Brokerage System Research Articles

Broker's Role and Responsibility in Commercial Brokering Contracts in Saudi Law

As trade and economic activities expand and spread in this era, the brokerage contract plays an important role in wealth trading and the exchange of goods and services in various trade, industrial, and other fields. A professional acquires the status of a merchant for this work, whether a natural person or a legal entity. The need for brokers and intermediaries continues to increase constantly due to their skills and expertise in bridging views and narrowing the gap between contractors, facilitating the conclusion of transactions. This underscores the impact of the broker's role on commercial and economic life and the necessity to develop laws governing their business, especially given the ambiguity in regulating this topic. From this perspective, the present research examines the broker's role and responsibility by adopting a comparative and analytical descriptive approach. The research is structured into three chapters, aiming to investigate the broker's role and responsibility in performing the functions of the brokerage contract, preserving documents, ensuring implementation, and refraining from prohibited practices. The goal is to draw the most important findings and recommendations, which include recommending the standardization of brokering and real estate brokering procedures, harmonization between the business transaction system project and the real estate brokerage system, recommending the establishment of a private center for trade brokerage with independence and legal person status, and suggesting the addition of some important provisions.

A comparative study of various optimization techniques for cloud brokerage systems

A comparative study of various optimization techniques for cloud brokerage systems

Enhancing knowledge brokerage drivers for dynamic capabilities: the effects on sustainable supply chain ecosystem

PurposeSustainable development involves companies on an individual, organizational and social level requiring the adoption of business models or innovations capable of privileging the co-creation of mutual value with a view to sustainability. From an organizational perspective, this paper aims to show that knowledge brokers, by making explicit their roles as mediators of interactions and acting on dynamic capabilities (DCs), can generate a proactive approach to the three dimensions of sustainability and specifically allows capabilities to positively impact the propensity toward sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices.Design/methodology/approachThis study offers an empirical analysis of 200 companies in the agro-food sector participating in a knowledge brokerage system activated by protection consortia. It uses a multiple regression technique that allows for observing relationships between DCs and SSCM.FindingsAbsorptive, adaptive and innovative capabilities, when understood and brokered, have a positive and direct impact on the SSCM.Originality/valueAs there have rarely been frameworks developed that correlate knowledge brokerage, DCs and sustainability, this paper suggests that DCs, when adequately valued by the knowledge broker, allow for identifying the requirements of the various stakeholders regarding sustainability and changes in market scenarios to generate sustainability practices along the supply chain.

Improvement of Real Estate Brokerage System for Prevention of Real Estate Brokerage Accidents

Improvement of Real Estate Brokerage System for Prevention of Real Estate Brokerage Accidents

How ethnicity matters in labour studies: harnessing ethnic marginality in Chinese manufacturing

ABSTRACT This paper examines how the labour force is segmented through ethnic distinctions. These distinctions can be harnessed to increase capitalist profit. While critical labour studies have documented how gender, race, and migration status are used to generate cheap labour, the ways in which ethnicity structures the labour market are less well understood. We approach this issue with ethnographic data on Yi ethnic minority people from the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture who migrate to South China to become manufacturing workers. These labour migrants enroll in factory work via co-ethnic labour brokers. The brokerage system provides workers with a sense of protection and solidarity, but simultaneously repurposes and entrenches existing inequalities. Based on how relationships between workers, brokers, and employers were structured, we develop two connected arguments: Firstly, ethnicity serves in much the same way as gender, race, and migration status to differentiate the labour force, for example by allowing for salary segmentation and flexible hires. Secondly, ethnicity differs from other labour market distinctions in that it is not only an identity marker, but also organises co-ethnics hierarchically through responsibilities and entitlements bestowed by kinship relations.

Socio and ethno-cultural embeddedness of transnational Nigerian immigrant entrepreneurs in Ghana

Transnational Nigerian immigrant entrepreneurs have been in Ghana for a long time, operating by utilizing a wide range of resources available to them. Key among these resources are their own socio and ethno-cultural norms which have yet to be explored in the existing scholarship. We explore these patterns and norms in the articulation of transnational entrepreneurship among these immigrants in Ghana. We do this by relying on qualitative data gathered through in-depth interviews, observations and market conversations—with 41 Nigerian immigrant entrepreneurs in Accra, Kumasi, and Ashaiman. We argue that these transnational Nigerian immigrant entrepreneurs in Ghana are embedded in their own ‘socio and ethno-cultural heritage’. This argument is anchored in multiple logics. First is the notion of transnational entrepreneurial activity that is ethnically and culturally inspired. Secondly, these entrepreneurship activities are inextricably embedded in informality and intensely rely on informal power brokerage system. Thirdly, there is an embeddedness in the entrepreneurs’ own traditional apprenticeship system. These lines of socio and ethno-cultural embeddedness provide useful pathways for understanding not only the operations and future prospects but also the patterns of transnational (mixed) embeddedness of the Nigerian immigrant entrepreneurs in Ghana.

