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1 – 10 of 31Fee Hilbert, Julia Barth, Julia Gremm, Daniel Gros, Jessica Haiter, Maria Henkel, Wilhelm Reinhardt and Wolfgang G. Stock
The purpose of this paper is to show how the coverage of publications is represented in information services. Academic citation databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show how the coverage of publications is represented in information services. Academic citation databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar) and scientific social media (Mendeley, CiteULike, BibSonomy) were analyzed by applying a new method: the use of personal publication lists of scientists.
Design/methodology/approach
Personal publication lists of scientists of the field of information science were analyzed. All data were taken in collaboration with the scientists in order to guarantee complete publication lists.
Findings
The demonstrated calibration parameter shows the coverage of information services in the field of information science. None of the investigated databases reached a coverage of 100 percent. However Google Scholar covers a greater amount of publications than other academic citation databases and scientific social media.
Research limitations/implications
Results were limited to the publications of scientists working at an information science department from 2003 to 2012 at German-speaking universities.
Practical implications
Scientists of the field of information science are encouraged to review their publication strategy in case of quality and quantity.
Originality/value
The paper confirms the usefulness of personal publication lists as a calibration parameter for measuring coverage of information services.
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Lilian Julia Trechsel, Clara Léonie Diebold, Anne Barbara Zimmermann and Manuel Fischer
This study aims to explore how the boundary between science and society can be addressed to support the transformation of higher education towards sustainable development (HESD…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how the boundary between science and society can be addressed to support the transformation of higher education towards sustainable development (HESD) in the sense of the whole institution approach. It analyses students’ learning experiences in self-led sustainability projects conducted outside formal curricula to highlight their potential contribution to HESD. The students’ projects are conceived as learning spaces in “sustainability-oriented ecologies of learning” (Wals, 2020) in which five learning dimensions can be examined.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an iterative, grounded-theory-inspired qualitative approach and sensitising concepts, 13 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted exploring students’ learning experiences. Interviews were categorised in MAXQDA and analysed against a literature review.
Findings
Results revealed that students’ experiences of non-formal learning in self-led projects triggered deep learning and change agency. Trust, social cohesion, empowerment and self-efficacy were both results and conditions of learning. Students’ learnings are classified according to higher education institutions’ (HEIs) sustainability agendas, providing systematised insights for HEIs regarding their accommodative, reformative or transformative (Sterling, 2021) path to sustainable development.
Originality/value
The education for sustainable development (ESD) debate focuses mainly on ESD competences in formal settings. Few studies explore students’ learnings where formal and non-formal learning meet. This article investigates a space where students interact with different actors from society while remaining rooted in their HEIs. When acting as “change agents” in this hybrid context, students can also become “boundary agents” helping their HEIs move the sustainability agenda forward towards a whole institution approach. Learning from students’ learnings is thus proposed as a lever for transformation.
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Daniel A. Wren, Regina A. Greenwood, Julia Teahen and Arthur G. Bedeian
This paper aims to highlight myriad accomplishments of C. Bertrand Thompson, who is perhaps most well known as a scientific-management bibliographer and a Taylor disciple, in the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to highlight myriad accomplishments of C. Bertrand Thompson, who is perhaps most well known as a scientific-management bibliographer and a Taylor disciple, in the belief that his contributions as a pioneer management theorist and consultant in Europe deserve to be more widely known and more deeply appreciated.
Design/methodology/approach
Archival, primary and secondary sources were used in the research.
Findings
Thompson was among the first to bring management consulting to Europe. He understood the importance of adapting scientific-management principles to meet the diverse needs of each client for whom he consulted. Thompson’s strong belief and value system remained constant throughout his life.
Practical implications
Understanding the needs of customers or clients and adapting systems to meet those needs is essential in achieving success as a consultant.
Originality/value
By drawing on rarely accessed published and unpublished materials, this paper discusses Thompson’s many contributions to management thought and practice, most of which previously have not been highlighted in the referent literature.
