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The aim of this study is to analyze the differences between non-standard forms of employment (FoE) (i.e. dependent self-employment/business-to-business/B2B contract and contract of mandate) in terms of investing in the development of future competencies by employees and employers. This study also examined additional factors which influence these investments.

To collect data, the computer-assisted telephone interview technique was used. 200 employees from different companies located in Poland participated in this study, wherein each of the above-mentioned FoEs (i.e. dependent self-employment and contract of mandate) was represented by 100 people. The Chi-Square test and multivariate logistic regression analysis were used in the statistical analyses.

In the case of only 2 out of 14 competencies, there were statistically significant differences between the two groups of respondents: the employers financed training courses for B2B employees more frequently than for mandate contract workers. Moreover, in only one case there was a statistically significant difference: the self-employed financed training courses themselves more often than mandate contract workers. This study revealed an important impact of other variables such as respondents’ age, education level, parental status and industry on the training activities undertaken by employers and employees.

Although the issue of developing future competencies is important, there is little research examining this problem in the context of people who work in non-standard FoE. Moreover, previous research primarily focused on identifying differences between people working under employment contracts and the self-employed. This article fills these research gaps as well as shows that more factors should be considered in the research models to get a deeper insight into the problem of non-standard FoEs.

The recent proliferation of preprints could be a way for researchers worldwide to increase the availability and visibility of their research findings. Against the background of rising publication costs caused by the increasing prevalence of article processing fees, the search for other ways to publish research results besides traditional journal publication may increase. This could be especially true for lower-income countries.

Therefore, the authors are interested in the experiences and attitudes towards posting and using preprints in the Global South as opposed to the Global North. To explore whether motivations and concerns about posting preprints differ, the authors adopted a mixed-methods approach, combining a quantitative survey of researchers with focus group interviews.

The authors found that respondents from the Global South were more likely to agree to adhere to policies and to emphasise that mandates could change publishing behaviour towards open access. They were also more likely to agree posting preprints has a positive impact. Respondents from the Global South and the Global North emphasised the importance of peer-reviewed research for career advancement.

The study has identified a wide range of experiences with and attitudes towards posting preprints among researchers in the Global South and the Global North. To the authors' knowledge, this has hardly been studied before, which is also because preprints only have emerged lately in many disciplines and countries.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2023-0181

Cambodia's sustained and robust growth performance since the post-reform era in 1993 has been attributed to the boom in inward foreign direct investment (FDI) attracted to the country's labor-intensive industries, where it has comparative advantages. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it aims to assess the consistency between Cambodia's revealed comparative advantage in exports and its sectoral inward FDI. Second, it examines the relationship between industry-level FDI and growth performance by accounting for heterogeneity across industries.

The paper uses descriptive methods and an industry-level dataset provided by the Council for the Development of Cambodia to elucidate the issue. Additionally, it applies instrumental variable two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) regression to investigate the impact of industry-specific FDI on economic growth from 1994 to 2017, which also aims to address the endogeneity issue.

On the one hand, our research finds that Cambodia's FDI has been attracted to sectors in which it has a comparative advantage during the aforementioned period. On the other hand, both FDI and the comparative advantage index significantly impact economic growth in Cambodia. The greater the flow of foreign investment into sectors with comparative advantage, the stronger the impetus for growth.

This study fills a gap in the literature and contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between FDI and economic growth in Cambodia. It is the first paper to investigate the heterogeneity of industry-specific FDI and provides practical recommendations for policymakers to effectively harness foreign investments and avoid malign FDI inflows.

This study introduces a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the foreign direct investment (FDI) literature by multinational corporations (MNCs) focusing on emerging economies to identify the most influential authors, journals and articles in FDI research and reveals the fields' conceptual and intellectual structures. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

The study analyzed 533 articles published between 1974 and 2020 in 226 academic journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases. We used the R language for statistical computing to map author collaboration, co-word and develop a conceptual and intellectual map of the field.

The results show that, although the FDI literature has many authors, few dominate the field. The International Business Review (IBR) and International Journal of Emerging Markets (IJoEM) are the main sources of the publications. Moreover, bibliometric laws show that our dataset follows the Lotka law of scientific productivity and Bradford law of scattering, identifying the core journals. Finally, FDI by MNCs in emerging economies research is divided into four sub-research themes related to (1) FDI determinants, (2) entry mode, (3) MNCs and FDI performance and (4) the internationalization process.

The current article provides several starting points for practitioners and researchers investigating FDI. It contributes to broadening the vision of the field and offers recommendations for future studies.

