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Capital project delivery, such as the delivery of transportation networks and industrial facilities, often suffers losses due to overly aggressive planning. Planners often are overly optimistic about the chance of success while underestimating risks. The purpose of this paper is to examine the hypothesis that these biases are from the difficulties most decision makers face when interpreting probabilistic information.

Three behavioral experiments were conducted to test the theoretical fitness of the paradigms proposed by the description–experience gap literature, namely, the sampling errors effect, the recency effect and statistical information format. College students were recruited to participate in a series of estimating tasks. And their estimating results were compared given different levels of information completeness.

It was found that the existing paradigms could predict risk decision making in the risk-averse estimating scenarios where test subjects were required to give a relatively conservative estimate, but they seemed to be less effective in predicting decisions in the risk-seeking estimating scenario, where test subjects were asked to give a relatively aggressive estimate.

Based on these findings, an integrative model is proposed to explain the observations pertaining to aggressive planning in capital projects. Two dimensions are deemed to be relevant: including risk-taking intentions, and an information uncertainty continuum that ranges from an implicit experience-based information representation to an explicit description-based information representation.

Specialty contractors have knowledge to contribute to the early design of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) products. In current practice, however, they are seldom involved in early design, but evidence suggests that their early involvement is increasing. Lean construction theory advocates such involvement. The practice of involving suppliers in product development efforts and manufacturing has proven to be highly successful. The paper reports on empirical research that identified the contributions of specialty contractor (SO knowledge to early design, which led to gains in process efficiency and improvements in product quality. These contributions are categorized and illustrated by means of examples that stem from current practice or present potential opportunities for improvement. Reasons are given why SC knowledge is often ignored in design. Changes in AEC practices nevertheless suggest that organizations are creating conditions to increase interaction between designers and SCs. Such interactions will help AEC organizations to retain and share the knowledge of individuals as well as learn to develop new knowledge.

In a previous paper the minimum inaccuracy principle was suggested as an operative method for estimating population parameters when the available experimental information could not be perceived as an exact outcome, but rather as fuzzy information. This principle is an extension of the maximum likelihood principle of estimating from exact experimental data. In this paper, the particularization of the first method to the case in which each fuzzy information reduces to a class of extact observations is developed. We then analyze certain correspondence between the maximum likelihood and minimum inaccuracy principles in estimating parameters after grouping data. In addition, we prove that the second method approximates to the first one when a certain natural grouping, or choice of classes, is accomplished. Finally, in order to illustrate the preceding results, some relevant particular cases are examined.

Citizens are substantial stakeholders in every e-government system, thus their willingness to use and ability to access the system are critical. Unequal access and information and communication technology usage, which is known as digital divide, however has been identified as one of the major obstacles to the implementation of e-government system. As digital divide inhibits citizen’s acceptance to e-government, it should be overcome despite the lack of deep theoretical understanding on this issue. This research aimed to investigate the digital divide and its direct impact on e-government system success of local governments in Indonesia as well as indirect impact through the mediation role of trust. In order to get a comprehensive understanding of digital divide, this study introduced a new type of digital divide, the innovativeness divide.

The research problems were approached by applying two-stage sequential mixed method research approach comprising of both qualitative and quantitative studies. In the first phase, an initial research model was proposed based on a literature review. Semi-structured interview with 12 users of e-government systems was then conducted to explore and enhance this initial research model. Data collected in this phase were analyzed with a two-stage content analysis approach and the initial model was then amended based on the findings. As a result, a comprehensive research model with 16 hypotheses was proposed for examination in the second phase.

In the second phase, quantitative method was applied. A questionnaire was developed based on findings in the first phase. A pilot study was conducted to refine the questionnaire, which was then distributed in a national survey resulting in 237 useable responses. Data collected in this phase were analyzed using Partial Least Square based Structural Equation Modeling.

The results of quantitative analysis confirmed 13 hypotheses. All direct influences of the variables of digital divide on e-government system success were supported. The mediating effects of trust in e-government in the relationship between capability divide and e-government system success as well as in the relationship between innovativeness divide and e-government system success were supported, but was rejected in the relationship between access divide and e-government system success. Furthermore, the results supported the moderating effects of demographic variables of age, residential place, and education.

This research has both theoretical and practical contributions. The study contributes to the developments of literature on digital divide and e-government by providing a more comprehensive framework, and also to the implementation of e-government by local governments and the improvement of e-government Readiness Index of Indonesia.

