Conceptual Papers Research Articles

Development NGO responses to countering violent extremism and hate

ABSTRACT This paper surveys the state of knowledge regarding development and humanitarian non-government organisation (NGO) responses to preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE). As well as delineating the nexus and shared objectives between P/CVE and development/humanitarian NGO frameworks, it outlines a reframing of the concept of VE into violent and hateful extremism (VHE), as a shift to a more nuanced understanding which addresses inherent complexities and entanglements more deeply. The Special Issue that this paper introduces is the product of a roundtable symposium held on this topic, with conceptual and empirical papers submitted by practitioners and academics who were invited to contribute due to their expertise in this area. The diversity of case studies, datasets, and author perspectives serves to advance knowledge on this topic and provide useful evidence and insights to inform policy and practice.

Measurement and outcomes of co-production in health and social care: a systematic review of empirical studies

BackgroundCo-production is promoted as an effective way of improving the quality of health and social care but the diversity of measures used in individual studies makes their outcomes difficult to...

Group concept mapping – bridging the gap between conceptual papers and empirical research

AbstractWith growing internationalism, there is a shift in research patterns in developing countries, especially China and India, generating vital and contemporary research areas that are beginning to challenge the existing Western‐dominated research literature in social sciences. Yet, many of the new ideas within conceptual papers by the social sciences are not empirically validated, let alone operationalized. This is where the group concept mapping method can play a role in bridging the gap between phenomenal conceptualization and having an empirically valid model that can then be operationalized. The group concept mapping process involves five steps: create statements, sort statements, run multidimensional scaling (MDS) of sorted units, run cluster analysis, and label the clusters. This approach allows for the collective thoughts of a pre‐defined group to be collected and organized into a tangible output with academic rigor. This paper offers an overview of the group concept mapping methodology, discussing the processes of the method, how the method can be utilized fully within the business and broader social science context, and the strengths, weaknesses, and practical implications of group concept mapping.

Examining the nexus between medical education and complexity: a systematic review to inform practice and research

BackgroundMedical education is a multifarious endeavour integrating a range of pedagogies and philosophies. Complexity as a science or theory (‘complexity’) signals a move away from a reductionist paradigm to one which appreciates that interactions in multi-component systems, such as healthcare systems, can result in adaptive and emergent outcomes. This examination of the nexus between medical education and complexity theory aims to discover ways that complexity theory can inform medical education and medical education research.MethodsA structured literature review was conducted to examine the nexus between medical education and complexity; 5 databases were searched using relevant terms. Papers were included if they engaged fully with complexity as a science or theory and were significantly focused on medical education. All types of papers were included, including conceptual papers (e.g. opinion and theoretical discussions), case studies, program evaluations and empirical research. A narrative and thematic synthesis was undertaken to create a deep understanding of the use of complexity in medical education.ResultsEighty-three papers were included; the majority were conceptual papers. The context and theoretical underpinnings of complexity as a relevant theory for medical education were identified. Bibliographic and temporal observations were noted regarding the entry of complexity into medical education. Complexity was relied upon as a theoretical framework for empirical studies covering a variety of elements within medical education including: knowledge and learning theories; curricular, program and faculty development; program evaluation and medical education research; assessment and admissions; professionalism and leadership; and learning for systems, about systems and in systems.DiscussionThere is a call for greater use of theory by medical educators. Complexity within medical education is established, although not widespread. Individualistic cultures of medicine and comfort with reductionist epistemologies challenges its introduction. However, complexity was found to be a useful theory across a range of areas by a limited number of authors and is increasingly used by medical educators and medical education researchers. This review has further conceptualized how complexity is being used to support medical education and medical education research.ConclusionThis literature review can assist in understanding how complexity can be useful in medical educationalists' practice.

Dealing with information overload: a comprehensive review.

Information overload is a problem that is being exacerbated by the ongoing digitalization of the world of work and the growing use of information and communication technologies. Therefore, the aim of this systematic literature review is to provide an insight into existing measures for prevention and intervention related to information overload. The methodological approach of the systematic review is based on the PRISMA standards. A keyword search in three interdisciplinary scientific databases and other more practice-oriented databases resulted in the identification of 87 studies, field reports, and conceptual papers that were included in the review. The results show that a considerable number of papers have been published on interventions on the behavioral prevention level. At the level of structural prevention, there are also many proposals on how to design work to reduce information overload. A further distinction can be made between work design approaches at the level of information and communication technology and at the level of teamwork and organizational regulations. Although the identified studies cover a wide range of possible interventions and design approaches to address information overload, the strength of the evidence from these studies is mixed.

