• How browsing data can advance television advertising

  De Schaepdrijver, Leen (2023)
• The market access of complementary diagnostics, precision medicine reimbursement policies and value assessment

  Govaerts, Laurenz (2021)

  Precision medicine relies on two technologies jointly working together to deliver benefit to patients, a medicine on the one hand and a diagnostic on the other. The diagnostic's purpose is to identify the right patient population for the medicine, and could be considered complementary to the use of the medicine. In recent years the market access of these complementary diagnostics has been scrutinized as being inadequate to ensure time access for patients. This thesis has delved into this issue and, as indicated in Chapters 1 and 2, sought to gain insights in these market access hurdles and gain a better understanding of the value derived from complementary diagnostics for our healthcare system. Chapter 3 delves into the reimbursement policies of complementary diagnostics (such as companion diagnostics). It identifies the reasons why the reimbursement issues of complementary diagnostics, and specifically companion diagnostics have emerged across European countries. In this study several issues with the standard in vitro diagnostic reimbursement pathways were identified across eight European countries, that consequently have risen to prominence when precision medicine was gradually introduced into healthcare systems. Several alternative reimbursement approaches were identified, specifically for companion diagnostics in Germany and Belgium and more broadly for complementary diagnostics in France. Chapter 4 examines the Belgian healthcare payer's health technology assessment of precision medicines with companion diagnostics. This research formulated several recommendations that could enhance the assessment practice under the novel reimbursement pathway for precision medicines with companion diagnostics in Belgium, as identified and discussed in chapter 3. Specifically, the introduction of the linked-evidence approach was recommended to be introduced in the assessment practice as many companion diagnostics lack the necessary direct evidence to establish their clinical utility. In Chapter 5, a study on the interaction between the biomarker that is identified by the diagnostic test, and the precision medicine is discussed. This interaction can also be referred to as the 'precision mechanism'. In this chapter we introduce the use of a novel performance parameter that examines directly what is at the heart of precision medicine; The ability of the diagnostic test to identify patients who are more likely to respond to treatment. These novel parameters convey the probability that a patient belonging to a specific subgroup will benefit from precision therapy or not. We applied these novel parameters to European medicine agency's approved precision medicines. The result of this analysis shows that not every companion diagnostics, or therefore precision mechanism, provides the same clinical utility, and that this differentiation could inform reimbursement decision making. Chapter 6 covers a systematic review on the use and adoption of assessment frameworks for complementary diagnostics such as omics technologies, by health technology assessment agencies. Many of these frameworks have been published, however none have seen their wide scale adoption by health technology assessment agencies. When looking at the health technology assessment reports on these technologies, the most recurrent elements under assessment were the clinical utility and the cost-effectiveness of these types of tests. Concepts such as ethical, social, and organisational aspect were often not considered. Specifically for organisational aspects, this could be of concern, as the specific context in which a test is implemented determines its clinical utility and therefore its cost-effectiveness. In Chapter 7 this issue is further illustrated. The working hypothesis of the study is that specific contextual factors influencing the clinical utility of a test (e.g., level of training by the treating physician, local clinical guidelines, experience level, etc) will therefore influence the cost-effectiveness, and hence the value perception of the test, which is expressed through the value-based price at a certain willingness to pay threshold. The study collected a range of published clinical utility scenarios across countries and healthcare systems. These scenarios were consequently inputted into a cost-effectiveness model with all other variables kept the same. The results showed that there is a range of outcomes where either the test can be seen as extremely valuable to the current clinical practice and others where the test adds not much additional benefit tot the current practice. This finding has its implications if one is to consider value-based pricing mechanisms as a pricing methodology for complementary diagnostics. In summary, this work took a closer look at the policies forming the market access of complementary diagnostics together with a specific focus on their clinical utility, how it is established, how it can be interpretated through probabilistic performance parameters, how its interpretation has implications for reimbursement policies and finally how contextual factors determining the clinical utility influence the value perception of these tests.
• Strategic decision making in entrepreneurial firms: A coalitional view

