The Scared,the Outraged,and the Anxious: How Crisis Emotions,Involvement, and Demographics Predict Publics’ Conative Coping

Through a nationally representative survey of 1,840 U.S. adults, this study examined fright, anger, and anxiety as emotional predictors of how publics respond to organizational crisis communication and communicate with each other during a hypothetical terrorist attack. The study also examined the influences of age, gender, and publics’ involvement with prior media coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings through hierarchical regression analyses. Crisis emotions, involvement, and demographics are significant predictors of different communication behavioral outcomes. Insights and implications for practice and theory development are discussed.     

A model for implementing service excellence in the financial services industry

This paper presents a model and provides considerations for implementing a service excellence initiative in the highly competitive financial services industry. This model identifies and defines service culture, desired employee service behaviours, operational standards and service outcomes necessary to enhance and sustain service excellence. When managed collectively, these components provide the organisational environment necessary to harness employee service-related activities for the purpose of creating value and enhancing performance. Implementation of this model resulted in a 20 per cent increase in service quality scores across select areas in the sample organisation over a two-year period.     

Discontinued operations and analyst forecast accuracy

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - The Financial Accounting Standards Board requires separate reporting of discontinued operations within the income statement to provide better...     

Further evidence on the validity of the theoretical models underlying the Baldrige criteria

The Baldrige framework has emerged as both a guide for quality management and the model upon which numerous state and international quality awards are based. It was introduced in 1988 as the foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The framework was significantly revised in 1992 and 1997. In order to test the validity of the theoretical model underlying the Baldrige framework as it has evolved over the years, we take the approach of analyzing the constructs upon which the Baldrige categories are based. Path analysis is used to test the fit of each of the three major frameworks, and the sums of direct effects are used to estimate the category weights implied by each of the path models. We found that all three frameworks were a good fit with the Baldrige frameworks for those years, and that both the 1992 and 1997 frameworks improved upon the foundation established by the 1988 framework. Thus, we conclude that appropriate adaptations to the Baldrige framework have been made over the years. We describe the implications for practitioners, in terms of critical success factors, and make recommendations for further minor modifications to the Baldrige framework.     

The association between characteristics of audit committee accounting experts,audit committee chairs,and financial reporting timeliness

We investigate the association between audit committee (AC) members' financial expertise and financial reporting timeliness, and extend the discussion by investigating how the source of accounting expertise (e.g., public accounting or CFO) differentially influences financial reporting timeliness. We predict and find that AC accounting financial expertise is associated with timelier accounting information. Further, we find that accounting expertise gained from public accounting experience is associated with timelier financial reporting; however, accounting expertise gained from CFO experience is not. We also find that AC chairs (ACCs) with accounting expertise from public accounting experience are significantly associated with timelier financial reporting while ACCs with CFO-sourced accounting expertise are not. Our results are important for two reasons. First, our results suggest that AC accounting financial expertise contributes to AC effectiveness by improving the timeliness of financial information. Second, our findings highlight how personal characteristics of accounting financial experts influence contributions toward AC effectiveness.     

Incorporating Fairness into Development of an Integrated Multi-agent Online Dispute Resolution Environment

The paper describes the development of an integrated multi-agent online dispute resolution environment called IMODRE that was designed to assist parties involved in Australian family law disputes achieve legally fairer negotiated outcomes. The system extends our previous work in developing negotiation support systems Family_Winner and AssetDivider. In this environment one agent uses a Bayesian Belief Network expertly modeled with knowledge of the Australian Family Law domain to advise disputants of their Best Alternatives to Negotiated Agreements. Another agent incorporates the percentage split of marital property into an integrative bargaining process and applies heuristics and game theory to equitably distribute marital property assets and facilitate further trade-offs. We use this system to add greater fairness to Family property law negotiations.     

Evaluating offshore and domestic production in the apparel industry: The small firm’s perspective

This paper extends the existing literature on the potential advantages and drawbacks of domestic and offshore manufacturing strategies to a small firm perspective. The advantages of offshore production to the large corporation have received much attention in recent years, particularly with regards to the apparel industry. The key advantages of offshore production are obvious for the large firm: cost reductions and increased productivity through labour market differentials. Little is known however about the viability and attractiveness of this strategy for the small apparel firm. The high number of small apparel firms who continue to produce in their domestic market, despite labour market differentials, suggests that the cost advantages of producing offshore may not be as critical for the competitive advantage of many of these small firms. Four case studies of small New Zealand apparel firms are used to substantiate and expand on themes developed from the literature.     

Embedded entrepreneurship in the creative re-construction of place

This paper focuses on ways in which entrepreneurs engage with place and community. Drawing on the ideas of embeddedness and transferring value across spheres, we develop insight about how the relationship between entrepreneurs and communities influences entrepreneurial practices and outcomes. Employing an ethnographic perspective including participant observation, we explored the situated practices of entrepreneurs in two depleted communities in the Northwest of Ireland. We found that entrepreneurs not only drew on the community in running their business, but were also involved in a wide range of “other” activities that engaged, involved and worked with the community. This entrepreneurship produced a range of projects that addressed social and economic issues (unemployment, employability and emigration) and the depleted sense of place which was adversely affecting these communities. We show how social bonds and an affinity to community enable entrepreneurship to create, renew and reify a positive identity of place by combining understanding with entrepreneurial purpose.