Network,knowledge and relationship impacts on innovation in tourism destinations

We combine network structure and firm-level relationship measures to explore the association between innovative behavior, firm position within the network of a destination, and the knowledge and relational trust characteristics of a firm's innovation-oriented relationships. We find current collaboration, shared knowledge and trust are associated with innovative behavior with partner firms, but that betweenness centrality indicates which partners are the most prominent innovators in a population. That is, relationship-level characteristics facilitate innovation partnerships, but network structure characteristics identify the most successful innovative partners. To theory, our findings contribute to efforts in the tourism, innovation and network literature to evaluate the differential effects of knowledge stocks and flows on innovation. For practice, our results suggest that promoters of innovation within a destination should leverage brokerage positions to improve the in-flow of ideas while encouraging the firms that share knowledge and trust to collaborate to apply those ideas.     

Microfoundations of network exploration and exploitation capabilities in international opportunity recognition

While international entrepreneurship (IE) recognizes opportunity recognition (OR) as a central activity and the prominent role of network capabilities in OR, it is not informative as to how different network capabilities influence OR in international markets. We utilize dual network capability through the lens of exploration-exploitation to better understand how these two different capabilities influence the identification of international opportunities. Given that microfoundations perspective and prior experience in IE are under-developed and under-theorized, we explore founder’s prior experience as an essential microfoundation for the dual network capability. By employing structural equation modeling on a sample of 647 early internationalizing firms from a developing country, the study demonstrates that founders’ prior experience is a significant microfoundation of dual network capability in international OR. However, both exploration and exploitation capabilities fail to bring new opportunities in a changing market environment. A post-hoc analysis reveals that at a higher level of market change, younger firms benefit more from network exploration, whereas older firms achieve greater success when leveraging benefits from network exploitation. The study concludes with implications and future research avenues.     

Geography of Italian student mobility: A network analysis approach

Understanding the phenomenon of intra- and international student mobility has become increasingly relevant to the organization of tertiary education systems. Using microdata information provided by the Italian National Student Archive on the cohorts of students enrolled at university in the academic years 2011–12 and 2014–15, we consider a network analysis approach to investigate the incoming and outgoing student flows between territories and universities. More specifically, the paper aims to shed light on the dynamics of Italian student mobility networks at both the bachelor's and master's degree levels by considering attractiveness indicators combined with network centrality measures, clustering techniques for network data and explanatory models. We analyze the partition of the global network structure by means of blockmodeling analysis and we explain the determinants of the differences among universities in attracting students adopting a quantile regression analysis.     

The Politics of Property in Planning: Hezbollah's Reconstruction of Haret Hreik (Beirut,Lebanon) as Case Study

This research looks at post‐2006‐war reconstruction of the southern suburbs of Beirut under the auspices of Hezbollah (the Islamic resistance movement in Lebanon). The project was widely acclaimed as an alternative to current neoliberal planning practices in the Middle East and beyond. Based on a critical reading of the conception of property issues in this planning project, the article argues that this reconstruction presents a new geometry or alternative to the mainstream configuration of neoliberal urbanism, rather than a departure from its precepts. The reason for this is that the adopted language of property corresponds closely with the conception of property advocated by neoliberal planning, one that enshrines private, individual ownership as sacred and desirable and that works to strengthen its model in the city. I further argue that the ‘neoliberal planning regime’ within which Hezbollah's urban intervention occurs is not accidental; rather, it is necessary for the party's control of this space's future and for consolidating its territory in the city. It is hence expected that Hezbollah's planning in the city will produce the same decried effects as neoliberal planning elsewhere in the city rather than usher an innovative, progressive model of planning.     

How to inhibit a partner's strong and weak forms of opportunism: Impacts of network embeddedness and bilateral TSIs

This study investigates the moderating effects of a firm's network embeddedness and a partner's transactional specific investments (TSIs) on relationships between the firm's TSIs and its partner's strong- and weak-form opportunism, and compares the efficiency among these moderator variables. The regression results suggest that (1) a firm's TSIs are positively related to partner's opportunism when network embeddedness and the partner's TSIs are relatively low; but (2) a firm's TSIs are negatively related to partner's opportunism when network embeddedness and the partner's TSIs are relatively high. Furthermore (3) network embeddedness is more effective in inhibiting partner's weak-form opportunism than in inhibiting strong-form opportunism resulting from the firm's TSIs. Finally (4) with regard to the relationship between TSIs and weak-form opportunism, the negative moderating effect of network embeddedness is greater than the negative moderating effect of partner's TSIs. This study explains reasons why conflicting views exist about the relationship between TSIs and partner's opportunism, reveals the differences in the moderating effects of network embeddedness and partner's TSIs, and makes new contributions to both transaction cost theory and embeddedness literature. It also provides, for firms involved in TSIs in a buyer–supplier relationship, insightful managerial suggestions about ways to reduce their partner's varying forms of opportunism.     

