Large-scale Empirical Investigation Research Articles

Does a Left-Wing Political Orientation Really Go Along With Greater Prosociality? A Large-Scale Empirical Investigation

The notion that political orientation is linked to prosociality has been voiced by many, suggesting that supporters of left-wing parties and ideologies may favor prosociality more than supporters of right-wing parties and ideologies. However, evidence for this proposition is inconclusive. We conducted a large-scale, preregistered analysis of the relation between political orientation and prosociality in a heterogeneous German sample (189 ≤ n≤ 1,836) using five different measures of political orientation, six incentivized economic game paradigms to measure prosocial behavior, and 10 measures of trait prosociality. Whereas we found only weak support for left-wing political preferences to be associated with more prosocial behavior, stronger evidence for said link was apparent for trait prosociality. Overall, our study suggests that political orientation and prosociality are indeed linked, thus supporting theoretical arguments. However, this link is relatively weak and depends on the way prosociality is measured.

Bug Analysis in Jupyter Notebook Projects: An Empirical Study

Computational notebooks, such as Jupyter, have been widely adopted by data scientists to write code for analyzing and visualizing data. Despite their growing adoption and popularity, few studies were found to understand Jupyter development challenges from the practitioners’ point of view. This paper presents a systematic study of bugs and challenges that Jupyter practitioners face through a large-scale empirical investigation. We mined 14,740 commits from 105 GitHub open-source projects with Jupyter notebook code. Next, we analyzed 30,416 Stack Overflow posts, which gave us insights into bugs that practitioners face when developing Jupyter notebook projects. Next, we conducted nineteen interviews with data scientists to uncover more details about Jupyter bugs and to gain insight into Jupyter developers’ challenges. Finally, to validate the study results and proposed taxonomy, we conducted a survey with 91 data scientists. We also highlight bug categories, their root causes, and the challenges that Jupyter practitioners face.

A large-scale empirical investigation of specialization in criminal career

We use a comprehensive longitudinal dataset on criminal acts over 6 years in a European country to study specialization in criminal careers. We present a method to cluster crime categories by their relative co-occurrence within criminal careers, deriving a natural, data-based taxonomy of criminal specialization. Defining specialists as active criminals who stay within one category of offending behavior, we study their socio-demographic attributes, geographic range, and positions in their collaboration networks relative to their generalist counterparts. Compared to generalists, specialists tend to be older, are more likely to be women, operate within a smaller geographic range, and collaborate in smaller, more tightly-knit local networks. We observe that specialists are more intensely embedded in criminal networks, suggesting a potential source of self-reinforcing dynamics in criminal careers.

IT impact on open innovation performance: Insights from a large-scale empirical investigation

Motivated by prior inconclusive findings on the effectiveness of open innovation initiatives in generating business value and the complexity of open innovation, this study draws on the IT-enabled organizational capabilities perspective to propose that the mobilization of information technology (IT) resources can positively affect the development of open innovation initiatives and, in turn, improve firms' open innovation performance. Our empirical analysis of >1100 large Spanish firms confirms that firms' IT resource investments positively impact the development and execution of open innovation initiatives, which in turn improves firms' open innovation performance in terms of product and process innovations. This research contributes to the business value of IT and to Information Systems (IS) research on open innovation by evidencing the enabling role of IT investment in achieving open innovation performance gains.

Rubbing salt in the wound? A large-scale investigation into the effects of refactoring on security

Software refactoring is a behavior-preserving activity to improve the source code quality without changing its external behavior. Unfortunately, it is often a manual and error-prone task that may induce regressions in the source code. Researchers have provided initial compelling evidence of the relation between refactoring and defects, yet little is known about how much it may impact software security. This paper bridges this knowledge gap by presenting a large-scale empirical investigation into the effects of refactoring on the security profile of applications. We conduct a three-level mining software repository study to establish the impact of 14 refactoring types on (i) security-related metrics, (ii) security technical debt, and (iii) the introduction of known vulnerabilities. The study covers 39 projects and a total amount of 7,708 refactoring commits. The key results show that refactoring has a limited connection to security. However, Inline Method and Extract Interface statistically contribute to improving some security aspects connected to encapsulating security-critical code components. Extract Superclass and Pull Up Attribute refactoring are commonly found in commits violating specific security best practices for writing secure code. Finally, Extract Superclass and Extract & Move Method refactoring tend to occur more often in commits contributing to the introduction of vulnerabilities. We conclude by distilling lessons learned and recommendations for researchers and practitioners.

