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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relative importance of different sources of finance for agricultural and non-agricultural investments using unique Smallholder Financial Diaries collected by Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) in Mozambique, Pakistan and Tanzania at the individual and household level.

Following the analytical framework of variance decomposition developed in Samphantharak and Townsend (2010), this study develops a method to quantify how much each cash deficit associated to investments and expenses of interest co-move with different financing sources.

This paper finds that self-finance, rather than formal or informal finance from external providers, is the main financing source for long-term and short-term smallholder agricultural investments. Further, the paper finds that the main source of self-finance varies depending on the economic opportunities faced by smallholders, with non-agricultural income as the dominant financing source for some, while agricultural income dominating for others.

Given CGAP’s Smallholder Financial Diaries is not nationally representative, research results should be interpreted carefully. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to analyze financing sources for smallholder households making use of high frequency financial data for individuals in developing countries.

These findings imply that financial inclusion policies specifically targeting smallholders and the agricultural sector would benefit from enabling the development of an ecosystem of diverse financial services that respond simultaneously to both agriculture and non-agriculture needs.

This is paper furthers the authors’ knowledge on how smallholder households are financing their agricultural investments. Moreover, it applies methods in new ways to exploit a unique data set.

The travel and tourism industry (TTI) could benefit the most from artificial intelligence (AI), which could reshape this industry. This study aims to explore the characteristics of tourism AI start-ups, the AI technological domains financed by Venture Capitalists (VCs), and the phases of the supply chain where the AI domains are in high demand.

This study developed a database of the European AI start-ups operating in the TTI from the Crunchbase database (2005–2020). The authors used start-ups as the unit of analysis as they often foster radical change. The authors complemented quantitative and qualitative methods.

AI start-ups have been mainly created by male Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics graduates between 2015 and 2017. The number of founders and previous study experience in non-start-up companies was positively related to securing a higher amount of funding. European AI start-ups are concentrated in the capital town of major tourism destinations (France, UK and Spain). The AI technological domains that received more funding from VCs were Learning, Communication and Services (i.e. big data, machine learning and natural language processing), indicating a strong interest in AI solutions enabling marketing automation, segmentation and customisation. Furthermore, VC-backed AI solutions focus on the pre-trip and post-trip.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study focussing on digital entrepreneurship, specifically VC-backed AI start-ups operating in the TTI. The authors apply, for the first time, a mixed-method approach in the study of tourism entrepreneurship.

The chapter introduces the reader to select language of human sexuality and the definitions and characteristics of some key terms related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning/queer (LGBTQ+), identifies different theoretical perspectives of human sexuality and sexual orientation, and discusses select LGBTQ+ theories and concepts in a historical context that library and information science (LIS) professionals should consider while performing their roles related to information creation–organization–management–dissemination–research processes. It helps better understand the scope of what is LGBTQ+ information and traces its interdisciplinary connections to reflect on its place within the LIS professions. The chapter discusses these implications with the expectation of the LIS professional to take concrete actions in changing the conditions that lack fairness, equality/equity, justice, and/or human rights for LGBTQ+ people via the use of information. Important considerations in this regard include the need for an integrative interdisciplinary LGBTQ+ information model, growth of a diversified LGBTQ+ knowledge base and experiences, holistic LGBTQ+ information representations, LGBTQ+ activism, and participatory engagement and inclusion of LGBTQ+ users.

While concerns about the social and environmental impact that result from business activity continue to grow, a stream of research consolidates to understand the mechanisms that can favor more sustainable companies. The present study tries to expand the knowledge of the antecedents of radical innovation by analyzing the effects of alternative and understudied constructs. Grounded on stewardship and organizational learning theories, this paper analyzes how leaders that are concerned with sustainability and the social impact of their companies may boost this type of innovation by facilitating an organizational context that promotes experimentation, dialog, participative decision-making, risk-taking and interaction with the external environment.

Through structural equation modeling, the study provides empirical evidence of the positive effect of stewardship leader behavior on radical innovation, using organizational learning capability as an explanatory variable.

Results suggest that organizational learning capability fully mediates the relationship between stewardship leader behavior and radical innovation.

This research focuses on a sample frame of Spanish companies with recognized excellence in human resources management.

In the context of a growing interest in sustainable development, and concern for the consequences of economic and business activities, this study highlights the role played by stewardship leader behavior to foster radical innovation and organizational learning capability which, in turn, represent essential tools to compete in a globalized and turbulent context.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that analyzes the mediating effect of organizational learning capability in the relationship between stewardship leader behavior and radical innovation. This paper contributes to the understanding of how stewardship leader behavior affects radical innovation and the key role played by organizational learning capability.

Libraries face an uncertain situation in present times of the “digital revolution” while every single sector moved online. The purpose of this paper is to search and propose potential library actions as response to the challenge of the peer-to-peer (p2p) sharing platform revolution in business models, a revolution to gain efficiency and to protect the environment.

This research focused on integrating economics and library concepts based on a selective literature review and real-world interaction. The main concern is to connect library possibilities with the emergence of p2p digital platforms, which has enabled individuals to make use of underused inventory via fee-based sharing, as a way of obtaining, giving or sharing access to goods and services. The authors balance the existing proposals to achieve how librarians can help.

