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1 – 10 of over 139000Inge Birkbak Larsen and Helle Neergaard
This research presents and evaluates a method for assessing the entrepreneurial mindset (EM) of students in higher education.
Abstract
Purpose
This research presents and evaluates a method for assessing the entrepreneurial mindset (EM) of students in higher education.
Design/methodology/approach
The research considers EM a multi-variable psychological construct, which can be broken down into several conceptual sub-categories. Using data from a master course in entrepreneurship, the authors show how these categories can be applied to analyze students’ written reflections to identify linguistic markers of EM.
Findings
The research reports three main findings: analyzing student reflections is an appropriate method to explore the state and development of students’ EM; the theoretically-derived EM categories can be nuanced and extended with insight from contextualized empirical insights; and student reflections reveal counter-EM categories that represent challenges in the educator’s endeavor to foster students’ EM.
Research limitations/implications
The commitment of resources to researching EM requires the dedication of efforts to develop methods for assessing the state and development of students’ EM. The framework can be applied to enhance the theoretical rigor and methodological transparency of studies of EM in entrepreneurship education.
Practical implications
The framework can be of value to educators who currently struggle to assess if and how their educational design fosters EM attributes.
Originality/value
This inquiry contributes to the critical research discussion about how to operationalize EM in entrepreneurship education studies. The operationalization of a psychological concept such as EM is highly important because a research focus cannot be maintained on something that cannot be studied in a meaningful way.
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EigenFactor service went through some changes in 2011 before issuing the most current edition (EF‐2010) following the release of the 2010 edition of the Journal Citation Reports…
Abstract
Purpose
EigenFactor service went through some changes in 2011 before issuing the most current edition (EF‐2010) following the release of the 2010 edition of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR‐2010) in mid‐2011. Ranking journals by the EigenFactor Score (EFS) and the Article Influence Score (AIS) offered an additional pair of bibliometric indicators to assess the impact of journals in the (sub)disciplinary fields of the sciences and social sciences. In evaluating the clout, importance, and impact of journals it is essential to compare apples to apples, i.e. limiting the assessments to journals belonging to the same (sub)disciplinary areas. This paper aims to examine the quality of the subject categories created for EF‐2010 and of the JCR‐2010 subject categories as implemented within the EigenFactor services.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper compares the adequacy of the subject categories in the JCR‐2010 and EF‐2010, examining the assignment of 77 information and library science journals and 50 business/marketing journals to the 64 subject categories used in EF‐2010.
Findings
The study finds that EF‐2010 uses a very broad categorisation system of merely 64 subject categories along with the much more specific subject categories originally developed and enhanced for the JCR database of the Institute for Scientific Information (now Thomson‐Reuters). JCR‐2010 has four times as many categories than the former, and would offer a far more realistic comparison of the impact of comparable journals in EF‐2010 if the developers of the EigenFactor database had retained the assignment of the journals to the JCR subject categories. The inconsistency, inaccuracy and incompleteness of the journal classification practice in EF‐2010 creates a highly distorted picture of the standing of journals in their (sub)disciplinary leagues, and makes it very difficult for the users to reproduce the far more refined league lists of journals.
Originality/value
The paper describes the most serious limitations and errors in the classification of journals in the EF‐2010 edition.
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Discusses the research opportunities brought about by the adoption of category management in the food industry and suggests reasons why category management might be of interest to…
Abstract
Discusses the research opportunities brought about by the adoption of category management in the food industry and suggests reasons why category management might be of interest to academics. Reviews contemporary research and proposes a multidisciplinary research agenda which crosses the academic‐industrial interface. Suggests four principal research themes: beneficiaries and benefits of category management; the process of organizational change; the management of categories; and the implications of category management adoption. Discusses these themes in the context of research already undertaken and details areas meriting closer investigation.
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Within a competitiveness perspective, the main purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze franchise categories and changing profiles and trends of the franchising…
Abstract
Purpose
Within a competitiveness perspective, the main purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyze franchise categories and changing profiles and trends of the franchising industry.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on data from The Franchising Handbook, the study investigates 1,464 franchisors in 67 franchise categories that encompass 445,314 franchisees. The work uses content analysis in the investigation of franchise categories.
Findings
The study finds that franchise categories tend to be diverse regarding their category issues, franchising fees, capital requirements, and category franchisees. The work also provides meaningful implications and future research directions.
Research limitations/implications
The author believes that fast‐growing mid‐sized and newly formed franchisors may need to be included in the survey from the USA and other countries. The study's implications are that the franchising industry requires new business models regarding franchising fees, capital, and sales that are critical in maintaining companies' competitiveness.