Information security and value creation: The performance implications of ISO/IEC 27001

Although protecting information is the key challenge in a business environment characterized by increasing digitalization and connectivity, the impact of firms’ investments in information security on their financial performance is unclear. In this paper, we focus on ISO/IEC 27001 (i.e., the most renowned norm in the field and the fourth most widespread ISO standard) and analyze the relationship between the attainment of the certification and firms’ financial performance. We developed a set of theory-grounded hypotheses and tested them through a long-term event study complemented by an ordinary least squares regression on a dataset of 143 US-listed companies. The results indicate that the ISO/IEC 27001 certification is associated with improvements in profitability, labor productivity, and (partially) sales performance. The impact appears affected by the level of internationalization of the certified firm. The study contributes to the scientific debate on information security and certifications by developing the first large-scale empirical investigation based on secondary data on the financial implications of ISO/IEC 27001. Moreover, we further deepen the current knowledge on the effects of international management standards on firms’ performance thus enabling comparisons with other major management system standards.

Curriculum Leadership of Rural Teachers: Status Quo, Influencing Factors and Improvement Mechanism-Based on a Large-Scale Survey of Rural Teachers in China.

Revealing the general status quo of teacher curriculum leadership has great theoretical, policy, and practical significance. However, large-scale empirical investigations in this area are rare, and there is even less attention to the current situation of rural teacher curriculum leadership. Based on the survey of 2,966 rural teachers in 20 provinces of China, this paper presented the status quo of rural teacher curriculum leadership and examined influencing factors through multiple linear regression analysis. It was found that curriculum leadership of rural teachers was at a low level with backward leadership views, lack of practical ability, and low sense of identity. Regression analysis demonstrated that individual field factors had a significant impact on teachers’ curriculum leadership. Specifically, the higher the teachers’ leadership willingness, trust in others, and self-efficacy, the higher the curriculum leadership. The school field was also an important influential aspect. In particular, the formation of a common vision and teacher community by the school and the appropriate empowerment of the principal had a significant positive impact on the curriculum leadership of rural teachers. Based on these key findings, several improvement suggestions are put forward at the end, which can be used as references for other countries to develop improvement plans on rural teacher curriculum leadership.

A blended model of restaurant deliveries, dine-in demand and capacity constraints

The fast-growing food-delivery services are expected to continue to expand following Covid19. While considered a favorable strategic initiative, delivery might not be profitable for all restaurants. Accordingly, this study provides an analytical model to assess the impact of adding delivery service to a traditional dine-in restaurant. The theoretical contribution is a mathematical model depicting the strategic allocation of the restaurant’s production capacity, revealing a surprisingly complex balance between production (capacity constraints) , marketing (customer utility) , cannibalism and markets interdependency, leading to a range of business outcomes. A large-scale empirical investigation uses over a million unique transactions to test some of the model’s insights. The results show the introduction of delivery may increase transactions and revenue. However, the theoretical model suggests capacity constraints can limit growth potential over time. Correlations between dine-in and delivery demand reveal weekday patterns between both channels as an important indicator for how delivery may impact restaurant operations. • The multifaceted strategic change of adding delivery is surprisingly complex. • While considered a favorable strategic initiative, delivery may not necessarily be profitable. • A framework that operationalized the balance between production and marketing is proposed. • The analytical framework also modeled cannibalism and markets interdependency. • Empirical analyses further demonstrated the complex nature of adding delivery.

