3287 research outputs found
Sort by
The Success Stories of Malaysian SMEs in Promoting and Penetrating Global Markets through Business Competitiveness Strategies
Full text linkOver the past decade, the Government of Malaysia has become increasing aware of the significant contribution of small medium enterprises (SMEs) to the national economy. A number of Government programmes and incentives were offered to the SMEs in the past years but with limited impact. This lecture touches on the nature and contribution of the Malaysian SMEs in the first five years of the 21st century. An attempt was made to identify the success factors and weaknesses of SMEs from official reports of Government agencies, and findings of research studies on the subject. Recognising the challenges posed by globalisation and trade liberalisation on the Malaysian SMEs, the Government revamped its policies, programmes, incentives, and approaches which are currently implemented in the Ninth Malaysian Plan and the Third Industrial Master Plan. The objective is to enhance the SMEs’ capacity and capabilities through continuous product development, knowledge and technology acquisition to empower them to compete with other global players offering high quality products and services at competitive prices
Three Meditations for Experiential Computing
Full text linkThis paper uses three meditations to contemplate walking, sensing and participation as three ways with which we can extend the notion of ‘experiential computing’ proposed by Yoo (2010). By using the form of meditations, loosely associated concepts that are part introspective and part ‘causative’, i.e. aimed as some form of change in perspective within Information Systems Research, the paper weaves empirical incidents from fieldwork with theoretical concepts on movement, sensuality, and embodiment, suggesting directions for methodologies and techniques to be pursued if experiential computing is intended to also inform the design of technologies for the future. By emphasizing the senses and the body and their importance to an extended notion of sensory apprenticeship (Pink, 2009), the paper suggests alternative routes to knowing and representation in IS related fieldwork
Transnational Struggles to Change International Taxation
No full textIn the contemporary age of global capitalism, international taxation – the taxation of income earned
from cross-border economic activity – has become a high-stakes issue. International taxation touches
upon the foundations of modern society as an arena for struggle between nation-states and other
stakeholders concerning government revenues, economic markets, political ideas, and – above all –
social change. However, most existing research on international taxation and, indeed, on the global
political economy at large, is dedicated to studying the effects of stable structures and sees change
through periodic snapshots of evolving orders. As a result, the dynamic processes enabling and
governing change remain underexplored. This dissertation promotes a change-oriented approach to
studying complex international contexts that unites insights from International Political Economy on
global political-economic orders and from Sociology on micro-social struggles over power and
authority. These insights enable an analysis of the dynamics of change in international taxation, and
I set out a conceptual language emphasizing the modes, contexts, and sources of change . To develop
my analysis, I apply a relational, qualitative and case-based methodology to study developments in
international taxation across four levels: Global tax governance, the transnational field of corporate
taxation, expert policymaking, and professional practice. I find that systemic change is underway in
the core institutional foundations of global tax governance, namely an expansion of multilateral
cooperation, institutionalized enforcement, and sovereignty-pooling by states. These changes are
entwined with changes in state activism, geopolitical shifts, austerity, populism, and economic
transformations. Those broad political changes reverberate in the transnational field of corporate
taxation, which has seen a swift ascent of critical activist influence, politicization, destabilization of
the dominant professional-technical logic, and increasing conflict over established social hierarchies.
Expert policymaking has largely resisted the challenges of critical outsiders, but its historical isolation
from popular politics and new expert resources is under scrutiny, opening possibilities for new
patterns of influence in technical expert proceedings. In professional practice, the core of everyday
work remains remarkably stable despite, and because of, broader social change, as professional
identities are entwined with transnational (political) institutions
Emission Reduction in the Maritime Transport Industry and Maritime Search and Rescue Operational Response to Migration
No full textThis Ph.D. project focuses on complex environmental and social global supply issues in line with the
United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. One of the possible key contributors to
this Agenda is the maritime transport industry, which could drive sustainable development from
various perspectives, such as tackling climate change, reducing societal inequalities, economic
growth, etc. Derived from a broad range of potential shipping industry’s contributions to the Agenda,
this project dwells on two specific areas on the basis of their urgency to respond at an international
level, their global impact, as well as the importance of their adverse effects and their individual
characteristics, which add more complexity to their addressment. The first area under study refers to
the enhancement of the industry’s operational performance, aiming at the reduction of greenhouse
gases through regulatory enforcement and, particularly, of a bunker levy scheme. The second area
under investigation relates to the societal contribution of the sector by means of improving the
maritime search and rescue operational effectiveness in the context of migration by sea emergencies.
Despite the sector’s contribution toward this direction, through collaboration with coastal states and
its significantly high involvement in conducting such activities, migration by sea crises are defined
by the engagement of various other stakeholders, such as humanitarian organizations, coast guards,
etc., adding more complexity to how such emergencies are addressed. This Ph.D. project produces
three research articles that have, as their main objectives, the structuring of the status quo of the issues
under study and the provision of guidance to the international community for addressing them. This
section summarizes the main findings of the project and highlights its contribution to the global
debate for achieving sustainable development targets
Evidence from the Italian Electricity Sector
No full textIt is generally accepted that institutions are important for economic development. However, whether the performance of regulated utilities within a country is affected by the quality of institutions is yet to be investigated thoroughly. We analyse how the quality of regional institutions impact performance of Italian electricity distribution utilities. We use a stochastic frontier analysis approach to estimate cost functions and examine the performance of 108 electricity distribution utilities from 2011 to 2015. This unique dataset was constructed with the help of the Italian Regulator for Energy, Networks, and Environment. In addition, we use a recent dataset on regional institutional quality in Italy. We present evidence that utilities in regions with better government effectiveness, responsiveness towards citizens, control of corruption, and rule of law, also tend to be more cost efficient. The results suggest that national regulators should take regional institutional diversity into account in incentive regulation and efficiency benchmarking of utilities
On proliferation and containment
No full textThis is a paper-based dissertation, consisting of a ‘cape’ and three articles, one of which is singleauthored.
The topic is servitization at work.
Servitization is a competitive strategy that, typically, Western industrial manufacturing companies
implement in order to secure their continued existence in increasingly competitive markets.
Servitization means combining products with a service component. With increasing servitization
implementation, companies move away from focusing on the sales of products and instead
emphasize their use, for example by repairing them, renting them out or by operating and
maintaining machines for clients. But more recent literature also highlights that companies face
many challenges when implementing servitization, up to the point where some close their service
business again. This indicates that servitization has important implications to it other than ‘just’
selling services.
This dissertation argues that some of these implications have gone by unnoticed because much of
the literature is both rooted in and itself perpetuating a number of widely-held assumptions.
Taking on a pragmatic stance, it explores how servitization is at work, despite the challenges
associated with it. In so doing, it challenges three taken-for-granted notions in the literature,
namely that customers demand services by default, that products are stable and that servitization
is one definite thing. It draws on the infralanguage and methodology provided by Actor-Network
Theory. In particular, it mobilizes the ideas around qualification, inscription and multiplicity
