Search results for: social business model

Authors: Patrick Innocenti, Elias Montini, Silvia Menato, Marzio Sorlini

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Documented experiences of industrial symbiosis are always triggered and driven only by economic goals: environmental and (even rarely) social results are sometimes assessed and declared as effects of virtuous behaviours, but are merely casual and un-pursued side externalities. Even worse: all the symbiotic project candidates entailing economic loss for just one of the (also dozen) partners are simply stopped without considering the overall benefit for the whole partnership. The here-presented approach aims at providing methodologies and tools to effectively manage these situations and fostering the implementation of virtuous symbiotic investments in manufacturing aggregations for a more sustainable production.

Keywords: business model, industrial symbiosis, industrial agglomerations, sustainability

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Authors: Sherrene Bogle, Verlia Bogle, Tyrone Anderson

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In recent years, organizations have become increasingly interested in the possibility of analyzing social media as a means of gaining meaningful feedback about their products and services. The aspect based sentiment analysis approach is used to predict the sentiment for Twitter datasets for Digicel and Lime, the main mobile companies in Jamaica, using supervised learning classification techniques. The results indicate an average of 82.2 percent accuracy in classifying tweets when comparing three separate classification algorithms against the purported baseline of 70 percent and an average root mean squared error of 0.31. These results indicate that the analysis of sentiment on social media in order to gain customer feedback can be a viable solution for mobile companies looking to improve business performance.

Keywords: machine learning, sentiment analysis, social media, supervised learning

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Authors: Sungwon Jung

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The percentage of 20 years or older apartment houses in South Korea is approximately 20% (1.55 million houses), and the explosive increase of aged houses is expected around the first planned new towns. Accordingly, we should prepare for social issues such as difficulty of housing lease and degradation of housing performance. The improvement of performance of aged houses is essential for achieving the national energy and carbon reduction goals, and we should develop techniques to respond to the changing construction environment. Furthermore, we should develop a performance evaluation system that is appropriate for the demands of residents such as the improvement of remodeling floor plan by performance improvement in line with the residence type of the housing vulnerable groups such as low-income group and elderly people living alone. For this purpose, remodeling techniques and business models optimized for the target complexes must be spread through the development of various business models. In addition, it is necessary to improve the remodeling business by improving the laws and systems related to the improvement of the residential performance and to prepare techniques to respond to the increasing business demands. In other words, performance improvement and evaluation and knowledge systems need to be researched as new issues related to remodeling that has not been addressed in the existing research.

Keywords: remodelling, performance evaluation, web-based system, big data

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Authors: Batuhan Kocaoglu

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Nowadays digital transformation is a hot topic both in service and production business. For the companies who want to stay alive in the following years, they should change how they do their business. Industry leaders started to improve their ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) like backbone technologies to digital advances such as analytics, mobility, sensor-embedded smart devices, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and more. Selecting the appropriate technology for the related business problem also is a hot topic. Besides this, to operate in the modern environment and fulfill rapidly changing customer expectations, a digital transformation of the business is required and change the way the business runs, affect how they do their business. Even the digital transformation term is trendy the literature is limited and covers just the philosophy instead of a solid implementation plan. Current studies urge firms to start their digital transformation, but few tell us how to do. The huge investments scare companies with blur definitions and concepts. The aim of this paper to solidify the steps of the digital transformation and offer a roadmap for the companies and academicians. The proposed roadmap is developed based upon insights from the literature review, semi-structured interviews, and expert views to explore and identify crucial steps. We introduced our roadmap in the form of 8 main steps: Awareness; Planning; Operations; Implementation; Go-live; Optimization; Autonomation; Business Transformation; including a total of 11 sub-steps with examples. This study also emphasizes four dimensions of the digital transformation mainly: Readiness assessment; Building organizational infrastructure; Building technical infrastructure; Maturity assessment. Finally, roadmap corresponds the steps with three main terms used in digital transformation literacy as Digitization; Digitalization; and Digital Transformation. The resulted model shows that 'business process' and 'organizational issues' should be resolved before technology decisions and 'digitization'. Companies can start their journey with the solid steps, using the proposed roadmap to increase the success of their project implementation. Our roadmap is also adaptable for relevant Industry 4.0 and enterprise application projects. This roadmap will be useful for companies to persuade their top management for investments. Our results can be used as a baseline for further researches related to readiness assessment and maturity assessment studies.

Keywords: digital transformation, digital business, ERP, roadmap

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Authors: Md. Abu Yousuf

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Islamic social financing (ISF) refers to the fair distribution of wealth and financial dealings and prevents economic exploitation at all levels. ISF instruments include Islamic institutions Zakat (obligatory charity), Sadaqah (voluntary charity) and Waqf (endowment) based on philanthropy such and Qard-al Hasan (beautiful loan), micro takaful (insurance) and social investments through Sukuk (bonds) based on cooperation. ISF contributes to socio-economic development, end poverty, protects environmental sustainability, promotes education, equality, social justice and above all, establishes social well-being since the birth of Islam. ISF tools are instrumental towards achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) set by United Nations (UN). The present study will explore the scope of ISF for community development in Bangladesh and examine the challenges in implementing ISF tools and will provide the most practical model of ISF. The study will adopt a mixed-method (MM) design in the process of data collection and analysis. The researcher will consider all issues related to ethics, reliability, validity and feasibility while conducting the study.

