Search

Purpose: Digital extension is widely embraced in African agricultural development, promising unprecedented outcomes and impact. Especially phone-based services attract attention as tools for effective and efficient agricultural extension. To date, assessments of digital extension services are generally ex-post in nature, thus consideration of users and broader systems occurs once an intervention is broadly identified. However, early understanding of user needs, readiness, and relevant context is a prerequisite for successful adoption and sustainable use of digital extension services. We conducted an ex-ante assessment of user readiness (UR) for phone-based services. Design/Methodology/Approach: We developed an ex-ante framework to assess UR, considering capabilities, opportunities, and motivations of targeted users. The case study of Rwandan banana farmers served to verify the UR framework, using survey data from 690 smallholder farmers. Findings: Findings demonstrate limited capacity to access and use phone-based extension services, especially those requiring a smartphone, and a mismatch between expected UR and actual UR, current capabilities and opportunities. Findings provide entry points for designing suitable digital extension projects and interventions, suggesting a need for capacity building. Practical implications: The UR-framework provided understanding about current limitations in farmer readiness for digital extension. This ex-ante approach to explore UR before designing digital interventions for African farmers is recommended. It points at the importance of embedding digital technologies into existing practices and creating blends of ‘digital’ and ‘analogue’ or 'high-tech' and 'low-tech'. Theoretical implications: The UR-framework provides a structured approach to developing pre-intervention insights about users and use-context, supporting informed strategizing and decision-making about digital extension. It is a relevant addition to existing readiness frameworks, participatory design methods, and ex-post intervention performance assessments, as part of a balanced readiness level assessment. Originality/Value: This is the first ex-ante assessment of UR for digital extension services in an African context, and the first attempt to analyse Rwandan farmers’ readiness for digital extension services.

Purpose: While new rich learning opportunities emerged through the introduction of Innovation Platforms (IPs) in agricultural value chains, the extent to which IPs enhance farmer experiential learning is still unclear.Design/methodology/approach: This paper brings clarity to the above question by interviewing 91 coffee IP farmers. Data were analyzed through content analysis to generate overarching themes for farmers’ experiences, learning activities, and outcomes.Findings: Results reveal that participation in IP learning activities generates farmers’ knowledge to cope with coffee value chain challenges. Specifically, farmers’ making-meaning of challenges and generating new solutions represents an iteration between individual critical reflection and experimentation of value chain activities. The IPs facilitated multi-directional knowledge flowsamong farmers by mobilizing necessary resources.Practical implications: As many Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) governments cannot provide sufficient extension support, farmers increasingly rely on IPs whose processes stimulate members’ learning commitment and endeavors. Nevertheless, Governments can use these findings to tailor the design and implementation ofIPs to farmers’ experiential learning processes.Theoretical implications: The study contributes to experiential theory in the context of agriculture by advancing a model on how IPs can accelerate farmers’ experiential learning processes based on the challenges experienced.Originality/value: This article extends knowledge of experiential learning in IPs context.

When multiple retailers hold inventory to satisfy random demand, retailer inventory-sharing strategies can potentially reduce the supply-demand mismatch and increase overall supply chain performance. In this paper, we experimentally investigate alternative inventory-sharing strategies in a two-tier supply chain with an upstream manufacturer and two downstream retailers. In one setting, retailers act as if they are centralized and use a single quantity to fulfill joint demand. In the other, retailers are decentralized and face separate demands, but they can transfer inventory after demands are realized. In this latter decentralized scenario, we also consider whether the manufacturer or retailers have decision authority over the inventory transfer price. One key result is that when the retailers are decentralized and the manufacturer sets the transfer price, both retailers and the manufacturer earn higher profits than in the centralized retailer strategy, which runs counter to theory. We also find that when retailers are decentralized and set their own transfer price, the most equitable distribution of profits is achieved. In an effort to account for these results, we find that a model of fairness captures decisions well. Overall, by investigating how different inventory-sharing strategies affect the distribution of profits in a two-tier supply chain, our results provide guidance to firms considering how, if at all, they should enter such arrangements. This paper was accepted by Jay Swaminathan, operations management. Funding: The authors acknowledge financial support from Cornell University and the University of Virginia. Supplemental Material: The data files and electronic companion are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4323 .

Following state-level legal changes that increase labor dismissal costs, firms increase their innovation in new processes that facilitate the adoption of cost-saving production methods, especially in industries with a large share of labor costs in total costs. Firms with high innovation ability exhibit larger increases in process innovation and capital-labor ratios - an effect driven by both increases in capital investment and decreases in employment. By facilitating the adjustment of the input mix when conditions in input markets change, innovation ability allows firms to mitigate value losses and is a key driver of their performance.

High voltage/high power capacitor chargers are primarily interested in many industrial applications. Resonant converters have been a proper choice in such applications because of their advantages. However, the performance of the resonant converter is highly affected by the parasitic elements of the high voltage/high power transformer. Also, short circuit condition is a frequent event in high voltage applications, so that the resonant converter should be robust against the short circuit condition. This paper presents a novel LCCL resonant converter with current source characteristics used as a high voltage capacitor charger. The proposed resonant converter eliminates the undesirable effect of the stray capacitance in high voltage devices and is robust against the short circuit condition inherently. It also provides a semi-trapezoidal resonant current wave which produces a lower crest factor. Furthermore, a frequency-sweep operation is applied, which has advantages in reducing the resonant current's peak value and the resonant network's size. Simulation results show a satisfactory performance of the proposed resonant converter. Moreover, experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed resonant converter in the application of capacitor charging.

