Search results

There is a great reliance on fiscal incentives to sustain the automotive industry competitiveness due to several structural problems, among them the inefficiency of the supply chain. This paper aims to compare the supply chain structure of traditional automotive industry with the supply chains from South Korea and China. Based on strategic decision and transaction cost theory, this comparison seeks to exploit the factors that led to the inefficiency of automotive supply chains.

The authors used a qualitative approach and applied a multi-method research. They conducted semi-structured interviews with six executives from automakers representing the selected countries, carried individual meetings during one workshop and used secondary data from several sources.

Concepts identified in the research such as reliability, supply chain governance and automaker competencies led the authors to propose that the traditional automakers have higher transaction costs when compared to the new automakers due to the horizontal structure of their supply chain. While new competitors have vertical upstream supply chains, which indicates better profitability, traditional automotive industry is horizontal, depends on fewer Tier 1 suppliers and is disconnected from Tier 2, impacting negatively in the transaction costs and supply chain management.

This study suggests that automotive executives rethink the current upstream supply chain model by identifying the competencies required for their current and future competitiveness and implementing a vertical integration of these competencies.

This research exploited the inefficiency of supply chain as one of the explanations for the low competitiveness of the national automotive industry.

This study aims to evaluate the usability of the augmented reality-based Evoke Education System (EES) to improve service operations in educational settings. The EES uses an animated character (Moe) to interact with children in a classroom by reproducing their teacher's movements and speech.

This study uses a quantitative approach for the system usability evaluation. The ESS was evaluated by 71 children aged 6–8 years old, from two primary schools. After interacting with the EES, they completed a system usability questionnaire and participated in a knowledge acquisition test.

The knowledge acquisition test undertaken on the initial day showed statistically significant improvements for children taught with the EES, compared to children taught through traditional teaching approaches. However, the retest nine days later was not statistically significant (as only one school participated) due to low power. This study used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), resulting in the identification of five essential factors (likeability, interactiveness, retention, effectiveness/attractiveness and satisfaction) that contribute to the EES's usability. The comparison with existing literature shows that these factors are consistent with the definition of system usability provided by the International Organization for Standardization and current academic literature in this field.

The findings presented in this study are based on the data from only two schools. The research can be extended by involving children from a greater number of schools. Mixed methods and qualitative research approaches can be used for future research in this area to generalise the results.

This study proposes an innovative augmented reality-based education system to help teachers deliver their key messages to the children in a fun way that can potentially increase their knowledge retention.

Going beyond the traditional approach of formal and informal institutions as antecedents of entrepreneurship (directly) and development (indirectly), this paper seeks to explore knowledge institutions as a necessary input for entrepreneurship and the development of societies.

Institutional economics lenses are utilized to observe other factors (e.g. the number of R&D staff and researchers from the public sector) that involve laws and socialization processes, which at the same time create knowledge useful for entrepreneurs and society. These ideas are tested through a sample of 281 observations from 17 autonomous communities and two autonomous cities in Spain. The information coming from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), Ministry of Economics, Industry, and Competitiveness, and INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística), was analyzed through 3SLS, which is useful for a simultaneous equation strategy.

Knowledge institutions such as the number of R&D staff and researchers from the public sector are found positively associated with entrepreneurship, which is a factor directly and positively linked to economic development across Spanish regions.

The findings help the operationalization of other institutions considered in institutional economics theory and its application to entrepreneurship research. Moreover, the results bring new insights into the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship in the public sector, in which the institutional analysis is implicit.

This chapter focusses on the ethical issues raised by different types of surveillance and the varied ways in which surveillance can be covert. Three case studies are presented which highlight different types of surveillance and different ethical concerns. The first case concerns the use of undercover police to infiltrate political activist groups over a 40-year period in the UK. The second case study examines a joint operation by US and Australian law enforcement agencies: the FBI’s operation Trojan Shield and the AFP’s Operation Ironside. This involved distributing encrypted phone handsets to serious criminal organisations which included a ‘backdoor’ secretly sending encrypted copies of all messages to law enforcement. The third case study analyses the use of emotional artificial intelligence systems in educational digital learning platforms for children where technology companies collect, store and use intrusive personal data in an opaque manner. The authors discuss similarities and differences in the ethical questions raised by these cases, for example, the involvement of the state versus private corporations, the kinds of information gathered and how it is used.