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Today, firms pursuing a pioneering strategy are often engaged in supply chain relationships to benefit from external resources and to improve their innovation. However, this effort can be impeded by power asymmetries in such relationships and especially by the execution of coercive power by their partner firm. Contracts could potentially reduce this risk of opportunistic behavior. Our survey study on 778 small to medium-sized enterprises in the European packaging and medical equipment industries examines how coercive power of the partner and the contractual arrangement between firms moderate the pioneering strategy's innovation outcomes in the short and long run. Our results confirm the negative effect of coercive power on innovation performance in both the short and long term. However, the compensating effect of rather complete contracts differs temporally. Whereas, contract completeness protects against higher dependence at the beginning of the collaboration, their effect diminishes over time. In contrast, rather incomplete contracts enhance the innovation performance in the long term, possibly complemented with trust.

Structural VAR models are routinely estimated by Bayesian methods. Several recent studies have voiced concerns about the common use of posterior median (or mean) response functions in applied VAR analysis. In this paper, we show that these response functions can be misleading because in empirically relevant settings there need not exist a posterior draw for the impulse response function that matches the posterior median or mean response function, even as the number of posterior draws approaches infinity. As a result, the use of these summary statistics may distort the shape of the impulse response function which is of foremost interest in applied work. The same concern applies to error bands based on the upper and lower quantiles of the marginal posterior distributions of the impulse responses. In addition, these error bands fail to capture the full uncertainty about the estimates of the structural impulse responses. In response to these concerns, we propose new estimators of impulse response functions under quadratic loss, under absolute loss and under Dirac delta loss that are consistent with Bayesian statistical decision theory, that are optimal in the relevant sense, that respect the dynamics of the impulse response functions and that are easy to implement. We also propose joint credible sets for these estimators derived under the same loss function. Our analysis covers a much wider range of structural VAR models than previous proposals in the literature including models that combine short-run and long-run exclusion restrictions and models that combine zero restrictions, sign restrictions and narrative restrictions.

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.

Lean implementation aims to maximize customer satisfaction while minimizing waste. However, the Lean philosophy has not yet been well understood in the construction industry due to complex and dynamic nature of construction projects. Even though Lean efforts in construction have recently gained popularity, there are still problems with the implementation processes. Therefore, it is essential to identify critical success factors (CSFs) in Lean implementation for conducting projects more effectively. Due to lack of studies in revealing CSFs in Lean implementation and the need for an up-to-date Lean implementation roadmap, this article provides an extensive set of CSFs for construction practitioners to benefit in their projects. Within this context, 27 variables were identified through an in-depth literature review. Moreover, a survey is designed and given to Lean practitioners to rank the variables based on their importance. The findings of the survey indicate that management commitment is ranked as the most important driver of Lean implementation, whereas the supportive nature of governmental regulations in Lean is ranked as the least important. A factor analysis of CSFs result in six factor groups, namely motivational factors, project factors, strategic and policy factors, company factors, technical factors, and workforce and resource factors.

Ships are usually disturbed by waves when they are traveling at sea. When the waves are large, it is not conducive to driving safety, comfort and economy. Therefore, this paper proposed a new type of automatic driving scheme, which links the wave height prediction with ship driving. By studying the accurate prediction of wave height, ships can adjust their course in real time to ensure that they always travel in the area with the lowest wave height. According to the different driving conditions of ships in the open sea and the offshore sea, we designed two wave height prediction models based on LSTM, which are suitable for the above two types of sea areas. In particular, when we created the open sea model, we selected the data of the location points other than the predicted point as the training data. After comparative testing, the two types of models have reached satisfactory accuracy, which provided support for the ship automatic driving scheme proposed in this paper.

SOTER, a cyber security incident management playbook, is developed to provide a comprehensive model to manage cyber security incidents, particularly for the cyber security operations centre. The proposed playbook is adaptive, cross-sectorial, and process driven. Each key components of the incident management playbook are outlined and discussed. Further, a lexicon based on equivalence mapping is developed and used to map existing cyber security incident vocabulary and taxonomy into a common and consistent lexicon to aid understanding among incident management stakeholder communities – national, government and private sectors. A versatile workbook model has been explored which proves to be adaptable to serve a wide range of cases for successfully managing government and private sector security operations centre. Cyber security incident sharing partnership, formalism for metric and measurements of cyber security incident parameters, and cyber security incident classification and prioritisation schemes are presented, and finally, cyber security incident ‘plays’ and playbook templates are discussed.

Feedback is important to improve writing quality; however, to provide timely and personalized feedback is a time-intensive task. Currently, most literature focuses on providing (human or machine) support on product characteristics, especially after a draft is submitted. However, this does not assist students who struggle during the writing process. Therefore, in this study, we investigate the use of keystroke analysis to predict writing quality throughout the writing process. Keystroke data were analyzed from 126 English as a second language learners performing a timed academic summarization task. Writing quality was measured using participants’ final grade. Based on previous literature, 54 keystroke features were extracted. Correlational analyses were conducted to identify the relationship between keystroke features and writing quality. Next, machine learning models (regression and classification) were used to predict final grade and classify students who might need support at several points during the writing process. The results show that, in contrast to previous work, the relationship between writing quality and keystroke data was rather limited. None of the regression models outperformed the baseline, and the classification models were only slightly better than the majority class baseline (highest AUC = 0.57). In addition, the relationship between keystroke features and writing quality changed throughout the course of the writing process. To conclude, the relationship between keystroke data and writing quality might be less clear than previously posited.

