Business Commons^™

The Role Of The Customer As A Quasi-Employee In Service Organisations: A Research Agenda, Jennifer Lawlor

Books / Book chapters

The travel, tourism and hospitality sectors are increasingly encouraging customers to act as quasi-employees by inviting and/or requiring them to adopt a range of technology-enabled services or self-service technologies (SSTs), i.e. ‘technological interfaces that enable customers to produce a service independent of direct service employee involvement’ (Meuter, Ostrom, Roundtree and Bitner, 2000:50). Specific examples in these sectors include self-check-in online, ‘bag and tag’ facilities at airports, and electronic kiosks for accommodation booking purposes. Inherent in the use of SSTs is the requirement for the consumer to learn about and develop familiarity with such technology.

Beyond Big Business For Student Work Placement, A Guide For Family Businesses And Community And Voluntary Groups., University College Cork, Roadmap For Employment Academic Partnerships, Higher Education Authority

Practice guides

No abstract provided.

The Montreal Convention And The Preemption Of Air Passenger Harm Claims, Marc Mcdonald

Articles

The article examines the evolution and present state of the law governing the preemption of passenger claims for compensation for harm arising from international air travel under the Montreal and Warsaw Conventions

'Have We All Gone Bats?' - The Strict Protection Of Wildlife Under The Habitats Directive And Tourism Development: Some Lessons From Ireland, Marc Mcdonald

Articles

This article explores the impact of the legal protection of bats under EU wildilfe legislation on tourism development in Ireland.

Regenerating The Quays In Salford: An Analysis Of Visitor Perception, Behaviour And Experience, Ruth Craggs, Peter Schofield

Articles

Tourism can generate substantial benefits to destination communities and has featured extensively in urban regeneration policy, but whilst there is now an extensive literature covering urban tourism and dockland regeneration, visitor perceptions of urban waterfront destinations and their on-site behaviour and experience remain largely unexplored. The paper focuses on the Quays in Salford, the city’s former docklands, which has been regenerated and repositioned as its flagship tourism product. It reports the findings from a questionnaire survey of visitors’ perceptions, behaviour and experience of the Quays. A principal components analysis revealed that four product performance dimensions: ‘primary attractions’, ‘secondary attractions’, ‘access’ …

Ict Innovation Diffusion In Small Logistics Service Providers: An Empirical Survey, Pietro Evangelista, Edward Sweeney, Claudia-Maria Wagner

Articles

For companies competing in highly dynamic markets, innovation is considered a fundamental component of a successful business as it allows companies to sustain profit margins, sales growth and reduce competitors’ pressures. Information and communication technology (ICT) is essential innovation enablers especially in service companies. The focus of the paper is on the analysis of the role of ICT in innovation processes of small third-party logistics service providers (3PLs). On the basis of quantitative evidence emerging from a recent survey carried out on the Italian 3PL market, the paper analyses how ICT is used to support innovation and the factors the …

Exploring Antecedents Of Consumer Resistance Towards Microgeneration Technologies In Ireland, Marius Claudy, Aidan O'Driscoll, Rosanna Garcia, Michael Mullen

Conference papers

The diffusion of microgeneration technologies like micro wind turbines provides great potential to reduce CO2 emissions, ease fossil fuel dependency and stabilize energy costs. The uptake of microgeneration technologies among home owners, however, remains low and they are often referred to as resistant innovations. Consumer resistance to innovations is a generally under-researched area and empirical evidence is scarce. The research presented in this study is based on a large scale study around micro wind turbines, which was conducted with home owners in the Republic of Ireland in 2009. The contribution of this study is twofold. Building on recent advances in …

The Sales Organisation: Influencer Or Mere Implementer Of Business Strategy? Investigating The Evolving Role Of Sales Strategy And Processes In Attaining Overall Business Objectives And Goals In International Markets, Sarah Browne, Katrina Lawlor, Pamela Sharkey Scott, Laura Cuddihy

Conference papers

This research will attempt to empirically examine the evolving nature of the sales organisation from a mere tactical support function of marketing, to a strategic capability in its own right and one that perhaps has a salient role to play in attaining overall objectives and goals pertaining to the business level strategy for international markets. The foundations of this research stem from multiple strands of literature including, strategic marketing, strategic management, selling and sales management and business internationalisation. This proposal attempts to locate this early stage research within these important and growing strands of literature and address the under researched …

Supply Chain Perspective, Volume 11, Issue 1, National Institute For Transport And Logistics

Issues

No abstract provided.

Perspectives On Church Tourism In Ireland, Kevin Griffin

Conference papers

This paper presents some thoughts on Pilgrimage and Church Tourism in Ireland, with a particular emphasis on Knock, pilgrimage for the Irish Travelling Community, and some thoughts on Genealogy, all with a view to informing the audience of research being undertaken in Ireland.