This note provides an evaluation of the contributions of the M5 Competition to the construction of prediction intervals. We consider the choice of criteria used in the evaluations, the relative performance of designed and benchmark methods and the take-home lessons both for statistical forecasters and for those interested in forecasting retail sales.

The “buy online and pick up in store” (BOPS) mode is gaining tremendous popularity among retailers since it is convenient for consumers and brings additional store sales to retailers. However, operating the BOPS channel requires additional investment, which is a challenge for retailers. This article considers the pricing strategies of competing dual-channel retailers, focuses on whether and when they should adopt the BOPS strategy, and explores the impacts of market factors on the equilibrium outcomes. Since retailers’ decisions are usually made sequentially in reality, we use the Stackelberg game model to analyze retailers’ optimal strategies. First, we show that the follower's price is not always lower than the leader's price. Specifically, when the unit additional profit from cross-selling of the follower is low enough, the follower will set a higher price than the leader. Second, we find that retailers prefer the BOPS strategy when the fixed costs for offering BOPS channels are low enough, or when the difference between the additional profits from cross-selling of two retailers is sufficiently large. Third, we present an interesting insight: an increase in product return probability or retailer cost of handling a returned product can be beneficial to retailers.

This note updates the 2019 review article “Retail forecasting: Research and practice” in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the substantial new research on machine-learning algorithms, when applied to retail. It offers new conclusions and challenges for both research and practice in retail demand forecasting.

Rails of unhealthy conditions are considered as major targets in the rail surface inspection and this study focuses on inspecting five types of major rail surface flaws, corrugations, defects, the shelling, squats, and grinding marks, via analyzing railway images. We propose a deep learning powered rail surface multi-flaw identification framework composed of two main components, a novel rail extractor for extracting rails from the background and a cascading rail surface flaw identifier for precisely identifying different flaws. The novelty of the cascading rail surface flaw identifier includes: 1) An unhealthy rail detector developed based on a DenseNet backbone for recognizing the healthy/unhealthy status on rail surfaces and 2) A rail flaw classifier for identifying flaw types on unhealthy rail surfaces. A new feature joint learning process integrating latent features derived from selected hierarchies of the DenseNet backbone as well as two traditional feature extractors, the local binary pattern and the gray level co-occurrence matrix, is developed to facilitate the rail flaw classifier to offer accurate identification results. The effectiveness of the proposed framework for rail surface multi-flaw identification is validated with datasets provided by an industrial partner in China and collected from online sources. Based on collected datasets, the proposed framework is capable to identify the rail with unhealthy conditions and its flaw type. The overall identification performance can achieve a 98.2% accuracy. Three groups of benchmarking methods are employed to verify advantages of the proposed framework. Computational results demonstrate the impressive performance of the proposed framework in the rail surface multi-flaw identification and its applicability on new datasets.

Despite extensive research on the value of collaborative forecasting among supply chain partners, there has been limited attention to the actual mechanisms of forecast sharing. We propose using cost-function-based prediction markets as means of sharing demand forecasts. We consider a decentralized two-stage supply chain with a supplier who sells to a retailer, in which both partners receive demand forecast updates. In the first stage, the supplier and the retailer agree on a collaborative forecasting scheme to form a consensus forecast. We consider two schemes: collaborative forecasting using cost-function-based prediction markets in which partners pay a set-up cost to operate a prediction market, and direct collaborative forecasting in which partners directly share their forecasts with each other and resolve their forecast differences through costly actions. In the second stage, we analyze the game between the supplier and the retailer to determine the retailer’s optimal order quantity as well as the supplier’s optimal wholesale price. We show that demand forecast sharing using cost-function-based prediction markets results in a Pareto improvement of the partners’ profit over the alternative of directly sharing forecasts. Furthermore, we show that this Pareto improvement is monotone with respect to supply chain partners’ forecast accuracy. We conduct an extensive numerical study to provide further insights into the effect of the return on forecast sharing investment, forecast accuracy, and level of demand uncertainty on the benefits gained by implementing cost-function-based prediction markets.

A world with large disparities in development between rural and urban areas could never achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). Issues related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers are fundamental to the stability and people's welfare of China as well as other developing countries. Despite the growing demand and national initiative for rural revitalization, rural innovation has received little attention in the innovation literature. Drawing from the new growth theory, institutional theory and innovation system theory, this paper proposes the rural innovation system, which is a complex socioeconomic network that aims to revitalize the countryside and achieve balanced and sustainable development. This paper compares the rural and urban innovation system, introduces a theoretical structural model of the rural innovation system, including a) technology innovation, b) institutional and management innovation, and c) community-based network and intermediary platform innovation. Then it outlines the future challenges in fostering a strong rural innovation system. The rural innovation system proposed makes direct contributions to the literature of rural studies, innovation system, and public policy, and offers both China and the world a new perspective for realizing rural revitalization, anti-poverty and global sustainable development.

This paper investigates the effect of the Internet on tax revenue instability, notably through the international trade channel. It has used a sample of 142 countries over the period 1995-2017, and relied primarily on the two-step system Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) estimators (but also incidentally on the Error Component Two-Stage Least Squares estimator). Tax revenue instability is primarily measured by the instability of non-resource tax revenue, but also by the instability of total tax revenue (for robustness check). The findings indicate that the Internet exerts a negative effect on tax revenue instability. Interestingly, this effect genuinely translates through the international trade channel, regardless of the measure of tax revenue instability considered. Countries enjoy a higher negative effect of the Internet on tax revenue instability as they enjoy a greater participation in international trade. These findings, therefore, add to the potential benefits of the Internet adoption (e.g., strengthening countries' participation in international trade, enhance their tax revenue performance and promote tax reform, including in developing countries) by showing that it could also help to stabilize tax revenue, particularly through the degree of countries' participation in international trade.

