Advanced predictive-analysis-based decision support for collaborative logistics networks

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine challenges and potential of big data in heterogeneous business networks and relate these to an implemented logistics solution. Design/methodology/approach – The paper establishes an overview of challenges and opportunities of current significance in the area of big data, specifically in the context of transparency and processes in heterogeneous enterprise networks. Within this context, the paper presents how existing components and purpose-driven research were combined for a solution implemented in a nationwide network for less-than-truckload consignments. Findings – Aside from providing an extended overview of today’s big data situation, the findings have shown that technical means and methods available today can comprise a feasible process transparency solution in a large heterogeneous network where legacy practices, reporting lags and incomplete data exist, yet processes are sensitive to inadequate policy changes. Practical implications – The means introduced in the paper were found to be of utility value in improving process efficiency, transparency and planning in logistics networks. The particular system design choices in the presented solution allow an incremental introduction or evolution of resource handling practices, incorporating existing fragmentary, unstructured or tacit knowledge of experienced personnel into the theoretically founded overall concept. Originality/value – The paper extends previous high-level view on the potential of big data, and presents new applied research and development results in a logistics application.

A hálózati pozíció és a versenyképesség kapcsolata (Business networks: network position and competitiveness in Hungary)

A cikk fókuszában az üzleti hálózatok állnak. Az IMP-csoport (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group) üzleti kapcsolatokkal, üzleti hálózatokkal foglalkozó több évtizedes kutatási eredményeire és fogalomrendszerére építve a szerzők áttekintik a téma alapvető megközelítéseit, majd a Versenyképesség-kutatás 2009. évi felmérésének adatait Felhasználva, megvizsgálják a vállalatvezetők által észlelt hálózati pozíció és a versenyképesség összefüggéseit. A vállalatvezetők értékelése szerint elemzik az iparági hálózatukban központi szerepet játszó, befolyással bíró (domináns hálózati pozícióval rendelkező) vállalatokat, különös tekintettel az üzleti teljesítmény és a versenyképesség jellemzőire. / === / The paper analyses the business network position of Hungarian companies, based on data of the Competitiveness research program. After an overview of the theoretical background of business relationships, business networks and network position – based on the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group) approach, the authors analyse the performance and competitiveness characteristics of firms with central position in their industrial network.

Üzleti hálózatok – Hálózati pozíció és versenyképesség = Business networks: network position and competitiveness in Hungary

Tanulmányunk fókuszában az üzleti hálózatok állnak. Az IMP csoport (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group) üzleti kapcsolatokkal, üzleti hálózatokkal foglalkozó több évtizedes kutatási eredményeire és fogalomrendszerére alapozva áttekintjük a téma alapmegközelítéseit, majd a Versenyképesség-kutatás 2009. évei felmérése adatainak felhasználásával vizsgáljuk a hálózati kép és a versenyképesség összefüggéseit. Jellemezzük a vállaltvezetők értékelése szerint az iparági hálózatukban központi szerepet játszó, befolyással bíró (domináns hálózati pozícióval rendelkező) vállalatokat, különös tekintettel az üzleti teljesítmény és versenyképesség jellemzőire. ________ The paper analyses the business network position of Hungarian companies, based on data of the Competitiveness research program. After an overview of the theoretical background of business relationships, business networks and network position – based on the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group) approach, we analyse the performance and competitiveness characteristics of firms with central position in their industrial network.

Innovation Management in Central and Eastern Europe: Technology Perspectives and EU Policy Implications

The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically the role of innovation activity in Central and Eastern Europea (CEE). We also identified those internal and external factors, which might cause improvements in innovation performance of CEE companies. Our main focus was on technology-based innovations within the healthcare industry. We applied qualitative research methods. Our findings demonstrate that CEE companies within the healthcare industry have significant contribution to European Union’s innovation performance. We found that key success factors of these organizations are based on four elements: knowledge management, access to financial resources, managing formal and informal networks, as well as achieving synergies between technological and non-technological innovations.

