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In the digital transformation era, the construction industry is not immune to unintended consequences and disruptions of distributed ledger technologies like blockchain. At the micro-level, construction organizations need an in-depth understanding of blockchain risks to take proactive strategies for being on the safe side. This study seeks to answer “What are the risks associated with blockchain technology from the firm-level perspective? And how can this disruptive technology overshadow the business objectives and impact organizational criteria?”

The current research proposes a novel model for risk assessment based on the trapezoidal fuzzy ordinal priority approach (OPA-F) in the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) context. The proposed model handles uncertainties of experts' judgment around three primary parameters: the importance of organizational criteria, the impact of blockchain risks on criteria and the probability of risk occurrence.

The case study shows that organizational “communication and information” is exposed to the most blockchain risk. On the contrary, blockchain has less to do with an organization's “corporate social responsibility.” Furthermore, effective blockchain risk management can bring about cost efficiency, quality and improved customer experience for this case study. In the end, the authors develop a conceptual blockchain risk management framework based on findings.

This study will broaden researchers' horizons regarding “blockchain in construction context” and “blockchain risk management.”

Furthermore, executives looking for blockchain-based solutions can benefit from research findings and lessons learned from this case study before decision-making. Lastly, the risk assessment model based on trapezoidal OPA-F can be used both for research purposes and industrial decision problems.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is for the first time that the OPA-F is employed in a risk assessment model. Also, the original OPA-F is extended to trapezoidal OPA-F using trapezoidal fuzzy numbers, and it is the first attempt to evaluate blockchain risks facing construction organizations and develop a blockchain risk management framework accordingly.

Economists usually shy away from talking about power. They assume an economy comprised of many small and medium-sized firms, each competing for consumer dollars. This circumvents the problem of economic power. John Kenneth Galbraith, however, refused to ignore power. It stood at the center of his economics, and he saw it as a key reason the US economy thrived in the years following World War II (WWII). This chapter examines Galbraith’s changing views regarding economic power. American Capitalism explains how countervailing power, or power on the other side of the market, solves the problem of economic power. In The New Industrial State, scientists and educated managers within the firm (the technostructure) mitigate the negative consequences of economic power wielded by large firms. The Affluent Society and Economics and the Public Purpose look to the government as the main check on corporate power. It does this through labor legislation or programs such as the New Deal and Fair Deal. This chapter then evaluates the different solutions Galbraith proffered to the problem of economic power. It contends that Galbraith got three things right when analyzing economic power. First, we no longer live in a world of scarcity due to oligopolistic firms. Second, capitalism was different in the post-WWII era because the US economy thrived and gains were shared widely. Third, Galbraith understood that power was unequally distributed – both between the public and private sectors and within the private sector itself. On the other hand, Galbraith was overly optimistic in believing the market economy or the public sector could counter corporate power.

Due to product value uncertainty, consumers do not know the product matching rate before they get the product, which is the probability of product fitness. Taking the consumers’ anticipated regret into account, this paper aims to develop a theoretical model to explore how the anticipated regret affects pricing and advertising decisions and profits of retailers in the online to offline (O2O) supply chain.

This paper considers an O2O supply chain consisting of an e-retailer and a brick-and-mortar retailer; both retailers cooperate to provide buying online and pick up in-store (BOPS) for consumers.

It shows three major findings. Retailers should decide whether to introduce BOPS channel according to the matching rate of the product when the BOPS channel is not very convenient for consumers. When the BOPS channel does not exist in the market, the profits of two retailers increase with the online regret of consumers, while the BOPS channel exists in the market and the matching rate of the product is low, the higher offline regret can enable both retailers to increase the profits; furthermore, when the matching rate is high, the higher degree of online regret can bring more profit to the O2O supply chain. Therefore, both retailers can take measures together to induce consumers’ regrets according to the different matching rates, which makes both retailers obtain more profits. Counterintuitively, consumer surplus will not always increase due to consideration of anticipated regret.

The model has some limitations that are worth further discussing. First, in practice, the O2O supply chain includes many forms except the BOPS channel, for example, order online and pick-up in-store (ROPS) channel; future research can discuss and consider the impact of consumers’ anticipated regret on ROPS. Second, the authors consider that O2O is a supply chain composed of two retailers. In reality, there is also a situation where an oligopoly retailer opens two channels to realize O2O supply chain, in the case the inventory decision-making of the product is worth studying. Finally, to highlight the impact of the anticipated regret on consumers’ decision-making, the return of the product is not considered. Future research can take the return of the product into account to assess the robustness of the results.

The contributions are in two main aspects. First, this paper considers an O2O supply chain with consumer value uncertainty, where there are duopoly retailers in the market and most of the existing literature focus on oligopoly retailer operates both online and offline channels; meanwhile, consumers’ value perceptions of the product is deterministic. Second, this paper explores how the consumer anticipated channel regret affects the pricing and advertising decisions of O2O supply chain, and the authors take behavioral theory into account when studying omnichannel operations, while most studies on anticipated regret consider traditional two-stage price reduction management, product innovation, etc.