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2019.2958785 In the early stages of the systems engineering process, an important focus is to create an understanding of the stakeholder needs. This is primarily done to prepare the system specification that forms the basis for the system’s design. By extension, example steps in this process include surveying stakeholders to better capture their intent, deriving and documenting requirements, and then using those requirements for subsequent activities, such as developing a functional baseline and candidate design alternatives. During this process, it is important to consider the full system lifecycle. As such, one major objective of a systems engineer is to translate the stakeholder’s needs into functional and nonfunctional requirements (NFRs). Despite this important role, early system designs are often faulty because important NFRs are poorly prioritized or not prioritized at all. While the prioritization of all requirements can be useful, this work focuses specifically on NFRs. It has been identified that the inability to identify the most useful NFRs can lead to system failure. Furthermore, the lack of NFR prioritization is considered one of the most expensive and difficult errors to correct, as well as one of the ten most significant risks in engineering. Systems need more emphasis on the relationships between the system’s elements, rather than on the individual elements or the whole system. Relationships among elements in a system can illustrate more than just the behavior of each element. The illustration can include the purpose for the system and the implications of changing how the NFRs associated with those elements are prioritized. This emphasis requires quantifiable tools and rigor to inform the decision makers. This research’s objective is to contribute to quantifiable decision-making methods and prioritization of NFRs in three ways: the development of a process to determine unique random index; the use of a continuous ranking scale; and the development of a universal decision-making heuristic to accompany prioritization of NFRs.

Online matching platforms require new approaches to market design because firms can now control many aspects of the search and interaction process through various IT-enabled features. Although choice capacity—the number of candidates a user can view and select—is a key design feature of online matching platforms, its effect on engagement and matching outcomes remains unclear. We examine the effect of different choice capacities on market performance by conducting a randomized field experiment in collaboration with an online dating platform. Specifically, we design four treatment groups with different choice capacities in which users can only interact with other users in the same group and randomly assign the users to the treatment groups. We find that providing more choice capacity to male and female users has different effects on choice behaviors and matching outcomes. Although increasing the choice capacity of male users yields the highest engagement, increasing the choice capacity of female users is the most effective method to increase matching outcomes. We empirically demonstrate four mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of different choice capacity designs and generalize our findings by discussing how choice capacity can be designed to increase engagement and matching outcomes.

Abstract. Background: The Systematic Tailored Assessment for Responding to Suicidality (STARS) is a client-centered, psychosocial needs-based assessment protocol. This semistructured interview obtains client prioritized indicators that contribute to suicidality and informs commensurate care responses for preventing suicide. Aim: To pilot the feasibility, client-centeredness, and usability of the STARS protocol, including clinicians' perceptions of ease of use; content validity; and administration within the community setting. Method: A convenience sample of clinicians who undertook assessment and/or intervention with suicidal persons and had used STARS between mid-2016 and early 2017 completed an online survey assessing feasibility, client-centeredness, and usability of STARS. Results: Of the 51 clinicians who entered the survey, 42 (82.3%; aged 25–74; 69% female) completed it. Overall, perceptions of feasibility and usability of STARS were positive, particularly regarding client-centeredness of the protocol and confidence in information obtained for screening suicidality and informing needs-based priority responses. Limitations: The pilot findings are limited by the use of a small convenience sample and the low completion rate of clinicians with STARS training. Conclusion: STARS was perceived as a feasible and useful psychosocial needs-based assessment protocol. Suggestions for improving STARS, training requirements, and application to diverse populations are outlined.

The received view of computation is methodologically bifurcated: it offers different accounts of computation in the mathematical and physical cases. But little in the way of argument has been given for this approach. This paper rectifies the situation by arguing that the alternative, a unified account, is untenable. Furthermore, once these issues are brought into sharper relief we can see that work remains to be done to illuminate the relationship between physical and mathematical computation.

The drive to miniaturize power electronics motivates investigation into alternative passive component technologies such as piezoelectrics, which offer fundamentally higher power density and efficiency capabilities at small scales compared to magnetics. Piezoelectric transformers (PTs) have seen application in dc-dc converters, but these designs typically require additional magnetics for competitive efficiency. In this work, we systematically enumerate isolated and non-isolated dc-dc converter topologies and switching sequences capable of efficiently utilizing PTs as their only energy storage components. The proposed switching sequences maintain high-efficiency behaviors (e.g., zero voltage switching (ZVS), all-positive instantaneous power transfer, and minimal charge circulation) across wide voltage gain and load ranges. We present techniques for deriving these switching sequences’ ZVS regions, estimating PT efficiency, and solving for periodic steady state switching times; these offer insights for comparing and implementing design options. We then verify our analyses in a 180-500 V experimental prototype based on a commercially-available PT, which demonstrates significant efficiency gain through a proposed implementation.

International audience; COVID-19 has caused unprecedented disruption to previously settled everyday routines, prompting a period of forced experimentation as people have adjusted to rapid changes in their private and working lives. For discussions regarding consumption, this period of experimentation has been interesting, as the apparent instability has disturbed the ongoing trajectory of consumption practices, and with it has created possibilities for transition toward sustainability. In this article, we examine food practices (e.g., food shopping, preparation, and eating) in seven countries (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, UK, and Vietnam) to assess what we can learn to accelerate transitions toward sustainable consumption. Grounded in a practice theoretical approach, our empirical analysis shows how disruption of everyday routines has generated socio-materially bounded experimentation. We demonstrate commonalities across contexts in how lockdown measures have restricted the performance of previously taken-for-granted practices. We also show diversity in experimentation as food consumption is entangled in other everyday practices. Our study, on one hand, portrays how adaptation of food practices allows disruption to be managed, demonstrating creativity in working within and around restrictions to continue to provide services for everyday life. On the other hand, we reveal that the capacity of experimentation is not evenly distributed among people and this variation helps in identifying the wider socio-material conditions that constrain and enable opportunities for readjustment. Understanding disparities that affect experimentation (e.g., integration of food practices with work and caring practices) is informative when thinking about how to stimulate sustainability transformations in food practices and provides critical reflections on strategies to enable sustainable consumption.