Rare gems or mundane practice? Resource constraints as drivers of frugal innovation

ABSTRACT Frugal innovation and related concepts are receiving increasing scholarly attention. While recent progress in the conceptualisation of frugal innovation as a phenomenon has been considerable, insights into the antecedents of frugal innovation remain relatively poor. We add to this literature by systematically conceptualising, theorising and empirically testing the relationship between resource constraints and the propensity of firms to produce frugal innovations, drawing on concepts of problemistic search and opportunity recognition. We distinguish two levels of resource constraints (firm-level and firm environment-level), and two types of frugal innovation (internally oriented and customer-oriented), while using managerial experience as a moderating internal factor. We find that firm-level resource constraints have a strong effect on the propensity of firms to engage in internally oriented frugal innovation, although only so for firms with experienced managers. This effect is lower when these firms operate in an environment that also faces high constraints. We find no effect of resource constraints on customer-oriented frugal innovations, but find a surprising negative moderating effect of managerial experience. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of these findings for the frugal and wider innovation literature. This study is the first large-scale empirical investigation of frugal innovation that estimates its prevalence. We find that frugal innovation is quite common when using the widest definition of frugal innovation. The majority of frugal innovations are mundane internal efficiency upgrades through capital investment.

The Innovation Arms Race

Economists have long recognized that competition and innovation interact as key drivers of economic growth (Schumpeter, 1943; Arrow, 1962; Aghion and Howitt, 1992). Acknowledging this, regulators carefully scrutinize competitive behaviors that potentially affect innovation incentives, in particular in the field of M&A (Shapiro, 2012). Do acquisitions of innovative targets spur or stifle innovation? To address this question, we test the Innovation Arms Race hypothesis, providing a first large scale empirical investigation of M&A effects on acquirer rivals’ incentives to innovate and the equilibrium outcome resulting from this competitive process. Our results are consistent with the Innovation Arms Race hypothesis predictions: acquisitions of innovative targets push acquirer rivals to invest more in innovation, both internally through research and development (R&D) and externally through acquisition of innovative targets (the correlated investment prediction) and this increase in innovation investment under pressure of rivals leads to a decrease in firm market valuation (the value decrease prediction). These results are robust to endogeneity and are driven by High-Technology and (to some extent) Healthcare industries. This arms race process appears stronger for leaders and (to some extent) firms under strong competitive pressure (so-called neck-and-neck firms). Initial patents and patent citations based evidence shows no sign of innovation investment efficiency decline, suggesting that the Innovation Arms Race generates a transfer of economic rent favorable to consumers.

The evolving role of hit and niche products in brick-and-mortar retail category assortment planning: A large-scale empirical investigation of U.S. consumer packaged goods

Long tail theory, the notion that the future of retailing could involve shifting product assortments to offer more product variety to precisely serve the unique needs of individual customers, has largely been proven true in the context of online distribution. However, it has been implicitly assumed that this theory does not apply to brick-and-mortar selling situations due to higher supply side inventory costs and higher demand side consumer search costs. Academics and practitioners alike have thus advocated for the use of Pareto rules to make category assortment planning decisions about product inventory breadth and depth in the brick-and-mortar channel. This research directly challenges this received wisdom by noting that the widespread prevalence and use of mobile technology is causing information flows to speed up for consumers even while performing traditional shopping tasks. Such information flows should theoretically favor the strategic importance of niche products in the long tail of the sales distribution. A large-scale empirical analysis of consumer packaged goods brick-and-mortar retailing data indicates that this alternative prediction is indeed true. This research contributes to a larger body of research as well that has documented how major environmental forces are shifting the nature of retail strategy, particularly in the brick-and-mortar channel.

