15th Annual International Symposium on Economic Theory, Policy and Applications
Program (Athens Local Time)
(*In the program presentations are included from all the subjects scheduled to be presented in parallel)(Note: each presentation includes at least 10 minutes for questions and discussions if available)
Monday 29 June 2020
08.00-08.30 Registration
08.30-09.00 Opening and Welcoming Remarks:
Gregory T. Papanikos, President, ATINER.
Sharon Claire Bolton, Emeritus Professor, The Management School, University of Stirling, Scotland.
Timothy M. Young, Professor and Graduate Director, The University of Tennessee, USA.
Codruta Simona Stoica, Professor and Vice-Rector, Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, Romania.
09.00-09.30 Radmila Janicic, Professor, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Title: Holistic Marketing Approach in Literature Arts.
The paper present theoretical and practical aspects of holistic marketing approach in literature arts. Focus of the paper is developing theoretical aspects of holistic marketing approach in literature arts. In empirical research the paper will present results about segmentation of target groups of literature art’s events, as well as, their satisfaction with literature arts events and experience about books. The results of empirical research will lead to further theoretical and practical analysis of holistic marketing approach in literature arts. The theoretical improvement of holistic marketing approach in literature arts is important, as new concept of marketing approach. Theoretical aspects of holistic marketing approach in literature arts is based internal marketing, integrated marketing communications, internal communication, relationship marketing and social responsible marketing. The paper present modern ways of social communications, by social media, in order to develop holistic marketing and experience marketing in literature arts. Social media gives opportunities for raising literature art’s experiences and get it interactive. Audience can comment literature art’s events, books and talk with literature art’s authors, what is unique experience. Audience become inspire with books, communications and literature arts events, what lead in develop of new literature art’s experiences. It is very important for young generations to improve literature art’s experiences, because the biggest impact on global world changes have education and arts.
09.30-10.00 Evangelos Xevelonakis, Professor, Head of Center Data Science & Technology, HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich, Switzerland. Title: Identifying Sustainability Efforts in Swiss Start-up Webpages using Machine Learning and Lexicon Based Approaches.
Today’s companies operate increasingly transparently, primarily because of the Internet. Firms are expected to fulfill their social responsibility and to engage socially, ecologically and economically. Large and established companies integrate Customer Social Responsibility (CSR) into their strategies and into the production process. The question arises as to whether start-ups that may be seeking investor capital should include CSR in their strategies. Sustainability represents initial costs, but in the long- term can make the company and its products more attractive to customers and investors. This study addresses the question of whether Swiss start-ups reports CSR practices on their websites and whether their reports can be detected automatically using text mining methods. The analysis was conducted as follows: Firstly, data was downloaded from the web pages of the start-up. The start-up was identified via a link from a ranking page and then its website content was copied. In addition, a data set was created with manually pre-classified web pages. The data was later used to set up and train the models. Regarding the CSR portion, A CSR dictionary by Pencle and Malaescu (2016) was used to identify CSRrelevant terms in the texts. Only the relevant terms were used in the analysis (non-relevant information was discarded). A fundamental assumption is that the greater the frequency of CSRrelevant terms in the text, the greater the CSR relevance of the text. The data collected were used to create documents which then were analyzed. This allowed the development of four models. One of the models was able to determine a threshold to classify the documents. The other three models used the learning algorithms Decision Tree, k-nearest-Neighbor and Naives Bayes. The best model (threshold) classifies 6% of the web pages as CSR relevant. This result confirms that text mining can be used to assess the sustainability strategy of Swiss start-ups. However, further research should be done to increase the accuracy of the classification models.
10.00-10.30 Cyrine Khalfallah, PhD Student, IHEC Carthage, Tunisia.
Faten Malek, Adjunct Professor, ESSCA École de Management, France. Norchene Ben Dahmane Mouelhi, Senior Lecturer, IHEC Carthage, Tunisia. Title: What Luxury for the Silver Generation Market? Seniors’ Motivations in Luxury Consumption
In a context marked by an increased competition and an economic crisis that is impacting the purchasing power of consumers, the luxury sector is one of the main sectors that haven’t been affected by this crisis. On the contrary, it has even taken advantage of this phenomenon to record sales. With a turnover of 247 billion dollars in 2017, the luxury market is showing positive growth that will continue until 2025 (Bain and company, 2018). Several researchers have confirmed the fact that the global market for luxury brands has grown rapidly over the last two decades (Codignola, 2018; Kapferer and Valette-Florence, 2018; Shimul and Phau, 2018; Shao et al, 2019; Ko et al, 2019; Halwani, 2019). As a result of these developments, there has been a growing concern for researchers in understanding the behaviour of luxury goods’ consumers and the management of luxury brands. However, the need for further research that explores other market segments for this area is imminent, especially in the case of seniors. Indeed, there are very few studies that have explored the seniors’ consumption for luxury products (Amatulli et al, 2015), while there is a multitude of works on luxury that have focused on consumers of different ages including youth, adolescents … Yet, senior consumers have a different purchasing behavior (Yoon et al, 2005; Serrière, 2006; Amatulli et al, 2015), and they are heterogeneous in terms of physical and psychological changes (Guiot, 2006). This innovative theme constitutes a very interesting path for the future of research and business, as this segment, very often neglected, is growing (Le Serre et al, 2013; Malek et al, 2014; Lesakova, 2016 ; Lacroix and Jolibert, 2018; Le Serre et al, 2017; Balderas-Cejudo et al, 2019), and deserves special interest due to its strong purchasing power, brand loyalty and free time (Littrell et al, 2004; Amatulli et al, 2015). The seniors’ market has become a real business and is experiencing a period of rapid expansion. Some professionals call it the “white gold” market because the current ageing of the population presents an interesting growth opportunity for many industries. In this research, an exploratory approach has been conducted to identify the motivations of seniors in the consumption of luxury goods in order to provide managers with a better understanding of the motivations of seniors to better satisfy this target group. The results of this qualitative study (1) reveal that intrinsic motivations primarily support the behaviour of seniors and (2) underline a relationship between the purchase of luxury goods and the aspiration to be younger.
