Search results

This chapter provides an introduction to the world of family companies and family constitutions from a legal perspective. It first studies the legal types of business organizations that family firms have chosen across time and jurisdictions. It then illustrates how early predecessors of family constitutions evolved in the late Middle Ages and what modern family constitutions look like in different countries today. Further considerations are devoted to the governance framework of family firms. The chapter concludes by exploring the potential legal effects of family constitutions under German company and contract law.

Social development is the ultimate goal of every nation, and climate change is a major stumbling block. Climate Risk Index has documented several climate change events with their devastations in terms of lives lost and economic cost. This study aims to link the climate change and renewable energy with the social progress of extreme climate affected countries.

This research used the top 50 most climate-affected countries of the decade and estimated the impact of climate risk on social progress with moderation effects of renewable energy and technology. Several competing panel data models such as quantile regression, bootstrap quantile regression and feasible generalized least square are used to generate robust estimates.

The results confirm that climate hazards obstruct socioeconomic progress, but renewable energy and technology can help to mitigate the repercussion. Moreover, improved institutions enhance the social progress of nations.

Government should improve the institutional quality that enhances their performance in terms of Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law and Control of Corruption to increase social progress. In addition, society should use renewable energy instead of fossil fuels to avoid environmental degradation and health hazards. Innovation and technology also play an important role in social progress and living standards, so there should be free hand to private business research and development, encouraging research institutes and universities to come forward for innovation and research.

The ultimate goal of all human struggle is to have progress that facilitates human beings to uplift their living standard. One of the best measures that can tell us about a nation’s progress is Social Progress Index (SPI), and one of many factors that can abruptly change it is the climate; so this study is an attempt to link the relationship among these variables and also discuss the situation where the impact of climate can be reduced.

Although social progress is an important concept of today’s economics discussion, relatively few studies are using the SPI to measure social well-being. Similarly, there is consensus about the impact of climate on people, government and crops but relatively less study about its overall impact on social progress, so this study attempts to fill the gap about the relationship between social progress and climate change.

The main contribution of this study is the solution for the impact of climate risk. Climate risk is not in human control, and we cannot eliminate it, but we can reduce the negative impacts of climate change. Moderator impact of renewable energy decreases the negative impact of climate change, so there is a need to use more renewable energy to mitigate the bad consequences of climate on social progress. Another moderator is technology; using technology will also mitigate the negative consequences of the climate, so there is a need to facilitate technological advancement.

The potential applications of information and communication technologies in the workplace are wide-ranging and, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, have increasingly found their way into the field of electronic performance monitoring (EPM) of employees. This study aims to examine the influence of EPM on individual performance considering the aspects of privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress within an organization. Thus, important insights are generated for academia as well as business.

A theoretical framework was developed which conceptualizes perceived EPM as independent variable and individual performance as dependent variable. Moreover, the framework conceptualizes three mediator variables (privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress). Based on a large-scale survey (N = 1,119), nine hypotheses were tested that were derived from the developed framework.

The results indicate that perception of EPM significantly increases privacy invasion, reduces organizational trust, increases individual stress and ultimately reduces individual performance. Moreover, it was found that privacy invasion reduces organizational trust and that this lowered trust increases individual stress. Altogether, these findings suggest that the use of EPM by employers may be associated with significant negative consequences.

This research enriches the literature on digital transformation, as well as human–machine interaction, by adopting a multidimensional theoretical and empirical perspective regarding EPM in the workplace context, in which the influence of EPM perceptions on individual performance is examined under the influence of different aspects (privacy invasion, organizational trust and individual stress) not currently considered in this combination in the literature.

Earned value management systems (EVMS), also called integrated project and program management systems, have been greatly examined in the literature, which has typically focused on their technical aspects rather than social. This study aims to hypothesize that improving both the technical maturity of EVMS and the social environment elements of EVMS applications together will significantly impact project performance outcomes. For the first time, empirical evidence supports a strong relationship between EVMS maturity and environment.

Data was collected from 35 projects through four workshops, attended by 31 industry practitioners with an average of 19 years of EVMS experience. These experts, representing 23 organizations, provided over 2,800 data points on sociotechnical integration and performance outcomes, covering projects totaling $21.8 billion. Statistical analyses were performed to derive findings on the impact of technical maturity and social environment on project success.

