Exploring Zero-Shot SLM Ensembles as an Alternative to LLMs for Sentiment Analysis

International audienceSentiment analysis has become vital for understanding consumer attitudes, guiding product development, and informing strategic decisions. Although LLMs such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 deliver strong zero-shot performance, they can be cost prohibitive and raise privacy concerns. In contrast, Small Language Models (SLMs) provide a lighter and more deployable solution, but their ability to match LLM accuracy, especially in zero-shot scenarios, remains underexplored. In this experimental study , we examine whether ensembles of zero-shot SLMs can serve as a viable alternative to proprietary LLMs in sentiment classification tasks. We investigate five commonly used SLMs (Phi2 Mini, Mistral, Llama, Gemma, Aya) and compare them to GPT-based models (GPT-3.5, GPT-4, GPT-4 omni, GPT-4 omni mini) across seven English-language datasets. By automating prompt generation and filtering responses based on a strict output format, we maintain a purely zero-shot approach. We form SLM ensembles via majority voting and evaluate their performance on accuracy, weighted precision, and weighted F1. We also measure inference time to assess cost and scalability trade-offs. Results show that SLM ensembles as a form of decision fusion, consistently outperform single SLMs, significantly boosting metrics in zero-shot settings. In contrast with GPT models, the ensemble achieves accuracy comparable to GPT-3.5 and even rivals GPT-4 on certain prompts. However, GPT-4 retains a slight edge in both precision and F1 score. Moreover, local SLM ensembles incur higher latency yet offer potential advantages in data privacy and operational control. This experimental study’s findings illuminate the feasibility of employing lightweight, zero-shot SLM ensembles for sentiment analysis, providing organizations with an effective and more flexible alternative to exclusively relying on large proprietary models

Invasive rapid innovation: An introduction and exploration of their acceptance

International audienceWe introduce the concept of invasive rapid innovations, technologies characterized by both their novelty and the speed of their development, which significantly affect daily routines, personal privacy, or bodily autonomy. The introduction of such innovations is typically accompanied by limited knowledge and heightened uncertainty. Consequently, individuals’ assessments of the benefits, costs, and risks associated with adopting these innovations are often shaped by broader factors, including their trust in government, perceptions of the severity of the threat the innovations are designed to address, and their aversion to ambiguity. To capture these dynamics, we propose an integrative framework that examines these relationships and highlights the social environment asa key factor that can strongly override the influence of such determinants. We validate our framework through an empirical study (n = 916) focusing on vaccine uptake and the adoption of contact-tracing apps. Our findings suggest that policymakers, who often struggle to effectively communicate the benefits and costs of innovations, should leverage the power of social influence to enhance acceptance. For example, an individual’s mistrust in government becomes less consequential when they perceive that their social environment favors the innovation

Understanding success factors of Class B enterprises in Chile: a pioneering study on socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneurship

International audienceInnovative entrepreneurship drives economic and societal progress by introducing novel products, services, and business models. Class B enterprises stand out for harmonising profitability with exceptional social and environmental performance, yet their success factors remain underexplored. This study examines the success factors of Class B enterprises in Chile across five strategic dimensions. Using a descriptive and empirical approach, in-depth surveys were conducted with 34 of the 74 registered Class B companies in Chile. Statistical analysis revealed critical success factors shaping their performance, including the entrepreneurial ecosystem, access to clients, education quality, and support networks. Notably, 81% of entrepreneurs highlighted the ecosystem as pivotal. These findings provide valuable insights into the operational dynamics of Class B enterprises, underscoring the importance of external influences. This pioneering study enriches the literature by offering a comprehensive analysis of success factors in socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneurship in Chile and Latin America

How practitioners can leverage GenAI to bridge the research-practice gap

International audienceDespite the practical relevance of many tourism research studies, organizations and policymakers often struggle to integrate them due to time constraints, language barriers, limited resources, and interaction challenges. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) offers new capabilities to overcome these barriers. We propose a GenAI-enabled knowledge translation process with three stages: (i) research curation to identify and translate relevant literature; (ii) content creation to produce materials; and (iii) market research using synthetic guests to pre-test their effectiveness. We examine the capabilities, limitations, and ethical implications of GenAI at each stage, drawing on a systematic review of GenAI and tourism literature. To equip managers with the knowledge and tools needed to harness research-based insights effectively, we offer a toolkit comprising a handbook, a promptbook, and tailored GPT models. The toolkit enables tourism and hospitality practitioners to apply research findings in their decision-making and content strategies without direct stakeholder interaction

