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When your supervisor underperforms: the role of process feedback and the formality of feedback
No full textThis study investigates the role of process feedback as a mechanism to motivate employees after a period of underperformance. We examine whether process feedback, following negative outcome feedback has a positive influence on employees’ willingness to improve performance, and whether this effect differs across organizational roles and the nature of the feedback provided. Based on an experiment and field survey, we find evidence that process feedback encourages employees to improve future performance and this effect becomes further pronounced for employees in a non-supervisory role. For supervisors, though, we find that the relationship between process feedback and future performance improvements is crucially dependent on the formality of feedback. Specifically, underperforming supervisors are more likely to positively react to process feedback when the feedback is generated in a formal way (e.g., by a formalized information system) while the opposite holds for underperforming non-supervisory employees. We also provide evidence that this interaction effect is mediated by feedback acceptance
The future of renewable gases. Our take on the role of renewable gases in the energy transition
Get PDFThe European Green Deal aims to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050. This vision of a net-zero carbon future has prompted the European Commission to up its emission reduction target: by 2030, greenhouse gases should be cut by at least 55% compared to 1990. This target was approved by the European Council in December 2020 but is still to be translated into European legislation. Meeting this target requires decarbonisation of all carbon-intensive energy consumption sectors, i.e. industry, buildings and transport. Quite understandably, the gas sector is concerned about its future. Natural gas is, after all, a carbon-based energy source, which, in the absence of carbon capture and storage, contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Initially, many thought the energy transition would be an all-electric one. Those who still think so are now in the minority. Electrification is not always feasible, technically or economically. In some cases, full decarbonisation will require the use of alternative clean energy carriers, such as renewable and low-carbon gases, like hydrogen and biomethane. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive, along with other legislation, is currently being reviewed to update it in line with the new 2030 emission reduction target. This Directive already includes targets for electricity generation from renewable sources, so it is expected that similar targets will be set for renewable gases. Given that technology and infrastructure investments have a lifetime of typically 20 to 60 years, the gas sector has no time to lose. This is why the Fluxys Chair was founded in January 2018. Fluxys is the independent transmission system operator that owns and operates Belgium’s high-pressure natural gas transmission grid, its natural gas storage infrastructure and the liquefied natural gas terminal in Zeebrugge. Through academic research by Professor Leonardo Meeus and doctoral researcher Martin Roach with the Vlerick Energy Centre, the company is seeking to anticipate any upcoming Belgian and EU legislation in order to make informed investment decisions. How can the existing natural gas infrastructure be repurposed for the transport of decarbonised gases? How can we harness the full potential and opportunities of renewable gases? What context is needed to decarbonise the gas sector so that it can play a role in the future integrated energy system? Two years on, it is time to take stock of what we know and what we do not yet know. The white paper ‘The future of renewable gases’ outlines the context of our research, as well as providing background information
Correction to: Forward-looking distribution network charges considering lumpy investments
No full textMany regulators are pushing for more cost-reflective distribution network charges to inform end users of the grid infrastructure costs their behavior causes. Since future investment costs can be avoided by reducing simultaneous peak loads, forward-looking, coincident peak charges are often proposed. Under the assumption of convex network costs, it has been shown that optimal charges signal long-run marginal network costs, triggering an optimal trade-off between network expansion and peak load reduction. In practice, however, network investments are lumpy, requiring engineering methods to estimate ill-defined marginal costs based on long-term peak demand forecasts. In this paper, we derive the optimal forward-looking network charge set by a social welfare maximizing regulator, endogenously considering investment lumpiness and uncertain consumer demand. While the optimal tariff still equals marginal network costs in essence, it now depends on a multitude of network- and demand-related parameters. Our results demonstrate that forward-looking network charges require accurate information on willingness to pay for peak demand, which currently is typically unknown to regulators
Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) as a service in Finland: Business model and regulatory challenges
No full textBattery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) can provide services to the final customer using electricity, to a microgrid, and/or to external actors such as the Distribution System Operator (DSO) and Transmission System Operator (TSO). In this paper, BESS as a service business model archetypes are drawn from case studies of 10 BESS as a service projects in Finland. It is found that, in addition to the service being provided by the BESS, the ownership of the system can vary: it can either be owned by the final consumer of electricity or by a third party who will provide the BESS as a service. The findings of the interviews are placed within the Finnish regulatory framework for storage and demand response services. It is concluded that the key enablers for the BESS as a service business model are a regulatory framework that allows stacked revenues and technological interoperability across a multi-customer business model
The regulatory framework for independent aggregators
No full textIndependent aggregation can lead to imbalances and foregone revenues for suppliers.
• The imbalance issue has been handled with a perimeter correction in most EU countries.
• The need for a compensation for foregone revenues is more controversial.
• Several supplier compensation models are being tested in the EU.
