Search results

The purpose of this study is to analyse the gender wage gap (GWG) in Spain adopting a labour market segmentation approach. Once we obtain the different labour segments (or idiosyncratic labour markets), we are able to decompose the GWG into its observed and unobserved heterogeneity components.

We use the data from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives for the year 2021 (matched employer–employee [EE] data). Contingency tables and clustering techniques are applied to employment data to identify idiosyncratic labour markets where men and/or women of different ages tend to match/associate with different sectors of activity and occupation groups. Once this “heatmap” of labour associations is known, we can analyse its hottest areas (the idiosyncratic labour markets) from the perspective of wage discrimination by gender (Oaxaca-Blinder model).

In Spain, in general, men are paid more than women, and this is not always justified by their respective attributes. Among our results, the fact stands out that women tend to move to those idiosyncratic markets (biclusters) where the GWG (in favour of men) is smaller.

It has not been possible to obtain remuneration data by job-placement, but an annual EE relationship is used. Future research should attempt to analyse the GWG across the wage distribution in the different idiosyncratic markets.

Our combination of methodologies can be adapted to other economies and variables and provides detailed information on the labour-matching process and gender wage discrimination in segmented labour markets.

Our contribution is very important for labour market policies, trying to reduce unfair inequalities.

The study of the GWG from a novel labour segmentation perspective can be interesting for other researchers, institutions and policy makers.

This paper aims to explore the promotion decisions of heterogeneous sellers on a decentralized platform under competitive conditions and analyze how seller behaviors impact platform profit, seller revenue, buyer surplus and social welfare.

This paper considers a Cournot model consisting of a platform charging a commission rate and two sellers with different conversion rates and browsing costs. Promotion efforts by sellers can increase traffic, but they also incur promotion costs for sellers. The sellers decide on promotion effort by weighing these two effects. The authors also explore the equilibrium when the platform charges a fixed usage fee.

The seller’s profit improves as its conversion rate increases and worsens as browsing costs increase. Also, increasing the commission rate charged by the platform makes the seller invest less in promotional efforts. Therefore, the platform must consider this trade-off to determine an optimal rate. The analysis shows that the seller with a high conversion rate and high browsing cost plays a greater role in generating more overall revenue. When the market favors such a seller, the platform tends to charge less in order not to impair its profitability.

This paper incorporates conversion rate, buyer’s browsing cost, unit promotion cost and the fee charged by the platform into the model to study sellers’ promotion decisions on decentralized platforms.

In response to the intense competition in the platform economy, e-commerce platforms are actively introducing value-added services to maintain their competitiveness. However, how effective these value-added services are in fulfilling this purpose remains unclear. This paper explores how value-added services can enhance e-commerce platform competitiveness, measured by both user scale and reputation, considering the effect of network externalities.

A bilateral e-commerce platform with potential high-quality sellers and low-quality sellers on one side and potential buyers on the other side was chosen as research setting. Game theory models are constructed to simultaneously consider the behaviors of all actors (including sellers, buyers and the platform).

On the one hand, to increase the seller scale, basic services play a substituting role in determining the effect of value-added services. On the other hand, to increase the buyer scale and improve platform reputation, basic services play a fundamental role in determining the effect of value-added services. Furthermore, the higher the loss rate of the product value, the bigger the room for providing value-added services. With increasing loss rate of the product value, participating buyers who are attracted by value-added services are the fastest growing indicators; this indicates that the most significant effect of value-added services is its increase in the buyer scale.

Basic services determine the lower limit of platform competitiveness, while value-added services set the upper limit. The results of this paper can instruct different types of platforms to enhance their competitiveness in different ways.

(1) While previous studies on how to enhance platform competitiveness only considered scale or reputation separately, this paper applies a new perspective of platform competitiveness, namely the improvement of both the seller scale/buyer scale and platform reputation. (2) According to the characteristics of bilateral platforms, game theory models are constructed to explore how value-added services can enhance platform competitiveness considering both positive and negative network externalities. (3) The existing literature studies basic services and value-added services in a fragmented state; this paper contributes to research on value-added services by considering the mutual effect between basic and value-added services.

The primary aim of this study is to provide actionable guidance for augmenting profitability in photovoltaic power plant investments within Iran’s solar energy sector. By emphasizing prudent capital management and strategic investment decisions, our research seeks to assist emerging businesses in attaining sustained success in this domain.

