Based on the 2017 conference "'New Reality' and Russian Markets" held at Harvard University, this book brings together world-renowned thinkers to offer the latest empirical research on recent ...financial risks, institutional policies, and financial stability.
Blockchain technology has been gaining visibility owing to its ability to enhance the security, reliability, and robustness of distributed systems. Several areas have benefited from research based on ...this technology, such as finance, remote sensing, data analysis, and healthcare. Data immutability, privacy, transparency, decentralization, and distributed ledgers are the main features that make blockchain an attractive technology. However, healthcare records that contain confidential patient data make this system very complicated because there is a risk of a privacy breach. This study aims to address research into the applications of the blockchain healthcare area. It sets out by discussing the management of medical information, as well as the sharing of medical records, image sharing, and log management. We also discuss papers that intersect with other areas, such as the Internet of Things, the management of information, tracking of drugs along their supply chain, and aspects of security and privacy. As we are aware that there are other surveys of blockchain in healthcare, we analyze and compare both the positive and negative aspects of their papers. Finally, we seek to examine the concepts of blockchain in the medical area, by assessing their benefits and drawbacks and thus giving guidance to other researchers in the area. Additionally, we summarize the methods used in healthcare per application area and show their pros and cons.
Although research on supply chain management has made many valuable contributions, there is a dearth of empirical evidence and theoretical reflection on the characteristics of supply chains that ...operate mainly in developing and emerging economies. The aim of this paper is to help to fill this gap by exploring how supply chain sustainability can be implemented and managed in these settings. An in-depth case study of the upstream oil and gas industry supply chain in Brazil was used to develop propositions about supply chains that operate in developing settings. Drawing from institutional theory, evolutionary theory, complexity theory, and from the organizational learning, innovation, and strategy literatures, this paper offers four key findings and contributions to the supply chain literature. First, it shows that becoming a sustainable supply chain is not a destination, but a journey, where trajectory and time matter. Given the evolutionary nature of supply chain sustainability trajectories, this paper highlights that supply chains learn and evolve just as organizations do. Second, this research indicates that, although globalization is a trend, natural resource-based supply chains are often more geographically bounded and susceptible to local social demands than other supply chains. Third, this paper extends the supply chain literature by arguing that supply chains face additional barriers to sustainability in developing and emerging economies, which contribute to a higher degree of complexity and uncertainty due to the existence of highly turbulent business environments and institutional voids. These factors in turn hinder supply chain learning and innovation, and reduce the slope of supply chains sustainability trajectories. Finally, this research contributes to the literature by claiming that, due to the highly complex and uncertain business environments, in these settings focal companies play an even more important role in managing the escalating ambiguity, stimulating supply chain learning, and promoting innovation towards supply chains enhanced sustainability performance.
In the last decade, sustainable supply chain management has become a key topic in the sustainability literature as well as a buzzword in industry and policy circles. Although research has made ...substantial contributions, there is a lack of understanding on how focal companies operating in emerging economies can lead the implementation of sustainability into their supply chains. This research connects and advances the constructs of cleaner production, sustainability and supply chains by exploring a classic case of a focal company operating in an emerging economy that, even facing considerable challenges, has been able to succeed in transforming its entire supply chain. Drawing from stakeholder theory and contingency theory, this research offers four key contributions to the sustainability and supply chain discourses as follows: 1) it proposes an innovation-centered approach to sustainable supply chain management, by adapting and extending the TCOS uncertainty framework; 2) it suggests that the way a focal company manages and is influenced by its established network of relationships shape the evolution of the supply chain sustainability trajectories; 3) it argues that supply chains are dynamic entities and should then be considered and understood through the lenses of evolutionary approaches; and 4) it suggests that the implementation and management of sustainable supply chains are context-specific challenges and therefore theoretical, managerial and policy generalizations are difficult to be achieved.
Curiously, economists, whose discipline has much to do with human well-being, have shied away from factoring the study of happiness into their work. Happiness, they might say, is an ''unscientific'' ...concept. This is the first book to establish empirically the link between happiness and economics--and between happiness and democracy. Two respected economists, Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer, integrate insights and findings from psychology, where attempts to measure quality of life are well-documented, as well as from sociology and political science. They demonstrate how micro- and macro-economic conditions in the form of income, unemployment, and inflation affect happiness. The research is centered on Switzerland, whose varying degrees of direct democracy from one canton to another, all within a single economy, allow for political effects to be isolated from economic effects.
Not surprisingly, the authors confirm that unemployment and inflation nurture unhappiness. Their most striking revelation, however, is that the more developed the democratic institutions and the degree of local autonomy, the more satisfied people are with their lives. While such factors as rising income increase personal happiness only minimally, institutions that facilitate more individual involvement in politics (such as referendums) have a substantial effect. For countries such as the United States, where disillusionment with politics seems to be on the rise, such findings are especially significant. By applying econometrics to a real-world issue of general concern and yielding surprising results, Happiness and Economics promises to spark healthy debate over a wide range of the social sciences.