10.30-11.00 Thanos Athanasopoulos, Senior Lecturer, De Montfort University/Leicester, UK. Title: Stability of Collusion and Vertical Differentiation.
We study collusion in a vertically (product quality) differentiated duopoly. We find that the two rms face a trade-off between prot maximization and stability of collusion. Profit maximization dictates that most of the production should be allocated to the rm with the best quality, while stability requires that the rm with the least quality should get a large share of production and collusive prots. This implies that collusion gets monotonically easier to sustain as quality differentiation rises, when inter-rm payments are unfeasible. Finally, we show that side payments can become a factor of cartel destabilization when quality differentiation is sufficiently large.
11.00-11.30 Gede Sumertha Kusuma Yanca, Lecturer, Former Dean, Faculty of Defense Srategy, Indonesia Defense University, Indonesia. Title: Participation Indonesian Female Peacekeeper in UNIFIL Year 2015-2017: Implication to Defense Diplomacy.
11:30-12:00 Tobias Zander, PhD Student/Researcher, University of Wuppertal, Germany. Title: A Gravity Approach to Analysing the Effects of Corruption on Foreign Direct Investment Flows within OECD Economies.
In this paper the effect of corruption on foreign direct investment flows is analysed. The literature is divided regarding the effects of corruption. One hypothesis argues that corruption greases the wheels of government and therefore is beneficial while the other hypothesis argues that it sands the wheels of government leading to suboptimal results for an economy. For the empirical analysis a dataset consisting of bilateral FDI data from the OECD for the years 1996 – 2017 and the Control of Corruption measure from the World Governance Indicators of the World Bank is compiled. This paper then employs a PPML gravity model with dyadic and time-fixed effects to analyse the data. Early findings support the sand the wheels hypothesis meaning that corruption might have a negative effect on FDI inflows within OECD economies.
12:00-12:30 David Hanrahan, Researcher, University of Wuppertal, Germany. Title: Tax Challenges of the Digitalized Economy.
The transformative process of digitalization has impacted our economies like few previous developments in history. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the digitalization process which they have supported have been the subject of economic analysis for many years, however the challenges they pose to economic growth, welfare and stability continue to intensify which has resulted in recent calls for action from people around the world and attempts by policymakers to respond. If one considers issues like rising income inequality, rising wealth inequality and rising populism, the role of digital dynamics cannot be ignored, and one key theme connects these issues: Taxation. The rapid spread of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has seen to a revolution in terms of business models, consumption patterns and financial flows. Key new characteristics of the digital age enable firms to reduce their tax burden. Despite the challenges facing the international tax challenges being recognized very early, little was done. Thus the fiscal termites of globalization and technological progress, as identified by Tanzi in 2000, have continued to undermine national tax systems. Following the transatlantic banking crisis and the Euro crisis, calls grew amongst frustrated voters – facing rising taxes and reduced public spending over many years – for governments to act against multinationals, and in particular tech giants, who were seen as not paying their fair share. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD), together with the G20, initiated the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project to coordinate international and multilateral responses to the challenges facing countries. Action 1 of the BEPS project focused on the Digital Economy. Despite early promise, progress in terms of Action 1 has been slow. This has resulted in individual countries implementing unilateral new taxes such as digital sales taxes designed to generate tax revenues until a more fundamental change to the international tax system can be agreed and implemented. However, despite the seemingly obvious detrimental nature of digitalization on tax revenues, little research has focused on the actual, specific effects – with effort instead expended on hypothetical investment decisions of firms to show the negative effect of digital firms. Another branch of the literature has argued that digital firms do not have a negative effect on tax revenues based on actual tax revenues. One reason for this is discord is that, contrary to Tanzi’s early prediction, the negative effects of digitalization are not immediately visible in tax revenue statistics. This paper will examine the effects of ICT on tax revenues in the literature. Moreover, it will reexamine measures such as Gross Domestic Product – commonly used as the denominator for tax revenue statistics – and seek to show that tax revenues are indeed lower than they could be, thus providing support for the actions of multilateral institutions such as the OECD and individual member states in seeking to tackle the challenge of digitalization.
12:30-13:00 Codruta Simona Stoica, Professor and Vice-Rector, Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, Romania. Title: Modelling with Evolution Cocycles
In recent years, concepts of the control theory, as stability, controllability or observability, were defined and developed, based on the fact that the dynamical systems, which describe processes from engineering, physics or economics, are extremely complex and the identification of the proper mathematical models is difficult. The possibility of reducing the nonautonomous case in the study of evolutionary families or skew-product flows to the autonomous case of evolution semigroups on various Banach function spaces can be considered an important way towards applications issued from the real world. It is of great interest to study the solutions of differential equations by means of evolution operators or skew-product semiflows because techniques from the domain of nonautonomous equations with unbounded coefficients in infinite dimensions were extended for the study of the previously mentioned categories. A classic subject in the domain of evolution equations and in the stability theory, frequently approached, is the theory of skew-product semiflows, which arises naturally when the linearization along an invariant manifold of a dynamical system generated by a nonlinear differential equation is considered. This paper presents the notion of skew-evolution semiflows, defined by means of evolution semiflows and evolution cocycles, as a natural generalization of the notion of skew-product semiflows. The major difference consists in the fact that a skew-evolution semiflow depends on three variables t, t0 and x, while the classic concept of cocycle depends only on t and x, thus justifying a further study of asymptotic behaviors for skew-evolution semiflows in a more general case, the nonuniform setting (relative to the third variable t0). Other remarkable particular cases are the evolution operators and semigroups of linear operators. Several examples are given, in order to emphasize the importance of the new concepts, as well as connections with the classic notions of operators commonly encountered in the theory of evolution evolutions.
13:00-13:30 Zoubida Jadda, Professor, Écoles de Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan, France. Title: PS—Boolean Functions.
