Electronic marketplaces and their roles in the staffing industry : an explorative analysis

This thesis will explore and analyze the role of electronic marketplaces in the staffing industry from the viewpoint of hiring executives, human resources personnel, staffing organizations, and candidates. Using analyses of popular electronic job marketplaces, this paper will establish the efficiency and effectiveness of electronic marketplaces as compared to traditional staffing methods. It will also provide a detailed view of various electronic marketplaces, their financial structure and analysis of their performance. This information will also result in a return on investment estimate for the average hiring organization using electronic marketplaces

Poverty Alleviation through Sustainable Strategic Business Models: Essays on Poverty Alleviation as a Business Strategy

How can the private sector serve the unmet needs of the world’s poor while, at the same time, attracting new business opportunities and advancing the standard of living of those living in poverty? One approach to this, known as the base-of the-pyramid, is for the private sector to develop towards including the poor as both producers and consumers. In this thesis we focus on some critical questions in base-of-the-pyramid research. In cooperation with NGOs, development organizations and micro finance institutions, we collected a unique dataset of 143 firms operating in base-of-the-pyramid markets in a total of 105 countries. Their focal group of customers, employees, suppliers, and/or distributors have an average daily purchasing power of $2 or less. Building upon this dataset, we develop an empirically derived classification of business challenges for firms at the base-of-the-pyramid, and examine differences with high-income markets. We also extend and test the central postulate that embedding social and environmental value in a firm’s business model drives a firm’s financial performance at the base-of-the-pyramid. Lastly, we build a management support model, which can be used to develop profitable pro-poor business models. We provide managers and entrepreneurs with the questions to ask, the framework to help formulate answers to these questions, and the qualities to search for in the answers. To this end, we clarify and conceptually advance the strategic business model concept, which provides the multi-theoretical approach necessary for disruptive innovation and augments our understanding of competitive advantage

The Impact of InfoCenters on E-Marketplaces

Information marketplaces enable entities to buy and sell information; these buying and selling entities can be humans, or automated agents that represent them. In this paper, we introduce a new type of participant into electronic information marketplaces, namely the InfoCenter agent, which can not only buy and sell information, but can also procure and sell manipulated (i.e., processed) information. We explore the effects that InfoCenters have on the marketplace and on the other agents that participate in it. We show that the benefits of extending an information e-marketplace with InfoCenter agents are twofold. First, InfoCenters can help buyers obtain better information; second, InfoCenter agents can help sellers gain higher profits. Furthermore, we empirically test the influence of different pricing algorithms and payment methods on the buyers', sellers', and InfoCenters' behaviors