bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Customer reinvestment analysis in the gaming industry
Authors: Klebanow Andrew 
Published: October 2009

PurposeOver the past several years, the term “Player Reinvestment” been used more frequently when describing the money and effort casinos expend in retaining profitable gaming customers. Most often, player reinvestment refers to the suite of benefits and offers that casinos give to various segments of their databases. The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of player reinvestment.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on the author's experience in the gaming industry as well as studies that have been done by his organization, Gaming Market Advisors.FindingsThis paper provides definitions for the components that make up player reinvestment, and how casinos measure those costs and the benefits that these investments contribute to their revenue streams. Further, the paper shows the range of expenditures that casinos in the US gaming market expend on fostering customer loyalty.Practical implicationsThis paper is written by a gaming industry executive for gaming industry managers. It contains conceptual as well as specific information on how to manage a player reinvestment program.Originality/valueThe player clubs in casinos have to be looked at as an investment to bring existing players back to the casino. This paper explains the concept of player reinvestment, an emerging practice in casino management.
Can casino gaming be used to maximize the benefits for tourism destinations?
Authors: Back Ki‐Joon , Bowen John 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the contribution made by this theme issue to the question: can casino gaming be used to maximize the benefits for tourism destinations?Design/methodology/approachThis paper reviews some of the key contributions arising from this theme issue.FindingsIf properly structured gaming can provide benefits for tourism destinations.Practical implicationsThere are many stakeholders involved in the provision of alcoholic beverages and suppliers, vendors, licensees, regulators, and other agencies will need to work closely together in order to limit what is viewed by many as an escalating problem.Originality/valueThe paper provides insight into the gaming industry with a focus on minimizing the social costs and maximizing the economic benefits of gaming.
Service innovation in cultural heritages management and valorization
Authors: Della Corte Valentina , Savastano Iris , Storlazzi Alessandra 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study service innovation applied to archaeological sites' management, in terms of enrichment of primary cultural product with auxiliary products (cultural activities).Design/methodology/approachThe research design is based on the application of the main issues in strategic management, with particular reference to resource‐based theory and service‐dominant logic, to cultural archaeological sites' management. The empirical part concerns a case study analysis conducted on some cases in the Mediterranean area: Hercolaneum (Italy), Masada (Israel) and Petra (Giordania).FindingsBy the cases' study, it comes out a clear awareness of the need to bring innovative forms to archaeological sites' management, both through the use of information and communication technology techniques and to the enrichment of “integrated and complex” offers that go far beyond the archaeological core product.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis provides a foundation for further development in the field of service innovation applied to archaeological sites' management. The paper proposes an analytical model and a positioning matrix, according to some variables, that could be applied to other cases for a more relevant analysis.Practical implicationsThe paper provides policy makers, private and public actors a possible approach for developing and applying strategic management concepts to cultural offer in an innovative way.Originality/valueThe paper gives some first important hints to innovate cultural service in archaeological sites. It is not just an attempt to apply a managerial optic in this business: an interdisciplinary approach is adopted, even consulting scholars in culture and archeology, trying to enrich the contents of managerial approach.
Creating value in multiple cooperative relationships
Authors: Ippolito Adelaide 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how service companies can create value by developing cooperative relationships between different network actors, with particular focus on the role of the customer.Design/methodology/approachThe actual analysis is preceded by a review of the principal articles on service management, with particular reference to the move from Fordist to neo‐industrial logic as well as the role of customer participation in value creation, highlighting how the role of the customer in service production has changed and how the customer can participate in creating value in a network perspective.FindingsEffectively developing cooperative relationships in a network is linked to the key role played by the strategic centre firm. This paper highlights the role of the strategic centre firm in organizing relationships by coordinating all the actors involved.Originality/valueThis paper shows how each actor in the network makes an important contribution to value creation by actively participating in multiple cooperative arrangements coordinated by the strategic centre firm.
