Small Players Research Articles

Implementing technology to improve stakeholder fairness perception

Fairness among supply chain actors is imperative for long term and effective inter-organizational relationships. Due to operational issues within a fresh produce supply chain involving many small and medium players, the coordination and communication will be inefficient. This results in perceptions of unfair behaviour and results in strained supply chain relationships within a food supply chain. The paper proposes the implementation of the MOVIE (Model, Operations, View, Intelligence and Events) model to instigate distributive, procedural and interactive fairness perceptions along the entire supply chain. By communicating on a real-time basis and accounting for user specific access levels, the proposed cloud-based IT system will provide better access to information pertaining to the products, whilst it is being processed by different elements within the supply chain. Through accurate and timely communication of this information, the information that was traditionally communicated only to the bigger and more powerful supply chain actors will be available to every supply chain actor irrespective of size or purchasing power. Though Enterprise Resource Planning systems are plentiful, this has not percolated the food supply chain sector, and the proposed system accounts for such a lack within the food supply chain management context. The implementation of the proposed system will not only improve storage and marketing of easily perishable fruits and vegetables but also effectively improve perception of fairness along the fresh food supply chain, thus contributing to effective supply chain relationships.

Small Players Ruling the Hard Game: siRNA in Bone Regeneration.

Silencing gene expression through a sequence-specific manner can be achieved by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). The discovery of this process has opened the doors to the development of siRNA therapeutics. Although several preclinical and clinical studies have shown great promise in the treatment of neurological disorders, cancers, dominant disorders, and viral infections with siRNA, siRNA therapy is still gaining ground in musculoskeletal tissue repair and bone regeneration. Here we present a comprehensive review of the literature to summarize different siRNA delivery strategies utilized to enhance bone regeneration. With advancement in understanding the targetable biological pathways involved in bone regeneration and also the rapid progress in siRNA technologies, application of siRNA for bone regeneration has great therapeutic potential. High rates of musculoskeletal injuries and diseases, and their inevitable consequences, impose a huge financial burden on individuals and healthcare systems worldwide.

Systemic Risk -- Identification, Assessment and Monitoring based on Eigenvector Centrality Analysis of Thai Interbank Connectivity Matrices

This paper presents a coherent framework for identifying Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFI) and assessing the overall banking system's vulnerability to systemic phenomena from the viewpoint of banking system as a complex network of interconnected nodes generating pair-wise financial activities. The proposed parameter-free methodology comprises two parts, Systemic Importance Analysis (SIA), which rates and ranks individual financial institutions relative to one another in terms of systemic influence each exerts over the banking system overall, and Systemic Vulnerability Analysis (SVA), which tracks the banking system over time in terms of how the very pattern of connectivities (inter-connectedness) somehow enable 'small players' to exert 'large leverage' on system (in)stability. SIA & SVA both utilizes Bonacich's Eigenvector Centrality measure, essentially the principal eigenvector associated with a matrix of pair-wise connection strengths. Empirical results presented herewith are based on actual records (2009-) of interbank transactions between financial instiutions operating in Thailand (actual bank names masked by aliases).

Lean times in oil and gas: frugal strategies for emerging as a stronger player

The reduction of the oil price depressed earnings for oil and gas companies during the past year. For many smaller players, this lack of revenues can lead to bankruptcy or takeovers. Even some larger companies have fallen casualty to depressed share prices. The first part of this extended abstract outlines focus areas on the process side to lower costs and improve revenues for operating companies, based on a number of case studies from around the world. In particular, the examples given will look at ways to increase production and reduce costs, increase the efficiency of drilling wells, and improve cycle times between well completion and bringing on production. The second part of the extended abstract discusses approaches in engineering and project execution that can lead to significant reductions in cost. Case studies will be used to illustrate how engineering deliverable standardisation decreased development cost considerably for operators. Further case studies will show that engineering practices such as debottlenecking, risk assessments, and technology application (e.g. flow assurance, reliability engineering, etc.) can lead to improving throughput, increasing reliability, and ultimately reducing cost. A final hypothetical case will be qualitatively evaluated to show the value of retaining flexibility in engineering designs. The conclusion of the extended abstract will look at how additional organisational measures such as training, performance management, and reporting structures can drive sustainable change and lead to increased profit margins in very challenging circumstances.

