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Internet of things (IoT) and Big Data, which are among the pioneers of Industry 4.0 technologies, have gained great importance in recent years. Within the scope of Industry 4.0, organizations are trying to undertake digital transformation by adapting these two important technologies to their business processes. Undoubtedly, while this transformation provides great advantages for organizations in terms of management, organization, and marketing, it also carries disadvantages such as difficulties and complexity regarding the privacy of the collected data and systems. However, IoT and Big Data Analytics play a role as restructuring factors for products, services, and especially business processes. This study discusses the impact of IoT and Big Data Analytics on the digital transformation of organizations from the perspective of corporate culture, marketing, and management. Simultaneously, the effects of the COVID-19 epidemic that the world has experienced recently, on the business of institutions, are also discussed. By adopting IoT and Big Data Analytics, the attitudes, benefits, and challenges of the institutions that are or are not willing to realize digital transformation during the epidemic process are examined, and a projection is tried to be made to the post-COVID-19 period. While the study specifically highlights the positive effects of IoT and Big Data Analytics on the business, it sheds light on available opportunities and provides useful implications for managers and marketers.

This article addresses purchasing decisions and the use of total cost of ownership (TCO) information. TCO is based on a monetary quantification of nonfinancial attributes and aggregation into a summary measure (such as cost per hour, per wafer, or per kilometer). From an accounting point-of-view, one intricate issue is the accuracy of the monetary quantification and how this affects decision-making. We distinguish three different kinds of inaccurate monetary quantification, and we investigate the weight that decision makers attach to attributes that are inaccurately monetarily quantified and subsequently included in TCO information. Specifically, we investigate whether this weight depends on reflective thinking and experience. This question is relevant beyond TCO, for all decision-making situations that involve monetary quantification of attributes and subsequent aggregation, such as in activity-based costing, net present value calculations for capital budgeting decisions, or cost-benefit analyses in public administration.

We found support for the hypothesis that reflective thinking increases the weight decision makers attach to the attribute that is included as a minimum cost in the TCO-numbers, but not for the hypothesis that reflective thinking would reduce the weight attached to the attribute that is included as a maximum cost in the TCO-numbers. Students and practitioners differed significantly in the weight they attached to an attribute that was excluded from the TCO-numbers, and practitioners gave less weight to such attributes. Together these results suggest that TCO-numbers should be provided with care and possible inaccuracies should be clarified.

Climate change requires society to focus more strongly on sustainability. This requires an adjustment both on the demand side and on the supply side. Consumers must be given incentives to optimise their consumption according to sustainability aspects. In the supply of capital goods and consumer goods, firms must do their part to ensure that environmental savings are made possible and cost-efficiency. However, there must be doubts that a more resource-efficient production technology leads to the desired environmental effects. Policymakers ignore the Jevon’s paradox. The Jevon’s paradox states that an improved technology that leads to resource savings disproportionately increases the intensity of use. In absolute terms, there is a higher consumption of resources after the technology is introduced. This effect is currently ignored, for example, by all forecasts on demand for lithium for electromobility. Regardless of this, it is fundamentally better to optimise the technologies. However, this raises the question of whether the Jevon’s paradox cannot be undermined by artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence applied to production promises the possibility to replace partial optimisations with total optimisations. By pursuing an absolute maximum (maximum maximorum), the intensity of use is limited. Therefore, this chapter is concerned with understanding the primary effects of artificial intelligence in production and highlighting the potential effects on sustainability.

Purpose: Increasing the sustainability in industrial production is getting more and more important. Furthermore, the technology of artificial intelligence is getting more and more important as well. For this reason, it is time to understand how artificial intelligence and sustainability are linked with one another in the context of production.

Need for the study: This chapter aims to deliver a solid argumentation regarding the prospects and the relevance of the usage of artificial intelligence in the context of production. Moreover, it specifically aims to show how artificial intelligence affects the sustainability of production.

Method: Literature analysis.

Findings: The findings are that artificial intelligence does enforce cooperative action within the industry via the effects on productivity variables, transaction costs, and production elasticities. Furthermore, the Jevon’s paradox does not seem to apply to artificial intelligence. Therefore, it is suggested that more empirical research has to focus on this topic.

