Search

Industry 5.0, the latest wave of industrial revolution, is redefining the traditional manufacturing and production landscapes by leveraging advanced technologies, promoting sustainability, and fostering a human-centric approach. An inevitable consequence of this progression is Quality 5.0, the next phase of quality control and assurance. Quality 5.0 aims to transcend the limitations of conventional quality control techniques, which are typically reactive, by adopting a proactive stance towards defect prevention and process optimization. This paper elucidates the concepts of Quality 5.0, discussing its principles, benefits, and potential challenges in the context of Industry 5.0.

Consumers increasingly adopt artificial intelligence (AI) enabled voice assistants (VAs) for transactional and non-transactional uses due to these devices’ inherent affordances, such as their ease of use and convenience. Despite the widespread adoption of VAs in recent times, consumers continue to avoid using VAs for transactional purposes. Currently, we have a limited understanding of the various antecedents and consequences of consumer decision avoidance in the context of VAs. This study aims to bridge this gap by adopting the decision avoidance theory as a theoretical lens and a convergent mixed-methods approach to identify the antecedents (i.e. cognitive biases and nudging) and consequences (i.e. rejection of VAs for transactional purposes and intention to adopt VAs for transactional purposes) of consumer decision avoidance (i.e. consumer inertia and procrastination). The study findings suggest a positive association of cognitive biases with consumer inertia, procrastination and rejection. While nudging is positively associated with procrastination and intentions, it shares a negative association with rejection. Consumer inertia is positively associated with rejection and negatively associated with intentions. Meanwhile, procrastination shares a positive association with intention and a negative association with rejection. Technology comfort has a significant moderating (negative) influence on the association between cognitive biases and intentions. publishedVersion

This research explores the role of Blockchain Technology (BCT) integrated with Reverse Supply Chain Networks (RSCN) and evaluates the relationship between BCT and sustainability performance in multi-industries. A qualitative research design was employed to develop a conceptual framework for BCT in RSCN for multi-industries. This research collected and analysed primary and secondary data from four case studies as focal actors. These focal actors are from industries in Jordan, namely food, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and toys. These actors are lead firms in their RSCNs and have experience working with RSCNs and technology applications such as BCT. Primary data were acquired from interviews with managers working in various industries. Analysis of secondary data has identified two types of the key BCT-influencing themes: internally focused and externally focused BCT-integrated drivers of RSCNs. The analysis also identified how they leverage sustainability performance improvements, including their use of RSCN approaches and features. This research is one of the few attempts to explore BCT integrated into RSCN for better sustainability performance through understanding the implementation and evaluation that contributes to the theoretical and practical knowledge of supply chains within emerging economies. All types of actors-as-stakeholders involved with national programs and projects can adopt the new framework that provides the changes required for RSCN. The key findings contribute to the field of RSCN where the adoption of BCT as a broad-based strategy to attain sustainability goals and reverse chain activities along the supply chain is a goal.

The Covid-19 pandemic outbreak across the globe has disrupted human life and industry. The pandemic has affected every sector, with the real estate sector facing particular challenges. During the pandemic, property management became a crucial task and property managers were challenged to control risks and disruptions faced by their organizations. Recent innovative technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), have supported many sectors through sudden disruptions; this study was performed to examine the role of AI in the real estate and property management (PM) sectors. For this purpose, a systematic literature review was conducted using structural topic modeling and bibliometric analysis. Using appropriate keywords, the researchers found 175 articles on AI and PM research from 1980 to 2021 in the SCOPUS database. A bibliometric analysis was performed to identify research trends. Structural topic modelling (STM) identified ten emerging thematic topics in AI and PM. A comprehensive framework is proposed, and future research directions discussed.

This paper sets out a general framework for store sales evaluation and prediction. The sales of a retail chain with multiple stores are first decomposed into five components, and then each component is explained by store, competitor and consumer characteristics using random effects models for components observable at the store level and spatial error random effects models for components observable at the zip code level. We use spatial panel data over four years for estimation and a subsequent year for evaluating one-year-ahead predictions. Set against a benchmark model that explains total sales directly, the prediction error of our framework is reduced by 34% for existing stores during the sample period, by 5% for existing stores one year ahead and by 26% for new stores.

This paper introduces an analytical framework for understanding how specialized and diversified regional innovation system (RIS) differ in the way an entrepreneurial discovery process (EDP) is likely to unfold. To analytically explore the proposed framework, we deploy a sequential explanatory design approach, using quantitative data to analyze the regional industry structure of the city regions of Bergen and Stavanger in Western Norway, followed by a qualitative analysis of interviews with key stakeholders in both regions. We find that the city regions face unique challenges that align with an understanding of their respective RIS categorization, providing evidence that the framework proposed serves as a useful guide in understanding the development of an EDP.

Family businesses have traditionally been recognised for their trustworthiness and reputation. Interestingly, the extant literature suggests the influence of reputation and trust on family businesses’ long-term financial success. However, despite the increasing attention the topic has received, a comprehensive overview of trust and reputation in family businesses remains lacking. The current study aims to critically examine and review the extant research on trust and reputation in the context of family businesses and uncover current research trends and future research opportunities. We identified and critically analysed 93 studies through a stringent search protocol and content analysis to achieve the research objective. Based on thematic analysis, we identified four clusters reflecting family business research on trust and reputation. The key outcome is the elucidation of research themes and potential research questions exploring drivers and consequences of trust and reputation. The findings indicate that trust and reputation are crucial for developing relationships with stakeholders and achieving economic and non-economic goals. We integrate our findings into a theoretical framework that can serve to motivate future research. We conclude by clarifying the limitations of our research, offering actionable implications for researchers and family business managers and attempting theory development by raising new research questions. © 2021 The Authors.

