Search results

The purpose of this paper is to broaden the domain of the gender pay gap research by exploring individuals' perceptions of it. Examining the factors that have an impact on the way individuals perceive the gender pay gap helps answering the question of why it persists and how to overcome it.

The paper provides a conceptual model of the factors proposed to influence individuals' perceptions of the gender pay gap by adopting social comparison, equity, occupational socialization, relative deprivation, expectancy and social dominance theories as well gender socialization perspective.

According to the conceptual framework, such individual factors as pay expectations, gender role orientation, perceived pay fairness, gender, age, marital status and education facilitate the perceived gender pay gap. Furthermore, gender composition of employment sector and occupational status predict individuals' perceptions of the gender pay gap. Finally, welfare state regime and the degree of public awareness constitute the perceived gender pay gap.

Besides, the obvious suggestion of eliminating the gender pay gap, the paper suggests that more efforts should be made by media and governments to discuss the concept of the gender pay gap and make women aware of their rights and opportunities.

The main of this paper is that it draws together different theoretical perspectives into the model of the perceived gender pay gap.

In recent years, speedy development of Taiwan’s hotel industry intensifies market competition, customers’ demands on hotel services quality also increase with the increase of their consumption consciousness, and their demands on hotel types diversify, therefore hotel industry should concern on their unique management services quality brought by their different hotel types. The current designed service system or service transmission process may fail to meet customers’ demands owing to emphasizing degree gap in service quality. What is worse, it is difficult for hotel industry to actualize complete customer segregation and to provide customized services, therefore comprehensive understanding of customers’ demands on the service quality of different types hotels would contribute to operating management improvement of Taiwan hotel industry. This paper divides Taiwan hotels into three types: international tourism commercial type, holiday type and motel, the general hotels. It studies the emphasize degree gap in service quality between the industry and the customers. Data analysis shows that service quality gap (perceived gap) of hotels of different types exists in several quality aspects; what’s more, the perceived gaps, service quality aspects, and its items of different types of hotel are also different. After an integrated analysis, this paper puts forward a general and customer‐oriented quality item suitable for hotel industry to shorten the perceived gap of service quality, so that the hotel industry could design a service system and service transfer system, which could meet most lodging customers’ demands in the context of pluralized customer sources.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the extent to which female and male university students from low-income countries express different entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, the study empirically tests whether the anticipated financial returns to entrepreneurship versus salaried employment, or the perceived barriers to entrepreneurship exert a stronger influence on the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions.

To test the relationship of anticipated rewards versus barriers to entrepreneurship on gender and entrepreneurial intention, the study uses new data from a field survey in Sierra Leone and employs multiple mediation analyses.

The authors find that the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions operates through the mediator of perceptions of the financial returns to entrepreneurship but not perceived barriers to entrepreneurship.

The authors study intent, not behavior, acknowledging that cognitive intent is a powerful predictor of later behavior. Implications for future research on entrepreneurship in the African context are discussed.

The results from this study can be applied to both pedagogic and business settings in the field of entrepreneurship, with concrete implications for policymakers.

Results suggest that the gender gap in entrepreneurial intentions (EI) for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)- and business-educated students in Sierra Leone is predominantly influenced by anticipated financial returns to occupational choices, as opposed to perceived barriers to entrepreneurship, a more frequently studied antecedent to EI.

The purpose of this paper is to capture and analyze the perception gaps with respect to the current usage and importances of the lean practices from the IT support service practitioners’ perspective.

A questionnaire was developed to capture the perceptions of the IT support service practitioners. The survey data were quantitatively analyzed by using statistical techniques which included testing of the hypotheses.

The analysis of the perception gaps revealed that even though all the gaps are statistically significant but gaps between different practices are not same. The gap analysis would be useful for IT support service organization in prioritizing the lean practices for implementation.

Lean practice applicability and implementation in IT support services is a relatively new domain, where mature empirically based studies are scarce. This study provides a sound basis for further research on lean implementation in IT support service area.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for predicting the role and effects of perceived organizational identity (POI) on organizational members' perceptions and behaviors during crisis and change situations, and the scope of the resulting POI changes that may occur.

The paper brings together research on crisis, change, threat/opportunity, and POI, along with case study data to create a threat/opportunity framework for making these predictions.

