Network-centric business models for health,social care and wellbeing solutions in the internet of things

In this multiple case study we analyze solutions based on connected devices in the context of health, social care and wellbeing. Based on the consideration that a solution is a combination of services and products, we build on the notion that business models can be studied at a firm-level and also at a network-level. The network-level analysis is used to motivate the reasons why solutions emerging at the intersection of the healthcare and the ICT industries benefit from collaboration among different actors. We conclude that the firm- and the network-level development of business models provide alignment in the business network and are useful to establish the relation that technological component have with overall solutions. Our findings suggest that some component bring novelty in the final offer without affecting the ongoing operation, while other component aim at improving the internal working processes, with minimal effects on the final offer to end users. We discuss the benefits of a network-level perspective for each case.     

Exploring the business benefits of environmental stewardship

Environmental sensitivity has gained much attention in business organizations; however, there is little empirical evidence on the business benefits from environment-oriented measures. Some of the many promised benefits from environmental sensitivity are categorized and rated. The framework proposed by the Management Institute for Environment and Business is used to assess company environmental stewardship. A pre-tested questionnaire was used to collect data from 133 business organizations known to have undertaken at least some ‘green business’ activities. The results from Pearson correlation analysis suggest that companies showing higher degrees of environmental stewardship will derive greater business benefits than organizations which aim at minimum compliance with government regulations in this area.     

Online business development services for entrepreneurs: an exploratory study

This paper addresses the use of the Internet to provide business development services such as training, consulting, counselling and networking. Using a Delphi study of experts from around the world, the possible uses of the Internet as well as criteria for successful implementation are presented. Three critical success factors for providing online services are identified. First, an effective use of online resources requires that the inherent strengths of the Internet be exploited. Using online tools when they are perceived to be a ‘second-best’ mode of communication is inefficient and can be counterproductive. Second, personal contact is still very important and can complement online services. Third, successful online services require an effective Internet site and program management. The study also shows that the specific nature of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs must be carefully considered when developing online services. The entrepreneur is more concerned about his/her problems and is less concerned with the problems of others. However, he or she is willing to participate in a small learning network if the benefits go beyond that of just learning together. Similarly, online training for entrepreneurs should be complemented by a face-to-face component. An efficient/effective pure online training program for entrepreneurs would be very difficult if not impossible to develop and implement.     

Business concepts of systemic service innovations in e-Healthcare

This paper contributes to the current understanding of systemic service innovations by making intensive inquiries into the issue of how to formulate a commercially viable business concept for e-healthcare. Business models as key to success in service innovations require formulating and articulating a good and meaningful business concept right from the beginning. Taking into account the systemic nature of e-healthcare services, the paper develops a conceptual framework and presents four cases gathered from Taiwan?s innovative e-healthcare programs to unveil the key ingredients of the business concept required for innovative e-healthcare services.     

The digital transformation of business models in the creative industries: A holistic framework and emerging trends

This paper examines how digital technologies facilitate business model innovations in the creative industries. Through a systematic literature review, a holistic business model framework is developed, which is then used to analyse the empirical evidence from the creative industries. The research found that digital technologies have facilitated pervasive changes in business models, and some significant trends have emerged. However, the reconfigured business models are often not ‘new’ in the unprecedented sense. Business model innovations are primarily reflected in using digital technologies to enable the deployment of a wider range of business models than previously available to a firm. A significant emerging trend is the increasing adoption of multiple business models as a portfolio within one firm. This is happening in firms of all sizes, when one firm uses multiple business models to serve different markets segments, sell different products, or engage with multi-sided markets, or to use different business models over time. The holistic business model framework is refined and extended through a recursive learning process, which can serve both as a cognitive instrument for understanding business models and a planning tool for business model innovations. The paper contributes to our understanding of the theory of business models and how digital technologies facilitate business model innovations in the creative industries. Three new themes for future research are highlighted.     

business schools in the marketplace

Professor David Myddelton, of Cranfield Business School, describes the business school courses on offer and outlines some of the problems faced by the schools.     

Benefits of Environmental Stewardship

Abstract

Environmental sensitivity has gained much attention in business organizations; however, there is little empirical evidence on the business benefits from environment oriented measures. Some of the many promised benefits from environmental sensitivity are categorized and rated. The framework proposed by the Management Institute for Environment and Business (MEB) is used to assess company environment stewardship. A pretested questionnaire was used to collect data from 66 business organizations in the United States and from 31 organizations in Pacific Rim nations. These organizations were known to have undertaken at least some “green business” activities. The results suggest that companies showing higher degrees of environment stewardship will derive greater business benefits than organizations which aim at minimum compliance with government regulations in this area. While, compared with American organizations, on the average the Pacific Rim companies show significantly less environmental stewardship and derive significantly less benefits from it, “their efforts in the area have also been rewarded.”     