This research aims to identify the optimal configuration of investment which leads firms to their best competitive positions, considering the degree of concentration in the market.

The methodology was quantitative and based on secondary data with samples of 124, 106 and 90 firms from competitive environment classified as perfect competition, monopolistic competition and oligopoly, respectively. Proposed models' parameters were estimated by means of genetic algorithms.

Adjustments on firm's investment are contingent on the degree of competition they face. Results are in line with existing academic research affirmation that the purpose of investments is to create and exploit opportunities for positive economic rents and that investments allow firms to protect from rivals' competitive actions and reinforce the need for investment decision makers to consider the environment in which the firm is competing, when defining the amount of investment that must be done to achieve and maintain a favorable competitive advantage position.

This research brings two main original contributions. The first one is the identification of the optimal amount of capital and R&D investments which leads firms to their best competitive positions, contingent to the degree of concentration of the competitive environment in which they operate, and the size of the firm. The second one is related to the use of genetic algorithms to estimate optimization models that considers the three competitive environments studied (perfect competition, monopolistic competition and oligopoly) and the investment variables in the linear and quadratic forms.

The overall goal of science is to build a valid and reliable body of knowledge about the functioning of the world and how applying that knowledge can change it. As personnel and human resources management researchers, we aim to contribute to the respective bodies of knowledge to provide both employers and employees with a workable foundation to help with those problems they are confronted with. However, what research on research has consistently demonstrated is that the scientific endeavor possesses existential issues including a substantial lack of (a) solid theory, (b) replicability, (c) reproducibility, (d) proper and generalizable samples, (e) sufficient quality control (i.e., peer review), (f) robust and trustworthy statistical results, (g) availability of research, and (h) sufficient practical implications. In this chapter, we first sing a song of sorrow regarding the current state of the social sciences in general and personnel and human resources management specifically. Then, we investigate potential grievances that might have led to it (i.e., questionable research practices, misplaced incentives), only to end with a verse of hope by outlining an avenue for betterment (i.e., open science and policy changes at multiple levels).

Green Public Procurement (GPP) has recently gained attention in the academic and policy arenas since climate change has uncovered the need to be addressed by both private companies and public entities. Because of this growing interest this study aims to explore the most influential journals, publishers, categories, topics and therecent trends and future research lines in GPP.

Based on the Web of Science database, 1,008 articles from 1990 to November 2023 devoted to GPP are analysed by using Bibliometrix, an R-tool to perform bibliometric analysis.

This study introduces the following findings. The most influential journals by far are Journal of Cleaner Production and Sustainability, differing in that the latter is open access (OA) while the former publishes through traditional subscription (TS). This result also occurs regarding the main publishers (Elsevier and MDPI).

GPP is a political commitment that contributes to improving the efficiency of the economies and that has aroused the interest of the scientific community. The paper can provide important insights for GPPs formulation in the areas of procurements and literacy.

The paper leads a debate on the opportunities or threats that the OA journals present for the dissemination of scientific knowledge of GPP, compared to TS publications in the same field.

Within the last two decades, entrepreneurship education has become institutionalized in Germany. It is offered as a stand-alone program or as part of a business degree, combining academic knowledge, practical skills, and personal development to enhance the entrepreneurial success of university graduates. While entrepreneurship education has experienced similar growth worldwide, its emergence in Germany is closely tied to the country’s political and economic developments. The significance of entrepreneurship education for a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem and contemporary economic policy has been instrumental in advancing its academic recognition. This chapter provides a historical analysis of the academization of entrepreneurship in Germany. It explores the recursive and often idiosyncratic processes involving state and financial institutions, companies, and universities that have created, respecified, and mutually reinforced a subdiscipline and field of study. Academic entrepreneurship knowledge successively not only became relevant for starting a business but also for employment within the entrepreneurial infrastructure and beyond. This chapter follows a chronological order, highlighting three key stages in the academization of entrepreneurship education. First, the academic, financial, and political roots (I) of entrepreneurship up until the 1970s. Second, it explores the transformation (II) of entrepreneurship into a viable policy alternative and the challenges faced in establishing complementary research and education in higher education institutions during the 1980s. Finally, it sketches the institutionalization (III) of entrepreneurship as a central driver of government economic policy, allowing for the late bloom of entrepreneurship education and research at universities around the turn of the millennium.

This study aims to examine the problems of the concession system that Macao has long-term adopted to regulate its gaming industry and discuss alternatives.

Theoretical reflection was used to provide qualitatively different insights about governmental supervision of the gaming industry.

Two options for reform are proposed: (1) replace the concession system with a licensing system that does not restrict the number of concessionaires or the period of concession or (2) adopt a modified form of the concession system that changes the number of concessionaires, period of concessions and methods for selecting concessionaires.

This study’s results have implications for the Macao government and other gaming jurisdictions in Asia.

This study provides a comprehensive examination of the concession system for governmental supervision of the gaming industry.