Search results
1 – 10 of over 3000Achutha Jois and Somnath Chakrabarti
The education services sector faces ever-changing global market dynamics with creative disruptions. Building knowledge brands can push the higher education sector beyond its…
Abstract
Purpose
The education services sector faces ever-changing global market dynamics with creative disruptions. Building knowledge brands can push the higher education sector beyond its geographical boundaries into the global arena. This study aims to identify key constructs, their theoretical background and dimensions that aid in building a global knowledge brand. The authors' research focuses on adapting and validating scales for global knowledge and education services brands from well-established academic literature.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors have adopted a mixed methodology approach and a systematic literature review. Authors interviewed 18 subject matter experts as part of content and face validity to arrive at select constructs, dimensions and items. Quantitative methods with random sampling were adopted as the primary methodology. Initially, the survey was administered to 390 students to test preliminary results. The survey was also administered to 5,112 students at a later part of this study. Valid responses stood at 3,244 with a 63% response rate. Further, the authors conducted confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to test the reliability and validity of scales. This study analyzed composite reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity to finalize items for scales. The authors also validated the hypotheses based on the discriminant validity assessment scores.
Findings
Authors' key research findings are that academic stimulus, campus infrastructure and student intent play a significant role in campus culture and events design and experience at campus. Authors were able to bring out 16 key constructs and 55 critical dimensions vital to global education services brand building. This study also adapted and validated 99 items that meet construct validity and composite reliability criteria. This study also highlights that constructs such as student intent, academic stimulus, campus infrastructure scalability, selection mechanism, pedagogical content knowledge, brand identity, events experience and campus culture play a vital role in global brand recognition.
Research limitations/implications
The authors' work is fairly generalizable to education services and the higher education sector. However, this study must be extrapolated and empirically validated in other industry sectors. The research implications of this study are that it aided the authors in building theoretical background for student brand loyalty theory, student expectation theory and study loyalty theory. This study adds to the body of knowledge by contributing to theoretical concepts on students, knowledge culture, events, infrastructure and branding. Researchers can adopt the scales proposed in this study to build research models in higher education branding. This study acts as a catalyst for building theories in education services areas. Researchers can delve deep into proposed research aspects of campus infrastructure, knowledge infrastructure, campus knowledge culture, events design and events experience.
Practical implications
This study aids educators and brand managers to develop global education services and optimize their effort and budget. Administrators in the education services sector must focus on practical aspects of student perception, campus infrastructure, culture and events experience. Practically administrators can reorient their efforts based on this study to achieve global brand recognition.
Social implications
This study highlights that students are not customers but are co-creators of value in the education sector. This study provides scales and dimensions needed to build co-creation frameworks and models.
Originality/value
Most research in higher education branding has not covered wider aspects of global brand building. Existing theories proposed in higher education and education services articles cover only narrower aspects of campus infrastructure, culture, events design and branding. This study presents a comprehensive list of critical factors that play a vital role in global knowledge brand building. This study highlights the constructs and scales integral to building a global education services brand.
Details
Keywords
Muhammad Aqeel, Humaira Jami and Ammar Ahmed
The purpose of this paper is to establish the reliability and validity of an expended scale with translation, adaptation and cross-language validation of the student: thinking…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to establish the reliability and validity of an expended scale with translation, adaptation and cross-language validation of the student: thinking about my homework (STP) (Bareno, 1997; Hoover-Dempsey et al., 1999; Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler, 2005).
Design/methodology/approach
Response items rating are made from four-point Likert-type scales ranging from the 1 (never) to 4 (always). This study includes two versions of the scale: mother’s school involvement version (STPM) and father’s school Involvement version (STPF). Both versions have been translated from English language into Urdu language with a sample of 200 students. Standard back translation method was used for translation and adaption of the scale (Brislin, 1976; Hambleton, 1994). The ages of the students ranged from 12 to 18 years.
