Multigroup validation of the service quality,customer satisfaction and performance links in higher education

The notion of ‘students as customers’ continues to be prominent, yet is insufficiently explored, especially from the standpoint of various stakeholders. To address this inadequacy, the present study employs a multigroup analysis of the service profit chain (SPC) model in higher education (HE). Its purpose is to examine the complete SPC model regarding stakeholder perceptions in order to inform its validation and implementation. A cross-sectional survey was employed in order to enable multigroup comparison of a comprehensive research model on subsamples of employees and students by means of structural equation modeling (SEM). Results provide support for the proposed SPC model within the sample of vocational colleges. Besides strongly linked constructs (quality–satisfaction–loyalty), some notable weaknesses (cracked ‘satisfaction mirror’) are found. Multigroup analysis also indicates some important differences between employees and students. Implications are provided for strategic service management in HE, which should acknowledge the differences among stakeholder perceptions.     

The Case for Economic Reasoning in MBA Education Revisited

Laurence S. Moss was a great scholar and author of countless articles and books. During his long career he continued to be excited by economics and history and made these subjects interesting to his students. For almost 30 years, undergraduate students enrolled in his Scams and Frauds class and Contemporary Economic Systems class in large numbers. Larry would engage students to think, to independently question prevailing truths, and to probe further. This essay is a reflection of our shared experience teaching in the full-time MBA program at Babson College.     

Being passionate about the mobile while travelling

People interpret the availability of their mobile phone similar to their personal (social) relationships (friends, family, and pets). Hence, mobile phones are appliances that provide continuous functional and emotional support. Also, in the field of tourism, the integrated use of mobile phones is indicated by words such as ‘catalyst’ and ‘travel buddies’, enhancing tourists’ experiences. This study goes one step further by incorporating the concept of passion and affective outcomes of using the mobile phone while travelling. Perceived socialness of the mobile phone significantly effects passionate behaviour and affective outcomes. For practitioners aiming for digital innovation in the field of tourism, these findings provide insight into the development of tailor-made travel-related applications. Furthermore, affective feelings derived from mobile phone usage will be enhanced by effective travel-related applications encouraging the modern tourists while travelling.     

An Ethics of Care or an Ethics of Justice

A conflict within the community of those investigating business ethics is whether decision makers are motivated by an ethics of justice or an ethics of caring. The proposition put forward in this paper is that ethical orientations are strongly related to cultural backgrounds. Specifically, Hofstede's cultural stereotyping using his masculine-feminine dimension may well match a culture's reliance on justice or caring when decisions are made. A study of college graduates from six countries showed that Hofstede's dimension was remarkably accurate in predicating a justice or caring orientation for decision makers from five of the six countries.     

Women managers in Poland and the United States: a comparative analysis

This paper compares women managers in Poland and the United States in the context of their contrasting political and economic systems—the socialism of Central and Eastern Europe and the liberal democratic tradition of the West. We discuss the two political philosophies and their impact on gender roles and labour markets, and then compare this theory to the reality of Poland's transition. Finally, this background is used to analyse differences between Polish women managers and their American counterparts.     

Endogenizing exogenous default barrier models: The MM algorithm

In this paper, we propose a Maximization–Maximization (MM) algorithm for the assessment of hidden parameters in structural credit risk models. Step M1 updates the value, volatility, and expected return on the firm’s assets by maximizing the log-likelihood function for the time series of equity prices; Step M2 updates the default barrier by maximizing the equity holders’ participation in the firm’s asset value. The main contribution of the method lies in the M2 step, which allows for ‘endogenizing’ the default barrier in light of actual data on equity prices. Using a large international sample of companies, we demonstrate that theoretical credit spreads based on the MM algorithm offer the lowest CDS pricing errors when compared to other, traditional default barrier specifications: smooth-pasting condition value, maximum likelihood estimate, KMV’s default point, and nominal debt.     

Cost management and value creation: the missing link

Understanding of the relationship between the costs of the firm and the value the firm provides to its customers is the key to the ability of the firm to reach its profit potential. From this perspective the firm needs to have a thorough understanding of its activities, their costs and their relation to market prices. Advanced cost management studies and practices suggest a variety of different tools that help us understand the relationship between value and cost. However, most of these studies provide us with qualitative tools only. An exception is studies related to product cost planning, as in the case of target costing or value analysis/value engineering. This paper, while being a part of emerging literature on strategic cost management, extends the existing knowledge of the relationship between costs and value by introducing the value creation model (VCM). In particular, the VCM model defines the firms' cost structure in terms of value added, non-value added but required activities, as well as of waste. A firm's cost structure is aligned with value attributes embedded in products and services. The VCM model seeks to understand the trade-off between what the customer is willing to pay for a product/service bundle (value) and the cost the firm bears to provide what the customer desires. Based on these trade-offs, VCM defines value multipliers, which help the firm determine which activities the firm should focus on in order to develop a competitive advantage.     

From a free gift of nature to a precarious commodity: Bees,pollination services,and industrial agriculture

The growing crisis of bee health has shone a spotlight on the problems facing pollinator populations in many parts of the world, the worrying implications for agriculture and ecosystems, and some of the risks of pesticides. Although this attention is important and can open a range of critical vistas, the threats to bees, other pollinators, and the future of pollination are too often framed in narrow ways. The goal of this paper is to provide a systematic way of thinking about the crisis of bee populations by examining the changing dynamics of pollination within industrial agriculture, drawing heavily on transformations in the United States and Canada. We set out a case for understanding pollination as a biophysical barrier to industrial organization and the rise of pollination services as a response that temporarily fixes (or overrides) this barrier, while containing an internal set of contradictions and overrides. We argue that these dialectic relations are continually generating further problems and hope that this lens can help inform critical education, outreach, and movement building with respect to the urgent problems of bee and pollinator health. In particular, we stress the need to connect growing bee‐related advocacy with struggles to confront industrial capitalist agriculture.     

Supplementing collegiate financial statements with across-fund aggregations: An experimental inquiry

Two experiments, one using commercial loan officers and the other MBA students, were conducted to examine potential user effects from supplementing conventional fund-by-fund collegiate financial statements with organizationwide, across-fund, consolidations. Significant differences in subject perceptions regarding the financial condition and changes in that condition for a hypothetical university were observed between subjects given traditional fund-by-fund statements and those receiving supplemental consolidated data.     

Demand–supply imbalances in the credit default swap market: empirical evidence

This paper empirically examines demand–supply imbalances in the credit default swap (CDS) market and provides evidence of its effect on the CDS spread dynamics. Analysis is conducted on a large and homogenous data set of the 92 non-financial European companies with the most quoted Euro-denominated CDS contracts during the 2002–2008 period. Main findings indicate that short-term CDS price movements, not related to fundamentals, are positively affected by demand–supply imbalances when protection buyers outstrip protection sellers. Results illustrate that CDS spreads reflect not only the price of credit protection, but also a liquidity premium for the anticipated cost of unwinding the position of protection sellers, especially during stress periods.