A dynamic business modelling approach to design and experiment new business venture strategies

Business Modelling has evolved as a key activity to reflect new business venture strategy by framing the way a firm will operate and how it will function in achieving its goals (e.g., profitability, growth, innovation, social impact). However, scholars and practitioners have criticized the adoption of a too static perspective in the design and use of conventional Business Model representations. Such a static perspective prevents nascent entrepreneurs experimenting with their Business Models and, as a result, identifying the most effective strategies, especially in terms of business sustainability and profitability. In this paper, we argue that combining conventional Business Model schemas with System Dynamics modelling results in a strategy design tool that may overcome several limitations related to a static view of Business Model representation. Mapping the different key elements underlying value creation processes into a system of causal interdependencies – through the use of simulation – allows strategy analysts and entrepreneurs to experiment and learn how the business reacts to strategic and organizational changes in terms of performance, innovation and value creation. As such, Dynamic Business Models provide useful insights to strategy formulation and business venturing by capturing how critical Business Model elements interact to produce enduring competitive advantages over time.     

Working precarious careers trajectories: tracing neoliberal discourses in younger workers’ narratives

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to explore how, in the context of the post Global Financial Crisis (GFC), some Italian younger workers in a specific geographical region in Italy recount their work trajectories. Drawing on narrative interviews with ten participants (aged between 24 and 30) as part of a research project carried out in the Autonomous region of Aosta Valley in Italy, the article traces discourses closely associated with neoliberalism – the discourses of the entrepreneurial self, employability and self-responsibilisation – through which subjects’ work experiences take shape. Moreover, the analysis highlights how locality, one’s personal relation with the geographical territory, makes more complex the younger people’s negotiations in crafting themselves vis-à-vis precarious employment opportunities and wider socio-economic dynamics in respect of precarious employment opportunities.     

Resistance to metropolitan institutionality and planning in Chile

In this article, the authors review and analyse two key processes conducted by the Chilean state over the past 50 years. The first process consists of the development of specific planning instruments for the particular realities of metropolitan areas. The second process consists of the successive legislative attempts to work towards a definition of a new form of institutionality for cities with metropolitan profiles. These attempts have either failed or solely become bills of law. Both processes suggest a political and technical resistance throughout history, to substantially modify institutionality, as well as planning instruments, in order to make them more appropriate and consistent with the needs of growing metropolitan areas in Chile.     

Fast parallel $$\alpha $$-stable distribution function evaluation and parameter estimation using OpenCL in GPGPUs

\(\alpha \)-Stable distributions are a family of probability distributions found to be suitable to model many complex processes and phenomena in several research fields, such as medicine, physics, finance and networking, among others. However, the lack of closed expressions makes their evaluation analytically intractable, and alternative approaches are computationally expensive. Existing numerical programs are not fast enough for certain applications and do not make use of the parallel power of general purpose graphic processing units. In this paper, we develop novel parallel algorithms for the probability density function and cumulative distribution function—including a parallel Gauss–Kronrod quadrature—, quantile function, random number generator and maximum likelihood estimation of \(\alpha \)-stable distributions using OpenCL, achieving significant speedups and precision in all cases. Thanks to the use of OpenCL, we also evaluate the results of our library with different GPU architectures.     

