Search results

This study aims to explore the impacts of long-term trends in the closure of abattoir businesses in the UK on the robustness of the network of abattoirs which provides private kill services.

This proof-of-concept study uses responses from a farmer and an abattoir survey in a spatial analysis to help visualise the private kill network. Monte Carlo simulation is used to estimate the impacts of possible further closures of private kill abattoirs on the robustness of the private kill network.

In August 2020, 18% of the area of the UK was more than 45 km from a private kill abattoir, 21% was serviced by one, 14% by two and 47% by three or more abattoirs. After randomly removing 9 and 18% of private kill abattoirs, to reflect the current trend in the closure of private kill abattoirs, the area of the UK more than 45 km from a private kill service and the areas with one and two providers increased, whilst the area with three or more providers decreased for each scenario. This approach, therefore, can be used to quantify the network's resilience to further closures.

The additional information that would be needed to allow this approach to help policymakers identify strategically valuable abattoir businesses is discussed.

No other national or international study has attempted to quantify the robustness of the network of private kill abattoirs.

This study investigates the empirical association between environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) performance and top executive compensation in the US financial services industry. Considering that financial firms can inflict systemic shocks across the economy, it has been argued that they must conduct ethical and sustainable business in accordance with ESG principles. This study examines whether ESG efforts are beneficial to managers.

The authors use CEO compensation and ESG performance ratings data for all US financial firms (SIC 6000–6799) from 2015 to 2019. Employing fixed effects regressions, the authors test whether lagged ESG performance is related to CEO compensation, after controlling for other firm characteristics such as size, financial performance, leverage and CEO stock ownership.

The authors find that lagged ESG ratings are strongly associated with all forms of compensation. An increase of one standard deviation in the composite ESG rating is associated with a 14%–16% increase in the total pay. Among the three ESG pillars, only S (social) and G (governance) exhibit persistent and significant associations with both short- and long-term executive pay. The authors also document the significant moderating effects of ESG on the relationships among firm performance, size, leverage, ownership and executive pay, identifying how ESG is associated with compensation.

The authors conclude that managers receive ESG incentives implicitly and explicitly. The novel finding of direct and indirect associations between ESG and top executive compensation contributes to the growing ESG literature on the financial sector and ongoing debate about the explicit inclusion of ESG targets in compensation design.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the fast growth of online music festivals. This paper explores how festivalgoers' experience affects their satisfaction and drives their loyalty to re-attend online music festivals in China.

Based on an understanding of the music festival experience and the characteristics of live-streamed performances, this paper investigates five factors that affect festivalgoers' satisfaction and loyalty, namely the music experience, ambience experience, separation experience, social experience and novelty experience. The relationships between festivalgoers' experience, satisfaction and loyalty are also explored using structural equation modelling techniques.

The empirical results suggest that four of the above-mentioned five factors of the online music festival experience directly affect festivalgoers' satisfaction and loyalty. The online mode is a rapid adaptation of and preferred alternative to offline music festivals, whilst the creation of the experience, along with satisfaction with and loyalty to the online music festival, are determined by different factors compared to offline modes. Overall festival satisfaction positively enhances the relationship between festivalgoers' experience and loyalty to online music festivals.

This study offers a range of practical and managerial implications for organisers of online music festival, similar activities such as live-streaming concerts and stage performances and hybrid events.

This study explores a phenomenon that has evolved quickly since COVID-19 and will, potentially, have an ongoing and enduring impact on the music festival sector. It differentiates the understanding of festivalgoers' experience in online and offline modes, which is a new addition to the literature. It also enriches the theoretical understanding of the experience of, satisfaction with and loyalty to online music festivals.

The purpose of this two-wave longitudinal study was to examine the role of mindfulness as mediator between social support and engagement and as a moderator in the relationship between work overload and burnout, both cross-sectionally and after one year.

The sample consisted of 243 Peruvian teachers. Structural equation modeling and SPSS Process Macro were used to test the hypothesis.

