How can we capture the value of rail transit to improve spatial equity across income groups?

ABSTRACT The philosophical debate between C. Thi Nguyen and Michael Ridge defines the contemporary ethical landscape of gamification: Nguyen’s ‘value capture’ diagnoses its reductive dangers, while Ridge’s ‘playfulness’ advocates for its liberating potential. This article argues that despite their sophistication, both frameworks are constrained by a form of methodological individualism, analysing gamification primarily as a problem of applied design or agential psychology. By demonstrating how this focus obscures the social logic that gamification operationalises, we expose the need to re-situate the phenomenon within its historicity – that is, within the concrete social relations it both reflects and reshapes. Advancing beyond their paradigm, the article proposes analysing institutional gamification – particularly in the domain of labour – as a form of social fetishism: a process that conceals relations of exploitation and control under the appealing, objective guise of voluntary play. The conclusion contends that only by centring this social-structural critique can philosophy grasp gamification’s role in reshaping the very texture of collective life under late modernity.

ABSTRACT The growing emphasis on sustainability necessitates a re‐evaluation of traditional value creation and capture challenges, highlighting the intricate interrelation between value (un)captured and recaptured. This study investigates the dynamics of overtourism and undertourism in the sustainable development of regions. This prominent incidence of oversupply and undersupply underscores the tension between short‐term economic benefits and long‐term sustainable value capture. Introducing the conceptual framework of value loops and a robust value cascade, this study explores how vendors generate, lose, and reclaim economic, social, and environmental value and how other value stakeholders perceive it. Focusing on overtourism and undertourism as an exemplary manifestation of sustainable value paradoxes, the study examines the cyclical processes of value creation, (un)capture, and recapture. These paradoxes illuminate the compromises inherent in sustainability ambiguities, such as balancing economic growth with cultural heritage conservation. The study identifies trailblazing actionable approaches for reclaiming previously uncaptured value, emphasizing the roles of heritage‐based, sustainable practices, stakeholder collaboration, and digital innovation.

Resilience and innovation: SME responses in global value chains under uncertainty

ABSTRACT Most fashion brands have focused their offerings on the elites or the middle to upper‐middle‐class segments. This study investigates how a value‐fashion brand in India, Zudio, took the road less traveled and found fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, where most brands have either struggled or never entered at all. This case study followed 9 years of research data on Zudio's growth while specifically demonstrating competitive dynamics against key competitors. Such analysis relied on relevant market research reports, published articles, insights into executives' interviews, and their statements in the public domain. Eventually, it also manifested an appropriate business model of Zudio and key managerial lessons for business success in the BOP segment. The findings suggest the importance of key business practices of value creation (e.g., addressing demand in the underpenetrated market and offerings with affordable pricing), value capture (e.g., quick inventory turnover for high sales, FOCO model for extensive customer reach), and value delivery (e.g., accessible fashion with affordability of high‐quality offerings supplemented with agile inventory). Hence, Zudio's story contributes insights into unique business practices in BOP segments with a successful working business model. It makes a case for other potential businesses to explore and find their fortune in this underserved yet highly fruitful market. Beyond the domestic context, the study also offers lessons for international business managers on how firms from emerging markets design scalable models that could be replicated across other BOP segments internationally.

This article analyzes how artificial intelligence changes the strategic management of product value in multi-sided digital marketplaces. The relevance of the topic stems from the rapid diffusion of generative and analytical AI across business functions and from the growing need to redesign product work around data, governance, and cross-functional coordination. The purpose of the study is to clarify how AI shifts product management from execution-heavy routines toward higher-order decisions concerning system behavior, marketplace balance, and value capture. The article uses source analysis, comparative interpretation, conceptual synthesis, and analytical generalization. The materials combine recent studies on product management, platform economics, marketplace value co-creation, human-centered AI design, responsible AI governance, and large-scale reports on enterprise AI adoption. The analytical section shows that AI compresses drafting, coordination, and first-pass analysis, while expanding the strategic significance of instrumentation, boundary-resource design, exception handling, governance, and ecosystem alignment. The findings apply to product teams operating in platform businesses that must coordinate buyers, sellers, data, models, and institutional constraints within one evolving decision system.