Value Chain Alliance and Financing of Sikki Craft in Nepal

This paper examines the value chain alliance and financing of sikki craft in Nepal. Among other crafts, sikki crafts is the potential handicrafts in rural community in Nepal. Sikki (dhakiya) is the natural fiber made from grass and which is being used among Tharu communities as a gift during marriage ceremony of daughter and high export potential in global market. Sikki is more labor-intensive based production, which involvement of women in whole process as well as 79% costs of raw materials have been used from local resources. Lack of awareness, inadequate design, lack of coordination, networking and structures, inadequate business knowledge and inefficient technology were major constraints hindering the growth of this sikki craft sub-sector in Nepal. It was estimated that a total of 630 enterprises can be developed during the five-year period. The study revealed that, a total of NPR 70.5 million will required to manage their enterprises that can create over 1260 jobs. The loan fund to be required from external financial institutions will be NPR 3.9 million, where Government of Nepal can play a catalytic role to help these entrepreneurs obtain such loans from the formal sources through brokerage system charging fees. The return of investment of this product was 66% and benefit-cost ratio was 1.7. From the points of view of value chain financing of sikki craft, the business seems viable to the rural women in Terai’ community of Nepal from employment generation and promotion of Nepalese handicraft in global niche markets.
 Int. J. Soc. Sc. Manage. Vol. 7, Issue-3: 131-151

디지털 정부혁신을 위한 부동산에스크로시스템도입에 관한 연구

Korea integrated 18 kinds of real estate transaction-related certificates into one by spending big budgets over the years. Notwithstanding this effort, the online certificate developed by the government is only used as a reference for transactions. Meanwhile, taxes are evaded along with manipulated real transactions and total transaction services are not properly provided, since there are many parties to transactions. This is why there is a backward country type of real estate transaction that brings about various ill effects including real estate transaction incidents. Besides, covert transactions prevail due to veiled transaction amounts and this makes it impossible to impose a tax at a real transaction price. In order to settle problems of the existing real estate brokerage system, there is a need to improve the current simple agency-based brokerage system consisting of many subdivided domains, develop a system for transparent announcement of real transaction prices and change into a real estate escrow system that enables the government to see transaction funds at once. Above all, it is urgently needed to introduce an escrow system, which is an advanced country type of real estate service system to guarantee safe transactions 100% when real estate transaction incidents occur. It is anticipated that development of real estate escrow system will make a contribution to stabilization of real estate transactions by 1) making the domestic real estate transaction system transparent, 2) establishing real transaction prices and consequently, expanding revenues, 3) facilitating stable management of real estate transaction funds, 4) integrating real estate transactions, 5) protecting consumers and improving the compensation system for damages, 6) reducing diverse opportunity costs and transaction costs through online services and 7) upgrading the credit rating for Mortgage Backed Security(MBS) when overseas real estate is open.

