Multiple paradigms and organisational research: an analysis of work behaviour in the fire service

The thesis examines Kuhn's (1962, 1970) concept of paradigm, assesses how it is employed for mapping intellectual terrain in the social sciences, and evaluates it's use in research based on multiple theory positions. In so doing it rejects both the theses of total paradigm 'incommensurability' (Kuhn, 1962), and also of liberal 'translation' (Popper, 1970), in favour of a middle ground through the 'language-game of everyday life' (Wittgenstein, 1953). The thesis ultimately argues for the possibility of being 'trained-into' new paradigms, given the premise that 'unorganised experience cannot order perception' (Phillips, 1977). In conducting multiple paradigm research the analysis uses the Burrell and Morgan (1979) model for examining the work organisation of a large provincial fire Service. This analysis accounts for firstly, a 'functionalist' assessment of work design, demonstrating inter alia the decrease in reported motivation with length of service; secondly, an 'interpretive' portrayal of the daily accomplishment of task routines, highlighting the discretionary and negotiated nature of the day's events; thirdly, a 'radical humanist' analysis of workplace ideology, demonstrating the hegemonic role of officer training practices; and finally, a 'radical structuralist' description of the labour process, focusing on the establishment of a 'normal working day'. Although the argument is made for the possibility of conducting multiple paradigm research, the conclusion stresses the many institutional pressures serving to offset development.

Models and performances of wireless MIMO and cooperative communication systems

Multiple-antenna systems offer significant performance enhancement and will be applied to the next generation broadband wireless communications. This thesis presents the investigations of multiple-antenna systems – multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and cooperative communication (CC) – and their performances in more realistic propagation environments than those reported previously. For MIMO systems, the investigations are conducted via theoretical modelling and simulations in a double-scattering environment. The results show that the variations of system performances depend on how scatterer density varies in flat fading channels, and that in frequency-selective fading channels system performances are affected by the length of the coding block as well as scatterer density. In realistic propagation environments, the fading correlation also has an impact on CC systems where the antennas can be further apart than those in MIMO systems. A general stochastic model is applied to studying the effects of fading correlation on the performances of CC systems. This model reflects the asymmetry fact of the wireless channels in a CC system. The results demonstrate the varied effects of fading correlation under different protocols and channel conditions. Performances of CC systems are further studied at the packet level, using both simulations and an experimental testbed. The results obtained have verified various performance trade-offs of the cooperative relaying network (CRN) investigated in different propagation environments. The results suggest that a proper selection of the relaying algorithms and other techniques can meet the requirements of quality of service for different applications.

The antecedents of prosocial service behaviours:an empirical investigation

Frontline employee attitudes and behaviours during service encounters influence customers' perceptions of service quality. For this reason, the identification of variables that influence service behaviours is important. Much remains unknown about the factors affecting service behaviours in service settings. This study investigates service employees' attitudinal (job satisfaction and organisational commitment) and behavioural (prosocial service behaviours) responses to management strategies (internal communication, professional development and empowerment). One hundred and eighty-eight service employees contributed data, which were analysed using a structural modelling methodology. The authors found that management strategies influence service behaviours directly but the mediating role of job attitudes is not supported.

Effects of retail employees' behaviours on customers' service evaluation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test a conceptual model of the effects of customer and service orientation (SO) behaviours of individual retail employees on individual customers’ perceptions of service encounter quality (SEQ), service quality (SQ), value, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions (BI). Design/methodology/approach – The sample (n ¼ 271) was customers of a supermarket in central India, and they completed questionnaires following mall intercept. To test the hypotheses, structural equation modelling using LISREL 8.7 was employed. Findings – It was found that: service and customer orientation (CO) behaviours are positively related to SEQ and SQ; SEQ is positively related to SQ and customer satisfaction; SQ is positively related to value perceptions and customer satisfaction; and customer satisfaction is positively related to retail customers’ BI. However, value is not related to customer satisfaction. Research limitations/implications – More research is needed on customer perceptions of value in non-Western contexts and service evaluation frameworks in other cross-cultural contexts. Practical implications – Retail managers need to train or select retail personnel who are able to perform their roles in a service-oriented and customer-oriented way, and value does not appear to be as important to Indian retail customers as it is to Western retail customers. Originality/value – This paper extends current service evaluation frameworks by including SO and CO as antecedents, and it analyses an Indian retail context. Keywords India, Retailing, Customer satisfaction, Service levels, Employee behaviour.