Measuring e‐commerce‐quality: an exploratory review
Authors: Gotzamani Katerina D. , Tzavlopoulos Yannis E. 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThere are various influences that affect e‐commerce quality which in turn affect customer online purchasing decisions. An understanding of these influences can lead to greater electronic marketing effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to conduct an exhaustive literature review on this issue in order to help identify the main aspects influencing e‐commerce quality.Design/methodology/approachFirst, there is an explanation regarding the main attributes of the concepts that are examined in the paper, with special attention being paid to the factors that are influencing e‐commerce quality and the relationships among them. This is followed by an examination of the validation processes of the various measuring instruments. Finally, the paper maps and measures all possible factors that are influencing e‐commerce quality.FindingsAfter the examination of numerous studies, the paper identifies the main factors that are influencing the perceived quality in e‐commerce and their relative importance.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper assumes that improving e‐commerce quality helps enhance customers' online purchasing decisions, having a favorable effect on transaction results. Also, the paper is only theoretical, based mainly on thorough literature review and needs further empirical support.Practical implicationsThe paper offers a comprehensive framework and practical guidelines for identifying and improving quality in e‐commerce. Furthermore, the results of this paper can then be used as a basis in order to empirically investigate this issue in the Greek market.Originality/valueMost studies of quality in e‐commerce have focused on web design aspects and models that measure the degree to which a web site facilitates effective and efficient purchasing. Moreover, the existing literature regarding internet consumers' behavior has not yet fully analyzed profits generated by higher perceived quality in terms of user satisfaction and loyalty.
The board's role in sustaining major organizational change
Authors: Alänge Sverker , Steiber Annika 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe importance of top management commitment for the success of major change initiatives has been emphasized in the literature, while the role of boards of directors (the board) has been in less focus. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the boards affect the sustainability of major organizational change.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on three case studies of the diffusion of total quality management (TQM), Toyota production system (TPS), and lean production (LP). Findings from these case studies are then compared to literature on management and organization and corporate governance.FindingsA TQM/TPS/LP transformation is a long‐term process. In the case studies, top management commitment is crucial for the sustainability of the implemented change programs. However, a committed top management does not “last forever.” The issue of sustaining change therefore falls back on the governance structure. If the board does not understand the essence of an organizational change, the risk is that top management is replaced with new leaders, who are given new directions by the board. Issues identified as important in order to create board commitment for sustainability of major organizational change are: board competence and experience, board meeting dynamics, board as a provider of critical resources, and the process of replacement of chief executive officers. The dominating agency theory within corporate governance also needs to be questioned and complemented by more recent theories such as the stewardship and the resource‐dependence theories.Originality/valueThis paper provides insights into the board's role in sustaining major organizational change.
Leadership and service quality in higher education
Authors: Trivellas Panagiotis , Dargenidou Dimitra 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of leadership roles on the quality of services provided in higher education.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon a sample of 134 faculty and administration members at the Technological Educational Institution (TEI) of Larissa, a structured questionnaire is developed to measure leadership roles and quality in services and internal processes. The competing values model is adopted to operationalise the eight leadership roles.FindingsResults indicate that different leadership roles are linked with different dimensions of higher education service quality. The importance of the innovator and monitor role in explaining the variance of two out of four teaching quality aspects is confirmed, while the broker and facilitator roles are strongly associated with both dimensions of administration quality. The producer, director and coordinator proved to be the most prevalent roles among administration staff, while the director, coordinator and mentor roles dominated among faculty members.Research limitations/implicationsThe possibility to generalise the results to other countries with different characteristics (e.g. regulatory framework, economic development) needs to be verified, by executing similar research projects.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the nature of the association between leadership and higher education service quality would enable academics and administrators to pursue or cultivate these roles and behaviours fostering both the quality of teaching and administration.Originality/valueThe research led to the diagnosis of the leadership role profiles of both administration and faculty members. Findings also highlight the importance of specific leadership roles in explaining the variance of different aspects of higher education service quality.
Is market orientation a relevant strategy for higher education institutions?
