Search results

Investigates the image of craftsmanship as a predictor influencing the purchase, by Americans, of European cars. Focuses also on the development of the factor model used in identifying differences between the purchase of European and American cars. Complements efforts of many others intent on the identification of factors giving the Europeans the competitive edge. Reports on a sample of 250 recent purchasers of US and European cars to find out the variables involved, of these 200 were returned and 140 were used for analysis – the remaining 60 were retained to be used as a final test of the model. Objectives were to determine whether such points as craftsmanship influenced Americans to purchase a European car and uses image analysis as well as discriminant analysis. Concludes that though this analysis and results are discussed it can in no way be described as definite or inclusive. Says this research may provide impetus for more extensive research into European image and impact on US consumers.

Considering the relevance of operational excellence as a business strategy, organizations are striving to improve themselves by adopting best practices and universally accepted principles through the process of continuous improvement, and these principles should be embedded in the culture of an organization. Organizations pursue to align themselves by continuously improving their processes by adopting scientifically proven techniques and cultural transformation throughout the organization. However, there is a lack of scientific instruments for the assessment of operational excellence. The objective of this study is to develop a scale for the assessment of practices of operational excellence principles in the organizations. Further reliability and validity of the developed scale are measured by testing the relationship between Human Resource Practices (HRP) and Operational Excellence (OE).

This study comprises quantitative design through exploratory and confirmatory studies and also includes qualitative analysis to develop a scale for the assessment of Operational Excellence (OE). Interviews from industry experts have been conducted to identify the major components for which organizations are striving for OE. Previous literature and excellence models, especially principles of the Shingo Operational Excellence Model (SOEM), have been reviewed and considered to finalize the scale items. Data were collected in two stages from both Telecommunication subsectors (Cellular Mobile Operators and Fixed Local Loop Operators) of Pakistan through the cross-sectional survey. In the first stage, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed on the sample of 611 respondents from both Cellular Mobile and Fixed Local Loop operators of Pakistan. In the second stage, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed on the sample of 423 respondents from the Fixed local loop operators. EFA was conducted by using SPSS version 23 to finalize the OE scale, and for confirmatory factor analysis, PLS-SEM using Smart PLS was used to confirm the reliability and validity of the OE Scale.

The results of EFA reveal that OE is a multidimensional construct with three dimensions and 23 items. The dimensions of the developed OE Scale explored in this study are cultural enablers (CE), continuous process improvement (CPI) and enterprise alignment (EA). The confirmatory factor analysis of OE confirmed the scale dimensionality, reliability and validity along with the hypothesis testing to measure the impact of antecedent variable HRP on OE.

Organizations pursue to improve and align their operational processes but usually unable to confirm the implementation of their desired objectives. Based on the developed OE scale, managers may assess the implementation of OE principles in their organizations. This research has been conducted in the telecommunication sector of Pakistan only, and the developed instrument needs to be further tested in other organizations.

The instrument developed in this study will help both researchers and practitioners to assess the principles of operational excellence in their organizations and enable them to design the strategies for improving organizational performance.

The results of this study will create awareness about the principles of operational excellence. The developed OE instrument will assist in identifying the gaps in organizational norms and values from the perspective of paying respect to every individual inside and outside the organization. OE instrument will be further helpful in the identification and assurance of health, safety, protection of the environment and community issues.

This study provides a reliable and validated scale for the scientific area of operation management and helps managers with the assessment of operational excellence in their organizations. This newly developed scale is also valid to test and use in different studies and industries by researchers and practitioners.

This study involved analysis of the consumption behaviours of spectators in the K-League (South Korea). Its dual purpose was to cluster spectators into homogeneous groups on the basis of attitudes towards game attendance, and to define the segments obtained on the basis of the demographic and lifestyle profiles of the spectators. Multiple steps were taken to analyse the data from a survey of 967 spectators. This revealed four distinct groups - promotion-concerned, place-concerned, price-concerned and indifferent.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate and compare the service quality of the city bus service measured by two different approaches which are subjective service quality dimensions and objective service quality dimensions.

The objective service quality dimensions have been estimated based on the benchmarking technique provided by the Ministry of Urban Development, India. For the analysis of subjective service quality dimensions, a questionnaire survey has been conducted to measure the users’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction about the service. The questionnaire consists of users’ socioeconomic characteristics and 23 questions related to city bus service quality dimensions. Questionnaire data have been analyzed by factor analysis, regression analysis and path analysis to find out the indicators representing subjective service quality dimensions. Finally, the overall service quality of the bus service has been determined based on both the measures.

The study indicates that the overall service quality of the bus service is different for subjective and objective analyses. While the objective measures show that the service quality is very good, the subjective measures indicate that the service is not doing well.

The analysis of the subjective dimensions is complicated. Analysis of the subjective dimensions needed more expertise and resources than the objective analysis.

In this study, the estimated service quality of the bus service is more reliable than the other methods as it comprises of both operators’ perspective and passengers’ expectations from the service.

This study aims to identify systematically the factors that can often influence labour productivity directly and indirectly, to build a model that can evaluate the significance of these factors. The model can be used as a tool for assisting field construction mangers responsible for productivity.

