Search results

Current Army doctrine stresses a need for military leaders to have the capability to make flexible and adaptive decisions based on a future unknown environment, location and enemy. To assess a military decision maker’s ability in this context, this paper aims to modify the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test which assesses cognitive flexibility, into a military relevant map task. Thirty-four military officers from all service branches completed the map task.

The purpose of this study was to modify a current psychological task that measures cognitive flexibility into a military relevant task that includes the challenge of overcoming experiential bias, and understand underlying causes of individual variability in the decision-making and cognitive flexibility behavior of active duty military officers on this task.

Results indicated that non-perseverative errors were a strong predictor of cognitive flexibility performance on the map task. Decomposition of non-perseverative error into efficient errors and random errors revealed that participants who did not complete the map task changed their sorting strategy too soon within a series, resulting in a high quantity of random errors.

This study serves as the first step in customizing cognitive psychological tests for a military purpose and understanding why some military participants show poor cognitive flexibility.

Competitive advantage in the service industry is achieved through superior customer service. This paper looks at the ways in which IT is being used to support superior quality customer service initiatives in the highly competitive Australian banking industry. The extent to which the need to improve service quality influences IT planning and purchases, and shifts in the level of influence over recent years, are detailed. The link between IT‐supported quality customer service improvements and organisational performance is then discussed.

Although dependence of contact surface temperatures between rough sliding bodies on surface topography is more explicitly described in terms of three‐dimensional (3D) topographic parameters, no work has yet been reported on this aspect. The paper seeks to carry out experiments to systematically correlate the 3D surface parameters to the contact temperature rise.

The surface temperatures at the contact between a relatively smooth zinc sulphide pin held against a rotating mild steel disc of varying surface topography were measured using an infrared thermal imaging system under different load and sliding velocity conditions. The main objective was to study the effect of 3D surface roughness parameters on the contact temperature rise.

The results indicate a rise in maximum contact temperature with the increase in a number of 3D parameters, such as, average surface roughness Sa, ten‐point height parameter Sz, skewness of the surface height distribution Ssk, mean summit curvature Ssc, and developed interfacial area ratio parameter Sdr while temperature was found to decrease with increasing values of another set of parameters, such as, kurtosis of the 3D surface texture Sku, summit density of the surface Sds, surface bearing index Sbi, core fluid retention index Sci, valley fluid retention index Svi, and root mean square slope of the surface Sdq.

In any sliding system, with mixed or boundary lubricated conditions, it can be attempted to find the optimum value of the roughness parameters so that on suitable processing of the surfaces a lower contact temperature rise can be achieved.

No work has yet been reported on the effect of 3D roughness parameters on contact temperature.

This paper examines the influence of corporate culture and organisational commitment on financial performance in Malaysian companies. Based on the work of Deshpande and Farley on corporate cultural types and Allen and Meyer on organisational commitment, a structured questionnaire was developed and self‐administered to managers in Malaysian companies. A total of 202 managers in public listed companies participated in the study. The results show that there is a significant correlation between corporate culture and organisational commitment. Both corporate culture type and organisational commitment have an influence on the financial performance of these companies. The implications of the study are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to help boards of directors to find ways of establishing continuity in the strategic plan when strategists are employed on contract leave before the end of the strategic plan period.

The author has conducted research in organisations that have executives on contracts of three to five years, and identifies how strategic plans are negatively affected when executives on contract – especially top management – leave organisations when their contracts ends. Research in organisations has shown that strategic plans usually have longer periods than the contract of the strategist, and contract renewal is sometimes not obvious.

The length of the strategist's contract and the length of the strategic plan have not been taken into account when crafting strategic plans in organisations and appointing executive directors. This scenario has caused a lot of strategy failures.

Ways are provided for boards of directors and organisations to foster a culture of continuity of the strategic plan even when executives leave the organisation unceremoniously or when their contracts end and are not renewed.

This paper gives practical advice from situations in organisations and helps boards of directors to take into account the duration of strategic plans when employing executives.

