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This paper proposes a semantic framework for Business Model evaluation and its application to a real case study in the context of smart energy and sustainable mobility. It presents an ontology based representation of an original business model and examples of inferential rules for knowledge extraction and automatic population of the ontology. The real case study belongs to the GreenCharge European Project, that in these last years is proposing some original business models to promote sustainable e-mobility plans. An original OWL Ontology contains all relevant Business Model concepts referring to GreenCharge’s domain, including a semantic description of TestCards, survey results and inferential rules.

PurposeAlthough the topic of performance budgeting has received considerable attention in the literature, it is mainly explored in the field of public management and administration, and little research exists in the field of public sector accounting. The purpose of this paper is to provide more insight into how non-performance indicators are integrated in budget documents, thereby bridging the gap between the literature in both fields. Furthermore, the influence of potential drivers of differences in the incorporation of non-financial performance indicators are explored.Design/methodology/approachThis study starts with an overview of historical developments in Dutch local government for a period of 50 years. This is followed by an empirical assessment of the current incorporation of non-financial performance indicators based on a dataset of 107 municipal budget documents for FY2019.FindingsThe authors' historical overview shows that several initiatives were employed to encourage municipalities to integrate non-financial performance indicators in their budget documents. A search to connect policy and means can be observed, which has not developed linearly over time, but mostly in reaction to major changes in national legislation. The authors find a large variation among the municipalities in their current incorporation of non-financial performance indicators. Contrary to theoretical expectations, output indicators (and not outcome indicators) are most frequently incorporated. Furthermore, the authors find that more indicators are incorporated if a municipality is larger, more willing to innovate and if it has less financial resources.Originality/valueThis article contributes to the understanding of how to incorporate non-financial performance indicators in public sector financial statements. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is an area that is not explored before.

Exclusivity is a key concern when designing a licensing contract, yet the organizational factors that influence the exclusive provision of university licenses remain underexplored. This study provides a deeper understanding of this question by developing a balanced framework that considers both licensors (universities) and licensees (companies) in licensing deals. Furthermore, we posit that university prestige affects both a university's ability to conduct non-exclusive licensing and a firm's incentive to obtain an exclusive license, thereby shaping their joint willingness to license (non-)exclusively. We also examine how technology transfer office (TTO) experience and prior collaboration between a university and a firm moderate this relationship. To test the hypotheses, we use a dataset consisting of 6653 licensed patents owned by 117 representative Chinese universities. We find that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between university prestige and the likelihood that two parties choose exclusive licensing. Moreover, the moderating effect of TTO experience is partially supported while that of prior collaboration is fully supported. Our findings generate important implications for the relative social impacts of exclusive and non-exclusive licensing of technology inventions as well as the management of university licensing.

Digitization is receiving a lot of interest in recent servitization research, but the use of platform-based Industry 4.0 technologies to boost product-service innovation (PSI) is less covered. This study aims to explore how companies successfully leverage platforms for servitization in an Industry 4.0 context. Building on theories of PSI, platform leverage and business model adaptation (BMA), we use longitudinal and interpretive research methods to conduct an exploratory study of the servitization pathways of four Chinese textile and apparel manufacturing companies. Results reveal companies’ roadmaps in undertaking digital and smart servitization strategies enabled by platform leveraging, and show the implementation approaches for related BMA. Further analysis identifies platform-based servitization destinations and pathway dynamics. This study constructs a theoretical basis and a typology for explaining platform-based servitization.

