Cooperative Platforms Research Articles

China and U.S. Lunar Cooperative Platforms: Competition or Cooperation?

China and U.S. Lunar Cooperative Platforms: Competition or Cooperation?

David against Goliath: from riders’ protest to platform cooperativism

AbstractFaced with platforms such as Uber, riders are resisting individually and organising actions such as Riders X Derechos in Spain. Some of these ‘new proletarians’ have even organised themselves into cooperatives. To the global utopia of investor-owned platforms, platform cooperativism opposes the utopia of delivery without exploitation or carbon emissions through local cooperatives owned by riders. Based on the case study of the Mensakas cooperative in Barcelona, this ethnography analyses the link between riders’ protests and cooperative platforms. It questions the concrete effects of ‘counter-platform politics’ and the relationship between politics and labour. It also examines the strategies of intercooperation in the ‘cyclelogistical’ sector to understand the institutional, social, and political conditions that foster the ‘re-embeddedness’ of the bike delivery market.

The International Lunar Research Station: China's New Era of Space Cooperation and Its New Role in the Space Legal Order

Tension between competition and cooperation is common in space activities. China's role in spearheading the International Lunar Research Station, in direct opposition to the US-led Artemis program, demonstrates its strong determination to upgrade its space cooperation. The configuration discourse on the International Lunar Research Station and the Artemis program is clearing a path for a new mixture structure and the interplay of competition and cooperation among space powers. The evolution of China's approach to space cooperation––from an emphasis on national independence to initiating multilateral cooperative platforms––provides insights into understanding the dynamics between techno-nationalism and external constraints, as well as the motivation to increase and an approach towards actually increasing soft power, alongside the development of hard power. This decade-lasting dynamics determines that openness and neutrality are viable means to guarantee the international prospect of China's lunar cooperation platform. Well-designed and targeted engagement measures and overall neutral strategies are needed to realise openness and promote neutrality. To compensate for China's ‘leadership deficit’ in international cooperation, a practical way forward is taking the Artemis program as a point of reference and transplanting the successful American experience while also differentiating from the Artemis program. The interplay of competition and cooperation challenges, forces compromise in, and maintains and develops the space order. Leading an international cooperation venture will accrue the soft power China needs to sustain its hard power and bring new positive energy to the space order. China's unique dual identity as a space power and a developing country could contribute to solving the dilemma of democratisation and decentralisation in the development of international space law.

Privacy-preserving cooperative online matching over spatial crowdsourcing platforms

With the continuous development of spatial crowdsourcing platform, online task assignment problem has been widely studied as a typical problem in spatial crowdsourcing. Most of the existing studies are based on a single-platform task assignment to maximize the platform's revenue. Recently, cross online task assignment has been proposed, aiming at increasing the mutual benefit through cooperations. However, existing methods fail to consider the data privacy protection in the process of cooperation and cause the leakage of sensitive data such as the location of a request and the historical data of cooperative platforms. In this paper, we propose Privacy-preserving Cooperative Online Matching (PCOM), which protects the privacy of the users and workers on their respective platforms. We design a PCOM framework and provide theoretical proof that the framework satisfies the differential privacy property. We then propose two PCOM algorithms based on two different privacy-preserving strategies. Extensive experiments on real and synthetic datasets confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithms.

Embedding in Global Value Chains, Innovative Human Capital and China’s Manufacturing Upgrades

Since the reform and opening up, China has actively participated in the Global Value Chain (GVC) division of labor system and achieved rapid economic growth and moderate industrial upgrading. However, with the rapid development of GVC, more and more countries are participating in the global competition, and China’s manufacturing industry is facing the serious challenge of “two-way squeeze” from the return of high-end and low-end transfer. This paper constructs a theoretical framework of GVC embedding and innovative human capital accumulation affecting manufacturing upgrading, and empirically examines the impact of GVC embedding location enhancement and innovative human capital accumulation on manufacturing upgrading from the perspective of product upgrading and efficiency upgrading. The findings show that innovative human capital accumulation enhances the positive effect of GVC embedding on product upgrading and efficiency upgrading. The extent of this effect varies across types of industries; for product upgrading, the positive regulating effect of innovative human capital on the positive relationship between embedded location and China’s manufacturing upgrading is most pronounced in labor-intensive industries; for efficiency upgrading, innovative human capital plays a more significant positive regulating effect in capital-intensive and technology-intensive industries. Based on the above conclusions, the Chinese government should strengthen diversified investment in high-level talents and invest in the expansion of cooperative learning platforms in the upper, middle and lower reaches of the global value chain manufacturing industry, establish and improve relevant laws and regulations on intellectual property protection and transformation of innovation results, and solve the problem of deviation of talents from optimal allocation, so as to better exert the regulating effect of innovative human capital and promote the upgrading of China's manufacturing industry.

