Affective commitment and customer loyalty in crowdsourcing: antecedents,interdependencies, and practical implications

Crowdsourcing, the outsourcing of previously internal processes within the corporate value chain to an external crowd of people, has become increasingly popular in retail. In applying this practice, retailers aim not only at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of their value creation process, but also at increasing the affective commitment and loyalty of their customers. Surprisingly, the effects of crowdsourcing on affective commitment and customer loyalty, and the factors influencing these objectives have hardly been researched. This paper closes this research gap. Through expert interviews and experimental studies, it comes to the conclusion that especially satisfaction with the crowdsourcing process and sense of virtual community are relevant factors impacting affective commitment and customer loyalty. The paper concludes with recommendations for optimizing these factors in retail practice.     

An architectural perspective on service adoption: A platform design and the case of pluggable cross-border trade compliance in e-commerce

Current e-commerce architectures rely on a small number of monolithic application systems. The adoption of innovative IT functionality within these architectures is a tedious and complex task. The purpose of this article is to present a design for a novel platform architecture to improve the pluggability of e-commerce services. More precisely, the pluggability of services in current architectures is described, a platform architecture is introduced, and its effect on pluggability is evaluated by means of a prototype. The enablers for this architecture are the recent innovations of web programming interfaces, delegated resource access, and client-side web application frameworks. Those technologies are common in social media and their potential in enterprise computing is revealed in this work, based on the example of a trade compliance service for cross-border retail. The results of this study suggest that the architectural design has merits as it improves the pluggability of e-commerce services. Hence, e-commerce companies should consider a paradigm shift and move from using self-contained application components to a platform-based adoption of complementary services.     

Der deutsche Leistungsbilanzüberschuss — Fluch oder Segen?

Germany has one of the highest current account surpluses in the world. This is criticised by its global trading partners and is subject to the European Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure. The authors interpret this phenomenon quite disparately. Some state that the surplus is not the result of continuously and structurally slower imports relative to export growth. Instead, two periods of weak domestic demand have left lasting traces. This should not result in programmes to stimulate the demand side. Others, however, find that Germany should identify ways to increase its domestic demand, especially its public and private investment, in order to reduce its surplus. It is hard to exactly quantify and target an appropriate level of the current account, and thus political action should focus directly on the distortions and misallocations that potentially result from an imbalance. By 2020, however, the German surplus is likely to decrease due to demographic developments, the housing boom and slowing globalisation. Since the rotation of fixed income assets out of Europe (“Euroglut”) is likely to continue, the outlook for the future value of the euro is therefore even more bearish.     

Firm Foundations and the Role of Financing Constraints

Improving the economic conditions for small and medium sized firms as well as start-ups is high on the agenda of policy makers. In this paper we discuss some policy options for fostering the creation of new enterprises. The discussion focuses on measures which aim at helping start-ups to overcome liquidity constraints. In order to provide the background for this discussion the paper provides some new empirical results on the determinants of firm foundations as well as some stylised facts on the occurence of liquidity constraints in West-Germany. We analyse the regional distribution of start-up intensity and offer several hypotheses to explain this distribution. To a large extent, the regional distribution of start-ups can be explained by the existing industry structure, regional human capital as well as the regional public traffic infrastructure. Moreover, we show that liquidity constraints occur more often in small and young firms.     

Modelling gold futures: should the level of speculation inform our choice of variables?

Prior literature provides conflicting evidence about the impact of speculation on gold futures returns, volatility, and the relationship between market fundamentals and prices. In this paper, we exploit trade volume information to determine the most appropriate family of factors to adopt when modelling gold futures. Using the Disaggregated Commitment of Traders report, we find that extreme levels of speculation are informative in that they signify a shift in the relative modelling accuracy of macroeconomic and latent factors. A simple composite prediction framework, incorporating the changing level of speculation, empirically demonstrates the uncovered phenomenon and offers improved predictive accuracy for gold futures prices. Furthermore, our findings are shown to be robust to alternative latent and macroeconomic model specifications.     

Work values of the next generation of business leaders in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Seoul

Understanding the work values of the current and future workforce is essential for designing a human resource management system that attracts, motivates, and retains talent. This study provides an updated, in-depth analysis of the work values of the next generation of business leaders in the commercial centers of China, Japan, and Korea. Although previous research has often clustered these countries together and labeled them Confucian Asia, survey results from more than 700 respondents reveal striking differences in work values across countries. The Chinese are more individualistic and career oriented, whereas the Japanese are more risk averse and work oriented, and the Koreans are often somewhere in-between. We argue that the value differences can be largely explained by different economic influences in these three countries. This study enhances our understanding of crossvergence theory by distinguishing economic influence in the economic development stage, economic growth, and inward foreign direct investments. While these economic indicators might be related, their influences on work values could be conflicting. The findings suggest that that each economic indicator has a unique effect on the development of work values.     

Eine Bewertung verschiedener Kapazitätsmechanismen für den deutschen Strommarkt

This article examines the economic impacts of an implementation of different capacity mechanisms in the German market for electricity. We discuss selective mechanisms that address only newly installed capacity, as well as global mechanisms. Whenever appropriate, we give examples from international experience. We show that global mechanisms—contrary to selective mechanisms—can incentivize efficient investment decisions. However, due to the regulatory intensity of such mechanisms we advise not to take such measures unless a clear need is indicated.     

The environmental value and impact of the Maker movement—Insights from a cross‐case analysis of European maker initiatives

The aim of this paper is to explore the environmental value of the Maker movement, which is driving digital fabrication into the mainstream. Makers are inspiring each other to create smart solutions for all types of individual needs and address societal and environmental challenges at the same time. They share their creative ideas and solutions in collaborative work spaces and Maker Faires or on social media platforms. Is this grassroots innovation the beginning of the next industrial revolution? This paper will explore the environmental value and impact of makers' innovative business model and discuss on how to increase the circularity. At the same time, we will describe the role of maker communities and how to help to play a better role. In the framework of a case study analysis based on 10 different Maker initiatives across Europe, 39 interviews were conducted with makers and Maker initiatives managers evaluating core questions such as potential environmental value and impact, value chains, and energy efficient behaviours. This study is expected to contribute to building an explorative but yet empirically rooted analysis of the environmental value and impact of the Maker movement. Furthermore, the challenges in the future and the suggestions for policy makers are provided.