Spotlight on new research publications in March
Photo: Bjarke MacCarthy
Are you a journalist, researcher or simply interested in academic articles on business and society?
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The following is a rough list. If you need more information, please contact the researcher.
The academic articles have been peer-reviewed, which means they have been judged by other researchers within the same area.
THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF THIS MONTH’S PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH – ENJOY YOUR READING:
Find the abstracts under each heading.
Abstract: This study applies quasi-experimental designs to assess how successful the special economic zones (SEZs) have been in offering a better investment climate than what is available to firms outside of them in three South Asian countries: India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. The World Bank Enterprise Surveys’ data for 2013–2014 on 68 investment climate factors for all the three countries have been organized into 50 onsite and offsite investment climate variables for the assessment. The study is the first to provide causal evidence based on the matching and weighting methods. The key argument is that what sets SEZs apart from other economic zones is their ability to overcome growth impeding institutions. The results however show that the SEZs could not be insulated from the wider institutional contexts in which they are embedded. There are gaps between promises and implementation on the one hand and perceived and actual improvement on the other. The paper has important implications for policy makers who seem to be in a rush to set up SEZs as a development panacea.
Journal: The World Economy
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Aradhna Aggarwal
How do Impact Investors Evaluate an Investee Social Enterprise? A Framework of Impact Investing Process
Abstract:
Purpose: Impact investors differ from venture capital firms as they invest to create social and commercial value. This paper pursues the question: how do impact investors select social enterprises? The aim of this study is to understand the selection and investing process of impact investors.
Design/methodology/approach: This study developed a database of 115 impact-investing firms across different geographies. Emails were sent to investors associated with each of the impact-investing firms found in the database, out of which 32 replied with consent for a telephonic or in-person interview.
Findings: The significant findings presented in the paper are the following. First, this study shows the impact-investing selection process model. The four major steps in the selection process are context, investment focus, venture analysis and decision. In each step, social values and missions become the defining characteristics of the selection process. Second, the findings also discuss the typologies of impact investors as a function of their selection approaches.
Practical implications: This paper discusses the impact investing strategy among social enterprises. It provides a framework for impact investing among investee social enterprises. As an impact investing professional, one learns investment strategy through this paper.
Social implications: Impact investing is a growing field. It is believed that impact investing could greatly impact sustainable development goals, climate change goals and help in inclusive development. This study helps to further understand impact investing process and hopes to help social enterprises and impact investors make a better match, thereby, creating a greater overall social and environmental impact.
Originality/value: This study helps both practitioners and academics to understand the complexity of impact investing. This study helps develop heuristics that impact investors may use to make investments. This study provides a framework for investing, which the impact investing firms may use to invest.
Journal: Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economy
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Kristjan Jespersen
The Why, How, and What of Public Policy Implications of Tourism and Hospitality Research.
Abstract: We synthesized policy implications of tourism and hospitality research by reviewing 12,269 articles published in 10 leading journals from 2012 to 2021. The most common rationale for policies (i.e., the why) is market failure, while the most typical role of policies (i.e., the how) is to create incentives. In addition, policies are typically hybrid and include suggestions for formal and informal institutional setups (i.e., the what). Because our review revealed that only 114 articles (i.e., 0.93%) included the why, how, and what of actual policies, we offer a theory-based research agenda on policy-making focused on making tourism and hospitality more inclusive and focusing on evolutionary dynamics, providing an understanding of the impact of crises and contemporary solutions, focusing on resilience and institutional complexity, and addressing the actors and time dimension. Our results, combined with those of our suggested research directions, will benefit organizations and society and simultaneously enhance the perceived societal value-added, contributions, and stature of tourism and hospitality research.
Journal: Tourism Management
Published: Aug 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Søren Henning Jensen
The Intertwinement of Speculative Fictions and Environmental Activism: Towards a Sensory Sociology of Climate Fiction
Abstract: In this article we tentatively plot the coordinates of a sensory sociology approach for empirically investigating how the popular culture genre of climate fiction operates affectively within environmental activism. We begin by theorising the genre of climate fiction as an affective potentiality capable of stimulating the imagination of hopeful climate futures and energising imaginactivism, that is the activist quest for the attainment of better climate alternatives. In this theorisation we draw on McKenzie Wark’s account of ecological speculative fiction, Elizabeth Grosz’s bioaesthetics and Bernard Stiegler’s ‘neganthropology’. We outline a range of speculative, inventive, utopian, atmospheric, enactive and sensory methodologies for the sociological study of climate fiction as an affective potentiality. By employing these methodologies, we argue, researchers will be better attuned to the affective intensities and atmosphere of anticipation, speculation and collective enactment of dreams of better climate futures that climate fiction is poised to catalyse in social settings of environmental activism.
Journal: The Sociological Review
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researchers: Ana Alacovska, Macon Holt
The Implementation of Sustainability Practices in Arab Higher Education Institutions
Abstract:
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how sustainability practices were implemented in a higher education institution within a local setting in the Gulf and Arab Emirates Region. This study examined the impact of social and cultural requirements on the development of the master plan for the New Kuwait University campus with regards to sustainability to illustrate how current social and cultural requirements impact the design of a future learning environment whilst highlighting the essential role of organisational actors in this implementation process.
Design/methodology/approach
Using an in-depth case study approach, the authors conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with educators and administrative staff who had been involved in the sustainability implementation process at Kuwait University. These participants were involved at different stages in the implementation of a major sustainability project at Kuwait University. The interviews were further supplemented by analysing supporting documents and communications.
Findings
The analysis reveals that sustainability was embedded in a narrative that was repeated at the practice level; this directed the setting of objectives for the project and its various sub-tasks. It also helped actors to develop their understandings of practice and the importance of social emotions, self-intentions and patterns of culture in the process. This study further reveals that participants mainly focused on environmental issues regarding saving paper/electricity and overlooked aspects of a wider concepts and core values of sustainability, and there is a significant amount of lack of knowledge and awareness on matters about sustainability, especially with the understanding of its definition.
Originality/value
This study draws on practice-organisation framework used by Schatzki (2002, 2010), suggesting that sustainability implementation is a process led by rules, practical understanding, general understanding and teleoaffective structures, to highlight the role of agency and change among various actors in implementing sustainability. A practice-theory framing is used to signpost the roles played by various actors in establishing goals and tasks for the project while taking account of local understanding and independence in the implementation of sustainability practices. Engaging with practice theory framework offers us theoretical basis that is fundamentally different from the theories of interaction-oriented approaches in sustainable design.
Journal: Journal of Financial Reporting and Accounting
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Muhammad Al Mahameed
Integrating Distribution, Sales and Services in Manufacturing: A Comparative Case Study
Abstract:
Purpose
The aim of this study is to gain important insights on integration oriented servitization identifying essential dimensions of effective structures, coordination approaches and management controls adopted by manufacturing firms that integrate forward towards distribution, sales and services.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a theory-guided qualitative abductive methodology to conduct a comparative case-study of two manufacturing firms in the same industry integrating forward to enhance servitization but with significantly different performance outcomes. The findings are uncovered from a broad spectrum of primary and secondary data spanning two decades.
Findings
The consistently high-performing firm puts equal emphasis on production and downstream distribution, sales and services and motivate individuals to engage in entrepreneurial efforts to develop combined product-services offerings that are valued by customers. The underperforming firm prioritizes operating efficiency driven by engineering prowess and managed through planning, standardization, authority and central controls.