ЕКСПОРТНИЙ ПОТЕНЦІАЛ ТА МОЖЛИВОСТІ УКРАЇНСЬКИХ МАЛИХ ТА СЕРЕДНІХ ПІДПРИЄМСТВ НА ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОМУ РИНКУ

This article deals with the export potential and possibilities of the Ukrainian small and medium size enterprises in the European market as well as markets of the third countries, especially after acting of the deep and comprehensive free trade area («FTA+») between Ukraine and the EU. Most of the articles of the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine concern the terms of business, competition defence in the market i.e. liberalization and removal of different administrative and discriminatory measures in Ukraine. The access to the market of the EU for the domestic small and medium size entrepreneurial activity players must be considerably broaden. In the case of the European market entry, the Ukrainian businessman, adjusting to the requirements of all countries-members of the EU, will be able to get a considerable competitive advantage as a mediator or intermediate link among the economic players of the EU countries. The consequences of adaptation of the technical adjusting, corporate management, defence of consumer rights and competition are analysed at the same time. The achievement of results on these questions is non-equivalent and has contradictions in the Ukrainian terms. The unwillingness of «FTA+» is exposed by the most Ukrainian economic players in separate market niches. The main reason is the expulsing of domestic products in the internal market by the European commodities and impossible access to the EU markets due to the competition and disparity of the Ukrainian standards to the European requirements. There are recommendations in relation to the effective implementation of the foreign economic activity of small and medium size enterprises, and increase of the products’ competitiveness of the domestic producers in the European market.

Small Finance Banks: The Big Institutional Move in Banking and Financial Inclusion Arena

A vibrant banking policy should facilitate the evolution and growth of banks and micro credit institutions, which focus on low income households, agriculturalists, tiny and small scale industries and underbanked citizens aiming at self-employment and entrepreneurship. These institutions should include such specialist institutions as may be promoted by voluntary action, private enterprise or NGOs for meeting the banking needs of the poor or small players. In the contemporary policy, ‘differentiated banks’ serving niche interests, local area banks, payment banks etc. are contemplated to meet credit and remittance needs of small businesses, unorganized sector, low income households, farmers and migrant work force. Small Finance Banks, to whom licences have recently been issued by the RBI, are a step in this direction.

ROLE OF LAW IN CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL SCALE INDUSTRIES THROUGH NORMATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The presence of law has become an absolute prerequisite that must exist in the dynamics of civil society. It is to achieve justice, certainty, and expediency, so the works of it will not be separated from such a noble mission. On the other side, the law is likely inseparable from the fields of meta-juridical, including economics. The expectations of the interference of law into economy, makes the existence of justice for the business players can be realized through the enacted product legislation. Regulations concerning investments and partnerships have the intent to build self-reliance and empowerment for small industry players so as to compete in the era of economic globalization. Laws employed as the instrument of social change to strengthen the capitalization of small industry and business empowerment through the training and development of small industries, as normatively mandated by law. Key words : Law, Economic, Small Industry

Adaptive Portfolio Optimization for Multiple Electricity Markets Participation.

The increase of distributed energy resources, mainly based on renewable sources, requires new solutions that are able to deal with this type of resources' particular characteristics (namely, the renewable energy sources intermittent nature). The smart grid concept is increasing its consensus as the most suitable solution to facilitate the small players' participation in electric power negotiations while improving energy efficiency. The opportunity for players' participation in multiple energy negotiation environments (smart grid negotiation in addition to the already implemented market types, such as day-ahead spot markets, balancing markets, intraday negotiations, bilateral contracts, forward and futures negotiations, and among other) requires players to take suitable decisions on whether to, and how to participate in each market type. This paper proposes a portfolio optimization methodology, which provides the best investment profile for a market player, considering different market opportunities. The amount of power that each supported player should negotiate in each available market type in order to maximize its profits, considers the prices that are expected to be achieved in each market, in different contexts. The price forecasts are performed using artificial neural networks, providing a specific database with the expected prices in the different market types, at each time. This database is then used as input by an evolutionary particle swarm optimization process, which originates the most advantage participation portfolio for the market player. The proposed approach is tested and validated with simulations performed in multiagent simulator of competitive electricity markets, using real electricity markets data from the Iberian operator-MIBEL.

Examining the efforts of a small, open economy to reduce carbon emissions: The case of Denmark

It is generally understood that greenhouse gasses produced by human activities are having a warming effect on the climate. Discussions concerning efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions often focus on large countries. However, considerable resources have been spent to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by relatively small, open economies. Although, these economies are small players in international markets, international trade has an important influence on their economies. Investigating the outcome of efforts to curb emissions by these small, open economies provides insights into the situation faced by a large set of the world's economies. This paper has three objectives: (1) investigate the outcome of Denmark's efforts to reduce its carbon emissions by characterizing the relationship between Denmark's macroeconomic activity and carbon emissions; (2) determine the carbon content of Danish trade and document the important effects that growing trade with China has had on Danish consumption emissions; and (3), investigate the robustness of measures of consumption emissions under varying information requirements. Our analysis of the outcomes of Danish efforts to reduce carbon emissions suggest two, related lessons. First, small, open economies, should track both production and consumption emissions when evaluating their progress towards reducing carbon emissions. Second, international trade should be considered in the design of environmental policy. The Danish experience indicates that increasing trade with a much larger and more emission intensive country can have substantial influence on consumption emissions.