基于经营偏好的物流外包决策

随着市场竞争的不断加剧和信息技术的快速发展,企业为了取得竞争上的优势,正在利用第三方物流服务供应商所能提供的所有服务。企业选择物流业务的运作方式,主要是从物流的运作方式为企业带来的利益出发考虑。企业的经营行为有一定的偏好,怎么样在一系列活动中实现企业的经营目标,即利润最大化,这正是基于企业在内生偏好下,选择是否外包物流业务的关键。在介绍企业传统的物流外包决策方法的基础上,通过引入经营偏好这一因素,讨论了企业物流外包决策方法的变化。     

For the greater good: business networks and business social responsibility to communities

Business networks (co-operative arrangements between independent business organizations) may be the signature organizational form of the contemporary global economy. Many policy-makers and local leaders advocate business network membership as an alternative development strategy for regional economic vitality. The extant literature on business networks has focused on their association with business success. However, little is known about their impact on other aspects of community life. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the role of network membership on one non-economic dimension of the business community interface. We examined the relationship between business network membership and business social responsibility to communities, defined as the provision of leadership and support for community betterment projects. Data were gathered from telephone interviews with a random sample of 460 non-metro small business operators in the USA. Independent t-tests and ordinary least squares regression analyses controlling for theoretically important variables were conducted. Findings show that networked businesses provide more leadership and support for their communities than non-networked businesses. However, networked businesses were no more likely than non-networked businesses to use local suppliers of goods and services.     

Search for yield and business cycles

In the ultra-low interest rate environment after the financial crisis, it has been often pointed out that the “search for yield” behavior of financial institutions might have been intensifying interest rate decreases. One hypothesis to explain search for yield is that banks try to buy longer-term bonds even when they recognize negative term premiums in long-term rates because they myopically care about current portfolio income, not just expected holding-period returns. I study the potential impacts of this behavior on U.S. business cycles and long-term bond’s ex-post term premiums. I find that in an economy in which banks are exposed to the value-at-risk constraint, the existence of these myopic banks provides realistic moments of ex-post term premiums. In addition, their existence could generate higher output persistence under a productivity shock compared to an economy without them. This is because the difference between a myopic long-term bond pricing and a realized deposit rate path affects banks’ net worth. I study policy implications, too. In response to changes in the strength of banks’ capital regulation, the existence of myopic banks amplifies business cycles. Regarding monetary policy, it is necessary to consider ex-post term premiums, because ex-post term premiums tend to move in the same direction as the short-term interest rate and amplify business cycles in that direction when myopic banks exist.     

A monetary business cycle model with unemployment

To reproduce key features of the post-war U.S. data, most monetary business cycle models must assume there are high price markups and that agents have high labour supply elasticities despite the existence of contradictory microeconomic evidence. This paper eliminates the need for these assumptions by introducing imperfectly observed effort into a limited participation model. The estimated model is better able to capture the sluggish price response to a monetary policy shock than the standard model, and is consistent with evidence regarding the qualitative responses of the U.S. economy to technology shocks, fiscal policy shocks and monetary policy shocks.     

The impact of the US on Latin American business cycles: A new approach

Business cycles in Latin America have tended to be more volatile than those in wealthier nations such as the US. Accordingly, much research has been conducted on Latin business cycles, as well as the impact of the US on such fluctuations. Some research seeks to find how “integrated” cycles are in the US and Latin America, yielding conflicting results. We apply a new method to the question of business cycle synchronization between the US and nine Latin nations. We find that in the majority of cases integration has been rising in recent years. We also find, contrary to some previous studies, that integration does not appear to be affected by either the level of trade or of capital account openness. Finally, we find that the two countries that are dollarized – Ecuador and El Salvador – appear least integrated with the US. This last finding has potentially troubling implications in terms of the ability of these nations to adjust to asymmetric shocks vis-à-vis the US.     

Transfer pricing under asymmetric information

This paper analyses optimal transfer prices in a firm organized in two divisions. The production costs of the divisions are their respective private information. The objective of headquarters is to determine the transfer pricing method that maximizes total profit less managers' compensation. Managers are interested in their current compensation and in the market evaluation of their experience. In this setting, the paper discusses why particular transfer pricing methods found in practice and literature may induce-inefficiencies, and it identifies conditions under which each method is preferable. Major results are: a market-based transfer price does not implement the first-best solution if there are benefits from internal trade; cost-based transfer,prices may achieve first-best, and they are preferable to negotiated transfer prices if communication is cost-less; dual transfer prices do not implement the first-best solution, as long as collusion cannot be discouraged.

