Search results

For over a decade, UK public sector construction policy and industry rhetoric has advanced a value agenda that advocates the development of project‐specific understanding of value. This study aims to examine construction practitioners’ collective cognition of value to determine how their facilitation may bias this intent. A value continuum is contributed.

Critique of the design quality indicator (the primary value agenda instrument) finds that it overemphasises objective value, confirming the need for practitioners to help stakeholders develop broader understanding of value. The freelisting technique of cultural anthropology is adopted to model practitioners’ collective cognition of value and, thus, their bias over this process. The standard freelisting protocol is followed.

Practitioners’ collective understanding is found to comprise related concepts that resolve to a one dimensional “value continuum” with subjective and objective terminals and which fully embodies value agenda intent. In contrast, the concepts articulated by the design quality indicator are biased towards the objective value continuum terminal, confirming the need for practitioners to facilitate stakeholder exploration of the full continuum if the value agenda is to be fully addressed.

The value continuum only reflects the views of a small but typical sample of construction practitioners. Further work must characterise model completeness and consistency through the supply chain.

This is the first work to derive an empirical model of construction practitioners’ collective understanding of value. It achieves this by the novel linking of a cognitive modelling technique from cultural anthropology with an emic interpretation of the results.

This paper aims to examine how three different organisations integrate sustainability reporting into management control systems (MCS).

A case study examination of sustainability reporting integrated into MCS in three New Zealand organisations.

The integration of sustainability reporting into MCS holds advantages for organisations to operationalise sustainability objectives, broaden stakeholder accountability as well as intensify interactions with stakeholders, formalise organisation beliefs and improve communication of sustainability measures internally. While frameworks such as the balanced scorecard (BSC) can facilitate implementation of sustainability reporting, some organisations may choose to fully integrate the latter into their management control system.

Sustainability reporting is sometimes seen as an external reporting philosophy that can be managed as a separate project. The authors show it can be integrated into MCS, either entirely or through tools such as the BSC. The authors develop a framework that may be useful in future studies to locate our case organisations.

This paper aims to investigate the concept of value self-creation and provides a formal definition for this concept. The paper suggests that it sits within an overall continuum of value creation that includes value delivery and value co-creation.

A proposed model of value self-creation was developed and empirically tested in a health care self-service, bowel screening. An online, self-completion survey was administered to Australian men and women aged 50 years and above, as this represents the primary target population for bowel screening.

The results of the structural equation modelling in AMOS suggest that consumers can self-create value, leading to desired outcomes of satisfaction with the consumption experience and behavioural intentions to engage with the self-service again in the future. The findings provide empirical evidence to suggest that consumers’ behavioural contributions represent the most important consumer contributions in self-service, followed by cognitive contributions.

The study provides an empirically validated model of value self-creation in health care self-service. Much of the existing research on value co-creation has concentrated on traditional service types and is ill-placed to explain the value creation processes in self-services. This study offers originality by addressing this gap and demonstrating to service managers how they can manage consumer contributions towards a self-service and facilitate value-self creation, even though they are not present during the consumption stage of the consumption process.

This paper aims to illustrates the use of the modern Graham and Dodd valuation methodology as a corporate M&A tool by way of case study.

The paper presents a case study of the 1995 Berkshire Hathaway acquisition of GEICO and draws on previously published Graham and Dodd methodological materials as well as GEICO's publicly available financial information. The valuation presented in the case is the sole work of the authors.

The paper finds that, while Graham and Dodd‐based valuation is a popular investment methodology it has thus far received scant attention as a corporate M&A tool. The results of the GEICO case suggest that Graham and Dodd valuation could be applied successfully to corporate M&A.

The paper explains modern Graham and Dodd valuation in the context of Berkshire Hathaway's 1995 GEICO acquisition. It demonstrates how that acquisition contained a reasonable margin‐of safety, or price discount to estimated intrinsic value, even though it was taken private at a 25.6 percent premium over the $55.75/share market price at the time. The case demonstrates the practical utility of Graham and Dodd‐based valuation in corporate M&A, and provides recommendations for its use in that context.

While Graham and Dodd valuation has been well covered from an investment perspective this is the first work, as far as the authors are aware, that seeks to apply it to corporate M&A.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of organisational capabilities (dynamic and operational) in the formation of value networks in the context of public transport services.

The theoretical argument is substantiated with qualitative data from four narratives on value network formations in the Swiss public transport system. These four narratives cover two types of new value networks: incremental improvements in established value networks; and radical leaps in emerging value networks.

These two types of new value networks entail the co‐evolution of different dynamic and operational capabilities.

The study is limited by the qualitative research approach.

Public transport operators can utilise the findings on organisational capabilities to guide incremental improvements in their existing value network and/or radical leaps into an emerging value network.

Governments should not only seek to increase transport capacity, but also aim to develop value networks to enhance public transport service experiences.

The paper applies value‐network thinking to public transport services. It offers a comprehensive framework to help organisations manage the formation of value networks. The results provide testable propositions that can be used to guide future research.

Studies have explored expectations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) among cultures, but findings are mixed. A more nuanced view of cultural dimensions rather than using Hofstede’s aggregate country scores can offer a stronger empirical foundation for studying the effects of culture. Based on two cultural dimensions and Carroll’s four-dimensional model of CSR, the purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between individualistic/collectivistic values and individuals’ expectations of different types of responsibilities (economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic), the relationship between long-term values and individuals’ expectations of different types of responsibilities and the degree of skepticism about CSR related to these values.

