bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Exploring principals’ instructional leadership practices in Malaysia: insights and implications
Authors: Harris Alma , Jones Michelle , Cheah Kenny Soon Lee , Devadason Edward , Adams Donnie 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to outline the findings from a small-scale, exploratory, study of principals’ instructional leadership practice in Malaysian primary schools. The dimensions and functions of instructional leadership, explicitly explored in this study, are those outlined in the Hallinger and Murphy’s (1985) model.

Design/methodology/approach
This study is part of a larger international, comparative research project that aims to identify the boundaries of the current knowledge base on instructional leadership practice and to develop a preliminary empirically based understanding of how principals conceive and enact their role as instructional leaders in Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Using a qualitative research design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 primary school principals in Malaysia. The sample comprised principals from 14 Government National schools (SK), nine principals from Chinese schools (SJKC) and seven principals from Tamil schools (SJKT). The qualitative data were initially analysed inductively, and subsequently coded using ATLAS.ti to generate the findings and conclusions.

Findings
The findings showed that the Malaysian principals, who were interviewed, understood and could describe their responsibilities relating to improving instructional practice. In particular, they talked about the supervision of teachers and outlined various ways in which they actively monitored the quality of teaching and learning in their schools. These data revealed that some of the duties and activities associated with being a principal in Malaysia are particularly congruent with instructional leadership practices. In particular, the supervision of teaching and learning along with leading professional learning were strongly represented in the data.

Research limitations/implications
This is a small-scale, exploratory study involving 30 principals.

Practical implications
There is a clear policy aspiration, outlined in the Malaysian Education Blueprint, that principals should be instructional leaders. The evidence shows that principals are enacting some of the functions associated with being an instructional leader but not others.

Originality/value
The findings from this study provide some new insights into the principals’ instructional leadership practices in Malaysia. They also provide a basis for further, in-depth exploration that can enhance the knowledge base about principals’ instructional leadership practices in Malaysia.
The west wind vs the east wind: instructional leadership model in China
Authors: Qian Haiyan , Walker Allan , Li Xiaojun 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a preliminary model of instructional leadership in the Chinese educational context and explore the ways in which Chinese school principals locate their instructional-leadership practices in response to traditional expectations and the requirements of recent reforms.

Design/methodology/approach
In-depth interviews were conducted with 22 selected primary school principals in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. A qualitative analysis was conducted to categorize the major leadership practices enacted by these principals.

Findings
An initial model of instructional leadership in China with six major dimensions is constructed. The paper also illustrates and elaborates on three dimensions with the greatest context-specific meanings for Chinese principals.

Originality/value
The paper explores the ways in which Chinese principals enact their instructional leadership in a context in which “the west wind meets the east wind”; that is, when they are required to accommodate both imported reform initiatives and traditional expectations. The paper contributes to the sparse existing research on principals’ instructional leadership in non-western cultural and social contexts.
Privatization and corporate entrepreneurship in telecommunication companies
Authors: Zarei Behrouz , Amanati Flora , Amanati Kasra 
Published: March 2017

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of privatization on corporate entrepreneurship in Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). The study examines the five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation including innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness and autonomy, before and after privatization.Design/methodology/approachUsing a “descriptive-survey” method, the required data were collected from a sample of 32 senior and middle managers with over ten years of management and work experience, who were project team members for business transformation working in TCI before and after privatization.FindingsThe results show that after privatization, the company acts more entrepreneurially. The most considerable dimension is its aggressive competition through entering competitive markets and increasing risk taking to develop new services, products and processes.Originality/valueAlthough many studies have been performed on privatization and entrepreneurship in the past, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the effect of privatization on every dimension of entrepreneurial orientation has not been investigated in a large company.
Income inequality
Authors: Baron Robert Alan 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explain why (based on an extensive body of research findings) efforts to reduce income inequality may have negative effects on motivation and the desire to excel.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents the author’s personal perspective on income inequality and efforts to reduce it. However, these views are grounded in extensive literature concerning the nature of “fairness,” and the harmful effects of weakening the link between performance or effort on the one hand, and rewards on the other. Breaking this connection may be especially harmful for entrepreneurs, who have strong beliefs that the hard they work in building their new ventures, the more likely are these companies to be successful.