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Holger Lengfeld and Clemens Ohlert
Up to date, it remains an unresolved issue how firms shape inequality in interaction with mechanisms of stratification at the individual and occupational-level. Accordingly, the…
Abstract
Purpose
Up to date, it remains an unresolved issue how firms shape inequality in interaction with mechanisms of stratification at the individual and occupational-level. Accordingly, the authors ask whether workers of different occupational classes are affected to different degrees by between-firm wage inequality. In light of the recent rise of overall wage inequality, answers to this question can contribute to a better understanding of the role firms play in this development. The authors argue and empirically test that whether workers are able to benefit from firms’ internal or external strategies for flexibility depends on resources available at the individual and occupational level. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Matched employer-employee data from official German labour market statistics are used to estimate firm-specific wage components, which are then regressed on structural characteristics of firms.
Findings
Between-firm wage effects of internal labour markets are largest among unskilled workers and strongly pronounced among qualified manual workers. Effects are clearly smaller among classes of qualified and high-qualified non-manual workers but have risen sharply for the latter class from 2005 to 2010.
Social implications
The most disadvantaged workers in the labour market are also most contingent upon employers’ increasingly heterogeneous policies of recruitment and remuneration.
Originality/value
This paper combines insights from sociological and economic labour market research in order to formulate and test the new hypothesis that between-firm wage effects of internal labour markets are larger for unskilled than for qualified workers.
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Julia Kasch, Margien Bootsma, Veronique Schutjens, Frans van Dam, Arjan Kirkels, Frans Prins and Karin Rebel
In this opinion article, the authors share their experiences with and perspectives on course design requirements and barriers when applying challenge-based learning (CBL) in an…
Abstract
In this opinion article, the authors share their experiences with and perspectives on course design requirements and barriers when applying challenge-based learning (CBL) in an online sustainability education setting. CBL is an established learning approach for (higher) sustainability education. It enables teachers to engage students with open, real-life grand challenges through inter-/transdisciplinary student team collaboration. However, empirical research is scarce and mainly based on face-to-face CBL case studies. Thus far, the opportunities to apply CBL in online educational settings are also underinvestigated.
Using the TPACK framework, the authors address technological, pedagogical and content knowledge related to CBL and online sustainability education. The integration of the different components is discussed, providing teachers and course designers insight into design requirements and barriers.
This paper supports the promising future of online CBL for sustainability education, especially in the context of inter-/national inter-university collaboration, yet emphasizes the need for deliberate use of online collaboration and teaching tools.
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Julia Y. Davidyan and Tammy R. Waymire
The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between conformity with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) indicated by Governmental Accounting Standards…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between conformity with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) indicated by Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) 34 presentation and pension underfunding in Illinois.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a fixed effects regression and employed a sample of Illinois municipalities (n=2,565 municipal-year observations) over the period 2009–2014.
Findings
The findings show that GAAP is inversely associated with pension underfunding, but only among the subsample of municipalities that are within the healthy pension funding range, i.e., above 80 percent funded. These municipalities may be in a better position to increase pension funding in response to the disciplining effect of broad GAAP conformity.
Research limitations/implications
The paper focuses solely on one state and one multi-employer plan. Future studies should consider assessing the applicability of the results to other states and plan settings.
Social implications
The results inform the standard-setting process, particularly as the implementation of the new GASB standards is evaluated and as GASB 34 is reexamined.
Originality/value
Despite concerns associated with state and local pension underfunding, academic studies examining its determinants are few. The sample setting is representative of municipal pension plans in the USA (with a comparable average pension funding ratio of 74.2 percent) and provides variability in GAAP conformity (the state encourages, but does not require, financial statement presentation consistent with GASB 34), as well as homogeneity in actuarial assumptions across observations (all sample municipalities participate in a large multi-employer municipal pension plan). The sample period immediately precedes the implementation of GASB Statements Nos 67 and 68, which increase the scope of pension reporting, providing the opportunity to consider the effects of broad GAAP conformity and a baseline for subsequent consideration of the effects of the new standards.
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Personnel managers are concerned with making effective use of people. Job satisfaction is thus an issue of fundamental importance in personnel management. Interest in job…
Abstract
Personnel managers are concerned with making effective use of people. Job satisfaction is thus an issue of fundamental importance in personnel management. Interest in job satisfaction has been maintained largely because of the costs which dissatisfaction entails. Job dissatisfaction has been linked with labour turnover, absenteeism, poor performance and productivity, and low morale. Many of these areas are ones which personnel managers have been able to cost. Job dissatisfaction has also been linked to industrial phenomena such as strikes, grievances, industrial accidents and sabotage.
