The biochemistry and physiology of digenetic ova and larvae

Imperial Users onl

Value co-creation characteristics and creativity-oriented customer citizenship behavior

For the competitive advantage of service organization, it is important to improve the creative performance of human resources in the organization. For example, when employees perform creatively, in other words, if they generate novel and useful ideas, it will contribute to organizational competiveness. Therefore, there has been an increased focus in identifying its antecedents and consequences. Unfortunately, little is known about the creative performance of customers. According to service-centered dominant logic, customer is the value co-creator, it emphasizes co-opting customer involvement in the value creation process as an additional human resource. In addition, customers can be a valuable resource for service improvement efforts for firms. For instance, companies might benefit greatly from customer feedback and complaints regarding their offerings and can enhance their productivity in terms of quality and quantity. In this paper, the type of novel, creative-oriented customer behaviors highlighted in the preceding paragraph are referred to as creativity-oriented customer citizenship behaviors (CCBs). In the customer value co-creation context, creative-oriented CCBs refer to extra-role efforts by customers with regards the development of ideas about products, practices, services, and procedures that are novel and potentially useful to a firm. According to the intrinsic motivation perspective, the context in which customers create values, influences their intrinsic motivation, which in turn affects creativity-oriented CCBs. The intrinsic motivation perspective suggests that high intrinsic motivation is affected by information from both task characteristics (i.e., autonomy) and social characteristics (e.g., supplier support). Specifically, complex and challenging task characteristics such as high levels of variety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedback are expected to increase customer intrinsic motivation. Under these conditions, customers should increase the likelihood of creativity-oriented CCBs. Therefore, customers are expected to be most creative when they experience a high level of intrinsic motivation. In contrast, complex and challenging task and social characteristics can have the opposite effect to customers. For example, in a high level of variety task, increased autonomy can lead to increased workload because they must take on related extra responsibilities and accountability. Increased workload, in turn, is expected to lead to decreased likelihood of creativity-oriented CCBs. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the impact of task characteristics and social characteristics on creativity-oriented CCBs. Furthermore, a substantial body of research has examined the possibility that creativity is affected by personal characteristics. As such, in addition to the relevant task and social characteristics, the moderating influence of several trait variables is also considered. This article makes several contributions. First, this study investigates the trade-off effect of the customer value co-creation related task and social characteristics by examining the underlying opposing mechanism of motivation and work overload. Second, this research provides a deeper understanding of contingency factors that systematically strengthen the relationships under consideration. Third, this study may indicate that companies seek to promote the creativity of their industrial customers and should design the tasks and social characteristics of their industrial customers in a way that maximizes their creativity. But, companies should be aware of the negative impact of specific tasks and social characteristics that may minimize the creativity of industrial customers

The great debate : evolution vs. creationism

Includes bibliographical references.Should we believe that life was created, or that it evolved over millions of years? Evolution is the fundamental principal of all biology, and although it has a wealth of information in its favot there are still many skeptics that fail to recognize its credibility. The purpose of my thesis is to present this evidence in a logical order, so that a creationist that doesn't believe evolution exists, may at least consider it as an explanation of the development of life on earth. I'm not attacking religion, just explaining alternative answers. By examining testimonies and arguments on both sides of the issue, I have concluded that this debate will continue for a long time to come, with no definitive answers in sight...B.S. (Bachelor of Science

IMPROVING BANK QUALITY DIMENSIONS TO INCREASE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

The purpose of this study is twofold: 1. examine the relationship between service quality dimensions and customer satisfaction with bank territorial units; 2. establish which quality measure method out of the four considered in this study should be applied in order to better determine the areas that need further improvement and investment. In this respect, we performed Principal Component Regression (PCR) and considered direct importance and performance measures as well. Our results reveal that human resources have the greatest impact on customers’ satisfaction with bank territorial units and that both “Convenience and Efficiency” and “Bank personnel” are the dimensions that bank management should consider in their efforts to improve and maintain the service quality level. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study which tries to emphasize the relationship between service quality dimensions and Romanian customers’ satisfaction with bank territorial units. The main limit of the study lies in the fact that data were collected among the customers of a single bank. Nevertheless, it provides valuable information about the Romanian market and ought to be considered a starting point for further studies.service quality, customer satisfaction, importance and performance measures, Romanian banking sector, principal component regression.

Extending the Boundaries : Portraits of Activism in Perth, Western Australia

For some analysts, post-industrial capitalist societies have pathological deficiencies which manifest themselves locally and further afield, in marginalisation and oppression of people and despoliation of the environment. For those who are passionately driven to challenge those consequences of the dominant paradigm, activism is deemed to be a potent force for effecting social and political change. The aim of this study was to establish how activists integrate issues, context, strategies, personal factors and other influences into a strategy for action

Being Interdisciplinary: Adventures in urban science and beyond

In Being Interdisciplinary, Alan Wilson draws on five decades as a leading figure in urban science to set out a systems approach to interdisciplinarity for those conducting research in this and other fields. He argues that most research is interdisciplinary at base, and that a systems perspective is particularly appropriate for collaboration because it fosters an outlook that sees beyond disciplines. There is a more subtle thread, too. A systems approach enables researchers to identify the game-changers of the past as a basis for thinking outside convention, for learning how to do something new and how to be ambitious, in a nutshell how to be creative. Ultimately, the ideas presented address how to do research. Building on this systems focus, the book first establishes the basics of interdisciplinarity. Then, by drawing on the author’s experience of doing interdisciplinary research, and working from his personal toolkit, it offers general principles and a framework from which researchers can build their own interdisciplinary toolkit, with elements ranging from explorations of game-changers in research to superconcepts. In the last section, the book tackles questions of managing and organising research from individual to institutional scales. Alan Wilson deploys his wide experience – researcher in urban science, university professor and vice-chancellor, civil servant and institute director – to build the narrative. While his experience in urban science provides the illustrations, the principles apply across many research fields