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In contemporary democracies, the balance between the minority principle and democratic principles, one of the components underlying the relationship between liberalism and democracy, is being broken. This paper offers a reflection on this theme – crucial for the future of representative government – in relation to the importance of the theory of elites. The article is divided into three parts: the first part briefly traces the main phases of the theory of elites from the late nineteenth century to the present, indicating, for each, the salient features; the second part focuses on the elements characterizing the alliance between the minority principle and democratic principles, which forms the basis of liberal representative democracy, with specific consideration paid to the geometric architecture of democracy, comprising a horizontal dimension and a vertical dimension; finally, the third part argues the need for strengthening the logic of distance to consolidate the connection between the theory of elites and liberal representative democracy.

The paper re-assesses the relation between the economic crisis and the rise of populist parties in the South of Europe. It argues that the former did not cause the latter directly, but rather played out as a catalyst of previously existing trends, i.e. the erosion of party democracy and the disintermediation of Western societies. It combines several theoretical approaches to advance an explanatory model that replaces the relation between crisis and populism – conceived of as political, performative and discursively mediated – within its structural pre-conditions. By doing so, it aims at providing a synthetic and steady explanation of the contemporary rise of populism in Southern Europe and beyond.

This article examines the consecration and transformation of the customary practice of sati (widow burning) in the aftermath of a violent case of immolation in 1987 in Rajasthan, India. Focusing on...

This article analyses the digital shutdown experienced in Catalonia within the framework of the independence referendum of 1 October 2017, which had been declared illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court. We question the notion of digital disintermediation and examine how Internet control and blackout processes are not exclusive to authoritarian political systems, but have instead begun to develop in Western democracies in situations of socio-political crisis. We analyse the type of shutdown implemented in Catalonia, the players (both institutional and corporate) taking part in the process, and the resistance strategies implemented by civil society to maintain the flow of digital communications. In our conclusion, we reflect upon the implications of the events that took place in Catalonia for the future of digital sovereignty and suggest further lines of research for monitoring similar shutdown processes.

Since the early 1990s, the share of loans in total debt of US firms appears to have declined. This paper explores the implications of this trend toward “disintermediation” for the transmission of monetary policy shocks. Empirically, investment among firms with high loan shares is significantly more responsive to monetary policy shocks. Moreover, this pass-through has declined since the early 1990s, when disintermediation started. A model where firms choose debt structure by trading off the flexibility of loans against the lower cost of bonds can account for the higher sensitivity of more bank-dependent firms to monetary shocks. In this model, disintermediation also leads to a decline in the overall pass-through of monetary shocks to investment.

The complexity of a supply chain makes product safety or quality issues extremely difficult to track, especially for the basic agricultural food supply chains of people’s daily diets. The existing agricultural food supply chains present several major problems, such as numerous participants, inconvenient communication caused by long supply chain cycles, data distrust between participants and the centralized system. The emergence of blockchain technology effectively solves the pain-point problem existing in the traceability system of agricultural food supply chains. This paper proposes a framework based on the consortium and smart contracts to track and trace the workflow of agricultural food supply chains, implement traceability and shareability of supply chains, and break down the information islands between enterprises as much as possible to eliminate the need for the central institutions and agencies and improve the integrity of the transaction records, reliability and security. At the same time, farmers record details of the environment and crop growth data in the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and store file IPFS hashes in smart contracts, which not only increases data security but also alleviates the blockchain storage explosion problem. This framework has been applied in Shanwei Lvfengyuan Modern Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. Although there are still many defects, the framework has successfully realized functions such as disintermediation and tracing of agricultural product information through QR codes. Thus, the framework proposed in this paper is of great significance and reference value for enterprises to ensure product quality and safety traceability.

The article provides a detailed analysis of the problem of implementing the concept of e-government and using ICT instruments of corruption prevention. That issue is considered in the context of the global trend of ensuring transparency of public service. Prospects for the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) as cost-effective and convenient tools of ensuring openness and transparency of the public service system and also the corruption reducing have been studied. Transparency of action within the public service and public administration system, public initiative and public rejection of corruption are seen as prerequisites for building participatory democracy, restoring the public trust in government and, consequently, preventing corruption through sound management decisions, ensuring high accuracy and openness of official information for the public. It has been identified that the Internet and ICT have significantly reduced the cost of collecting, disseminating and accessing information, which has been a significant step towards eradicating corruption at the grassroots level. As a result of these tools using, the last decade has demonstrated the rapid development of the concept of e-government to ensure maximum access to information with the transparency, accountability and anti-corruption measures. The focus is put on the studying of the innovative component of anti-corruption public management, which means the modernisation of ways of the providing the information to citizens, on the one hand, and strengthen the ability of citizens to resist corruption, on the other. Such a component, in particular, is ICT and digitalising of public services, which remains the main focus of the paper. It is concluded that the intensifying of the usage of digital technologies in public administration and public service aims, in addition to overcoming corruption, is aiming the increasing of the level of transparency and fairness in decision-making, disintermediation and increasing budget expenditures efficiency.

