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This research paper delves into the importance of continuous and lean improvements within the context of Industry 4.0. As businesses navigate the digital revolution, enhancing efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptability becomes paramount for maintaining competitiveness. The paper examines the principles of continuous and lean improvements, assessing their relevance in the Industry 4.0 landscape. Utilizing a grounded theory approach, it scrutinizes Industry 4.0 characteristics, market dynamics, disruptive forces, change management tools, and the attainment of lean operations. The findings emphasize the crucial role of continuous and lean improvements in enabling firms to navigate the dynamic Industry 4.0 landscape, effectively respond to market disruptions, and deliver enhanced value to customers. By providing actionable insights, the research paper equips companies to thrive in the digital revolution and leverage Industry 4.0 for sustainable growth. Data from 156 firms, gathered through a five-points-Likert scale questionnaire, informs the research paper. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software are used for statistical analyses that look at multicollinearity, content validity, and consistency, construct validity, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and the links between technological disruptions, the rise of agile companies, and overall performance. Results indicate that industry transformations directly and indirectly influence the evolution of Industry 4.0 and agility, empowering companies to develop effective strategies to overcome challenges posed by the digital revolution. To achieve this, companies must overhaul production systems, adopt innovative relationship management approaches, recognize and utilize existing organizational knowledge, and integrate it into product development, production operations, and marketing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As efforts to mitigate climate change become increasingly urgent, the need to address the environmental impact of the built environment has gained significant attention. Buildings, as major contributors to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, have a substantial embodied and operational carbon footprint resulting from their construction materials, practices, and lifetime operation. This paper examines the economic landscape of strategies and policies aimed at reducing the embodied and operational carbon footprint of buildings on a global scale, with specific case studies from various national contexts. It delves into various innovative approaches, including economic analysis techniques, market instruments, market demands, and the role of government incentives to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings. The study highlights the crucial role of government policies, financial incentives, and market forces in promoting sustainable practices and fostering the adoption of low-carbon alternatives. By shedding light on the economic dimensions of reducing the carbon footprint of buildings, this research aims to facilitate informed decision-making by policymakers, engineers, and other stakeholders, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and climate-resilient built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Wounded Storyteller, Arthur Frank proposed three types of narrative told by people attempting to reclaim their voice and the body made alien by illness. In restitution narrative the medical community is presented as having agency. In quest narrative, the person experiencing the disease or illness has agency, and they are saddled with the imperative to inspire others. The third type, the chaos narrative, is rarely encountered by audiences because the chaos narrative is usually erased. The individual living with chronic physical or mental illness or a disability, who cannot be stoic and turn their story into a quest narrative, is rendered mute. Their stories have largely been controlled by external agents. Failure to meet normate expectations has meant rejection. How prescriptive norms arose that delegitimatized the authority of chaos narrative must be understood if authentic chaos narrative is to be spoken and written. People living with chronic illnesses and disabilities are often prevented from telling their stories as they don't have happy endings or end with triumph. Their stories often don't fit the traditional Western storytelling format that has a clear resolution, but rather speaks to ongoing challenges continually lived in the present. Society, publishing and media outlets create forces that often both shape the narratives people tell and determine what kind of stories reach audiences. There is a need to allow more venues for allowing stories about ongoing struggles that do not resolve rather than to silence these narratives because they don't fit our learned, preferred tastes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding market forces that shape up supply and demand of fresh milk. This research study is essential for smooth milk production and its consumption particularly in case of emerging economies. Therefore, this study analyzes those factors that influence the market forces: consumption and production of fresh milk in Faisalabad, Pakistan. To achieve the objective, we used multiple linear regression technique to determine the effect of determinants influencing production and consumption. Results of this research article revealed that the fresh milk demand was positively influenced by consumer's educational background, fresh milk price, consumer income, family size, and family expenditures along with use of ICTs. Our study also depicted that the fresh milk production was influenced by factors such as credit facility, the strength of milking animals, sale price, concentrate value, farming experience, labor costs, fodder value, and ICTs. The