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In heterogeneously segmented markets, collaborating with product users in product innovation is important for business success. End user innovators and embedded user innovators differ in terms of their prior embeddedness in the target industry. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, the authors empirically compare these two types of user innovators in terms of their diffusion channel selection. Second, the authors analyze how the technological advances of their innovations affect this difference.

Using an online questionnaire survey, this study collected a sample of 237 user-generated innovations in Japan and analyzed several hypotheses using quantitative statistical approaches.

The analysis shows that embedded user innovators are more likely than end user innovators to transfer their innovations to producers rather than peers. As the technological advances of their innovations increase, end user innovators' likelihood of transferring their innovation to producers increases more significantly than that of embedded user innovators.

This is the first paper to investigate the difference between end user innovators and embedded user innovators with respect to their diffusion channel selection as well as the moderating role of technological advances. The findings bring new perspectives to the domains of user–producer collaboration and technology transfer.

The cash conversion cycle (CCC) is widely used in the academic studies of working capital management and supply chain efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a modification of this measure that takes into account advance payments as a component of operational working capital.

A new measure, the modified cash conversion cycle (mCCC) is introduced and tested with empirical data of companies in Helsinki Stock Exchange.

The mCCC reveals the real efficiency of operational working capital in companies that receive advance payments to a remarkable extent.

The mCCC can be used in empirical analysis in academic studies. In this paper, the empirical data are used only for testing the mCCC. The paper concerns received advance payments, but the mCCC can also be extended also to other components of operational working capital ignored by the traditional CCC.

The paper offers insights into the variations of CCC for class teachers, and business practitioners, particularly financiers, who deal with operational working capital, cash flow predictions and calculations.

There are current items that may have a remarkable effect on operational working capital, but traditionally only inventories, accounts receivable and accounts payable are discussed. The authors argue that also other current items should be taken into account, if they affect the efficiency of operational working capital. The new mCCC is encouraged to be used instead of the CCC when observing working capital management.

Supporting the advancement of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in ways that help to ensure the health, prosperity, welfare and security of the nation has been central to the mission of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) since 1950, the year Congress created the agency. Preparing a highly qualified and diverse STEM workforce plays a central role in supporting this mission. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Over the past several decades, many positive steps have been taken throughout the US education system to help ensure a more diverse STEM workforce. Even so, women remain underrepresented among STEM faculty in higher education, especially at the upper ranks. Contributing to women’s underrepresentation are systemic obstacles to the recruitment, retention and promotion of women of different racial, ethnic, disability, sexual orientations and nationality statuses.

The NSF ADVANCE Program is designed to address these barriers. Success for ADVANCE is, therefore, best defined in terms of the changes made to the structures and climates of academic workplaces, rather than in numbers of women hired, retained or promoted in any one institution at a given point in time.

This introduction briefly examines the origins of ADVANCE, key transitions in the program over time, its reach nationally and internationally, and its future.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolving theories of change of the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF) ADVANCE program to increase the representation of women on academic faculties in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). ADVANCE supports efforts to transform the cultures and structures of US institutions of higher education by removing gendered barriers to STEM faculty women’s employment, advancement and success, and by developing change strategies that others may adopt.

The empirical study is based on qualitative, longitudinal analysis of nine requests for proposals (RfPs) for the ADVANCE program (2001–2016), complemented by historical analysis of funded ADVANCE projects using public records.

The analysis identifies changes over time that suggest shifts in NSF’s rationale and theory of change for ADVANCE. Increased guidance directs how institutions should best undertake change, document outcomes and share best practices. The RfPs reveal growing attention to equity, rather than simply to representation, and to intersectionality – how gender, race, social class and other identities intersect to produce disparate experiences and outcomes for individuals differently positioned in social systems. Gendered organizations theory helps to place these experiences and outcomes in a structural context. Iterative processes of organizational learning are postulated to account for these changes over time.

While many studies have examined ADVANCE projects’ activities and outcomes, none have examined the premises and design of the ADVANCE program itself. This analysis offers insight into how the ADVANCE RfP has driven innovation and learning about transformative institutional change to advance gender equity in STEM.

