Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence for the motivations of SMEs for introducing the Living Wage (LW), focussing on retail as one specific sector. It develops understanding of the strategic benefits and challenges these employers face in balancing financial, ethical and social considerations in small businesses.


Design/methodology/approach
The study employed mixed methods: a survey and semi-structured interviews. The interviews are presented as part of three case studies.


Findings
Findings indicate that employers were, for the most part, motivated by personal ethics and beliefs about fair wages and social justice. They suggest that SME accrue benefits from LW accreditation such as reputational benefits and higher employee morale, but that there are also potential pitfalls of LW adoption related to pay structure and incentives. The sustainability of the LW emerged as an issue in terms of the long-term strategy and brand positioning of the companies involved.


Research limitations/implications
The nature of the research was exploratory and thus the study only allows for limited generalisation. Recommended avenues for further research include gathering data from different levels of organisations and from different stakeholders.


Originality/value
This is the first paper to investigate the drivers for, and implementation of, the LW in SMEs. The specific characteristics of SMEs – their ethos, low visibility, reliance on trusting relationships and limited resources, among others – make the study of why and how they choose to implement the LW very interesting. This study is the first to gather and analyse data from SME retailers and wholesalers that have implemented the LW.

PurposeThis study explores the factors that influence platform-to-platform cooperation (PPC) and designs a theoretical framework for platform research.Design/methodology/approachThis multi-case study includes a combination of exploratory and explanatory case studies.FindingsFrom the internal factor perspective, channel integration capability, technology-based order matching capability and service innovation capability positively affects the PPC. From the perspective of external factors, the impact of a new platform entry on the PPC depends on market power and complementarities between platforms in the supply and value chains. Diversity of demand also has a positive effect on the PPC, which is moderated by network externalities. It is worth noting that the incumbent platform prefers to diversify its services for collaborating platforms with a higher level of cooperation. In addition, the higher diversity of demand, the stronger the service innovation capability, which indirectly impacts cooperation positively.Originality/valueThe PPC has gained immense popularity in recent years. However, no scholars have investigated the factors influencing the PPC decisions, which warrants further exploration. This study sheds light on the factors and mechanisms that influence the PPC from both internal and external perspectives.

Sustainability has become the global need for survival in all scopes due to financial development's side effects that have resulted in environmental destruction. The world leaders have proposed green banking (GB) to reduce carbon footprints from banking operations by promoting paperless financial services based on technology. However, the customers' adoption of GB remains unsatisfactory in the UAE. This study attempts to investigate the determinants of consumers' intention adoption of GB. An exploratory sequential mixed-method approach is employed. The qualitative analysis identified six new challenges facing customers' intention adoption of GB: customer awareness, personal innovativeness, bank reputation, security and privacy, system quality, and government support. The qualitative findings are mostly confirmed by quantitative study whereby awareness, personal innovativeness, system quality, and bank reputation significantly impact customers' intention to adopt GB. The study also revealed the insignificant moderating impact of gender and age in most proposed relationships.

In certain environments like condominium complexes, couriers are only allowed to drop off their payloads at designated drop-off stations instead of delivering it directly to the recipient. This practice has become more common in condominium during the Covid-19 pandemic, in part due to government SOPs encouraging their adoption. This project aims to develop a partially automated delivery system using robot couriers that would deliver the payloads from the drop-off stations directly to the recipient, removing the need for manual collection. The system is made up of a central database, a simulated delivery robot and two Android applications for interfacing with the system. The applications and database are used to arrange the delivery request and the robot services it by navigating the complex. The Robotic Multi-Storey Delivery System is able to perform deliveries within a controlled condominium environment, use QR codes to verify recipients and displays the system status clearly on a dashboard which is linked to a database. It is a fully software project where a simulated environment for robot delivery system was developed.