Progress in Authority Management of People Names for Collections

The concept of building a network of relationships between entities, a knowledge graph, is one of the most effective methods to understand the relations between data. By organizing data, we facilitate the discovery of complex patterns not otherwise evident in the raw data. Each datum at the nodes of a knowledge graph needs a persistent identifier (PID) to reference it unambiguously. In the biodiversity knowledge graph, people are key elements (Page 2016). They collect and identify specimens, they publish, observe, work with each other and they name organisms. Yet biodiversity informatics has been slow to adopt PIDs for people and people are currently represented in collection management systems as text strings in various formats. These text strings often do not separate individuals within a collecting team and little biographical information is collected to disambiguate collectors. In March 2019 we organised an international workshop to find solutions to the problem of PIDs for people in collections with the aim of identifying people unambiguously across the world's natural history collections in all of their various roles. Stakeholders were represented from 11 countries, representing libraries, collections, publishers, developers and name registers. We want to identify people for many reasons. Cross-validation of information about a specimen with biographical information on the specimen can be used to clean data. Mapping specimens from individual collectors across multiple herbaria can geolocate specimens accurately. By linking literature to specimens through their authors and collectors we can create collaboration networks leading to a much better understanding of the scientific contribution of collectors and their institutions. For taxonomists, it will be easier to identify nomenclatural type and syntype material, essential for reliable typification. Overall, it will mean that geographically dispersed specimens can be treated much more like a single distributed infrastructure of specimens as is envisaged in the European Distributed Systems of Scientific Collections Infrastructure (DiSSCo). There are several person identifier systems in use. For example, the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) is a widely used system for published authors. The International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI), has broader scope and incorporates VIAF. The ORCID identifier system provides self-registration of living researchers. Also, Wikidata has identifiers of people, which have the advantage of being easy to add to and correct. There are also national systems, such as the French and German authority files, and considerable sharing of identifiers, particularly on Wikidata. This creates an integrated network of identifiers that could act as a brokerage system. Attendees agreed that no one identifier system should be recommended, however, some are more appropriate for particular circumstances. Some difficulties have still to be resolved to use those identifier schemes for biodiversity : 1) duplicate entries in the same identifier system; 2) handling collector teams and preserving the order of collectors; 3) how we integrate identifiers with standards such as Darwin Core, ABCD and in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility; and 4) many living and dead collectors are only known from their specimens and so they may not pass notability standards required by many authority systems. The participants of the workshop are now working on a number of fronts to make progress on the adoption of PIDs for people in collections. This includes extending pilots that have already been trialed, working with identifier systems to make them more suitable for specimen collectors and talking to service providers to encourage them to use ORCID iDs to identify their users. It was concluded that resolving the problem of person identifiers for collections is largely not a lack of a solution, but a need to implement solutions that already exist.

Emerging Technology and Its Applications Require New Standards

Let’s put aside the question whether Blockchain is a real technology or a passing fad – a hype. The ups and downs of your fortunes in Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies in the last couple of years may have clouded your views. Short-term or long-term success, or failure, of cryptocurrencies may depend on the success, or failure, of Blockchain, but it is important to recognize that Blockchain and the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) have far greater uses in wide-ranging applications. One such use of Blockchain is as a key enabling technology of 5G applications. Prof. Chaudhry and Dr. Asad present their research to propose a Blockchain-based Network Slice and Resource Brokerage system to build an open, transparent, and fair 5G ecosystem. They explain the challenges of addressing the massive cooperation required among 5G devices and potential solutions using Blockchain.

Qing dynasty market towns and society on the Chengdu Plain: The example of Zhenzichang in Jian prefecture

The author proceeds from reconsideration of G. William Skinner’s theory of the “standard marketing community” to propose an alternative understanding of a “marketing community” on the Chengdu Plain, through a concise analysis of guild halls, ancestral shrines, Buddhist and Daoist temples, academies, and other social organizations in Zhenzichang, Jian prefecture, during the Qing dynasty. The establishment of social organizations in market towns on the Chengdu Plain during the Qing dynasty was closely associated with the brokerage system and the appointment of administrative bailiffs: through the intervention of government authority, these social organizations integrated the market towns with the surrounding villages, gradually forming a community identity. Between the late 18th century and the early 19th century, a number of distinct social units centered on market towns, or marketing communities, took shape on the Chengdu Plain. The logic of “standard marketing communities” as established by Skinner is untenable: the marketing communities must be understood on the basis of the formation and significance of social organizations within the market towns.

State‐mediated Brokerage System in China's Self‐funded Study Abroad Market

AbstractThe thriving of China's self‐funded study abroad market is marked by the tremendous increase of students who use the services of educational intermediaries to facilitate their transnational journeys. This is largely due to the marketization of China's higher educational system and the liberalization of state policy towards commercialized brokerage services. Based on multi‐sited fieldwork in China and Italy, this paper examines the intersections between the regulatory, the commercial, and the social dimensions of the educational migration infrastructure in China. It identifies a tension between the neoliberal ideas of individual autonomy and freedom, which are promoted by the state and private intermediaries, and the self‐perpetuating nature of the educational migration infrastructure, which facilitates and constrains different groups of parents' and students' desire for international education.