Environmental Sustainability in Stadium Design and Construction: A Systematic Literature Review

Large stadiums are highly visible assets for large-scale ‘mega-events’, inspiring built environment professionals to innovate in structure and aesthetics. In recent years environmental performance—or environmental sustainability—has been increasing in focus, with events such as the Olympics calling for ‘green games’ and countries committing to reducing built environment carbon emissions. This paper presents a systematic literature review of large stadiums’ environmental sustainability discourse over the last five years related to design and construction. Using the PRISMA methodology, 18 relevant conceptual and empirical research papers were distilled from 159 extracted papers. Energy consumption and material composition were the most discussed topics. Emergent technologies and processes were also extensively discussed regarding significant embodied energy and indoor air-quality improvements, and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. There was a lack of best practices, or whole life cycle considerations, and minimal demonstration of other attributes of environmental sustainability. This paper provides a baseline to assess progress on environmental sustainability for the built environment sector. A practical definition is presented for Environmentally Sustainable Stadiums (ESS) and a checklist is provided to support leading practices in design and construction. This paper is relevant for built environment professionals and asset owners and managers considering new-build and refurbishments.

A conceptual framework for higher education student loyalty from the green marketing perspective

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the impact of green image on student loyalty and to present a conceptual framework aimed at retaining current students and attracting new ones in higher education.Design/methodology/approachAfter review of prior studies using green image to predict customer loyalty in non-higher education industries and student loyalty in the context of higher education, a conceptual framework is developed after identifying research gaps in two sets of literature.FindingsUsing stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) as a foundation, this study identifies core constructs in the green marketing perspective that may serve as predictors of student loyalty in higher education. A conceptual framework has been developed to examine the relationship between green image and loyalty of student in higher education, with student green satisfaction and institution reputation serving as mediators.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is restricted to developing a conceptual framework and no empirical evidence has been presented. However, the conceptual framework developed in this study could facilitate the theoretical and practical implications for enhancing loyalty of students in higher education.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the extant literature in the green marketing realm by extending the green perspectives in the higher education context. This is one of the earliest conceptual papers to examine loyalty of students in higher education using green image. The conceptual framework could serve as the foundation for future research on enhancing loyalty of students in higher education.

Understanding brokers, intermediaries, and boundary spanners: a multi-sectoral review of strategies, skills, and outcomes

Background:Brokers, intermediaries, and boundary spanners (BIBS) bridge research and policy or practice, and can elevate the role of evidence in decision making. However, there is limited integration of the literature across different sectors to understand the strategies that BIBS use, the skills needed to carry out these strategies, and the expected outcomes of these strategies. Aims and objectives:In this review, we characterise the strategies, skills, and outcomes of BIBS across the literature in education, environmental, health and other relevant sectors. Methods:We included 185 conceptual and review papers written in English that included descriptions or conceptualisations of BIBS in the context of knowledge transfer or research use in the education, environmental, health, or other relevant sectors (for example, social services, international development). For each included paper, we extracted and coded information on sector, BIBS strategies, skills, and outcomes. Findings:Our review revealed five strategies used by BIBS that were emphasised in the literature. Specifically, 79.5% of papers mentioned facilitating relationships, 75.7% mentioned disseminating evidence, 56.8% mentioned finding alignment, 48.6% mentioned capacity building, and 37.3% mentioned advising decisions as strategies used by BIBS. Additionally, papers described skills and expected outcomes that were common across these strategies as well as those that were unique to specific strategies. Discussion and conclusions:We discuss implications of these findings for understanding how BIBS interface with knowledge users and producers as well as directions for future research on BIBS and the professionalisation of BIBS roles.

Meta-analysis on the relevance of Public Service Motivation (PSM) for public sector employees

As there are very few conceptual papers to discuss the current relevance of Public Service Motivation (PSM) to public sector employees, the objective of the paper is to explore the significance of PSM in explaining public sector employees in recent history. The paper would highlight the development of the construct of Public Service Motivation (PSM) and how it is being used by researchers now, whether it is still a multidimensional concept as it was developed in the 1990s. The paper would provide an extensive understanding of the concept of PMS concerning public sector employees. This research would contribute to the existing body of literature, on the usefulness of PSM in understanding the behaviour of public sector employees. It fills the gap in PSM research, by providing a meta-analysis of the empirical studies of PSM, on some of the most common areas of studies of PSM, such as Job performance, Satisfaction, commitment, person-organization fit, and so on, while showing that there are limited studies on the dark side of PSM, which needs to be studied for future research perspective. Analysis based on existing research shows that PSM alone is not sufficient to create desired work-related outcomes for public sector employees, hence organization-related factors need to be improved to create meaningful work for public sector employees.

