Periodica Polytechnica Social and Management Sciences
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Published By "Periodica Polytechnica, Budapest University Of Technology And Economics"

1587-3803, 1416-3837

Author(s):  
Sára Khayouti ◽  
Hubert János Kiss ◽  
Dániel Horn

Since trust correlates with economic development and in turn economic development associates with political regime, we conjecture that there may be a relationship between trust and political regime. Without looking for any casual inference, we investigate if trust aggregated on the country level correlates with the country's political regime. Specifically, we are interested whether trust correlates positively with the level of democracy in cross-sectional observations. We analyse data on trust from 76 countries using the Global Preference Survey and investigate the correlations with five separate democracy indices (Polity2, Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy, Freedom House, MaxRange and Unified Democracy Score). We do not find any significant association, with or without taking into account other factors (e.g., regional location, economic development, geographic conditions, culture) as well. Trust does not correlate with cornerstones of democracy either, measured by five components of the EIU index. A robustness check using an alternative measure of trust from the World Values Survey reaches the same results. The present study supersedes the working paper version (Khayouti et al., 2020).


Author(s):  
Mária Babicsné-Horváth ◽  
Károly Hercegfi

Eye-tracking based usability testing and User Experience (UX) research are widespread in the development processes of various types of software; however, there exist specific difficulties during usability tests of three-dimensional (3D) software. Analysing the screen records with gaze plots, heatmaps of fixations, and statistics of Areas of Interests (AOI), methodological problems occur when the participant wants to rotate, zoom, or move the 3D space. The data gained regarded the menu bar is mainly interpretable; however, the data regarded the 3D environment is hardly so, or not at all. Our research tested four software applications with the aforementioned problem in mind: ViveLab and Jack Digital Human Modelling (DHM) and ArchiCAD and CATIA Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. Our original goal was twofold. Firstly, with these usability tests, we aimed to identify issues in the software. Secondly, we tested the utility of a new methodology which was included in the tests. This paper summarizes the results on the methodology based on individual experiments with different software applications. One of the main ideas behind the methodology adopted is to tell the participants (during certain subtasks of the tests) not to move the 3D space while they perform the given tasks at a certain point in the usability test. During the experiments, we applied a Tobii eye-tracking device, and after the task completion, each participant was interviewed. Based on these experiences, the methodology appears to be both useful and applicable, and its visualisation techniques for one or more participants are interpretable.


Author(s):  
Kate K. Mays ◽  
James E. Katz ◽  
Jacob Groshek

People around the world who seek to interact with large organisations increasingly find they must do so via mediated and automated communication. Organisations often deploy both mediated and automated platforms, such as instant messaging and interactive voice response systems (IVRs), for efficiency and cost-savings. Customer and client responses to these systems range from delight to frustration. To better understand the factors affecting people's satisfaction with these systems, we conducted a representative U.S. national survey (N = 1321). We found that people overwhelmingly like and trust in-person customer service compared to mediated and automated modalities. As to demographic attitude predictors, age was important (older respondents liked mediated systems less), but income and education were not strong attitude predictors. For personality variables, innovativeness was positively associated with mediated system satisfaction. However, communication apprehensiveness, which we expected to be related to satisfaction, was not. We conclude by discussing implications for the burgeoning field of human-machine communication, as well as social policy, equity, and the pullulating digital services divide.


Author(s):  
Fernando Almeida ◽  
Jorge Miguel-Oliveira

Intrapreneurship is becoming a key factor in the growth of a company in a highly dynamic and progressively more competitive business environment. The idea of intrapreneurship is to encourage greater employee involvement within the organisation in which they work, giving them the freedom to innovate and experiment in a proactive, creative, and innovative way. In the startups, the role of intrapreneurship is of great relevance knowing that startups are designed to scale and grow exponentially in a short time and with few resources. Innovation is at the core of a startup and intrapreneurship initiatives allow leveraging this capacity in startups. Accordingly, this study seeks to explore the phenomenon of intrapreneurship in startups, seeking to understand how formal and informal intrapreneurship initiatives are taken on by startups, and also exploring the role played by existing resources to support these initiatives. The results of the study allow us to conclude that startups value intrapreneurship initiatives despite financial constraints that overlap with time constraints that affect what can be allocated to these activities. Finally, medium-sized startups and those with more qualified human capital tend to value and support intrapreneur initiatives more intensely. In contrast, startups with less academically qualified human capital offer worse conditions and support to intrapreneur activities.


Author(s):  
Judit T. Nagy ◽  
Mária Bernschütz

This study aims to investigate the role played by academic discipline differences in terms of their influence on the acceptance of video technology being used for educational purposes by higher education students. The research model was based on Technology Acceptance Model in which academic discipline (hard, pure, soft, applied) was involved as a moderator variable.Data were collected from 240 students using a questionnaire on which the partial least-squares structural equation modelling and the Henseler's multi-group analysis were used to compare differences among academic discipline-groups. In summary, results show that the degree of importance attached to perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and attitude toward video use when students explain the intensity of their instructional video usage differs between hard/soft, and pure/applied academic disciplines. In the case of hard-pure subjects (e.g. natural sciences) and hard-applied subjects (e.g. engineering or computer science) the intensity of video usage, as a learning resource, is mostly determined by the students' expectations in relation to the effortlessness (or otherwise) of learning with videos. In the case of soft-pure subjects (such as sociology) and soft-applied subjects (such as law and business studies) positive/negative feelings associated with video usage also play an important role in the intensity of video usage as a learning resource. The degree to which a student believes that using videos would enhance his or her learning has a stronger influence on the intensity of video usage in the case of soft-pure subjects than in the case of soft-applied subjects.


