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1 – 10 of over 4000Mohammad AlMarzouq, Varun Grover, Jason Thatcher and Rich Klein
To remain sustainable, open source software (OSS) projects must attract new members—or newcomers—who make contributions. In this paper, the authors develop a set of hypotheses…
Abstract
Purpose
To remain sustainable, open source software (OSS) projects must attract new members—or newcomers—who make contributions. In this paper, the authors develop a set of hypotheses based on the knowledge barriers framework that examines how OSS communities can encourage contributions from newcomers.
Design/methodology/approach
Employing longitudinal data from the source code repositories of 232 OSS projects over a two-year period, the authors employ a Poisson-based mixed model to test how community characteristics, such as the main drivers of knowledge-based costs, relate to newcomers' contributions.
Findings
The results indicate that community characteristics, such as programming language choice, documentation effort and code structure instability, are the main drivers of knowledge-based contribution costs. The findings also suggest that managing these costs can result in more inclusive OSS communities, as evidenced by the number of contributing newcomers; the authors highlight the importance of maintaining documentation efforts for OSS communities.
Originality/value
This paper assumes that motivational factors are a necessary but insufficient condition for newcomer participation in OSS projects and that the cost to participation should be considered. Using the knowledge barriers framework, this paper identifies the main knowledge-based costs that hinder newcomer participation. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical study that does not limit data collection to a single hosting platform (e.g., SourceForge), which improves the generalizability of the findings.
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Justin Okechukwu Okoli, Gordon Weller and John Watt
Experienced fire ground commanders are known to make decisions in time-pressured and dynamic environments. The purpose of this paper is to report some of the tacit knowledge and…
Abstract
Purpose
Experienced fire ground commanders are known to make decisions in time-pressured and dynamic environments. The purpose of this paper is to report some of the tacit knowledge and skills expert firefighters use in performing complex fire ground tasks.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilized a structured knowledge elicitation tool, known as the critical decision method (CDM), to elicit expert knowledge. Totally, 17 experienced firefighters were interviewed in-depth using a semi-structured CDM interview protocol. The CDM protocol was analysed using the emergent themes analysis approach.
Findings
Findings from the CDM protocol reveal both the salient cues sought, which the authors termed critical cue inventory (CCI), and the goals pursued by the fire ground commanders at each decision point. The CCI is categorized into five classes based on the type of information each cue generates to the incident commanders.
Practical implications
Since the CDM is a useful tool for identifying training needs, this study discussed the practical implications for transferring experts’ knowledge to novice firefighters.
Originality/value
Although many authors recognize that experts perform exceptionally well in their domains of practice, the difficulty still lies in getting a structured method for unmasking experts’ tacit knowledge. This paper is therefore relevant as it presents useful findings following a naturalistic knowledge elicitation study that was conducted across different fire stations in the UK and Nigeria.
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Martin Yongho Hyun and Liping A. Cai
As more destinations jump on the bandwagon of branding, their marketing organizations increasingly employ the Internet as a convenient medium for promotion. This chapter argues…
Abstract
As more destinations jump on the bandwagon of branding, their marketing organizations increasingly employ the Internet as a convenient medium for promotion. This chapter argues that instead of extending their brand communications to the Web by simply digitizing the logos, taglines, and other elements, destinations can build brands virtually in an internet-mediated environment where virtual experience takes place. The study examines how branding can be achieved through building virtualized destination image. It adopts the concepts of telepresence, virtual experience, and integrated informational response and explains how online and offline communication stimuli can affect various components of virtualized image. This expands and modifies the conventional image constructs by specifying information sources as antecedents through telepresence and integrated behavioral responses as consequences. The relationships between the image, its antecedents, and consequences, and among the image constructs are illustrated through 14 propositions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the net community in which residents and other stakeholders of communities actively participate in virtually building a strong destination brand.
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The wake of a natural disaster is a tumultuous setting. Resources are scarce, actions are quick, and emotions are high. Social commentators have often brought complaints against…
Abstract
Purpose
The wake of a natural disaster is a tumultuous setting. Resources are scarce, actions are quick, and emotions are high. Social commentators have often brought complaints against capitalism for promoting greed and selfishness during and after natural catastrophes. Most recently academics have introduced a unique perspective in addition to the more traditional criticisms. They claim that free‐market advocates have imposed capitalist theories and policies in the wake of crises to the detriment of traditional policies, preferred cultures, and democratically selected institutions. This paper aims to investigate these claims.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is a discursive analysis.
Findings
It is argued that the left overlooks the case that capitalism and corporate businesses may be a natural part of local cultures and recovery processes. If such a claim is true, then the normative case against capitalist responses to natural disasters is weaker than has been presented. The two perspectives are speaking past one another.
Originality/value
The paper illustrates that claims against capitalism and market processes in the wake of natural disasters can be overstated and that it should be recognised that markets are an integral part of people's cultures and local identities.
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This study aims to describe the feasibility of designing and fostering pre-service teacher inquiry at the intersection of community and disciplinary engagement. Mapping My Math…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to describe the feasibility of designing and fostering pre-service teacher inquiry at the intersection of community and disciplinary engagement. Mapping My Math (MMM), a game-based and mobile learning activity, guided pre-service teachers in playfully exploring mathematics featured in the everyday activities of people and places and creatively representing this inquiry with digital media.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws from design-based research that examined the role of place, digital media and mobility in mathematics teacher education. Design narrative methods describe how MMM was created, implemented and refined to support disciplinary inquiry across settings given the evolution of tools, activities and practices. The study and design narrative address the following question: How can game-based and mobile learning be designed to support pre-service teachers’ disciplinary inquiry of everyday mathematics?