This article considers a two-stage supply chain consisting of a supplier and two competing multichannel retailers and examines their channel and pricing strategies. The supplier wholesales a product to the retailers who resell the product to consumers with different channel preferences. The retailers can either operate their online and offline channels separately and apply differential pricing strategy, or choose to integrate the channels and adopt unified pricing strategy. We establish a game-theoretical model to derive the optimal wholesale price of the supplier and equilibrium retailing prices of the two retailers, and investigate the impact of consumer structure and channel integration ability on the prices, demands, and profits. We then analyze the effect of channel integration and discuss the equilibrium strategy. We find no adoption, asymmetric adoption, and symmetric adoption of channel integration strategy are all possible equilibria. However, one or the both retailers can be worse off in the competition, while the supplier can be always better off if any retailer integrates the channels. Our results suggest that retailers should be very cautious when deciding whether to integrate channels under competition, and the supplier could design other mechanisms to encourage the retailers to integrate their channels.

Cybercrime continues to cause increasing threat to business processes, eroding stakeholders’ trust in Internet technologies. In this article, we explore how six dominant algorithmic trust positions facilitate cognitive processing, which, in turn, can influence an organization's productivity and align its values and support structures for combating cybercrimes. This conceptual paper uses a cognitive perspective described as a throughput model. This modeling perspective captures several dominant algorithmic trust positions for organizations, providing a new, and powerful approach which seeks to enhance our understanding of the cognitive representation of decision-making processes. These trust positions are rational-based trust, rule-based trust, category-based trust, third-party based trust, role-based trust, and knowledge-based trust. Finally, we provide conclusion and implications for future research.

In the context of neoliberal financialization, what is the role of debt in agrarian change? To address this question, I combine insights about debt from rural political ecology and development finance scholarship in order to analyze the relationship between changing agroecological practices and household indebtedness in a Cambodian rice- farming village. In the past two decades, Cambodians have borrowed from commercial microfinance institutions at the highest rate per capita of any country in the world. With fewer Cambodians farming, and agricultural production increasingly commodified, researchers have begun to study how the fast growth of Cambodia's microfinance industry contributes to these changes. By building upon the concept of financial landscapes, which highlights the diversity of social and material relations of debt in rural economies, I argue that agrarian change in Cambodia is entangled with rising household debts used to fund both agricultural production and social reproduction. I describe how non-monetary debt obligations underpinned labor-intensive rice agricultural practices in the 1980s and early 1990s, but have since been replaced by monetary debt used to fund household basic needs and commodified agricultural production. To make my argument, I draw upon 20 months of ethnographic research within a farming village in Kampot Province. This article contributes to rural political ecology and development finance scholarship by exploring debt in its diverse material and social forms at a time of deepening financialization, and how these debt relations in turn shape the economic and agroecological contours of contemporary agrarian change.

Hypoparathyroidism (HP) is a rare metabolic disorder and causes hypocalcemia because parathyroid hormone secretion is inadequate to mobilize calcium from bone and reabsorb calcium from kidney and gut. Anterior neck surgery is the most common cause of acquired HP and autoimmune HP is the next most common form in adults. The duration, severity, and rate of development of hypocalcemia determine the clinical presentation. A variety of organs can be affected by calcification, more frequently kidneys, but also joints, eyes, skin, vasculature, and other organ systems and, although rarely seen, intracerebral calcifications. We report four cases of bilateral basal ganglia calcifications (BGC) also known as Fahr’s syndrome related to hypoparathyroidism. Fahr’s syndrome is characterized by bilateral symmetrical calcification of areas of the brain that control movements including basal ganglia, thalamus, and others; it is a rare inherited or sporadic neurological disorder with a prevalence of less than 1/1.000.000. Main symptoms related to bilateral BGC include extra-pyramidal and cerebellar disorders, cognitive impairment, epileptic seizures, and psychiatric changes. BGC has been established as a possible outcome of HP. Its prevalence, demonstrated in the HP cohorts, varied significantly from 12 up to 74%. Currently, computed tomography (CT) is the most valuable method for diagnosis. The treatment include symptomatic support and identification of causes, but there is no specific treatment limiting the progression of calcification in the basal ganglia. Especially in HP, an early treatment can prevent calcification and neurophysiological disorders. Resumo O hipoparatireoidismo (HP) é um distúrbio metabólico raro e causa hipocalcemia, pois a secreção do paratormônio é inadequada para mobilizar o cálcio dos ossos e reabsorver o cálcio dos rins e intestino. A cirurgia cervical anterior é a causa mais comum de HP adquirido. O HP autoimune é a segunda causa mais comum em adultos. A duração, gravidade e taxa de desenvolvimento da hipocalcemia determinam a apresentação clínica. Diversos órgãos podem ser afetados pela calcificação, mais frequentemente os rins, mas também articulações, olhos, pele, vasculatura e outros órgãos e, embora raramente vista, calcificações intracerebrais. Relatamos quatro casos de calcificações dos gânglios da base (CGB) bilaterais, também conhecidas como síndrome de Fahr relacionadas ao hipoparatireoidismo. A síndrome de Fahr é caracterizada pela calcificação bilateral simétrica de áreas do cérebro que controlam os movimentos incluindo os gânglios da base, tálamo e outros; é um distúrbio neurológico raro, hereditário ou esporádico, com uma prevalência 1/1.000.000. Os principais sintomas relacionados à CGB bilateral incluem distúrbios extrapiramidais e cerebelares, comprometimento cognitivo, convulsões e alterações psiquiátricas. A CGB foi estabelecida como uma possível consequência do HP. Sua prevalência, demonstrada nas coortes de HP, variou significativamente de 12 a 74%. Atualmente, a tomografia computadorizada (TC) é o método mais valioso para o diagnóstico. O tratamento inclui suporte sintomático e identificação de causas, mas não há tratamento específico limitando a progressão da calcificação nos gânglios da base. Especialmente no HP, um tratamento precoce pode prevenir calcificações e distúrbios neurofisiológicos.

