Search results

Speculative hypotheses relating to firm performance and company objective differences between first and multi‐generation family firms were tested. Bivariate differences were found to be spurious. Results from multivariate multiple regression and logistic regression analyses suggest that the performance of first and multi‐generation firms do not significantly differ in terms of employment growth, the propensity of a firm to be an exporter, and the intensity of internationalization activity. In addition, it was confirmed that the profitability of a family firm was not significantly influenced by its generation stage. It was, however, confirmed that multi‐generation firms were significantly more likely to report a prime company objective is “to enhance the reputation and status of the business in the local community”. In contrast, first generation firms were significantly more likely to report “family objectives have priority over business objectives”. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

Multi-generation cohousing projects are loaded with the expectations of inhabitants and planners, as well as political representatives. They are expected to foster a form of neighborly assistance, which is supposed to ultimately unburden social security. But evidence is scarce when it comes to central aspects like long-term development, the influence of context factors, the quality of community living, and the neighborly assistance actually provided. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Hence, this explorative study sought to specify the support activities that neighbors in one cohousing project carried out. A survey was conducted in three survey intervals, with questionnaires structured according to the ”Activities” chapter of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (WHO 2002).

Respondents reported receiving or providing assistance in all suggested areas of life, but some activities were more common than others. Respondents with long-term support requirements were not assisted by neighbors but by other caregivers. The results indicate that neighborliness depends on the individual activity radius since the scope of assistance varied along with socio-demographic characteristics. Respondents deemed reciprocity important to guarantee the voluntary nature of neighborly support and also to allow care recipients to specify how support should be given.

The author therefore suggests considering multi-generation cohousing projects as a means to foster Quality of Life rather than to cut costs.

Findings from this study with a focus on multi-generation cohousing with the legal status of cooperatives and implications for spatial planning were previously published in: Kuhnke, Y. (2015), “Nachbarschaftliche Hilfen. Hohe Erwartungen an Mehrgenerationenwohnprojekte in der Rechtsform der Genossenschaften” (Neighborly Assistance. High Expectations of Multi-generation Cohousing Projects under the Legal Form of Registered Cooperatives), RaumPlanung, Vol. 179 No. 3, pp. 20-6.

Feature fatigue (FF) will lead to negative Word-Of-Mouth (WOM), which damages the brand’s long-term profit and ultimately decreases the manufacturer’s customer equity (CE). It becomes severer in multi-generation products because of the significant impacts of earlier generation products on the CE of later ones. The purpose of this paper is to alleviate FF, it is imperative for designers to decide what features should be integrated to balance initial revenue and long-term profit so as to maximize CE.

In this paper, a novel method based on the Norton-Bass model is proposed to alleviate FF of multi-generation products to help designers find optimal feature combination that maximizes CE. The authors take the effects of adding features on product capability and usability into account, and integrate product capability, usability, WOM and earlier-generation product’s effects into the Norton-Bass model to predict the impacts of FF on CE in current product development. A case study of a virtual product is presented to illustrate and validate the proposed method.

The advantage of the proposed method is highlighted in the cases of large feature number, high-product complexity (low-product usability) and multi-generation products. The experiments show that the earlier generations do affect the later ones from the perspective of maximizing CE. The superiority of the proposed method compared with the traditional way to put all potential features into a product during the product development is demonstrated. And the more features, the larger CE obtained using the proposed model than the one obtained by traditional way.

Although, there are reports attempting to analyze and alleviate FF, most of these studies still suffer the limitations that cannot point out what features should be added to the product with the objective of maximizing CE. In addition, few studies have been carried out to alleviate FF of multi-generation products. A novel method based on the Norton-Bass model and a genetic algorithm is proposed to alleviate FF of multi-generation products to help designers find optimal feature combination that maximizes CE.

Improved nuclear reactor configurations that address major concerns of environmentalists and safety analysts are discussed. In addition to social acceptance, these new modes of power generation have economic potential to become the dominant producers of energy in the twenty‐first century. The class of power generation with this promise is the high temperature gas reactor (HTGR); the variant we focus on is the pebble‐bed modular reactor (PBMR). We also focus on using nuclear power as an energy source for desalinating seawater. Finally, the case is made that HTGR reactors are ideal for supplying the high‐temperature heat needed for manufacturing molecular hydrogen, a leading candidate for clean fuel consumption. These three themes are developed in a broad context with the objective of recommending policy actions dealing with global warming, public health, and economic opportunity.

This paper presents a three-generation migrant analysis, comparing the relative economic performance of various migrant generations to the native population. We develop a theoretical model to explain the relationship between the different earnings of the migrants over three generations and relate the model to the results in the literature. The empirical analysis explores the suitability of the theoretical implications based on data from the 1995 Israeli Census. We show that assimilation of the third generation into the local population is far from clear.

Explores the limited value of concepts such as Baby-Boomer, Generation X (Gen X) and Generation Y (Gen Y) and advances the view that life course is more valuable.

Examines how young adults in Britain, born between 1975 and 1982, conceptualized the notion of work-life balance as they were about to leave university and enter full-time paid employment.

Reveals that the notion of individual choice strongly underpins young adults’ conceptualization of work-life balance and expectations of work-life balance support; while young British and Asian adults largely considered it to be a matter of individual choice, there were variations in their preferences for how to prioritize their impending employment and personal lives; and four emerging patterns of work-life balance orientation preferences were found – balancer, careerist, career-sacrificer and integrator.

