bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A revised model of team roles and some research findings
Authors: Manning Tony , Parker Richard , Pogson Graham 
Published: September 2006

PurposeTo provide a critique of Belbin's team role theory, including the provision of a re‐definition of the concept of team role and an adequate framework for relating personality to team roles. The re‐defined concept of team roles has a significant social dimension that relates it to the roles people habitually play in teams, the autonomy provided by such roles and their commitment to them. It also advocates the use of the “Big Five” model for describing individual personality differences and relating them to team role behaviour.Design/methodology/approachA revised model of team role behaviour is described, along with a brief account of the “Big Five” model of personality, and findings are presented that relate team role behaviour to three sets of variables, namely, personality, team role expectations and team role orientation, including autonomy and commitment.FindingsTeam role behaviour is described using both self‐assessments and aggregated assessments by others derived from instruments using Likert‐type scales. Information is presented showing the relationship between these measures of team role behaviour and three sets of variables, namely, personality, team role expectations and team role orientation, including autonomy and commitment. These findings support the idea that team roles have a significant social dimension and that the “Big Five” model of personality provides a useful model for relating team role behaviour to individual personality traits.Research limitations/implicationsThe research does not look at a number of other issues raised by Belbin's theory of team roles, including the relationship between team composition and team effectiveness. Further research, using the measures described in the article, could be carried out to explore this relationship in actual teams, including exploring team composition in different work contexts.Practical implicationsThe main implication of the research is that, while team role behaviour does appear to be related in part to individual personality traits, such traits are much less constraining than Belbin's theory suggests. Team role behaviour can usefully be seen, in part at least, as learned social behaviour, with individuals learning to play different roles in teams. Thus attempts to improve team effectiveness would benefit from looking more at learned behaviour (including leadership, problem solving, work organisation and interpersonal skills, as well as specialist expertise relevant to the particular team), while focusing relatively less on assessment, selection, placement and guidance.Originality/valuePrevious research on, and criticisms of, Belbin's team role theory have challenged it from within the discipline of psychology. This research is unique in criticising it from a more sociological perspective. It is also unique in shifting the practical focus for improving team effectiveness away from assessment, selection, placement and guidance to learned behaviour and skills.
Increasing impact of training investments: an evaluation strategy for building organizational learning capability
Authors: Brinkerhoff Robert O. 
Published: September 2006

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide training and human resources development practitioners with a practical, credible and strategically‐useful training evaluation method.Design/methodology/approachThe suggested evaluation strategy and method are based on the author's experience as a thought leader and consultant with hundreds of organizations world‐wide.FindingsHuman resources development practitioners need a more practical, simple, valid and actionable approach to evaluation.Practical implicationsEvaluation should focus on the entire training and performance improvement process, not solely on training events. Leverage for making improvements to training impact is found in the performance management system factors in the larger organization outside the boundaries of the training department or function.Originality/valueThe paper proposes a new, more simple and valid approach to measurement of training impact that has been tried successfully in several dozen leading companies.
Leveraging levels of information services and developing knowledge services
Authors: Ju Yingjie 
Published: September 2006

PurposeThe paper seeks to explore the essential nature of knowledge services, and to identify key issues that impact on the successful implementation of knowledge services in libraries.Design/methodology/approachThis paper focuses on and discusses the heightened information service levels required in order to aspire to knowledge services. It answers the questions: What is the difference between information services and knowledge services? How do we realize knowledge services? What is knowledge services' blue print?FindingsInformation profession services are required to identify, analyze and coordinate the various needs of their potential user groups. Part of this process determines the levels of service. The requirements are changing from data, information to knowledge. The main reasons are library customers' growing and changing needs: from information access, storage, and retrieval to knowledge access, storage and retrieval. The aim of knowledge services is to provide a high level service through the effective use of knowledge. So special repositories must be accessed and used, and then analysis tools can be applied to achieve the user's objectives.Originality/valueThe paper posits how knowledge is pivotal in today's environment and illustrates how it is important to set up new knowledge services modes that make use of knowledge service platforms and knowledge warehouses.
Benefits of general vs vocational/technical education in Singapore using quantile regressions
Authors: Sakellariou Chris 
Published: September 2006