Accountant Ethics: The Role of Islamic Work Ethic as a Solution

Purpose: The fraud problem has occurred for a long time, followed by accounting scandals including Enron, Worldcom, Satyam, and Global Crossing. This problem is observed from the problems in accounting ethics. This study reviews the literature on ethical self-regulation in accounting from 1980-2020. The articles referred to are those published in Scopus indexed journals. Various solutions were presented from various articles such as improving regulations and professional ethics, free choice of standards used in accounting methods, perceptions of accountants to ethics education in accountants. All of these suggestions have advantages and disadvantages. This paper offers an Islamic work ethic as a solution to the ethical self-regulation of accountants that has a strong dimension with a backing on the divine aspect. This paper offers an Islamic work ethic as a solution to the ethical self-regulation of accountants that has a strong dimension with a backing on the divine aspect. Method: This paper uses harzing software to compile articles on ethical regulation in accountants from the 1980s to 2020. The articles referred to are those published in Scopus indexed journals. The results of tracing articles found very little data discussing regulations on accounting ethics. After the screening process, only six articles were found to be relevant (Table 1). Table 2 shows that most of the articles are conceptual papers. The rest use survey, qualitative and archival methods. Result: So with various improvement efforts in these various fields, this paper suggests an Islamic work ethic as a solution to the problem of accountant ethics. This ethic can be universally applicable because it involves the individual's relationship with his God. All actions return to intentions that focus on the process, not only on the results. Limitation: The limitation of this article is that it only discusses the aspect of self-regulation. Studies from different aspects will add to the contribution of ethical studies in accounting.

An analysis of environmental awareness among Chinese higher education groups due to differences in different majors

In this study, the university students of Chongqing Three Gorges University as the main research object, through the questionnaire survey method to obtain empirical data, analyze the factors affecting the environmental protection consumption behavior of university students. College students are a relatively independent consumer group, we from the environmental protection consumption behavior, personal environmental protection attitude, environmental awareness of the concept of three aspects of their analysis, the study of all kinds of college students personal environmental awareness. Students of various major categories in Chongqing Three Gorges University were selected as research objects for data collection. SPSS software was used for reliability and validity of the data obtained, correlation analysis was used to analyze the relationship between variables, and students of different majors were filled in environmental conceptual papers, and the information after filling was datalized and analyzed by multidimensional scaling method. Therefore, it is concluded that we should strengthen the education of college students in environmental aspects, advocate the community, the school level to carry out environmental education activities, encourage college students to actively participate in, so as to improve their environmental awareness level in consumption, use green consumption to restrain their consumption behavior, so as to reduce the environmental problems caused by college students' consumption. At the same time, colleges and universities strive to build environmental education, so that environmental protection will deepen the environmental awareness of college students, and promote the development of environmental protection of the whole society, and finally achieve the goal of building environmental protection consumption of all employees.

Impact of ICT Usage and Dynamic Capabilities on the Business Resilience of SMEs During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case of Galle District

Journal of Management Matters (JMM) is the official journal of the Faculty of Management Studies, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. The JMM publishes original research articles, reviews, conceptual papers, and case studies that cover a wide array of disciplines including organizational management, accounting and economics, information systems, and tourism and hospitality. The JMM is an open access, double-blind peer reviewed journal and is published bi-annually, in September and December.

The Effect of Foreign Exchange Rates on the Stock Market Performance in Sri Lanka

Journal of Management Matters (JMM) is the official journal of the Faculty of Management Studies, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. The JMM publishes original research articles, reviews, conceptual papers, and case studies that cover a wide array of disciplines including organizational management, accounting and economics, information systems, and tourism and hospitality. The JMM is an open access, double-blind peer reviewed journal and is published bi-annually, in September and December.

The Relationship between Strategic Assets and Project Performance: Special Reference to Government and Non-Government Organizations in Sri Lanka

Journal of Management Matters (JMM) is the official journal of the Faculty of Management Studies, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. The JMM publishes original research articles, reviews, conceptual papers, and case studies that cover a wide array of disciplines including organizational management, accounting and economics, information systems, and tourism and hospitality. The JMM is an open access, double-blind peer reviewed journal and is published bi-annually, in September and December.

