How and when do purchasers successfully contribute to the implementation of circular purchasing: A comparative case-study

The transition towards a circular economy puts pressure on organizations to purchase in a circular manner. The aim of this research is to investigate the role, behaviors, and characteristics of purchasers in the circular purchasing process, and the contextual factors that influence circular purchasing. To address this aim, we interviewed purchasers, supervisors and policy makers of seven Dutch organizations. The results of the comparative case-study show that the main roles of the purchaser are those of coordinator, facilitator and advisor, and that the successful circular purchaser can best be described as intrapreneurial, sustainability-minded and knowledgeable about the circular economy. Purchasers are successful in implementing circular purchasing when they share responsibility with budget holders and when they are part of organizations that have processes in place to ensure the inclusion of circularity in their purchasing projects. The drivers that influence the success of circular purchasing can be described as creating a sense of direction and grasping the complexity of the circular economy. Furthermore, the market, organizational, legal, conceptual and cultural constraints that limit the success of circular purchasing were identified.     

Technology adoption and the impact on average productivity

In this paper, a framework is developed to analyze how the specifications of new technologies and the heterogeneity of micro-units of production affect the input use, the adoption pattern, and the productivity of inputs. It shows that asset-productivity-enhancing (APE) technologies tend to be adopted by micro-units with high-quality assets, while variable-input, efficiency-enhancing (VIEE) technologies tend to be adopted by micro-units with low-quality assets. In both cases, the variable input productivity increases, but the average productivity of the fixed asset may decline in the case of the VIEE technology. The distribution of asset quality and the new technology specifications will therefore determine the impacts of production technology innovations on aggregate behavior and consequently the change in average productivity of the fixed asset.     

Human resource management and innovation in the Canary Islands: an ultra-peripheral region of the European Union

This study attempts to answer the question about how firms in an ultra-peripheral region innovate to compete in a global market when they often seem not to have the basic conditions to innovate identified in the literature. On that line, and based on the notion that firms in ultra-peripheral regions must recognise the value of their human capital in order to overcome the limitations typical of their social and geographical context, this research aimed to analyse the relationship between the human resource (HR) policy and innovation in an ultra-peripheral region of the European Union, namely the Canary Islands. The objective of this study is to identify the HR-related internal factors that can affect the innovation capability of firms. In particular, this paper considers the HR management policy, the formalisation of that policy in an HR plan, and job stability. To achieve this goal, an empirical study of 157 Canarian firms was carried out and arrived at the conclusion that high commitment human resource management (HRM) has a positive influence on organisational innovation in processes. The results also show that the formalisation of the HR policy in a plan, and job stability also increases innovation in processes.     

The intrapreneurial employee: toward an integrated model of intrapreneurship and research agenda

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - The intrapreneurial behavior of employees has become of strategic importance for the performance of organizations. However, the literature on...     

Bridging the Gap between Different Statistical Approaches: An Integrated Framework for Modelling

This paper proposes a template for modelling complex datasets that integrates traditional statistical modelling approaches with more recent advances in statistics and modelling through an exploratory framework. Our approach builds on the well-known and long standing traditional idea of 'good practice in statistics' by establishing a comprehensive framework for modelling that focuses on exploration, prediction, interpretation and reliability assessment, a relatively new idea that allows individual assessment of predictions.
The integrated framework we present comprises two stages. The first involves the use of exploratory methods to help visually understand the data and identify a parsimonious set of explanatory variables. The second encompasses a two step modelling process, where the use of non-parametric methods such as decision trees and generalized additive models are promoted to identify important variables and their modelling relationship with the response before a final predictive model is considered. We focus on fitting the predictive model using parametric, non-parametric and Bayesian approaches.
This paper is motivated by a medical problem where interest focuses on developing a risk stratification system for morbidity of 1,710 cardiac patients given a suite of demographic, clinical and preoperative variables. Although the methods we use are applied specifically to this case study, these methods can be applied across any field, irrespective of the type of response.     

Business cycle and inflation synchronisation in Mainland China and Hong Kong

This paper uses annual data spanning 1962 to 2003 to examine whether business and inflation cycles have become more similar across Chinese provinces as the economy has been liberalised and modernised. We find evidence of synchronisation, although business cycles in a group of mainly northwestern provinces appear to have diverged from those in the rest of China. Both the business and inflation cycles in Hong Kong seem to have become increasingly synchronised with those in the Mainland over recent years.