The role of the entrepreneurial encounter in the emergence of opportunities: Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to explore the conceptual potential of the Deleuzian notion of the encounter in order to better understand the genealogy of opportunities. We adopt a processual perspective of opportunities. In order to translate this notion to the domain of entrepreneurship, we analysed and interpreted Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club. This film follows the creation of the first club in the United States that illegally allowed HIV-positive people to supply themselves with foreign antiretroviral drugs from Mexico or Japan. The article highlights encounters in this process that disturb the entrepreneur’s belief systems and allow him or her to be open to potential opportunity. It finally explores how the encounter may improve our understanding of the political becoming of opportunities within the entrepreneurial process.     

The endo–exo problem in high frequency financial price fluctuations and rejecting criticality

The endo–exo problem lies at the heart of statistical identification in many fields of science, and is often plagued by spurious strong-and-long memory due to improper treatment of trends, shocks and shifts in the data. A class of models that has shown to be useful in discerning exogenous and endogenous activity is the Hawkes process. This class of point processes has enjoyed great recent popularity and rapid development within the quantitative finance literature, with particular focus on the study of market microstructure and high frequency price fluctuations. We show that there are important lessons from older fields like time series and econometrics that should also be applied in financial point process modelling. In particular, we emphasize the importance of appropriately treating trends and shocks for the identification of the strength and length of memory in the system. We exploit the powerful Expectation Maximization algorithm and objective statistical criteria (BIC) to select the flexibility of the deterministic background intensity. With these methods, we strongly reject the hypothesis that the considered financial markets are critical at univariate and bivariate microstructural levels.     

Could lean practices and process innovation enhance supply chain sustainability of small and medium‐sized enterprises?

Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) adopt lean practices (LP) to reduce waste across their organisational value chain, which helps achieve sustainability. Process innovation (PI) has also been applied through cleaner production, environmental management system, ecodesign, and so on to address both customers' needs and legislations by policymakers. Although prior studies reveal the effect of sustainable practices, LP, and PI on sustainable performance separately, less is known on the integrated effect of them on sustainability performance. Moreover, studies on mediating effect of LP and PI on sustainability performance are scant. This is significant as LP and PI are considered to be the enablers for achieving sustainability performance. This research addresses this knowledge gap. The research first theorises a model integrating these four major constructs (sustainability practices, LP, PI, and sustainability performance) through hypotheses development. Subsequently, using structural equation modelling, it is tested whether each of sustainability practices, LP, and PI effect sustainability performances. Additionally, mediating effect of LP and PI between sustainability practices and performances is derived. The study uses data from 119 SMEs within manufacturing industries in the Midlands, United Kingdom. Further, a few case studies have been undertaken to validate the findings from quantitative analysis. The overall results show that although sustainability practices, LP, and PI help achieve sustainability performance of SMEs supply chain through efficiency and responsiveness respectively, the mediating effect LP is more compared with PI. Moreover, SMEs adopt LP when they are economy focused and implement PI when they are pressurised by customers and/or policymakers.     

Cover's universal portfolio,stochastic portfolio theory,and the numéraire portfolio

Cover's celebrated theorem states that the long‐run yield of a properly chosen “universal” portfolio is almost as good as that of the best retrospectively chosen constant rebalanced portfolio. The “universality” refers to the fact that this result is model‐free, that is, not dependent on an underlying stochastic process. We extend Cover's theorem to the setting of stochastic portfolio theory: the market portfolio is taken as the numéraire, and the rebalancing rule need not be constant anymore but may depend on the current state of the stock market. By fixing a stochastic model of the stock market this model‐free result is complemented by a comparison with the numéraire portfolio. Roughly speaking, under appropriate assumptions the asymptotic growth rate coincides for the three approaches mentioned in the title of this paper. We present results in both discrete and continuous time.     

