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The objective of the presented pilot study was to test the applicability of a metric to specifically measure performance improvement via a hands-on workshop about collaborative robotics.

Candidates interested in acquiring basic practical skills in working with a collaborative robot completed a distance learning exercise in preparation for a hands-on training workshop. The candidates executed a test before and after the workshop for recording the parameters compiled in the tested performance index (PI).

The results reflected the potential of the tested PI for applications in detecting improvement in practical skill acquisition and revealed potential opportunities for integrating additional performance factors.

The low number of candidates available limited in-depth analyses of the learning outcomes.

The study outcomes provide the basis for follow-up projects with larger cohorts of candidates and control groups in order to expedite the development of technology-assisted performance measurements.

The study contributes to research on performance improvement and prediction of learning outcomes, which is imperative to this emerging field in learning analytics.

The development of the presented PI addresses a scientific gap in learning analytics, i.e. the objective measurement of performance improvement and prediction along skill-intensive training courses. This paper presents an improved version of the PI, which was published at the 12th Conference on Learning Factories, Singapore, April 2022.

The purpose of this paper is to present recent empirical results concerning offshoring and backshoring of manufacturing from and to Sweden, to increase the understanding of manufacturing relocation in an international context. In particular, extent, geographies, type of production, drivers, and benefits of moving manufacturing in both directions are investigated.

The study is based on survey data from 373 manufacturing plants. The same set of questions is used for both offshoring and backshoring between 2010 and 2015, which allows similarities and differences in decision-making and results between the two relocation directions to be identified.

There are many significant differences between offshoring and backshoring projects. Labour cost is the dominating factor in offshoring, as driver and benefit, while backshoring is related to many drivers and benefits, such as quality, lead-time, flexibility, access to skills and knowledge, access to technology, and proximity to R&D. This is also reflected in the type of production that is relocated; labour-intensive production is offshored and complex production is backshored.

Plants that have both offshored and backshored think and act differently than plants that have only offshored or backshored, which is why it is important to distinguish between these plant types in the context of manufacturing relocations.

The experience of Swedish manufacturing plants reported here can be used as a point of reference for internal manufacturing operations.

The survey design allows a unique comparison between offshoring and backshoring activity. Since Swedish firms in general have been quite active in rearranging their manufacturing footprint and have experience from movements in both directions, it is an appropriate geographical area to study in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intended and unintended consequences of compliance and auditing pressures in the Bangladeshi garment industry. To explore this issue the authors draw on three medium-sized suppliers. The institutional changes that followed the Rana Plaza accident in April 2013 make Bangladesh in general and the garment industry in particular an interesting and suitable research setting for standards compliance.

The study adopts a multiple case study approach. Face-to-face interviews have been conducted with the owners of three Bangladeshi garment manufacturing firms and several workers. Additionally, organisational documents and local newspaper articles had been collected wherever possible.

The results indicate that the pressure for compliance has led the case companies to prioritise the implementation of measurable standards over the socially grounded needs and priorities of workers. As a consequence certain initiatives instead of adding new social value in fact destroyed previously existing social value. Furthermore, the pressure for compliance created the necessity to find ways to cover the sizable cost of compliance. This prompted firms to pursue process upgrading through technological advancements and increased work pressures on the labour force. These initiatives led to an increased power imbalance and the exclusion of unskilled workers from the job market.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the human rights implications of compliance and auditing pressures and initiatives. Furthermore, in order to further enrich existing knowledge in the critical accounting literature, the study draws on insights from the global value chains (GVC) and international business (IB) literatures.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the human rights implications of compliance and auditing pressures and initiatives. Furthermore, in order to further enrich existing knowledge in the critical accounting literature, the study draws on insights from the GVC and IB literatures.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact on student work readiness outcomes of collaboration with employers in developing and delivering tailored graduate employability workshops in socio-emotional skills for work (SES4Work).