Radical flexibility: driving for Lyft and the future of work in the platform economy

ABSTRACT Labour conditions in the first two decades of the twenty-first century in the US have become increasingly precarious and abusive. At the same time, many workers and users (no longer easily categorically separated) exhibit a sustained attachment to the idea of flexible work. For workers, internalizing the demand to be flexible as an affirmative choice can be a method of survival. But the demand for flexibility is also connected to an affective sense of agency and a refusal of alienation. For workers, flexibility connects strong convenience with access to fast cash. It connects a sense of play and creative fun with access to infrastructure and transit. The ‘unicorn’ rideshare company Lyft's brand narrative has capitalized on and exploited the desire for flexibility in historically specific political contexts. In light of these sticky financialized appropriations of flexibility, this essay imagines radical flexibility as a wilful re-appropriation. It explores ways that Lyft's rhetoric might be redirected and resisted. In light of existing demands for collective or cooperative platforms, radical flexibility could be a galvanizing justification for a cooperative response to the Uberization of work, part of a broader horizon that reclaims flexibility, play, creativity, and convenience as affects and practices outside of the wage relation.

Strategic management, the theory of the firm, and digitalization: Reintroducing a normative perspective

The theory of the firm, as we know it from the literature, focuses on the boundary question. Recently, the idea of ecosystems, an organizational arrangement that lies somewhere between the firm and the market poles, has been promoted as an adequate response to the ongoing trend of digitalization (Jacobides, Cennamo, & Gawer, 2018). What is missing in the extant literature is an answer to or reflection on the normative question of what role business firms should or could play in modern societies, where major (“grand”) challenges such as climate change, poverty, migration, and rising inequality are seen (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016). Thus, a core element of the traditional theory of the firm has been neglected, with the consequence that its social relevance is no longer evident. We focus on the strategic management discipline, with an aim to reintroduce the lost normative perspective and to provide a guideline for future theorizing about business firms as well as guidelines for practice. The three cornerstones of our framework are (de-) growth, sustainability, and digitalization. We emphasize the digitalization angle and elaborate on what we call the “common good orientation” of digitalization, using the key terms “internet as a commons”, “open-source”, and “cooperative platforms”

Improving Navigation in GNSS-Challenging Environments: Multi-UAS Cooperation and Generalized Dilution of Precision

This article presents an approach to tackle navigation challenges for unmanned aircraft systems flying under non-nominal GNSS coverage. The concept used to improve navigation performance in these environments consists of using one or more cooperative platforms and relative sensing measurements (based on vision and/or ranging) to the navigation aid. The article details the cooperative navigation filter, which can exploit multiple cooperative platforms and multiple relative measurements while also using the partial GNSS information. The achievable navigation accuracy can be predicted using the concept of “generalized dilution of precision,” which derives from applying the idea of the dilution of precision to the mathematical structure of the cooperative navigation filter. The values and trends of generalized dilution of precision are discussed as a function of the relative geometry in common GNSS-challenging scenarios. Finally, navigation performance is assessed based on simulations and multidrone flight tests.

Hybrids and Hybrid Organizing for Sustainability

It is notable to see how management scholars have started to investigate sustainability issues. With regard to the history of management research, this phenomenon is very recent and, thus, there is much to investigate. In particular, we do not know how organization and management theories can help to address the grand challenges of modern times. Reversely, it is still unclear how sustainability issues question and help improve managerial practices and theories. At the intersection of these two questions, this symposium aims to start a discussion on the role of hybrid organizations in the context of sustainable development, and on the strategies making hybrid organizing work. Hybrid organizations are part of new organizational forms that replace “or” by “and”, create bridges and outreach traditional organizations that prove their failure to meet social and environmental requirements. This symposium brings together theoretical and empirical researches reflecting the diversity of grand challenges with data from renewable energy cooperatives, local food hubs, microfinance organizations, social entrepreneur coworking spaces, cooperative platforms and public-private partnerships. They not only critically examine the concept of hybridity in various empirical contexts but also highlight in how far hybrid organizing may contribute to develop solutions for sustainability challenges of modern times, and where this analytical framework needs to be improved. The Restoring of Institutional Logics and the Engagement of Grand Challenges Presenter: Ali Aslan Guemuesay; U. of Hamburg Presenter: Laura Claus; U. College London Presenter: John Matthew Amis; U. of Edinburgh Transforming from Within or Building an Alternative? Presenter: Marya Besharov; Oxford U., Saïd Business School Presenter: Bjoern C. Mitzinneck; Groningen U. (RuG) Inside Hybrid Organizations: The platform Cooperatives Presenter: Mélissa Boudes; Institut Mines-Telecom Business School, LITEM, U. Paris-Saclay, France Cross-pollinating at the Beehive: Embracing Hybridity at a Social Entrepreneurship Coworking Space Presenter: Julie Fabbri; Cnrs - Ecole Polytechnique of Paris Presenter: Benjamin Huybrechts; EMLYON Business School Employee Tenure and Staff Performance: The Case of Social Enterprise Presenter: Naome Otiti; U. of Adger Presenter: Cécile Godfroid; UMONS-CERMi Presenter: Roy Mersland; full professor Cross-sector Collaboration to Tackle Grand Challenge? Presenter: Martin Sievert; U. of Mannheim Presenter: Alexander Pinz; U. of Mannheim Presenter: Bernd Helmig; U. of Mannheim

