This article presents a new centrality measure. The presented measure was compared with state-of-the-art measures and proved to combines two features, low computational complexity and high precision ...of calculations. The measure has been mathematical analyzed, and then, experiments on real-life graphs were conducted. The mathematical analysis showed many essential properties of the proposed measure. Statistical analysis of the conducted experiment showed that measure has precision the same as state-of-the-art measures with much lower computational complexity.
Harnessing digital technology is of increasing concern as product firms organize for service-led growth. Adopting a service ecosystem perspective, we analyze interfirm and intrafirm change processes ...taking place as firms pursue digital servitization. The study draws on in-depth interviews with 44 managers involved in organizing activities in two multinational industry leaders. Our findings identify major differences between the two focal firms in terms of digital service-led growth and associated ecosystem-related activities. The study disentangles underlying processes of organizational change in the ecosystem and suggests that within-firm centralization and integration play a key role in the capacity to organize for digital servitization. For managers, the findings highlight the need to foster service-centricity in order to take full advantage of digitalization beyond purely technological benefits.
This paper studies how centralizing environmental administration affects air pollution in China. China launched a reform in 2016 to empower upper-level environmental protection bureaus to administer ...lower-level bureaus vertically through personnel control. Exploiting a stacked difference-in-differences strategy, we find that the reform significantly reduced air pollution. The effect was stronger in places where pollution was less likely to be affected by spillovers from other provinces, where local governments initially paid less attention to environmental protection, and where there was less economic importance. Further analysis shows that the reform reduced pollution by strengthening the pollution reduction incentives of local environmental officials, increasing the intensity of local environmental inspection, and promoting environmental compliance by polluting firms.
The concept of a centre approach to the treatment of patients with complex disorders, such as those with hepato-pancreato-biliary (HPB) diseases, is widely applied, although what is needed for an HPB ...centre to achieve high-quality outcomes remains unclear. We therefore conducted a literature review, which highlighted the paucity of information linking centre structure or process to outcome data outside of caseloads, specialisation, and quality of training. We then conducted an international survey among the largest 107 HPB centres with experts in HPB surgery and found that most responders work in ‘virtual’ HPB centres without dedicated space, assigned beds, nor personal. We finally analysed our experience with the Swiss HPB centre, previously reported in this journal 15 years ago, disclosing that budget priorities set by the hospital administration may prevent the development of a fully integrated centre, for example through inconsistent assignment of the centre’s beds to HBP patients or removal of dedicated intermediate care beds. We propose criteria for essential requirements for an HPB centre to deliver high-quality outcomes, with the concept of “centre of reference” limited to actual, as opposed to virtual, centres.
Venezuela has suffered for more than twenty years from a totalitarian regime determined to systematically demolish all orders of national life. Beyond the material and institutional devastation, the ...true core of the destruction is of a spiritual order: the regime has corroded the national ethos. The task of recovering the soul of the nation is more urgent and arduous than the immense work of material and institutional reconstruction.
ABSTRACT
Trade credit finance (TCF), retailer independent finance (RIF), and partial credit guarantee (PCG) finance are all important financing tools for capital‐constrained retailers. Risk aversion ...has a significant impact on financing, but it is difficult to measure. This research investigates the manufacturer's financing provision strategies considering risk aversion and capital market competition. First, an ordinary least squares method with conditional value at risk criteria is proposed to measure the risk attitude of decision‐makers. Second, the equilibrium mode of financing provision and impacts of risk aversion and the retailer's initial capital are analyzed. Third, a laboratory experiment and numerical analysis are conducted to verify the risk aversion estimation method and other theoretical results. We draw the following conclusions. First, the equilibrium financing provision mode changes with the degree of risk aversion and retailer's initial capital. Although the manufacturer prefers TCF and PCG to RIF, the retailer chooses the RIF mode when its initial capital is low. A variable parameter guarantee mechanism is proposed to encourage more retailers to choose PCG instead of RIF. Second, the risk‐averse financing system realizes super‐centralization (i.e., utility in the decentralized system is larger than that in the centralized system) when the manufacturer is less risk averse than the other participants. A Pareto‐optimality mechanism is designed to realize super‐centralization and coordinate the decentralized financing system. This research provides financing providers with practical guidance on the efficient implementation of supply chain financing.
