International student complaint behaviour: Understanding how East-Asian business and management students respond to dissatisfaction during their university experience

The higher education sector is characterised by intense global competition for international students. This is driving universities to place greater priority on the student experience and, in particular, student satisfaction and retention. However, an under-researched area is student complaint behaviour. By understanding how students react to poor experiences; the likely impact on the learning and teaching experience, satisfaction ratings and ultimately international student recruitment can be assessed, and appropriate strategies implemented. This study developed an instrument that measured East-Asian students’ preferred university complaint channels. The research focused on four categories of complaint behaviour: public, private, third party and non-behavioural, and data were collected from 135 East-Asian Business and Management students. A vignette questioning technique was used, providing respondents with hypothetical negative student experiences and recording their likely responses in terms of both how and where they would complain. Results suggest international students are pro-active in reporting dissatisfaction direct to the university, but also share these negative experiences with fellow students. The findings offer new insights to those responsible for managing the student experience and, in particular, for those tasked with handling student complaints

A Micro-Level View on Knowledge Co-Creation Through University-Industry Collaboration in a Multi-National Corporation

Purpose: Technology transfer (TT) in industry to university collaboration (UIC) literature focuses primarily on a macro view within an SME environment. While these discussions are important to establish the significance of encouraging UIC’s as the value is important to both parties, there is a need for further research at a micro level to help understand key approaches to ensuring the success of the TT. By looking at how value created from TT for a multi-national corporation (MNC) with a project based within a single subsidiary, this research effectively looks at the issue from both a SME level (the subsidiary independently) and a MNC level. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research uses a longitudinal knowledge transfer partnership and action research to form a case study of Parker Hannifin’s Gas Separation and Filtration Europe, Middle East and Africa (GSFE) division. Findings: The research highlights the key areas to focus on in ensuring a successful TT within an UIC such as: once identifying the gap that a UIC is filling in the company, identifying internal barriers before the project starts; education of why change is necessary and then using knowledge experts to educate on the new processes being introduced and finally; incorporation of a full range of personnel, not just those directly involved in the day-to-day of the UIC. Research limitations/implications: As a case study, further research is required to make the results more generalisable. One way to do this would be to evaluate previous successful and unsuccessful UIC's and determine if the success criteria identified were present in these programmes. Practical implications: There are three critical points that can be taken away from this research and applied to any company looking to use UIC for TT and value co-creation. Education, external knowledge experts and business wide inclusion were highlighted in the findings as being potentially critical turning points and need to be addressed for successful TT. Social implications: Successful UIC’s further encourage investment in such programmes which has greater societal benefits. Not only can we see greater leaps in industry through better, more specific knowledge being transferred from the university, the industry knowledge fed into universities helps to guide research and teachings. Originality/value: The micro level view created by action research based from the industry partner perspective adds another level of importance as the ‘how’ for overcoming barriers is clearly addressed. Furthermore, the research looks at how a multi-national corporation can have value added through UIC's within subsidiaries which often is not addressed in the literature

A model complete theory of transexponential pre-HH-fields

The theory of differential-henselian, real closed pre-$H$-fields that have exponential integration and closed ordered differential residue field has quantifier elimination and is the model completion of the theory of pre-$H$-fields with gap $0$. From quantifier elimination, we deduce that this theory is distal, so has NIP. Moreover, we establish a two-sorted quantifier elimination result when the theory of the residue field has quantifier elimination in a language expanding the language of ordered differential rings, which yields a weak Ax--Kochen/Ershov principle.Comment: 27 pages; v3: two-sorted model completeness improved to quantifier elimination, weak AKE principle added, Appendix A with detailed example added, other improvements and corrections throughou

The Digitally Enabled Business Clinic: A How-To Guide

The Digitally Enabled Business Clinic (DEBC) builds on the success of Northumbria University's Business Clinic (BC). The DEBC enables businesses to engage with university students and access free business consultancy, providing the latest knowledge from a range of disciplines and leading to positive business outcomes. We have created, tested and evaluated a digitally enabled model of the BC, which could enable the highly successful BC approach to be implemented quickly and cost-effectively by other universities. Findings revealed clients valued the average consultancy project at £5,174, moreover these projects enhanced business productivity, and stimulated technology and modern business practice adoption. The project also tested the viability of using digital marketing to attract low to mid productivity SMEs to our free consultancy services. The project reached 47 SMEs of low to medium productivity, providing an opportunity to tap into the perspective of 'young eyes' from our motivated and innovative Business School students. The DEBC provides a cross-functional range of advice (including digital marketing, finance, strategic management) through digital media and tools, removing the need for costly physical infrastructure. What made this project innovative is that we tested an alternative digitally-enabled model, which could be quickly scaled up. The project was used to determine whether the DEBC concept is a cost-effective way for SMEs to interact with a local university, gain pro-bono neutral advice, access state of the art knowledge and have the added value of the younger generation perspective. We monitored the reach, uptake and impact on business outcomes. This ‘how to’ guide for implementing a DEBC provides a step by step roadmap for the formation of DEBCs in other regions. The UK industrial strategy aims to support universities and businesses working together to innovate. Rolling out a network of DEBCs would be an innovative mechanism enabling UK businesses to easily connect with and benefit from existing technologies, new knowledge, insights and fresh perspectives of university business schools

Monotone TT-convex TT-differential fields

Let $T$ be a complete, model complete o-minimal theory extending the theory of real closed ordered fields and assume that $T$ is power bounded. Let $K$ be a model of $T$ equipped with a $T$-convex valuation ring $\mathcal{O}$ and a $T$-derivation $\partial$ such that $\partial$ is monotone, i.e., weakly contractive with respect to the valuation induced by $\mathcal{O}$. We show that the theory of monotone $T$-convex $T$-differential fields, i.e., the common theory of such $K$, has a model completion, which is complete and distal. Among the axioms of this model completion, we isolate an analogue of henselianity that we call $T^{\partial}$-henselianity. We establish an Ax--Kochen/Ershov theorem and further results for monotone $T$-convex $T$-differential fields that are $T^{\partial}$-henselian.Comment: 26 page