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Explaining Academic Interest in Crowdfunding as a Research Topic
No full textAbstract Crowdfunding research has grown exponentially since the first academic papers in the field were published in 2013. This interpretivist study attempts to explain why academics worldwide have chosen to study crowdfunding. As no explicit theories currently exist to guide our research, we have relied on schooling and management fashion theories. Based on interviews with 30 crowdfunding scholars, we develop a model which interprets the underlying reasons why academics have chosen this research topic. Our results show that, beyond scientific reasons, career and socio‐psychological reasons also explain why academics have chosen to research crowdfunding. By documenting both the scientific and non‐scientific reasons why researchers study a certain topic, our findings contribute to the knowledge about the rationales behind scientific development in the fields of management, entrepreneurial finance and entrepreneurship
The personalization–privacy paradox at the nexus of social exchange and construal level theories
No full textAbstract Marketing personalization requires firms to collect information that they can use to personalize their products or services, which might raise consumer privacy concerns. Prior studies on construal level theory suggest that happier Internet users would likely take future rewards in social exchanges (e.g., personalization–privacy trade‐offs) into greater consideration. Building on both social exchange and construal level theories, this article investigates the extent to which happiness with the Internet drives the personalization–privacy paradox, as well as the moderating role of experience sharing frequency as a proxy for reciprocity. An online survey administered to a representative sample of French consumers ( n = 649) largely confirms the predictions. Happiness with the Internet is the strongest driver of willingness to disclose information in exchange for personalization, surpassing conventional privacy‐related constructs (e.g., trust and risk beliefs). In line with social exchange theory, reciprocity has an important influence on online social exchanges too
Belgian mergers and acquisitions market peaks, but future is uncertain. Results of the 2022 M&A Monitor
No full textIn line with the international M&A market, Belgian acquisition activity recovered strongly in 2021, especially for large transactions and acquisitions by private equity players. The average price paid for a transaction is once again reaching a record high. ESG measures do not yet play a significant role in Belgium with regard to pricing or deal structure. And the high level of geopolitical uncertainty combined with inflation and disrupted supply chains make predictions for 2022 difficult. These are the main conclusions of the ninth edition of the M&A Monitor, an annual survey of just under 200 Belgian merger and acquisition specialists including corporate finance advisers, private equity investors, strategic advisers, bankers and lawyers. They represent all industries and transaction sizes. The survey asks about their experiences of the deals they were involved in during 2021 on the one hand, and their expectations for 2022 on the other. The study was conducted by Professor Mathieu Luypaert and researcher Gianni Spolverato of the Centre for Mergers, Acquisitions & Buyouts at Vlerick Business School in collaboration with Bank J.Van Breda & Co., BDO, Van Olmen & Wynant, and Sowalfin Transmission.Bank J.Van Breda & Co., BDO, Van Olmen & Wynant, and Sowalfin Transmission
Digital evolution of ERP: Capabilities definition and research agenda
No full textMany organizations have a long history with the use of ERP. However, organizations are increasingly turning to digital capabilities to transform operational processes and business models. Extant literature has increased our under-standing of ERP, but we lack comprehensive insights into the evolving nature of ERP in the context of digital transformation. Through a review of articles from the AIS Basket of Eight IT journals, we identified digital capabilities associated with contemporary ERP across five categories. The identified capabilities fore-ground the evolving nature of ERP, resulting in the introduction of a definition for digital ERP (D-ERP) and a call for research studying the co-evolution of D-ERP and digital transformation
A Resampling Method to Improve the Prognostic Model of End-Stage Kidney Disease: A Better Strategy for Imbalanced Data
No full textBackground: Prognostic models can help to identify patients at risk for end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) at an earlier stage to provide preventive medical interventions. Previous studies mostly applied the Cox proportional hazards model. The aim of this study is to present a resampling method, which can deal with imbalanced data structure for the prognostic model and help to improve predictive performance.
Methods: The electronic health records of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) older than 50 years during 2005-2015 collected from primary care in Belgium were used (n = 11,645). Both the Cox proportional hazards model and the logistic regression analysis were applied as reference model. Then, the resampling method, the Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique-Edited Nearest Neighbor (SMOTE-ENN), was applied as a preprocessing procedure followed by the logistic regression analysis. The performance was evaluated by accuracy, the area under the curve (AUC), confusion matrix, and F 3 score.
Results: The C statistics for the Cox proportional hazards model was 0.807, while the AUC for the logistic regression analysis was 0.700, both on a comparable level to previous studies. With the model trained on the resampled set, 86.3% of patients with ESKD were correctly identified, although it was at the cost of the high misclassification rate of negative cases. The F 3 score was 0.245, much higher than 0.043 for the logistic regression analysis and 0.022 for the Cox proportional hazards model.
