Search results
11 – 20 of 22Jonathan Gumz and Diego Castro Fettermann
This article aims to compare smart meters' acceptance studies worldwide to consolidate trends and highlight factors that are not a consensus.
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to compare smart meters' acceptance studies worldwide to consolidate trends and highlight factors that are not a consensus.
Design/methodology/approach
This work performs a statistical meta-analysis, using the Hunter–Schmidt method and the UTAUT2 model, of the factors of acceptance of smart meters in the world literature. A meta-regression was also conducted to verify the moderation exercised by gender, level of education and timeline context of the articles.
Findings
The main results point to hedonic motivation, performance expectancy and effort expectancy as the leading influencers for smart meter's acceptance. Meta-regression indicates that the influence is more significant among the male gender and that over the years, the social influence must gain weight in the smart meter's acceptance.
Social implications
Specific strategies are suggested to improve projects for the implementation of smart meters based on the obtained results.
Originality/value
The contribution given by this work is relevant, considering it is the first meta-analysis focused on smart meters' acceptance published in the literature
Details
Keywords
The way organizational actors use language to think about and communicate their organizational experiences is central to how organizational actors enact organizational paradox…
Abstract
The way organizational actors use language to think about and communicate their organizational experiences is central to how organizational actors enact organizational paradox. However, most inquiries into the role of language in the organizational paradox literature has focused on specific components of language (e.g., discourse), without attention to the complex, multi-level linguistic system that is interconnected to organizational processes. In this chapter, we expand our knowledge of the role of language by integrating paradox research with research from the linguistics discipline. We identify a series of linguistic tensions (i.e., generalizability-specificity, universalism-particularism, and explicitness-implicitness) that are nested within organizational paradoxes. In the process, we reveal how the organizing paradox of control and autonomy is interconnected to other paradoxes (i.e., performing, learning, and belonging) through the instantiation of linguistic paradoxes. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on paradox and language.
Details
Keywords
Shahnaz Nayebzadeh and Maryam Jalaly
– The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the nature of emotion, self-esteem and life satisfaction tendencies amongst Iranian Muslim consumers when making impulse purchases.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the nature of emotion, self-esteem and life satisfaction tendencies amongst Iranian Muslim consumers when making impulse purchases.
Design/methodology/approach
Questionnaires were distributed amongst female Muslim participants at a shopping centre in Yazd, Iran – each of which were selected using cluster and random sampling methods. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling techniques, where LISREL software was used to measure the direct and indirect relationships between variables.
Findings
Within the sample, there was a direct causal relationship between impulse buying tendencies, impulse buying behaviour and purchasing. Second, there was a negative relationship between self-esteem and life-satisfaction within impulse buying tendencies. Finally, a positive relationship exists between emotion and impulse buying tendencies, which elicits impulse buying behaviour culminating in purchases. Emotion drives these consumers towards dissonance-reducing behaviour, which mediates low self-esteem and life satisfaction – through consumerism as a form of retail therapy. Some of the items purchased on impulse, that fulfilled this role, were hijabs (headscarves) and mantos (a type of tunic/shirt-dress/coat common in Iran).
Research limitations/implications
The hijab is worn by Muslim females across the globe. However, the manto is an item of clothing worn almost exclusively by Iranian females. Therefore, it is likely that Muslim females in different geographies may exhibit similar behavioural traits, but their consumption patterns would substitute this item with a different one, such as an abaya or jilbab, for example.
Originality/value
Whilst the notion of retail therapy is widely understood, the novel contribution of this study lies in highlighting that the purchase of clothing such as hijabs and mantos by Iranian Muslim females is not just driven by rational and emotional decision-making seeking to fulfil religious obligations. There are cases where these religious artefacts are used to raise feelings of self-esteem and life satisfaction within the same individuals.
Details
Keywords
THERE appeared in the Library Association Record some months ago, an article—not very practical—on Accession Methods, and it is with this work that I intend to deal.
Over the last few decades, precarious work rose as an important feature of socioeconomic insecurity in contemporary Europe. The following study asks: How do labor market…
Abstract
Over the last few decades, precarious work rose as an important feature of socioeconomic insecurity in contemporary Europe. The following study asks: How do labor market institutions and labor market conditions shape work precarity in Europe? This research captures the elusive concept of precarious work by measuring the degree to which a job (1) is insecure and uncertain, (2) offers poor prospects of career mobility, and (3) puts workers in an economically insecure position with low pay. Building on two theoretical paradigms, the Varieties of Capitalism and the Power Resource Theory, this study derives and tests hypotheses about how macro-level factors shape the variation in the distribution of precarious work in 32 European countries. Combining individual-level data from the 2010 European Working Conditions Survey with country-level data from multiple sources, my findings suggest that work precarity decreases in countries with high percentages of employees in all enterprises receiving continual training, high percentages of all enterprises providing on-the-job training for employees, and high levels of spending on active labor market policies.
Details
Keywords
Support sought for changes to copyright law EIIA members have been asked to support a change in the copyright laws to permit some ‘fair use’ copying of software. A proposal is…
Abstract
Support sought for changes to copyright law EIIA members have been asked to support a change in the copyright laws to permit some ‘fair use’ copying of software. A proposal is likely to go to the European Commission this month. Meanwhile, Memoranda of Mutal Understanding have been signed with the United States' HA and Japan's JICOA, to co‐operate in activities such as supporting the free flow of information.
Maintaining an adequate nutritional state, important at all times, is never more so than during the dark days of Winter. The body reserves are then taxed in varying degrees of…
Abstract
Maintaining an adequate nutritional state, important at all times, is never more so than during the dark days of Winter. The body reserves are then taxed in varying degrees of severity by sudden downward plunges of the thermometer, days when there is no sight of the sun, lashing rains and cold winds, ice, frost, snow, gales and blizzards. The body processes must be maintained against these onslaughts of nature — body temperatures, resistance against infections, a state of well‐being with all systems operating and an ability to “take it”. A sufficient and well balanced diet is vital to all this, most would say, the primarily significant factor. The National Food Surveys do not demonstrate any insufficiency in the national diet in terms of energy values, intake of vitamins, minerals and nutrients, but statistics can be fallacious amd misleading. NFS statistics are no indication of quality of food, its sufficiency for physiological purposes and to meet the economic stresses of the times. The intake of staple foods — bread, milk, butter, meat, &c., — have been slowly declining for years, as their prices rise higher and higher. If the Government had foreseen the massive unemployment problem, it is doubtful if they would have crippled the highly commendable School Meals Service. To have continued this — school milk, school dinners — even with the financial help it would have required would be seen as a “Supplementary Benefit” much better than the uncontrolled cash flow of social security. Child nutrition must be suffering. Stand outside a school at lunch‐time and watch the stream of children trailing along to the “Chippie” for a handfull of chip potatoes; even making a “meal” on an ice lollie.