Search results

Overconsumption of resources has become a global issue. To deal with resource depletion and mitigate these impending crises, the circular economy (CE) holds some promise. A wide range of performance measurements for CE have emerged over the years. However, with increasing complexity of supply chains, appropriate and potentially new performance measurements are needed for effective CE management. Blockchain is an innovative technology that may advance CE development. This chapter provides an overview of the potential linkages between blockchain technology and CE from sustainability perspectives – the specific focus will be on the performance measurement of reverse logistics activities. One of the main findings indicates that both blockchain and CE performance measurements – especially reverse logistics processes – are still evolving in both theory and practical developments. Future directions with a critical analysis including research and theoretical applications will conclude this chapter.

The aim of this review is to reflect the current state of Financial Technology (FinTech) research along with its journey of development. Further, a conceptual framework showing the interaction of independent, mediating, and moderating variables with dependent variables (acceptance of FinTech products and services) along with propositions is prepared to facilitate the future researchers. This systematic literature review consists of 110 articles from 78 journals indexed in two academic databases (Scopus and/or Web of Science), extracting facts and figures about FinTech during 2016–2021. Our findings contribute to the literature by exemplifying that FinTech is a mixed set of threats and opportunities. In the present review only 18 articles belong to 2016–2017 but 54 articles are considered from 2020–2021, the increasing number of FinTech articles in high-ranking journals indicate the speedily growing popularity of FinTech. Similarly, secondary data based articles are dominating the primary data based ones. Further, regression analysis and PLS-SEM are the most popular statistical techniques among the authors of FinTech articles. To the best of knowledge of the authors, this is a unique study in which the latest FinTech research findings are skimmed.

The purpose of this paper is to present the research carried out on a conceptual approach in business improvement termed as culture driven regeneration (CDR). The research positions CDR as business improvement tool that leverages organizational learning, organization culture and corporate knowledge in implementing changes. The CDR concept is positioned half way between business process re-engineering (BPR) that thrives on radical design and process changes, and total quality management (TQM) that takes the slow and incremental approach to improvement. CDR regenerates the processes in the journey to business improvement.

A structured and a comprehensive literature review were carried out on BPR and TQM in the context of leadership, organization learning, organizational learning and corporate knowledge. The review confirmed that TQM and BPR are connected to the four areas. This connection led to the conceptualization that organizations deploy culture and corporate knowledge to drive business improvement. Organization culture and knowledge was quantified based on previous research in this area and methods applied in other research studies relating to benchmarking. There are no empirical analyses included in this paper, however knowledge and culture were given scores in illustrating the CDR concept.

This conceptual paper has pointed out that organization culture, knowledge, organizational learning and leadership are important components of a business improvement tool such as BPR and TQM. The CDR concept leverages those components and draws on the organization’s corporate culture to enable change.

Additional empirical studies are required on various types of industries, organization cultures, organization structures and professions to establish more robust scores for knowledge and culture applied in the CDR concept. The concept could be further expanded into a framework that could be applied across a number of industries.

The CDR concept is a business improvement tool that enables organizations to leverage their existing culture in driving change. The concept is built up on the existing relationship BPR and TQM has with organization learning, organization culture, corporate knowledge and the quantification of culture and knowledge.

This Chapter provides an overview of the field of digital humanities and examines the arguments that are helping to shape it in a variety of ways. This chapter explores the unique difference in perspective between the “code” as the basis of understanding the humanities in general and digital humanities more specifically and the focus of pedagogues, who believe that it is indeed the examination and expression of the humanities that help shape the code, thus giving the code meaning. There are also those who focus more on research within the field and are not conversant on how various tools work but instead why they are chosen in the first place. This chapter also explores how the work of students, as user of that which we in the field code, teach and research, impacts the discipline.

Fundamental theories of power and status have developed sufficiently to apply in educational and organizational contexts. The path from basic theory to program development is neither simple nor direct. We trace the application of theoretical principles taken from network exchange theories of power as well as status characteristics and expectation states theories through the interdisciplinary field of leadership studies to applications that interrelate basic research, applied research, undergraduate educational programs, and organizational development. Two proposals result (1) a leadership training program that will produce university graduates with effective leadership skills, while also bringing diverse high school students to participate in a university program and (2) basic status characteristics research to explain the glass ceiling phenomenon.

Managers as Actors Those of us who manage are playing on an organisational stage every day. We enter early every morning to take up our roles, whether it is as chief executive, marketing manager, personnel adviser, production executive or any of the numerous other roles that have to be performed if work is to be done effectively.

