Why should I believe this? Deciphering the qualities of a credible online customer review

Online customer reviews have been shown to have a powerful impact on the sales of a given product or service. However, the qualities of a ‘credible’ online customer review are still subject to debate. Existing research has highlighted the potential influence of a range of factors on the credibility of an online customer review, but relies heavily on quantitative methods and a ‘top down’ approach. In turn, this can reduce our understanding of the influence of these factors into merely discerning whether one pre-determined factor is more influential than another is. This paper adopted a ‘bottom up’ thematic analysis of individual qualitative interviews with a purposeful sample of consumers who regularly utilised online customer reviews. The findings uncovered a range of factors that influenced the credibility of an online customer review that were attached to a reader’s personal experience and to the content of a specific review, and inferred the existence of a reciprocal relationship between the constructs of review helpfulness and review credibility.     

Gender and conservation agriculture in East and Southern Africa: towards a research agenda

It is remarkable that despite wide-ranging, in-depth studies over many years, almost no conservation agriculture (CA) studies consider gender and gender relations as a potential explanatory factor for (low) adoption rates. This is important because CA demands new ways of working with the farm system. Implementation will inevitably involve a reallocation of men's and women's resources as well as having an impact upon their ability to realize their gender interests. With respect to intra-household decision-making and the distribution of benefits, CA interventions have implications for labour requirements and labour allocation, investment decisions with respect to mechanization and herbicide use, crop choice, and residue management. CA practice may impact upon the ability of households to source a wide variety of crops, wild plants, and insects and small animals for household nutrition. Gender biases in extension service design can sideline women. This paper examines the limited research to date on the interactions between CA interventions and gender in East and Southern Africa, and, based on the gaps observed, sets out a research agenda. It argues that attention to gender in CA is particularly timely given the increasing interest in CA as a means of adapting to climate change.     

Vietnam in transition: SMEs and the necessitating environment for entrepreneurship development

A transitional economy has been characterized as experiencing a large amount of economic and social change. SMEs can be considered as the vehicle for entrepreneurship development in such a context. The purpose of this paper is to further the investigation of the favourability of the transitional environment on SMEs and entrepreneurship in Vietnam. Using a new approach, we analyse the transitional economy discourse via examining government policies, international organization reports and academic articles on Vietnam. Our findings suggest that, in Vietnam, compared to an overall normative framework developed from a wide literature review, the settings generally support a vibrant transitional entrepreneurship development and SMEs. However, more needs to be done to build up favourable sociocultural setting and effective business support systems in the country. Implications for the relevant stakeholders and suggestions for future research in the East Asian and Central and Eastern Europe regions are also provided.     

E-business audit: Advisory jurisdiction or occupational invasion?

This study sets out to examine the impact of technological change on the external audit function of e-businesses and, specifically, the professionals involved in executing it. Utilising semi-structured interviews combined with a questionnaire survey, this paper explores the possible implications of developments in e-business audit for financial auditors as a professional group. The findings suggest that the traditional authority enjoyed by external financial auditors is being, and will be, increasingly challenged by IT audit specialists. The role of the professional bodies, responsible for the education and training of financial audit professionals, in particular, is highlighted as key to the outcome if they are to fend off challenges in this growing arena and retain jurisdictional control.     

Oral and written communication apprehension in accounting students: Curriculum impacts and impacts on academic performance

In the context of an accounting curriculum that has been significantly modified over the past decade in response to calls for skills development, this study investigates the impacts of curriculum on students' levels of communication apprehension. An emerging concern in accounting is that attempts made to improve students' communication skills may fail or be less effective for some students because such attempts do not improve, or may even exacerbate, students' anxiety about communicating, which in turn leads to poorer performance. The results from this New Zealand study show that students in their final year of study in which they are exposed to greater communication demands do not, on average, have higher levels of communication apprehension in earlier studies than their peers do. The levels of communication apprehension for final year students decline most markedly for those students starting with higher average levels of apprehension. The results fail to find any strong associations between levels of communication apprehension and students' abilities to advance in their studies or average levels of academic performance. One finding that opens up the possibility for further research, however, is that students' anxiety about communicating in interviews is not reduced.     

Public participation: comparing approaches

Public participation in societal decision‐making is becoming more and more common. There have been numerous studies asserting the benefits of involving citizens and stakeholders in decision‐making at various levels in government and regulation. However, as several writers have noted, there have been few comparative studies demonstrating the relative advantages and disadvantages of different participation instruments. In this paper, we report a small series of experiments that seek to compare the efficacy of a few methods in a variety of circumstances. We argue that, although such experiments provide indications of the relative merits of participation instruments, a much more substantial and co‐ordinated programme is needed. We suggest two components of this programme: first, the development of a public domain knowledge base in which researchers can share, discuss and document their experiences within a common framework that will allow better comparisons; second, a programme of action research in which comparative experiments are attached to ‘live’ participation exercises on contemporary issues.     

Debate: Arm's- length bodies and alternative models of service delivery

What behaviours do public servants regard as representing publicness? Do those same behaviours allow us to meet the challenges of an increasingly diverse and testing civicness? The authors think not. They argue that the existing psychological contract needs to be examined and collectively redefined, initiating a reinvention in how we behave when we do public service.