PurposeThis study sets out to investigate the pattern of benefits from education along the earnings distribution and compares this pattern between general and vocational/technical education in Singapore, with a particular focus on male‐female differences.Design/methodology/approachQuantile regression methodology is used, which allows for estimates of education benefits that differentiate the contribution of the quantity and quality of education along the earnings distribution. The quantile regression estimates highlight where in the income/ability distribution the impact of education is more pronounced.FindingsFinds that, while the pattern of returns to an additional year of education for general education follows that of other high income countries, exhibiting increasing returns to education as one goes from lower to higher income quantiles, the returns to vocational education exhibit much lower heterogeneity. Based on the findings, the vocational education system in Singapore has served women with secondary vocational qualifications particularly well. They earn more, have higher labor force participation, experience higher employment rates and are associated with a narrower gender earnings gap compared with women with general education. However, this is not the case for women with polytechnic qualifications, who earn much less than men with such qualifications.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that, by and large, Singapore's vocational education system at the secondary level has successfully addressed the needs of the industry and has contributed towards narrowing gender earnings differentials. It has also contributed towards less overall earnings inequality, because it results in less heterogeneity in the returns to education, compared with general education. However, the curricula of polytechnics need to be re‐examined to identify the cause of the sharply lower female benefits from this type of education.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the empirical literature with its use of the quantile regression methodology in evaluating the benefits of vocational versus general education for men and women.
Job‐search assistance using the internet: experiences from a Swedish randomised experiment
Authors: Hägglund Pathric 
Published: September 2006

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the evaluation design in this study manages to avoid common difficulties in experimental evaluation, and to assess the effect of an internet‐based job‐search assistance programme offered at the Swedish employment offices on employment outcome.Design/methodology/approachIn 2002, the Swedish Labour Market Board initiated a nation‐wide demonstration programme investigating the possibility of pursuing voluntary job‐search club activities on the internet. Participants were randomly selected from a group of voluntary job seekers registered at the employment offices.FindingsMany experiment‐related problems such as ethical concerns, bureaucratic resistance and randomisation bias were circumvented. With the services being voluntary, however, a considerable fraction of the applicants either failed to show up or dropped out early in the process. Neither the intent‐to‐treat impact estimate, estimating the effect of being offered the services, nor the treatment‐on‐the‐treated estimate, estimating the effect of actual treatment, shows any effect on subsequent job transitions.Practical implicationsWith fewer than 1,000 showing interest in the services, and with the large portions of no‐shows and dropouts among the applicants, it is likely that the Swedish Labour Market Board misjudged the clients' interest in this type of internet service.Originality/valueBy using random assignment to these programme services, the study contributes to the sparse literature on experimental evaluation of labour market topics in Europe in general, and in Sweden in particular.
Buyer‐supplier relationships in the Turkish automotive industry
Authors: Nazli Wasti S. , Kamil Kozan M. , Kuman Ayca 
Published: September 2006

PurposeUsing a baseline model of buyer‐supplier relationships, the study aims to identify the types of relationships in the Turkish automotive industry, and to test predictions as to how these relations would differ across contextual, managerial, and social climate variables.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaire data from 51 buyers in automaker firms and 72 supplier firms were subjected to K‐means cluster analyses to establish relationship groups in the two samples. Differences across the groups were tested using ANOVA and Scheffé tests.FindingsThree relationship types (captive supplier, market exchange, and strategic partnership) were identified both in the buyer and supplier data. Significant differences were observed in terms of contextual (product and supplier characteristics), managerial (information exchange and cooperation), and social climate variables (mutual understanding, payoff equity, and satisfaction). Turkish buyers were found to strategically segment their suppliers based on product and supplier characteristics, whereas supplier groups were differentiated along social climate variables.Research limitations/implicationsThe Turkish results differ somewhat from the ones for developed countries, which suggests that more work should be conducted in emerging economies. Future research that uses matched pairs of buyers and suppliers may provide in‐depth insights.Practical implicationsThe results demonstrated a perception (hence, communication) gap between buyers and suppliers in how they differentiated relationship types. Strategic partnership led to cooperation in both samples, and to satisfaction, mutual understanding, and equity in the supplier sample.Originality/valueThis study used data from both parties, contrasted buyer‐supplier relationships in an emerging market with those in developed markets, and highlighted the effects of the industry's historical evolution on the present state of buyer‐supplier relationships.
The intellectual foundations of the social market economy
Authors: Ebner Alexander 
Published: September 2006