Formalization of the informal venture capital market - Business angel networks and syndicates

Business angels are natural persons who provide equity financing for young enterprises and gain ownership in them. They are usually anonym investors and they operate in the background of the companies. Their important feature is that over the funding of the enterprises based on their business experiences they can contribute to the success of the companies with their special expertise and with strategic support. As a result of the asymmetric information between the angels and the companies their matching is difficult (Becsky-Nagy – Fazekas 2015), and the fact, that angel investors prefer anonymity makes it harder for entrepreneurs to obtain informal venture capital. The primary aim of the different type of business angel organizations and networks is to alleviate this matching process with intermediation between the two parties. The role of these organizations is increasing in the informal venture capital market compared to the individually operating angels. The recognition of their economic importance led many governments to support them. There were also public initiations that aimed the establishment of these intermediary organizations that led to the institutionalization of business angels. This study via the characterization of business angels focuses on the progress of these informational intermediaries and their ways of development with regards to the international trends and the current situation of Hungarian business angels and angel networks.

Understanding China's climate change mitigation policy development: Structures, processes and outcomes

Climate change is one of the most important and urgent issues of our time. Since 2006, China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. China’s role in an international climate change solution has gained increased attention. Although much literature has addressed the functioning, performance, and implications of existing climate change mitigation policies and actions in China, there is insufficient literature that illuminates how the national climate change mitigation policies have been formulated and shaped. This research utilizes the policy network approach to explore China’s climate change mitigation policy making by examining how a variety of government, business, and civil society actors have formed networks to address environmental contexts and influence the policy outcomes and changes. The study is qualitative in nature. Three cases are selected to illustrate structural and interactive features of the specific policy network settings in shaping different policy arrangements and influencing the outcomes in the Chinese context. The three cases include the regulatory evolution of China’s climate change policy making; the country’s involvement in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) activity, and China’s exploration of voluntary agreement through adopting the Top-1000 Industrial Energy Conservation Program. The historical analysis of the policy process uses both primary data from interviews and fieldwork, and secondary data from relevant literature. The study finds that the Chinese central government dominates domestic climate change policy making; however, expanded action networks that involve actors at all levels have emerged in correspondence to diverse climate mitigation policy arrangements. The improved openness and accessibility of climate change policy network have contributed to its proactive engagement in promoting mitigation outcomes. In conclusion, the research suggests that the policy network approach provides a useful tool for studying China’s climate change policy making process. The involvement of various types of state and non-state actors has shaped new relations and affected the policy outcomes and changes. In addition, through the cross-case analysis, the study challenges the “fragmented authoritarianism” model and argues that this once-influential model is not appropriate in explaining new development and changes of policy making processes in contemporary China.

Islamist Cyber Networks in Spanish-Speaking Latin America

Despite significant concern among policy, law enforcement and intelligence communities in the United States (U.S.) over the possible spread of radical Islamist thought throughout the world as part of a global jihad movement, there has been little investigation into the growing cyber networks in Latin America that promote strong anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. messages. This paper offers an overview of that network, focusing on the structure of Shi’ite websites that promote not only religious conversion but are also supportive of Iran -- a designated State-sponsor of terrorism – its nuclear program. Hezbollah, and the “Bolivarian revolution” led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his allies in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. There is also a smaller group of Sunni Muslim websites, mostly tied to the legacy organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of the Shi’ite websites are linked to each other consistently portray Israel as a Nazi State, and the United States as an imperialist war monger. The Palestinian issue is frequently juxtaposed with the anti-imperialist struggle that those states supporting Chávez’ Bolivarian revolution claim to wage against the United States. Some of the Islamist websites claim thousands of new convert, but such claims are difficult to verify. Most of the websites visited touted the conversion of one or two individuals as significant victories and signs of progress, implying that there are few, if any, mass conversions. While conducting this research, no websites directly claiming to be linked to Hezbollah were found, although there numerous sites hosted by that group that were active until around 2006. Several of the inactive links are supportive of Hezbollah as a political party. No websites linked to al Qaeda were found. Yet a substantial Internet network remains operational. Much of the outreach for Shi’ite Muslims, closely tied to Iran, is sponsored on numerous websites across the region, including El Salvador, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico and Bolivia. Numerous Facebook forums for discussion are also hosted around Latin America. These links must be viewed in the context of the rapidly expanding diplomatic, intelligence, political and economic ties of Iran in recent years with the self-proclaimed Bolivarian states. Given the sparse literature available and the rich vein of un-mined information on the sites cited as well as others that one could find with additional research, the cyber network of Islamist groups remains one of the least understood or studied facets of their presence in Latin America and the Caribbean. It merits significantly more investigation.