In [14], authors presented new results on quaternary cryptographic function and their binary projection, bringing out a new approach of functions used int the security of pseudo-random generators of stream and blocks ciphers. This projection provides a large family of (2m)-variable boolean functions (respectively (2m+1)-variable) with good cryptographic properties. In the present paper, we propose a characterization of this binary projection by disregarding the conditions imposed by the quaternary construction. We show that these (2m)-variable derived boolean functions are PS− and their (2m+1)-variable homologous are semi bent. This characterization can be viewed as a Dillon type construction with a drastic simplification of the intern function and a large choice of suitable support according a particular partition of F22m (respectively of F22m+1).
13:30-14:00 Patrice Parraud, Assistant Professor, Ministère des Armées, France. Title: New and Efficient Combined Hard Fault and Algebraic Attack on Full Trivium.
Hard fault attack is a powerful kind of attack to stream cipher. The major idea is to simplify the stream cipher equations by injecting or creating some faults to reveal the hidden secret key of the encryption machine. In this paper we present a new and efficient combined hard fault and algebraic attack on the Full version of the hardware-oriented synchronous stream cipher Trivium of the European project eSTREAM [1]. This combined hard fault reset based and algebraic attack has a complexity less than O(248) and can be made whenever during the cipher stream generation by finding both the the 80-bit secret key and the 80-bit Initial Values. The main idea of this transient fault attack is to stick to a constant a particular register by targeting its reset wire and to make a cryptanalysis in order to recover the secret. The reset fault attack decreases the algebraic complexity of equations and the algebraic attack solves them. This attack is actually better in terms of complexity, than the best known attacks on the full version of Trivium.
14:00-14:30 Carla Santos, Adjunct Professor, New University of Lisbon and Polytechnic Institute of Beja, Portugal. Title: Linear Mixed Models and Best Linear Unbiased Estimators for Estimable Vectors.
The use of linear mixed models is suitable for correlated data due to, for example, repeated measurements. When the variance-covariance matrix of a linear mixed model is a linear combination of known pairwise orthogonal projection matrices that add up to the identity matrix, this mixed model belongs to the particular class of models with orthogonal block structure (OBS). OBS allow optimal estimation for variance components of blocks and contrasts of treatments. Requiring commutativity between the orthogonal projection matrix, on the space spanned by the mean vector, and the orthogonal projection matrices, involved in the expression of the variance-covariance matrix, we achieve a more restricted class of OBS, called COBS (models with commutative orthogonal block structure). In this work we study this commutativity condition of COBS, which is a necessary and sufficient condition for the least square estimators, LSE, to be best linear unbiased estimators, BLUE, whatever the variance components.
14:30-15:00 Cristina Dias, Adjunct Professor, New University of Lisbon and Polytechnic Institute of Beja, Portugal. Title: An Extension of the Concept of Common Structure for a Series of Studies.
15:00-15:30 Catherine Bruneau, Professor, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France. Title: Labor Productivity in France: Is the Slowdown of its Growth Inevitable or are There Levers to Fight it?
Labour productivity in most advanced countries has slowed in successive stages since the 1970’s and, after the 2008 crisis, it has reached its lowest level since World War II. In this paper we focus on the evolution of the French labour productivity over the last four decades with two main questions. Is the slowdown of labor productivity growth a process which began far before the Great Recession and is expected to continue? Or is the last decrease observed after the 2008 crisis just temporary and, in this case, are there levers to reverse the current trend? To answer these questions, we propose two complementary characterizations of the trend labor productivity, both describing a long run target, first as a simple piecewise linear function of time, involving so-called structural breaks, and, second, without breaks, as a linear function of fundamentals derived from an augmented growth model including Human capital. We propose a thorough econometric investigation with multiple robustness analyses which leads to conlude, first, that the effect of the 2008 crisis is rather temporary and, second, that investing in Human capital in tight relation with innovations should be an efficient lever to fight the slowdown of the labour productivity growth.
15:30-17:00
A Panel on “Corporate Responsibility, Equality and Diversity Practices in Organizations”
Leader: Neide Lúcia de Oliveira Almeida, PhD Student, Sustainability Management Systems, Fluminense Federal University (UFF), Brazil.
Edna Ribeiro Alves, MBA Teacher, Fluminense Federal University, Brazil. Title: Are the Organizations Ranked by the Great Place to Work a Great Place for All in Brazil? An Analysis of what is Being Done toward the Brazilian LGBTQI+ Minority.
Affirmative actions as well as the inclusion of people that have a different sex orienta-tion have been supported by social movements, academia and the media, leading to the creation and strenghtening of public policies in favor of lesbian, gay, bi and trans-sexual people, queers, and others (LGBTQI+) This movement promotes a revision of values, ideas, and visions, implying in intensifying the crusade against homophobia and heteronormativity, which results not only in the inclusion of these mimorities but also in the guarantee of human rights and consolidation of democracy and social jus-tice. Recent studies (IRIGARAY, 2011; FURLLERTON, 2013; CAPRONI NETO, 2014) dis-closed that LGBTQI+people, even those whose intellectual capital is recognized, are exposed to various barriers that make it hard for them to enter the job market through discriminatory practices, whether explicit or disguised. The possibility of admitting to being a homosexual in organizations that adopt affirmative actions and value diversity is a key factor for the worker to face more bravely the challenge of assuming their own identity and declaring themselves before his peers, which makes they feel more confident and, consequently, more productive (COLGAN, 2007; IRIGARAY, 2011). The current research has a qualitative nature and looks into what has been done in terms of inclusion, equity, and guarantee of rights of LGBTQI+ minorities in Brazilian organizations ranked as best companies to work by Great Place to Work (GPTW, 2019). The annual sustainability reports and the code of conduct and ethics reports released in 2019 and accessed in October on the sites of the 30 leading companies were ana-lyzed in context. The result demonstrated that only 23% of the organizations put into practice some kind of affirmative policy for the LGBTI+ group. Furthermore it is worth mentioning the poor result obtained by medium-sized Brazilian companies – only 10% of those listed adopt inclusion practices of this population – making it clear that the idea of promoting protagonism and inclusion of people with different sexual orientation is not yet seen as a relevant competitive value. The conclusion is that in Brazil, the LGBTI+ topic must still overcome prejudices, lift barriers, gain space, and integrate corporate agendas in a more proactive way in view of the evidence that a great place to work does not automatically ensure that the or-ganization is a great place to work for everyone.
