Environmental proactivity and firms' performance: Mediation effect of competitive advantages in Spanish wineries

The main aim of this paper is to show the extent to which environmental proactivity is able to generate competitive advantages in a firm in order to improve their economic-financial performance by introducing the role of managerial perception into the analysis. This study focuses on Spanish wineries and their environmental practices and covers a total of 4598 wineries with a sample of 142 valid responses during the month of November 2015. The results can be summarized as follows. Firstly, there is positive environmental proactivity in terms of obtaining both cost-based and differentiation-based competitive advantages. Likewise, this proactivity has a positive impact on the manager’s perception of performance. Secondly, obtaining differentiation-based competitive advantages has a positive impact on the manager’s perception of performance although a negative impact on performance itself. There is, however, no significant evidence of the impact of cost-based competitive advantages on financial performance nor on the perception of performance itself, nor the impact of environmental proactivity on financial performance

The Effect of Colour on the Perception of Taste, Quality and Preference of Fruit Flavoured Drinks

The effect of colour conditioning on taste, quality and liking perception of fruit flavoured drinks was investigated in this study using a Between-Subjects Experimental Design. This study utilized twenty four (24) psychology students of Covenant University as participants. The colour of the fruit drink served as the independent variable while dependent variables such as taste, quality and liking perception were measured. Six research hypotheses were stated and tested. The results indicated that there was no significant difference in the association of colour with taste based on gender (t =. 29, p>0.05). Colour was observed to have a significant effect on taste and quality perception (t=2.10, p<0.05) and (t=3.0, p<0.05) respectively. Relationships between colour and the three dependent variables were observed. There was a negative but not significant relationship between colour and taste perception as well as colour and liking perception, while a positive but not significant relationship was observed between colour and quality perception. A significant positive relationship between quality and liking perception was observed (r=.63, p<0.01). From the findings, it was concluded that colour has an effect on taste and quality perceptions although the result seemed inconclusive concerning the effect of colour on how much participants liked the drink. It is therefore recommended that food designers put into consideration the colour of food products as it would have an effect on consumers. decision making and buying behaviour

On the Positive Effects of Overcon fident Self-Perception in Teams

In this paper, we study the individual payoff effects of overconfident self-perception in teams. In particular, we demonstrate that the welfare of an overconfident agent in a team of one rational and one overconfident agent or a team of two overconfident agents can be higher than that of the members of a team of two rational agents. This result holds irrespective of the assumption about the agents' awareness of their colleague's bias. Moreover, we show that an overcondent agent is always better of when he is unaware of a potential bias of his colleague.Overconfidence; Team Production

Consumer Perception of Bread Quality

Bread contains a wide range of important nutritional components which provide a positive effect on human health. However, the consumption of bread in Belgium is declining during the last decades. This is due to factors such as changing eating patterns and a increasing choice of substitutes like breakfast cereals and fast foods. The aim of this study is to investigate consumer’s quality perception of bread towards sensory, health and nutrition attributes. Consumer’s quality perception of bread seams to be determined by sensory and health attributes. Three clusters of consumers are identified based on these attributes. In the first cluster, consumers’ quality perception of bread is not dependent on the health attributes it embraces, but to some extent on sensory attributes. For the second cluster, both health and sensory attributes appear to influence quality perception. In the third cluster only sensory attributes appear to be important in determining quality perception, though in a negative direction. The results of this study will possibly help health professionals and policy makers to systematically inform the consumers about the positive effects of bread and its components. Furthermore, firms can use the result to build up a tailor-made marketing strategy.Consumer, Quality perception, Bread, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

HUBUNGAN PERSEPSI STATUS PEGAWAI NEGERI SIPIL DENGAN\ud PENGAMBILAN KEPUTUSAN KERJA PADA REMAJA

Each person has his own life goal and its positive life achievement can only be determined by a good decision making. Most of decision makers implement perception as one of measurements to select the best alternative. It can be described through the working perception, as to work is a\ud demand to fulfill human need. The working perception of the civil servant status can be illustrated as one example in this case, that some people might have either positive or negative view. Both views have potential to influence individual in the decision making process for working.\ud This study is aimed to find out the correlation betwen the civil servant status perception and job decision making especially for teenagers, as the decision making is a natural process experienced by teenagers within their personal development. This study is a quantitative research in which the civil servant status perception is stated as free variable and the job decision making as tied\ud variable. The population of this study is students of Sekolah Menengah Umum Negeri 7 Pontianak (State Senior High School 7 Pontianak) and the sample is one hundred third graders of the mentioned school that is taken by Cluster Sampling technique. The data collection process uses scale, by the likert scale as well as the other two scales; the civil servant perseption scale and the job decision making scale. The data analysis applies a product moment technique by Karl Pearson with the application of SPSS 12 computer peogram. Based on the data analysis, the result of the study (by r = 0.370; p = 0.000) can be stated that there is a significant difference between the civil servant status perception and job decision making especially for teenagers. Thus, if there is a positive perception, the job decision making will be higher; on the other hand, if there is a negative perseption, the job decision making will be lower. By having this study, the (r2) is discovered as 0.137 or 13.7% that indicates the civil servant perseption gives effective contribution for job decision by 13.7% while the other 86.3% is influenced by other variable, insufficient accuracy, and the imprecision of research subjects