Research limitations/implications
The study is based on two representative firms operating in a specific industry context, which has ramifications for the generalizability of results and calls for replication studies to substantiate and extend findings.
Practical implications
Forward integration from manufacturing into distribution, sales and services represents a specific servitization strategy that needs structure and particular coordination approaches to be effective in complex dynamic product-markets. The characteristics of the outperforming case company provide useful insights on effective integrated servitization efforts.
Social implications
Forward integration is a commonly adopted strategy among manufacturing firms that constitute the backbone of modern economies and effective governance of these integration oriented servitization efforts has important implications for societal value creation.
Originality/value
This study builds on rationales from management science including economic theory, corporate strategy and different micro-foundational lenses and thereby hone recent calls for broader theoretical foundations to enlighten studies of the servitization puzzle.
Journal: International Journal of Operations and Production Management
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Torben Juul Andersen
Risikostyring og Strategisk Risikoledelse
Abstract: Risikostyring er formelt en metode til at identificere, evaluere og håndtere vigtige eksponeringer ofte struktureret omkring enterprise risk management (ERM) standarder (COSO, ISO), der er blevet en forventet del af virksomhedernes ledelsespraksis. ERM og det underliggende risikobegreb er imidlertid udfordret af usikre og ukendte forhold i omgivelserne, som ikke kan håndteres af konventionel praksis. Økonomiske kriser, pandemier, militære og geopolitiske konflikter samt effekter af klimaforandringer eksemplificerer nogle af disse udfordringer, hvor de gængse rammeværktøjer kommer til kort. Der er behov for nye samarbejdsbaserede tilgange, hvor organisationens mange interessenter kan inddrages i udviklingen af effektive løsninger. Forskellige former for dynamisk tilpasningsevne diskuteres som mulige processer, der (formodentlig) kræver en ny form for strategisk risikoledelse.
Journal: Finans/Invest
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Torben Juul Andersen
Hiding in Plain Sight: Organizational Magic as a Contested Process of Revelation and Concealment
Abstract: This article seeks to theorize organizational magic. A vast literature in organization and management studies has come to understand magic as an epiphenomenon, a by-product, an outcome of affective encounters and aesthetic experiences, and thus often synonymous with enchantment. Drawing on classical anthropological and sociological theories, the article conceptualizes magic as skilled revelation, or the performative disclosure of strategically concealed performances. This leads us to highlight the important role of audiences who contest the success of these performances. We apply this theoretical perspective to study tax-exempt hiding places for expensive art collections, so-called freeports. A freeport maintains a symbolic order around charismatic, extraordinary objects. An analysis of how magic rituals of revelation, concealment, de-mystification and transformation come together to create a freeport not only adds to our knowledge about the role of revelatory performances and of contestations in the establishment of controversial business models. Using an anthropological perspective also normalizes our understanding of magic as organizational practice as it rejects conceptual juxtapositions with managerial rationality and disenchantment.
Journal: Organization Studies
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Stefan Schwarzkopf
On Digital Theorizing, Clickbait Research, and the Cumulative Tradition
Abstract: The pursuit of novel and indigenous digital theories is a thought-provoking call by Grover and Lyytinen. Such a piece is direly needed, and we hope it will spark a reinvigoration of the field. However, despite its many merits and our alignment with its message, we have two comments or caveats for readers of their piece. These are—a) a need to re-emphasize the value of attending to the cumulative tradition in our pursuit of digital theorizing, and relatedly b) an unreflective reading of the paper may risk mobilizing IS scholarship towards clickbait research. We further highlight three anchors that future scholarship can consider in attending to these issues a) problematization anchor, b) implications anchor, and c) boundary-spanning anchor. With these points, we add more volume to amplify the message of G&L and offer suggestions for pursuing innovative digital theories that go beyond ephemeral theorizing.
Journal: Journal of Information Technology
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researchers: Michel Avital, Abayomi Baiyere
Is European Attachment Sufficiently Strong to Support an EU Fiscal Capacity: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment
Abstract: Based on a conjoint survey experiment with 10,000 respondents from France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain at the end of March/beginning of April 2020, we explore how individual characteristics shape support among Eurozone citizens for a European Union (EU) budgetary assistance instrument to combat adverse temporary or permanent economic shocks hitting EU Member States. We consider particularly the role of socioeconomic factors, such as income and education, covid fears and European attachment. Remarkably, how covid worries and European attachment affect the support for specific designs of the assistance instrument is not affected by other factors, in particular not by socioeconomic factors. These latter factors play an important role affecting support, independent of European attachment. Programs with European Commission monitoring (and recommendations) and cross-country redistribution, possibly even mandatory towards poor countries, can count on stronger support from those with higher European attachment. Those with strong covid fears are generally more in favor of EU budgetary assistance, mandatory spending of assistance on healthcare and redistribution to poor countries. Programs with Commission monitoring (and recommendations) receive extra support from high-income and highly-educated individuals. Also, the latter group specifically favors potential or mandatory cross-border redistribution. The independent role of individual European attachment suggests that instruments other than socioeconomic policies, e.g. better information provision about its use, may help raise support for an EU assistance instrument.
Journal: European Journal of Political Economy
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Roel Beetsma
Gender Wage Transparency and the Gender Pay Gap: A Survey
Abstract: We survey the literature on the effects of increased transparency of gender segregated wages on the pay gap between men and women in comparable jobs. Pay transparency is promoted by countries and supra-national institutions and we categorise reforms according to their content and coverage. A growing number of papers have used variations of difference-in-difference estimation methods to analyse the impact of reforms on the gender pay gap (GPG), and from these we extract four main findings: First, reform-based studies find that pay transparency reforms reduce the GPG in all countries but one, which finds no effect. Second, in Canada, Denmark and the UK, the reduction in the GPG from transparency reforms originate from a reduction in the growth rate of male income and less from an increase in women’s pay. Third, there is fragmented evidence for the impact of transparency reforms on other labour outcomes and firm productivity. Fourth, the monetary implementation cost of transparency reforms is, in general, small both for individual firms and public administration. These finding are consistent with the notion that gender wage transparency reforms are an effective policy tool to reduce the GPG.
Journal: Journal of Economic Surveys
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Birthe Larsen
On Optimal Regression Trees to Detect Critical Intervals for Multivariate Functional Data
Abstract: In this paper, we tailor optimal randomized regression trees to handle multivariate functional data. A compromise between prediction accuracy and sparsity is sought. Whilst fitting the tree model, the detection of a reduced number of intervals that are critical for prediction, as well as the control of their length, is performed. Local and global sparsities can be modeled through the inclusion of LASSO-type regularization terms over the coefficients associated to functional predictor variables. The resulting optimization problem is formulated as a nonlinear continuous and smooth model with linear constraints. The numerical experience reported shows that our approach is competitive against benchmark procedures, being also able to trade off prediction accuracy and sparsity.
Journal: Computers & Operations Research
Published: Apr 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Dolores Romero Morales
How Career Hubs Shape the Global Corporate Elite
Abstract: In this contribution, we introduce ‘career hubs’ as an alternative to interlocking directorates and propose to study transnational corporate elite networks with this new concept. Career hubs, the most frequent common career organizations, put emphasis on knowledge brokering and allow us to study a larger variety of organizations to understand the form and the spread of elite networks. We use a sample of 1366 firms on the Forbes 2000 list of 2018 and investigate the careers of 16,500 top executives by linking these data to the BoardEx database. We find three types of career hubs: global audit and consulting firms, financial firms participating in a transatlantic banking alliance and large US consumer goods conglomerates – and highlight the mechanisms through which they shape the spatial structures of finance led capitalism. In the conclusion, we consider the implication of our results for the literature on corporate networks and propose a series of future research avenues in the career hub perspective.