This study presents a comprehensive approach to refined decision-making in Iran’s solar energy sector. Our methodology integrates the best-worst method, ArcGIS software for site selection, and the TOPSIS method for decision-making, aiming to enhance precision and reliability.

Our research has identified ten promising regions suitable for photovoltaic power plant installations in Iran. Leveraging the TOPSIS method, we have made optimal selections among these alternatives. Furthermore, our exhaustive cost analysis, incorporating factors like land prices, system maintenance, revenue estimation, and various financial scenarios, has yielded insights into project cost-effectiveness.

By filling a notable gap in the literature regarding optimal site selection and investment strategies for photovoltaic power plants in Iran, our research contributes to the sustainable development of solar energy infrastructure. Through a thorough literature review and the development of a novel methodology, we offer valuable guidance for businesses and investors seeking success in Iran’s solar energy sector. Our study represents a significant advancement by introducing a novel methodology that integrates the best-worst method, ArcGIS software, and the TOPSIS method for site selection and investment analysis. These findings furnish valuable guidance for businesses seeking success in the solar energy sector, thereby contributing to the sustainable development of renewable energy infrastructure in Iran and beyond.

A lack of suitably qualified Building Information Modelling (BIM) professionals is understood to be a major barrier towards higher uptakes of BIM in the Australian construction industry. In response, Australian universities have tried to integrate the teaching of BIM into construction-related curricula, but with limited success. The acknowledged impediment is the lingering mismatch between what universities offer and what industry actually needs. However, the exact nature of that mismatch has yet to be identified. This study addresses that knowledge gap. It assesses both the current status of BIM competencies among university graduates and explores how BIM education at Australian universities may be improved to deliver BIM work readiness, as required by the industry.

This paper employed a qualitative research approach, utilizing 17 semi-structured interviews with experts in the Australian BIM industry. The Person-Organization (PO) fit theory, which emphasizes the congruence between individual and organizational characteristics, was utilized as a theoretical framework to examine the compatibility between “demand” and “ability” perspectives. The resulting data were analysed using this theoretical framework to gain insights into the PO fit perspectives in relation to BIM industry practices.

Findings reveal that graduates are generally competent regarding the use of BIM software. However, employers require much more than software skills, and expect recruits to have the capability to implement BIM as a process according to information management standards. Specifically, graduates are significantly deficient in matters of BIM protocols, collaboration and coordination, information workflows as well as completion and handover procedures.

This study is the first of its kind that bridges the gap between industry expectations and university education, in the Australian context, moving beyond the common discourse in education literature, which is exclusively focused on assessing students’ perceptions about BIM.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of two dimensions of technological relatedness, namely technological similarity and complementarity, on collaborative performance, plus the mediating role of collaboration network stickiness and the moderating role of partner expertise and geographical distance in interfirm collaboration contexts.

This study takes Chinese Scientific and Technological Achievements (STA) of inter-firm collaboration in five high-tech fields in 2010–2020 as the sample and uses OLS regression to test the hypothesis.

Technological similarity and complementarity positively affect collaborative performance. Partner expertise negatively moderates the relationship between similarity, complementarity and collaborative performance. Geographical distance positively moderates the relationship between similarity and collaborative performance while negatively moderates that between complementarity and collaborative performance. Collaboration network stickiness partly mediates the relationship between similarity and collaborative performance.

This study expands literature on inter-firm collaboration, especially research on the antecedents of collaborative performance. Moreover, this study not only compensates for lack of empirical analysis in partner selection research, but also utilizes second-hand data to enhance the objectivity of analysis. Additionally, we enrich the research on the moderating role of partner expertise and geographical distance as well as the mediating role of collaboration network stickiness.

This study aims to investigate the mechanism of knowledge management within multinationals during the post COVID-19 era, with particular consideration given to the relationship between the cultural intelligence of top managers and knowledge-oriented leadership using fear of COVID-19 as a moderating factor.

Derived from upper echelons’ theory and research on knowledge management success (KMS), a theoretical model and associated hypotheses have been developed and tested. Structural equation modeling was used with statistics collected from 288 top managers and executives of multinational corporations dominated by knowledge-intensive industries through a network investigation.

Results indicate that the levels of executives’ cultural intelligence and knowledge-oriented leadership contribute to KMS, while knowledge-oriented leadership acts as a mediator between them. In addition, the fear of COVID-19 of senior executives negatively affects both the direct and mediated influence of cultural intelligence on KMS.