  Bourgois, Dries (2021)

  When entrepreneurs are asked about their ventures’ estimated chances of growth and survival, they typically tend to be much more optimistic than what statistics would suggest. Both theory and empirical evidence support this view of entrepreneurs being unduly positive about their future venture prospects. Entrepreneurs create forecasts for making a wide variety of decisions such as sales and financing decisions. Errors or positive biases in these forecasts have been shown to substantially decrease venture performance. Far less attention, however, has been spent on how such errors affect important external stakeholders. In this project we focus on one particularly relevant stakeholder for entrepreneurial ventures, being their venture capital (VC) investors. VCs are one of the earliest resource providers to entrepreneurial ventures. Moreover, entrepreneurs’ forecasts about the future venture performance are what VCs rely on to inform their decisionmaking, both prior to and after the investment has been made. Given the importance of forecasts and the accuracy therein to VCs, this project will examine (1) when entrepreneurs provide more positively biased forecasts to their VCs and (2) how VCs react to positive bias in VC-backed ventures.
• Advances in flexible models and efficient statistical procedures for heavy-tailed and asymmetric data

  Babic, Sladana (2021)
• Linguistic cues in online product reviews

  He, Xzavier (2022)

  Online product reviews ("reviews" hereafter) are prevalent and valuable. Because of that, a large stream of research in marketing investigated reviews under the following three main topics: 1) the role of review writers, 2) the role of review readers, and 3) the role of linguistic cues in reviews. This dissertation further builds on this stream and proposes three new angles that were under-researched. Specifically, we compose three essays that focus on 1) the intents of review writers to write a review based on linguistic cues and their impact on perceived review helpfulness, 2) the effect of humanlike linguistic cues on perceived review helpfulness, and 3) the usage of emotional intent based on linguistic cues in fake reviews and its impact on review trustworthiness. All three essays are structured under the same pattern to use linguistic cues as a tool to provide a unique solution for the related issues in reviews from both writers' and readers' perspectives.
• A perfect match or an arranged marriage? How chief digital officers and chief information officers perceive their relationship: a dyadic research design

  Lorenz, Felix; Buchwald, Arne

  Several organisations have introduced a new leadership role, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO), as a centralised role in their top management team (TMT), tasked with accelerating and coordinating their digital transformation. While previous research proposes a complementary, tight alignment between the CDO and the Chief Information Officer (CIO), role redundancies and the fight for recognition and resources also suggest an inherent tension. We provide insights into the CIO-CDO collaboration quality based on role, TMT cooperation, conflict theory, and a dyadic design approach of 11 CIO-CDO relationships with 33 expert interviews in two waves. Our findings indicate that the CIO-CDO relationship may not always be as complementary as proposed in the literature; instead, in the vast majority of our dyads, there is too much role conflict to achieve tight alignment, leading to separation behaviour between the roles. We identify the involvement in the introduction of the other role, the CIO demand-side orientation, and the CDO supply-side orientation as important contingency factors determining the quality of the CIO-CDO relationship. Finally, unless the CIO-CDO relationship resembles a perfect match, a unified Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO) role may better resolve the challenges we identify in our sample’s dyads. Our insights extend the understanding of the CIO-CDO relationship.
• When do finance offices create more organisational value? How does the finance function’s digital maturity affect organisational performance?

  Stouthuysen, Kristof; Van der Schraelen, Lennert; Foncke, Jan; Willemoons, Anouck (2023)