Keywords: Islamic social financing, sustainable development goals, poverty eradication, zakat, waqf, sadaqah, Islamic microfinance

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Authors: Yassine Jamoussi, Ameni Youssfi, Henda Ben Ghezala

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With the growing interest in social networking, the interaction of social actors evolved to a source of knowledge in which it becomes possible to perform context aware-reasoning. The information extraction from social networking especially Twitter and Facebook is one of the problems in this area. To extract text from social networking, we need several lexical features and large scale word clustering. We attempt to expand existing tokenizer and to develop our own tagger in order to support the incorrect words currently in existence in Facebook and Twitter. Our goal in this work is to benefit from the lexical features developed for Twitter and online conversational text in previous works, and to develop an extraction model for constructing a huge knowledge based on actions

Keywords: social networking, information extraction, part-of-speech tagging, natural language processing

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Authors: Trevor Stephen, Joshua D. Aceves, David Guyer, Jona Jacobson

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As a profession, social work has much to offer individuals, groups, and organizations. A multidisciplinary approach to understanding and solving complex challenges and a commitment to developing and training ethical practitioners outlines characteristics of a profession embedded with leadership skills. This presentation will take an overview of the historical context of social work leadership, examine social work as a unique leadership model composed of its qualities and theories that inform effective leadership capability as it relates to our code of ethics. Reflect critically on leadership theories and their foundational comparison. Finally, a look at recommendations and implementation to social work education and practice. Similar to defining leadership, there is no universally accepted definition of social work leadership. However, some distinct traits and characteristics are essential. Recent studies help set the stage for this research proposal because they measure views on effective social work leadership among social work and non-social leaders and followers. However, this research is interested in working backward from that approach and examining social workers' leadership preparedness perspectives based solely on social work training, competencies, values, and ethics. Social workers understand how to change complex structures and challenge resistance to change to improve the well-being of organizations and those they serve. Furthermore, previous studies align with the idea of practitioners assessing their skill and capacity to engage in leadership but not to lead. In addition, this research is significant because it explores aspiring social work leaders' competence to translate social work practice into direct leadership skills. The research question seeks to answer whether social work training and competencies are sufficient to determine whether social workers believe they possess the capacity and skill to engage in leadership practice. Aim 1: Assess whether social workers have the capacity and skills to assume leadership roles. Aim 2: Evaluate how the development of social workers is sufficient in defining leadership. This research intends to reframe the misconception that social workers do not possess the capacity and skills to be effective leaders. On the contrary, social work encompasses a framework dedicated to lifelong development and growth. Social workers must be skilled, competent, ethical, supportive, and empathic. These are all qualities and traits of effective leadership, whereas leaders are in relation with others and embody partnership and collaboration with followers and stakeholders. The proposed study is a cross-sectional quasi-experimental survey design that will include the distribution of a multi-level social work leadership model and assessment tool. The assessment tool aims to help define leadership in social work using a Likert scale model. A cross-sectional research design is appropriate for answering the research questions because the measurement survey will help gather data using a structured tool. Other than the proposed social work leadership measurement tool, there is no other mechanism based on social work theory and designed to measure the capacity and skill of social work leadership.

Keywords: leadership competencies, leadership education, multi-level social work leadership model, social work core values, social work leadership, social work leadership education, social work leadership measurement tool

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Authors: Nadya Patel, Jawn Lim

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Foresight 3.0 is a synergistic methodology that encompasses systems analysis, future studies, capacity building, and forward planning. These components are interconnected, fostering a collective anticipatory intelligence that promotes societal resilience (Ravetz, 2020). However, traditional applications of these strands can often fall short, leading to missed opportunities and narrow perspectives. Therefore, Foresight 3.0 champions a holistic approach to tackling complex issues, focusing on systemic transformations and power dynamics. Businesses are pivotal in preparing the workforce for an increasingly uncertain and complex world. This necessitates the adoption of innovative tools and methodologies, such as Foresight 3.0, that can better equip young employees to anticipate and navigate future challenges. Firstly, the incorporation of its methodology into workplace training can foster a holistic perspective among employees. This approach encourages employees to think beyond the present and consider wider social, economic, and environmental contexts, thereby enhancing their problem-solving skills and resilience. This paper discusses our research on integrating Foresight 3.0's transformative principles with a newly developed Critical Design Futures (CDF) framework to equip organisations with the ability to innovate for the world's most complex social problems. This approach is grounded in 'collective forward intelligence,' enabling mutual learning, co-innovation, and co-production among a diverse stakeholder community, where business transformation and innovation are achieved.

