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Logistics and supply chain management has been elevated to a strategic level whereby firms can simultaneously achieve differentiation and low cost for sustained competitive advantage. Empirical studies have often concentrated on logistics management in developed Western countries, displaying a bias towards the USA. This study applies the competency approach to explore logistics in Taiwan. A survey of 1,200 manufacturing firms was undertaken in order to examine the relationships between logistics competency, logistics performance, and financial performance, using exploratory factor analysis and the structural equation modelling technique. Four logistics competencies, namely, integration and knowledge competency, customer focused logistics competency, measurement competency, and agility competency were identified. The research findings revealed that (1) logistics competency was significantly related to logistics performance but not significantly associated with financial performance, and (2) logistics performance was positively associated with financial performance. These findings also implied that logistics competency has an indirect effect on financial performance through logistics performance. This finding confirmed the “world-class” logistics competencies (i.e. positioning, integration, agility, and measurement) as identified by MSUGLRT (1995). In addition, it suggests that logistics competency in a huge geographic area such as America can have the same effect in a smaller geographic area such as Taiwan.

Economic Society 5.0 is the answer to the challenges of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 through the creation of new value from the development of advanced technology that aims to reduce the gap between human and economic problems. Excellent human resources and adequate digital infrastructure are requirements in an Economic Society 5.0. Cooperatives as community economic organizations are players in the Industrial Revolution 4.0. Because of low competitiveness, cooperatives cannot create new and sustainable income streams, particularly digitalization capabilities. This study aims to encourage the competitiveness of cooperatives in the West Java region, Indonesia, in an Economic Society 5.0 by identifying the correlation between digital capabilities, digital orientation, employee resistance, government support, digital innovation and competitiveness.

This study uses a quantitative method through surveys as data collection techniques by distributing questionnaires to 386 leaders of cooperatives in West Java. Hypothesis testing uses analysis technique of structural equation modeling with partial least squares tool.

There are five hypotheses that are supported in the proposed model in this study. Digital orientation and government support have a positif and significant effect on digital innovation, in contrary; digital capability and employee resistance do not show any effect. Digital orientation, government support and digital capability also have a positive and significant effect on competitiveness. Meanwhile, employee resistance and digital innovation have no significant effect on competitiveness. Digital innovation was also found not to mediate the relationship between digital orientation, government support, digital capability and employee resistance with competitiveness.

This study provides new insights into the study of cooperatives as community’s economic institutions. This study adds empirical evidence of the factors that influence the competitiveness of cooperative institutions in Indonesia as a driver of the community’s economy. This study also provides practical implications for the development of cooperative competitiveness in developing countries, particularly in Indonesia.

Human brands in the music industry use self-presentation tactics on social media to manage audience impressions. This practice has led to many posts asking followers to adopt behaviors favoring the human brand. However, its effectiveness in leveraging relevant performance metrics for musicians outside social media, such as popularity in specialized media, music sales and number of contracted concerts, needs further exploration. This study aims to reveal the effect of impression management tactics conveyed on social media on the market performance of musicians’ human brands.

Secondary data research classifies 5,940 social media posts from 11 music artists into self-presentation tactics (self-promotion, exemplification, supplication and ingratiation). It shows their predictions on three market performance metrics in an annual balanced panel study.

Impression management tactics via posts on social media are mostly self-promotion, improving the musicians’ market performance by increasing the number of contracted concerts. Conversely, ingratiation generated the most positive effect on the musician’s popularity but reduced music sales. Besides lowering the musicians’ popularity, exemplification also reduced the number of contracted concerts, while the supplication had no significant effect.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the research is the first to use social media postings of musicians’ official human brand profiles based on self-presentation typologies as a complete impression management tool. Furthermore, it is the first to test the effects of these posts on market performance metrics (i.e. outside of social media) in a longitudinal study.

This study estimated greenhouse gas emissions from aviation transportation and sought systems that could manage these emissions based on the IPCC guidelines to prepare for greenhouse gas regulations on international airlines. For this purpose, policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aviation transportation were developed based on international agreements and the cases of advanced countries. In addition, marginal abatement costs and greenhouse gas reduction measures were derived for the effective execution of these policies. While estimating greenhouse gas emissions from aviation transportation, it was found that there has been an average increase of 3.9% and 12.9% for domestic and international flights, indicating that it is urgent that we prepare global greenhouse gas regulations. The estimated marginal abatement cost of greenhouse gas from airplanes was approximately. USD 123, and this amount could be used to decide the price of emission rights, the amount of carbon tax, and could be referred to when distributing incentives for voluntary agreements.

The measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for aviation transportation were classified into four types: voluntary agreements, international collaboration, greenhouse gas reduction technology and operation process development, and application of emission trading and carbon tax.

This paper aims to review the efficient use of economic and social resources to generate income and, at the same time, reduce the concentration of wealth in the 32 states of the Mexican Republic during the period 1990-2015.

Data envelopment analysis with the inclusion of a bad output was used to diagnose the efficiency of Mexican entities, and the Malmquist–Luenberger index was applied to understand how this efficiency evolves.

