bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Controllers as business partners in managerial decision-making
Authors: Wolf Sebastian , Weißenberger Barbara E. , Claus Wehner Marius , Kabst Rüdiger 
Published: February 2015

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine whether controllers are willing to and/or general managers are expecting them to act as business partners and, hence, to analyze the related consequences from a manager’s point of view.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on a dyadic data set gathered from 112 German head controllers and corresponding general managers in the period of March to May 2009. Drawing on the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975), the authors examine controllers’ attitude, subjective norm and behavior regarding their participation in managerial decision-making. Further, the authors analyze general managers’ assessment of related outcomes, such as internal efficiency and process improvements and use covariance-based structural equation modeling to test for the theoretical relationships.FindingsResults show that controllers’ behavior is strongly influenced by management’s expectations. Moreover, the results support the notion that business partnering is associated with organizational improvements regarding internal processes, decisions and efficiency, thereby increasing the contribution of the controllers’ department to the competiveness of an organization.Research limitations/implicationsOur study focuses on a limited set of variables and does not incorporate different hierarchy levels, which could be avenues for further research. Still, our findings highlight the importance of management’s expectations as triggers for business-oriented behavior of controllers.Originality/valueTheory and empirical evidence in the research area of controllers’ business orientation are still underdeveloped and, therefore, knowledge about the micro-processes and determinants on an individual level for becoming a business partner, as well as on the related outcomes of such a behavior is still limited. The results contribute to literature by highlighting the importance of general managers’ expectations as triggers for business orientation of controllers and its related benefits for the organization.
Accounting firm partners to public corporation employees
Authors: Edward Pickering Mark 
Published: February 2015

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the implications on former accounting firm partners becoming employees of a publicly owned accounting corporation, the responses of the former partners and impacts on the acquiring company. Partners of accounting and other professional service firms selling their firms to publicly owned companies often remain with the acquiring company as employees and receive company shares as consideration for their firms. Agency theory suggests public ownership will result in changes to the roles of senior professionals with potential resistance and motivation consequences.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a case study approach involving the review of publicly available information and interviews with executives and senior professionals of an Australian publicly owned accounting company, Stockford Limited.FindingsThe Stockford case indicates that selling their firm to a publicly owned company can have significant negative implications for accounting firm partners. The former partners struggled to adapt to their new roles as senior professional employees and shareholders. Their responses had significant impacts on company performance, which ultimately contributed to the collapse of the company, thus reflecting the power senior professionals retain regardless of the change of ownership form.Research limitations/implicationsCare is required when generalising findings of a single case to other professions and other geographic jurisdictions.Practical implicationsThis paper has significant implications for entrepreneurs and executives consolidating professional service firms, partners considering selling their firms and investors in publicly owned professional service firms.Originality/valueDespite the emergence of publicly owned accounting and other professional service companies and the importance and power of senior professionals in professional service firms, this is the first study to explore the implications on senior professionals of selling their firms to public companies.
Individual and contextual variables in municipal officers' workplace learning
Authors: Moraes Valéria Vieira , Borges-Andrade Jairo Eduardo 
Published: February 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to investigate workplace learning among municipal officers in the high-learning-demanding organizational context of their work practice in the first year of mandate.

Design/methodology/approach
– A before-and-after quasi-experimental design was used to assess the effect of time of work practice on learning work requirements. Level of mastery of role-relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSAs) was measured on three occasions (once before and twice after occurrence of work practice), with 126 participants. Associations have been tested between this learning and level of education, previous experience, use of learning strategies at work, population size of municipalities and participatory public planning.

Findings
– Findings suggest that the municipal officers showed learning of KSAs but no change in their attitude toward public administration. This learning has been positively associated to size of the municipalities, previous professional experience and learning strategies, especially regarding the cognitive strategy “intrinsic and extrinsic reflection”. A possible positive effect of the use of participatory planning on this learning could have been detected if measures were taken after 11 months.

Research limitations/implications
– The generalization of findings is limited, as data are restricted to the southern and southeastern regions of Brazil, in municipalities in which mayors belong to a given political party.

Practical implications
– The study brought useful information that may contribute to provide some clues, to municipal officers and their parties, on how to accelerate the required learning that should take place right after election.

