We sometimes face critical situations and frequently try to handle them without a good understanding of their complexity. A dissociated and even fragmented approach, often rules in our management of politics, economics, education and business. Only some limited aspects are taken into account, out of context and even omiting sometimes very basic features of the affected entity. When we busy ourselves with the study of systems and their multiple relations with their environment, we should try to discover and use some efficient ways for their management. If we consider systemic modelisation, we notice the existence and multiplicity of hypercomplex entities and situations, mostly man-made or, at least, widely modified and made more complex by human activities. Examples are the vast economic systems for production and distribution of goods, as well as the numerous and very diverse local, national and transnational ones, private or public, concerned with a wide variety of specific subjects, scientific, technical, economical, political, social, etc. Most of those originally natural and more or less cyclical ones (water, forests, soils, human as well as vegetal and animal populations, etc…), have been widely modified by ever increasing human interferences, deepened in turn by technological progress. Obviously, we should urgently attend the need for a better understanding and adequate management of all kinds of complex systems, natural as well as man-modified. This would be possible only through a new conceptual synthesis, in order to gain a general and coherent integration of our enormous, but scattered and globally ill-interconnected specialised knowledge.

Cocoon weight, cocoon shell weight and shell percentage have high heritability, economic values and importance in silkworm breeding. Different selection methods serves to improvement of these traits and each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Generally, Efficiency of selection method evaluates by genetic gain in given trait(s). Additionally, economic gain in production system, inbreeding and constrained costs are important criteria in method evaluation process, too. Methods have different ranking in each criterion and consideration of one criterion to identification of optimum selection method may create problems in long term. The objective of this study was to construct an approach based on fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (fuzzy AHP) for evaluating suitable method of selection to economic cocoon traits improvement in silkworm breeding. In this paper seven selection methods (A1 to A7) and four criteria (C1 to C4) are considered. These alternative and criteria, synthesize from the literature relating to silkworm breeding and experts’ knowledge. Fuzzy AHP has calculated the relative weights of chosen selection methods in order to reduce vagueness and ambiguity of information and ranking. It shows that the proposed fuzzy AHP model for optimum selection method in silkworm breeding can be a useful and effective assessment tool.

This paper describes some of the changes that have been brought about in the Italian private equity market by the global financial crisis, by undertaking a contextual analysis of the characteristics of supply and demand in the private equity sector. On the demand side, we attempt to describe the major effects of the financial crisis in terms of the trends, size, and profitability of the companies investigated. On the supply side, we attempt to verify in the light of the global financial crisis whether the category of intermediary bank represented by local banks has changed its modus operandi in order to gain the characteristics of a diversified intermediary in the merchant banking business sector. We have here tried to trace the evolution of the role of the bank in dealing with private equity. In particular, we describe and empirically analyse the role of local banks in providing support for nationwide companies.

According to the new international trade theory, trade need not be the result of international differences in technology and factor endowments. Instead, trade is the result of the exploitation of scale economies. Under increasing returns, trade is similar to the growth of the labor force and regional agglomerations. Nevertheless, these findings cannot be generalized to all kinds of firms and industries. It is true that in certain cases centripetal forces caused by scale and agglomeration economies can compel firms to cluster in a given geographical area and become localized. In other cases, however, because of centrifugal increasing returns stemming from expansion economies, firms have incentives to become global. This paper develops a simple model of expansion economies and shows that they are a special case of increasing returns that cause the growth of the firm by its dispersion, thus they are completely different from scale economies. In order to exploit economies of expansion, manufacturing firms tend to expand their economic activities to different locations, regions and countries. The level to which firms spread out in different region depends on the local demand. When such local demand is completely satisfied by the firm, it may decide to star business activities in another region, and so on

Given the scope and mission of the Business Systems Review, we will publish qualitative and empirical papers across all the major fields of management, marketing, banking, and financial research. It will be a specialized forum for the publication of research in the area of general management, innovation management, knowledge management, banking and finance, marketing, economics of organization, and services.

The purpose of this study is to consider the following two questions by examining insurance products as credence goods. First, whether the insurance firm chooses the truth telling when it sells good-type or bad-type insurance product? Second, what is the effect of the allocation of the burden of proof between insurance firm and consumer? First, there are two types of equilibrium in the model. The insurance firm always chooses the truth telling when it sells good-type insurance product in both types of equilibrium. The second type of the equilibrium realizes when the ratio of good-type insurance products is relatively low. Second, what the insurance firm bears a greater burden of proof is not desirable because it lowers the probability of truth telling. This result is not consistent with the general opinion that the insurance firms should bear a greater burden of proof for protecting the consumers.

