Blockchain in Additive Manufacturing and its Impact on Supply Chains

Additive manufacturing (AM) appears to be a particularly attractive use case for blockchain. This research combines inductive in‐depth interviews with the Delphi method to explore what potentials blockchain technology in AM creates, which adoption barriers firms need to overcome, and how supply chains will be affected by the integration of these two potentially disruptive technologies. The results suggest opportunities that are related to intellectual property (IP) rights management, the monitoring of printed parts throughout their lifecycle, process improvements, and data security. The most important barriers for blockchain adoption in AM are an absence of blockchain‐skilled specialists on the labor market, missing governance mechanisms, and a lack of firm‐internal technical expertise. By addressing important limitations of AM, blockchain is expected to improve the competitiveness of AM in parts’ production, catalyzing the trend toward more decentralized manufacturing resulting in more agile, resilient, and flexible supply chains and reduced logistics costs. Beyond that, blockchain‐based AM platforms are expected to enhance supply chain visibility, drive supply chain digitalization, support supply chain finance, and contribute to the emergence of shared factory systems.     

Sharing versus collaborative economy: how to align ICT developments and the SDGs in tourism?

Great hopes have been placed in the sharing economy to provide a new business model based on peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges of underutilized assets. As a model, the sharing economy has been expected to make significant contributions to sustainability, providing new opportunities for entrepreneurship, more sustainable use of resources, and consumer co-operation in tight economic networks. However, in recent years, digital platforms have turned into the most important actors in the global sharing economy, turning global corporations, such as AirBnB, Booking, or TripAdvisor into intermediaries controlling and profiting from most transactions. Focused on accommodation, this paper conceptualizes the sharing economy in comparison to the wider collaborative economy, and discusses its social, economic, environmental, and political impacts in comparison to the sustainable development goals. It concludes that the sharing economy has great potential to make very significant contributions to sustainability, though the model is increasingly being replaced by the collaborative economy, which performs as an extension and acceleration of neoliberal economic practices.     

How to approach business model innovation: the role of opportunities in times of (no) exogenous change

Firms need to show dynamic adaptability and innovate their business models to achieve survival and growth, in particular when they are exposed to high levels of exogenous change. However, business model innovation also takes place in the absence of exogenous change. We know relatively little about firms’ approaches to opportunities for business model innovation in both of these environmental settings. The objective of this study is to understand how firms exposed to various environmental conditions explore and exploit business model innovation opportunities. In a qualitative multiple case analysis, the study compares the approaches to business model innovation used by four firms exposed to high levels of exogenous change with those of four firms operating in the absence of exogenous change. The findings are contrasted with entrepreneurial opportunity discovery and creation theories. The results reveal that firms exposed to high levels of exogenous change focus on discovering objective opportunities, whereas firms operating in the absence of exogenous change concentrate on creating opportunities for business model innovation. However, this study revealed that when the firms further explore and exploit these opportunities, they tend to combine the behaviours that the two opportunity perspectives suggest. This study contributes to the literature on business model innovation by emphasising the relationship between environmental context and approach to business model innovation and by reinforcing the link with entrepreneurship theory.     

Saving Accounts versus Stocks and Bonds in Household Portfolio Allocation

We study the structure of household portfolios of financial wealth by analyzing both the determinants of total financial wealth and the choice between risky (stocks and bonds) and riskfree assets (saving accounts). The econometric specification is a generalized trivariate Tobit model, estimated on a cross section of 3,077 households in the Netherlands in 1988. We account for endogeneity of financial wealth and for selectivity due to nonreporting. Results show that the level of financial wealth and the marginal tax rate are major determinants of the allocation between riskfree and risky assets.     

Skill Loss, Ranking of Job Applicants and the Dynamics of Unemployment

Abstract. This paper investigates the consequences of skill loss as a result of unemployment in an efficiency wage model with turnover costs and on-the-job search. Firms are unable to differentiate wages and therefore prefer to hire employed searchers or unemployed workers who have not lost human capital. It is shown that if some fundamental factor in the economy changes, this will result in a lengthy adjustment process with substantial long-run unemployment effects. Moreover, the model is capable of generating persistence, but the amount depends on the duration of the shock itself.     

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Uncertainty in the Austrian Theory of Capital

This paper is based on the traditional Austrian Theory of Capital which deals with expected values of future returns of investments over various periods of time. The longer the time period that elapses between the beginning of a production process and its end, the higher the (expected) productivity must be due to positive time preferences of individuals. This paper focuses on the uncertainty of future returns and on uncertainty preferences, instead. Based on the Hayekian idea of the dispersion of knowledge in society, it will be shown that there is a systematic relationship between the structure of capital and uncertainty. This result will be derived for a production process characterized by complete vertical integration and one which is not completely vertically integrated. The distinction between these two settings is crucial, if one accepts the distinction between an individual and a social period of production and the planning horizon which are introduced in this paper.     

Self-Efficacy Toward Service, Civic Participation and the Business Student: Scale Development and Validation

This paper presents the development andvalidation of new measurement tools to exploreself-efficacy toward service and toward civicparticipation. We developed and administereda survey to 851 students in an AACSB-accreditedcollege of business at a comprehensive publicuniversity located in the Midwest. Traditionalscale development methodologies plusconfirmatory factor analysis and simultaneousfactor analysis in several populations wereused to analyze both a primary sample and aholdback sample. Results strongly support thevalidity and reliability of the surveyinstrument. Future use for the instrumentincludes verification of the effectiveness ofpedagogies designed to increase self-efficacytoward service and motivation for civicparticipation in business students.