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The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of supplier selection method on key procurement outcomes such as procurement lead time (PLT), supplier performance and buyer team size.

Data were collected from a sample of 124 archival contract records from the US Department of Defense. A multiple regression model and multivariate analysis of covariance/analysis of covariance models were used to test the effects of source selection method on pertinent procurement outcomes.

The trade-off (TO) source selection method increases PLT, as does the number of evaluation factors and the number of proposals received. Substantially larger sourcing teams are also associated with the TO source selection method. Nonetheless, the TO method results in better supplier performance.

TO source selections yield superior supplier performance than low-bidder methods. However, they are costly in terms of time and personnel. Any assessment of supplier value should consider not only the price premium for higher performance but also the transaction costs associated with the TO method.

Very little research addresses a buying team’s evaluation of supplier-offered value ex ante and whether that value assessment materializes into actual value-added supplier performance. Low bidder tactics are pervasive, but price (i.e. sacrifice) is only one component of value. Benefits from superior supplier performance may yield greater overall value. If value is critical to the buyer, a TO source selection method – versus a low-bidder approach – is the appropriate tool because of higher supplier performance ex post.

Entrepreneurship researchers use various types of screening criteria to select samples for study. In that selecting these criteria is, in effect, choosing a definition or model of entrepreneurship, the consequences are immense and have had a direct impact on the generalizability of research and theory development in our field. The purpose of this study is to help entrepreneurship researchers better understand these consequences and, thereby, improve our understanding of entrepreneurial phenomenon. Four of the most commonly used screening criteria are included in this study: firm age, firm size, firm growth, and innovation. Based on a sample of 368 manufacturing firms, the results indicate that few firms fit all or even most of the considered screening criteria and independent-dependent variable relationships vary considerably by screening criteria selection.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel data-driven approach for predicting energy performance of buildings that can address the scarcity of quality data, and consider the dynamic nature of building systems.

This paper proposes a reinforcing machine learning (ML) approach based on transfer learning (TL) to address these challenges. The proposed approach dynamically incorporates the data captured by the building management systems into the model to improve its accuracy.

It was shown that the proposed approach could improve the accuracy of the energy performance prediction compared to the conventional TL (non-reinforcing) approach by 19 percentage points in mean absolute percentage error.

The case study results confirm the practicality of the proposed approach and show that it outperforms the standard ML approach (with no transferred knowledge) when little data is available.

This approach contributes to the body of knowledge by addressing the limited data availability in the building sector using TL; and accounting for the dynamics of buildings’ energy performance by the reinforcing architecture. The proposed approach is implemented in a case study project based in London, UK.

Immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees living in Europe face a number of challenges in accessing or using health information and healthcare services available in their host countries. To resolve these issues and deliver the necessary services, providers must take a comprehensive approach to better understand the types of health information and healthcare services that these individuals need, seek and use. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop that comprehensive approach.

In this paper, a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed publications was performed, with 3.013 articles collected from various databases. A total of 57 qualifying papers on studies conducted in Europe were included in the review after applying the predefined inclusion and exclusion requirements, screening processes and eliminating duplicates. The information seeking and communication model (ISCM) was used in the analysis.

The findings revealed that while many health information and healthcare services are accessible in Europe for immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, many of these individuals are unaware of their existence or how to access them. While our findings do not specify what health-related information these groups need, use or seek, they do suggest the importance and value of providing mental health, sexual health and HIV, as well as pregnancy and childbirth information and services. Furthermore, according to our results, health information services should be fact-based, easy to understand and raise awareness about healthcare structure and services available in Europe for this vulnerable population.

This study has a range of practical implications, including (1) highlighting the need for mental health and behavioural health services and (2) stressing the value of addressing cultural context and religious values while investigating (health) information seeking of people with foreign background.

This is one of the first studies to systematically review and examine the behaviour of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees in relation to health information and healthcare services in the European context.

Increased economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has given rise to increased demand for port development. Given the often scarce availability of national public funding, port institutional reform programmes have been implemented to pave the way for the inclusion of external port investors. Notwithstanding this fact, some sub-Saharan African Governments remain institutionally locked into the notion that state-owned enterprises remain an appropriate vehicle for port terminal operations. This, despite the fact that terminal operational concessions globally and within the continent of Africa are increasingly being managed by global terminal operators. Given this context, this study aims to evaluate different port valuation and funding strategies. Two research questions form the core of this research: what is the financial value of a concession? What is the most cost advantageous funding strategy? The methodology is applied to the development of a two-berth container terminal in SSA.

After reviewing a range of financial valuation and funding techniques, the study presents valuation and funding model applicability-fit tests. Thereafter, a suitable valuation technique is selected and applied to the case study providing a concession valuation. Different funding strategies are applied to the valuation model to determine the cost implications of each funding instrument given the local context and institutional constraints applicable to SSA. Finally, the study discusses the significance of the results to potential SSA port investors by highlighting the impact of each funding approach on key financial metrics.