This paper reviews the retail interest-rate-control deregulation in China over the 1993-2015 period and provides a preliminary assessment of the PBC's replacement monetary framework. I show that the interest-rate controls triggered the development of deposit substitutes that banks used to circumvent the restrictions, which in turn drove deposits out of commercial banks.This gave rise to concerns about deterioration of bank profits and build-up of financial frangibility, which have pushed up the PBC's deregulation acceleration over the post-2012 period. I quantify the distortionary effects of these controls: disintermediation, a rising shadow banking system and financial repression. Despite the official lift-off of the controls, the retail interest rates are still subject to the PBC’s window guidance and other pricing mechanism guidance. The interest-rate corridor does not function well in confining money market rates. This suggests that the PBC adopt a target money market rate system.

Disintermediation allows citizens to directly access political communication. The greater diversity of interactions between political actors results in increased flow of information. This causes decreased effectiveness for gatekeepers and agenda-setters (old media), and makes way for the creation of a deregulated, non-hierarchical, and borderless space, resulting in the empowerment of citizens and the democratization of political communication. This is a modernizing time that affects the development of political process and the role of different political actors. However, this transformation is shaped by bias and structural factors that limit its universalization and, a priori, encourage the emergence of a citizen elite that is capable of managing and benefiting from change.

Medical tourism (MT) is a promising industry that has shown significant growth in the past few decades. Patients often travel abroad to seek treatment, conventional and otherwise due to a myriad of reasons. The reasons include but are not limited to rising costs in their home country, experimental treatments only available abroad or better standards of care. However, MT has also created room for intermediaries to grow. These intermediaries are known as medical tourism facilitators (MTF), and as the name suggests, they provide patients services to make their experience easier and more convenient. MTFs often under deliver on their claims to the detriment of the patient. Given the varying legal jurisdiction, the sensitive nature of the healthcare process, and the arduous process of seeking and claiming settlements, most medical tourists are unlikely to pursue cases where they have been cheated. To understand the system of MT and the key issues faced by stakeholders, we used Value Focussed Thinking (VFT). VFT assists to arrive at the fundamental objectives that need to be addressed for mitigating these problems of MT. Based on the findings of VFT; we present a linkage or equivalence between the fundamental objectives for mitigating the problems of MT through Blockchain Technology. We present our findings on how Blockchain Technology can assist to increase disintermediation, transparency, and trust by bringing in aspects of optimizing time and efforts; optimizing expense required to settle disputes, automating disbursement of payments and enforcing mutually accepted agreements among other benefits.

The paper discusses the benefits of blockchain technology for medical tourism. The major focus is placed on pre-procedure and post-procedure of medical tourism. The authors argue that blockchain technology can facilitate several stages of medical tourism by enabling disintermediation, allowing cryptocurrency payments, ensuring secure data sharing and privacy, and empowering trusted review systems. With regard to COVID-19 pandemic, the paper outlines the current challenges of the medical tourism industry and prop oses the opportunities for blockchain technology use. The paper attempts to provide important insights regarding the positive implications of blockchain technology use within the medical tourism industry as well as to further advance the current knowledge about blockchain technology’s effects for medical tourism.

We advance the concept of platformic management, and the ways in which platforms help to structure project-based or “gig” work. We do so knowing that the popular press and a substantial number of the scholarly publications characterize the “rise of the gig economy” as advancing worker autonomy and flexibility, focusing attention to online digital labor platforms such as Uber and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Scholars have conceptualized the procedures of control exercised by these platforms as exerting “algorithmic management,” reflecting the use of extensive data collection to feed algorithms that structure work. In this paper, we broaden the attention to algorithmic management and gig-working control in two ways. First, we characterize the managerial functions of Upwork, an online platform that facilitates knowledge-intensive freelance labor - to advance discourse beyond ride-sharing and room-renting labor. Second, we advance the concept of platformic management as a means to convey a broader and sociotechnical premise of these platforms’ functions in structuring work. We draw on data collected from Upwork forum discussions, interviews with gig workers who use Upwork, and a walkthrough analysis of the Upwork platform to develop our analysis. Our findings lead us to articulate platformic management -- extending beyond algorithms -- and to present the platform as a “boundary resource” to illustrate the paradoxical affordances of Upwork and similar labor platforms. That is, the platform (1) enables the autonomy desired by gig workers, while (2) also serving as a means of control that helps maintain the viability of transactions and protects the platform from disintermediation.