To operate successfully, a commercial organization must satisfy the everchanging demands of its clients, its owners, its employees and society as a whole. To do this, it must have a good understanding of its persona as perceived by its own members and the entities it deals with. This persona, or image an organization presents of itself, and the way in which it is perceived by its external environment and its internal members, is commonly referred to as its Corporate Culture (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Silverzweig and Allen, 1976). The tangible aspects include corporate logos, uniforms and clothing, office layout, use of ‘in‐vogue’ technology and business processes, while behavioural indicators can include relative importance of social issues and norms such as time keeping, and adherence to prescribed procedures. This paper describes research within a single, large, Australian engineering, procurement and construction management consultancy aimed at identifying the form of its current corporate culture and the extent to which this is perceived to be appropriate by those involved. Using Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s (1983) Competing Values Framework, the overall cultural profile of the organization and dominant characteristic traits is determined through an in‐house electronic survey employing the Organizational Cultural Assessment Instrument. This indicated that the company has a dominant market‐oriented culture. In contrast, the most desired form was found to be the employee focused culture ‐ indicating a misalignment between what employees thought was needed and what was perceived to exist. This finding is considered in the light of recent reports identifying the detrimental effect of market‐oriented cultures, and the supporting role of employee focused cultures, in achieving construction project quality outcomes.

The competing values model (CVM) describes organizational culture in terms of what appear to be mutually exclusive value dimensions: structural control vs. flexibility, focus on internal vs. external stakeholders, and means vs. ends. The apparent paradox in simultaneously expressing competing values has implications for a variety of organizational phenomena, including leadership, decision making, and strategic management. The CVM thus offers promise for providing a common metric for multi‐level, trans‐organizational, and cross‐cultural analyses. To date, however, underlying assumptions regarding the competing values framework as a characterization of culture have not been fully validated. This research provides a test of the competing values model with methodology that is conceptually consonant with the paradoxical nature of the theory. Using a sample drawn from 10 U.S. organizations, a Qsort and multidimensional scaling analysis produce qualified support for a structure of organizational cultural values consistent with the CVM. Further, this study elaborates the CVM by suggesting a mechanism whereby the apparent paradox of competing values might be more effectively managed.

In recent years, China is exerting effort to improve the performance effectiveness of its construction industry. This paper aims to report a preliminary study on organisational culture of five selected construction enterprises from different geographical locations in China and to discuss a framework for developing effectiveness measurement criteria for Chinese construction enterprises.

The research approach focuses on the culture profiles of the selected enterprises which have similar size, number of employees, general reputation (in terms of quality of construction), business type (building works) and tax bracket. The measuring instrument of organisational culture is adopted from previous tested research.

It is found that the hierarchy culture is dominant in four cases; Shantou in the Special Economic Zone is the exception. The Shantou enterprise has a market culture and Shantou was one of the first regions to embark on economic reform. Further analysis is required of the spread of the culture profiles in terms of geopraphcial regions and developmental stages of the construction enterprises in China.

The result of the five case studies is indicative of the presence of the dichotomy in hierarchy – market culture dominance. Evaluation of operational effectiveness of such organisations must depend on their developmental stages in line with their stated objectives, and a framework for effectiveness measurement is proposed.

This paper seeks to present findings from the first all‐Ireland study that consulted older people on their perceptions of interventions and services to support people experiencing abuse.

Utilising a grounded theory approach, 58 people aged 65 years and over took part in focus groups across Ireland. Four peer‐researchers were also trained to assist in recruitment, data collection, analysis, and dissemination.

Participants identified preventative community‐based approaches and peer supports as important mechanisms to support people experiencing, and being at risk of, elder abuse. Choices regarding care provision and housing, as well as opportunities for engagement in community activities where they can discuss issues with others, were identified as ways to prevent abuse.

The development of elder abuse services has traditionally been defined from the perspective of policy makers and professionals. This study looked at the perspective of the end‐users of such services for the first time. The research also gave an active role to older people in the research process. The policy implication of the findings from this research is that enhanced attention and resources should be directed to community activities that enable older people to share their concerns informally thereby gaining confidence to seek more formal interventions when necessary.

Argues that the general area of commercial sponsorship activity, while attracting increasing interest from marketing practitioners as an important strategic option in marketing communications, has not been the subject of sufficiently rigorous and comprehensive investigation by theoreticians. States the purpose is to establish and consolidate the available body of knowledge combining an overview of the standard conceptual approaches to marketing communication with an examination of the recent academic research in sponsorship, while maintaining a focus on current marketplace practice. Argues for a coherent and structured approach to the management of sponsorship expenditure through the application of a ‘management by objectives’ approach. Parameters are established in terms of a working definition of sponsorship, a review of its commercial development and an overview of current activity. Develops a commercially ration framework within which sponsorship activity may be undertaken. Views objective‐setting as the cornerstone of sponsorship management and outlines a classification of sponsorship objectives that subsumes current practice clarifies the range of potential benefits. Examines the criteria that govern rational sponsorship selection and proposes an evaluation strategy based on stated criteria. Methods of evaluating effects of marketing communications (sponsorship particularly) are examined and new evaluation techniques are advanced to facilitate the implementation of this rigorous scientific approach.