Radical drug innovations are of great importance to pharmaceutical firms and public health. Understanding the determinants involved in successful radical drug innovations is key to increasing this type of output in the future. The objective of this review is to search the literature for key firm-level determinants of radical drug innovation. Following a systematic literature review approach, we considered more than 4100 peer-reviewed journal articles and PhD theses, of which we included 38 in the narrative synthesis. To guide the review, we use Crossan and Apaydin’s (J Manag Stud 47:1154–1191, 2010) model of firm-level determinants of innovation for the first time within the pharmaceutical industry, which is unique due to the risks, costs, and time frames associated with radical drug innovation. We focus on three groups of determinants: leadership, managerial levers, and business processes. We find the following to be particularly important for radical drug innovation: external knowledge sourcing (managerial lever); internal knowledge management (managerial lever); ability of top leaders to innovate, as determined by educational background and professional experience (leadership); and leaders’ focus on shaping innovation and performance cultures (leadership). We offer a conceptual framework of critical determinants of radical drug innovation and highlight managerial implications. We also discuss gaps in radical drug innovation research and provide suggestions for future study. Many of the findings discussed in this paper are contradictory because they rely on different definitions and measures, which inhibits our full and accurate understanding of radical drug innovation development. More research is needed to address untested measures of radical drug innovation.

What is the secret ingredient to securing better long-term investment outcomes? Investors seldom consider institutional investors from an organizational and strategic perspective. Thinking in terms of investment models highlights a severely under-researched area. The authors propose that this different lens is required to make sense of the dynamics in the investment industry and has a lot to offer to boards that are open to this. Five models dominate the investment industry, and the authors identify an emergent one that has its roots in the existing models but takes a strong societal perspective, which they denote the prudent society investment model. Thinking in terms of investment models, boards and decision makers will be able, far better than today, to determine why, how, and what is needed for investment success. TOPICS:Long-term/retirement investing, pension funds, portfolio theory, financial crises and financial market history Key Findings ▪ Every investor works with an investment model: a unique combination of goals, risk appetite, investment beliefs, and governance of investment implementation. ▪ Making the underlying assumptions and consequences explicit is key; otherwise, achieving long-term success is a struggle. ▪ Investment models evolve slowly. The increased focus on long-term, private assets and the incorporation of societal goals are new elements but do not (yet) form an entirely new model. Thus, we have to keep learning from and adapting the existing ones.

This study aims to investigate the day-of-the-week effect of cross-market leveraged exchange-traded funds (LETFs) in the Taiwanese stock market. We find that Wednesday's overnight returns are significantly positive for bull 2X LETFs tracking major stock indices of the Chinese market, whereas no such an effect is found for ETFs tracking local or other international stock markets. The “T + 1” trading rule and a lagged Monday effect potentially explain this anomaly. Finally, simulation analysis of various simple trading rules further shows that there exist exploitable profit opportunities in cross-market bull 2X LETF markets.

1. Frank J. Fabozzi 1. Editor 2. Kees Koedijk 1. Editor 1. To order reprints of this article, please contact David Rowe at d.rowe{at}pageantmedia.com or 646-891-2157. This special issue focuses on the most popular investment models used in the asset management industry.

To date, there has been little agreement in the literature on what exactly constitutes radical drug innovation and how to properly measure this important construct. Without a validated measure, our ability to understand radical drug innovations, explain their origins, and demonstrate their implications for management and health policy is limited. This paper addresses the problem of radical drug innovation measurement, provides evidence of the limitations associated with the current state of the art, and offers a new method based on German health technology assessments (HTA). Data was obtained for 147 drugs authorized by the European Medicines Agency from 2011 to 2016. The innovativeness of these drugs was assessed using current measures of radical drug innovation compared with the newly developed measure. Findings indicate that current measures of radical drug innovation are associated with very inconsistent outcomes and do not appear to measure what they purport to measure. This study argues that assessing therapeutic value (as measured by the German HTA) is particularly important, given that drug novelty alone does not conclusively indicate whether a drug will deliver therapeutic value.

Many firms struggle to successfully translate corporate strategy into value-added solutions for customers by integrating products and services. A particular hurdle is the intrinsic motivation of the people in charge. This study contributes to the microfoundations of servitization literature by exploring what motives and strategies drive decision-makers to pursue product-service integration (PSI). Given the fragmented state of the literature, we follow an abductive approach. First, applying a behavioral strategy lens, we identify the theoretical building blocks to construct a conceptual framework. Next, we collect data of 178 small, Belgian firms to perform an exploratory quantitative analysis. Finally, we develop theory based on the results. Specifically, we find that the need for achievement and affiliation are both directly and positively associated with PSI. Also, achievement-driven people are likely to pursue PSI, originating from a product leadership position. Finally, the power motive is positively associated with operational excellence, but not with PSI.

