In this chapter, I analyze the behavior of banks in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico between 2005 and 2014. With data from the regulatory institutions of these countries, I show the…
Abstract
In this chapter, I analyze the behavior of banks in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico between 2005 and 2014. With data from the regulatory institutions of these countries, I show the influence of their institutions on the performance of banks. The World Bank provides two main datasets that measure the institutional characteristics of each country. Their doing business data set computes the ease of doing business while the governance data set measures the effectiveness of government and the perception that people have of their own governments. The results show that voice and accountability, which is a variable that measures the ability of citizens to select their government and participate in society, has a strong effect in the performance of loans. However, these institutional variables seem to have little effect on the volatility of profits.
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Spyridon Damianos Lekkakos and Alejandro Serrano
Faced with increasing pressure to meet short-term financing needs, companies are looking for ways to unlock potential funds from within the supply chain. Recently, reverse…
Abstract
Purpose
Faced with increasing pressure to meet short-term financing needs, companies are looking for ways to unlock potential funds from within the supply chain. Recently, reverse factoring (RF) has emerged as a financing solution that is initiated by the ordering parties to help their suppliers secure financing of receivables at favorable terms. This paper studies the impact of RF schemes on SMEs’ operational decisions and performance.
Design/methodology/approach
We model a supplier’s inventory replenishment problem as a multi-stage dynamic program and derive the supplier’s optimal inventory policy for two cases: 1) no access to external financing; 2) access to external financing through RF or traditional factoring (TF). A number of numerical experiments assesses the supplier’s operational performance.
Findings
A working capital-dependent base-stock policy is optimal. The optimal policy specifies the sell-up-to level of accounts receivable with regard to their maturity. RF considerably improves a supplier’s operational performance while providing the potential to unlock more than 10% of the supplier’s working capital. When RF is associated with credit term extension and the supplier has access to alternative sources of financing, the value of RF is then lower than intuitively expected unless the interest spread is considerably large.
Originality/value
This is the first attempt to analytically study the impact of RF in a stochastic multi-period setting.
Diego Escobari and Alejandro Serrano
The purpose of this paper is to model asymmetric information and study the profitability of venture capital (VC) backed initial public offerings (IPOs). The mixtures approach…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to model asymmetric information and study the profitability of venture capital (VC) backed initial public offerings (IPOs). The mixtures approach endogenously separates IPOs into differentiated groups based on their returns’ determinants. The authors also analyze the factors that affect the probability that IPOs belong to a specific group.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors propose a new method to model asymmetric information between investors and firms in VC backed IPOs. The approach allows the authors to identify differentiated companies under incomplete information. The authors use a sample of 2,404 US firms from 1980 through 2012 to estimate the mixture model via maximum likelihood.
Findings
The authors find strong evidence that companies can be separated into two groups based on how IPO returns are determined. For companies in the first group the results are similar to previous studies. For companies in the second group the authors find that profitability is mainly affected by the reputation of the seed VC and capital expenditures. Tangible assets and age help explain group affiliation. The authors also motivate the findings for a continuum of heterogeneous IPO groups.
Practical implications
The proposed mixture approach helps decrease asymmetric information for investors, regulators, and companies.
Originality/value
The mixture methods help decrease asymmetric information between investors and firms improving the probability of making profitable investments. Separating between groups of IPOs is crucial because different determinants of an IPO operating performance can potentially have opposite effects for different groups.
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Alejandro Ramirez‐Serrano, Hubert Liu and Giovanni C. Pettinaro
The purpose of this paper is to address the online localization of mobile (service) robots in real world dynamic environments. Most of the techniques developed so far have been…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the online localization of mobile (service) robots in real world dynamic environments. Most of the techniques developed so far have been designed for static environments. What is presented here is a novel technique for mobile robot localization in quasi‐dynamic environments.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed approach employs a probability grid map and Baye's filtering techniques. The former is used for representing the possible changes in the surrounding environment which a robot might have to face.
Findings
Simulation and experimental results show that this approach has a high degree of robustness by taking into account both sensor and world uncertainty. The methodology has been tested under different environment scenarios where diverse complex objects having different sizes and shapes were used to represent movable and non‐movable entities.
Practical implications
The results can be applied to diverse robotic systems that need to move in changing indoor environments such as hospitals and places where people might require assistance from autonomous robotic devices. The methodology is fast, efficient and can be used in fast‐moving robots, allowing them to perform complex operations such as path planning and navigation in real time.
Originality/value
What is proposed here is a novel mobile robot localization approach that enables unmanned vehicles to effectively move in real time and know their current location in dynamic environments. Such an approach consists of two steps: a generation of the probability grid map; and a recursive position estimation methodology employing a variant of the Baye's filter.