PurposeThis paper suggests that an adequate understanding of the notion of the social market economy, which has become a prominent aspect of debates on the social model of the European Constitution, is to be assessed in the context of the historist tradition in German economic and social thought.Design/methodology/approachThe paper explores the intellectual history of the notion of the social market economy and its conceptual relevance for a dynamic European social model by highlighting Alfred Müller‐Armack's contributions to ordoliberalism and their relationship with German historism, in particular with Gustav von Schmoller's approach toSocialpolitik.FindingsThe paper finds that the decisive concern of the notion of the social market economy is the reconciliation of economic dynamism and social cohesion in a basic setting of legal rules and cultural values, reaching beyond common interpretations that focus more narrowly on institutional aspects of social policy.Practical implicationsBy highlighting the interplay of economic, social and cultural dimensions, the paper suggests an extension of the conceptual horizon of current debates on the social model of the European Union, promoting policy implications that account for the possibilities of balancing conflicting social interests in the process of integration.Originality/valueThe paper applies a reconstruction of the intellectual history of the notion of the social market economy to the problem of designing a social order for the European Union with its underlying discourse on the constitutional status of a European social market economy.
Productivity trends in the United States
Authors: Serletis Apostolos , Feng Guohua 
Published: September 2006

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate productivity growth and technical progress bias in the USA.Design/methodology/approachFollowing the work of Kohli in 1978 and Diewert and Wales in 1992, the paper estimates output supply and input demand functions in the context of a normalized quadratic (NQ) variable profit function using US data (over a period from 1960 to 2002) on six goods: output, exports, imports, labour, reproducible capital, and fixed capital.FindingsResults show that the NQ variable profit function with linear splines works very well and the technique for determining structural breaks is effective. Estimates show that the US productivity rate in the last decade recovered in a stepwise manner, rather than jumped overnight in 1996 (as some previous studies have suggested), and that the US productivity revival after 1995 has been volatile and fragile.Originality/valueThis paper highlights productivity trends in the USA.
How to get marketing back in the boardroom
Authors: McDonald Malcolm 
Published: September 2006

PurposeTo show how the marketing discipline has lost its boardroom credibility by its own short sightedness over the past half century, and suggest how the situation might be redeemed.Design/methodology/approachPersonal reflection, based on long, broad and deep experience.FindingsWhereas success is measured in capital markets in terms of shareholder value‐added, balanced against risks associated with future strategies, the time value of money and the cost of capital, marketing management avoids such issues – this despite the fact that most of the capital value of companies resides in intangibles, the very things on which their actions have an impact.Practical implicationsSenior practitioners, business‐school academics and marketing consultants will have to change their attitudes and behaviour if the marketing function is to be restored to the boardroom.Originality/valueA call to arms.
Subjective appraisal of service quality using fuzzy linguistic assessment
Authors: Liou Tian‐Shy , Chen Ching‐Wen 
Published: September 2006

PurposeThis study proposes a conceptual model to assess the perceived service quality properly using fuzzy set theory, since customers' perceptions of service quality are generally expressed subjectively in vague linguistic termsDesign/methodology/approachTo demonstrate the proposed model, the exploratory prospect of empirical study with questionnaire is given in measuring the service quality. The customer first records his or her perception of service quality in linguistic terms. The reviewer then quantifies the perception with fuzzy numbers. By mutually comparing all the criteria, importance weights of criteria in assessing the service quality can be prioritized. The fuzzy perceived quality score is then calculated by combining the fuzzy numbers of criteria with the corresponding weights. The fuzzy scores are then transformed to linguistic terms to reflect the customer's satisfaction level of overall service quality as interpreted by the reviewer.FindingsThe investigation shows that distinguishing satisfaction scores with crispy numbers may be difficult, but that customer satisfaction is much easier to identify. The sample information reveals the percentage of population customers who are satisfied with the service provided, since customer satisfaction and attitude toward perceived service quality are linguistic in nature.Originality/valueFuzzy linguistic assessment of service quality is much closer to human thinking than methods based on crispy numbers. Similarly, the proposed method can also be extended to other studies or contests in which the evaluation or appraisal is subjective or verbal in nature.
Innovative SCM
Authors: Soroor Javad , Tarokh Mohammad J. 
Published: September 2006

