Search results

This study uses social capital theory to analyze how social capital and supplier development support achieving supplier satisfaction and preferred customer status. The resulting model is compared between manufacturing and service suppliers.

A survey receiving 482 supplier responses from manufacturing and service suppliers was utilized and analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) path modeling and multi-group comparison tests.

The paper adds new explanations for preferred customer status through empirical evidence of relationships between supplier development, social capital, supplier satisfaction, and preferred customer status. Cognitive and relational capital directly support achieving preferred customer status. The role of supplier satisfaction in achieving preferred customer status is lower for manufacturing suppliers.

Both service and manufacturing suppliers could also be studied in their specific industry settings. A more in-depth investigation of other business relationship dynamics, such as power, is needed in a future study.

Service and manufacturing suppliers need different strategies to obtain the benefits from supplier development and social capital building. For service suppliers, more intangible factors are relevant in comparison to manufacturing suppliers.

This study advances the literature in two main ways. First, it elaborates the role of supplier development and social capital in the path toward supplier satisfaction and preferred customer status as perceived by suppliers. Second, this study answers the calls for a better understanding of the contextual characteristics underlying potential differences in how preferred customer status is formed.

The interest in global purchasing has increased significantly in recent years, but the impact on product innovation is not well understood. The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyse the impact of global purchasing on product innovation sourced from suppliers, while taking into account how firms integrate their suppliers.

The data used in this study are from the International Purchasing Survey, an international online survey on purchasing and supply management conducted in 2009. The data are analysed using factor and regression analyses.

The paper shows that global purchasing has no direct impact on product innovation performance. However, supplier integration is more strongly associated with product innovation performance for firms purchasing globally compared to firms purchasing regionally.

The implication is that when companies purchase globally, they must have a highly developed purchasing department in order to sustain a high level of innovation. For firms purchasing only regionally, the role of the purchasing department is diminished, at least in terms of contributing to innovation.

This paper contributes to the discussion of potential advantages and disadvantages of global purchasing. First, the paper provides an explanation for the ambiguous results of previous research. Product innovation does not depend on whether firms are purchasing globally or not, it depends on how they purchase. This paper has showed that when purchasing globally, the role of the purchasing department becomes crucial for product innovation. The proficiency and activities of the purchasing department largely determine the success, in terms of supplier product innovation, of global purchasing.

The purpose of this paper is to assess ways in which informality can be understood and reviews an emerging area of management scholarship. The origins and nature of informality are discussed with the aid of two different theoretical tools: “workplace sociology” (WS) and “mixed embeddedness” (ME).

The analysis is grounded in empirical material reflecting different aspects of informality mainly within the ethnic economy, such as a study on the implementation of the National Minimum Wage regulations (Ram et al., 2007; Jones et al., 2004, 2006).

The authors argue that the combination of WS and ME provides a valuable means of content and character of informality. It can also help to explaining variations and patterns within the informal economy, as well as understanding new forms of informality in the ethnic economy and beyond in “superdiverse” contexts.

This paper bridges two different theoretical approaches to explain the interactions between the firm and state regulations, as well as the workplace relations between employer and employees.

Despite agreement on the importance of adopting governance structures for developing competitive advantage, we still know little about why or how governance mechanisms are adopted in the first place. We also acknowledge that family businesses with formal governance mechanisms in place still resort to informal means to make decisions, and we lack knowledge about why certain governance mechanisms are sometimes, but not always, effective and functional. Given these research gaps, and drawing on institutional theory, we aim to explore: How are governance structures adopted and developed in family firms? Once adopted, how do family businesses perceive these governance structures?

Using Mokken Scale Analysis, a method suitable to uncover patterns/sequences of adoption/acquisition over time, we analyze a dataset of 1,488 Spanish family firms to explore if there is a specific pattern in the implementation of governance structures. We complement the analysis with descriptive data about perceived usefulness of such structures.

Our findings highlight two important issues. Family businesses follow a specific process implementing first business governance (board of directors, then executive committee), followed by family governance (family council then family constitution). We suggest they do so in response to institutional pressures, given the exposure they have to business practices, and their need to appear legitimate. Despite formal adoption of governance structures, family businesses do not necessarily consider them useful. We suggest that their perception about the usefulness of the implemented governance structures may lead to their ceremonial adoption, resulting in a gap between the implementation and functionality of such structures.