The current research uses an empirical approach to examine cross-border KMS. Further research is needed to develop more comprehensive measurement tools for KMS and more detailed research by further developing the subdimensions of cultural intelligence. In addition, this paper used cross-sectional research that limits the capability to establish causal relationships over time.

The research explores the “human side” of the key antecedents of KMS, fills the gap in research about the impact of cultural intelligence and knowledge-oriented leadership on the achievement of KMS, paves the way for emerging knowledge-oriented leadership from the initial phase to the mature phase and contributes to the literature on environmental uncertainty and crisis, using the COVID-19 as a representative context.

As little is known about the productivity levels of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engaging with universities and the relative changes in productivity of SMEs subsequent to these collaborations, the paper examines the following questions: (1) Does the relative productivity of SMEs engaging in university collaboration differ from those that do not? (2) Are subsequent changes in firm productivity following university collaboration related to their initial levels of productivity?

The paper utilises data on 254 SMEs from the Longitudinal Small Business Survey and uses two statistical techniques: First, bivariate tests of difference were used to inspect the relationships between productivity levels and whether the firm collaborated with a university to introduce its innovation. Second, ordinary least squares regressions were used to test whether the future productivity of SMEs that collaborated with universities was related to their initial productivity levels.

The analysis reveals that SME–university collaboration is unrelated to starting productivity. Furthermore, the analysis suggests a nonlinear relationship exists between the starting productivity of SMEs and their subsequent productivity following a university collaboration. Therefore, higher levels of subsequent productivity are observed among those SMEs where starting productivity was either relatively low or high, suggesting that collaborations have a transformative effect on SMEs with relatively lower initial levels of productivity and a maintenance effect for SMEs with relatively higher levels of initial productivity.

Given the fact that the extant literature also suggests that, overall, university collaboration is beneficial, policymakers should strive to encourage greater levels of collaboration involving SMEs. In light of the evidence that SME–university collaborations can transform less productive firms, it appears unjustified for practitioners and policymakers to only consider stronger-performing firms to be included in such programmes.

The study contributes new theoretical and practical knowledge to the understanding of the role of firm productivity in predicting the proclivity of firms to collaborate with universities. Furthermore, as few studies have examined the impact of these collaborations on the subsequent productivity of firms that collaborate with universities, this paper fills an existing gap in the literature.

In situations where the crew is reduced, the optimization of crew task allocation and sequencing (CTAS) can significantly enhance the operational efficiency of the man-machine system by rationally distributing workload and minimizing task completion time. Existing related studies exhibit a limited consideration of workload distribution and involve the violation of precedence constraints in the solution process. This study proposes a CTAS method to address these issues.

The method defines visual, auditory, cognitive and psychomotor (VACP) load balancing objectives and integrates them with workload balancing and minimum task completion time to ensure equitable workload distribution and task execution efficiency, and then a multi-objective optimization model for CTAS is constructed. Subsequently, it designs a population initialization strategy and a repair mechanism to maintain sequence feasibility, and utilizes them to improve the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm III (NSGA-III) for solving the CTAS model.

The CTAS method is validated through a numerical example involving a mission with a specific type of armored vehicle. The results demonstrate that the method achieves equitable workload distribution by integrating VACP load balancing and workload balancing. Moreover, the improved NSGA-III maintains sequence feasibility and thus reduces computation time.

The study can achieve equitable workload distribution and enhance the search efficiency of the optimal CTAS scheme. It provides a novel perspective for task planners in objective determination and solution methodologies for CTAS.

This study aims to investigate whether higher value creation leads to higher value appropriation and to identify the boundary conditions in a buyer–supplier relationship that can explain why a particular supplier can appropriate higher value than others.

The study uses questionnaire surveys. The sample of the survey has 150 publicly-listed supplier firms in Taiwan. The unit of analysis is the buyer–supplier relationship.

In the buyer–supplier relationship, suppliers’ bargaining power, partnership and a supplier’s original brand manufacturing (OBM) business can strengthen the positive relationship between value creation and value appropriation.

This study adopts the unilateral viewpoint of suppliers; however, some constructs might require dyadic evaluation. This study only explores the spillover effect of OBM business on the relationship between value creation and appropriation.

The spillover effect of a supplier’s OBM business in a buyer–supplier relationship allows the buyer to share more common benefits and the supplier to capture more private benefits as compensation. By broadening its customer base, a supplier can increase its bargaining power. A supplier can also maintain a strategic partnership with each essential buyer.

To avoid the dark-side effect of partnership, the model provides the contingency that a supplier can capture more value from a buyer–supplier relationship.