Competitive Advantage Variation over the Life Cycle of a Franchise: Of the Tested Competitive Advantages, Franchisee Motivation is Perceived as the most Important at all Life Cycle Stages

Purpose Nowadays, innovation appears as one of the main driving forces of organisational success. Despite the above fact, its impact on the propensity of an organisation to develop and sustain a competitive advantage has not yet received sufficient empirical investigation. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the existing empirical literature by focusing on the antecedents of innovation and its impact on competitive advantage. It proposes a newly developed conceptual framework that adopts a three-step approach, highlighting areas that have rarely been simultaneously examined before. Design/methodology/approach The examination of the proposed conceptual framework was performed with the use of a newly developed structured questionnaire that was distributed to a group of Greek manufacturing companies. The questionnaire has been successfully completed by chief executive officers (CEOs) from 189 different companies. CEOs were used as key respondents due to their knowledge and experience. The reliability and the validity of the questionnaire were thoroughly examined. Empirical data were analysed using the structural equation modelling technique. The study is empirical (based on primary data), explanatory (examines cause and effect relationships), deductive (tests research hypotheses) and quantitative (includes the analysis of quantitative data collected with the use of a structured questionnaire). Findings Results indicate that knowledge management, intellectual capital, organisational capabilities and organisational culture have significant direct and indirect effects on innovation, underlining the importance of their simultaneous enhancement. Finally, the positive effect of innovation on the creation of competitive advantages is empirically validated, bridging the gap in the relevant literature and offering avenues for additional future research. Originality/value The causal relationship between innovation and competitive advantage, despite its significant theoretical support, has not been empirically validated. The present paper aspires to bridge this gap, investigating the impact of innovation on the development of competitive advantages. Moreover, the present study adopts a multidimensional approach that has never been explored in the existing innovation literature, making the examination of the proposed conceptual framework an interesting research topic.

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Limited-scale field trial confirmed differences in growth and agarose characteristics in life-cycle stages of industrially important marine red alga Gracilaria dura (Gracilariales, Rhodophyta)

Journal of Applied Phycology ◽

10.1007/s10811-020-02356-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Vaibhav A. Mantri ◽

Yashesh Shah ◽

Nikunj Balar ◽

Keval Chavda ◽

Mayur Mavani ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle ◽

Field Trial ◽

Red Alga ◽

Life Cycle Stages ◽

Scale Field ◽

Limited Scale ◽

Gracilaria Dura

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Mitigating the Energy Consumption and the Carbon Emission in the Building Structures by Optimization of the Construction Processes

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14113287 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (11) ◽

pp. 3287

Author(s):

Alireza Tabrizikahou ◽

Piotr Nowotarski

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle ◽

Energy Consumption ◽

Structural Optimization ◽

Carbon Emissions ◽

Carbon Emission ◽

Construction Materials ◽

High Energy ◽

Building Structures ◽

Life Cycle Stages ◽

Reduction Of Energy Consumption

For decades, among other industries, the construction sector has accounted for high energy consumption and emissions. As the energy crisis and climate change have become a growing concern, mitigating energy usage is a significant issue. The operational and end of life phases are all included in the building life cycle stages. Although the operation stage accounts for more energy consumption with higher carbon emissions, the embodied stage occurs in a time-intensive manner. In this paper, an attempt has been made to review the existing methods, aiming to lower the consumption of energy and carbon emission in the construction buildings through optimizing the construction processes, especially with the lean construction approach. First, the energy consumption and emissions for primary construction materials and processes are introduced. It is followed by a review of the structural optimization and lean techniques that seek to improve the construction processes. Then, the influence of these methods on the reduction of energy consumption is discussed. Based on these methods, a general algorithm is proposed with the purpose of improving the construction processes’ performance. It includes structural optimization and lean and life cycle assessments, which are expected to influence the possible reduction of energy consumption and carbon emissions during the execution of construction works.

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The effects of greening the supplier and innovation on environmental performance and competitive advantage

Journal of Transport and Supply Chain Management ◽

10.4102/jtscm.v7i1.121 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Unine Van den Berg ◽

Jean-Pierre Labuschagne ◽

Hugo Van den Berg

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Competitive Advantage ◽

Environmental Performance ◽

Competitive Advantages ◽

Latent Constructs ◽

Confirmatory Factor ◽

Environmental Goals ◽

The City ◽

Strength Of Association ◽

Managerial Innovation

Companies in South Africa should realise the important influence of greening their suppliers and of innovation to achieve environmental goals and competitive advantages. In order to prove this, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 75 companies from 11 industries in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality region, South Africa. A confirmatory factor analysis was done, followed by bivariate correlations to determine the strength of association between the latent constructs. Correlations between greening the supplier, innovation, environmental performance and competitive advantages were done. The research found that a green innovative process had a significant effect on environmental performance. Green managerial innovation further had a significant correlation with competitive advantage. The primary result of the study indicated that all the constructs positively related to each other, meaning that greening suppliers, by means of green innovation, leads to an enhanced environmental performance and to competitive advantages.

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Mitochondrial Processes during Early Development of Dictyostelium discoideum: From Bioenergetic to Proteomic Studies

Genes ◽

10.3390/genes12050638 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (5) ◽

pp. 638

Author(s):

Monika Mazur ◽

Daria Wojciechowska ◽

Ewa Sitkiewicz ◽

Agata Malinowska ◽

Bianka Świderska ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle ◽

Developmental Stages ◽

Coupling Efficiency ◽

Slime Mold ◽

Intact Cells ◽

Life Cycle Stages ◽

Early Developmental Stages ◽

Proteomic Study ◽

And Function ◽

Early Developmental

The slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum’s life cycle includes different unicellular and multicellular stages that provide a convenient model for research concerning intracellular and intercellular mechanisms influencing mitochondria’s structure and function. We aim to determine the differences between the mitochondria isolated from the slime mold regarding its early developmental stages induced by starvation, namely the unicellular (U), aggregation (A) and streams (S) stages, at the bioenergetic and proteome levels. We measured the oxygen consumption of intact cells using the Clarke electrode and observed a distinct decrease in mitochondrial coupling capacity for stage S cells and a decrease in mitochondrial coupling efficiency for stage A and S cells. We also found changes in spare respiratory capacity. We performed a wide comparative proteomic study. During the transition from the unicellular stage to the multicellular stage, important proteomic differences occurred in stages A and S relating to the proteins of the main mitochondrial functional groups, showing characteristic tendencies that could be associated with their ongoing adaptation to starvation following cell reprogramming during the switch to gluconeogenesis. We suggest that the main mitochondrial processes are downregulated during the early developmental stages, although this needs to be verified by extending analogous studies to the next slime mold life cycle stages.

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