Investment decision-making is modeled by means of a Kohonen neural net, where neurons represent firms. This is done in order to model investments in novel fields of economic activity, that according to this model are carried out when firms recognize the emergence of a new technological pattern....

Shafer's evidence theory is a branch of the mathematics of uncertain reasoning that allows for novel possibilities to be conceived by a decision-maker. Many of its findings exhibit striking similarities with an alternative decision theory purported by Shackle in the 1950s, before expected...

Economists often perceive the “ideological beliefs“ held by political actors as obstacles to rational policy-making. In contrast, it is argued that ideologies have characteristics that appear desirable in policy- making in that they allow political actors to credibly commit themselves to...

This article presents a formalization of knowledge based on a connectionist model of a firm's structure. Transaction costs are not ignored, but integrated with the knowledge-based approach. A numerical example on the canonical comparison of "Japanese" versus "American" organizational structures...

Facing a growing competitive environment, higher education institutions have increased dramatically the competition for recruiting and retaining students providing a high quality service as a solution to compete. Frequently, researchers who have studied the service quality and client...

The Web portals business model has spread rapidly over the last few years. Despite this, there have been very few scholarly findings about which services and characteristics make a Web site a portal and which dimensions determine the customers’ evaluation of the portal’s quality. Taking the...

In this paper we attempt to compare the responses of consumers and professionals to questions related to organic food retailing, in order to highlight the differences and the similarities of viewpoints between them and to understand the links between consumer perception of organic food and the...

Consumer value may be defined as a tool to measure the prolonged satisfaction and an on-going propensity to buy the product and services. Though there are many issues floating in an on-going debate about the consumer value, it may be argued that the consumer value in terms of the level of...

Brands are successful because people prefer them to ordinary products. In addition to the psychological factors already mentioned, brands give consumers the means whereby they can make choices and judgments. The secret to successful branding is to influence the decisions the way in which...