Keywords: business transformation, innovation, foresight, critical design

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Authors: Lizinis Cassendra Frederick Dony, Dewi Binti Tajuddin, Jirom Jeremy Frederick Dony, Andrew Nicholas

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Unemployed graduates have become among the world major concerns lately. 70% of Malaysian graduates are jobless. Due to this concerns, this paper aims to identify major factors influencing Sabah minority ethnic favorable in the entrepreneurialism business interest. Hence, extensive introductory entrepreneurship syllabus clusters development beginning from the early childhood, primary, secondary and university students. This may induce interest appeal and to develop focus group of self-employment. The study focus on 7 indicators consist of demographic profiles variable (DP), social norms (SN), attitude (A), self-efficacy (SE) and business management skills (BMS) with reference to university students’ entrepreneurial intention. This study also partially mediates the relationship between product attractiveness (PA) and the minority ethnic entrepreneurialism business interest (MEEBI), by testifying their direct and indirect relationships. Hence, this study provides new perception towards improving the graduates’ characteristic, capabilities to exploit the business opportunities in the market. Furthermore, this paper will assess the relationship with the product attractiveness(PA) as a mediator. The study encompasses on the type of Sabah minority ethnic (ME) and nature of family own business (FOB) background with the 280 samples students in UiTM Sabah and UMS. The descriptive and random sampling method of research which revealed that majority of the respondents agreed that FOB and entrepreneurship education had positively influenced the ethnic students’ involvement in the entrepreneurial process and career development either full-time or part-time basis.

Keywords: Demographic profile (DP), soci, unemployed graduates, Malaysian minority

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Authors: Sarah Smail

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Algeria has been subject to countless conquests and invasions that resulted in having a diverse linguistic repertoire. The sociolinguistic situation of the country made linguistic landscape analysis pertinent. This in fact, has led to the growth of diverse linguistic landscape studies that mainly focused on identifying the sociolinguistic situation of the country through shop names analysis. The present research adds to the existing literature by offering another perspective to the analysis of signs by combining the physical and digital semiotic landscape. The powerful oil, gas and agri-food industries in Algeria make it interesting to focus on the commodification of natural resources for the sake of identifying the language and semiotic resources deployed in the Algerian public scene in addition to the identification of the visibility of linguistic inequalities and minorities in the business domain. The study discusses the semiotic landscape of three trade cities: Bejaia, Setif and Hassi-Messaoud. In addition to interviews conducted with business owners and graphic designers and questionnaires with business employees. Withal, the study relies on Gorter’s multilingual inequalities in public space (MIPS) model (2021) and Irvine and Gal’s language ideology and linguistic differentiation (2000). The preliminary results demonstrate the sociolinguistic injustice existing in the business domain, e.g., the exclusion of the official languages, the dominance of foreign languages, and the excessive use of the roman script.

Keywords: semiotic landscaping, digital scapes, language commodification, linguistic inequalities, business signage

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Authors: Lam Hong Lan

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The textile industry is said to be the second-largest polluter, responsible for 92 million tonnes of waste annually. There is an urgent need to practice the circular economy to increase the use and reuse around the world. By its nature, the pre-owned fashion business is considered part of the circular economy as it helps to eliminate waste and circulate products. Second-hand clothes and accessories used to be associated with a ‘cheap image’ that carried ‘old energy’ in Vietnam. This perception has been shifted, especially amongst the younger generation. Vietnamese consumer is spending more on products and services that increase self-esteem. The same consumer is moving away from a collectivist social identity towards a ‘me, not we’ outlook as they look for a way to express their individual identity. And pre-owned fashion is one of their solutions as it values money, can create a unique personal style for the wearer and links with sustainability. The design of this study is based on the second-hand shopping motivation theory. A semi-structured online survey with 100 consumers from one pre-owned clothing community and one pre-owned e-commerce site in Vietnam. The findings show that in contrast with Vietnamese older consumers (55+yo) who, in the previous study, generally associated pre-owned fashion with ‘low-cost’, ‘cheap image’ that carried ‘old energy’, young customers (20-30 yo) were actively promoted their pre-owned fashion items to the public via outlet’s social platforms and their social media. This cultural shift comes from the impact of global and local discourse around sustainable fashion and the growth of digital platforms in the pre-owned fashion business in the last five years, which has generally supported wider interest in pre-owned fashion in Vietnam. It can be summarised in three areas: (1) global and local celebrity influencers. A number of celebrities have been photographed wearing vintage items in music videos, photoshoots or at red carpet events. (2) E-commerce and intermediaries. International e-commerce sites – e.g., Vinted, TheRealReal – and/or local apps – e.g., Re.Loved – can influence attitudes and behaviors towards pre-owned consumption. (3) Eco-awareness. The increased online coverage of climate change and environmental pollution has encouraged customers to adopt a more eco-friendly approach to their wardrobes. While sustainable biomaterials and designs are still navigating their way into sustainability, sustainable consumerism via pre-owned fashion seems to be an immediate solution to lengthen the clothes lifecycle. This study has found that young consumers are primarily seeking value for money and/or a unique personal style from pre-owned/vintage fashion while using these purchases to promote their own “eco-awareness” via their social media networks. This is a good indication for fashion designers to keep in mind in their design process and for fashion enterprises in their business model’s choice to not overproduce fashion items.