新零售下社区生鲜配送模式的综合评价

新零售模式下社区生鲜“最后500m”的冲刺已成为生鲜农产品快速配送的关键问题。基于目前已有的配送模式:“社区+便利店”模式、第三方配送以及众包模式,通过层次分析法从服务水平、配送成本、客户体验三个方面对三种配送模式进行量化分析,得出每种配送模式在各层次的权重。研究结果表明配送中降低配送成本是关键,减少货物赔损率、提高客户满意度才能实现有效率的配送。     

恩格斯对《资本论》方法的贡献——纪念恩格斯诞辰200周年

恩格斯对待《资本论》的态度是将其看做科学作品和历史作品的统一，坚持由“科学品性”提升“历史品格”——这就是对唯物主义路径的着重阐发；恩格斯进而希望通过自己的扎实辛勤工作，全方位展示他和马克思共同的理论思维——辩证法，用以“伟大逻辑”的建构。要之，恩格斯的工作和《资本论》方法关联的线索有三：一是以《自然辩证法》研究和《资本论》商品章“工作呼应”，希图在马克思主义理论中彻底肃清“蒲鲁东主义”；二是坚持《资本论》的由“自然过程”向“历史过程”进军，对其总体方法论和理论逻辑主张——自然历史过程——进行学理性阐发，又主要归结于发生学的工作逻辑；三是恩格斯晚年的历史唯物主义思考，以耄耋之年推动“《资本论》增补”工作，进行巨大的认识推进。换言之，从广义的工作角度看，恩格斯是尝试把《资本论》当作马克思自身要完成而未能完成的“《辩证法》”（即唯物辩证法）的一个全面预演。经由恩格斯的唯物史观化的“辩证法”努力，《资本论》逐渐成为指导科学思考和进行意识形态战斗的武器，这为《资本论》“俄国化”和“中国化”打下了牢靠的基础。     

Managing turnaround performance through Collaborative Decision Making

The purpose of this paper is to explore turnaround performance as a resultant from both Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) processes and collaborative measures. This paper presents how CDM operates in the Turnaround Process (TAP) to propose a new method for managing the collaborative turnaround performance of all actors by predicting the most critical indicators. To achieve this, data from a CDM airport is used. Sample data of 6500 observations, taken from turnaround movements handled in 2014 at Madrid-Barajas Airport, were obtained from three separate databases and analyzed separately (in three databases). To predict turnaround performance, this paper also introduces a predictor dependent variable called “star values” as a measure of minimal delay conditions in order to predict time performance. The analysis shows that the proposed method unveils a new approach in determining how collaborative performance can be measured in the TAP and the predicted key performance indicators, which shows variations in the predicted CDM indicators. Results challenge managers and policymakers to find which improvements can be enacted for better usage of airport infrastructures and resources for optimum use as well as enhanced TAP. In terms of theory use and extension, the study reveals how CDM is an essential element in the literature on air traffic management.     

Success factors for continuous supply chain process improvement: evidence from Japanese manufacturers

This study explores how firms can realise ‘continuous’ supply chain process improvement. Specifically, this study proposes the success factors of routinised activities (also called ‘repeated activities’) in the supply chain process improvement. Eight Japanese manufacturers are selected for the case studies. These firms are selected based on their supply chain process operation capabilities. From the case studies, we find that the planning of supply chain process improvement depends on the existing stage of the firm’s Supply Chain Management reform. In addition, even firms with high scores for supply chain process operation capabilities do not have supply chain performance systems. Furthermore, quite surprisingly, many Japanese manufacturers tend to improve their supply chain processes in the absence of such systems.     

E-service innovation: combining directed and practice-based approaches

This paper aims to contribute to the service innovation literature by analyzing the different phases of e-service innovation in relation to the dichotomic model of practice-based versus directed innovation. In detail, using the case study method, the study investigates the innovation process of an e-service initiative developed by one of the largest universities in Italy and a banking group during the idea generation, design and implementation steps. The study advances service theory by detailing the integration of existing perspectives on service innovation and revealing the coexistence of directed innovation and practice-based changes. Finally, based on the results of this exploratory study, the paper concludes with research propositions.     

中国经济升级版的评价指标体系构建、测度与阶段甄别

改革开放以来，中国经济取得了举世瞩目的成绩，而随之引起的弊端也日益凸显，经济转型和经济升级成为刻不容缓的任务之一。本文选取1995～2014年中国20年间的统计数据，利用层次分析法，从人民幸福感程度、结构优化程度、可持续发展能力、外向型经济、创新驱动能力方面考察中国经济阶段性特征，再运用系统聚类分析，进一步探索出中国在这20年间历经的经济升级状况及发展趋势，最后提出中国经济再次升级的动力源泉在于提高民生保障水平、科技创新、绿色产业、发展服务业、构建全方位开放新格局。