Journal: Global Networks
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researchers: Christoph Ellersgaard, Jacob Lunding
“You just Earned 10 Points!”: Gaming and Grinding in Academia
Abstract: This short paper explores the gamification of an online academic conference. At the conference, digital gamification was meant to stimulate increased levels of participation among attendees. Instead, it resulted in a series of unintended consequences. Precisely because it was all too easy to score points and ascend the virtual leaderboard by means of machine-like grinding, the “Conference Challenge” posed a moral dilemma for its players: each participant had to determine for themselves where the border lay between playing the game and gaming the system. We use this case to raise questions about the ethics of game-playing in an academic context. In particular, we suggest that the Conference Challenge is a distorted reflection of what’s already happening in the broader “publication game” in the university.
Journal: Organization
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Sverre Spoelstra
Climate Uncertainty and Information Transmissions across the Conventional and ESG Assets
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of climate uncertainty on the spillover effects across the European conventional and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) financial markets via novel measures of physical and transitional climate risk proxies obtained from textual analysis. Analyzing daily data for stocks in the MSCI Europe ESG Leaders Index and various Euro based ESG bond indexes over the period January 3, 2014–September 30, 2021, we show that the shock transmissions between the conventional and ESG assets are significantly lower during periods of high climate uncertainty, suggesting that ESG investments can offer conventional investors diversification benefits against climate-driven shocks. Further comparing a forward-looking investment strategy conditional on the level of climate risk against the passive investment strategy, we show that investors who are worried about physical climate risks could utilize ESG equity sector portfolios as a diversification tool against physical climate uncertainty. In contrast, ESG bonds are found to be particularly useful in managing transition risk exposures that are associated with policy uncertainty and/or business transitions with respect to environmental policies. The findings have important implications regarding the role of climate uncertainty as a driver of informational spillovers across the conventional and ESG assets with important insights to manage climate risk exposures.
Journal: Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money
Published: Mar 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Oguzhan Cepni
Adoption of AI Integrated Partner Relationship Management (AI-PRM) in B2B sales Channels: Exploratory Study
Abstract: Partner relationship management (PRM) is a set of methods, tools, strategies, and web-based capabilities that a business-to-business (B2B) firm uses to manage its relationships with partners, resellers, and other third parties. Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into PRM helps automate processes and procedures by eliminating human error and processing data faster and more accurately. Following growing attention from scholars and practitioners to AI-PRM, this study builds on the dynamic capability view (DCV) and absorptive capacity theory to develop a conceptual model to understand the requirements for a B2B firm's adoption of AI-PRM and its impact on business value. Since AI-PRM is still relatively new in scholarly research, there are no specific scales in the existing literature that could be used to capture specific factors and preconditions for its adoption, thus we explore a set of new metrics. We test the conceptual model using structural equation modeling with data from 427 B2B firms. Our results show that firms improve operational performance when an AI-PRM system is reflected in customized partner services and partner engagement, which in turn yields business value.
Journal: Industrial Marketing Management
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Selma Kadic-Maglajlic
Customers' Acceptance of Artificially Intelligent Service Robots: The Influence of Trust and Culture
Abstract: This study addresses two critical research gaps in human-robot interaction (HRI): the limited systematic research on the role of trust in customers’ acceptance of artificially intelligent (AI) robots; and the lack of understanding of robot acceptance under different cultural backgrounds. Drawing on the AIDUA framework, this study examines the impacts of trust and moderating effects of both national (the U.S. and China) and individual culture on customers’ intentions to use AI robots in hospitality services by developing a theoretical model. The model is tested on data collected using online data collection platforms from 491 U.S. and 495 Chinese respondents. PLS-SEM and the bootstrapping method were used to test the hypothesized relationships and analyze the moderating effects of culture, respectively. The findings suggest that trust in interaction with AI robots is a significant higher-order construct that influences the intention of use. Furthermore, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and power distance have been found to exhibit significant moderation effects. The results of this study extend the theoretical frameworks in HRI and provide detailed guidance to promote AI robot applications across different cultures.
Journal: International Journal of Information Management
Published: Jun 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Robin Nunkoo
The Dark Side of Signals: Patents Protecting Radical Inventions and Venture Capital Investments
Abstract: Patents are an important signal of the unobserved quality of young, innovative firms. We study patents that protect radical inventions associated with high earnings potential but also a high risk of failure. These previously disregarded signals convey positive and negative information simultaneously, i.e., strong signals that have a dark side. We argue that whether firms that send such signals are attractive investment targets for venture capital (VC) investors depends on the characteristics of the investors. Reputable VC investors are attracted to the strong quality signals of patents protecting radical inventions and are better able than other VC investors to deal with the dark side of these signals through syndication. These effects are stronger in the first financing round than in follow-on rounds, as the (positive and negative) informational value of patents protecting radical inventions diminishes over time as information asymmetries between young firms and prospective VC investors are reduced. We test these predictions using a sample of 759 young life science firms and 555 VC investors. Econometric estimates from a matching model support our predictions.
Journal: Research Policy
Published: Jun 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Karin Hoisl
Preventing Plastic Pollution with a Global Plastic Treaty and Public-private Partnership for the Climate
Abstract: Reducing the use of plastic is essential because plastic production involves an enormous use of energy and resources, which results in a high amount of carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. This article focuses on regulations concerning plastic, particularly, the coming global Plastic Treaty, which the UN is expected to adopt in 2024. The article argues that regulation will not be enough to solve the issue of plastic pollution; innovative and alternative solutions are necessary. The article further suggests public-private partnerships for the climate as a way of supporting the coming Plastic Treaty.
Journal: European Procurement & Public Private Partnership Law Review
Published: 2022
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Contact CBS researcher: Sarah Maria Denta
Dynamics of Control on Digital Platforms
Abstract: Digital platforms are supraorganizational entities that use digital technology to facilitate interactions between diverse actors, leading to novel forms of organisation and accompanying forms of control. The current Information Systems (IS) literature, however, struggles to describe control on digital platforms in a way that does justice to the dynamic character of the phenomenon. Taking this as an opportunity, we follow the enactment of control over time and across parties in a hybrid ethnographic study of the social commerce platform Poshmark. Specifically, we conceptualise the dynamics of control as changes in the means of control—formal or informal—and the sources of control—operator or participants—over time. Tracking these conceptual dimensions, we identify the distinct ways control has changed on Poshmark. Synthesising these findings into four dynamics of control, we show that control on digital platforms is rarely static due to aggregate effects arising from the operator and from participant interactions with each other through the digital features deployed on the platform. Based on these insights, our study contributes to the IS literature on control by broadening the conception of control on digital platforms. The theoretical and practical insights generated in this paper thereby lay the foundation for the systematic study of the dynamics of control that are unique to platform environments.
Journal: Information Systems Journal
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researchers: Philipp Hukal, Tina Blegind Jensen
Co-movement between Dirty and Clean Energy: A Time-frequency Perspective.
