Making Sense of SERVQUAL's Dimensions to the Chinese Customers in Macau

To confirm the sustainability of the SERVQUAL framework within an Eastern business context, a replication study was conducted in Macau, a small place which is adjacent to Hong Kong and has just been returned to the PRC from the Portuguese administration. In March, 1999, about 230 customers of a local bank were surveyed on the 22 items of the SERVQUAL. Factor analysis established the existence of six service dimensions, which is different from the original findings of Parasuraman et al. (1988). The new solution thus requires considerably different interpretations.     

Making Sense of the Third Way

Books reviewed in this article:
Anthony Giddens, The Third Way
Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder, The Way Forward for Europe's Social Democrats – A Proposal     

Making Sense of Corporate Social Responsibility

This paper provides preliminary insights into the process of sense-making and developing meaning with regard to corporate social responsibility (CSR) within 18 Dutch companies. It is based upon a research project carried out within the framework of the Dutch National Research Programme on CSR. The paper questions how change agents promoting CSR within these companies made sense of the meaning of CSR. How did they use language (and other instruments) to stimulate and underpin the contextual essence of CSR? Why did they do that in this particular way? What were the consequences of this approach for shaping the process of CSR in their company? Did their efforts contribute to a new way of thinking and acting or was it merely putting old wine in new barrels? A preliminary conclusion is that change agents use above all linguistic artefacts (words and notions) and carry out practical projects while constructing meaning. Still, the meaning of meaning itself remains highly intangible, situational and personality related.     

Perceptions of Deception: Making Sense of Responses to Employee Deceit

In this research, we examine the effects that customer perceptions of employee deception have on the customers’ attitudes toward an organization. Based on interview, archival, and observational data within the international airline industry, we develop a model to explain the complex effects of perceived dishonesty on observer’s attitudes and intentions toward the airline. The data revealed three types of perceived deceit (about beliefs, intentions, and emotions) and three additional factors that influence customer intentions and attitudes: the players involved, the beneficiaries of the deceit, and the harm done by the perceived lie. We develop a model with specific propositions to guide organizations with respect to apparently deceitful behavior of their employees. Implications and directions for future research are provided, focusing on the question of whether organizations should consistently encourage honesty or train their employees to be effective liars.     

Corporate Social Responsibility in Colombia: Making Sense of Social Strategies

As corporate social responsibility (CSR) grows increasingly well known and accepted worldwide, organizations attempt to make sense of their social strategies bridge the gap between their current situation and what their stakeholders expect of them. If social strategies represent a potential stepping stone to more sophisticated forms of CSR, then research must investigate the strategies that organizations have adopted. After defining a framework for classifying and analyzing organizations’ social strategies, this article considers empirical evidence from 10 case studies in Colombia to reveal how organizations might build on their social involvement to engage in more sophisticated CSR practices. The framework also suggests some different trajectories that organizations might follow.     

论新《食品安全法》中的特殊食品

本文开篇简要地说明了特殊食品的定义及范围,而后介绍了特殊食品相关法律法规体系的变更,并从特殊食品的角度分析了新《食品安全法》扩大特殊食品监管范围、优化管理制度、明确食品标签和广告、加强监管力度、严惩重处生产经营违法行为和提高信息公开程度6个亮点.     

The Under-Examined Public: Making Sense of Industry Analysts and Analyst Relations

SUMMARY

The first section of this article looks at who the key analysts are in the U.S. and Europe, what it is they primarily do, and why they matter to the communication departments of IT and telecom vendors. A set of clear metrics is offered to gauge analyst influence across the board: on market intelligence, media, investors, and customers. The second section examines case studies of agency-driven and in-house managed analyst relations (AR) programs from both geographies, benchmarking the most successful strategies. From these and the direct testimony of analysts, a checklist or best-practices metric for analyst relations management is derived. The final section extrapolates from this model a template for measuring the results of analyst relations efforts. The template includes tools and services recently available through a new breed of agencies and consultants that specialize in evaluating analyst programs. It also, for the first time, broadens the tracking metrics to include the wide range of publics influenced by industry analysts (IAs).     

缘起于金融危机的公允价值会计争论之探——兼以金融机构的视角

此次全球金融危机引起的对公允价值会计的强烈争论对公允价值来说是一个挑战,其关乎到公允价值能否继续使用及推广。回顾已有的研究对公允价值的理解,可以看出公允价值会计的许多争论是源于对公允价值的概念及其目的的混淆。在金融危机发生的情况下,对盯市会计①存在的问题的关注可以理解,但是会计准则中规定的所用的公允价值会计并不只是由盯市会计方法确定,将这种关注同样施加给公允价值会计是否合理,还有待于实证检验。虽然公允价值会计与金融危机的关系并不清楚,可公允价值会计在实施中存在的问题也是导致争论的因素。分析银行等金融机构对公允价值会计的态度,可以从另一个角度给出对公允价值会计争论的理解。     

Making Sense of Marketing Data: Some MIS Perspectives on the Analysis of Large Data Sets

Despite the growth in the size and complexity of corporate data, the technology for analyzing it has not kept up with the advances in data collection, in that managers mostly need to rely on marketing research and information systems experts to generate the analysis and reports they need. We review some useful approaches here from the computer science and information systems fields for the analysis of large data sets, viz. good data organization and the use of flexible analysis tools, for making the analysis more tractable and user-friendly. These methods are increasingly being adopted by practitioners who are hard-pressed to generate business intelligence from large corporate databases. However, the benefits of these approaches may not be confined only to practitioners, and may apply to academic researchers working with large data sets, as well.     

