Search results

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether a diversification by grape varieties may help wine producers reduce uncertainty in quantity and quality variations due to increasingly erratic climate conditions.

This study hand-collects granular quantity and quality data from wine harvest reports for vintages 2003 to 2017 for the Valais region in Switzerland. The data allows us to obtain detailed data on harvested kilograms/liters and Oechsle/Brix degrees. It is then merged with precise meteorological data over the same sample period. The authors use this data set to capture weather conditions and their impact on harvested quantities and quality. Finally, they build portfolios including different grape varieties to evaluate whether this reduces variations in quality and quantity over vintages.

The findings highlight that the weather varies relatively strongly over the sample period and that climate hazards such as hail, frost or ensuing vine diseases effectively occur. These strongly impact the harvested quantities but less the quality of the wine. The authors further show that planting different grape varieties allows for a significant reduction in the variation of harvested quantities over time and thus acts as a good solution against climate risk.

The effect of climate change on viticulture is becoming increasingly important and felt and bears real economic and social consequences. This study transposes portfolio diversification which is central to reducing risk in the finance industry, into the wine industry and shows that the same principle holds. The authors thus propose a novel idea on how to mitigate climate risk.

This article of exploratory research provides a critical perspective on accountability, focusing on three characteristics: transparency, asymmetry and individual agency. An experimental method is developed, calling for an ethics of accountability.

Four entrepreneurs have given accounts of themselves and their projects in life cycle interviews. This article applies Devereux's approach (1967), which allows for opacity (the “unconscious”) to oneself and to others with symmetry between analysts and analysed, and a lack of demarcation between the observer and the observed.

A tragic entrepreneurial accountability trap of continuous self-justification was discovered, which pertains both to the entrepreneurs and the researchers. Nonetheless, the researchers as inspired by Devereux's method were able to realize a form of accounterability.

This article shows that the demands for transparent, asymmetrical and agentive accountability call for ethical reflection. The request for accounts, as resulting in the accounts given and the research conducted into accountability, are all sources of constraints. Differing the accountability situation may lessen the constraints.

This study introduces Devereux's method as an investigative tool in accountability research, opening up new perspectives on communication and analysis. This article shows the researcher as situated both inside and outside of the accountability mechanisms. This article explores a singular form of accountability; that of entrepreneurs who seemingly only account for the future, thereby disconnecting them from others.

This exploratory paper aims to examine attitudes and practices with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the effects of mandatory teleworking from home in the wake of the first state of emergency orders in Japan in 2020.

An online survey of married employees retrospectively assessed changes in work style, subjective well-being, work–family conflict and job performance before and during forced teleworking from home in Tokyo and three of the surrounding prefectures.

Regular employees reported high levels of anxiety and to have thoroughly implemented government-recommended hygiene and safety practices. A majority of respondents were satisfied with mandatory telework from home and desired to continue partial telework after the end of the pandemic. The strongest predictor of satisfaction with mandatory telework from home turned out to be adequate workspace at home for both men and women. However, the antecedents of the desire to continue working from home differed by gender.

These findings can help individuals, firms and governments better understand the effects of mandatory teleworking from home and devise countermeasures to maximize employee well-being and job performance. This is all the more crucial, as Japan has had successive waves of the virus and has declared numerous states of emergency since the beginning of the pandemic, forcing office workers to continue social distancing and remote working for the time being.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first to provide insights on how imposed teleworking from home in the context of COVID-19 in Japan affected regular employees’ personal and professional lives and to identify predictors of satisfaction with teleworking and the desire to continue doing so.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive overview of green innovation (GI) in China, which is carried out by reviewing the evolution of GI from 2000 to 2019, and the main type of technology, actors and localizations. When appropriate, GI is compared to non-GI.

The study uses patent data from the European Patent Office database (PATSTAT); these data are processed to map trends and identify the main contributors to GI and the location of such innovation. The findings are then discussed and complemented with academic literature.