Abstract: In the backdrop of the recent covid-19 pandemic there is a renewed interest to understand the interlinkages between dirty and clean energies. In this regard, the study examines the co-movement structure between clean energy stocks and dirty energies before and during the covid-19 outbreak. The study analyses the interlinkages between the underlying markets by utilizing a vast sample of dirty energies namely crude oil, heating oil, gas oil, gasoline and natural gas, whereas clean energy sector is proxied by S&P Global clean energy index and Wilder Hill clean energy index. We make use of rolling window wavelet approach and wavelet coherence analysis to identify interdependencies between the clean energy stocks and dirty energies. The results exhibit weak linkages between clean energy equities and dirty energies in the short-run, while; we also record few occasions of high co-movements among dirty and clean energy markets in the long-run. Noticeably, a distinct decoupling effect persisted between dirty and clean energy markets. In addition, the findings also illustrate that clean energy market is relatively isolated from dirty energies during the recent pandemic crisis, amplifying portfolio diversification benefits across clean and dirty energy markets. The findings of the study hold meaningful insights for investors, policy makers and other market participants in energy financial markets.
Journal: Energy Economics
Published: Mar 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Tooraj Jamasb
Rethinking Hierarchy
Abstract: We need to reconceive managerial authority for today’s business environment — not eliminate it.
Journal: MIT Sloan Management Review
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Nicolai J. Foss
A Collective Blueprint, Not a Crystal Ball: How Expectations and Participation Shape Long-term Energy Scenarios.
Abstract: The development of energy systems is not a technocratic process but equally shaped by societal and cultural forces. Key instruments in this process are model-based scenarios describing a future energy system. Applying the concept of fictional expectations from social economics, we show how energy scenarios are tools to channel political, economic, and academic efforts into a common direction. To impact decision-making, scenarios do not have to be accurate — but credible and evoke coherent expectations in diverse stakeholders. To gain credibility, authors of scenarios engage with stakeholders and appeal to the authority of institutions or quantitative methods.
From these insights on energy scenarios, we draw consequences for developing and applying planning models, the quantitative tool energy scenarios build on. Planning models should be open and accessible to facilitate stakeholder participation, avoid needlessly complex methods to minimize expert bias and aim for a large scope to be policy relevant. Rather than trying to simulate social preferences and convictions within engineering models, scenario development should pursue broad and active participation of all stakeholders, including citizens.
Journal: Energy Research & Social Science
Published: Mar 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Jens Weibezahn
Learning by Exporting for Marketing Innovation
Abstract: Exporting provides important learning opportunities for firms. Learning by exporting literature has primarily focused on general performance outcomes of learning such as productivity or technological innovation outcomes such as patents or product innovation. We use learning mechanisms from this literature and develop arguments for marketing innovation outcomes of learning by exporting. We further theorise how learning outcomes vary across firms depending on firms’ levels of marketing and technological capabilities. We test these hypotheses using a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms for 2007–2013 and find that exporting is associated with more marketing innovations. This learning effect is stronger for firms with leading marketing capabilities, and this effect is independent from the technological leadership status of the firm.
Journal: Industry and Innovation
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Wolfgang Sofka
From Homes to Assets: Transcalar Territorial Networks and the Financialization of Build to Rent in Greater Manchester
Abstract: Over the last decade, Greater Manchester's city-regional centre has become an important site for build to rent (BTR) housing development in the UK. The growth of this new tenure raises important empirical and conceptual questions about how far and through what means BTR has extended in post-industrial cities like Manchester, as well as how to theorise the global–local relations involved in BTR development. Drawing on a self-built database of 155 development projects incorporating 45,069 new housing units, we show that new-build BTR units have outpaced ‘build to sell’ (BTS) units almost two to one in Manchester's city-regional centre since 2012. We also found stronger international investment in BTR relative to BTS, illustrating BTR's more globalised and financialised form. Our paper understands BTR growth in Manchester as the outcome of a transcalar territorial network – an assemblage of national policy objectives, local state actors’ urban regeneration activity and heterogenous global investor groups with different priorities all seeking a return. We highlight the important role of national and local state subsidies and local authority joint ventures in constructing a territory conducive for BTR investment in Manchester. We also show how the fungibility of BTR assets as a ‘networked product’ widens the investment appeal of the tenure type, broadening and deepening housing financialization.
Journal: Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Adam Leaver
Actor-network Theory: A Novel Approach to Supply Chain Management Theory Development
Abstract: Supply chain management (SCM) researchers often conduct research using theoretical approaches and ontological assumptions adopted from other areas of management. These approaches and assumptions are valid for some aspects of SCM, but may also neglect or be unsuited to other questions and concerns that are distinctive to the SCM domain. Actor-network theory (ANT) provides an alternative perspective that addresses some of the blind-spots of established approaches. We begin by describing the main theoretical assumptions and the dominant ontological position of ANT, in terms of three principles: relationality, heterogeneity, and performativity. We then show how adopting these principles allows an alternative conceptualization of the supply chain and of SCM itself, and discuss the methodological implications of adopting these principles for research in SCM. ANT-inspired research can make four major contributions to the development of new SCM theory. First, ANT can provide new theoretical insights into the dynamic and fragile character of supply chains, specifically regarding how SCM systems and devices are implemented, constructed, and transformed in practice. Second, ANT can enable the development of SCM theory that leads to a better understanding of how people in SCM roles really act when managing in the supply chain space. Third, the question of what and who manages the supply chain can be explored in radically new ways. Finally, ANT can provide a complementary perspective on power in the supply chain, serving as a good lens for researchers interested in exploring the politics of representing, interpreting, and stabilizing SCM practices and systems.
Journal: Journal of Supply Chain Management
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Kim Sundtoft Hald
Hiding Practices in Employee-user Innovation
Abstract: Recent research has demonstrated that employees can develop novel solutions to work-process-related problems that they experience directly, but in order for organizations to benefit from this form of user innovation (“employee-user innovation”), employee-developed innovations need to diffuse within the innovator's organization. This paper challenges the prevalent assumption in studies of employee-user innovation that employee-users readily reveal and diffuse their innovations. Based on a grounded analysis of 117 innovations developed by rank-and-file workers that we identified during 32 months of ethnographic fieldwork in two police units and two military units in Denmark, we show that employee-users frequently invest considerable effort in actively hiding their innovations. We (i) identify four distinct hiding practices that employee-user innovators enact, (ii) demonstrate how decisions about whether and how to hide are based on interpretations of a range of material and organizational conditions, and (iii) show how these decisions negatively impact the employee-user innovation process by impeding not just use and diffusion, but also the development of innovations. Our findings carry implications for user innovation research, as well as for how we understand both covert innovation processes in organization and the relationship between bureaucratic organization and innovation.
Journal: Research Policy
Published: May 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Rasmus Koss Hartmann
A SWOT Analysis of Pilot Implementation
Journal: Interactions
Published: 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Torkil Clemmensen
Compassion in the International Business Studies: Prospects for Future Research
Abstract:
Purpose
This paper aims to introduce the concept of compassion to the field of international business studies. As international business activities continuously intensify and hence generate a work environment characterized by cultural heterogeneity and pluralism, the notion of compassion in a cross-cultural context can be regarded a key skill for employees in internationally operating firms to enable coping with potential cross-cultural conflicts.
Design/methodology/approach
In this narrative-oriented type of review, the authors discuss compassion in a cross-cultural context by drawing on the literature in the management and international business studies. By connecting prior research on compassion with the typical research interests in the IB domain, the authors identify and define potential future research foci for a research agenda centering on the role that cross-cultural compassion plays.