Political strategy, leadership, and policy entrepreneurship in Japanese defense policy and politics: A comparison of three prime ministerships

Since the end of the Cold War, Japan's defense policy and politics has gone through significant changes. Throughout the post cold war period, US-Japan alliance managers, politicians with differing visions and preferences, scholars, think tanks, and the actions of foreign governments have all played significant roles in influencing these changes. Along with these actors, the Japanese prime minister has played an important, if sometimes subtle, role in the realm of defense policy and politics. Japanese prime ministers, though significantly weaker than many heads of state, nevertheless play an important role in policy by empowering different actors (bureaucratic actors, independent commissions, or civil actors), through personal diplomacy, through agenda-setting, and through symbolic acts of state. The power of the prime minister to influence policy processes, however, has frequently varied by prime minister. My dissertation investigates how different political strategies and entrepreneurial insights by the prime minister have influenced defense policy and politics since the end of the Cold War. In addition, it seeks to explain how the quality of political strategy and entrepreneurial insight employed by different prime ministers was important in the success of different approaches to defense. My dissertation employs a comparative case study approach to examine how different prime ministerial strategies have mattered in the realm of Japanese defense policy and politics. Three prime ministers have been chosen: Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro (1996-1998); Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro (2001-2006); and Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio (2009-2010). These prime ministers have been chosen to provide maximum contrast on issues of policy preference, cabinet management, choice of partners, and overall strategy. As my dissertation finds, the quality of political strategy has been an important aspect of Japan's defense transformation. Successful strategies have frequently used the knowledge and accumulated personal networks of bureaucrats, supplemented bureaucratic initiatives with top-down personal diplomacy, and used a revitalized US-Japan strategic relationship as a political resource for a stronger prime ministership. Though alternative approaches, such as those that have looked to displace the influence of bureaucrats and the US in defense policy, have been less successful, this dissertation also finds theoretical evidence that alternatives may exist.

On Optimizing Compatible Security Policies in Wireless Networks

This paper deals with finding the maximum number of security policies without conflicts. By doing so we can remove security loophole that causes security violation. We present the problem of maximum compatible security policy and its relationship to the problem of maximum acyclic subgraph, which is proved to be NP-hard. Then we present a polynomial-time approximation algorithm and show that our result has approximation ratio for any integer with complexity .

An empirical analysis of the global audit market: International Financial Reporting Standards-related changes and differences within the Big 4 global networks

Ongoing debates within the professional and academic communities have raised a number of questions specific to the international audit market. This dissertation consists of three related essays that address such issues. First, I examine whether the propensity to switch between auditors of different sizes (i.e., Big 4 versus non-Big 4) changes as adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) becomes a more common phenomenon, arguing that smaller auditors have an opportunity to invest in necessary skills and training needed to enter this market. Findings suggest that clients are relatively less (more) likely to switch to (away from) a Big 4 auditor if the client's adoption of IFRS occurs in more recent years. ^ In the second essay, I draw on these inferences and test whether the change in audit fees in the year of IFRS adoption changes over time. As the market becomes less concentrated, larger auditors becomes less able to demand a premium for their services. Consistent with my arguments, results suggest that the change in audit service fees declines over time, although this effect seems concentrated among the Big 4. I also find that this effect is partially attributable to a differential effect of the auditors' experience in pricing audit services related to IFRS based on the period in which adoption occurs. The results of these two essays offer important implications to policy debates on the costs and benefits of IFRS adoption. ^ In the third essay, I differentiate Big 4 auditors into three classifications—Parent firms, Brand Name affiliates, and Local affiliates—and test for differences in audit fee premiums (relative to non-Big 4 auditors) and audit quality. Results suggest that there is significant heterogeneity between the three classifications based on both of these characteristics, which is an important consideration for future research. Overall, this dissertation provides additional insights into a variety of aspects of the global audit market.^