With the profound transformation of service-oriented manufacturing worldwide since the 21st century, a new industrial model based on the combination of products and services has become a new profit and value growth point for manufacturing enterprises. Enterprises are shifting from simple product production to providing a comprehensive product-service system, further evolving into a smart product-service system, and ultimately expanding into Sustainable Intelligent Interconnected Ecosystems (SICE). The complexity and dynamic nature of SICE make its business and value boundaries unclear, and there is no effective theoretical framework and method for boundary identification and value capture, which hinders the sustainable development of SICE. To clarify the effective boundaries of the operation of the SICE, an innovative model and methods of the framework process, system boundaries for the SICE have been proposed. This study constructs a systematic framework for SICE business and value boundary research to optimize business boundary integration, and verifies the model through empirical research in the smart-home industry, providing a new method for SICE boundary identification and value capture. The system boundary research methods proposed in this paper can identify the business boundary and value boundary of the smart-home product-service ecosystem through a hierarchical approach, and the case illustration shows that the methods have certain applicability and practical guiding significance for the construction of smart-home product-service enterprise business platforms.

This study examines the development of business models for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the beef industry, with particular emphasis on market integration and sustainability strategies. The study adopts an integrative literature review approach to synthesize recent scholarly discussions on MSMEs, beef supply chains, business model development, digital transformation, and sustainability. The review draws on peer-reviewed publications indexed in Scopus and ScienceDirect from 2020 to 2025 and employs thematic synthesis to identify major patterns and conceptual linkages across the literature. The findings indicate that MSMEs play a strategic role in the beef industry as intermediaries in distribution, contributors to local price stability, and generators of employment; however, their performance remains constrained by fragmented supply chains, weak market integration, limited technological adoption, and restricted access to strategic partnerships. The review further shows that adaptive business models are strengthened through the integration of value creation, value delivery, and value capture, supported by digitalization, vertical coordination, and collaborative networks. In addition, sustainability-oriented approaches grounded in resource optimization, dynamic capabilities, and sustainable value chain thinking are consistently associated with greater business resilience and long-term competitiveness. By integrating these perspectives, this study offers a conceptual understanding of how MSMEs in the beef industry can strengthen competitiveness and adaptability in an increasingly complex food-system environment. The study also provides practical insight for the development of more integrated and sustainable MSME strategies in the agribusiness sector.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the spatial heterogeneity of land value tax capitalization and its implications for housing affordability in Loja, Ecuador, using a novel dataset of 1419 repeat land sales (2010–2017). Employing instrumental variable approaches within both parametric (Spatial Error Models) and semi‐parametric (Generalized Additive Models) frameworks, we document significant spatial variation in tax capitalization effects. Properties located in the urban core experience a 2.5% reduction in land prices for each 1% point increase in the effective tax rate, with this effect diminishing by approximately 0.6% for every additional kilometer from the city center. This gradient reflects differences in land supply elasticity, proxied by proximity to the urban core. Although tax capitalization results in lower nominal prices near the center, it does not necessarily enhance affordability, as buyers face higher long‐term tax burdens. Moreover, institutional practices, such as systematic underassessment in rapidly appreciating areas and the shifting of fiscal burdens to slower‐growing areas, undermine the intended price‐stabilizing effects of the tax and exacerbate equity concerns. The findings emphasize the importance of complementary policies aimed at curbing land market financialization and implementing administrative reforms to better align value capture mechanisms with rapidly rising land values, particularly at the urban fringe. As the first empirical analysis of land tax capitalization in Latin America, this research contributes to the methodological understanding of spatial heterogeneity and provides critical insights for the design of equitable and effective urban fiscal policy.

This article analyzes the determinants of consumers' purchase and consumption of geographical indication (GI) agricultural products through a ten-year systematic review. There exist growing concerns about food safety, quality, and health, increasing consumer attention to origin labelled foods. GI agricultural products have gained a stable position in global food markets. This study pursues two objectives. First, it identifies and classifies the key determinants of GI agricultural product consumption reported in the literature. Second, it compares insights from five existing review studies on closely related themes to clarify what is already established and what remains contested. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a transparent and reproducible systematic literature review, including structured searching, screening, and data extraction procedures. The results summarize how consumers respond to GI cues and identify factors associated with heterogeneous responses across contexts. By integrating fragmented evidence, this review clarifies consumption relevant mechanisms and offers implications for GI governance and marketing, helping firms better understand consumer decision making and supporting value capture for farmers, producers, and regional stakeholders.