Findings
The authors argue that the conventional approach to learning about other national cultures, their value and norm systems, needs to be complemented by the acquisition of compassion skills. In todays culturally diverse business environment where employees increasingly work in virtual teams, cultural complexity is hardly manageable alone by developing expert knowledge about respective cultural contexts to prevent cross-cultural conflicts.
Originality/value
By drawing on extant research on compassion conducted in neighboring disciplines of the social sciences, the authors conceptualize compassion in the context of international business research. Because compassion in a cross-cultural context is new to international business research, this study suggests directions for future research consisting of four research streams to guide future research on compassion in a cross-cultural context in international business studies.
Journal: Critical Perspectives on International Business
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researchers: Michael Jakobsen, Verner Worm
Front- and Back-end Employee Satisfaction During Service Transition
Abstract: Purpose – Scholars studying servitization argue that manufacturers moving into services need to develop new job roles or modify existing ones, which must be enacted by employees with the right mentality, skill sets, attitudes and capabilities. However, there is a paucity of empirical research on how such changes affect employee-level outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors theorize that job enrichment and role stress act as countervailing forces during the manufacturer’s service transition, with implications for employee satisfaction. The authors test the hypotheses using a sample of 21,869 employees from 201 American manufacturers that declared revenues from services over a 10-year period.
Findings – The authors find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the firm’s level of service infusion and individual employee satisfaction, which is flatter for front-end staff. This relationship differs in shape and/or magnitude between firms, highlighting the role of unobserved firm-level idiosyncratic factors.
Practical implications – Servitized manufacturers, especially those in the later stage of their transition (i.e. when services start to account for more than 50% of annual revenues), should try to ameliorate their employees’ role-induced stress to counter a drop in satisfaction.
Originality/value – This is one of the first studies to examine systematically the relationship between servitization and individual employee satisfaction. It shows that back-end employees in manufacturing firms are considerably affected by an increasing emphasis on services, while past literature has almost exclusively been concerned with front-end staff
Journal: International Journal of Operations and Production Management
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Jawwad Raja
Principal Portfolios
Abstract: We propose a new asset pricing framework in which all securities' signals predict each individual return. While the literature focuses on securities' own-signal predictability, assuming equal strength across securities, our framework includes cross-predictability—leading to three main results. First, we derive the optimal strategy in closed form. It consists of eigenvectors of a “prediction matrix,” which we call “principal portfolios.” Second, we decompose the problem into alpha and beta, yielding optimal strategies with, respectively, zero and positive factor exposure. Third, we provide a new test of asset pricing models. Empirically, principal portfolios deliver significant out-of-sample alphas to standard factors in several data sets.
Journal: Journal of Finance
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Lasse Heje Pedersen
Personal Prestige through Travel? Developing and Testing the Personal Prestige Inventory in a Tourism Context
Abstract:
Purpose
Leisure travel has long been seen as a means of conspicuous consumption in pursuance of personal prestige; yet, there is no empirical evidence that travel affects personal prestige of tourists. The aims of this study are to develop a scale measuring personal prestige and to experimentally test prestige evaluations based on amount of leisure information, tourism participation and different types of leisure.
Design/methodology/approach
In an experimental online survey, 477 respondents were presented with a manipulated social media profile and asked to evaluate personal prestige of the person on the profile.
Findings
Results present evidence that representation of travel experience has a positive effect on personal prestige evaluations of tourists. The authors found significant differences in personal prestige depending on experimental variations.
Originality/value
This study advances methodological approaches towards the study of tourists’ prestige by providing a reliable, multidimensional measurement scale for personal prestige. The findings yielded by subsequent application of the scale in an experimental setting provide empirical evidence that sharing travel experiences has measurable and experimentally testable personal prestige benefits for tourists.
Journal: Consumer Behavior in Tourism and Hospitality
Published: 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Florian Kock
Bottom-up Market-facilitation and Top-down Market Steering: Comparing and Conceptualizing Green Finance Approaches in the EU and China
Abstract: To address environmental problems, efforts to green financial systems are proliferating across the globe. However, green finance policy approaches differ substantially and in ways left unexplained in current literature. Focusing on the EU and China as the most active and influential in green finance, the paper provides a comparative analysis and conceptualization of their approaches. The analysis is based on the dissection of policy documents, a review of stakeholder statements and articles, and insights from semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The paper finds that in terms of similar characteristics, both parties seek inclusive expertise input, establish thematic committees, and initiate green finance efforts through financial system-wide guidelines. In terms of different characteristics, the paper finds that through a consultation-based, transparent, and limited mandate approach, the EU is characterized by longer time horizons and organic growth. This can be contrasted with the Chinese technocratic, closed-door, and non-limited mandate approach, characterized by rapid rollout and command-and-control growth. These findings can be conceptualized as a bottom-up market-facilitating approach in the EU and a top-down market-steering approach in China. The different approaches help explain current difficulties in coordination between the EU and China and imply that cooperation is only possible through compatibility rather than harmonization. The findings show that different governance models can actively use the state to pursue sustainable development, and second that such an active state can function in very different ways towards the same goals.
Journal: Asia Europe Journal
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Mathias Lund Larsen
The Role of R&D Resource Commitment in Accessing Co-location Advantages
Abstract: In a globalized economy, multinational enterprises (MNEs) pursue competitiveness through crossborder knowledge exploitation and exploration in international R&D. It is conventionally assumed that for subsidiaries to effectively access co-location advantages in knowledge milieus abroad, high levels of resource commitment are required. This paper analyses the relationship between resource commitment and access to co-location advantages, first theoretically and then through a case study of two MNEs in high-tech industries. We disaggregate the composite concept of resource commitment and demonstrate the dimensions accentuated, respectively, by the resource-based view, transaction cost economics and institutional theory. Next, we analyse the relationship between resource commitment and co-location advantages for 11 R&D subsidiaries of the two MNEs. Based on this analysis, we discuss the relationships between the empirical findings and the theoretically differentiated resource commitment dimensions. The study finds that high resource levels are less important for access to co-location advantages than conventionally assumed, while the level of commitment associated with allocated resources appears consistently to be important, lending more support for the relevance of institutional theoryrelated dimensions of resource commitment than the resource-based view-related ones. We also find support for the claim that more flexible governance arrangements promote access to colocation advantages in asset exploration.
Journal: Journal of International Management
Published: 2023
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Contact CBS researchers: Niels le Duc, Peter Gammeltoft
Sjællands kvaler
Abstract: København er i rivende udvikling, mens der er stagnation på den anden side af Sjælland. Fødselstallet i Vest- og Sydsjælland er lavere nu end for 20 år siden. I København er det fordoblet. Antallet af arbejdspladser udvikler sig tilsvarende forskelligt. Det er en overraskende udvikling. For København var for 30 år siden både befolkningsmæssigt og erhvervsmæssigt i krise. Dette essay trækker trådene tilbage til den industrielle revolution i anden halvdel af 1800-tallet for at finde baggrunden for denne udvikling og påpeger, hvordan byens fysiske rammer, befolkningens uddannelse og markante ændringer i produktionsvilkårene har dannet rammerne for en selvforstærkende, positiv udvikling i København. Parallelt hermed ses Vestog Sydsjælland som et område uden en tilsvarende dynamik, hvis fremtid er knyttet op på Københavns fortsatte udvikling.
