Cloud storage is an increasingly popular application of cloud computing, which can provide on-demand outsourcing data services for both organizations and individuals. However, users may not fully ...trust the cloud service providers (CSPs) in that it is difficult to determine whether the CSPs meet their legal expectations for data security. Therefore, it is critical to develop efficient auditing techniques to strengthen data owners' trust and confidence in cloud storage. In this paper, we present a novel public auditing scheme for secure cloud storage based on dynamic hash table (DHT), which is a new two-dimensional data structure located at a third parity auditor (TPA) to record the data property information for dynamic auditing. Differing from the existing works, the proposed scheme migrates the authorized information from the CSP to the TPA, and thereby significantly reduces the computational cost and communication overhead. Meanwhile, exploiting the structural advantages of the DHT, our scheme can also achieve higher updating efficiency than the state-of-the-art schemes. In addition, we extend our scheme to support privacy preservation by combining the homomorphic authenticator based on the public key with the random masking generated by the TPA, and achieve batch auditing by employing the aggregate BLS signature technique. We formally prove the security of the proposed scheme, and evaluate the auditing performance by detailed experiments and comparisons with the existing ones. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively achieve secure auditing for cloud storage, and outperforms the previous schemes in computation complexity, storage costs and communication overhead.
According to research, the Supply Chain Management (SCM) accounts for most of a company’s environmental effects. When goods are manufactured and transported worldwide, supply chains frequently ...include energy-intensive manufacturing and transportation. As a result, sustainability is crucial throughout the supply chain. Putting economic operations in line with environmental preservation and social welfare standards has become important globally. In order to improve the overall performance of the supply chain, the industries are thus looking into their SCM structures in collaboration with a third-party logistics (3PL) service provider. Consequently, for a broader view of increased company value, choosing the correct 3PL supplier for a lasting partnership is of the utmost importance. The fundamental motive of this research is to pick the most suitable 3PL provider for a food manufacturing company (FMC) following a comprehensive review of six distinct viable logistic providers working in India for over a decade. Choosing the best 3PL provider is incredibly difficult and demanding due to the inherent uncertainty related to subjectivity and the qualitative review of the performances of service provider. In this article, we propose a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model based on triangular fuzzy numbers (TFN) that combines the LOgarithmic Percentage Change-driven Objective Weighting (LOPCOW), Full Consistency Method (FUCOM), and DOmbi Bonferroni (DOBI) methods for evaluating criteria and ranking alternatives. The proposed method is tested and verified on a case study of an Indian FMC’s optimal selection of 3PL providers. On the basis of the sensitivity analysis findings, it was established that the presented TFN-based LOPCOW-FUCOM-DOBI model delivers stable or consistent solutions. It is demonstrated in this work that the novel hybrid MCDM approach is an effective and trustworthy technique for rational decision-making.
•A combined subjective–objective method is used for flexible decision making.•Triangular fuzzy numbers for dealing with uncertainty in group decision process.•Fuzzy LOPCOW and FUCOM methods are applied for obtaining criteria weights.•Fuzzy DOBI method utilized for analysing the feasible alternatives.•The proposed method is applied to a 3PL service provider selection problem.
We build on the knowledge-based view to study the relative impact of alternative R&D sources on innovation performance. We contrast two arguments that have created a debate in the literature: One is ...that diversity of knowledge is better for innovation, because the integration of a larger variety of knowledge helps create new products that can fulfill unmet customer needs; another is that control of knowledge is better, because the incentives and contextual system of the firm facilitate employees' experimentation, which supports the creation of new products. We provide one solution to this debate by arguing that the relative importance of diversity and control of knowledge on innovation depends on the sources of finance. Hence, we find that, in general, control of knowledge has a higher impact than diversity of knowledge on the sale of new products. We also find that alternative sources of finance moderate the relationships: internal funds strengthen the impact of R&D sources with more diversity of knowledge on the sale of new products, while external funds strengthen the impact of R&D sources with more control of knowledge on the sale of new products.