Social media enables public sector organizations to connect with citizens. Next to this, it can help organizations provide more detailed and useful information. But to what extent is social media used by local governments for interaction purposes, and what factors influence this? In this article, we study how Dutch local governments use Twitter for interaction, linking this to political, institutional, and socio-economic determinants. We find that politically fragmented municipalities use Twitter more for interaction, suggesting that political multiplicity forms a stimulus for more online engagement. Moreover, municipalities that have a Twitter account for a longer time make more advanced use of its functions, implying that municipalities with longer experience are better acquainted with a platform's strengths and weaknesses. Finally, municipalities with a higher presence of people in the age group 20–65 as well as municipalities with more higher-educated people use their social media more for interaction. The same counts for municipalities with more ICT workers.

This article proposes to bring the sustainable product-service innovation (PSI) field into a next phase—after two phases of exploring why and how firms achieve sustainable PSI growth, we suggest to further focus on finding when they actually do so. Based on prior studies, we pinpoint and describe two main shortcomings in the current body of PSI literature: (1) an overemphasis on the firm level, and (2) an overuse of descriptive case studies. These shortcomings are used as stepping-stones for formulating a research approach that integrates Multiple Levels (namely, the firm, its environment, and its people), mixes different Methods (both qualitative and quantitative) and that turns researchers to Action (through advice and training). This MLMA approach offers ample new research opportunities and turns the servitization research community into a servitized community by leveraging academic insights to better support firms in improving their economic and environmental performance.

This study analyses the effect of spatial concentration of general hospitals, the appearance of independent treatment centers (in Dutch: Zelfstandige Behandelcentra: ZBCs) and the concentration of health insurers on production volume and costs since the introduction of market-oriented health care reforms in the Netherlands. We use regression analyses of 1,345,144 patient-level hospital data for fifteen major diagnosis treatment combinations (in Dutch: Diagnose Behandeling Combinaties: DBCs), representing 70% of the managed competition segment (the so-called B-segment). We find that spatial concentration of hospitals and concentration of insurers do not affect health care production volume. More competitive hospital markets are associated with higher cost of most DBCs studied. Surprisingly, hospitals operating under insurers with high monopsonic power incur higher average DBC-cost than hospitals operating under insurers with more dispersed power. The number of independent treatment centers in the hospital’s vicinity is positively related to health care volume and average cost.

[ ]internationally operating businesses and governments started to realize that extremely efficient (lean) global value chains designed on the basis of the just-in-time principle came with a huge cost: lack of resilience after a shock [ ]international businesses are expected to return to the white board to design value chains that follow a just-in-case principle with the aim to increase their shock resilience For labor, the ‘boundaryless career’ will become the standard across many segments in the labor market, with international borders losing their importance (Friedman, 2020) [ ]the old protective status of ‘employee’ will be replaced by the new one of the vulnerable ‘entrepreneur’ [ ]future work is needed to closely examine how the development of more advanced digital communication and interaction tools may reduce these traditional downsides of physical separation, as well as what tasks that traditionally used to be based on physical interaction can be transformed into modular activities without physical fixity

When discussing servitization, the human dimension is often forgotten. Recently, the microfoundations movement is gaining traction in strategy and organization theory. Uncovering the microfoundations of servitization—that is, the influence of individual-level factors on firm-level service decisions, actions and outcomes—may further explain the heterogeneity among firms and their varying degrees of success. It also supports practitioners by unveiling the complex interactions between individual and firm-level components. In this chapter, we consult and summarize prior research about the relationship between servitization and people’s cognitions, motivations, abilities, traits, and behavior. Based on the current literature, we present a conceptual framework as inspiration for future microfoundational research.