In emerging markets, instances of increasing consumers focus on ethical aspects of the product are observed. To this end, we aim to examine the influence of two ethical certifications and two product involvement types on consumers willingness to purchase ethical products at price premiums in the Indian market. No animal cruelty certification and no child labor certification are chosen as the ethical certifications, and a shirt and a bar of soap are chosen as high and low involvement product categories. Data is collected from 206 respondents for the experiment, in which consumers willingness to purchase a product is evaluated for different product scenarios. The results of the study indicate that individuals show highest willingness to purchase products (a shirt or a soap) when both certifications (no animal cruelty, no child labor) are present. However, in comparing individual certifications, individuals prefer no animal cruelty certification for a shirt and no child labor certification for a bar of soap. The study provides insights to practitioners regarding consumers present perception of ethical aspects in the product and directions to increase sales of ethical products in the Indian market.

The aim of the paper is to shed light on the role played by regional knowledge bases in Industry 3.0 in fostering new technologies in Industry 4.0 in European regions (NUTS 3) over the period 1991–2015. We find that 4.0 technologies appear to be quite related to 3.0 technologies, with some heterogeneity among different technology fields. The paper investigates the geographical implications. We find that the probability of developing Industry 4.0 technologies is higher in regions that are specialized in Industry 3.0 technologies. However, other types of knowledge bases also sustain regional diversification in Industry 4.0 technologies.

The intense proliferation of social media platforms into every facet of human lives has engaged researchers' attention towards understanding their adverse influences, referred to as the dark side of social media (DoSM) in the evolving literature. A relatively unexplored context in this regard is employees' personal use of social media during work hours and its impact on work-related outcomes. Since using social media during work hours can have implications for work performance and productivity, the lack of research in the area needs to be addressed by scholars sooner rather than later. Specifically, it is important to understand the drivers and outcomes of such behaviour. We have thus conceptualized a theoretical model based on the associations among individual tendencies (exhibitionism and voyeurism), fear of missing out (FoMO), and individual-level psychological (compulsive use of social media) and behavioral (work performance decrement and procrastination) outcomes of social media use during work hours. Grounded in the stressor-strain-outcomes (SSO) framework, the hypothesized associations were tested by a path analysis of 312 responses collected from individuals working in the United States. The results confirmed significant relationships between individual tendencies and FoMO, as well as psychological and behavioural outcomes. The findings contribute to the evolving literature around DoSM in the workplace and offer useful and practical insights.

University–industry collaboration (UIC) is an important source of knowledge and innovation for firms but is often challenging due to the partners’ different goals. Thus, formal research centers have become a key policy instrument to foster stronger UIC whereby strong mutual relationships are created. This study investigates the establishment of a university–industry research center to gain insights into the coordination activities the focal firms used to achieve their goals with UIC. We find that the firms with goals related to specific innovations and technology development took a more active role by using structured coordination activities in the preformation phase of the research center, whereas the firms with goals related to general knowledge development mainly coordinated through unstructured activities when the center began operations. We map the specific coordination activities used in UIC and theorize on how the partners’ different organizational goals influenced their use of these activities. Our findings have important implications for how activities in UIC, particularly in research centers, can be designed to strengthen the collaboration between universities and their firm partners to enhance knowledge development and innovation.

This article examines which economic domains regional policy makers aim to develop in regional innovation strategies, focusing in particular on the complexity of those economic domains and their relatedness to other economic domains in the region. We build on the economic geography literature that advises policy makers to target related and complex economic domains, and assess the extent to which regions actually do this. The article draws on data from the smart specialization strategies of 128 NUTS-2 regions across Europe. While regions are more likely to select complex economic domains related to their current economic domain portfolio, complexity and relatedness figure independently, rather than in combination, in choosing priorities. We also find that regions in the same country tend to select the same priorities, contrary to the idea of a division of labor across regions that smart specialization implies. Overall, these findings suggest that smart specialization may be considerably less place based in practice than it is in theory. There is a need to develop better tools to inform regions’ priority choices, given the importance of priority selection in smart specialization strategies and regional innovation policy more broadly.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) enable negative interest rates. A game is analyzed between a central bank (accounting for the government’s interest) and a representative household choosing to consume, hold CBDC, or hold non-CBDC. The central bank chooses negative interest rate when it realizes that the household is willing to pay the central bank for holding CBDC. The household pays the negative interest rate because of its Cobb Douglas preferences whereby it values holding CBDC while simultaneously holding the competitive non-CBDC with a given interest rate, consuming with various output elasticities, and accounting for transaction efficiencies and costs. More explicitly, intuition and how the players benefit are provided for the following results: The central bank chooses more negative interest rate when the household’s output elasticity for consumption increases, the household’s output elasticity for holding CBDC decreases, the CBDC and non-CBDC transaction efficiencies increase, the household’s transaction efficiency for consumption decreases, the household’s scaling of the transaction cost increases, the scaling parameter for the central bank’s profit per household decreases, the household’s monetary energy decreases, and the non-CBDC interest rate decreases. The results are determined analytically and illustrated numerically where each of nine parameter values is varied relative to a benchmark.