This article describes the growing field of financial technology (fintech) and the different financial paradigms and technologies that support it. Fintech is primarily a disintermediation force where disruptive technologies are the drivers. This framework discusses 10 primary areas in fintech comprising a taxonomy, which categorizes research in the field and also proposes a pedagogical structure. Pitfalls of fintech are also analyzed. Overall, the great strides made in computing technology, mathematics, statistics, psychology, econometrics, linguistics, cryptography, big data, and computer interfaces have combined to create an explosion of fintechs.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce and explore blockchain technology and its potential implementation to hospitality and tourism firms’ wide range of business operations and transactions from a technological and functional point of view. This study’s central interest is to produce novel and rigorous in-depth-review analysis and foundations for a broad discussion and outlook on the potential applications of blockchain technology benefiting hospitality and tourism research, as well as the industry as a whole. Design/methodology/approach This study identifies and proposes several potential areas of the adoption and implementation of blockchain technology to the hospitality and tourism industry, including payment and cryptocurrencies, tracking and service customization, the disintermediation of hospitality and tourism, innovative loyalty programs, smart contracts, integrated property management systems, verified rating and review systems, collaborative initiatives and due diligence and smart tourism, each of which represents fertile avenues for future research. Findings This paper provides extensive critical discussions, reviews and answers to a fundamental question: “What critical functions of Blockchain mechanisms can be implemented to the existing core operational (i.e. booking and reservation systems, guest management, etc.) and business functions (i.e. loyalty/reward programs, agent transactions, etc.) of hospitality and tourism companies?”. Research limitations/implications Future studies should specifically delve further into various angles of this “BizTech” environment based not only on business operations and competition but also on vendor and customer collaboration. Practical implications This study intends to serve as a guidance for future research, facilitate knowledge accumulation and create a new understanding and awareness in both practice and academia. One of the most important applications of blockchain in this industry would be that pertaining to direct booking, online reservation systems (i.e. airlines and online travel agencies) and check-in/out with digital identities. With industry-wide blockchain adoption, guests’ personal information can be digitally validated, saved and secured as previously established cryptographically secured codes verify one’s identity without disclosing essential personal information. Originality/value It is obvious that the hospitality and tourism industry needs urgent technological transformation, industrial innovations and new growth avenues such as the adoption of blockchain technology and systems to maintain its global market share in the future. Therefore, the implementation of blockchain systems can promote the formation of multi-center (i.e. guest operations and customer service), weakly intermediated (i.e. loyalty programs and/or review and rating systems) areas in this industry.

This contribution to the Forum argues the research agenda on diplomacy has to be recalibrated: with a greater focus on how diplomacy is challenged domestically. This turbulence is intertwined with ...

Purpose This paper aims to identify, analyse and organise the literature about blockchains in supply chain management (SCM) context (blockchain–SCM integration) and proposes an agenda for future research. This study aims to shed light on what the main current blockchain applications in SCM are, what the main disruptions and challenges are in SCM because of blockchain adoption and what the future of blockchains holds in SCM. Design/methodology/approach This study followed the systematic review approach to analyse and synthesise the extant literature on blockchain–SCM integration. The review analysed 27 papers between 2008 and 2018 in peer-reviewed journals. Findings Blockchain–SCM integration is still in its infancy. Scholars and practitioners are not fully aware of the potential of blockchain technology to disrupt traditional business models. However, the electric power industry seems to have a relatively mature understanding of blockchain–SCM integration, demonstrated by the use of smart contracts. Additionally, the disintermediation provided by blockchain applications has the potential to disrupt traditional industries (e.g. health care, transportation and retail). Research limitations/implications The limitations of this study are represented mainly by the scarcity of studies on blockchain–SCM integration in leading journals and databases. Practical implications This study highlights examples of blockchain–SCM integration, emphasising the need to rethink business models to incorporate blockchain technology. Originality/value This study is the first attempt to synthesise existing publications about the blockchain–SCM integration, shedding light on the disruption caused by, and the necessity of, the SCM reconfigurations.

The various lines of resistance against the Indian government’s Unique Identification Number project since its inception in 2009 form a national and publicly accessible narrative. But less is known...

In the literature, it is argued that the Fordist regime of accumulation has gradually been replaced by a financedriven regime. We argue that the contemporary regime in the UK could be best characterized as a finance- and real estate-driven regime. Like Fordism, the new regime is thought to fuel the economy by propping up consumption, but unlike the Fordist regime it does not seek to do so through job creation or high and steady wages, but rather through private money creation and real estate price inflation. The reliance of the economy on private housing debt rather than public debt—‘privatized Keynesianism’ (Crouch, 2011)—is a key element of the new regime. The state has not simply facilitated the rise of the new regime but has put its faith in the financial and real estate sectors—both residential and commercial—to prop up the economy. Different layers of the UK government have favoured real estate development and investment, in part enabled by disintermediation and lobbying. For a while, the finance- and real estate-driven regime seemed to create economic growth. Although the regime appeared fragile during the financial crisis of 2007–2009, the neoliberal mode and its accompanying finance- and real estate-driven regime were saved and the dominance of finance and real estate have deepened. This paper is based on the analysis of publicly available statistics, policy and advocacy documents and 39 in-depth interviews with real estate professionals. ispartof: GEOFORUM vol:100 pages:89-100 status: published

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Pakistani banks manage their portfolios (lending vs investment) when the economic indicators are not supportive. This study investigates three aspects of the banking system in Pakistan – prevalence of disintermediation, post-crisis profitability orientation and depositor protection by financial system in unfavorable conditions. Design/methodology/approach This study is limited to identifying the key economic and financial drivers behind disintermediation and its subsequent impact on banks’ profitability and depositors’ protection. GLS panel regressions and Engle–Granger causality test as specified by the error correction model have been used to test the major hypothesis of this study. Findings This study shows that small banks have been shifting major part of their portfolios toward risk-free investments to be able to maintain their profitability more efficiently and effectively, like large banks. The study also observes that significant pairing causality exists between gross credit loans and investments confirming disintermediation hypothesis for all types of banks except Islamic or Sharia compliant banks, whereas for significant pairing causality, the results are mixed for remaining variables among gross credit loans as a proportion of assets and economic variables that include GDP growth, unemployment, KSE-100 and SBP policy rate. It is also confirmed by the results that disintermediation improves banks profitability and depositor protection, thus providing a good rationale and justification to banks for opting it. Originality/value The study focuses on the impact of structural changes in portfolios only of commercial banks’ revenue-generating assets not including other financial institutions as a part of banking system. Furthermore, data are extracted from balance sheets and is the sole property of corresponding author.

