Absence of corporate social reporting (CSR) in Bangladesh: a research note

This paper aims to broaden the present CSR literature by extending its focus to the absence of CSR within a developing country, an area which, to date, is relatively under researched in comparison to the more widely studied presence of CSR within developed Western countries. In particular this paper concentrates upon the lack of disclosure on three particular eco-justice issues: child labour, equal opportunities and poverty alleviation. We critically examine why this is the case and thereby illuminate underlying motives behind corporate unwillingness to address these issues. For this purpose, 23 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with senior corporate managers in Bangladesh. The findings suggest that the main reasons for non-disclosure include lack of legal requirements, lack of knowledge/awareness, poor performance and fear of bad publicity. Given these findings the paper raises some serious concerns as to why corporations would ever be expected to voluntarily report on eco-justice issues where performance is poor and negative publicity would be generated. These significant issues require careful consideration by policy makers at the national, regional and international levels.

A model of transactional and transformational leadership for services personnel

This paper is concerned with the effects that leadership styles (i.e., transactional and transformational) can have upon the level of front-line employees’ service delivery quality. Previous literature has mostly looked at leadership and its effects upon subordinates within a sales, psychology, or human resources context. However, due to the idiosyncrasies inherent in services (i.e., intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability, and inseparability), it is likely that, in such a context, different leadership styles will effect performance outcomes. Consequently, this paper seeks to expand the services marketing literature by developing a conceptual framework of leadership style effects adapted to the field of services marketing. Of particular importance are the effects that leadership styles have upon front-line employee “motivators” and service-related job outcomes. Specific hypotheses are developed and future research directions are also presented for consideration.

Problematising the construction of journal quality:an engagement with the mainstream

Journal ranking studies have generally adopted citation techniques or academic perceptions as the basis for assessing journal quality. They have traditionally been a source of information about potential research outlets, new journals, and an aid to developing a consensus about the relative merit of publications for promotion decisions. The aim of our research is to address specific shortcomings in the conventional literature and construct an alternative view of how we might more appropriately assess journal ‘quality’. We attempt to engage with the conventional literature by applying an approach that does not privilege either citation techniques or academic perceptions. We have adopted from Zeff (1996) an objective measure of academic journal library holdings, which Zeff describes as a ‘market test’. Our construct provides evidence of an important difference in journal holdings for the Australasian region that could significantly influence further research on journal quality. The method itself is entirely mundane but may be considered to reflect a complex of historic and more contemporary variables which impact on academic and administrative decisions, influencing the makeup of academic library holdings and providing a proxy for journal ‘quality’.

Constructing an 'efficient frontier' of accounting journal quality

This paper reports the construction of an 'efficient frontier' of the perceived quality attributes of academic accounting journals. The analysis is based on perception data from two web-based surveys of Australasian and British academics. The research reported here contributes to the existing literature by augmenting the commonly supported single dimension of quality with an additional measure indicating the variation of perceptions of journal quality. The result of combining these factors is depicted diagrammatically in a manner that reflects the risk and return trade-off as conceptualised in the capital market model of an efficient frontier of investment opportunities. This conceptualisation of a 'market' for accounting research provides a context in which to highlight the complex issues facing academics in their roles as editors, researchers and authors. The analysis indicates that the perceptions of the so-called 'elite' US accounting journals have become unsettled particularly in Australasia, showing high levels of variability in perceived quality, while other traditionally highly ranked journals (ABR, AOS, CAR) have a more 'efficient' combination of high-quality ranking and lower dispersion of perceptions. The implications of these results for accounting academics in the context of what is often seen as a market for accounting research are discussed. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An analysis of costs in institutions of higher education in England

Cost functions are estimated, using random effects and stochastic frontier methods, for English higher education institutions. The article advances on existing literature by employing finer disaggregation by subject, institution type and location, and by introducing consideration of quality effects. Estimates are provided of average incremental costs attached to each output type, and of returns to scale and scope. Implications for the policy of expansion of higher education are discussed.