Findings
The paper presents what, it is hoped, provides a broadened framework within which to examine the causes and income inequality, definitions of “fairness,” and the potential effects of efforts to reduce such inequality.

Practical implications
By weakening the relationship between performance and rewards, efforts to reduce income inequality involving large tax increases may weaken the relationship between performance (accomplishment) and rewards, thus reducing motivation to work hard and achieve excellence.

Social implications
Understanding the negative implications of government-funded programs designed to reduce income inequality helps to clarify the potentially detrimental effects of such programs – effects that are neither intended not expected by proponents of such efforts.

Originality/value
The effects of efforts to reduce income inequality have not previously been examined in the context of their negative implications for human motivation to work hard and attain excellence in any endeavor – implications suggested by a large body of relevant research.
Exploring the case of The White Moustache
Authors: Yonk Ryan M. , Harris Kayla , Martin R. Chistopher , Anderson Barrett 
Published: March 2017

PurposeSmall and emerging business failure rates are high for numerous reasons. Government regulation has been cited as a contributing factor, yet literature documenting the actual effects of government regulation on small business is limited. The purpose of this paper is to clearly outline the regulatory compliance costs and effects on small businesses in the California dairy industry.Design/methodology/approachThis paper applies a public choice framework to the history of dairy regulation and performs a case study on a small business, The White Moustache (TWM). The case study traces the burdens and costs of state dairy regulations placed on TWM as they sought the necessary permits to sell their artisan yogurt.FindingsStrict and unresponsive regulation restricted TWM from selling their product. To comply with state dairy regulations, the direct costs to TWM would have increased by 70 percent. In addition, regulation caused two and a half years of delay before the company decided to leave the state. California’s dairy regulations place burdens on small dairy businesses that work as a strategic barrier to entry in the marketplace.Originality/valueThis case study highlights the direct effects that strict and unresponsive regulation can have on entrepreneurs and emerging businesses through a case study. Improving the understanding of how regulation affects small business can highlight new paths forward and help improve the small business failure rate in the USA.
The role of satellite technologies in relief logistics
Authors: Delmonteil François-Xavier , Rancourt Marie-Ève 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The devastating impact of catastrophic disasters on terrestrial infrastructure requires the adoption of alternative technology solutions among humanitarian organizations. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of the most commonly used satellite technologies in relief logistics: imagery and mapping, portable global positioning system (GPS) positioning devices, telecommunications, and GPS vehicle tracking.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper examines both the benefits and limitations of satellite technologies in light of the existing literature and through a complementary questionnaire survey with field workers involved in humanitarian operations in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Findings
The results show that the use of satellite technologies can facilitate most of the key logistics challenges encountered by relief actors. However, they also highlight important barriers within humanitarian organizations such as the lack of skilled workers and high costs, underlining the need for long-term training, resource investments, and cooperation between users and technology providers.

Research limitations/implications
The research findings remain valid only in the context of catastrophic disaster responses, which lead to similar destructions, logistical problems, and needs for satellite technologies.

Practical implications
This paper shows how satellite technologies can support humanitarian professionals in the field. It also provides policy recommendations that can facilitate the use of these technologies.

Originality/value
The applications of satellite technologies within humanitarian supply chains are not well-defined in the literature. This paper is the first to be dedicated to analyze the role of the main satellite technologies used in a relief logistics setting.
Price protection policies with demand uncertainty and strategic consumers
Authors: Wang Tingting , Zhou Chuiri 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
This paper aims to study a retailer’s decision on the price and inventory when facing strategic consumer behavior and demand uncertainty. Price protection is a kind of rebate that the retailer provides to consumers when the price drops during the selling season. The research investigates whether price protection can bring the retailer advantages. This paper compares price protection’s impact with price commitment. In addition, the paper studies the price protection’s impacts on supplier of the supply chain.