Social implications
– The practical implications may be cautiously used in organizations in general.

Originality/value
– The feasibility of a longitudinal design to measure work-related learning was shown. Options for more comprehensive studies that may better define the phenomenon of workplace learning and identify its relationships with other variables have been demonstrated.
A study on learning organizations in Indian higher educational institutes
Authors: Chawla Saniya , Lenka Usha 
Published: February 2015

Purpose
– This paper aims to study the antecedents and consequences of learning organizations (LOs) in Indian higher educational institutes.

Design/methodology/approach
– The methodology used is survey-based. Primary data were collected from 300 faculty members of Indian higher educational institutes.

Findings
– It was found that all the variables, i.e. resonant leadership (RL), knowledge management, intrapreneurship and total quality managt1ent, have a significant moderate impact on LO. It has also been found that LO results in strong employer branding.

Research limitations/implications
– Discussions are performed and conclusions are drawn in the context of existing literature. The study bears implications for researchers to take on similar research in other contexts.

Practical implications
– The study bears significant implications for faculty members working in higher educational institutes. It is suggested that RL should be used to contribute toward LOs in institutions. Moreover, this would make the institute emerge as a strong employer brand.

Originality/value
– This paper identifies significant antecedents and consequences of LOs. It is a pioneering effort to use all these variables together as predictors of LO in Indian context.
Optimizing a workplace learning pattern: a case study from aviation
Authors: Mavin Timothy John , Roth Wolff-Michael 
Published: February 2015

Purpose
– This study aims to contribute to current research on team learning patterns. It specifically addresses some negative perceptions of the job performance learning pattern.

Design/methodology/approach
– Over a period of three years, qualitative and quantitative data were gathered on pilot learning in the workplace. The instructional modes included face-to-face classroom-based training; pilots assessing pre-recorded videos in classroom-based training; pilots assessing videos with fellow pilot of similar rank (paired training); pilots undertaking traditional 4-hour simulator session with 1-hour debriefing using a variety of technologies for replaying the simulator session; and pilots undertaking 2-hour simulator sessions with extended 3-hour debriefing utilizing simulator replay video.

Findings
– Although traditional classroom-based, face-to-face instruction was viewed as acceptable, pilots who critically assessed the practice of other pilots in pre-recorded videos felt empowered by transferring classroom instruction to the workplace. The study also establishes a need to determine the correct balance between high-workload simulator training and low-workload debriefing.

Research limitations/implications
– A move towards developing a typology for workplace learning patterns was viewed negatively if job performance was the focus. However, pilot practitioners felt empowered when provided with the right mix of performance-oriented learning opportunities, especially when these provided an appropriate mix of high-fidelity simulations with time for reflection on practice.

Practical implications
– By focusing on one learning pattern – job performance – the paper demonstrates the benefits of learning via a variety of instructional modes. Whereas aviation has a unique workplace environment, many other high- and low-risk industries are acknowledging the impact of technical and non-technical skills on job performance. This may suggest that findings from this study are transferable across a broader range of workplace settings.

Originality/value
– The findings demonstrate that broadening research across many professional workplace settings may assist in developing a more robust framework for the micro-organization of each workplace learning pattern.
Knotworking and the visibilization of learning in building design
Authors: Kerosuo Hannele , Mäki Tarja , Korpela Jenni 
Published: February 2015

Purpose
– This paper aims to study the visibilization of learning in the context of developing a new collaborative practice, knotworking, in building design. The case under study describes the process of learning from the initiation of knotworking to its experimentation. The implementation of new building information modeling tools acted as an impetus for this development.

Design/methodology/approach
– The research is based on activity-theoretically oriented ethnographic research. The four analytical steps created by Engeström (1999) for analyzing the expansive visibilization of learning are applied in the analysis.

Findings
– The envisioning of the idea of knotworking involved the first and the second steps of visibilization. First, a flowchart made the ideal process of design visible and triggered a discussion on the problems and requirements emerging in the project members’ work. Second, an idea for a new type of collaboration was introduced as a solution to these problems and requirements. Planning the knotworking experiment and explicating the associated design instruments involved the third step of expansive visibilization. The fourth step of visibilization took place during the experiment of knotworking in a design project.