Exploring the Co-operative Form’s Potential in Crowdfunding: A Non-monetary Perspective

Technology-driven change has generated new, even revolutionary business models, characterized by high levels of user participation. In the finance field, business models based on crowdfunding have seen significant growth and entered use as an alternative means of extending access and gaining financing for various types of projects. Nonetheless, current crowdfunding practices have been subject to criticism for issues such as information asymmetry, lack of trust and transaction costs, spurring discussion of how to develop and improve these practices. One way of speaking to the criticism has been a suggestion that platforms could be owned by the ones who use them. While the associated way of thinking, referred to as platform co-operativism, has seen some inroads in practice, its novel and practical nature means that a clear knowledge gap remains with regard to its potential for dealing with challenges of platform economy. Consequently, the aim of this study is to examine the relevance and potential of the co-operative company form for crowdfunding arrangements. Our conceptual study utilizes existing research on co-operatives and considers features of crowdfunding from three different perspectives: asymmetry of information and of trust, interaction frequency and homogeneity of interests. As a result, we provide three taxonomies for outlining future research on co-operative platforms.

Transition within a transition: how cooperative platforms want to change the sharing economy

Scholars have argued that the sharing economy represents a transitional pathway to sustainability. The growth, however, of multi-national giants, such as Airbnb or Uber, has created new environmental, social, and economic problems and led many to question the dominant form of the sharing economy. In this paper, we study a transition within a transition—that is the emergence of a new niche of cooperative platforms within the sharing economy. We examine how promoters and followers of Fairbnb, a nascent cooperative alternative to Airbnb, frame and envision their project and then discuss tensions, debates, and limits around their ideas and business model. We find that their primary motivations are to mitigate the negative effects of mass tourism, to prevent the extraction of wealth from local economies, and to sustain a prosperous social business. Tensions are found around limitations of democratic governance, decentralization, and size of the project.

Value Chain Management Through Cloud-based Platforms

The transformation of traditional value chain processes towards a digital value chain management enables companies to sustainably establish and retain a competitive market position. Digitisation offers the opportunity to design and operate expansive process chains with efficient process operations via co-operative platforms. Increased customer loyalty („lock-in”) via integrated measures at the front-end raises utilization and planning certainty for the technological recovery systems.

MEQSA-OLSRv2: A Multicriteria-Based Hybrid Multipath Protocol for Energy-Efficient and QoS-Aware Data Routing in MANET-WSN Convergence Scenarios of IoT

Convergence of typical wireless networks [mobile ad hoc network (MANET) and wireless sensor network (WSN)] is paving the way toward brand-new cooperative platforms for Internet of Things (IoT) communications. The IoT enables the global connectivity of a wide variety of heterogeneous objects in accordance with their battery capacity, processing capabilities, and mobility to serve people in a collaborative manner automatically and intelligently. In such ubiquitous smart environments, efficient and effective data routing among IoT devices represent a real challenge due to nodes heterogeneity. Thus, this paper proposes a hybrid multipath energy and quality of service (QoS)-aware optimized link state routing protocol version 2 (MEQSA-OLSRv2), which is developed to cope with the challenges presented by limited energy resources, mobility of nodes, and traffic congestion during data transmission in the MANET-WSN convergence scenarios of IoT networks. This protocol uses a node rank according to multicriteria node rank metric (MCNR). This MCNR aggregates multiple parameters related to energy and QoS into a comprehensive metric to dramatically reduce the complexity of multiple constrained considerations and avoid the control overhead caused by separately broadcasting multiple parameters. These metrics are the node’s lifetime, residual battery energy, node’s idle time, node’s speed, and queue length. The MCNR metric is utilized by a new link quality assessment function for multiple-route computation. It is also adopted to select a multipoint relay (MPR) set of nodes by using an energy and QoS-aware MPR selection mechanism for flooding topological information. The simultaneous consideration of energy and QoS parameters can benefit the tradeoff between QoS and energy awareness. The performance of the MEQSA-OLSRv2 is evaluated through EXata-based simulations, and its effectiveness is validated by comparing it with the conventional routing protocols. The MEQSA-OLSRv2 is found to outperform existing schemes even in heavy traffic load and high-mobility scenarios. Furthermore, the MEQSA-OLSRv2 considerably enhances QoS, reduces energy consumption, and decreases the energy cost per packet.