This study surveyed panel participants in two countries, South Korea (collectivistic and long term) and the USA (individualistic and short term), chosen because they are at extreme ends of the cultural values continuum. Multi-dimensional aspects of the cultural variables were tested in the samples rather than using national scores as proxy variables for culture. Data were quantitative and various statistical tests including structural equation modeling were used for analysis.

The findings show that horizontal collectivism and the planning dimension of long-term orientation are positively associated with CSR expectations, whereas the tradition dimension of long-term orientation is negatively associated with CSR expectations. In addition, vertical individualism is positively associated with skepticism toward CSR activities.

The differences in types of individual-collectivism (horizontal and vertical) as well as the different aspects of long-term orientation had an effect on the results, pointing to the importance of exploring the nuances of the dimensions as well as the importance of testing them within the sample rather than using aggregated national scores.

Previous studies that used a proxy variable for culture assumed that collectivistic cultures have higher expectations for CSR. While empirically supporting the assumption of the relationship between cultural factors and CSR expectations at the individual level, the study found that people who view themselves as autonomous within a group but accept inequality within the group (vertical individualism) are more likely to be skeptical of CSR activities and suggests that skepticism about CSR may be more closely related to individual viewpoints or to particular contexts or particular corporations rather than to cultural factors, which has implications for international corporate communication.

The purpose of this research is to identify and analyze the core values of the Peruvian public sector in the particular context of recent public management reforms.

After distinguishing between traditional private and public sector values, the paper compared the presence of each of these types of values in two very different sources of data: input from employees' values survey and formal values statements of Peruvian public sector organizations. The analysis includes both a comparison of the presence of traditional public and private sector values in the two sources of data and the identification of the cultural profile of the public sector of Peru using the tri-axial model.

The findings indicate a large gap between values at the theoretical level and values at the practical level. While values statements of public organizations in Peru clearly reflect traditional public sector values, in practice, public sector employees appear to follow a mixture of public and private sector values. Strengthening this conclusion is the finding that the cultural tri-axial profile of the sector is purely economic-pragmatic, which suggests that ethical and emotional values are positioned lower on the values hierarchy.

This paper provides the first evidence of two important cultural phenomena in the Peruvian public sector: a broad adoption of private sector values and a gap between the values that are proposed as ethical guidelines (ideal) and the values that are followed in practice (real). The combination of these two phenomena suggests a potential risk to the ethical functioning of the public administration. This risk is especially significant in a developing country like Peru, where many of its poor citizens depend on government support. The paper discusses both the research and practical implications of this study.

Although perceived as a wrong act, insurance fraud is a prevalent phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to understand the psychological factors that lead to reporting an exaggerated/false insurance claim would enable insurance companies and policy makers to devise better preventive policies.

Utilizing data-driven clustering techniques on psychological and demographic measures from 985 insurance customers in Europe, this study outlines profiles of segments of customers as it relates to dishonesty in dealing with insurance companies. The segmentation criteria include attitude toward insurance fraud, perceived probability of punishment, basic human values and morals, religiosity, life satisfaction and demographic characteristics.

Results reveal the existence of four market segments. The segments include non-conservatives (sensitive to both perception of wrong behavior and the monetary payoff for a fraudulent claim), self-protectionists (sensitive to the probability of being caught), hedonists (sensitive to the personal pleasure and monetary payoffs for insurance fraud) and socially focused individuals (sensitive to social norms regarding admitting to having committed insurance fraud). Among the demographic variables, only education and among psychological variables, universalism, hedonism, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, moral philosophy, religiosity, perceived probability of punishment and attitude toward insurance fraud were significantly different among the four identified segments.

Specific policies are proposed in order to prevent insurance fraud, tailored to the specific profile of each segment.

Using a psychological perspective and a data-driven methodology, this study identifies four heterogeneous segments of unethical insurance customers with dissimilar values, attitudes toward fraud and perception of punishment probability.

This paper aims to investigate how different trajectories can be detected and classified in business models (BMs) at the level of their underlying product development value-structure (value-creation and appropriation), and what are the drivers. Such BMs are run by multinational firms to accommodate various technologies and innovations; however, this is stressful because of inherent incompatibilities and conflicts.

An explorative study of six product cases from Du Pont’s Textiles Fiber Division (DTFD), namely, nylon yarns, knits and wovens, DTFD blockbusters, Coolmax^®, MicroMattique™, filling materials and Supriva™, is conducted.

In value-creation, technology push or market pull yields resultant technology-forward or market-back trajectories. For value appropriation, new growth opportunities or continuous market expectations lead to breakthrough or continuous innovations. Consistent and inconsistent combinations of these trajectories yield four differential drivers: technological breakthrough, market-back technology, continuous technology and continuous market-back. This is supported by relevant supply chain strategies, either focused through joint ventures and licensees for commodities or vertically integrated for specialty products.

The paper adds to the analysis of ambidexterity in the value structure of BMs along constituent value-creation and appropriation, thus providing a logical lens to understand various complementarities that exist in terms of opposing technology trajectories and product innovation repertoire.

This study contributes to the knowledge of product innovation management in the textile industry, where both large-scale innovation and operational excellence are challenged over the past few decades.

The lessons learnt address the fundamental issue of higher value generation through configuration of multiple contrasting value-structure elements.