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1 – 10 of over 2000Nihan Yildirim, Derya Gultekin, Cansu Hürses and Abdullah Mert Akman
This paper aims to use text mining methods to explore the similarities and differences between countries’ national digital transformation (DT) and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) policies…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to use text mining methods to explore the similarities and differences between countries’ national digital transformation (DT) and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) policies. The study examines the applicability of text mining as an alternative for comprehensive clustering of national I4.0 and DT strategies, encouraging policy researchers toward data science that can offer rapid policy analysis and benchmarking.
Design/methodology/approach
With an exploratory research approach, topic modeling, principal component analysis and unsupervised machine learning algorithms (k-means and hierarchical clustering) are used for clustering national I4.0 and DT strategies. This paper uses a corpus of policy documents and related scientific publications from several countries and integrate their science and technology performance. The paper also presents the positioning of Türkiye’s I4.0 and DT national policy as a case from a developing country context.
Findings
Text mining provides meaningful clustering results on similarities and differences between countries regarding their national I4.0 and DT policies, aligned with their geographic, economic and political circumstances. Findings also shed light on the DT strategic landscape and the key themes spanning various policy dimensions. Drawing from the Turkish case, political options are discussed in the context of developing (follower) countries’ I4.0 and DT.
Practical implications
The paper reveals meaningful clustering results on similarities and differences between countries regarding their national I4.0 and DT policies, reflecting political proximities aligned with their geographic, economic and political circumstances. This can help policymakers to comparatively understand national DT and I4.0 policies and use this knowledge to reflect collaborative and competitive measures to their policies.
Originality/value
This paper provides a unique combined methodology for text mining-based policy analysis in the DT context, which has not been adopted. In an era where computational social science and machine learning have gained importance and adaptability to political and social science fields, and in the technology and innovation management discipline, clustering applications showed similar and different policy patterns in a timely and unbiased manner.
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Drew Woodhouse and Andrew Johnston
Critiques of international business (IB) have long pointed to the weaknesses in the understanding of context. This has ignited debate on the understanding of institutions and how…
Abstract
Purpose
Critiques of international business (IB) have long pointed to the weaknesses in the understanding of context. This has ignited debate on the understanding of institutions and how they “matter” for IB. Yet how institutions matter ultimately depends on how IB applies institutional theory. It is argued that institutional-based research is dominated by a narrow set of approaches, largely overlooking institutional perspectives that account for institutional diversity. This paper aims to forward the argument that IB research should lend greater attention to comparing the topography of institutional configurations by bringing political economy “back in” to the IB domain.
Design/methodology/approach
Using principal components analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis, the authors provide IB with a taxonomy of capitalist institutional diversity which defines the landscape of political economies.
Findings
The authors show institutional diversity is characterised by a range of capitalist clusters and configuration arrangements, identifying four clusters with distinct modes of capitalism as well as specifying intra-cluster differences to propose nine varieties of capitalism. This paper allows IB scholars to lend closer attention to the institutional context within which firms operate. If the configurations of institutions “matter” for IB scholarship, then clearly, a quantitative blueprint to assess institutional diversity remains central to the momentum of such “institutional turn.”
Originality/value
This paper provides a comprehensive survey of institutional theory, serving as a valuable resource for the application of context within international business. Further, our taxonomy allows international business scholars to utilise a robust framework to examine the diverse institutional context within which firms operate, whilst extending to support the analysis of broader socioeconomic outcomes. This taxonomy therefore allows international business scholars to utilise a robust framework to examine the institutional context within which firms operate.
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Maryam Salehi Esfandarani and Jamal Shahrabi
The purpose of this paper is to develop a new suit sizing system based on up‐dated data, using data mining techniques, to improve the final quality and reduce the waste of fabric…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a new suit sizing system based on up‐dated data, using data mining techniques, to improve the final quality and reduce the waste of fabric. This paper aims to investigate the effect of data reduction on the final fitness of the sizing chart.
Design/methodology/approach
Principal component analysis is applied to reduce the sizing variables, non‐hierarchical clustering approach is used to segment the heterogeneous population to more homogeneous one, and the aggregate loss of fitness is used to evaluate the resulted sizing chart.
Findings
The results show that, when principal component analysis reduces the ten sizing variables to two main components, the final fitness for the resulted sizing chart is the best. These two main components are height and circumference. The hierarchical clustering approach could effectively group all body type to seven clusters. The resulted sizing chart could be used as a reference for suit manufacturers.
Practical implications
Due to wide differences in race, nutrition and climate, people who live in different countries have their own body size; also, most of current sizing systems are out‐dated, so there is an urgent need to develop a new sizing system. Due to the growing rate of globalization, the final results will be useful for those companies wanting to connect to global business chains.
Originality/value
This work introduces the first suit sizing systems, based on data mining, for Iranian males, that has more fitness in comparison to the current sizing chart. The effect of the number of principal components on the final fitness of a sizing system is introduced as an innovative way, to avoid losing useful data during data reduction process with principal component analysis.
