A Study of Typology of Teacher’s Questions

This study invested the typology of teacher’s questions as well as its functions in teaching. Teacher’s questions are widely acknowledged as a valuable instrumental strategy,improved classroom questioning strategies may contribute to the development of students’ higher cognitive-thinking skills,asking the right questions appears to enhance the student learning.     

Toward an understanding of consumers’ perceptions of food labels

This study examines the factors that influence consumers’ perceptions or beliefs about food labels. The results indicate that health and diet related attitudes, special diet status, perceived importance of product attributes like nutrition and ease of preparation, race, gender, income, and body mass index are important factors affecting consumers’ perceptions and beliefs about label use. Understanding the type of consumers who have these perceptions and beliefs as well as the factors that influence these beliefs and perceptions is crucial for designing effective marketing and nutrition education campaigns.     

A generalization of Macula’s disjunct matrices

As a generalization of the novel construction of disjunct matrices by Macula (Discrete Math. 162:311–312, 1996), we construct a new family of disjunct matrices and discuss its error-tolerant property.     

The effect of outside directors’ and auditors’ incentives on managers’ ability to manage cash bonuses

This paper investigates the impact of outside directors’ and auditors’ monetary incentives on the association between discretionary accounting and managers’ cash bonuses in a two-tier system. For a sample of German stock corporations from 2005 to 2007 we expect and find that outside directors who receive compensation based on accounting income and auditors who receive high non-audit fees have the incentive to tolerate managers’ bonus-increasing accounting choices. More specifically, we show that positive discretionary accruals are more strongly associated with managers’ cash bonuses than negative discretionary accruals if outside directors receive accounting-based compensation and/or if auditors receive high non-audit fees. Our results suggest that executives’ ability to manage their cash bonuses depends on the monitoring institutions’ monetary incentives.     

Socioemotional wealth’s implications in the calculus of the minimum rate of return required by family businesses’ owners

This paper demonstrates that the minimum rate of return (k _e ) required by family business shareholders is inversely related to the emotional endowment presented in these firms. After reviewing the socioemotional wealth (SEW) literature, we find empirical support to justify that different SEW dimensions influence k _e . Findings from a population of 207 family firms show that the identification of family members with the firm and the renewal of family bonds with the firm through dynastic succession have consistently negative impacts on k _e , while family control and influence have significantly positive impacts on k _e .     

Perceptions of the effectiveness of training and development of ‘grey-collar’ workers in the People's Republic of China

An important human resource development (HRD) implication of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) rapidly expanding economy has been the emergence of a critical shortage of grey-collar workers (GCW). Although ‘grey-collar’ has been commonly used in the West to describe an aging population within the workforce, in China it refers to people who are neither white nor blue collar workers but technicians. The shortage of GCW constrains the PRC's economic and developmental sustainability, and has been recognized in central and provincial government initiatives to increase training and development of employees within these fields. While acknowledged as a policy and organizational problem, there has been no research investigating what organizations are doing to develop these employees. Drawing upon a survey of 310 semi-skilled and skilled employees in Beijing, our findings suggest that while the surveyed organizations are investing heavily in both on- and off-the-job training, employees' perceived value of such differs markedly according to age and position. The research has important implications for China's HRD strategy in suggesting links between training and other human resource management (HRM) functions are yet to be evidenced.     

‘Training,it's a load of crap!’: the story of the hairdresser and his ‘Suit’

Many managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are more concerned about survival rather than growth. There are consistent findings that indicate managers in SMEs do not respond favourably to offers of HRD interventions and government policy now recognizes the value of informal learning and demand-led intervention. A social constructionist approach is suggested to consider engaging and working with SME managers. A framework of SME ‘worlds’ is considered before the case of one SME is examined. Using data from three different sources, the various positionings are considered. The case shows how from an apparently antagonistic view of external training, the manager was prepared to allow a coach/mentor to work with him towards his vision for expansion and growth. Conclusions are provided concerning engagement and stretch with SMEs, policy and future funding for HRD and the definition of skills development.     

Characteristics of master’s programs in agribusiness management

This study describes and compares agribusiness master’s programs in North America. These programs include the master of business administration (MBA) and master in (or “of”) agribusiness (MAB) degrees. Accredited MBA programs with an agribusiness emphasis are required to have a clear required core of courses in finance, management, marketing management, and human behavior. Additional required courses in policy, agricultural marketing, production or managerial economics, and quantitative methods are also frequently required. MAB programs have more diversity regarding the four core subjects with a greater percentage of the courses taught within departments of agricultural economics. Evaluation of agribusiness master’s programs in agricultural economics departments is difficult without any formal evaluation criteria.     

The type and quantity of corporate social disclosures of German ‘Universal’ banks

Grounded in legitimacy theory and deductive in nature, this paper uses content analysis of annual report social disclosures of 169 German ‘universal’ banks belonging to three different categories (credit, saving, and cooperative) to report on the type and quantity of social disclosure by these banks, and to test seven hypotheses related to the nature of their social disclosures and their association with size, financial performance, corporate form, and other selected variables. The findings provide evidence of the importance of social disclosure for the German banking sector as a means to legitimize their business and relay to the society the extent of their fulfillment of social obligations. Greater importance is attributed to product and customers as well as human resource disclosures. In addition, a strong positive association is found between these disclosures and the size variables as well as the number of apprentices, whereas ROE and net profits as financial performance proxies provide evidence of a significant relationship. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the quantity of social disclosure varies with bank category, corporate form and listing status, but seems to be almost unrelated to bank age and overseas presence. These promising findings could be used to inform corporate social responsibility policies and practices of German banks; nevertheless, further longitudinal analysis to validate them over time is warranted.     