Multi-source environmental data are increasingly used for measurement, reporting and verification, and for coordinating low-carbon innovation across interorganizational networks. However, voluntary data sharing remains limited because participants face asymmetric costs, leakage and compliance risks, and uncertainty in value capture. This study develops a network evolutionary game model to examine how cooperative data sharing emerges and stabilizes in green innovation networks. We specify a two-strategy game in which heterogeneous agents choose between sharing and withholding. The payoff structure integrates private innovation gains from their own data, cross-partner synergy, external incentives, fixed governance costs, and stock-scaled sharing and risk burdens. Agents interact on a Barabási–Albert scale-free network and update strategies via local imitation under a Fermi rule. Simulations show that cooperation can diffuse from low initial participation and converge to a high-sharing regime when benefit allocation and incentive intensity jointly offset cost and risk frictions. Several governance levers exhibit threshold-type effects, including the allocation share, the opportunity loss of non-sharing, and the marginal cost–risk burden. Multi-source synergy and subsidies further raise the attainable cooperation level, but with diminishing marginal returns. Degree heterogeneity accelerates diffusion once hub organizations adopt sharing, while also raising fairness concerns when benefits concentrate on central nodes. Overall, the findings provide green-innovation-specific governance conditions that translate threshold regions into implementable design targets for sustainable environmental data sharing.

Corporate finance functions are moving through a new digital inflection point. Earlier waves of automation in finance centered on robotic process automation, rules engines, workflow tools, and predictive analytics that standardized high-volume transactions and reduced cycle times. The current wave is different because large language models, generative AI, and agentic systems can interpret unstructured data, coordinate across tools, and recommend or execute multi-step decisions. Yet the finance function cannot adopt autonomy in the same way as less regulated business areas. Financial reporting, planning, controllership, treasury, tax, internal audit, and investor-facing processes are constrained by internal controls, segregation of duties, auditability, data lineage, policy compliance, and accountability to boards, regulators, and external assurance providers. This review paper examines how the literature from 2020 to 2026 explains the shift from automation to augmentation and develops a constraint-aware framework for adopting agentic AI in corporate finance. Following a structured review and content analysis of recent academic studies, standards, and practitioner reports, the paper synthesizes four themes: the evolution of AI use cases in finance and accounting; the distinction between automation, augmentation, and bounded autonomy; the organizational and technical constraints that shape deployment; and the governance mechanisms needed for reliable value capture. The review argues that the most realistic pathway for finance is not unrestricted autonomy but graduated augmentation, in which AI agents expand analytical capacity, accelerate close and planning cycles, and improve stakeholder alignment while humans retain accountability over material judgments and irreversible actions. Building on the synthesis, the paper proposes a five-layer framework that aligns use-case selection, autonomy design, control requirements, human oversight, and performance metrics. The framework helps organizations match agentic capability to task criticality, data quality, reversibility, and regulatory exposure. The paper contributes a finance-specific conceptualization of agentic adoption, unique research objectives, an implementation sequence for CFO organizations, and a future research agenda focused on control redesign, explainability, operating models, and the changing role of finance professionals.

Artificial intelligence has transitioned from a productivity tool to a strategic inflection point, yet most organizations fail to capture enterprise value from individual efficiency gains because workflows remain unchanged. This article synthesizes evidence from large-scale organizational studies, randomized controlled trials, and industry observations to examine why isolated AI adoption yields marginal returns while integrated workflow redesign unlocks substantial competitive advantage. Drawing on documented productivity improvements of 26–40% in knowledge work and the emergence of agentic AI systems, we analyze the organizational, labor market, and capability development consequences of the current deployment gap. Evidence-based responses include experimental workflow redesign, capability expansion strategies, apprenticeship model recalibration, and distributed AI governance structures. The article concludes that leadership mindset—choosing expansion over efficiency—determines whether AI diminishes or amplifies organizational capacity. Organizations that redesign work systems to augment human judgment, not merely automate tasks, position themselves for sustained value creation in an environment where AI capability evolves faster than institutional adaptation.

