Malcolm James Beynon

Cardiff University | CU · Cardiff Business School

The ‘revolving door’ between those at the top of public and private organizations has given rise to questions about the ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors influencing public servants’ switching into lucrative posts with companies they previously regulated. In this study, we investigate the departmental attributes associated with the movement of senior Briti...

Lecture Capture (LC) material is accepted to be an available and accessible resource for students in universities across the world. This exploratory study investigates the ‘when viewing’ LC material engagement of accounting undergraduate students. Three categories of engagement are defined, Near-Event-Viewing (NEV), Get-Round-to-Viewing (GRV) and R...

Purpose The paper shows how small firms perceive the pathways through which access to and adoption of superfast broadband-enabled resources strengthen business performance. Improvements to broadband infrastructure do not automatically lead to adoption of opportunities made available through the broadband resource. Then, interventions can be used to...

Despite evidence of substantial differences in business exit rates across countries, understanding of the institutional conditions contributing to those differences is still incomplete. Methodological limitations have left considerable gaps in our understanding of business exit, due to the dominance of regression models that capture institutional c...

Using a 2019 data set, 236 regions across 26 European countries are investigated, focusing on four, interlinked, conditions of potential relevance to SME innovation, specifically measures focused on levels of human capital, internal firm innovation, innovation collaborations and broader knowledge collaborations between public and private sectors. T...

Dans le présent article, nous examinons la variation dans le niveau d’utilisation des technologies de l’information et de la communication par les organes nationaux des administrations du travail dans 81 pays différents. Nous poussons plus loin la recherche empirique sur la situation de l’usage des technologies de l’information et de la communicati...

This study offers a novel evaluation of the conditions for Total Entrpreneurial Activity (TEA) and Entrepreneurial Intention (EI) across 59 Sub-Saharan African regions. The analysis employs fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis using Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2013) survey data using five condition variables, measuring regional-level ent...

This paper presents a novel longitudinal study of entrepreneurial attitudes and activity. The study uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and builds on a previous cross-sectional cross-country investigation. Data for 2007–2017 from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project are used to compare 108 countries in terms of entr...

Local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) were introduced by the UK government in 2010 to promote local economic development. There is, however, a minimal pre-LEP baseline analysis concerning aspirations of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in LEP geographies. Employing Federation of Small Businesses 2010 data gathered before LEP policy activiti...

Building on a longitudinal dataset of 245 small firms covering the period of the Global Financial Crisis, this study uses, in combination with fuzzy clustering, the N-State Classification and Ranking Belief Simplex (NCaRBS) technique. This technique, able to deal with ambiguous outcome variables, small datasets, incomplete data and relationships th...

This study considers roles played by dimensions of entrepreneurship, innovation, and geography on United States (US) state level growth, unemployment, and income employing Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analyses (fsQCA). One important developmental feature of the analyses is the use of a novel fuzzy membership score creation process, undertaken...

In many developing countries, access to basic infrastructure services, such as sewerage and waste disposal varies considerably across different areas. In this study, Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis identifies configurations of economic and political conditions (population density, population size, income and political participation), ass...

Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis identifies configurations of New Public Management (NPM) reforms (privatization, consumerism, performance management, and corporatization) associated with perceptions of improvements in healthcare efficiency, effectiveness and equity in 14 European countries. Although these outcomes are pursued concurrentl...

This study, utilizes an innovative methodological approach, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), investigating the drivers of heterogeneous geographies characterizing English Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs). The fsQCA technique offers a novel configurational alternative to regression-based approaches investigating the effects of c...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are tasked with driving economic recovery globally, in terms of contribution to economic growth. Understanding the determinants of SME innovation is essential in clarifying this phenomena. This study investigates the link between SME strategies and intention to undertake future innovation, using Federation o...

We reveal how tourist visitation to similar historical sites supports different levels of local gross value added (GVA). The paper shows how information on tourism activity at few historical sites can be used to analyse causal recipes defining whether sites support relatively high/low levels of GVA. Fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis is emp...

