Export memory: a preliminary investigation of its quality, its use, and its link to export performance

Exporting is one of the main ways in which organizations internationalize. With the more turbulent, heterogeneous, sophisticated and less familiar export environment, the organizational learning ability of the exporting organization may become its only source of sustainable competitive advantage. However, achieving a competitive level of learning is not easy. Companies must be able to find ways to improve their learning capability by enhancing the different aspects of the learning process. One of these is export memory. Building from an export information processing framework this research work particularly focuses on the quality of export memory, its determinants, its subsequent use in decision-making, and its ultimate relationship with export performance. Within export memory use, four export memory use dimensions have been discovered: instrumental, conceptual, legitimizing and manipulating. Results from the qualitative study based on the data from a mail survey with 354 responses reveal that the development of export memory quality is positively related with quality of export information acquisition, the quality of export information interpretation, export coordination, and integration of the information into the organizational system. Several company and environmental factors have also been examined in terms of their relationship with export memory use. The two factors found to be significantly related to the extent of export memory use are acquisition of export information quality and export memory quality. The results reveal that export memory quality is positively related to the extent of export memory use which in turn was found to be positively related to export performance. Furthermore, results of the study show that there is only one aspect of export memory use that significantly affects export performance – the extent of export memory use. This finding could mean that there is no particular type of export memory use favored since the choice of the type of use is situation specific. Additional results reveal that environmental turbulence and export memory overload have moderating effects on the relationship between export memory use and export performance.

Pharmacy and public health: examining the link between strategy and practice

Despite having been described by the then (2003) Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England as ·probably the biggest untapped resource for health improvement", the development of the public health function of community pharmacists has been limited. However, devolution of healthcare budgets has led 10 differential rates of development of the public health function in each administration of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). This is measured and reflected upon in this thesis. Two large-scale surveys were conducted, one of key strategic personnel (Directors of Public Health and Chief Pharmacists) in Primary Care Organisations (PCOs) and one of practicing community pharmacists. This research highlights the fact that community pharmacists have developed an individualistic, service-based approach to their engagement with public health that is contrary to the more collective approach adopted by the wider public health movement. The study measures the scope and level of health-improving services through community pharmacy across the UK and shows that the nature of the pharmacy contractor (independent, multiple etc.) may impact on the range and nature of services provided. Survey data also suggest that attitudes towards pharmacy involvement in the public health agenda vary markedly between Directors of Public Health, PCO Chief Pharmacists, and community pharmacists. Furthermore, within the community pharmacist population, attitudes are affected by a wide range of factors including the nature of employment (owner, employee, self-employed) and the type of employing pharmacy (independent, multiple etc.). Implications for policy and areas for further research aimed at maximising the public health function of community pharmacists are suggested.

Medication management - the missing link in dementia interventions

Editorial

Humans:the missing link in manufacturing simulation?

Computer based discrete event simulation (DES) is one of the most commonly used aids for the design of automotive manufacturing systems. However, DES tools represent machines in extensive detail, while only representing workers as simple resources. This presents a problem when modelling systems with a highly manual work content, such as an assembly line. This paper describes research at Cranfield University, in collaboration with the Ford Motor Company, founded on the assumption that human variation is the cause of a large percentage of the disparity between simulation predictions and real world performance. The research aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of simulation prediction by including models of human factors.

Noise characterization and transmission evaluation of unrepeated Raman amplified DP-16QAM link

Impairments characterization and performance evaluation of Raman amplified unrepeated DP-16QAM transmissions are conducted. Experimental results indicate that small gain in forward direction enhance the system signal-to-noise ratio for longer reach without introducing noticeable penalty.

