bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Human resources management and performance in the hotel industry
Authors: Domínguez-Falcón Carmen , Martín-Santana Josefa D. , De Saá-Pérez Petra 
Published: May 2016

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of high-commitment human resources (HR) practices on organisational performance through the commitment and satisfaction of both managers and supervisors.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical study was carried out, based on the perceptions of 68 managers and 296 supervisors at four- and five-star hotels in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain).FindingsThe results obtained reveal that: high-commitment HR practices have a positive and significant effect on the commitment and satisfaction of both groups; managers’ commitment and satisfaction do not lead to improved organisational performance; however, supervisors’ commitment and satisfaction do lead to better economic results because of an improvement in customer results.Practical implicationsThis research revealed that it is important for hotel companies to adopt high-commitment HR practices because these practices contribute to managers’ and supervisors’ affective connection to the company, leading them to feel positively satisfied with their jobs. In addition, hotels should focus on supervisors because they feel more customer-oriented and tend to stay longer in the company, which probably leads them to better meet the needs of customers, allowing hotels to obtain better economic results.Originality/valueThis study contributes to HR management in the hotel industry by obtaining the views of two key informants – managers and supervisors – about the implementation of HR practices and their own levels of commitment and satisfaction.
Perceived impacts of special events by organizers: a qualitative approach
Authors: Xie Philip , Sinwald Andy 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to focus on: first, what major impacts do organizers perceive special events to create, and how do they measure an event’s success? second, do these perceived impacts align with the major themes of economic benefits, social impacts, and community cohesiveness revealed in the existing literature? and third, why do event organizers perceive these major impacts?

Design/methodology/approach
– In order to gain a better understanding of the types of community impact event organizers anticipate from, and attempt to solicit through special events, this study makes use of a survey with open-ended questions. Such questions enable a broader discussion between interviewees and interviewers, giving interviewees greater response leeway and generating more material for the researcher’s analysis.

Findings
– Findings suggest that bringing the community together, producing economic benefits for local businesses, and creating socializing and educational opportunities for visitors are the primary impacts anticipated by interviewed event organizers. In particular, providing a positive experience by getting the community involved proves to be the key element to the success of any special event discussed.

Research limitations/implications
– There are a couple of limitations to the study. First, the study presented a relatively small sample. Second, these results may relate to the institutions located along Lake Erie where parks and recreation have long been viewed as an integral part of community life.

Originality/value
– This study represents a first attempt to complement the quantitative data in the former research with a qualitative study. Through in-depth interviews, it sets out to create a dialogue from the event organizers along Lake Erie in the USA to help better understand the impacts of special events prepared by Parks and Recreation Departments.
The Pransky interview: Melonee Wise, CEO, Fetch Robotics
Authors: Pransky Joanne 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
The following paper is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned successful business leader, regarding the commercialization and challenges of bringing technological inventions to market while overseeing a company. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach
The interviewee is Melonee Wise, an entrepreneur and veteran robot designer. In this interview, Wise candidly discusses her career journey, including the successes and lessons learned in the transitioning from an engineer to the CEO of two robotic start-up companies in just six years.

Findings
Melonee Wise had a love for building mechanical things since childhood. At the age of eight, she built and programmed a plotter out of Legos. Wise received BS degrees in mechanical engineering and physics engineering, and an MS degree in mechanical engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While in school, Wise spent her summers interning at Alcoa, DaimlerChrysler and Honeywell Aerospace. She was able to parlay her passion of building robots when she had the opportunity to work on the DARPA Urban Challenge through her university. From there, Wise joined the start-up Willow Garage as a Senior Engineer in 2007. In 2013, she left her position as Manager of Robot Development at Willow to co-found Unbounded Robotics. When Unbounded unexpectedly shut down 18 months later, Ms Wise gave birth to Fetch Robotics, a manufacturer of autonomous and affordable robots for the warehouse and logistics industries.