Breathe and let breathe: Breathing as a political model of organizing

International audienceTake a deep breath. Although nothing is more natural or essential to human bodies than breathing, this simple yet vital act is the critical result of complex organizational, material, and political processes. We suggest that breathing can be thought of as a political model of organizing insofar as it shapes questions of life and death while rooting these ‘operationally’ in immediate, urgent, collective and more-than-human intra-action. Breathing is also a social act because the self is bound up with others in a fabric of relations upon which each person depends, and so breathing can serve as a trope for regenerating and rethinking social structures, institutions and organizing blueprints. We take the act of breathing – its literal and metaphorical (im)possibility and collective organization – as the focus of a reflection on relations among humans and between other living beings, humans, and their ecological surroundings. Re-thinking the question of whose breathing we care about and whose breathing counts, we offer a political model that embraces the mutuality principle for post-humanistic and post-anthropocentric organizing and community building. We thereby hope to ‘inspire’ and materialize new social and political realities for organizing our shared future, conceptualized as building a (scholarly) community of breathers who breathe and let breathe

Cleaning the carbon market! Market transparency and market efficiency in the EU ETS

International audienceThis paper revisits the informational efficiency of the EU ETS at a micro level, by introducing a novel time variant structural decomposition of variance. The new modelling introduces GARCH-like effects into a structural price modelling. With this, all variance components, including public information and price discreteness, can be estimated, for the first time, in a continuously updated setup that is free of sampling bias. The empirical findings report that although all variance components decrease in magnitude, this is primarily due to higher overall market liquidity that results in less price discovery per trade. On a proportional basis, though, the EU ETS appears to be increasingly inefficient prior to the introduction of MiFID II rules, with the situation reversing after their implementation. This is evidence that transparency is vital in rendering emission allowances a policy rather than a speculative instrument

The virtual store: a new shopping channel that generates value and well-being for Gen Z customers

International audienceThe increasing adoption of virtual reality in the retail sector has spurred academics and professionals alike to understand shopping experiences in virtual stores. Unlike existing studies that used this technology only as a research tool, this research considers the virtual store as a full-fledged shopping channel with multichannel or omnichannel logic. An experiment involving 193 respondents showed that the virtual store generates value and well-being for Gen Z customers, where value is positively or negatively determined by ease of use, empowerment, cognitive effort and a lack of privacy. The influence of these antecedents on the perceived value is more or less important, depending on the shopper’s presence in the virtual store (through an avatar with full body versus hands only). Although the full-body avatar (n=96) provides ease of use (when moving around the virtual store and selecting products), it diminishes the experience because it is perceived as less privacy compliant. In contrast, an avatar with hands only (n=97) increases the empowerment felt during the shopping experience, even if it demands more cognitive effort to apprehend the virtual store’s operations

Disabled individuals facing and reacting against identity threat during school-to-work transition

International audiencePurposeIn a context in which disabled people are stigmatized, the school-to-work transition threatens the occupational identity to which disabled individuals aspire. This study highlights how students with a disability face and react against identity threat, using identity management strategies and, specifically, identity threat responses when intending to integrate into the workplace.Design/methodology/approachStudents in transition or having recently integrated into the workplace were interviewed to relate their transitioning experience, resulting in a qualitative study based on 31 semi-structured interviews.FindingsThe study reveals that identity threat is experienced during the school-to-work transition process and that disabled individuals do not remain passive but actively fight against it. The participants used four identity management strategies to attempt to counteract such threats. The strategies displayed include identity threat mechanisms such as identity-protection and identity-restructuring responses. The outcomes of these strategies are presented in terms of their positive and backlash effects.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the identity management literature and, more specifically, to the identity threat literature by showing how disabled individuals combine several identity threat responses, which they use as resources to reduce potential harm. New identity threat responses that are particularly crucial in a career management strategy are also highlighted.</p

International evidence on household affordability of deep decarbonization

International audienceWe document international evidence on household affordability of deep decarbonization by applying a simple formula for an affordability index to publicly available market data. We conclude that economy-wide deep decarbonization policies are affordable for average households of the International Energy Agency’s member regions and therefore politically feasible for these regions

Portfolio optimisation under prospect theory with an empirical test

International audienceBarberis et al. (2016. “Prospect Theory and Stock Returns: An Empirical Test.” The Review of Financial Studies 29:3068–3107. https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhw049.) show that a stock whose past return distribution has a high (low) prospect theory value (TK) earns a low (high) subsequent return on average. In this paper, we investigate whether portfolio optimisation techniques can make high-TK stocks (both long and short positions) more appealing to investors. Following the literature, we remove the probability distortion part of prospect theory to find a closed-form solution under the well-justified assumptions of a piecewise exponential value function and normally distributed returns for multiple risky assets in a single-period setting. We show that the optimal portfolio is proportional to the well-known Markowitz mean–variance portfolio. Our numerical results demonstrate that our portfolio optimisation approach yields higher subsequent gains for groups of stocks with high TK and lower gains for those with low TK in the US market. TK at the portfolio level is an important driver of portfolio returns under our optimisation approach, even after controlling for well-established stock return predictors, and it negatively affects portfolio returns