The agricultural value chain is a fundamental analytical approach for understanding the organization, generation, and distribution of value in agri-food systems. The municipality of Escárcega, Campeche, has a strong agricultural focus based primarily on staple crops such as maize (Zea mays L.) and rice (Oryza sativa L.), which play a central role in the local economy and regional food security. The objective of this study is to analyze the structure and functioning of the value chain for Escárcega's main agricultural products through a comprehensive review of scientific and documentary literature. The results reveal a value chain dominated by primary production, with a low level of agro-industrial processing, limited producer organization, and a strong dependence on intermediaries for marketing. These conditions limit value capture by local producers. It is concluded that strengthening the value chain requires comprehensive strategies focused on productive organization, technological innovation, and access to differentiated markets.

Purpose Despite substantial investments in digital transformation, firms in emerging economies often experience widely divergent performance outcomes. This study examines how digitalization relates to firm performance through strategic decision-making and governance mechanisms, and how these relationships vary with firm size. Design/methodology/approach Grounded in transaction cost theory (TCT) and a strategic decision-making perspective, we develop and test a moderated mediation framework using structural equation modeling with survey data from 212 Chinese manufacturing firms. We examine whether digitalization relates to firm performance through two characteristics of strategic decision-making processes: procedural rationality and organizational politics, and whether these indirect effects vary with firm size. Findings Digitalization is positively associated with firm performance both directly and indirectly through decision-governance mechanisms. Specifically, digitalization is linked to greater procedural rationality and lower organizational politics, which together help explain why seemingly similar digital investments yield divergent outcomes. Moreover, these governance pathways are systematically contingent on firm size, such that the governance returns to digitalization are more pronounced in larger, more complex organizations. Originality/value This study makes three theoretical contributions. First, it extends TCT in the digital age by specifying decision governance as the key internal channel through which digitalization translates into firm performance, thereby opening the black box behind heterogeneous outcomes. Second, it advances digitalization research by developing a process-based, dual-mechanism account of value capture in which digitalization operates through complementary changes in strategic decision making: enhancing procedural rationality while constraining organizational politics, rather than technological sophistication per se. Third, it identifies firm size as a structural contingency that conditions these governance pathways, providing a theoretical basis for explaining when and why digital investments yield stronger performance implications across organizations of different scale and complexity. These insights also offer actionable guidance for managers in emerging economies by framing digital transformation as a decision-governance redesign problem.

ABSTRACT Patents are central to open innovation because they help companies protect and exchange knowledge. On one hand, patents can strengthen appropriability by granting exclusion rights that deter imitation, improve bargaining power, and support value capture. On the other hand, patents provide a foundation for licensing, technology transfer, and ecosystem building. This trade-off is especially acute in mission-oriented, technology-based sectors such as cultivated meat, where timely progress on complex technological challenges is critical to advancing urgent societal goals. Yet, existing patent governance models remain largely anchored in private value-capture and offer limited guidance on how prosocial commitments can be operationalized through patents without undermining investment incentives. This underscores the need to explore prosocial governance logics in patent management. Drawing on interviews and archival data, this study examines how patents are strategically governed to balance value capture with broader societal outcomes. We identify four emerging hybrid approaches to managing patents – Patent Salvaging, Altruistic Patent Sharing, Sharing Close Failures, and Benevolent Patent Extensions – that vary by degree of openness (closed, selective, open) and how benefits are distributed (industry-wide or for private stakeholders). By investigating the incentive logics and boundary conditions that make each approach viable, we extend open innovation and patent management research in mission-oriented sectors. We also provide practical guidance for companies and policymakers designing patent strategies that support both private returns and collective impact.