It is common that airlines encounter a disruption of a flight schedule, which is mainly caused by resource shortages. In case of a disruption, subject to scarce resources, most of airlines lose flexibility of performing aircraft recovery on the basis of business interest priorities and need to delay, swap, and cancel flights. This paper proposes an air-rail inter-modal strategy to incorporate a High-Speed Rail (HSR) transport mode into an aviation network for aircraft recovery. The air-rail inter-modal strategy focuses on occasionally operational integration of existing airside and HSR infrastructure capacities. It is different from air-rail cooperation implemented in Europe which emphasizes a long-term strategy. In addition to modelling the air-rail inter-modal strategy, an inter-modal time-band network is presented. Modelling is applied to a pure aviation network and the inter-modal network. Comparison results show that the inter-modal air-rail strategy helps to reduce the number of cancelled flights and the total disruption cost.

One advantage of online retail is that a large number of products can be displayed at low cost. However, online retailers must decide which of these products to carry in inventory (stock items) and which to order from suppliers when a customer places an order (nonstock items). In this paper, we empirically investigate how carrying a product in inventory affects its online sales. We use data from a European furniture and interior design retailer consisting of daily sales transactions and inventory data covering 18 months. We use a quasi-natural experiment—random transitions of products in and out of inventory at the retailer’s central warehouse—to estimate the causal effect of carrying inventory on sales. Our results show a strong and statistically significant increase in sales of, on average, 65% associated with having the product available in stock. More interestingly, this effect differs between products and is moderated by the price of the product: sales of more expensive products are less sensitive to the product being in stock. We use these results to draw insights on which types of items to carry in inventory. This paper was accepted by Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz, operations management. Supplemental Material: Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4777 .

We investigate whether a firm’s financial statement comparability is associated with the firm’s tax strategy. We hypothesize that external observers (e.g., press, shareholders, analysts, and tax authorities) can better detect a firm’s atypical tax strategy when the firm has high financial statement comparability with its industry peers. Detection and its consequent penalties should restrain firm managers from choosing tax strategies that deviate significantly from those of industry peers. Using firms’ uncertain tax benefits (UTBs) as a proxy for tax avoidance, we find that the UTBs of firms with high financial statement comparability move toward their industry peers in subsequent periods. Results suggest that comparability reduces tax aggressiveness for high tax-avoidance firms and enhances tax aggressiveness for low tax-avoidance firms, in comparison with those of industry peers. Overall, these findings indicate a strong within-industry harmonization in tax avoidance for firms with high financial statement comparability.

With the diversity of customer needs and complexity of technology innovation, many high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) turn to open innovation, to produce the perfect match between market demands and firm resources. However, questions still exist in relation to open innovation in SMEs. Based on a framework combining both inbound and outbound open innovation with the four-stage new product development (NPD) process, this article explores the open innovation strategies adopted by high-tech SMEs in emerging economies for NPD and the reasons behind it through case studies. Results show that high-tech SMEs in emerging economies selectively adopt open innovation for NPD at different stages with various partners based on their needs. High-tech SMEs prefer to be closed to protect the know-how at the experimentation stage. Regarding the open innovation strategy, at ideation stage, SMEs adopt inbound open innovation for basic research and customer knowledge, while at manufacturing and commercialization stages, SMEs conduct both inbound and outbound open innovation. The analysis raises awareness of customer knowledge and customization to high-tech SMEs for NPD. This article contributes to the theories and practices on open innovation in SMEs.

Globally, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are engines of economic growth and job creation. After the pandemic, innovation activities have become more critical than ever as a generator of competitiveness. Therefore, we need to better understand the factors that lead to innovation in SMEs. This study aims to analyze the role of relational capital and technology orientation in innovation to appreciate its final impact on firm performance. The main results reveal a strong positive effect of relational capital on innovation, but the effect is not so strong as firm performance. We also found a strong positive effect of relational capital on technology orientation. Finally, we offer some clues in the debate on technology as a source of innovation and how relational capital and technology orientation are related to a firm’s performance. The results reveal significant implications for innovation policies and relational capital strategies for SMEs.

Over the last 2 years, nursing leaders have operated in a fluid and disruptive environment, constantly adapting to changes in the workplace. The global pandemic challenged these leaders on various fronts: workforce, technology, and regulatory, threatening the status quo of traditional orderly change. Factors external to organizations and a highly contagious disease were forcing rapid hourly and daily changes. Today, nursing leader skills are also morphing, requiring a revisit of the competencies needed for visionary leadership. Traditional models of leadership need to shift from transformational to disruptive. This article reviews and offers suggestions for competencies needed in the future by nurse leaders.