Alejandro Lara-Bocanegra, M. Rocío Bohórquez and Jerónimo García-Fernández
The main aim of this study was to analyze and establish the state of the question about entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in sport, identify the role of innovation in both of…
Abstract
Purpose
The main aim of this study was to analyze and establish the state of the question about entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in sport, identify the role of innovation in both of them, as well as to determine the latest study trends and detect possible research niches.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review of the Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, ERIC, SPORTDiscus and Dialnet databases was performed. The analysis of the selected texts allowed categorizing the entrepreneurship articles into subthemes: precursors of entrepreneurship, intention/orientation of entrepreneurship, different perspectives of entrepreneurship in sport and social entrepreneurship in sport. Of the 49 texts included in the review, only seven articles dealt with intrapreneurship, and they could not be classified into subtopics because the studies are scarce, diverse and with disparate themes.
Findings
The main findings show deficiencies in research on precursors/antecedents of entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial behavior, especially in relation to innovation, the importance of the political perspective on entrepreneurship in sport and formulation of behavior training programs for intrapreneurs.
Originality/value
This paper provides valuable and global information about entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in sport, of which there were scattered or grouped data in some reviews.
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Alejandro Lara-Bocanegra, Vera Pedragosa, Jerónimo García-Fernández and María Rocío Bohórquez
This study aims to analyze the precursors of high and low intrapreneurial intentions among fitness center employees, considering various variables (gender, age, organization size…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the precursors of high and low intrapreneurial intentions among fitness center employees, considering various variables (gender, age, organization size and job satisfaction).
Design/methodology/approach
The study involved 166 fitness center employees of the Portuguese fitness center. The study used a two-part questionnaire to gather sociodemographic data and assess variables related to intrapreneurial intentions and job satisfaction among fitness employees. The first part collected basic demographic information, while the second used validated scales to measure intrapreneurial intentions (innovation and risk-taking) and job satisfaction (intrinsic and extrinsic).
Findings
This study underscores intrapreneurship as key for the evolving global fitness sector, highlighting job satisfaction as critical for fostering intrapreneurial intentions. Age, organizational size and gender diversity are also significant, suggesting that fostering a diverse and satisfied workforce under transformational leadership can enhance fitness organizations’ adaptability and growth.
Social implications
This research supports the growth of the fitness sector by demonstrating how intrapreneurship, propelled by job satisfaction, can resolve challenges, benefiting fitness centers regardless of size, age or gender diversity.
Originality/value
The study highlights the vital role of intrapreneurs in the fitness industry, advocating a nongender-biased approach to intrapreneurship and identifying job satisfaction as key to fostering intrapreneurial intentions, beneficial for all fitness centers.
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Jorge Alejandro Silva, Dulce María Monroy Becerril and Esteban Martínez Díaz
This systematic review of literature purposes to explore the impact of climate change on Mexico's water resources, exploring the impacts and efforts to address the problem as well…
Abstract
Purpose
This systematic review of literature purposes to explore the impact of climate change on Mexico's water resources, exploring the impacts and efforts to address the problem as well as their effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
The researcher relied on several tools to obtain scholarly articles. The primary approach was using preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The Journal Impact Factor was an important consideration for the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The work also excluded all journals predating 2009. The work emphasized using journal articles. However, it consulted textbooks and documents from the government and water conservation sources. Contextually the sources with the highest Journal Impact Factor index were selected, paying heed to their relevance to the topic under investigation. Fifty sources out of seventy were included in the systematic review.
Findings
Mexico's already strained water resources have been negatively impacted by climate change, behooving the Mexican government to implement various mitigative strategies. However, scholars reported mixed results on the effectiveness of the various policies and programs implemented by the Mexican government. Key impediments to sustainable implementations entailed the political and social contexts surrounding the conservation policies in Mexico.
Originality/value
Numerous articles have explored the impact of climate change on Mexico's water resources, but many focus on a specific aspect. This work took a holistic approach, synthesizing multiple impacts and providing a sociological perspective on the effects, mitigation efforts, and implementation challenges.
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Manuela García-Tabuyo, Alejandro Saez-Martin and Carmen Caba-Perez
The purpose of this paper is twofold: to identify legislators’ policy on the mandatory, online proactive disclosure of information; and to identify environmental influences on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: to identify legislators’ policy on the mandatory, online proactive disclosure of information; and to identify environmental influences on behaviour in this respect. To implement these proactive policies on transparency included in the legislative frameworks, internet websites are being used as a means of disseminating this proactive information.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve these goals, by application of the theories used to analyse the causes of information disclosure, the authors first developed an index of online proactive disclosure; then, by means of a regression analysis, the authors examined and tested eight hypotheses related to environmental variables.
Findings
The results obtained show that legislators have chosen to require scant online proactive information on which to base institutional legitimacy, and that in this respect they are influenced by how long the previous laws have been in force, by the level of public sector borrowing and by the degree of political commitment among the population.
Originality/value
The results obtained from this study will provide valuable information for future legislators and for civil society about information policies, clarifying the amount and nature of information that, according to the authorities, should be disclosed without the need for prior request. The paper is also intended to stimulate the development of further research in this area, by showing how different economic, political, social, cultural and institutional contexts influence the decisions taken regarding the public information that must be reported proactively to stakeholders.
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Manuel Alonso Dos Santos, Ferran Calabuig Moreno and María Huertas González-Serrano