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Older people with dementia (OPD) have specific housing and technology-related needs, for which various design principles exist. A model for designing environments and its constituting items for people with dementia that has a firm foundation in neurology may help guide designers in making design choices. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A general design model is presented consisting of three principles for OPD, namely designing for ageing people; designing for a favourable state and designing for beautiful moments. The neurosciences as a whole give shape to an eminent framework explaining the behaviour of OPD. One of the objectives of this paper is to translate the design principles into design specifications and to show that these specifications can be translated in a design.

Philosophical concepts are introduced which are required to understand design for OPD. Four case studies from Dutch nursing homes are presented that show how the theory of modal aspects of the philosopher Dooyeweerd can be used to map design specifications in a systematic way.

These examples of design solutions illustrate the applicability of the model developed in this article. It emphasises the importance of the environment for supporting the daily life of OPD.

There is a need for a design model for OPD. The environment and technology should initiate positive behaviours and meaningful experiences. In this paper, a general model for the designing of environments for OPD was developed that has a firm foundation in neurology and behavioural sciences. This model consists of six distinct steps and each step can be investigated empirically. In other words, this model may lay the foundation for an evidence-based design.

Despite the criticality of strategic partnerships to the survival and success of professional service firms (PSF) in emerging markets, there is a dearth of research on the subject matter. Specifically, not much is known concerning the dynamics of partnerships among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the professional services sector of the economy. This paper aims to explore the dynamics of the impact of constructs such as attributes of partnership, communication behaviour and collaborative conflict resolution on partnership success.

A quantitative survey sent to 300 small and medium-sized PSFs achieved a 79% response rate. The data is then analysed using bivariate and multi-variate techniques.

The results revealed a positive relationship between two of the three constituents of attributes of the partnership (i.e. commitment and coordination) and the success of partnerships. Commitment and coordination emerged as the significant attributes of partners that affect the success of the partnership. Contrary to previous studies, trust and information sharing did not have a positive impact on partnership success.

PSFs in emerging markets need concerted efforts to maintain competitive and sustainable partnerships. To make any significant impact, they must develop contemporary skills in collaborative conflict management.

This paper highlights the need for PSFs and SMEs in other service sectors of emerging markets to harness partnerships as a valuable tool to overcome the policy shortcomings of current regulatory frameworks within their respective markets.

This study aims to reveal the quantity, quality and cultural differences of negative corporate social performance (CSP) disclosures in large firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Firms are expected to be transparent about the impacts and outcomes of their CSP. A central aspect of transparency is balance, which means disclosing both positive and negative CSP.

Content analysis was applied to 75 CSR reports of large firms chosen from the Forbes Top 500 list. The firms belong to three cultural clusters: Anglo, Confucian Asia and Germanic/Nordic Europe.

Firms made few negative CSP disclosures, yet the quantity of negative CSP disclosures varied among cultural clusters. Reports from Germanic/Nordic Europe showed the highest number of negative CSP disclosures, reports from Confucian Asia showed the lowest number and the Anglo cluster's number fell in between. The Asian firms communicated corrective actions more often than firms from the other clusters.

This study focused on negative CSP disclosures in the CSR reports – not omitting negative CSP. The practice of self-laudatory CSR communication decreases the likelihood that relevant stakeholders will believe what firms report about.

Studies on the quality and quantity of negative disclosures are rare; by examining cultural differences, this study contributes to the limited body of knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to review the food supply chain management (FSCM) in terms of systems and implementations so that observations and lessons from this research could be useful for academia and industrial practitioners in the future.

A systematical and hierarchical framework is proposed in this paper to review the literature. Categorizations and classifications are identified to organize this paper.

This paper reviews total 192 articles related to the data-driven systems for FSCM. Currently, there is a dramatic increase of research papers related to this topic. Looking at the general interests on FSCM, research on this topic can be expected to increase in the future.

This paper only selected limited number of papers which are published in leading journals or with high citations. For simplicity without generality, key findings and observations are significant from this research.

Some ideas from this paper could be expanded into other possible domains so that involved parties are able to be inspired for enriching the FSCM. Future implementations are useful for practitioners to conduct IT-based solutions for FSCM.

As the increasing of digital devices in FSCM, large number of data will be used for decision-makings. Data-driven systems for FSCM will be the future for a more sustainable food supply chain.

This is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive review on FSCM from the view of data-driven IT systems.

This study aims to build on the dynamic capability view by examining dynamic capabilities associated with public value in public procurement.

A qualitative case study approach is used in this study. The interview and secondary data consist of eight cases of value-creating procurement from four public organizations.

The findings connect dynamic capabilities and public value in terms of innovation generation and promotion, well-functioning supplier markets, public procurement process effectiveness, environmental and social sustainability and quality and availability of products or services.

Dynamic capabilities in public procurement are necessary to improve public procurement.