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The purpose of this study is to develop and verify a methodology for a zoned deformation prediction model for super high arch dams, which is indeed a panel data-based regression…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop and verify a methodology for a zoned deformation prediction model for super high arch dams, which is indeed a panel data-based regression model with the hierarchical clustering on principal components.
Design/methodology/approach
The hierarchical clustering method is used to highlight the main features of the time series. This method is used to select the typical points of the measured ambient and concrete temperatures as predictors and divide the deformation observation points into groups. Based on this, the panel data of each zone can be established, and its type can be judged using F and Hausman tests successively. Then hydrostatic–temperature–time–season models for zones can be constructed. Through the comparative analyses of the distributions and the fitted coefficients of these zones, the spatial deformation mechanism of a dam can be identified. A super high arch dam is taken as a case study.
Findings
According to the measured radial displacements during the initial operation period, the investigated pendulums are divided into four zones. After tests, fixed-effect regression models are established. The comparative analyses show that the dam deformation conforms to the natural condition. The factors such as the unstable temperature field and the nonlinear time-dependent effect have obvious effects on the dam deformation. The results show the efficiency of the proposed methodology in zoning and prediction modeling for deformation of super high arch dams and the potential to mining dam deformation mechanism.
Originality/value
A zoned deformation prediction model for super high arch dams is proposed where hierarchical clustering on principal component method and panel data model are combined.
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Although risk culture is a key determinant for an effective risk management, identifying the risk culture of a firm can be challenging due to the abstract concept of culture. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Although risk culture is a key determinant for an effective risk management, identifying the risk culture of a firm can be challenging due to the abstract concept of culture. This paper proposes a novel approach that uses unsupervised machine learning techniques to identify significant features needed to assess and differentiate between different forms of risk culture.
Design/methodology/approach
To convert the unstructured text in our sample of banks' 10K reports into structured data, a two-dimensional dictionary for text mining is built to capture risk culture characteristics and the bank's attitude towards the risk culture characteristics. A principal component analysis (PCA) reduction technique is applied to extract the significant features that define risk culture, before using a K-means unsupervised learning to cluster the reports into distinct risk culture groups.
Findings
The PCA identifies uncertainty, litigious and constraining sentiments among risk culture features to be significant in defining the risk culture of banks. Cluster analysis on the PCA factors proposes three distinct risk culture clusters: good, fair and poor. Consistent with regulatory expectations, a good or fair risk culture in banks is characterized by high profitability ratios, bank stability, lower default risk and good governance.
Originality/value
The relationship between culture and risk management can be difficult to study given that it is hard to measure culture from traditional data sources that are messy and diverse. This study offers a better understanding of risk culture using an unsupervised machine learning approach.
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Simon Wiersma, Tobias Just and Michael Heinrich
Germany has a polycentric city structure. This paper aims to reduce complexity of this structure and to find a reliable classification scheme of German housing markets at city…
Abstract
Purpose
Germany has a polycentric city structure. This paper aims to reduce complexity of this structure and to find a reliable classification scheme of German housing markets at city level based on 17 relevant market parameters.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a two-step clustering algorithm combining k-means with Ward’s method to develop the classification scheme. The clustering process is preceded by a principal component analysis to merely retain the most important dimensions of the market parameters. The robustness of the results is investigated with a bootstrapping method.
Findings
It is found that German residential markets can best be segmented into four groups. Geographic contiguity plays a specific role, but is not a main factor. Our bootstrapping analysis identifies the majority of pairwise city relations (88.5%) to be non-random.
Research limitations/implications
A deeper discussion concerning the most relevant market parameters is required. The stability of the clusters is to be re-investigated in the future, as the bootstrapping analysis indicates that some clusters are more homogeneous than others.
Practical implications
The developed classification scheme provides insights into opportunities and risks associated with specific city groups. The findings of this study can be used in portfolio management to reduce unsystematic investment risks and to formulate investment strategies.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to offer insights into the German housing markets which applies principal component, cluster and bootstrapping analyses in a sole integrated approach.
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Francesco Salomone Marino and Maria Berrittella
The main aim of this study is to investigate the role of fathers and mothers in the intergenerational educational persistence for sons and daughters under two dimensions that…
Abstract
Purpose
The main aim of this study is to investigate the role of fathers and mothers in the intergenerational educational persistence for sons and daughters under two dimensions that characterize the clusters of countries: redistributive policy and governance.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from the Global Database of Intergenerational Mobility (GDIM), hierarchical cluster analysis on principal components and panel regression are used in this study to estimate intergenerational educational correlation and to investigate its determinants related to the parents’ and descendants’ education variables in 93 countries grouped in four clusters. The empirical analysis is differentiated by gender combinations of parents and descendants.