•More guidance is needed at EU-level to converge into a more harmonized approach.The importance of independent aggregators has been acknowledged in the recently adopted EU Clean Energy Package (CEP). The CEP obliges all Member States to develop a regulatory framework to allow these players to enter the market, but it leaves many of the details of implementation to the national level. In this paper, we take stock of current practices in regulating the contractual relationship between the supplier and the independent aggregator. The actions of an independent aggregator can cause an imbalance in a supplier’s portfolio, and suppliers have also asked for a compensation payment for forgone revenues. We find that the first issue has been handled with a perimeter correction in most countries, while the second issue is more controversial. The need for a compensation payment has been challenged and many different compensation models are being tested. We distinguish between the regulated, the corrected, and the contracted model. We conclude that more guidance is needed at EU-level for convergence on a more harmonized approach.European Unio
An analysis of network and resource indicators for resource-constrained project scheduling problem instances
No full textIn the past decades, the resource on the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) has grown rapidly, resulting in an overwhelming amount of solution procedures that provide (near)-optimal solutions in a reasonable time. Despite the rapid progress, little is still known what makes a project instance hard to solve. Inspired by a previous research study that has shown that even small instances with only up to 30 activities is sometimes hard to solve, the current study provides an analysis of the project data used in the academic literature. More precisely, it investigates the ability of four well-known resource indicators to predict the hardness of an RCPSP instance. The study introduces a new instance equivalence concept to show that instances might have very different values for their resource indicators without changing any possible solution for this instance. The concept is based on four theorems and a search algorithm that transforms existing instances into new equivalent instances with more compact resources. This algorithm illustrates that the use of resource indicators to predict the hardness of an instance is sometimes misleading. In a set of computational experiment on more than 10,000 instances, it is shown that the newly constructed equivalent instances have values for the resource indicators that are not only different than the values of the original instances, but also often are better in predicting the hardness the project instances. It is suggested that the new equivalent instances are used for further research to compare results on the new instances with results obtained from the original dataset
Academy of Management Proceedings
No full textIn the context of intense global stakeholder pressures to improve female representation in the executive suite, we examine the speed of advancement and exit of first time executive directors around the world. We make two inter-related arguments. First, we argue that while normative pressures from global stakeholders have created a gender premium for women in the form of lower age at the time of appointment vis-à-vis male executive directors, appointed women are also penalized in the form of quicker exits from these positions because of their lower age. Second, we contend that this gender premium and penalty is contingent on the local gender norms in a society such that lower gender parity leads to a higher premium and penalty for these women. Results based on a sample of 15,202 first time executive directors from 6,452 firms in 33 countries largely support our theoretical predictions
International Diversification and MNE Innovativeness: A Contingency Perspective of Foreign Subsidiary Portfolio Characteristics
No full textWe advance research on how international diversification affects MNEs’ innovativeness by reconciling contradictory views on the role of international diversification for innovation. We do so by developing a portfolio perspective of MNE innovation that moves beyond foreign R&D subsidiaries to consider firms’ entire international footprints and by theorizing that MNE innovativeness depends on the interplay of geographical (i.e., regional diversification and institutional distance) and organizational (i.e., asset diversification and functional mandate breadth) characteristics of the foreign subsidiary portfolio. We test our proposed relationships on a unique multi-source panel dataset of Japanese listed electronics firms (266 firms and their 4505 subsidiaries between 2007 and 2015 resulting in 1936 firm-year observations and 28,350 subsidiary-year observations). We find that the institutional distance and asset diversification of the foreign subsidiary portfolio constrain the extent to which geographical (regional) diversification can enhance MNEs innovativeness. We also find that, at high levels of geographical diversification, MNEs with low levels of institutional distance and asset diversification in the foreign subsidiary portfolio tend to achieve higher innovativeness. Lastly, we did not find empirical support for functional mandate breadth as affecting how geographical diversification influences MNE innovativeness. Overall, the study highlights that, for a nuanced understanding of MNE innovativeness, managers need an encompassing and deliberate portfolio-level strategy that explicitly considers the interrelatedness of geographical and organizational characteristics
Encoding global expertise in self & active-learning machines: Improve the quality of decisions made by machines
No full textHome location prediction with telecom data: Benchmarking heuristics with a predictive modelling approach.
No full textCorrectly identifying the home location is crucial for human mobility analysis with telecom data, more specifically call detail record (CDR) data. To that end, multiple heuristics have been developed in literature. Nevertheless, due to the lack of ground truth home location data, no study has thoroughly validated these widely used methods so far. We present a detailed performance analysis of existing home detection heuristics, using a unique dataset that enables this important validation on the lowest level, being the level of the cell tower. Our research indicates that simple heuristics surprisingly outperform their more complex counterparts. The benchmark study revealed that the best heuristic is able to identify the home location with an average error of approximately 4.5 km and selects the correct home tower in 60.69% of the cases. Based on the insights provided by our study, we propose a new heuristic that increases the accuracy to 61% and lowers the average distance error to 4.365 km. Secondly, if the home location is known for possibly only a fraction of the instances, we propose a labelled predictive modelling approach. Adding social network based variables in this predictive model further enhances the predictive performance. Our best model reduces the average distance error to 2.848 km and selects the correct home location in 72.08% of the cases. Furthermore, this result provides an indication of the upper bound for home detection with CDR data. Finally, models that only make use of social network based data are developed as well. Results show that even without using data of the focal individual, these models are able to select the correct home tower in 37.65% of the cases and achieve an average distance error of 8.1 km