Organisational citizenship and the post-acquisition of a global hotel brand

Abstract : The purpose of this study was to examine the power of organisational support, brand satisfaction and brand trust on the organisational citizenship for employees in the post-acquisition integration of a global hotel brand. This was conducted through theoretical and empirical objectives. The development of a conceptual model framework paved the way for the postulation of five hypotheses. To put the proposed research model and hypotheses to the test, data was collected in South Africa, in particular, a hotel group that was newly acquired, with hotels spreading through sub- Saharan Africa. This study used quantitative research methodology. A data collection tool was used to be able to measure data on a scale with a numerical value that was then subdivided into the various elements of the surveying measuring instrument. Descriptive statistics was used to measure and determine the strength of the relationship between the dependent variables and the independent variables to test the developed hypotheses in question. The total usable sample size was 235. As consequence, the findings of this research indicate that organisational support can have a strong influence on brand trust and brand satisfaction but only indicates that organisational citizenship is influenced by organisational support via brand satisfaction and not directly, nor via brand trust. Managerial implications of this research are discussed with limitations and future research advised. This research contributes new knowledge to the body of strategic management literature in Africa.M.Com. (Strategic Management

On some key research issues in Enterprise Risk Management related to economic capital and diversification effect at group level

The goal of this short communication is to give an overview of the key research issues in Enterprise Risk Management that arose during the talks and the brainstorming session of the first ERMII research workshop, which was held at ISFA, University of Lyon in June 2007. To define and compute economic capital at group level, fundamental problems related for example to value creation, correlation and capital allocation are stated. The ideas gathered in this paper are not directly ours, we just collected and summarized the ones that arose during the workshop.

The effects of soil temperature on urea hydrolysis, nitrification, and plant utilization

Urea is being produced in large amounts for use in plastics, feeds and fertilizers. Although it has been used as a fertilizer for many years, it has not been until recent years that adequate supplies have been available for extensive use as a fertilizer. It was the purpose of this investigation to study some of the factors that influence the availability of urea nitrogen to plants. The two main objectives of this study were: (1) to determine the rate of urea hydrolysis subsequent nitrification to nitrate nitrogen at several controlled soil temperatures, and (2) to determine the yield and chemical composition of ryegrass forage grown under controlled conditions with different rates of nitrogen fertilization from urea and ammonium nitrate

Organisational citizenship and the morning after - a case of an acquisition of a local hotel chain by a global brand

Abstract: The hospitality industry has recent years seen a growing trend of acquiring brand portfolios through strategic investments by global and local investment companies to increase brand reach. The challenges associated with post acquisition integration remain consistently high and can consequently impact negatively on the organisation’s performance. This study sought to determine the influence of organisational support, brand satisfaction, and brand trust on the organisational citizenship among the local hotel employees following an acquisition by a global hotel brand. The study employed a quantitative design involving a survey in which questionnaires were administered to a sample of 350 hotel employees. A probability sampling employing simple probability sampling methods was used. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were employed to assess the psychometric properties of the measurement scale and to test hypotheses using the path modelling technique. The study found that organisational support was found to have a strong positive and significant linear relationship with brand satisfaction and brand trust. The study also found that both brand satisfaction and brand trust each have a weak positive influence on organisational citizenship. Finally, the study found that organisational support has a moderate positive influence on organisational citizenship. The study has hopefully shed some light in demonstrating the relationship between organisational support, brand satisfaction, brand trust, and organisational citizenship in a postacquisition situation

Children’s looking preference for biological motion may be related to an affinity for mathematical chaos

Recognition of biological motion is pervasive in early child development. Further, viewing the movement behavior of others is a primary component of a child’s acquisition of complex, robust movement repertoires, through imitation and real-time coordinated action. We theorize that inherent to biological movements are particular qualities of mathematical chaos and complexity. We further posit that this character affords the rich and complex inter-dynamics throughout early motor development. Specifically, we explored whether children’s preference for biological motion may be related to an affinity for mathematical chaos. Cross recurrence quantification analysis (cRQA) was used to investigate the coordination of gaze and posture with various temporal structures (periodic, chaotic, and aperiodic) of the motion of an oscillating visual stimulus. Children appear to competently perceive and respond to chaotic motion, both in rate (cRQA-percent determinism) and duration (cRQA-maxline) of coordination. We interpret this to indicate that children not only recognize chaotic motion structures, but also have a preference for coordination with them. Further, stratification of our sample (by age) uncovers the suggestion that this preference may become refined with age

Some aspects of coupling constants related to stereochemistry

Thesis (M.Sc.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Organic Chemistry, 197

The multiprocessor real-time scheduling of general task systems

The recent emergence of multicore and related technologies in many commercial systems has increased the prevalence of multiprocessor architectures. Contemporaneously, real-time applications have become more complex and sophisticated in their behavior and interaction. Inevitably, these complex real-time applications will be deployed upon these multiprocessor platforms and require temporal analysis techniques to verify their correctness. However, most prior research in multiprocessor real-time scheduling has addressed the temporal analysis only of Liu and Layland task systems. The goal of this dissertation is to extend real-time scheduling theory for multiprocessor systems by developing temporal analysis techniques for more general task models such as the sporadic task model, the generalized multiframe task model, and the recurring real-time task model. The thesis of this dissertation is: Optimal online multiprocessor real-time scheduling algorithms for sporadic and more general task systems are impossible; however, efficient, online scheduling algorithms and associated feasibility and schedulability tests, with provably bounded deviation from any optimal test, exist. To support our thesis, this dissertation develops feasibility and schedulability tests for various multiprocessor scheduling paradigms. We consider three classes of multiprocessor scheduling based on whether a real-time job may migrate between processors: full-migration, restricted-migration, and partitioned. For all general task systems, we obtain feasibility tests for arbitrary real-time instances under the full-and restricted-migration paradigms. Despite the existence of tests for feasibility, we show that optimal online scheduling of sporadic and more general systems is impossible. Therefore, we focus on scheduling algorithms that have constant-factor approximation ratios in terms of an analysis technique known as resource augmentation. We develop schedulability tests for scheduling algorithms, earliest-deadline-first (edf) and deadline-monotonic (dm), under full-migration and partitioned scheduling paradigms. Feasibility and schedulability tests presented in this dissertation use the workload metrics of demand-based load and maximum job density and have provably bounded deviation from optimal in terms of resource augmentation. We show the demand-based load and maximum job density metrics may be exactly computed in pseudo-polynomial time for general task systems and approximated in polynomial time for sporadic task systems

Observations on Behavior of Lone Bull Bison

Behavior of lone bull American bison (Bison bison bison) was studied during June, July and August 1966, at the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park, Medora, North Dakota. Ingestive, shelter-seeking, grooming, agonistic, sexual, eliminative and investigative behavior patterns were observed. The sociological relationship of the lone bull to the bison herd was also observed