Ting Zheng, Marco Ardolino, Andrea Bacchetti and Marco Perona
This paper has two objectives: first, to investigate the state-of-the-art of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) adoption in Italian manufacturing firms and, second, to understand variations in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper has two objectives: first, to investigate the state-of-the-art of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) adoption in Italian manufacturing firms and, second, to understand variations in technologies implemented and business functions involved, benefits perceived, and obstacles encountered in I4.0 implementation over a three-year period.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach adopted in this research is descriptive, nesting longitudinal features. The paper presents a descriptive survey of 102 Italian manufacturing companies. The authors also evaluated non-response biases. The longitudinal approach was achieved by comparing the responses of the 40 sub-samples in common with a second similar survey launched three years prior, which aimed to identify patterns of evolution in the adoption of the I4.0 paradigm.
Findings
Survey findings demonstrate that Italian manufacturing companies still have limited awareness of I4.0 technologies, and the adoption of I4.0 technologies differs per technology. Company size and information system coverage level are the two factors that impact the company's technology adoption level. The comparative study shows that knowledge and adoption increase in a three-year interval with an unbalanced involvement of business functions regarding the I4.0 transformation. Indeed, companies are still seeking I4.0 solutions to reduce costs and lead times primarily, and the benefits perceived by companies are shown to be related to the number of I4.0 technologies in use. Finally, when companies put the I4.0 technologies into practice, competence is constantly considered the most significant barrier.
Research limitations/implications
This paper aims at conducting a thorough investigation into the development of I4.0 adoption in manufacturing companies. The main limitation of this study concerns the limited number of subjects involved in the longitudinal study (40) and the focus on a limited geographical area (Italy). In addition, more I4.0 technologies could also be incorporated into the survey protocol to gain further insight into I4.0 development.
Originality/value
The authors provide one of the first attempts to assess the variations of I4.0 implementation concerning technology adoption, business function involvement, and the alteration of benefits and obstacles. Several studies presented in the literature highlight the lack of longitudinal studies investigating the development of the I4.0 paradigm in a specific manufacturing context: this paper is the attempt at filling this gap.
Details
Keywords
Ting Zheng, Marco Ardolino, Andrea Bacchetti, Marco Perona and Massimo Zanardini
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how much the Italian manufacturing companies are ready to be concretely involved in the so-called “Industry 4.0” (I4.0) journey. In…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how much the Italian manufacturing companies are ready to be concretely involved in the so-called “Industry 4.0” (I4.0) journey. In particular, this paper focuses on analyzing the knowledge and adoption levels of specific I4.0 enabling technologies, also considering how organizations are involved and which are the main benefits and obstacles.
Design/methodology/approach
A descriptive survey has been carried out on a total of 103 respondents related to manufacturing companies of different sizes. Data collected were analyzed in order to answer five specific research questions.
Findings
The findings from the survey demonstrate that Italian manufacturing companies are in different positions in their journey toward the I4.0 paradigm, mainly depending on their size and informatization level. Furthermore, not all the business functions are adequately involved in this transformation and their awareness about this new paradigm seems quite low because of the absence of specific managerial roles to guide this revolution. Finally, there are strong differences concerning both benefits and obstacles related to the adoption of I4.0 paradigm, depending on the technology adoption level.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should focus on developing case studies about pilot I4.0 practitioners in order to understand the root cause of successful cases. Both managerial and practical references should be developed, helping Italian manufacturing enterprises to consolidate and strengthen their position in global competitive market. Finally, it would be interesting to carry out the same study in other countries in order to make comparisons and suitable benchmark analyses.
Originality/value
Despite scholars have debated about the adoption of technologies and the benefits related to the I4.0 paradigm, to the best of authors’ knowledge, only a few empirical surveys have been carried out until now on the adoption level of I4.0 principles in the manufacturing sector of a specific country.
Details
Keywords
Reports on the implementation and early stage use of OCLCworkstations at the Library and Learning Resource Centre at theUniversity of Wisconsin. Details many of the difficulties…
Abstract
Reports on the implementation and early stage use of OCLC workstations at the Library and Learning Resource Centre at the University of Wisconsin. Details many of the difficulties of setting up the system. Outlines some local innovations introduced to facilitate use. Considers the advantages of the network and its costs.