Framed by the CareerEDGE model of graduate employability, the authors piloted a five-session module for near graduates in five disciplines. The research included an online employer survey (n = 128), employer interviews (n = 21) and tailored workshops for near graduates, culminating in a mock competency-based interview. Using a pre/post-test design, participants (n = 24) also completed the CareerEDGE Employability Development Profile (EDP) and the Trait Emotional Intelligence questionnaire (TEIque).

After completing the module, there was a statistically significant improvement in participant scores on the CareerEDGE EDP +12.3%, p < 0.001, effect size (Cohen's d) 0.89, large, and the TEIque +6.4%, p = 0.009, effect size (Cohen's d) 0.61, moderate. Furthermore, 70% (n = 17) of participants were “hired” based on their mock interviews, with 12% (n = 4) offered employer connections after graduation.

This is the first academic research in Ireland to develop and evaluate an enterprise-collaborative, discipline-specific module for enhancing graduate employability. Findings suggest that employer collaboration can enhance the efficacy of employability interventions and therefore merits further research.

The impact of COVID-19 on tourism destinations has been severe, but a future crisis is never far away. How communities can better prepare for disasters to come in the near future continues to be researched. This research aims to understand the tourism community’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and present the Tourism Community Resilience Model as a useful instrument to help communities better respond to disasters in the future.

This research uses a qualitative research approach which seeks to understand phenomena, events, social activities, attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and individual and group opinions that are dynamic in character in accordance with the situation in the field. Research primary data is in the form of Kuta Traditional Village local community responses in enduring the COVID-19 pandemic conducted between January and May 2022. These data were obtained through in-depth observations and interviews involving informants based on purposive sampling, including traditional community leaders, village officials, tourism actors (i.e. street vendors, tourist local guides, taxi drivers and art workers) and tourism community members. We selected the informants who are not only directly impacted by the pandemic, but also some of them have to survive during the pandemic because they do not have other job options. The results of previous research and government data concerning the pandemic and community resilience were needed as secondary data, which were obtained through a study of the literature. The data which had been obtained were further analysed based on the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) technique, which seeks to make meaning of something from the participants’ perspective and the researchers’ perspective as a result there occurs a cognition of a central position.

Based on findings from Bali, Indonesia, this resilience model for the tourism community was created in response to the difficulties and fortitude shown by the community during the COVID-19 pandemic. It comprises four key elements, namely the Local Wisdom Foundation, Resource Management, Government Contributions and External Community Support. These elements are all rooted in the concepts of niskala (spirituality) and sekala (real response); it is these elements that give the tourism community in the Kuta Traditional Village a unique approach, which can inspire other tourism destinations in other countries around the world.

A tourism community resilience model based on local community responses has implications for the process of enriching academic research and community management practices in facing future crisis, particularly by involving local wisdom foundation.

A tourism community resilience model based on local community responses has implications for the process of enriching academic research and community management practices in facing future crisis, particularly by involving local wisdom foundation.

The existence of the resilience model strengthens local community social cohesion, which has been made stronger by the bonds of culture and shared faith in facing disaster. This social cohesion then stimulates the strength of sustainable and long-term community collaboration in the post-pandemic period. For tourism businesses, having strong connections with the local communities is an important condition to thrive.

The value of this research is the Tourism Resilience Community Model, which is a helpful tool to optimise and improve future strategies for dealing with disasters. Illustrated by this Balinese example, this paper emphasises the importance of adding social factors such as niskala and sekala to existing community resilience models. Addressing these local characteristics is the innovative aspect of this paper and will help inspire communities around the world to prepare for future disasters better and build more sustainable and resilient tourism destinations elsewhere.

The aim of this paper is to make a descriptive exploratory effort to discern the role of IT exports in India's macro-economic indicators, like national income, employment and balance of payment in the post-Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization strategy in the 1990s. The paper also explores the vital historical developments of various dimensions of IT, such as its export growth, major software and services exports destinations, compositions of IT exports and domestic growth in India.