It has been suggested that, in dynamic environments, the combination of causation and effectuation will boost an SME's innovative performance, compared to a sole focus on planning. To statistically test this claim, we develop a contingency model for business planning, which considers effectuation as an internal and environmental dynamism as an external boundary condition. As expected, we find that causation positively relates to an SME's innovativeness and that this effect is amplified when combined with effectual decision-making logics. Interestingly, it turns out that this leverage effect is only present in stable environments. What is more, in dynamic environments, SMEs relying on pre-committed resources from partners appear to score lower on innovativeness than their counterparts without pre-commitments. With this finding, we provide statistical evidence that combining causal and effectual decision-making logics is beneficial for innovative performance, but that environmental dynamism acts as a barrier to fully take advantage of it.

How do perceptions of country-of-origin image (COI) relate to willingness of Western people to work for subsidiaries in advanced countries of multinational enterprises from emerging countries (EMNEs)? We seek to shed light on this question by exploring six hypotheses based on environment-processing metatheory. Applying a PLS-SEM analysis of online survey data from the Netherlands, we find that the COI and familiarity with the EMNE’s home country are positively associated with willingness to work. Additionally, we reveal a few mediating effects indicating that familiarity and individual difference are indirectly related to willingness to work. This study contributes to our understanding of the inability of EMNEs to attract talent in the Western world by adding a macro perspective to the human resource management literature. Furthermore, we extend environment-processing metatheory by expanding the focus from the perceived internal context (corporate information) to the perceived external environment (country of origin), as well as to the antecedents (familiarity and individual differences) of the perceived environment.

Traditionally, the relationship between a firm's performance and its business strategy is studied using structured data taken from proxy statements and financial reports. However, there have been increasing efforts to explore the linkages between corporate outcomes and unstructured information, such as text or image/audio/video files. Until recently, semi-structured data had been largely overlooked. Given that a substantial amount of such data can be extracted using web crawler techniques and then processed using big data solutions, the current study employed this procedure to investigate whether dynamic job vacancy postings by Taiwanese publicly listed companies are associated with subsequent stock returns and operating ratios. We report that new job openings foreshadow a firm's operating performance, both indirectly, by boosting stock prices, and directly, by signaling positive developments. This finding remains robust to tests addressing endogeneity concerns and the adoption of alternative specifications. We thus shed light on the role of metadata in financial analysis.

Despite the increased interest in using digital technologies for servitization purposes, little is known about what drives firms towards a digital servitization strategy. Using a dynamic capabilities lens, we look into the relationships between two organizational mechanisms – exploitation and exploration – and firms' orientation towards digitization, servitization and digital servitization. On top, we examine the influence of two environmental contingencies – technological turbulence and competitive intensity – as potential influencers of these relationships. We collected and analyzed data of 139 Belgian firms through hierarchical regressions. Exploitation and exploration are positively associated with digital servitization, but exploration trumps the effect of exploitation when firms do both. Technological turbulence is positively associated with digitization regardless of the firm's level of exploration or exploitation, and competitive intensity only relates positively with servitization when firms emphasize exploration. Theoretically, we contribute to the literature by unravelling the relationship between firms' dynamic capabilities and their environment. In order to fully understand firms' strategic transition towards digital servitization, both should be considered. As managerial implications, we suggest that firms pay close attention to adapting their strategy to fit an increasingly changing environment.

Recent debates on transparency and replicability suggest that JIBS needs to update its approach on data access and research transparency (DART). We propose a series of initiatives, knowing well that there is a balance to be struck. There are clear benefits on the one hand, chief among these the potential for learning and knowledge accumulation, and equally manifest challenges on the other: the imperative to respect privacy, confidentiality, and intellectual property rights. Without addressing these challenges, will there be the high-quality data on which the benefits depend? We present access and transparency objectives, and set out how an actionable and effective approach towards DART will be implemented, but also address ethical, legal, and organizational challenges of concern to us as a scholarly community.