This research proposes to organise and distil this massive amount of data, making it easier to understand. Using data mining, machine learning techniques and visual approaches, researchers and managers can extract valuable insights (on guests' preferences) and convert them into strategic thinking based on exploration and predictive analysis. Consequently, this research aims to assist hotel managers in making informed decisions, thus improving the overall guest experience and increasing competitiveness.

This research employs natural language processing techniques, data visualisation proposals and machine learning methodologies to analyse unstructured guest service experience content. In particular, this research (1) applies data mining to evaluate the role and significance of critical terms and semantic structures in hotel assessments; (2) identifies salient tokens to depict guests' narratives based on term frequency and the information quantity they convey; and (3) tackles the challenge of managing extensive document repositories through automated identification of latent topics in reviews by using machine learning methods for semantic grouping and pattern visualisation.

This study’s findings (1) aim to identify critical features and topics that guests highlight during their hotel stays, (2) visually explore the relationships between these features and differences among diverse types of travellers through online hotel reviews and (3) determine predictive power. Their implications are crucial for the hospitality domain, as they provide real-time insights into guests' perceptions and business performance and are essential for making informed decisions and staying competitive.

This research seeks to minimise the cognitive processing costs of the enormous amount of content published by the user through a better organisation of hotel service reviews and their visualisation. Likewise, this research aims to propose a methodology and method available to tourism organisations to obtain truly useable knowledge in the design of the hotel offer and its value propositions.

This paper delves into cross-border E-business, unraveling its intricate dynamics and forecasting its future trajectory.

This paper projects the prospective market size of cross-border E-business in China for the year 2023 using the GM (1,1) gray forecasting model. Furthermore, to enhance the analysis, the paper attempts to simulate and forecast the size of China’s cross-border E-business sector using the GM (1,3) gray model. This extended model considers not only the historical trends of cross-border E-business but also the growth patterns of GDP and the digital economy.

The forecast indicates a market size of 18,760 to 18,934 billion RMB in 2023, aligning with the consistent growth observed in previous years. This suggests a sustained positive trajectory for cross-border E-business.

Cross-border e-commerce critically shapes China’s global integration and traditional industry development. The research in this paper provides insights beyond statistical trends, contributing to a nuanced understanding of the pivotal role played by cross-border e-commerce in shaping China’s economic future.

This study aims to explore how the absorptive capacity of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) facilitates increased acquirer performance in industry exploration and technology exploration cross-border acquisitions (CBAs).

The research context for this study is Brazilian EMNEs and their CBAs. The final database contains 101 CBAs.

The authors find that industry exploration strategies negatively affect financial performance, but technology exploration strategies have a positive effect. The acquirer’s absorptive capacity can exacerbate the negative effects, except in instances of technology exploration strategies, where there is a demonstrable benefit from the acquirer’s absorptive capacity.

The study contributes first by providing a more nuanced understanding of the effects of absorptive capacity on postacquisition performance, depending on the type of knowledge explored. Second, by drawing on EMNE learning perspectives, the authors demonstrate the versatility of absorptive capacity in emerging markets.

The paper investigates if the process that led to the birth of the Euro Area had a significant impact in homogenizing the capital structure decisions of European firms since the first introduction of the common currency.

A large sample of firms was constructed, and a Tobit-censored regression model was utilized to investigate the determinants of firms' observed capital structures. The Black–Scholes–Merton model was used to infer market values of assets, as well as the volatility of those values, from the observed market values of equity and the corresponding volatility. The existing differences in national tax rules were considered for estimating firm-specific marginal tax rates.

It was found that, despite the currency union and the institutional harmonization process, certain factors still play a different role. In particular, the impact of profitability is consistent with the pecking order view in some countries, and with the trade-off theory in others. Assets risk, measured as the annualized volatility of the market enterprise value, is the best predictor of observed leverage ratios. The sector of activity is significant in determining leverage decisions even when assets' risk is taken into account. Despite the monetary union and the increased financial and institutional integration in the Euro Area, the country of origin still plays a significant role in capital structure decisions, suggesting that other country-level factors may affect firms' financing behaviour.

The paper indicates that, despite the long harmonization process of institutions, regulations and public budget required to join the Euro, firms' financing decisions are still affected by country-specific factors once the common currency is introduced. Therefore, new entrant countries in the Euro area should not expect their companies to immediately conform with those located in other countries within the common currency area.

