Search results

A FEW MONTHS ago we were listening to a management consultant who had arrived here from the USA, though he was originally an Israeli. We did not agree with all the things he said. One of his audience, in fact, asked a question based on one of his statements that he seemed to have difficulty in answering. Certainly it did not seem to satisfy his questioner.

This paper focuses on how individuals and organisations can improve their performance by more effective time management. An approach is developed for examining employee's time performance and potential benefits for both individual and organisation are identified. A distinction is drawn between time mismanaged by the individual and that wasted due to inefficiencies in the structure of the organisation. Drawing case study material from an examination of the staff of the maintenance management division of a major commercial organisation, an approach is described which can be adopted in any enterprise. As organisations are in a state of constant change, there is an increasing need to engender greater effectiveness in employees. It therefore becomes vital to instil in individuals, no matter what their level in the organisation, a more disciplined approach to their use of time during the working day. In which case it is necessary to take a close look at the way the organisation, and each section of it, is functioning with respect to the way it makes demand on employee's time. If a strategy can be developed for both individual and organisation, major benefits can result, yielding greater effectiveness in time usage. An improvement in time management can provide the individual with free time to concentrate on important things and allow him to do those things he most enjoys doing. Insufficient time to prepare and to plan ahead often means tasks are rushed and, as a result, stress in the individual increases. Alternatively, those who are better organisers of their time, may find themselves more relaxed and capable of achieving their targets. Employees often find that a significant proportion of their day is spent losing time in futile meetings, handling unnecessary telephone calls, and in unproductive travelling time. Furthermore, time may be wasted dealing with trivial details and issues which subordinates or less highly trained staff should be doing, or coping with constant interruptions because the section/group in which they are working is not adequately structured for time efficiency. Staff often spend a significant proportion of their day attempting to cope with some of these distractions, which may be due in part either to organisational inadequacies, or to their own personal failure to manage time and contact patterns effectively. The incidence of these distractions will vary from company to company, but can be overcome if the right approach is adopted. A survey of the literature on the subject reveals relatively few studies which can provide guidance. Of these, some have concentrated on how managers/staff occupy their working day and only a handful have addressed the issue of time management for the employee. One exception is a study carried out by IBM in 1979 on how its managers spent their time. Among the findings was that over 50 per cent of an employee's working day is occupied by no more than five activities, namely writing, meetings, telephone calls, travelling and filing. Each of these areas can be prodigious time wasters, and yet few organisations have availed themselves of the countless studies which show how improvements in performance can be achieved.

Pricing studies have largely focused on sellers' pricing strategies and price determinants. To expand earlier work on sellers' pricing decisions, this study considers time as a major factor driving sellers' ticket prices in the secondary market. Specifically, because most secondary market transactions occur in the last moments before a game, this study considers how resellers adjust ticket prices within a few days prior to a game day including an actual game day.

To examine the impact of time on secondary market ticket prices for Major League Baseball (MLB), ticket prices were collected from StubHub (one of the largest secondary ticket markets) four times per game: from 3 days to 1 day prior to a game day and on the actual game day. Additionally, 10 control variables were obtained from previous research on price determinants (N = 19,155). A multiple regression model was created based on the extant literature regarding secondary market ticket prices.

Results indicate the number of days before a game negatively influenced ticket prices: resellers decreased ticket prices consistently during the last few days prior to a game's first inning. Specifically, secondary market ticket prices decreased relatively dramatically on an actual game day. Time had no significant effects on ticket prices 2 days prior to a game day. In addition to the role of time, league affiliation and the number of all-star players were identified as key price determinants in the secondary market. Moreover, changes in weather forecasts and the home team starting pitcher's ERA played significant roles in price changes.

Despite containing a relatively high number of data observations compared with prior pricing studies, this study's findings were limited to certain teams. Additionally, as only MLB secondary market ticket pricing was considered, different outcomes and implications may apply in other major sport ticket markets (e.g. NBA, NFL, NHL and MLS) featuring distinct league structures, policies and demand.

This study offers practical guidance for sellers' pricing decisions. Most secondary ticket market sellers lowered their ticket prices relatively dramatically on an actual game day. Reducing ticket prices prior to a game day can lead to greater chances to avoid unsold tickets that compromise revenue management. This study's results also afford professional sport organizations and secondary ticket market consumers a clearer understanding of the factors resellers consider when setting ticket prices.

Although previous studies have uncovered essential elements influencing ticket prices and consumer demand in the secondary ticket market, little work has examined how time affects sellers' pricing decisions within a few days prior to a game day. Little is known about the elements that significantly influence sellers’ decisions to adjust (i.e. increase or decrease) ticket prices in the secondary market as well. This topic deserves ongoing attention, as new outcomes can supplement previous studies' findings due to changing market environments.

Fatigue effects related to answering a sequence of choice tasks have received much scrutiny in the stated choice experiments (SCE) literature. However, decision fatigue related to the time of day when respondents answer questionnaires has been largely overlooked in this literature even though time of day related fatigue effects are well known in the psychology literature. The purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that variations in the time of day when respondents answer an online food choice experiment will translate into observable fatigue effects in the food choices.