The study presents a range of financial investment appraisal results for the case study concession in consideration of four specific funding strategies. The highest concession valuation could be attributed to a higher debt ratio as a principal funding strategy. In addition, this funding approach (100% debt) realised the shortest payback period and the highest internal rate of return values. The authors, however, maintain that the optimal funding strategy for a concession depends ultimately on the financial goals of the investor.

This research makes a contribution to the existing literature on port finance and development by presenting a structured approach to the evaluation of the valuation and funding techniques, which can be used in terminal development subject to the specific local context and institutional constraints (in this case applicable to SSA). The study provides practical insight into the potential cost of the considered terminal concession for private or public sector participants and a view of the most cost advantageous funding strategy available for interested investors.

The aim of this paper is to provide evidence of the relationship between the governance structure of universities and the universities' knowledge transfer (KT) performance outcomes measured in terms of university spin-off firms university spin-offs (USOs).

The universities' board of directors has been analyzed under three profiles: the incidence of internal directors belonging to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) faculties, the incidence of women directors and the incidence of external directors.

The findings provide evidence of a significant and positive association, for southern Italian state universities, of the presence of university STEM directors and the establishment of university spin-offs (USOs).

The article is original as, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study, except for the paper by Meoli et al. (2019), examined the governance of universities in relation to the establishment of academic spin-offs.

Literature practices represent the process leading up to the citation of a source, and consist of the selection, reading and citing of sources. The purpose of this paper is to explore possible factors that might influence researchers during this process and discover possible consequences of researchers’ citation behaviours.

In this exploratory study, various factors which could influence literature practices were explored via a questionnaire amongst 112 researchers. Participants were first authors of articles published in 2016 in one of five different journals within the disciplines of experimental psychology, educational sciences and social psychology. Academic positions of the participants ranged from PhD student to full professor.

Frequencies and percentages showed that researchers seemed to be influenced in their literature practices by various factors, such as editors suggesting articles and motivation to cite. Additionally, a high percentage of researchers reported taking shortcuts when citing articles (e.g. using secondary citations and reading selectively). Logistic regression did not reveal a clear relationship between academic work experience and research practices.

Seeing that researchers seem to be influenced by a variety of factors in their literature practices, the scientific community might benefit from better citation practices and guidelines in order to provide more structure to the process of literature practices.

This paper provides first insights into researchers’ literature practices. Possible reasons for problems with citation accuracy and replicating research findings are highlighted. Opportunities for further research on the topic of citation behaviours are presented.

Nowadays businesses tend to compete with rivals by improving capability to meet customer demands. One of the key to improve logistics efficiency of a firm is to select appropriate supplier. In the past, to select the most suitable supplier, most people evaluated performance by using average performance or variance from historical data but did not mentioned skewness. In other words, skewness impact on supplier performance is ignored by researchers and buyers. In fact, supplier with greatest average performance does not confirm to be the most suitable one because of uncertainties which make its performance skew either to the left or right, i.e., lower or higher than expectation. Therefore, this empirical study aims to discover and determine the important role of skewness on supplier selection problem. After identifying influential criteria on supplier selection, we analyze skewness effect on suppliers’ performance in each criterion by surveying real data of suppliers’ performances. Skewness effect can be rated in 3 levels; no effect, moderately effect, and highly effect. The results show that, there is only one criterion with no skewness effect, which is price. Criteria which have high skewed performance, for both of medium-sized and large-sized buyers, are lead time, product quality and reliability, and on-time delivery. Also, skewness has higher effect on suppliers’ performance of medium-sized buyers than large-sized buyers. The conclusion surprisingly shows that, skewness is the best index to distinguish between good and bad suppliers, while mean is the worst index.

The purpose of this paper is to show how data analytics can be used to identify areas of potential cost savings for category managers of installation-level services. Using integrated solid waste management (ISWM) as a test case, the authors also examine the impact of small business set-asides on price and contractor performance.

The authors use data analytics, specifically sequential regression, the Wilcoxon rank-sum test and ordered logistic regression to investigate the influence of service- and contracting-related variables on price and contractor performance.

The authors find that service- and contracting-related variables influence price. Specifically, they identify that a service-related variable, number of containers, significantly affects price, and that two contracting-related variables, one type of small business set-aside and the number of offers received, also significantly affect price. The authors quantify the price premiums paid for using various types of small business set-asides.

Although the findings were significant, the authors believe that the robustness of the conclusions could be enhanced if the Air Force captured more data. Additional observations would increase the generalizability of the results.

This empirical experiment demonstrates that detailed analyses are required to gain insights into services’ price drivers to craft more appropriate category management strategies for installation-level services.

This empirical study shows how historical data can be used to assess price drivers of installation-level services. It is also one of the first to quantify the impact that small business set-asides have on price.