Identification and analysis of moderator variables:investigating the customer satisfaction-loyalty link

Purpose – Research on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty has advanced to a stage that requires a more thorough examination of moderator variables. Limited research shows how moderators influence the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in a service context; this article aims to present empirical evidence of the conditions in which the satisfaction-loyalty relationship becomes stronger or weaker. Design/methodology/approach – Using a sample of more than 700 customers of DIY retailers and multi-group structural equation modelling, the authors examine moderating effects of several firm-related variables, variables that result from firm/employee-customer interactions and individual-level variables (i.e. loyalty cards, critical incidents, customer age, gender, income, expertise). Findings – The empirical results suggest that not all of the moderators considered influence the satisfaction-loyalty link. Specifically, critical incidents and income are important moderators of the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Practical implications – Several of the moderator variables considered in this study are manageable variables. Originality/value – This study should prove valuable to academic researchers as well as service and retailing managers. It systematically analyses the moderating effect of firm-related and individual-level variables on the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. It shows the differential effect of different types of moderator variables on the satisfaction-loyalty link.

Does the employee–customer satisfaction link hold for all employee groups?

Increasingly, retailers nowadays have to focus on service marketing strategies and tactics to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Delivering high levels of service quality becomes crucial for long-term success. Since customers' perception of service quality depends very much on the interaction between the customer and the employee, this study analyzes the link between employee and customer satisfaction in more detail. Moreover, based on three different theories that prior research has used, it investigates whether or not the level of customer contact is a determinant of the existence or the intensity of the employee–customer satisfaction link. Analysis of dyadic data from 53,645 customers and 1659 employees across 99 outlets of a large German Do-It-Yourself (DIY)-retailer shows that employee job satisfaction affects customer satisfaction even for employee groups that are not in direct interaction with customers, although effects seem to be slightly stronger for high interaction groups. Implications for research and management are discussed.

Exploring the link between In-store physical shopping behavior and purchases

Only little research investigates the relationship between consumer purchases and in-store physical shopping behavior, largely because of the difficulty involved with reconciling a precise observation of in-store behavior with a robust statistical analyses of the data. Using an innovative data collection method, this article determines that physical shopping behavior manifests itself along two main dimensions: shopping width (behavioral scope throughout the store) and shopping depth (specific store elements). Both dimensions have strong impacts on purchases: the former tends to influence the number of items bought, and the latter affects the price of purchased items, depending on the product category.

Investigation of a cross-layer link adaptation algorithm for IEEE 802.11n networks

Link adaptation is a critical component of IEEE 802.11 systems, which adapts transmission rates to dynamic wireless channel conditions. In this paper we investigate a general cross-layer link adaptation algorithm which jointly considers the physical layer link quality and random channel access at the MAC layer. An analytic model is proposed for the link adaptation algorithm. The underlying wireless channel is modeled with a multiple state discrete time Markov chain. Compared with the pure link quality based link adaptation algorithm, the proposed cross-layer algorithm can achieve considerable performance gains of up to 20%.

Nonlinearity compensation in multi-rate 28 Gbaud WDM systems employing optical and digital techniques under diverse link configurations

Digital back-propagation (DBP) has recently been proposed for the comprehensive compensation of channel nonlinearities in optical communication systems. While DBP is attractive for its flexibility and performance, it poses significant challenges in terms of computational complexity. Alternatively, phase conjugation or spectral inversion has previously been employed to mitigate nonlinear fibre impairments. Though spectral inversion is relatively straightforward to implement in optical or electrical domain, it requires precise positioning and symmetrised link power profile in order to avail the full benefit. In this paper, we directly compare ideal and low-precision single-channel DBP with single-channel spectral-inversion both with and without symmetry correction via dispersive chirping. We demonstrate that for all the dispersion maps studied, spectral inversion approaches the performance of ideal DBP with 40 steps per span and exceeds the performance of electronic dispersion compensation by ~3.5 dB in Q-factor, enabling up to 96% reduction in complexity in terms of required DBP stages, relative to low precision one step per span based DBP. For maps where quasi-phase matching is a significant issue, spectral inversion significantly outperforms ideal DBP by ~3 dB.

