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This study aims to explore the vulnerabilities of the dairy industry to ransomware threats, focusing particularly on the upstream supply chain and applying routine activity theory (RAT) to understand the evolving dynamics of cybercrime in critical infrastructure sectors.

Utilizing expert interviews and network analysis, this research investigates the exploitation of complex supply chain vulnerabilities by motivated offenders. It delves into the intricate interplay between digital threats and physical supply continuity.

The study uncovers that ransomware threats transcend digital boundaries, manifesting in disruptions to physical operations and presenting significant risks to food security. It underscores the threat posed by the convergence of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT), emphasizing the urgent need for heightened awareness and robust defenses against this substantial menace.

Addressing cyber vulnerabilities in critical sectors like dairy ensures not only the security of operations but also safeguards broader societal interests such as food security. Collaboration and proactive measures are essential to mitigate potential social and economic disruptions caused by cyber incidents.

This research fills a knowledge gap by shedding light on the nexus between cyber threats and supply chain resilience. It emphasizes the need for industries to adapt traditional defense mechanisms in the face of sophisticated digital adversaries.

During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life nearly a hundred years after his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this chapter, the authors discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf.

This chapter is an introduction to the English version of Karl Kautsky’s essay “Theories of Crises,” which in turn is a review of Michael von Tugan-Baranowsky, Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte der Handelskrisen in England (Studies on the Theory and History of Commercial Crises in England), published in 1901. The chapter contextualizes Kautsky’s essay in the framework of the ongoing revisionist controversy within the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Second International, and well as of the debate between Marxists and Populists in Russia.

This chapter analyzes the pricing policy of hybrid P2P lodgings versus traditional hotels in relation to seasonality. A quantitative comparative analysis of room prices in Airbnb and hotel lodgings in the city of Barcelona was conducted across four different pairs or dates (peak versus low season) in one year. Overall, the study shows that Airbnb prices are significantly lower than those of hotels and that the former’s prices fluctuate very little, whereas hotels use yield or revenue management techniques to adjust prices in high and low seasons. This implies that relevant purchase behavioral changes may occur in terms of customers waiting until the last minute to book.

This paper seeks to deal with the history of Research and Development (R&D) management. It takes the history of the R&D Department of the Royal Philips Electronics of The Netherlands as an example to unravel the dynamics behind industrial R&D management.

This paper is based upon historical and theoretical studies on industrial R&D institutions and research cultures.

The paper proposes that the directors of the Philips R&D Department continually shaped and reshaped the organization in order to retain researchers with creative ideas, and to stimulate innovativeness. The R&D‐management was the outcome of a search process that comprehended a mixture of scientific and industrial (management) skills, knowledge and expertise, which together shaped an industrial research culture. One of the most difficult questions for the research managers was to find a balance between the professional status and motives of individual researchers on the one hand and the Philips company production strategy on the other. Over the years, the research leaders stimulated individual creativity in their own way, taking specific business and economic circumstances into account. They operated during different historical periods that reflect their management ideas.

Nowadays, the Philips research takes place at the High Tech Campus. Its philosophy is based upon Chesbrough's open innovation paradigm. In the discussion of this paper, it is argued that the history of industrial research teaches that the success of this organization, as in the past, will depend upon the management's ability to find a balance between scientific activities and industrial production.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

Poses the question whether, on an academic level, human resource management (HRM) is a scientific discipline of management. To arrive at an answer, brings together findings of a survey concerning the foundations of HRM then links them by four central hypotheses. The first (rather speculative) hypothesis claims that, in Germany at least, the discussion of HRM problems over the last 30 years has been selective and influenced by different and changing paradigms of HRM. The second hypothesis is that nearly all formulations of HRM concepts have to be embedded in a national context. The third hypothesis states that even given the restricting effect of hypotheses one and two, a theory pitfall exists preventing any theoretical foundation of effective HRM and forcing us to construct intelligent, but untested, HRM hypotheses. The fourth hypothesis links the problems of these untested hypotheses with the problem of ethical norms for HRM in theory and practice. The final judgement is that the high theoretical requirements of HRM as an academic discipline cannot be fulfilled.