Search results

The purpose of this article is to examine the purchasing power at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), i.e. of low‐income consumers.

The authors analyze secondary data on income, population, and expenditure at the BOP from different countries, and apply the buying power index (BPI) methodology to assess the purchasing power of low‐income consumers.

In developing countries, more than 50 percent of the purchasing power resides in the BOP segment. Asia is the region with the greatest purchasing power, relative to Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America and Caribbean. On average, the greatest BPI is in the lowest income tier, and consumption concentrates mainly in food, housing, and household goods.

The article provides useful information to companies interested in reaching low‐income consumers about the relative purchasing power at the BOP across geographic regions, income tiers, and product categories (or industries).

The research proposes the BPI as a key indicator of purchasing power at the BOP, and shows how this purchasing power breaks up among geographic regions, income tiers, and product categories (or industries).

The purpose of this article is to examine the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) proposition, where private companies can both be profitable and help alleviate poverty by attending low‐income consumers.

The literature on BOP was reviewed and some key elements of the BOP approach were proposed and examined.

There is no agreement in the literature about the potential benefits of the BOP approach for both private companies and low‐income consumers. However, further research on characterizing the BOP segment and finding the appropriate business model for attending the BOP can provide some answers to this issue.

The article provides some guidelines to managers as to how they need to adapt their marketing strategies to sell to the BOP market, and what type of partnerships they need to build in order to succeed.

The article presents a thorough analysis of the key elements involved in the BOP initiative: companies' motivations, characterization of the BOP consumers, and the business model to attend the BOP.

This paper aims to report on a new form of project insurance in the UK construction designed to improve collaborative working among project participants. It aims to examine the interprofessional collaborative endeavour under the new insurance arrangements, drawing on a structuration model of interdisciplinary collaboration developed in the field of healthcare studies.

The research employed a longitudinal, action research approach with participant observation. A novel element included a project facilitator as part of the action research team. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected using semi-structured interviews with close scrutiny of the documented project record.

Project structure emerges as a more important element in the collaboration process than is typically recognised in practice-based studies; the analysis revealing the interplay of structure, the socialising processes of participants and how facilitation helps develop interdependence among project participants. The analysis provides a basis for understanding collaboration on the trial project.

The project provides a unique context for the examination of collaboration under the new project insurance arrangements. The results have implications for the study of collaboration in highlighting the important relationship between project structure, collaboration and facilitation.

Understanding how interdependency is developed through structure, the socialising processes of collaborators and facilitation has important implications for those concerned with designing project arrangements and managing collaborative processes.

The paper reports on the first full trial of new project insurance arrangements in the UK. It highlights the significance of project structure, and the interplay between collaborators’ emerging practices and facilitation.

The study analyses collaborative practice in offsite manufacturing (OSM) housing supply chains, focusing specifically on supply chains driven by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study’s analysis builds on previous work where we argued that collaboration in OSM housing construction comprises nine elements. In this study, the authors demonstrate empirically that SMEs enact these collaborative practice elements in distinct ways, foregrounding key elements over others. One core model and two sub-models of collaboration emerge from our two case studies.

The study analyses two SME-driven supply chains using qualitative case study techniques. Data were gathered through 12 semi-structured interviews conducted in two housing construction supply chains: one in South Australia, Australia, and another in Tasmania, Australia.

A comparative case study of SMEs shows that collaboration in OSM supply chains has a number of common elements, including a champion for innovation, investment in long-term relationships, resourceful use of limited assets and physical co-location. However, SMEs can also enact these elements through a range of diverging collaborative strategies that can be distilled into different models: stable relationality and dynamic innovation.

Findings provide a compelling empirical basis for arguing that SMEs can successfully lead OSM supply chains if key collaborative practice elements are strategically mobilised in ways that are suited to their strengths and limitations. The study therefore interrogates the widely held and often limiting assumption that OSM can only be driven by large organisations with access to capital assets, capacity to invest and undisputed bargaining power.

The purpose of this paper is to map out and characterize existing health-promotion initiatives at Florida International University (FIU) in the USA in order to inform decision makers involved in the development of a comprehensive and a long-term healthy university strategy.

This study encompasses a narrative literature review on health promotion in higher education institutions and the identification and characterization of the various health-promotion initiatives associated with the subject of healthy universities at FIU. The characterization of health-promoting initiatives relied on the stakeholder analysis approach. Using the information obtained from this study, a map for promoting health initiatives with their location, capacities, leadership, and resources was established.

Most publications on health-promoting universities are limited to partial experiences’ reproduction. Self-financing health-promoting initiatives foster competition and work in silos. Gains of health-promotion interventions require governance, participation, and academic considerations. This study highlights the need for standards and minimum requirements for the mapping and characterization of health-promoting initiatives within institutions of higher education. The health-promotion strategy should fall within the university’s social responsibility policy.

This study helps identify organizational strengths and weaknesses and can inform decision makers seeking to establish policies and strategies as well as defining priorities and courses of action for healthy universities.

The indexing techniques most commonly applied in information retrieval systems associate weights to the terms of documents; this association is carried out in order to quantify the term’s capacity for representing the document. Subsequently, these weights are used in query processing, playing an important role in the performance of the system. This work presents a method for the adjustment of index weights by processing text that has been highlighted by users. Text in a document is highlighted using an application which provides annotation facilities in order to support active reading. Highlighted text is supposed to be of special relevance and the method tries to improve the index weights of terms located in these highlighted fragments.