Our study explores the work undertaken by entrepreneurial ventures when engaging with external enabling technologies. Specifically, we examine a unique sample of early-stage ventures who are using blockchain technologies in an attempt to disintermediate the music recording industry. We carry out a preliminary analysis of 36 venture ‘white papers’, before constructing and inductively analyzing 11 new venture case studies. In doing so, we identify three interlinked enablers of new venture ideas in this context: blockchain, ideology, and market volatility. Furthermore, we identify a range of venture-level shaping practices and field-level work that describes the framing and legitimizing activities undertaken by entrepreneurs to unlock the potential of external enablers. This extends recent conceptual work on external enablers of entrepreneurship. In particular, we propose a novel category of actor-dependent enabler should be advanced to capture engagement with the uniquely editable, interactive, distributed properties of digital technologies.

We build models with an interest-bearing central bank digital currency (CBDC) to investigate the impacts of issuing CBDC on banking and the macroeconomy. When CBDC is the only asset, a higher interest rate on CBDC does not necessarily lead to financial disintermediation. It could promote bank lending and firm investment because CBDC and bank deposits are complements. The interest rate on reserves and the required reserve ratio can affect bank lending and investment when the reserve constraint binds. In our extensions, cash and interest-bearing CBDC can coexist, where the coexistence may require the central bank to adjust either the CBDC interest rate or the interest rate on reserves. Our results suggest that the design of CBDC and banking matters for understanding how CBDC affects the macroeconomy.

Online service platforms that enable customers to connect with a large population of independent servers have been successfully developed in many sectors, including transportation, lodging, and delivery, among others. We ask a basic, yet fundamentally important, question - who should set the prices on the platform? The platform or the servers? In addition to regulatory implications for the classification of the workers on the platform as either employees or contractors, this choice influences the degree of competition among servers, and in turn determines both the amount of supply available and the overall attractiveness of the platform to consumers. We find that when the platform uses a simple commission contract to earn revenue, the price delegation decision depends on the importance of regulating competition among the large population of servers relative to the value of allowing servers to tailor their prices to their privately known costs. The same tradeoff exists in fully disintermediated platforms, such as those enabled with blockchain technology. However, merely adding appropriate linear quantity discounts or surcharges to the basic commission contract maximizes the platform's revenue and allows all participants to enjoy the benefits of both centralized and decentralized control of prices.

El spot electoral ha encontrado en las redes sociales un marco permanentemente abierto de difusión, que va más allá del espacio y del tiempo electoral regulado. En este artículo se presenta un análisis de los anuncios difundidos por los partidos con mayor representación parlamentaria (PP, PSOE, Unidos Podemos y Ciudadanos) en el Congreso de los Diputados en el período previo a las elecciones que dieron lugar a la XII Legislatura en España. Mediante el análisis descriptivo y el análisis de contenido, se examinaron los spots difundidos en YouTube para las elecciones generales del 26 de junio de 2016 por las formaciones políticas aludidas. Entre los resultados más destacados se observa un aumento en el número de anuncios políticos en los comicios de 2015 y 2016, una clara desintermediación –al dejar de lado la legislación sobre publicidad electoral vigente para otros medios– y la preponderancia de anuncios de temas programáticos sobre los de otro tipo, así como de apelaciones emotivas sobre otras

The chapter presents an overview of the European Commission’s flagship legislative proposals for a new regulatory framework for crypto-activities in the European Union (EU) and a pilot regime to facilitate DLT experimentation by market infrastructures. To provide some context for the proposals, the chapter reflects on some of the issues industry, regulators and supervisors have encountered in seeking to reconcile innovative DLT applications with EU and national financial services law. The chapter goes on to outline the key elements of the legislative proposals, which are intended to mitigate risks effectively and facilitate the scaling-up of DLT and crypto-asset applications in the EU.

The GameStop saga and meme stock frenzy have shown the pathway to the most disruptive revolution in corporate governance of the millennium. New generations of retail investors use technologies, online forums, and gaming dynamics to coordinate their actions and obtain unprecedented results. Signals indicate that these investors, whom we can dub wireless investors, are currently expanding their actions to corporate governance. Wireless investors’ generational characteristics suggest that they will use corporate governance to pursue social and environmental causes. Their engagement with corporate governance has the potential to spark a social movement. The movement would be based on disintermediation of investments and aimed at bringing business corporations to serve their original partly-private-partly-public purpose. This article discusses premises, architecture, and characteristics of the movement that would cause business corporations to re-marry their partly-private-partly-public purpose. If such a movement proves successful, the paradigm shift that finally makes corporations serve the welfare of a broader range of stakeholders would happen at the hands of shareholders.

