Cooperative conversion and communalization: Closely observed interactions between the material and the mental

Various authors, including Elinor Ostrom, have shown that the legal form of a cooperative has many of the characteristics of a Common. Here we focus on cooperative conversion, through which conventional enterprises become labor‐managed firms (LMFs), viewing it dynamically as a communalization process. These processes are addressed in the light of a field survey carried out in France, looking at six firms involved in cooperative conversion. The changes entailed are two‐dimensional, both material and mental. This is visible, for example, when finding the capital to mount an LMF: members of the workforce must draw on their own funds; they must also believe in the project. Through our empirical observations we highlight the obstacles in the way of forming an LMF. In particular participants must undertake a work of negotiation hinging on stakes marked by the two, largely inseparable dimensions. Ultimately we query the ethic brought into play in the collective action of constituting a Common. Specifically, individuals must contribute to a collective action underpinned by principles of self‐governance, or commoning, the rock on which the Common rests. A key finding of our study is to demonstrate that a Common can only be successfully created if the constituent processes are consistent with the overall goal. In other words the manner in which we travel is inseparable from our final destination; otherwise we shall surely lose our way.     

External pressure or internal culture? An innovation diffusion theory account of small retail businesses’ social media use

COVID-19 put unprecedented external pressure on small businesses to adopt or increase use of social media while not all small businesses are internally ready for this rapid change. This study investigated the roles of external pressures and organizational culture of openness and learning in driving small retail business owners'/managers' social media use decisions by impacting their perceived usefulness and barriers, based on the innovation-decision process model from the diffusion of innovations theory and the theory of reasoned action. An online survey with structured measurements was administered to 411 U.S. small retail business owners/managers. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that external pressures positively influenced small business owners'/managers’ perceived usefulness and barriers and social media use intention. In addition, the culture of openness and learning positively influenced the perceived usefulness while mitigating the perceived barriers, thereby directly and indirectly influencing the social media use intention. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Deep learning for modeling the collection rate for third-party buyers

This study evaluates a wide range of machine learning techniques such as deep learning, boosting, and support vector regression to predict the collection rate of more than 65,000 defaulted consumer credits from the telecommunications sector that were bought by a German third-party company. Weighted performance measures were defined based on the value of exposure at default for comparing collection rate models. The approach proposed in this paper is useful for a third-party company in managing the risk of a portfolio of defaulted credit that it purchases. The main finding is that one of the machine learning models we investigate, the deep learning model, performs significantly better out-of-sample than all other methods that can be used by an acquirer of defaulted credits based on weighted-performance measures. By using unweighted performance measures, deep learning and boosting perform similarly. Moreover, we find that using a training set with a larger proportion of the dataset does not improve prediction accuracy significantly when deep learning is used. The general conclusion is that deep learning is a potentially performance-enhancing tool for credit risk management.     

Uncertainty,story-telling and transformative learning: An instructor’s experience of TEFI’s Walking Workshop in Nepal

ABSTRACT

This article recounts three stories from TEFI’s walking workshop in Nepal: the construction of a road through what was once a trekking path; a dance-floor encounter at a Himalayan party; and the arrival of one participant, fatigued by jet lag and disoriented by the new surroundings. These stories of confusion, discomfort and fear are linked by one common theme: the potential of uncertainty to foster deep reflection and nuanced conclusions. The premise that uncertainty is to be valued and even cultivated has been explored in educational theory, spiritual traditions, and research on transformative learning. These sources affirm the role of uncertainty in the process of knowledge creation. However, accepting this role can be challenging for educators because it requires they assume a new identity, one which they may perceive as being at odds with their status as “teacher” the identity of learner. One way for the educator to address this challenge may be through recounting their own stories of uncertainty. Stories of being immersed in unfamiliar situations that challenge, confuse and even frighten – stories, in other words of being a tourist – can foster reflection on an intellectual, emotional and spiritual level, engaging the “whole” person, and thus initiating the educator/learner’s transformative journey.     

A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE ON FARMER COOPERATIVES: PERFORMANCE,OWNERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE,FINANCE, AND MEMBER ATTITUDE

The empirical literature on farmer cooperatives is now fast emerging and developing in the areas of performance, ownership and governance, finance, and member attitude. We discuss 56 peer‐reviewed publications to illustrate the main findings and conclusions while outlining challenges and opportunities for future research. Generally, cooperative membership is found to positively impact price, yield, input adoption, income, and other indicators of member performance, yet there is growing evidence of an uneven distribution of benefits for small and large producers. In terms of structure, evidence of a causal relationship of ownership and governance to performance has been elusive, yet there are now many findings of inherent equity and long‐term debt constraints, often in the context of consolidation to drive scale and scope economies. Further inefficiency is observed to be driven by increased heterogeneity in member attitudes and objectives, in particular in terms of commitment and participation. Thus, overall, empirical work portrays farmer cooperatives as flawed and complex business organizations which nonetheless have a strong positive impact on its members. While applied research may progress in various directions, a general improvement in empirical methodologies is needed to allow robust analysis of mixed objectives in dynamic environments.     

Firm-specific assets and the internationalization–performance relationship in the U.S. movie studio industry

We study the role that firm-specific assets (FSAs) play in the processes underlying the internationalization–performance relationship. International business scholars have begun studying the interrelationship between FSAs, internationalization, and performance; however, this research is still emergent, and has produced inconclusive results. We believe that this may be due, in part, to research designs involving the same FSAs across many industries, even though individual industries may rely on different FSAs in their internationalization strategies. We address this issue in a single industry study of U.S. movie studios, which typically rely on blockbuster production capabilities as FSAs in their internationalization efforts. We show how these FSAs co-evolve with firms’ degree of internationalization, and how each factor mediates the positive effect of the other on performance. Our results highlight the importance of studying specific industries and their salient FSAs when assessing their role of such resources in the internationalization–performance relationship.     

天地一体化信息网络中天基卫星网络架构设计

为了充分利用各种空间设施资源，提升天基信息网络覆盖与传输能力，分别从天基信息网络体系架构和逻辑功能架构角度进行了系统性设计。与以往天基网络的设计不同，该设计更注重各类卫星网络的深度融合应用，为此将网络虚拟化技术引入天基卫星网络。同时，还提出了解决新架构下卫星组网难题的方法，将电磁涡旋、卫星灵活载荷和边缘计算技术设计到天基网络。仿真表明，所提出的架构能有效提升频谱利用率和减少卫星网络信令开销。     

The Right Choice at the Right Time: A Herding Experiment in Endogenous Time

Herding describes the phenomenon in decision-making where an economic agent disregards his own private information to follow the actions of his predecessors as in Banerjee (1992). With later decision-makers simply copying earlier decisions their private information cannot be inferred by other decision-makers and will be forever lost. There is some experimental evidence on simple sequential herding of this type in the literature, notably Anderson and Holt (1997). This paper differs by allowing subjects to delay their decision-making in order to benefit from observing others' actions as in more recent herding models such as Chamley and Gale (1994). The results in this paper suggest that subjects will indeed delay when their private information is not sufficiently strong. Despite this ability to wait, as predicted in the theoretical literature, cascades remained ubiquitous and more worrying still, reverse-cascades occurred in which incorrect decisions made by early decision-makers produced informational cascades on the wrong action. In an alternative design, informing subjects that they had made incorrect choices only made matters worse as subjects moved further away from rational behavior.