Exploring the UK high street retail experience: is the service encounter still valued?

Purpose: The relationship between service quality, the service encounter and the retail experience is explored within a changing UK retail environment. Design: Data was gathered from forty customers and twenty staff of an established UK health and beauty retailer with a long standing reputation for personal customer service. A qualitative analysis was applied using both a service quality and a customer value template. Findings: Customers focused more on the utilitarian features of the service experience and less on ‘extraordinary’ aspects, but service staff still perceived that the customer encounter remained a key requisite for successful service delivery. Research implications: Recent environmental developments - involving customers, markets and retail platform structures - are challenging traditional service expectations. Practical Implications: Retailers may need to reassess the role of the service encounter as part of their on-going value proposition. Originality/value: There has been limited research to date on the perception of shoppers to the service encounter in a changing retail environment and to the evolving notions of effort and convenience

Mind the Gap: DBA students, knowledge generation, transfer and impact

Increasingly higher education institutions are expected to demonstrate their contribution to academia, society, and the economy. This is pertinent for business schools as a key purpose for them is to provide education that enhances management practice, with Doctorates in Business Administration (DBAs) being the highest-level qualification offered in pursuit of this goal. Yet there is scant research that captures the impact of DBAs beyond the individual and academia. This paper focuses on the important role of DBAs in generating and transferring knowledge from academia to practice and in creating wider impact in society and the economy. Based on 36 semi-structured interviews with DBA students and alumni, our research shows how DBA students are able to generate and exchange knowledge between academia and business, enabling a wide range of impacts to be achieved. We show how knowledge transfer is the outcome of a learning process in which DBA students and their supervisors learn to speak each other’s language, enabling two-way communication. Facilitated by the power and associated credibility and legitimacy of the DBA students as practicing senior managers, the knowledge can then be transferred. Personal development in the form of analytical skills and increased confidence gained through the learning process results in a personal impact that acts as the precursor to other forms of impact, such as improved organisational performance and broader societal benefits. Research generated by DBAs is thus well-placed to offer opportunities for impact and contribute substantially to the research-practice conversation in higher education

Response of selected microorganisms to experimental planetary environments

The anaerobic utilization of phosphite or phosphine and the significance of this conversion to potential contamination of Jupiter were investigated. A sporeforming organism was isolated from Cape Canaveral soil which anaerobically converts hypophosphite to phosphate. This conversion coincides with an increase in turbidity of the culture and with phosphate accumulation in the medium. Investigations of omnitherms (organisms which grow over a broad temperature range, i.e. 3 -55 C were also conducted. The cellular morphology of 28 of these isolates was investigated, and all were demonstrated to be sporeformers. Biochemical characterizations are also presented. Procedures for replicate plating were evaluated, and those results are also presented. The procedures for different replicate-plating techniques are presented, and these are evaluated on the basis of reproducibility, percentage of viable transfer, and ease of use. Standardized procedures for the enumeration of microbial populations from ocean-dredge samples from Cape Canaveral are also presented

String amplitudes in arbitrary dimensions

We calculate gravitational dressed tachyon correlators in non critcal dimensions. The 2D gravity part of our theory is constrained to constant curvature. Then scaling dimensions of gravitational dressed vertex operators are equal to their bare conformal dimensions. Considering the model as d+2 dimensional critical string we calculate poles of generalized Shapiro-Virasoro amplitudes.Comment: 14 page

Corner transfer matrix renormalization group method for two-dimensional self-avoiding walks and other O(n) models

We present an extension of the corner transfer matrix renormalisation group (CTMRG) method to O(n) invariant models, with particular interest in the self-avoiding walk class of models (O(n=0)). The method is illustrated using an interacting self-avoiding walk model. Based on the efficiency and versatility when compared to other available numerical methods, we present CTMRG as the method of choice for two-dimensional self-avoiding walk problems.Comment: 4 pages 7 figures Substantial rewrite of previous version to include calculations of critical points and exponents. Final version accepted for publication in PRE (Rapid Communications

Bridging the gap: an exploration of the use and impact of positive action in the UK

Despite laws in Britain permitting limited positive action initiatives to combat disadvantage faced by minority groups in employment since the mid-1970s, the subject has notoriously been a neglected and highly controversial area in the UK. Notwithstanding the potential provided by sections 158 and 159 of the Equality Act 2010, it still appears that organisations prefer to steer clear of this opportunity to address disadvantage suffered by protected groups. Whilst there is a body of work considering the theoretical importance of positive action in the UK, there is a lack of empirical exploration of the practical implications of these provisions. This paper will provide a brief overview of the theoretical context and current positive action legislative provisions within the UK. In light of this context, the early findings of a small-scale qualitative study carried out by the authors will be discussed looking at the experiences of a purposive sample of public and private employers in relation to the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010. Early research findings suggest that whilst there was a clear willingness and openness by employers to use of outreach measures in order to redress disadvantage, there was evident wariness regarding a move towards preferential treatment as expounded by section 159. Whilst respondents appeared to appreciate the business case for and utility of the positive action measures under section 158, there was far less enthusiasm for more direct preferential treatment, with many respondents raising serious concerns regarding this. These concerns often reflected a highly sensitive risk-based approach towards any action that could expose their organisation to the possibility of “reverse discrimination”

Black holes and Hawking radiation in spacetime and its analogues

These notes introduce the fundamentals of black hole geometry, the thermality of the vacuum, and the Hawking effect, in spacetime and its analogues. Stimulated emission of Hawking radiation, the trans-Planckian question, short wavelength dispersion, and white hole radiation in the setting of analogue models are also discussed. No prior knowledge of differential geometry, general relativity, or quantum field theory in curved spacetime is assumed.Comment: 31 pages, 9 figures; to appear in the proceedings of the IX SIGRAV School on 'Analogue Gravity', Como (Italy), May 2011, eds. D. Faccio et. al. (Springer