In the early 1990s, Francis Fukuyama published a book with the provocative title “The End of History and the Last Man”. The book was based on an article published a few years earlier and the main argument was that the battle of political ideas ended with the victory of Liberal Democracy as the sole version of social arrangement after the collapse of Socialisms around the world.

PurposeThis work highlights the potential of blockchain from a public management (PM) angle. Given the limited presence of blockchain's broad-spectrum, empirical-applicative evidence in the public sector, as well as theoretical systematisations that can exemplify its potential within this scope, the authors have concentrated their efforts on structuring a referring model.Design/methodology/approachAfter identifying a gap and conducting a preliminary literature review related to public administration (PA), the authors propose a paradigm focused on a conceptual synthesis methodology, starting from a longitudinal analysis and a coding activity that are able to structure a clear framework of theoretical parallelism regarding blockchain's main functionalities, as well as future perspectives in the public sector.FindingsThe main results yielded a specific longitudinal literature review and constitute a referring model of blockchain's systematised functionalities through a conceptualised matrix. The outcome of the conceptualisation process frames and systematises a rapidly growing controversial phenomenon, furnishing a specific referring paradigm for the issue as it relates to policymakers.Originality/valueThe study's originality resides in the two views the authors created, both from the literature review and from the conceptual synthesis for public sector operative practice via an anthropocentric lens, conveyed by a three-year range of analysis.

Blockchain technology creates a decentralized chain and gives access to digital assets in a way that their history remains unalterable and transparent by employing cryptographic hashing. Blockchain is a state-of-the-art technology that promises to reduce risk, minimize chances of fraud, and bring transparency in a scalable way for multiple uses across different sectors and industries, including travel and tourism. This paper attempts to do a rigorous systematic literature review of research articles that discuss the concept of blockchain among the leading travel and tourism journals. This review identifies 11 thematic applications of blockchain as discussed in these journal papers including, for example, smart contracts, digital currency, disintermediation, identity management, service customization, bringing authenticity in customer reviews, and building innovative loyalty programs. Finally, going beyond these thematic applications, this review also discusses present blockchain usage in the travel and tourism sector.

This chapter covers the potential uses of blockchain from accounting, legal, and financial perspectives, provides a brief review of smart contracts and includes a high-level summary of classifiers and risk scoring methodologies. We have used the example of disintermediation in peer-to-peer (P2P) online lending as a case study. We identify three main areas in which blockchain as a service can provide advantages: blockchain-based creditworthiness assessments, blockchain and real-time accounting, and historical data-keeping. Finally, we estimate that the funding of P2P platforms will increase from a recent USD 100 billion to USD 150 billion by 2025 (of which we forecast a 10% market share of P2P blockchain-based platforms or USD 15 billion in absolute terms).

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) offers the promise of an emergent alternative financial architecture that prioritizes disintermediation and decentralization to empower individuals along cryptoanarchist principles. Yet it is mired in considerable difficulties including market manipulation, distortionary incentives, excess short-termism, Ponzi-schemes, and money-laundering challenges that also foment a considerable level of dissuasion against DeFi’s wider adoption. This paper critically evaluates many of these important facets at a time when DeFi is emerging as a disintermediated and experimental financial praxis.

The current efforts to provide institutional and legal certainty around blockchain-based innovative solutions reflect the status of the technology as it appears in the market today, which emphasizes more the “disintermediation” properties of the DLTs and less the “decentralization” properties. With the improvement of the design architectures, the algorithmic efficiency of the smart contracts and the blending of DLTs with machine learning we expect “decentralized autonomous organizations” to become more efficient over time and reach more strategic industries. This will transform market structures, business and operational models and it is expected to have strong macroeconomic effects. This will pose significant challenges to the regulator. A principles-based approach is sine qua non for creating a sustainable competitive advantage in order for an economy to leverage the benefits of blockchain. European Union is a pioneer regulator in the space of distributed ledgers. It adopts a technologically neutral approach. We believe that this is an appropriate approach however technological neutrality should be coupled with business model neutrality. This is a requirement for making sure that the regulator will not be directed by short-term considerations and constraints. The European Parliament’s Blockchain Resolution is a text that reflected the views of how to approach, from a regulatory point of view, a technology which is still evolving. This text is the basis for the regulatory initiatives of the EU in blockchain-related topics and became a reference point for many other jurisdictions around the world. This chapter presents the views of the Rapporteur of the Blockchain Resolution and indicates the significance of creating demand for a new technology from a Political Economy point of view.

This introductory chapter offers an overview of the effects of digitalization on the arts, cultural, and creative world. Specifically, it introduces the contents of the book addressing how artists and art institutions, such as museums, and the creative industries are facing the challenge posed by digitalization in the age of the sharing economy. The work of the authors of the book is presented as they investigate how arts and creativity-based organizations are addressing such profound technological shifts, with a focus on issues of authenticity, legitimacy, control, trust, and co-creation that arise whenever digital disintermediation processes occur. The chapter makes the case for digital transformation to be addressed and strategically managed by culture administrators as they enter a more dynamic era of the art and creativity production and consumption.