  Digital maturity can be defined as the measure of an organisation’s ability to respond to, take advantage of, and create value through digital technologies. It is commonly accepted that companies with high levels of digital maturity have a competitive advantage along multiple performance indicators: revenue growth, time to market, cost-effectiveness, product quality and customer satisfaction. In contrast, organisations with low levels of digital maturity struggle to exploit the benefits of digitalization. In this white paper, we discuss the possible benefits of an increase in the finance office’s digital maturity level. To do this, we develop a construct that represents the digital maturity of the finance office. Further, we examine the impact of the finance function’s digital maturity on the organisation’s performance, and we discuss the finance function’s ability to take on a strategic role in steering the organisation. We believe that the findings in our white paper, based on a survey among CFOs and finance leaders of Belgian firms, are highly relevant for all finance leaders who want their finance office to become true value generators for their organisations. The study is part of a master’s thesis by Jan Foncke and Anouck Willemoons (Master students, KU Leuven), together with supervisor Kristof Stouthuysen (Professor of Management Accounting & Digital Finance, Vlerick Business School) and coach Lennert Van der Schraelen (doctoral researcher, Vlerick Business School).
• Allianz: Predicting direct debit with machine learning

  Van der Schraelen, Lennert; Willems, Emma; Stouthuysen, Kristof; Verdonck, Tim; Grumiau, Christopher; Thoppan Mohanchandralal, Sudaman (2022)

  In January 2021, the chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) at Allianz Benelux SA (Allianz) spotted a possible opportunity to optimize cash flow with direct debit. Direct debit was a pre-authorized financial transaction between two parties where the amount due was directly and automatically collected from the payer’s bank account. Direct debit would allow Allianz to shorten payment processes, reduce risks by anticipating payments, and improve customer loyalty. Despite the clear advantages of direct debit for both clients and insurers, only a few of Allianz’s clients were currently making use of direct debit. It was not clear what drove Allianz’s customers or brokers to implement direct debit. This was where the CDAO and his data office team came in. The data office possessed a large amount of data on Allianz’s property and casualty insurance contracts and customers. Now the team needed to investigate how this data could be leveraged to determine the value drivers and develop a strategy to convert more clients to direct debit payments.
• Allianz: Improving P&L through machine learning

  Heyvaert, Carl-Erik; Darmawan, Viola; Stouthuysen, Kristof; Verdonck, Tim; Grumiau, Christopher; Thoppan Mohanchandralal, Sudaman (2022)

  During an Allianz Benelux SA (Allianz) board meeting held in early 2019, Allianz’s chief financier officer (CFO) had a profound discussion with Allianz’s chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) on improving the company’s profit and loss (P&L) statement by targeting problematic cases among disability claims related to Allianz’s life insurance product. It appeared that certain claims had very long durations, leading to recurrent payouts surpassing the total amount of premiums. Consequently, there were too many claims that could translate into future losses. If this phenomenon persisted, Allianz could lose millions of dollars in revenues. Therefore, the CFO contacted the CDAO and his data office and requested that the team identify the client segments in which the most problematic cases of disability claims occurred. Additionally, the CFO wanted the data office to build a predictive model that could estimate the duration of a claim, to adapt the premium coverage to specific customer segments.
• Allianz: Optimizing Customer Acquisition Strategy using Machine Learning

  Brié, Bjarne; Distelmans, Tineke; Stouthuysen, Kristof; Verdonck, Tim; Grumiau, Christopher; Thoppan Mohanchandralal, Sudaman (2022)

  In October 2019, the regional chief data and analytics officer at Allianz AG, Belgium, attended a two-hour strategy meeting with the Allianz Benelux chief executive officer, who had expressed concerns about the company’s digitalization strategy. A few days earlier, the marketing department had found that online sales channel results had fallen unexpectedly. The chief executive officer was worried that the company could lose market share if it did not react accordingly, which would damage the company’s competitive position in the market. Therefore, the regional chief data and analytics officer was asked to gather a team to investigate why online sales were low and to design an effective customer acquisition strategy. In addition to his data office staff, the regional chief data and analytics officer asked for the business transformation unit to provide assistance. He had to consider how best to approach this challenging task.
• Ovinto: Preparing for a series a venture capital investment round

  Manigart, Sophie (2019)