Findings
The overall scale has good internal consistency reliability. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to explore covert and novel configuration of these versions (father’s school involvement and mother’s school involvement). Results revealed that mother’s school involvement consisted of 21 items, and father’s school involvement consisted of 22 items.
Originality/value
The investigated scale provides assessment of father’s and mother’s school involvement, respectively, in order to achieve better understanding of family’s role in academics.
Details
Keywords
Stephen G. Fisher, K W.D. and John Wong
Team role preference, as formulated by Meredith Belbin, and cognitive style are both rooted in personality. As a consequence, it should be possible to successfully hypothesise…
Abstract
Team role preference, as formulated by Meredith Belbin, and cognitive style are both rooted in personality. As a consequence, it should be possible to successfully hypothesise certain relationships between team role preferences and cognitive style, or one or more of its components. To test this idea, data was collected by administering the Kirton Adaption Innovation inventory and Cattell’s 16PF personality questionnaire to a group of undergraduate students (n = 183) who were reading a mixed engineering and business degree. This paper reports correlations which substantiate some of the postulated relationships. The findings, which suggest that the ideal Belbin team contains a balanced mix of adaptors, innovators and bridgers, give a new perspective to the Belbin team role model, and should provide some guidance to those who seek to build and operate “Belbinesque” teams.
Details
Keywords
Stefan Kleinschmidt, Christoph Peters and Jan Marco Leimeister
While scaling is a viable approach to respond to growing demand, service providers in contact-intensive services (CIS) – such as education, healthcare and social services …
Abstract
Purpose
While scaling is a viable approach to respond to growing demand, service providers in contact-intensive services (CIS) – such as education, healthcare and social services – struggle to innovate their offerings. The reason is that the scaling of CIS – unlike purely digital settings – has resource limitations. To help ease the situation, the purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the practices used in scaling CIS to support ICT-enabled service innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The research draws on an in-depth analysis of three CIS to examine service innovation practices. The analysis informs model development for service scaling.
Findings
The analysis uncovers three practices for service scaling – service interaction analysis, service pivoting and service validation – and their related activities that are applied in a cyclic and iterative logic.
Research limitations/implications
While the findings reveal that the scalability of CIS is limited and determined by the formative characteristic of personal interaction, this study and its findings describe how to leverage scalability in CIS.
Practical implications
The insights into the practices enable service providers of CIS to iteratively revise their service offerings and the logic of creating value with the service.
Originality/value
This research identifies and describes for the first time the practices for the scaling of CIS as an operationalisation of ICT-enabled service innovation.
Details
Keywords
Methodological advances in cross‐cultural scale development have addressed many concerns regarding the development of valid scales. However, several issues remain to be examined …
Abstract
Purpose
Methodological advances in cross‐cultural scale development have addressed many concerns regarding the development of valid scales. However, several issues remain to be examined – including the potential problems of using language to measure communication phenomena using self‐reported studies and addressing the effect of response scale type on the validity of resultant measures. The purpose of this paper is to expand the cross‐cultural measurement paradigm by comprehensively examining these issues and suggesting a new response scale type that may potentially produce more valid cross‐cultural measures of communication‐based phenomena.
Design/methodology/approach
Measures of Hall's concept of context were developed using three types of response scales – Likert, semantic differential, and conceptual metaphoric. The last response scale type is developed within this research. Samples were gathered in 23 countries using existing scale development procedures. The response scales were compared for psychometric properties and validity based on reliability, metric invariance, response styles, and face validity.
Findings
Overall all three response scale types adequately measured the construct of context. The newly developed conceptual metaphoric scale performed marginally better on most comparative metrics.
Practical implications
International marketers measure a host of variables related to culture for many purposes. The new response scale type may provide slightly better measures to more accurately reflect communication based constructs – many of which are central to marketing.
Originality/value
The findings indicate that the new conceptual metaphoric response scale type may overcome some existing biases inherent in standard response scale types. In addition, this research provides the first viable and parsimonious measure of Hall's concept of context.
