Learning from the Dark Web: leveraging conversational agents in the era of hyper-privacy to enhance marketing

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science - The Web is a constantly evolving, complex system, with important implications for both marketers and consumers. In this paper, we contend that over the...     

Contagion of Capital Markets in CEE Countries: Evidence from Wavelet Analysis

We employed wavelets technology to investigate how and when contagion occurred on 10 Central and Eastern European financial markets in relation to Western European and US financial markets during 2000–2016 and their different reactions on the background of changes in their regulatory framework. We found that most of Central and Eastern European (CEE) capital markets showed contagion in relation to both Western European and US markets between 2005 and 2009, while Slovakian and Estonian markets showed no contagion. However, during 2010–2016, Croatian market showed de-contagion in relation to Western European market, while Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, and Polish markets showed de-contagion in relation to US market, increasing their independence.     

Assessment of Satisfaction of Local Government as a Client of the Federal Government: Case Study of the Priority Zone Development Program

This paper reports the design of a model that broadens focus of the national government index of customer satisfaction from external clients to internal clients between local and federal governmental institutions. The model for a case study of a national Mexican welfare program includes (i) generic variables, as adapted from the American Customer Satisfaction Index model for government and the variable of institutional image by findings in Mexico; (ii) specific variables, as identified through a qualitative study. The estimation technique is partial least squares. The result is a valid and reliable model that moderately explains satisfaction (R² = 0.67), perceived quality (R² = 0.60), and trust (R² = 0.41). The moderating role of institutional image is not rejected. Future research must test the resulting model in other cases to obtain an appropriate model for the Mexican User Satisfaction Index (MUSI). The Council for Science and Technology of Mexico funds this project.     

User perception of transfers in multimodal urban trips: A qualitative study

The aim of this article is to identify the factors affecting user perception of transfers in order to reduce the penalty associated with transfers. Policy makers can thus concentrate on the most relevant factors to achieve a more effective investment of public funds. We carried out an extensive review of the literature and identified a total of 45 factors. A qualitative study was then conducted in two Spanish cities, Vitoria and Madrid, consisting of various focus groups stratified by age. The results indicate that a combination of factors influence the perception of transfers. Time spent during transfers, both walking and waiting, is the main penalty associated with transfers. However, the provision of real-time passenger information helps reduce the perceived waiting time. Differences were found between cities and age groups. Two new factors were identified, mainly in Madrid: mental effort and activity disruption. We, therefore, advise policy makers to concentrate their efforts on providing real-time information to passengers, improving the frequency and reliability of services, and designing transfer areas to ensure continuity between transport modes and between information and communication systems.     

Context,market economies and MNEs: The example of financial incentivization

This is a study of the relative utilization of reward systems within and between capitalist archetypes: the study includes not only a closer focus on diversity within and between coordinated market economies, but pays specific attention to the Japanese case, and a systematic comparison of the reward practices adopted by multinational enterprises vis-à-vis their local peers. The study uses the most recent (at the time of writing) wave of the Cranet international survey of HRM. We found clear, firm-level evidence that share schemes and performance related pay exhibit significant differences both within and between varieties of capitalism, highlighting the extent to which key features of reward system continue to vary according to institutional setting, and whether an organization is multinational or not.     

The (missing) subjects of research on gender and global governance: Toward inquiry into the ruling relations of development

Responding to the Special Issue's call for “new thinking” on gender and governance in developing societies, we introduce our research on the social organization of development knowledge and its ethical implications. Our feminist-based approach, institutional ethnography, analyses the ruling relations of development and the standpoints represented in knowledge about development and its governance. Our paper offers an alternative to what we see as “the institutional standpoint” prevailing, but taken for granted, in business and society scholarship addressing development. Instead of theorizing development relationships between institutions and their “stakeholders,” we illustrate what can be learned about the social relations of development beginning from the experiences of local subjects. Our analysis of an environmental research and development project in Uzbekistan shows that being missed is knowledge about development subjects that could have revealed what is locally relevant and needed. Instead, we discover gender inequality being constituted, unknowingly, within this project's institutionally generated knowledge and the activities it authorizes.     

Employability as a compass for career success: development and initial validation of a new multidimensional measure

This article reports the development and initial validation of a multidimensional measure of employability based on the theoretical model of Lo Presti and Pluviano (2016). Four different studies were designed and implemented. Study 1 was a qualitative study that involved a group of 15 labour market experts and aimed at developing the items pool. In Study 2, an exploratory factor analysis of 526 employees was carried out to examine the structure of the employability measure as previously obtained. Study 3 aimed at verifying the employability measure that had emerged from Study 2 through confirmatory factor analysis of 699 employees, resulting in a 28‐item shortened version encompassing the original four employability dimensions. Finally, in Study 4, concurrent and predictive validity of the definitive version of the employability measure were tested on a sample of 712 employees. Implications for vocational guidance and human resource management, as well as future employability research, are discussed.     

Psychometric properties of the Valencia Scale of Attitudes and Beliefs toward Hypnosis Client version (VSABH-C) in a mexican sample

Quality & Quantity - The study analyzes the psychometric properties of the Client version of the Valencia Scale of Attitudes and Beliefs towards Hypnosis (VSABH-C), in its adaptation for...     

The future of food production – a text-mining approach

ABSTRACT

The system of food production is facing grand challenges, such as a rising population, climate change, degrading bio-productivity of agricultural land and over-fishing. Agriculture and food production are becoming more innovative and implement new infrastructure, IT-platforms or biotechnologies, like gene editing or synthetic food production. A more advanced knowledge base about food innovations helps customers to build informed opinions of new technologies and provides policy makers and industry actors with better information for strategic decision-making. As the amount of available information exceeds expert knowledge or manual filtering of data outputs, this paper presents a text mining study on science and technology in food production based on more than 30 million documents. The proposed methodology which we demonstrate on the example of the future of food production can be applied each time new data becomes available and can serve as an early warning system for a changing technology landscape.     

Macroeconomic determinants of remittances: evidence from Romania

Given the globalization of the labour market and the promotion of free movement for work, young people are looking for employment opportunities from at least two perspectives – professional careers and socio-economic benefits from employment. In developing countries, such as Romania, the labour market is less attractive, which has led to profound, numerical and structural imbalances, due to external mobility for work. Both new generations of graduates and young people aged up to 40 years, decide to work abroad as a more beneficial individual solution, i.e. remittances. The purpose of this paper is to examine the macroeconomic determinants of remittances to Romania, in order to substantiate public policies on diaspora, to adjust employment policy on the national labour market by promoting incentives to create decent, youth-friendly jobs. Using panel data model we selected several variables with potential influence on remittances level. The results demonstrate that traditional influence’s factors as distance, migration routes diaspora concentration or unemployment rate are, at present, less important than wage gap or tax rate at least for developing origin countries.