The purpose of this paper is to explain why product-centric manufacturers utilize advanced services not as vehicles of transformation, but of reinforcement, to strengthen their established business model logic based on selling products and basic product-related services.

The empirical basis of this study relies on an in-depth case study of a globally operating manufacturer of industrial pumps and related services. The data includes 31 interviews conducted over several years of in-depth collaboration with the studied firm.

Product-centric manufacturers utilize advanced services as engagement platforms to facilitate the external and internal engagement of the actors and the resources controlled by them. Externally, advanced services facilitate access to customer decision makers and insights into their latent needs. Internally, advanced services help the manufacturer to more effectively leverage resources that reside within its different organizational units. Ultimately, in leveraging advanced services as engagement platforms, the manufacturer seeks to boost activities with the greatest immediate impact on its market performance: the sale of products and basic product-related services.

The study explains why managers should invest into development of advanced services even if such services contribute only marginally to the manufacturer’s direct revenues and profits.

This study contributes to development of an alternative explanation of servitization that departs from the current paradigmatic assumptions in the field.

This paper extends the institution theory to examine the relationship between high-performance work system (HPWS) and organizational performance (OP), and analyzes how country of origin interacts with performance measures and industrial affiliation in moderating the HPWS–OP relationship.

The paper collects data of 60,142 firms and establishments in 252 studies published up to December 2021 and employs meta-analysis techniques to test hypotheses on the role of country of origin in moderating the HPWS–OP relationship in conjunction with performance measures and industrial affiliation.

The paper finds that, firstly, there is a positive relationship between HPWS and OP, but the relationship is much stronger in developing than advanced countries. Secondly, the relationship is stronger when OP is measured in operational than financial term in both developing and advanced countries, but the moderating effect of performance measures is stronger in developing than advanced countries. Thirdly, the relationship is stronger in service than manufacturing industries in developing countries, but no such variation is found in advanced countries.

The study for the first time unveils the important role of country of origin in interacting with performance measures and industry affiliation to condition the HPWS–OP relationship, and provides a coherent explanation based on institutional theory. The study sheds fresh light on the HPWS–OP relationship, and has important implications for managers.

The paper aims to study a strategy of advance selling with part payment (ADP) in which pre-ordering consumers are required to pay a portion of advance price first and then pay the rest in the spot period to complete the order. The authors compare the ADP strategy with strategies of advance selling with full payment (ADF) and no advance selling (NA) from the perspective of sellers.

The paper proposes a two-period pricing model with price-off promotion in the first period for a market consisting of consumers and a single seller. For each strategy (i.e. NA, ADF and ADP), solutions to the seller’s optimal order quantity in the spot period, optimal advance price and prepayment in the advance period are derived by backward conduction. Numerical study is also used to obtain straightforward insights.

Advance price of ADF is lower than that of ADP. Order quantity of ADF is higher than that of ADP. ADP brings more profit than the other two selling strategies, i.e. NA and ADF, when ADP’s implementing conditions are satisfied. While ADF is effective only when unit cost is low, ADP is applicable irrespective of whether the cost is low.

Existing researchers on advance selling mainly focus on the ADF strategy. The paper pays attention to different payment mechanisms in advance selling and steps further to propose a new form of advance selling, i.e. the ADP strategy. The effects of ADP on consumer’s purchasing behavior and seller’s marketing decisions are analyzed.

The purpose of this study is to discuss how consumers accept advanced artificial intelligence (AI) robots in hospitality and tourism and provide a typology and conceptual framework to support future research on advanced robot applicability.

This research reviews current cases of AI use and technology acceptance model (TAM) studies and proposes a framework, interactive technology acceptance model (iTAM), to identify key determinants that stimulate consumer perceptions of advanced robot technology acceptance.

