Sherry Avery

Seeking Empirical Validity in an Assurance of Learning System

Business schools have established measurement tools to support their assurance of learning (AoL) systems and to assess student achievement of learning objectives. However, business schools have not required their tools to be empirically validated, thus ensuring that they measure what they are intended to measure. The authors propose confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) be utilized by business schools to evaluate AoL measurement systems. They illustrate a CFA model used to evaluate the measurement tools at their college. The authors’ approach is in its initial steps, currently evaluating individual measurement tools, but the authors are working toward developing a system that can evaluate the entire AoL measurement system.

Contextualizing or decontextualizing? The peril of using Western social capital scales in China

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to promote Chinese indigenous research by examining a case in which adopting social capital (SC) scales developed in the Western context for Chinese samples can decontextualize inter-firm guanxi management in the Chinese context. Design/methodology/approach – Adopting the existing Western scales to measure SC, we collected data from Chinese executives participating in executive master of business administration programs on buyer–supplier relationship. Using the same items and data source, we identified post hoc factors representing guanxi dimensions. Ordinary least squared regressions were used for both guanxi and SC dimensions to test the hypotheses. Findings – Our analysis showed that Chinese natives responded to the Western SC items according to their understanding and mindsets rooted in guanxi. This was evidenced by the results from the post hoc-derived guanxi dimensions with the same data, which show better regression results for the hypotheses tested, although ...