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This chapter looks at the sex trade in Japanese society and the manner in which it has been accepted for decades, both socially and legally, as a ‘necessary evil’. This passive and disinterested tolerance of the industry's quasi-legal state, neither banning prostitution completely nor ensuring that it follows the transparent rules and regulations expected of other industries, means that it fails to satisfy either of the primary views on transactional sex: prohibition or legalisation. The result is that the women involved in the industry are subject to various forms of exploitation and abuse that the Japanese government, by failing to take active steps to reform the industry in either direction, becomes complicit to. Shaped by personal interviews with members of the industry and the NGOs that provide them with support, the chapter provides an examination of the industry's historical development, its portrayal in popular media and the prevailing social norms regarding the industry. It then assesses the political and legal responses to the industry and the glaring oversights that exist in their failure to provide adequate support. Finally, it considers, based upon the self-expressed interests of the women working in the industry, in what areas meaningful reform might occur.

This study investigates the impact of board independence on firm risk of Vietnamese listed firms and the moderating effect of capital expenditure on this relationship.

This paper applies fixed effects and dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) models to examine hypothesized associations between the proportion of nonexecutive directors and stock return volatility, as well as the moderating effect of capital expenditure. The robustness tests are implemented by applying alternative measures of overinvestment and firm risk.

The results show that the presence of nonexecutive directors on board increases firm risk. However, the combination of nonexecutive ratio and capital expenditure ratio has a significant negative impact on firm risk. The result is also confirmed by the difference between the monitoring role of nonexecutive directors in overinvesting and underinvesting firms.

The results imply that Vietnamese listed firms take stock return volatility into consideration before nominating and appointing nonexecutive directors into their board, especially in overinvesting firms. From another perspective, the shift toward having a majority of nonexecutive directors on boards can play a significant role in pursuing a stable or risky business strategy.

This paper investigates the influences of nonexecutive directors on firm risk in the context of Vietnam.

This paper presents a theorization and an empirical analysis of the influences of international open innovation (IOI) on the international market success of emerging market small and medium-sized enterprises (ESMEs). An analysis of the moderating roles played by cross-cultural competencies and digital alliance capabilities in this specific context is also presented.

The study adopted a quantitative research design involving a survey of 231 ESMEs based in the UAE. The authors formulated some hypotheses and tested them by employing hierarchical regression models.

The findings revealed that IOI positively affects the international market success of ESMEs. The authors further found that both cross-cultural competencies and digital alliance capabilities moderate the relationship between IOI and international market success.

The study advances the international marketing, knowledge and innovation management literature in two ways. First, it is a pioneering study that advances both the theoretical and empirical scholarship regarding the relationship between IOI and emerging market firm international market success by employing an extended resource-based view. Second, it further highlights the role played by cross-cultural competencies and digital alliance capabilities as effective governance mechanisms that moderate the relationship between IOI and international market success.

Institutional, economic, social and technological advancements enable openness to cope with wicked public management issues. Although open innovation (OI) is becoming a new normality for public sector entities, scholarly knowledge on this topic is not fully systematized. The article fills this gap, providing a thick and integrative account of OI to inspire public management decisions.

Following the SPAR-4-SLR protocol, a domain-based literature review has been accomplished. Consistently with the study purpose, a hybrid methodology has been designed. Bibliographic coupling permitted us to discover the research streams populating the scientific debate. The core arguments addressed within and across the streams were reported through an interpretive approach.

Starting from an intellectual core of 94 contributions, 5 research streams were spotted. OI in the public sector unfolds through an evolutionary path. Public sector entities conventionally acted as “senior partners” of privately-owned companies, providing funding (yellow cluster) and data (purple cluster) to nurture OI. An advanced perspective envisages OI as a public management model purposefully enacted by public sector entities to co-create value with relevant stakeholders (red cluster). Fitting architectures (green cluster) and mechanisms (blue cluster) should be arranged to release the potential of OI in the public sector.

The role of public sector entities in enacting OI should be revised embracing a value co-creation perspective. Tailored organizational interventions and management decisions are required to make OI a reliable and dependable public value generation model.

The article originally systematizes the scholarly knowledge about OI, presenting it as a new normality for public value generation.

Given the cryptocurrency market boom in recent years, this study aims to identify the factors influencing cryptocurrency pricing and the major gaps for future research.

A systematic literature review was undertaken. Three databases, Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCOhost, were used for this review. The final analysis comprised 88 articles that met the eligibility criteria.

The influential factors were identified and categorized as supply and demand, technology, economics, market volatility, investors’ attributes and social media. This review provides a comprehensive and consolidated view of cryptocurrency pricing and maps the significant influential factors.