Behavioral biases are known to influence the investment decisions of retail investors. Indeed, extant research has revealed interesting findings in this regard. However, the literature on the impact of these biases on millennials' trading activity, particularly during a health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the equity recommendation intentions of such investors, is limited. The present study addressed these gaps by investigating the influence of eight behavioral biases: overconfidence and self-attribution, over-optimism, hindsight, representativeness, anchoring, loss aversion, mental accounting, and herding on the trading activity and recommendation intentions of millennials during the pandemic. An artificial neural network approach was used to analyze the data collected from 351 millennial men in Finland. The results revealed that herding, hindsight, overconfidence and self-attribution, representativeness, and anchoring influence both trading activity and recommendation intentions, albeit to varying extents. Notably, loss aversion and mental accounting influence only the recommendation intentions. Furthermore, the relationship of the two endogenous variables is nonlinear with herding, representativeness, and anchoring but is linear with other biases. In addition to the quantitative study, we also conducted a post hoc qualitative study with 19 millennials to evaluate the persistence of behavioral biases among them through the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

The study explores strategic partnerships themes for Sustainable Agricultural Value chains (SAVC) dimensions. Acknowledging the role of stakeholders, business and Not-for-Profit actors, and their engagement in such partnerships, this study focuses on the latter’s perspective. Literature review followed by five exploratory case studies are used to examine SAVC partnership themes. The study identifies three themes influencing strategic partnerships: the interaction between partners through cooperation, coordination, and collaboration; management of information flow between partners; and product flow management with demand-supply coordination between partners. The level of information sharing between partners also influences SAVC value creation. The findings extend value chain literature by stressing the theoretical association between the identified antecedents and partnership in the sustainability value chain in general and the SAVC in particular. The exploratory case studies provide real-life perspectives and a practical framework in the context of SAVC. Managers, policymakers and international funded programmes can also benefit from the current key findings and the new framework as a referential basis to form a partnership strategy in agricultural sectors. This research suggests a further test for the conceptual framework using large-scale surveys in diverse geographic contexts and looking at trans-border value chain partnerships, especially in different country contexts that influence sustainable development and partnerships in SAVC.

This study examines the interplay between whale watchers’ knowledge and interest in protecting the environment on the perceived value and satisfaction of their whale watching experience. Despite an emphasis on examining 1) environmental insights into protecting the environment employed by tourists and tourism stakeholders; and 2) evaluating tourists’ perceived value and satisfaction in the literature, it is unknown if whale watchers’ knowledge and interest in protecting the environment influences their evaluation of a whale watching experience. To assess the relationships between these constructs, 1024 self-administered surveys were collected on three whale watching vessels within one Australian whale watching destination. Ordinary least square and logit regression determined that whale watchers’ interest in protecting the environment and perceived value and satisfaction with their whale watching experience was high. Whale watchers’ knowledge of protecting the environment was an insignificant predictor of perceived value and satisfaction. Conversely, whale watchers’ interest in protecting the environment was a significant predictor of perceived quality and emotional value. Perceived value mediated whale watchers’ interest in protecting the environment and satisfaction. To remain competitive whilst also protecting the environment, tourism stakeholders (e.g. Destination Marketing Organizations, whale watching operators) need to further market whale watching experiences to whale watchers in the targeted segment emphasizing environmental protection appeal. This study has provided several theoretical and practical contributions while future research opportunities are also outlined.

The aim of this paper is to explore how innovation search is conceptualised, given that firms increasingly use innovation intermediaries. The paper examines the search processes which involves the role of innovation intermediaries in different stages of the innovation search process. The study discovered that innovation search activity is a much more extended and complex process, not being as targeted or as specific than previously conceptualised, and involves a set of search stages, which are associated with a loosely coupled iterative search process. Innovation intermediaries were also discovered to be undertaking new, more extended roles in the search process, through, for example, combining new search procedures with online digital platforms.

Fishers tend to prioritize landings of the most valuable product to better utilize vessel capacity. This may lead to discards of catches that are economically undesirable or legally prohibited. The high-value of shark fins and the low-value of shark carcasses has traditionally led to an example of that practice, known as finning. Brazil is an important player in the trade for non-fin shark products. The recent increase in shark meat trade is associated with increased imports of shark meat in Brazil. This increase may be a consequence of stricter finning regulations that has created incentives for full utilization of sharks and exposed the resource to a new source of demand. Thus, sharks overexploitation may increase, even if demand for fins weakens over time. This paper investigates the shark meat market development in Brazil over the last decades using demand and cointegration analysis, with a focus on before and after implementation of finning restrictions in 1998. Results indicate that shark meat is not a new market in Brazil, but an old one driven by a particular interest from local consumers. The decline in domestic shark meat landings, increasing demand for seafood, and the commoditization of shark meat have facilitated import growth. Additionally, domestic prices seem to influence imports most likely because Brazil is an important player as a shark meat consumer. This means that even with the global shark fin market weakening, the Brazilian demand for shark meat is likely to contribute to the overexploitation of sharks in poorly managed fisheries.