Details
Keywords
Allie S. Grotts and Tricia Widner Johnson
This paper aims to examine a consumer segment, Millennial, and its status and conspicuous consumption tendencies. The current research was conducted to determine if handbags can…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine a consumer segment, Millennial, and its status and conspicuous consumption tendencies. The current research was conducted to determine if handbags can be used as a symbolic representation of status.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 598 females participated in this study through an electronically administered questionnaire. Eastman, Goldsmith, and Flynn's Status Consumption Scale was altered with permission and used to test and measure the status consumption of handbags.
Findings
The research findings indicated that handbags are being used in the process of status consumption and suggested characteristics of female Millennial consumers who are likely to use this process.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are limited to 18‐25 year old females in the United States, at a Midwestern university and cannot be generalized to other nationalities or age cohorts. The findings in this study are valuable in adding to the literature on status consumption by examining a product domain not previously studied for its ability to convey status and facilitate a complete self.
Practical implications
The findings are valuable to marketers because defining traits of Millennial consumers, a unique target market, have been discovered and proper marketing tactics may be deployed with the use of these results in the marketplace.
Originality/value
This paper fills a gap in the literature by examining handbags, which have not previously been researched for their status and conspicuous consumption abilities in an appropriate sample of college Millennial aged females.
Details
Keywords
Mladen Subotic, Mia Maric, Slavica Mitrovic and Maja Mesko
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences between adaptive behaviour and innovative behaviour of individuals according to Kirton adaptation-innovation (KAI…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences between adaptive behaviour and innovative behaviour of individuals according to Kirton adaptation-innovation (KAI) model and determine how these differences impact entrepreneurial potential dimensions. Research sample consisted of student population from three countries: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (EU candidate countries) and Belgium (EU country). Research results will be valuable for the development of entrepreneurship in EU candidate countries. Data were collected from a sample of 1,008 university students from these three countries. KAI inventory, questionnaire on entrepreneurial traits (QET) and the scale of entrepreneurial potential (SEP) were used to obtain data. The canonical discriminant analysis determined differences and structure of differences between the adaptive and innovative persons, described by KAI model and their scores on the dimensions of the entrepreneurial traits model, as well as on entrepreneurial potential model.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, the first research question concentrates on the existence of differences among students from Bosnia, Serbia and Belgium with regard to the dominant style of problem-solving according to KAI model to determine whether students from EU countries and non-EU countries differ in regard to problem-solving style. Second research question is the existence of differences in the development of entrepreneurial potential by EQT and SEP among student adaptors and student innovators according to KAI model to investigate to what extent the dominant style of solving problem contributes to differences in the development of entrepreneurial potential among students.
Findings
The research has confirmed the existence of significant differences between the adaptors and innovators described by the KAI model in terms of developed characteristics of entrepreneurial potential in the student population. Results of the research prove that young innovators possess to a greater extent developed key characteristics important for entrepreneurship, as well as intellectual and organizational skills, motivational factors and social capacity, self-confidence and constitutional factors. This research also revealed key differences among students with regard to the country of origin.
Practical implications
The practical implications of the research are reflected in the creation of the initial guidelines and structural support for the promotion of entrepreneurial potential in young people, where it can be concluded that it is particularly important to encourage innovation and creative approach to problem-solving, but also awareness of young individuals and development of their knowledge of entrepreneurship.
Originality/value
The main objective of this research was the examination of differences between students who belong to the category of adaptors and students innovators according to the KAI model (Kirton, 1976, 1998, 2003), with regard to the researched dimensions of entrepreneurial potential, to explicitly as possible identify differences in personal characteristics of young people who are predisposed for entrepreneurship and those who are not. Young innovators and adaptors significantly differ according to the researched dimensions of the EQT and SEP models of entrepreneurial potential and young innovators possess more developed entrepreneurial potential than adaptors.