A New Mode of Talent Cultivating Based on International Cooperative Platforms

China's higher education has experienced a rapid development after the reform and opening up, especially in the past "985" project, "211" project, and now it is in the high level of first-class university and the discipline construction, driven by the development of higher education into a powerful spring. In order to promote the discipline on top, all kinds of universities are scrambling to implement various development strategy, talent strategy, subject development planning, science and technology cooperation plan, and international strategy, etc., one of the most obvious is a variety of international cooperation platform construction, such as a large international research collaboration platform construction have mushroomed, union college established heyday, China-foreign cooperatively-run universities are established, a large number of Confucius institutes fulfill synergistic quality. The platforms provide good conditions for innovative talent cultivation. This paper is going to find the mechanism of the new mode of talent cultivating based on the international cooperative platforms.

Cooperative platforms as an attempt to revise the corporate model of sharing economy

Cooperative platforms as an attempt to revise the corporate model of sharing economy

Analysis of the Use of Local Resources in Extension Education Programme in Nkonkobe Local Municipality of Eastern Cape

The paper identified the available local resources for extension education and the constraints in the use of these local resources in Nkonkobe local Municipality. The survey was conducted in the peri-urban areas of Fort Beaufort, Alice, Seymour, Balfour, Hogsback and Middledrift from 7th to 29th September 2010 by interviewing 58 farmers on the identification of local resources and their perception of constraints in the use of local resources. The study revealed that there are local resources embedded in the area for use in Extension teaching and learning. The perception of constraint (inadequate access to local resources) increased significantly with age (P = 0.04) and farm experience (P = 0.045). The fundamental strategies for a successful Extension work should be to develop a process which not only creates co-operative platforms for the use of local resources for rural improvement, but also reinforces farmer’s ingenuity and inspires them to learn and accept innovation.The available local resources in Nkonkobe Local Municipality are well distributed in the community and are important for the achievement of educational goals in Extension teaching and learning.

Diagnostik und Therapie des malignen Pleuramesothelioms - von der Palliationzur kurativen Intention

Malignant pleural mesothelioma continues to be a clinical challenge and its incidence will continue to increase worldwide. Once diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, patients nearly invariably die of the disease. While the benefit of chemotherapy for advanced disease has been established, many other aspects of treatment continue to be controversial, in particular in regard to surgery and radiotherapy. However, the best survival data is reported from groups using multimodality treatment including surgery for patients qualifying from a tumor stage - and functional perspective. Therefore, efforts should focus on improving staging systems. Translational studies should be included with the final aim of finding reliable markers for response to therapy. Despite both, the increase in basic biologic knowledge and the fact that many new agents have reached various stages of development, the number of new treatments that have been approved for patients has not increased. As mesothelioma is a rare disease, the number of patients is limiting and more innovative trial designs (such as multi-arm multi-stage trials [1]) using cooperative platforms to eliminate less effective treatments may be the best way forward.

Effect of Ceramide on Nonraft Proteins

The currently accepted model of biological membranes involves a heterogeneous, highly dynamic organization, where certain lipids and proteins associate to form cooperative platforms ("rafts") for cellular signaling or transport processes. Ceramides, a lipid species occurring under conditions of cellular stress and apoptosis, are considered to stabilize these platforms, thus modulating cellular function. The present study focuses on a previously unrecognized effect of ceramide generation. In agreement with previous studies, we find that ceramide leads to a depletion of sphingomyelin from mixtures with palmitoyl oleoyl phosphatidylcholine bilayers, forming a ceramide-sphingomyelin-rich gel phase that coexists with a fluid phase rich in palmitoyl oleoyl phosphatidylcholine. Interestingly, however, this latter phase has an almost fourfold smaller bending rigidity compared to a sphingomyelin-palmitoyl oleoyl phosphatidylcholine mixture lacking ceramide. The significant change of membrane bulk properties can have severe consequences for conformational equilibria of membrane proteins. We discuss these effects in terms of the lateral pressure profile concept for a simple geometric model of an ion channel and find a significant inhibition of its activity.

Keeping smart, omnidirectional eyes on you

An adaptive panoramic stereo approach for two cooperative mobile platform is presented. There are four key features in the approach: 1) omnidirectional stereovision with an appropriate vertical FOV, and a simple camera calibration method; 2) cooperative mobile platforms for mutual dynamic calibration and best view planning; 3) 3D matching after meaningful object (human subject) extraction; and 4) real-time performance. The integration of omnidirectional vision with mutual awareness and dynamic calibration strategies allows intelligent cooperation between visual agents. This provides an effective way to solve the problems of limited resources, view planning, occlusion, and motion detection of movable robotic platforms. Experiments have shown that this approach is quite promising.