Mediated power and sustainable supplier management (SSM)

PurposeAs focal buyers implement sustainable supplier management (SSM) to advance their supply chain sustainability, the purpose of this paper is to provide a more nuanced understanding of how buyers’ use of power may incite varying perceptions of justice from suppliers that affect sustainable supplier performance (SSP).Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on multidisciplinary literature and collects empirical data from 181 supplying firms in China to examine the complex links among power use, justice, SSM, and sustainable performance using partial least squares structural equation modeling.FindingsBoth coercive and reward buyer power can facilitate SSM implementation and justice perception moderates the impact of SSM on SSP. Furthermore, coercive power adversely influences justice evaluation, thereby attenuating the effect of SSM on performance.Research limitations/implicationsThis study complements and extends sustainable supply chain management research by evaluating SSM: on environmental, social and economic performance; from the perspectives of suppliers; and in an emerging market where many suppliers of Western firms are located. It also adds to behavioral SCM research by examining how buyers’ exercise of power might influence suppliers’ justice perception.Practical implicationsTo implement SSM, focal buyers cannot simply issue codes of conduct to suppliers and ignore suppliers’ disposition to commit to standards. While coercive power might be convenient and tempting for buying firms, managers ought to be judicious in the use of coercion.Originality/valueThis is the first large-scale empirical investigation on the links among power use, justice, SSM and sustainable performance from the perspectives of suppliers in an emerging economy.

Mixed sustainability motives, mixed results: the role of compliance and commitment in sustainable supply chain practices

PurposeAs supply chain sustainability has become more urgent than ever before, this study aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of how supplying firms’ sustainability motives influence their compliance and commitment, as well as sustainable performance, as they respond to buyers’ sustainable supplier management programs.Design/methodology/approachTo investigate the intriguing links among sustainability motives, compliance/commitment and sustainable performance of supplying firms, this paper draws on multidisciplinary literature and collects empirical data from 281 supplying firms in China to test the proposed model and hypotheses using structural equation modeling.FindingsInstrumental and moral motives make comparable contributions to compliance; moral motives exert stronger influence on firms’ commitment to sustainable practices. In addition, although compliance has a greater impact on economic and environmental performance, commitment is far more robust in improving environmental and social performance.Research limitations/implicationsUnlike most research on motives that has been theoretical, this study represents one of the few empirical analyses of how motives may affect sustainable performance. Examining the challenges from the perspectives of supplying firms, it also adds to the SSCM literature by making clear how compliance and commitment may differentially predict sustainable performance.Practical implicationsAlthough instrumental and moral motives can be complementary in advancing sustainable practices, it is imperative for firms to integrate moral considerations into sustainability decision-making and move beyond compliance, if they are to contribute meaningfully to a better society and cleaner environment.Originality/valueThis is the first large-scale empirical investigation on the links among motives, compliance, commitment and sustainable performance from the perspectives of suppliers.

Mindfulness in Schools: a Health Promotion Approach to Improving Adolescent Mental Health

Between 10 and 20% of adolescents worldwide experience a mental health problem within a given 12-month period. Mental health problems impact on an adolescent’s potential to live a fulfilling and productive life and lead to challenges such as stigma, isolation and discrimination. To address this need, in recent years, there has been growing interest into broad-based school-integrated health promotion interventions that seek to build resilience and augment protective factors in adolescents. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) reflect one such approach that have been administered to adolescent populations in both resilience building and treatment contexts. This paper discusses the utility of school-based MBIs as an adolescent health promotion approach and makes recommendations for intervention design, delivery and evaluation. Emerging evidence indicates that school-integrated MBIs may be a cost-effective means of not only meeting government objectives relating to adolescent mental health, but also for improving the wellbeing of teachers and parents. Furthermore, there is growing evidence indicating that mindfulness can elicit improvements in student learning performance and general classroom behaviour. However, notwithstanding these beneficial properties, there remains a need to conduct large-scale empirical investigations that seek to evaluate the effectiveness of school-integrated MBIs at a regional or national level. A further challenge is the need to ensure that mindfulness instructors are able to impart to adolescents an experiential understanding of this ancient contemplative technique.

