1,720,991 research outputs found
Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for Luxury Cars: an empirical study
No full textLuxury cars represent an important segment of Luxury, and since vehicles are quite complex product with respect to “high-end furniture” “personal luxury goods” or “fine dining” they are quite peculiar from a business perspective. This research aims to understand whether there could be peculiar Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for luxury car manufacturers, and eventually know how they differ from the list of CSFs provided by literature for the general luxury market. Moreover, the study investigate whether there are possible distinct clusters of consumers which show a common pattern in valuing these CSFs. The study has been able to craft a new model where Critical Successful Factors for luxury cars are presented, meaning those characteristics essential for winning competition of other companies that also constitute as differentiators from the mass market vehicles. The validity of the model has has been tested on more than 400 real luxury car owners that confirmed the importance of the attributes included. Further analysis of the collected responses has allowed to identify five key factors that encapsulate the meaning of all the variables introduced. The factors identified are the following: technical aspects, social appeal, brand origin, uniqueness and innovation. Leveraging on these findings, it has been possible to structure the model in a new layout on two levels. On the first one there are only the five key factors and provide a macro perspective, while on the second level there is a group of CSFs for each factor describing luxury car characteristics with an additional level of detail. Interesting implications for academics as well as managers have been discussed, together with limitations and future suggestions for research
Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS): state-of-the-art of up and running solutions and a framework to assess the level of development of a Cloud Manufacturing platform
Full text linkDuring the last decades manufacturers tried to find new sources of flexibility because of the uncertainty of the market. Both practitioners and academics started to study new paradigms aiming to make companies more flexible up and downstream of their value chains leveraging on suppliers and customers. Cloud Manufacturing (CM) is certainly one of the most interesting concepts because it comes from the success of Cloud Computing and belongs to the complex fourth industrial revolution (i.e. Industry 4.0 paradigm). It has been introduced in 2010, defined as the “manufacturing version of cloud computing” where manufacturing resources are available to users on-demand, with outstanding flexibility. CM pursues the idea of creating Manufacturing as-a-Service (MaaS) leveraging on the benefits of the platform economy. In spite of its interest, after ten years debate there is not consensus on the essential characteristics of this paradigm because of the very limited number of real applications (prototypes excluded). In this paper we explore 6 cases of up and running platforms which resemble some of the characteristics of CM, define them as “CM Early adopters” and inductively propose a framework to assess the level of development of a CM platform. This study contributes to theory as it shows that CM is already arising in some businesses, the approach to the paradigm can vary significantly from one case to another, and different levels of development can be assessed. From a managerial point of view, this paper helps to understand the CM paradigm as it shows concrete examples of real companies pursuing the MaaS idea. In conclusion, MaaS seems ready to land on some industrial sectors and this can be either a new opportunity for competitiveness or a serious threat
The role of Engineering-to-Order machinery manufacturers in future Cloud Manufacturing supply chains: a business case and a strategic perspective
Full text linkThe visionary paradigm of Cloud Manufacturing (CM) struggles to take off in the real manufacturing world. This paper develops a single-case study on one fully-operative platform we found in Europe (metal processing business) which can be regarded as representative - and maybe 'revelatory' - for the future CM paradigm. The case, with an explanatory purpose, studies the platform success from a resources perspective. The findings show how an Engineer-to-Order (ETO) company, namely the manufacturer of the machineries virtualised, provided a key contribute to build such a system, thanks to its own peculiar resources and competences. Resorting to theoretical available knowledge, the paper suggests that ETO machine manufacturers should consider CM as a strategic option for their competitiveness but - at the same time - they should recognise that their internal resources and competences are not enough to build completely a CM platform on their own
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Companies’ adoption of Smart Technologies to achieve structural ambidexterity: an analysis with SEM
Full text linkThe transition to “Industry 4.0′′ and the adoption of Smart Technologies (STs) are generally driven by expectations of gains in productivity, better control over operations and supply chain processes and, therefore, improved competitiveness. These factors are important to achieve success, but sustainable competitive advantage depends on a company's ability to exploit its current assets, while simultaneously exploring new ways of producing value. The ambidextrous balancing of these two areas requires concerted effort and the capacity to balance paradoxical tensions. Literature has thoroughly covered the aspect of how to overcome the trade-off between exploitation and exploration. However, research has only recently started focusing on the pivotal role that digital technologies may play in this process. Our paper contributes to this nascent literature stream by investigating how STs can operate as antecedents of structural ambidexterity. This study relies on the 3rd CINet Survey (2016–2017) involving over 370 companies worldwide. Leveraging on STs and structural ambidexterity as mediators, we used Structural Equation Modelling to show that manufacturing firms with good business performance are in a favorable position to achieve better innovation performances. Our results shed new light on the current debate around the Industry 4.0 transition, with implications for both academics and practitioners
Ambidexterity 4.0: How Adopting Smart Manufacturing Technologies Improves Both Exploitation and Exploration
Full text linkVariations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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