Frontiers in Management and Business

Dovetailing the human resource management with the cloud computing in the era of industry 4.0: A review

Dipanker Sharma — 2024-01-17

The Current review evaluates the human side of Industrial Revolution which is blending the physical, biological, and digital worlds, erasing the borders between technology and human. The Current article examines the potential benefits of Cloud Computing (CC) in the area of HR, and their significant advantages in various HRM processes and highlights the development and trends in the industrial revolution. The 44 articles were retrieved from free search engines like Google scholar, Proquest, Research Gate and Google from (2010-2022). The articles selected through this process were carefully analyzed to synthesize existing knowledge. The findings emphasized that cloud based HRMS offers distinctive advantages to enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The review surfaces that innovative programs have disrupted traditional HR management practices by transitioning the company's segregated in-house HRMS to the cloud. The organizations; implementing and practicing such technologies have gained competitive edge over their rivals. Additionally, cloud computing facilitates efficient resource utilization, seamless scalability, elimination of hardware and software maintenance requirements, and reliable data recovery capabilities. The study suggests strategies on how HR must create a digital workplace that can innovate, collaborate, and tackle business issues.

Research on the impact of artificial intelligence on the employment environment of labors in China

Nannan Shan — 2023-11-29

Purpose: The development of artificial intelligence technology can undoubtedly trigger profound changes in the labor market. Empirical analysis of the impact of artificial intelligence on the employment environment and its mechanism can propose effective paths to optimize the employment environment, which can effectively promote the improvement of the employment environment for Chinese labors and the stability of the employment situation. Based on the limitations of the development of artificial intelligence technology in China, this study focuses on studying its impact on the employment environment in the short term, and the long-term effects on the employment environment in China will become the author's future focus and research direction.
Methodology: This study uses quantitative research methods, based on Panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2009 to 2019, and uses program computer software Stata 17.0 for data processing and empirical analysis.
Conclusion: AI technology has a significant positive role in promoting the employment environment, and the new Information infrastructure represented by the Internet is conducive to promoting the positive moderating of AI on the employment environment. Through further research, it was found that the employment environment improvement effect of AI technology has regional differences, with a greater impact on the employment environment in the eastern region than in the western region, while the impact on the central region is not significant.

Adapting entrepreneurial orientation for business performance of medium-sized business in South-West Nigeria

Olugbenga Ayo Ojubanire — 2023-06-19

Entrepreneurial orientation as a concept has gained the attention of scholars over the last decade. It also became interesting to find out its relationship with business performance in South-West Nigeria. This study set out to find out any measure of influence that entrepreneurship as well as entrepreneurial orientation may assert on the performance of medium size businesses, with South-West Nigeria as the sample location. The results showed that pro-activeness (β = 0.145), competitive aggressiveness (β = 0.231), risk-taking (β = 0.087), and autonomy (β = 0.119) all had positive regression coefficients while innovativeness (β = -0.028) had a negative regression coefficient.

Factors undermining quality of medical-care services delivered by a physician in today's medical-care market country-wise: Statistical analysis

Akim M. Rahman — 2023-06-09

The study aims to decide factors that are affecting a physician’s quality of medical-services in today’s medical-care market country-wise such as Bangladesh. It further describes the relationship among the factors and then decides its influence affecting the physician’s quality of medical-care services. Here primary data was collected from patients and patient-attendants in different private and government hospitals found in Dhaka City. This data statistics are used in this study for quantitative research approaches to conduct the goals. The dependent variable “quality of medical-services (PQMCS)” is regressed on six explanatory variables: a) pharmaceutical products promotional impact b) lengthy prescription c) unnecessary test requirements d) spending less time e) poor communication with patients and f) requirements for longer staying in hospital (private hospitals cases) etc. These characteristics were gathered from survey-opinions of patients and patient-attendants. These data statistics are used to decide the validity of the model. All multiple regression assumption tests were found to be valid. According to regression analysis, it was found that each of the explanatory variables have a substantial negative impact on a physician’s quality of medical-services in the medical-care market. The analysis from one-way ANOVA reveals that patients and patient-attendants have similar feelings of the six independent variables that undermine a physician’s quality of medical-services on duty. Results from this study can be used by policymakers as well as leaderships of hospitals (government and private) for policy-design and for administrative approaches addressing today’s problem of medical-care market in Bangladesh. Since most physicians are employed either in government or in private sector or in both sectors, it is obvious that enforcing effective management systems can be instrumental curtailing the magnitudes of the problem soon. Obviously, in this case both government & private hospitals must work together for the interest of Bangladeshi-society, which can ensure quality & sustainable medical-care market soon in Bangladesh. The findings of this study can be a synopsis of medical-care services in today’s business-driven world country-wise where undertaking further study on policy-design can be instrumental.