The results show statistically significant differences in cost growth, compliance, meeting project objectives and business drivers and customer satisfaction, between projects with high EVMS maturity and environment and projects with poor EVMS maturity and environment. Moreover, the technical and social dimensions were found to be significantly correlated.

Key contributions include a novel and tested performance-driven framework to support integrated project management using EVMS. The adoption of this detailed assessment framework by government and industry is driving a paradigm shift in project management of some of the largest and most complex projects in the U.S.; specifically transitioning from a project assessment based upon a binary approach for EVMS technical maturity (i.e. compliant/noncompliant to standards) to a wide-ranging scale (i.e. 0–1,000) across two dimensions.

This study explores whether a new machine learning method can more accurately predict the movement of stock prices.

This study presents a novel hybrid deep learning model, Residual-CNN-Seq2Seq (RCSNet), to predict the trend of stock price movement. RCSNet integrates the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, convolutional neural network (CNN) and the sequence-to-sequence (Seq2Seq) long–short-term memory (LSTM) model.

The hybrid model is able to forecast both linear and non-linear time-series component of stock dataset. CNN and Seq2Seq LSTMs can be effectively combined for dynamic modeling of short- and long-term-dependent patterns in non-linear time series forecast. Experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms baseline models on S&P 500 index stock dataset from January 2000 to August 2016.

This study develops the RCSNet hybrid model to tackle the challenge by combining both linear and non-linear models. New evidence has been obtained in predicting the movement of stock market prices.

Construction industry and the built environment professions play an important role in contributing to society’s improved resilience. It is therefore important to improve their knowledgebase to strengthen their capacities. This paper aims to identify gaps in the knowledgebase of construction professionals that are undermining their ability to contribute to the development of a more disaster resilient society. The paper also provides a series of recommendations to key actors in the built environment on how to more effectively mainstream disaster resilience in the construction process.

The paper reports the findings of 87 stakeholder interviews with: national and local government organisations; the community; non-governmental organisations, international non-governmental organisation and other international agencies; academia and research organisations; and the private sector, which were supplemented by a comprehensive analysis of key policies related to disaster resilience and management. The findings were validated using focus group discussions that were conducted as part of six organised stakeholder workshops.

The primary and secondary data generated a long list of needs and skills. Finally, the identified needs and skills were combined “like-for-like” to produce broader knowledge gaps. Some of the key knowledge gaps identified are: governance, legal frameworks and compliance; business continuity management; disaster response; contracts and procurement; resilience technologies, engineering and infrastructure; knowledge management; social and cultural awareness; sustainability and resilience; ethics and human rights; innovative financing mechanisms; multi stakeholder approach, inclusion and empowerment; post disaster project management; and multi hazard risk assessment. The study also identifies a series of recommendations to key actors in the built environment on how to more effectively mainstream disaster resilience in the construction process. The recommendations are set out in five key themes: education, policy, practice, research and cross-cutting.

This study is part of an EU funded research project that is seeking to develop innovative and timely professional education that will update the knowledge and skills of construction professionals in the industry and enable them to contribute more effectively to disaster resilience building efforts.

The paper provides an extensive analysis of the gaps in the knowledgebase of construction professionals that are undermining their ability to contribute to the development of a more disaster resilient society. Accordingly, the paper recommends major changes in construction education, research, policy and practice with respect to mainstreaming disaster resilience within the construction process.

This paper extends entrepreneurial ecosystems theory by testing how aspects of the local business environment affect individual entrepreneurs' ability to translate their personal resources into firm performance.

Data were collected from 223 business owners across Australia. Moderation hypotheses were tested using multiple hierarchical regression and confirmed with the Preacher and Hayes (2004) bootstrapping method.

The results show that business owners' psychological capital, social capital and entrepreneurial education directly affect their individual firm performance. These positive relations are moderated by specific aspects of the business environment, such that they are stronger when the environment is more favorable.

This study puts individual business owners back into entrepreneurial ecosystems theory and explains how they can make the most of their personal resources, suggesting a complex interplay where one size does not fit all. Far-reaching practical implications for policymakers are discussed.