Based on whether threat or opportunity is perceived during crisis and change situations, different aspects of individuals' POIs will become salient. In threat situations, individuals will focus on perceptions of “who we are.” In opportunity situations, individuals will also focus on “who we could be.” The focus of attention and the threat/opportunity context will influence organizational identification, learning, and openness to change; and whether incremental or transformational POI change occurs. The perception of “who we could be” will motivate more change than the ideal organizational identity or the image of “who we want to be” that is typically studied in the literature. The scope of POI change is also dependent on perceptions of identity cost and the identity gap.

Future research can test the hypotheses suggested here in various crisis and change contexts. Also, differentiating between threat and opportunity contexts is important for understanding the role of POI, and the extent to which POI changes can occur in crisis and change situations. Studies of resistance to POI change could consider whether individuals perceived the identity cost and the identity gap as being too low. More research on POI in opportunity contexts could expand understanding of the POI image of “who we could be” in motivating POI change. Finally, further integration of the literature on crisis and change can benefit both fields.

Practitioners can predict which aspects of POI will become salient in threat and opportunity conditions, and manage their different effects. For individuals to learn and change their POIs during crisis and change situations, managers need to diminish heightened perceptions of threat and shift the focus of attention to “who we could be.” Top managers' claims of “who we could be” need to be perceived by organizational members as being desirable and attainable in order to be motivating. Finally, to create transformational POI change, executives need to highlight the identity cost of not changing, and the size of the identity gap.

The threat/opportunity framework enables new predictions of the role and effects of POI in crisis and change situations. The paper highlights the POI image of “who we could be,” defines incremental and transformational POI change, redefines the identity gap concept, and introduces the notion of identity cost to provide a framework for predicting the scope of POI change that has received limited research attention. Finally, the paper contributes to research on POI in opportunity‐oriented conditions, and integrates research on crisis and change.

The purpose of this study is to increase understanding of gaps in buyer‐seller relationships. Increasingly complex, rapidly changing, and dynamic business environments provide a rich research environment for analysing gaps in business relationships. Traditionally, gaps have been examined from the static and single party perspective. However, dyadic buyer‐seller relationships can be revealed, described, and analysed in new ways by viewing intraorganisational and interorganisational gaps longitudinally as chains of interactions in relationships and from the perspectives of several parties. In this study the gaps are understood as consisting of concepts such as inconsistency, critical incident, conflict, gap, and perceived differences.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the existence of logistics performance gaps in the dyadic order fulfillment process.

A literature review on service quality, logistics quality and logistics performance generated a conceptual model, four hypotheses and a scale for measuring logistics performance. Dyads of customers (large manufacturing companies) and their most important suppliers were addressed in two similar surveys. A total of 136 such dyads were acquired.

The dyadic order fulfillment process contains four significant logistics performance gaps, even though important business dyads are addressed. Customers' expectations are not perceived by customers as being fulfilled, customers' expectations are over‐targeted by suppliers, but suppliers' internal performance decreases performance. Finally, suppliers overestimate their performance compared with the ratings of customers.

By applying a service quality model to a logistics process, new knowledge about logistics performance was obtained. A tested conceptual model and a tested scale for measuring logistics performance are theoretical contributions.

The model can be used as a basis for deeper communication between customer and supplier in order to improve logistics performance in the dyadic order fulfillment process.

A true dyadic approach is rare in logistics research. As no comprehensive studies of the “mechanisms” of the dyadic order fulfillment process were found, the results can be valuable to both customers and suppliers.

This paper aims to quantify, for the first time, the performance expectations gap in community roadworks projects by proposing a performance expectations gap index (PEGI) that can answer a vital question of how wide/how narrow the gap is from a stakeholder perspective. Previous scholars have offered qualitative descriptions of the expectations gap from an auditing point of view using a constructivist approach. This study uses a positivistic approach in addressing the procurement performance expectations gap.

The index is computed by combining data from actual and perceived performance of public roadworks from two categories of respondents: “Technical personnel” and “Road users” in selected District Local Governments (DLGS) of Uganda using paired mean differences. The authors created grand means from these two groups for us to make a meaningful comparison. Data were collected from community access roads projects opened, maintained and completed and the satisfaction levels from 69 DLGS. The community leaders and political representatives formed a group of road-users, whereas DLG Engineering staff represented the technical staff. Data was collected on the extent to which the DLG had achieved performance efficiency, performance effectiveness and performance reasonableness. The measurements items was anchored along the continuum of: (5) Outstanding = Performance is consistently superior to (1) Unsatisfactory = Performance is consistently unacceptable.

