‘This open access book addresses an urgent issue on which little organized information exists. It reflects experience in Africa but is highly relevant to other fragile states as well.’ —Constantine ...Michalopoulos, John Hopkins University, USA and former Director of Economic Policy and Co-ordination at the World Bank Fragile countries face a triple data challenge. Up-to-date information is needed to deal with rapidly changing circumstances and to design adequate responses. Yet, fragile countries are among the most data deprived, while collecting new information in such circumstances is very challenging. This open access book presents innovations in data collection developed with decision makers in fragile countries in mind. Looking at innovations in Africa from mobile phone surveys monitoring the Ebola crisis, to tracking displaced people in Mali, this collection highlights the challenges in data collection researchers face and how they can be overcome.
Co-operatives provide a different approach to organising business through their ideals of member ownership and democratic practice. Every co-operative member has an equal vote regardless of his or ...her own personal capital investment. They take a variety of different forms, including consumer co-operatives, agricultural co-operatives, worker co-operatives and financial co-operatives.
Patmore, Balnave and Marjanovic provide a perspective on Australian co-operative development within a conceptual framework and international context since the 1820s by exploring the economic, political and social factors that explain their varying fortunes. Drawing upon the Visual Historical Atlas of Australian Co-operatives, a significant database of Australian co-operatives and a variety of historical sources, this book provides a detailed historical analysis of their development, from their inception in Australia to today. Australian co-operatives were heavily dependent on state sympathy for their growth and vulnerable to ideas that challenged collective organisation such as Neo-liberalism. Despite these challenges, the co-operative business model has persisted and since 2009, there has been resurgence of interest and organisation that may provide a platform for future growth.
A useful resource for practitioners, students, educators, policy makers and researchers that highlights a significant alternative business model to the Investor-Owned Business and state enterprise.
The goal of this research is to identify the investment preferences of top managers and owners of four- and five-star hotels and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their investment planning. The ...study examines various factors, including the individual characteristics of executives (such as gender, age group, education level, and position held in the hotel unit), and their perceptions of the pandemic’s effects on their investment planning. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to capture the pandemic’s impact on investment options, planning, and spending for luxury hotels. The study first conducted a structured questionnaire survey to record investment priorities under two distinct scenarios: one prior to the pandemic and another after the pandemic’s spread and containment measures. Statistical tests were then used to compare the results between the two periods, revealing clear differences in investment choices among top executives and owners. Chi-square tests were also employed to examine the impact of individual characteristics on executives’ perceptions of the pandemic’s impact on their investment planning and their willingness to limit investment spending. Ordinal regressions were used to explore association further. The findings show that participants’ age group was associated with their perception of the pandemic’s negative impact on investment planning and their willingness to limit investment spending. Participants’ position in the hotel unit partially explained their willingness to reduce investment resources during the pandemic. Therefore, the research highlights that the age of higher management in luxury hotels impacts the business's ability to adapt to the post-COVID-19 environment. The results also suggest that policy makers' public measures aimed at enhancing executives’ willingness to invest during difficult periods should consider these factors.
This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2024, which took place in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, during June 04-07, 2024. XP is ...the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice. It is a unique forum where agile researchers, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations, research results, experiences, concerns, challenges, and trends. XP conferences provide an informal environment to learn and trigger discussions and welcome both people new to agile and seasoned agile practitioners. This year’s conference was held with the theme “Reflect, Adapt, Envision”. The 10 full and 2 short papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: agile at scale; value and quality in agile; and people and teams in agile.
This open-access book is premised on the belief that understanding and protecting privacy requires a multidisciplinary approach. The editors of this contributed book believe that privacy is a ‘wicked ...problem’ because of its social complexity. In the modern world, political, social, and technological structures increasingly violate human privacy in physical and virtual spaces. Our behaviors are surveilled, captured, and monetized—often without our knowledge. Contributors are experts from diverse fields, including anthropology, architecture, data science, engineering, history, information systems, library sciences, medicine, philosophy, and supply chain management, each writing for an explicitly interdisciplinary readership. Privacy as a concept is a moving target across the globe, morphing and transforming historically from one epoch to the next. By moving beyond the limitations of a single disciplinary lens, this book aims at a richer, more comprehensive, and more lasting analysis. This collection is of great interest to students and scholars of diverse backgrounds studying human privacy.
In literature there are many studies considering the action of interest groups in several countries’ societies and economies. In order to study the effect of special interest groups in the economy of ...each country, a multitude of variables have been used by researchers. After an extended bibliographic research in the recording of the economy affecting variables that have been used, this research presents a methodology for the selection of those which better represent the action of interest groups in the economy of Greece. The methodology used is based on Principal Component Analysis and therefore on the correlation tests needed. In this way it can be concluded which variables can be more advantageous in future research.
The aim of this study is to analyze the freight relationships between three major mainland Greek ports (Piraeus, Thessaloniki and Volos), based on containers’ transportation. The methodology used is ...the Global Vector Autoregressive (GVAR) model. The empirical analysis is based on time series data spanning the period January 1998–December 2012. The most important finding is that a shock in one port doesn’t have, in general, a significant impact on any other port and the corresponding effects settle down relatively quickly, usually in less than two months.
Digital technology in the form of big data and data analytics is transforming the global economy. This book is the first to take an open innovation perspective to the study and practice of ...ecosystems, providing a novel way of understanding the impact data has on the way entrepreneurial firms develop.
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) typically steer clear of implementing business intelligence (BI) systems because they feel that this sort of modeling is complicated and costly. But the ...market for business intelligence (BI) has evolved quickly. New opportunities like cloud computing have greatly lowered prices and eventually made it possible to design integrated solutions that are only intended for SMEs. In addition to highlighting the research trends in the sector under investigation, this paper explores the function of business intelligence in enhancing the decision-making process and competitive advantage of SMEs. The research subject has been approached using bibliometric analysis using the R package. The display of the results was done with the aid of Biblioshiny and VOSviewer's bibliometric tools. The study highlighted that SMEs have started integrating Business Intelligence systems. However, a new business model that will combine business analytics and will ensure to SMEs that emerging technologies will not affect them negatively is crucial. Thus, this research proposes the development of a new business model that will be based on Business Intelligence and Technology–organization–environment framework (TOE) framework, which helps SMEs to feel safe with emerging technologies.
