1,720,959 research outputs found
E-Commerce in Agro-food industry in Zimbabwe: myth or reality
No full textElectronic commerce has become a valuable model for the growth of business in every sector of the economy. This paper examines the level of e-commerce adoption in agro-food firms in Zimbabwe. A cross-sectional design using a survey method is used. The results show that e-commerce growth in agro-food
firms in Zimbabwe is still at the embryonic stage. The implications to industry and the whole economy are discussed
Understanding service failure and complaint management in marketing oriented organisations: a review
No full textAlthough marketing-oriented organizations have customer satisfaction as a major goal, it is difficult (if not impossible) to provide 'zero defects' services. Service failures can and do occur. This is largely due to the nature of services, especially in high contact service encounters. If service failures cannot be avoided then organizations must have clear service recovery strategies to prevent customer defections. Organisations must be able to solicit customer complaints and properly handle these complaints to keep the customer satisfied. This paper reviews existing literature on service failure
and complaint management in marketing-oriented organizations and identifies the strategies that organisations can use to keep the customers satisfied after experiencing a service failur
Towards a New Theory of Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries
Get PDFThere have long been conflicting expectations of the nature of companies responsibilities to society Some businesses have been practising what might be termed Corporate Social Responsibility CSR focusing on corporate image management or other activities aimed predominantly at business benefits This paper discusses why corporate social responsibility is no longer an option for business organisations nor is still about programmes to produce socially and environmentally friendly products A new paradigm in corporate social responsibility for corporations in developing countries is presented in which they need to create a strategic partnership with supply chain members support their strategic partners and understand the effect of their bought-in products on the society as a whol
Internal marketing strategies in state universities in Zimbabwe: a case of Midlands State University
No full textThe Midlands State University (MSU) was established in 1999 through an Act of the Parliament of Zimbabwe. It is one of the nine state universities in Zimbabwe. In 2000, the number of academic staff was 87, and then reached 320 in 2005 against a projected number of 223. This number increased to 434 in 2010 against a projection of 430. This rise in the number of the academic staff was against the background of the brain drain as a result of the economic meltdown which the whole country experienced between 2005 and 2009. This paper, therefore, explores the talent and skills attraction and retention strategies employed by MSU during the decade of its existence. A documentary analysis in which the MSU Strategic and Business plans, Human Resource (HR) plans and payrolls were analyzed is used. This was coupled with unstructured interviews with the university Registrars and staff representatives. The results showed that there was a conscientious effort by the university to attract and retain the required skills. Above all, the open door policy of engaging management and the clearly defined promotion and tenure policies made the stay at MSU for
the academic staff pleasant
Establishing a sustainable competitive advantage through e-business: a case of the manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe
No full textManufacturing firms, the world over, are confronted with the need to improve the quality of their products while at the same time containing costs (Barden, Whitaker and Mithas, 2013). This has driven most firms in the developed countries to adopt e-business in order to remain competitive (Rangathan, Dhaliwal and Teo (2004). However, there is little empirical evidence in developing countries linking e-business adoption and firm efficiency. The study investigates the factors affecting the adoption of e-business by the manufacturing firms in Zimbabwe. It further seeks to establish the consequences of e-business adoption on firm’s business efficiency and sustainable competitive advantage. A pragmatic philosophical approach involving the use of the exploratory, descriptive and explanatory research designs is adopted to fully answer the research objectives. Quantitative data were obtained from 118 respondents using a survey. These were drawn from 170 manufacturing firms on the 2012 Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) membership list using systematic random sampling method. The results from the quantitative phase were complimented by the qualitative data obtained using in-depth interviews. The results substantiate the significance of institutional factors, innovation orientation, financial resources, size of the firm, perceived usefulness and managerial attitudes as drivers of e-business adoption. In addition, number of e-business applications adopted by the firm and their usage rate are found to have positive impact on business efficiency and sustainable competitive advantage of the firm. Finally, the results show a positive relationship between the firm’s business efficiency and its organisational and strategic sustainable competitive advantage. The study furthers current debate on e-business adoption by identifying the drivers of e-business adoption in the manufacturing sector in a developing country. Furthermore, the study makes a contribution to new knowledge by identifying the mediating variables in e-business adoption that generate e-business efficiency. It further develops a new e-business adoption model linking the antecedents of e-business adoption with business efficiency and sustainable competitive advantage
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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