Journal: Samfundsøkonomen
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Peter Lotz
Talking About (My) Generation: The Use of Generation as Rhetorical History in Family Business
Abstract: The concept of “generation” in family business scholarship is primarily used genealogically to reflect family lineage. This approach fails to account for complementary perspectives that are more established in history: “generation” as a category of societal belonging and a form of rhetorical history. Using a constitutive history approach, we identify four usages of “generation” by which these narratives can establish continuity or change in how families talk about themselves and foreground either family dynamics or embeddedness in societal developments. The form of historical narratives and how they mark time, we argue, is core to understanding rhetorical history processes.
Journal: Family Business Review
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Christina Lubinski
Who Depends on Why: Toward an Endogenous, Purpose-driven Mechanism in Organizations' Reference Selection
Abstract:
Research Summary
This paper investigates how firms select reference organizations, that is, other firms to which they compare themselves. We question the exogenous nature of references (i.e., them being defined via industry-categorizations) but suggest that, via motivations or purposes, firms endogenously select them. We evaluate our findings when analyzing proprietary data on hotels' self-selection of comparison-hotels. In support of our arguments, we find that in situations of increased uncertainty regarding firms' own relative abilities and standing, firms make adjustments to their selected references toward more similar ones. This enables them to obtain more diagnostic information about their relative abilities and this effect holds constant of (exogenous) industry-entry or exit events. Our findings contribute to an updated understanding about the role of comparison organizations in firms' decision-making.
Managerial Summary
Prior work shows that comparisons with other firms (i.e., references) play an important role for our understanding of firms' decision-making. For example, performance comparisons with references can trigger search or a decision-need, ultimately, leading to acquisition-decisions, new-product-introductions, and the like. When questioning the selection of such references, prior work has typically derived them from (exogenous) industry-categorizations. We review this practice by relying on rare, longitudinal data on firms' reference self-selection. When controlling for industry level effects, we find that firms adapt references as a function of changes in their comparison needs (e.g., self-assessment). This is important because it implies an endogenous reference selection mechanism and shifts the attention from industry-categorizations toward an understanding of comparison needs and their emergence when attempting to understand firms' decision-making.
Journal: Strategic Management Journal
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Johannes Luger
Industrial Policy, Local Firm Growth Paths, and Capability Building in Low-income Countries: Lessons from Ethiopia's Floriculture Export Sector
Abstract: The industrial policy literature has made important contributions to understanding how to catalyze industrialization, but it tends to focus more on the industrial policies required to incentivize learning than on studying firm-level learning dynamics and investments in technological capabilities. Furthermore, global value chain studies on export sectors in low-income countries rarely consider whether local firms are part of broader business groups and if so, how that position within business groups affects local firms’ business strategies regarding the global supply chain in question as well as investments outside it. This article examines local firms’ investments in a new export industry, and they are shaped by dynamics linked to their family business groups, industrial policies, and the wider national economic and political contexts of low-income countries. It does so through a case study of Ethiopia and the emergence of its floriculture export industry. The article explains firm-level motivations in acquiring knowledge and building capabilities as well as their export trajectories and firm growth paths and how they are shaped by owners’ decisions related to the overall business group. It argues that industrial policies need to consider not only the existing capabilities, organizations, and networks of local firms but also tailor industrial policies to the potential of the family business groups to drive capability building in new industries.
Journal: Industrial and Corporate Change
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Lindsay Whitfield
Strategic Human Resource Management in the Context of Environmental Crises: A COVID‐19 Test
Abstract: This article explores the gaps in strategic human resource management (SHRM) research exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic in order to guide future SHRM research in the context of environmental crises. Using evidence from Danish companies and public organizations collected using a mixed-methods sequential design, we discuss whether existing SHRM frameworks can adequately frame and deliver the academic knowledge needed to address the novel challenges posed by the pandemic. We formulate guidelines for future research that will shape discussions of the role of SHRM in building organizational resilience in the face of environmental crises.
Journal: Human Resource Management
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Dana Minbaeva
The Influence of Special Dietary Needs on Tourist Satisfaction and Behavioral Intention: Satisfiers or Dissatisfiers?
Abstract: In a globalized world, incoming tourists bring with them a variety of expectations. As destinations are coming to accept the variability of consumer needs, destination managers seek to identify additional factors that can determine tourists' evaluations and intentions. This study promotes the ability to satisfy tourist dietary needs as an antecedent factor influencing the experience outcomes. It is among the first to demonstrate the links between diverse tourist dietary needs, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. We found that all three groups of dietary needs (religious, medical, lifestyle) have an effect on satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Our results confirm that the relationship between tourist dietary needs and destination evaluation and intentions is not symmetrical. The higher the perceived importance of tourists' dietary needs, the more likely they are to be satisfied with a destination that can cater to their needs. Satisfied tourists are more likely to revisit and recommend the destination to others. However, the effects of dietary needs on dissatisfaction are not significant. The destination's inability to satisfy dietary needs does not necessarily reduce willingness to recommend or revisit. The results of this study support the notion that destination's dietary preparedness is associated with better experience outcomes. The study concludes with important implications for destination managers.
Journal: Journal of Destination Marketing & Management
Published: Mar 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Alexander Josiassen
The ESG Discourse Is Neither Timeless Nor Stable: How Danish Companies ‘Tactically’ Embrace ESG Concepts
Abstract: During the last decade, ESG has become a globally widespread doctrine of good investment principles. ESG defines investing for broader, extra-financial goals by the use of “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) factors. While commentators generally agree that ESG has become a crucial arena for defining responsible investment, research is so far scarce on the conceptual development of the ESG discourse as well as how companies articulate it in their public communication. By analysing ESG concepts, this article combines methods derived from corpus linguistics with dispositional analytics, inspired by Michel Foucault. The data material consists of 281 annual reports, which contain the self-representation of 24 Danish large-cap companies, including how they communicated their ESG policies from 2010 to 2021. The analysis displays the proliferation of specific ESG keywords as well as changes over time in their frequency, proportional to each other. We supplement the quantitative analyses with dispositional analytics, considering how the dispositives of law, discipline, and security condition Danish companies’ adoption of ESG. We also discuss how companies use ESG concepts ‘tactically’ to navigate a context, in which the dispositives ‘over-determine’ urgent environmental, social, and governance issues.
Journal: Sustainability
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Kaspar Villadsen
Digital Transformation of Professional Healthcare Practices: Fitness Seeking across a Rugged Value Landscape
Abstract: Digital transformation (DT) is typically described as a strategic, top-down initiative where new digital technologies fundamentally disrupt an organisation’s structure, procedures, and processes to enhance its value proposition. We propose a middle-range theory which highlights that DT of professional practices in healthcare follows a different path. To build this theory, we transpose the metaphor of a “fitness landscape” from evolutionary biology to a professional healthcare context to build an intermediate conceptualisation, which is then refined through an empirical study. Our theory highlights that external events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, changing patient behaviours or the availability of new digital resources, transform the “value landscape” upon which healthcare professionals create and deliver healthcare services to patients. Empowered by their professional autonomy and driven by their service orientation, healthcare professionals search for new paths and peaks for value creation and delivery across a rugged landscape. As digital resources are leveraged, new value propositions in practice emerge, and professional healthcare practices are digitally transformed.
Journal: European Journal of Information Systems
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Tina Blegind Jensen
Child and Adolescent Health in Europe: Towards Meeting the 2030 Agenda
Abstract: Background: Childhood and adolescence are critical stages for a healthy life. To support countries in promoting health and development and improving health care for this age group, the WHO Regional Office for Europe developed the European strategy for child and adolescent health 2015-2020, which was adopted by all countries. This paper reports progress in the strategy’s implementation until 2020.