In product development (PD) organizations, coordinating technical dependencies among teams with different expertise in overlapping processes is a fundamental challenge. This article takes a more sophisticated approach than prior methodologies to improve coordination via organizational clustering, by accounting for both team structural and attribute similarity from the perspective of social network analysis. We built models to quantify the impact of the overlapping processes on the interaction strength among PD teams, which we then used to construct structural similarity by combining tie strength and social cohesion among teams via the design structure matrix. To evaluate the organization network, we propose social embeddedness-related centrality indices within (intracluster) and across (intercluster) team groupings. To facilitate knowledge sharing, we base team attribute similarity on product- and process-related expertise among teams. We integrate the modularity index and an improved silhouette index to find an optimal number of clusters, which we then incorporate with team similarity measures as inputs to a spectral clustering algorithm. An industrial example illustrates the proposed model. The clustering results reinforce several managerial practices but also yield new insights, such as how to measure similarity among teams based on organizational network characteristics and how structural and attribute similarities impact the optimal organizational structure.

Callender claims that `time is the great informer' (Callender 2017, chapter 7), meaning that the direction(s) in which our `best' physical theories inform are temporal. This is intended to be a metaphysical claim, and as such expresses a relationship between the physical world and information-gathering systems such as ourselves. This paper gives two counterexamples to this claim, illustrating the fact that time and informative strength doubly dissociate, so the claim cannot be about physical theories in general. The first is a case where physical theories inform in directions that we have no reason to regard as temporal. The second is a case where our best physical theories fail to inform in directions that we have independent (pre-theoretic) reasons to regard as temporal. Taking these two cases into account suggests that the connection Callender makes between time and informativeness is perspectival. The second case demonstrates that, although scientists often seek information in temporal directions, the behaviour of the physical world can present serious difficulties for finding it. In response, this paper proposes a perspectival reading of Callender's claim, according to which the connection between time and informative strength has more to do with the aims and objectives of science than the workings of the physical world.

In this research, canola meal was densified using bio-additives including alkali lignin, glycerol, and l -proline. The fuel pellet's formulation was optimized. The best fuel pellet demonstrated relaxed density and mechanical durability of 1015 kg/m3 and 99.0%, respectively. Synchrotron-based computer tomography technique indicated that lack of water in pellet formulation resulted in a twofold increase in pellet porosity. Thermogravimetric analysis showed that ignition temperature (240 °C) and burn-out temperature (640 °C) for fuel pellet were smaller than those for coal. Impacts of process parameters were evaluated on the quality of the gas product obtained from pellet's steam gasification and hydrothermal gasification. The gasification experiments showed production of untreated syngas with a suitable range of H2/CO molar ratio (1.3–1.6) using steam gasification. Hydro-thermal gasification produced a larger molar ratio of H2/CO (1.8–51.2) for the gas product. Modeling of pellet's steam gasification showed an excellent agreement with experimental results of steam gasification.

Resume Le present article comprend l’anorexie mentale comme une strategie visant a se produire soi-meme, en modelant le corps d’une maniere determinee, afin d’obtenir une reconnaissance intersubjective. Il s’agirait plus precisement d’une strategie permettant de systematiser la reussite de trois objectifs caracteristiques de l’existence sociale moderne ou les individus sont appeles a se realiser au moyen de leurs propres ressources, en s’emancipant de toute tutelle. Soumis a l’injonction d’etre « quelqu’un », et d’accomplir une performance individuelle remarquee, le sujet anorexique serait singulierement sensible aux risques d’echec constitutifs de ces deux ideaux sociaux. Ainsi, 1) la maigreur permettrait au sujet anorexique de faire l’economie de la question de son identite, en produisant a travers le corps maigre un type d’identite plutot qu’une veritable subjectivite. Effrayee a l’idee de ne pas parvenir a cerner les frontieres et facultes du « soi », la personne anorexique se retrancherait derriere le type d’identite que suggere une apparence tres amincie. 2) Travaillant sur son corps, le sujet anorexique echapperait aux aleas des formes conventionnelles de travail et d’accomplissement de soi, en choisissant un materiau – son propre corps – sur lequel il a un pouvoir immediat et qui a priori ne met a l’epreuve que sa volonte, en supprimant tout alea exterieur immaitrisable. 3) Conscient des representations sociales dont la maigreur est investie, le sujet anorexique controlerait le genre de jugement porte sur lui par les autres : il echapperait ainsi au risque, normalement structurel, de ne pas etre reconnu par les autres sujets conscients, ou d’etre incompris d’eux.

Nowadays, supported by the blockchain technology, initial coin offering (ICO) has emerged as a way to finance projects via crowdfunding. In this article, by building stylized theoretical models, we examine the product development project financing problem under the traditional bank case (Model TBK) and ICO case (Model ICO). Under a commonly used demand function in which product quality scales the price-dependent market demand, we theoretically derive and compare the optimal pricing and quality decisions for the project under both models. We identify the feasible conditions, which govern the feasibility of each financing model. We then develop the optimal rule, in the form of an algorithm, to determine the optimal financing choice. To show the robustness of the results and test the impacts of having a different form of demand function, we examine in the extended models the case when demand function is linear-additive to both price and quality. We find that the major results derived from the main models scenario remain valid in the extended models scenario. Some interesting subtle differences between the two models are also revealed. We conclude by highlighting that the two financing modes (TBK and ICO) are very different and have a substantial impact on the optimal pricing and quality decisions as well as the start-up company's profitability.