With the development of e-commerce, manufacturers now have the opportunity to compete with existing retail channels by introducing their direct channels. Encroachment weakens the strength of retail channels, which may affect the manufacturer's decision on whether to provide trade credit financing to retailers. This study investigates the strategic interaction between manufacturer's encroachment and retailers’ financing choices (trade credit financing or external financing) in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and two capital-constrained retailers. We find that only encroachment cost below a certain threshold will make the manufacturer encroach on the market, while manufacturer encroachment is harmful to capital-constrained retailers. Surprisingly, these retailers can expand the ratios of equity financing in anticipation of manufacturer encroachment, which is a new strategic role of equity financing. In addition, the more intense the channel competition (the larger the credit gap between the two retailers) is, the less (more) likely the manufacturer will be to encroach. Further, we find that retailers prefer trade credit (external) financing at a low (high) bank loan interest rate in a non-encroachment scenario, while they prefer external financing in an encroachment scenario. However, the manufacturer always prefers the case that both retailers choosing external financing. Finally, there are financing choice conflicts between the manufacturer and retailers in the non-encroachment scenario. A high-credit retailer choosing trade credit financing may make all members achieve a Pareto improvement when the credit gap between two retailers is large; otherwise, both retailers choosing external financing is a Pareto improvement.

The sharing economy has disrupted the retailing industry by increasing competition as an emerging platform of service innovation. Today’s retailing is transforming to play a role in the sharing economy as consumers can complete transactions more easily among one another. However, it is unclear whether retailers should own sharing economy platforms or partner with other, independently owned platforms. Thus, the purpose of this research is to better understand how retailer involvement in the sharing economy (i.e., ownership of vs. collaboration with sharing economy apps) affects anticipated service quality and value co-creation. The current study examines the effects of retailer ownership vs. collaboration on service quality and customer value co-creation, respectively, and documents perceived credibility as an important mediator. The findings suggest that full ownership (vs. collaboration with an independent app) can lead customers to anticipate higher service quality and greater value co-creation due to higher perceived credibility.

Governments and publics in Europe and around the world have turned to innovation in response to the manifold economic, environmental, and societal challenges we are facing. However, innovations often end up in what is popularly termed as the "valley of death" between upstream creation and downstream product development and implementation. Consequently, the benefits of innovation do not always reach the citizens. In addition, critically informed governance of innovations matter because it allows steering of innovations in response to the values and end points desired by society. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed the rise of digital health and new information and communications technologies (ICTs). The pandemic underscored the need for innovation governance between global North and the global South. We report and discuss, in this study, the development of the innXchange innovation wheel to improve innovation creation and management, using a case study of cooperation between Europe and Africa. The innovation wheel offers best practice guidance and framework to build capacity for innovation dimensions such as partnership mobilization, evaluation, and monitoring, not to mention innovation literacy. The framework emphasizes active engagement of all key stakeholders from the very beginning, also referred to as "systematic early dialog." We propose the incorporation of systematic early dialog as the best practice guidance in global South and global North cooperation for health care and ICT innovation. The framework is a novel instrument to help overcome the current barriers in planetary health innovation management and consequently, bring breakthrough discoveries in ICTs and innovative ideas to the people.

Globalization has brought about concerns of domestic job losses due to outsourcing to countries like China. The ‘employment footprint’ concept provides new insights into the implications of trade for employment. Using this approach for the period of 1995–2008, we analyze the relation of US jobs with international trade, particularly with China. Furthermore, we compare the US employment footprint with its labor endowment to assess if the country could be self-sufficient in terms of labor. We find that the US’s consumption increasingly depends on foreign workers. The country ‘consumes’ more labor than is nationally available; thus, self-sufficiency is not possible under realistic assumptions. Moreover, the US has benefited from jobs–especially in services–generated by the world economy. Referring to Albee’s famous play about living in illusions, we use ‘Virginia Wu’ as a Chinese version of ‘Virginia Woolf’ to argue that the perceived threat of China (Virginia Wu) is only an illusion.

In this paper a system is developed for monitoring the crops in green house using solar energy. India is an agricultural country and the agricultural sector accounts for 18% of GDP of India. This sector provides 50% employment to Indian workforce. As per 2011 census of India, almost 65% of people are fully dependent on agriculture. In spite of fertile land, crops yields are not more than compared to developed countries. Therefore, it is not wrong to say that from time to time there has been less development and research in agriculture sector. Technology may play a vital role in agricultural sector, because it reduces human effort and time. The developed system is a combination of power electronics and power system in which the system uses GSM technique (Global System for Mobile communication), Arduino, and various sensors to sense the real time data in greenhouse. Using sensor, the system obtains the real time data of the crops and then transmits it on the user mobile. The user can monitor and control the temperature, watering and light through mobile.

Innovations have the potential to help us address and overcome many of the challenges that agriculture is facing today. Yet, at the same time, they have the potential to create new, sometimes even more challenging, problems, especially when they are not governed in a sustainable way. Governing agricultural innovation sustainably requires understanding of all components that influence, and are influenced by, innovation processes, interactions across societal levels, and the normative and power dynamics that come together to shape the direction and outcomes of innovation processes. Hitherto, approaches to (agricultural) innovation and transition tend to specialize on a specific societal scale or sub-aspect of innovation or transition processes. In this article we aim to bring the strengths of some of the main approaches (Multi-Level Perspective, Agricultural Innovation Systems, Responsible Innovation, Innovation Management, Theory of Planned Behaviour) and insights from environmental governance literature together into a comprehensive framework. The framework describes seven key components and their interactions: macro context, governance system, immediate context, innovative and adaptive capacity of the actors, psychosocial factors, and the innovation process itself. Based on these, we present a subset of guiding questions that can be used diagnostically or for design purposes to support the sustainable governance of agricultural innovation processes.

