Circular Business Model Innovation and Its Relationship With Business Performance in Brazilian Industrial Chemical Companies

This study aimed to analyze the relationship between circular business model innovation and business performance in Brazilian industrial chemical companies. This is a quantitative study carried out through a survey with Brazilian industrial companies. Based on a homogeneity analysis (Homals), the results showed that the high degree of innovation in business models from the adoption of circular economy (CE) strategies in the analyzed companies confirms that a significant change leads to superior performance, especially in market, production, economic and financial, and social.

The Effects of Commercial Orientation on (Agro) Pastoralists’ Household Food Security: Evidence from (Agro) Pastoral Communities of Afar, Northeastern Ethiopia

Commercialization has been increasingly promoted for (agro) pastoral communities as an intervention to improve incomes and food access. Using households from rural Afar, this study examines the food security effects of the livestock commercial orientations of (agro) pastoralists by employing propensity score matching (PSM) procedures. The results show that, despite the fact that the market production of (agro) pastoralists is stressed by a broad range of factors, identified as cultural, infrastructural, and production risks, participation in livestock sales significantly decreased the severity of food insecurity in both the household food insecurity access score (HFIAS), and the reduced coping strategy index (rCSI) measures. However, the results failed to find consistently significant effects via the per capita consumption expenditure measure, in which case, the ‘subsistence’ and ‘commercially’ oriented groups are alike. Yet, given the factors depressing market production, properly addressed with policy measures, the income generated from livestock sales improved the welfare of (agro) pastoralists, at least by some (the HFIAS and rCSI) of the livelihood indicators. This highlights the importance of combining market infrastructure investments with culturally sensitive policy measures in order to sustain the traditional livestock husbandry of (agro) pastoralists. Therefore, in order to sustainably improve the food security situations in (agro) pastoral areas, the promotion of market production through the broadening of market access for both sales and purchases is important.

Home, sweet home? The impact of working from home on the division of unpaid work during the COVID-19 lockdown

A lockdown implies a shift from the public to the private sphere, and from market to non-market production, thereby increasing the volume of unpaid work. Already before the pandemic, unpaid work was disproportionately borne by women. This paper studies the effect of working from home for pay (WFH), due to a lockdown, on the change in the division of housework and childcare within couple households. While previous studies on the effect of WFH on the reconciliation of work and family life and the division of labour within the household suffered from selection bias, we are able to identify this effect by drawing upon the shock of the first COVID-19 lockdown in Austria. The corresponding legal measures left little choice over WFH. In any case, WFH is exogenous, conditional on a small set of individual and household characteristics we control for. We employ data from a survey on the gendered aspects of the lockdown. The dataset includes detailed information on time use during the lockdown and on the quality and experience of WFH. Uniquely, this survey data also includes information on the division, and not only magnitude, of unpaid work within households. Austria is an interesting case in this respect as it is characterized by very conservative gender norms. The results reveal that the probability of men taking on a larger share of housework increases if men are WFH alone or together with their female partner. By contrast, the involvement of men in childcare increased only in the event that the female partner was not able to WFH. Overall, the burden of childcare, and particularly homeschooling, was disproportionately borne by women.

Potential Areas in Poland for Forestry Plantation

Plantations have many advantages when compared to natural or semi-natural forests, such as shortening production cycles, the production of wood with specific characteristics, and near-market production concentrations. The intensive development of this form of industrial wood production is practiced all over the world. The wood industry in Poland struggles in recent years, with a large shortage of wood. The deficit of wood has been accumulated for several years and is steadily increasing. One of the possibilities to change this trend can be development of fast-growing trees plantations. The main aim of this study was to determine the potential of land in Poland, which could be used for the cultivation of fast-growing trees plantations. The analyses took into account the area and marginal agricultural land. The potential plantation land areas were determined for poplar cultivar “Hybrid 275” and European larch (Larix decidua Mill.). The results show a possibility to generate a considerable area that can be developed into plantations of fast-growing trees in Poland. According to the analyses carried out for the purpose of this study, with only 5% use of the sown area and 5% use of forest lands, as well as the boscage (wooded land and bushy land), it is possible to obtain approximately 0.6 MM ha of land for fast-growing tree plantations. In the case of planting 50% of these lands with larch and 50% with poplar, and if a 50% capacity of the plantation is assumed, it will be possible to obtain nearly 6 MM m3 of wood per year.

The Impact of Digital Transformation on Business: A Detailed Review

The human society is permanently changing in all aspects. It has experienced many challenges like wars, political conflicts, and financial systems collapse. Today it is hurt by an old well-known enemy – the pandemic. In order to make the things better and even to survive current society is investing in market, production, communications and technological progress. The common base of all these fields is the digitalization on the Communication and Information Technology (IT – Hardware, Software, Algorithms, and Methods). Since the 50-ies of the 20th Century the IT is in permanent development but this has not impacted all layers of the society. In the last decade it is observed a new trend. The IT impacts almost all layers and the technologies of the society – communications, productions, management, analysis, forecasts, education, health, social and medical security). This chapter is concentrated on the basics and tools of digital transformation of business and trends in the business and production in the frame of this new paradigm.