The Relationship Between Demographic Characteristics, Types of Contact with Police, and Perceptions of Police

Police officers play a very important role in their communities, considering they need to interact with the public in order to carry out their duties. For that reason, the relationship between the public and police officers has been the focus of many studies. The current study analyzed data from the 2011 Police-Public Contact Survey (n= 49,246). The study was conducted in three separate parts - the relationship between individual demographic characteristics and type of contact with the police, individual demographic characteristics and perceptions of police, and type of contact with the police and perceptions of the police. The results from this study were consistent with previous findings from studies that used smaller populations, as it was found that women were more likely to have voluntary contact with police than men, non-Hispanics had more voluntary contact with police than those of Hispanic Origin, women reported more positive perceptions of police, there was a positive relationship between age and perception of the police, and those who had voluntary contact had a more positive perception of police officers than those who had involuntary contact

Positive change with Ménière’s disease

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright © 2009 The British Psychological Society.Objective - The aims of this study were twofold: to determine in what way people with a non-fatal chronic illness experience positive change after the onset of their illness, and to determine whether comparing with other people with Ménière's disease influenced perceiving this change. Design - Using a longitudinal method, questionnaires were administered at baseline and at ten-month follow-up. Method - At both time points 301 people with Ménière's disease completed the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory and at baseline they also completed questionnaires measuring, demographic variables, disease severity, psychological variables (self-esteem, perceived control, and optimism), and social comparison variables. Results - People with Ménière's disease in this study perceived positive change. Greater positive change was perceived on the domain of ‘appreciation of life,’ followed by ‘relating to others,’ ‘personal strength,’ ‘new possibilities,’ and ‘spiritual change’. In addition, more change was perceived at follow-up than at baseline. Social comparison was associated with perceiving change at both time points. Conclusions - People with Ménière's disease do perceive positive change. Perceiving change is an on-going process for people with Ménière's disease, as they perceived more change over time. Social comparison was related to the perception of change, in particular, to the perception of growth in personal strength.Economic and Social Research Council, UK and the Ménière's Society, U

Interactive Perception Based on Gaussian Process Classification for House-Hold Objects Recognition and Sorting

We present an interactive perception model for object sorting based on Gaussian Process (GP) classification that is capable of recognizing objects categories from point cloud data. In our approach, FPFH features are extracted from point clouds to describe the local 3D shape of objects and a Bag-of-Words coding method is used to obtain an object-level vocabulary representation. Multi-class Gaussian Process classification is employed to provide and probable estimation of the identity of the object and serves a key role in the interactive perception cycle – modelling perception confidence. We show results from simulated input data on both SVM and GP based multi-class classifiers to validate the recognition accuracy of our proposed perception model. Our results demonstrate that by using a GP-based classifier, we obtain true positive classification rates of up to 80%. Our semi-autonomous object sorting experiments show that the proposed GP based interactive sorting approach outperforms random sorting by up to 30% when applied to scenes comprising configurations of household objects

Client Feedback and the Role of the Appraiser

Appraisers routinely work at solving ill-structured valuation problems where the normative performance criterion is an objective judgement of market value as of the valuation date. This study, theoretically grounded in the lens model of perceptual theory, investigates the effect of client feedback on appraisers’ perceptions of their role in the loan underwriting process. It investigates the extent of cognitive departure from the normative role toward perception of being a validator of pending sale prices. An instrument is devised to measure environmental perception feedback, coercive feedback and positive reinforcement of the normative performance criterion. Client feedback is found to have a significant effect on appraisers’ role perceptions and on appraisers’ perceptions of the of the lender-client’s performance criterion. Appraisers who receive a great deal of environmental perception feedback and coercive feedback are more likely to view themselves as price validators, whereas appraisers exposed to positive reinforcement of the normative performance criterion are more likely view themselves as providers of objective opinions of market value.