Details
Keywords
Agata McCormac, Dragana Calic, Kathryn Parsons, Marcus Butavicius, Malcolm Pattinson and Meredith Lillie
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between resilience, job stress and information security awareness (ISA). The study examined the effect of resilience…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between resilience, job stress and information security awareness (ISA). The study examined the effect of resilience and job stress on the three components that comprise ISA, namely, knowledge, attitude and behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 1,048 working Australians completed an online questionnaire. ISA was measured with the Human Aspects of Information Security Questionnaire. Participants also completed the Brief Resilience Scale and the Job Stress Scale.
Findings
It was found that participants with greater resilience also had higher ISA and experienced lower levels of job stress. More specifically, individuals who reported higher levels of resilience had significantly better knowledge, attitude and behaviour. Similarly, participants who reported lower levels of job stress also reported significantly better knowledge, attitude and behaviour. Resilience plays an important mediating role in the relationship between job stress and ISA. This means that even if people have high levels of job stress, if they are better able to cope with or adapt to stress (i.e. have higher resilience), they are less likely to have lower ISA. Results of this study add to the body of literature emphasising the positive effects of resilience and suggest that resilience is associated with improved ISA and therefore more secure behaviour.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should focus on assessing the influence of resilience training in the workplace.
Originality/value
Given the constructive findings, it may be valuable to focus on the effect of organisational culture, and organisational security culture, on resilience, job stress and ISA.
Details
Keywords
Wade Jarvis, Robyn Ouschan, Henry J. Burton, Geoffrey Soutar and Ingrid M. O’Brien
Both customer engagement (CE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been linked to customer loyalty. Past studies use service dominant logic and customer value…
Abstract
Purpose
Both customer engagement (CE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been linked to customer loyalty. Past studies use service dominant logic and customer value co-creation to explain this relationship. The purpose of this paper is to apply utility theory to develop and test a new theoretical model based on CSR initiative preference to understand the relationship between CE and customer loyalty to the organisation in a CSR platform.
Design/methodology/approach
This empirical study uses choice theory in the form of best-worst scaling, and structural equation modelling, to measure the impact of sports club members’ choice preferences for a range of CSR initiatives on their intention to engage with the initiative and subsequent loyalty to the club.
Findings
This study highlights the importance of engaging members in the CSR strategy they prefer as it enhances not only the extra value to the organisation via customer loyalty to the organisation, but also CE with the organisation. Furthermore, the study reveals age and gender impact on the relationship between CE in CSR initiatives and customer loyalty.
Originality/value
This study extends CE to CSR behaviours and provides empirical evidence for a unique theoretical framework of CE based on utility theory. It also highlights the need to take into account moderating variables such as customer demographics.
Details
Keywords
Deepak Chamola, Ajoy Kumar Dey, Arunaditya Sahay and Rahul Singh
The paper contributes to the long-standing interest in studying the relationship of social capital and trust. It examines the relationship between social capital and trust in a…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper contributes to the long-standing interest in studying the relationship of social capital and trust. It examines the relationship between social capital and trust in a producer company and the role of perceived benefits as a mediating variable.
Design/methodology/approach
A multistage sampling was done to collect data from 395 farmer members from five producer companies spread over three states of India. Through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) latent constructs were mapped, and composite reliability and construct validity were established. PROCESS macro of Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) was used to probe relationship between social capital and member's trust and mediation effect of perceived benefit.
Findings
The authors’ research findings establish that the social capital has a positive and significant relationship with members' trust in a producer company and perceived benefit mediates this relationship.
Research limitations/implications
The paper contributes to reduce complexity of social capital theory by differentiating sources and benefits of social capital. It opens up the avenues of testing theoretically valid mediation effects of many other constructs.
Originality/value
The role of member's perceived benefits as a mediator between social capital and members' trust is a new knowledge to the literature of social capital.
Details