Hotels and Resorts Rent Intention via Online Affiliate Marketing

Nowadays, competition in the online business of tourism esp. hotels and resorts is noticeably fierce. Using a kind of cyber brokerage system, called affiliate, in conducting marketing becomes more and more popular marketing weapon for tourism industry. it is viewed as an effective marketing tool that can raise the exposure of products and chance to establish credibility and strength of brand image. The objective of this research is to study relationships between factors in the system of affiliate marketing and the rent intention. Online questionnaire-based data were collected from Thai consumers who used to make room reservations via affiliate marketing system. Experimental results show that the trust in publisher in the affiliate system is the key factor significantly affecting the rent intention.

분산 재생에너지의 효율적 활용을 위한 가상발전소(VPP) 플랫폼 개발에 관한 연구

Purpose The recent concern over environmental problems such as greenhouse gas emission and fine dust contributes increasing interest in renewable energies. However the intrinsic characteristics of renewable energies, intermittent and stochastic generation, might cause serious problems to the stability and controllability of power grid. Therefore countermeasures such as virtual power plant (VPP) must be prepared in advance of the spread of uncontrollable distributed renewable energy resources to be one of major energy sources. Design/methodology/approach This study deals with the design concept of the VPP platform. we proposed as a technology solution for achieving the stability of power grid by guaranteeing a single power profile combining multiple distributed power sources with ICT. The core characteristics of VPP should be able to participate in the grid operation by responding to operation instructions from the system operator, KPX, as well as the wholesale electricity market. Findings Therefore this study includes energy storage device(ESS) as a controllable component as well as renewable energy resources such as photovoltaic and wind power generation. Based on this configuration, we discussed core element technologies of VPP and protype design of VPP solution platform according to system requirements. In the proposed solution platform, UX design for the integrated control center and brokerage system were included as well as ancillary service function to respond to KPX’s operation instruction with utilizing the capability of ESS. In addition, a simulator was suggested to verify the VPP operations.

Patron-Clientelism and Community Participation: Lessons From an Urban Poverty Alleviation Project in Bangladesh

This paper explores the logic of patronage and its manifestation in a community-driven development project in two poor urban settlements in Bangladesh. It is seen from the case study that long-term patron-clientelistic relationship has been more dominant than a short-term based brokerage system due to the existing typical socio-political culture in Bangladesh. The exertion of patron-clientelistic relationship depends primarily on the community specific socio-political context. This paper opines that the presence of multi-political parties’ influence in a community reduces the dominance of patron-clientistic logic in shaping social relationship. This in turn contributes to a more meaningful participation.

ACCESS TO IMPROVED HYBRID SEEDS IN GHANA: IMPLICATIONS FOR ESTABLISHMENT AND REHABILITATION OF COCOA FARMS

SUMMARYPoor access to improved seeds in West and Central Africa has compromised crop yields and productivity as most farmers source the bulk of their seeds from informal channels. The use of farmer produced seeds has mostly resulted in high seedling mortality thereby presenting challenges to cocoa rehabilitation programmes across the sub region. With the aid of a mobile data collection system (MDCS), the first of its kind to enhance accuracy of survey results in an improved seed supply system through brokerage and linkages among diverse actors, this study assesses Ghanaian farmers’ access to improved hybrid cocoa seeds and provides evidence on the socio-cultural factors that affect field performance of such planting materials. Results show that farmers value a seed brokerage system (SBS), which is facilitated through group bulk purchase, timely acquisition and delivery of seeds. The study also revealed that farm size, land use type and gender have significant effect on survival rate of transplanted hybrid cocoa seedlings over two dry seasons. Regardless of the rehabilitation process, mean survival rate was high (79%) although an 11% (p < 0.000) difference occurred between gender with men recording a higher rate. The majority of farmers prefer cultivating cocoa on forest and fallow lands, implying continues degradation of forest areas. There is therefore an urgent need for a change of mind set, to advocate for land recycling to spare forest areas to thrive.