How firms use workforce size adjustment as a strategic response to external shocks such as exchange-rate fluctuations is an important but not yet fully understood topic. To address the void in the literature, we apply the strategy tripod theoretical framework, which sees the external shocks as an industrial impact, the budget constraints as an institutional force, and the firm leverage as an organisational capability to examine the firms’ strategic response in terms of workforce size adjustment in the Chinese economy context. Based on longitudinal data of Chinese manufacturing firms, our analysis finds that facing exchange rate shocks, firms with hard budget constraint are more responsive in adjusting their workforce than firms with soft budget constraint. Furthermore, highly levered firms, with hard budget constraint, will adjust their workforce more aggressively than firms with less debt in their financial structure.

The objective of the current study was to examine the role of innovative ideas in business sustainability. The mediating role of innovative process, innovative production and innovative supply chain was also examined. Therefore, the relationship between innovative ideas, innovative process, innovative production, innovative supply chain and business sustainability was examined. Data was collected from the employees of textile companies. As the Indonesian textile companies were under investigation in the current study. Data was collected from Indonesian textile company employees. 300 questionnaires were sent to the textile companies with the help of email. Hence, email surveys were preferred with the help of questionnaires. Results of the study highlights that the innovative ideas had a major role in business sustainability. Introduction of new ideas inside the boundaries of the organization expedites the business sustainability. Additionally, innovative ideas have a positive effect on innovative production and innovative supply chains. Moreover, innovative production and innovative supply chain have a positive effect on business sustainability. Therefore, innovative ideas increase the innovative production and supply chain which further shows a positive effect on business sustainability.

This paper investigates the impact of separating the affiliated businesses from rail operations and the associated efficiency gain on firms' exporting decisions by rail. First, an economic model was built to analytically show that an efficiency improvement in rail operations would increase the firm's product variety but decreases the skewness of export by rail. The paper then utilized China's rail reform to separate the affiliated businesses from the rail sector in 2003 as a quasi-natural experiment and adopted the difference-in-differences (DID) method to empirically verify and quantify the analytical findings. Specifically, it is found the reform to separate the affiliated businesses significantly improved the efficiency of China's rail operations. The resultant efficiency gain then encouraged firms to export by rail, with more variety of export products and higher value. More importantly, the firm's skewness of export by rail has also been reduced. The relevant policy implications have also been provided.

Debt-shared bank financing, as an innovative and collaborative financing scheme, allows the supplier to (partially) share the retailer’s bank loan obligation, including principal and interest. We study the operational and financial decisions of a chain with a supplier (Stackelberg leader) selling to a capital-constrained retailer via a debt-shared contract. We derive the equilibrium debt-shared coefficient, wholesale price, order quantity and bank’s interest rate with the retailer in different wealth regions. The very poor retailer always accepts debt-sharing and earns a profit, even if the supplier sets the wholesale price up to the retail price. The medium poor retailer might enter a supplier’s debt-sharing hole (a retailer’s wealth region) and acquire zero profit, by using debt-sharing with a wholesale price up to the retail price. For the medium poor retailer outside the hole or the medium rich retailer, the supplier offers either an optimal debt-shared bank financing contract or an optimal price-only contract at her benefit, mainly depending on the production cost and the retailer’s capital. Under debt-shared bank financing, both the supplier’s profit and the chain’s efficiency improve. The retailer might overstock when the production cost is high. Computational studies show the not very rich retailer’s profit is a bowl-shaped function of his capital and the bottom is the hole. The very poor retailer might earn a larger profit than under the optimal price-only contract. The supplier’s profit is unimodal and it achieves globally optimum in the hole (at the upper bound of the hole if production cost is low).

This article develops a system dynamics model for innovation ecosystems in the high-tech industry. The model emphasizes the interactions between high-tech enterprises, the government, and universities in the innovation process. In particular, we use two high-tech instruments, the Mars Rock Corer and the Soil Preparation System, in the aerospace innovations developed by Hong Kong Polytechnic University. These instruments are a byproduct of collaborations with the European Space Agency, Russian Space Agency, and China Space Agency. They span decades of space missions to the moon and Mars. Furthermore, we propose a three parities systems dynamics model to study innovation behaviors. This model can be used to study and analyze the stakeholders’ interactions in high-technology-oriented innovation ecosystems. Theoretical, computational, and simulation studies are also conducted to understand and evaluate the evolution of the ecosystem. The results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach, which can be applied in on a large scale and in complex space projects.

International audience; Assessment of visual encryption of video and image content requires a reliable estimation of content recognizability and low quality. As pointed out in the literature, current methods are insufficient and research into this topic, as well as into the relation between low quality and recognizability, is still lacking. This lack of research is primarily due to a lack of data. To improve on the status-quo we have taken a recognizability database and performed a subjective quality evaluation on a subset of the images. This gives us a new database with both subjective recognizability and quality information and allows to delve into the relation between low quality and recognizability. We analyze the relationship between quality and recognizability as well as the predictive quality of state of the art visual quality indices. We show that the visual quality indices are poor indicators for the estimation of recognizability. Furthermore, we show that they must be a poor fit because of the disparity between two distinct perceptual tasks: quality and recognizability.