Factors Influencing the Effective Implementation of the Remote Working Teams in Insurance Companies in Sri Lanka

Journal of Management Matters (JMM) is the official journal of the Faculty of Management Studies, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. The JMM publishes original research articles, reviews, conceptual papers, and case studies that cover a wide array of disciplines including organizational management, accounting and economics, information systems, and tourism and hospitality. The JMM is an open access, double-blind peer reviewed journal and is published bi-annually, in September and December.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Customer Satisfaction: Role of Artificial Intelligence

Every corporation for maintaining long- term customer relationships in terms of customer retention and loyalty, certainly considers customer satisfaction as one of its major objective as it not results into retaining the customers who generate the revenues but also supports the business firms to relieve their social obligations towards the customer segment of the society. To remain economically and socially viable, every firm is looking forward to incorporate the customer satisfaction in its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda so as to achieve the objective of enhanced customer satisfaction. The rapid advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has opened the new ways to perform CSR in times of competitive environment to bring increased customer satisfaction for several firms. Many companies are using AI strategically to enhance CSR efficiency to widen the scope for improved customer satisfaction. But the question arises here how companies can make use of AI techniques for increasing the customer satisfaction through CSR in this competitive environment? The objective of the present research paper is to address this question by proposing that applicability of AI techniques such as machine learning, neural networks, predictive analysis ,visual searching ,chatbots ,sentiment analysis etc., will help the corporations to deliver the abundant benefits to customers and target increased customer satisfaction. This research throws light on that how AI driven CSR will result into augmented customer satisfaction in this competitive environment. This study is carried out by with the help of secondary sources like conceptual and empirical papers, books and websites to explore the concept.

Student support and teacher education in English for Academic Purposes and English Medium Instruction: Two sides of the same coin?

The massive increase in the use of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in universities around the world has been accompanied by an ever-growing body of publications. The majority focus on EMI policies, teacher identities, and teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards EMI, whilst there seems to be little research into pedagogical approaches to language and literacy support for students as well as into practices in EMI teacher education, areas that are fundamental to the successful delivery of EMI. Recommendations come predominantly from conceptual papers (e.g. Dafouz, 2018, 2021; Galloway & Rose, 2021; Lasagabaster, 2018), and it is noticeable that some of these papers, in line with other EMI publications, rarely draw on English for Academic Purposes (EAP), a field that offers a rich set of theories and practices relating to student support and teacher education that are based on a decades-old research history.

Cultural Openness, Patriotism, and Intention as Determinant Factors of Tax Compliance: A Systematic Review

The aim of this review is to analyze the current state of the literature on tax compliance (TC) based on three determinants, namely: cultural openness, patriotism and intention to comply, then to make suggestions for future research. A systematic literature review from identified online academic databases was used to conduct this research. A total of 45 conceptual and empirical papers relating to the designed relationships were analyzed. In light of the review of the existing literature, this systematic review suggests that the influence of patriotism, cultural openness and intention on actual behavior of individual taxpayers still require more empirical analyses using alternative research approaches, alternative theories, and a comprehensive population. Further, prior TC research has used several competing components and similar frameworks under theory of planned behavior which extended to reasoned action theory. Although these frameworks have provided beneficial insights into our understanding of compliance and intention behavior in general, empirical evidence from this stream of research has not been convincing or comprehensive. This article seeks to persuade authorities to recognize that low TC occurs when a gap exists between authorities and taxpayers. Instead of relying solely on deterrence tactics, they should devise policy measures to close that gap by concentrating on taxpayer attitudes and values. This is the first systematic review on individual tax compliance using the three determinants.

Continuous intention of using zoom for e-learning: Empirical evidence from management undergraduates in University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka

Journal of Management Matters (JMM) is the official journal of the Faculty of Management Studies, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. The JMM publishes original research articles, reviews, conceptual papers, and case studies that cover a wide array of disciplines including organizational management, accounting and economics, information systems, and tourism and hospitality. The JMM is an open access, double-blind peer reviewed journal and is published bi-annually, in September and December.

Impact of digital transformation on employee engagement at Ceylon Electricity Board in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka

Journal of Management Matters (JMM) is the official journal of the Faculty of Management Studies, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. The JMM publishes original research articles, reviews, conceptual papers, and case studies that cover a wide array of disciplines including organizational management, accounting and economics, information systems, and tourism and hospitality. The JMM is an open access, double-blind peer reviewed journal and is published bi-annually, in September and December.