Study findings show the level of performance of roadworks attained by technical staff is only 65%, with 15.9% gap is attributed to performance efficiency, the 29.1% gap is attributed to performance effectiveness issues and 20% gap is the perceived performance unreasonableness gap in the stakeholder’s perspective, creating an overall performance gap of 35%, in the perspective of road users. From the computations carried out, the authors determined the size of the expectation gaps by the technical DLG stakeholders and road-users of 0.3493. The gap index (0.3493) falls within the range between 0.2 and 0.39, which is a small performance expectations gap, calling for top management’s attention to identify and work on the parameters causing operational inefficiency within implementing units of DLGs. Study findings show the level of performance of roadworks attained by technical staff is 65%, creating a performance gap of 35%, in the perspective of road users.

The implications of these results can ignite a meaningful debate on whether financing of road projects should be based on how narrow the performance gap should be and having sustained evidence that the gap is progressively being narrowed for improved sustainability of roadworks financing by donor agencies. Whereas this quantification of the performance gap is a new positivistic direction towards minimizing the performance expectation gap, it can easily be adopted by roadworks implementing units in assessing road-user performance needs at the point of project completion and once these are not achieved, such minor loopholes would be worked on, on a regular basis as and when need warrants.

The authors have introduced and empirically verified the performance expectation gap index, which further understands the performance expectations gap from a positivistic approach. The paper provides a problem-solving tool to analyse stakeholder engagement linkages with performance expectations variations on the practical side.

The paper has started on a change perception campaign of shaping road-user critical perspectives about the outcome of community roadworks procurements. By introducing and creating a mindset of quantitative assessments in understanding the expectation gaps that can be caused by a number of factors, the responsible people for creating, maintaining and widening PEGs will eventually wake up and improve personal behaviours that lead to the widening of the procurement performance gap in roadworks, from a stakeholders’ perspective.

Unlike previous scholars who used a constructivist approach, the paper is the first of its kind to use a positivistic approach to quantify the procurement performance expectations gap using a PEGI. The use of the index gives new insights to managing procurement performance expectations to the satisfaction of stakeholders from a quantitative perspective.

This study seeks to determine if body image disturbance and eating disorders that have plagued Western women are now becoming more common in Asia as well. Additionally, it attempts to examine perceptions of the impact of models in advertising in both cultures. The third person effect which states that people believe the media impacts others more than themselves is tested to determine if this contributes to behaviors related to body image. A comparison of responses from young women inHong Kong and the US indicate that both cultures are similar in the degree of body dissatisfaction and dieting behavior exhibited. However, Western women spend significantly more time exercising and are more willing to have plastic surgery to improve their appearance. The third person effect appears robust across cultures, but generally does not contribute significantly to explaining body image related attitudes and behaviors. The results have important implications for both third person effect and cross cultural consumer behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate franchisees' perception of the value of quality service in the franchise system.

Two dimensions, perceived importance and perceived gaps of the quality of the franchise system, form the anchors of a proposed 2 × 2 franchise system quality (FSQ) matrix. This is empirically tested with 200 Australian franchisees.

The results reflected a strong evidence of four distinct profiles of franchisees as conceptualized. These results also showed that the more cooperative the franchisees, the better their performance and satisfaction levels with the system. In contrast to existing literature, franchisees who fall in the high‐perceived importance cells of the FSQ matrix have a stronger desire for autonomy.

Cooperation between franchisees and franchisors are fundamental to achieve success. It is important to provide resources and assistance to franchisees and these are considered as key success factors. Further, determining the profile of the franchisees allows franchisors to determine the potential Best Buddy who are considered an asset in the franchise system.

A larger sample size should be implored that focuses on specific industries or service sectors. The research can be replicated in other non‐Western contexts to formulate different insights. Cross‐national studies could be conducted to investigate differences between cultures.

The paper addresses the gap in literature by examining franchisees' perception of the value of services provided in a franchise system. The FSQ Matrix is also conceptualized and empirically tested on an Australian sample.