Talking at cross-purposes? The missing link between feminist linguistics and translation studies

Following decades of feminist linguistic activism, and as a result of a greater awareness of the vital role that non-sexist language plays in achieving social equality, different campaigns were launched in many countries leading to a more frequent use of so-called inclusive language. Bringing this together with current theoretical approaches to translation studies which have been defining translation as an ideological act of intercultural mediation since the 1990s, this article seeks to examine to what extent feminist linguistics have had any influence on translation studies. My purpose is to assess whether particular feminist linguistic interventions in vogue when writing ‘original’ texts within the realm of the source language are also adopted when (re)writing ‘translated’ texts in the target language, bearing in mind the double (con)textual responsibility that translators have towards the source and the target (con)texts. I will examine the arguments for and against the use of inclusive language in (literary) translation through an analysis of the ‘ideological struggle’ that emerged from two ideologically disparate rewritings of gender markers into Galician of the British bestseller The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon (2003), focusing on the ideological, poetic and economic pressures that (still) define the professional practice of translation. It is my contention that the close scrutiny of these conflicting arguments will shed light not only on the existing gap between the theory and practice of translation, but may be also indicative of a possible ‘missing link’ between feminist approaches to linguistics and to translation studies.

Communities and emerging semantics in semantic link network:discovery and learning

The World Wide Web provides plentiful contents for Web-based learning, but its hyperlink-based architecture connects Web resources for browsing freely rather than for effective learning. To support effective learning, an e-learning system should be able to discover and make use of the semantic communities and the emerging semantic relations in a dynamic complex network of learning resources. Previous graph-based community discovery approaches are limited in ability to discover semantic communities. This paper first suggests the Semantic Link Network (SLN), a loosely coupled semantic data model that can semantically link resources and derive out implicit semantic links according to a set of relational reasoning rules. By studying the intrinsic relationship between semantic communities and the semantic space of SLN, approaches to discovering reasoning-constraint, rule-constraint, and classification-constraint semantic communities are proposed. Further, the approaches, principles, and strategies for discovering emerging semantics in dynamic SLNs are studied. The basic laws of the semantic link network motion are revealed for the first time. An e-learning environment incorporating the proposed approaches, principles, and strategies to support effective discovery and learning is suggested.

Non-English-speaking defendants in the magistrates court:a comparative study of face-to-face and prison video link interpreter-mediated hearings in England

This study compares interpreter-mediated face-to-face Magistrates Court hearings with those conducted through prison video link in which interpreters are located in court and non- English-speaking defendants in prison. It seeks to examine the impact that the presence of video link has on court actors in terms of interaction and behaviour. The data comprises 11 audio-recordings of face-to-face hearings, 10 recordings of prison video link hearings, semistructured interviews with 27 court actors, and ethnographic observation of hearings as viewed by defendants in Wormwood Scrubs prison in London. The over-arching theme is the pervasive influence of the ecology of the courtroom upon all court actors in interpretermediated hearings and thus on the communication process. Close analysis of the court transcripts shows that their relative proximity to one another can be a determinant of status, interpreting role, mode and volume. The very few legal protocols which apply to interpretermediated cases (acknowledging and ratifying the interpreter, for example), are often forgotten or dispensed with. Court interpreters lack proper training in the specific challenges of court interpreting, whether they are co-present with the defendant or not. Other court actors often misunderstand the interpreter’s role. This has probably come about because courts have adjusted their perceptions of what they think interpreters are supposed to do based on their own experiences of working with them, and have gradually come to accept poor practice (the inability to perform simultaneous interpreting, for example) as the norm. In video link courts, mismatches of sound and image due to court clerks’ failure to adequately track current speakers, poor image and sound quality and the fact that non-English-speaking defendants in pre-and post-court consultations can see and hear interpreters but not their defence advocates are just some of the additional layers of disadvantage and confusion already suffered by non- English-speaking defendants. These factors make it less likely that justice will be done.