Existing research has emphasised various mechanisms for knowledge exchange in industry clusters, including inter-firm collaboration, labour mobility, and monitoring of other firms. However, these mechanisms are normally studied in isolation, and we know little about how they interrelate. This paper examines which firms collaborate within a cluster. We ask whether knowledge exchanges through other channels, specifically monitoring and labour mobility, are positively or negatively associated with collaboration. We use data from interviews with 30 firms in the subsea sector in Rogaland, Norway, representing nearly the entire population of the cluster, to examine the association between the different forms of linkages. The results from Social Network Analysis reveal an overall high degree of knowledge exchange among the organisations making up the subsea cluster. Furthermore, using Quadratic Assignment Procedure (QAP) regression analysis, we find that collaborative linkages are significantly more likely to exist between firms which share recruitment and/or monitoring linkages. publishedVersion

Asia, particularly China, has become an attractive market that receives much attention in the Norwegian tourism industry. This raises relevant questions about the sustainability of the Chinese tourism boom. If the Norwegian tourism industry increasingly targets this rapidly growing market with larger investments, it should respond to the prospects of long-term growth. Such prospects hinge on the economic drivers behind the influx of Chinese tourists. In this study, we use both descriptive data analysis and the ARDL model to investigate the main economic factors that drive Chinese tourists to Norway. Specifically, we investigate whether the boom of the Chinese tourists is a relatively stable trend associated with the growing Chinese economy or just a short-term phenomenon brought by the weakened NOK. Our findings suggest instead of the well-recognized Chinese economic growth, it is the improving price competitiveness of Norway resulting from the weakening Norwegian kroner that has made the boom of the Chinese tourists in Norway. This result suggests although the income effect is significant in affecting aggregate tourist flow from a source country, for a single destination, price competitiveness is the key to make a destination attractive since the substitution effects of other destinations are huge and the income effect becomes uncertain.

Strategic alliances between competitors (coopetition) is perceived to be full of tensions that needs to be managed. This study explore the evolution of a Norwegian coopetition alliance, through how firms handle tensions over time. The study finds that the firms experience a mutual dependence towards one another and that this dependence evolves over time. In the early phases of a coopetition alliance firms handle tension by relying on a structural dependence with their partners whereas firms move towards a more harmonious relationship with their partners by building a psychological dependence through trust and generosity. Further, the results indicate these dependencies might reduce the possible tensions related to asymmetries in size and knowledge between firms. Unit Licence Agreement

Research on sustainable development is significantly influenced by the trade-off between the economic, social, and environmental performance of businesses. Industry 4.0 development is a key business priority due to the promise of exponential increase in productivity, time efficiencies and cost reduction. However, industry 4.0 development has been slow. Notably, human actors remain central to industry 4.0; while the social responsibility component of sustainable development is a key prerogative for industry, championed through the UN sustainable development goals and European Commission. Therefore, we evaluate human-related impediments for industry 4.0 and critically explore how human resource management (HRM) can overcome these barriers using a socially responsible orientation. First, we analyse the human-related challenges to industry 4.0 through a thematic literature review. Thereafter, through an integrative literature review of different research streams (industry 4.0, HRM and social responsibility), we critically argue novel perspectives on how human resource practices can enable sustainable development of industry 4.0 in a socially responsible manner. Herein, we address a crucial literature gap. Our findings reveal numerous people-related barriers, including change resistance, digital skills gap, employment threats widening socio-economic inequalities, lack of industry-wide collaboration, leadership, and organisational culture challenges. We show that HRM can be a crucial enabler for sustainable industry 4.0 development through socially responsible human resource practices. These include strategic multi-stakeholder collaborations, holistic talent management, change leadership, inclusive knowledge sharing, sponsoring education research and co-designing curricula, smart technology for upskilling and retention, rewarding inclusive industry 4.0 ideas and so on. We conclude with future research directions. Strategic sustainable development of Industry 4.0 through the lens of social responsibility: The role of human resource practices

MAD statement The intention of this leading article is to help reframe our take on capitalism and leadership. Rather than presenting a linear, one-solution approach, it promotes an often messy, uncertain approach based on purpose, co-creation, creativity, courage and action delivering on a multitude of stakeholders’ needs and interests.

Managers of street-level organizations play an important role in the successful implementation of public reforms. A prevailing view within the public administration literature is that this work involves the adaptation between reforms and local contexts, where divergence is viewed as a form of resistance to change. The paper challenges this prevalent reform-centric view by introducing a situation-centric perspective and coining the concept of situational work as a significant form of managerial work during implementation. Situational work encompasses managerial actions that ensure functional and well-ordered service delivery in local street-level organizations by accomodating everyday situational contingencies, including reform objectives, but also the interests and expectations of workers, clients, and local service partners. The concept of situational work, then, broadens the recognized scope of managerial activities that contribute to successful reform implementation, reconceptualizing divergence from reform design as constructive rather than as resistance to change. The paper draws on an extensive multi-wave study of a major organizational reform in Norway, based on observations of meetings as well as qualitative interviews of managers, union representatives, frontline workers and collaborating partners in six welfare service offices at three points in time (altogether 23 observation sessions and 173 interviews). Resisting or facilitating change? How street-level managers’ situational work contributes to the implementation of public reforms

Purpose Facing the challenges posed by the pandemic of COVID-19, this paper aims to contribute to the resilience of businesses through the development of a real options approach (ROA) that provides alternatives and opportunities for a decision process under situations when future events and outcomes are unknown and not capable of being known from current information. Design/methodology/approach This paper involves a stochastic modelling process in generating a set of absolute option values, using available data and scenarios from the COVID-19 pandemic event. The modelling and simulations using ROA suggest how strategic portfolios resolve the growing problem during the endemic to all but in the most isolated societies. Findings This study finds the emergent correlation between circuit breakers and lockdowns, which have brought about a “distorted gravity” effect (inverse growth of global businesses and trades). However, “time-to-build” real options (i.e. deferral, expand, switch and compound exchange) start to function in the adaptive-transformative capabilities for growth opportunities of both government and corporate sectors. Significantly, some sectors grow faster than others while the compound exchange remains primarily challenging. Clearly, the government and corporate sectors are entangled, inevitably, the decoherence allows for the former to change uncertainty in the latter; therefore, government sector options change option values in the corporate sector. Originality/value The ROA by empirically focusing on both government and corporate sectors demonstrates under conditions of uncertainty how options in decision-making generate opportunities that hitherto have not been recognised and exercised upon by research in the immediate context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, the ROA provides an insightful concatenation (capability–behaviour approach) that drives resilience.

