Search results

Seeks to explain why key aspects of the current turmoil in the telecommunications sector is not simply the fact that, both structures and strategies are changing unusually rapidly, and consequences for structures and strategies during the decades remainder. Sums up that technical change has driven the telecommunications sector – just as it did previously in respect of computers, and rapid technical advances mean that first‐movers generally take the biggest risks.

The purpose of this paper is to compare beliefs about medication prescribed for bipolar disorder across professional groups within Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) – psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists, support workers, social workers, and occupational therapists – who each receive different training.

Participants (n=138) completed an adapted version of the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire. ANOVAs with Tukey's post hoc tests were used to compare beliefs across professional groups.

Beliefs about medication differed across professional groups, with psychiatrists believing most strongly that medication is necessary in the treatment of bipolar disorder (p<0.05) and reporting the lowest concern about its adverse effects (p<0.05). Psychiatrists and social workers were significantly more likely to believe that patients take less than instructed than occupational therapists, nurses and support workers (p<0.05).

The differences in perceptions of medication across professional groups may reflect differences in training, with the role of medication traditionally being “downplayed” on some training courses. This has implications for patient adherence, as patients' beliefs about medication are likely to be influenced by those of their key workers. This is particularly relevant in terms of “New Ways of Working” where patients are likely to see psychiatrists less often.

This original research provides evidence to support the provision of training about medications and adherence in bipolar disorder for CMHT workers, who may not have had exposure to such training as part of their primary qualification.

This paper aims to stimulate the nascent research agenda on the environmental sustainability of the ongoing mushrooming of international student mobility (ISM). The higher education (HE) system in the UK and elsewhere is increasingly predicated upon the hosting of international students. Whilst this drive towards internationalisation undoubtably has multiple benefits, little attention thus far has been paid to its potentially very considerable environmental impact. The drive for internationalisation within HE thus potentially sits at odds with ambitions and strategies to promote sustainability within the sector and beyond.

In-depth interviews with 21 students and representatives of 14 university international offices offer insights into how the environment features in the decisions that young people and HE institutions make with regards to partaking in and promoting education-related mobility.

The results find that students take environmental considerations into account when undertaking education-related mobility, but these aspirations are often secondary to logistical issues concerning the financial cost and longer travel times associated with greener travel options. At the institutional scale, vociferously championed university sustainability agendas have yet to be reconciled with the financial imperative to recruit evermore international students.

This paper identifies a thus far neglected contradiction within HE whereby the sustainability agenda that it so rightly espouses is potentially undermined by the drive towards internationalisation. The paper uses the anthropause concept to consider the future environmental sustainability of ISM.

The purpose of this paper exploratory study is to decipher sport consumer associations and sentiments connected to the brand image of retired athletes.

In total, 14 sport consumers, who demonstrated an in-depth knowledge of throwback branding tactics and expertise in athlete brand promotion, participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews.

The findings indicate there are three prevalent themes across the present data (i.e. epoch epitome, athlete-team connection and off-the-field persona).

While the proliferation of throwback merchandise and affinity for brands of retired athletes is evident, the internalization of associations related to retired athletes has escaped empirical investigation. Numerous questions concerning how specific facets of a retired athlete’s image (e.g. athletic skills or life off the field) activate nostalgic feelings, drive consumer loyalty and establish market permanence remain unanswered. The current study contributes to the understanding of the brand image of the retired athlete and the existing literature concerning athlete branding.

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

This paper explores the impact of contemporary calculative practices, termed “accountingisation”, on Australian accounting academics' values. Also, it seeks to understand the rationale underlying the development of various university performance measurement systems (PMSs), and their implementation and evaluation.

A case study approach uses accounting academics' responses to an online survey and also semi-structured interviews with senior research-related leaders in a group of Australian universities. This is supplemented by document analysis. A narrative story-telling approach explores and presents the combined data observations, over the period 2010–2018, of two characters: a “typical” accounting academic and a “typical” vice-chancellor.

The study contributes to the literature on PMSs in understanding “accountingisation”, the rationale behind the development, implementation and evaluation of performance metrics by senior management and its impact on accounting academics. It juxtaposes and unpacks the complexities and nuances of PMSs and provides empirical evidence by highlighting the perceptions of both the Australian accounting academics and senior university management. The findings demonstrate a level of discontent among accounting academics in reconciling the expectations of increased “accountingisation” within university PMSs. These are juxtaposed against the views of senior university leaders who are influential in determining PMSs.

This paper is novel in considering the implications of “accountingisation” in a contemporary setting, focusing on accounting academics, values and individual PMSs within business schools.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a Canadian corporation's implementation and application of a sustainable business operation and model. It is based upon a case study of an International Canadian coffee and donut chain: Tim Hortons.

Data were collected through: extensive publications of corporate documents, observations of actual operations at retail sites and social media sites.

The paper finds that Tim Hortons has clearly made progress toward greater sustainability. However, its program often lacks specificity, particularly in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Within a visibly and highly polluting industry Tim Hortons sustainability program is a step in the right direction but there are areas in need of improvement.

The findings of this study paradoxically suggest that it is difficult for a company in the fast food industry to truly become sustainable given certain characteristics of the industry (disposal food and beverage containers, and drive‐thrus for example), yet sustainability is also imperative to business success and competitiveness.

Through a detailed examination of Tim Hortons' sustainable business approach the authors delineate a number of areas where the company can improve its sustainability. The paper also discusses areas of difficulty (e.g. drive‐thrus) and areas in need of improvement (e.g. a detailed description of the sources of the company's greenhouse‐gas emissions).