The impact of employees' customer orientation and service orientation behaviours on customers' service evaluation

In this paper the authors conceptualize and test the effects of service employees’ customer orientation and service orientation behaviors within an extended service evaluation model encompassing service quality, service encounter quality, perceived value and customer satisfaction. The context is 271 Indian retail customers. Data analysis incorporates confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. We find that Findings indicate that: 1) customer orientation is positively related to service orientation, customers’ perceptions of service encounter quality and service quality; 2) service orientation influences customers’ perceptions of service encounter quality and service quality; 3) customers’ perceptions of service encounter quality influence customers’ perceptions of service quality and customer satisfaction; 4) customers’ perceptions of service quality influence value perceptions; 5) service quality influences customer satisfaction; and 6) customer satisfaction influences customers’ behavioral intentions. The importance of these findings for practitioners and academics, research limitations and future research avenues are subsequently discussed.

The definition, theoretical modelling and empirical research of front-line service employee corporate identity within a UK national grocery retailer:determining the FLE corporate brand identification construct

Over the past forty years the corporate identity literature has developed to a point of maturity where it currently contains many definitions and models of the corporate identity construct at the organisational level. The literature has evolved by developing models of corporate identity or in considering corporate identity in relation to new and developing themes, e.g. corporate social responsibility. It has evolved into a multidisciplinary domain recently incorporating constructs from other literature to further its development. However, the literature has a number of limitations. It remains that an overarching and universally accepted definition of corporate identity is elusive, potentially leaving the construct with a lack of clear definition. Only a few corporate identity definitions and models, at the corporate level, have been empirically tested. The corporate identity construct is overwhelmingly defined and theoretically constructed at the corporate level, leaving the literature without a detailed understanding of its influence at an individual stakeholder level. Front-line service employees (FLEs), form a component in a number of corporate identity models developed at the organisational level. FLEs deliver the services of an organisation to its customers, as well as represent the organisation by communicating and transporting its core defining characteristics to customers through continual customer contact and interaction. This person-to-person contact between an FLE and the customer is termed a service encounter, where service encounters influence a customer’s perception of both the service delivered and the associated level of service quality. Therefore this study for the first time defines, theoretically models and empirically tests corporate identity at the individual FLE level, termed FLE corporate identity. The study uses the services marketing literature to characterise an FLE’s operating environment, arriving at five potential dimensions to the FLE corporate identity construct. These are scrutinised against existing corporate identity definitions and models to arrive at a definition for the construct. In reviewing the corporate identity, services marketing, branding and organisational psychology literature, a theoretical model is developed for FLE corporate identity, which is empirically and quantitatively tested, with FLEs in seven stores of a major national retailer. Following rigorous construct reliability and validity testing, the 601 usable responses are used to estimate a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model for the study. The results for the individual hypotheses and the structural model are very encouraging, as they fit the data well and support a definition of FLE corporate identity. This study makes contributions to the branding, services marketing and organisational psychology literature, but its principal contribution is to extend the corporate identity literature into a new area of discourse and research, that of FLE corporate identity

Reverse resource exchanges in service supply chains:the case of returnable transport packaging

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how reverse resource exchanges and resource dependencies are managed in the service supply chain (SSC) of returnable transport packaging (RTP). Design/methodology/approach: A single case study was conducted in the context of automotive logistics focusing on the RTP SSC. Data were collected through 16 interviews, primarily with managers of a logistics service provider (LSP) and document analysis of contractual agreements with key customers of the packaging service. Findings: Resource dependencies among actors in the SSC result from the importance of the RTP for the customer’s production processes, the competition among users for RTP and the negative implications of the temporary unavailability of RTP for customers and the LSP (in terms of service performance). Amongst other things, the LSP is dependent on its customers and third-party users (e.g. the customer’s suppliers) for the timely return of package resources. The role of inter-firm integration and collaboration, formal contracts as well as customers’ power and influence over third-party RTP users are stressed as key mechanisms for managing LSP’s resource dependencies. Research limitations/implications: A resource dependence theory (RDT) lens is used to analyse how reverse resource exchanges and associated resource dependencies in SSCs are managed, thus complementing the existing SSC literature emphasising the bi-directionality of resource flows. The study also extends the recent SSC literature stressing the role of contracting by empirically demonstrating how formal contracts can be mobilised to explicate resource dependencies and to specify, and regulate, reverse exchanges in the SSC. Practical implications: The research suggests that logistics providers can effectively manage their resource dependencies and regulate reverse exchanges in the SSC by deploying contractual governance mechanisms and leveraging their customers’ influence over third-party RTP users. Originality/value: The study is novel in its application of RDT, which enhances our understanding of the management of reverse exchanges and resource dependencies in SSCs.