An empirical SCE concerning food choices is conducted using a web-based questionnaire for interviews in a pre-recruited online panel of consumers. Timestamps collected during the online interviews provide knowledge about the time of day at which each respondent has answered the survey. This information is linked with knowledge from a food sociology survey on typical meal times as well as biophysical research linking food intake to blood sugar and mental energy in order to generate a proxy variable for each respondent’s level of mental energy when answering the food choice tasks in the questionnaire.

Results show evidence of a time of day effect on error variance in the stated food choices as well as the subsequently estimated market share predictions. Specifically, respondents provide less consistent answers during the afternoon than at other times of the day.

The results indicate that time of day can affect responses to an online survey through increased fatigue and correspondingly less choice consistency. Thus, especially online surveys might account for this in data analysis or even restrict accessibility to the online survey for certain times of day.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

This article explores the varied ways that individuals create and use calendars, planners and other cognitive artifacts to document the multiple temporalities that make up their everyday lives. It reveals the hidden documentary time work required to synchronize, coordinate or entrain their activities to those of others.

We interviewed 47 Canadian participants in their homes, workplaces or other locations and photographed their documents. We analyzed qualitatively; first thematically to identify mentions of times, and then relationally to reveal how documentary time work was situated within participants' broader contexts.

Participants' documents revealed a wide variety of temporalities, some embedded in the templates they used, and others added by document creators and users. Participants' documentary time work involved creating and using a variety of tools and strategies to reconcile and manage multiple temporalities and indexical time concepts that held multiple meanings. Their work employed both standard “off the shelf” and individualized “do-it-yourself” approaches.

This article combines several concepts of invisible work (document work, time work, articulation work) to show both how individuals engage in documentary time work and how that work is situated within broader social and temporal contexts and standards.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) is the worst pandemic in recent memory in terms of its economic and social impacts. Deadly second wave of COVID-19 in India shook the country and reshaped the ways organizations functions and societies behave. Medical infrastructure was unaffordable and unsupportive which created high distress in the Indian society, especially for poor. At this juncture, some pharmaceutical firms made a unique social investment when they reduced price of drugs used to treat COVID-19 patients. This study aims to examine how the market and the society respond to the price reduction announcement during the psychological distress of COVID-19.

Market reactions have been analyzed by conducting an event study on stock market data and visual analytics-based sentiment analysis on Twitter data.

Overall, this study finds positive abnormal returns on the day and around the day of event. Interestingly, this study finds that returns during the time of high distress are significantly higher. Sentiment analysis conveys that net sentiment is favorable to the pharmaceutical firms around the day of event and it sustains more during the time of high distress.

This study is unique in contributing to the business and industrial management literature by highlighting market reactions to social responsibility of business during the time of psychological distress in emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize, organize, and discuss multidisciplinary research influential to a service firm's use of a cyclical time‐based marketing approach that may be aptly termed time‐of‐day services marketing, to introduce a general process and framework to assist in the evaluation of its strategic use, and to present areas in need of future research.

Objectives are achieved via conceptual analysis and a synthesis and organization of the relevant multidisciplinary literature.

The paper finds that the principal benefits to service firms of adopting a time‐of‐day services approach in varying degrees are that it is able to assist the firm in offering multiple, unique value‐propositions, providing superior contextual value to the customer, enhancing customer perceptions of value in relation to their needs, and supporting the firm's pursuit of a sustainable competitive advantage in its services.

Time‐of‐day services marketing is a viable approach for some firms but is not a strategy to be pursued by all firms. Service industry executives and managers should carefully weigh its adoption in terms of an overarching framework to identify the best services strategy for their marketing and business objectives.

Time‐of‐day services marketing has received little strategic attention in the services marketing literature. Furthermore, there is no good, published source of guidance to help service industry executives and managers make decisions about the extent that such an approach may present opportunities for value creation and competitive advantage. This paper addresses these voids by providing and discussing a comprehensive set of multi‐disciplinary factors, process, and framework that facilitate its evaluation for strategic adoption. Theoretically, the research contributes to the body of services marketing knowledge by altering the services marketing view of the “day” to be one that can be increasingly examined as less‐constant in terms of many service‐relevant individual and social behaviors, more systematically varying, and increasingly explainable on biological/physiological, sociological and/or psychological bases which are ultimately highly relevant to services marketers

Just‐in‐time (JIT) systems were originally designed for deterministic production environments such as constant processing times and smooth and stable demand. However, once implemented, JIT is fraught with numerous types of uncertainties, including variations in processing time and demand, planned interruptions such as preventive maintenance and unplanned interruptions such as equipment failure. These uncertainties lead to lowered production throughput, decreased machine utilization, increased order completion time and greater backlogs and overtime requirements. In this paper, we introduce a newly developed system, which we refer to as the flexible kanban system (FKS), to cope with uncertainties and planned/unplanned interruptions. We demonstrate the superiority of the new system by considering four case examples covering various uncertainties, conducting numerous studies and comparing the overall performances of the FKS with that of the traditional JIT system. In all the cases considered, the performance of the FKS was, indeed, superior to that of the traditional JIT system.