China in Global Value Chains: Implications for Industrial Policy and Development

Rapid technological advances and liberal trade regimes permit functional reintegration of dispersed activities into new border-spanning business networks variously referred to as global value chains (GVCs). Given that the gains of a country from GVCs depend on the activities taking place in its jurisdiction and their linkages to global markets, this study starts by providing a descriptive overview of China’s economic structure and trade profile. The first two chapters of this paper demonstrate what significant role GVCs have played in China’s economic growth, evident in enhanced productivity, diversification, and sophistication of China’s exports, and how these economic benefits have propelled China’s emergence as the world’s manufacturing hub in the past two decades. However, benefits from GVC participation – in particular technological learning, knowledge building, and industrial upgrading – are not automatic. What strategies would help Chinese industries engage with GVCs in ways that are deemed sustainable in the long run? What challenges and related opportunities China would face throughout the implementation process? The last two chapters of this paper focus on implications of GVCs for China’s industrial policy and development. Chapter Three examines how China is reorienting its manufacturing sector toward the production of higher value-added goods and expanding its service sector, both domestically and internationally; while Chapter Four provides illustrative policy recommendations on dealing with the positive and negative outcomes triggered by GVCs, within China and beyond the country’s borders. To the end, this study also hopes to shed some light on the lessons and complexities that arise from GVC participation for other developing countries.

Optimal Capital Requirements in Financial Networks with Fire Sales

I explore and analyze a problem of finding the socially optimal capital requirements for financial institutions considering two distinct channels of contagion: direct exposures among the institutions, as represented by a network and fire sales externalities, which reflect the negative price impact of massive liquidation of assets.These two channels amplify shocks from individual financial institutions to the financial system as a whole and thus increase the risk of joint defaults amongst the interconnected financial institutions; this is often referred to as systemic risk. In the model, there is a trade-off between reducing systemic risk and raising the capital requirements of the financial institutions. The policymaker considers this trade-off and determines the optimal capital requirements for individual financial institutions. I provide a method for finding and analyzing the optimal capital requirements that can be applied to arbitrary network structures and arbitrary distributions of investment returns.

In particular, I first consider a network model consisting only of direct exposures and show that the optimal capital requirements can be found by solving a stochastic linear programming problem. I then extend the analysis to financial networks with default costs and show the optimal capital requirements can be found by solving a stochastic mixed integer programming problem. The computational complexity of this problem poses a challenge, and I develop an iterative algorithm that can be efficiently executed. I show that the iterative algorithm leads to solutions that are nearly optimal by comparing it with lower bounds based on a dual approach. I also show that the iterative algorithm converges to the optimal solution.

Finally, I incorporate fire sales externalities into the model. In particular, I am able to extend the analysis of systemic risk and the optimal capital requirements with a single illiquid asset to a model with multiple illiquid assets. The model with multiple illiquid assets incorporates liquidation rules used by the banks. I provide an optimization formulation whose solution provides the equilibrium payments for a given liquidation rule.

I further show that the socially optimal capital problem using the ``socially optimal liquidation" and prioritized liquidation rules can be formulated as a convex and convex mixed integer problem, respectively. Finally, I illustrate the results of the methodology on numerical examples and

discuss some implications for capital regulation policy and stress testing.