A large scale empirical comparison of state-of-the-art search-based test case generators

ContextReplication studies and experiments form an important foundation in advancing scientific research. While their prevalence in Software Engineering is increasing, there is still more to be done. ObjectiveThis article aims to extend our previous replication study on search-based test generation techniques by performing a large-scale empirical comparison with further techniques from the state of the art. MethodWe designed a comprehensive experimental study involving six techniques, a benchmark composed of 180 non-trivial Java classes, and a total of 21,600 independent executions. Metrics regarding effectiveness and efficiency of the techniques were collected and analyzed by means of statistical methods. ResultsOur empirical study shows that single target approaches are generally outperformed by multi-target approaches, while within the multi-target approaches, DynaMOSA/MOSA, which are based on many-objective optimization, outperform the others, in particular for complex classes. ConclusionThe results obtained from our large-scale empirical investigation confirm what has been reported in previous studies, while also highlighting striking differences and novel observations. Future studies, on different benchmarks and considering additional techniques, could further reinforce and extend our findings.

Branded restaurants employees’ personal motivation, flow and commitment

PurposeAugmenting employees’ commitment is of important interest to hospitality managers, particularly in the branded restaurant industry where the workforce is often transient. This paper aims to identify and analyse if levels of personal motivation and flow are drivers of commitment, and if the relationship between the variables is moderated by length of service, age and gender.Design/methodology/approachThe study is a large-scale empirical investigation of hospitality staff in the UK branded restaurants through 1,133 survey responses, measuring levels of personal motivation, flow and commitment, as well as the moderating effects of multi-group differences among age, gender and length of service. Partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used for analysis of data.FindingsUsing PLS-SEM found personal motivation to be important in determining employees’ level of flow and, in turn, employees’ commitment. Using multi group analysis, results revealed that relationship among personal motivation, flow and commitment played superior role for older employees and working for a long time in a hospitality organisation than those younger and working less than five years. No significant differences between male and female staff are found.Research limitations/implicationsThrough finding flow and personal motivations to be drivers of commitment, branded restaurant practitioners can focus on emphasising these elements in their employees to increase commitment. Further, part-time roles are often taken by people likely to be non-committal in their job needs, e.g. students funding their studies. By focussing on extending lengths of service to meet the optimum years identified, managers can fortify their businesses.Originality/valueThe paper is one of few large-scale quantitative studies to examine personal motivation, flow and commitment in the context of UK branded restaurants. It identifies that employees exhibit higher levels of commitment through intrinsic values over time, and establishes relationships between the constructs of flow, personal motivation and commitment.

On the diffuseness and the impact on maintainability of code smells: a large scale empirical investigation

Code smells are symptoms of poor design and implementation choices that may hinder code comprehensibility and maintainability. Despite the effort devoted by the research community in studying code smells, the extent to which code smells in software systems affect software maintainability remains still unclear. In this paper we present a large scale empirical investigation on the diffuseness of code smells and their impact on code change- and fault-proneness. The study was conducted across a total of 395 releases of 30 open source projects and considering 17,350 manually validated instances of 13 different code smell kinds. The results show that smells characterized by long and/or complex code (e.g., Complex Class) are highly diffused, and that smelly classes have a higher change- and fault-proneness than smell-free classes.

Billboard and cinema advertising: Missed opportunity or spoiled arms?

Advertising remains one of the most popular marketing instruments, and many studies have studied its sales effectiveness. However, prior research has either looked at the total spending of a brand/firm, or has focused on the most popular media, especially TV advertising. Even though huge amounts are also spent on “smaller” media such as billboards and cinema, little is known on their effectiveness.While many brands never use them (which could be a missed opportunity), others allocate a substantial part of their advertising budget to these media (which could represent spoiled arms in case of insufficient effectiveness). In this study, we conduct a large-scale empirical investigation, using close to 7 years of monthly data on over 250 brands of consumer packaged goods, to quantify the sales elasticity of these often-neglected media.Even though a significant long-run elasticity is found for a number of brands, we obtain a substantially lower proportion of significant effects for billboard and cinema advertising than for the more popular TV medium. Also meta-analytically, and after correcting for the brands' self-selection of media on which to spend their advertising budget, no evidence of a significant short- or long-run sales elasticity is found for these two media, while significant effects are obtained for both TV and magazine advertising. In addition, little evidence of systematic synergy effects with the more traditional media is found. Hence, from a sales-response point of view, investments in billboard and cinema advertising appear to act as spoiled arms for most mature CPG brands.