Marcello Borio, Researcher, Fluminense Federal University, Brazil. Title: The Rights of Inclusion of People with Disabilities (Pwd) in the World of Work: An Overview in Brazilian Organizations.
Patricia Goncalves Pacheco, Researcher, Fluminense Federal University, Brazil. Title: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A Case Study of a Brazilian SME.
17:00-17:30Rafael Roos Guthmann, Assistant Professor, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Title: On the Informational Efficiency of Decentralized Price Formation
This paper studies the informational efficiency in models of decentralized price formation. First, we show that a search equilibrium, a common model of decentralized price formation, req uires an infinitely larger message space, and therefore infinitely less informationally efficient than the competitive equilibrium in a large economy. We propose here a model of price formation through marketmakers. This model of price formation attains t he competitive allocation in the limit (as the search equilibrium). The case of monopolistic equilibrium where markets for each commodity are monopolized by a single marketmarkers as they deter the entry of competitors, we show that the equilibrium only re quires, in a quasilinear environment with L goods, a message space with L 1 more dimensions than the competitive process. This appears to be the most informationally efficient form of decentralized price formation process that implements the competitive al location at the limit.
17:30-18:00 Ampalavanar Nanthakumar, Professor, State University of New York at Oswego, USA. Title: Comparison of Archimedean Copula Models for Reliability.
Purpose. The purpose this research is examine the relationship of perceptions of organizational justice on the ranking of candidates for incentive bonuses and the impact of organizational culture on these perceptions.
Design/methodology. A questionnaire was developed which asked respondents to rank a set of seven candidates for a sales bonus based on deservingness for the bonus. Descriptions of the candidates included information not only on whether they achieved a pre-established metric for the bonus, but on how they achieved (or failed to achieve) the metric. Hypotheses related compliance with norms of organizational justice, both by candidates and the organization, to candidate rank. The survey was administered to a sample of 204 employees of business organizations at all levels obtained through a survey research firm, as well as a sample of 52 employees of organizations in the Christian publishing industry. Nonparametric statistics were used to analyze the results. A comparison was made between the respondents sourced through the research firm, seen as representing the general population, and those from the Christian-oriented group.
Findings. Hypotheses that respondents will seek to punish violators of justice norms, reward compliers, and compensate victims of organizational unfairness were generally supported. More interesting were differences between the groups of respondents from the general population and the group representing Christian-based firms.
Originality/value. This article reveals the impact of organizational culture on the acceptance of incentive systems. The research employed a practitioner survey, rather than more common experimental approach.
18:30-19:00 Michael Radin, Associate Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA. Title: Value Orientations, Emotional Intelligence and International Pedagogical Innovations and Practices.
The primary goal of this paper is to portray how the value orientations and priorities can direct us to new pedagogical cores and innovations and leadership. First of all, we will examine how the students’ value orientations and priorities become a pertinent factor in conceiving new teaching practices that enhance the amiable learning atmosphere and guides us to new ideas and leadership. Second of all, we will focus on how value orientations and priorities expand our current knowledge and comprehension of the students’ learning styles and demands and gravitate teachers and students to the concept of emotional intelligence; this then leads students and teachers to new international and interdisciplinary environment(s) and to new teaching and learning practices. In addition, our aim is to address the students’ value orientations and priorities and apply them to steer us to design new learning environment(s) and to the transformational and primal leaderships. Furthermore, our intent is to render how value orientations guide to the emotional intelligence, which then directs to new practices, ideas and innovations. Moreover, we will share specific examples of successful pedagogical innovations that lead to the emotional intelligence and were guided by the students’ value orientations and priorities. Throughout this paper we will remit the following vital question: how do we link the value orientations together with the emotional intelligence and the transformational and primal leaderships?
19:00-19:30 Carmine Gorga, President, The Somist Institute, USA. Title: Concordian Economics: An Integration of Theory, Policy, and Practice.
Keynes said that his ideas were “extremely simple and should be obvious.” Concordian economics, fifty years in the making, fulfills that promise by filling the “black box” of modern economics with the process of (1) Production of real wealth, (2) Distribution of economic values of ownership rights over real and monetary wealth, (3) Consumption (expenditure) of financial wealth to acquire real wealth. Concordian economics re-integrates economic theory with economic justice as the Aristotelian guide to economic policy. Finally, Concordian economics highlights four economic rights and responsibilities that, in correspondence with four (modern) factors of production, translate economic justice into practice. Economic rights are universal rights, essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The implementation of Concordian economics will break the impasse between demands of extreme right and extreme left that poison our economic and political life. Concordian economics transforms economics from a linear, rational discipline into a complex, relational, chaotic field of analysis.
19:30-20:00 Maryam Dilmaghani, Associate Professor, Saint Mary’s University, Canada. Title: The Blue of the Rainbow: Sexual Orientation and Hiring Discrimination in Blue-collar Occupations.
According to a large interdisciplinary literature, gay males are more likely to be employed in female-dominated jobs, while they are substantially less present in blue-collar occupations than their heterosexual counterparts. Two non-mutually exclusive explanations are often advanced for this pattern. The first explanation is the employees’ voluntary self-selection into specific occupations, based on their preferences for job characteristics. The second explanation is hiring discrimination. But, even the employees’ voluntary sorting into certain jobs can be rooted in workplace discrimination. Particularly, sexual minorities may refrain from pursuing occupations in which they anticipate unfavorable treatment. Conversely, they may presume a higher level of tolerance in occupations with a greater concentration of sexual minority employees and adjust their vocational choices accordingly. Consequently, sexual minorities may over-invest in education and seek employment in more tolerant white-collar jobs. Additionally, sexual minorities who work in blue-collar jobs may have decided to conceal their sexual orientation to overcome the minority stress associated with their devalued identity in the workplace. If so, their numbers have not been accurately assessed in the surveys used to establish labour market patterns. The present paper assesses the extent of unfavourable treatment towards sexual minorities applying to blue-collar jobs in Canada. To empirically examine the extent of hiring discrimination, the “correspondence audit” is used. In this experiment, job applications from demographically different individuals with identical qualifications are sent in response to job advertisements. The differences in the interview invitation rates by applicant type provide evidence for discrimination. The paper is the first correspondence audit informed by the extant occupational segregation patterns and dedicated to the blue-collar sector. The data collection is underway and by the time of the conference, the results will be available to present.