Hamming distance is a measure of the similarity between two strings of the same length. Privacy-preserving Hamming distance computation allows data users to obtain the Hamming distance between their ...data without disclosing their respective private data. The existing privacy-preserving protocols for Hamming distance computation require multiple rounds of online interactive computation between two data users. To address this issue, we propose a new Privacy-preserving non-interactive Hamming Distance Computation (PHDC) protocol. Different from previous works, we adopt the strategy of secure outsourcing to avoid the online interactive computation between data users. We move the Hamming distance computation from the user side to the cloud side. The cloud server is responsible for the Hamming distance computation under privacy protection. To preserve data privacy, we propose a novel blinding technique for user data. Data users initially blind their data using homomorphic encryption and randomization techniques. The edge server is responsible for data aggregation and further data blindness. In this way, data users only need to outsource their encrypted data to the edge server, and there is no online interactive computation between data users. With the assistance of the edge server and the cloud server, the privacy-preserving Hamming distance computation is achieved. The security analysis demonstrates that the protocol guarantees the data privacy under the semi-honest adversarial model. The theoretical analysis and experimental results illustrate the efficiency of the proposed protocol.
•Considering customers’ origin preferences, we study limited-edition luxury goods’ production outsourcing decisions.•Luxury brand tends to use overseas CM when customers’ origin preference is not ...significant and competition is mild.•Win-win situation exists for luxury brand and its rival when overseas CM is used.•Reference price effect is identified between luxury brand’s markups under two outsourcing strategies.
Origin decisions related to the manufacture of limited-edition luxury goods can be critical for luxury brands, because consumers often have strong origin preferences. We hence study two competing luxury brands’ production outsourcing decisions by incorporating tradeoffs among competition intensity, origin preferences, and quantity limits. Interestingly, we find that when luxury brands have the option, they tend to outsource production to an overseas contract manufacturer even when origin preferences for overseas goods are not strong and the downstream competition is mild. Correspondingly, if a brand’s rival has no outsourcing options, its profit might be hurt when origin preferences for overseas goods and competition intensity are both moderate.
The nature of the relationship between employers and employees has been changing over the past three decades, with firms increasingly relying on contractors, temp agencies, and franchises rather than ...hiring employees directly. We investigate the impact of this transformation on the wage structure by following jobs that are moved outside the boundary of lead employers to contracting firms. We develop a new method for identifying outsourcing of food, cleaning, security, and logistics services in administrative data using the universe of social security records in Germany. We document a dramatic growth of domestic outsourcing in Germany since the early 1990s. Event-study analyses show that wages in outsourced jobs fall by approximately 10–15% relative to similar jobs that are not outsourced. We find evidence that the wage losses associated with outsourcing stem from a loss of firm-specific rents, suggesting that labor cost savings are an important reason firms choose to contract out these services. Finally, we tie the increase in outsourcing activity to broader changes in the German wage structure, in particular showing that outsourcing of cleaning, security, and logistics services alone accounts for around 9% of the increase in German wage inequality since the 1980s.
Nowadays, cloud computing platforms are becoming increasingly prevalent and readily available, providing alternative and economic services for resource-constrained clients to perform large-scale ...computations. This work addresses the problem of secure outsourcing of large-scale nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) to a cloud in a way that the client can verify the correctness of the results with small overhead. The protection of the input matrix is achieved by a random permutation and scaling encryption mechanism. By exploiting the iterative nature of NMF computation, we propose a single-round verification strategy, which can be proved to be quite effective. Theoretical and experimental results are provided to show the superior performance of the proposed scheme.
•First empirical study to compare the performance of various hotel revenue-management implementation strategies.•Random sample of 602 hotels, self-reported implementation strategy, performances ...measured using hotel’s RevPAR index.•Used four different time periods: last month, 3,6, and 12 months’ averages.•Chi-square test, repeated measure ANOVA, pairwise comparison and multiple regression analysis.•Findings suggest that not all strategies are equally effective, some are clearly better than others.
This study explores RM strategic implementation approaches, addressing the question of whether the RM function should be performed within the hotel property, or should be outsourced to an outside entity such as corporate, regional office or a third party. Using a random sample of 602 US hotels, the study analyzed the hotels’ RevPAR Index over varying periods and the hotels’ self-reported RM implementation strategy. The findings suggest that hotel characteristics such as size and scale affect their decision on where to perform the RM function. More importantly, we find that this strategic implementation decision impact the hotel’s level of performance compared to its competitive set: corporate and centralized RM functions outperform in-house and third party. Interestingly, the findings indicate that a mixed strategy, one that combines implementation strategies, is associated with the highest RevPAR index.
In this paper, we suggest that internalization theory might be extended by incorporating complementary insights from GVC theory. More specifically, we argue that internalization theory can explain ...why lead firms might wish to externalize selected activities, but that it is largely silent on the mechanisms by which those lead firms might exercise control over the resultant externalized relationships with their GVC partners. We advance an explanation linking the choice of control mechanism to two factors: power asymmetries between the lead firms and their GVC partners, and the degree of codifiability of the information to be exchanged in the relationship.
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