This article examines the variation in the level of use of information and communication technologies by national bodies of labour administrations across 81 different countries. Extending empirical research on the state of information and communication technology use, it introduces a prototype index of country-level information and communication te...

This study develops a concept of integrated leadership-in-government as a global and multifaceted construct for the first time in the Dubai and wider Gulf context. Leadership-in-government combines eight public leadership roles articulated in recent literature, as performed by managers at all levels within the government hierarchy. The eight public...

Consumer behaviour is often perceived through the notion of consideration sets. However, realistic modelling of consumer choice processes identifies impeding factors, including ignorance and non-specificity. In this chapter, the appeasement of these factors and the role of consideration sets are considered through the utilisation of the nascent Dem...

This study investigated the relationship between entrepreneurial climate (EC) and self-perceptions about entrepreneurship (SPaE). The variables and data were derived from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) dataset and framework. Specifically, the study examined variables closely related to the GEM concepts of entrepreneurial capacity and pre...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) propensity to export using data from a North African country, namely Algeria. Drawing on the extended resource-based view, the study examines the role of firms’ resources and capabilities in explaining the probability to export. Design/me...

Purpose: The theory of Double Jeopardy (DJ) is shown to hold across broad ranging geographies and physical product categories. However, there is very little research appertaining to the subject within an online environment. In particular, studies that investigate the presence of DJ and the contrasting view point to DJ, namely that of Negative Doubl...

Third Stream Activity (TSA) is increasingly important to UK universities and the wider economy, through innovation and entrepreneurship. Using data from the 2009/2010 UK Higher Education Business and Community Interaction Survey, this study investigates UK universities’ TSA. Through considering the data in original and logged forms, two interpretat...

Resource dependence theory suggests that to function successfully, organizations must obtain certain resources controlled by actors in their environment. To do this effectively, managers often develop networking relationships with key stakeholder groups in order to make critical resources available. Managers in public service organizations, in part...

Strategic decision-making theories suggest that organizations that combine rational and incremental strategy implementation styles are likely to perform better than those that emphasize a single style. To assess whether these arguments apply to the public sector; we explore the strategy implementation style and perceived service effectiveness, effi...

This study undertakes a cross-country comparison of the relationship between entrepreneurship attitudes and high and low entrepreneurial activity. The analysis employs fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The data set comes from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2011 survey, four country-level entrepreneurial attitudes and perceptions vari...

Understanding the factors that make a location more rural or urban is an important task for planners and policymakers. Traditional individual characteristics of rurality sometimes hide the more complex social as well as physical dynamics of a locality. This paper builds on early work which applied factor analysis to construct a single index of rura...

Purpose – The maintenance of public order and the control of crime are clearly amongst the primary objectives of global law enforcement agencies. An important antecedent to this is the consideration of public trust in their police force. The purpose of this paper is to utilise data from the fifth round European Social Survey (ESS), to investigate h...

This study demonstrates a novel form of business analytics, respecting the quality of the data available (allowing incompleteness in the data set), as well as engaging with the uncertainty in the considered outcome variable (inclusive of Don’t Know (DK) responses). The analysis employs the NCaRBS technique, based on the Dempster-Shafer theory of ev...

This article brings together resource-based theory and contingency theory to analyze organizational capability in the public sector. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is used to identify configurations of organizational attributes (department size, structural complexity, agencification, personnel instability, use of temporary employees), a...

This paper compares the frontal plane hip function of subject's known to have had hip arthroplasty via either the lateral (LA) or posterior (PA) surgical approaches and a group of subjects associated with no pathology (NP). This is investigated through the Trendelenburg test using 3D motion analysis and classification. Here, a recent development on...

