Consumer price knowledge in the German retail market

Price knowledge as a construct has been one of the top behavioral pricing themes in the last four decades, especially in the Anglo-American literature. In Germany, scientists have paid relatively little attention to this topic during the last 15 years – with some notable exceptions. Therefore, this study analyzes German consumers' price knowledge and, by doing so, replicates and extends existing international work. After reviewing earlier attempts at assessing the construct, a measure is developed for the price estimation error “PEE”, based on explicit price knowledge stored in long-term memory. Results, including data from about 1,000 consumers on 69 products from a German retail chain, indicate that price knowledge in Germany is relatively low. Based on that observation, implications for the management are discussed.

How do public private partnerships influence business school performance in English-speaking Caribbean?

This thesis addresses the question of how business schoolsestablished as public privatepartnerships (PPPs) within a regional university in the English-speaking Caribbean survived for over twenty-one years and achieved legitimacy in their environment. The aim of the study was to examine how public and private sector actors contributed to the evolution of the PPPs. A social network perspective provided a broad relational focus from which to explore the phenomenon and engage disciplinary and middle-rangetheories to develop explanations. Legitimacy theory provided an appropriate performance dimension from which to assess PPP success. An embedded multiple-case research design, with three case sites analysed at three levels including the country and university environment, the PPP as a firm and the subgroup level constituted the methodological framing of the research process. The analysis techniques included four methods but relied primarily on discourse and social network analysis of interview data from 40 respondents across the three sites. A staged analysis of the evolution of the firm provided the ‘time and effects’ antecedents which formed the basis for sense-making to arrive at explanations of the public-private relationship-influenced change. A conceptual model guided the study and explanations from the cross-case analysis were used to refine the process model and develop a dynamic framework and set of theoretical propositions that would underpin explanations of PPP success and legitimacy in matched contexts through analytical generalisation. The study found that PPP success was based on different models of collaboration and partner resource contribution that arose from a confluence of variables including the development of shared purpose, private voluntary control in corporate governance mechanisms and boundary spanning leadership. The study contributes a contextual theory that explains how PPPs work and a research agenda of ‘corporate governance as inspiration’ from a sociological perspective of ‘liquid modernity’. Recommendations for policy and management practice were developed.

Linguistic identifiers of L1 Persian speakers writing in English:NLID for authorship analysis

This research focuses on Native Language Identification (NLID), and in particular, on the linguistic identifiers of L1 Persian speakers writing in English. This project comprises three sub-studies; the first study devises a coding system to account for interlingual features present in a corpus of L1 Persian speakers blogging in English, and a corpus of L1 English blogs. Study One then demonstrates that it is possible to use interlingual identifiers to distinguish authorship by L1 Persian speakers. Study Two examines the coding system in relation to the L1 Persian corpus and a corpus of L1 Azeri and L1 Pashto speakers. The findings of this section indicate that the NLID method and features designed are able to discriminate between L1 influences from different languages. Study Three focuses on elicited data, in which participants were tasked with disguising their language to appear as L1 Persian speakers writing in English. This study indicated that there was a significant difference between the features in the L1 Persian corpus, and the corpus of disguise texts. The findings of this research indicate that NLID and the coding system devised have a very strong potential to aid forensic authorship analysis in investigative situations. Unlike existing research, this project focuses predominantly on blogs, as opposed to student data, making the findings more appropriate to forensic casework data.

Multiple component patient safety intervention in English hospitals:controlled evaluation of second phase