Do many hands make light work? How to overcome social loafing and gain motivation in work teams

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to challenge the assumption that process losses of individuals working in teams are unavoidable. The paper aims to challenge this assumption on the basis of social identity theory and recent research. Design/methodology/approach – The approach adopted in this paper is to review the mainstream literature providing strong evidence for motivation problems of individuals working in groups. Based on more recent literature, innovative ways to overcome these problems are discussed. Findings – A social identity-based analysis and recent findings summarized in this paper show that social loafing can be overcome and that even motivation gains in group work can be expected when groups are important for the individual group members' self-concepts. Practical implications – The paper provides human resource professionals and front-line managers with suggestions as to how individual motivation and performance might be increased when working in teams. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the literature by challenging the existing approach to reducing social loafing, i.e. individualizing workers as much as possible, and proposes a team-based approach instead to overcome motivation problems.

Requisite IS management knowledge and skills construct: A survey

A review of the literature suggests that various IS knowledge and skills should be grouped into a construct because many IS tasks require a combination of diverse disciplines. Many studies argue that today's IS executives should be multidisciplinary, while the organizational skills are becoming increasingly important. However, the outstanding issue is what is the appropriate balance of disciplines between the organizational domain and technical domain. For understanding such a balance, it is easier to refer to quantitative proportions than to qualitative descriptions. Therefore, this study suggests a way to quantitatively identify an IS management knowledge and skills construct - a combination that comprises six related knowledge and skills categories suggested by the literature. By analyzing the data obtained in a 1996's survey, two such constructs for current proficiency and expected level have been quantitatively identified. To people aiming at a senior IS executive career, the deficiencies between current and expected constructs suggest not only the direction but also the extent should be enhanced, and the constructs indicate the balance among various disciplines should be maintained.

Reliability management of machine tool technology: a case study of current practice

Considerable attention has been given in the literature to identifying and describing the effective elements which positively affect the improvement of product reliability. These have been perceived by many as the 'state of the art' in the manufacturing industry. The applicability, diffusion and effectiveness of such methods and philosophies, as a means of systematically improving the reliability of a product, come in the main from case studies and single and infra-industry empirical studies. These studies have both been carried out within the wider context of quality assurance and management, and taking reliability as a discipline in its own right. However, it is somewhat of a surprise that there are no recently published findings or research studies on the adoption of these methods by the machine tool industry. This may lead one to construct several hypothesised paradigms: (a) that machine tool manufacturers compared to other industries, are slow to respond to propositions given in the literature by theorists or (b) this may indicate that a large proportion of the manufacturers make little use of the reliability improvement techniques as described in the literature, with the overall perception that they will not lead to any significant improvements? On the other hand, it is evident that hypothetical verification of the operational and engineering methods of reliability achievement and improvement adopted in the machine tool industry is less widely researched. Therefore, research into this area is needed in order to explore the 'state of the art' practice in the machine tool industry. This is in terms of the status, structure and activities of the operation of the reliability function. This paper outlines a research programme being conducted with the co-operation of a leading machine tool manufacturer, whose UK manufacturing plant produces in the main Vertical Machining Centres (VMCs) and is continuously undergoing incremental transitions in product reliability improvement.

Institutions and firm ownership structure:evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

FDI plays a key role in development, particularly in resource-constrained transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe with relatively low savings rates. Gains from technology transfer play a critical role in motivating FDI, yet potential for it may be hampered by a large technology gap between the source and host country. While the extent of this gap has traditionally been attributed to education, skills and capital intensity, recent literature has also emphasized the possible role of institutional environment in this respect. Despite tremendous interest among policy-makers and academics to understand the factors attracting FDI (Bevan and Estrin, 2000; Globerman and Shapiro, 2003) our knowledge about the effects of institutions on the location choice and ownership structure of foreign firms remains limited. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by examining the link between institutions and foreign ownership structures. To the best of our knowledge, Javorcik (2004) is the only papers, which use firm-level data to analyse the role of institutional quality on an outward investor’s entry mode in transition countries. Our paper extends Javorcik (2004) in a number of ways: (a) rather than a cross-section, we use panel data for the period 1997-2006; (b) rather than a binary variable, we use the percentage foreign ownership as continuous variable; (c) we consider multi-dimensional institutional variables, such as corruption, intellectual property rights protection and government stability. We also use factor analysis to generate a composite index of institutional quality and see how stronger institutional environment could affect foreign ownership; (d) we explore how the distance between institutional environment in source and host countries affect foreign ownership in a host country. The firm-level data used includes both domestic and foreign firms for the period 1997-2006 and is drawn from ORBIS, a commercially available dataset provided by Bureau van Dijk. In order to examine the link between institutions and foreign ownership structures, we estimate four log-linear ownership equations/specifications augmented by institutional and other control variables. We find evidence that the decision of a foreign firm to either locate its subsidiary or acquire an existing domestic firm depends not only on factor cost differences but also on differences in institutional environment between the host and source countries.