On fiducial generators

Fiducial inference has been gaining presence recently and it is the intention of the present article to look at the notion of fiducial generators; meaning procedures to simulate parameter values that in some sense correspond to simulations from some implicit fiducial distribution. It is well known that when the distribution has group structure, stemming from the natural pivotal associated, a fiducial may be obtained. It is in the non group distributions that there appears to be still room for finding a fiducial distribution. Recently some general procedures have been proposed for dealing with generalized fiducials, but these depend on certain choices for a structural equation or a fiducial equation, as in Hannig (2009 Hannig, J. (2009). On generalized fiducial inference. Stat. Sin. 19:491–544.[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) or Taraldsen and Lindqvist (2013 Taraldsen, G., Lindqvist, B.H. (2013). Fiducial theory and optimal inference. Ann. Stat. 41(1):323–341.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), respectively. A brief presentation is made of an earlier approach to fiducial inference for multivariate parameters, as in Brillinger (1962 Brillinger, D.R. (1962). Examples bearing on the definition of fiducial probability with a bibliography. Ann. Math. Stat. 33(4):1349–1355.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), and the implied fiducial generator introduced in Engen and Lillegård (1997 Engen, S., Lillegård, M. (1997). Stochastic simulation conditioned on sufficient statistics. Biometrika 84(1):235–240.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), trying to connect them. Three interesting non group distributions are seen; two of them, the truncated exponential and the two-parameter gamma, already reported in literature. A third non group distribution is analyzed; the inverse Gaussian, connecting the fiducial that results following Brillinger (1962 Brillinger, D.R. (1962). Examples bearing on the definition of fiducial probability with a bibliography. Ann. Math. Stat. 33(4):1349–1355.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), with a result pertaining confidence limits for the shape parameter in Hsieh (1990 Hsieh, H.K. (1990). Inferences on the coefficient of variation of an inverse-Gaussian distribution. Commun. Stat. - Theory Methods 19(5):1589–1605.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In the three cases, comparisons are made with the Bayesian posteriors that have been known to be close numerically. Some discussion is made on the issue of singularities of the fiducial density and its connection with densities that do not integrate to unity. As to the case of discrete observables, some comments are made for the Bernoulli distribution, only.     

Effective eProcurement implementation process

As eProcurement is gaining popularity in business practice, researchers as well as practitioners have addressed the need of defining a proper eProcurement implementation strategy. This article aims to build an eProcurement implementation framework, which considers the main variables that have an impact on the eProcurement success and the links among them. The goal is to identify the main decisions that companies should take during the three principal phases of the eProcurement adoption (pre-implementation; implementation and post-implementation). Six case studies at different levels of eProcurement adoption have been used to identify the peculiarities of each phase of the process and to provide contingent guidelines.     

Minimizing the number of tardy jobs in two-machine settings with common due date

We consider two-machine scheduling problems with job selection. We analyze first the two-machine open shop problem and provide a best possible linear time algorithm. Then, a best possible linear time algorithm is derived for the job selection problem on two unrelated parallel machines. We also show that an exact approach can be derived for both problems with complexity \(O(p(n) \times \sqrt{2}^n)\), p being a polynomial function of n.     

Coalition-proofness under weak and strong Pareto dominance

This article examines the structure of pure strategy coalition-proof Nash equilibria under weak and strong Pareto dominance in games with strategic complementarities and isotone externalities. The analysis is particularly focused on the following issues: (i) the inclusion relation between the set of coalition-proof Nash equilibria under weak Pareto dominance and the set of coalition-proof Nash equilibria under strong Pareto dominance; (ii) the conditions for the coincidence of the strong (resp. weak) Pareto dominance refinement and the coalition-proofness refinement under strong (resp. weak) Pareto dominance; (iii) the conditions for the uniqueness of a coalition-proof Nash equilibrium under both notions of Pareto dominance. Dual results are stated for games with antitone externalities.     

Goodness of fit for the inverse Gaussian distribution

For testing the fit of the inverse Gaussian distribution with unknown parameters, the empirical distribution-function statistic A² is studied. Two procedures are followed in constructing the test statistic; they yield the same asymptotic distribution. In the first procedure the parameters in the distribution function are directly estimated, and in the second the distribution function is estimated by its Rao-Blackwell distribution estimator. A table is given for the asymptotic critical points of A². These are shown to depend only on the ratio of the unknown parameters. An analysis is provided of the effect of estimating the ratio to enter the table for A². This analysis enables the proposal of the complete operating procedure, which is sustained by a Monte Carlo study.