study concluded that any intervention that aimed at smooth milk production and consumption should facilitate consumers and producers' access to ICTs, reduce prices of fresh milk and provide access to credit. Furthermore, while devising policies, the government should focus more on consumers with large family sizes and illiterate households to overcome the problem of food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Putting ecological protection in a more prominent position is one of the outstanding features of implementing China ' s new development concept. Therefore, the Chinese government has implemented strict environmental regulation measures to improve the ecological environment, and has achieved remarkable results. Using the relevant data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2020 for empirical analysis, this study found that there was a significant U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and regional economic growth. The consumption-oriented tertiary industry and the production-oriented tertiary industry, with market forces as the main resource allocation mode, developed better in southern China than in northern China. The structural advantage of tertiary industry with market forces as the main resource allocation mode in southern China could transform the positive externalities brought by environmental improvement into economic benefits so as to weaken the negative effect of environmental regulation on economic growth. As the basic industry of the digital economy, the production-oriented tertiary industry represented by computer service and the software industry developed better in southern China than in northern China, and the digital economy advanced rapidly in the advantageous industrial categories in southern China. Threshold model analysis showed that when the development level of the digital economy was low, environmental regulation had a significant promoting effect on the economic development of southern regions, while it had an inhibiting effect on the economic development of northern regions. When the development of the digital economy was high, environmental regulation played a significant role in promoting the economic development of southern and northern China, but it was obviously more intense in southern China than in northern China, making the economic disparities between the two demonstrate an amplified trend. Therefore, to narrow these disparities, it is necessary to further optimize the industrial structure in an accelerated manner, and promote the continuous transformation of environmental dividends into economic benefits while making full use of the opportunities of the digital economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implications of the second sentence in Tudor Harts statement about inverse care – that its operation was strongest when exposed to market forces. In the Australian context, we briefly review some available evidence for inverse care in three groups – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and those living in remote and socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. We then discuss the extent to which these examples can be attributed to the operation of supply-and-demand within Australia's hybrid fee-for-service system in general practice. Our analysis suggests disparities in workforce supply and the ability of disadvantaged groups to seek preventive and proactive care are critical factors. These, in turn, suggest the need to fund general practice to be responsible for proactive and preventive care of disadvantaged population groups alongside broader structural reforms in workforce, education and taxation. This paper examines the implications of the second sentence in Tudor Harts statement about inverse care – that its operation was strongest when exposed to market forces. Examples of inverse care can be found in the disparities access to primary health care in Australia, which can be attributed to both supply-and-demand factors in Australia's hybrid market model of health care. Correcting these requires changes to the funding and workforce models, as well as specific actions at the service and community level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private-sector planners in Turkey have been operating in a planning system that has been restructured within the framework of neoliberal urban policies for the last forty years. Especially after 2000, while the model of growth over construction was adopted as a basic economic policy, the planning practices that implemented these policies were seen as a means of capital accumulation by wider social groups. In this economic political environment, private-sector planners have entered into new relationships with politics, markets, and bureaucracy, and have settled in the centre of criticism with professional practices that fall behind the basic principles of the profession, such as land speculation and serving certain pressure groups instead of the public interest. This article focuses on the conditions in which private-sector planners realize their planning practices and the problems they encounter in their plan-making processes. According to private-sector planners, the most important problem is the increase in the determination of rent-oriented interest relations between public institutions and local market actors instead of public benefit in the planning process. Private-sector planners believe that at every stage of the planning process, politicians and market actors exert pressure on planners, and that these forces have caused Turkey's planning practices to decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the background of China's ecological civilization construction, enterprises green technology innovation (GTI) has attracted more and more attention. In this paper, the internal factors and external factors, subjective factors, and objective factors of each relevant subject are comprehensively considered, and