Findings
Findings shared in this study’s design narrative attend to the quality of pre-service teachers’ inquiry-as-play, or expressive mobility situated amonglearners’ social and material relations, disciplinary concepts and the built environment.
Research limitations/implications
Implications from this study concern the role of mobile learning in mathematics teacher education to connect school, community and online settings; the potential of gameful design to impact pre-service teacher learning across settings; and the importance of fostering disciplinary inquiry whereby pre-service teachers can “navigate” their own learning.
Originality/value
Game-based and mobile learning designs, like MMM, can create the conditions for cross-setting mobility as generative of inquiry-as-play in mathematics teacher education. MMM encouraged pre-service teachers to playfully leverage disciplinary practices that shaped new relationships with mathematics, their city and the mathematics of place and community.
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Thomas J. O'Brien, Lawrence J. Gramling and Mauricio Rodriguez
The primary and secondary market activity in collectible sportscards has evolved into that of a primitive, but organised financial market. This report reviews some aspects of the…
Abstract
The primary and secondary market activity in collectible sportscards has evolved into that of a primitive, but organised financial market. This report reviews some aspects of the collectible sportscard market. The objective of the report is to introduce the sportscard investment medium to finance professionals, including those interested in the research potential of the market. The report includes an empirical analysis of the performance of some selected sportscard portfolio strategies for the period between March 1988 and December 1993. Sportscard collecting has evolved from an adolescent hobby of the 1950s into an active national market, estimated to involve approximately $5 billion and 3 million persons and served by a network of dealers and price information suppliers. The evolution of the sportscard market into its current state is described in this presentation. The description includes an empirical analysis of the performance of some selected sportscard portfolio strategies for the period between March 1988 and December 1993. The objective of the report is to provide information to those considering collectible sportscards as an investment medium and to those who might be interested in conducting financial research with collectible sportscard pricing data.
Jean X. Zhang and Kevin T. Rich
We investigate whether council audit committees relate to municipal fiscal policies. We find that municipalities with audit committees are associated with greater levels of…
Abstract
We investigate whether council audit committees relate to municipal fiscal policies. We find that municipalities with audit committees are associated with greater levels of own-source revenue, in that they finance municipal operations with locally raised revenues driven by charges and fees compared to municipalities without audit committees. Furthermore, municipalities with audit committees are associated with less new debt than those without audit committees, indicating more conservative use of external financing. Overall, our results are consistent with municipal audit committees, in addition to monitoring the financial reporting function, playing an advisory role in fiscal decisions, especially when the cost of local government to citizens is high.
Nils Stieglitz and Nicolai J. Foss
Entrepreneurs in a competitive economy face three fundamental problems. They need to search for and discover a business opportunity (Kirzner, 1973), evaluate it (Knight, 1921)…
Abstract
Entrepreneurs in a competitive economy face three fundamental problems. They need to search for and discover a business opportunity (Kirzner, 1973), evaluate it (Knight, 1921), and then seize the opportunity to reap entrepreneurial profits (Schumpeter, 1911) (Langlois, 2007). The problem that we address is how the ability to exploit business opportunities is influenced by entrepreneurial search and the economic organization of entrepreneurship (Arrow, 1962; Lippman & Rumelt, 2003b; Aghion et al., 2005; Foss, Foss, & Klein, 2007). In many cases, the discovery for a new business opportunity needs to be motivated by expected gains, since the search and evaluation of business opportunities is a costly, resource-consuming process (Denrell, Fang, & Winter, 2003; Nickerson & Zenger, 2004; Foss & Klein, 2005; Teece, 2007; Foss & Foss, 2008).1 We show the critical role of expectations for understanding of the economic organization of entrepreneurship, and argue that transaction cost economics, with its insistence on bounded rationality, but farsighted contracting offers useful insights and presents rich opportunities for further theoretical and empirical research (cf. also Furubotn, 2002).
This paper aims to explore how accounting is entwined in the cultural practice of popular music. Particular attention is paid to how the accountant is constricted by artists in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how accounting is entwined in the cultural practice of popular music. Particular attention is paid to how the accountant is constricted by artists in art and the role(s) the accountant plays in the artistic narrative. In effect this explores the notion that there is a tension between the notion of the bourgeois world of “the accountant” and the world of “art for art's sake”.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on the cultural theory of Pierre Bourdieu to understand how the character of the accountant is constructed and used by the artist. Particular attention is paid in this respect to the biography and lyrics of the Beatles.
Findings
Accounting and accountants play both the hero and the villain. By rejecting the “accountant villain”, the artist identifies with and reinforces artistic purity and credibility. However, in order to achieve the economic benefits and maintain the balance between the “art” and the “money”, the economic prudence of the bourgeois accountant is required (although it might be resented).
Research limitations/implications
The analysis focuses on a relatively small range of musicians and is dominated by the biography of the Beatles. A further range of musicians and artists would extend this work. Further research could also be constructed to more fully consider the consumption, rather than just the production, of art and cultural products and performances.
Originality/value
This paper is a novel consideration of how accounting stereotypes are constructed and used in the field of artistic creation
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Ioanna D. Constantiou, Arisa Shollo and Morten Thanning Vendelø
An ongoing debate in the field of organizational decision-making concerns the use of intuition versus analytical rationality in decision-making. For the purpose of contributing to…
Abstract
An ongoing debate in the field of organizational decision-making concerns the use of intuition versus analytical rationality in decision-making. For the purpose of contributing to this debate we use a rich empirical dataset built from a longitudinal study of information technology project prioritization in a large financial institution to investigate how managers make space for the use of intuition in decision-making. Our findings show that during project prioritization meetings, senior decision makers apply three different techniques: bringing-in project intangibles, co-promoting intuitive judgments, and associating intuitive judgments with shared group context, when they make space for intuition in decision processes.
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