Originality/value
Melonee Wise is an ambitious robot engineer-turned-entrepreneur in pursuit of fast-paced career and personal growth, and taking on unprecedented challenges. After interning at three large US manufacturing companies, Wise decided to pursue her PhD until the right company and opportunity came along. In 2007, she was asked by a Willow Garage co-founder to leave her PhD studies and join them as their second employee. Willow Garage, the creator of Robot Operating System (ROS) open source software and the PR2 hardware platforms, would go on to become one of the most significant robot incubators of the decade. Wise was one of the co-creators of TurtleBot, a consumer robotics product developed in nine months, and she helped with the design of the PR2 and ROS. Additionally, while at Willow Garage, Wise created the Intern Program, increasing the number of interns from one to over 60. Melonee Wise spun-off Unbounded Robotics in 2013 and headed Fetch Robotics in 2014. Wise and Fetch recently raised more than US$20 million in Series A funding. Wise holds the patent for a steering column lock assembly and has been honored with the prestigious awards: MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators under 35; The 2014 Business Insider’s 15 Most Important People Working in Robotics; and Robohub’s 2013 25 Women in Robotics you need to know about.
Hybrid position/force control of 6-dof hydraulic parallel manipulator using force and vision
Authors: Gao Changhong , Cong Dacheng , Liu Xiaochu , Yang Zhidong , Tao Han 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a hybrid position/force control scheme using force and vision for docking task of a six degrees of freedom (6-dof) hydraulic parallel manipulator (HPM).

Design/methodology/approach
The vision system consisted of a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, and a laser distance sensor is used to provide globe relative position information. Also, a force plate is used to measure local contact forces. The proposed controller has an inner/outer loop structure. The inner loop takes charge of tracking command pose signals from outer loop as accurate as possible, while the outer loop generates the desired tracking trajectory according to force and vision feedback information to guarantee compliant docking. Several experiments have been performed to validate the performance of the proposed control scheme.

Findings
Experiment results show that the system has good performance of relative position tracking and compliant contact. In whole docking dynamic experiment, the amplitudes of contact forces are well controlled within 300 N, which can meet perfectly the requirement of the amplitude being not more than 1,000 N.

Originality/value
A hybrid position/force control scheme using force and vision is proposed to make a 6-dof HPM dock with a moving target object compliantly.
Call of duty: an exploration of the factors influencing NHS professionals to report adult protection concerns
Authors: Fennell Kate 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
– The Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007 places a duty on Councils to investigate the circumstances of adults who, because of a disability, health condition or illness are unable to safeguard themselves from harm. Public partner agencies, including the NHS have a statutory obligation to bring to the attention of the Council those individuals who may be at risk of harm. Health professionals cooperate with adult protection investigations and participate in the development of adult support and protection plans, yet do not appear to be initiating adult protection referrals with the Council. Low reporting by health has also been recognised as a national issue. The purpose of this paper is to explore what promotes and what prohibits the identification and reporting of situations of abuse within the Scottish Legislative Framework. Understanding the decision-making processes of prospective reporters would potentially allow the barriers to be reduced and the supports to be strengthened.

Design/methodology/approach
– The research strategy is based on a literature review, a web-based survey and semi-structured interviews with health professionals within community learning and community mental health teams.

Findings
– The findings point to a number of inter-related factors which impinge upon the professional’s confidence to initiate adult protection referrals. Workers must first recognise harm as conduct which needs to be reported and addressed. They need to be familiar with referral procedures and be assured that their concerns will be dealt with appropriately. Health professionals are more likely to report if they are based in an environment which supports honest and open discussion regarding harm, without over-concern about agency reputation or resources. Access to multi-disciplinary consultation and support, particularly in relation to more ambiguous protection situations, was viewed as fundamental to reporting.

Originality/value
– This small scale study adds to a developing bank of literature providing a Scottish perspective on protecting adults. It offers some insight into reporting decisions from the viewpoint of community health professionals.
Foreign aid via 3-Party Covenant Financings of capital-intensive infrastructure
Authors: Simshauser Paul , Smith Leonard , Whish-Wilson Patrick , Nelson Tim 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
The purpose of this article is to analyse electricity supply in the Solomon Islands face extraordinarily expensive electricity tariffs – currently set at 96 c/kWh – making them amongst the highest in the world. Power is supplied by a fleet of diesel generators reliant on imported liquid fuels. In this article, the authors model the 14,100 kW power system on the island of Guadalcanal and demonstrate that by investing in a combination of hydroelectric and solar photovoltaic generating capacity, power system costs and reliability can be improved marginally. However, when the authors model a 3-Party Covenant (3PC) Financing structure involving a credit wrap by the Commonwealth of Australia, electricity production costs fall by 50 per cent, thus resulting in meaningful increases in consumer welfare.