Home, sweet home? The impact of working from home on the division of unpaid work during the COVID-19 lockdown

A lockdown implies a shift from the public to the private sphere, and from market to non-market production, thereby increasing the volume of unpaid work. Already before the pandemic, unpaid work was disproportionately borne by women. This paper studies the effect of working from home for pay (WFH), due to a lockdown, on the change in the division of housework and childcare within couple households. While previous studies on the effect of WFH on the reconciliation of work and family life and the division of labour within the household suffered from selection bias, we are able to identify this effect by drawing upon the shock of the first COVID-19 lockdown in Austria. The corresponding legal measures left little choice over WFH. In any case, WFH is exogenous, conditional on a small set of individual and household characteristics we control for. We employ data from a survey on the gendered aspects of the lockdown. The dataset includes detailed information on time use during the lockdown and on the quality and experience of WFH. Uniquely, this survey data also includes information on the division, and not only magnitude, of unpaid work within households. Austria is an interesting case in this respect as it is characterized by very conservative gender norms. The results reveal that the probability of men taking on a larger share of housework increases if men are WFH alone or together with their female partner. By contrast, the involvement of men in childcare increased only in the event that the female partner was not able to WFH. Overall, the burden of childcare, and particularly homeschooling, was disproportionately borne by women.

America and the Trade Regime: What Went Wrong?

The era of American leadership in the multilateral trading regime has ended. This paper argues that this current antipathy to trade is unsurprising: support for US leadership of the regime has always rested on a precarious balance among domestic interests. To overcome a historic bias in favor of home market production, American leaders created incentives for exporters to organize while creating roadblocks for import-competing firms and their employees. The dominance of the exporters’ voice had a significant influence on the policies the US pursued in the design and execution of the global trade regime. Most importantly, the absence of labor's voice undermined the prospect for “embedded liberalism” and instead resulted in an anemic system of adjustment for job loss at home and limited support for worker interests within the regime. While policymakers’ decision to shift power away from potential “veto” groups may have been necessary for US leadership of the Liberal International Order, this institutional design undermined a robust response to the economic dislocation thought to be a result of globalization. The result was a fracturing of the coalition in support of American leadership in the GATT/WTO regime.

Visual state symbols of Japan during the Meiji era

This article is dedicated to the visual state symbols of Japan of the late XIX century (national flag, personal seal of the emperor, order and medal of honor, and military insignia). The aforementioned symbols are viewed as the attributes of the status. First institutionalized graphic symbols in the history of the country have emerged under the influence of European culture and actualized elements of the ”old” Japanese culture, primarily  from the emblems “mon” used to decorate and identify an individual or a family. This article explores the mechanisms of their emergence, as well as the mechanisms of evolution and introduction into the cultural environment based on the material of print mass-market production (postcards and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints). The author’s main contribution consists in comprehensive analysis of the state symbols of Japan of the late XIX century as the attributes of the status, which has been conducted for the first time. The flag, order and emblem of the emperor were used to demonstrate their direct affiliation to the department, as an attribute of a festive event, or indicate their authority. The research also employed postcards as a rarely used source for studying political symbols, or used in the context of ideology alone. The visual images of print production illustrate the reality of using state symbols, as well as within the framework of artistic techniques expand their use as the symbols.

ORGANIZATION OF OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE OF VEHICLES AND MACHINES IN UKRAINE AND ABROAD

The current state of agricultural machinery in the agro-industrial complex shows that service as a direction of production activities aimed at maintaining machinery in working order has ceased to exist. Foreign and domestic experience in the operation of equipment shows that maintaining equipment in working order for consumers is an important economic task. In the current market conditions in Ukraine, technical service in the agro-industrial complex should be considered as a strategic direction to ensure the efficiency of equipment during operation from the standpoint of legal, economic, regulatory, technical, technological and personnel support, as an integral link between producer and consumer. techniques. The issues of problems in technical operation of vehicles and machines and foreign experience in organizing technical service in order to comprehensively study the basics of operational reliability of equipment, advanced technologies of technical service used in the agro-industrial complex of Ukraine and abroad. The experience of the organization of repair and maintenance in foreign countries, which is based on reducing the cost of agricultural mechanization. It is established that in modern economic conditions one of the main resources is information about the market, production technologies, various "know-how", which are the result of combining the efforts of scientists and specialists in various fields of production, etc. It is determined that for the effective implementation of scientifically sound methods of management, promotion of knowledge-intensive technologies in production, analysis of the information environment in which the enterprise operates, it is necessary to have a separate subject of market relations, which could perform such work. The set of services provided to the consumer is called a technical service. The motivating motive for improving the technical service is not to lose a potential buyer of its products, to attract a new buyer, to win a competition with a competitor, to ensure its survival and prosperity.