The behavior of complex dependable systems poses severe safety issues due to hazards which may result from incorrect and unpredictable behavior. In order to prevent such hazards, system behavior has to be specified and checked incrementally, in order to defeat the overall system’s complexity. Modularity in system design is however not trivial due to the intrinsic monolithic nature of the control loop, typical of such systems. An additional problem is given by the fact that the current modeling paradigm tends at introducing additional interactive complexity due to the direct communication and synchronization mechanism among decomposed modules. It can be shown, however, that modular decomposition is feasible by revising the current communication and interaction paradigm. Physical interactions in physical systems denote in fact less evident conceptual structures, which host the overall interaction and synchronization knowledge among the component parts. By introducing additional system entities with the aim of hosting such knowledge in a localized and compact manner, we obtain a part-whole hierarchy of systems, called holarchy. Such systems are, at the same time, both parts and wholes within a holarchy, thus giving a formal characterization to Koestler’s holons.

This study tests whether the Nigerian capital market exists in the strong-form efficiency. It is necessitated on the belief that investors and firms can outperform the market. The empirical analysis is done employing the Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedascity (ARCH) and Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedascity (GARCH) models. Data were collected mainly from the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin and other published sources. The study covers a period from 1986 to 2010. The findings reveal that the Nigerian capital market is weak-form efficient, suggesting that current market price of securities reflect past or historical information. The study recommends among others that the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) should be closely monitored to achieve an optimal maturity level, greed and bad choices should not take the place of risk management capacity and market discipline and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should take a leading role in regulating abnormal financial activities.

This paper compares some studies in the field of economics and management in order to identify an innovative model of strategic management in reference to complex products. The work starting from (after having taken a critical look at) a critical analysis of structuralist studies, highlights the need to move from industry analysis to business analysis to define strategies, later on it offers a new definition of Product - increasingly made up of good /goods + service/services and subsequently seen as commodities - as well as a new definition of Consumer - as a person searching for characteristics in products and then seen as “usumer”. Such definitions underlie a model that allows the analysis of both market structure and market “soul”. The structuralism’s limitations – thanks to a brief analysis of literature – are considered outweighed by business models, among which one in particular is Abell’s model defining the (SBA) Strategic Business Areas. This study, after considering complex products and usumer, aims to complete Abell’s model and to provide a revision of it, in order to suggest new guidelines and interpretations mainly aimed to complex products such as the “Made in Italy”

The social and economic complexity of our times triggers intense transformations in the competitive logics of markets and, broadly speaking, of business systems. Business scenarios today are typified by dynamism, connectivity, nonlinearity, and emergent properties—in other words by "complexity". Asserting that the world, and consequently business systems, are complex means that it is impossible to understand them by considering their individual elements separately, and that there is no option of predicting the future, but only of grasping and proactively influencing future scenarios. Reductionist models are unable to fully depict, or to allow us to deeply understand, new complex and dynamic business scenarios. Today more than ever, it is necessary to recognize the need for a paradigm shift that can carry science beyond the analytical reductionist approach, and towards a more comprehensive systemic perspective. This, of course, does not imply rejecting all the discoveries and benefits that the reductionist approach has brought to science, but it does mean going further, being aware that the analytic way alone is not sufficient for obtaining a deeper understanding of complex phenomena. Hence, without rejecting the old paradigm, we must move ahead to embrace a systemic view of social and economic facts.

Despite outsourcing has been at the core of managerial practice and literature for a long time, still authors do not agree on a clear understanding of the overall outsourcing process. This article answers two main questions, relevant to researchers and practitioners: 1.What are the main findings so far in outsourcing literature? 2. What do we still need to learn? Through a comprehensive review of the literature, we offer systematization of the existent body of knowledge on outsourcing, its implications on firms’ boundaries, and the theoretical challenges. In conclusion, implications for managers are drawn.

This paper proposes a performance and cost measurement system that integrates the Economic Value Added criteria (EVA) with Process Based Costing (PBC). The EVA-PBC methodology allows us to implement the EVA management logic non only at the firm level, but also at lower levels of the organization. We discuss the role of EVA-PBC methodology in bringing strategy back into financial performance measures.