The main constructs and types of advanced robots were identified by reviewing TAM studies and AI robots that are currently used in the tourism and hospitality industry. This research found that as technologies tested in TAM studies have been improved by highly interactive systems, increased capability and a more user-friendly interface, examining perceived interactivity of technology has become more important for advanced robot acceptance models. The examples of advanced robot uses indicate that each machine learning application changes the robots’ task performance and interaction with consumers. Conducting experimental studies and measuring the interactivity of advanced robots are vital for future research.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study on how consumers accept AI robots with machine learning applications in the tourism and hospitality industry. The iTAM framework provides fundamental constructs for future studies of what influences consumer acceptance of AI robots as innovative technology, and iTAM can be applied to empirical experiments and research to generate long-term strategies and specific tips to implement and manage various advanced robots.

旅游和酒店业机器人的机器学习：交互式技术接受模型（iTAM）–前沿研究

这项研究旨在讨论消费者如何在酒店和旅游业中接受先进的人工智能（AI）机器人, 并提供类型学和概念框架来支持有关先进机器人适用性的未来研究。

这项研究回顾了AI使用和技术接受模型（TAM）研究的当前案例, 并提出了一个框架, 即交互式技术接受模型（iTAM）, 以识别能够激发消费者对先进机器人技术接受程度的认知的关键因素。

通过回顾当前在旅游和酒店业中使用的TAM研究和AI机器人, 本文确定了高级机器人的主要结构和类型。研究发现, 由于TAM中的技术已通过高度互动的系统, 增强的功能以及更友好的用户界面进行了改进, 因此, 对于先进的机器人接受模型而言, 检查感知技术交互性已变得越来越重要。先进的机器人使用案例表明, 每个机器学习应用程序都会改变机器人的任务性能以及与消费者的互动。进行实验研究和测量高级机器人的交互性对于将来的研究来说是至关重要的方向。

这是关于消费者如何在旅游和酒店业中接受具有机器学习应用程序的AI机器人的首次研究。iTAM框架为将来的研究提供了基础结构, 以了解哪些因素会影响消费者对AI机器人作为创新技术的接受程度。iTAM亦可以用于实证实验和研究, 以提供实施和管理各种先进机器人的长期策略和具体技巧。

iTAM,机器学习,人工智能机器人, 技术接受, 感知交互性, 人工智能机器人的类型

纸张类型概念纸

概念性文章

El Machine Learning (Aprendizaje Automático) de robots en turismo y hotelería: Modelo de Aceptación de Tecnología Interactiva (iTAM): tecnología de punta

El objetivo de este estudio, es analizar la aceptación que tienen los robots avanzados de Inteligencia Artificial (IA) por parte de los consumidores de hoteles y turismo y proporcionar una tipología y un marco conceptual para apoyar la investigación futura sobre la aplicabilidad avanzada de estos robots.

Esta investigación, revisa los casos actuales de uso de IA y estudios del Modelo de Aceptación de Tecnología (TAM) y propone: el Modelo de Aceptación de Tecnología Interactiva (iTAM) para identificar los determinantes clave que estimulan las percepciones del consumidor sobre la aceptación avanzada de la tecnología de robots.

Los principales prototipos de robots avanzados se identificaron mediante la revisión de los estudios TAM y de IA sobre robots que se utilizan actualmente en la industria del turismo y la hostelería. Esta investigación, encontró que a medida que las tecnologías testadas en los estudios TAM, se han mejorado mediante la incorporación de sistemas altamente interactivos, aumentando la capacidad y mejorando la usabilidad de la interfaz; se ha vuelto más importante examinar la interactividad percibida de la tecnología para los modelos avanzados de aceptación de robots. Los ejemplos de usos avanzados de robots, indican que cada aplicación de aprendizaje automático varía el rendimiento de la tarea de los robots y la interacción con los consumidores. La realización de estudios experimentales y la medición de la interactividad de los robots avanzados son vitales para futuras investigaciones.