How does industrial agglomeration affect firm performance of Chinese high and new technology industry?

Qianfei Shu — 2023-05-05

Many researches have discussed the relationship between industrial agglomeration and firm performance. However, the relationship between policy-directed industrial agglomeration in the context of Chinese high and new technology (HNT) industry remains unclear. This study aims to investigate the correlation between industrial agglomeration and China's HNT firm performance by using the two-stage least squares (2SLS) and the system generalized methods of moments (GMM) approaches on account of the panel data of HNT industries in China during 2004-2015. The estimation results revealed that industrial agglomeration has a positive impact on HNT firm performance, including productivity and sales growth. To be specific, by taking advantage of agglomeration effect, foreign-owned firms have demonstrated excellent performance in both labor productivity and sales growth. In contrast, private-owned firms have not performed well in terms of productivity, but have shown sound performance in term of sales growth. Unfortunately, state-owned firms do not benefit from the industrial agglomeration. Moreover, large firms perform better in respect of labor productivity, while small firms experience higher sales growth.

Recent advances in internal control: Soft control overcoming the limits of hard control

Peter Yao Lartey — 2023-03-29

Uncertainties and risks continue to pose a threat to governance and internal control, impeding public sector modernization and essential service delivery. Attempts to develop alternative strategies to meet desired results in highly bureaucratic institutional environments such as the public sector are intensifying because ideas and principles matter. This study advances informal "soft control" as a substitute for formal "hard control" in four dimensions: (a) creates a clear difference between "soft" and "hard" control; (b) designs key determinants of informal "soft" control; (c) limitations of formal "hard" control; and (d) a conceptual framework and hypotheses to support future empirical research and “operationalization” of the proposed constructs. Critical observations imply that the increasing cases of corporate malpractice and consequential non-alignments with best practises in recent times are sufficient evidence to suggest that formal control is incapable of mitigating financial crimes, irregularities, and preventing complex accounting scandals classified as white-collar fraud. The causes of these control failures are attributed to overreliance on "hard control" which primarily works with sanctions and the neglect of informal control mechanisms "soft controls". This condition has limited the ability of auditors to uncover systematic failures of controls that are process-specific, resulting in a partial and incomplete evaluation of internal controls. The study assumed a theoretical approach due to the lack of existing empirical research on “soft control”. However, this observations form a solid theoretical foundation for further discussions. We argue that "tone at the top," informal social control, organisational culture, ethical values, empowerment, and employee competence are effective substitutes for and complements to formal "hard" controls in preventing another Enron.

Research on the export competitiveness of aquatic products and its influencing factors: A case study of Guangdong Province in China

Li Huang — 2023-03-14

Guangdong Province is a major producer of aquatic products in China, but its export has been lack of competitiveness. Based on data of aquatic products in Guangdong Province from 2009 to 2020, this paper analyzes the export competitiveness and influencing factors of aquatic products in Guangdong Province using an extended gravitational model and result show that production factor input and high-quality production management are the core factors to enhance the export competitiveness of aquatic products. The geographical distance of importing countries and GDP per capita have a significant positive impact; The impact of the fisheries industry and construction industry is significantly positive; Whether the exporting country is an APEC has a significant negative impact, indicating that the previous trade agreements have no effect on the improvement of the export competitiveness of aquatic products in Guangdong Province over time. It has no significant impact on fish breeding area, the number of processing enterprises above designated size and the openness of foreign trade. Reducing the density of aquaculture, increasing innovation, strengthening the supervision of aquatic products and improving the supporting facilities of related industries are important measures to improve the export competitiveness of aquatic products in Guangdong Province.

Do doctors work for patients in today's business-mentality world: Looking through consumer choice theory lens?