Timor-Leste Coffee

Over the past decade, Timor-Leste has aimed to identify and execute numerous peace-building and state-building initiatives. Central to the country’s strategic development plan is the careful management of its resources and exports. While the development of downstream industries in the oil and gas sector is the tiny nation’s strongest source of revenue, rehabilitation of its coffee sector has also been flagged for development. Although a relatively small player in the global coffee trade—producing under 0.2 percent of the global coffee supply—Timor-Leste’s coffee sector enjoys one comparative advantage: it constitutes the largest single-source producer of organic coffee in the world. However, despite attempts to boost this sector’s viability through fair-trade partnerships and development-oriented agents, the complex interplay of myriad structural bulwarks shows just how formidable the challenge facing Timor-Leste is. This phenomenon is situated within the fraught history of Timor-Leste and the current plight of its coffee sector sits within a larger narrative of extreme deprivation and asymmetries of power. This article thus considers the limits of fair-trade organic coffee exports to address Timor-Leste’s acute poverty.

Coaches’ implicit associations between size and giftedness: implications for the relative age effect

The relative age effect (RAE) is a well-established phenomenon in education and sports. Coaches have been assumed to be important social agents of RAE via biased selection decisions in favour of children with maturation advantages. In the present research, we used the Implicit Association Test to investigate automatic associations between body size and a player’s domain-specific giftedness amongst youth baseball (N = 18) and youth soccer coaches (N = 34). We found medium to strong automatic associations between body size and player giftedness (baseball: MD = 0.62; soccer: MD = 0.51). Specifically, taller players were associated with positive performance-related attributes, whereas smaller players were associated with negative attributes. The results are in line with theories of grounded cognition by showing that the abstract concept of “sport giftedness” is partly grounded in the perception of physical height amongst youth sports coaches. We argue that this grounded cognition has the potential to influence coaches’ selection decisions and in turn account for RAE as coaches are biased towards physically more matured players, even when no apparent performance advantage is evident.

Defining strategic areas of management for small business and private enterprise players

Defining strategic areas of management for small business and private enterprise players

Nostalgia for war and the paradox of peace in the Colombian emerald trade

In 1991 the most prominent leaders of Colombia's emerald mining sector signed a peace agreement that brought a decades-long conflict to an end. Peace brought consolidation to the business. It gave mine owners the ability to control the supply of emeralds that would be let out onto the market. New efficiencies in the production process disrupted older social relations. Miners who had once let emeralds slip through their fingers, now exercised a much tighter control. In the time of the emerald wars, the owners of the mines had to sustain large followings. This meant that they had to be very generous and openhanded with their emeralds, diffusing them through networks of people joined together by kinship, affinity and personal loyalty. The end of the wars brought an end to the need for such followings. Miners could cut out many of the men and women who stood between themselves and the foreign buyers of Colombian stones. They could also restrict the scope of informal mining on their lands. Thus peace had the paradoxical effect of squeezing out the smaller players, disrupting the social networks formed in times of violence and threatening the livelihoods of thousands of miners and traders.

Post-Entry Product Introduction: Who Explores New Niches?

Where do innovative products come from? Why do some firms address new market niches and others do not? The literature has rarely blended the concept of innovativeness of a product at the market level with the coherence of the product portfolio at the firm level. In this paper, we examine whether the introduction of products that are highly innovative occurs in firms that are very differentiated, both in terms of target niches and in terms of technological competencies, or rather in firms that focus on specific market segments and that have a limited technological capability. The results show that the introduction of products that are new to the market generally occurs in firms that introduce many products in few market segments and are characterized by a set of specialized technological and market competencies. At least in this industry, the myth of the small specialized niche player does not hold. Implications have a positive relevance to assess firms' behaviour in a given market. From the welfare point of view, this paper helps disentangle monopolistic power generated by truly new products and simple versioning of the product.

Jyothy Stoops to Conquer: The Henkel India Acquisition

In the year 2011, Jyothy Laboratories (Jyothy), a small domestic player in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry in India, acquired Henkel India. Having historically followed a purely organic strategy, Jyothy made a strategic shift, by acquiring Henkel India. The case describes the circumstances leading to this acquisition from the perspective of both Henkel and Jyothy. The case outlines the intricacies involved in the entire acquisition process including the strategic motives, regulatory issues, bargaining between the parties and the postacquisition phase. There were integration issues faced by both companies, specifically since Jyothy was an Indian company and Henkel India was part of a large European multinational. The main protagonist in the case has to address the challenges his company faces after the acquisition of Henkel India.