Keywords: cultural shift, pre-owned fashion, sustainable consumption, sustainable fashion.

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Authors: Vitool Suksankavanich

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This preliminary research aimed to explore the development of wastewater management of Bang Pu Sub- District Municipality, Samutprakan Province, in order to establish appropriate model for effective wastewater management that fit to the context of the area. The research posed three questions: [i] to what extent the promotion of social responsibility awareness built among the local community resulted in effectiveness of the local wastewater management; [ii] did the waste disposal management of Bang Pu Industrial Estate contribute to the overall environmental quality of Bang Pu Sub- District Municipality; and [iii] did the relationship between the community and the industrial factories have any effect on the wastewater management. The in- depth interview revealed main obstacles occurred in the process of wastewater management in the area. The fieldwork also contributed to a product of an appropriate model of effective wastewater management.

Keywords: legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, social responsibility, wastewater management

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Authors: Meron Okbandrias

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The South African formal economy is rule-based economy, unlike most African and Asian markets. It has a highly developed financial market. In such a market, foreign migrants have dominated the small or spaza shops that service the poor. They are highly competitive and capture significant market share in South Africa. This paper analyses the factors that assisted the foreign migrants in having a competitive age. It does that by interviewing Somali, Bangladesh, and Ethiopian shop owners in Cape Town analysing the data through a narrative analysis. The paper also analyses the 2019 South African consumer report. The three migrant nationalities mentioned above dominate the spaza shop business and have significant distribution networks. The findings of the paper indicate that family, ethnic, and nationality based network, in that order of importance, form bases for a relationship-based business network that has trust as its mainstay. Therefore, this network ensures the pooling of resources and abiding by certain principles outside the South African rule-based system. The research identified practises like bulk buying within a community of traders, sharing information, buying from a within community distribution business, community based transportation system and providing seed capital for people from the community to start a business is all based on that relationship-based system. The consequences of not abiding by the rules of these networks are social and economic exclusion. In addition, these networks have their own commercial and social conflict resolution mechanisms aside from the South African justice system. Network theory and relationship based systems theory form the theoretical foundations of this paper.

Keywords: migrant, spaza shops, relationship-based system, South Africa

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Authors: Aiswarya Gopal, Kamal Bijlani, Vinoth Rengaraj, R. Jayakrishnan

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In the business world, the term “startup” is frequently ringing the bell with the high frequency of young ventures. The main dilemma of startups is the unsuccessful management of the unique risks that have to be confronted in the present world of competition and technology. This research work tried to bring out a game based methodology to improve enough real-world experience among entrepreneurs as well as management students to handle risks and challenges in the field. The game will provide experience to the player to overcome challenges like market problems, running out of cash, poor management, and product problems which can be resolved by a proper strategic approach in the entrepreneurship world. The proposed serious game works on the life cycle of a new software enterprise where the entrepreneur moves from the planning stage to secured financial stage, laying down the basic business structure, and initiates the operations ensuring the increment in confidence level of the player.

Keywords: business model, game based learning, poor management, start up

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Authors: Hang T. T. Truong, Ronald S. Laura, Kylie Shaw

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Within Vietnam's system of higher education, its schools of business play a vital role in supporting the country’s economic objectives. However, the crucial contribution of soft skills for maximal success within the business sector has to date not been adequately recognized by its business schools. This being so, the development of the business school curriculum in Vietnam has not been able to 'catch up', so to say, with the burgeoning need of students for a comprehensive soft skills program designed to meet the national and global business objectives of their potential employers. The burden of the present paper is first to reveal the results of our survey in Vietnam which make explicit the extent to which major Vietnamese industrial employers’ value the potential role that soft skill competencies can play in maximizing business success. Our final task will be to determine which soft skills employers discern as best serving to maximize the economic interests of Vietnam within the global marketplace. Semi-structured telephone interviews have been conducted with the 15 representative Head Employers of Vietnam's reputedly largest and most successful of the diverse business enterprises across Vietnam. The findings of the study indicate that all respondents highly value the increasing importance of soft skills in business success. Our critical analysis of respondent data reveals that 19 essential soft skills are deemed by employers as integral to business workplace efficacy and should thus be integrated into the formal business curriculum. We are confident that our study represents the first comprehensive and specific survey yet undertaken within the business sector in Vietnam which accesses and analyses the opinions of representative employers from major companies across the country in regard to the growing importance of 19 specific soft skills essential for maximizing overall business success. Our research findings also reveal that the integration into business school curriculums nationwide of the soft skills we have identified is of paramount importance to advance the national and global economic interests of Vietnam.