Practical implications
– Two other knotworking projects have already been conducted, and plans have been made to commercialize knotworking in building design. New technical tools have been developed for energy calculation and the comparison of alternative design requirements.

Social implications
– Knotworking can improve the collaboration between designers with positive implications on the quality of a building design process.

Originality/value
– Development and learning are studied as a longitudinal process in the construction industry.
What drives social integration in the domain of social network sites?
Authors: Sánchez-Franco Manuel J. , Buitrago-Esquinas Eva María , Yñiguez-Ovando Rocío 
Published: February 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the study aims to investigate the effects of personal innovativeness and familiarity on social integration in the domain of social network site (SNS) innovation. Second, the study seeks to examine the influences of satisfaction and trust on social integration.

Design/methodology/approach
– Structural equation modelling is proposed to assess the relationships between the constructs, along with the predictive power of the model.

Findings
– The results demonstrate that increasing satisfaction, trust, and familiarity and assisting members’ personal innovativeness are important initiatives that promote social integration, reduce competition between my SNS and others, and consequently, inhibit opportunistic behaviour.

Research limitations/implications
– The model does not include all the relevant variables. The sample is not random and thus it is not necessarily representative of the population.

Practical implications
– Managers must take familiarity and innovativeness into account to customise their social strategies in order to ensure enduring enthusiasm for SNSs. Likewise, fostering members’ satisfaction through more gratifying and easier interactions is an effective strategy to promote social integration. Furthermore, SNSs should prioritise their initiatives for enhancing perceived control by making clear rules and management procedures available, as well as the required legal aspects and seals of approval that will increase levels of trust.

Originality/value
– A review of the literature reveals that very few studies analyse the effects of personal differences and relationship quality on social integration. This work therefore improves the explanatory power of existing theoretical frameworks.
The networked cultural diffusion of Korean wave
Authors: Xu Weiai Wayne , Park Ji Young , Park Han Woo 
Published: February 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the diffusion of a popular Korean music video on the video-sharing web site YouTube. It applies a webometric approach in the diffusion of innovations framework to study three elements of diffusion in a Web 2.0 environment: users, user-to-user relationship and user-generated comment.

Design/methodology/approach
– The webometric approach combines profile analyses, social network analyses, semantic and sentiment analyses.

Findings
– The results show that male users in the US played a dominant role in the early-stage diffusion. The dominant users represented the innovators and early adopters in the evaluation stage of the diffusion, and they engaged in continuous discussions about the cultural origin of the video and expressed criticisms. Overall, the discussion between users varied according to their gender, age, and cultural background. Specifically, male users were more interactive than female users, and users in countries culturally similar to Korea were more likely to express favourable attitudes toward the video.

Originality/value
– The study provides a webometric approach to examine the Web 2.0-based social system in the early-stage global diffusion of cultural offerings. This approach connects the diffusion of innovations framework to the new context of Web 2.0-based diffusion.
What’s App: a social capital perspective
Authors: Aharony Noa 
Published: February 2015

Purpose
– Based on the premises of Putnam’s bridging social capital, and on Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe’s notion of maintained social capital, the purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which the well-being variables of self-esteem and loneliness, as well as What’s App attitudes and intention to use variables, explain the social capital students gain from What’s App use.

Design/methodology/approach
– The research was conducted in Israel during the second semester of the 2014 academic year and included 124 students from two major universities in Israel. Researchers used six questionnaires to gather data.

Findings
– Findings confirm that the well-being variables, as well as What’s App attitudes and intention to use, affect the social capital students gain while using What’s App.

Originality/value
– The findings of this study shed light on a new technological platform: What’s App that has rarely been examined to date. In addition, it expands the social capital and well-being perspectives to new media.
Sustainability measures: a stakeholder focus beyond shareholders
Authors: Tetrault Sirsly Carol-Ann 
Published: February 2015

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provoke a reflection on how sustainability may be measured to predict future performance to inform diverse stakeholders in their assessment of organizations.Design/methodology/approach– Conceptual.Findings– Propositions have been developed for considerations in elaborating future measures.Originality/value– A rigorous examination of the pertinence of current sustainability measures and assumptions has been carried out to provide a foundation for the future development of forward-looking sustainability measures. Integration of stakeholder management capabilities and environmental, social and governance measures to support sustainable business development strategies.
Corrupting activities and economic development
Authors: Anderson Beverlee B. 
Published: February 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships of different types of corruption and selected economic measures that appear to contribute to a country’s sustainable economic development.