Provides support for the argument that the work-life balance perceptions of young adults who would belong to the so-called Gen Y cannot be generalized and simplified as being either work-centric or life-centric. The picture is a lot more complex given the diversity within this group of young adults.

Highlights how, instead of looking for generational differences (or age-related differences) which can be divisive, it is more useful to look at the issue of multi-generations in a broader way.

By using a life-course approach instead of a generational approach, is able to take into account how past transitions have shaped the way work-life balance was discussed by the young adults and how anticipated future transitions were expected by the young adults to change their needs and therefore expectations of employer and government support.

The effect of customers’ forward-looking behavior on firms’ profit has been highlighted by many researchers and practitioners. This study aims to develop a mathematical model for new generation products to analyze the optimal pricing and advertising policies in the presence of homogeneous forward-looking customers. A firm that produces and sells a new generation product was considered. This firm aimed to determine the optimal pricing and advertising expenditure by maximizing the total profit.

The demand was presented as a diffusion model inspired by the Bass diffusion model. This paper used Pontryagin’s maximum principle to analyze the proposed model. The presented model was implemented in some numerical examples by proposing a heuristic solution method. Numerical examples confirmed the theoretical results.

This paper found a threshold on the optimal advertising policy depends on customers’ forward-looking behavior, advertising coefficient (both direct and word-of-mouth advertising) and discount rate. The funding showed that the optimal pricing path of the first generation was monotonically decreasing or increasing and, then, decreasing. Results revealed that, by increasing the customers’ forward-looking behavior, the firm should reduce the price and advertising expenditure. Also, the price was shown to be negatively affected by the discount rate and word-of-mouth advertising. The profitability will improve if the firm spends more budget on advertising by increasing the discount rate and advertising effectiveness. Further, when the word-of-mouth advertising effect is high, the firm should increase the advertising expenditure first and, then, decrease it.

Nowadays, forward-looking customers’ anticipation for releasing a new generation can harm the firms’ profit. In this regard, this research analyzed optimal pricing and advertising policies for a new generation product in a market populated by homogeneous forward-looking customers. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study that investigated these two marketing policies jointly in the presence of forward-looking customers.

Employee engagement studies are popular in contemporary research because of the complexity organizations face in nurturing the performance and productivity of multi-generations of workers. The purpose of this paper is to assess association of age and dimensions of work engagement.

In total, 181 participants completed the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) to measure work engagement including the dimensions of absorption, vigor and dedication as well as demographics. One-way ANOVA and post hoc tests were conducted to examine the relationship between age and work engagement.

Employees 50 years of age and older were found to have statistically significant higher work engagement scores than the employees under the age of 50. Statistically significant scores were also found to be higher in absorption and dedication.

The workforce is aging with older employees becoming larger populations in organizations. Understanding how age influences employee work engagement supports human capital management strategy within organizations. HR professionals can also use the findings to develop targeted employee engagement to leverage the dedication and talents of older employees.

The learning outcomes of this case will help the participants to assess values, motivations and interpersonal relations that exist and evolve in a family firm; analyze individual-level strategies in absence of business growth strategy and succession plan; expose trade-offs associated with natural inheritance or merit-based succession; reveal alternate strategies of coping with conflicts in multi-generation multi-family firms.

This case focuses on leadership, succession and conflicts at Dalal Group, a 50 years old textile yarn trading family-run business. The trading business has 10 members across three generations working in it. The business is making profits but the growth of the business is not synchronous to the number of family members working in it. As revenues are stable and buyers’ network is not growing, an internal tussle has begun among the members to preserve business resources available to them. The founder, who is also the Managing Director of the Group, is about to retire in a couple of years but there is no clear successor to his position. In the absence of a business growth plan and uncertainty about the next leader, members are clueless about their own future and that is affecting their interpersonal relations at work. This has triggered the need for decision and action by the founder, failing which the business might disintegrate. The case author has used personal interview methods and secondary sources like annual reports and manuals of the company to collect data and information.

Senior Undergraduates, MBA (Entrepreneurship and Family Business), MBA.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

This paper aims to study the corporate heritage brand traits and corporate heritage brand identity by concentrating on developing key dimensions for the corporate heritage brand dimensions in the retailing industry in the UK. This study advances the corporate brand heritage theory and introduces the theory of corporate heritage brand identity, which is developed from the case study of John Lewis – one of the most respected and oldest retails in the UK established in 1864.

This empirical study has adopted a theory-building case study using qualitative data. It uses semi-structured interviews that were organised and managed by John Lewis Heritage Centre in Cookham. A total of 14 participants were involved in this study. We have used Nvivo.11 software to set the main themes and codes for this study framework.

This study identifies Balmer’s (2013) corporate heritage brand traits that are essential to be considered for the corporate heritage brands in the retailing industry to sustain their innovativeness and competitiveness. The findings of the case study informed the four dimensions of corporate heritage brand identity, which include price, quality, symbol and design. The findings are incorporated into a theoretical framework of corporate heritage brand identity traits.

The discussed traits of this study can help brand senior management to enhance their corporate heritage reputation and sustainability through maintaining these (four) traits over their brand, and inform their brand stakeholders about their brand heritage success.

This is one of the few attempts to develop a research framework of corporate heritage brand identity. This framework suggests four dimensions of corporate heritage brand identity traits including brand price, quality, design and symbol. This is one of the first attempts to study corporate heritage branding management traits in the retailing industry sector.