The research presented in this paper applies the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to reveal and analyse transhipment port selection by global carriers. Forty seven relevant service attributes were recorded from a literature review. Two rounds of Delphi surveys — followed by brainstorming sessions — were conducted among experts in industry and acade...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate student motivation for undertaking an entrepreneurship education programme and their ultimate employment aspirations through a novel data mining technique. The study considered what relationship certain motivation characteristics have to students’ aspirations, specifically in terms of their inte...

Organizational social capital is critical to effective organizational functioning. Yet, different aspects of social capital are likely to be present to varying degrees within any given organization. In this study, alternative blends of structural, relational and cognitive social capital are modelled using a range of key organizational variables dra...

DS/AHP is a technique for multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), based on the Dempster-Shafer Theory of evidence (DST) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Since its introduction it has been developed and applied by a number of authors, as well as form the foundation for other DST related MCDM techniques. This paper reviews the evolution and i...

Evidential C-Means (ECM) is a technique for cluster analysis, which has a methodology based on the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence (DST). To date this technique has been theoretically discussed but has had limited application. Based on DST, ECM facilitates the association of objects to sets of clusters, rather than simply a single cluster. One f...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate student motivation for undertaking an entrepreneurship education programme and their ultimate employment aspirations through a novel data mining technique. The study considered what relationship certain motivation characteristics have to students’ aspirations, specifically in terms of their inte...

Background The heterogeneity of chronic low back pain (CLBP) can be deleterious to its successful management. Classification systems (CSs) that subclassify CLBP in order to target treatments rely on clinical judgement; therefore, less subjective classification is preferable. This study aims to determine whether the Cardiff Classifier (CC), which is...

Organizations frequently adopt multiple strategies to satisfy conflicting and competing goals. Modeling the organizational characteristics associated with such hybrid strategies is an important challenge for organization scientists. This study proposes the use of a novel evidence-based computational approach to the ambiguous classification of organ...

This study investigates the impact of available training alternatives (TAs) on employee retention in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). A noticeable problem with this research issue is that individual SMEs may utilize different combination of TAs. The considered survey questionnaire allowed respondent SME owners/managers the option to gauge the l...

Category of presentation: Epidemiology: evidence based papers on effective diagnostic and therapy outcome DISCRIMINATING NON-SPECIFIC CHRONIC LOW BACK PAIN CLINICAL SUBGROUPS AND MONITORING RECOVERY USING AN OBJECTIVE CLASSIFICATION METHOD Sheeran L.1, Whatling G.2, Holt C.2, Beynon M. J.3, van Deursen R.1, Sparkes V.1 1Cardiff University, School...

Location Quotients (LQs) remain an important tool for geographical analysis, particularly in terms of assessing industrial specialisation and clustering. LQs as decision aids are typically understood through the use of arbitrarily set cut-off values. However, LQs are rarely accompanied by an associated level of variance that can be connected with t...

The business environment is characterised by increasing competitiveness, globalised trading markets and technological enhancements (Aragon-Sanchez et al., 2003; Lin and Jacobs, 2008). Organisational working practices have become increasingly sophisticated and as a consequence training provision and requirements have evolved. Birdthistle (2006) and...

This paper investigates the relationship between psychological contracts, organizational commitment and employment characteristics among paid employees in a non-profit organization. This is an empirically neglected workforce group. Using fuzzy c-means clustering, our analysis establishes three clusters of employees based on their psychological cont...

The decision of whether to buy, hold or sell equities depends on whether the current price reflects the stock’s intrinsic or fundamental value. The residual income valuation model expresses this fundamental value as a function of current book value of equity plus the sum of discounted expected residual income. Although past and present income and b...

With this study we evaluate the impact of different training methods (TMs) on small and medium-enterprises’ (SMEs’) business performances, utilising a dataset of 3521. We consider the relationship between the satisfaction SMEs have towards their employees’ training needs being met by a diverse range of TMs and the levels of impact the training has...