20:00-20:30 Timothy M. Young, Professor and Graduate Director, The University of Tennessee, USA. Title: Improving Manufacturing Data Quality with Data Fusion and Advanced Algorithms for Improved Total Data Quality Management (TQDM)
The advent of artificial intelligence, data mining, robotics, etc., has become a standard for successful business endeavours and is known as the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ or ‘Industry 4.0’. Data quality is a key issue in the sustainable biomaterials industry. Untreated data from multiple databases are generally not in the right structure to perform advanced analytics. Some inherent problems of data from sensors that are stored in data warehouses at millisecond intervals include missing values, duplicate records, sensor failure data (data out of feasible range), outliers, etc. This data science focused research was to create a continuous real-time software algorithm for data cleaning that automatically aligns, fuses, and assesses data quality for missing fields and potential outliers. The program automatically reduces the variable size, imputes missing values, and predicts the destructive test data for every record in a database. The impact of outliers and missing data were tested on a dataset with 201 variations of outlier percentages and missing data percentages ranging from 0-50%. The software program was also validated on a real dataset from the wood composites industry. Overall, the data cleaning software program significantly decreased the NRMSEP ranging from 64% to 12% in accurately predicting quality control variables.
21:30-23:00 Greek Night (The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
Tuesday 30 June 2020
Urban Walk (The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
08:30-09:00 Yanbo Ren, Research Assistant & Postgraduate, Shanghai International Studies University, China. Title: The Effect of Product Design Novelty on Purchase Intention: The Mediating Role of Cognitive and Affective Attitudes.
Product design, perceived by consumers at first glance, is of paramount importance for corporations to achieve their business success. From technology differentiation to intangible attributes differentiation, manifold design strategies are ubiquitous for modern enterprises. And of all intangible product designs, novelty must take pride of place. Some researchers understand the key role played by novelty in consumer’s intention to purchase. However, a further elaboration concerning attitude from a two-dimensional perspective does not come to light, novelty-induced purchase intention viewed from consumer’s psychological angle still need to be enriched. Specifically, based on stimulus-organism-response model theory, this research explores the mechanism for the effect of product design novelty on purchase intention with a total of 442 data from Chinese consumers. Attitude is considered as a mediate variable divided into cognitive and affective in a bipartite structure as well. As a consequence, a “product design novelty – consumer attitude response – purchase intention” model is proposed. Then in the process of empirical research, creative products from Palace Museum official Taobao store, characterized by their novel designs, are taken as an example, questionnaire and data analysis function as tools to examine the conceptual model. According to the results, mediated by cognitive and affective attitudes, product design novelty has a significant impact on purchase intention, and it also directly elicits a positive response to consumer’s willingness to buy. Finally, the study culminates in implications for both scholars and entrepreneurs.
09:00-09:30 Lukanda Kalobo, Lecturer, Central University of Technology, Free State, South Africa. Title: The Relationship between the Teaching of Mathematics and the Teaching of Statistics at High School Level in the South African Context.
Originally, mathematics was developed to face ordinary problems. Numbers are found in everyday life in comparisons, tables, orders of magnitude, rounding, estimating, prices and other numerical messages. Statistics encompass much of these mathematical concepts and attempts to describe the world around us. The study of Statistics can be fully integrated into the Mathematics curriculum, giving it meaning to everyday life. Statistical activities in the classroom can be directly linked to the learners’ personal interests and stimulate their motivation for numerical and quantitative studies. Hence, it is important to develop children’s mental images of numbers parallel to their acquisition of counting and calculation skills; skills that mathematics and statistics present. The purpose of this study is to explore the relation between the teaching of mathematics and the teaching of statistics at high school level in the South African Context. Furthermore, the study examines and analyses examples of statistical teaching situations from both a mathematical and a statistical perspective with view to reveal the links between the teaching of mathematics and teaching of statistics. A non-empirical method or conceptual method was followed to achieve the purposes of the study. To this end, a literature review characterised by document analysis was used to answer to the critical aspects of the study. The study reveals the cardinal links between the teaching of mathematics and teaching of statistics. Hence the call to educators to acknowledge the symbiosis to enhance the teaching and promote an awareness of the ways in which statistics is presented and aligned in the South African Mathematics high school curriculum.
09:30-10:00 Narjes Haj Salem, Assistant Professor, University of Sharjah, UAE. Title: The Theory of Planned Behavior: An Exploration of the Role of Anticipated Emotions in Green Product Consumption.
Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, this study develops and tests a model that incorporates both positive and negative anticipated emotions as an additional predictor of the intention to buy green alongside attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. The data were collected from 302 UAE respondents via an online survey. The result from the structural analysis suggests that attitude toward green consumption has the highest impact on the intention to buy green followed by perceived behavioral control, subjective norms and positive anticipated emotions. Surprisingly, negative anticipated emotions did not have any effect on the intention neither the actual buying green behavior. Additionally, a mediating effect of green purchase intention was found between anticipated positive emotions, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control respectively, and buying green products. Overall, the findings of this study contribute to the evidence that emotions play a significant role in consumer decision to buy green products. Marketers should not only rely on cognitive appeal to persuade consumers to shift to green products, but they should also emphasize the positive emotions, such as pride, linked to the consumption of green products.
10:00-10:30 Jan Konig, Honorary Professor, University for Sustainable Development Eberswalde, Germany. Title: Labor Market Integration of Migrants: Hidden Costs and Benefits.
