Generation Z Perceptions of a Positive Workplace Environment

Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal - The most recent generation to enter the workplace, generation Z, has been stereotyped as being less engaged in the workplace, despite being highly...     

Eating out,nutrition, education and the consumer: a case study from Alabama

Increasingly, there is agreement that the hospitality industry, particularly the restaurant sector, can significantly impact people's eating behaviour. This impact includes the nutritional intake of meals many restaurants sell that may lead to problems such as the growing obesity epidemic. This preliminary study investigates consumers' attitudes towards their eating out experience as it relates to their reasons for eating out and the importance that nutrition may place in their experience when eating out. Findings suggest differences in consumer attitudes towards these issues based on their gender, educational achievement level and type of restaurant they frequent. Nutritional awareness and education strategies do not appear to be reaching groups that are more exposed and/or more prone to unhealthier food consumption. Overall, consumers do not seem interested in education or involvement in healthier consumption.     

Using data in legacy fundraising: a practical approach

• Legacies provide a major source of income to charities, and their importance is only likely to increase with the passing on of the baby-boomer generation. Legacy fundraising is a long-term process, based on developing relationships with donors over time. Data have a key role to play in the development of these relationships, allowing legacy fundraisers to measure and track their donors, and to contribute to the development of effective fundraising strategies. This paper discusses the effective collection and use of data in legacy fundraising, from consolidating data, to analysing the results and building legacy targeting models. The authors discuss how these principles have been applied in UK-based charity, Help the Aged, in conjunction with their Data Agency, Tangible Data (formerly Talking Numbers) and to give practical advice on how they may be implemented in other organisations.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘These are not my people’: queer sport spaces and the complexities of community

Community is often imagined as a space of common beliefs, shared values and/or common purpose. For many individuals of non-normative gender or sexual identity, sports are a means to find and/or develop community. Fostered as spaces of inclusivity and an alternative to heteronormativity and cissexism, sports teams enable and promote a progressive community potential. However, they simultaneously erect overarching boundaries at the expense of some bodies and identities. Based on narratives of 30 diversely identified queer individuals, the authors find that within Canadian queer sports spaces complexities with respect to diverse embodiments – from femme invisibility, racism and trans acceptance, to a preference for androgyny, and fat phobia – ignite uncertainties of community idealism. This paper argues for a re-conceptualisation of community that is based on complexity and struggle, rather than on an assumed unity and, thus privileged safety.     

How Borrowing Constraints Hinder Migration: Theoretical Insights from a Random Utility Maximization Model*

We provide a theoretical framework to analyze how financial constraints hinder migration. Introducing wealth heterogeneity and borrowing constraints into a random utility maximization model of migration, we find evidence of multilateral resistance to migration stemming from borrowing constraints. We calibrate the model on 22 European countries, and we show that omitting the constraints biases upward the estimation of bilateral migration rates. We then simulate an increase in the bilateral cost of migration to the United Kingdom. We find that omitting the constraints biases downward the change entailed by the cost increase in the bilateral rates of migration to all destinations.     

Hidden information,bargaining power,and efficiency: an experiment

We devise an experiment to explore the effect of different degrees of bargaining power on the design and the selection of contracts in a hidden-information context. In our benchmark case, each principal is matched with one agent of unknown type. In our second treatment, a principal can select one of three agents, while in a third treatment an agent may choose between the contract menus offered by two principals. We first show theoretically how different ratios of principals and agents affect outcomes and efficiency. Informational asymmetries generate inefficiency. In an environment where principals compete against each other to hire agents, these inefficiencies may disappear, but they are insensitive to the number of principals. In contrast, when agents compete to be hired, efficiency improves dramatically, and it increases in the relative number of agents because competition reduces the agents’ informational monopoly power. However, this environment also generates a high inequality level and is characterized by multiple equilibria. In general, there is a fairly high degree of correspondence between the theoretical predictions and the contract menus actually chosen in each treatment. There is, however, a tendency to choose more ‘generous’ (and more efficient) contract menus over time. We find that competition leads to a substantially higher probability of trade, and that, overall, competition between agents generates the most efficient outcomes.     

Combining DEA Window Analysis with the Malmquist Index Approach in a Study of the Canadian Banking Industry

The banking industry in Canada is essentially an oligopoly with five large participants controlling about 90% of the market. To evaluate the industry's performance over time, we need to deal with the problem of a small number of DMU's compared to the number of relevant inputs and outputs. To overcome this problem we use data envelopment analysis (DEA) window analysis, whereby efficiency scores for the 20 year period 1981–2000 are obtained. To measure productivity changes over time, Malmquist indices can be calculated from DEA scores. Using DEA window analysis scores, however, raise the question of how to define the same period frontier in a DEA window analysis. We show that for both the adjacent and the base period Malmquist index and for all suggested definitions of same period frontier, the standard decomposition into frontier shift and catching up effects gives inappropriate results when Malmquist indices are based on DEA window analysis scores.     

Business Model Innovation for Sustainability: Towards a Unified Perspective for Creation of Sustainable Business Models

Business model innovation has seen a recent surge in academic research and business practice. Changes to business models are recognized as a fundamental approach to realize innovations for sustainability. However, little is known about the successful adoption of sustainable business models (SBMs). The purpose of this paper is to develop a unified theoretical perspective for understanding business model innovations that lead to better organizational economic, environmental and social performance. The paper examines bodies of literature on business model innovation, sustainability innovation, networks theory, stakeholder theory and product–service systems. We develop five propositions that support the creation of SBMs in a unified perspective, which lays a foundation to support organizations in investigating and experimenting with alternative new business models. This article contributes to the emerging field of SBMs, which embed economic, environmental and social flows of value that are created, delivered and captured in a value network. It highlights gaps for addressing the challenges of business model innovation for sustainability and suggests avenues for future research. © 2017 The Authors. Business Strategy and the Environment published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Watching the Detectives 1

Abstract

This paper examines the role of regulators in the UK in integrating sustainable development into public services. In particular, how can we explain the different ways in which different regulators engage with sustainable development? Drawing on insights from rational choice and sociological institutionalism, this paper explains the responses of the three regulators operating in local government, schools and healthcare. It finds that, central government's failure both to send out clear signals about how to promote sustainable development and to create incentives to ensure it happens has left the integration of sustainable development mediated by regulators' organizational norms and professional identities.     

Market reaction to equity offer reasons: What information do managers reveal?

Prior studies have had limited success explaining the negative market reaction to common stock announcements using firm and offer specific variables. We employ apiecewise linear model to test the relationship between announcement returns and firm and offer specific variables by specific offer reason as stated by management. We find evidence that managers are signalling the quality of the new investment when issuing equity for the offer-motive capital expenditures; this is support for the announcement of the equity issue being a signal of wasteful investment. We also find that the announcement of equity issues signals overvaluation when the equity offer is for general purposes.