A semi-oriented radial measure for measuring the efficiency of decision making units with negative data, using DEA

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a nonparametric method for measuring the efficiency of a set of decision making units such as firms or public sector agencies, first introduced into the operational research and management science literature by Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes (CCR) [Charnes, A., Cooper, W.W., Rhodes, E., 1978. Measuring the efficiency of decision making units. European Journal of Operational Research 2, 429–444]. The original DEA models were applicable only to technologies characterized by positive inputs/outputs. In subsequent literature there have been various approaches to enable DEA to deal with negative data. In this paper, we propose a semi-oriented radial measure, which permits the presence of variables which can take both negative and positive values. The model is applied to data on a notional effluent processing system to compare the results with those yielded by two alternative methods for dealing with negative data in DEA: The modified slacks-based model suggested by Sharp et al. [Sharp, J.A., Liu, W.B., Meng, W., 2006. A modified slacks-based measure model for data envelopment analysis with ‘natural’ negative outputs and inputs. Journal of Operational Research Society 57 (11) 1–6] and the range directional model developed by Portela et al. [Portela, M.C.A.S., Thanassoulis, E., Simpson, G., 2004. A directional distance approach to deal with negative data in DEA: An application to bank branches. Journal of Operational Research Society 55 (10) 1111–1121]. A further example explores the advantages of using the new model.

A comparative study of hospital management in Great Britain and Brazil : cost information use

In Great Britain and Brazil healthcare is free at the point of delivery and based study only on citizenship. However, the British NHS is fifty-five years old and has undergone extensive reforms. The Brazilian SUS is barely fifteen years old. This research investigated the middle management mediation role within hospitals comparing managerial planning and control using cost information in Great Britain and Brazil. This investigation was conducted in two stages entailing quantitative and qualitative techniques. The first stage was a survey involving managers of 26 NHS Trusts in Great Britain and 22 public hospitals in Brazil. The second stage consisted of interviews, 10 in Great Britain and 22 in Brazil, conducted in four selected hospitals, two in each country. This research builds on the literature by investigating the interaction of contingency theory and modes of governance in a cross-national study in terms of public hospitals. It further builds on the existing literature by measuring managerial dimensions related to cost information usefulness. The project unveils the practice involved in planning and control processes. It highlights important elements such as the use of predictive models and uncertainty reduction when planning. It uncovers the different mechanisms employed on control processes. It also depicts that planning and control within British hospitals are structured procedures and guided by overall goals. In contrast, planning and control processes in Brazilian hospitals are accidental, involving more ad hoc actions and a profusion of goals. The clinicians in British hospitals have been integrated into the management hierarchy. Their use of cost information in planning and control processes reflects this integration. However, in Brazil, clinicians have been shown to operate more independently and make little use of cost information but the potential signalled for cost information use is seen to be even greater than that of their British counterparts.

The antecedents and consequences of e-business adoption in Malaysian manufacturing firms

Theory suggests that firms that adopt innovation share some common characteristics, just as those who do not adopt innovation and firms adopt a particular technology because the functions provided by the chosen technology fulfils their needs. Building on these arguments, this research project investigates the antecedents and consequences of e-business adoption among manufacturing firms in Malaysia. This thesis develops from the existing literature of organisational innovation adoption, information technology and strategic marketing/management. It further adds to the existing literature by using cultural-based predictors representing organisational characteristics consisting of market orientation, innovativeness and organisational learning. The study also formalises the theoretical framework of organisational-environment-technology. This study develops a new construct called technology motivation in addition to the introduction of several e-business technology scales. The results substantiate the significance of firm technology motivation in determining firm adoption of the various e-business initiatives. In addition, business environment and market orientation are found to influence firm choice of technology motivation. Meanwhile, innovativeness and organisational learning are shown to influence the magnitude of a firm’s e-business adoption. Finally, the results show that firm adoption of e-business technology does not influence organisational performance. This investigation clarifies the rationale and importance of firm technology motivation in adopting the various e-business initiatives. It also highlights the importance of having the appropriate organisational culture in ensuring a successful technology adoption.