This chapter studies the tourism cluster of Majorca and its connection with collective entrepreneurship. To this end, the authors review the history of four world leading Spanish hotel companies, from their beginnings, in Majorca, in the 1950s, to their internationalization, in the 1980s and 1990s: Barceló, Meliá, Riu, and Iberostar. This allows us to identify common patterns of behaviour among them over time, which in turn illustrate the dynamics of the tourism cluster and the role played by its context. This qualitative and historical research allows us to make the following contributions: first, in line with other studies in the economic history of Spanish tourism, the four cases support the identification of Majorca as a tourism cluster. Second, the authors highlight several important characteristics of the island which reinforced and strengthened the cluster and boosted collective entrepreneurship, through an intense flow of information between the companies. Third, the authors illustrate coopetition as the key nature of the relationship between the clustered companies in a simultaneous process of competition and cooperation. Finally, the authors show how the strength of the tourism cluster, in Majorca, drove the companies to replicate the same dynamics and structures abroad.

The traditional literature dealing with statistical decision problems usually assumes that previous information about an associated experiment may be expressed by means of conditional probabilistic information, and the actual experimental outcomes can be perceived with exactness by the statistician. We now consider statistical decision problems satisfying the first assumption above, so that the actual available information cannot be exactly perceived, but rather it may be assimilated with fuzzy information (as defined by Zadeh et al.).

The development of the short food supply chain (SFSC) is one of the issues of the current agri-food systems. Consumers are re-connecting the food they eat with the farming process and are increasingly asking for fresh, seasonal and traceable food products from known producer source. The purpose of this paper is to analyse consumers’ opinions towards the SFSC and willingness to pay (WTP) for local honeys in Mar del Plata, Argentina before and after a hedonic evaluation test.

In an incentive compatible approach, using real purchasing scenarios, two non-hypothetical discrete choice experiments were applied, accounting for the impact of the SFSC understanding and hedonic evaluation on consumers’ WTP.

Results showed that consumers’ WTP, a premium for local honey products, is conditioned to specific quality cues and the global sensory acceptance. Consumers with high level of agreement with the social and environmental roles of the SFSC were more quality demanding and exhibited higher WTP towards the locally produced honeys. The development of local market by re-connecting producers and consumers, allowing for in-site tasting, has a strong implication for the structure of the honey added-value chain due to the potential role that may play in satisfying consumers’ preference and needs.

The authors measured consumers’ opinions towards the SFSC and analyse their impact on consumer WTP for honey product by including real purchasing scenarios and hedonic evaluation test, to reduce the hypothetical bias of the traditional surveys. Questionnaires were completed in a controlled laboratory environment for with real product and real money.

The problem of estimating the information conveyed about a random variable by another one in a population on the basis of a sample drawn at random and with replacement from it was exhaustively analysed previously. From a theoretical viewpoint, this analysis showed the advantages of the quadratic mutual information against Shannon's mutual information in relation to such a problem. This theoretical conclusion is confirmed from an empirical viewpoint by comparing the population values and estimates for both information measures on the basis of samples obtained from a normal bivariate distribution by a Monte Carlo simulation.

This work presents evidence that cross‐isted stocks (ADRs) are traded in markets that are not completely integrated, and it is the presence of high frequency arbitrage activity that forces these stock pairs to be most commonly in relative equilibrium. A Threshold Autoregressive (TAR) model tests the hypothesis that the reversion to equilibrium of the price discrepancy series is a nonlinear function that has nontrivial thresholds, and that large price discrepancies are relatively short‐lived. The TAR specification models the neutralization of arbitrage forces with thresholds that separate outer regions where large discrepancies have a strong reversion to equilibrium from a central region where transaction costs significantly mitigate this reversion.

The paper provides an overview of research published in the innovation and operations management (IOM) literature on 15 methods for cost management in new product development, and it provides a comparison to an earlier review of the management accounting (MA) literature (Wouters & Morales, 2014).

This structured literature search covers papers published in 23 journals in IOM in the period 1990–2014.

The search yielded a sample of 208 unique papers with 275 results (one paper could refer to multiple cost management methods). The top 3 methods are modular design, component commonality, and product platforms, with 115 results (42%) together. In the MA literature, these three methods accounted for 29%, but target costing was the most researched cost management method by far (26%). Simulation is the most frequently used research method in the IOM literature, whereas this was averagely used in the MA literature; qualitative studies were the most frequently used research method in the MA literature, whereas this was averagely used in the IOM literature. We found a lot of papers presenting practical approaches or decision models as a further development of a particular cost management method, which is a clear difference from the MA literature.

This review focused on the same cost management methods, and future research could also consider other cost management methods which are likely to be more important in the IOM literature compared to the MA literature. Future research could also investigate innovative cost management practices in more detail through longitudinal case studies.

This review of research on methods for cost management published outside the MA literature provides an overview for MA researchers. It highlights key differences between both literatures in their research of the same cost management methods.