Sustainable and traditional product innovation without scale and experience, but only for KIBS!

This study analyzes the ideal strategic trajectory for sustainable and traditional product innovation. Using a sample of 74 Costa Rican high-performance businesses for 2016, we employ fuzzy set analysis (qualitative comparative analysis) to evaluate how the development of sustainable and traditional product innovation strategies is conditioned by the business’ learning capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation in knowledge-intensive (KIBS) and non-knowledge-intensive businesses. The results indicate two ideal strategic configurations of product innovation. The first strategic configuration to reach maximum product innovation requires the presence of KIBS firms that have both an entrepreneurial and learning orientation, while the second configuration is specific to non-KIBS firms with greater firm size and age along with entrepreneurial and learning orientation. KIBS firms are found to leverage the knowledge-based and customer orientations that characterize their business model in order to compensate for the shortage of important organizational characteristics—which we link to liabilities or smallness and newness—required to achieve optimal sustainable and traditional product innovation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

International Differences in the Size and Roles of Corporate Headquarters: An Empirical Examination

This paper examines differences in the size and roles of corporate headquarters around the world. Based on a survey of over 600 multibusiness corporations in seven countries (France, Germany, Holland, UK, Japan, US, and Chile) the paper describes the differences among countries, and then applies a model of the factors determining the size of corporate headquarters (Young, Collis, and Goold, 2003) to systematically examine those differences. The data shows that there are significant differences among countries in the size and role of corporate headquarters, and strongly suggests the existence of a developing country model, a European model, a US model, and a Japanese model of corporate headquarters. Contrary to popular expectations, corporate headquarters in the US are about twice the size of European counterparts. Headquarters there exert a higher level of functional influence and have larger staffs in certain key areas, such as IT and R&D. US managers are generally more satisfied than their European counterparts with their larger more powerful headquarters which suggests that, at least in the US context, large corporate headquarters can create value. Japanese headquarters, as might have been expected, are substantially larger than elsewhere – a factor of four times larger than in Europe. However, those headquarters are becoming smaller because of dissatisfaction with their performance. It is clear that having headquarters the size of the Japanese firms in the survey is not conducive to value creation. More specifically, the evidence cannot refute a hypothesis that the slope of the relationship between firm size and the size of corporate headquarters is the same across all countries, but that there are significant differences in the intercept for Chile, the US, Japan, and the European countries. What the data indicates is that at a firm employing 20,000, a European corporate headquarters would on average employ 124 individuals, a US headquarters would have 255 employees, and Japan 467 employees. The paper also examines differences between countries in the extent to which they perform the two key corporate tasks of control and coordination. The US and Chile chose to be somewhat more interventionist in the traditional tools and processes used to monitor and control business units – setting strategy, budgets, and administering capital budgets. However, there was a significant difference in the degree of influence in operational affairs between countries. The US and Japan exerted far more influence than the other countries over every activity from IT and purchasing, to marketing, R&D and HR issues. The US was also found to have significantly larger legal, tax, and treasury functions than the common European model, perhaps reflecting a more legalistic institutional structure. Japan also has significantly larger tax, treasury, and corporate management functions, but overall was not that much larger than the common European model. While the causes of these observed differences cannot be directly determined from the research, suggestions are made that the institutional infrastructure, the size and homogeneity of the domestic market, and cultural factors within countries are important underlying drivers.

Defuzzification of groups of fuzzy numbers using data envelopment analysis

Defuzzification is a critical process in the implementation of fuzzy systems that converts fuzzy numbers to crisp representations. Few researchers have focused on cases where the crisp outputs must satisfy a set of relationships dictated in the original crisp data. This phenomenon indicates that these crisp outputs are mathematically dependent on one another. Furthermore, these fuzzy numbers may exist as a group of fuzzy numbers. Therefore, the primary aim of this thesis is to develop a method to defuzzify groups of fuzzy numbers based on Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes (CCR)-Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model by modifying the Center of Gravity (COG) method as the objective function. The constraints represent the relationships and some additional restrictions on the allowable crisp outputs with their dependency property. This leads to the creation of crisp values with preserved relationships and/or properties as in the original crisp data. Comparing with Linear Programming (LP) based model, the proposed CCR-DEA model is more efficient, and also able to defuzzify non-linear fuzzy numbers with accurate solutions. Moreover, the crisp outputs obtained by the proposed method are the nearest points to the fuzzy numbers in case of crisp independent outputs, and best nearest points to the fuzzy numbers in case of dependent crisp outputs. As a conclusion, the proposed CCR-DEA defuzzification method can create either dependent crisp outputs with preserved relationship or independent crisp outputs without any relationship. Besides, the proposed method is a general method to defuzzify groups or individuals fuzzy numbers under the assumption of convexity with linear and non-linear membership functions or relationships