Practical implications
Franchisors should pay attention to those fast‐growing franchise categories that may become available in the coming years.
Originality/value
Within the areas of changing franchising and franchise categories, this work provides useful findings for researchers as well as practitioners.
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Bronston T. Mayes, Dorothy Heide and Ephraim Smith
A survey was mailed to the deans of AACSB accredited schools and 50 per cent of the non‐accredited AACSB affiliates, to determine their perceptions of how the changes in…
Abstract
A survey was mailed to the deans of AACSB accredited schools and 50 per cent of the non‐accredited AACSB affiliates, to determine their perceptions of how the changes in accreditation criteria might affect their curricula and what methods might be used to make these changes. The sample was classified according to the Porter‐McKibbin categories and significant differences were found among these categories for perceived ease of accreditation; changes in programme quality; resource allocation changes; use of mission statements in decision making; curriculum component emphasis, and curriculum evaluation methods. While the overall amount of change expected in the next five years seems modest, the nature of the changes expected could have significant effects on the curricula of US business schools.
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Ramesh Roshan Das Guru, Marcel Paulssen and Arnold Japutra
This study aims to extend research in marketing on two important relational constructs, customer satisfaction and brand attachment, by comparing their long-term effects on…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to extend research in marketing on two important relational constructs, customer satisfaction and brand attachment, by comparing their long-term effects on customer behaviors with different levels of performance difficulty in a relatively understudied domain of durable products.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a two-stage quantitative study with US customers from five durable product categories, the authors first explored the hierarchy of customers’ loyalty behaviors based on increasing effort in a pretest study (N = 675). Then, the authors tested the effectiveness of satisfaction and brand attachment for customers’ loyalty behaviors over a nine-month period in a longitudinal study (N = 2,284) with customers from the same product categories.
Findings
Compared to satisfaction, brand attachment emerges as a stronger long-term predictor of customer behaviors. The performance difficulty of customer behaviors positively moderates the impact of brand attachment and negatively moderates the impact of customer satisfaction. Brand attachment is particularly effective in predicting difficult-to-perform customer behaviors, which require customers to expend resources such as time and money. Customer satisfaction is mainly effective for predicting easy-to-perform behaviors, but its long-term impact is significantly lower for easy-to-perform behaviors than brand attachment.
Research limitations/implications
The use of consumer durables in the study and samples from only one country restricts the generalizability of the findings.
Practical implications
The complementary roles of customer satisfaction and brand attachment are highlighted. Only satisfying customers is not enough to engage customers in behaviors that require resources such as money, time and energy for the brand.
Originality/value
A comparative study on the long-term effectiveness of two established relational metrics in explaining different customer behaviors varying in their performance difficulty in an understudied domain of durable products.
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Wan-Chen Lee, Li-Min Cassandra Huang and Juliana Hirt
This study aims to explore the application of emojis to mood descriptions of fiction. The three goals are investigating whether Cho et al.'s model (2023) is a sound conceptual…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the application of emojis to mood descriptions of fiction. The three goals are investigating whether Cho et al.'s model (2023) is a sound conceptual framework for implementing emojis and mood categories in information systems, mapping 30 mood categories to 115 face emojis and exploring and visualizing the relationships between mood categories based on emojis mapping.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was distributed to a US public university to recruit adult fiction readers. In total, 64 participants completed the survey.
Findings
The results show that the participants distinguished between the three families of fiction mood categories. The three families model is a promising option to improve mood descriptions for fiction. Through mapping emojis to 30 mood categories, the authors identified the most popular emojis for each category, analyzed the relationships between mood categories and examined participants' consensus on mapping.
Originality/value
This study focuses on applying emojis to fiction reading. Emojis were mapped to mood categories by fiction readers. Emoji mapping contributes to the understanding of the relationships between mood categories. Emojis, as graphic mood descriptors, have the potential to complement textual descriptors and enrich mood metadata for fiction.
José Osvaldo De Sordi, Wanderlei Lima de Paulo, Andre Rodrigues dos Rodrigues Santos, Reed Elliot Nelson, Marcia Carvalho de Azevedo, Marcos Hashimoto and Roberto Cavallari Filho
In this paper, the authors review the literature on the nature of the small and medium-sized enterprise concept. The review examines the broad diversity of terms and definitions…
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper, the authors review the literature on the nature of the small and medium-sized enterprise concept. The review examines the broad diversity of terms and definitions used to describe these kinds of firms in scholarly and practical settings. They relate this examination to the concept of small business for the purpose of comparison, in order to highlight differences and similarities between the concepts.