Keywords: business curriculum, business graduates, employers’ perception, soft skills

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Authors: Taksina Bunbut

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Personality and grooming are vital for creating professionalism and safety image for all staffs in the airline industry. Airline Business Program also has an aim to educate students through the subject Personality Development and Grooming in order to elevate the quality of students to meet standard requirements of the airline industry. However, students agree that there are many difficulties that cause unsuccessful learning experience in this subject. The research is to study problems that can afflict students from getting good results in the classroom. Furthermore, exploring possible solutions to overcome challenges are also included in this study. The research sample consists of 140 students who attended the class of Personality Development and Grooming. The employed research instrument is a questionnaire. Statistic for data analysis is t-test and Multiple Regression Analysis. The result found that although students are satisfied with teaching and learning of this subject, they considered that teaching in English and teaching topics in social etiquette in different cultures are difficult for them to understand.

Keywords: personality development, grooming, Airline Business Program, soft skill

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Authors: Meinrad Haule Lembuka

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Social work profession one of its primary mission is to restore and maintain human rights where social workers recognise all humanity as equal, and so too the philosophies that have developed across the world’s regions. Ubuntu means African Humanism, where realization of human rights has been a primary role for every member of community to protect other member. Before Universal declaration of human rights, African societies had a long history of embracing human rights through Ubuntu approach model. The article used Ubuntu theory to guide the review process of existing literature since Ubuntu theory since is grounded in African cultural values and ecology, and it was thought that application of Ubuntu theory was relevant to reflect reality of Ubuntu model and indigenization of social work in African context. Results have shown that in realization of human rights, Ubuntu was practiced is termed as model, philosophy, cultural values, way of life or framework originated in sub-sahara Africa and some of remarkably practice model in several African communities such as Angola, (gimuntu), Botswana (muthu), Burkina Faso (maaya), Ghana (biako ye), Malawi (umunthu), Mali (maaya/hadama de ya), Namibia (omundu), Nigeria (mutunchi/iwa/agwa), (bantu), Sierra Leonne (maaya), South Africa (ubuntu/botho) and Tanzania (utu/obuntu/bumuntu). Collective and holistic mechanism of Ubuntu is found through an Ubuntu framework that is contributed by individual, family, community and spirit that is characterised by interconnectedness of all things and beings. Each society has its own name but the practice remained the same and realization of human rights in Africa context was centred through human dignity, Ubuntu is built under cultural values of humanism that brings implications for African social worker to integrate this indigenous model into social work practice in restoring and maintain human rights. Social workers should promote policies and practices that demonstrate respect for human life, difference, support and expansion of cultural knowledge and resources, advocate for programmes and institutions that demonstrate cultural competence and promote policies that safeguard the rights and confirm equity and social justice for all people.

Keywords: African ubuntu, indigenous practice, African humanism, African human rights, social work and human rights

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Authors: Julio Sotomayor, Daniel Yucra, Jorge Mayhuasca

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The article presents an evaluation of free technologies for business process automation, with emphasis only on tools compatible with the general public license (GPL). The compendium of technologies was based on promoting a service-oriented enterprise architecture (SOA) and the establishment of a business process management system (BPMS). The methodology for the selection of tools was Agile UP. This proposal allows businesses to achieve technological sovereignty and independence, in addition to the promotion of service orientation and the development of free software based on components.

Keywords: BPM, BPMS suite, open-source software, SOA, enterprise architecture, business process management

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Authors: Joel Vilca Tarazona, Igor Aguilar-Alonso

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The problem of this research related to business intelligence is the lack of a tool that supports automated and efficient financial analysis for decision-making and allows an evaluation of the financial statements, which is why the availability of the information is difficult. Relevant information to managers and users as an instrument in decision making financial, and administrative. For them, a business intelligence solution is proposed that will reduce information access time, personnel costs, and process automation, proposing a 4-layer architecture based on what was reviewed by the research methodology.

Keywords: decision making, business intelligence, Google Cloud, Microsoft Power BI

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Authors: Sarah Mueller-Saegebrecht, André Brendler

