The impact of innovation training on successful outcomes in public–private partnerships

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly seen as a way of innovating the production and management of public services. However, the question of what drives innovation in partnerships has so far received only limited attention. Drawing on network governance and collaborative innovation literature, this article presents the findings from a survey among 260 Danish PPPs. The study shows that while innovation training has a significant effect on achieving innovation in PPPs, factors such as trust and institutional support only affect some innovation types. The findings demonstrate the importance of individual innovation skills and a differentiated understanding of innovation outcomes in PPPs.     

How does risk transference to private partner impact on public-private partnerships’ success? Empirical evidence from developing economies

This work analyses how risk transference to the private partner affects the success of public-private partnerships (PPP). For this purpose, a broad sample from the World Bank database of 6,022 PPP infrastructure projects in 59 developing countries in the period 1997 to 2016 is analysed. Using multilevel logistic models our results show that PPPs' success is more likely when the private partner takes more risk and the economic and institutional environments are better. Another interesting finding is that an excessive transference of risks to the private party when certain institutional features show good records could prejudice PPPs’ performance.     

A relational view of climate adaptation in the private sector: How do value chain interactions shape business perceptions of climate risk and adaptive behaviours?

Studies exploring climate change adaptation in the private sector have seldom investigated the effect of business network interactions on climate vulnerability and adaptation outcomes. This paper proposes a novel theoretical framework to explore how business–network dynamics affect risk perceptions and adaptive behaviours in business firms. The framework is empirically grounded in a comparative analysis of business–network dynamics from three agricultural value chains in Jamaica that are vulnerable to climate change impacts. The results illustrate how the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of value chain actors are influenced by business interdependencies and interfirm relationships. We find that the level of formality of business exchanges (contractual or noncontractual), the level of resource interdependency, and the ability to diversify access channels to critical resources can influence the propagation of climate‐related risks and influence actors' exposure and sensitivity to those risks. The study also offers evidence of the role played by bonding and bridging relational ties on adaptive capacity. The framework and findings provide a foundation for a new research agenda exploring a relational view of firm adaptation strategy in response to climate risks.     

How does Internationalisation affect the productivity of R&D activities in large innovative firms? A conditional nonparametric investigation

Quality & Quantity - This work explores the relationship between multinational R&D and innovation productivity among top corporate knowledge and R&D producers by adopting a...     

How do trade openness,public expenditure and institutional performance affect unemployment in OIC countries? Evidence from the DCCE approach

This study explores the relationship between trade openness, public expenditure, institutional performance, and unemployment in member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (formerly the Organization of the Islamic Conference). The conventional panel data techniques overlook cross-sectional dependence and yield-biased results. A new methodology called dynamic common correlated effects (DCCE) is employed to deal with the issue of cross-sectional dependence. The long-run results demonstrate that trade openness is inversely and significantly associated with overall unemployment and youth unemployment in lower-income as well as all the OIC economies and positively correlated in the higher-income OIC group. Public expenditure has an inverse and significant correlation with unemployment in OIC countries overall and higher-income OIC countries. Moreover, institutional performance and foreign direct investment are negatively related to unemployment in all OIC economies. The research shows the need for the continuation of open trade policies, strong institutions, and higher public expenditure in the OIC countries in order to decrease overall unemployment—in particular, youth unemployment.     

Convergence of public and private enterprise wages in a transition economy: Evidence from a distributional decomposition in Vietnam, 2002–2014

We examine the transition of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Vietnam during the period 2002–2014 from a wage perspective by decomposing the differences in wage distributions between SOE employees and non-SOE employees. Although SOE employees received higher pay in 2002 because of differences in the characteristics and residuals, the differences in coefficients were minimal along the wage distribution during 2002–2014. The differences in characteristics decreased over time in the middle and middle-to-high wage distribution groups. University graduates were the main contributor to the difference in endowments. By 2014, the residuals difference vanished and the pay schemes between SOEs and non-SOEs converged.     