Design/methodology/approach
Relevant literature including articles from academia and defining documents from practical settings was identified through a scope literature review. Field data were subsequently collected via questionnaires sent to editors and authors of articles related to the theme. The data were content analyzed and the resulting codes consolidated into dimensions in accordance with the Gioia method. Chi-squared tests were applied to categorical data.
Findings
The use of the composite category “small and medium” was found to be predominant in the labeling of small businesses in scientific articles, including those in journals that specialize in small businesses, with no justifications presented for this, characterizing a widespread and consensual practice between authors and editors. In the defining documents of practical settings, however, the authors observed greater consistency and precision both in the terms used and in the delimiting values for a small business (self-employed, micro business, small business). In the sample of 27 defining documents mentioned in the articles, 25 specifically defined “small business” and 20 defined “micro business,” using indicators such as number of employees and annual turnover. The indicators delimiting values regarding the category of micro business were the same in all the documents analyzed and, regarding the category of small business, many documents used the same delimiting values.
Practical implications
Recognizing the “non-large enterprise” myth will provide a more effective posture for editors and authors to avoid using the term “small and medium,” resulting in greater precision, understanding and knowledge regarding small businesses. A better definition of a small business by academia can help public policymakers and managers of organizations that support small businesses to tailor their actions better according to the different sizes of companies. This will also lead to social gains, given the importance of small businesses in terms of job creation and countries' economies.
Originality/value
The authors identified and described the myth of the “non-large enterprise” among academics, characterized by the dichotomous view of the business universe, composed of “large enterprises” and “non-large enterprises,” the latter group being characterized by the widespread use of the term “small and medium.”
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Xiaosong Dong, Hanqi Tu, Hanzhe Zhu, Tianlang Liu, Xing Zhao and Kai Xie
This study aims to explore the opposite effects of single-category versus multi-category products information diversity on consumer decision making. Further, the authors…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the opposite effects of single-category versus multi-category products information diversity on consumer decision making. Further, the authors investigate the moderating role of three categories of visitors – direct, hesitant and hedonic – in the relationship between product information diversity and consumer decision making.
Design/methodology/approach
The research utilizes a sample of 1,101,062 product click streams from 4,200 consumers. Visitors are clustered using the k-means algorithm. The diversity of information recommendations for single and multi-category products is characterized using granularity and dispersion, respectively. Empirical analysis is conducted to examine their influence on the two-stage decision-making process of heterogeneous online visitors.
Findings
The study reveals that the impact of recommended information diversity on consumer decision making differs significantly between single-category and multiple-category products. Specifically, information diversity in single-category products enhances consumers' click and purchase intention, while information diversity in multiple-category products reduces consumers' click and purchase intention. Moreover, based on the analysis of online visiting heterogeneity, hesitant, direct and hedonic features enhance the positive impact of granularity on consumer decision making; while direct features exacerbate the negative impact of dispersion on consumer decision making.
Originality/value
First, the article provides support for studies related to information cocoon. Second, the research contributes evidence to support the information overload theory. Third, the research enriches the field of precision marketing theory.
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The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the business streamlining (BS) model proposed in 2017.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the business streamlining (BS) model proposed in 2017.
Design/methodology/approach
This study/paper develops and validates the qualitatively generated BS model, a conceptual model of service sourcing relationships, by testing it quantitatively. A survey was sent to chief exective officers, chief purchasing officers or facility managers in 764 private or public companies in Sweden with an annual turnover exceeding € 10m. The categories were tested and analyzed by means of factor analysis.
Findings
The BS model for managing service sourcing processes was confirmed to be significant overall, meaning that it is applicable irrespective of service sourcing context. The efficiency pursuing (EP) was found to have an interlinking role that calls for a revision of the BS model. Furthermore, the four categories tended to load pairwise.
Research limitations/implications
Although this cross-sectional study confirms the relevance of the BS model for managing service-sourcing processes, further studies should examine both the relative significance of its categories in different service-sourcing contexts and why the four main categories tend to pair.
Practical implications
The results support that the model is flexible and adaptable to a wide range of service-sourcing circumstances. Irrespective of the relative complexity of facility management (FM) sourcing processes, the categories can be adapted to fit the service sourcing context. Thus, it can be used as a tool to analyze and facilitate strategic decision-making.
Originality/value
The paper validates that the BS model can represent the dynamics of different service-sourcing processes, regardless of the complexity of the context.
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