The article deals with the development of a new model for taxing personal capital income and business profits incorporating elements of a (lifetime oriented) ACE system and of a traditional system of capital income taxation. This new approach adheres to decision neutrality at the enterprise level while taking into account both international competitiveness of company taxation and the requirement to meet the redistribution goal of the government. Neither a purely consumption based tax system nor the traditional tax system is capable to meet these requirements in a similar way. The distinctive core of the new system is that - according to the ideal approach of taxing lifetime income - notional interest on equity capital is deductible from the taxable profit of enterprises irrespective of their legal form. Interest income, dividends and capital gains received by individuals will be taxed according to a flat rate tax when they are withdrawn from their qualified bank accounts. Compared to the status quo, the introduction of the proposed tax system in Germany would make equity financing of investments more attractive. This could provide companies with the necessary cushion to survive financial or economic crises as they would be equipped with more equity capital.

Everybody who owns a smartphone is the chattel owner of an artefact embodying patented inventions. The extent to which one may use the smartphone depends on the scope of patent rights and the impli...

Social media are becoming increasingly popular in a professional context and, if used appropriately, can be beneficial to postgraduate students. Little is known regarding the extent to which postgraduate students engage with social media for postgraduate purposes. The present study aimed to understand postgraduate students' general use of social media, as well as investigate social media use specifically for postgraduate (educational and/or scientific) purposes. A total of 231 postgraduate students from 45 countries completed a mixed-methods survey. Instagram was the most frequently used social media platform overall, with Twitter being the most commonly used for postgraduate purposes. Most students posted educational and/or scientific content on social media platforms, with approximately one-third having a social media account specific for postgraduate/scientific content. The most common reasons postgraduate students access social media for postgraduate-related purposes were personal connection with community, science communication, motivations and learning, and networking. The most common reasons for posting postgraduate content online were self-branding, accessing a broad audience, science communication, and building a postgraduate community. Overall, postgraduate students are commonly using social media for postgraduate purposes which presents opportunities to mitigate pitfalls of the student experience and promote positive mental health among this group. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Attention in teacher professional development programs for situating teacher learning in the workplace has increased during the last decades. This article presents an overview of what is described in recent educational workplace learning literature about facilitating and constraining conditions of the workplace. These findings are discussed from the viewpoint of general workplace learning insights. Although workplace learning potentially has several advantages, the six workplace factors identified for learning to occur, also show the complexity of teacher workplace learning and several potential problems. It is argued that not all learning “at work” is good, and a balance is necessary between individual and organizational learning, and off-site and on-site learning.

Are retail investors using uncurated disclosures in form of patents for their investment decisions? This study uses the investment decisions of retail investors and variation in the local availability of patent information to answer this question. The variation comes from changes in the locations of U.S. Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries over time. I find a strong increase in the local trading volume of stocks after the release of a patent in counties that have easier access to patent information. In addition, trades made by retail investors with easier access to this information yield higher returns, compared to trades made by other investors. These results indicate that disclosures of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office facilitate the dissemination of patent information to retail investors. Furthermore, these results suggest that retail investors complement traditional curated disclosures with uncurated disclosures in form of patents.

Purpose: The study proposes that the individuals with protean career attitudes employ best work practices through job crafting behaviors and attain desired career outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of protean career attitudes on career outcomes, i.e., Perceived Employability (PE) and Subjective Career Success (SCS) through job crafting behavior. Methodology: The study has a quantitative, deductive research design that mainly focuses on the testation of the hypotheses. This study has been conducted on full-time faculty members of public and private sector Universities of Pakistan Findings: The data from the employees working in the universities of Pakistan revealed that PCA has a positive impact on individual career outcomes. It was also found that there exists a pathway of serial mediation from job crafting towards perceived employability to achieve career success. The individuals who craft their jobs are more likely to enhance their employability, ultimately leading to career success. The study highlights the importance of PCA and Job Crafting behaviors, yet un-explored phenomena, for the employees for career development. Implications: Employees who want to progress and develop their careers should actively engage in task crafting behavior in task crafting, relational crafting, or cognitive crafting.

Research to examine the role of tax knowledge and tax awareness for tax compliance by e-commerce entrepreneurs. The sample is 50 e-commerce entrepreneurs, obtained by a simple random sample technique. Multiple linear regression was used to analyze the effect of tax knowledge and awareness on tax compliance. The important point of the research results is that knowledge and awareness of taxes owned by e-commerce entrepreneurs have a positive effect on tax compliance.

Purpose. The main purpose of the research is to substantiate the methodological approach of defuzzification and to define its peculiarities in the process of estimating the value of agricultural lands. Methodology / approach. The research purpose included the use of a set of appropriate methods. In particular, the fuzzy logic techniques formed the basis of the research. The system approach was used in order to determine the role of land resources in the enterprise potential and the corresponding spheres of their management. The analysis and synthesis methods were used in the process of definition of impact factors of land resources value. The cartographic method was used for the needs of graphical display of humus content in the land plots of the analyzed enterprise. The generalization method was used in the process of forming conclusions. Results. The article defines the peculiarities of defuzzification in the process of estimating the value of agricultural lands. The results provided the methodological basis for considering the qualitative metrics in the process of estimation as well as for granting the numerical interpretation for linguistic variables. The corresponding methodology was overviewed at the example of land plot size. The quantitative reference limits for “small”, “medium” and “large” land plots were defined. Research results made it possible to form the sequence of stages, which are to be undertaken, in order to provide numerical values for qualitative characteristics of agricultural lands. A decision tree was built for the needs of formation of management decisions. According to the data of researched enterprise, the dependence of the value of agricultural lands (for the needs of management accounting) on the size of the land plot and the humus content was determined. Originality / scientific novelty. The article improves the methodological approach to determining the value of agricultural lands as of an element of enterprise potential based on the use of fuzzy logic techniques, which, in contrast to existing approaches, allows taking into account both quantitative and qualitative factors in the process of estimating the value of land resources for the needs of their management. Applying the respective approach increases the level of accuracy, relevance, and adequacy to market realities of the results of estimating the value of agricultural lands for the needs of their management. Practical value / implications. The results of the research provided an opportunity to improve the quality and efficiency of the process of estimating the value of agricultural lands. The corresponding process is characterized by a high level of complexity and uncertainty due to the presence of a significant number of qualitative factors influencing the value of the land resources. The approach considered in the article makes it possible to take into account the influence of relevant qualitative factors by giving them numerical certainty through the use of fuzzy logic techniques. The proposed approach will provide an opportunity to increase the accuracy and relevance of estimating the value of land resources as of an element of enterprise potential for the making of corresponding managerial decisions. The proposed methodological approach was implemented with the use of data of agricultural enterprise, which made it possible to take into account linguistic variables (land plot size and chemical properties of the soil) when forming the managerial decisions about land plots. The decision tree was also formed, which serves as a means of supporting management decisions in the process of forming the value of agricultural lands.