The results show that mindfulness mediated the relationship between social support and engagement at both times but doesn't moderate the relationship between work overload and burnout at either time.

This study highlights the role of mindfulness as a valuable personal resource in the workplace, as it facilitates a higher functioning at work while identifying relevant organizational characteristics that have an influence in its use.

El propósito de este estudio longitudinal de dos olas fue examinar el papel de mindfulness como mediador entre el apoyo social y el engagement en el trabajo; así como moderador en la relación entre la sobrecarga de trabajo y el burnout, tanto transversalmente como después de un año.

La muestra estuvo conformada por 243 profesores peruanos. Se utilizó el modelo de ecuaciones estructurales (SEM en inglés) y Process Macro para SPSS para probar la hipótesis.

Los resultados muestran que mindfulness media la relación entre el apoyo social y engagement en ambos momentos, pero no modera la relación entre la sobrecarga de trabajo y el burnout en ninguno de los dos.

Este estudio destaca el papel del mindfulness como un recurso personal valioso en el trabajo, ya que facilita un mejor funcionamiento al tiempo que identifica características organizacionales relevantes que influyen en su uso.

Previous studies have confirmed the potential benefits of participating in theatrical improvisation, including improved mental health, well-being, skills and strategy development. This study aims to explore the experiences of improv (a subset of theatrical improvisation) for autistic, non-autistic, yet neurodivergent and neurotypical people. In particular, it explores whether participants believe that there have been any benefits from participating in improv.

Twenty adult participants were recruited using snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and qualitative content analysis (QCA). IPA explored the autistic lived experience during improv participation, while QCA sought to identify the benefits gained.

Implementing IPA allowed for the benefits of improv to be embedded into autistic lived experience. This was aggregated into two themes: “life beyond improv” and “social worlds negative impact”. Findings from QCA found five themes: “creativity and opportunities: the arts and workplace”; “acceptance, cognitive flexibility and rolling with it”; “interpersonal, social and communication skills and human connection”; “gains in mental health, quality of life and wellbeing”; and for just autistic participants, “‘I've gone full autistic’ (and can learn why neurotypicals are like they are)”.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a novel study area that has not been investigated previously.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in immense pressure on healthcare workers (HCWs) and healthcare systems worldwide. The current multi-centre evaluation sought to explore the association between coping behaviours and levels of psychological distress among HCWs working during the initial onset of COVID-19.

Between April and July 2020 HCWs at three urban hospitals in England were invited to complete an online survey measuring personal and professional characteristics, psychological distress and coping. A principal component analysis (PCA) identified components of coping and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the relationship between components of coping and psychological distress.

A total of 2,254 HCWs participated (77% female, 67% white, 66% in clinical roles). Three components for coping were retained in the PCA analysis: external strategies, internal strategies and self-criticalness/substance use. SEM indicated that internally based coping was associated with lower levels of psychological distress, whereas externally based coping and self-criticalness were associated with greater psychological distress. The final model accounted for 35% of the variance in psychological distress.

This multi-centre evaluation provides unique insight into the level of psychological distress among HCWs during the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) and associated coping strategies. Addressing self-criticalness and supporting cognitive-based internal coping strategies among HCWs may protect against prolonged exposure to psychological distress. Findings highlight the importance of developing a culture of professional resilience among this vital workforce as a whole rather than placing pressure on an individual's personal resilience.

While current scholarship on innovation typically examines its antecedents, the purpose of this paper is to provide a more complete account by advocating for social impacts as a critical component of the sociological study of innovation.

This study adopts a conceptual approach to illustrate the ways in which innovation may generate unequitable outcomes. The authors illustrate the purpose of the paper by discussing strategically selected examples that are intended to reflect prominent themes and topics in the relevant literature.