Findings
In the clusters of countries characterized by high inequalities and poor governance, our findings show that the role of the fathers is stronger than that of the mothers in educational transmission; fathers and mothers are more influential for the daughters rather than for the sons; parental educational privilege is the main driver of intergenerational educational persistence; there is an inverse U-curve in the association between educational inequality of the parents and educational correlation for the sons. Differently, in the countries characterized by high income, low redistributive conflict and better governance, the role of the mothers is stronger and education mobility for the daughters is higher than that for the sons.
Social implications
The authors’ results remark on the importance of social welfare policies aimed to expand a meritocratic public education system including schooling transfers for lower social class students and narrowing the gender gap in educational mobility between daughters and sons. Social welfare policies should also be oriented to spread high quality child care systems that help to foster greater women equality in the labor market, because the strength of educational persistence depends on the position of the mother in the economic hierarchy.
Originality/value
The distinctiveness of the paper can be found in the fact that this study investigates the parental role differentiating by gender and coupling hierarchical cluster analysis on principal components with panel regression models. This allows us to have a sample of 93 countries aggregated in four groups defined in two dimensions: redistributive policy and governance. Amongst the determinants of educational transmission, we consider not only education’s years of the parents but also other determinants, such as educational inequality and privilege of the parents. We also identify the effects of investment in human capital and educational inequalities for the descendants on education mobility.
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Chao-Lung Yang and Thi Phuong Quyen Nguyen
Class-based storage has been studied extensively and proved to be an efficient storage policy. However, few literature addressed how to cluster stuck items for class-based…
Abstract
Purpose
Class-based storage has been studied extensively and proved to be an efficient storage policy. However, few literature addressed how to cluster stuck items for class-based storage. The purpose of this paper is to develop a constrained clustering method integrated with principal component analysis (PCA) to meet the need of clustering stored items with the consideration of practical storage constraints.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to consider item characteristic and the associated storage restrictions, the must-link and cannot-link constraints were constructed to meet the storage requirement. The cube-per-order index (COI) which has been used for location assignment in class-based warehouse was analyzed by PCA. The proposed constrained clustering method utilizes the principal component loadings as item sub-group features to identify COI distribution of item sub-groups. The clustering results are then used for allocating storage by using the heuristic assignment model based on COI.
Findings
The clustering result showed that the proposed method was able to provide better compactness among item clusters. The simulated result also shows the new location assignment by the proposed method was able to improve the retrieval efficiency by 33 percent.
Practical implications
While number of items in warehouse is tremendously large, the human intervention on revealing storage constraints is going to be impossible. The developed method can be easily fit in to solve the problem no matter what the size of the data is.
Originality/value
The case study demonstrated an example of practical location assignment problem with constraints. This paper also sheds a light on developing a data clustering method which can be directly applied on solving the practical data analysis issues.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore and map the intellectual structure of biofuel research.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore and map the intellectual structure of biofuel research.
Design/methodology/approach
The study attempts to present the structure of biofuel research through document co‐citation patterns of core references. Document co‐citation analysis was performed using the Web of Science of the Thomson‐ISI database. A sample of 26 cited references was identified and the co‐citation frequencies were analyzed and represented them systematically within groups of similar researched topics.
Findings
The study shows the co‐citation analysis method suitable for depicting structure of biofuel research in document clusters by performing multivariate analysis: cluster analysis, factor analysis, multidimensional scaling and network analysis.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to research articles and co‐citation data for the first author only. For the co‐citation analysis, the cited references rather than the cited authors were used as the units for analysis.
Practical implications
Co‐citational analysis using multivariate tools provides a useful technique to explore and document the development of the field supplementing the insights normally available from the routine co‐citational analysis.
Originality/value
Specialties in biofuel research are identified and this may provide a valuable building block for future research.
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Siphe Zantsi, Louw Petrus Pienaar and Jan C. Greyling
Understanding diversity amongst potential beneficiaries of land redistribution is of critical importance for both design and planning of successful land reform interventions. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Understanding diversity amongst potential beneficiaries of land redistribution is of critical importance for both design and planning of successful land reform interventions. This study seeks to add to the existing literature on farming types, with specific emphasis on understanding diversity within a sub-group of commercially oriented or emerging smallholders.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a multivariate statistical analysis – principal component and cluster analyses applied to a sample of 442 commercially-oriented smallholders – five distinct clusters of emerging farmers are identified, using variables related to farmers' characteristics, income and expenditure and farm production indicators and willingness to participate in land redistribution. The five clusters are discussed in light of a predefined selection criteria that is based on the current policies and scholarly thinking.
Findings
The results suggest that there are distinct differences in farming types, and each identified cluster of farmers requires tailored support for the effective implementation of land reform. The identified homogenous sub-groups of smallholders, allows us to understand which farmers could be a better target for a successful land redistribution policy.
Originality/value
Most of the existing typology studies in South Africa tend to focus on general smallholders and in the Eastern Cape province; this study extends the literature by focussing on specific prime beneficiaries of land reform in three provinces. This study uses a more detailed dataset than the Statistics general and agricultural household surveys.
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