Coordinating Loosely-Coupled Work in Construction Inspection Activities

Inspections represent key activities in construction projects. They allow coordinating the work of the main contractor and the subcontracted companies participating in the project. Today the inspection activities and the coordination process are done using information recorded into paper-based blueprints. As a consequence of it, coordinating the activities derived from inspection processes become expensive, slow and error-prone. This paper presents a mobile shared workspace, named COIN (Construction Inspector), which helps the participants in a construction project to overcome these limitations. COIN was particularly designed to be used on tablet PCs, but it is able to run on several computing devices. This workspace has been tested in a controlled work scenario. The preliminary results are highly positive, indicating this proposal could have an important impact on the construction management process.     

Store brand and national brand promotion attitudes antecedents

Retailers compete against national manufacturers by launching store brands. National manufactures regularly use brand promotions to fight store brands back. The purpose of this article is to find out whether attitudes toward national brand promotions and store brands have similar or different conceptual antecedents. The study presents and tests a model of the effects of shoppers´ characteristics (price and non-price-related) on attitudes toward store brand and national brand promotions. The results support that constructs relating to price impact both store brand attitude and national brand promotion attitude, but the strength of some of these relationships differ. Other shopper characteristics like brand loyalty and store loyalty, have similar negative and positive effects, respectively. These slight differences suggest that promotions of national brands might be a good tool for fighting back store brands, but manufacturers need to design and target these promotions carefully in order to avoid head-to-head competition.     

Highway to Economic Growth? Competition in Public Works Tenders in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the poorest countries in the world. The construction sector will play an essential part to bring the country on the path of economic growth, and competition within the sector is crucial to achieve this goal. In this paper, we analyse the effect of competition in public works tenders in the DRC, using a unique and newly assembled database on public works contracts. We find that the number of participating bidders significantly reduces contract prices, confirming our prior hypothesis that competitive pressure can enhance the overall performance of the sector. Further, we account for the possibility of heteregenous tender participants, finding that the competition effect can vary with the degree of bidders' heterogeneity.     

Innovation and business research in Latin America: An overview

Innovation in Latin America is a challenge for achieving development. Several Latin American countries and businesses are attempting to increase innov ation and entrepreneurship but they face substantial challenges and difficulties. Institutional, governmental and business policies and practices need to be enhanced in order to increase such innovation. Increasing business research in Latin America and university-business partnerships is probably key in such endeavor. This special issue provides some evidence regarding these challenges at the company level, industry level, and country level. This issue also includes three cases showing Latin American company experiences with financial, marketing and new product innovations and market changes.     

Forward-Looking Disclosures,Financial Verifiability and Analysts' Forecasts: A Study of Cross-Listed European Firms

Forward-looking disclosures are a crucial source of information when valuing a company. We study the effect of forward-looking disclosures on analysts' forecast properties, in particular accuracy and dispersion. Our sample includes all the non-financial firms from Italy, Germany, France and Switzerland that in year 2002 were cross-listed on local stock exchanges and on the New York Stock Exchange. We conduct a content analysis on the Annual Report and the 20F form of these companies for the years 2002, 2003 and 2004. We differentiate between forward-looking information on the basis of the disclosure of expected effects on future financial performance and the disclosure of a measure of this impact. We define forward-looking information disclosed with the characteristics of being quantified and directed (and financial) as financially verifiable as it facilitates the comparison with its subsequent realisation in relation to expected future financial performance. Our analysis finds support for the theoretical prediction that verifiable disclosures are more effective than unverifiable disclosures at improving accuracy and reducing dispersion of analysts' forecasts. Our sample also allows us to explore the effects of the difference between the degrees of verifiability between forward-looking disclosures of the 20F form versus those of the domestic annual report. Our analysis provides empirical support for the hypotheses that these differences are significant and have a significant effect on forecast properties.     

Value co-creation behaviours from customer-to-customer interactions (CCIs) in recreational social tango experiences

ABSTRACT

Drawing on customer-dominant (C-D) logic, the main objective of this study is to examine value co-creation behaviours that emerge from customer-to-customer interactions (CCIs) in recreational dance experiences. In-depth interviews were held with 15 dance participants located in Chile, who take social tango classes. The findings identify seven CCI value co-creation behaviours, such as seeking and sharing information about the service with other participants, complying with service requirements and behaving responsibly towards other participants, developing personal interactions with other participants, helping and providing feedback to other participants, and finally being tolerant of and courteous to other participants. The findings of this study advances knowledge on value co-creation and can assist recreational services and dance school managers to develop more effective service strategies for improved customer experiences.     

Modelling outcome‐related risk in choice experiments

In this study, we introduce information on outcome‐related risk as an additional attribute in a choice model of preferences for a land‐based climate change mitigation project. We provide a comprehensive comparison of different model specifications arising from different behavioural assumptions about the way that respondents process information on outcome‐related risk within the choice task. We find significant differences between several specifications in terms of both model fit and WTP estimates. The behavioural assumptions made when choosing a particular model specification, and reasons that motivate them should be made explicit, and consequences of using different specifications should not be ignored.     

Central Banking and Post-Keynesian Economics

Abstract

The Post-Keynesian theory of endogenous money has given much attention to the role of the central bank in the money creation process. Circuit theory has neglected this role, in so far as it has focused on the relationship between banks and firms within a monetary production economy. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold. First, it intends to fill this gap in circuit theory, by providing a role for the central bank in settlement of interbank debts. Secondly, it aims at reinforcing the Post-Keynesian analysis of central bank money by considering both the money-purveying and the credit-purveying roles of the settlement institution in the interbank market. The result of this analysis is a more comprehensive theory of endogenous money, where the lender-of-last-resort facilities of a central bank are viewed as an endogenous phenomenon involving both a money creation and a credit operation between the central bank and the domestic banking system. In such a framework, monetary policy consists of setting the base rate of interest at a level that enables banks to limit their bilateral debt position in the interbank market, so as not to disrupt the workings of the payment system by either an illiquidity or an insolvency crisis.     

Customer preferences versus managerial decision-making in open innovation communities: the case of Starbucks

Customers can participate in open innovation communities posting innovation ideas, which in turn can receive comments and votes from the rest of the community, highlighting user preferences. However, the final decision about implementing innovations corresponds to the company. This paper is focused on the customers' activity in open innovation communities. The aim is to identify the main topics of customers' interests in order to compare these topics with managerial decision-making. The results obtained reveal first that both votes and comments can be used to predict user preferences; and second, that customers tend to promote those innovations by reporting more comfort and benefits. In contrast, managerial decisions are more focused on the distinctive features associated with the brand image.