With the prosperity of global trade and maritime transportation, dry port is playing a significant role in freight transport industry through relieving seaport congestion and facilitating improved logistics solutions. This article studies the rail shuttle service pricing and scheduling problem in a dry port system with one dry port and multiple shippers. Bilevel models are developed to address the interaction between the dry port and shippers, with the dry port as the leader and individual shippers as followers. The optimal properties of the proposed bilevel model are analyzed, and a solution procedure is proposed to obtain the global optimal solution. Numerical studies are carried out to investigate the sensitivity of optimal decisions, and performance of both parties with respect to various system parameters. This study shows that offering a higher storage price could not always bring higher profit for the dry port. An extremely high storage price will reduce shippers’ total costs, especially for shippers with high production rates. If the seaports’ cutoff time is short, shippers with low production rates would have to bear high expenses. It is also found that low setup costs at shippers will bring not only cost savings for shippers, but also profit improvement for the dry port.

Contracts are crucial for curbing opportunism, a common phenomenon in construction projects. This article differentiates among the contractual mechanisms of obligatoriness, monitoring, and coordination, and studies the relationships between the complexity of the above functions and different types of opportunistic behavior. Using data from 262 clients (i.e., the parties issuing contracts) in the Chinese construction industry, this article reveals that contractual obligatoriness has a negative effect on strong-form opportunistic behavior. At the same time, contractual monitoring and coordination have positive and negative effects, respectively, on weak-form opportunistic behavior. Furthermore, we find that goodwill trust mediates contractual coordination's effect on weak-form opportunistic behavior. This article contributes to both the contract management literature and the interorganizational relationship governance literature by providing more nuanced findings that speak to the debate surrounding the relationship between contractual governance and opportunistic behavior, elaborate the mediation mechanism, and provide insights into the contractual function view.

Technological innovation, a complex and multidimensional construct, refers to innovations associated with an organization's operations, such as the introduction of new/improved products or processes. Scholars and practitioners recognize the importance of technological innovation in a firm's ability to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage. However, the empirical findings on the overarching relationship between technological innovation and firm performance remain inconclusive. Thus, in this article, we attempt to reconcile the mixed empirical results on the relationship by employing a multivariate meta-analytic methodology. We find that technological innovation has a significant and positive impact on a firm's performance. Furthermore, we find empirical support for the moderating influence of cross-cultural and institutional differences on the relationship. We observed a better performance outcome for innovation occurring in nations with a lower propensity to avoid uncertainty and collectivistic attitudes. In contrast, performance suffers when technological innovation occurs in nations that have stronger patent protection.

This article used nine patent value indicators to compare the differences in the characteristics of U.S. patents for which provisional applications (PAs) were submitted and other patents without PAs (NPAs). The findings revealed significant differences in the average numbers of backward and forward citations, patent and nonpatent references, and patent claims, patent family size (number of patents and number of countries), and duration of examination between the two groups of patents granted between 2005 and 2017 by United States Patent and Trademark Office. Increasing trends were observed in the average number of backward citations and average percentage of patents renewed per year in both PA and NPA groups, whereas decreasing trends were observed in the average numbers of forward citations, countries, claims, and average duration of examination per patent and per year in PA and NPA groups. Differences in patent characteristics based on type and field were observed. This article also revealed more significant differences in PAs than in NPAs because of a larger number of pairs of fields. The results of this study confirmed that PAs have a stronger association with patent value and provided further justification for filing PAs, in addition to obtaining an early effective date for new inventions.

In the post-Bitcoin era, many cryptocurrencies with a variety of goals and purposes have emerged in the digital arena. This article aims to map cryptocurrency protocols across three main defining dimensions, which are governance decentralization, security, and scalability. We theorize about the organizational and technological features that impact these three dimensions. Such features encompass roles permissiveness, validation network size, resource expenditure, and number of transactions per second. We map the different cryptocurrency constellations based on their consensus mechanisms, discussing the organizational and technological features of the various protocols applications and how they experience and play with the tradeoffs among governance decentralization, security, and scalability.

The output gap, the difference between potential and actual output, has a direct impact on policy decisions, e.g., monetary policy. Estimating this gap and its further analysis remain the subject of controversial debates due to methodological problems. We propose a local polynomial regression combined with a Self-Exciting Threshold AutoRegressive (SETAR) model and its forecasting extension for a systematic output gap estimation. Furthermore, local polynomial regression is proposed for the (multivariate) OECD production function approach and its reliability is demonstrated in forecasting output growth. A comparison of the proposed gap to the Hodrick–Prescott filter as well as to estimations by experts from the FED and OECD shows a higher correlation of our output gap with those from those economic institutions. Furthermore, sometimes gaps with different magnitude and different positions above or below the trend are observed between different methods. This may cause competing policy implications which can be improved with our results.

PurposeThis paper examines whether family control exerts any influence on corporate cash holdings in Indian listed firms. It also examines how this accumulated cash of family firms impacts firm value.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses dynamic panel data regression estimated using two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) on S&P BSE 500 firms during 2009–2018 for testing the repercussions of family control on the cash levels of a firm. Further, fixed effects regression has been employed for the valuation analysis.FindingsEstimation results showed that family control negatively impacts cash holdings in Indian firms. Further, the cash accumulation by family firms adversely affects the market valuation of the firm. These findings signal a principal–principal (P-P) agency conflict in Indian family firms, i.e. friction between family owners and minority shareholders' interests. Minority shareholders fear that a part of the cash reserves will be used by family members for personal benefits. Thus, they discount cash reserves in family firms.Originality/valueThe study adds to the determinants of corporate cash holdings in emerging markets. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study from India investigating family control as a determinant of cash policy. It sheds light on the P-P agency conflict in Indian family firms. P-P agency conflict is less researched in cash holdings literature as opposed to the principal–agent managerial disputes. Also, the study uses a more comprehensive definition of family control rather than just considering the ownership as used in prior cash holding research.