Energy is a complex issue to deal with, and the paper’s purpose is to decline a systems theory reflection capable of interpreting complex phenomena in order to better design and manage future energy agendas. Achieving an efficient matching of energy demand and supply needs, introducing a market mechanism for the allocation and pricing of energy resources especially take the specific requirements of energy producers and consumers into account. Moreover, many other actors ought to be taken into considerations; among these for certain all world population and future generations. It seems that energy is a socio-economic topic that needs to be approached with network and complexity theories due to the number of interested parties and the numerous perspectives with which it can be viewed and analyzed. Furthermore, Smart Energy Grid requires continuous improvement in the interactions among system elements in order to optimizing resource allocation, collaborative advantages and cooperative strategies, indeed for the systemic equilibrium within the complex service systems related the energy services provision

Our paper aims to apply a non-conventional Social Network Analysis to a network generated from an initial sorting of data with mere order. The aim is to test whether and how one relationship set "conveniently" generated by the ranking is able to provide a coherent system of interactions with possible practical and theoretical utility. We consider a system of city distributions where we focus on “Ranking-Based Ties” social networks, considering a system of "objects" of the same class that would be able to interact. The objects in question are ordered according to their "performance" in a particular ranking. According to a survey developed by Global Language Monitor, there is a ranked number for every capital that could be considered important among the world’s most fashionable cities. Using the rank of scoring average we construct a fashion cities network in order to analyze the dynamics and the topology of the system following a gradual process of clustering or densification of relationships consistent with key network statistics analysis.

The study aims to empirically investigate the predictive ability of reported cash flows versus earnings to predict future cash flows in a market situated in a high growth rate economy such as Qatar. The sample of the study consists of companies on the Doha Securities Market (Qatar Exchange) for the period 2004-09. Qatar is a very interesting context to explore especially after the quick reputation it is gaining at the international scene. We provide evidence on the ability of earnings and cash flow measures to forecast one period or two-period ahead cash flows. However, the results support the superiority of cash flows over earnings in predicting future cash flows. Furthermore, with the exception of CFOP, our research model reports that CFFIA and CFFA are better predictors of themselves. NIDPR – A traditional cash flow measure is a good predictor of CFOP. Finally empirical findings show that cash flow measures and earnings are not correlated suggesting the specificities of each are different.

Though various authors have offered reviews of the Regional Innovation Systems (RIS) literature and some have described their personal intellectual voyage amongst the building blocks that constitute this area of scientific enquiry (for example, Cooke 2008), these often illuminating illustrations are nonetheless subjective and, thus, suffer from biases which pertain to the actor performing the analysis. The study proposed in this paper aims to overcome the aforementioned limitation by elaborating an objective review of the main contributions to the RIS field of research, highlighting the main themes studied and the principal approaches followed. The analysis has been conducted following the Author Co-citation method, applied to the literature regarding RIS present in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) of Thomson-ISI in the time span from 1990 to 2009. The results allow to trace an overview of how the RIS research area is actually composed, identifying six main research themes which characterize the field and varied approaches according to which each theme has been analyzed. Main contributions are positioned against each other in order to foster an increase in efforts from future research.

We are in the era of globalization where innovation in every field is essential due to the changes in the society and continuous demands for the betterment of life. In such a climate around, one needs to be creative, selfless, have qualities of businessman and be scientific in thoughts. An entrepreneur who works for the welfare of the society without profits as a sole motive is a social entrepreneur. Biotechnology as such is the field which has grown tremendously over the years now and has helped people spot a ray of hope with its applications in the field of Medicine, Agriculture, Food, Industrial and many more. We found out that there is large scope and need for social entrepreneurs in this sector who can contribute remarkably to the society. This paper peaks into the topic to show the need of social entrepreneurs in Biotechnology field and how it can bring about sustainable development.

In the beginning of higher-competition decades, organizations were forced to analyze and revise their processes for optimization. They needed to reinvent better ways to execute their core businesses. The challenge was also linked to dynamism in buyer behavior, the ever-changing needs and wants, and decrease in the customer loyalty due to discontent, and parallel to that due to the variety of offers in market place. From this perspective, the focus of innovativeness to remain competitive enforces firms to develop new perspectives in consumer behavior analysis, whereby “customer’s advisory” is the core to pull this stakeholder group to the process of creativity. In this paper, the need to obscure “customer’s advisory” is underlined in the right composure to address an easier and inexpensive tool to evaluate services of the organization. In addition, author highlights the requirements and explains the use of it as a driver of innovative corporate thinking for new features and services.