unity among coworkers are challenging. The idea that a crisis may, as in certain political situations in society, create a “rally-around-the-flag” effect is still relevant, even if the case study is an example of how this did not happen.
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Daniel Stefan Hain and Jesper Lindgaard Christensen
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how access to financing for incremental as well as radical innovation activities is affected by firm-specific structural and behavioral…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how access to financing for incremental as well as radical innovation activities is affected by firm-specific structural and behavioral characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach
Deploying a two-stage Heckman probit model on survey data spanning the period 2000–2013 and covering 1,169 firms, this paper analyzes the effect of a firm’s engagement in incremental and radical innovation on its likelihood to get constrained in their access to external finance, and how this effect is moderated by the firm’s age and size.
Findings
In line with earlier research, it is confirmed that the type of innovation matters for the access to external finance, but in a more nuanced way than generally portrayed. While incremental innovation activities have little negative effect on the access to external finance, radical innovation activities tend to be penalized by capital markets. This effect appears to be particularly strong for small firms.
Originality/value
This paper provides nuanced insights into the interplay between types of firm-level innovation activities, structural characteristic and access to external finance.
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Kevin Dadaczynski, Bjarne Bruun Jensen, Nina Grieg Viig, Marjorita Sormunen, Jesper von Seelen, Vladislav Kuchma and Teresa Vilaça
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the official statement of the Fifth European Conference on Health-Promoting Schools.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the official statement of the Fifth European Conference on Health-Promoting Schools.
Design/methodology/approach
The Fifth European Conference on Health-Promoting Schools was held on 20–22 November 2019 in Moscow, Russian Federation, with over 450 participants from 40 countries. A writing group was established to prepare a draft version of the statement before the conference. On the basis of an online and offline feedback process, the opinions of the participants were collected during the conference and included in the finalisation of the statement.
Findings
The final conference statement comprises six thematic categories (values and principles; environment, climate and health; schools as part of the wider community; non-communicable diseases (NCDs); evidence base; and digital media), with a total of 23 recommendations and calls for action.
Originality/value
The recommendations and calls for action reflect current challenges for Health Promoting Schools in Europe. They are addressed to all actors in governmental, non-governmental and other organisations at international, national and regional levels involved in health promotion in schools and are to be applied for the further development of the concept.
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