How are extensive internet control, surveillance and restricted online anonymity reconceptualized into virtues of effective state governance, rather than violations of civic rights? The Russian government has instrumentalized ostensibly sound legitimations - countering terrorist and extremist propaganda, combatting child pornography - to bring about a dramatic decline in internet freedom. While these policies have been widely studied, scholarship examining how the Russian government legitimates and cultivates popular support for restricting online freedoms remains scarce. This article therefore studies how restrictions of internet freedom are framed in political and media discourses. It focuses on the case of Telegram, a popular messaging application that was banned in Russia in April 2018 for its refusal to provide the FSB with access to encrypted messages in compliance with anti-terrorism legislation. It finds that media framing of the ban was more diverse than the official governmental line. While national security framing was important, the 'rule of law' frame occurred most frequently, and conspiracy framing was markedly infrequent.

Advances in digitalization place completely new demands on both political and economic leaders as well as on society as a whole. In addition to technical skills as a basis for dealing with and understanding digital technologies, digitalization demands that relevant decision-makers have a digital mindset so that they can recognize and correctly assess the opportunities and challenges associated with digitalization. Against this backdrop, this article presents a conceptual framework for digital leadership and explains the motives as well as the opportunities and challenges associated with it. It also shows how the critical capabilities of a digital leader contributes to the realization of their strategic vision of successful digitalization. The article concludes by discussing whether and how digital leadership can support successful digital transformation in the economy and society, and it points out possible fields for future research.

The human action observation network (AON) encompasses brain areas consistently engaged when we observe other's actions. Although the core nodes of the AON are present from childhood, it is not known to what extent they are sensitive to different action features during development. Because social cognitive abilities continue to mature during adolescence, the AON response to socially-oriented actions, but not to object-related actions, may differ in adolescents and adults. To test this hypothesis, we scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) male and female typically-developing teenagers (n= 28; 13 females) and adults (n= 25; 14 females) while they passively watched videos of manual actions varying along two dimensions: sociality (i.e., directed toward another person or not) and transitivity (i.e., involving an object or not). We found that action observation recruited the same fronto-parietal and occipito-temporal regions in adults and adolescents. The modulation of voxel-wise activity according to the social or transitive nature of the action was similar in both groups of participants. Multivariate pattern analysis, however, revealed that decoding accuracies in intraparietal sulcus (IPS)/superior parietal lobe (SPL) for both sociality and transitivity were lower for adolescents compared with adults. In addition, in the lateral occipital temporal cortex (LOTC), generalization of decoding across the orthogonal dimension was lower for sociality only in adolescents. These findings indicate that the representation of the content of others' actions, and in particular their social dimension, in the adolescent AON is still not as robust as in adults.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTThe activity of the action observation network (AON) in the human brain is modulated according to the purpose of the observed action, in particular the extent to which it involves interaction with an object or with another person. How this conceptual representation of actions is implemented during development is largely unknown. Here, using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, we discovered that, while the action observation network is in place in adolescence, the fine-grain organization of its posterior regions is less robust than in adults to decode the abstract social dimensions of an action. This finding highlights the late maturation of social processing in the human brain.

The authors describe the factors that are destroying the Russian education system, a strategy and tactics for overcoming the crisis, as well as model ideas about the future of education in Russia.

Applying a conceptual framework of hyphenation, understood as the organization of racialized subjects, this paper investigates rhetorical strategies for working existing hyphens as practiced within an Action Aid Denmark initiative to train young people to become public opinion leaders in anti-discrimination matters. We identify three such rhetorical strategies: (1) Silencing: Racialized subjects are organized by majority voices that speak of/for ‘the Other’; the training explicitly seeks to change the organization of public debate by working this hyphen. (2) Positioning: The main strategy for working the hyphen, as taught in the course, is to speak from a minority position, but in a manner that is recognizable to the majority. Thus, non-white participants are trained to speak with white voice; they become exceptions to the rule, tokens or role models when telling their stories in a scripted manner. And (3) Representing: In telling their own stories, the aspiring opinion leaders come to speak for racialized subjects as a group. Thus, the course (unwittingly) reproduces the current racialized organization of public space in the form of ‘benign discrimination’. On the basis of this analysis, the article advances postcolonial organization studies by demonstrating that hyphenation cannot be overcome, but must be engaged in a continuous process of re-working the hyphen. Thus, the task of researchers and practitioners alike is to show the constraints of current hyphenations and find strategies for organizing subjects in more equal and open relations.

Dance has become an important topic for research in empirical aesthetics, social and motor cognition, and as an intervention for neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders. Despite the growing scientific interest in dance, no standardised psychometric instrument exists to assess people’s dance experience. Here, we introduce the Goldsmiths Dance Sophistication Index (Gold-DSI), a 26-item questionnaire to measure individual differences in participatory and observational dance experience on a continuous scale. The Gold-DSI was developed in three stages: In the first stage a set of 76 items was generated by adapting questions from the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Müllensiefen et al., 2014), and as part of a stakeholder workshop using a grounded theory approach. The second stage focused on item reduction. Using a large-scale online survey (N=424) , hierarchical factor analysis was used to fit a model comprising of one general and six secondary factors (28 items in total). In stage three, six new items were added to specifically capture individual differences in dance observation. We then collected data from two samples for final model estimation (N=127) and evaluation (N=190). The final version of the Gold-DSI comprises 26 items; 20 items relate to one general factor that captures experience in dance participation. This includes four secondary factors: Body Awareness, Social Dancing, Urge to Dance, and Dance Training. A further six items separately measure experience in dance observation. In sum, the Gold-DSI provides a brief, standardised and continuous assessment of doing, watching and knowing about dance.