The results clearly show that only 3 of the 32 units studied generated and distributed wealth efficiently, while the other 29 must increase their level of income and its distribution.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work that performs a temporal analysis of the efficiency in the generation of Human Development Index using bad outputs and the Malmquist–Luenberger index.

Using Social Network Analysis (SNA), this paper examines the inter-provincial logistics relationships in China. Based on the annual data of inter-provincial railway logistics quantity during the period 1998-2009, the degree of interconnection between regions could imply intensified trends of regional economic integration.

The main results of the logistic relationships in China are as follows: the regional logistic interconnection, especially between western and eastern China has increased continuously, which would imply a rising national economic integration. However, the increased centralization index and the average Degree Centrality level imply that a logistics bottleneck has intensified in several hub provinces.

Secondly, logistic center provinces evaluated by the Degree Centrality have changed. In 2009, Hebei, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan and Sichuan provinces revealed the highest inward Degree Centrality. Sichuan Province is the region that most surprisingly increased its centrality.

Thirdly, the number of logistic hub provinces, evaluated by the Degree Betweenness Centrality, has increased. In 2008, Henan province was only a focal hub but in 2009, Shandong, Hubei, Sichuan provinces became logistic hubs.

Lastly, the Community Modularity which analyzed grouping structures shows that there are three time-consistent communities. This means that even though there is enhanced between-region integration, the inter-regional inter-connection is more important in explaining the regional logistic relationship.

This study aims to investigate how university students' basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness) determine whether coaching or training is more supportive for them.

Real-life coaching (N₁ = 110) and training (N₂ = 176) processes with students as clients were examined, measuring the students' needs before the coaching/training, their need fulfilment after the coaching/training and their satisfaction and goal attainment/intrinsic motivation after the coaching/training.

The results show that university students with a higher autonomy need had this need fulfilled to a greater extent through coaching, while university students with a higher competence need had this need fulfilled to a greater extent through training.

The research focused on university students and was conducted at German-speaking universities, so it is unclear to what extent the findings are transferable to other contexts. In addition, future research is needed to further compare other personal development tools, such as mentoring or consulting.

The results depict the relevance of the most appropriate personal development tool (coaching or training) depending on students' needs. Furthermore, coaches should be autonomy-supportive, while trainers should be competence-supportive.

Supporting students with the most appropriate personal development tool is essential for the effectiveness of this tool. Thus, the personal development tool used should reflect students' needs: students with a high autonomy need should receive coaching, while students with a high competence need should receive training.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of political connections on the association between firms' business strategy and their tax aggressiveness in an emerging economy such as China.

The authors study a large sample of Chinese public firms from 2011 to 2017 using a panel regression model. In addition, a change analysis, an instrument variable test and alternative measures/samples are implemented as robustness tests.

Firms adopting innovative business strategy are more tax aggressive overall. However, innovative firms with political connections are less tax aggressive compared to those without political connections.

This paper contributes to the understanding of firms' tax behaviors in an emerging economy setting. It suggests that there are costs associated with political connections, such as foregone tax saving opportunities, which are understudies in the prior literature.

This study aims to statistically verify the links of income and education with information and communication technology (ICT) diffusion across 191 countries of the world taking into account a total of 9 indicators best representing the socio-economic variables.

Multivariate regression analysis was used as a prime method to rigorously test the relationships of income and education with ICT diffusion across 191 countries. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (V. 22) was used to analyze and predict patterns in the data.

The results support the hypotheses that income and education are positively related to ICT diffusion. The findings statistically confirm that poverty is a leading cause of digital divide worldwide.

Academic, policy and practice groups should work in collaboration to fight against digital divide. Present results also imply that digital divide shall never end but rather it can be controlled to an extent with multiple collaborative efforts.

Prior research assignments on the digital divide concentrate on exploring the links between few socio-economic and ICT variables in select few regions theoretically. The present work addresses this literature gap by developing and testing two hypotheses to statistically investigate the relationships between a broad set of socio-economic and ICT indicators.

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of local political uncertainty on the asymmetric cost behavior (i.e. cost stickiness) for listed firms in China.

In this study, the authors manually collect the turnover data of prefecture-city officials as a measure of exogenous fluctuations in political uncertainty and obtain firm-level financial information from the China Stock Market Accounting Research (CSMAR) database. To perform the analysis, the authors augment the traditional cost stickiness model by including the interaction terms of the prefecture-city official turnover, and firm-level and prefecture-city level control variables.

The authors find that political turnover leads to a higher degree of cost stickiness, implying that firms retain slack resources when political uncertainty is high. Moreover, the effect of political turnover on cost stickiness is more pronounced for firms residing in regions with weaker institutional environments, and firms that are privately owned and with smaller size. The authors further provide evidence that policy uncertainty and the threat of losing political connection are two underlying channels. Overall, this study documents that the local political process is an important channel that influences corporate operational decisions.

This study provides the first piece of evidence on the relation between political uncertainty and cost stickiness at the local government level. Moreover, the authors propose and demonstrate two underlying channels through which political uncertainty affects firms' asymmetric cost behavior.