Sustainable And Traditional Product Innovation Without Scale And Experience, But Only For KIBS!

This study analyzes the ideal strategic trajectory for sustainable and traditional product innovation. Using a sample of 74 Costa Rican high-performance businesses for 2016, we employ fuzzy set analysis (qualitative comparative analysis) to evaluate how the development of sustainable and traditional product innovation strategies is conditioned by the business' learning capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation in knowledge-intensive (KIBS) and non-knowledge-intensive businesses. The results indicate two ideal strategic configurations of product innovation. The first strategic configuration to reach maximum product innovation requires the presence of KIBS firms that have both an entrepreneurial and learning orientation, while the second configuration is specific to non-KIBS firms with greater firm size and age along with entrepreneurial and learning orientation. KIBS firms are found to leverage the knowledge-based and customer orientations that characterize their business model in order to compensate for the shortage of important organizational characteristics-which we link to liabilities or smallness and newness-required to achieve optimal sustainable and traditional product innovation

競争環境における入札戦略並びに送電線混雑管理に関する研究

制度:新 ; 文部省報告番号:乙2143号 ; 学位の種類:博士(工学) ; 授与年月日:2008/1/18 ; 早大学位記番号:新468

Energy production mix in the EU: a machine learning and data mining analysis

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementClimate change is a threat to the earth’s ecosystem. This phenomenon is driven by natural as well as human forces. Anthropogenic contributions to climate change increased steadily since the pre-industrial era. This resulted in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reaching the highest point in the recent human history. As a consequence, the high concentration of GHG in the atmosphere contributes to rising ocean and surface temperatures, melting of ice covers, rising of average sea levels, the occurrence of extreme weather and climate events (IPCC, 2014). The main drivers of anthropogenic GHG emissions are “population size, economic activity, lifestyle, energy use, land use patterns, technology and climate policy” (IPCC, 2014, p. 8). Without any action on mitigating the emissions of GHG more extreme and irreversible events will impact the ecosystem and humanity (IPCC, 2014)

When intentions turn into action : pathways to successful firm performance

Entrepreneurship brings wealth to nations and contributes to their economic growth. People can take many paths to become entrepreneurs. Some join the family business, whilst others are born entrepreneurs, letting their innate intuition lead them into firm creation. For many, though, being able to learn and acquire the right skills is critical for a successful career as an entrepreneur. Like other human capital factors, entrepreneurial skills can be acquired. In today's fast-changing society, it is of utmost importance for entrepreneurs not only to gain these skills but also to be surrounded by a supportive environment that will (1) guide them in the creation of their business idea and (2) help them succeed and keep their business alive. Taking the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as an initial theoretical framework, this paper studies the pathways that lead newly established entrepreneurs to successful firm performance. In this paper, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is used to study a sample of 49 entrepreneurs who responded to an online survey. The results reveal different pathways leading to successful firm performance. This study fills a theoretical and empirical gap and makes a valuable contribution to the literature on entrepreneurial behaviour by exploring the combinations of factors that best explain entrepreneurs' success in achieving high firm performance. Examining the entrepreneurial process and the factors that guide entrepreneurs towards new firm success provides valuable insights that can hel

建設プロジェクトにおける契約変更に関する理論的研究

京都大学0048新制・課程博士博士(工学)甲第18572号工博第3933号新制||工||1604(附属図書館)31472京都大学大学院工学研究科都市社会工学専攻(主査)教授 小林 潔司, 教授 大津 宏康, 教授 河野 広隆学位規則第4条第1項該当Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering)Kyoto UniversityDFA