Authors: Bugandwa Mungu Akonkwa Deogratias 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to encourage the development of a research stream on the market orientation concept in higher education. Specifically, the author explains why this concept has emerged as a potentially relevant strategy to manage higher educational institutions. The paper raises the main problems surrounding the use of market orientation in higher education, and thereby, suggests an extensive research agenda which is expected to improve the importation of marketing concepts in higher education.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on an extensive critical literature review on market orientation, and a document analysis to grasp the major changes that have affected higher education institutions' context since the middle of the 1980s. A bulk of research agenda is proposed and summarised in a table. The different topics are rooted in the link the author has attempted to put between marketing theory and higher educational context.FindingsResearch on market orientation in higher education still has many rooms to explore. These are: competition, quality issues, the impact of budget cuts on marketing implementation and market orientation operationalisation, etc.Originality/valueWhile the market orientation strategy has been widely studied in commercial sector, its use in public and non‐profit sector such as higher education is still unsatisfactory. The paper: points on the limits of conceptual transpositions; discusses why market orientation is important to face the new context of higher education; and raises a number of research directions that have tremendous promises in the endeavour to build richer theories of marketing management, and to address significant problems of marketing practice in higher education.
Public services co‐production: exploring the role of citizen orientation
Authors: Cassia Fabio , Magno Francesca 
Published: October 2009

PurposeSince the introduction of “new public management” in the 1980s, public officials have looked for solutions to increase citizen participation in services planning and provision. Despite recent advancements in co‐production and value‐creation literature, the public sector is still lagging behind. A few studies have recently tried to investigate factors leading to public officials' resistance to adopting these new practices and tools, but they only analyze structural and objective antecedents. This has led to unconvincing results. The purpose of this paper is to broaden the perspective by adopting public officials' point of view, developing a scale for the construct “citizen orientation” and investigating its explanatory power.Design/methodology/approachA mail survey is conducted among a sample of Italian town mayors. Factor analysis and regressions are used, respectively, to develop the scale for citizen orientation and to test the hypotheses.FindingsResults support the hypothesis, showing that public officials' citizen orientation is a significant antecedent of the intention to increase the level of co‐production.Research limitations/implicationsResults could have been influenced by the degree of new public management development within the specific research setting. Further studies with larger samples are needed to strongly corroborate findings.Practical implicationsFindings imply that a cultural change is needed among public officials in order for public organizations to become facilitators of value co‐production processes.Originality/valueThis paper develops a scale for citizen orientation as an adaptation of the customer orientation construct to explain public officials' attitude toward co‐production within local government. This perspective complements the more common approaches based only on objective antecedents.
The institutional pillars of management accounting function
Authors: Järvenpää Marko 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to theorize the institutional pillars of management accounting function.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts a comparative case study approach.FindingsInstitutional pillars of management accounting are explored on the basis of two longitudinal case studies. Competitive/economic forces and three analytical elements of institutional theory are composing institutions: regulative, normative and cultural‐cognitive pillars. Each element is important, and all of them may work in combination, but they operate through distinctive mechanisms and processes. This paper illustrates how they provide the basis for compliance, order and the legitimacy of not the whole organization, nor of the management accounting systems but of the management accounting function. This “organizational legitimacy” of management accounting function may provide one potential additional explanation for the change and stability of management accounting in organizations.Originality/valueThis paper creates an institutional interpretation of accounting change or stability at the level of an accounting function. It illustrates how the pressure for change or stability in management accounting is collectively constituted in organisations, how it is given meaning and how individuals are making sense of things, i.e. how accounting is institutionally embedded.
Voluntarism versus regulation
Authors: Fallan Even , Fallan Lars 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the development of environmental disclosure during periods of voluntarism and during periods with changed statutory requirements. More specific, the question is how volume and content variety of environmental disclosure in financial statements are immediately affected by statutory regulations.Design/methodology/approachIn order to compare the effects of such regulations with the development in environmental disclosure during periods without any changes in statutory requirements, a longitudinal study is conducted to test five specific hypotheses. A quasi‐experiment with pre‐ and post‐testing of disclosure volume and content variety is carried out to test the effects of the statutory changes.FindingsThe most important lesson from this paper is the significance of the voluntary approach to improve the variety of environmental disclosure. The present paper supports the claim of voluntarism that companies will meet the heterogeneous requirements of their stakeholders without any governmental regulations. No statutory regulations are needed to make the companies increase and adapt their environmental disclosure to the demand from their stakeholders and legitimate their existence towards society. The present paper has revealed that the regulation approach has a significant, immediate effect on mandatory environmental disclosure only, and that companies do not fully comply with such statutory regulations.Research limitations/implicationsThere is no universal notion of voluntarism. Different countries and societies have different legal requirements and political cultures regarding voluntarism. That is, voluntary reporting in Norway is affected by the national statutory requirements and may be underpinned by a certain set of societal responsibilities that may or may not exist elsewhere. Further research is needed to see whether these findings are readily generalized or whether they should only be interpreted in light of local considerations.Originality/valueThis is the first comprehensive study of the development of environmental disclosure in Norwegian companies. A total of 822 financial statements and annual reports, during the period between 1987 and 2005, are analysed.