The Eastern enlargement and open borders significantly increased the size of the population in the European Union and also induced a major expansion of the labor market. What is a great step towards a unified Europe is at the same time a challenge for national policy makers. The opening of borders intensifies the pressure to put in place advanced mechanisms of labor market integration since collective bargaining and welfare state institutions might hamper the integration of migrant workers. However, the integration process of migrant workers is multidimensional and involves more than the principle of non-discrimination in the European treaties. Beside others, important determinants for the integrative capability of a system are the labor market effects of migration induced by (i) the welfare state and (ii) the behavior of the market players (trade unions, employers’ associations). In our paper, we concentrate on two dimensions of integration. The first dimension is the nondiscrimination in national labor market institutions while the second is the integration into employment, e.g. enforced through migrant quotas in a member state. We further consider two types of union behavior. In the first scenario, the union embraces the interests of native and migrant workers, while, in the second, she exclusively incorporates the interests of the native workers. More precisely, our paper analyzes the two labor market integration strategies under differential union behavior by studying the following research questions: (i) What are the effects of the participation of migrant workers in a two-tier welfare system? (ii) What are the implications of a change in the participation rate of migrants in the workforce, e.g. through the introduction of a governmental quota? While the first question focuses on the impact of migration on the contribution rate to the unemployment system, the second spotlights the effects of governmental intervention. Independent from union preferences, we support previous findings concerning the negative impact of an inflow of migrants on the equilibrium contribution rate. More interestingly, it is shown that the effects of a change in the labor market participation rate of migrants are qualitatively affected by union behavior. In a two-tier welfare system, a larger share of migrants in the workforce decreases (increases) the contribution rate if the union represents (does not represent) migrant workers, while this phenomenon is not observable in a welfare system with a unique social transfer. We thus detect hidden costs and benefits of labor market integration that are induced by the existence of different levels of benefit claims, respectively the design of the welfare program.
10:30-11:00 Weiwei Zhao, PhD Student, Shanghai International Studies University, China. Title: A Better Family Member or a Better Female Leader? The Effects of Work-Family Enrichment and Female Leadership Effectiveness in the Mediating Role of Positive Mood.
Based on conservation of resource theory and emotion broaden and build theory, this study examines the relationship between work-family enrichment (work-to-family enrichment and family-to-work enrichment) and female leadership effectiveness as well as the moderating effect of family support and work support. Taking a sample of 248 employees and 65 female leaders in a Chinese company, we investigated the relationship between work-family enrichment, positive mood and leadership effectiveness. The results of the study show that work-family enrichment is related to female leadership effectiveness; positive mood mediates work-family enrichment and female leadership effectiveness. Furthermore, work support moderates the relationship between work-to-family enrichment and positive mood, and family support moderates the relationship between family-to-work enrichment and positive mood. Therefore, companies and family should give more support to enhance female leadership and female leaders should positively balance work and family performance.
11:00-11:30 Ida Kukliansky, Head, Industrial Engineering and Management Department, Ruppin Academic Center, Israel. Title: Is Ogive’s Interpretation Easy for College Students?
Faced with growing abundance of visual graphic representation in research articles, newspapers and internet, today’s learners are expected not only to build various graphs but also to know how to interpret them. Interpretation of graphs and converting them to meaningful information is considered as an essential part of statistical literacy. Graphs are an excellent way to condense significant amounts of data, but often students that are able to create graphs, perform poorly on graph interpretation. Despite the perceived importance of an ogive-cumulative frequency distribution graph, most of the existing research in interpretation of graphs is related to bar graphs, histograms and box plots. The present study aims to partially fill this void by broadening the understanding of three levels of graph perception in student’s interpretation of the cumulative frequency distribution graphs in descriptive statistics. The three levels of graph sense considered in this study are: (a) reading the data-questions that are supposedly answered on the graph, (b) reading between the data-interpolating and finding relationship in the data presented in a graph and (c) reading beyond the data-extrapolating or inferring from the graph in order to solve complicated questions. The main research question that this study focuses on is how students are dealing with interpretation of cumulative frequency distribution graphs for the three levels of graph sense. The research tool was a questionnaire of 8 true-false items: 4 of them examining the (a) level, 2 of them examining the (b) level and 2 of them examining the (c) level of graph sense understanding. All of the items referred to the same ogive-cumulative frequency distribution graph (“less than” type). Two groups of college students participated in this study. The first group included 56 business administration students and the second group included 85 industrial engineering and management students. The questionnaire was a part of the semester exam, so the students studied these topics and their motivation to answer as good as possible was very high. The average percentage of correct answers for all the items for all the participants was 78.2%; 77% for the engineering student and 79.4% for the business administration students. The averages for different levels were 86.7 for level a) items, 74.7 for level b) items and 64.5 for level c) items. The two-way ANOVA revealed significant differences between the mean percentage of correct answers for the three levels (F (2, 10) =31.44, p<0.01). No significant differences between the mean percentages of correct answers between the two groups were found (F (1, 10) =0.55, p=0.47>0.05). The most difficult c) level questions required building a frequency distribution table from the ogive in order to calculate the average or to determine the shape of the distribution. Here converting the visual representation into an analytic representation was the first step and converting it into a numeric representation was the second step. Our results show that working within a multi-representational learning environment posed a difficult challenge for learners in linking representations and moving flexibly between them
11:30-12:00 G Suganya, Research Scholar, PSG Institute of Management, India. Title: Efficiency of the Unorganised Sector’s Supply Chain
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study about the adaptability of supply chain of the unorganised sector to volatility in the market. In addition, to understand the efficiency of the unorganised sector’s supply chain models, ability to thrive in the face of global competition through foreign direct investments by large MNC’s, global economic slowdown, government policy changes and depleting resources. Design/methodology/approach A review of available literature were done in order to understand the effectiveness of the unorganised sector’s supply chain. It is a descriptive study, which falls under the conclusive research pattern. Outcome The outcome is to prove that the strength of the unorganised sector will lead to a stable and strong economy for a developing nation. Originality/value This study to the best of author’s knowledge had not been undertaken earlier in India especially in the area of unorganised sector. There are not much research works pertaining to this sector. Though it has contributed so much for the economy, it is considered to be a neglected sector.