Enhancing creativity in a general work environment : the role of problem-solving demand

Prior research suggests management can employ cognitively demanding job attributes to promote employee creativity. However, it is not clear what specific type of cognitive demand is particularly important for creativity, what processes underpin the relationship between demanding job conditions and creativity and what factors lead to employee perceptions of demanding job attributes. This research sets out to address the aforementioned issues by examining: (i) problem-solving demand (PDS), a specific type of cognitive demand, and the processes that link PSD to creativity, and (ii) antecedents to PSD. Based on social cognitive theory, PSD was hypothesized to be positively related to creativity through the motivational mechanism of creative self-efficacy. However, the relationship between PSD and creative self-efficacy was hypothesized to be contingent on levels of intrinsic motivation. Social information processing perspective and the job crafting model were used to identify antecedents of PSD. Consequently, two social-contextual factors (supervisor developmental feedback and job autonomy) and one individual factor (proactive personality) were hypothesized to be precursors to PSD perceptions. The theorized model was tested with data obtained from a sample of 270 employees and their supervisors from 3 organisations in the People’s Republic of China. Regression results revealed that PSD was positively related to creativity but this relationship was partially mediated by creative self-efficacy. Additionally, intrinsic motivation moderated the relationship between PSD and creative self-efficacy such that the relationship was stronger for individuals high rather than low in intrinsic motivation. The findings represent a productive first step in identifying a specific cognitive demand that is conducive to employee creativity. In addition, the findings contribute to the literature by identifying a psychological mechanism that may link cognitively demanding job attributes and creativity.

An assessment of factors affecting performance and growth of new technology based firms in the UK

New Technology Based Firms (NTBF) are considered to be important for the economic development of a country in regards to both employment growth and innovative activity. The latter is believed to contribute significantly to the increase in productivity and therefore the competitiveness of UK’s economy. This study contributes to the above literature by investigating two of the factors believed to limit the growth of such firms in the UK. The first concerns the existence of a ‘knowledge gap’ while the second the existence of a ‘financial gap’. These themes are developed along three main research lines. Firstly, based upon the human capital theory initially proposed by Backer (1964) new evidence is provided on the human capital characteristics (experience and education) of the current UK NTBF entrepreneurs. Secondly, the causal relationship between general and specific human capital (as well as their interactions) upon the company performance and growth is investigated via its traditional direct effect as well as via its indirect effect upon the access to external finance. Finally, more light is shed on the financial structure and the type of financial constraints that high-tech firms face at start-up. In particular, whether a financial gap exists is explored by distinguishing between the demand and the supply of external finance as well as by type of external source of financing. The empirical testing of the various research hypotheses has been obtained by carrying out an original survey of new technology based firms defined as independent companies, established in the past 25 years in R&D intensive sectors. The resulting dataset contains information for 412 companies on a number of general company characteristics and the characteristics of their entrepreneurs in 2004. Policy and practical implications for future and current entrepreneurs and also providers of external finance are provided.

Breast clinic and life style study BLLISS

Background: Independent, strong and unequivocal evidence suggests that life style factors such as obesity and lack of physical activity along with certain reproductive choices can increase the risk of breast cancer. There are no studies measuring the effectiveness of guidelines from the Department of Health regarding life style choices made by women presenting to breast clinics. The aim of this audit was to study the prevalence of obesity, physical activity and reproductive factors in women referred to breast clinic. Patients and methods: All patients attending the Breast clinic as new referrals were invited to complete a life style questionnaire. The data was analysed for prevalence of various risk factors for breast cancer. Three hundred and 73 patients completed the questionnaire. Results: Final analyses of 373 patients demonstrated that 42% of women performed no exercise and only 24% of patients met Department of Health guideline of 30 minutes of exercise for 5 days a week. Overall 50% of patients were either obese or overweight and 22% of patients had BMI of > 30 kg/m. The median age of menarche was 13 and 18% of women started their period below the age 12. Twenty one percent of women were nulliparous and 14% had their first live birth after the age of 30. Fourteen percent of patients were on the hormone replacement therapy of which 57% have used hormones for more than 5 years. Twenty two percent of women smoked and 9% of women consumed alcohol 5 days a week of which 13% had more than 4 glasses of alcohol in a day. Conclusion: There is preponderance of high risk life style choices in women attending breast clinic. If these life style options are not modified, there could potentially be a significant rise in the number of breast cancer in West Midlands.