Search results

Sarcasm is often used in everyday speech and writing and is prevalent in online contexts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the analogy between sarcasm comments from sentiment tools and the human coder.

Using the Verbal Irony Procedure, eight human coders were engaged to analyse comments collected from an online commercial page, and a dissimilarity analysis was conducted with sentiment tools. Three constants were tested, namely, polarity from sentiment tools, polarity rating by human coders; and sarcasm-level ratings by human coders.

Results found an inconsistent ratio between these three constants. Sentiment tools used did not have the capability or reliability to detect the subtle, contextualized meanings of sarcasm statements that human coders could detect. Further research is required to refine the sentiment tools to enhance their sensitivity and capability.

With these findings, it is recommended that further research and commercialization efforts be directed at improving current sentiment tools – for example, to incorporate sophisticated human sarcasm texts in their analytical systems. Sarcasm exists frequently in media, politics and human forms of communications in society. Therefore, more highly sophisticated sentiment tools with the abilities to detect human sarcasm would be vital in research and industry.

The findings suggest that presently, of the sentiment tools investigated, most are still unable to pick up subtle contexts within the text which can reverse or change the message that the writer intends to send to his/her receiver. Hence, the use of the relevant hashtags (e.g. #sarcasm; #irony) are of fundamental importance in detection tools. This would aid the evaluation of product reviews online for commercial usage.

The value of this study lies in its original, empirical findings on the inconsistencies between sentiment tools and human coders in sarcasm detection. The current study proves these inconsistencies are detected between human and sentiment tools in social media texts and points to the inadequacies of current sentiment tools. With these findings, it is recommended that further research and commercialization efforts be directed at improving current sentiment tools – to incorporate sophisticated human sarcasm texts in their analytical systems. The system can then be used as a reference for psychologists, media analysts, researchers and speech writers to detect cues in the inconsistencies in behaviour and language.

The purpose of this paper is to expand current knowledge about the recent trend of wearable technology to assess both its potential in the work environment and the challenges concerning the utilisation of wearables in the workplace.

After establishing exclusion and inclusion criteria, an independent systematic search of the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect and Web of Science databases for relevant studies was performed. Out of a total of 359 articles, 34 met the selection criteria.

This review identifies 23 categories of wearable devices. Further categorisation of the devices based on their utilisation shows they can be used in the work environment for activities including monitoring, augmenting, assisting, delivering and tracking. The review reveals that wearable technology has the potential to increase work efficiency among employees, improve workers’ physical well-being and reduce work-related injuries. However, the review also reveals that technological, social, policy and economic challenges related to the use of wearable devices remain.

Many studies have investigated the benefits of wearable devices for personal use, but information about the use of wearables in the work environment is limited. Further research is required in the fields of technology, social challenges, organisation strategies, policies and economics to enhance the adoption rate of wearable devices in work environments.

Previous studies indicate that occupational stress and injuries are detrimental to employees’ health; this paper analyses the use of wearable devices as an intervention method to monitor or prevent these problems. Introducing a categorisation framework during implementation may help identify which types of device categories are suitable and could be beneficial for specific utilisation purposes, facilitating the adoption of wearable devices in the workplace.

Health plays a crucial role in the daily lives and supporting health is the important role of medicine. With the availability of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM), the demands and willingness to pay among users are increasing. Hence, this study aims to determine the psychological factors influencing the willingness to pay for TCAM among Malaysian adults.

In total, 300 completed self-administered questionnaires were collected from Malaysian adults using a purposive sampling method through intercepts at public health-care facilities. A structural equation modelling approach using partial least square was used to test the hypotheses.

The findings show that attitude, subjective norms, perceived price and knowledge have a significant impact on willingness to pay for TCAM. Surprisingly, there was no relationship found between perceived behavioural control and health consciousness on willingness to pay for TCAM.

The findings of this study are expected to provide better insights into TCAM use among Malaysian adults. The results are also important to encourage health-care institutions and practitioners to educate the general public on the safety of TCAM to ensure more health benefits to the users.

This paper aims to examine the institutional and social determinants, and consequences of social entrepreneurship with respect to China's rural enterprises. It also attempts to provide a conceptual framework concerning how rural Chinese enterprises act as social entrepreneurial institutions and contribute to both business development and social welfare of local communities.

The conceptual framework is developed through a critical review of literature and an integration of multiple disciplinary studies, with a focus on the perspectives of institutional governance, managerial networks, and market orientation.

The study identifies three framework layers for the development of China's rural enterprises, which are fundamentally driven by market preserving authoritarianism, local state corporatism, community culture, social entrepreneurship and market orientation.

The proposed framework can help contribute to the theoretical development of strategic issues of social entrepreneurship in transitional economies. It may also provide insights about local state governance, ownership structures and market competition in China.

As China's rural enterprises are widely regarded as a phenomenon related to the core nature of a “socialist market economy”, an ideology embraced since the beginning of Chinese social‐economic reforms, a study of institutional and entrepreneurial nature of this kind serves as a stepping stone for understanding the emerging phenomenon of the country's social entrepreneurship, which is characterized by open market mechanisms and socialist legacies.