Cluster analysis provides insights into data, such that objects in an identified cluster are more similar to each other that to objects in other clusters. This chapter offers a background to the general approach termed cluster analysis, including an illustrative cluster analysis of a real world problem. One feature of this chapter is the comparison...

This chapter considers the problem of understanding the relationship between company stock returns and earnings components, namely accruals and cash flows. The problem is of interest, because earnings are a key output of the accounting process, and investors have been shown to depend heavily on earnings in their valuation models. This chapter offer...

Qualitative Comparison Analysis (QCA) is an innovative analytical technique that bridges the gap between qualitative and quantitative approaches to research. Grounded in set theory, it allows the analyst to make causal about the structure of relationships between variables and outcomes. This is achieved through the identification of multiple config...

The Preference Ranking Organisation Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) method offers a way to undertake the ranking of a finite set of decision alternatives based on values from a number of criteria. As an outranking method it is a multi-criteria decision aid in the ranking process. This chapter outlines the rudiments of the PROMETHEE me...

The psychological contract refers to an individual employee's belief in mutual obligations between them and their employer. Psychological contracts are a key management concern, as they can impact employees' attitudes and behaviors in ways that influence organizational efficiency and effectiveness. In this paper, we analyse the relationship between...

Purpose – The UK police service has a major challenge to introduce innovative ways of improving efficiency and productivity, whilst at the same time improving public opinion as to their effectiveness in the “fight against crime”. The purpose of this paper is to outline an exploratory study of the ability to cluster police forces based on their sanc...

The purpose of this article is to further an understanding of the airport sector through a systematic analysis of the existing studies assessing the economic efficiency and productivity of the sector. A full review of journal papers from 1990 to 2011 was undertaken. The emphasis is on the measurement methodologies, the variables used, and the resul...

The purpose of this article is to further an understanding of the airport sector through a systematic analysis of the existing studies assessing the economic efficiency and productivity of the sector. A full review of journal papers from 1990 to 2011 was undertaken. The emphasis is on the measurement methodologies, the variables used, and the resul...

This study investigates the differences in hip biomechanics for subjects following a total hip arthroplasty (THA), through the lateral approach (LA) and posterior approach (PA), to those with no pathology (NP). The principal component analysis was performed on two kinematic and two kinetic waveforms (subject-based characteristics) from level gait t...

Many countries continue to face challenges in public policy implementation. One explanation for this is the need for local knowledge and insight to inform effective policy interventions (Matland 1995). This arises due to variations in local challenges, structures and stages of development, necessitating adaptation of policy requirements, to facilit...

This paper explores the hitherto neglected combined contribution of automobility cultures and corruption to prevailing death and injury rates from road traffic, with an emphasis on developing countries. Automobility cultures are argued to be crucial to real-world death and injury rates. The paper then argues that indices of public corruption may be...

Configurational theories assume that organizational form has important implications for the degree of alignment between top and middle management on strategic priorities. Taken in combination, the structure, process and environment of an organization are thought to have a deep pervasive influence on top management’s attempts to achieve the coordina...

Purpose The paper is set in the context of the impact of new public management (NPM) on the police service in the UK. Specifically, it aims to describe a modelling based approach to targeted police performance improvement within a specific area of measured operational policing namely sanction detection levels. It draws upon nationally available cri...

CaRBS (Classification and Ranking Belief Simplex) is a novel technique for object classification, which, due to its reliance on the Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence, can operate in the presence of ignorance and ambiguity (uncertain reasoning). In this article, we further the introduction of the CaRBS technique with the development of new measures...

Uncertain reasoning is closely associated with the pertinent analysis of data where there may be imprecision, inexactness, and uncertainty in its information content. In computer modelling, this should move any analysis to be inclusive of such potential uncertainty, away from the presumption of perfect data to be worked with. The nascent Classifica...

This paper presents an important development of a novel non-parametric object classification technique, namely CaRBS (Classification and Ranking Belief Simplex), to enable regression-type analyses. Termed RCaRBS, it is, as with CaRBS, an evidence-based technique, with its mathematical operations based on the Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence. Its...

