Business Models in the Industry 4.0 Environment—Results of Web of Science Bibliometric Analysis

The Fourth Industrial Revolution affects the operations of companies and results in new strategic thinking. The changes resulting from the requirements of Industry 4.0 force restructuring in many areas of management or the building of new business models. The aim of this article was to indicate the pillars that will form the basis for building business models of enterprises functioning in the era of Industry 4.0. The research methods used in this article were bibliometric analysis and analysis of the content of sophisticated publications. The results of this research are the analysis of the dynamics of publications in the area of business models in the era of Industry 4.0, an indication of the research areas undertaken in these publications and the identification of the pillars that will constitute the basis for building business models in the era of Industry 4.0. Business models in the era of Industry 4.0 are to be a method of increasing and using the company’s resources in order to achieve a competitive advantage through personalization of products and their new quality; their key competitive advantage will be a structure based on a network of cyber-physical cooperation. This article is dedicated to scientists and business practitioners looking for tips for building modern business models.

Smart and Sustainable Tourism Destinations

Policymakers and business practitioners increasingly recognize the importance of sustainability in the development of smart tourism destinations, which require clear directions and specific guidelines. The authors used the Bibliometrix R-package and VOS Viewer software to perform a bibliometric analysis of 59 articles between 1900-2020 retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database. They compiled a bibliographic coupling, identified the key authors, journals, documents, and the most relevant universities. The findings detail four clusters: (1) smart tourism, (2) sustainable tourism, (3) technology, and (4) smart specialization. This work contributes to a better understanding of the concepts and aspires to provide useful information for those academics and destination marketing organizations (DMOs) attempting to analyze and deepen their knowledge within this research field. Simultaneously, it also aims to provide insights concerning the future development of sustainability and smart tourism in the social sciences' academic literature.

The Rise of China, Inc.

Leveraging its absolute power, low human rights advantage, and tolerance by other countries, the Chinese Communist Party has transformed China into a giant corporation. Living and working is not a right, but a privilege granted by the party. State-owned firms are business units or subsidiaries, private firms are joint ventures, and foreign firms are franchisees of the party. 'China, Inc.' enjoys the agility of a firm and the vast resources of a state. Meanwhile, foreign firms competing with Chinese firms can find themselves matched against the mighty Chinese state. The Rise of China, Inc. will interest many readers: it will compel business scholars to rethink state-firm relationships; assist multinational business practitioners in formulating effective strategies; aid policy-makers in countering China's expansion; and inform the public of the massive corporate organisation China has become, and how democracies can effectively deal with it.

The Centrality of Brand Awareness

The brand concept, especially brand loyalty, has evolved significantly; however, this phenomenon is still considered far from complete. This study extends a long line of scholars’ efforts by investigating a moderating effect of brand awareness in triangle relationships between product innovation and brand trust and brand loyalty. The hypotheses were tested based on online questionnaire data collected from 100 Indonesian respondents. The Ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis shows that brand awareness positively and significantly moderates these triangle relationships. Additionally, the direct relationships between product innovation on brand awareness and brand loyalty and brand trust and brand loyalty were found to be significant. This research offers future research direction and implications for business practitioners and academics.

Research on Occupational Injury Protection System for New Business Practitioners

This paper analyzes the necessity of establishing the occupational injury security system for new forms of business and summarizes the pilot areas of the current occupational injury security sy stem, and then analyzes the problems existing in the current occupational injury security for new forms of business, including the difficulty in identifying labor relations and the mismatch between supply and demand of occupational injury security. Finally, the specific conception of occupational injury protection system for employees in the new form of business is put forward, including open insured objects, appropriate payment base, flexible identification of occupational injury, etc.

Barriers to Adopting New Technologies within Rural Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

The adoption of technologies by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that operate in several business sectors in rural areas is a crucial issue because they often need financial and technical incentives and support from public and local authorities. The question of whether and how innovation can be replicated and applied in a wider context is strictly connected to the understanding of those factors and mechanisms capable of determining the success or failure of the introduction of innovation itself. In this paper, the attention is focused on the impact of new technologies in order to increase SMEs’ competitiveness and productivity among the firms. For this purpose, only recent resources, research and studies that have been implemented during the last twenty years are taken into account. Firstly, based on these studies, the main disruptive technologies were selected. Secondly, the evidence is drawn from stakeholder data discussions of the Interreg Europe project “Regional policies for innovation driven competitiveness and growth of rural SMEs—INNOGROW”, covering eight European countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Slovenia and the United Kingdom). Descriptive statistics were applied to describe the case identities. The cases’ needs, enablers and barriers in different groups were analyzed using a chi-square test and Mann–Whitney U Test. The results of this study are important for both researchers as well as small business practitioners (including government agencies and owners/managers) in order to provided policy recommendations, concerning how to establish favourable conditions and offer incentives to SMEs to integrate innovative solutions into their business models.

Structural Equation Modelling to Understand the Impact of Various Components of CSR and the Benefits to Stakeholders

In the last many years academicians and business practitioners have shown their interest in the study of the activities of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This study describes a deeper understanding of the CSR parameters on the benefits to the stakeholders. It explains the direct effect of the various independent variables like ‘Encourage Employee Volunteer - kinds of incentives’, ‘Improve Employee Welfare and Labour Relations’, ‘Companies/Organizations communicate the Policy to the stakeholders’ and ‘Adoption of CSR practices by Companies/Organizations’ on the dependent variable benefits of CSR to the stakeholders. We had also studied the impact of the variables, that is, ‘Encourage “Employee Volunteers”, kinds of incentives’, ‘Companies/Organizations communicate the Policy to the stakeholders’ and ‘Adoption of CSR practices by Companies/Organizations’ on Employee Welfare and Labour Relations. The outcomes of the research model depend on the data collected from 349 employees across local and international organizations in India. The respondents are employees of various organizations working at different levels of management. This study focuses on middle-level managers. The major findings suggest the positive impact of all the activities of CSR on benefits to the stakeholders. Out of the four CSR activities, Adoption of CSR practices by Companies/Organizations is the strongest predictor followed by Employee Welfare and Labour Relations, whereas the CSR activity Encourage ‘Employee Volunteers’, kinds of incentives has no significant impact on benefits to the stakeholders.

Constitutive Features of Deliberate Language Shift: A Case Study of Afghan Immigrants as a Community of Practice

The study is aimed to determine the constitutive features of deliberate language shift by Afghan immigrants in Chakwal (Punjab, Pakistan). The researchers selected 10 business practitioners living for at least 10 years in the Punjabi community. The semi-structured interviews and non-participants observations were conducted for data collection. The researchers used "Community of Practice" (CofP) as a theoretical framework. CofP Model has three elements that helped the researchers determine the constitutive features of language shift by Afghan immigrants. The researchers found out that the regional displacement left the Afghan immigrants with the least liberty to exercise their language in all the fields of life because the local stakeholders were not conversant with Afghan's language. As a result, they started borrowing words from Punjabi and Urdu languages. The study's findings reflect that the influence of these languages permanently substituted their native language vocabulary with that of Panjabi and Urdu. The researchers noticed that linguistic adaptations are tactically intentional and need-based and not accidental. The market competition is the driving force towards their deliberate language shift. This language shift is determined through practitioners' attitudes and communication attempts to generate more significant revenue and make better fits in the community of practice.