Food waste is a serious problem that impacts the environment and sustainability by increasing greenhouse gas emissions from landfills. Food waste also represents a social challenge because it raises serious concerns about food security. While acknowledging that households waste a great deal of food because they lack a proper routine for reusing leftovers and purchase more food than required, few studies have extensively examined the drivers of leftover reuse and over-ordering. We address this gap using the stimulus-organism-response paradigm. Moral norms and anticipated pride are conceptualised as stimuli that impact the organismic state of intentions against food waste and response in the form of leftover reuse routines and over-purchasing of food. Data collected from 443 individuals residing in the United States confirm the positive association of norms and pride with intentions. Statistical analyses also reveal a positive association between intentions and leftover reuse routines and a negative association between intentions and over-purchasing of food. The results further demonstrate the mediation effect of intentions on the association of moral norms and anticipated pride with both response variables; in addition, we find that household income exerts a positive moderation effect on the association of norms and pride with intentions and a negative moderation effect on the association of anticipated pride with over-purchasing of food. Researchers, organisations and policymakers can draw upon these findings to motivate future research, propose effective strategies and enact favourable policies to promote sustainability and reduce food-related waste at the household level. publishedVersion

Koronakrisen har medført store endringer for bedrifter over hele verden. Noen bedrifter har brukt innovasjon aktivt for å håndtere krisen. Nye utfordringer ble møtt med nye løsninger, mens andre i mindre grad responderte med innovasjon. Ved hjelp av to studier gjennomført siste året foretar vi i denne artikkelen et dypdykk i hvordan og i hvilken grad norske bedrifter har benyttet innovasjon som et verktøy under krisen. Vi ser nærmere på hvilke tilpasninger bedriftene har gjennomført, og om disse endringene ser ut til å være permanente ved at bedriftene tar dem med seg videre etter krisen. Vi finner at norsk næringsliv har endret innovasjons­atferd under pandemien og trappet opp innovasjons­aktivitetene. Dette gjelder innovasjons­aktiviteter generelt, men også innovasjonsaktiviteter målrettet mot digitalisering og bærekraft. Norske bedrifter har innovert på en rekke forskjellige områder; innovasjoner i produkter og tjenester, arbeids­prosesser, forretnings­modeller og logistikkløsninger. Bedriftslederne forventer at største­delen av disse innovasjonene har verdi også når krisen er over. Det er imidlertid verdt å legge merke til at den økte innovasjons­aktiviteten i hovedsak har skjedd i bedrifter med tidligere erfaring fra innovasjon.

Doctoral thesis (PhD) – Nord University, 2022 The financial sector that provides funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation is not protected from climate change. However, there is a lack of knowledge about financial markets’ response to climate change regarding asset pricing. The main concern is effects of climate change on companies and their performance in the long term. This thesis studies how climate risks impact financial markets by analyzing assets’ market performance. Interested in climate risk in general, the thesis also investigates regulatory climate risk as being the most recognized by companies. This thesis comprises four scientific articles that present the results of quantitative empirical research conducted on secondary market data. Two of these articles apply event study methodology to assess the market reaction to events related to climate policy, linking them to the regulatory climate risk. The findings show that climate policy‐related events, such as the adoption of the Paris Agreement, significantly affect stock returns and even cause a long‐term shift in price fluctuations. In the case of green bonds, such events also influence their return per unit risk and correlation with other assets. The other two articles depart from the assumptions of sustainable investments and investigate the performance of sustainable and climate‐aligned investments in the Norwegian context. The results suggest a significant underperformance of high‐climate‐risk stocks and a neglectable return difference between low and high sustainable stocks. A long‐short climate‐aligned investment strategy was found to be profitable and thus preferable. Overall, this thesis discovers a significant impact of climate risk on asset prices and argues that investors might benefit from distinguishing assets by their climate risk exposure. Recognition of climate risks becomes even more important for long‐term oriented value‐driven investors. Impact of climate change risks on the financial markets Effekten av klimaendringer på finansmarkedene

Prior research has often portrayed information technology (IT) as a stressor. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate that IT can also be an effective means of coping with life stressors, including those induced by pandemics such as COVID-19. We thus deviate from the common IT-as-a-stressor perspective and adopt an IT-as-a-coping-mechanism viewpoint. To this end, we apply the stressor-detachment model from organisational psychology to the use of social network sites (SNSs) in coping with stressors wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine psychological well-being as our dependant variable and introduce psychological detachment through SNS use as a mediator and moderator of the associations between psychological well-being and two COVID-19 stressors: work-family conflict and perceived isolation. We used structural equation modelling and tested this model with survey data collected from 398 professionals who were in lockdown and working from home during the pandemic. The results indicated that psychological detachment through SNS uses increased psychological well-being and that heightened work-family conflict motivated this detachment strategy. In contrast, consistent with helplessness and motivation-opportunity theories, perceived isolation as a stressor did not influence psychological detachment through SNS use. While perceived isolation directly reduced individual well-being, the effect of work-family conflict on well-being was contingent upon users' levels of psychological detachment through SNS use. These findings suggest that while psychological detachment through SNS use is an effective means of improving one's well-being, it can be positively or negatively affected by stressors. Our study contributes to research on technology-mediated strategies for coping with stress and the psychosocial implications of global pandemics.