Design/methodology/approach
In this model, there are three alternative strategies for retailer: no price protection policy, full price protection policy and partial price protection policy. The selling season is divided into two periods: regular period and sale period. In the regular period, the products are sold at a regular price. In the sale one, the products are sold at a lower price. By adopting rational expectations equilibrium, this paper analyzes retailer’s optimal price and order quantity under each policy and compares optimal decisions and maximum profits of three policies.

Findings
This paper finds that the price protection has a positive influence on the retailer. Strategic consumers are induced to purchase at the regular period. It can simultaneously increase retailer’s profit and reduce inventory risk. Meantime, full price protection is chosen as the optimal policy. By comparing full price protection’s impacts with price commitment, full price protection is considered as the most profitable strategy, while price commitment can bring lower inventory risk. In addition, the profit of supplier would decrease because of price protection.

Originality/value
This research provides a new method to address the negative effects of strategic consumer behavior. It also brings some managerial insights to some retailers, especially online ones, on whether to adopt price protection.
Identifying meaningful neighbors for an improved recommender system
Authors: Kumar Rahul , Bala Pradip Kumar 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
Collaborative filtering (CF), one of the most popular recommendation techniques, is based on the principle of word-of-mouth communication between other like-minded users. The process of identifying these like-minded or similar users remains crucial for a CF framework. Conventionally, a neighbor is the one among the similar users who has rated the item under consideration. To select neighbors by the existing practices, their similarity deteriorates as many similar users might not have rated the item under consideration. This paper aims to address the drawback in the existing CF method where “not-so-similar” or “weak” neighbors are selected.

Design/methodology/approach
The new approach proposed here selects neighbors only on the basis of highest similarity coefficient, irrespective of rating the item under consideration. Further, to predict missing ratings by some neighbors for the item under consideration, ordinal logistic regression based on item–item similarity is used here.

Findings
Experiments using the MovieLens (ml-100) data set prove the efficacy of the proposed approach on different performance evaluation metrics such as accuracy and classification metrics. Apart from higher prediction quality, coverage values are also at par with the literature.

Originality/value
This new approach gets its motivation from the principle of the CF method to rely on the opinion of the closest neighbors, which seems more meaningful than trusting “not-so-similar” or “weak” neighbors. The static nature of the neighborhood addresses the scalability issue of CF. Use of ordinal logistic regression as a prediction technique addresses the statistical inappropriateness of other linear models to make predictions for ordinal scale ratings data.
Accounting for asymmetry between strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in outranking methods
Authors: Dehouche Nassim 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper consists in discussing and modeling the asymmetrical nature of evaluation criteria that are notably relevant in strategic planning, project portfolio management and complex systems management.

Design/methodology/approach
The author guarantees the theoretic validity of the proposed approach, by showing that it possesses desirable properties such as monotonicity. This allows for a reduced implementation time and thus a real-time use of the model.

Findings
The author conducts a comparative study with two other multicriteria decision aid models on a set of real data regarding a power plant sitting problem and highlights some of the limitations of previous models compared to the proposed approach.

Originality/value
This paper describes a novel multicriteria decision aid model, entitled SPADE (which is an acronym for Structuring Preferences to Aid DEcisions). It aims at consolidating SWOT analysis with sound decision-theoretic techniques, and making use of its results to support decision-making.
How do women’s self-report symptoms impact on identification of perinatal mental health problems?
Authors: Jarrett Patricia M. 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
Perinatal depression is common and increases the risk of adverse outcomes for both the mother and child. Despite regular contact with midwives and GPs during the perinatal period less than 50 per cent of women with depression are identified and treated. A number of reasons for this have been proposed; however, failure of health professionals to recognise the symptoms women present with may contribute. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to explore women’s self-report symptoms of perinatal depression and understand how the symptoms women present with might impact on identification.

Design/methodology/approach
Women were invited to post their experiences of perinatal depression on one of two online discussion forums over a nine-month period. Data were analysed using a process of deductive thematic analysis informed by cognitive behavioural therapy.