Global value chain (GVC) analysis examines the distribution of value between lead firms and suppliers but overlooks profit leakage to actors outside GVCs, especially financial markets. We address this gap by integrating GVC analysis with the corporate financialization literature, examining value capture between shareholders, lead firms, and suppliers. Using S&P Capital IQ data, we analyze lead firms’ financialization of objectives, investments, operations, and value capture across four GVCs (apparel, automotive, copper, and coffee/cocoa) from 1993 to 2022. We show that GVCs serve lead firms as a “source of value” by lowering sourcing costs to increase profit margins and shareholder returns, and as a “source of liquidity,” extending supplier payment terms that enhance working capital. Overall, shareholders emerge as the main beneficiaries of GVCs. While issuing equity plays a minor role in financing lead firms, these firms sustain stock markets through large shareholder payouts, funded through the profits generated in GVCs.

This literature review examines how agribusiness innovations contribute to stronger and more resilient global agricultural value chains (GAVCs). Drawing on 19 studies published between 2020 and 2025, the review shows that technological and digital innovations improve productivity, traceability, and supply chain resilience, though their benefits vary across countries and depend on local capabilities and infrastructure. Evidence highlights that innovation outcomes are shaped by factors including education, investment capacity, geographic access, and the ability of firms and producers to manage knowledge and adopt new processes. The review further finds that innovation capabilities within agri-business firms and production units are essential for transforming technologies into value-added activities. Inclusive and sustainability-oriented innovations, supported by coordination among multiple actors, help integrate smallholders and ensure environmental and social alignment within value chains. Financial innovations, particularly FinTech and blockchain, address challenges of trust, transaction costs, and financial exclusion, but require strong digital literacy and supportive infrastructure to be effective. Policy frameworks and state interventions play a decisive role, influencing how innovations diffuse and whether they lead to meaningful upgrading and value capture. Overall, the literature indicates that strengthening GAVCs requires a combination of technological, organizational, financial, and policy innovations tailored to specific contexts, with coordinated strategies that promote resilience, inclusion, and sustainability. Keywords: Agribusiness Innovation, Global Agricultural Value Chains, Digital Transformation, FinTech and Blockchain, Smallholder Inclusion, Supply Chain Resilience

In International Political Economy (IPE), brands appear across debates on intangible assets, managerialism, supply-chain governance, value capture, and hidden costs; yet, their role in organizing value globally remains secondary. This article advances a critique of the political economy of global branding, arguing that global branding organizes value worldwide through the metamorphoses of brand capital into four forms: commercial, constant, fictitious, and neocolonial. These metamorphoses generate a specular ‘infinite mirrors’ dynamic that magnifies the distance and complexity between the production and realization of value across space and time. Grounded in Marxist value theory and drawing on Harvey’s relational space-time of value, and in dialogue with François Chesnais, who contended that financial capital overflows into other forms of capital, we develop an analytical framework of brand capital metamorphosis through empirical cases from IPE and Business and Management literature. The article’s contribution to IPE is twofold: It centers global branding as a mechanism of value organization that connects dispersed debates into a processual account of capital’s movement, and it offers an analytical tool for examining supply chains, digital platforms, and extractive sectors, revealing mechanisms of valorization and the tensions that sustain accumulation.

Digitalization is increasingly reshaping business models, yet the mechanisms through which specific digital technologies influence business model transformation in renewable energy remain insufficiently understood. Unlike prior research that treats digitalization and business models separately or focuses on macro-level impacts, this study examines how digital technologies affect business model components—value creation, value delivery, and value capture—in renewable energy firms and the extent to which they drive business model adaptation, evolution, or innovation. It aims to combine insights from the literature on digitalization, sustainability, and business models. Through a systematic literature review following the four-phase PRISMA methodology, 32 peer-reviewed studies were analyzed using a combination of descriptive, bibliometric, and Gioia-based thematic coding analyses to identify structures and patterns across the dataset. The analysis introduces a functional grouping perspective, linking digital technologies to business model components, and business model changes. Findings reveal that the same technology can enable multiple, overlapping transformation pathways and that outcomes vary depending on how technologies are implemented and embedded within firm operations. This study contributes theoretically by integrating a functional technology lens and sustainability lens with business model change typologies—a novel integrative framework absent from the prior literature. It practically provides a framework to help renewable energy firms move toward sustainability-oriented reconfiguration of business models by prioritizing and integrating digital tools effectively, thereby enhancing competitive advantage and accelerating value capture from digitalization. This paper closes with directions for future research on technology-enabled business model change.