  Late 2018, Frederick Ronse, founder and CEO of Ovinto, was going over the options to finance the next development stage of his scale-up. Ovinto is active in big data analytics and IoT in the rail freight industry. It had now gained traction and had lined up some highly visible customers. Its recent partnership with SAP, the global software solutions company, was also a major step forward. Now was the time to push the company on a high growth trajectory, but some EUR5 million to EUR10 million was needed to achieve this. Important questions crossed his mind. How much should Ovinto try to raise? What would a reasonable valuation be, that would be agreeable to his current investors - and himself - but that would not scare off potential investors? And who might be interested investors, that could add value to his scale-up? Frederick understood that raising professional venture capital was not only a financial decision, but a highly strategic decision as well. This case won the Entrepreneurship category at The Case Centre Awards and Competitions 2023.
• Multi-project scheduling: A benchmark analysis of metaheuristic algorithms on various optimisation criteria and due dates

  Bredael, Dries; Vanhoucke, Mario (European Journal of Operational Research, 2023)

  This paper reviews a set of ten existing metaheuristic solution procedures for the resource-constrained multi-project scheduling problem. Algorithmic implementations are constructed based on the description of the original procedures in literature. Equivalence is verified on the original test instances for the original objective and parameters through a comparison with the reported results. An extensive benchmark analysis is performed on a novel, publicly available dataset for a variety of optimisation criteria and due date settings for which the original algorithms have not been tested earlier. The impact of the different objectives, due dates and test instance parameters is analysed and an overall ranking of the metaheuristic solution methods for different situations is discussed. Key insights into the structure of competitive solutions for disparate objectives and due date settings are presented and effective algorithmic components are revealed.
• New resource-constrained project scheduling instances for testing (meta-)heuristic scheduling algorithms

  Coelho, José; Vanhoucke, Mario (Computers & Operations Research, 2023)

  The resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) is a well-known scheduling problem that has attracted attention since several decades. Despite the rapid progress of exact and (meta-)heuristic procedures, the problem can still not be solved to optimality for many problem instances of relatively small size. Due to the known complexity, many researchers have proposed fast and efficient meta-heuristic solution procedures that can solve the problem to near optimality. Despite the excellent results obtained in the last decades, little is known why some heuristics perform better than others. However, if researchers better understood why some meta-heuristic procedures generate good solutions for some project instances while still falling short for others, this could lead to insights to improve these meta-heuristics, ultimately leading to stronger algorithms and better overall solution quality. In this study, a new hardness indicator is proposed to measure the difficulty of providing near-optimal solutions for meta-heuristic procedures. The new indicator is based on a new concept that uses the distance metric to describe the solution space of the problem instance, and relies on current knowledge for lower and upper bound calculations for problem instances from five known datasets in the literature. This new indicator, which will be called the indicator, will be used not only to measure the hardness of existing project datasets, but also to generate a new benchmark dataset that can be used for future research purposes. The new dataset contains project instances with different values for the indicator, and it will be shown that the value of the distance metric actually describes the difficulty of the project instances through two fast and efficient meta-heuristic procedures from the literature.
• The effect of Corporate Governance on corporate environmental sustainability: A multilevel review and research agenda

  Karn, Ina; Mendiratta, Esha; Fehre, Kerstin; Oehmichen, Jana (Business Strategy and the Environment, 2022)

  Climate change is a major challenge facing society. Given its intricate links with business, governance scholars have shown an increasing interest in understanding how corporate governance (CG) actors can improve corporate environmental sustainability (CES). In this article, we review the literature focusing on CG and CES. We assess the importance of the motivations, expertise, and power of CG actors at different levels (individual, team, firm, and supra‐firm) for CES. Using this as a guiding framework, we build a multilevel synthesis highlighting the theoretical mechanisms around motivations, expertise, and power suggested in the literature. Based on this synthesis, we present critical reflections on the extant knowledge. Finally, we develop a future research agenda that calls for research at single levels, but also for integrative research examining how CG actors at multiple levels collectively shape CES.
• The Illusion of inclusion: Examining trickle-down effects of board gender quota regulation in India

  Mendiratta, Esha; Haq, Hammad Ul (2021)