This study extends understanding of how sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities contribute to public value creation in both innovative and less innovative (i.e. ordinary) procurement scenarios.

While known by many names, qualifying exams function as gatekeepers to graduate student advancement to PhD candidacy, yet there has been little formal study on best qualifying exam practices particularly in biomedical and related STEM PhD programs. The purpose of this study is to examine the current state of qualifying exams through an examination of the literature and exploration of university-wide policies.

The authors conducted a literature review of studies on qualifying exams and completed an external evaluation of peer institutions’ and internal institutional qualifying exam requirements to inform our discussion of qualifying exams practices in PhD training at a research-intensive US institutions.

This study identified the need for more research on qualifying exams to establish evidence-based best practices. The authors found a wide variety of qualifying exam formats, with little evidence in support for specific formats. The authors also found little evidence that student expectations are made clear. The lack of evidence-based best practices coupled with insufficient clarity for students has a real potential to disadvantage PhD students, particularly first generation, underrepresented minority, international and/or other trainees who are not privileged or socialized to navigate training environments with vague landmarks such as the qualifying exams.

There are very few studies that evaluate qualifying exams in US doctoral education, particularly in STEM fields, and to the authors’ knowledge, there has been no analysis of campus-wide policies on qualifying exams reported. The lack of evidence for best practices and the need for to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of qualifying exams are discussed.

This paper aims to elaborate a set of characteristics that conceptualize and qualify a disruptive business model.

The literature on disruptive business models will be analyzed using the latent semantic analysis (LSA) technique, complemented by content analysis, to obtain a more precise qualification and conceptualization regarding disruptive business models.

The results found described concepts already described in the theory. However, such findings, highlighted by the LSA, bring new perspectives to the analysis of the disruptive business models, little discussed in the literature and which reveal important considerations to be made on this subject.

It should be noted, about the technique used, a limitation on the choice of the number of singular values. For this to be a problem in the open literature, the authors tried to work not just with the cost-benefit ratio given the addition of each new dimension in the analysis, as well as a criterion of saturation of the terms presented.

The presentation of this set of characteristics can be used as a validation tool to identify if a business is or is not a disruptive business model by managers.

The originality of this paper is the achievement of a consolidated set of characteristics that conceptualize and qualify the disruptive business models by conducting an in-depth analysis of the literature on disruptive business models through the LSA technique, considering the difficulty of obtaining precise concepts on this subject in the literature.

Acknowledging that housing forms a large part of households’ and country’s long-term wealth, the South African Government has implemented various housing-related policies towards that end. Among these, the government has extended transfer duty exemption to house buyers – both individuals or natural persons and companies or other parties – to enable them buy houses of their choices since January 1950 to date. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between historical transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) over a longer period, where a comprehensive data set on house sales and other predictors was available.

This paper uses multi-year data on repeat house sales from 2010 to 2020 and other macro- and socio-economic variables to test the relationship between transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the CoJ, a core part of Gauteng province, South Africa. After cleaning the original data, final analysis was based on 139,121 repeat sales transactions. Data was analyzed in R.

Findings suggest that, when macro-, socio-economic and yearly effects are controlled, transfer duty has a damping effect on housing demand in the CoJ. The results were consistent across all the estimated models. While the motivation behind the implementation of transfer duty exemption in South Africa continues to encourage home ownership, these findings are unexpected because they do not offer support to that policy intention. These unexpected results are partly explained by the prevailing complexities of the housing market and related policies and the progressive tax regime. However, there are welfare effects that all buyers achieve across the housing market ecosystem.

This paper extends work on housing markets research in South Africa through the investigation of mortgage-based housing market in the CoJ that presents one of the densest, developed, bustling and growing housing market in the country. It also presents a fertile ground where all the effects of all the housing policies coalesce – in the statistical sense, one can control the effect of some aspects of housing policies, while appropriately testing the link between a specific policy (in this case, transfer duty exemption) and housing dynamics.

The purpose of this study is to provide a contextualized understanding of how business-to-business (B2B) firms use the sales development function for efficient and effective lead funnel management.

The authors adopted a qualitative field-study approach and interviewed 13 people from eight firms. While software as a service (SaaS) firms are the most prevalent application context for the sales development function, the authors also included respondents from non-SaaS firms to develop an in-depth understanding of the contextualized nature of the sales development process.

Sales development processes can be applied in outbound prospect-focused, outbound account-based, inbound prospect-focused and inbound account-based lead management contexts. The sales development processes of lead research, engagement and handover vary depending on the nature of the lead management context. These processes are supported by the appropriate design of organizational, technological and people platforms.