This chapter considers a probabilistic reasoning based investigation of an information system concerned with consumer choice. The DS/AHP technique for multi-criteria decision making is employed in this consumer analysis, and with its development formed from the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence and the well known Analytical Hierarchy Process, it i...

Consumer attitudes, involvement and motives have long been identified as important determinates of decision making in classic models of consumer behaviour. Online consumer attitudes may differ depending on the level of web experience of the intended consumer. This chapter considers Classification and Ranking Belief Simplex (CaRBS) analyses of consu...

This chapter considers the soft computing approach called fuzzy decision trees (FDT), a form of classification analysis. The consideration of decision tree analysis in a fuzzy environment brings further interpretability and readability to the constructed 'if.. then..' decision rules. Two sets of FDT analyses are presented, the first on a small exam...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: to outline and analyse the issue of gender differences in supermarket choice; and to demonstrate the nascent CaRBS technique as an appropriate analysis tool on incomplete data. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a CaRBS analysis of survey‐based data with emphasis on the visualisation of the...

The chapter exposits the strategies employed by the public long-term care systems operated by each U.S. state government. The central technique employed in this investigation is fuzzy decision trees (FDTs), producing a rule-based classification system using the well known soft computing methodology of fuzzy set theory. It is a timely exposition, wi...

This chapter considers, and elucidates, the general methodology of rough set theory (RST), a nascent approach to rule based classification associated with soft computing. There are two parts of the elucidation undertaken in this chapter, firstly the levels of possible pre-processing necessary when undertaking an RST based analysis, and secondly the...

The non-trivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, interesting, and potentially useful information is at the heart of efforts to solve real-world problems; perhaps nowhere more so than in the field of organization studies. This chapter aims to describe the ability of a nascent data mining technique, Classification and Ranking Belief Simple...

The central theme of this chapter is a preference ranking analysis of a group of motor vehicles based on their chemical emissions. Beyond the initial ranking of the motor vehicles, operationalised using the multi-criteria decision making technique PROMETHEE, further analysis is given on how the manufacturers of a motor vehicle could improve its pre...

The non-trivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, interesting, and potentially useful information is at the heart of efforts to solve real-world problems; perhaps nowhere more so than in the field of organization studies. This chapter aims to describe the ability of a nascent data mining technique, Classification and Ranking Belief Simple...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: to outline and analyse the issue of gender differences in supermarket choice; and to demonstrate the nascent CaRBS technique as an appropriate analysis tool on incomplete data. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a CaRBS analysis of survey-based data with emphasis on the visualisation of...

The paper undertakes a linkage analysis on a regional economy, concentrating on tourism-related sectors. Recent improvements in the accounting for tourism activity, through satellite account frameworks, provide information on tourism-related sectors and their transactions with the rest of the economy. Several regions of the UK have highlighted tour...

In this study, a Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) of a car hire purchasing problem is undertaken, with a group of decision makers involved in the judgements made. Developments on an existing FAHP method are exposited, including the sensitivity of the results when there is variation in the degree of fuzziness associated with the decisions mad...

The origins of Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) go back to the work by Dempster (1967) who developed a system of upper and lower probabilities. Following this, his student Shafer (1976), in their book “A Mathematical Theory of Evidence” developed Dempster’s work, including a more thorough explanation of belief functions, a more general term for DST. In...

This chapter demonstrates intelligent data analysis, within the environment of uncertain reasoning, using the recently introduced CaRBS technique that has its mathematical rudiments in Dempster-Shafer theory. A series of classification and ranking analyses are undertaken on a bank rating application, looking at Moody’s bank financial strength ratin...

The essence of data mining is to investigate for pertinent information that may exist in data (often large data sets). The immeasurably large amount of data present in the world, due to the increasing capacity of storage media, manifests the issue of the presence of missing values (Olinsky et al., 2003; Brown and Kros, 2003). The presented encyclop...