Building on marketing capabilities literature and social network theories, this thesis empirically investigates the contribution of network connections to the development of firm marketing capabilities. This thesis conceptualizes network relationships based on the cohesion and diversity of network resources in the firm-firm network and firm-government network. Using a survey and archival data obtained from 186 firms operating in the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, this study reveals how external network partners contribute to developing firms' marketing capabilities. I found that diversity in firm–firm and firm–government networks produced comparable results, but cohesion in these two networks produce different results. The findings indicated that diversity in both firm-firm and firm-government networks contributed to marketing capabilities. While cohesion in firm-firm networks contributes to marketing capabilities, the same is not true for firm-government network cohesion and marketing capabilities relationship. Besides, the effect of network connections on marketing capabilities is contingent upon environmental dynamism and knowledge tacitness. Cohesive networks contribute to the development of marketing capabilities under a high level of knowledge tacitness. Diverse networks provide knowledge relevant to building marketing capabilities in dynamic environments. The findings also revealed that marketing capabilities mediate the effect of the firm–firm network on sales growth and new market development. This research provides new insights for marketing researchers and managers on how to make the most out of their network connections to develop marketing capabilities and how investments in developing marketing capabilities contribute to firm performance.

This study examined the effects of key fishing tactics such as the choice of fishing gear and catch size, an indicator of swift and intense fishing, on the quality of landed fish. The effects of changes in yearly TACs, and thus catch shares, vessel size (length) and vessel age on fish quality were also investigated. A data set consisting of objective quality assessments of Atlantic cod in 432 catches from the coastal cod fishery in Norway, combined with details about the same catches was analyzed. The statistical analysis showed that fishing gear affected fish quality, but to a variable degree, with gillnets and Danish seines, the preferred methods in this fishery, providing the poorest-quality fish. It was also found that catch size had a negative impact on fish quality for gillnets, handlines, and Danish seines, but not for longlines. The results indicate that fishers’ tactical decisions regarding what fishing gear to use, and how swiftly and intensely to fish, may lead to poor-quality fish being landed. Although this may be economically rational for fishers in a fishery with no restrictions on the choice of fishing gear and catch sizes, and where quality-based pricing is largely absent, it may lead to a substantial reduction in value-adding opportunities in downstream processing and marketing.

This paper assesses the effects of investors’ lottery-seeking behavior on expected returns in the Norwegian equity market, a relatively small equity market dominated by the energy industry. We use the MAX factor defined as maximum daily return over the previous month as the proxy of investors’ preference for lottery-like stocks. Despite evidence from recent literature that MAX has a negative relationship with the expected returns in other developed European markets, we find that the relationship is generally insignificant in Norway; however, it becomes more nuanced when we control for the state of the oil market. The dominance of firms related to the oil industry, which have experienced tremendous growth over the last couple of decades, masks the effect to a large extent. Conditional regressions show that the MAX effect is only significant in the Norwegian stock market when the oil market is in the bearish state.

There is a lack of research on how cross-industry innovation (CII) affects growth processes in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and whether it is worthwhile for SMEs to attempt CII. The current study addresses this gap by examining how CII at different market entry stages leads to various modes of growth in SMEs. Based on a survey data from 1187 Norwegian SMEs, we demonstrate a clear positive connection between CII and growth, particularly organic and acquired growth, and CII and cost reductions. Our findings highlight the importance of innovation across industry lines and show that CII is a favorable option for SMEs. This study makes several contributions. First, it adds to the growth literature by stepping away from a unidimensional view of growth. Second, it extends the existing CII and SME literature by addressing CII outcomes for SMEs. Third, the findings have important implications for business practitioners and policy makers. In this regard, we recommend that SMEs explore and exploit CII opportunities whenever possible to achieve greater versatility and diversity. The clear connection between CII and SMEs’ growth also emphasizes the need for policymakers to further develop the policies facilitating proactive CII and connecting SMEs from different industries.

The literature offers valuable insights into various aspects of service recovery and service outcomes. However, the available findings are limited relative to the size of the ever-expanding service economy. In particular, past studies have left more granular nuances of the association between service recovery strategies and service outcomes, such as the mediating role of forgiveness or the valence of forgiveness, under-explored. Recognising that an improved understanding of recovery from failures is crucial for sustaining positive customer–brand relationships in the service economy, the present study investigates the mediating effect of the valence of forgiveness (both exoneration and resentment) on the association between various service recovery strategies (apology, compensation and voice) and service outcomes (brand trust and negative word of mouth [NWOM]) in the context of food delivery apps (FDAs). We tested the proposed model by analysing data from 294 FDA users who had experienced FDA service failures and recovery efforts in the recent past. The findings suggest that recovery strategies are associated with exoneration, resentment and brand trust but not with NWOM. While exoneration mediates the association of these strategies with both brand trust and NWOM, resentment mediates only the association of these strategies with NWOM. Finally, the severity of previously experienced service failures and the speed of the service provider’s response moderates the association of the valence of forgiveness with brand trust and NWOM. By uncovering the key role of the valence of forgiveness in service recovery, our study offers significant theoretical and practical implications for stakeholders. publishedVersion

Larger firms are increasingly acquiring innovative new ventures at an early stage. Despite significant integration challenges with these acquisitions, the elongated pre-acquisition process of aligning buyers’ and sellers’ different objectives is rarely studied. By studying nine academic spin-off acquisitions, we develop a three-phase model outlining the temporal dynamics of the pre-acquisition process. In each phase—namely, strategic fit, synergy confidence, and deal structure—a specific buyer-seller tension emerges. By showing how each of these tensions needs to be overcome prior to an acquisition event, our dialectical model complements the dominant focus on post-integration activities in the acquisition literature.