12:00-12:30 Iman Boseila, Lecturer, MSA University / Cairo University, Egypt. Title: Global vs. Local? Egyptian Consumers’ Perceptions and Preferences of Global vs. Local Brands.
13:00-13:30 Lucky Otame, PhD Student, Bournemouth University, UK. Title: The Link between International Remittances from Abroad and Households’ Ability to Access Capital for Business Development: The Case of Nigeria.
14:00-14:30 Saiyu Gu, Postgraduate Student, Shanghai International Studies University, China. Title: Crafting a Confucian Culture in Chinese Corporations: A Case Study of Guangzhou Borche.
Corporate culture is an important source of enterprise’s soft power, while Confucian culture which contains more than thousands of years of wisdom has unique social value. In China , more and more private enterprises fully excavate and introduce management thought in Confucian culture. However, there are still many shortcomings in the study of how the Confucian culture penetrates through the enterprise culture concretely. This case study, taking Guangzhou Bo Chuang as the research object and collecting cases, speech and textual evidence to form evidence triangle verification. The study shows: On the one hand, the process of cultural infiltration is divided into three stages: cultural identity-strengthening identity- spontaneous behavior. Based on the stages, a cultural penetration model is created. On the other hand, corporate culture evolves with the life cycle of enterprise development and displays on four levels of spirit, institution, behavior, and matter. The results of this study can not only enrich China’s local management theory, strengthen the construction mechanism and evolution process of corporate culture construction, but also contribute to the cultural construction of small and medium-sized private enterprises in China.
14:30-15:00 Danyang Zhao, PhD Student, Xi’an Jiaotong University / Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China / Hong Kong. Title: Does Contract-Based Governance Lead to or Curtail Opportunism?
15:00-15:30 Nahdh S.M.Alsaif, Lecturer, University of Anbar, Iraq. Title: Approximate Solution for Integro Partial Differential Equation via Neural Network
Finding the exact solutions of functional equations has been devoted consideration of mathematician’s interested in current years. Many issues in theoretical physics and different sciences lead to (IPDE).The solve of this form of equations are regularly very complicated. For this cause in many cases, it is required to attain the approximate solutions The aim of this paper is to solve integro partial differential equations (IPDEs) using artificial neural network through designing multi-layer feed forward Neural Network. A multi- layers design in the proposed method consists of a hidden layer having five hidden units with tanh (tansig) Transfer function used as each unit and one output unit with linear (purelin) transfer function.in this design using Levenberg- Marquardt algorithm training. Moreover, examples on partial integro-differential equations carried out to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the introduced technique.
15:30-16:00 Rolf Rellstab, Research Associate, ZHAW School of Management and Law, Switzerland. Title: Motivation for Craft Beer Consumption – A Means-End Approach.
In recent years, sales of craft beer have increased substantially. Despite the considerable growth, corresponding motives for consumption have not yet been researched more closely. This paper examines Swiss consumers’ motives and values underlying the consumption of craft beer. An empirical analysis was conducted based on the means-end chain approach. According to the means-end theory consumers link product attributes to consequences and to values. The perceived links between them determine the selection of attributes when making purchases. The data collection was based on a qualitative survey using the laddering method, which explicitly addresses the connections between concrete product attributes and higher order cognitive categories motivating behavior. The analysis of the laddering data showed that two predominant motives exist for the consumption of craft beer, both of which are individually oriented. First a desire for happiness by being cheerful and appreciating the good taste, and on the other a desire for an exciting life by being broad-minded and consuming something special. The results confirm the findings of other studies. Craft beer is not primarily consumed because of its functional benefits, but because of its meaning and identification with the product.
16:00-16:30 Ovinda Wijeyaratne, Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University, UK. Title: A Development of a Conceptual Framework to Study Customer Buying Behaviour during a Pandemic Crisis.
16:30-17:00 Jessica Thacker, PhD Student, South Asian University, India. Debdatta Saha, Assistant Professor, South Asian University, India. Title: The “Missing Middle” Problem and Small Firm Fragility: The Case of Food Processing in India.
This paper investigates issue of firm fragility through the lens of density dependence/industrial ecology/organizational ecology, which is reflected in a skewed distribution of firm size distribution in the industry. The literature on resource misallocation has mostly examined reasons for a “missing middle”, whereas we are more interested in the effect of this distortion of firm size on the survival possibilities of firms. To this extent, we first provide a theory about the role that middle-sized firms play in the organizational ecology. We argue that firm specific role in an industry can be determined strictly with firm size classification, which signifies that each firm size is mapped to manufacturing or/and marketing activity, allowing a division of specialization for survival. Essentially, our claim is that small firms business strategy focuses on upstream manufacturing activities, medium sized firms targets marketing processed products that is mostly sourced through industrial sales/ sub-contracting/ co-processing from small-sized firms. On the other hand, large firms are fully integrated into the supply chain and have the ability to produce their own manufactured items as well as market it themselves. Trade-offs are made between manufacturing and marketing when the size of the firm is small and medium, and this trade-off extinguishes when the firm becomes large. In the absence of an appreciable middle-size of firms, small firms loose the cheaper channel of industrial sales and either market their own produce by incurring additional costs of marketing or sell in the cheap wholesale segments with almost no profit margins. As this is most common in food processing industries (with all kinds of sales: wholesale, industrial sales and branded retail), we work out the implications of our theory for this industry for registered manufacturing in India from 2008-09 to 2016-17. We find evidence of firm fragility in the manner that our theory predicts. Not only do we find evidence of the missing middle (more markedly for grain milling than dairy units in India) but using the non-parametric two stage network Data Envelopment Analysis (NDEA): we also find that marketing inefficiency is the core driver of inefficiency for firms rather than technical inefficiency, with high variability in marketing efficiency scores and less variability in technical efficiency scores across the firms in each year. Moreover, we also find mixed evidence for the trade-offs between production and marketing activities.
17:00-17:30 Sureyya Dal, Assistant Professor, Trakya University, Turkey. Title: Regional Disparities of Poverty in Turkey: Lessons from Family Characteristics.