In this paper we set out a three-pillar monetary-financial framework to (i) analyze, categorize and compare past, current and emerging means of payment, to (ii) capture their creation and destruction processes through sectoral balance sheet dynamics, and to (iii) identify the inherent risks to the current monetary-financial system, also known as the fractional reserve banking system. These risks, which stem from sudden shifts in money demand and supply, are as follows: (I) risk of a cashless society, (II) risk of structural bank disintermediation, (III) risk of systemic bank runs, (IV) risk of currency substitution, and (V) risk of economic and financial bubbles. This framework will guide the assessment of the central bank digital currencies (CBDC), which are considered as the next step in monetary evolution. We will analyze two large groups of CBDC proposals: (i) proposals aimed at complementing cash and bank deposits, and (ii) proposals aimed at replacing all bank deposits with CBDCs. We find that once CBDCs are issued in both sets of proposals, there is always a trade-off between low levels of (I), (IV), (V), risks and high levels of (II) risk. This trade-off could also be defined as the CBDC dilemma, which states that in most CBDC proposals it is impossible to have both of the following at the same time: (1) low levels of (I), (IV) and (V) risks, and (2) low levels of (II) risk. Finally, we suggest that further research on CBDCs should focus on the second group of proposals on a phase-in basis in order to also mitigate the structural bank disintermediation risk and hence to overcome the CBDC dilemma.

RESUMEN. El desarrollo de tecnologías blockchain ha permitido la creación de nuevas formas de ejecución automática de obligaciones contractuales mediante los mal denominados "contratos inteligentes" (smart contracts). Las características propias de la blockchain, esto es, su lenguaje de código, la desintermediación, autonomía e inmutabilidad, crean nuevas problemáticas asociadas a la ejecución contractual mediante contratos inteligentes; y al mismo tiempo implican retos para los actores involucrados, así como para los reguladores. El presente artículo tiene como objeto servir de introducción al análisis de las problemáticas asociadas a la tecnología blockchain y a los contratos inteligentes. ABSTRACT. The development of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies has allowed the creation of new forms of self-execution of contractual obligations through the so-called "smart contracts". The characteristics of the blockchain, that is, its code language, disintermediation, autonomy and immutability, create new problems associated with contractual execution through smart contracts; and, at the same time, they imply challenges for the actors involved, as well as for the regulators. The purpose of this article is to introduce the analysis of the problems associated with blockchain and smart contracts.

In this paper, we present CommonsHood, a Blockchain based Wallet app aiming to provide the general public with the tools to not only use, but also create new kinds of cryptographic tokens for their own purposes, something that currently resides only in the hands of technologists. It provides communities with instruments for financial inclusion to support the sustainability of the local economy. It provides commons and associations with instruments to help finance themselves with tokens representing prepaid cards, crowdfunding, complementary currencies, to share tools and infrastructures with tokens representing access rights. It provides small retailers with tokens representing loyalty tools and institutions with purpose-driven tokens to reward volunteers for, e.g., recycling. It allows the dematerialization of tickets and collectibles. All tokens can be distributed to the Wallet app of other users, via websites, QR codes, or proximity marketing using geolocalization. The use of Blockchain allows us to construct an open decentralized and disintermediated infrastructure to avoid the fees and data control of services such as group-buying or crowdfunding websites, and to have a general purpose single app, rather than different ones for different associations and retailers. Thanks to its flexibility, actually CommonsHood is used in different projects for supporting communities in the co-creation of local economy models.

This work analyses blockchain-mediated decentralization based on a systematic review of the scholarly understanding of the term ‘decentralization’ across multiple disciplines from computer to political sciences, examining how its various meanings are reflected in popular discourse on blockchains and distributed ledgers. The paper aims to capture the rigorous cross-domain understanding of decentralization and its most important features, and to map the commonalities and differences between it and some closely related concepts such as distribution, disintermediation and peer-to-peer (P2P). Across all domains, decentralization appears to be used as a solution to problems requiring non-trivial coordination across heterogeneous stakeholders. Blockchain-mediated decentralization appears to have unique characteristics reflecting an idiosyncratic set of authority-related values prevalent in so-called ‘crypto’ online communities. Within blockchain space, the article argues against the binary positioning of ‘decentralization’ and ‘centralization’, proposing a dialectical approach and arguing that a system’s authority allocation is a quality positioned on a spectrum between purely decentralized and completely centralized, noting how a blockchain set-up could simultaneously both have facets that are significantly centralized and others that are not. The authors document their systematic review findings and propose a framework for understanding blockchain-mediated decentralization, suggesting a definition, and outlining new directions for further human-centric research into distributed ledger technologies and for designing decentralized ecosystems.

Relations between journalists and Public Relations professionals have been the subject of various investigations. In a context in which great precariousness in the media coincides with an increase and professionalization of communication agencies, we propose to study their informational relations. Our objective is to determine the perceptions of journalists and Public Relations professionals regarding their work and profession, identify how the influences between these two groups of professionals are established, and evaluate their routines and interactions. This research has been carried out using the qualitative discussion group technique (n = 43). Among the results, the media’s weakness stands out in the face of Public Relations that is experiencing a golden age, capable of exercising not only a relationship of influence that fits with the “determination model” but also aspiring to journalistic disintermediation.