Although the concept of the blue economy was created by the Small Island Developing States, its relevance extends to any coastal region around the globe, making the engagement of both state and corporate actors imperative. At the core of the blue economy framework stands the incorporation of ocean values and services into economic modeling and governance. Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture are thus significant in this endeavor, particularly for Arctic nations, the economies of which are predominantly based on seafood production. Yet, while focus is increasingly placed on sustainability and blue economy models among Arctic states, the need for structured transnational collaboration is not always acknowledged. In that respect, this article aims to articulate a comparative study of the status quo, challenges, and opportunities of fisheries and aquaculture in Alaska and northern Norway and seeks to explore potentials for cross-sectoral synergies between the two regions in the context of the blue economy. Looking for Common Ground: Marine Living Resource Development in Alaska and Northern Norway in the Context of the Blue Economy

The dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) model by Engle (2002) is one of the most popular multivariate volatility models. This model is based solely on closing prices. It has been documented in the literature that the high and low prices of a given day can be used to obtain an efficient volatility estimation. We therefore suggest a model that incorporates high and low prices into the DCC framework. We conduct an empirical evaluation of this model on three datasets: currencies, stocks, and commodity exchange traded funds. Regardless of whether we consider in-sample fit, covariance forecasts or value-at-risk forecasts, our model outperforms not only the standard DCC model, but also an alternative range-based DCC model.

Aquaculture supply from China has been a remedy to meet the growing global demand for seafood in the last decades. However, output growth has decreased dramatically in China in the 2000s. Previous literature focuses on the ecosystem problems arising in intensive farming in China. In this study, we used stochastic production analysis (SPA) to estimate the technical efficiency of Chinese large yellow croaker farming, which provides implications for impediments to the sustainable development of Chinese aquaculture. Data were collected from 430 large yellow croaker farmers in nine farming areas located along the coastline of southeastern China. The technical efficiency of large yellow croak farming is estimated to be 0.829, suggesting that farming is operated close to the production frontier with a maximal margin of 17% for improvement under the current technology. It further suggests that Chinese aquaculture growth is geared by conventional factors, expansion of fishing sites, and intensive farming, and is not sustainable under the constraint of farming areas and environmental problems in China. For the sustainable development of Chinese aquaculture, it is necessary to adopt new technology through innovation. The family-based farming model is a hinder to adopting new technology that requires systematic significant investment. Large-scale industrialized farming based on research and new technology development thus should be a modern trend in the future.

Sustainable entrepreneurship, that is, venturing with the aim of contributing to a shift of practices towards environmental and social sustainability, is an increasingly prominent phenomenon. This article investigates how sustainability ventures orient between dual – commercial and environmental – logics when conducting the legitimation work necessary to secure their first major partnership with an incumbent firm. Specifically, we study multiple cases of partnerships on food waste reduction. This setting is characterised by limited tension between the two logics, which implies that ventures are not forced into hybridity. We find some indications that ventures are able to draw on both types of logic to legitimate their ventures. However, the dominant pattern is that sustainability ventures tend to orient their legitimation work around a salient founding logic. Our analysis suggests that this pattern can be attributed partly to organisational imprinting, but also to legitimation work in this context being inherently logic-specific to a significant degree. This seems to be particularly true for ventures with a salient environmental logic.

Incivility has been identified as a prevalent and crucial issue in workplaces and one that may be associated with detrimental effects on employees and organizational outcomes, such as turnover intention. Many studies have been published regarding the effects of incivility, but there is a lack of integrative reviews and meta-analyses. The aim of the present study is to conduct an early meta-analysis of the relationship between employees’ perceptions of workplace incivility and their turnover intentions. Six databases, including ISI Web of Science, PsychInfo, Scopus, Emerald, Hospitality & Tourism Complete, and Soc Index, were searched to identify empirical articles for this meta-analytical paper. The results of statistical meta-analyses and meta-regression suggest that there is a positive relationship between perceived incivility and turnover intentions in employees and that relationship is consistent across different sources of workplace incivility. However, we did observe a possible interaction effect of “supervisor” and “coworker incivility”. The results also suggest that the relationship between workplace incivility and turnover intention is stronger in the academic sector than in other industries and stronger in the United States than in other countries.

Employees’ work-related well-being has become one of the most significant interests of researchers and organizations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines how job characteristics such as mental load and team support, and technology-related factors such as perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and technology acceptance, impact employees’ work engagement as a dimension of work well-being. Data were collected through a sample of 610 academic employees from three Norwegian universities after COVID-19 restrictions were implemented. The structural model estimation showed that mental load, perceived team support, and technology acceptance were significantly related to work engagement. It also showed that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and mental load were significantly related to technology acceptance. Furthermore, the analysis showed that technology acceptance partially mediates the relationship between job characteristics and work engagement, and fully mediates the relationship between technology-related perceptions and work engagement. Building on the technology acceptance model (TAM) and job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, this study provides insights into the effects of job-related and technology-related factors on remote workers’ well-being. By doing so, we contribute to the existing literature by demonstrating how remote working with the use of newly implemented technologies can be related to employees’ well-being during a pandemic.