Key findings reveal an increasing divergence between GI and nongreen innovation after the 2008 crisis. It is also observed that solar energy appears to be the main component of GI in China, with a shift from photovoltaic thermal energy to solar photovoltaic energy after 2008. Other areas, such as waste management, greenhouse gases capture and climate change adaptation, are less innovative. Companies play an essential role in the development of all types of innovation. In terms of location, green patents are mainly filed in China’s three main megacities. The study also highlights the significant role of the Chinese state, which led policies shaping the trajectories and forms of GI.

This study expands knowledge on GI in China, highlighting its main specificities and the role of key actors. It provides to the reader a comprehensive picture of China’s green policies and innovation realities. The results can therefore be used to improve the understanding of GI evolution in China and facilitate the formulation of new research questions.

This paper aims to investigate the prevalence of corruption in Ghana to understand how and why it has turned public procurement into a mere money-making scheme instead of a means to provide needed public goods and services.

The study focuses on Ghana as a case study and mobilizes the monetization of politics lenses. Data are collected via interviews with key officials across the procurement sector (including the government, donors and civil society), documents, documentaries and news articles.

The findings suggest that the increasing costs of elections and political financing coupled with the costs of vote-buying, which has become informally institutionalized, intensify corruption practices and, consequently, turns public procurement into a mere source of cash for political ends. Political appointments and legalized loopholes facilitate this by helping to nullify the safeguard accounting and other control institutions are designed to provide. Likewise, enduring poverty and rising inequality “force” citizens into a vote-buying culture which distorts democratic premises that may drive out unscrupulous politicians; thus, perpetuating capture schemes. Civil society's efforts to remedy these have had little success, and corruption and inequality remain rife.

The main practical implication of the study lies in the need for a gradual demonetization of elections, and the consideration of the fundamental function of public procurement as a policy instrument embedded in economic, social, cultural and environmental plans. Additionally, given the connectedness of the various corruption issues raised, a comprehensive system-based approach in dealing with them would be more effective than a piecemeal approach targeting each issue/problem in isolation.

While extant literature has examined the issue of endemic corruption in developing countries using state capture, few have attempted to explain why it remains enduring, particularly in public procurement. This study, therefore, contributes to the literature on corruption and state capture theoretically and empirically by drawing on monetization of politics from political science to explain why corruption and state capture endure in certain contexts (with Ghana as an illustrative example) which reduce public procurement to a cash-milking scheme.

The purpose of this paper is to exploit the optimal performances of each magnetic material in terms of low iron losses and high saturation flux density to improve the efficiency and the power density of the selected motor.

This paper presents a study to improve the power density and efficiency of e-motors for electric traction applications with high operating speed. The studied machine is a yokeless-stator axial flux permanent magnet synchronous motor with a dual rotor. The methodology consists in using different magnetic materials for an optimal design of the stator and rotor magnetic circuits to improve the motor performance. The candidate magnetic materials, adapted to the constraints of e-mobility, are made of thin laminations of Si-Fe nonoriented grain electrical steel, Si-Fe grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) and iron-cobalt Permendur electrical steel (Co-Fe).

The mixed GOES-Co-Fe structure allows to reach 10 kW/kg in rated power density and a high efficiency in city driving conditions. This structure allows to make the powertrain less energy consuming in the battery electric vehicles and to reduce CO₂ emissions in hybrid electric vehicles.

The originality of this study lies in the improvement of both power density and efficiency of the electric motor in automotive application by using different magnetic materials through a multiobjective optimization.

We empirically assessed the antecedents of subjective well-being at work for French permanent employees.

The methodology includes qualitative and quantitative data analyses. In the first phase, interviews elicited the antecedents of subjective well-being at work among permanent French employees. In the second phase, a questionnaire survey was used to confirm the relevance of the antecedents uncovered in the first phase.

We found 14 distinct elements that influence French employees’ subjective well-being at work: corporate culture, job dissonance, relationships with colleagues, achievement, professional development, relationships with superiors, status, workload, perks, feedback, workspace, diversity and pay. Moreover, we identified discrete antecedents for the three components of subjective well-being at work: work achievement and relationships with superiors and colleagues for positive emotions at work, job dissonance and workload for negative emotions at work and organizational culture and professional development for satisfaction with one’s work.