PurposeWe introduce and summarize the selected papers of the Special Section on the “Micro-Foundations of Small Business Internationalization and briefly summarize the state-of-the-art of this literature stream.Design/methodology/approachWe briefly summarize the state-of-the-art of the literature regarding the micro-foundations of small business internationalization. Then, we summarize the selected papers of the Special Section, highlighting their main contributions. We end with suggesting future research avenues.FindingsWe move beyond the usual suspects such as gender, education and experience to bring together internationalization studies that open up the individual lens to small business internationalization. To do so, we selected papers examining deeper-level behavioural and psychological constructs impacting the internationalization process, going from internationalization intention to internationalization behaviour and eventually leading to internationalization performance.Originality/valueWe stress the importance of the entrepreneur as a person to better understand small business internationalization. We address the current lack of attention attributed to psychological and behavioural drivers (e.g. motives, attitudes, ambitions and aspirations) throughout the internationalization process, and we urge future researchers to further develop this research stream.

Traditionally, firm competition has been studied in contexts where the dimensionality of the product attribute space is given, and firms deploy their strategies constrained by this space. However, firms may exert influence on the local structure of the product attribute space by offering product variants with new attributes. As a result, the geometry of the product attribute space would change endogenously through firms' actions, and this emergent new geometry modifies the conditions for subsequent firm behavior. By focusing on this interplay between actors and conditions, we explore the co-evolution of the firm and the product attribute space. Through a multi-variant Cournot competition framework, we develop a computational model in which firms invest to differentiate their products from other variants, but as minimally as possible so that demand from closely similar existing variants can be stolen. We introduce the fraction dimensionality of the attribute space as our critical independent variable, to reflect saturation of the space with product varieties. The simulation reveals that while new product variants are typically introduced by firms with scale economies, their performance gap with firms without scale economies reduces as fraction dimensionality increases. This indicates that space geometry evolution may favor small-scale players, even when their large-scale competitors are the driving force behind attribute space changes.

We address the lack of studies focusing on internal organizational sponsorship mechanisms, while considering environmental influencers and focus on a specific type of organizational sponsorship to do so: Business incubators. We argue that to be able to offer a customized incubatee-strengthening service pack, incubator-incubatee interaction is key, requiring clear-cut and directive service co-development instructions, which is our focal construct. To better understand the functioning of this focal construct, we adopt a contingency approach to examine how the incubator's human capital, and the institutional environment impact the incubator's service co-development directiveness. A quantitative empirical study reveals that both human capital and an entrepreneurially-minded regulative and cognitive institutional environment allow an incubator to be directive, thereby laying a foundation for co-development of customized service offerings. Moreover, the incubator's human capital turns out to further stimulate the positive effects of an entrepreneurially-minded regulative environment. All in all, we find that both internal organizational and external institutional elements are pivotal for first-best implementation of the internal sponsorship mechanism ‘service co-development directiveness’.

This paper evaluates the impact of market competition on health care volume and cost. At the start of 2005, the financing system of Dutch hospitals started to be gradually changed from a closed-end budgeting system to a non-regulated price competitive prospective reimbursement system. The gradual implementation of price competition is a ‘natural experiment’ that provides a unique opportunity to analyze the effects of market competition on hospital behavior. We have access to a unique database, which contains hospital discharge data of diagnosis treatment combinations (DBCs) of individual patients, including detailed care activities. Difference-in-difference estimates show that the implementation of market-based competition leads to relatively lower total costs, production volume and number of activities overall. Difference-in-difference estimates on treatment level show that the average costs for outpatient DBCs decreased due to a decrease in the number of activities per DBC. The introduction of market competition led to an increase of average costs of inpatient DBCs. Since both volume and number of activities have not changed significantly, we conclude that the cost increase is likely the result of more expensive activities. A possible explanation for our finding is that hospitals look for possible efficiency improvements in predominantly outpatient care products that are relatively straightforward, using easily analyzable technologies. The effects of competition on average cost and the relative shares of inpatient and outpatient treatments on specialty level are significant but contrary for cardiology and orthopedics, suggesting that specialties react differently to competitive incentives.