Excelling In Supply Chain Management: Logistics And Supply Chain Management Excellence In A Volatile Global Environment, Edward Sweeney

Practitioner Journals

No abstract provided.

Ict In Supply Chains, Edward Sweeney

Other Resources

No abstract provided.

Students' Overview: The Impact Of Technology On Learning In Higher Education, Eileen O'Donnell, Mary Sharp

Other resources

This research explores students’ views on the impact and transformations that technology has brought to the learning experience of students in higher education. The students who kindly participated in this study are from: The School of Computer Science and Statistics, Faculty of Engineering, Mathematics and Science, Trinity College Dublin and The Faculty of Business, Technological University Dublin, both based in Dublin City, Ireland. The use of technologies in third level education facilitates flexible learning environments. The pedagogic approach employed by e-learning development officers or lecturers when designing e-learning platforms or learning management systems has the capability to transform student learning. …

Practical Simulation Application: Evaluation Of Process Control Parameters In Twisted-Pair Cables Manufacturing System, Amr Mahfouz, Amr Arisha

Articles

Intensive competition and rapid technology development of Twisted-Pair Cables (TPC) industry have left no room for competing manufacturers to harbour system inefficiencies. TPC are used in various communication and networks hardware applications; their manufacturing facilities face many challenges including various product configurations with different equipment settings, different product flows and Work in Process (WIP) space limitations. The quest for internal efficiency and external effectiveness forces companies to align their internal settings and resources with external requirements/orders, or in different words, significant factors must be set appropriately and identified prior to manufacturing processes. Integrated definition models (IDEF0, IDEF3) in conjunction with …

The Quays In Salford: An Analysis Of Visitor Perceptions, Satisfaction And Behavioural Intention, Ruth Craggs, Peter Schofield

Articles

Despite an extensive literature on urban regeneration, visitor perceptions of urban waterfront destinations and their subsequent outcomes remain largely
unexplored. The paper reports the findings from a survey of visitors to the Quays in Salford; it focuses on their perceptions, satisfaction and behavioural intentions. While the primary attractions were found to have an important influence, the secondary elements explain more of the variance in
overall satisfaction and intention to return to the Quays and the environmental aspects have a greater influence on visitor intention to recommend the destination. The implications of the findings for destination management and marketing are discussed.

Consuming At The Centre Of No-Where: Tweens And The Mediating Of Liminal Selves Through Metaconsumption, Kevina Cody

Conference papers

Despite the fact that ‘a consumer culture of childhood stands as a ubiquitous fixture in public life’ (Cook, 2004: p1), there are few theoretical accounts of young people’s specific negotiations and ‘styles of agency’ (James and Prout, 1996: p47) as they mediate the intricacies of their lived experiences and social contexts within contemporary consumer culture. Within the realm of children’s consumer culture theorists, Martens et al (2004: p161) contend that ‘relatively little is known about how children engage in practices of consumption or what the significance of this is to their everyday lives and broader issues of social organisation.’ Similar …

The Analysis Of Rush Orders Risk In Supply Chain: A Simulation Approach, Amr Arisha, Amr Mahfouz

Conference papers

Satisfying customers by delivering demands at agreed time, with competitive prices, and in satisfactory quality level are crucial requirements for supply chain survival. Incident of risks in supply chain often causes sudden disruptions in the processes and consequently leads to customers losing their trust in a company’s competence. Rush orders are considered to be one of the main types of supply chain risks due to their negative impact on the overall performance. Using integrated definition modeling approaches (i.e. IDEF0 & IDEF3) and simulation modeling technique , a comprehensive integrated model has been developed to assess rush order risks and examine …

Beyond Big Business For Student Work Placement, A Guide For Placement Practitioners., University College Cork, Roadmap For Employment Academic Partnerships [Reap]

Practice guides

No abstract provided.

Strategic Planning In Irish Quantity Surveying Practices, Roisin Murphy

Other

No abstract provided.

Forming Ireland's Industrial Development Authority, Paul Donnelly

Books/Book Chapters

Tracing the creation and (re)production of Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority (IDA) through the lens of path dependence theory, the story charts the IDA’s creation within protectionism. In parallel with the gradual shift away from protection towards free trade, the story follows the IDA’s emergence as the state’s pre-eminent industrial development agency, its re-creation as a state-sponsored organisation and the growing political, institutional and monetary resources afforded it in return for delivery on objectives, largely in the shape of new job creation. However, the increasing reliance on foreign investment to meet targets, at the expense of indigenous industry, eventually surfaces as …

The Global Financial Crisis: World Market Or Regional Contagion Effects?, Lucia Morales, Bernadette Andreosso-O'Callaghan

Conference papers

In the last two decades, the world economy has been challenged by different economic and financial crisis. These events have captured researchers’ attention, and in particular the analysis of contagion effects derived from stock market shocks have been a focal point of interesting discussions. However, there is little consensus on how contagion should be defined and indentified. Consequently, this paper contributes to the already settled debate on the area proposing the analysis of contagion effects in a worldwide framework, where three different econometric models to test for contagion are being used. The main results are in line with most of …

Institutionalizing Ireland’S Industrial Development Authority, Paul Donnelly

Conference papers

Actor-network theory is considered to have great potential for broadening and deepening our grasp of institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). Given its focus on process, ANT offers a means to breathe life into the practices associated with institutionalization. With Callon’s (1986) four moments of translation as analytical lens, and with Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority as empirical example, I seek to address the concerns in the call for papers to reconsider ‘the role of agency, power, persistence and change in the process of institutionalization.’