the analysis framework of the impact mechanism of enterprise GTI is constructed. Then, taking 211 heavily polluting listed enterprises in China from 2010 to 2019 as the sample, integrating the mediating effect model and the moderating effect model, this paper empirically discusses the relationships among corporate endowments, executive characteristics, and enterprise GTI. The results demonstrate that corporate endowments have a positive impact on GTI, and executive characteristics act on GTI as a mediating variable during the impact process; market forces respectively play a weakening and strengthening role in moderating the main effect and the intermediate effect; government intervention and social background have positive moderating effects on the relationship between executive characteristics and GTI; the three moderating variables have a remarkable joint-moderating effect on the relationships between executive characteristics and GTI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide empirically informed reflections on the difficulty of undertaking critically inflected, decolonial praxis in community psychology within the overdetermined global order of neo‐liberalism. Using interviews with 10 alumni of the Masters in Community‐Based Counselling (MACC) psychology program at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, we extend what have hitherto been largely theoretical debates about the fundamental constraints on teaching decolonial theory as an important touchstone of criticality in the context of the constraining forces of the free‐market economy. We focus on our participants' attempts to navigate the inevitable tensions between the tenets of decolonial critical community psychology and neo‐liberal market pressures on employability. We analyze accounts of job‐seeking and employment experiences of the program alumni to ask whether we may have to contemplate the imminent evacuation of critical community epistemologies within the context of a market‐structured and professionally regulated psychology. We suggest that while the death knell of critical pedagogies and epistemologies has not yet quite arrived, more nuanced approaches to criticality may have to be adopted by the training programs that embrace them. We reveal that decoloniality's emergent traction within the academy is not mirrored by the world of professional psychology. We contend that our apparently ideologically bifurcated curriculum together with fundamental constraints on practice opportunities in the world of work, do not support an easy leap into the decolonial breach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sticky cost will enhance variety of firms' performance and uncertainty, does sticky cost list company increase or decrease stock price crash risk? Due to information and expected concerns, investors will consider sticky cost as companies' capacity and risk. We examine the effect of sticky cost on firms' stock price crash risk and find a negative association. This association mainly exists in firms with younger CEO, high level of product market competition, lower finance risk, poor performance, state-owned and concentrated ownership. We conclude that the sticky cost reduces the stock price crash risk. The conclusions have theoretical and practical significance for corporate governance and corporate strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Wounded Storyteller, Arthur Frank proposed three types of narrative told by people attempting to reclaim their voice and the body made alien by illness – restitution, quest, and chaos. Restitution narrative has dominated media; in it, the patient simply experiences the disease and is presented passively, and the medical community is presented as having agency. In quest narrative, the experiencer becomes their own hero; their suffering brings knowledge which is then shared with the audience who bears witness and is charged with learning the lesson the experience conveys. In quest narrative, while speakers have agency that they are often robbed of in the restitution narrative, they are saddled with the imperative to inspire others. This makes the narrator a hero, but we need to ask, where does the imperative come from that demands that the narrator become a hero and an example for others? If that imperative comes from the audience and market demands, we need to recognize how they are dictating the manner in which stories are told, determining which are selected by publishers and media venues to be disseminated. The third type, the chaos narrative, is rarely encountered by audiences because the chaos narrative is usually erased. This "anti-narrative" can only be lived and cannot be told. The individual living with chronic physical or mental illness or a disability, who cannot be stoic and turn their story into a quest narrative, is rendered mute. Since restitution narrative is also unavailable to these individuals, their stories are left unspoken or unwritten. Their stories have largely been controlled by external agents. Failure to meet normate expectations has meant rejection. How prescriptive norms arose that delegitimatized the authority of chaos narrative must be understood if authentic chaos narrative is to be spoken and written. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to demonstrate on a familiar example of Cobb-Douglas utility function principles of intertemporal resource allocation under general market conditions. The enormous increase of data availability and progress in data analysis in recent decades caused that empirical inequality research has created a robust base of results. On the other hand, researchers face serious interpretation difficulties. Empirical results do not speak for themselves but only through interpretative theory. Hence, the article provides a theoretical scheme which clarifies fundamental inequality-driving forces and which reveals economic inequalities as the intrinsic feature of market economies.