The authors explain how sales development as a form of inside sales can support effective lead funnel management in B2B firms through technology-enabled lead research and nurture processes designed to prepare customers for meaningful conversations with field sales.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to focus purely on the sales development function as a form of inside sales. They explain how the sales development processes relating to lead research, engagement and handover are conducted in four distinct application contexts to qualify leads for the outside salesforce.

The impact of volatility crush can be devastating to an option buyer and results in a substantial capital loss, even with a directionally correct strategy. As a result, most volatility plays are for option sellers, but the profit they can achieve is limited and the sellers carry unlimited risk. This paper aims to demonstrate the dynamics of implied volatility (IV) as being influenced by effects of persistence, leverage, market sentiment and liquidity. From the exploratory factor analysis (EFA), they extract four constructs and the results from the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated a good model fit for the constructs.

This section describes the methodology used for conducting the study. This includes the study area, study approach, sources of data, sampling technique and the method of data analysis.

Although there is extensive literature on methods for estimating IV dynamics during earnings announcement, few researchers have looked at the impact of expected market maker move, IV differential and IV Rank on the IV path after the earnings announcement. One reason for this research gap is because of the recent introduction of weekly options for equities by the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) back in late 2010. Even then, the CBOE only released weekly options four individual equities – Bank of America (BAC.N), Apple (AAPL.O), Citigroup (C.N) and US-listed shares of BP (BP.L) (BP.N). The introduction of weekly options provided more trading flexibility and precision timing from shorter durations. This automatically expanded expiration choices, which in turned offered greater access and flexibility from the perspective of trading volatility during earnings announcement. This study has demonstrated the impact of including market sentiment and liquidity into the forecasting model for IV during earnings. This understanding in turn helps traders to formulate strategies that can circumvent the undefined risk associated with trading options strategies such as writing strangles.

The first limitation of the study is that the firms included in the study are relatively large, and the results of the study can therefore not be generalized to medium sized and small firms. The second limitation lies in the current sample size, which in many cases was not enough to be able to draw reliable conclusions on. Scaling the sample size up is only a function of time and effort. This is easily overcome and should not be a limitation in the future. The third limitation concerns the measurement of the variables. Under the assumption of a normal distribution of returns (i.e. stock prices follow a random walk process), which means that the distribution of returns is symmetrical, one can estimate the probabilities of potential gains or losses associated with each amount. This means the standard deviation of securities returns, which is called historical volatility and is usually calculated as a moving average, can be used as a risk indicator. The prices used for the calculations are usually the closing prices, but Parkinson (1980) suggests that the day’s high and low prices would provide a better estimate of real volatility. One can also refine the analysis with high-frequency data. Such data enable the avoidance of the bias stemming from the use of closing (or opening) prices, but they have only been available for a relatively short time. The length of the observation period is another topic that is still under debate. There are no criteria that enable one to conclude that volatility calculated in relation to mean returns over 20 trading days (or one month) and then annualized is any more or less representative than volatility calculated over 130 trading days (or six months) and then annualized, or even than volatility measured directly over 260 trading days (one year). Nonetheless, the guidelines adopted in this study represent the best practices of researchers thus far.

This study has indicated that an earnings announcement can provide a volatility mispricing opportunity to allow an investor to profit from a sudden, sharp drop in IV. More specifically, the methodology developed by Tan and Bing is now well supported both empirically and theoretically in terms of qualifying opportunities that can be profitable because of the volatility crush. Conventionally, the option strategy of shorting strangles carries unlimited theoretical risk; however, the methodology has demonstrated that this risk can be substantially reduced if followed judiciously. This profitable strategy relies on a set of qualifying parameters including liquidity, premium collection, volatility differential, expected market move and market sentiment. Building upon this framework, the understanding of the effects of persistence and leverage resulted in further reducing the risk associated with trading options during earnings announcements. As a guideline, the sentiment and liquidity variables help to qualify a trade and the effects of persistence and leverage help to close the qualified trade.

The authors find a positive association between the effects of market sentiment, liquidity, persistence and leverage in the dynamics of IV during earnings announcement. These findings substantiate further the four factors that influence IV dynamics during earnings announcement and conclude that just looking at persistence and leverage alone will not generate profitable trading opportunities.

The impact of volatility crush can be devastating to the option buyer with substantial capital loss, even for a directionally correct strategy. As a result, most volatility plays are for option sellers; however, the profit is limited and the sellers carry unlimited risk. The authors demonstrate the dynamics of IV as being influenced by effects of persistence, leverage, market sentiment and liquidity. From the EFA, they extracted four constructs and the results from the CFA indicated a good model fit for the constructs. Using EFA, CFA and Bayesian analysis, how this model can help investors formulate the right strategy to achieve the best risk/reward mix is demonstrated. Using Bayesian estimation and IV differential to proxy for differences of opinion about term structures in option pricing, the authors find a positive association among the effects of market sentiment, liquidity, persistence and leverage in the dynamics of IV during earnings announcement.