An individual-based model of information diffusion combining friends’ influence

In many real-world scenarios, an individual accepts a new piece of information based on her intrinsic interest as well as friends’ influence. However, in most of the previous works, the factor of individual’s interest does not receive great attention from researchers. Here, we propose a new model which attaches importance to individual’s interest including friends’ influence. We formulate the problem of maximizing the acceptance of information (MAI) as: launch a seed set of acceptors to trigger a cascade such that the number of final acceptors under a time constraint T in a social network is maximized. We then prove that MAI is NP-hard, and for time \(T = 1,2\) , the objective function for information acceptance is sub-modular when the function for friends’ influence is sub-linear in the number of friends who have accepted the information (referred to as active friends). Therefore, an approximation ratio \((1-\frac{1}{e})\) for MAI problem is guaranteed by the greedy algorithm. Moreover, we also prove that when the function for friends’ influence is not sub-linear in the number of active friends, the objective function is not sub-modular.     

The importance of taxes in entrepreneurial decisions: an analysis of practicing physicians’ behavior

An irrational strong importance of taxes in an individual’s decision-making behavior is one of the most popular assumptions about the behavioral effects of taxation. However, empirical research about this phenomenon is rare. In a study of German physicians, this paper analyzes whether tax aspects are over weighted in entrepreneurial decision-making. Furthermore, factors that may influence the irrational decision-making behavior of actors are analyzed. As research method, a conjoint analysis is used that permits measurement of the relative importance of tax aspects in decisions. The first result of the study is that the majority of the respondents (practicing physicians) misestimate their own marginal tax rate. The main result of the study is that––in comparison to the neoclassical model of rational maximization of consumption utility––most of the respondents overweight tax aspects. No evidence can be found for any relationship between indicators of a possible tax aversion (e.g., low satisfaction with the tax system) and attention to tax aspects in the decisions analyzed.

Comment on ‘A political economy of accounting standard setting’

This comment raises questions about the appropriateness of the model proposed by Königsgruber (J Manag Gov 14:277–295, 2010) in depicting the politics of the standard-setting process in the context of the very different regulatory contexts in the EU and the US.     

On the meaning of ‘Waste’: review and definition

Waste reduction is one of the main principles of lean, but it has been taken for granted that we have a common understanding of what waste means. We first present a critical, qualitative discussion that identifies four distinct waste concepts. We then conduct a systematic review of the literature that examines the different uses of these concepts. We find that only the classic concept of the seven wastes and the concept of waste as non-value-adding activity are widely applied. However, both concepts are, at times, not only incompatible but used in a way that leads to open contradiction. A new definition, centred on an efficient, timely transformation process seeks to consolidate the literature. We outline two distinct waste types: (i) obvious waste, to refer to any waste that can be reduced without creating another form of waste; and, (ii) buffer waste, to refer to any waste that cannot be reduced without creating another waste. The paper has important implications for practice. To reduce waste, managers must undertake three interlinked tasks: the elimination of obvious waste; the reduction of variability to transform buffers into obvious waste; and, the balancing of remaining buffers to best achieve performance targets. The paper supports managers in their endeavours to identify waste, which is an important precursor to waste reduction/elimination.     

The impact of family owners’ monitoring on CEO turnover decisions and the role of trust

Even though there is clear evidence that large shareholders play an effective monitoring role over poorly-performing CEOs, the monitoring of family owners is yet quite unexplored. This study investigates the impact of family ownership on the CEO turnover-performance sensitivity, examining two potential factors that can affect the ability of the family owners in ensuring a prompt replacement of an underperforming CEO. First, we examine whether the monitoring of family owners is weakened by the existence of family ties with CEO. Second, we investigate whether the monitoring of family owners over professional CEOs is affected by the cultural propensity to trust or distrust a stranger. Our findings show that family owners are able to ensure a prompt replacement of an underperforming CEO only when the CEO is not a family member but rather an outside professional. Moreover, we find that the effectiveness of the family’s monitoring over professional CEO is weaker in environments characterized by the cultural propensity to distrust a stranger, rather than in contexts characterized by the cultural feeling to trust an outsider.     

Planners’ Perceptions of Why Canadian Communities Have Too Many Plans

A survey of Canadian planners explored perceptions about factors contributing to the growing number of plans communities have adopted recently. The results suggest that practitioners see themselves as responding to current community concerns, as well as to requirements imposed by higher levels of government. Neoliberal practices that force compliance with accountability frameworks to enable transfer payments increase demands for new plans. Professional practices within planning have encouraged specialization—in fields such as urban design—that often leads to plan-making activities. With many plans to coordinate, and limited staff resources and time available, practitioners face increasing implementation challenges.