This paper defines key types of potential applications for platform business models in the sharing economy promoted by librarians and describes their characteristics for the renaissance of the “New libraries”. First, “educating” society to face critically the disruptive change in networks of culture and information. Second, “growing” as key reference institutions and community service centres integrating “external” skills. Third, “promoting” the disruptive economy by creation or participation in digital platforms. Fourth, “creating” cooperative markets through social-economic currencies.

This research was carried out with the objective of determining how librarians contribute to sustainable development. All four proposals to implement represent possibilities that derive from the sharing economy approach at different levels of implementation according to the degree of commitment that librarians require to translate into specific actions.

This article studies how the Regenerative Government (1880–1903) in Colombia positioned monetary policy as one of the central subjects in the political arena by the end of the nineteenth century, and how the struggles of this attempt transformed the political economy of the period. In the background of the monetary, debates were some relevant characteristics: the country was facing serious difficulties as a consequence of an uneven integration of sectors to international trade, the de facto bimetallic regime, the formation of conglomerates of regions, and the difficulty of implementing paper money. Facing this situation, the Regenerating Governments found themselves in the need of imposing monetary and credit rules. They attempted to implement the scientific rules prevailing at the time and the possibilities that the national reality allowed them. As a consequence, the interests of the merchant elites and bankers had eroded the existing free banking system. Some bankers took advantage of the situation of the dubious management that the State gave to the monetary issue and succeeded on speculative finance increasing their wealth. Others, on the other hand, tried to strengthen their relations with the State. In this perspective, this article will synthesize the main aspects by agents of the debate between free banking and forced course.

The food processing industry is growing with retail and catering supply chains. With the rising complexity of food products and the need to address food customization expectations, food processing systems are progressively shifting from production line to job-shops that are characterized by high flexibility and high complexity. A food job-shop system processes multiple items (i.e. raw ingredients, toppings, dressings) according to their working cycles in a typical resource and capacity constrained environment. Given the complexity of such systems, there are divergent goals of process cost optimization and of food quality and safety preservation. These goals deserve integration at both an operational and a strategic decisional perspective. The twofold purpose of this paper is to design a simulation model for food job-shop processing and to build understanding of the extant relationships between food flows and processing equipment through a real case study from the catering industry.

The authors designed a simulation tool enabling the analysis of food job-shop processing systems. A methodology based on discrete event simulation is developed to study the dynamics and behaviour of the processing systems according to an event-driven approach. The proposed conceptual model builds upon a comprehensive set of variables and key performance indicators (KPIs) that describe and measure the dynamics of the food job-shop according to a multi-disciplinary perspective.

This simulation identifies the job-shop bottlenecks and investigates the utilization of the working centres and product queuing through the system. This approach helps to characterize how costs are allocated in a flow-driven approach and identifies the trade-off between investments in equipment and operative costs.

The primary purpose of the proposed model relies on the definition of standard resources and operating patterns that can meet the behaviour of a wide variety of food processing equipment and tasks, thereby addressing the complexity of a food job-shop. The proposed methodology enables the integration of strategic and operative decisions between several company departments. The KPIs enable identification of the benchmark system, tracking the system performance via multi-scenario what-if simulations, and suggesting improvements through short-term (e.g. tasks scheduling, dispatching rules), mid-term (e.g. recipes review), or long-term (e.g. re-layout, working centres number) levers.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the relationships between advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) categories (stand-alone, intermediated and integrated systems) implementation and design, process and commercial benefits obtained.

A survey is designed with benefits gained from AMT implementation as well as its categories, which is applied to the maquiladora industry. A structural equation model with data from 383 responses is used to measure the relationship between AMT categories and benefits gained using nine hypotheses that are tested statistically significant using partial least squares. Also, using conditional probabilities, a sensitivity analysis reports how low and high levels from AMT implementation influence on the obtained benefits.

Integrated systems are the most important AMT for maquiladoras and have the strongest impact on design, processes and commercial benefits.

Data obtained support the model, but results may be different in another industrial sector and countries with different labor culture and technological level.

Managers in maquiladora industry must focus their attention on integrated manufacturing systems, because high implementation levels guarantee the biggest probability to gain benefits in design, production process and commercial.

The relationship between AMT and their benefits has not been measured in depth, and this paper contributes to understand that problem. In addition, this paper is the first to report a sensitivity analysis that enables managers to acknowledge the probability of obtaining certain benefits.

This paper aims to propose a new three-dimensional (3D) fuzzy logic methodology to evaluate the level of misalignment between an enterprise’s knowledge and the knowledge management systems (KMSs) it adopts.

The proposed methodology was implemented by means of a field analysis based on semi-structured face-to-face interviews involving a sample of 61 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operating in high-tech and/or complex industries.

The paper highlights that while there is generally a high level of misalignment between an enterprise’s knowledge and the KMSs adopted, there are also a broad variety of behaviours. The paper identifies a taxonomy able to bring together the various types of behaviour associated with how an enterprise’s knowledge is related to KMS selection. Specifically, four behaviour patterns were identified, and the enterprises were then categorised accordingly as being guideposts, practice laggards, tool laggards or latecomers.

The proposed taxonomy provides an operational tool that can be used by enterprises and policy makers alike. The paper shows how enterprises can use this tool to understand which category they belong to and support decision-making to introduce changes leading to improved levels of alignment. Policy makers, on the other hand, can use the proposed taxonomy to identify measures to support the competitiveness of local systems by improving management processes and knowledge sharing among enterprises.

The paper highlights the difficulties that SMEs experience in adopting KMSs that are truly aligned with their knowledge and proposes a methodology to improve alignment.