This article investigated the impact of the currency change from national currencies to the Euro on the determinants of capital structure choices. It was shown that, despite the long harmonization process that led to the birth of the Euro Area, national factors still affect firms' financing decisions. This provides guidance for policymakers in countries that are planning to join the Euro about the impact this will have on firms' financing decisions in the entrant country.

As an advanced manufacturing method, additive manufacturing (AM) technology provides new possibilities for efficient production and design of parts. However, with the continuous expansion of the application of AM materials, subtractive processing has become one of the necessary steps to improve the accuracy and performance of parts. In this paper, the processing process of AM materials is discussed in depth, and the surface integrity problem caused by it is discussed.

Firstly, we listed and analyzed the characterization parameters of metal surface integrity and its influence on the performance of parts and then introduced the application of integrated processing of metal adding and subtracting materials and the influence of different processing forms on the surface integrity of parts. The surface of the trial-cut material is detected and analyzed, and the surface of the integrated processing of adding and subtracting materials is compared with that of the pure processing of reducing materials, so that the corresponding conclusions are obtained.

In this process, we also found some surface integrity problems, such as knife marks, residual stress and thermal effects. These problems may have a potential negative impact on the performance of the final parts. In processing, we can try to use other integrated processing technologies of adding and subtracting materials, try to combine various integrated processing technologies of adding and subtracting materials, or consider exploring more efficient AM technology to improve processing efficiency. We can also consider adopting production process optimization measures to reduce the processing cost of adding and subtracting materials.

With the gradual improvement of the requirements for the surface quality of parts in the production process and the in-depth implementation of sustainable manufacturing, the demand for integrated processing of metal addition and subtraction materials is likely to continue to grow in the future. By deeply understanding and studying the problems of material reduction and surface integrity of AM materials, we can better meet the challenges in the manufacturing process and improve the quality and performance of parts. This research is very important for promoting the development of manufacturing technology and achieving success in practical application.

The paper aims to illuminate the platform created by a cluster organization to facilitate its internationalization and thereby enhance its regional innovation system partners' competitiveness by providing access to global value chains and boosting innovativeness.

The study draws upon the interaction approach, focusing on the interaction process, interaction partners, relationship atmosphere, and relationship environment. A qualitative study was conducted at Future Position X, a Swedish cluster organization. A total of 58 interviews were conducted, including 48 face-to-face in-depth interviews between 2017 and 2019 with six key informants at FPX, representatives from 28 SMEs, ten members of regional innovation systems to which FPX belongs, and four process leaders of regional and local networks, in addition to online interviews with ten members of the regional innovation systems conducted via Microsoft Teams in March 2021. The time span of the study provides a longitudinal perspective.

The FPX cluster collaborates with actors in the quadruple helix, maintaining a mindset that has led to a number of new partner agreements in the global arena to secure the resources and expertise necessary for cluster activities, and thereby ensuring firms in FPX networks access to platforms for international expansion. Internationalization thus expands the cluster's knowledge base beyond the traditional environment of its member firms.

Very few innovations arise from the isolated work of a lone genius. Instead, most innovation is achieved through complex, interactive, iterative and cumulative learning processes in which a variety of actors are involved. The FPX cluster organization's internationalization platform is therefore vital to the internationalization of its partners since cluster actors lack the time, resources, knowledge, experience, and networks required to break into international markets singlehandedly.

This study suggests that, for practitioners and researchers alike, the growing importance and relevance of the regional innovation system cannot be overemphasized. It also holds policy and societal implications in that FPX's global network helps regional SMEs to internationalize, in addition to inspiring international firms to establish operations in the Gävleborg region, thereby helping to strengthen the overall GIS environment. Internationalization also expands the FPX cluster's knowledge base beyond the traditional environment of its firms, an example of this being the construction start of a Microsoft data centre in the region in 2020.

FPX is financed through taxation and grant funding. By initiating projects, creating relationships and building collaborations, FPX thus contributes to collaboration between business, academia and the public sector. FPX also contributes to knowledge development of new technology by creating meeting places and networks around digital issues, such as GIS, AI, the IoT and blockchain technology.

While earlier research has concentrated on endogenous gaps critical to cluster dynamics, comparatively little attention has been paid to exogenous gaps, i.e. linkages between regional clusters and innovation partners elsewhere in the world. This study showcases the richness of interactions in the cluster against the background of wider, global innovation interactions. Future research should examine other vital questions that remain unanswered, e.g. by measuring and exploring the extent to which regional innovation systems can contribute to long-term economic growth for society.