Exploring Russian central government accounting in its context
Authors: Timoshenko Konstantin , Adhikari Pawan 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to knowledge about Russian public sector accounting in times of change by exploring the emergence of a new way of accounting for Russian central government.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, accounting is viewed as a social and institutional practice. A frame of reference guided by three theoretical perspectives is elaborated on. Thistroikaincorporates a system approach to accounting, an accountability approach, and an institutional approach. Document search represents the major method of collecting data for this paper.FindingsThis paper suggests that launching a nascent version of Russian central government accounting is better comprehended in terms of legitimacy rather than in terms of instrumentality.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper focuses on the appearance of up‐to‐date accounting provisions at macro‐level and does, therefore, have limitations with regard to scope. This makes it intellectually rewarding to link the central government initiatives with endeavours to implement them at different levels of government and in specific public sector organizations.Originality/valueBearing in mind, the lack of consistent research efforts on the topic in Western English‐language literature, this paper strives to bring rather “alien” Russian central government accounting into the international arena for the purposes of cross‐national comparisons and wide‐ranging discussions. It also contributes to the literature dealing with the role of international organizations in the reform of public sector accounting.
The role of internal auditors in ERP‐based organizations
Authors: Madani Haider H. 
Published: October 2009

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework that will help to examine the role of internal auditors (IAs) in enterprise resource planning (ERP) based organizations. An ERP integrates all organizational functions in one powerful system that drives the organization strategically and also presents new challenges to the internal audit function.Design/methodology/approachA literature review is undertaken to highlight the role of IAs in an ERP environment.FindingsThe framework depicts the new relationships which the ERP system requires between the IAs and five associated groups: software vendors, information systems, information technology managers, ERP users, and consultants. ERP also gives interanl auditors an enabling technology to advise management on the implications of ERP for risk‐intelligence.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a conceptual paper that has implications for internal auditing practice. Academic researchers will find this framework to be useful for testing it in the field. Practitioners will also benefit from this model when assessing the role of IAs in an ERP environment.Originality/valuePrior research in the auditing field has overlooked this issue. This paper will attempt to fill such an apparent gap in prior research and will help motivate further research in this field.
Structure of Anogeissus leiocarpa Guill., Perr. natural stands in relation to anthropogenic pressure within Wari‐Maro Forest Reserve in Benin
Authors: Assogbadjo Achille Ephrem , Kakaï Romain Lucas Glele , Sinsin Brice , Pelz Dieter 
Published: October 2009

AbstractThe present study focused on the analysis of the structure of the Anogeissus leiocarpa dominated natural stands in the Wari‐Maro forest reserve which are under high and minimal anthropogenic pressures. These stands were considered for forest inventories after carrying out a random sampling scheme of 40 sample units of 30 m × 50 m. In each level pressure stand, the dbh and tree‐height of identified tree‐species were measured in each plot. Data analyses were based on the computation of structural parameters, establishment of diameter and height distributions and the floristic composition of the two types of stands. Results obtained showed higher values for the overall basal area (9.78 m2 ha−1), mean height (22.37 m) and mean diameter (36.92 cm) for A. leiocarpa in low‐pressure stands. In high‐pressure stands, some species like Afzelia africana had lower Importance Value Index and the frequency of A. leiocarpa trees in the successive diameter classes dropped rapidly and the value of the logarithmic slope of the height–diameter relationship was lower (9.77) indicating a lanky shape. Results obtained suggest that effective conservation is needed for A. leiocarpa stands under high pressure by limiting human interference and developing appropriate strategy for restoration purposes.