Trusted Energy-Efficient Cloud-Based Services Brokerage Platform

The use of cloud computing can increase service efficiency and service level agreements for cloud users, by linking them to an appropriate cloud service provider, using the cloud services brokerage paradigm. Cloud service brokerage represents a promising new layer which is to be added to the cloud computing network, which manages the use, performance and delivery of cloud services, and negotiates relationships between cloud service providers and cloud service consumers. The work presented in this paper studies the research related to cloud service brokerage systems along with the weaknesses and vulnerabilities associated with each of these systems, with a particular focus on the multicloud-based services environment. In addition, the paper will conclude with a proposed multi-cloud framework that overcomes the weaknesses of other listed cloud brokers. The new framework aims to find the appropriate data centre in terms of energy efficiency, QoS and SLA. Moreover, it presents a security model aims to protect the proposed multicloud framework and highlights the key features that must be available in multi-cloud-based brokerage systems.

Book Review: The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism, by Dean Starkman

The Watchdog That Didn't Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism. Dean Starkman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. 368 pp. $24.95 hbk. $18.95 pbk. $23.99 ebk.In a March 2009 interview, Jon Stewart confronted CNBC business commentator Jim Cramer with the charge that in the period leading up to the Wall Street crash of 2008, Cramer, specifically, and business journalism generally, had missed the biggest financial story of their era. Now a popular view, it is a charge that Dean Starkman largely supports. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, Starkman is an editor and Kingsford Capital Fellow of the Columbia Journalism Review.He concludes that the mainstream business press failed to meet even minimum standards of investigative reporting on financial institutions during the bubble period. This was despite the fact that many times throughout the history of business journalism, even up until a short time before the bubble (the period 2000-2003), many fine examples of investigative journalism exposed fraud and held the fraudsters to account, as in the New York Times' expose of Lehman and its deep relationship with predatory lenders. Yet in 2004-2006 when subprime lending went stratospheric, the watchdog was dormant. Drawing from a Columbia Journalism Review survey of relevant coverage, Starkman offers three main causes for this failure: (a) the rise of CNBCization and accompanying dominance of what he calls access journalism, (b) deregulation, and (c) financial distress among media outlets. A small number of reporters (whom Starkman identifies) did understand and report the story, but they worked for local media or did not get the backing and exposure from big media employers that could have unleashed the necessary critical force.Even media that did see subprime lending as dangerous for the economy simply did not get the reality that a great deal of it consisted of egregiously fraudulent and criminal behavior in which borrowers, who either could not afford loans or already had satisfactory low-interest mortgages, were aggressively and massively scammed into signing up for new debt without the safeguard of proper disclosure of fundamentals such as rates, fees, and built-in triggers for future interest hikes. The brokerage system in subprime came out of a culture of hire-and-fire boiler room cold-calling, door-knocking sales frenzy often conducted by sleazy companies whose funding nonetheless came from Wall Street. This not only smashed the rules of professionalism characteristic of prime lending but insidiously contaminated the prime lending institutions as well.Wall Street's culpability was threefold. Wall Street provided the money to support the loans. Sometimes, Wall Street banks became directly involved in subprime practices. And it was Wall Street that leveraged the loans for the mainstream investment community worldwide through the sale of spliced-and-diced bonds. …

“A Rather Stupid Sort of Game Played by the Bald and Obese Middle-aged”: Partisanship and Patronage in Late Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century English Canadian Historical Writing

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, English Canadian historians and other thinkers came to revise the history of the struggle for Responsible Government in Upper and Lower Canada, along with the accepted narrative of political developments during the early nineteenth century. This revisionism reflected a contemporary critique of “partyism” which was seen to be an outcome of extreme partisanship, patronage, and the brokerage system of politics. These practices were characterized as irrational, inefficient, and a threat to social cohesion and national unity. Moving away from a “Whiggish” vision of political progress in Canada, historians increasingly came to use “excessive” partisanship as a negative characteristic in the evaluation of past events and individuals. The increasing authority of the “new” social scientists is seen in the move away from moralistic condemnations of partyism. Overall, the writing of history was significantly shaped by the sense of political disillusionment felt by English Canadian intellectuals in how liberal democracy was practiced in their society.

An Auction-Based Dispatching Method for an Electronic Brokerage of Truckload Vehicles

This study suggests an electronic brokerage system that has the capability of efficiently matching dispatching delivery tasks with trucks. In the brokerage system, individual truck drivers and shippers are allowed to participate in the dispatching process through the internet or wireless communication. An auction-based dispatching method for the electronic brokerage system is suggested. The basic rationale of the auction-based dispatching method-which is a distributed decision-making process-is discussed. The performance of the suggested algorithms is evaluated by a simulation study.