Involving suppliers in product development: Insights from R&D directors and project managers

While there is increasing evidence that involving suppliers in new product development (NPD) is important, and for many firms even inevitable, there is also evidence that not all such efforts are successful. Firms aiming at implementing this strategy effectively have to pay close attention to several contingency factors on the organizational level and properly manage supplier involvement on the project level. The exploratory case study research underlying this article explores key issues to be considered when involving suppliers in NPD and the counter measures they can take. Our research shows that companies differentiate between so-called “know-how” and “capacity” projects, and that they manage them differently. Furthermore, this research shows that firms outside the automotive and high-tech manufacturing industries are likely to intensify supplier involvement in the future.     

Developing Technological Stance: Children's Learning in Technology Education

Following a review of current research in children's learning in technology education, and an examination of the kinds of knowledge demanded in contemporary technology education programs in elementary schools, I argue that what is needed in early technology education programs is the scaffolding of what I am calling technological stance. This construct acknowledges the socio-cultural character of technology as a human endeavor. In contrast to programs which are oriented to application of conceptual and procedural knowledge or to programs in which knowledge is generated through interpretation of interactions with materials and tools, programs which support technological stance position learners as critical inquirers into both tool-related and discursive practices of technology.     

Enhancing Practicing Primary School Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Technology

This paper describes the frameworks and cognitive tools that have been developed to enhance practising teachers' pedagogical content knowledge in primary school technology education. The frameworks evolved from our research that firstly examined existing teaching practices, secondly enhanced formative interactions and thirdly enhanced summative assessment strategies. The evidence gained over the three years demonstrated how the effective use of frameworks could be utilised to enhance teacher pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). How we see learning is of prime importance in examining the development of teacher pedagogical content knowledge. A sociocultural view of learning is taken where human mental processes are situated within their historical, cultural and institutional setting. In the research project we strongly emphasised the need for teachers to build a knowledge base for teaching technology. Critical aspects identified as enhancing PCK included: negotiated intervention, planning frameworks, reflection on case studies, workshops and support in classrooms, appropriate resources, teacher agreement meetings, portfolios of student work and summative profiles. The increased PCK resulted in: enhanced teacher knowledge about technology including the nature of technology, areas of technology and specific technological knowledge, changed pedagogical approaches, enhanced teacher student interaction, refinement of appropriate learning outcomes, critical decision making, improved teacher confidence, and enhanced student learning. Seven characteristics or features of pedagogical content knowledge that we believe are important for effective teaching and learning in technology are presented. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Organizational learning and market orientation: interface and effects on performance

This paper discusses the relationship between market orientation and organizational learning and, in particular, the former's contribution to the generation of double-loop learning. Although prior contributions on this topic have been controversial, the authors, departing from the principles of RBV, consider market orientation a resource capable of generating higher order organizational learning and, in this way, capable of additionally reinforcing firms' sustainable competitive advantage. The empirical study provides evidence on the existing relationship between a firm's learning and market orientation degree and the organization's economic and non-economic results. Findings indicate that learning orientation stimulates the market-oriented behavior and that it also positively affects the establishment of long-term relationships with strategic clients. Contrary to prior research a significant and positive effect on business performance is only contrasted in the case of market orientation.     

Zombie Board: Board Tenure and Firm Performance

We show that board tenure exhibits an inverted U‐shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance. The quality of corporate decisions, such as M&A, financial reporting quality, and CEO compensation, also has a quadratic relation with board tenure. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that directors’ on‐the‐job learning improves firm value up to a threshold, at which point entrenchment dominates and firm performance suffers. To address endogeneity concerns, we use a sample of firms in which an outside director suffered a sudden death, and find that sudden deaths that move board tenure away from (toward) the empirically observed optimum level in the cross‐section are associated with negative (positive) announcement returns. The quality of corporate decisions also follows an inverted U‐shaped pattern in a sample of firms affected by the death of a director.     

Machine learning in individual claims reserving

Machine learning techniques make it feasible to calculate claims reserves on individual claims data. This paper illustrates how these techniques can be used by providing an explicit example in individual claims reserving.     

Asking ‘Why’ in AI: Explainability of intelligent systems – perspectives and challenges

Recent rapid progress in machine learning (ML), particularly so‐called ‘deep learning’, has led to a resurgence in interest in explainability of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, reviving an area of research dating back to the 1970s. The aim of this article is to view current issues concerning ML‐based AI systems from the perspective of classical AI, showing that the fundamental problems are far from new, and arguing that elements of that earlier work offer routes to making progress towards explainable AI today.     

Learning minimum variance discrete hedging directly from the market

Option hedging is a critical risk management problem in finance. In the Black–Scholes model, it has been recognized that computing a hedging position from the sensitivity of the calibrated model option value function is inadequate in minimizing variance of the option hedge risk, as it fails to capture the model parameter dependence on the underlying price (see e.g. Coleman et al., J. Risk, 2001, 5(6), 63–89; Hull and White, J. Bank. Finance, 2017, 82, 180–190). In this paper, we demonstrate that this issue can exist generally when determining hedging position from the sensitivity of the option function, either calibrated from a parametric model from current option prices or estimated nonparametricaly from historical option prices. Consequently, the sensitivity of the estimated model option function typically does not minimize variance of the hedge risk, even instantaneously. We propose a data-driven approach to directly learn a hedging function from the market data by minimizing variance of the local hedge risk. Using the S&P 500 index daily option data for more than a decade ending in August 2015, we show that the proposed method outperforms the parametric minimum variance hedging method proposed in Hull and White [J. Bank. Finance, 2017, 82, 180–190], as well as minimum variance hedging corrective techniques based on stochastic volatility or local volatility models. Furthermore, we show that the proposed approach achieves significant gain over the implied BS delta hedging for weekly and monthly hedging.     

The interactive effects of organizational and leadership career management support on job satisfaction and turnover intention

In the organizational career management literature, scholars have focused on career management policies, with little attention given to practices that can vary within organizations. And despite its recognized importance, research on the role of leaders in the career management process is also scant. In this study, we investigate the effects of career management practices (OCPs) and leadership career support (LCS) on employee attitudes. Grounded on coping theory, we propose that career support received from line managers can be particularly consequential when OCPs are lacking. We analyze the moderating effects of LCS on the relationship between OCPs and both job satisfaction and turnover intention in a sample of employees from a large Brazilian organization, applying multiple regression analyses. Results showed that OCPs and LCS are positively related to job satisfaction and that OCPs are negatively related to turnover intention. In addition, we confirmed that LCS moderates the relationship between OCPs and both job satisfaction and turnover intention. Finally, we observed that the relationship between OCPs and turnover intention is mediated by job satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Forecasting U.S. money growth using economic uncertainty measures and regularisation techniques

This paper examines the out-of-sample forecasting properties of six different economic uncertainty variables for the growth of the real M2 and real M4 Divisia money series for the U.S. using monthly data. The core contention is that information on economic uncertainty improves the forecasting accuracy. We estimate vector autoregressive models using the iterated rolling-window forecasting scheme, in combination with modern regularisation techniques from the field of machine learning. Applying the Hansen-Lunde-Nason model confidence set approach under two different loss functions reveals strong evidence that uncertainty variables that are related to financial markets, the state of the macroeconomy or economic policy provide additional informational content when forecasting monetary dynamics. The use of regularisation techniques improves the forecast accuracy substantially.