论内地与香港食品安全合作法律机制的构建——一种跨行政区域软法治理的思路

内地与香港食品安全合作的有序推进需要相应法律机制的保障。这一法律机制应立足于两地食品安全合作法律实践的现状,从组织机构、表现形式和内容三方面予以构建。内地与香港食品安全合作法律机制的组织机构建设应依托于两地合作的整体性机构安排,革新和完善现有的磋商交流机制;两地食品安全合作法律机制的表现形式主要是行政协议。行政协议在法律性质上属于软法;在内容上,这些行政协议至少应涵盖四类规则:食品安全信息交流制度、食品安全标准协调制度、食品安全能力建设制度和食品安全突发事件协处制度。     

Fighting dragons with dragons: Approaches for negotiating with Chinese partners

For many American firms engaging with Chinese business partners, patterns of negotiated promises made but not kept by their Chinese counterparts often prove rule rather than exception. While various issues play a role in this unfortunate condition, many contributing factors are not subject to control or correction by U.S. negotiators. But two singularly damaging factors can be controlled and corrected by U.S. managers. First is their tendency to negotiate from decidedly Western sociocultural perspectives. Second is that managers often negotiate in states of relative ignorance about certain key cultural values that heavily influence Chinese negotiating practices. Grounded in Bing Fa, this article describes approaches designed to enable managers to negotiate more effectively with Chinese partners. By turns, the approaches instruct U.S. managers regarding why and how they should (when negotiating with Chinese counterparts): embrace the unusual as normal; begin with hard ends in mind; anticipate/prepare for conflict; never resist resistances, [instead] always retreat gracefully; disclose with discretion; act like ladies and gentlemen; and never die with bullets in [their] guns. Adopt these tactics, and U.S. managers would lessen the impact of two factors that, when present, degrade their negotiating effectiveness.     

Opening Local Retail Food Stores: A Real-Options Approach

A real-options approach was used, incorporating uncertainty and irreversibility of investments, to study the number of stores entering the Swedish retail food market during the period 1994–2002. It was found that uncertainty affected the entry-decision. Entry was less frequent in highly concentrated local retail food-markets characterized by a high degree of uncertainty, whereas higher profit opportunities seem to have increased the probability of entry.     

Timothy J. Bartik: Making Sense of Incentives: Taming Business Incentives to Promote Prosperity

Business Economics -     

Social Contracting in a Pluralist Process of Moral Sense Making: A Dialogic Twist on the ISCT

This paper applies Wempe’s (2005, Business Ethics Quarterly 15(1), 113–135) boundary conditions that define the external and internal logics for contractarian business ethics theory, as a system of argumentation for evaluating current or prospective institutional arrangements for arriving at the “good life,” based on the principles and practices of social justice. It does so by showing that a more dynamic, process-oriented, and pluralist ‘dialogic twist’ to Donaldson and Dunfee’s (2003, ‘Social Contracts: sic et non’, in P. Heugens, H. van Oosterhout and J. Vromen (eds.), The Social Institutions of Capitalism: Evolution and Design of Social Contracts (Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd.) pp. 109–126; 1999, Ties that Bind: A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics (Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press); 1995, Economics and Philosophy 11(1), 85–112; 1994, Academy of Management Review 19(2), 252–284.) integrated social contracting theory (ISCT) of economic ethics will further develop this promising and influential approach to moral reasoning, ethical decision-making, and stakeholder governance. This evolutionary, interactive learning-based model of ethical norm generation via dialogic stakeholder engagement is particularly appropriate within economic communities that are experiencing value conflict and pressures for institutional change.Jerry M. Calton is Professor of Management at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. His research interests encompass multi-stakeholder learning dialogue, trust-based network governance, and the social contracting approach to ethical decision-making. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Business & Society, Business Ethics Quarterly, the Journal of Corporate Citizenship, and elsewhere.     

Waste Not,Want Not: A Case Study on Food Waste in Restaurants of Lahore,Pakistan

ABSTRACT

Recently, there is growing focus on quantifying food waste problem and analyzing its causes due to an imminent challenge: feed nine billion people by 2050. Among developing countries, we focus on Pakistan which has the sixth largest population in the world and faces serious issues of food insecurity and malnourishment. Astoundingly, despite the gravity of the situation the available research on the issue is almost non-existent. Here, in this first-of-its-kind study for Pakistan we attempt to measure the quantum of food wastage and study its underlying reasons across restaurants in the country’s second largest urban center, Lahore, which is also popularly designated as “the culinary capital of Pakistan”. Segmenting restaurants according to the niche markets they target—as high-end, medium-end, and low-end—and using actual measures of daily wastage, we find overproduction and liability concerns as the prime reasons of excess food preparation and its improper disposal.     

The Impact of Eco-Design Packaging on Food Waste Avoidance: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Eco-design packaging is a potential tool to reduce food waste. However, the absence of a theoretical basis regarding the relationships between eco-design packaging and consumer food waste behavior obscures the social impact of this packaging. This study assesses research linking eco-design packaging and food waste avoidance from a consumer perspective. The authors analyze 22 articles in top-tier journals, and conclude that consumer perceptions of eco-design packaging could reduce food waste. Results lead to a conceptual model of the mechanism whereby consumer perceptions of eco-design packaging influence food waste avoidance intentions.