The Village Voice: Masculine Identity Construction Within An Interpretive Community, Deirdre Duffy

Conference papers

This paper looks at how young Irish men construct their masculine self/identity/body keeping in mind the mediated world within which they find themselves, and considering their own more immediate social surroundings and influences, that is to say, their interpretive community. The research paper combines Foucault’s later writings on technologies of the self with literary theory, using critics such as Stanley Fish (1980) and his work on ‘Interpretive Communities’ to inform the study.

Time Varying Risk Aversion: An Application To Energy Hedging, Jim Hanly, John Cotter

Articles

Risk aversion is a key element of utility maximizing hedge strategies; however, it has typically been assigned an arbitrary value in the literature. This paper instead applies a GARCH-in-Mean (GARCH-M) model to estimate a time-varying measure of risk aversion that is based on the observed risk preferences of energy hedging market participants. The resulting estimates are applied to derive explicit risk aversion based optimal hedge strategies for both short and long hedgers. Out-of-sample results are also presented based on a unique approach that allows us to forecast risk aversion, thereby estimating hedge strategies that address the potential future needs of …

(Le)Agility In Humanitarian Aid Supply Chains, Kirstin Scholten, Pamela Sharkey Scott, Brian Fynes

Articles

Purpose - This paper explores the concept of agility in the context of supply chains of humanitarian aid (HA) organizations, particularly Non Government Organizations (NGOs). This responds to the increasing pressure on NGOs to use their resources more strategically if they are to gain donor trust and long term commitment. Design/ Methodology/Approach - A literature based approach that extends the commercial supply chain concept of agility to NGOs is combined with the first exploratory semi structured interviews of these concepts with five NGO supply chain directors. Findings – The commercial concept of agility when responding to disaster relief holds strong …

Subsidiaries As Learning Engines: Understanding Middle Managers’ Searching For Knowledge As Micro-Foundation, Esther Tippmann, Pamela Sharkey Scott, Vincent Mangematin

Articles

A lot of research on MNC knowledge flows has concentrated on the organizational conditions that promote learning outcomes through a more efficient reuse of existing knowledge (cf. Gupta and Govindarajan 2000). Departing from this predominant research stream and recognising the increasingly important role of middle managers in large, distributed organizations, we investigated how subsidiary middle managers actually search for knowledge when dealing with non-routine problems and evaluated the solution outcomes in terms of generating organizational adaptation. By doing so, we contribute to several calls for more micro-level research of organizational learning processes (Felin and Foss 2005, 2009, Felin and Hesterly …

Subsidiary Entrepreneurship, Strategy Development Processes And Strategic Initiatives, Pamela Sharkey Scott, P. T. Gibbons

Conference Papers

MNCs gain competitive advantage through leveraging initiatives generated by their subsidiary networks. Yet we continue to have limited understanding of the complex conditions which promote initiatives. By integrating the subsidiary entrepreneurship literature and strategy development theory, we argue that the subsidiary’s approach to strategy development mediates the relationship between entrepreneurship and strategic initiative generation. We test our propositions on data generated from surveying the total population of Irish subsidiaries of foreign MNCs. Our findings confirm that an entrepreneurial subsidiary’s engagement in formal strategy development makes it better at generating strategic initiatives. This evidences the need for headquarters to encourage both …

Students’ Perceptions Of Audio Feedback: An Examination Of Individual Differences, Daire Hooper

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

The Servicescape And Behavioral Outcomes: Formative Versus Reflective Indicators, Daire Hooper

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Implementation Of The Dit-Achiev Model For Sustainable Tourism Destination Management: Killarney, Ireland, A Case Study, Kevin Griffin, Maeve Morrissey, Sheila Flanagan

Conference papers

The DIT-ACHIEV Model is a model of sustainable tourism indicators developed in a previous research project undertaken by the School of Hospitality Management and Tourism, Dublin Institute of Technology. The indicators represent six fields of interest – Administration, Community, Heritage, Infrastructure, Enterprise and Visitor (Flanagan et al, 2007). This current research addresses the implementation of the DIT- ACHIEV model in an Irish tourism destination, with the objective to assess whether it can be implemented by the local community in any tourism destination.

The methodology used to implement the model is based on recommendations by Goodey (1995) and Denman (2006). Goodey …