Este es el primer estudio sobre como los consumidores del sector turístico y hotelero aceptan los robots de IA basado en aplicaciones de machine learning (aprendizaje automático). El marco iTAM proporciona constructos fundamentales para futuros estudios sobre los factores que influyen en el consumidor a la hora de aceptar los robots de IA como tecnología innovadora. iTAM se podría aplicar a experimentos empíricos e investigaciones con el objetivo de generar estrategias a largo plazo y consejos específicos para implementar y administrar varios robots avanzados.

iTAM, Aprendizaje automático, Robot de inteligencia artificial, Aceptación de tecnología, Interactividad percibida, Tipo de robot IA

Tipo de papel Papel conceptual

The purpose of this paper is to establish a model to study the determinants of financial flows, portfolio and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows, and the impact of these determinants on economic variables in samples of developing and advanced countries. The analysis then turns to an evaluation of the effects of external flows on economic activity.

To that end, the paper follows a two‐step procedure. First, the paper estimates a series of reduced‐form equations in differenced form, using annual data, for the current and the financial account balances as well as important underlying components, using a number of macroeconomic indicators reflecting the state of the business cycle as explanatory variables. These include not only a measure of economic growth, but also other factors that vary cyclically, such as the exchange rate and energy prices. In addition, the paper examines the effect of positive and negative shocks to these and other cyclical variables on components of the balance of payments. Second, the results are summarized in three directions. First, cross‐country correlations evaluate time‐series co‐movements between the current account balance and external flows with respect to major determinants of cyclicality across the samples of advanced and developing countries. Second, time‐series regressions evaluate the direct effects of financial flows on the current account balance within the samples of developing and advanced countries. Third, cross‐country regressions evaluate the impact of movements in trend and variability of financial flows on major economic indicators across the samples of developing and advanced countries.

The results are summarized in three directions. Across the samples of advanced and developing countries, the pervasive evidence highlights the negative correlation between the responses of the current account balance and the financial balance with respect to the various sources of cyclicality in the time‐series model. Second, using time‐series regressions the bulk of the evidence indicates that an increase in financial flows helps finance a widening current account deficit. Third, cross‐country regressions evaluate the impact of movements in trend and variability of financial flows on major economic indicators across the samples of developing and advanced countries. While FDI flows appear significant in differentiating growth performance within and across developing countries, their effects appear to be limited on growth performance in advanced countries. Portfolio flows are more relevant, compared to FDI flows, to financing a wider current account deficit, both in developing and advanced countries.

Overall, the evidence presented in this paper establishes the importance of financial flows to external balances and macroeconomic performance within and across the samples of developing and advanced countries. In light of this evidence, macroeconomic policies should target a combination of external balances that can be easily financed by external inflows and align domestic policies to achieve the desired cyclicality in external balances, available financing, and macroeconomic performance.

The development of low-carbon production is impeded by the investment costs of green technology research and development (R&D) and carbon emission reduction while facing the uncertain risk of emission reduction investment. With the government's carbon emission constraints, green manufacturers implement the advance selling strategy to increase both profit and reduction level. However, few studies consider the consumer's green preference and emission constraints in advance selling market and spot market independently. The authors' paper investigates the optimal strategies of advance selling pricing and reduction effort for green manufacturers to maximize profits.

The authors' paper designs a stochastic model and investigates the manufacturer's optimal strategies of advance selling price and emission reduction efforts by categorizing different purchasing periods of low-carbon consumers. With the challenges of uncertain demand and government's emission constraints, the authors' develop the non-linear optimization model to investigate the manufacturer's profit-oriented decisions.

The results show the government's carbon constraints cannot influence the manufacturer's profit, but the consumer's low-carbon preference in the advance selling period can. Interestingly, the manufacturer will make fewer reduction efforts even when the consumers have stronger environmental awareness. In addition, the increasing consumer price sensitivity will exacerbate the profit loss from mandatory emissions reduction. Overall, for achieving a win–win situation between emission reduction and profit growth, green manufacturers should not only consider the sales strategies, market demand, and government constraints in a low-carbon market, but also pay attention to the uncertainty of green technology innovation.

With the consideration of the government's carbon emission constraints, uncertain demand, and low-carbon consumer's preferences, the authors' study innovatively incorporates the joint impacts of advance selling strategy and emission reduction effort strategy and then differentiates between two cases that pertain to the diverse carbon emission regulations.