Our article contributes to the family business literature by bringing novel insights about implementation of governance structures. We take a step back to explain why these governance mechanisms were adopted in the first place. Using institutional theory we enrich governance and family business literatures, by offering a lens that explains why family businesses follow a specific process in adopting governance structures. We also offer a plausible explanation as to why governance structures are ineffective in achieving their theorized role in the context of family businesses, based on the family's perception of the unusefulness of such structures, and the concept of ceremonial adoption.

There is no single recipe that can serve the multiple needs of different family businesses. This indicates that family businesses may need diverse levels of development and order when setting up their governance structures. Accordingly, this study constitutes an important point of demarcation for practitioners interested in examining the effectiveness of governance structures in family firms. We show that an important pre-requisite for examining the effectiveness of governance structures is to start by investigating whether these structures are actually being used or are only adopted ceremonially.

Our paper expands current knowledge on governance in family firms by taking a step back hinting at why are governance structures adopted in the first place. Focusing on how governance is implemented in terms of sequence is novel and relevant for researcher and practitioners to understand how this process unfolds. Our study uses institutional theory, which is a strong theory to support the results. Our paper also uses a novel method to study governance structures in family firms.

This paper offers a definition of the core of information science, which encompasses most research in the field. The definition provides a unique identity for information science and positions it in the disciplinary universe.

After motivating the objective, a definition of the core and an explanation of its key aspects are provided. The definition is related to other definitions of information science before controversial discourse aspects are briefly addressed: discipline vs. field, science vs. humanities, library vs. information science and application vs. theory. Interdisciplinarity as an often-assumed foundation of information science is challenged.

Information science is concerned with how information is manifested across space and time. Information is manifested to facilitate and support the representation, access, documentation and preservation of ideas, activities, or practices, and to enable different types of interactions. Research and professional practice encompass the infrastructures – institutions and technology –and phenomena and practices around manifested information across space and time as its core contribution to the scholarly landscape. Information science collaborates with other disciplines to work on complex information problems that need multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to address them.

The paper argues that new information problems may change the core of the field, but throughout its existence, the discipline has remained quite stable in its central focus, yet proved to be highly adaptive to the tremendous changes in the forms, practices, institutions and technologies around and for manifested information.

In recent years, the use of dating and hook up apps has become an increasingly socially acceptable and commonly used method of seeking romantic and sexual partners. This has seen a corresponding rise in media and crime reports of sexual harms facilitated through these services, including sexual harassment, unsolicited sexual imagery, and sexual assault. Emerging empirical research shows that experiences of sexual harms in this context are common and predominantly impact women and girls. The aim of this chapter is to examine the sociocultural and sexual norms that underpin online dating and which perpetuate a “rape culture” within which sexual harms become both possible and normalized. This chapter also considers how the discourses that minimize and legitimize sexual harms are encoded within the responses undertaken by dating and hook up apps to sexual harms. It is argued that together these norms and discourses may act to facilitate and/or prevent sexual harms, and may normalize and excuse these harms when they occur.

This research aims to explore childhood construction in the Afghan refugee community living in Pakistan. Young Afghan people aged 12–18 who were working on the streets participated in the generation of data for this study in 2019. Ethnographic research approaches with semi-structured in-depth interviews and field observations were used to obtain real insights. Young Afghan refugees have been a constant phenomenon on the streets for decades in the twin cities of Pakistan – Rawalpindi and Islamabad – where this research was conducted and are involved in different street-based casual activities. The findings show that young people face discrimination and exclusion from the mainstream of society due to their undefined citizenship status and poverty. Parents see their children as dependents and as assets for their old age, and children and young people need to work to support their families who live in poverty. In fulfilling their filial responsibilities, young people sacrifice their schooling and have limited opportunities to learn new skills. It is concluded that the government and other international institutions with responsibility for setting policies and creating programs for young Afghan refugees need to understand the dynamics of the families in which the young people live and how these families inculcate them with their generational values.

This paper responds to the lack of visitor engagement in many culture-based World Heritage sites and conceptualises a “Cuteification-Value Nexus” for the discussion of the communication of heritage values through “cute” or aesthetically pleasing popular culture elements. It reflects on observations in Macao to argue for a greater engagement of culture-based World Heritage sites through a combination of popular culture inspired motifs and truthful heritage messages. Specifically, it identifies a form of “cuteified heritage” – a hyperreal cultural zone that happens away from the actual heritage sites, but which articulates the heritage significances of those sites. This draws on concepts on themed spaces and insights from postmodernistic hyperreality and tourism to examine how the “completely real” becomes identified with the “completely fake” in the staging, consumption and negotiation of experiences with World Heritage and their utility in the management of World Heritage tourism sites.