For more than two decades, researchers have aimed to measure responsible leadership. This has resulted in several survey instruments and parallel streams of research, making it difficult to carve out the core. We systematically review 28 studies measuring responsible leadership (RL). A qualitative content analysis of RL survey instruments is conducted to identify the core aspects across measures, as well as synthesizing the evidence, mapping antecedents, and mapping the outcomes of RL. Findings show that 24 studies in the sample were published during the last two years, indicating a growth spurt in the field. Most survey instruments on RL measure leadership of the individual direct leader, while a few have a wider focus, such as leadership of the organization. Four themes were identified across RL survey instruments: accountable role model, inclusive facilitator, inventive planner and benevolent value creator. Our review contributes to the establishment of a joint platform for future research. In addition to providing a systematic account of evidence, our analysis points at research gaps and gives a basis for a critical discussion on nature as a stakeholder. Avenues for future research are outlined.

Ecolabels are supposed to reduce the information asymmetry between producers and consumers, but they may also produce a warm glow of “green” behavior. We design discrete choice experiments to measure the relative importance of these motivations for choosing ecolabeled seafood products. We find that choice probability increases if the product carries an ecolabel, but the magnitude of this effect depends on which further information is provided about the sustainability of the product. Overall, we attribute 63% of the ecolabel’s original effect on choice probability to consumer demand for sustainable products, and further 24% to warm glow.

Sensitivity to scope in nonmarket valuation refers to the property that people are willing to pay more for a higher quality or quantity of a nonmarket public good. Establishing significant scope sensitivity has been an important check of validity and a point of contention for decades in stated preference research, primarily in contingent valuation. Recently, researchers have begun to differentiate between statistical and economic significance. This paper contributes to this line of research by studying the significance of scope effects in discrete choice experiments (DCEs) using the scope elasticity of willingness to pay concept. We first formalize scope elasticity in a DCE context and relate it to economic significance. Next, we review a selection of DCE studies from the environmental valuation literature and derive their implied scope elasticity estimates. We find that scope sensitivity analysis as validity diagnostics is uncommon in the DCE literature and many studies assume unitary elastic scope sensitivity by employing a restrictive functional form in estimation. When more flexible specifications are employed, the tendency is towards inelastic scope sensitivity. Then, we apply the scope elasticity concept to primary DCE data on people’s preferences for expanding the production of renewable energy in Norway. We find that the estimated scope elasticities vary between 0.13 and 0.58, depending on the attribute analyzed, model specification, geographic subsample, and the unit of measurement for a key attribute. While there is no strict and universally applicable benchmark for determining whether scope effects are economically significant, we deem these estimates to be of an adequate and plausible order of magnitude. Implications of the results for future DCE research are provided.

This study investigated the effect of abusive supervision on employee organizational identification by analyzing the mediating effect of psychological contract violation. In addition, it explored the moderating role of favoritism in the direct association of abusive supervision and organizational identification and the indirect effect through psychological contract violation. A total of 488 seasonal, immigrant, and part-time employees from family-run hotel organizations were surveyed during the data collection process. By utilizing Hayes’s macro, we found that abusive supervision and psychological contract violation had a significant negative effect on organizational identification. In addition, the results showed that psychological contract violation mediated the effect of abusive supervision on organizational identification and favoritism moderated the effect of abusive supervision on psychological contract violation. The findings highlight the detrimental effects of favoritism and abusive supervision on employee outcomes in the hospitality industry.

Firms are under constant pressure from various governmental and nongovernmental agencies to switch from conventional environmentally polluting products to green product innovations (GPIs). However, the relevant research pertaining to GPI has been published in a diverse set of journals that vary in their scope and readership and, therefore, the scholarly contribution to the topic remains largely fragmented. This study has utilised a systematic literature review approach to examine the literary corpus on GPI to paint a holistic picture of its different aspects. The content and thematic analysis of 85 studies resulted in the extraction of seven key research themes: organisational capabilities, organisational learning, institutional pressures, barriers, structural changes, benefits of GPI, and methodological choices. This study's findings further highlight the various gaps in the GPI literature and raise some research questions that warrant scholarly investigation in the future. Likewise, our study has important implications for practitioners who are likely to benefit from a holistic understanding of the different aspects of GPI. Similarly, policymakers can use this study's findings to introduce policy interventions, especially in countries where GPI adoption is low.

The hospitality literature is quite deficient in insights on consumer behaviour towards food waste generation and its mitigation in out-of-home dining. The present study addresses this gap by undertaking a mixed-method study to examining a broad spectrum of diners’ behaviour, beginning from planning the meal and ending with bringing the leftovers home. To this end, it utilises the Stimulus-Organism-Response theory to conceptualise the association of planning routine, food-ordering routine, motives, attitude, and behaviour of taking away leftovers and throwing away leftovers. The results of analysis of the data collected from 276 diners in the United States confirm a positive association of food-ordering and planning routines with motives, which, in turn, are positively associated with attitude and the behaviour of taking away leftovers. Finally, attitude is not only negatively associated with throwing away leftovers but also partially mediates the association of motives with throwing leftovers away. Our findings provide useful inputs for businesses and researchers to motivate green consumer behaviour. publishedVersion