Details
Keywords
Chihli Hung, Chih‐Fong Tsai, Shin‐Yuan Hung and Chang‐Jiang Ku
A grid information retrieval model has benefits for sharing resources and processing mass information, but cannot handle conceptual heterogeneity without integration of semantic…
Abstract
Purpose
A grid information retrieval model has benefits for sharing resources and processing mass information, but cannot handle conceptual heterogeneity without integration of semantic information. The purpose of this research is to propose a concept‐based retrieval mechanism to catch the user's query intentions in a grid environment. This research re‐ranks documents over distributed data sources and evaluates performance based on the user judgment and processing time.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses the ontology lookup service to build the concept set in the ontology and captures the user's query intentions as a means of query expansion for searching. The Globus toolkit is used to implement the grid service. The modification of the collection retrieval inference (CORI) algorithm is used for re‐ranking documents over distributed data sources.
Findings
The experiments demonstrate that this proposed approach successfully describes the user's query intentions evaluated by user judgment. For processing time, building a grid information retrieval model is a suitable strategy for the ontology‐based retrieval model.
Originality/value
Most current semantic grid models focus on construction of the semantic grid, and do not consider re‐ranking search results from distributed data sources. The significance of evaluation from the user's viewpoint is also ignored. This research proposes a method that captures the user's query intentions and re‐ranks documents in a grid based on the CORI algorithm. This proposed ontology‐based retrieval mechanism calculates the global relevance score of all documents in a grid and displays those documents with higher relevance to users.
Details
Keywords
Maslina Ahmad, Raja Nur Syazwani Raja Kamaruzaman, Hamdino Hamdan and Hairul Azlan Annuar
In 2011, the Malaysian cabinet approved the policy that all board of directors of companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia should consist of 30 per cent women in decision-making…
Abstract
Purpose
In 2011, the Malaysian cabinet approved the policy that all board of directors of companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia should consist of 30 per cent women in decision-making positions by the year 2016. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between the presence of women on the board and firms’ performance following the introduction of the diversity policy.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis uses the information of the top 200 Malaysian public listed companies for the financial year 2011–2013. The multiple regression analysis is used to estimate the relationship between the firm performance (return on assets (ROA)) as the dependent variable and the independent variables.
Findings
The results show that during the period under study, the proportion of women directors on board is negatively correlated with ROA. This indicates that the firm performance may not be dependent on the number of women directors on board. However, the results of the study also show that the academic backgrounds of the women board members add some value toward generating better firm performance.
Research limitations/implications
A small sample size of only the top 200 public listed companies was utilised. Consequently the outcome may not be generalisable to smaller public companies or private firms. Another limitation is regarding the sample period. Taking only one year before and one year after the policy’s approval may be too short of the period under study and may be too early to study the impact of the policy. Future studies could sample a longer period.
Practical implications
The findings encourage public listed companies to appoint women with the necessary qualities as members of the board and not to simply increase the number of women on boards.
Originality/value
There is a lack of work on studying women’s effectiveness on board in developing countries, whereby previous work and literature review were predominantly based upon the experience of Western economies. This study, thus, contributes to the rising literature on women board member representation based on the firm performance of the top 200 listed companies in Malaysia.
Details
Keywords
Peiyan Wu, Xiaofang Yao and Shakeel Muhammad
This paper aims to examine the relationship between the female participation in top management team (TMT) and the growth performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the relationship between the female participation in top management team (TMT) and the growth performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Chinese economic environment.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting resource dependence theory, this paper tests the hypotheses using panel data from 469 Chinese-listed SMEs during the period of 2011 to 2013.
Findings
The results show that female participation in TMT significantly promotes the growth performance of SMEs, and there is significantly inverted U-shaped relationship between these two variables.
Originality/value
This paper finds that education level weakens the inverted U-shaped relationship between the female’s participation in TMT and the growth performance of SMEs.
