R&D and Innovation Collaboration between Universities and Business—A PLS-SEM Model for the Spanish Province of Huelva

In the last decade we have witnessed a growing amount of interest for developing better ‘exchange’ between universities, research centres and technology parks and companies, governments and other institutions. The biggest aim of those projects is, on the one hand, to make sure that valuable research does not stay hidden in the ivory tower of academia, and, on the other, that there are clear indications for what kinds of solutions are needed in the market. Due to the lack of empirical research in the topic, the focus of this paper is to establish and explain which factors determine the demand for technological services and how they can contribute to the promotion of greater university–business collaboration in R&D and innovation. To achieve that goal, we applied the PLS-SEM (Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling) method in order to create a theoretical model, which was then verified through the application of the CTA (Confirmatory Tetrad Analysis) with the purpose of evaluating whether the specification of the chosen measurement model based on the theoretical rationale was supported by data. The test run was performed on 96 companies from the Spanish region of Huelva. It showed that only four of the considered factors, namely influence of the environment, market conditions, technology adoption decision and economic characteristics of the company, constituted 65.76% of the variance of the endogenous latent Demand for Technological Services. We believe that thanks to the proposed model and its adaptivity, it is possible to design relevant policies and undertakings aimed at promoting the research-business collaboration at the regional, national and international level

THE IMPACT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES

The thesis is about knowledge management in education: how to create quality knowledge through the e-learning environment which is positively related to students’ perceptions of their learning outcomes; and secondly, how to develop communities of practice to ensure effective transfer of tacit knowledge to improve student learning. An effective knowledge management system must address both the creation and transfer of explicit as well as tacit knowledge. This research set forth that tacit knowledge must be converted into high quality explicit knowledge through the e-learning environment. The success in converting educator’s tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge to be internalised by the learner as tacit knowledge is very much depended on information quality as the medium for the conversion process. Thus, in this thesis, information quality is an essential concept to examine in the conversion process. This is to ensure that learners are able to derive quality tacit knowledge from this information. Information quality is always relative and depends on the individual or group of students who are evaluating it. Thus, any standardising of information quality has to match to a considerable large group of students’ cognitive structures. This research provides an empirical investigation of the relationship between information quality and student learning outcomes. Data for this study were collected by means of questionnaires through the survey manager in the Blackboard Learning System and were evaluated through a combination of multiple regression analysis. Data analysis revealed evidence that the relationship between the quality of information and student learning outcomes is systematically measurable, in that measurements of information quality can be used to predict student learning outcomes, and that this relationship is, for the most part, positive. Furthermore, this research set forth the conceptual review of developing communities of practice (CoPs) to transfer sustained tacit knowledge effectively to improve student learning

Using Classroom Observations to Describe and Model the Impact of Positive and Negative Teaching Behaviors on Classroom Disruptive Behavior

Positive, proactive classroom management strategies support academic and behavioral student outcomes while fostering positive teacher-student relationships. However, teachers often cite struggles with classroom management and challenging student behavior as key reasons they ultimately leave the field. Additionally, pre-service teachers often fail to receive substantive training in effective classroom management. Experiments within the present study sought to better understand the foundational role of teachers’ positive and negative verbal interactions with students. Experiment 1 utilized descriptive and inferential statistics to better understand the current rate of teachers’ positive and negative verbal interactions regarding student behavior, as well as the influence of specific teacher behaviors on classroom disruptive behavior. Experiment 2 evaluated the effectiveness of a low-intensity treatment package (training, performance feedback, and reflective goal-setting) to adjust teachers’ verbal interactions with students. Results from Experiment 1 show teachers used nearly five times as many negative interactions as positive, with significant differences across teachers and specific behaviors. Teachers’ negative statements were also two times longer than their positives, on average. Teachers appeared to rely on unique negative ‘crutches’ – individual collections of specific negative behaviors. Both criticisms and attention to junk statements significantly influenced the rate of classroom disruptive behaviors. Experiment 2 findings indicate the treatment package helped one participant make significant changes over baseline (increased positive interactions and reduced negative interactions). Results from this study support the need for additional large-scale descriptive studies of teacher interactions and coercives, as well as an exploration of the wide variability of teachers’ positive and negative interaction rates across available research

