Platform Business Models – A Case Study of the Technology Industry

The opportunity to create a value exchange environment is uniquely offered by the platform businesses. A novel approach of co-creating value is writing the rules in the platform business world. This paper analyzes the platform business models within the technology industry based on a multiple case study. As the main driver of business performance in this environment is technology, companies are using it to develop new products or to provide technology as a service. Thus, the main objective is to debate on the actual business needs in terms of business model innovation and to investigate how platform business models are developed through strategic acquisitions to achieve competitive advantage. The cases analysis suggests that technology acquisitions made around the core business may contribute to business model innovation. In addition, new partnerships with the external environment may facilitate mutual value creation exchanges and the platform may evolve through adding extra features from its external partners. We contribute to the advancement of business model research by putting platform business model study into the competitive context of the technology industry, with findings on how platforms are used in the digital era to innovate the core business model. From a practitioner’s perspective, this study may help companies to understand the importance of investing in other technology companies and to identify the opportunities of business model innovation through strategic partnerships. The limitation of this study is that the main data used for the multiple case study was derived from secondary sources and it provided insights about each company’s platform business model from a macro perspective

The impact of telework on organisational performance, behaviour, and culture: evidence from business services industry based on employees’ perceptions

AbstractThe future of work is being redesigned by the world’s largest telework experiment as a consequence of the global pandemic. The research objective was to analyse and debate actual organisational needs in terms of telework and its implications for organisational performance, behaviour, and culture within the context of digital technology. This article challenges the results of previous research on factors related to telework and its outcomes, contributing to the literature through an advanced analysis of employees’ perceptions, for the Business Services industry. Quantitative research is conducted based on a questionnaire. The research hypotheses were tested through Kruskal–Wallis test, Spearman’s correlations, and linear regression, complemented by robustness tests. Findings indicate that the business professionals with pre-pandemic telework experience assigned a higher importance to all organisational dimensions, as compared with the employees having pandemic telework experience, only. The results also show significant relationships between telework and the organisational dimensions, with positive impact for factors contributing to achieving goals while teleworking. The results are mixed in the case of negative factors affecting telework, with a positive impact on organisational performance, and a negative impact on organisational behaviour. Significant changes were found when the digital technology dimension was considered

Aspects of Digitalization and Related Impact on Green Tourism in European Countries

The digital world requires the implementation of new technologies and customer-driven business transformation. As the tourism sector may experience unanticipated ways of developing new technologies due to the current global health crisis, the standard travel experience could be changed. The main aim of this study was to analyze the influence of digitalization and tourists’ preferences in terms of accommodation and economic well-being implying sustainability. This paper applied a regression analysis and principal component analysis to achieve the above objective. Research exposed the fact that tourists’ preferences towards green destinations and ecological accommodation establishments, as well as Internet use in travel planning, may have a significant influence on the sustainability of tourism. This study identified behavioral models of 30 European countries from the sustainable tourism and digitalization perspective and made recommendations on economic and social policy measures to ensure the sustainable nature of tourism activity

Knowing and Unknowing Purchases of Undeclared Healthcare Goods and Services: the Role of Vertical and Horizontal Trust

Although major advances have been made in relation to explaining the supply side of the informal economy, this is not the case for the demand-side of the informal economy. This study analyses for the first time the purchasers of undeclared goods and services in the healthcare sector. To evaluate the purchase of undeclared healthcare goods and services, logistic regression analysis and robustness tests are used on 3048 interviews in Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Malta. The finding is that an important share of the purchasers make this type of purchase unknowingly. However, no difference in terms of socio-economics characteristics of those who knowingly and those who unknowingly made purchases of undeclared healthcare goods and services was identified. Meanwhile a significant influence of trust (in government and in other citizens) has been identified in relation to those who made these purchases knowingly. As such, policy measures aimed at decreasing unknowing purchases and at nurturing trust are discussed in the concluding section