‘There are two truisms in business. Transfer prices are wrong and charges for corporate overhead are too high.‘¹     

TBTA在商科院校物流专业教学的应用

TBTA（Task—Based Teaching Approach）任务型教学方法是一种以任务为核心来实施教学过程的新型教学方法。任务型教学从促进“学”的角度设计课堂,主张有效的教学过程不是传授性的,而是经历性的;学习活动和学习内容一样重要。因此,任务型教学特别强调“做中学”,在“任务”中让学习者获得丰富的实践体验,形成解决问题的能力与素质。通过分析商科院校物流专业的教学特点和传统3P教学模式存在的缺陷,系统的提出了应该将TBTA教学方法应用于商科院校物流专业的教学中来。最后,结合湖南商学院的实际情况,对TBTA方法在商科院校物流专业中的实施原则与实施过程进行了分析。     

Strategies for business innovation: Evaluating the prospects of incubation in Thailand : Technovation, 12:8 (1992) 521–533

Thailand is currently undertaking a strategy of technology development which emphasizes Business Incubation. This paper explores the issues of Business Incubation and Innovation. It presents the results of a study of potential Thai entrepreneurs on what kinds of services they require and what kinds of agencies they would go to for assistance. The results show that these entrepreneurs are much more oriented to business services than to innovation.     

Gasoline prices,transport costs,and the U.S. business cycles

The effects of gasoline prices on the U.S. business cycles are investigated. In order to distinguish between gasoline supply and gasoline demand shocks, the price of gasoline is endogenously determined through a transportation sector that uses gasoline as an input of production. The model is estimated for the U.S. economy using five macroeconomic time series, including data on transport costs and gasoline prices. The results show that although standard shocks in the literature (e.g., technology shocks, monetary policy shocks) have significant effects on the U.S. business cycles in the long run, gasoline supply and demand shocks play an important role in the short run.     

Organizational sponsorship and service co-development: A contingency view on service co-development directiveness of business incubators

We address the lack of studies focusing on internal organizational sponsorship mechanisms, while considering environmental influencers and focus on a specific type of organizational sponsorship to do so: Business incubators. We argue that to be able to offer a customized incubatee-strengthening service pack, incubator-incubatee interaction is key, requiring clear-cut and directive service co-development instructions, which is our focal construct. To better understand the functioning of this focal construct, we adopt a contingency approach to examine how the incubator's human capital, and the institutional environment impact the incubator's service co-development directiveness. A quantitative empirical study reveals that both human capital and an entrepreneurially-minded regulative and cognitive institutional environment allow an incubator to be directive, thereby laying a foundation for co-development of customized service offerings. Moreover, the incubator's human capital turns out to further stimulate the positive effects of an entrepreneurially-minded regulative environment. All in all, we find that both internal organizational and external institutional elements are pivotal for first-best implementation of the internal sponsorship mechanism ‘service co-development directiveness’.     

营业税改增值税对地勘单位的影响

根据财务部和国家税务总局的相关政策,全国范围逐渐实行"营改增"的制度,制度的改革必然会给企业造成一定的影响。原来的营业税计算只需要很少的部分和人员即可。营改增后,随着出现的计算复杂、取得增值税专用票据压力大以及识别困难等问题,会计人员更要积极熟悉营改增的相关知识。此外,为了加大营改增为地堪企业带来的有利影响且尽量减少和消除不利影响,应当加大对企业员工增值税知识的普及力度。     

Social responsibility paradox of small business human resource management practices

This article investigates social responsibility (SR) and human resources management practices focused on internal stakeholders, namely employees, in a context of small business. SR is defined as ‘obligations to constituent groups in society other than stockholders and beyond that prescribed by law and union contract’ Jones (1980, pp. 59–60). Numerous studies have addressed the economic significance and effects of small business but contributions to HR within small businesses have remained relatively unexplored in contemporary SR literature. A case research methodology employing theoretical replication was used to select 10 small businesses across industry sectors. These were chosen with the assistance of the Hunter Business Chamber, Australia. A semi-structured face-to-face interview with the owner of the business who also functioned as the manager was undertaken using a research instrument comprising eight qualitative and open-ended questions. The questions specifically addressed the small business owner's HR priorities, motivations, and financial contribution to SR. This research is designed to fill a gap that exists in the literature and can be considered innovative and timely given the growing interest by society in SR. The principal objective of this research is to broaden the understanding of small business by addressing the research problem: ‘Are human resource management practices of small businesses socially responsibility or market driven?’     

Networking,entrepreneurship and microbusiness behaviour

It has been argued that networking by owner-managers of small businesses will enhance business performance. Yet to define and demonstrate the presence of networking activity is suffused with methodological difficulties. In this paper the authors attempt to disentangle some of these difficulties. The paper draws on quantifiable data from 104 owner-managers and qualitative data from 34 critical incident interviews from a study of microbusinesses to assess the nature and extent of networking activity. The paper shows: a high proportion of owner-managers use their trading contacts as sources of useful additional information; they use ‘weak ties’ for purposes such as recruitment; a sparse use of institutional networks; an association between networking activity and business performance, although it seems that this must be qualified by sectoral differences; an association between type of owner-manager on a scale of entrepreneurship and networking activity. The policy implications of this paper suggest that economic development agencies continue to have problems reaching out to the microbusiness. This paper recommends that such agencies might use a tool to differentiate more finely amongst the microbusiness population.