Has IFRS raised the standard of accounting? : value relevance of financial statements for stock prices in light of IFRS changes

This thesis measures the value relevance of the financial statement through analyzing the explanatory power and coefficients of earnings per share and book value of equity per share on next quarter’s stock price. The analysis is done for the time period of 2005-2019Q2 in Europe to assess the effect of new IFRS Standards using quarterly data and a large sample size covering over 90 percent of free-float market capitalization in Europe. The contribution should be seen as an overall assessment of IFRS policymakers and whether they succeed in making financial statements more relevant, which is one of the two desired characteristics highlighted in the IFRS Conceptual Framework. Researchers carry a big responsibility as a watchdog to understand and assess actions taken by actors who influence capital market effectiveness, and this thesis tries to do just that with IFRS. Hypothesis on the value relevance effect of new IFRS Standards is created for each defined period. A synthesis of the different hypotheses is that many of the issued Standards are not superior to the IAS Standards which they supersede, and often create noise. Hypotheses are tested empirically with linear regression on the Ohlson-model from Ohlson (1995) and a decomposition model used in Collins et al. (1997). Lastly, additional testing on cash flows versus accruals utilizing the approach of Sloan et al. (2018) shows findings that indicate a steady persistence of accruals anomaly. In the analysis, a significant fall in value relevance in the tested period of around 0.7 percentage points per year is observed. However, compared to previous research, we find higher overall value relevance and informational overlap between the income statement and balance sheet. These findings are robust to changes in both time intervals and model specifications. The implication from our findings is that IFRS Standards should be placed under stronger scrutiny before their EU endorsement and that further research should focus on the underlying mechanisms that lead to the fall in value relevance. Keywords – Value relevance, IFRSnhhma

A thermal comfort model for high-altitude regions in the Ecuadorian Andes

Of Ecuador's 3.75 million households, 33% live in poor-quality and substandard dwellings. Construction standards provide metrics and criteria for energy and comfort performance evaluation; that plays a significant role in designing adequate and affordable dwellings. Due to a lack of supporting evidence, the thermal comfort criteria have been adopted from international standards, such as ASHRAE 90.2:2018. In the absence of accurate contextualised comfort models, building standards can trigger a combination of wasting energy and exacerbating discomfort. Furthermore, householders' environmental perception may be affected by particular weather and geographical conditions. Therefore, this research aims to define thermal comfort criteria, aligned with residents' perception in subtropical highlands, to be used for the thermal performance assessment in dwellings in the Ecuadorian Andes. The research combined cross-sectional thermal comfort surveys and thermal performance simulation. Data was collected in three locations between 2400 and 3000 meters above sea level. This thesis's main outcomes add knowledge on why and how people adapt to high-altitude locations. Thermal comfort temperatures are significantly different across the study locations due to altitude. Moreover, the comfort temperature differences also rely upon the broader limits of comfort acceptability for lower altitudes and acclimatised subjects. On the contrary, the range is narrower at higher altitudes and non-acclimatised residents. The derived high-altitude thermal comfort algorithm for the Ecuadorian Highlands resulted from the regression of the comfort temperature and the 24-hour mean outdoor air temperature. Over 80% of comfort hours were estimated for the study archetypes based on the high-altitude comfort model. International comfort models consistently overestimate the percentage of hours of discomfort for all the study archetypes. Moreover, the discomfort could increase up to 30% for dwellings in compliance with the thermal insulation requirement of the Ecuadorian construction standard (NEC11). The research outcomes are expected to contribute with grounded evidence to the development of local construction policy