Practical Implications: This chapter highlights the importance of artificial intelligence for the topic of sustainability.

High-involvement work processes (HIWPs) are associated with high levels of employee influence over the work process, such as high levels of control over how to handle individual job tasks or a high level of involvement at team or workplace level in designing work procedures. When implementations of HIWPs are accompanied by companion investments in human capital – for example, in better information and training, higher pay and stronger employee voice – it is appropriate to talk not only of HIWPs but of “high-involvement work systems” (HIWSs). This chapter reviews the theory and practice of HIWPs and HIWSs. Across a range of academic perspectives and societies, it has regularly been argued that steps to enhance employee involvement in decision-making create better opportunities to perform, better utilization of skill and human potential, and better employee motivation, leading, in turn, to various improvements in organizational and employee outcomes.

However, there are also costs to increased employee involvement and the authors review the important economic and sociopolitical contingencies that help to explain the incidence or distribution of HIWPs and HIWSs. The authors also review the research on the outcomes of higher employee involvement for firms and workers, discuss the quality of the research methods used, and consider the tensions with which the model is associated. This chapter concludes with an outline of the research agenda, envisaging an ongoing role for both quantitative and qualitative studies. Without ignoring the difficulties involved, the authors argue, from the societal perspective, that the high-involvement pathway should be considered one of the most important vectors available to improve the quality of work and employee well-being.

This paper explores the contested notion of what constitutes a fair price in the context of grain exchanges in a subsistence farming village in the highlands of Matagalpa. Using ethnographic data, I show how Nicaraguan campesinos’ economic behavior plays out within a local moral universe of fairness: how much to produce and how much to sell in the market (or to give away); how prices and obligations vary depending on the social relation that binds the seller and the buyer (kinship, friendship, community, and so on); in what ways these notions of fair price are articulated and contested by different classes within a rural community; and lastly, what is expected of the State in terms of regulating food prices. Price emerges as the dialectic between the market in its abstract form and the specific social relationships and everyday politics that shape exchanges. What constitutes help (ayuda) and what constitutes exploitation in market exchanges and the determination of price is constantly contested, the moral economy is a discursive battlefield.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess the main and interaction effects of activity-based costing (ABC), internal information systems integration (IISI), and external information systems integration (EISI) on manufacturing plant operational performance, controlling for plant characteristics.

Methodology/approach: The study uses survey data from a cross-section of 369 U.S. manufacturing plants. Data were analyzed using hierarchical regression model.

Findings and implications: The results indicate partial support for the main and two-way interaction effects on plant operational performance. The three-way interaction effects are significant and positive, suggesting that deploying all three resources (i.e., ABC, IISI, and EISI) leads to the higher plant operational performance.

Originality/value: The paper significantly extends prior research and contributes to the understanding of the main and interaction effects of ABC, IISI, and EISI on manufacturing plant operational performance. The paper would also be of interest to practitioners interested in keeping up with academic literature.

The purpose of this research was to investigate a successful company, Atlas Container Corporation, that practices the values of egalitarianism, democracy, mutuality, and transparency. Moreover, this research sought to identify the human resource policies and practices (HRPP) used to reinforce these values and create a distinctive culture.

An ethnographic approach was used to produce a case study. Interviews, observations, archives, and documents were all part of the collected data.

The HRPP were distinctively different from the normal practices in the industry. Thus, these differences appeared to explain its success.

While this case study focused only on a single organization, it provides an illustration of the importance of reflecting the organization’s culture through its HRPP, and of how they could operate synergistically for optimal impact.

This case illustrated how a company following a set of HRPP contrary to industry norms could succeed. In addition, it pinpointed some areas where HRPP either reduced costs or made the company more responsive to customer needs.

This case illustrated that a company can be both humanistic and efficient. Moreover, it demonstrated a number of ways that the financial success of the company could be shared with its employees.

A review of the literature found that companies that practiced a progressive set of HRPP and made decisions based on democratic principles are rare. Thus, knowledge of such a company should be valuable.