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Business model innovation (BMI) as an intentional change of an existing business model (BM) or the design of a new BM is essential to a firm's development in dynamic markets. The relevance of BMI is also evident in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, in which start-ups, in particular, are affected by limited access to resources. However, first studies also show that they react faster to the pandemic than established firms. A strategy to successfully handle such threatening dynamic changes represents BMI. Entrepreneurship literature shows how and when firms should utilize BMI in times of crisis and which barriers one can expect during the BMI process. Nevertheless, research merging BMI barriers and crises is still underexplored. Specifically, further knowledge about antecedents and the effect of moderators on the BMI process is necessary for advancing BMI research. The addressed research gap of this study is two-folded: First, foundations to the subject on how different crises impact BM change intention exist, yet their analysis lacks the inclusion of barriers. Especially, entrepreneurship literature lacks knowledge about the individual perception of BMI barriers, which is essential to predict managerial reactions. Moreover, internal BMI barriers have been the focal point of current research, while external BMI barriers remain virtually understudied. Second, to date, BMI research is based on qualitative methodologies. Thus, a lack of quantitative work can specify and confirm these qualitative findings. By focusing on the crisis context, this study contributes to BMI literature by offering a first quantitative attempt to embed BMI barriers into a structural equation model. It measures managers' perception of BMI development and implementation barriers in the BMI process, asking the following research question: How does a manager's perception of BMI barriers influence BMI development and implementation in times of crisis? Two distinct research streams in economic literature explain how individuals react when perceiving a threat. "Prospect Theory" claims that managers demonstrate risk-seeking tendencies when facing a potential loss, and opposing "Threat-Rigidity Theory" suggests that managers demonstrate risk-averse behavior when facing a potential loss. This study quantitively tests which theory can best predict managers' BM reaction to a perceived crisis. Out of three in-depth interviews in the German chemical industry, 60 past BMIs were identified. The participating start-up managers gave insights into their start-up's strategic and operational functioning. After, each interviewee described crises that had already affected their BM. The participants explained how they conducted BMI to overcome these crises, which development and implementation barriers they faced, and how severe they perceived them, assessed on a 5-point Likert scale. In contrast to current research, results reveal that a higher perceived threat level of a crisis harms BM experimentation. Managers seem to conduct less BMI in times of crisis, whereby BMI development barriers dampen this relation. The structural equation model unveils a mediating role of BMI implementation barriers on the link between the intention to change a BM and the concrete BMI implementation. In conclusion, this study confirms the threat-rigidity theory.

Keywords: barrier perception, business model innovation, business model innovation barriers, crises, prospect theory, start-ups, structural equation model, threat-rigidity theory

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Authors: Binish Ahmed

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is regarded as voluntary behaviors that contribute to the social welfare based on the concept of sustainable development. The corporations should not only stress on their economic and business outcomes but also pay attention to their effect on the society and environment. It could attract investors and customers, as well as maintain a positive interaction with the government. In spite of the broad diffusion, and its potential significance to employees' perspective, CSR is now examined and has built-in Organizational Behavior (OB), and Human Resource Management (HRM) look into the broad structure of relationship between employees' perspective, work attitudes and behavior to improve the research on CSR. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of employees’ perception of CSR on work attitudes and behaviors of employees. A conceptual framework is proposed, based on the literature and practices. The research would conduct the primary data survey of convenient sampling from the employees and managers-using detailed questionnaire- to address the following questions. The survey of 180 respondents of age greater than 20 having at least six-month experience from companies based in Karachi are source of data. The application of professional empirical models for data analysis and interpretation are source to draw the conclusion. 1. What are the dynamics of CSR in an organization? Why is it important to have a CSR department? What sort of business approach are CSR activities practiced? Do CSR activities improve the quality of life of workplace? And, how it linked with welfare of society? 2. How the positive job attitude and behavior does encourage the employees about the perception of CSR? How is it linked with the job satisfaction? What is the relationship between employees’ perception of CSR and job satisfaction?

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work behaviors

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Authors: Abhimanyu Pati, Prabir K. Bandyopadhyay

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The paper intends to highlight the significance of Digital Manufacturing (DM) strategy in support and achievement of business strategy and goals of any manufacturing organization. Towards this end, DM initiatives have been given a process perspective, while not undermining its technological significance, with a view to link its benefits directly with fulfilment of customer needs and expectations in a responsive and cost-effective manner. A digital process model has been proposed to categorize digitally enabled organizational processes with a view to create synergistic groups, which adopt and use digital tools having similar characteristics and functionalities. This will throw future opportunities for researchers and developers to create a unified technology environment for integration and orchestration of processes. Secondly, an effort has been made to apply “what” and “how” features of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) framework to establish the relationship between customers’ needs – both for external and internal customers, and the features of various digital processes, which support for the achievement of these customer expectations. The paper finally concludes that in the present highly competitive environment, business organizations cannot thrive to sustain unless they understand the significance of digital strategy and integrate it with their business strategy with a clearly defined implementation roadmap. A process-oriented approach to DM strategy will help business executives and leaders to appreciate its value propositions and its direct link to organization’s competitiveness.

Keywords: knowledge management, cloud computing, knowledge management approaches, cloud-based knowledge management

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Authors: Yuan Long, Fabrizio Ceschin, David Harrison

