R&D strategy and Australian manufacturing industry: an empirical investigation of emphasis and effectivness

This research investigates the degree of emphasis placed by the Australian manufacturing industry on Research and Development (R&D) strategy as well as on other organisational strategies such as marketing, HRs (HR), technology, and operations at the functional level. The research extends further to investigate whether the emphasis on R&D strategy differs with contextual factors such as firm size, firm’s generic strategy, type of market, firm’s life cycle stage, etc. A mail survey was carried out to collect information from manufacturing firms across Australia. This was followed by an on-site interview of some of the senior managers of manufacturing firms from three Australian states: South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.The study found that although the emphasis on R&D strategy has received a high priority in the past few years, it has not been as effective as the operations strategy and the technology strategy. The operations strategy has been accorded the highest importance in the past few years and this will continue in the future. The study also indicated that firms, which adopt a differentiation generic strategy, put more emphasis on R&D than the firms, which adopt cost leadership and focus generic strategies. The results did not indicate any evidence of a relationship between firm size and the R&D strategy although large firms are found to put more emphasis on operations and marketing strategies. Relatively higher emphasis was placed on the R&D strategy by businesses: at the growth stage; involved in the manufacture of consumer goods as opposed to industrial goods; involved in exports with a higher sales growth in export markets; and having a higher growth rate relative to their industry.     

Exploring the interdisciplinary potential of the Agenda2030—Interactions between five Danish societal demands for sustainable land use

This article explores the potential of the SDG framework for interdisciplinary research. The aim is to illustrate the process of creating a shared platform of operation by the clarifying the positive and negative interactions between societal demands for land use on a national and local level. The research question is answered by making use of the systemic approach introduced by Niklas Luhmann including his arguments about autopoietic communication systems reproducing themselves. An interdisciplinary research group is firstly applying the SDG framework to the demands for sustainable land use by activating the land consolidation in Denmark. By doing so a ‘national framework’ anchored in the SDG framework is created. Secondly, the national framework is applied to a multifunctional land consolidation project in a Danish case area. The findings from the mapping of interactions between societal demands on a concrete case area revealed that some indicators and societal demands are more prone to conflicts than others but also on the local level there may be variations. Thus, a localised and contextualised SDG framework has shown useful insight for future projects on sustainable land use including land consolidation projects. The paper concludes that the SDG framework may be used for facilitating interdisciplinary research, however there is also a need for guidelines and examples on how to integrate the framework in academia. The paper offers a suggestion for integrating the Agenda2030 and the SDG framework in projects about sustainable land use.     

A quantile regression approach for estimating panel data models using instrumental variables

We introduce a quantile regression approach to panel data models with endogenous variables and individual effects correlated with the independent variables. We find newly developed quantile regression methods can be easily adapted to estimate this class of models efficiently.     

对中国信用卡消费群体特征的多元统计分析

本文在北京地区调查问卷的基础上设计了一套信用卡评价量表,通过多元统计中的因子分析、方差分析、卡方检验等手段分析信用卡评价变量与人口统计变量的相互关系,从量化的角度得出中国信用卡市场的基本现状和特点:信用卡各项服务的水平有很大的提升空间,开发潜力很大;信用卡的年费普遍过高;年轻群体相比于其他年龄群体对于信用卡的接受度、认同度、透支程度、及时还款程度都是最高的;信用卡的功能有待进一步开发;新功能的宣传所达到的效果较小;营销的细分市场应该主要通过透支额度和服务程度等来划分.最后文章还提出了相应的政策建议.     

The Impact of Omitting Promotion Variables on Simulation Experiments

Using store-level scanner data, elasticity matrices are estimated using a twotiered demand system. Two basic models are estimated, one with promotion variables and one without. Differences between the estimates across the two models are statistically significant. However, when the elasticities are used as 'inputs' into several simulation exercises, there are only small differences in merger effects and patent damage estimates.The results suggest that the differences are not 'economically' significant.     

情境满意度对旅游者购物行为的影响研究——以黄山市屯溪老街为例

情境是消费者行为学的重要研究对象,它通过影响消费者的感知进而影响消费者的购买决策。本文通过对黄山市屯溪老街旅游者的购物行为进行研究,分析不同满意类型的旅游者其购物行为偏好的差异,并在此基础上提出建议。     

Removing the contextual lens: A multinational, multi-setting comparison of service evaluation models

Four service evaluation models are identified from the literature that are commonly offered to depict the relationships amongst the primary service evaluation constructs of sacrifice, service quality, service value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. We comparatively test the models using samples of service consumers in Australia, Hong Kong, Morocco, the Netherlands, and the United States, as well as across varied temporal and service settings. The results of the comparative analyses reveal that one conceptualization, the “comprehensive” model, best captures the identified relationships. This model is the best fitting across all countries and settings, which indicates it has the greatest external validity. These findings are discussed relative to the limitations associated with the use of less generalizable models.     

Introduction: human resource management in Africa

This article introduces the special issue that seeks to spur the debate on the challenges of managing people in organizations in Africa. The debate on HRM in Africa has proceeded with tentative steps and now clearly needs to be located firmly within the international management context. It is not the purpose of this special issue to discover or develop an over-arching model of HRM. That has been attempted elsewhere. Our purpose is to bring together the various threads that characterize the on-going debate and hopefully move towards a more specific research agenda which captures the complexity of managing on the African continent. Some of these threads include the formulation of new perspectives on HR research, finding common ground with diverse disciplines and tackling enduring problems like ethnicity and discrimination.     

An exploratory study of the impact of intervening variables on student performance in a Principles of Accounting course

The purpose of this paper is to provide some new empirical evidence on the determinants of student performance in a Principles of Accounting course at Birzeit University situated in the Occupied West Bank. It examines the impact of a number of new attitudinal variables on examination performance. The empirical results suggest that, in addition to a number of standard control variables, student perceptions of factors associated with class size, the attributes of the lecturer, student effort and the complexity of the course are associated with student performance in a first level principles of accounting course.     

组织整合视角下情景双元动态收敛过程研究

基于组织资源基础理论，探索性提出以组织整合为中介，以创业导向和组织情景为阶段性调节变量的间断平衡向情景双元平衡收敛的动态过程模型。通过对高科技企业210名员工的调查统计分析，结果发现：①组织间断平衡正向影响情景双元；②组织整合在间断平衡对情景双元的影响中起中介作用；③创业导向在中介的前后两个阶段均起调节作用；④组织情景仅在中介的后一阶段起调节作用。该研究从静态平衡拓展到情景双元平衡形成的动态收敛过程，揭示了情景双元形成的内在作用机理，对企业有效实现双元平衡具有重要实践意义。