Strategic Brand Management based on Sustainable-oriented View: An Evaluation in Turkish Home Appliance Industry

This paper evaluates the effect of firm sustainability on brand perception, which is key to brand image in brand management and marketing. The paper also reviews the literature in understanding well-established activities of sustainability effecting brand perception of individuals. Branding literature explains the influence of a brand on sustainability-driven opportunities available to a firm for brand image. The objective of this study is to explore how sustainability-based brand image making of managers effective in driving opportunities available to a firm for marketing performance. A conceptual framework grounded in this study is based on the sustainability-based brand image that effects marketing performance of a brand sold through retailers and customers which in turn can create numerous opportunities for marketing. A descriptive qualitative survey exploring sustainability activities of three big brands in home appliances industry in Turkey has been included in the study. The results indicated that the model developed by using existing approaches in the literature, provides supportive findings for further large scale empirical investigations in terms of variables and hypotheses that can be used for both academic and managerial purposes. In future studies, relationship between sustainability and brand image and marketing performance can be evaluated within wider perspectives.

Common values in assessing health outcomes from disease and injury: disability weights measurement study for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Measurement of the global burden of disease with disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) requires disability weights that quantify health losses for all non-fatal consequences of disease and injury. There has been extensive debate about a range of conceptual and methodological issues concerning the definition and measurement of these weights. Our primary objective was a comprehensive re-estimation of disability weights for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 through a large-scale empirical investigation in which judgments about health losses associated with many causes of disease and injury were elicited from the general public in diverse communities through a new, standardised approach. We surveyed respondents in two ways: household surveys of adults aged 18 years or older (face-to-face interviews in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Peru, and Tanzania; telephone interviews in the USA) between Oct 28, 2009, and June 23, 2010; and an open-access web-based survey between July 26, 2010, and May 16, 2011. The surveys used paired comparison questions, in which respondents considered two hypothetical individuals with different, randomly selected health states and indicated which person they regarded as healthier. The web survey added questions about population health equivalence, which compared the overall health benefits of different life-saving or disease-prevention programmes. We analysed paired comparison responses with probit regression analysis on all 220 unique states in the study. We used results from the population health equivalence responses to anchor the results from the paired comparisons on the disability weight scale from 0 (implying no loss of health) to 1 (implying a health loss equivalent to death). Additionally, we compared new disability weights with those used in WHO's most recent update of the Global Burden of Disease Study for 2004. 13,902 individuals participated in household surveys and 16,328 in the web survey. Analysis of paired comparison responses indicated a high degree of consistency across surveys: correlations between individual survey results and results from analysis of the pooled dataset were 0·9 or higher in all surveys except in Bangladesh (r=0·75). Most of the 220 disability weights were located on the mild end of the severity scale, with 58 (26%) having weights below 0·05. Five (11%) states had weights below 0·01, such as mild anaemia, mild hearing or vision loss, and secondary infertility. The health states with the highest disability weights were acute schizophrenia (0·76) and severe multiple sclerosis (0·71). We identified a broad pattern of agreement between the old and new weights (r=0·70), particularly in the moderate-to-severe range. However, in the mild range below 0·2, many states had significantly lower weights in our study than previously. This study represents the most extensive empirical effort as yet to measure disability weights. By contrast with the popular hypothesis that disability assessments vary widely across samples with different cultural environments, we have reported strong evidence of highly consistent results. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.