While much research on translanguaging is in bilingual and heritage language classrooms, it is under-researched in K-12 English-medium education. To better understand translanguaging in this context, this study applied interactional sociolinguistics, including analytical categories adapted from Conversation-for-Learning (Kasper and Kim, 2015; Kim, 2019), to a ninth grade English class in Honolulu with students from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The study examined interactional sequences as students did literary analysis of novels and poetry over 13 weeks. These sequences involved appropriation of others’ lexical phrases, collaborative word searches, miscommunication repair, and knowledge checks. Translanguaging, when it occurred, indicated joint meaning-making across linguistic asymmetries, and was not only a means of thinking aloud using an integrated language repertoire, but a form of helping peers as students signaled to each other to adopt language, teach them something, or work through a problem together, creating opportunities to learn. These findings suggest that equity hinges not only on allowing students to learn using their whole linguistic repertoires but on social and ethical dispositions made apparent through interactional analyses.

Background Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by both internalizing (anxiety) and externalizing (compulsivity) symptoms. Currently, little is known about their interrelationships and their relative contributions to disease heterogeneity. Our goal is to resolve affective and cognitive symptom heterogeneity related to internalized and externalized symptom dimensions by determining subtypes of children with OCD symptoms, and to identify any corresponding neural differences. Methods A total of 1269 children with OCD symptoms screened using the Child Behavior Checklist Obsessive-Compulsive Symptom scale and 3987 matched control subjects were obtained from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Consensus hierarchical clustering was used to cluster children with OCD symptoms into distinct subtypes. Ten neurocognitive task scores and 20 Child Behavior Checklist syndrome scales were used to characterize cognitive/behavioral differences. Gray matter volume, fractional anisotropy of major white matter fiber tracts, and functional connectivity among networks were used in case-control studies. Results We identified two subgroups with contrasting patterns in internalized and externalized dimensions. Group 1 showed compulsive thoughts and repeated acts but relatively low anxiety symptoms, whereas group 2 exhibited higher anxiety and perfectionism and relatively low repetitive behavior. Only group 1 had significant cognitive impairments and gray matter volume reductions in the bilateral inferior parietal lobe, precentral gyrus, and precuneus gyrus, and had white matter tract fractional anisotropy reductions in the corticostriatal fasciculus. Conclusions Children with OCD symptoms are heterogeneous at the level of symptom clustering and its underlying neural basis. Two subgroups represent distinct patterns of externalizing and internalizing symptoms, suggesting that anxiety is not its major predisposing factor. These results may have implications for the nosology and treatment of preteenage OCD.

BACKGROUND: Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by hypersociability, heightened auditory sensitivities, attention deficits, and strong musical interests despite differences in musical skills. Behavioral studies report individuals with WS exhibit variable beat and rhythm perception skills. METHODS: We sought to investigate the neural basis of beat tracking in individuals with WS using electroencephalography (EEG). Twenty-seven adults with WS and sixteen age-matched typically developing control subjects passively listened to musical rhythms with accents on either the first or second tone of the repeating pattern, leading to distinct beat percepts. RESULTS: Consistent with the role of beta and gamma oscillations in rhythm processing, individuals with WS and typically developing control subjects showed strong evoked neural activity in both beta (13-30 Hz) and gamma (31-55 Hz) frequency bands in response to beat onsets. This neural response was somewhat more distributed across the scalp for individuals with WS. Compared with typically developing control subjects, individuals with WS exhibited significantly greater amplitude of auditory evoked potentials (P1-N1-P2 complex) and modulations in evoked alpha (8-12 Hz) activity, reflective of sensory and attentional processes, compared to typically developing control subjects. Individuals with WS also exhibited markedly stable neural responses over the course of the experiment, and these were significantly more stable than those of controls. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide neurophysiological evidence for dynamic beat tracking in WS and coincide with the atypical auditory phenotype and attentional difficulties seen in this population.

The contribution of the paper to the geographical literatures on informalities is to expand the work on transport informalities from transport system reforms and professionalization of informal provisions such as minibus services or taxi provisions to ridehailing, including explicit discursive framings through which formalization operates. Ridehailing platforms have entered various cities around the world extra-legally, forcing public authorities to deal with them. While there is an emerging literature discussing various aspects of ridehailing and platform economies, the literature to date has not analyzed what kinds of discursive frames facilitate the legitimation of these businesses. Analyzing legitimation through frame analysis highlights the affective forcefulness of future visions configured around technology-oriented regulation, employment provision and digitalization. The article argues that the state acceptance of sharing platforms, together with the introduction of the legal framing for them, particularly gains strength from the frame promising digital future. In such policy-framing processes, sharing platforms’ extra-legal entry into the market as a form of “elite informality” becomes accepted instead of being considered illegal. This paper analyzes verbatim reports of debates regarding ridehailing legalization held at the Estonian parliament (Riigikogu) in April and September 2016. These verbatim reports represent a key event and arguably the most public part of the trajectory from Uber entering Estonia extra-legally in May 2015 to Estonia introducing the “Uber law” legalizing ridehailing in 2017.

We estimate a structural model using data from a novel experiment investigating how investors’ preferred frequency of portfolio evaluations balance the opposing effects of ambiguity and loss aversion. Investors in the experiment face initial ambiguity concerning return distributions for an asset. They observe draws from the true return distribution of the asset, allowing them to reduce their ambiguity through time. We exploit portfolio choices and stated beliefs over possible return distributions to estimate preferences and ambiguity updating rules. We find that 70% of investors would opt for a high frequency of portfolio evaluations, reflecting the dominating effect of ambiguity aversion over loss aversion.

This article reports on a mixed methods study that investigated the extent to which written corrective feedback (WCF) contributes to L2 learners’ acquisition of regular past tense in English and the cognitive processes that underpin the corrective feedback provided. The study adopted a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design and involved 113 intermediate-level Chinese learners of English who were assigned to four conditions: indirect WCF, direct WCF, metalinguistic WCF, and control. A picture description task and a grammaticality judgement test were used to measure gains in the target structure. To explore how learners process feedback, nine learners, three from each treatment group, were selected to produce think aloud protocols. The study found that all three types of WCF had a positive effect on the picture description task, though none of them had a clear impact on the grammaticality judgement test. In addition, indirect WCF was found to have an advantage over direct and metalinguistic WCF on the delayed posttest, when compared to the control group. Think aloud data suggested that indirect WCF induced deeper cognitive processes than the other two kinds of feedback, which may account for the superiority of indirect WCF.