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Environmental sustainability is under the threat of excessive single-use plastic packaging waste, and current waste management fails to address this issue. Therefore, it has led to a reidentification of the alternative, which can curb the packaging waste without reducing social needs. Reusable packaging represents a circular approach to close the loop of consumption in which packaging can stay longer in the system to satisfy social needs. However, the implementation of reusable packaging is fragmented and lacks systematic approaches. The product-service system (PSS) is widely regarded as a sustainable business model innovation for embracing circular consumption. As a result, applying PSS to reusable packaging solutions will be promising to address the packaging waste issue. This paper aims at filling the knowledge gap relating to apply PSS to reusable packaging solutions and provide a strategic design tool that could support packaging professionals to design reusable packaging solutions. The methodology of this paper is case studies and workshops to provide a design tool. The respondents are packaging professionals who are packaging consultants, NGO professionals, and entrepreneurs. 57 cases collected show that 15 archetypal models operate in the market. Subsequently, a polarity diagram is developed to embrace those 15 archetypal models, and a total number of 24 experts were invited for the workshop to evaluate the design tool. This research finally provides a strategic design tool to support packaging professionals to design reusable packaging solutions. The application of the tool is to support the understanding of the reusable packaging solutions, analyzing the markets, identifying new opportunities, and generate new business models. The implication of this research is to provide insights for academics and businesses in terms of tackling single-use packaging waste and build a foundation for further development of the reusable packaging solution tool.

Keywords: environmental sustainability, product-service system, reusable packaging, design tool

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Authors: Irina Canco, Amela Malaj

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It is evident that there exists a relationship between supply chain management and business performance. Surveys have showed that in many cases the manager's beliefs and expectations on supply chain management do not match the reality of the business. In this context, the study of supply chain issues is of particular importance and interest considering specifically the current period. The economic problems of this period, are present in Albania as well. The complexity of the supply chain focuses on order fulfilment. Therefore, in this paper, attention will be paid to the impact of supply chain management on business performance. The objective of the paper is to find a relationship between the good supply chain management and business performance. This research is based on the results of surveys referring to the experience of successful businesses on issues related to sustainable supply chain management and its synchronization with the provision of products and services required by the final customers. This study clearly evidenced the impact of the speed of meeting customer requirements on AMAZONA performance. This was also confirmed mathematically through one of the decision criteria in conditions of uncertainty—Laplace criterion.

Keywords: supply chain management, AMAZONA, business performance, Laplace criteria

Procedia PDF Downloads 153

Authors: Lorena Blasco-Arcas, Francesca Pucciarelli

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Business contexts have become globalised and digitalised, which requires that managers develop a strong sense of cross-cultural intelligence while working in geographically distant teams by means of digital technologies. How to better equip future managers on these kinds of skills has been put forward as a critical issue in Business Schools. In pursuing these goals, higher education is shifting from a passive lecture approach, to more active and experiential learning approaches that are more suitable to learn skills. For example, through the use of case studies, proposing plausible business problem to be solved by students (or teams of students), these institutions have focused for long in fostering learning by doing. Though, case studies are no longer enough as a tool to promote active teamwork and experiential learning. Moreover, digital advancements applied to educational settings have enabled augmented classrooms, expanding the learning experience beyond the class, which increase students’ engagement and experiential learning. Different authors have highlighted the benefits of digital engagement in order to achieve a deeper and longer-lasting learning and comprehension of core marketing concepts. Clickers, computer-based simulations and business games have become fairly popular between instructors, but still are limited by the fact that are fictional experiences. Further exploration of real digital platforms to implement real, live projects in the classroom seem relevant for marketing and business education. Building on this, this paper describes the development of an experiential learning activity in class, in which students developed a communication campaign in teams using the BuzzFeed platform, and subsequently implementing the campaign by using other social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter…). The article details the procedure of using the project for a marketing module in a Bachelor program with students located in France, Italy and Spain campuses working on multi-campus groups. Further, this paper describes the project outcomes in terms of students’ engagement and analytics (i.e. visits achieved). the project included a survey in order to analyze and identify main aspects related to how the learning experience is influenced by the cultural competence developed through working in geographically distant and culturally diverse teamwork. Finally, some recommendations to use project-based social media tools while working with virtual teamwork in the classroom are provided.

Keywords: cultural competences, experiential learning, social media, teamwork, virtual group work

Procedia PDF Downloads 160

Authors: Bahia Braktia, S. Anna Marcela Montenegro, Imene Abdessemed

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Adult education is still considered a crucial area of education. In a developing framework, it is regarded as a practical approach for social inclusion and poverty reduction. They are also perceived as a way to serve adults who did not have the chance to education in their early ages by providing them knowledge, skills and values. Non-formal adult education and trainings are critical means in a society to break poverty and unemployment, and to decrease the social inequality. This paper investigates the perception of women trainees about a series of workshops in natural beauty products, held in Algeria and Costa Rica and organized by a non-profit educational organization, to improve their socio-economic status. This research seeks to explore ways of empowering women by assessing their needs and providing them with skills to start their own business. A questionnaire is administered before the workshops and focus groups are held at the end. A qualitative research method is employed to analyze the data. Preliminary results show that the trainees aspire to create their businesses with the objectives of poverty reduction and social inclusion. The findings also reveal the need for small business funding programs and entrepreneurial training programs.