This article compares the use of deep packet inspection (DPI) technology to the use of cookies for online behavioral advertising (OBA), in the form of two competing paradigms. It…
Abstract
Purpose
This article compares the use of deep packet inspection (DPI) technology to the use of cookies for online behavioral advertising (OBA), in the form of two competing paradigms. It seeks to explain why DPI was eliminated as a viable option due to political and regulatory reactions whereas cookies technology was not, even though it raises some of the same privacy issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The paradigms draw from two-sided market theory to conceptualize OBA. Empirical case studies, NebuAd's DPI platform and Facebook's Beacon program, substantiate the paradigms with insights into the controversies on behavioral tracking between 2006 and 2009 in the USA. The case studies are based on document analyses and interviews.
Findings
Comparing the two cases from a technological, economic, and institutional perspective, the article argues that both paradigms were equally privacy intrusive. Thus, it rejects the generally held view that privacy issues can explain the outcome of the battle. Politics and regulatory legacy tilted the playing field towards the cookies paradigm, impeding a competing technology.
Originality/value
Shifting the narrative away from privacy to competing tracking paradigms and their specific actors sheds light on the political and the regulatory rationales that were not considered in previous research on OBA. Particularly, setting forth institutional aspects on OBA – and DPI in general – the case studies provide much needed empirical analysis to reassess tracking technologies and policy outcomes.
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Le Luo and Qingliang Tang
This paper aims to investigate the impact of the proposed carbon tax on the financial market return of Australian firms. It also considers the differential tax effect on…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the impact of the proposed carbon tax on the financial market return of Australian firms. It also considers the differential tax effect on individual firms with different carbon profiles, including factors such as emissions costs, carbon disclosure and climate-change policies.
Design/methodology/approach
Utilising the event-study method, the authors examine the market reaction to seven key carbon legislative information events that occurred from February 2011 to November 2011. The sample includes 48 different firms whose emissions-related data are available from Carbon Disclosure Project reports; thus, 336 firm-event observations are used for the cross-sectional analysis.
Findings
The paper documents evidence that the proposed tax has an overall negative impact on shareholder wealth as measured by abnormal returns. The negative impact varies across sectors, with the most significant effect found in the materials, industrial and financial sectors. It was also found that a firm’s direct carbon exposure (as measured by Scope 1 emissions) is significantly associated with abnormal returns, whereas the indirect exposure (as measured by Scope 2 emissions) is not, because Scope 2 emissions are not covered by the tax. In addition, the findings suggest that the information content of the events is more notable during the early stages of the development of the carbon tax.
Research limitations/implications
The sample is restricted to the largest firms with relevant carbon profile information. Thus, caution should be exercised when generalising the inferences.
Practical implications
The introduction of the carbon tax was largely unexpected and most firms were unprepared for it; thus, their carbon policy appears inadequate and does not impress investors. An understanding of how the carbon tax affects shareholder value and welfare will encourage management to take proactive actions to mitigate the compliance costs of carbon legislation.
Originality/value
The enactment of the Australian carbon tax perhaps represents one of the biggest social and economic restructuring events in the country’s history. Our results offer initial insight into its impact and suggest that investors would penalise firms with heavy direct operational emissions. In addition, Australian corporate carbon policy seems inadequate, so does not reverse the negative effect of the tax on the value of a firm.
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This paper aims to compare biographical content for literary authors writing in English among Biography Reference Bank, Contemporary Authors Online, Wikipedia, and the web.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to compare biographical content for literary authors writing in English among Biography Reference Bank, Contemporary Authors Online, Wikipedia, and the web.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 500 names was gathered from curricula and textbooks used in English courses and searched in the Contemporary Authors Online portion of Literature Resource Center, Biography Reference Bank, Wikipedia, and the web; the results and content were compared.
Findings
Each source has core content plus its own unique offerings and specific challenges, as evidenced in searching, evaluative techniques such as authority and currency, and content.
Research limitations/implications
This study can only offer a small part of the picture of what information resides where and a single snapshot in time.
Practical implications
This study will help librarians decide whether to subscribe to a biographical database. It also reinforces the need for evidence‐based practice in librarianship.
Originality/value
While the study is only a small part of the picture, it still makes use of a significant sample size to validate/refute assumptions about the availability of biographical information and the sources studied.
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