Sequence and chemistry requirements for a novel aptameric oligonucleotide inhibitor of EGF receptor tyrosine kinase activity

We have previously identified a phosphorothioate oligonucleotide (PS-ODN) that inhibited epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase (TK) activity both in cell fractions and in intact A431 cells. Since ODN-based TK inhibitors may have anti-cancer applications and may also help understand the non-antisense mediated effects of PS-ODNs, we have further studied the sequence and chemistry requirements of the parent PS-ODN (sequence: 5′-GGA GGG TCG CAT CGC-3′) as a sequence-dependent TK inhibitor. Sequence deletion and substitution studies revealed that the 5′-terminal GGA GGG hexamer sequence in the parent compound was essential for anti-TK activity in A431 cells. Site-specific substitution of any G with a T in this 5′-terminal motif within the parent compound caused a significant loss in anti-TK activity. The fully PS-modified hexameric motif alone exhibited equipotent activity as the parent 15-mer whereas phosphodiester (PO) or 2′-O-methyl-modified versions of this motif had significantly reduced anti-TK activity. Further, T substitutions within the two 5′-terminal G residues of the hexameric PS-ODN to produce a sequence, TTA GGG, representing the telomeric repeats in human chromosomes, also did not exhibit a significant anti-TK activity. Multiple repeats of the active hexameric motif in PS-ODNs resulted in more potent inhibitors of TK activity than the parent ODN. These results suggested that PS-ODNs, but not PO or 2′-O-methyl modified ODNs, containing the GGA GGG motif can exert potent anti-TK activity which may be desirable in some anti-tumor applications. Additionally, the presence of this previously unidentified motif in antisense PS-ODN constructs may contribute to their biological effects in vitro and in vivo and should be accounted for in the design of the PS-modified antisense ODNs. © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc.

On modeling and satisfaction of non-functional requirements using cloud computing

Specification of the non-functional requirements of applications and determining the required resources for their execution are activities that demand a great deal of technical knowledge, frequently resulting in an inefficient use of resources. Cloud computing is an alternative for provisioning of resources, which can be done using either the provider's own infrastructure or the infrastructure of one or more public clouds, or even a combination of both. It enables more flexibly/elastic use of resources, but does not solve the specification problem. In this paper we present an approach that uses models at runtime to facilitate the specification of non-functional requirements and resources, aiming to facilitate dynamic support for application execution in cloud computing environments with shared resources. © 2013 IEEE.

Assessing the impact of management concerns in e-business requirements planning in manufacturing organizations

This paper describes the application of a model, initially developed for determining the e-business requirements of a manufacturing organization, to assess the impact of management concerns on the functions generated. The model has been tested on 13 case studies in small, medium and large organizations. This research shows that the incorporation of concerns for generating the requirements for e-business functions improves the results, because they expose issues that are of relevance to the decision making process relating to e-business. Running the model with both and without concerns, and then presenting the reasons for major variances, can expose the issues and enable them to be studied in detail at the individual function/ reason level. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013.

Investigation of PHY, MAC and APP layers for adaptive and cross-layer optimization in IEEE802.11 WLAN

Due to huge popularity of portable terminals based on Wireless LANs and increasing demand for multimedia services from these terminals, the earlier structures and protocols are insufficient to cover the requirements of emerging networks and communications. Most research in this field is tailored to find more efficient ways to optimize the quality of wireless LAN regarding the requirements of multimedia services. Our work is to investigate the effects of modulation modes at the physical layer, retry limits at the MAC layer and packet sizes at the application layer over the quality of media packet transmission. Interrelation among these parameters to extract a cross-layer idea will be discussed as well. We will show how these parameters from different layers jointly contribute to the performance of service delivery by the network. The results obtained could form a basis to suggest independent optimization in each layer (an adaptive approach) or optimization of a set of parameters from different layers (a cross-layer approach). Our simulation model is implemented in the NS-2 simulator. Throughput and delay (latency) of packet transmission are the quantities of our assessments. © 2010 IEEE.