The high performance polymer market can be a fickle one for manufacturers, subservient to the whims of the end user. The materials often serve narrow, exotic markets and are thus produced in significantly smaller quantities than their higher tonnage, commodity cousins. Often, these more expensive, thoroughbred materials tend to be acquired and divested more readily than more humble products that constitute the core business. For example, a cursory glance at the development of cyanate ester monomers, first reported in the 1960s by Bayer AG, shows that the business changed hands on no fewer than seven occasions during the intervening forty years. In this reflective essay, the development of a carefully selected group of high performance polymers is contrasted in order to identify the key elements that contribute to the success (or failure) of a product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clean technologies are generally developed in industrialized countries and transferred to developing countries where they are adapted to local market conditions. This transfer is regularized by the technological and environmental policies of the receiving countries. The aim of the present work is to show that clean technologies are important in dealing with environmental problems in Algeria and that the regulation plays a key role in the technological eco-development process. To do so, we adopt an empirical approach that is based on data collection from industrial firms in the West of Algeria which operate in different sectors of activities. The present study used a modeling approach that relied on a structural equation model and multiple regression analysis. The developed model is based on the results of the qualitative survey that preceded the econometric study. The results show that the variance of industrial pollution in Algeria is explained by regulation intensity, technological policy, and market forces. In addition, the collected data show that technologies that are needed for green growth in Algeria are mastered in 53% of the cases where technology transfer and adaptive Research and Development (R&D) play an important role. In 75% of cases, regulatory incentives related to the integration of technological change and eco-innovations are one of the key drivers of reducing environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the financial crisis in 2008 did not hit as hard in Denmark as elsewhere, its imprints make visible how fluctuating market forces take an active part in the shaping of architecture and urban spaces. Recent theoretical developments in the field of architectural anthropology stress that architecture, rather than being a static entity, is a moving project in which numerous human and nonhuman actors continuously entangle. This paper builds on and advances such an approach by focussing on the vicissitudes of the market as an actor in the complex ecology of architectural design. The analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork in what is here referred to as the place-making processes of new Danish residential architecture; that is, the ways in which architects, users, investors, branding strategies, building materials and financial fluctuations all interact in the continuous creation of places. The paper demonstrates how the contemporary architect designs places in interaction with the global market as much as in interaction with building sites and materials. Consequently, it introduces the concept of ‘unintended design’ in relation to architecture, and argues in favour of an architectural anthropology that studies place-making across the habitually distinguished phases of design and use.

Given constant emergence of new infectious threats, infectious diseases (ID) should be one of the most attractive medical specialties to students and trainees. Yet, ID Fellowship programs continue to not fill in the match, and ID remains among the lowest paid specialties. Approximately 35 years after Dr. Petersdorf first asked the question, we find ourselves once again wondering, "Whither Infectious Diseases?" To answer this question, and align with predominant US market forces, ID experts should push for the following: (1) restrictions regarding utilization of ID diagnostics and antimicrobial agents; (2) pay-for-performance measures regarding antimicrobial prescribing rates; and (3) healthcare reform as called for by the American College of Physicians to move away from fee-for-service medicine. Einstein said, "Continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity." We must move towards alignment with market forces, to benefit our patients, society, and our colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The academic community suggests that there are multiple variations of the welfare state depending on its specific political and socio-economic background. Considered a “novelty” of both modernity and capitalism (hence the term welfare capitalism), its main end goal is generally considered to be the just redistribution of wealth to the most disadvantaged and/or marginalized citizens via social policy, which can translate into retirement schemes, social and healthcare insurance, maternal leave plans, employment policies and so forth. Feminist theory tries to analyze and emphasize the interaction between the public and private spheres, both being directly affected by the market and the state’s intervention upon it. This article sets out a brief historical account on the emergence of the concept of welfare state, which is then followed by a review of the main currents of thought and contentions within feminist literature on this topic. The main research question I am trying to address here is the following: Is the welfare state an effective device of diminishing gender inequality and its inherent issues such as the feminization of poverty or the double burden? At the same time, can it be used as an instrument to balance the gender hierarchy?