Conclusion: This study pointed out the imbalanced data structure and its effects on prediction accuracy, which were not thoroughly discussed in previous studies. We were able to identify patients with high risk for ESKD better from a clinical perspective by using the resampling method. But, it has the limitation of the high misclassification of negative cases. The technique can be widely used in other clinical topics when imbalanced data structure should be considered.This study was supported by the KU Leuven: Research Fund (projects C16/15/059, C3/19/053, C32/16/013, and C24/18/022), Industrial Research Fund (Fellowship 13-0260), and several Leuven Research and Development bilateral industrial projects and the Flemish Government Agencies: FWO [EOS Project no 30468160 (SeLMA), SBO project S005319N, Infrastructure project I013218N, TBM Project T001919N, and PhD Grants (SB/1SA1319N, SB/1S93918, and SB/151622)], this research received funding from the Flemish Government (AI Research Program). BD and XS are affiliated to the Leuven. AI-KU Leuven Institute for AI, B-3000, Leuven, Belgium. VLAIO [City of Things (COT.2018.018), PhD grants: Baekeland (HBC.20192204), and Innovation mandate (HBC.2019.2209), Industrial Projects (HBC.2018.0405)]; the European Commission: This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 885682); (EU H2020-SC1-2016-2017 Grant Agreement No. 727721: MIDAS), KOTK foundation
Understanding and characterizing B2B customer experience
No full textPractitioners increasingly recognize the impact of delivering better customer experiences in B2B markets. However, and despite the significance of CX in B2C marketing, there is a lack of understanding of CX and its management (CX(M)) in B2B marketing. Given its growing importance in B2B markets, it is key to develop a conceptual foundation for characterizing CX in these markets. Based on an extensive literature search, we select 44 papers that provide additional insight in B2B CX(M). Nevertheless, a conceptual study on B2B CX is still lacking. We integrate the CX(M) literature and the B2B marketing literature to theoretically adapt a recent and holistic CX framework, extending and deepening its components, and illustrate it by means of preliminary case study insight. This B2B CX framework can help scholars and practitioners to better understand and manage CX in B2B markets
Digitization in the Market for Entrepreneurial Finance: Innovative Business Models and New Financing Channels
No full textDigitization creates new financial channels that complement traditional intermediaries, but may raise concerns over fraud, cybersecurity, or bubbles. Artificial intelligence and machine learning change the way in which traditional investors work. This special issue focuses on economic, cultural, and regulatory determinants of fintech development, and on the new forms of information production and processing engendered by digital entrepreneurial finance. We provide a general overview of digitization in the market for entrepreneurial finance, illustrate how the different articles in the special issue contribute to advance our knowledge, and identify promising avenues for research.The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this articl
Finite inventory budgets in production capacity and safety stock placement under the guaranteed service approach
No full textFollowing the guaranteed service approach (GSA), several studies have investigated the interaction between production and inventory decisions in multistage supply systems and developed efficient algorithms to solve the large-scale optimization problems that emerge. These works have largely ignored limited inventory budgets and their effect on production and inventory decisions. In reality, however, firms tend to limit the amount of capital tied-up in inventories, and there is usually a limited amount of storage space at a warehouse or a retailer. This study investigates the problem of production capacity and safety stock placement with both limited capacity and inventory budgets in general acyclic supply chains. This problem allocates capacity to production stages and sets inventory targets at logistics stages, with the objective to minimize the expected total supply chain cost while meeting a target customer service level. The present paper contributes to the GSA literature in several ways. First, we compare guaranteed and chance-constraint approaches to model limited inventory budgets and analyze their effect on safety stock placement. Second, we present two new equivalent formulations of the production capacity and safety stock placement problem. Solving these new models using a successive piecewise linear approximation algorithm outperforms existing solution procedures in terms of solution quality and time, in both cases of infinite and finite inventory budgets. Third, taking advantage of the structure of these formulations, we develop a two-phase heuristic, which finds optimal or near-optimal solutions and greatly improves CPU times. Finally, our numerical experiments show that inventory budgets affect production capacity and safety stock placement decisions, increasing both work in process (WIP) and safety stock levels.(Research Foundation - Flanders
Product platform replacement: impact of performance objectives, innovation speed, and competition
Get PDFProduct platforms are assets shared by multiple products. Their primary purpose is to offer product variety while keeping time-to-market and operational costs down. As new products are developed over time, the question arises when to replace a platform. The repetitive use of the same platform for multiple product generations keeps platform development time and costs low. As the platform gets obsolete, however, the time and efforts to adapt the platform to the newest product will go up. With these dynamics in mind, we develop a simulation model to gain insight into the desired platform replacement planning. We examine how platform replacements are impacted by a firm's performance objectives, the speed of innovation, and the competitive landscape