Design/methodology/approach
This study’s approach uses an integrated levelised cost of electricity model and dynamic partial equilibrium power system model. Doing so enables the authors to quickly analyse the rich blend of fixed, variable and sunk costs of generating technology options. The authors also focus on the cost of capital that is likely to be achieved under various policy settings.

Findings
The authors find that a 3PC Financing policy can substantially reduce the production costs associated with capital-intensive power projects in an unrated sovereign nation. Such a policy and associated prescriptions are not specific to the Solomon Islands or power generation. The conceptual framework and associated financial logic that underpins the initiative can be generalised to other “user pays” infrastructure projects and to other developing nations. The broad applicability of 3PC financing means that it is not country specific, project specific or asset class specific.

Research Limitations/implications
It is important to note that the analysis in this paper has a number of limitations in that the authors do not deal with rural electrification or distribution network costs. The focus of this paper is to identify policy interventions that are capable of making profound changes to the cost and the reliability of wholesale electricity production.

Originality/value
The focus of this paper is to identify a policy intervention capable of making profound changes to the cost and the reliability of wholesale electricity production. While there is nothing novel associated with a 3PC Financing per se, the authors are unaware of its direct use as a form of delivering foreign aid. A 3PC Financing has the effect of shifting the source of aid funding from fiscal account surplus/deficit (i.e. cash outlays) to balance sheet (i.e. credit wrap). However, this is not a “magic pudding” – 3PC Financing creates an asset-backed contingent liability and will have the effect of reducing the donor country’s own debt capacity by a commensurate amount, holding the nation’s credit rating constant.
Agile manufacturing practices for new product development: industrial case studies
Authors: Leite Marco , Braz Vanessa 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
– For decades multiple management philosophies directed toward lean production and mass were assumed as to respond to process inefficiencies and rampant consumerism, optimizing operation costs. However, new customization and flexible productions philosophies have been gaining ground in some industries, such as the agile manufacturing. From a literature review that addresses the history of this philosophy, it is clear that agile manufacturing is not fully comprehended, with very scarce information about practical cases. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach
– In this paper the authors describe an exploratory methodology approach, with three semi-structured case study interviews. The goal is to study which of agile manufacturing practices are being applied in the studied companies and what is the perceived effect that these have on operational performance. Since most of these companies develop highly customized products, the role of agility on new product development can have a huge impact on their operational performance.

Findings
– Agile manufacturing is not yet a widespread philosophy of managing for the companies studied, being virtually unknown as a global concept. However, it was found that many of the practices of agile manufacturing are already implemented in these companies without association with this philosophy. It was also concluded, by the finding through respondents opinions, that agile practices contribute positively to the studied companies operating performance.

Originality/value
– The novelty of this research derives from observation of agile manufacturing practices in SMEs. This research is useful to SMEs implementing agile manufacturing principles.
Audit committee – internal audit interaction and moral courage
Authors: Khelil Imen , Hussainey Khaled , Noubbigh Hedi 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
This paper aims to offer empirical evidence about the effect of the interaction between the audit committee and the internal audit function (IAF) on the moral courage of the chief audit executive (CAE).

Design/methodology/approach
A mixed approach was followed. In the first stage, questionnaires were sent to CAEs of 60 listed, financial and non-financial Tunisian companies. To enhance the depth of the analysis, in the second stage, semi-directed interviews with 22 CAEs from listed financial and non-financial Tunisian companies were performed.

Findings
This paper found that the existence of private access to the audit committee has a positive effect on the moral courage of the CAE. The number of meetings between the audit committee and the CAE, the examination of internal audit programmes and results together with the contribution of the audit committee to the appointment and dismissal of the CAE do not show a significant link with the moral courage of the CAE. It also found an insignificant relationship between the audit committee’s examination of interaction between management and the IAF and the moral courage of the CAE.

Originality/value
To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper fills one of the major research gaps in the auditing literature by demonstrating the critical role of audit committee–internal audit interaction in promoting the CAE’s moral courage to behave ethically.
Measuring annual report narratives disclosure
Authors: Abed Suzan , Al-Najjar Basil , Roberts Clare 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
This paper aims to investigate empirically the common alternative methods of measuring annual report narratives. Five alternative methods are employed, a weighted and un-weighted disclosure index and three textual coding systems, measuring the amount of space devoted to relevant disclosures.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors investigate the forward-looking voluntary disclosures of 30 UK non-financial companies. They employ descriptive analysis, correlation matrix, mean comparison t-test, rankings and multiple regression analysis of disclosure measures against determinants of corporate voluntary reporting.