Sexism and racism in academia have contributed to women and people of color being underrepresented at increasing levels of the academic hierarchy. We investigated whether people with socially marginalized identities experience disparities regarding rates of publishing and inclusion in the scientific-review process. Using a sample of academics in psychology departments at research-focused universities in the United States (n = 885), we found gender disparities for PhD holders and racial/ethnic disparities for graduate students. Specifically, female PhD holders and graduate students of color reported fewer publications and were less likely to be included in the scientific-review process compared with male PhD holders and White graduate students, respectively. Differences in research activity by gender and race/ethnicity in a contemporary sample of psychologists reflected a 'leaky pipeline' that persists in psychology departments

Research purpose. This article presents insights on the concept and key factors of the digital economy based on a literature review. The article focuses on the identification of the factors of the digital economy and evaluation of their importance in terms of the European Union countries. The aim of the article is to determine the factors of the digital economy and evaluate their importance. Design / Methodology / Approach. Panel regression analysis was used to evaluate which indicator of selected digital economy indicators is the most important. Panel regression was chosen to have an overall view of all European Union as one unit. Findings. Digital technologies are radically changing the way society, business or the whole economy operates. The survey of this article reveals that the high-quality infrastructure of the internet plays an essential role in the digital economy. In order to create value and improve the ICT sector performance in the whole economy, high-quality infrastructure in terms of the internet is needed. Only fast and high-stability connection ensures needed infrastructure and development in the digital economy. Business and government should invest in high-quality internet infrastructure to ensure the steady growth of the digital economy. To take full advantage of digital infrastructure and the digital economy, individuals should use it daily. Daily usage of the internet has a positive effect on the percentage for the ICT sector in GDP regardless of activities on the internet. Originality / Value / Practical implications. Definition of the digital economy was suggested: the digital economy is considered to be all economic activities that include using or creating digital technologies to generate value-added of digital enablers and development of digital infrastructure, which is the key factor of the digital economy. High quality and available for everyone internet access is crucial for steady growth and the best performance of the digital economy. This study has several practical contributions. This survey may serve as a guide for understanding the concept and the factors of the digital economy for other researchers. We also propose a potential explanation why countries should invest in high technology infrastructure, and these results can help to create a new strategy for ICT sector expansion in different countries.

This article brings the role of talent migration to the discussion of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mainly focusing on academic talents. We explore the foundation for BRI's talent development as a long-term and gradual process building on policies dating back to China's opening in 1978. China's opening saw an increased number of individuals who could improve their skills, knowledge, and network from China globally or inside China from elsewhere on the globe. These global experiences have resulted in the Chinese government, companies, and institutions' necessity to compete for talent or human resources on a global “market”. We interpret the call for establishing people-to-people connections within the BRI as an intensification of China's existing talent strategy. However, at a micro-level, we continue to find that international talents and returned migrants perceive themselves as outsiders which hinders China's talent attraction policies and results in a circular movement of academic talents to and from China

There is increasing awareness of the benefits of formal mentorship programmes in radiology. In the context of the COVID 19 pandemic which impacted on education, professional engagement and networking within the wider radiological community, the European Society of Head and Neck Radiology (ESHNR) decided to develop a formal mentoring programme. The ESHNR mentoring initiative is novel in its scope, whereby European and international members of a subspecialty radiology society are matched into mentor–mentee pairings to disseminate good practice, knowledge and ideas. The purpose of this report is to describe the motivations, planning, challenges and early experience of the ESHNR mentoring programme together with initial feedback from the scheme.The development of the programme and iterative modifications during the first phase of the scheme are described. The programme has enrolled 33 mentors and 27 mentees with international representation and 24 mentor–mentee pairs have participated in 2.6 (mean) meetings. The experience and benefits reported by the participating ESHNR members (mentees and mentors) were evaluated by a questionnaire at six months following the start of the programme. There were 80% of mentors and 88% of mentees who strongly agreed that the mentoring programme was rewarding rather than an obligation, and all participants reported that they would recommend the scheme to colleagues.A formal mentoring programme has been established for an international subspecialty radiology society. The early experience is encouraging and suggests that it is both useful and sustainable. Our experiences may be of benefit to other subspecialty societies considering a mentoring programme.