基于逆向工程的玩具汽车内饰部件模具设计与研究

本研究运用逆向工程技术,对玩具汽车内饰的模型进行重建并完成其成型工艺与模具设计。玩具汽车内饰的外形曲面比较复杂,采用逆向工程方法,利用三维扫描仪高效率、高精度地完成了该部件的点云数据采集工作。同时应用Geomagic软件完成玩具汽车内饰的点云数据处理和曲面重构。然后以UG软件完成玩具汽车内饰模型重建并用其Mold Wizard模块完成产品的成型工艺与模具设计。     

Intangible resources of competitive advantage: Analysis of 49 Asian airlines across three business models

Without sustainable competitive advantage firms have limited economic reasons to exist and will decline. Competitive advantage concerns the factors which provide competitive strength. This paper is based upon the resource-based view which considers firm resources to be heterogeneous and which believes that firms only have a small bundle of core resources irrespective of their overall performance. This research establishes the role of 36 intangible resources for 49 Asian airlines across three business models: network airlines; low-cost subsidiaries from network airlines; and low-cost carriers. It uses the VRIN framework which examines whether resources are valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable. Research participants distribute points between their chosen seven resources according to their perceived role in firm performance. Resources which meet all four requirements of VRIN are considered core competences and sources of sustained advantage. Across all 49 Asian airlines, the top-three most important resources of advantage are slots, brand, and product/service reputation. While these core resources are predictable, they have not previously been proven within the context of airlines, let alone geographically and by airline model. Results show that the core bundle of resources vary for each model, which helps to explain the difference in performance across models, and that some resources which were expected to be high-ranking, such as organisational culture and customer focus, were not.     

Systemic financial risk early warning of financial market in China using Attention-LSTM model

We propose an Attention-LSTM neural network model to study the systemic risk early warning of China. Based on text mining, the network public opinion index is constructed and used as a training set to be incorporated into the early warning model to test the early warning effect. The results show that: (i) the network public opinion is the non-linear Granger causality of systemic risk. (ii) The Attention-LSTM neural network has strong generalization ability. Early warning effects have been significantly improved. (iii) Compared with the BP neural network model, the SVR model and the ARIMA model, the LSTM neural network early warning model has a higher accuracy rate, and its average prediction accuracy for systemic risk indicators has been improved over short, medium and long terms. When the attention mechanism is included in the LSTM, the Attention-LSTM neural network model is even more accurate in all the cases.     

Environmental factors influencing the management of key accounts in an Arab Middle Eastern context

Within the sales and marketing literature, it is recognised that a range of external factors can influence how companies in the business-to-business field manage business relationships within national and across international borders. However, there have been very few studies that explore the influence of the external environment on key account relationships, especially within the context of emerging economies. This study draws on the network approach and contingency theory to identify and highlight the influence of external environmental factors on the management of inter-organisational relationships with key customers in emerging economies in the Arab Middle East region. It is based on an extensive qualitative enquiry that utilises 50 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in Jordan with endogenous and Western firms. It concludes that key account practices within an Arab context are shaped by a number of contingencies that are embedded in broader institutional contexts and the business environment, which may challenge the adoption of company-wide universal key account management policies across borders.     

非洲铁路发展需求分析与市场开发策略

中资企业面向非洲铁路市场,多以"广覆盖"的形式投入开发,一定程度上造成了资源浪费。为优化中资企业在非洲铁路市场布局以及资源配置,在分析非洲铁路发展现状、铁路网发展影响因素基础上,基于铁路系统需求度、铁路发展需求度分析非洲铁路发展需求,提出了非洲大陆49个国家高、较高、中、低4个等级的铁路发展需求度,同时提出非洲铁路市场开发策略建议,即:优化非洲铁路市场开发资源配置,分区域实施铁路市场开发及项目建设,创新合作模式、拓宽资金来源。