Findings
The results reveal that while the alternative methods of forward-looking voluntary disclosure are highly correlated, important significant differences do nevertheless emerge. In particular, it appears important to measure volume rather than simply the existence or non-existence of each type of disclosure. Overall, we detect that the optimal method is content analysis by text-unit rather than by sentence.

Originality/value
This paper contributes to the extant literature in forward-looking disclosure by reporting important differences among alternative content analyses. However, the decision regarding whether this should be a computerised or a manual content analysis appears not to be driven by differences in the resulting measures. Rather, the choice is the outcome of a trade-off between the time involved in setting up coding rules for computerised analysis versus the time saved undertaking the analysis itself.
Corporate innovation and innovation efficiency: does religion matter?
Authors: Huang Dan , Lu Dong , Luo Jin-hui 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how the extent of religion in a firm’s social environment affects corporate innovation and innovation efficiency from the perspectives of religion-related risk aversion and religion-based social norms.

Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of 8,601 Chinese firm-year observations from 2007 to 2012, this paper examines the relationship between religion and innovation intensity, as well as innovation efficiency. A battery of checks, that is, adopting Heckman selection model, using a province-level measure of religiosity and an alternative measure of innovation intensity, and taking the stochastic frontier analysis method to capture corporate innovation efficiency, are conducted to alleviate the concern of self-selection and to guarantee the robustness of the findings of this paper.

Findings
This paper finds strong evidence that firms registered in more religious regions, that is, regions with more Buddhist monasteries within a certain radius, undertake fewer innovation activities as measured by the ratio of R&D investment over total sales income but achieve higher innovation efficiency reflected by the value-relevance of R&D investment.

Originality/value
This paper complements the existing literature by suggesting that religion can serve as an informal social mechanism and performs a “less is more” effect in disciplining corporate innovation activities.
Social enterprise sustainability revisited: an international perspective
Authors: Jenner Peter 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine social enterprise sustainability by comparing recent international research with prior findings seeking to identify the important factors that facilitate social enterprise development.

Design/methodology/approach
The research used a concurrent, convergent mixed methods approach on a sample of 93 social enterprise leaders using surveys and face-to-face interviews. The participants were sourced from a cross-section of social enterprise organisational types from urban and regional locations in Australia and Scotland.

Findings
The findings support prior research, identifying resourcing, organisational capabilities, collaborative networks and legitimacy as influential in the success of social enterprises. However, the research contributes new knowledge by revealing an overarching growth orientation as the dominant factor in the strategic management for sustainability of these ventures. This growth orientation is generally associated with the intent to achieve profitability. Thus, social enterprise managers view a commercially focused growth orientation as an overarching strategic factor that underpins organisational sustainability.

Originality/value
The paper delivers new insights into the strategic orientation of social ventures of benefit to policy makers and practitioners alike. The findings are significant for policy makers providing perspectives into how governmental assistance can be targeted to develop sustainable social enterprises, particularly the need to support the growth of these ventures. Similarly, practitioners are alerted to the strategic imperatives of incorporating a commercially focused growth orientation and the latent potential that exists in the networks of social enterprise.
Care homes lay assessor project – using volunteers to improve the quality of life of older people living in care homes
Authors: Dolbear Kenneth Walter 
Published: May 2016

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to outline the learning from an innovative approach to using volunteers as lay assessors in order to secure improvements in the quality of life of older people in care homes.

Design/methodology/approach
– The paper describes the implementation of pilot lay assessor scheme in Bristol and systematically explores the learning from this case study.

Findings
– The paper concludes that despite a number of important challenges and limitations, a lay assessor approach, particularly when conducted in close co-operation with a local council, can indeed provide demonstrable quality of life benefits for older people in closed institutions such as care homes.

Practical implications
– The case study highlights a number of key implications for practice including: it is possible to recruit, motivate and train volunteers to provide a lay assessor scheme; working with a local council and providers of care homes can produce real improvements in quality of life; lay assessor schemes are an important way of “shining a light” into closed institutions; defining quality of life and balancing this with institutional attitudes towards risk can be extremely challenging; and working with care home managers, providing them with ideas and support can be effective in bringing about meaningful change.

Originality/value
– This case study reports on one of the first volunteer lay assessor initiatives in the country. There has been very little if any reporting or analysis of such schemes. This paper therefore adds significantly to this important are of public policy and provision.