Details
Keywords
Renming Liu, Abu Bakar Abdul Hamid and Noor Inayah Ya'akub
Cross-border e-commerce live streaming morphs into an epidemic shopping scenario, yet there is a paucity of research on impulse purchasing in this context. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
Cross-border e-commerce live streaming morphs into an epidemic shopping scenario, yet there is a paucity of research on impulse purchasing in this context. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the adoption motivation of cross-border e-commerce live streaming and its influence mechanism on intrinsic response and purchase impulse and to highlight the mediating role of browsing behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the use and gratification lens, a new conceptualization model is established to captivate the theoretical relationships between perceived stimuli, individual attitudes, browsing behavior and impulsive purchases. A questionnaire survey was used to collect cross-sectional data from 427 Malaysian consumers and the estimated framework was validated through AMOS-structural equation modeling technique.
Findings
The findings confirm that perceived interactivity, perceived information usefulness and perceived enjoyment significantly influenced positive attitudes toward live-streaming, which in turn induced impulsive purchases; however, perceived affective gratification did not stimulate positive attitudes. Consumers’ utilitarian browsing had a stronger effect on impulse purchases than hedonic browsing and utilitarian browsing behavior mediated the relationship between positive attitudes and impulse buying; however, hedonic browsing had neither a direct nor a mediating effect on impulsive purchases.
Practical implications
This research enhances the literature on the impact of cross-border e-commerce live streaming, an emerging technology, on consumer behavior and offers managerial implications for e-commerce practitioners to gain insights into consumer impulse purchasing behavior.
Originality/value
The findings revamp conventional knowledge and provide new angles for understanding the formation mechanisms of impulse purchases, motivations for virtual media use and browsing behavior mediating effects in the context of live streaming.
Details
Keywords
Chunyang Wang, Xinghua Zheng, Ting Zhang, Haisheng Chen and Moghtada Mobedi
The purpose of this study is to investigate the applicability of volume average which is extensively used for analyzing the heat and fluid flow (both for single-phase and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the applicability of volume average which is extensively used for analyzing the heat and fluid flow (both for single-phase and solid/liquid-phase change) in a closed cell porous medium numerically.
Design/methodology/approach
Heat conduction equations for the solid frame and fluid (or phase change material) are solved for pore scale and volume average approaches. The study mainly focuses on the effect of porosity and the number of porous media unit cell on the agreement between the results of the pore scale and volume average approaches.
Findings
It is observed for the lowest porosity values such as 0.3 and the number of porous media unit cell as 4 in heat transfer direction, the results between two approaches may be questionable for the single-phase fluid. By increasing the number of porous media unit cell in heat transfer direction, the agreement between two approaches becomes better. In general, for high porosity values (such as 0.9) the agreement between the results of two approaches is in the acceptable range both for single-phase and solid/liquid-phase change. Two charts on the applicability of volume average method for single-phase and solid/liquid-phase change are presented.
Originality/value
The authors’ literature survey shows that it is the first time the applicability of volume average which is extensively used for analyzing the heat and fluid flow in a closed cell porous medium is investigated numerically.
Details
Keywords
Ting He and Kenneth Zheng
This study investigates whether financial analysts process information efficiently when they make cash flow forecasts.
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates whether financial analysts process information efficiently when they make cash flow forecasts.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of 3,967 observations spanning 2004–2016, we perform empirical analyses by regressing actual cash flows on previous cash flow forecasts for the current period and a vector of information variables known to the analysts at the time of the forecasts.
Findings
We find that analysts do not incorporate past stock returns or past cash flow information efficiently when they generate cash flow forecasts. We also find weak evidence that analysts do not incorporate past consensus cash flow forecasts or past accruals information when they generate cash flow forecasts.
Practical implications
Our findings contribute to the analyst forecast efficiency literature and highlight the difference between analyst cash flow forecast efficiency and earnings forecast efficiency.
Originality/value
While extant research on whether analysts use publicly available information efficiently when generating earnings forecasts documents mixed findings (e.g. DeBondt and Thaler, 1990; Abarbanell and Bernard, 1992; Basu and Markov, 2004; Evans et al., 2017), our results regarding analysts’ cash flow forecast efficiency are unambiguous.