For the 25th anniversary of Economic and Business Studies at the UOC, professors Pacheco-Bernal and Jiménez-Zarco reflect on the way in which technology has influenced the disciplines of marketing and market research, both in terms of their evolution and their scope. They also present challenges linked to these disciplines and faced by organizations at a key moment of digital transformation. For marketing, technology has provided a before and after. Basic concepts that currently determine the core of the discipline emerge and are consolidated as technology places new tools, devices, channels and even environments within our reach. Marketing is going from the field of short-term sales to building and maintaining, in real time, complex and lasting relationships with a strong emotional component between agents of various natures and with varying interests. In terms of market research, the potential offered by the development of new technologies in understanding consumers, while it has not eclipsed more traditional market research, has modified the panorama with regard to the quality and quantity of the information obtained and the breadth of methodological options for gathering data. In the midst of the digital era, the integration of data coming from various sources and the use of hybrid methodologies enable the sector to anticipate trends and better understand market behaviour.
Coinciding with the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the UOC, the following article aims to review the main transformations that the basic areas of business have undergone over the past two and a half decades. For this, we have enjoyed the participation of five female and five male professors in the studies of economy and business, who have given us some broad strokes on some of the main changes during this period and the challenges still to come. These topics are: leadership, decision-making, internationalization, digitalization, strategy, adaptation to change, ethics, corporate social responsibility, diversity, inclusion, business modal innovation, and finance.
The objective of this article is to analyze the evolution of logistics in three different contexts: past, present and future. By looking at where the concept of logistics began and the point it has now reached, we can understand and better anticipate the trends and logistical challenges of the future. We live in an era where digitalization is increasing rapidly, which enables us to obtain more data, more transparency, a greater capacity for anticipating change and a greater automatization of processes. In addition, the health crisis of COVID-19 has only accelerated the use of electronic devices and online tools, as shown by the increasing figures in e-commerce over the last two years. However, the pandemic has also shone a spotlight on the need to rethink the current logistical model. Aspects such as globalization, sustainability, resilience or security throughout the supply chain are in question. In this changing context, the skills and competencies of logistics professionals will undoubtedly decide future success.
This article discusses the analysis of the concept of collaborative economics, taking the various streams of knowledge into consideration. It also provides an overview of the different collaborative business models that have existed so far and how their evolution over time has been due to different factors, including information and communication technologies (ICTs). While it is true that these business models are still in the midst of consolidation, they represent a great opportunity both for users who want to see their consumption needs met, as well as for companies that are not only looking for new sources of revenue, but also innovation when approaching their customers. Finally, the sharing economy represents a very recent field of research that is full of opportunities for contributing to science and the development of new business models.
The evolution of ICTs and the internet has a clear influence on all areas of tourist destination development, both directly and indirectly, and in both internal and external tasks. Destinations face a new cycle of growth, one in which they must take advantage – to varying degrees – of the use of new technological developments as well as new formulae and strategies for management and planning. Essentially, the challenge is to tackle with assurance the need for reorientation towards a model that is more efficient, one that is adapted to changes in demand, and is based on an integration of all the elements making up the destination, the tourists and the local population.
In this context there emerges a new framework for management, a basic feature of which is the governance of tourism, and in which ICTs and the internet are key factors in the transition to the new model of smart tourism destinations. An important part of the basis for this framework will be knowledge and the active participation of all agents.
Tourism is one of the main areas where the sharing economy is expanding. The increasing number of press and journal articles on the topic highlights the relevance – on various levels – of platforms such as Airbnb, Uber or BlaBlaCar. This paper will tackle different aspects of this subject. First, the notion of the sharing economy or collaborative consumption will be defined, examining both its initial definitions that addressed the possibility of a new economic paradigm and more recent descriptions looking at the commercial aspects and the particularities introduced by the use of major technological platforms. The focus then moves on to three aspects that shed light on convergences between sharing economy and tourism: the use of information and communication technologies, the role of references or qualifications, and the disruption of preexisting models. Finally, the conclusions from the study are drawn.
The occupational health paradigm implemented with the Law on Prevention of Occupational Risks in 1995 is promoting new models of preventive management, still incipient, in favor of the so-called healthy organizations. As a result of this change, there has been a move from the traditional concept of safety and health, essentially linked with occupational accidents and diseases, towards a more far-reaching concept, safety and health, including workers' health in its whole extent, whether physical, psychological and social.
After twenty years of the enforcement of the rule, there are many achievements and progress has been made in prevention, but many challenges will arise in the coming years. Among others, those related to the breakdown of space and time barriers in the labor activity as a result of the incorporation of ICT. In this regard, the article deals with the problem that arises in the enforcement of occupational health and safety in telework.
The present analysis focuses on the problem from the very basis of the practical application of the requirement of occupational safety and health in telework, the occupational risk assessment, which is the foundation on which all our regulatory structure on prevention of occupational hazards is built and connected.
The globalisation of financial markets has been based on several factors that have enabled their integration. Two of them are financial deregulation and free movement of capital. Especially relevant to this change has been technological progress regarding the connection between markets. This has encouraged and standardised systems for settling and compensating transactions, speeded up trading with integrated services from different markets, and improved the risk-benefit ratio for investors.
As a result of such big change in the economic environment as well as the financial system and its communication patterns, new innovative financial products have been developed. Their aim is to provide protection from growing volatility and increased risk in all financial transactions.
The negative side of globalisation and the high interconnection between markets is the contagion effect of financial crises. The most recent example is the sub-prime crisis that sparked off in the United States in 2007. This caused a drop in liquidity on the global credit market, which in turn affected the economy of several countries, and showed the weakness of the global financial system and its regulatory framework.
The paper analyzes the role of e-vocational training in the achievement of new employability conditions that require the emergence of networking, knowledge economy and knowledge society. Under the analytical framework of skill biased technological change (e-SBTC) and from the results of three empirical analysis, four main conclusions have been obtained. First, e-vocational training is not yet strong enough to break the training gap. That is, e-vocational training of workers occurs mainly in more educated and digital skilled-based workers. Second, e-vocational training is revealed as a qualified instrument to improve employability, particularly on the dimensions of acquired skills and satisfaction with the educational design, but less with the training labour applicability. Third, the vast majority of firms, with no structural change, has a problem of relative over-education. That is, they don’t meet the association between a higher educational level and a higher wage. And fourth, although e-vocational training has made considerable progress as a tool to improve workers employability, it actually shows two major weaknesses: 1) the need to enlist more collectives of workers; and, 2) the need to promote e-vocational training as a lever on structural change in firms (complementary with organizational change and ICT uses).
This article explains my final project of the Master in Education and ICT of the UOC (Catalan Open University), which has been prepared following the training program in management projects and organizations with the application of ICT.
The project PIMESCAT 2.0 aims to create a meeting platform for the Catalan SMEs to carry out joint training and conduct ICT training courses for employees of SMEs, which contribute to improve their competitiveness.
This project has been developed following the ADDIE model, as reflected in the structure of the project report, where each phase is explained: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation of the project. In this course I have developed and implemented a sample unit within a Moodle environment, more specifically, unit 7, dedicated to the design and use of blogs. The pedagogical model of this project is based in Learning by doing.