The factors were first identified by undertaking a literature review. The scope and method for measuring labour productivity were then determined. The final analysis model was built through a statistical analysis conducted with the chosen factors.

The results of the analysis indicate that the work management component (e.g. the manager's abilities) and the work technique component (e.g. work continuity) have greater impact than the worker component (e.g. the workers' capability) and the work characteristic component (e.g. work difficulty).

This research focuses on the qualitative perspective of site managers on labour productivity. Although the process of translating qualitative opinions into quantitative data is a matter for debate, the result of this research, when compared to other quantitative studies, can be used to establish a strategy and an action plan for managing labour productivity.

Qualitative aspects that were considered to establish a labour productivity model can be evaluated by site construction managers. Despite the importance of these qualitative aspects, they have, by and large, been neglected, as models to date tend to consider more directly measurable quantitative factors. In particular, they can be used to develop a strategy for increasing labour productivity at the initial planning stage.

This research explores the differences between a subjective perception and the objective reality of labour productivity.

As the Chinese Government is planning to transform the economy from an export-oriented economy into a consumption-oriented economy, the impact of Chinese consumers to the economy will become more and more important. However, there is a lack of literature on Chinese consumers’ behavior and the critical factors of shopping malls in China. Hence, this study aims to determine the critical factors of a shopping mall in an urban complex in China from customers’ perspective, using Nanjing Wanda Plaza as an example for our case study.

This study carries out ranking analysis and factor analysis to determine the critical factors of the shopping mall. Then cluster analysis is applied to divide the customers into three segments, showing the importance of each factor to different customer segments. Furthermore, correspondence analysis is conducted to investigate the relationship between customer segments and customer characteristics (gender, occupation, age and income). This method can show how customer characteristics affect the critical factors of the shopping mall.

Sensual enjoyable shoppers consider the “soft factors” to be superior to the “hard factors”, whereas the pragmatic shoppers are just the opposite.

This study can serve as a useful reference for developers in designing shopping malls in urban complexes to attract more customers.

Determines that factor analysis is a data reduction technique, which takes a number of different variables and tries to note any underlying relationships which may be present. Posits that the factor analysis technique was originally pioneered by a psychologist named Spearman to aid his understanding of human abilities, he postulated that a basic factor of intelligence underlies each person's ability to perform various skills. Adumbrates that the applications of factor analysis in marketing are in two main categories, to: attempt to understand behavioural processes by trying to identify and give descriptive definitions to underlying factors; reduce large groups of descriptive variables into a smaller but more manageable representative subset. Closes by giving a table, with sorted rotated factor loadings which are useful in naming factors, from the pharmaceutical industry. Concludes that factor analysis is useful when the researcher is primarily concerned with degree of association among variables.

The Student Leadership Competencies Inventory consists of eight scales, each corresponding to its relevant leadership construct within the Student Leadership Competencies framework (Seemiller, 2013). Due to the increasing use of the framework and associated inventory in leadership development programs in higher education, we conducted a thorough analysis of the psychometric properties within each scale. Specifically, using a national dataset of university student responses, we analyzed internal reliability statistics, and conducted exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation and maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis for each of the eight scales. Our results suggested that all scales, overall, possess sufficient strength to be considered valid measures of the leadership constructs within the Inventory, with some notably high co-variances between certain sub-scale factors in several scales.

Aims to distinguish among different levels of default risk for residential mortgage loans and to examine the significant factors for the different levels of default risk. Classifies the sample into default and non‐default groups and analyses the original mortgage loan data by factor and cluster analyses based on borrower characteristics, property characteristics and microeconomic variables in order to derive risk classifications from various likelihoods of default. Furthermore, applies logit, probit and discriminant analyses to examine the significant factors for all three clusters. The empirical results show that the three clusters may be ranked as follows, in order of risk, from the least to greatest likelihood of default: the owner‐occupied housing buyer, invester group and young buyer clusters. In addition, the factor “borrower’s education level” has negative impact for all three clusters.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a structured review of the literature on the factors affecting the strategic thinking of an organization. This study offers some theoretical insights by analysing the divergent or analogous views of authors on these factors by analysing the empirical studies carried out in the literature.

An empirical method of conducting a structured literature review has been adopted in this study. Theory context characteristic methodology framework and meta-analysis are the methodologies applied to analyse the different empirical studies conducted in the literature and determine the variation or similarities in the views of authors over the same factor based on their effect sizes. This study analyses over 45 different empirical studies in the literature conducted on the factors affecting strategic thinking.

This study explains how the factors have been similarly or differently explained by the authors in the literature. This analysis gives a better understanding of the factors affecting strategic thinking and quantitatively amalgamates the current empirical studies carried out in the literature. The effects sizes generated for each factor helps in determining the homogeneous or heterogeneous nature of the factor.

The study is limited only to analyse the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the factors affecting strategic thinking at an organisational level. This study can be further extended by analysing the type of effect these factors have on the strategic thinking of the organisation.

The findings of this study identify the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the factors affecting strategic thinking in an organisation. This helps the top management to concentrate on these factors, which might develop a strategic thinking nature in the organisation, leading to the better formation of strategies, and successfully implement them in their businesses.

The study fills the unattended gaps in the literature by analysing the homogeneous and heterogeneous nature of the factors affecting the strategic thinking of an organisation.