This article introduces new models of disintermediation of the real estate broker by the buyer or the seller. The decision to retain a real estate broker is critical in the property purchase/sale process. The existing literature does not contain analysis of: (1) information asymmetry, (2) the conditions under which it will be optimal to disintermediate the broker, (3) social capital and reputation, (4) the impact of different types of real estate brokerage contracts. The article shows that disintermediation of the real estate broker by the seller or buyer may be optimal in certain conditions.

The digital revolution has significantly impacted the music industry by lowering barriers to entry. This change is usually depicted as endangering the big incumbent firms, the so-called ‘Majors’ (Universal, Sony, and Warner). Yet, market indicators show that the majors’ leadership has not declined. In part thanks to the application of a 360° business model made possible by digitization, they have been able to sustain their position. However, there is still a lack of theoretical account as well as empirical evidence for understanding how this model has been implemented by the Majors. This paper uses the concept of transactional capabilities in order to explain this switch towards 360° business model : majors have relied on a new type of competences, more oriented towards the completion of multiple transactions in parallel with heterogeneous actors. We illustrate this point with the case study of the French arm of Sony Music Entertainment.

The use of social media by politicians has received much scholarly interest. However, much less is known about the citizens who follow them and whether their motivation to seek information directly...

Orientation: Leadership and its development continue to be an urgent and critical priority for firms. As a field of practice and research, one observes that leadership development continues to be characterised by the failure to achieve its outcomes in spite of the scale of firms’ investment in it and the availability of a rich repertoire of developmental methods. Therefore, there is a need to understand how leadership development is configured and managed within firms as a bounded function, as programmes and as learning and development processes. Research purpose: The study explored how leadership development is articulated, configured and managed within the retail banking sector in South Africa; in particular, the retail banks and the Banking Sector Education and Training Authority (BANKSETA). Motivation for the study: There is a dearth of research on how the purpose of leadership development is defined by and within firms and, relatedly, how the management of leadership development has evolved within these organisations. Research approach/design and method: The research comprised a multi-site, qualitative case study that utilised semi-structured interviews at five retail banks, the BANKSETA and the local business school that hosted the BANKSETA International Executive Development Programme (IEDP). Thematic analysis was used for the within and cross-case analysis of the data. Main findings: The study illustrated how the institutional dynamics, contingencies and compromises inform the evolving management of leadership development within organisations. It traced the evolving purposes and the internal and external differentiation of the Leadership Development Centres (LDCs) of the retail banks and the BANKSETA IEDP. These illustrate how leadership development as a function, centre, programme and process is shaped over time. This includes the sampled stakeholders’ developing capabilities, their internal and external partnerships, their different positions, and the contestations and integration challenges they contend with. Practical/managerial implications: The study provides insights on the evolving management of leadership development, in particular the capabilities, roles, partnerships and identity work that needs to be grappled with. Contribution/value-add: The research can help practitioners diagnose and manage their firm’s evolving capabilities and detail a road map for managing and innovating leadership development.

The proliferation of sophisticated e-commerce platforms coupled with mobile applications has ignited growth in business-to-consumer (B2C) commerce, reshaped organizational structures, and revamped value creation processes. Simultaneously, new technologies have altered the dynamics of brand marketing, enabling a broader reach and more personalized targeting aimed at increasing brand trust and enhancing customer loyalty. Today, the Internet allows marketers to penetrate deeper into their existing markets, create new online marketplaces and to generate new demand. This dynamic market engagement uses new technologies to target consumers more effectively. In this conceptual paper, we discuss how blockchain technology can potentially impact a firm's marketing activities. More specifically, we illustrate how blockchain technology acts as incremental innovation, empowering the consumer-centric paradigm. Moreover, blockchain technology fosters disintermediation, aids in combatting click fraud, reinforces trust and transparency, enables enhanced privacy protection, empowers security, and enables creative loyalty programs. We present six propositions that will guide future blockchain-related research in the area of marketing.

With the recent advances in digital technology, creators of information goods such as books, songs, or videos can now self-publish and sell their work directly to consumers, without the help of traditional publishers. In this study, we construct an analytical model to examine the role of online word of mouth in this trend of disintermediation. Online word of mouth can reveal product quality for experience goods and raise awareness to accelerate product diffusion. Intuitively, one would expect that with online word of mouth, creators would be more likely to skip publishers and sell directly to consumers. However, our results suggest that online word of mouth may, in fact, encourage more creators to use publishers for high quality work. Our model also makes predictions on the conditions under which online word of mouth benefits publishers and for what types of products and creators it has the most impact.