In Public Servants We Trust?: A behavioural experiment on public service motivation and trust among students of public administration,business sciences and law

Using a laboratory experiment with monetary rewards to explore the effect of self-reported public service motivation (PSM) on choosing to study public administration and on trust behaviour reveals that students of public administration behave more trusting and trustworthy than business sciences and law students. Self-reported PSM is positively associated with trust behaviour, but does not explain trust differences between the three groups. This indicates that the normative orientation that underlies self-reported PSM exerts a stronger influence on behaviour in a low-cost decision than in a high-cost decision with long-term consequences such as choosing a field of study.     

How do performance feedback characteristics influence recipients’ reactions? A state-of-the-art review on feedback source,timing, and valence effects

One of the most important measures to stimulate individual performance is feedback, whose effectiveness highly depends on underlying feedback characteristics. Although an extensive body of research has stressed its importance, a conclusive overall picture on feedback characteristics effects is missing. However, synthesized knowledge is important when one is willing to implement feedback systems to effectively influence recipients’ reactions. To address this issue, we organize and summarize the findings regarding the main effects of feedback source, feedback timing, and feedback valence as well as regarding their interactions with the source, message, task, and recipients’ individual characteristics from different disciplines. Based on an analysis of 64 empirical articles, we show that main effects have been considered very context-specific and are often inconsistent, while the occurrence of certain source, message, task, and individual characteristics even inverts the generally assumed main relationships. Based on an extract of our findings, we provide specific research propositions and offer avenues for future research, which will be of value for researchers and feedback-providing practitioners.     

A science mapping analysis of ‘marginality,stigmatization and social cohesion’ in WoS (1963–2019)

Quality & Quantity - The current socio-economic and politico-humanitarian crisis is reflected in the progressive entanglement of social cohesion. The increase of social, political, and economic...     

How does a firm’s management of greenhouse gas emissions influence its economic performance? Analyzing effects through demand and productivity in Japanese manufacturing firms

This paper analyzes how a firm’s management of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions affects its economic performance. The theoretical model we derive from Cobb–Douglas production and inverse demand functions predict that in conducting GHG emissions management, a firm will enhance its economic performance because it promotes an increase in demand for its output and improves its productivity. The estimation results, using panel data on Japanese manufacturing firms during the period 2007–2008, support the view that a firm’s GHG emissions management enhances a firm’s economic performance through an increase in demand and improvement in productivity. However, the latter effect is conditional. Although a firm’s efforts to maintain lower GHG emissions improves productivity, efforts to reduce GHG emissions further does not always improve it, especially for energy-intensive firms. Because firms attempting to maintain lower GHG emissions are more likely to improve their productivity, there is a possibility that firms with high GHG emissions can also enhance economic performance by reducing their emissions in the long term, even if additional costs are incurred. In addition, better GHG emissions management increases the demand of environmentally conscious customers because a product’s life cycle GHG emissions in the upper stream of the supply chain influence those in the lower stream, and customers evaluate the suppliers’ GHG emissions management in terms of green supply-chain management.     

A study on the influence of eWOM using content analysis: how do comments on value for money,product sophistication and experiential feeling affect our choices?

The influence of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has been heavily investigated in relation to online ratings. However, only a few studies examined the content of eWOM. From the perspective of the consideration sets model, consumers formulate an awareness set, a consideration set and a choice set before making a purchase. We argue that the formulation of these sets is influenced by eWOM based on its volume, valance and content relating to product attributes such as value for money, product sophistication and experiential feeling. In this study, the content of posts relating to Shure professional earphones in the online forum Mingo (www.mingo-hmw.com/forum) was captured and annotated. During the data collection period, Mingo was the sole online forum relating to professional earphones. Without much interference from other online forums, the circumstances of this study closely approximate a laboratory setting. In addition, we collected the actual sales, marketing costs, fault rates and number of retail stores selling the Shure professional earphones for 126 weeks. Our findings show that the weekly volume of posts, their relative number of positive (negative) comments, especially regarding value for money and sound quality, and those posts from the earlier week impinged strongly on weekly sales of Shure products. From the regression models, the explained variance in sales jumps from 0.236 to 0.732 due to the influence of eWOM.     

How do Google searches for symptoms,news and unemployment interact during COVID-19? A Lotka–Volterra analysis of google trends data

Quality & Quantity - In this paper I exploit Google searches for the topics “symptoms”, “unemployment” and “news” as a proxy for how much attention people...