Methods: A survey was sent to all ministries of health of the 53 Member States of the WHO European Region. Responses were received from 45 Member States. Results are presented in this paper.
Results: The European Region made overall progress in recent years, but increasing levels of overweight and obesity among children, adolescent mental health and low breastfeeding rates are recognized as key national challenges. Although forty-one countries adopted a national child and adolescent health strategy, only eight countries involve children in their review, development and implementation stages. Two-thirds of countries have a strategy for health-promoting schools and a school curriculum for health education. One-third of countries do not have legislation against marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to children. Most countries reported routine assessment for developmental difficulties in children, but less than a quarter collected and reported data on children who are developmentally on track. There are major gaps in data collection for migrant children. Hospitalization rates for young children vary five-fold across the region, indicating over-hospitalization and access problems in some countries. Only ten countries allow minors access to health care without parental consent based on their maturity and only eleven countries allow school nurses to dispense contraceptives to adolescents without a doctor’s prescription
.
Conclusions: This paper shows the progress in child and adolescent health made by countries in Europe until 2020 and key areas where additional work is needed to move the 2030 agenda forward. The survey was undertaken before the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Both will likely exacerbate many of the observed problems and potentially reverse some gains reported. A renewed commitment is needed.
Journal: Journal of Global Health
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Aixa Aleman-Diaz
Digitalize and Deny: Pluralistic Collective Ignorance in an Algorithmic Profiling Project
Abstract: The digital transformation paradigm, marked by optimistic tech determinism, pushes contemporary management to constantly consider the usefulness of cutting-edge digital technologies for their organizations. When experiments with such technologies fail, the same optimistic tech determinism seems to play a role in actors’ denial of that failure. Based on an ethnographic study of a public organization, this paper analyzes an empirical case involving an unsuccessful digitalization flagship project. Despite encountering fundamental problems and clearly failing to fulfill its promises, the project was allowed to continue, and daily work took place unabated. This study explores how managers, project managers, and employees reacted to the numerous problems and failures related to the project in both the development and implementation phases. Our paper is situated within the literature on organizational ignorance and denial, and it advances the concept of ‘pluralistic collective ignorance’. Inspired by science and technology studies, the term ‘pluralistic collective ignorance’ is developed to account for the diversity in how organizational members ignore a phenomenon and the diversity of actors who do so. Tech optimism seems to prevent otherwise reflective actors from asking certain kinds of questions about technological solutions. However, as it is often unknown whether a digitalization project will have a positive impact in practice, it remains on open question whether denial should be viewed as supportive or destructive for organizational development.
Journal: Ephemera: Theory & politics in organization
Published: Nov 2022
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Contact CBS researchers: Ursula Plesner, Lise Justesen
Best Practices in New Product Develpment and Innovation: Results from PDMA's 2021 Global Survey
Abstract: Extending thirty years of NPD best practice studies, this article presents the results of the most recent 2021 global best practice survey on product development management practices conducted by the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA). With responses from 651 companies in 37 countries, the results reveal once again that no single capability is necessary nor sufficient to explain best performance. The Best firms rely on the skillful combination of multiple new product development (NPD) practices to achieve greater overall innovation success. However, for the first time in this series of research, having an innovation strategy that encourages radical innovation, is oriented towards risk-taking and long-term, and strives for growth through new markets and new technologies is now a more important component of these practices than was previously found. Further results regarding the practices of the Best are discussed in the article, and implications are provided.
Journal: Journal of Product Innovation Management
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Max von Zedtwitz
ATP: Investeringsafkast og ny model for opsparing
Abstract: ATP’s aktive og højt gearede investeringer har gennem de sidste 10 år leveret et afkast på godt 9% om året, det samme som en passiv ugearet global aktieinvestering. ATP’s afkast har derimod været betydeligt mere usikkert. ATP har således ikke fået tilstrækkelig kompensation for den øgede risiko. På den baggrund anbefaler vi en række væsentlige ændringer i ATP’s forretningsmodel, så ATP fortsat kan være et relevant supplement til folkepensionen.
Journal: Finans/Invest
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researchers: Henrik Ramlau-Hansen, Jesper Rangvid
Continuing Patent Applications at the USPTO
Abstract: Despite their growing importance for firm innovation strategy and frequent appearance in U.S. patent policy debates, how continuing patent applications are used remains unclear. Turn-of-the-century reforms strongly limited opportunities to extend patent term and surprise competitors, but continuing applications have steadily risen since. We argue that they retain a subtle use, as applicants can file continuations to keep prosecution open and change patent scope after locking in gains with the initial patent. We document a sharp drop in parent abandonment and rise in continuations per original patent after the reforms. Continuing applications are more privately valuable than original patents, are filed in more uncertain contexts, for higher value technologies, by more strategic applicants, and react strongly to the notice of allowance. The evidence supports a current strategic use of continuing applications to craft claims over time.
Journal: Research Policy
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Davide Cannot
How Design Rules Emerge and Evolve: A Coevolutionary Architectural Perspective on Firm and Industry Organization
Abstract: This paper elaborates on how design rules emerge and evolve as firms’ micro-level choices of product and organization architectures coevolve with changes in product markets and an industry’s competitive and cooperative dynamics. We suggest that the design rules a firm adopts will vary according to firms’ strategic choices of product and organization architectures that they believe are or may become feasible in a given industry. Building on the mirroring hypothesis that product designs a firm adopts will influence the organization designs it uses, we develop a model that identifies key relationships that influence firms’ strategic choices of product and organization architectures and associated design rules. We then elaborate on key interactions between firm-level architectural choices and the architecture-enabled competitive and cooperative dynamics that obtain in an industry. Our model identifies strategically important aspects of open- and closed-system architectures and modular and nonmodular architectures that impact industry structures, interfirm interactions, and resulting industry dynamics. Drawing on these analyses, we suggest how firms’ strategic choices of architectures are influenced by their assessments of (i) the potential for capturing value through both gains from specialization and gains from trade that firms believe will be enabled by their architectural choices and (ii) both ex ante and ex post transaction costs implied by their architecture decisions. We conclude by suggesting how the perspective on firm’s strategic architectural decisions we develop here enables new approaches to understanding evolutions of both product markets and industry structures for serving product markets.
Journal: Industrial and Corporate Change
Published: Feb 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Ron Sanchez
Dark Sides of Data Transparency: Organized Immaturity After GDPR
Abstract: Organized immaturity refers to the capacity of widely institutionalized sociotechnical systems to challenge qualities of human enlightenment, autonomy, and self-determination. In the context of surveillance capitalism, where these qualities are continuously put at risk, data transparency is increasingly proposed as a means of restoring human maturity by allowing individuals insight and choice vis-à-vis corporate data processing. In this article, however, I draw on research on General Data Protection Regulation–mandated data transparency practices to argue that transparency—while potentially fostering maturity—itself risks producing new forms of organized immaturity by facilitating user ignorance, manipulation, and loss of control of personal data. Considering data transparency’s relative “successes” and “failures” regarding the cultivation of maturity, I outline a set of possible remedies while arguing for a general need to develop more sophisticated ethical appreciations of transparency’s complex and potentially problematic implications for organized (im)maturity in the digital age.