The issues of business management development on the border between Russia and China and the integration of science in the field of artificial intelligence with the real sector of the Chinese economy are of particular interest in the development of knowledge'based cooperation, the transfer of advanced technologies and the introduction of artificial intelligence in the sphere of border cooperation between our countries, including the full range of services related to border crossing and the development of all types of infrastructure on both sides of our common border

As clients’ needs change, firms need to adapt and innovate, but how do firms innovate if they have not done it before? We study law firms as novice innovators. Law firms are generally conservative and averse to exploration-based innovation. We show that law firms face two challenges in starting innovation: developing innovation capacity and gaining legitimacy for innovative behavior. Employing a qualitative comparative analysis approach, we used 50 in-depth interviews with innovating multinational law firms headquartered in the United Kingdom to present six configurations of factors leading to service innovation in law firms. Clients and competitors play a key role both as innovation stimuli and legitimizing actors. We demonstrate that knowledge-based networks are important for service innovation, but legitimizing strategies are important for novice innovators to ensure innovation is recognized, approved, and diffused.

By virtue of the low-cost and high-efficiency internet traffic monetizing ability, key opinion leaders (KOL) have achieved great success on social media platforms in terms of agricultural brand e-commerce marketing. However, opinion leaders tend to adopt different promotion strategies according to their preference to brands. How to optimize online marketing strategies based on the difference in opinion leaders’ attitudes remains a problem demanding prompt solution for agricultural product brand enterprises. This study takes agricultural product brand enterprises and opinion leaders with limited rationality as the research subjects. On the premise of considering the difference in opinion leaders’ attitudes towards brands, the paper combines the evolutionary game theory to construct agricultural product brands’ online promotion strategy evolutionary model, adopts visualization system to simulate the evolutionary process of brand online promotion strategies, verifies model validity and explores the influencing mechanism of punishment on opinion leaders’ negative promotion. Results of multi-agent-based simulation demonstrate that investment in brand promotion, irrelevant to opinion leaders’ attitudes towards brands, pertains to the absolute advantage strategy of agricultural product brand enterprises. Reinforced intensity of punishment against opinion leaders following negative promotion may change opinion leaders’ promotion strategies for agricultural product brands. Moreover, the present study provides an idea and reference to the management decisions of agricultural product brand enterprises’ online brand promotion strategies.

The article considers and systematizes the main factors influencing the process of diffusion and adoption of technologies and innovations, offers marketing methods to reduce the impact of barriers to the process of diffusion.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused unparalleled morbidity and mortality across the globe. Healthcare agencies, public health departments, and academic institutions experienced widespread disruption to usual operations. These events had an adverse impact on the nursing workforce. Nurse leaders in California rallied to identify and remediate the effects of COVID-19 on the nursing workforce. This article describes the strategy and interventions. Nurse leaders should invest resources in state workforce centers to ensure the health and supply of a strong nursing workforce.

The persistent gender imbalance in the labor market - both in Russia and globally - is largely formed during the school years as the period of the development of professional preferences and human capital. The article presents the views of schoolchildren on various aspects of the STEM school subjects, including their common interests, attitudes to the STEM teaching, their role in choosing a career related to STEM, and the ideas of schoolchildren about jobs related to STEM. The authors refer to the Soviet experience of overcoming gender inequality in the labor market, in particular, by helping women to get the industrial and specialized technical education. The results of the search study show that for the majority of girls, especially those not engaged in special education projects focused on STEM, school profile lessons do not contribute to changing gender representations of professions. The authors argue that to change these gender representations we need classes focused not on the academic achievements but on the practical features of professions that are in demand in the labor market. Such an experience is necessary for it is impossible to choose the most promising career if you do not know about it or if you are convinced that you would not cope with a particular job. At the same time, the schoolchildren should understand that some of todays professions have very short future, for instance, due to the inevitable consequences of automation. The schoolchildrens positioning of all professions as gender-neutral can be used for a positive study of career-related challenges and for designing career-guidance activities as taking into account those aspects that are essential for girls and boys, even if at the moment they are perceived negatively.

Using entrepreneurial discovery theory, this study explains how digital applications can drive entrepreneurial alertness across heterogenous innovation ecosystems. A diverse set of stakeholders have been analyzed when performing entrepreneurial discovery tasks on a digital platform ecosystem. A quantitative survey-based experimentation phase with 686 individuals was conducted in two moderate-innovation ecosystems—Greece and Spain—and two defined as innovation leaders—Scotland and the Netherlands—on the European Innovation Scoreboard. Based on structural equation models, the findings show that digital applications, including discovery tasks, facilitate entrepreneurial alertness regardless of the innovation ecosystem in which the user operates. Additionally, Kruskal-Wallis tests reinforce that the relationship between perceived quality of digital applications for discovery tasks and perceived entrepreneurial alertness remains significantly positive despite heterogeneity across stakeholders and innovation ecosystem. Through its psychological foundations, this work reveals how digital technologies alert any kind of individual to potential entrepreneurial opportunities. It thus contributes to research on digital economies by evaluating digital technologies’ potential to boost psychological starting drivers of any entrepreneurial endeavor across innovation ecosystem. Although this study is of interest to a wide range of stakeholders, it is particularly relevant for potential entrepreneurs and policymakers as an inspiration for new ideas to strengthen sustainable innovation ecosystems., Technovation, 118, ISSN:0166-4972

Digital trade has become an important driver of global commerce and accounts for an increasing share of many countries’ economies. While progress in digital trade-related discussions at the World T...