This paper is the first to systematically and comprehensively review the relevant literature on cryptocurrency to identify the factors of pricing fluctuation. This research contributes to cryptocurrency research as well as to consumer behaviors and marketing discipline in broad.

The present study aims to construct ensemble machine learning (EML) algorithms for groundwater potentiality mapping (GPM) in the Teesta River basin of Bangladesh, including random forest (RF) and random subspace (RSS).

The RF and RSS models have been implemented for integrating 14 selected groundwater condition parametres with groundwater inventories for generating GPMs. The GPM were then validated using the empirical and bionormal receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve.

The very high (831–1200 km²) and high groundwater potential areas (521–680 km²) were predicted using EML algorithms. The RSS (AUC-0.892) model outperformed RF model based on ROC's area under curve (AUC).

Two new EML models have been constructed for GPM. These findings will aid in proposing sustainable water resource management plans.

This teaching case aims to encourage reflection on the formulation of the strategic repositioning of an automotive dealership.

Built on the teaching case method, it portrays the situation of the Premium Motors automotive dealership in the face of a strategic repositioning. Management and the board discuss ways to minimize the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on sales figures. The situation presents the possibility of entering a new product segment.

How to make consumers correctly understand the new positioning? The case is structured to enable reflection and teaching of marketing strategies, with each student having the possibility of putting themselves in the role of company managers. The environment and trajectory are also portrayed, broadening the perception of the studied company and providing devices for solving the emerging problems of the case.

The case becomes a tool to promote knowledge, from the implementation to the management of strategic repositioning. Thus, the teaching notes offer directions on how professors can use the teaching case with their undergraduate and graduate students in disciplines related to strategy and marketing.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic has caused stress for everyone and impacted the lives of people globally. Such stress increases troubles for the employees. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to identify symptoms of health problems that employees face during the COVID-19 epidemic. Also, the aim of the paper is to examine if there are statistically significant differences in the physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms of health problems among employees before the COVID-19 epidemic and employees during the COVID-19 epidemic.

The research is based on a survey of 950 employees in Slovenian companies. The factor analysis and the t-test for two independent samples were used to test the hypotheses of the research.

The results show that physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms of health problems of employees during the COVID-19 epidemic are intensified as compared to the before COVID-19 epidemic era.

The results highlight the measures with which companies can reduce the problem of different symptoms of employees during the COVID-19 epidemic. The results can be useful for employers and for managers who want to create an adequate working environment for employees during the COVID-19 epidemic.

Work-family conflict is an important topic which had an evolution, starting from a static definition, where work and family domains were divided, to a more dynamic and complex balance. COVID-19 has influenced society and created a significant distress among families and working activity, and this topic has been characterised by a major interest, considering some old definitions where this balance was considered problematic but not as an enriching opportunity.

The authors used SCOPUS to find all records mentioning work-family conflict, by considering book, article and review, excluding conference paper and considering only records written in English language. After a duplicated and not pertinent record removal, the authors obtained a number of 675 records. The authors considered 437 records from SCOPUS to create a cluster map.

Using SCOPUS and VOSviewer the authors have clustered 5 different areas, which are regrouped in next clusters considering keywords with most co-occurrence and significancy: Work-life balance and burnout gender cluster job stress and performance social and family support job satisfaction.

Cluster map is origined only by SCOPUS database.

This work aims to find a state of art about this topic, creating hypothesis where this problem has been exacerbated by 2020 due to important society modifications created by COVID-19, where recent evolution of work-family balance has been complicated by papers which come back to consider this balance as problematic.

Lockdowns and the forced closure of certain industries during the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted workers, particularly entrepreneurs, who were financially and emotionally involved in their businesses. Two studies have shown that entrepreneurs have a lower willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19 than employees. In this study, the authors try to replicate the vaccination gap between the two groups. Second, the authors study whether the difference persists when controlling for demographics, vaccination attitudes and the COVID-19 context, including the financial impact of the pandemic, its effect on the wellbeing of workers, and government attitudes. Third, the authors study whether there are differences in how the context of the pandemic relates to vaccination willingness for entrepreneurs and employees.

The authors conduct regression analyses using three large datasets. The authors study vaccination status (February 2022) in a 27-country Eurobarometer sample, vaccination intention (December 2020) in a Dutch sample from the LISS panel and vaccination status (July 2021) in a sample from the Understanding America Study (UAS).

All datasets confirm that entrepreneurs have lower vaccination intention and coverage than employees. Even when controlling for the variables described in the LISS and UAS datasets, this negative difference remains. The study results also indicate that demographics, especially vaccination attitudes, are much more important than contextual influences in the decision to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The authors are the first to dive further into the vaccination differences between entrepreneurs and employees. They advise further research into the drivers of this gap, specifically relating to the role of personality and social normative influences.