Findings
Women’s symptoms were presented using five headings: triggers (for perinatal depression), thoughts, moods, physical reactions and behaviours. Women believed having a previous mental health problem contributed to their depression. Women’s self-report symptoms included intrusive and violent thoughts; emotional responses including fear, worry and anger; and somatic symptoms including insomnia and weight changes. Women also reported aggressive behaviour and social withdrawal as part of their depressive symptomatology. Symptoms women present with may negatively impact on identification as they often overlap with those of pregnancy; may not be included in the criteria for mental health assessment and may involve undesirable and socially unacceptable behaviour, making disclosure difficult.

Practical implications
A more inclusive understanding of women’s self-report symptoms of perinatal depression is called for, if identification is to improve.

Originality/value
This paper offers an analysis of women’s self-report symptoms of depression, in the context of identification of perinatal mental health problems.
Information richness and trust in v-commerce: implications for services marketing
Authors: Chesney Thomas , Chuah Swee-Hoon , Dobele Angela R. , Hoffmann Robert 
Published: March 2017

PurposeThe potential for e-commerce is limited by a trust deficit when traders do not interact in a physical, bricks-and-mortar context. The theory of information richness posits that equivocal interactions, such as ones requiring trust, can be facilitated through communication media that transmit multiple cues interactively. This study aims to examine the potential of information-rich virtual worlds to reduce this trust deficit compared with more traditional Web-based e-tailing environments.Design/methodology/approachRather than focusing on stated intentions, the authors adopt an experimental approach to measure behaviour. Participants receive performance-related financial incentives to perform trust games in different information-rich treatments that represent three retail environments: a physical environment representing bricks-and-mortar trade, an electronic environment representing Web-based online retailing and a virtual environment representing virtual world retail.FindingsThe authors find that the two dimensions of trust significantly differ between the treatments. In particular, as hypothesised, both trustingness and trustworthiness are higher in the virtual than in the electronic environment. However, contrary to the hypotheses, physical trade is not associated with greater trust than virtual trade.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors extend previous research by demonstrating how the information richness of the virtual world interface can promote e-commerce by deepening trust between trading partners. This research also complements existing work that approaches product and service interfaces through the lens of servicescapes.Practical implicationsThe findings also contribute towards the development of services marketing practice and the design of e-commerce environments.Originality/valueMuch of the work in this space considers purchase intentions and attitudes around trust, whereas this study looks at actual trust behaviour in the virtual space.
Rethinking functionality and emotions in the service consumption process: the case of funeral services
Authors: Korai Bernard , Souiden Nizar 
Published: March 2017

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the service literature by investigating post-consumption evaluation in the context of unwanted services. In particular, it intends to delineate the main characteristics of funeral services.Design/methodology/approachGiven the lack of substantive literature on funeral services, a qualitative exploratory design was used from in-depth interviews with ten managers of funeral services companies in Quebec (Canada).FindingsThe study shows that compared to other traditional services, funeral services are characterized by their strong emotiveness, non-recurrence, irreversibility, uncommonness, high level of symbolism and personalization and emotion control of the service provider. The study also argues that funeral services quality is strongly dependent on funeral houses’ integrated logistics, proximity and integrity.Practical implicationsBecause of consumers’ lack of competency, funeral companies need to guide and educate consumers about the criteria they should use to evaluate the service quality. Because funeral consumers are strongly emotion-driven at the purchase time, funeral services providers should find the right balance of emotions to express. Thus, more staff training is needed.Originality/valueBecause funeral services are emotionally challenging and deal with grief and distressed clients, the present study contributes in shedding light on service quality assessment in the funeral industry. Although they have some characteristics of traditional services (intangibility, perishability and variability), funeral services are also different in many ways.
Editorial: the role of the editor – managing fair play
Authors: Russell-Bennett Rebekah , Baron Steve 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
This editorial aims to highlight the challenges and dilemmas faced by journal editors and the implications for the editorial process.

Design/methodology/approach
A sporting metaphor has been used. A soccer referee is used to highlight the tasks, roles and dilemmas faced by editors.

Findings
Editors need to identify the role they wish to play in the editorial process, and this role involves balancing the dilemmas and identifying trade-offs.

Originality/value
This research offers insight into the editorial role for authors to assist them in understanding both the process and the decisions that are made in a complex, competitive environment of publishing.