A Leviathan central bank: Modeling seigniorage in a money search model

This paper studies the nature of optimal monetary policy under a utility-maximizing monetary authority in a micro-founded model of money based on Lagos and Wright (2005). Such a monetary authority represents a monopoly private money supplier or situations where fiscal policy drives monetary policy and hence the name Leviathan. Under no commitment, I characterize an equilibrium with reputation concerns. The centralized market interaction is modeled as an infinitely repeated game between the Leviathan monetary authority (a large player) and the economic agents (small players), where the size of the players refers to the ability to influence aggregate outcomes. This large–small player dynamics pins down the equilibrium set of payoffs. Under the assumption that agents do not refuse to use money purely for coordination reasons, the one shot game has a unique Nash equilibrium with maximum inflation tax. The set of equilibria is considerably enlarged in the infinite repetition of the game and equilibria with a lower inflation tax can also be supported by providing appropriate incentives to the money supplier.

The Role of microRNAs in Mitochondria: Small Players Acting Wide.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short, single-stranded, non-coding RNA molecules that act as post-transcriptional gene regulators. They can inhibit target protein-coding genes, through repressing messenger RNA (mRNA) translation or promoting their degradation. miRNAs were initially found to be originated from nuclear genome and exported to cytosol; where they exerted most of their actions. More recently, miRNAs were found to be present specifically in mitochondria; even originated there from mitochondrial DNA, regulating in a direct manner genes coding for mitochondrial proteins, and consequently mitochondrial function. Since miRNAs are recognized as major players in several biological processes, they are being considered as a key to better understand, explain, and probably prevent/cure not only the pathogenesis of multifactorial diseases but also mitochondrial dysfunction and associated diseases. Here we review some of the molecular mechanisms purported for miRNA actions in several biological processes, particularly the miRNAs acting in mitochondria or in mitochondria-related mechanisms.

Building Relationships From the Outside In: A Case Study of Falken Tire's Drift Toward Success

This article explores a unique application of relationship marketing and commitment-trust theory through “outside-in” channel development. Necessitated by market conditions and competitor size and influence, the case company lacked the financial strength and credibility to compete head on to drive awareness from key channel members. Findings demonstrate how out-of-the-box thinking, entrepreneurial risk taking, and creative event marketing allowed a small market player to establish, build, and ultimately extend relationships with both indirect and direct channel partners from the outside in. This case provides guidance for relationship marketing efforts through the use of event sponsorship and social media strategies.

Drawbacks in SMEs‟ EIS Applications: Framework for Development of EIS for SMEs in Sri Lanka

The Small and Medium Scale Enterprises/Industries (SMEs) function as a lifeline in the informal sector in SriLanka due to their significant contribution to the overall economy in terms of employment, exports,innovation, tax income, equitable income distribution, social stability, domestic resources usage, andregional development. However, in Sri Lanka, a majority of Enterprise Information System (EIS)applications have not been focused by those ‘small players’ in the economy. The paper first identifies factorsthat contribute to SMEs relatively lower level of attraction towards EISs, using TOE Framework, which wastested mainly to assess the organization willingness on ICT in developing countries. Finally, the paperexplains the ways and means by which the EIS vendors, SME and IT policy makers can address the gapbetween the current level and the potential for SME EIS adoption. Therefore the research findings helpSMEs to create business opportunities with EIS applications and combat pressures from competition.Further specific SME ICT needs to be addressed strategically, in order to ensure their competitive position inthe economy, will be discussed KEYWORDS: SME, Enterprise Information Systems/EIS, Enterprise Resource Planning/ERP, TOEFramework, ICT Adoption.

MiRNA dysregulation in cancer: towards a mechanistic understanding

It is now well known that gene expression is intricately regulated inside each cell especially in mammals. There are multiple layers of gene regulation active inside a cell at a given point of time. Gene expression is regulated post-transcriptionally by microRNAs and other factors. Mechanistically, microRNAs are known to bind to the 3’ UTR of mRNAs and cause repression of gene expression and the number of known microRNAs continues to increase every day. Dysregulated microRNA signatures in different types of cancer are being uncovered consistently implying their importance in cellular homeostasis. However when studied in isolation in mouse models, clear-cut cellular and molecular mechanisms have been described only for a select few microRNAs. What is the reason behind this discrepancy? Are microRNAs small players in gene regulation helping only to fine tune gene expression? Or are their roles tissue and cell type-specific with single-cell level effects on mRNA expression and microRNA threshold levels? Or does it all come down to the technical limitations of high-throughput techniques, resulting in false positive results? In this review, we will assess the challenges facing the field and potential avenues for resolving the cellular and molecular mechanisms of these small but important regulators of gene expression.