Is “be yourself” always the best advice? We suggest that interpersonal consequences of behaving authentically depend on the extent to which individuals identify with the social environment where they behave authentically. Bridging the research on authenticity, social identity, and conflict, we propose that for high identifiers, authentic behavior reveals how similar they are to others, thereby reducing dyadic relationship conflict. When social identification is low, behaving authentically increases the salience of how different the individual is from others, increasing relationship conflict. In a multi-source time-lag sample of professional work teams (Study 1), we found that authentic behavior indeed reduced relationship conflict and enhanced task performance for high identifiers, but had an inverse, detrimental effect for low identifiers. In a sample of student teams (Study 2), we only found an attenuating effect of authentic behavior on relationship conflict for high identifiers, and no effect for low identifiers. These results suggest that the advice “to be yourself” applies in educational contexts involving younger adults, but has to be prescribed with care in professional work contexts. Our findings emphasize the importance of social context for the consequences of authentic behavior, and call for more research on the contextual effects of authenticity.

This article reconstructs the shifting uses of local concepts of “informality“ (nǫk rabop) over the last 35 years in the streets of Bangkok, with a particular attention to the birth of the motorcycle taxi business in the 1980s, its development after the 1997 economic crisis, and its transformation since the arrival of ride-hailing apps in 2016. Based on more than 10 years of qualitative and quantitative research with motorcycle taxi drivers, state officials, city planners and everyday users in Bangkok, this archaeology of informality expand on contemporary theorizations of informality as a logic of planning, a heuristic device, and a practice. I do so by focusing on the highly relational, contingent, and ultimately contested nature of informality, the role of non-state actors in shaping it and, the performative power of informality as a categorical label. In this sense, I propose a double conceptualization of informality: on one side as an ever-shifting relationship between established and codified practices (whether regarding land, labor, property rights, or everyday actions), a governmental and legal system, and people who control and interact with these practices; on the other, as a label, often deployed tactically by actors trying to make sense and make do with the world around them. In this duality between a shifting set of relationships and an almost intuitive and referential label that allow for categorical assessments resides, I show, the central efficacy of “informality” as a concept good to think with, to govern with, and to resist with.

Informal public transport is generally understood as transport services that are provided in absence or violation of state regulations. This paper argues that attempts to define the informality of public transport through such liberal economic lenses are insufficient in explaining the processes which lead to production of informalities. Discussing the operation of Vikrams (individually-owned and privately-operated shared autorickshaws plying on fixed routes) in Dehradun, India, this paper uncovers the multifaceted role of the state in producing and sustaining informalities in public transport provisions. It offers a more nuanced view of informality in transport studies than its commonplace understanding as a spontaneous, self-regulating, entrepreneurial aggregate. The paper argues that informality in transport studies should be understood as a heterogeneous practice that is a product of wider structural contexts situated in the politico-historical understandings of public transport in evolving spatio-temporal moments. In the case presented in this paper these include imperial legal legacies and its intersections with shifting postcolonial political economies and territorial structures.

This paper estimates a discrete choice model of time allocation decisions made by university students. We consider investments in academic and non-academic activities, such as job placements or volunteering. Identification is achieved using data collected through a recent survey of UK university students on subjective expectations about the returns to these activities, and the enjoyment students derive from them. Unobserved heterogeneity in the choice set is addressed using a sufficient set logit method. The analysis reveals significant ethnic differences in the level of investments, expected academic and labour market returns, and enjoyment of academic and non-academic activities. Simulations suggest that existing constraints play an important role in explaining ethnic gaps in investments.

This paper exploits a large-scale auction experiment conducted by two Chinese government treasury security issuers—the Chinese Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank—to investigate whether treasury securities should be sold through uniform price or discriminatory price auction mechanisms. Based on the outcomes of more than 300 treasury securities issued through an alternating auction-rule market experiment, we find that yield rates of the two auction formats are not statistically different. Further, these estimates indicate there is no significant economic difference in terms of revenue between the two auction mechanisms. This result is robust across different bond yield-rate measurements and participation behavior. (JEL D44, E63, G12, O16, P34)

A range of studies have sought to understand why people’s compliance with social distancing varied during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent theory suggests that pathogen avoidance behavior is based not only on perceived risk but on a trade-off between the perceived costs of pathogen exposure and the perceived benefits of social contact. We hypothesized that compliance with social distancing may therefore be explained by a trade-off between pathogen avoidance and various social motives such as mate-seeking. Two studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that social distancing was positively associated with disease avoidance motives but negatively associated with social motives, especially mating motives. These associations remained after controlling for predictors identified by previous research, including risk perception and personality. Findings indicate that people who are more interested in seeking new romantic partners (e.g., young men) may be less inclined to socially distance and be more at risk of pathogen transmission.

This paper investigates how migration and location choice decisions depend on a large set of location characteristics, with particular focus on measuring the importance and nature of non-monetary costs of moving. We employ a stated-preference approach to elicit respondents’ choice probabilities for a set of hypothetical choice scenarios, using two waves from the NY Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations. Our stated probabilistic choice approach allows us to recover the distribution of individual-level preferences for location and mobility attributes without concerns about omitted variables and selection biases that hamper analyses based on observed mobility choices alone. We estimate substantial heterogeneity in the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for location characteristics and in moving costs, both across and within demographic groups. We find moving costs to be strongly associated with attachment to the current neighborhood and dwelling and to social networks. Our results indicate evidence of sorting into current locations based on preferences for location attributes as well as a strong negative association between respondents’ non-monetary moving costs and their moving expectations and actual mobility decisions.