PurposeAs the technology evolves, the ways in which supply chain is coordinated improve. During a careful study on the intelligent wireless web (IWW) and its services for future applications, its great potentials for the implementation of a mobile real‐time system for supply chain coordination were realized. This paper seeks to introduce a development process for the IWW. In addition, it aims to explain the concept of mobile real‐time supply chain coordination, and propose and describe a practical model for this subject matter based on the most recent technologies including the IWW and agents.Design/methodology/approachObjectives were achieved through a thorough study on the IWW, agent technology, and the ways of applying them for mobile real‐time coordination in supply processes. As a method to conduct the research, first, the paper made out what the IWW services are and how one may develop them. Since mobile real‐time coordination is an absolutely innovative concept, the study prepared a comprehensive understanding of it and then, a practical framework was sketched and explained to implement the suggested system. The approach to this topic was a realistic one and an attempt was made to include all the prerequisites and details for the intended system.FindingsIn the course of the work, it was found that the IWW and other corresponding technologies have the greatest potentials ever available for the realization of a mobile real‐time supply chain coordination system and most of the chapters illustrate the claim.Originality/valueMobile real‐time coordination and its use in supply chains is something new. The development process for IWW proposed here is totally practicable and no other implementation scenario for the application of the IWW in mobile real‐time coordination has been suggested yet.
Clear and present questions: formulating questions for evidence based practice
Authors: Booth Andrew 
Published: September 2006

PurposeThe paper seeks to provide an overview and update of thinking in relation to the theory and practice of formulation of answerable research questions within evidence based information practice.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews the healthcare and information literature on question formulation, augmented by structured and purposive internet searches.FindingsAlthough a few key authors have published extensively on all aspects of the evidence‐based information practice process, including question formulation, there is little in the way of empirical research.Research limitations/implicationsIn the absence of an empirical research base from within the specific domain of information practice, this conceptual paper extrapolates findings from healthcare research to general librarianship.Practical implicationsThis article models the process of question formulation using a proposed conceptual framework (SPICE) and encourages practitioners to identify their own practice‐based questions.Originality/valueThis is the first article specifically to address question formulation for a general (i.e. non‐health) library audience.
An examination of buying centres in Irish biotechnology companies and its marketing implications
Authors: Howard Paul , Doyle Declan 
Published: September 2006

PurposeThis research is a qualitative study which aims to investigate the intricacies of organisational buying behaviour in the context of the Irish biotechnology industry. Particularly the research seeks to focus on the phenomenon of buying centres as the core decision‐making unit in an organisation and examines the functionality of such a process. The main aims of the research study is to examine key influencers, as well as to examine the decision process itself so as to fully comprehend modern organisational buyer behaviour and to discuss these issues from a practical viewpoint beneficial to both the marketing and purchasing functions.Design/methodology/approachThe research process was conducted through qualitative methods, which formed a combination of focus group and key respondent interviewing. A triangular approach of data was also used to obtain quality information and to achieve a platform upon which to base accurate conclusions. A small number of organisations from industry participated in this study, which was deemed sufficient as the purpose of the study was gaining insight as opposed to proving or disproving previous theories.FindingsIt was discovered that users were key influencers in the decision process as were quality control personnel. In addition the business functions were found to be the decision makers in a highly dynamic buying centre process, which is constantly changing in terms of numbers, participation, and structure. Based on the finding of the research newer models of organisation buying behaviour were developed in addition to appropriate marketing strategies being put forward in order to better represent the realities of modern business‐to‐business marketing. This is where the real benefits of this research will be seen as marketing organisations become more efficient, buying organisations develop best practice procedures, and academics can build on this research base to further enhance marketing knowledge.Originality/valueThe paper examines buying centres in Irish biotechnology companies and offers recommendations for future research.