This chapter centres on a novel classification technique called NCaRBS (N-state Classification and Ranking Belief Simplex), and the analysis of Moody’s Bank Financial Strength Rating (BFSR). The rudiments of NCaRBS are based around uncertain reasoning, through Dempster-Shafer theory. As such, the analysis is undertaken with the allowed presence of...

This chapter investigates the appropriateness of the application of fuzzy decision trees on the evaluation of company audit fees, with attention to the sensitivity of the results. With the rudiments of fuzzy decision trees in a fuzzy environment, it implies a linguistic emphasis on the concomitant analysis, allowing readability in the fuzzy decisio...

This paper demonstrates the development of the Ecological Footprint within a fuzzy environment. The approach taken provides a means to understand the impacts of imprecision and uncertainty in the input-output framework, which forms a cornerstone of many recently constructed Footprint estimates. The paper uses, as a basis, an example of Footprint co...

There are certain major obstacles to using motion analysis as an aid to clinical decision making. These include: the difficulty in comprehending large amounts of both corroborating and conflicting information; the subjectivity of data interpretation; the need for visualization; and the quantitative comparison of temporal waveform data. This paper s...

Limits on the precision of technical relationships within input–output frameworks have led to the use of stochastic analytical methods. The notion of stochastic analysis is developed in this paper to discern how the inherent imprecision effect, when aggregated data are utilised, affects the concomitant key sector analysis. Through a Monte Carlo bas...

The motor vehicle has provided mobility and individual freedom for millions of people. However, vehicles embody the dilemma of contemporary industrialisation in that the environmental costs of automobility are equally large. This non-country specific study undertakes a PROMETHEE-based preference ranking of a small set of motor vehicles based on con...

PROMETHEE is a popular multi-criteria decision making ranking technique that is regularly applied to enable the performance comparisons of alternatives across relevant criteria. The police forces in the UK, as with other public services, are periodically compared with each other on their performance. This study demonstrates the employment of PROMET...

PROMETHEE is an outranking method to identify a rank ordering of alternatives based on their values from a number of different criteria. The uncertainty (sensitivity) in the established rank ordering is an ongoing issue. One recent approach identifies the minimum changes required in an alternative's criteria values to equate or reverse the order of...

The general fuzzy decision tree approach encapsulates the benefits of being an inductive learning technique to classify objects, utilising the richness of the data being considered, as well as the readability and interpretability that accompanies its operation in a fuzzy environment. This chapter offers a description of fuzzy decision tree based re...

Outranking methods are a family of techniques concerned with ranking the preference for alternatives based on the criteria values that describe them. The breadth of applications taking inference from such preference ranking analysis includes the areas of business, health, environment, marketing, and public services. In the context of databases, the...

This chapter investigates the effectiveness of a number of objective functions used in conjunction with a novel technique to optimise the classification of objects based on a number of characteristic values, which may or may not be missing. The classification and ranking belief simplex (CaRBS) technique is based on Dempster-Shafer theory and, hence...

This chapter employs the fuzzy decision tree classification technique in a series of biological based application problems. With its employment in a fuzzy environment, the results, in the form of fuzzy ‘if .. then ..’ decision rules, bring with them readability and subsequent interpretability. The two contrasting applications considered concern, th...

This chapter demonstrates intelligent data analysis, within the environment of uncertain reasoning, using the recently introduced CaRBS technique that has its mathematical rudiments in Dempster-Shafer theory. A series of classification and ranking analyses are undertaken on a bank rating application, looking at Moody’s bank financial strength ratin...

This chapter investigates the modelling of the ability to improve the rank position of an alternative in relation to those of its competitors. PROMETHEE is one such technique for ranking alternatives based on their criteria values. In conjunction with the evolutionary algorithm trigonometric differential evolution, the minimum changes necessary to...