Poverty is a multidimensional social issue which affects all life domains. Therefore, it is important to understand roots of poverty. This study investigates poverty patterns by using Turkish Family Survey 2016 provided by Turkish Statistical Institute. For this purpose, the families who receive social transfers are examined by different aspects. Firstly, poor families are explored by demographic characteristics. Household size,tenure of accommodation, household income, age, gender, education level and marital status have been taken as demographic characteristics. Then importance of family is examined. In this context, attitudes towards traditional family values and attitudes towards marriage and social norms within low income families have been discussed by using results of quantitative methods. All investigations are carried out for 12 regions of Turkey.
17:30-18:00 Juan Carlos Chica, Associate Professor, Colombia National University, Colombia. Title: Influence of Olfactory Marketing on Human Attention and Concentration for Marketing Decision Making.
The sudden and unpredictable behavior of human beings has led the natural and social sciences that study them to be constantly updated and at the forefront of their study. Marketing has not been alien to this trend, where the need to understand their behavior in everyday life and even more, to understand the decision-making process leads to the creation of terms such as olfactory marketing. Olfactory marketing is derived from Neuromarketing and has as its main objective to enhance a purchase or to influence the process of customer care and concentration by means of odours. Through the reptilian brain, odors are fixed in the brain for more time, unlike hearing and sight, which have a shorter memory. Therefore, the purpose of the research is to evaluate the level of attention and concentration that can be generated from certain odors and how they affect a decision making process.
METHOD Large stores and brands generally develop their own scents, such as Zara or Sephora, this research will work with common aromas such as lavender, roses, cinnamon and citrus. Likewise, a control group that will not be subjected to any olfactory stimulus will be worked on. In the research development process, a group under study is subjected to the stimulation of some of the odors described above; An audiovisual is presented and a test is performed. According to the rating (from 0 to 10) of the test and contrasting with the data provided by the eeg, the odors with the highest levels of attention and concentration will be examined, classified. These data will be compared with the control group that was not subjected to any olfactory stimulus under similar conditions to assess the margin of influence of odors. Each group is made up of individuals who undergo the same stimulus for the same period of time, so the comparison process can be done, as it is kept as homogeneous as possible The research is carried out with the support of eeg Neuromarketing tools and the analysis software Neuro-Experimenter Version 6.2. The study is relevant and has a greater value for the academia, because currently there are not a significant number of studies that corroborate olfactory marketing and its impact on human attention and concentration. The preliminary review of the literature allows us to conclude that large companies use novel and uncommon odours as a positioning strategy to attract customers and to build their loyalty. In addition to the above, olfactory marketing increases the value of products and services, making the customer want to pay a larger sum of money to have it.
18:00-18:30 Maria Estela Navarro Robles, Titular Professor, National Pedagogical University (UPN), Mexico. Title: Analysis of the Results of a Pilot Test for an Online Course of Rational Numbers Designed Using Variation Theory and Lesson Study.
We designed an online course based on variation theory and lesson study. Variation theory was used in the sense of having multiple changes to one problem. And lesson study was used as a method to design the course in a systematic way. This method has four cyclic phases: Study, plan, teach and reflect. First one: the study, in this phase we identified goals and key components, in this phase we evaluated approximately 400 elementary school teachers and 400 students from two different universities of México. The average results concerning their knowledge about rational numbers was found deficient in both cases, even if some of the evaluations were perfect, they were a few. One of the most important goals of this phase was to identify which one didn’t know it was different. So, we went to phase 2, plan, to establish goals and indicators of effectiveness for each lesson of the course. So, we defined the aim of the course, which was to give each participant the knowledge that they don’t have about rational numbers. So, we decided to design the course in such a way that each participant has a personalized path of learning, the initial point is his or her own knowledge about the theme, along the course there are diagnostic evaluations that define the path of learning of the participant. Other important result of this phase was that we identified that the context is very important, sometimes in mathematical education we discovered that the context is considered implicit, but this leads to many misconceptions. So, one of the variations was the context, fixing some concept, we varied for example: number of parts, money, areas (in a non – traditional forms and divided in congruent parts or in parts with different form and equivalent areas, etc.), length, weight, volume measures, number line. The phase 3 was to teach. The course is not traditional, neither in its content nor in its format, the course is interactive. The main idea is that the participants think about rational numbers in different ways, the same problem in different contexts. They see videos where there is a brief explanation or a problem (less than 1 minute) and in the same video they answer different questions in which they become aware of the context, the whole and the meaning of the question in this context. The online course had 150 students in a stage pilot and the results of this stage lead us to the phase 4 of the lesson study method. We analyzed the results of the personalized paths of learning of each one of the 150 students in the first module of the course to contrast if knowledge acquired in the course satisfied with the indicators established by us in the phase 2.
18:30-19:00 Juan Ignacio Alcaide, Lecturer, University of Cadiz, Spain. Title: Reconnecting the Old City-Harbour: Best Practices for Attracting Cruise Tourists.
Cruise tourism continues to be a main international growth sector. This paper is based on the gap between destination management organization and unguided city tour as key drivers for change. The paper is focused on evaluating the tourist attraction indicators that strengthen the unguided tour of the city of Cadiz, then aims to refine the focus of sustainable practices, and finally proposes strategies for improving cruise tourists’ satisfaction. Cadiz is a successful city for the large cruise industry and harbour located in the city core, is chosen as the case area to evaluate the alignment of strategic management and marketing. The study is based on an analysis of on structured survey of strengths and improvement potential. The result indicates that industry should more effectively focus on opportunities and challenges and promote old city experience. They could place a stronger emphasis on local identity by cooperating with local-regional network and potential strategies that can be employed by cruise line operators with respect to community relations.
20:00-21:30 Dinner (The event did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
Wednesday 1 July 2020Educational Islands Cruise
Thursday 2 July 2020Delphi Tour
(The events did not take place due to the limited number of attendance. Those who paid and were not able to attend will be offered a free voucher according to our policy: https://www.atiner.gr/coronavirus)
* ATINER does not have the administration and infrastructure capacity to organize separate online conferences for each one that is planned every week. Instead, an attempt has been made made to have one online event for the given week.