This research explores stakeholder salience and sustainability learning efforts of apparel manufacturers operating in an emerging economy. An organizational view of sustainable supply chain ...management (SSCM) is conceptualized to delineate mechanisms that facilitate the implementation of supply chain sustainability. Data is collected from survey responses from 156 apparel manufacturers operating in India. Findings suggest that stakeholder salience in pressuring apparel manufacturers to embrace SSCM practices generates reactive pathways to sustainability implementation at the firm-level. Results also show that firm-intrinsic efforts of organizational members aiming to learn about sustainability shape proactive pathways toward SSCM. Our paper shows evidences that reactive pathways appear to be less effective than proactive ones. This paper contributes to the literature by detailing how different SSCM practices adopted by apparel manufacturing contribute to enhanced supply chain environmental and operational performances of contemporary apparel supply chains. It also enriches the firm-intrinsic view of stakeholder salience in SSCM by outlining the relevance of internal and external stakeholders in pressurizing manufacturing firms within the supply chain. Lastly, it strengthens the view of intra-firm learning toward sustainability in SSCM by drawing from the construct of ‘responsible management learning’ to propose an integrative notion of organizational learning toward responsible management (OLRM).
Actors of public interest today have to fear the adverse impact that stems from social media platforms. Any controversial behavior may promptly trigger temporal, but potentially devastating storms of ...emotional and aggressive outrage, so called online firestorms. Popular targets of online firestorms are companies, politicians, celebrities, media, academics and many more. This article introduces social norm theory to understand online aggression in a social-political online setting, challenging the popular assumption that online anonymity is one of the principle factors that promotes aggression. We underpin this social norm view by analyzing a major social media platform concerned with public affairs over a period of three years entailing 532,197 comments on 1,612 online petitions. Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated.
This paper compares today’s corporate management in developing markets (BRICS countries) vs. developed markets (the OECD countries). The influence of determining a new social corporate management ...season considering social distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic on emerging markets' economic growth is ascertained and set apart from corporate management in developing markets. This paper helps clarifying and better understanding the role of corporate social responsibility in the conditions of an economic crisis against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic. This work provides scientific arguments that allow solving critical discussions regarding the advantages (growth of quality of life, an increase of business's competitiveness) and costs (limitation of economic growth, non-commercial use of profit, and increased price for goods and services) of domestic production and consumption. In the long-term, responsible financial practices return all investments and allow countries to better cope with a crisis. The research supplies a new view of corporate social responsibility as a measure of crisis management. It reflects its advantages at a time of social distancing in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The institutionalization of corporate social responsibility in emerging countries is not predetermined by internal factors (approach to doing business or organizational culture), if not by external factors (market status, state regulation, and consumer awareness). These circumstances prove the high complexity of strengthening corporate social responsibility in developing countries. In the conditions of social distancing – due to the COVID-19 pandemic – corporate social responsibility goes to a new level. In both developing and developed countries, one of the most widespread manifestations of corporate social responsibility is the entrepreneurship's transition to the remote form of activities. This envisages the provision of remote employment for workers and the online purchase of goods and services for consumers.
•Impact factors are still highly influential because a majority of authors benefit.•Changes in performance management must occur at the institutional level.•Evaluation has to take fundamental ...uncertainty in research into account.•Focal randomization mitigates biased selection of articles.•Scholarly diversity instead of one-dimensional rankings is supported.
Publications in top journals today have a powerful influence on academic careers although there is much criticism of using journal rankings to evaluate individual articles. We ask why this practice of performance evaluation is still so influential. We suggest this is the case because a majority of authors benefit from the present system due to the extreme skewness of citation distributions. “Performance paradox” effects aggravate the problem. Three extant suggestions for reforming performance management are critically discussed. We advance a new proposal based on the insight that fundamental uncertainty is symptomatic for scholarly work. It suggests focal randomization using a rationally founded and well-orchestrated procedure.
Although theoretically the importance of sustainable business models has become widely accepted in the literature, little is known about how managers deal with practical issues such as differences in ...stakeholder interests. In this paper, we focus on the question: What strategies can help decision-makers to better connect with stakeholders and overcome the challenges of conflicting interests when considering sustainability in their business models? Our research draws on two case studies in the Brazilian energy sector: the national oil company Petrobras and its attempts to develop biodiesel, and the national electrical utility Eletrobras and its attempts to provide electricity to impoverished communities. This paper is based on original qualitative data derived frominterviews with 138 key informants conducted between 2003 and 2010 with supply chain members and other stakeholders, as well as secondary sources. We draw from a number of literature streams to develop our paper. One stream relates to sustainable supply chain and the recognition of the relationship among economic, environmental and social values rather than only focusing on economic and/or environmental aspects. Another stream suggests that BOP (Bottom of the Pyramid) settings present potential ideal opportunities to connect business with sustainability. Finally, we use stakeholder theory to analyze how sustainable values can drive the operationalization of sustainable business models. We suggest that a combination of approaches promoting the participation of a diverse number of local stakeholders, encouraging both learning and capability building and shifting stakeholder values from single to multiple objectives are critical to overcome the challenges of stakeholders conflicting interests.
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