Objective: To independently evaluate the impact of the second phase of the Health Foundation's Safer Patients Initiative (SPI2) on a range of patient safety measures. Design: A controlled before and after design. Five substudies: survey of staff attitudes; review of case notes from high risk (respiratory) patients in medical wards; review of case notes from surgical patients; indirect evaluation of hand hygiene by measuring hospital use of handwashing materials; measurement of outcomes (adverse events, mortality among high risk patients admitted to medical wards, patients' satisfaction, mortality in intensive care, rates of hospital acquired infection). Setting: NHS hospitals in England. Participants: Nine hospitals participating in SPI2 and nine matched control hospitals. Intervention The SPI2 intervention was similar to the SPI1, with somewhat modified goals, a slightly longer intervention period, and a smaller budget per hospital. Results: One of the scores (organisational climate) showed a significant (P=0.009) difference in rate of change over time, which favoured the control hospitals, though the difference was only 0.07 points on a five point scale. Results of the explicit case note reviews of high risk medical patients showed that certain practices improved over time in both control and SPI2 hospitals (and none deteriorated), but there were no significant differences between control and SPI2 hospitals. Monitoring of vital signs improved across control and SPI2 sites. This temporal effect was significant for monitoring the respiratory rate at both the six hour (adjusted odds ratio 2.1, 99% confidence interval 1.0 to 4.3; P=0.010) and 12 hour (2.4, 1.1 to 5.0; P=0.002) periods after admission. There was no significant effect of SPI for any of the measures of vital signs. Use of a recommended system for scoring the severity of pneumonia improved from 1.9% (1/52) to 21.4% (12/56) of control and from 2.0% (1/50) to 41.7% (25/60) of SPI2 patients. This temporal change was significant (7.3, 1.4 to 37.7; P=0.002), but the difference in difference was not significant (2.1, 0.4 to 11.1; P=0.236). There were no notable or significant changes in the pattern of prescribing errors, either over time or between control and SPI2 hospitals. Two items of medical history taking (exercise tolerance and occupation) showed significant improvement over time, across both control and SPI2 hospitals, but no additional SPI2 effect. The holistic review showed no significant changes in error rates either over time or between control and SPI2 hospitals. The explicit case note review of perioperative care showed that adherence rates for two of the four perioperative standards targeted by SPI2 were already good at baseline, exceeding 94% for antibiotic prophylaxis and 98% for deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis. Intraoperative monitoring of temperature improved over time in both groups, but this was not significant (1.8, 0.4 to 7.6; P=0.279), and there were no additional effects of SPI2. A dramatic rise in consumption of soap and alcohol hand rub was similar in control and SPI2 hospitals (P=0.760 and P=0.889, respectively), as was the corresponding decrease in rates of Clostridium difficile and meticillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection (P=0.652 and P=0.693, respectively). Mortality rates of medical patients included in the case note reviews in control hospitals increased from 17.3% (42/243) to 21.4% (24/112), while in SPI2 hospitals they fell from 10.3% (24/233) to 6.1% (7/114) (P=0.043). Fewer than 8% of deaths were classed as avoidable; changes in proportions could not explain the divergence of overall death rates between control and SPI2 hospitals. There was no significant difference in the rate of change in mortality in intensive care. Patients' satisfaction improved in both control and SPI2 hospitals on all dimensions, but again there were no significant changes between the two groups of hospitals. Conclusions: Many aspects of care are already good or improving across the NHS in England, suggesting considerable improvements in quality across the board. These improvements are probably due to contemporaneous policy activities relating to patient safety, including those with features similar to the SPI, and the emergence of professional consensus on some clinical processes. This phenomenon might have attenuated the incremental effect of the SPI, making it difficult to detect. Alternatively, the full impact of the SPI might be observable only in the longer term. The conclusion of this study could have been different if concurrent controls had not been used.

Growing better brains? Pregnancy and neuroscience discourses in English social and welfare policies

In recent years, English welfare and health policy has started to include pregnancy within the foundation stage of child development. The foetus is also increasingly designated as ‘at risk’ from pregnant women. In this article, we draw on an analysis of a purposive sample of English social and welfare policies and closely related advocacy documents to trace the emergence of neuroscientific claims-making in relation to the family. In this article, we show that a specific deterministic understanding of the developing brain that only has a loose relationship with current scientific evidence is an important component in these changes. We examine the ways in which pregnancy is situated in these debates. In these debates, maternal stress is identified as a risk to the foetus; however, the selective concern with women living in disadvantage undermines biological claims. The policy claim of neurological ‘critical windows’ also seems to be influenced by social concerns. Hence, these emerging concerns over the foetus’ developing brain seem to be situated within the gendered history of policing women’s pregnant bodies rather than acting on new insights from scientific discoveries. By situating these developments within the broader framework of risk consciousness, we can link these changes to wider understandings of the ‘at risk’ child and intensified surveillance over family life.

Interlingual Identifiers of an L1 German speaker writing in English

Master of Arts dissertation