Nowadays, innovation appears as one of the main driving forces of organisational success. Despite the above fact, its impact on the propensity of an organisation to develop and sustain a competitive advantage has not yet received sufficient empirical investigation. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the existing empirical literature by focusing on the antecedents of innovation and its impact on competitive advantage. It proposes a newly developed conceptual framework that adopts a three-step approach, highlighting areas that have rarely been simultaneously examined before.

The examination of the proposed conceptual framework was performed with the use of a newly developed structured questionnaire that was distributed to a group of Greek manufacturing companies. The questionnaire has been successfully completed by chief executive officers (CEOs) from 189 different companies. CEOs were used as key respondents due to their knowledge and experience. The reliability and the validity of the questionnaire were thoroughly examined. Empirical data were analysed using the structural equation modelling technique. The study is empirical (based on primary data), explanatory (examines cause and effect relationships), deductive (tests research hypotheses) and quantitative (includes the analysis of quantitative data collected with the use of a structured questionnaire).

Results indicate that knowledge management, intellectual capital, organisational capabilities and organisational culture have significant direct and indirect effects on innovation, underlining the importance of their simultaneous enhancement. Finally, the positive effect of innovation on the creation of competitive advantages is empirically validated, bridging the gap in the relevant literature and offering avenues for additional future research.

The causal relationship between innovation and competitive advantage, despite its significant theoretical support, has not been empirically validated. The present paper aspires to bridge this gap, investigating the impact of innovation on the development of competitive advantages. Moreover, the present study adopts a multidimensional approach that has never been explored in the existing innovation literature, making the examination of the proposed conceptual framework an interesting research topic.

In the second part of this report the action of nitrogen peroxide on flour is discussed at some length in an account of a series of researches that have been carried out by DR. MONIER‐WILLIAMS. His conclusions may be briefly stated as follows. The maximum bleaching effect is obtained when each kilogram of flour is treated with from 30 to 100 cubic centimetres of nitrogen peroxide. The bleaching effect becomes more pronounced after keeping for several days. The amount of nitrous acid or nitrites that are present in bleached flour corresponds to about 30 per cent. of the total nitrogen absorbed, the proportion of nitrites present remaining nearly constant after the lapse of several days in the more slightly bleached samples. After the lapse of a short time it is still possible to extract about 60 per cent. of the nitrogen absorbed by the flour by means of cold water, but after several days the nitrogen that can be extracted by this means decreases. This may perhaps be attributed to the “absorption” of nitrous acid by the glutenin and gliadin. In highly bleached flour (300 cubic centimetres of nitrogen peroxide per kilogram of flour) a considerable increase in the amounts of soluble proteins and soluble carbohydrates takes place. In highly bleached flour, after some time, about 6 or 7 per cent. of the nitrogen introduced as nitrogen by the nitrogen peroxide is absorbed by the oil, which acquires the characteristics of an oxidised oil. No evidence is forthcoming as to the formation of diazo compounds nor the production of free nitrogen. Bleaching was found to exercise an inhibitory action on the salivary digestion of flour.

This paper examines the relationships between citizenship fatigue, organisational- and job-based psychological ownership and family management among family hotel employees in Ghana.

A total of 479 workers took part in the study by completing either a self-reported questionnaire or an interviewer-administered questionnaire. The hotels and respondents were selected using purposive and convenience sampling techniques, respectively. IBM SPSS version 21 and partial least squares structural equation model were used to process and analyse the data.

Citizenship fatigue was found to be a negative predictor of organisational- and job-based psychological ownership. Additionally, job- and organisational-based psychological ownership were positively predicted by family management. Furthermore, family management positively moderates the relation between citizenship fatigue and organisational- and job-based psychological ownership.

This study appears to be one of the first to have investigated a model linking family management, citizenship fatigue and psychological ownership in the family hotel context.

The purpose of this paper is to identify attitudes, behaviors, motivations, and consumption patterns of potential and current consumers of organic cotton products in the Hawaii market.

Data were collected from face‐to‐face structured interviews from an intercept sample of 420 Hawaii consumers. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, chi‐square tests and correlation analysis to provide additional information about the association of variables.

Significant associations were found between gender and knowledge about organic cotton, between cotton preference and ethnicity, and between cotton preference and knowledge of differences among organic and conventional cotton. This study also found that people who preferred organic cotton were more likely to purchase organic products and were more concerned about the environment than people who preferred conventional cotton, and that people who owned organic cotton products were more eco‐literate than people who did not own organic cotton products. A profile describing characteristics of organic cotton consumers was developed which may assist organic product producers, marketers, and sellers.

This research only involved collecting and analyzing information from participants in Hawaii, therefore, more research may be needed to compare characteristics of potential organic cotton consumers in different regions of the USA.

In addition to providing researchers with further understanding of potential and current organic cotton consumers, this study may provide organic product producers and sellers further insight about their potential customers which may help develop better ways to market their products.