Dollarization rates in the Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) region are among the highest in the world, with adverse consequences for macroeconomic stability, monetary policy transmission, and financial sector development. Using dynamic panel data models, we find that foreign exchange deposits and loans in the CCA are mainly driven by volatile inflation and exchange rates, low financial depth, and asymmetric exchange rate policies biased toward depreciation. Although there is no unique formula for success, empirical studies and cross-country experiences suggest that credible monetary and exchange rate frameworks, low and stable inflation, and deep domestic financial markets are essential ingredients of any de-dollarization strategy. In implementation, policymakers need to consider proper sequencing of policies, effective communication as well as risks from potential financial disintermediation and instability, and/or capital flight.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue that academic librarians must learn to use web service APIs and to introduce APIs to a non-technical audience. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a viewpoint that argues for the importance of APIs by identifying the shifting paradigms of libraries in the digital age. Showing that the primary function of librarians will be to share and curate digital content, the paper shows that APIs empower a librarian to do that. Findings The implementation of web service APIs is within the reach of librarians who are not trained as software developers. Online documentation and free courses offer sufficient training for librarians to learn these new ways of sharing and curating digital content. Research limitations/implications The argument of this paper depends upon an assumption of a shift in the paradigm of libraries away from collections of materials to access points of information. The need for libraries to learn APIs depends upon a new role for librarians that anecdotal evidence supports is rising. Practical implications By learning a few technical skills, librarians can help patrons find relevant information within a world of proliferating information sources. Originality/value The literature on APIs is highly technical and overwhelming for those without training in software development. This paper translates technical language for those who have not programmed before.

Purpose of the paper: Our study aims to analyze the evolution of the marketing communication network as a consequence of the development of new platforms specialized in supplying crowd-driven creative services to different businesses (i.e., brand, traditional agency, digital agency and media agency). Methodology: An exploratory research design has been drawn through the qualitative analysis of a cross-sectional embedded single-case study. The unit of analysis is the communication network developed around Zooppa, one of the leading creative crowdsourcing platforms in the international scenario. Findings: The findings show the major objectives pursued by the various players in the network (i.e., brand, agency, creative members of the crowd) by using creative crowdsourcing platforms, as well as the players’ evolution in terms of roles within the new relational dynamics. Moreover, a conceptual framework relative to the emerging crowd-driven architectures has been elaborated, following the opposite forces of disintermediation and re-intermediation. Research limits: Being qualitative, the research can not assume a general validity. However, the insights included in this study could guide future - qualitative and quantitative - research about the creative crowdsourcing dynamics in a relational perspective. Practical implications: The results offer useful suggestions to the different businesses of the communication network (i.e., brand, agency, platform crowd-driven) with the aim to exploit innovation opportunities offered by the creative crowdsourcing. Originality of the paper: This study contributes to the literature available about both the creative crowdsourcing and the evolution of the marketing communication network, and gives for the first time an in-depth relational interpretation of the phenomenon including the points of view of all the different players.

Three cultural forces have shaped and framed higher education in the last twenty years: economic changes, technological changes and the increased speed and mobility of people, goods, money and ideas. Public institutions have managed a decline in public funding, requiring commercialization and private partnerships, alongside changes in the labour force through casualization and short term contracts. Digitization has enabled disintermediation and deterritorialization. The power relationships in knowledge dissemination have flattened through the changes to publishing and social media. Traditional, industrial supply chains have collapsed. There is little need for middlemen and agents. This article reflects on the changes to higher education in the last twenty years and how they provide exemplars, warnings and beacons for the radical transformations in the post fordist, post-Global Financial Crisis economy. Policy development is often disconnected from the social reality of working in – and gaining services from – the health and education industries. This article contributes to a free and robust dialogue, enabling collaboration and debate about what went right and wrong in higher education in the last two decades.

Blockchains are distributed ledgers that enable the disintermediation of collaborative processes and, at the same time, foster trust among partners. Modern blockchains support smart contracts, i.e., software deployed on the blockchain, and guarantee their repeatable, deterministic execution. Alas, blockchains and smart contracts lack standardization. Therefore, smart contracts come with heterogeneous properties, APIs and data formats. This hinders the integration of smart contracts running in different blockchains, e.g., into enterprise business processes. This paper introduces the Smart Contract Invocation Protocol (SCIP), which unifies interacting with smart contracts of different blockchains. The protocol supports invoking smart contract functions, monitoring function executions, emitted events, and transaction finality, as well as querying a blockchain. The protocol is accompanied by a prototypical implementation of a SCIP endpoint in the form of a gateway.

We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to study the impact of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) on the financial sector. We focus on the effects of interest- and non- interest-bearing CBDCs during financial crises and their interactions with the effective lower bound. In addition, we analyze the role of central bank funding and a rule-based variable interest rate on CBDCs. We find that CBDCs crowd out bank deposits. However, this crowding out effect can be mitigated if the central bank chooses to provide additional central bank funds or disincentivize large-scale CBDC accumulation through low CBDC interest rates.

Today’s world is in the midst of a material and immaterial exchange process, one of discussion and synergic use of abilities. This begs the question of what role design could possibly play in these conditions and what procedures should a designer put in place in order to attempt to give plausible answers to the new relationships that connect people and the space they inhabit. Basically, the quality of a space is no longer entrusted solely to its architectural characteristics, but to the management of a more complex system of relationships, between subjects, objects and actions of varying nature. This design is of an investigative nature, which other than providing solutions also and most importantly becomes a tool for reading and knowing reality. In these conditions, instead of binding ourselves to a system of theoretical assumptions and preconceptions, we should implement a new strategy we could describe as curatorial. It is, therefore, necessary to think of a redistribution of roles that contribute to defining a design and the connections between the various skills. This process is one of disintermediation with regards to the role of the designer, no longer seen as the sole mediator between people’s needs and the shaping of space, but instead as part of a more complex dialogue system.