This study is based on secondary data, which were collected from Balance of Payment Statistics Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy, National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM),rtd and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY). This study has used descriptive analysis and growth models for studying the objectives. Major IT sector dimensions, such as total output, exports revenue, domestic revenue, gross domestic product, employment and exports of the software and service industry, have been examined for the period 1991–2016.

The findings suggest that over the last 26 years, the information technology industry's economic footprint has extended by more than seven times. Over the same period, direct employment in the information technology sector increased at an average growth rate of around 17%. Software and services exports earn, on average, about three times greater than the other three major services of India's current account of the balance of payment.

This study focuses on originality in examining the role of IT exports in India's macro-economic indicators economic reforms of the 1990s and also explores the historical developments of various dimensions of IT exports and domestic growth in India. All the work has been done in original by the authors, and the work used has been acknowledged properly.

The aim of this study is to define the aspects of place attachment and their effect on migratory behaviour. It also aims to identify the connection between migration decision-making and workforce supply at the source, as well as to track the impact of adequate employment supplies and the improvement on employment generation.

A primary study was conducted among the migrants who returned back during nationwide lockdown with the help of tested structured questionnaire. The variables identified through review of literature and pilot study are tested using a structural equation modelling model.

The result exhibited that all hypothesised relationships had a positive and significant connection. The overall results showed there is a significant and positive connection between place attachment and migratory behaviour, and both have a positive impact on economic activity.

This survey is conducted in the districts of West Bengal, India. There are several documents on the connection to the place attachment and the migratory behaviour. There are, however, no studies focusing on place attachment and its effect on economic activity on West Bengal, India, where migration is a serious problem. This is the first article that discusses three main concepts together such as place attachment, migratory behaviours and its influence on the economic activity of the districts of West Bengal, India.

This policy paper compares the performance of state-owned enterprise (SOEs) versus private firms in selected emerging economies in Asia, focusing on a number of performance indicators. The indicators are internationally recognized quality innovation, product and/or service innovation, financing of operations, dealing with government regulations and labor performance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has been no such comparative study for these indicators between SOEs and private firms and across countries. Most studies of SOEs have been national case studies. As such, they give us little knowledge of how a country compares with other countries at similar stages of economic development. A cross-country comparative analysis can help us identify broader trends and patterns.

The authors compare and discuss the performance of SOEs versus private firms in a number of emerging Asian countries, namely China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. To do so, the authors use data from the 2018 World Bank Enterprise Survey (which is the latest available) for the period 2012–2015. The authors focus on a number of key performance indicators, namely internationally recognized quality innovation, product and/or service innovation, financing of operations, dealing with government regulations and labor performance.

The comparative analysis uncovers some interesting differences between the two types of firms. For example, somewhat surprisingly, SOEs tend to innovate more than private firms. However, the single most significant pattern the authors find is that in middle-income Asia both types of firms face formidable challenges with respect to doing business – e.g. scarcity of relevant training programs for employees. Therefore, the priority of policymakers must be to improve the overall business environment for all firms, regardless of their ownership structure.

The nature of this paper is a policy paper. This is because the data used in this study is survey data, conducted every four–five years (or more) for each country in the study and available for very few countries. As the data are not available for a continuous period of time, The authors could not conduct empirical research for this topic and thus made it a policy paper that presents a comparison across Asian countries as case studies.

The five selected Asian countries are interesting case studies for a comparative analysis since they are middle-income countries where SOEs play a significant role in the economy. Furthermore, state ownership is an important institutional dimension in emerging markets, and strong ties with the government can influence the performance of SOEs through various market and non-market channels. Despite the potential importance of the research theme, there is very little existing research on cross-country comparisons of the performance of SOEs vis-à-vis private firms. This could be explained by scarce data availability. With this in mind, the study attempts to shed some light on SOEs' performance and add to the rather limited literature.