Akim M. Rahman — 2022-12-26

In the 21^st century world, people mostly behave with business-mentality without considering moral obligations in society. In this behavioral change, service-market, particularly Medical-care service-market is appeared to be vulnerable. Because of supplying medical-care services, the doctor or hospital receives capitation payments, fees-for-services, risk pool settlements, incentive payments or other fees. However, today it is probably the most criticized profession in world-economy country-wise such as Bangladesh. Sometimes doctors here are blamed for requiring unnecessary tests of patients for doctor’s own monetary gains. In some cases, doctors’ efforts are assumed to be connecting with pharmaceutical-products promotion by writing lengthy prescriptions. Some group claims that today doctors spend less time for each patient. All these interactions justify claiming that a patient works for a doctor when the patient visits a doctor for medical-care services. Here the existence of “asymmetric information” dominates the medical-care market where doctor takes advantages in multi-faucets. It causes market inefficiency that creates negative economic externalities – deadweight loss. Improving medical education with special emphasis on ethical aspects and soft skills in communication are considered important in aim to reduce the magnitudes of today’s dilemma of medical-care service-market. Also, strict enforcements of medical-care provisions and ethical code of conduct among all health works can be instrumental. Finally, the answer to the question “Do doctors work for patients or something else, depends on who are asked. But the reflections of today’s medical-care-market in economy of Bangladesh are no deniable, which deserves to be studied further curtailing the magnitudes of the problem.

Black carbon and other pollutants from brickfields country-wise: Impact assessment and policy guidance under welfare analysis

Akim M. Rahman — 2022-11-22

The brick industry in developing world is a vast, coal burning and polluting industry. Nearly 1,500 billion bricks are produced globally each year where 87% are from Asia. China dominates the world in producing bricks using coal combustion and woods as fuels where Australia placed the last. Bangladesh placed the 5^th in the world, and it mostly uses woods as fuels. These industries are owned privately. It is a type of industry that is mostly driven with business mentality without emphasizing the hygiene and health aspects where government laws are barely active in practices where rapid urbanization has been increasing demand of bricks. But, in most cases, this industry uses inefficient and dirty technology that causes environmental externalities. Brick-kilns inject huge volume of effluent gases. It causes depletion of atmospheric O₂ level. Addressing the issue for policy guidance, this study first analyzes the consequences of these externalities in terms of marginal damage (MD) under neoclassical partial equilibrium demand & supply theory. It further analyzes the reasons of disparity between social-cost and private-cost by conventional marginal damage analysis. Findings show that due to gases emission from brickfields, the marginal social-costs are higher than marginal private-cost. In this economic dilemma, brick-kilns are benefiting with the expense of human-society country-wise. As it has been going on, the rises of brick-prices have been causing upward trends of welfare losses where producer surplus is dominating the total surplus. This consequential economic situation has been causing higher deadweight loss year after year. The reason is that the bricks-customers distribute this expenditure away from now more expensive bricks. Now there is an urgency for national policy actions for ensuring cleaner & sustainable brick production. On this aspect, reforestation efforts can be achieved in multi-faucets including brickfields’ charity and govt. policies on planting trees and for motivational efforts inspiring citizens of this country. These motivational efforts can be in multi-faucets: (a) inspiring “birthday celebration by planting trees”, (b) forcing to use green Tech in brick kilns and (c) conducting research in both phases of govt. and academicians where financial supports can be inspirational.

A quantitative approach to risk-driven strategy formulation: A case study introducing a real-options framework

Alberto Bettanti — 2022-11-02

The thesis of this article advocates that a quantitative and analytical approach to the business value vs. risk relationship can effectively support company strategy formulation processes dealing with uncertain business scenarios. Within the grounded theory methodology, a suitable case study was selected among SMEs, and a real-options (RO) framework was applied to address the research question. This inductive-empirical methodology shows that the RO framework, in conjunction with the Montecarlo method, is a valuable tool capable of supporting the best strategy formulation by purposefully connecting risk with business value. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the RO framework can maximize business value in markets characterized by deep fundamental uncertainty. This article is of interest to both scholars and practitioners. Strategic thinking research can benefit from the conclusions of this paper by conceptually reinforcing strategy formulation theories based on organizational resource-investment choices exploited through the RO lens. Practitioners can verify the strengths of the RO framework in practice. Moreover, they can adopt the combined use of the RO framework and the Montecarlo method as a leading factor for strategy-setting processes and a trigger for shaping strategic risk management practices within their reference industry.