The original contribution of this study is to have unpacked the black box of the antecedents of subjective well-being in the French workplace and to have uncovered discriminant predictors for each of the three components of subjective well-being at work. Furthermore, we specifically linked each of these three components with their most significant antecedents.

Although crowd logistics (CL) is a promising digital solution, its future development remains uncertain. This paper aims to suggest multiple possible futures of CL in terms of business relationships and value co-creation between manufacturers and digital platforms.

This paper offers a systemic and multistakeholder approach related to the field of strategic foresight, based on the scenario method. The scenarios construction involved 22 participants (practitioners, academic researchers and foresight experts).

Four scenarios emerged from the strategic foresight study. For each scenario, the configuration, diffusion and coordination of CL – as well as the balance of power between manufacturers, digital platforms and customers – are specified.

The foresight analysis reveals not one certain future, but multiple potential business configurations and research avenues related to the development of CL.

The adopted multistakeholders perspective, including macro factors, regarding CL allows business-to-business (B2B) managers to rethink its potential. Managers can use the scenarios to consider multiple types of coordination with digital platforms and its implication for value co-creation.

This paper provides insights into social changes that may constitute drivers and consequences of the development of CL and identifies two forms of coupling that may drive the development of CL: regulation–social transformation and technology–environment.

This research contributes to IMP research on B2B relationships in digital contexts, by showing that CL presents an opportunity for the co-creation of distribution value in a B2B environment.

Online investment platforms offer an environment that may lead some traders into excessive behaviors akin to gambling. Over the last decade, gambling behaviors associated with the stock market have attracted the attention of many researchers but the literature on the subject remains scarce. This study aims to present the results of live interviews with a sample (N = 100) of retail investors trading online, and contrasts trading habits with gambling behaviors.

Participants are divided in three groups according to their score on an adapted version of the Problem Gambling Severity Index (referred to as the PGSI-Trading), and their trading habits and behaviors are compared.

The authors find that traders with higher PGSI-Trading scores are more likely to display gambling-related behaviors such as trading within a short timeframe, being motivated by making money quickly and experiencing high sensations when trading.

The sample is small but the authors proceeded this way in order to gather some qualitative data that would be helpful to clinicians in the Province of Quebec. The questionnaire used to classify traders at risk of being gamblers (PGSI-Trading) has not been validated.

The findings of this study will be helpful to clinicians who hwork with patients suffering from excessive online stock trading habits.

Clinicians observe an increasing number of patients who consult with excessive stock trading habits. This study has brought new information allowing clinicians to better understand how gambling manifests itself on the stock market.

To the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the trading habits of individuals classified in terms of their score on an adapted PGSI questionnaire.

This research aims to examine the introduction of participatory budgeting (PB) in local governments in two Francophone countries, namely, Benin and Niger, and how local contextual factors influence its practices.

The research employs a multiple case study design with a comparative approach to analyze the introduction and practices of participatory budgeting across selected municipalities in Benin and Niger. Hopper (2017) and Lassou et al.’s (2018) notion of “pragmatism” within neopatrimonialism is mobilized to analyze the data from sources including interviews and documents. The analysis is conducted at both the country and local government levels.

Participatory budgeting took roots in a number of municipalities. Its introduction and adoption has promoted participatory governance especially from traditionally marginalized segments of society (e.g. women); albeit to varying degrees, in the face of the prevailing national neopatrimonial context. Furthermore, despite donor's push for a standardized model of PB implementation, actual practices took varying shapes, a consequence of differing local conditions and circumstances.

In terms of limitation, it was not possible to access a number of research participants sought, particularly in Niger. But access to key documents from government, donors and civil society organizations help mitigate this to a large extent.

A major practical implication is the importance of adaptation to local socio-economic contexts and circumstances. As shown in the study, a blanket introduction and implementation of PB across societies based on a standardized model is unlikely to succeed and be sustained in the long run. A great deal of flexibility is required to accommodate indigenous realities on the grounds.

The study contributes to shed light on public sector budgeting regarding participatory budgeting practices in an under-researched setting: Francophone Africa.