Tim Hortons' sustainability program was only recently launched, and although the motivations behind the program are not discussed, it was not developed in response to any government subsidies or legislation.

The main contributions are as follows. First, the authors methodically analyze the sustainable business approach of a Canadian fast‐food company including but not limited to its value‐added process, driving forces, and purchasing policies. This provides a beginning for others who wish to implement sustainability into an industry not known for its environmental responsibility. Second, the authors suggest ways that Tim Hortons could improve its sustainable business approach. Third, the authors provide a case study of how an iconic Canadian company with revenues over $2.5 billion and nearly 4,000 stores across the globe has begun to implement sustainability into its core strategic approach.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the supply chain management (SCM) skills that support the sensing and seizing of opportunities in a changing business environment.

Based on the previous literature on the T-shaped model of SCM skills, data were collected through a mail survey among Australian business executives. The resultant skill sets are grouped along factors that support the sensing vs seizing of opportunities.

Interestingly from an SCM perspective, functional logistics-related skills are important to maintain competitiveness but are not the ones contributing to a firm’s ability to sense opportunities and threats, and to seize opportunities in a changing business environment. The authors, therefore, support the notion that supply chain managers should be managers first. Factual SCM knowledge is the solid basis, but otherwise only an entry requirement in this field.

Problem-solving skills, along with forecasting and customer/supplier relationship management, stand out as important components that support the ability of supply chain managers to sense and shape opportunities and threats in a turbulent business environment. This focus would tend to suggest the importance of supply chain integration and collaboration as management approaches. Other SCM skills from warehousing and inventory management to transportation and purchasing are more prevalent for maintaining competitiveness.

The results of the survey and the consequential analysis indicate that the content of tertiary-level educational programmes should be significantly reviewed to deliver two distinct (but partially overlapping) streams that focus on the generalist and functionalist managers who must work together in the management of the increasingly global and complex supply chains.

Functional skills often form the basis of training and education programmes for supply chain managers. Whilst these form the solid foundation for their jobs, they are entry requirements at best. In a changing business environment, other skills are needed for success. Given that turbulence is becoming the norm rather than the exception, this finding necessitates rethinking in training and education programmes, as well as in the recruitment of supply chain managers.

Testing the T-shaped model of SCM skills from a dynamic capabilities perspective, the results of the factor analysis lead to a regrouping of skill sets in terms of sensing and seizing opportunities in a turbulent business environment.

A broad array of information channels exists for service customers. The purpose of this study is to better understand the relationship between the use of, and trust in, information channels, so that there is scope to increase the effectiveness of reliable information provision and, hence, to change behaviour.

This study empirically explored whether customers use channels they trust, and trust what they use, and examined the association between individual (demographic) factors and that trust. A total of 472 mothers completed an online survey.

The current study empirically explored channel trust and individual factors, finding that individual factors (such as education level) and trust warrant inclusion in traditional communication models such as Communication–Human Information Processing. The findings revealed that the more highly educated a customer is, the more likely it will be that a health professional is their most trusted channel, but the less likely it will be that they consider family the most trusted channel. Magazines are the least trusted information channel. Further, while informants’ most trusted information channel was healthcare professionals, this was not the most common information channel used.

This study was limited to a female consumer sample focused upon one service (maternity and child health) and five key information channels, which limits the generalizability. Further, the data were collected via an internet survey, which have biased may the results on use and trust of the internet.

The findings showcase the importance of demographic factors and the relationship between trust in information sources and use. The insights developed provide a useful research agenda for the future. This study was limited to a female consumer sample focused upon one service (maternity and child health) and five key information channels, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The data were collected via an internet survey, which may bias the results on use and trust of the internet. Additionally, the data were collected over five years ago, which may have some impact on factors such as the role and importance of internet usage. However, these limitations do not detract from the primary focus of this study and the main findings remain new and relevant.

This study undertook an empirical exploration to examine information channel trust and individual factors, thereby extending the research focus beyond current traditional communication model approaches. Models such as Communication–Human Information Processing focus on individual cognitions and assume a staged sequence of decision-making following traditional decision-making models and ignoring channel attributes such as channel trust, thereby limiting understanding. The current study indicates that communication models will benefit from the addition of channel trust and additional individual factors (such as demographics) to extend understanding beyond individual cognitions.

There has been an increased interest in the use of semantic description and matching techniques, to support service discovery and to overcome the limitations in the traditional syntactic approaches. However, the existing semantic matching approaches lack certain desirable properties that must be present in an effective solution to support service discovery. The purpose of this paper is to present a solution to facilitate the effective semantic matching of resource requests and advertisements in pervasive environments.

The paper presents a semantic description and matching approach to facilitate resource discovery in pervasive environments; the approach includes a ranking mechanism that orders services according to their suitability and also considers priorities placed on individual requirements in a request.

The solution has been evaluated for its effectiveness and the results have shown that the matcher results agree reasonably well with human judgement. The solution was also evaluated for its efficiency/scalability and from the experimental results obtained, it can be observed that for most practical situations, matching time can be considered acceptable for reasonable numbers of advertisements and request sizes.

The proposed approach improves existing semantic matching solutions in several key aspects. Specifically; it presents an effective approximate matching and ranking criterion and incorporates priority consideration in the matching process. As shown in the evaluation experiments, these features significantly improve the effectiveness of semantic matching.