Keywords: adult education, non-formal education, socio-economic status, women empowerment

Procedia PDF Downloads 191

Authors: Filip Majetić, Dražen Šimleša, Jelena Puđak, Anita Bušljeta Tonković, Svitlana Pinchuk

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This paper focuses on the self-sustainability aspect of social entrepreneurship (SE). We define SE as a form of entrepreneurship that is social/ecological mission oriented. It means SE organizations start and run businesses and use them to accomplish their social/ecological missions i.e. to solve social/ecological problems or fulfill social/ecological needs. Self-sustainability is defined as the capability of an SE organization to operate by relying on the money earned through trading its products in the free market. For various reasons, the achievement of self-sustainability represents a fundamental (business) challenge for many SE organizations. Those that are not able to operate using the money made through commercial activities, in order to remain active, rely on alternative, non-commercial streams of income such as grants, donations, and public subsidies. Starting from this widespread (business) challenge, we are interested in exploring elements that (could) influence the self-sustainability in SE organizations. Therefore, the research goal is to empirically investigate some of the self-sustainability factors of two notable SE organizations from different socio-economic contexts. A qualitative research, using the multiple case study approach, was conducted. ACT Group Čakovec (ACT) from Croatia was selected for the first case because it represents one of the leading and most self-sustainable SE organization in the region (in 2015 55% of the organization’s budget came from commercial activities); Friskis&Svettis Stockholm (F&S) from Sweden was selected for the second case because it is a rare example of completely self-sustainable SE organization in Europe (100% of the organization’s budget comes from commercial activities). The data collection primarily consists of conducting in-depth interviews. Additionally, the content of some of the organizations' official materials are analyzed (e.g. business reports, marketing materials). The interviewees are selected purposively and include: six highly ranked F&S members who represent five different levels in the hierarchy of their organization; five highly ranked ACT members who represent three different levels in the hierarchy of the organization. All of the interviews contain five themes: a) social values of the organization, b) organization of work, c) non-commercial income sources, d) marketing/collaborations, and e) familiarity with the industry characteristics and trends. The gathered data is thematically analyzed through the coding process for which Atlas.ti software for qualitative data analysis is used. For the purpose of creating thematic categories (codes), the open coding is used. The research results intend to provide new theoretical insights on factors of SE self-sustainability and, preferably, encourage practical improvements in the field.

Keywords: Friskis&Svettis, self-sustainability factors, social entrepreneurship, Stockholm

Procedia PDF Downloads 198

Authors: M. Novak, J. Dufourmount, D. Wildi, A. Sutherland, L. Sosa, J. Zimmer, E. Szabo

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The circular economy has grounded itself amongst scholars and practitioners operating across governments and enterprises. The aim of this paper is to augment the circular economy concept by identifying common core and enabling circular business models. To this aim, we have analysed over 150 papers regarding circular activities and identified 8 clusters of business models and enablers. We have mapped and harmonised the most prominent frameworks conceptualising the circular economy. Our findings indicate that circular economy core business models include regenerative in addition to reduce, reuse and recycle activities. We further find enabling activities in design, digital technologies, knowledge development and sharing, multistakeholder collaborations, and extended corporate responsibility initiatives in various forms. We critically contrast the application of these business models across the European and African contexts. Overall, we find that seemingly varied circular economy definitions distill the same conceptual business models. We hope to contribute towards the coherence of the circular economy concept, and the continuous development of practical guidance to select and implement circular strategies.

Keywords: Circular economy, content analysis, business models, definitions, enablers, frameworks

Procedia PDF Downloads 196

Authors: Suglo Tohari Luri

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Data analysis is an important aspect of business performance. With the application of artificial intelligence within databases, selecting a suitable database engine for an application design is also very crucial for business data analysis. The application of business intelligence (BI) software into some relational databases such as Neo4j has proved highly effective in terms of customer data analysis. Yet what remains of great concern is the fact that not all business organizations have the neo4j business intelligence software applications to implement for customer data analysis. Further, those with the BI software lack personnel with the requisite expertise to use it effectively with the neo4j database. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how the Neo4j program code alone can be applied for the analysis of e-commerce website customer visits. As the neo4j database engine is optimized for handling and managing data relationships with the capability of building high performance and scalable systems to handle connected data nodes, it will ensure that business owners who advertise their products at websites using neo4j as a database are able to determine the number of visitors so as to know which products are visited at routine intervals for the necessary decision making. It will also help in knowing the best customer segments in relation to specific goods so as to place more emphasis on their advertisement on the said websites.

Keywords: data, engine, intelligence, customer, neo4j, database

Procedia PDF Downloads 181

Authors: Ali Muhammad

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The purpose of this study is to develop and test a theoretical framework which demonstrates the effect of procedural justice on four work outcomes: effective organizational commitmentو organizational trust, organizational citizenship behaviour, and adherence to rules. The new model attempts to explain how procedural justice effects work outcomes. Data were collected from 267 employees working in nine Kuwaiti business organizations. Structural equation modelling was used to analysis the data. A discussion of issues related to procedural justice is presented, as well as recommendations for future research.

Keywords: procedural justice, affective organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour, organizational trust, adherence to rules

Procedia PDF Downloads 277