The analysis suggests that while innovation yields many positive benefits, pervasive narratives about its virtues can be overstated when, in fact, innovation may generate adverse effects for particular social groups by reproducing or exacerbating inequality. The authors provide a more complete account of innovation by naming social impacts as a critical component of its sociological study and discussing examples that illustrate how innovation can produce disadvantageous effects by race, gender and social class. The authors move forward the discussion of social impacts by elaborating conditions in which innovation is likely to reproduce the status quo as well as ameliorate negative impacts.

While many studies have explained the conditions that foster innovation, this study pushes the boundaries of the study of innovation – a timely topic for practitioners and scholars in the fields of not only sociology, but management, education and public policy. Accordingly, we move forward the discussion of the social impacts of innovation by identifying the ways in which innovation is likely to reproduce structural inequalities.

This study aims to examine the phenomenon of self-perceived age (SPA) identity for Generation X (GenX) women in the UK. Squeezed between the more ubiquitous “boomer” and “millennial” cohorts, and now with both gender and age stigma-related challenges, this study looks to provide insights for understanding this group for marketing.

This study adopts an existential phenomenological approach using a hybrid structured/hermeneutic research design. Data is collected using solicited diary research (SDR) that elicits autoethnographic insights into the lived experiences of GenX women, these in the context of SPA.

For this group, the authors find age a gendered phenomenon represented via seven “age frames”, collectively an “organisation of experience”. Age identity appears not to have unified meaning but is contingent upon individuals and their experiences. These frames then provide further insights into how diarists react to the stigma of gendered ageism.

SDR appeals to participants who like completing diaries and are motivated by the research topic. This limits both diversity of response and sample size, but coincidentally enhances elicitation potential – outweighing, the authors believe, these constraints. The sample comprises UK women only.

This study acknowledges GenX women as socially real, but from an SPA perspective they are heterogeneous, and consequently distributed across many segments. Here, age is a psychographic, not demographic, variable – a subjective rather than chronological condition requiring a nuanced response from marketers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first formal study into how SPA identity is manifested for GenX women. Methodologically, this study uses e-journals/diaries, an approach not yet fully exploited in marketing research.

The purpose of this study was to propose a benchmark model for the process of post-migration social adjustment based on the points of view and experiences of young individuals from forced-migration backgrounds.

Twelve young adults (18–24 years) living in Australia with an experience of forced migration and from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds were recruited. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed through thematic analysis.

The results showed that post-migration social adjustment requires effective interactions within individual, family and community domains. The participants proposed specific characteristics, enablers and barriers for each domain that can affect the process of social adjustment after the experience of forced migration.

Based on the reported points of view and experiences of participants in this study, the authors proposed an ecological model that can be considered as a preliminary benchmark to inform policymaking, research and services focusing on the social adjustment of young refugees. The practical implications for resettlement programs are discussed.

This study was steered to establish how buyer–supplier collaboration's commitment attributes serve as an antecedent for procurement performance in large manufacturing entities in Tanzania.

A parallel, concurrent, mixed method was used in the study. Quantitatively, 52 firms were surveyed from Temeke Municipality, Tanzania, using questionnaire that specified 1 procurement manager and 1 store manager from those firms, totaling a sample size of 104 respondents. Qualitatively, expressive opinions to supplement the numeric data were gathered from supply chain managers using the saturation principle. Explanatory design analyzed the existing cause–effect relationship, and the null hypotheses were tested using binary logistic regression at p values < 0.05 and ExpB > 1.

Fidelity and enthusiasm to suggest improvements to suppliers and the duration of the collaboration antecede the procurement performance of the manufacturing firms in Tanzania, while devotion to invest resources and initiatives on joint problem solving have no significant impact.

The causality between buyer–supplier collaboration and procurement performance has been revealed. Since there might be third party logistics in collaborations, future research should center on their moderating effect.

A framework has been developed for liberating procurement performance in the context of large manufacturing firms in Tanzania.

Based on Transaction Cost Economics and Resource Dependency Theories, the study revealed the root cause of procurement performance in the context of Tanzanian manufacturing firms, while also considering commitment to buyer–supplier collaboration as a prerequisit for the commendable target.