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This paper focuses on the strategic inclusion of reciprocity clauses in the licensing commitments disclosed by firms claiming standard essential patents (SEPs) in the telecom industry. We highlight the main cost and benefit of using these clauses for SEPs holders, namely, a possible deterrence effect for potential standard users on the one hand, and a legal instrument to prevent holdup and negotiate cross-licenses with other SEPs owners on the other hand.

We formulate general hypotheses explaining firms’ disclosure strategies with respect to reciprocity clauses, and use an original dataset of 19,601 patent disclosures in 12 different ETSI (European Telecommunications Standard Institute) projects (including UMTS, GSM, 3GPP, or GPRS) to test them empirically.

Our econometric results first confirm our predictions that reciprocity clauses are used as an insurance mechanism in technologically complex environments. They are more frequently included in patent disclosures when the ownership of SEPs at the project level is more fragmented. We also find that firms do not claim reciprocity clauses before having already declared a significant number of non-reciprocal SEPs in the same project, which suggests a deterrence effect on standard users that must be balanced by a strong patent position.

Our findings highlight a trade-off for the SEPs holder to insert a reciprocity clause. There is both a cost and a benefit of adding this clause to the patent licensing commitment. Contrary to the usual literature on the subject, we do not analyze the general patenting strategies but the conducts on the licensing terms.

The success of waste management depends on public awareness of environmental issues and the ability of the local government to provide facilities. Many countries have serious problems of financial resources and infrastructure for waste management. As there is a lack of awareness of the population on the importance of waste management, municipal governments only adopt remediation actions to manage waste collection service.

In Angola, during the last decade, the government has been committed to the reconstruction and development of the country, creating infrastructure for the provision of essential services and publishing legal tools to respond to environmental issues. In 2012 the government approved the Strategic Plan for the Management of Municipal Solid Waste (PESGRU). The strategic plan was designed for a time horizon until 2025. Due to the economic crisis that hit the country, the implementation of the plan suffered several setbacks and the deadlines established for the different programmes are being compromised.

A study carried out in 2020 on waste management in Angola, with four of the main provinces as a stage, through the analysis of official documents, direct observation and face-to-face interviews with those in charge of waste management, revealed a lack of funding for the implementation of PESGRU and low assistance from the Ministry of the Environment and the central government and showed the unsustainability of the waste management model in light of the principles recommended by international good practices.

Introduction: Digitalization has become crucial in our daily lives. The rapid rise of new technologies and high interest levels of individuals enforces companies to invest in these technologies. Nowadays, as customers are willing to try new experiences, companies dynamically start to find new ways to develop their products and services. One of the most popular technologies used by companies to improve their services is the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Education, health, transportation, retail, and energy are some of the industries in which the IoT is frequently being used. As security concerns of individuals arose and willingness to remote control increases, innovative and technological projects with IoT applications are engaged in the construction and real estate sector.

Aim: The purpose of this chapter is to explore IoT applications within the new generation smart home systems. In this framework, the effect of IoT technologies on architectural structure of the smart home and operating systems as well as IoT and mobile-supported customer-focused applications and difficulties are analyzed.

Method: The study is designed as an exploratory study. The data are obtained from face-to-face interviews with companies operating on technology-based commercial and residential projects. Descriptive analysis method is used to analyze data. Sample selection was carried out by the judicial sampling technique.

Findings: The results showed that smart home systems offer several customer-oriented experiences to their users like personalized accessibility, comfort, time control, and energy savings. Wired and wireless communication protocols are included in the architecture of the system. Linux core software-based Android and iOS operating systems are used in order to enhance personal accessibility. However, some difficulties are noticed in the sector. Lack of information and internet infrastructure of companies that install electrical set-up are mentioned. Contractors, after sales service support, and customer-oriented applications are evaluated.

Purpose — Describe the system set-up and processing requirements for a long-duration longitudinal Global Positioning System (GPS)/prompted-recall (PR) survey conducted in Sydney, Australia and assess reaction and cognition of participants.

Design/methodology/approach — The survey uses data collected using an in-car GPS device within a PR interface accessed over the Internet by participants. Technical requirements, interface design and survey administration of the survey are discussed. This is followed by an assessment of participant burden and cognition by analysing user activity on the PR and comparing participant responses to information inferred from the GPS data.

Findings — New technologies have allowed for increasingly sophisticated data collection efforts but they require substantial resources to translate this into a usable form. This study shows these technologies can be used to conduct long-duration travel studies in a way that is appealing and engaging to participants. However, it was found that responses to the PR are sometimes inconsistent and caution should be drawn in taking PR responses as the ‘ground truth’.

Research limitations/implications — The relatively low participant burden of this study shows long-duration studies are feasible if care is taken to limit the work required by participants. The inconsistency of the responses to the PR suggest future surveys may need to employ mechanisms that are better able to aid participants in accurately completing the survey.

Originality/value — Details the requirements of running a long-duration GPS/PR survey and assesses participant burden and cognition of the survey which are often not reported.

We link the exploration–exploitation framework of organizational learning to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a developing economy. SMEs in a developing economy generally lack abundant resources and capabilities because of an evolving set of industrial and environmental regulations. Studying two SMEs in China, we argue that their approaches to balancing exploration and exploitation depend on the development stages of the SMEs and their industrial and environmental contexts. In particular, we propose a four-stage framework that unfolds via initiation, innovation, transformation, and expansion. In this framework, SMEs balance exploration and exploitation by adopting temporal separation and organizational separation sequentially. We also find that SMEs may benefit from exploring a narrow scope of products and exploiting them in a wide market scope.

This chapter aims to provide a descriptive analysis and a theoretical interpretation of the challenges for international expansion of four large multinationals of each of the BRIC countries (JBS from Brazil, VimpelCom from Russia, Tata Motors from India, and Lenovo from China).

This study employs a qualitative approach, following a multiple-case study methodology, by analyzing four prominent cases of the internationalization of BRIC multinationals.

The internationalization process of the studied BRIC multinationals was influenced by the type of inputs and resources that each company had in their home country and the search for needed resources in other firms abroad that may have helped them to complement their business assets. The international expansion of these firms have been characterized by overcoming of several obstacles through the possession of firm-specific advantages, mainly composed of managerial capabilities, expertise, and knowledge about the markets and their companies.