There has been extensive research on the strategic choice between supply chain centralization and decentralization. However, most research assumes complete centralization or complete decentralization ...but omits the commonly adopted supply chain structure of partial centralization. With partial centralization, a firm owns a portion, but not all, of its partner. To help fill this research gap, in this paper, we make a major contribution by explicitly analyzing partial centralization in a supply chain where a durable‐good manufacturer owns a portion of its downstream retailer. We start with a two‐period model and derive analytical equilibrium outcomes of the supply chain and its members under complete centralization, complete decentralization, and partial centralization. First, our analysis reveals that partial centralization with an appropriate portion of ownership can yield the desirable product sales pattern over periods and alleviate the time‐inconsistency problem in selling durable goods. As a result, partial centralization can become the equilibrium structure for a durable‐good supply chain. Second, the manufacturer's optimal ownership level in the retailer decreases in the product durability and decision horizon length, implying that complete decentralization is more likely to be the supply chain structure in equilibrium for higher product durability and longer decision horizon. Third, our extended analyses demonstrate the robustness of the main results with backward partial centralization. Moreover, partial centralization outperforms conventional strategies such as two‐part tariffs that can coordinate a supply chain but not fully solve the time‐inconsistency problem associated with durable goods.
Many commentators have suggested that the first 18 months of the Johnson government were characterised by a propensity to centralise power. However, few accounts have situated the administration in ...the historical context of the British state or systematically examined these centralising tendencies. This article attempts to address these omissions. First, through a critical assessment of the literature on authoritarian neoliberalism, the concept of ‘executive centralisation’ is developed within the context of the British state. Second, the article applies this revised framework to the early stages of the Johnson government. While a dominant executive is a long-standing feature of the British political system, it is argued that Johnson has pursued a multifaceted centralisation strategy facilitated by the context of Brexit and COVID-19. In identifying the role of consent in this process, the article augments scholarship on ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ as a moment in neoliberal governance characterised by the ascendance of coercive governing strategies.
Recently online social networks have grown enormously to become an essential marketing tool for many companies. Therefore, identifying the important or central or influential node is a crucial task. ...Centrality indicates the most central node or most influential node within a network. Centralization has proven to be a vital tool that helps to solve many problems. Besides the existence of numerous centralization measures, there is a lack of requirements for them. The main contribution of this article are postulates for centralization measures that solve this problem by enforcing intuition behind centralization. To prove the legitimacy of these postulates, a few existing measures that have fulfilled all postulates are shown. The proposed postulates are not only helpful during the formation of new measures but they also represent the perfect tool to compare two different measures.
Over the past decade, the rise of blockchain technology has led to the emergence of a growing number of decentralized platforms that are governed less by platform owners and more through community ...efforts. The emergence of blockchain platforms offers a unique opportunity to examine alternative structures for platform governance and to develop a theory around the value of centralized, semi-decentralized, and decentralized governance. Drawing on mechanism design theory, we evaluate the tradeoffs between centralization and decentralization and hypothesize semi-decentralization as a higher performing governance structure. Empirical evidence from the blockchain industry shows that decentralization has an inverted U-shaped relationship with platforms’ market capitalization, developer attention, and development activity. We further examine factors driving the decentralization of platform governance and find that digital platforms of the infrastructure layer—relative to those of the application layer—have a tendency to become more decentralized. This tendency, nevertheless, can be offset by experienced leaders to achieve semi-decentralization. Overall, this study contributes new insights on the characteristics, antecedents, and consequences of effective platform governance.
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