This study aims to investigate the role of psychological factor affecting Malaysian consumers’ purchase intention towards green residential buildings and to examine whether the purchase intention affects their willingness to pay for such buildings.

In general, a total of 304 respondents participated in the survey of this study and they are from three states in Malaysia, namely, Penang, Selangor and Johor. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) analyses were performed on the latent variables.

This study concludes that the main factors influencing consumer purchase intention towards green residential buildings include the attitude towards green residential buildings, the perceived moral obligation, the environmental concern, the perceived value, the perceived self-identity and the financial risk. These do not include subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, performance risk and psychological risk. Subsequently, the purchase intention was found to be an essential predictor of consumers’ willingness to pay for a green home in a green residential building.

Psychological factors are noteworthy determinants in assessing consumer purchase intention toward green residential building in Malaysia.

Going green has become prevalent among Malaysian households, and it should be embraced for promoting green living such as purchasing a green home. This study is expected to provide insights to property developers in designing their marketing and promotion strategies. As for the government sector, the findings are important in view of the recent government blueprint focused on building a sustainable city in near future.

Dans l'économie générale comme dans le tourisme, les phénomènes de consonimation ont été relégués, pendant longtemps, au deuxième ou troisième rang des préoccupations des chercheurs. Ce délaissement s'explique historiquement par l'essor spectaculaire qu'a pris la production industrielle au cours des 19e et 20e siècles ainsi que par l'attention qu'a toujours évoquée, dans la pensée économique, le röle des échanges. Dès lors, la première approche scientifique du tourisme s'est logiquement opérée au travers de la balance des paiements. En effet, des mercantilistes britanniques, tels que Thomas Mun, relevaient déjà l'influence favorable des dépenses faites par les voyageurs étrangers, cet apport d'or et de monnaies qui échappait à l'observation des officiers de douane de Sa Majesté britannique grâce à son caractère «invisible». Une nouvelle impulsion à la découverte du tourisme est née de la révolution des transports et notamment par la construction des chemins de fer au 19e siécle. Le déplacement étant un élément constitutif du phénoméne touristique — dont il marque le début et la fin — les avantages immenses du chemin de fer sur la diligence venaient nécessairement bouleverser et généraliser la pratique des voyages d'agrément. Inversement, ces derniers venaient grossir le trafic‐voyageurs du rail. Il n'est done pas étonnant que dans une série de pays les chemins de fer aient été les premiers à inaugurer, par leurs agences à l'étranger, une action systématique de publicité touristique.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences/similarities in business practices of second‐generation South Asian entrepreneurs within family‐owned firms, in comparison to their second‐generation counterparts managing and running their own business.

The paper draws its theoretical underpinning via a number of concepts relevant to the South Asian business experience. To understand this, investigation was conducted within a phenomenological paradigm. In total, 48 semi‐structured interviews were carried out with three South Asian groups. Namely, first‐ and second‐ generation Sikh, Hindu and Pakistani Muslim entrepreneurs from both family and non‐family owned micro‐small businesses situated within the Greater London area. In addition, nine businesses from all three ethnic groups were selected to complete the multiple (comparative) case‐study stage of the research.

Similarities and differences between second‐generation entrepreneurs within family and non‐family businesses (NFBs) are evident. For instance, a majority of the respondents (from family and non‐family businesses) considered entrepreneurship as something to embrace, and not as a means of economic survival. A minority of the respondents within FBs were pushed into entrepreneurship, as such, this has had an impact on the father‐son relationship in a negative way. Second‐generation respondents from FBs, in comparison to their counterparts within NFBs, were more likely to have decision‐making pertaining to the business impeded by the father. Furthermore, respondents from FBs were moving back into the said business, whereas, respondents from NFBs were developing businesses more akin to their prior employment experience.

The paper offers insights into the behaviour and business practices of second‐generation South Asian entrepreneurs from family and non‐family, so adding a further dimension to our understanding of this particular group.

The paper will be of value to policy makers, practitioners and researchers alike, is it sheds light on motives, prior experience and class resources the second‐generation bring to entrepreneurship.

The paper provides an overview of research published in the innovation and operations management (IOM) literature on 15 methods for cost management in new product development, and it provides a comparison to an earlier review of the management accounting (MA) literature (Wouters & Morales, 2014).

This structured literature search covers papers published in 23 journals in IOM in the period 1990–2014.

The search yielded a sample of 208 unique papers with 275 results (one paper could refer to multiple cost management methods). The top 3 methods are modular design, component commonality, and product platforms, with 115 results (42%) together. In the MA literature, these three methods accounted for 29%, but target costing was the most researched cost management method by far (26%). Simulation is the most frequently used research method in the IOM literature, whereas this was averagely used in the MA literature; qualitative studies were the most frequently used research method in the MA literature, whereas this was averagely used in the IOM literature. We found a lot of papers presenting practical approaches or decision models as a further development of a particular cost management method, which is a clear difference from the MA literature.

This review focused on the same cost management methods, and future research could also consider other cost management methods which are likely to be more important in the IOM literature compared to the MA literature. Future research could also investigate innovative cost management practices in more detail through longitudinal case studies.

This review of research on methods for cost management published outside the MA literature provides an overview for MA researchers. It highlights key differences between both literatures in their research of the same cost management methods.