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This study examines the extent to which opposition parties engage in wedge-issue competition. The literature on wedge-issue competition has exclusively focused on the two-party system in the United States, arguing that wedge issues are the domain of opposition parties. This study argues that within multiparty systems opposition status is a necessary but not sufficient condition for wedge-issue competition. Since parties within multiparty systems compete in the wake of past and dawn of future coalition negotiations, parties that are regularly part of a coalition are not likely to exploit wedge issues as it could potentially jeopardize relationships with future coalition partners. Conversely, it is less risky for parties that have never been part of a government coalition to mobilize wedge issues. These theoretical propositions are empirically substantiated by examining the attention given to the European integration issue between 1984 and 2010 within 14 Western European countries, utilizing pooled time-series regressions.

This paper analyses and describes the possible role and responsibility of workers (via their representatives) in the process of strategic decision-making at corporate level, especially in the Netherlands where the Works Council (Ondernemingsraad) has achieved a certain degree of maturity in the last decade. It is a reaction to the lack of attention to workers' participation in the actual debate on Corporate Governance. From our point of view workers also have to be seen as equal 'stakeholders' and partners in decision-making. In several Dutch companies forms of partnership in corporate governance are starting to develop. But also in other countries (like Germany) and at European level Works Councils are starting to discuss strategic topics with the Board of Directors. After describing the position and role of the most important boards and stakeholders at corporate level (the Board of Directors, the Supervisory Board, the shareholders, the trade unions and the works councils), the paper presents a stakeholder model in which also the workers participate and exercise influence on strategic decision-making. Finally it gives practical suggestions for the improvement of the position of workers' participation in corporate governance. These suggestions and recommandations are mainly based on experiences in Dutch companies.

In this paper, we present our first research findings on the opportunities for works councils and their practices to influence the supervisory board member(s) election under the ‘old’ co-option system. When and under which conditions works councils are really using their right to propose supervisory board candidates and what kind of effects could be expected from that? The conceptual framework for our research work is presented next, finally followed by a description of the first research findings. The research findings to date, reveal what sort of conditions and factors have a stimulating impact on the works councils’ behaviour to use the formal right to propose supervisory board candidates, to influence the composition of the supervisory board and to build up a relationship with that board. The research also shows the perceived effects of proposing candidates. The findings confirm the expectation that the attitude of the parties involved is very dominant and that works councils which are really striving for a better strategic position at the corporate level, are more actively involved than other works councils.

In the highly competitive environment management builds relationships with very different kinds of stakeholders, acting more transparently, providing opportunities for dialogue and involvement and being accountable to all the stakeholders. The paper considers implementation of one of the most challenging instrument to build those relationships named "stakeholder management". Improvements on corporate governance and stakeholder-management already have been found: in the further professionalising of the Supervisory Board by updating the board-profile, setting up audit- and remuneration-committees, introducing self-assessment (internal board-evaluations) etcetera; more openness and transparency in the annual reports, making mention of board members’ remuneration; increasing the influence of shareholders by providing opportunities to certificate-holders for more actively participating and voting at the General Meeting, and intensifying the relationships with investors; developing international employee participation, based on the European Directive on information and consultation and the implementation in Dutch law; intensifying customer relationships by developing a Customer Relationship Management system world-wide, using internet-opportunities (ING Direct), converting call centres to Customer Contact Centres, introducing customer-panels, etcetera; introducing HR-plans on inspiring leadership, performance management and diversity worldwide.

Stakeholder management is increasingly a key factor for improving business performance. Management needs to build relationships with very different stakeholders (shareholders, employees, customers, society etc.), act more transparently, be accountable and provide opportunities for dialogue and involvement or participation. This paper describes how to mobilise the sense of responsibility of all the relevant stakeholders, create the best organisational context for involvement, organise and manage that involvement, consider all the stakeholder arguments and manage the constantly shifting balance between the interests of stakeholders. In particular, employees as stakeholders can play an active role. On the basis of some best practices in the Netherlands, the paper shows that within the concept of the stakeholder model, employees–under certain conditions–really can become partners in decision making at the corporate level. The stakeholder model assumes a partnership between management and stakeholders, a partnership seen as a real dynamic and changing process of dialogue.