Entrepreneurial intention is regarded as a useful and practical approach to understanding actual entrepreneurial behavior. Planned behavior has been widely applied to examine entrepreneurial intention. Nevertheless, how risk aversion affects entrepreneurial intention using the model of planned behavior is not well understood. The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated model based on planned behavior to examine the direct and indirect effect of risk aversion on entrepreneurial intention concurrently.

The paper first uses factor analysis to study the latent constructs underlying determinants of planned behavior, risk aversion, and entrepreneurial intention. Then, it applies the technique of structural equation modeling to explore relationships among latent constructs. There are 306 survey responses collected from dental school students to run the analysis.

The determinants of planned behavior are positively associated with entrepreneurial intention. There is no direct relationship between risk aversion and entrepreneurial intention. Risk aversion only indirectly reduces entrepreneurial intention through determinants of planned behavior.

The results of the integrated model may be constrained by the sample context of dental students. Replicating the model by using other samples with various educational backgrounds can strengthen the implication of the study. Another limitation is the weakness of the cross-sectional study design, leaving room for improvement by using longitudinal data in the future.

Risk aversion only indirectly reduces entrepreneurial intention. To establish an environment with a strong entrepreneurial intention, a focus on developing a positive attitude and strengthening entrepreneurial skills are perhaps more fruitful than lowering risk aversion. This study also suggests that non-business students may need additional business education to improve the perception of self-efficacy.

The integrated model of this paper is original. The development of the model draws support from planned behavior adjusted to the context of starting a business.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the significance of “contextual factors” on the talent development of underserved populations. Understanding the “context” and background of an individual provides greater insight into their life experiences (Paik, 2013). Race, class and gender, in particular, play a role in one’s life, providing both barriers and opportunities.

To examine contextual and other factors, in-depth biographical case studies were systematically studied across 10 diverse notable artists and scientists. Over 85 autobiographies, biographies and other sources were carefully content-analyzed for commonalities and differences in artists’ and scientists’ lives.

Because of their ascribed statuses (e.g. race, class, gender), these individuals had to navigate their unique school and life circumstances. Within their sociocultural contexts, however, key relationships (e.g. parents, teachers, mentors and peers) helped mitigate the challenges. All artists and scientists had a “village” – key stakeholders who invested in them at every stage of their talent development.

Parents, teachers, mentors and peers are not only critical, but they are lifelines for talent development. Key implications discuss the role of contextual factors and support networks for aspiring diverse artists and scientists.

The theoretical framework for this study is based on the productive giftedness model (PGM) (Paik, 2013, 2015). PGM includes 10 key psychosocial and environmental factors and how they influence “productive giftedness” (e.g. achievements, accomplishments, leadership). Within the model, both “alterable” and “contextual factors” provide access to different opportunities, support and resources. The model is considered generalizable and applicable for diverse populations.

Social annotation (SA) is a genre of learning technology that enables the annotation of digital resources for information sharing, social interaction and knowledge production. This study aims to examine the perceived value of SA as contributing to learning in multiple undergraduate courses.

In total, 59 students in 3 upper-level undergraduate courses at a Canadian university participated in SA-enabled learning activities during the winter 2019 semester. A survey was administered to measure how SA contributed to students’ perceptions of learning and sense of community.

A majority of students reported that SA supported their learning despite differences in course subject, how SA was incorporated and encouraged and how widely SA was used during course activities. While findings of the perceived value of SA as contributing to the course community were mixed, students reported that peer annotations aided comprehension of course content, confirmation of ideas and engagement with diverse perspectives.

Studies about the relationships among SA, learning and student perception should continue to engage learners from multiple courses and from multiple disciplines, with indicators of perception measured using reliable instrumentation.

Researchers and faculty should carefully consider how the technical, instructional and social aspects of SA may be used to enable course-specific, personal and peer-supported learning.

This study found a greater variance in how undergraduate students perceived SA as contributing to the course community. Most students also perceived their own and peer annotations as productively contributing to learning. This study offers a more complete view of social factors that affect how SA is perceived by undergraduate students.

For Colombia, cocaine is a product that is sold for profit in the United States. Mainstream political economy, let alone the other social sciences, has little to say about the process of extraction of surplus value in the production and distribution of cocaine, in other words, how cocaine is exploited for profit. The paper argues that the conventional framework, which locates profits generated from the cocaine trade in an economic model of crime shields a much deeper reality than simply ‘money laundering’ as a ‘legal problem.’ The central argument is that the cocaine trade in general, and the cocaine economy in particular, are a vital aspect of U.S. imperialism in the Colombian economic system. The paper tackles a critical problem: the place of cocaine in the re-colonization of Colombia – defined as ‘narcocolonialism’ – and the implications of the cocaine trade generally for U.S. imperialism in this context. The paper evaluates selected literature on the Colombian cocaine trade and offers an alternative framework underpinned by a political economy analysis drawn from Marx and Lenin showing that cocaine functions as an ‘imperial commodity’ – a commodity for which there exists a lucrative market and profit-making opportunity. It is also a means of capital accumulation by what could be termed, Colombia's comprador ‘narcobourgeoisie;’ dependent on U.S. imperialism. It is hoped that by analyzing cocaine with a Marxist interpretation and political economy approach, then future developments in understanding drugs in Colombia's complex political economy may be anticipated.