Forces of agglomeration and dispersal in rural business networks: a social network analysis

Two concepts in rural economic development policy have been the focus of much research and policy action: the identification and support of clusters or networks of firms and the availability and adoption by rural businesses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). From a theoretical viewpoint these policies are based on two contrasting models, with clustering seen as a process of economic agglomeration, and ICT-mediated communication as a means of facilitating economic dispersion. The study’s conceptual framework is based on four interrelated elements: location, interaction, knowledge, and advantage, together with the concept of networks which is employed as an operationally and theoretically unifying concept. The research questions are developed in four successive categories: Policy, Theory, Networks, and Method. The questions are approached using a study of two contrasting groups of rural small businesses in West Cork, Ireland: (a) Speciality Foods, and (b) firms in Digital Products and Services. The study combines Social Network Analysis (SNA) with Qualitative Thematic Analysis, using data collected from semi-structured interviews with 58 owners or managers of these businesses. Data comprise relational network data on the firms’ connections to suppliers, customers, allies and competitors, together with linked qualitative data on how the firms established connections, and how tacit and codified knowledge was sourced and utilised. The research finds that the key characteristics identified in the cluster literature are evident in the sample of Speciality Food businesses, in relation to flows of tacit knowledge, social embedding, and the development of forms of social capital. In particular the research identified the presence of two distinct forms of collective social capital in this network, termed “community” and “reputation”. By contrast the sample of Digital Products and Services businesses does not have the form of a cluster, but matches more closely to dispersive models, or “chain” structures. Much of the economic and social structure of this set of firms is best explained in terms of “project organisation”, and by the operation of an individual rather than collective form of “reputation”. The rural setting in which these firms are located has resulted in their being service-centric, and consequently they rely on ICT-mediated communication in order to exchange tacit knowledge “at a distance”. It is this factor, rather than inputs of codified knowledge, that most strongly influences their operation and their need for availability and adoption of high quality communication technologies. Thus the findings have applicability in relation to theory in Economic Geography and to policy and practice in Rural Development. In addition the research contributes to methodological questions in SNA, and to methodological questions about the combination or mixing of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Circular migration and the Internet: The role of social networks in the sociocultural context of Mexican residents in Barcelona

This work focuses on the study of the circular migration between America and Europe, particularly in the discussion about knowledge transfer and the way that social networks reconfigure the form of information distribution among people, that due to labor and academic issues have left their own country. The main purpose of this work is to study the impact of social media use in migration flows between Mexico and Spain, more specifically the use by Mexican migrants who have moved for  multiple years principally for educational purposes and then have returned to their respective locations in Mexico seeking to integrate themselves into the labor market. Our data collection concentrated exclusively on a group created on Facebook by Mexicans who mostly reside in Barcelona, Spain or wish to travel to the city for economic, educational or tourist reasons.  The results of this research show that while social networks are spaces for exchange and integration, there is a clear tendency by this group to "narrow lines" and to look back to their homeland, slowing the process of opening socially in their new context.

Digitizing dissent: cyborg politics and fluid networks in contemporary Cuban activism

Communication technologies shape how political activist networks are produced and maintain themselves. In Cuba, despite ideologically and physically oppressive practices by the state, a severe lack of Internet access, and extensive government surveillance, a small network of bloggers and cyberactivists has achieved international visibility and recognition for its critiques of the Cuban government. This qualitative study examines the blogger collective known as Voces Cubanas in Havana, Cuba in 2012, advancing a new approach to the study of transnational activism and the role of technology in the construction of political narrative. Voces Cubanas is analyzed as a network of connections between human and non-human actors that produces and sustains powerful political alliances. Voces Cubanas and its allies work collectively to co-produce contentious political discourses, confronting the dominant ideologies and knowledges produced by the Cuban state. Transnational alliances, the act of translation, and a host of unexpected and improvised technologies play central roles in the production of these narratives, indicating new breed of cyborg sociopolitical action reliant upon fluid and flexible networks and the act of writing.