Author(s):  
Bruna Strapazzon do Couto ◽  
Miguel Afonso Sellitto

The purpose of this study is to choose an order dispatching rule and measure the work-in-process and lead-time in the production process of a conveyor chain manufacturer. The main strategic issue for the manufacturer is dependability, which requires meeting deadlines and managing internal lead-times. The study integrates two techniques, workload control (WLC) and an analytical hierarchy process (AHP), respectively systems for production planning and control, and multi-criteria decision support, both widely used in handling manufacturing strategic issues. The research method is a field experiment. Supported by the AHP and according to strategic criteria, practitioners selected the early due date rule (the order with the closest due date comes first) to release 231 orders. Then, employing a methodology designed to support WLC applications, the study measured key parameters that provide information regarding the overall performance of the manufacturer, the input rate, work-in-process, lead-time, throughput performance, and the level of safety stock. Using the model and a graphical tool derived from queuing theory, the throughput diagram, the study provides evidence that, although the manufacturing process is satisfactorily balanced and achieves acceptable performance, the level of safety stock is small and should be increased to prevent starvation on the shop floor.


Author(s):  
Olivia Tanaya ◽  
Suyanto Suyanto

The nexus between foreign direct investment and economic growth has long been among the most debated issues in macroeconomics. Some studies find a positive link between the two factors, but others find no evidence. This current research fills the gap by analysing the causal nexus between foreign direct investment and economic growth in Indonesia for the period 1970-2018. Indonesia as a developing country is one of the largest recipients of FDI flow; hence the study on the impact of FDI on the economic growth is very much important. This current research employs a contemporary time-series procedure, involving several unit-root tests namely Augmented-Dickey-Fuller (ADF), Phillips-Perron (PP), Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS), and Lee-Strazicich (LS), an Auto-Regressive-Distributed-Lag (ARDL) bounds-testing method for cointegration, and Granger causality test. The findings provide evidence of long-run and short-run causal direction from GDP to FDI. In contrast, FDI generates only a short-run relationship on GDP. The Granger causality test confirms the finding in ARDL that there is a unidirectional causality running from GDP to FDI.


Author(s):  
Oleh Pasko

This paper examines the consequences of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption in Ukraine through the lens of New Institutional Accounting theory. IFRS adoption's effects on management's reporting incentives, enforcement and institutional complementarities are analysed. I find that adoption at a technical level is not enough to be called "adoption" as profound changes at the institutional level are also required. Adopted IFRS are subjected to the same type of institutional and market pressures that gave rise to the old set of standards and as a result, the practice of financial reporting is unchanged at its core while only new technical rules apply. Hence, jurisdictions should not pursue only technical adoption but should also try their best to align as close as possible all institutional aspects of this issue. The best advice for all jurisdictions with an institutional infrastructure similar to Ukraine's is to strengthen management's reporting incentives and enforcement mechanisms.


Author(s):  
Tímea Beatrice Dóra ◽  
Zsuzsanna Szalkai

The aim of this paper is to examine the consumer expectations and marketing communications related to the services of addiction prevention. The research questions of the study are the following: 1. What are the front- and back-office components to addiction prevention services and what key attributes should the front office staff have? 2. What types of service gaps occur, and what are the most critical factors highlighted by these gaps? 3. How do consumers perceive addiction prevention campaigns and what are their expectations? In order to answer the research questions, secondary and primary research were conducted, where the Servuction; GAP; and AIDA models were applied. As primary research, in-depth interviews were conducted with healthcare professionals in Hungary. Based on expert opinion we assessed the possible GAPs related to the campaign, placing the greatest emphasis on the communication gap (GAP4). To examine the consumer response, we analysed the attitude and opinion of consumers with an online questionnaire survey in connection with the communication GAP of the service, following the structure of the AIDA model. This paper presents the factors affecting the environment, implementation and the consumers of addiction prevention services. Our results highlight the importance of positive messages, family therapy and continuous training of patients; moreover, they show that friends and general practitioners have more influence on the behaviour of people than celebrities and social trends. The results presented in our study can help healthcare managers or marketers to develop their communication programmes/campaigns.


Author(s):  
Zuzana Birknerová ◽  
Lucia Zbihlejová

Coping with demanding situations is a regular part of managerial work; therefore, training in it ought also to be part of the pre-graduation preparation of students of Management. From a managerial perspective, demanding situations are perceived as either unpleasant or as a potential opportunity for career advancement. This paper presents the results of an experimental research project investigating coping strategies development, specifically among students of Management. An experimental group underwent specific preparation, whereas a control group did not. The experiment was conducted on a research sample of 293 management students using the COPE (b) methodology. The experimental results confirmed statistically significant differences between the ante- and the post-measurement within the experimental group in terms of these five coping strategies: Positive reframing, Active coping, Planning, Humour, and Venting. Within the control group, no significant differences were recorded.


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