Drawing upon evidence from the Chinese corporate bond market, we study how ownership structure affects the cost of debt for firms. Our results show that state, institutional and foreign ownership formats reduce the cost of debt for firms. The benefits of state ownership are accentuated when the issuer is headquartered in a province with highly developed market institutions, operates in an industry less dominated by the state or during the period after the 2012 anti-corruption reforms. Institutional ownership provides the most benefits in environments with lower levels of marketization, especially for firms with low credit quality. Our evidence sheds light on the nexus of ownership and debt cost in a political economy where state and private firms face productivity and credit frictions. It is also illustrative of how the market environment interacts with corporate ownership in affecting the cost of bond issuance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper considers the implications of reform efforts that rely on charter management organizations to assume operational control of underperforming neighborhood schools. The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which changes to the education sector place enormous pressure on these organizations to both manage instruction and their social environments. Design/methodology/approach: The research presents the results from a longitudinal case study of two organizations operating within the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD). Interviews, observations and document analysis provided insight into the perspectives of school operators, state officials and community leaders. The study design allowed researchers to observe the influence of the environment on school operators over a four-year period. Findings: Results show that the environment that included a muscular state, market pressures, NGOs and local communities placed an extreme and contradictory set of demands on organizations operating schools, pressing them to develop robust systems of instruction, leadership and teacher development while actively working to ensure social legitimacy in the community. Neither a national network nor a small local startup began with a strategy aligned to these environmental demands, and both needed to make substantial revisions. Research limitations/implications: Research into contemporary educational reform should account for rapidly evolving environments that feature a complex mix of resources and incentives. Careful examination of the consequences of these environments for educational organizations will further our understanding of how markets, communities and governments are shaping the education sector. Practical implications: The extraordinary challenges that confront organizations that operate in crowded and contested environments preclude fast or dramatic results. Policymakers and the public should assume an incremental process of organizational learning and improvement. Setting unrealistic expectations and focusing exclusively on impact risks delegitimizing organizations and policy initiatives before they have time to adapt. Originality/value: This research reported here is among the few studies that have explored the experiences and implications of NGOs that have attempted to assume operational control of underperforming neighborhood schools. The popularity of this approach among a growing number of states highlights the importance of this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is experiencing a tough transformation from rapid growth to quality development, with extensive implementation of land redevelopment. Previous studies have analyzed the mechanisms of land redevelopment at the urban and neighborhood scales, but little attention has been paid to its spatial heterogeneity at national scales, making it impossible to measure the role of macro factors and the central government, and the differences in the driving factors across cities. Using a city-level database of 287 Chinese cities from 2012 to 2018, this paper quantitatively reveals the spatial heterogeneity of land redevelopment among different regions, administrative levels, and city sizes, and analyzes how government and market forces generate such geographic characteristics. The findings reveal that: 1) The national land redevelopment ratio increased from 26.44% in 2012 to 31.95% in 2018, with an average yearly rise of 1%. 2) Eastern cities have the largest land redevelopment scale, while Northeastern cities have the highest proportion of land redevelopment, accounting for about 40%. Despite having the highest amount of land redevelopment, high-level administrative cities and large cities do not have a higher proportion of land redevelopment than other cities. 3) Market mechanism is imperfect and unbalanced. Foreign direct investment affects land redevelopment in eastern cities with a coefficient of 0.19, while real estate development affects the western cities and small cities, with coefficients of 1.72 and 1.11, respectively. Although the government plays a crucial role in propelling land redevelopment in China, the involvement of administrative power in expanding new construction land and non-market transactions has hindered the transition to the redevelopment of existing land. • Spatial heterogeneity of land redevelopment among cities of different regions, administrative levels and sizes. • The proportion of land redevelopment increased from 26.44% in 2012 to 31.95% in 2018. • High-level administrative and large cities do not have a higher proportion of land redevelopment than other cities. • The state, local governments, market forces and regional context jointly affect land redevelopment. • Market mechanisms are imperfect and unbalanced, with western cities driven by real estate, eastern cities driven by FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to show in an exact manner the importance of the state contribution in the process of formation and consolidation of the agriexport model and analyze the social and environmental consequences of this transformation today. It is noticed that the export commodity, carried by powerful agroindustrial complex consolidated in the past, now much more sophisticated, and called agribusiness, assumes a similar role that had in the past. Ponders that the reason would be political and economic representation representing exports to GDP, payment balance, income and employment. Argues that, in a superficial comparison of the pattern of occupation of the strategies used and the legacy left in the way of this expansion, there are common links, concluding that, the positive results for the company involved are not encouraging; one prevails looting and pillage trail and a huge perverse social and environmental liabilities.