Design/methodology/approach
– The research used selected data from the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey on corruption activities (Irregular Payments and Bribes, the Diversion of Public Funds, Organised Crime, and Favouritism in Decisions of Government Officials) and Ethical Behaviour of Firms. The economic data (FDI, GDP, GDP Growth and Capital Formation among others) is from the World Bank database. A series of statistical models were developed to examine the relationships among different types of corruption and a country’s economic development.

Findings
– The findings are mixed, showing that some types of corruption have greater negative impact on specific aspects of economic development.

Research limitations/implications
– The research is limited by the availability of data from reliable sources and the availability of data on a limited number of corruption activities. Only four aspects of corruption are examined in this paper. Only selected aspects of a country’s economy were examined. The variables analysed in the study were not available for each of the 179 countries.

Practical implications
– A country may learn the types of corrupting activities that must be controlled to aid in the targeted growth of specific economic development, such as Direct Foreign Investment.

Originality/value
– This study builds on previous work by Anderson (2012, 2013) that used Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) as a global measure of corruption. This study, in contrast, uses the results of the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey, to indicate the perceived level of different types (components) of corruption. By using more specific measure of corruption, there is a better understanding of the relationships between corruption and economic development.
Constructing the meaning of ultrasound viewing in abortion care
Authors: Kimport Katrina , Weitz Tracy A. 
Published: February 2015

AbstractAs ultrasound scanning becomes increasingly routine in abortion care, scholars and activists have forwarded claims about how viewing the ultrasound image will affect pregnant women seeking abortion, speculating that it will dissuade them from abortion. These accounts, however, fail to appreciate how viewing is a social process. Little research has investigated how ultrasound workers navigate viewing in abortion care. We draw on interviews with twenty‐six ultrasound workers in abortion care for their impressions and practices around ultrasound viewing. Respondents reported few experiences of viewing dissuading women from abortion, but did report that it had an emotional effect on patients that they believed was associated with gestational age. These impressions informed their practices, leading many to manage patient viewing based on the patient's gestational age. Other aspects of their accounts, however, undercut the assertion that the meaning of ultrasound images is associated with gestation and show the pervasiveness of cultural ideas associating developing foetal personhood with increasing gestational age. Findings demonstrate the social construction of ultrasound viewing, with implications in the ongoing contestation over abortion rights in the US.
Pelvic organ prolapse and incontinence 15–23 years after first delivery: a cross‐sectional study
Authors: Volløyhaug I , Mørkved S , Salvesen Ø , Salvesen KÅ 
Published: February 2015

ObjectiveTo study the association between pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) and mode of delivery and to calculate the risks of PFD comparing caesarean delivery and operative vaginal delivery to normal vaginal delivery 15–23 years after childbirth. A subgroup analysis comparing forceps and vacuum delivery was planned.DesignCross‐sectional study.SettingPostal questionnaire.Population1641 (53%) of 3115 women who delivered their first child in Trondheim, Norway, between January 1990 and December 1997.MethodsA questionnaire including questions on symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse, urinary and fecal incontinence and surgery for these conditions.Main outcome measuresPrevalence of PFD measured by symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse or surgery (sPOP), urinary incontinence or surgery (UI) and fecal incontinence or surgery (FI).ResultsWhen caesarean delivery was compared to normal vaginal delivery the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for sPOP was 0.42 (95% confidence interval, CI, 0.21–0.86) and the aOR for UI was 0.65 (95% CI 0.46–0.92). Operative vaginal delivery was associated with increased risk of sPOP (aOR 1.73, 95% CI 1.21–2.48) and FI (aOR 1.96, 95% CI 1.26–3.06) when compared with normal vaginal delivery. There were no differences in sPOP, UI or FI in a subgroup analysis comparing forceps and vacuum delivery.ConclusionsCaesarean delivery was associated with decreased risk and operative vaginal delivery with increased risk of pelvic floor dysfunction 15–23 years after first delivery, but there were no differences between forceps and vacuum delivery.