Journal: Business Ethics Quarterly
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Frederik Schade
Is Less More? Investigating Citizen and Consumer Preferences for the Future Direction of Livestock Farming Policy
Abstract: The sustainable transition of livestock farming has moved on the agenda of international and national policy regulations aimed at the mounting sustainability challenges. Until now, the political debate has been focused on how to change production and management practices to enhance animal welfare or reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The question about the number of livestock, however, has been neglected so far. In particular, this is true for the question of what a socially accepted development of livestock numbers could look like. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate citizen preferences for a sustainable transition of livestock farming regarding the number of livestock, and whether citizen preferences align with consumer preferences. The sample consisted of 1030 German participants who were surveyed online in January and February 2021. A latent profile analysis (LPA) identified two sub-groups within the population labelled “status-quo proponents” (49.0%) and “proponents of a sustainable transition” (51.0%) that differed in their perception of the development of future livestock numbers. “Status-quo proponents” were aware of the sustainability challenges in livestock production but less interested in supporting the transition with their consumption behavior of animal-based products. For “proponents of a sustainable transition”, a reduction of livestock numbers was a viable pathway for the livestock sector. They were willing to adapt their consumption behavior accordingly. To reach a socially accepted transition of livestock farming, including a reduction of animal numbers, the transition should be supported by a combination of political push and pull measures, such as financial support for farmers, as well as information provision, nudging, and taxes on the market side.
Journal: Journal of Cleaner Production
Published: Mar 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Maureen Schulze
Conducting Online Focus Groups: Practical Advice for Information Systems Researchers
Abstract: Video-based online focus groups (OFGs) present an emerging opportunity for Information Systems (IS) researchers to circumvent spatial and temporal constraints in collecting rich data. They enable researchers to overcome interpersonal and operational challenges arising from face-to-face (F2F) focus groups (FGs) by allowing participants, who are located anywhere in the world, to share their personal experiences from behind their screens. However, the realization of the full potential of OFGs for IS research is currently hampered by challenges and uncertainty over best practices when conducting such FGs. Consequently, we offer a detailed account of our own experiences with seven OFGs in the context of digital platforms. In supplementing our own experiences with those of others reported in extant literature on (online) FGs in and beyond the IS discipline, we (a) arrive at hurdles inherent to the OFG method, (b) derive lessons learned from our own experience with OFGs, and (c) prescribe actionable advice to researchers who are interested in conducting OFGs in the future.
Journal: Communications of the Association for Information Systems
Published: 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Chee-Wee Tan
Post-acquisition Integration: Managing Cultural Differences and Employee Resistance using Integration Controls
Abstract: The integration of acquisitions is often complicated by cultural differences between the acquiring and acquired firms. An important path through which cultural differences can impact acquisition performance is through employee resistance. We assemble detailed survey data to examine how acquiring firms' use of integration controls moderates the impact of employee resistance following from cultural differences on acquisition performance. Our findings confirm that cultural differences between acquirer and target are associated with initial employee resistance, which in turn depresses acquisition performance. Managers’ use of integration controls moderates the effects of employee resistance on acquisition performance. Specifically, while use of task integration controls is positively associated with performance, it also amplifies the detrimental effects of resistance. In contrast, use of sociocultural integration controls helps to reduce these effects. Our findings thus indicate that in the presence of cultural differences, sociocultural integration gains importance to reduce initial employee resistance, which can enhance the effectiveness of subsequent task integration efforts.
Journal: Accounting, Organizations and Society
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Henri Dekker
Labour Market Rigidity and Expansionary Austerity
Abstract: This study provides new evidence on how labour market rigidities affect the transmission of fiscal consolidations using a sample of 17 OECD countries. Owing to a novel empirical approach, the outcomes of consolidations are modelled as a function of employment and wage rigidities. The evidence confirms that tax-based consolidations are distortionary, while expenditure-based consolidations have wealth effects. These effects are then magnified by flexible employment and rigid wages, while they are moderated by rigid employment and flexible wages. This indicates that labour market conditions influence how fiscal consolidation is propagated in the economy by affecting both the magnitude and the transmission channels of consolidation plans. This result has crucial policy implications and suggests that the design of consolidation plans should account for the labour market structure.
Journal: Journal of Macroeconomics
Published: Mar 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Andrea Tafuro
Masters of the Market: Ship Captaincy in the British Atlantic, 1680-1774
Journal: Enterprise & Society
Published: Dec 2022
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Contact CBS researcher: Hannah Tucker
Thinking Differently about Supply Chain Resilience: What We Can Learn from Social-ecological Systems Thinking
Abstract:
Purpose
This article seeks to broaden how researchers in supply chain management view supply chain resilience by drawing on and integrating insights from other disciplines – in particular, the literature on the resilience of social-ecological systems.
Design/methodology/approach
Before the authors import new notions of resilience from outside the discipline, the current state of the art in supply chain resilience research is first briefly reviewed and summarized. Drawing on five practical examples of disruptive events and challenges to supply chain practice, the authors assess how these examples expose gaps in the current theoretical lenses. These examples are used to motivate and justify the need to expand our theoretical frameworks by drawing on insights from the literature on social-ecological systems.
Findings
The supply chain resilience literature has predominantly focused on minimizing the consequences of a disruption and on returning to some form of steady state (often assumed to be identical to the state that existed prior to the disruption) implicitly assuming the supply chain behaves like an engineered system. This article broadens the debate around supply chain resilience using literature on social-ecological systems that puts forward three manifestations of resilience: (1) persistence, which is akin to an engineering-based view, (2) adaptation and (3) transformation. Furthermore, it introduces seven principles of resilience thinking that can be readily applied to supply chains.
Research limitations/implications
A social-ecological interpretation of supply chains presents many new avenues of research, which may rely on the use of innovative research methods to further our understanding of supply chain resilience.
Practical implications
The article encourages managers to think differently about supply chains and to consider what this means for their resilience. The three manifestations of resilience are not mutually exclusive. For example, while persistence may be needed in the initial aftermath of a disruption, adaptation and transformation may be required in the longer term.
Originality/value
The article challenges traditional assumptions about supply chains behaving like engineered systems and puts forward an alternative perspective of supply chains as being dynamic and complex social-ecological systems that are impossible to entirely control.
Journal: International Journal of Operations and Production Management
Published: Jan 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Andreas Wieland
Toward a Taxonomy of Corporate Data Protection Malpractices and Their Causal Mechanisms: A Regulatory View
Abstract: Corporate data protection malpractices are not uncommon, especially in contemporary technological environments. Embracing a regulatory view, this study attempts to advance a taxonomy of prevailing corporate data protection practices and their causal mechanisms by analyzing cases where organizations were fined for violating data protection legislation. Selecting the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enacted by the European Union (EU) as our benchmark, this study employs an iterative taxonomy development technique as guidance and conducts a thematic analysis on 875 cases of GDPR enforcement. In so doing, we derive a conceptual model comprising 6 focal categories and 28 subcategories of prevailing corporate data protection malpractices existing within organizations as well as 4 main categories and 22 subcategories of causal mechanisms underlying these identified malpractices. Empirical findings from this study not only reinforce corporate data protection malpractices established in prior research, but they also yield novel malpractices which have been neglected in previous work. From a pragmatic standpoint, this study yields invaluable insights into the prevention and resolution of corporate data protection malpractices for practitioners.
Journal: Journal of Information Technology
Published: 2023
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Contact CBS researcher: Chee-Wee Tan