  Proponents of board gender quotas argue that such policies ought to generate trickle-down effects in the form of higher female executive appointments within organizations because of female directors’ motivation and ability to correct firm level gender imbalances. In this study, we argue and show that such normative arguments may not be reflective of social realities of historically male dominated corporate boards. Grounding our theoretical ideas in the attention based view, we argue that such policies increase appointments of female directors because of the mandated shift in firm level attention towards the issue. However, given the controversial nature of such policies and gender differences in status and power, such policies may have unintended consequences of negative trickle-down effects where firms reduce appointment of women in senior executive positions. Analysis on a sample of 185 largest, publicly listed firms in India during 2008-2017 find support for our theory.
• Cross-country examination of speed of advancement and exit of male and female executive directors

  Mendiratta, Esha; Mukherjee, Shibashish; Oehmichen, Jana (2021)

  In the context of intense global stakeholder pressures to improve female representation in the executive suite, we examine the speed of advancement and exit of first time executive directors around the world. We make two inter-related arguments. First, we argue that while normative pressures from global stakeholders have created a gender premium for women in the form of lower age at the time of appointment vis-à-vis male executive directors, appointed women are also penalized in the form of quicker exits from these positions because of their lower age. Second, we contend that this gender premium and penalty is contingent on the local gender norms in a society such that lower gender parity leads to a higher premium and penalty for these women. Results based on a sample of 15,202 first time executive directors from 6,452 firms in 33 countries largely support our theoretical predictions.
• Not just a woman or a man: Influence of team faultlines on board gender diversity- firm performance

  Mendiratta, Esha (2019)

  Evidence on whether increasing female representation on boards improves firm performance is equivocal. To reconcile these disparate findings, I explore the role of team level contextual conditions in shaping board gender diversity--firm performance relationship. Specifically, relying on the concept of team level faultlines, I argue that strength of alignment of gender with bio-demographic and task-related characteristics is likely to moderate board gender diversity-firm performance relationship. I test my theoretical model using 17 years of unbalanced panel data on boards of S&P 500 firms. I find that board gender diversity influences firm performance positively. I also find that faultline strength based on gender and age negatively moderates this main effect relationship. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
• International locations and top management teams: The influence of team-level contextual conditions

  Mendiratta, Esha; Flores, Ricardo Gabriel (2017)

  An extensive body of research in international business (IB) theoretically and empirically examines factors that determine international location decisions of multinational companies (MNCs). However, not much attention has been paid to the heterogeneity in these decisions across firms. In this paper, we ask: why do some firms make more novel location choices vis-à-vis others? We seek to answer this question by exploring the role of top management team's (TMT) task-related experiences and characteristics in shaping these strategic choices. Combining insights from upper echelons (UE) and faultlines models, we develop a framework to explore how TMT level task-related faultlines impact the novelty of international location decisions of MNCs. Moreover, we also examine how shared experiences and power dynamics across subgroups influence the relationship between faultline strength and novelty of locations. In doing so, we identify contextual conditions under which TMT level characteristics are especially important for novelty of location choices. Implications for UE, faultlines and location choice theories are discussed.
• Strategic choices and TMT task-related faultlines: Do CEO characteristics matter too?

  Mendiratta, Esha; Flores, Ricardo Gabriel (2016)

  Research on top management team (TMT) faultlines has conceptualized the CEO as an unremarkable actor within these teams. This paper breaks with this presumption and argues that CEO's formal authority and responsibilities might give him/her a unique position within these social units. In particular, we argue that certain types of background characteristics of the CEO enable him/her to play an integrative role within these units, thereby potentially influencing how faultlines may impact specific strategic choices. Using a dataset of 737 investments made by a sample of American firms in 2010-2013, we find support for the main effect of team faultline strength and a moderation effect of CEO's characteristics (breadth of sector experiences, overlapping experiences with team members). Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
• Novelty of international locations: the role of TMT faultlines and subgroup level dynamics

  Mendiratta, Esha; Gabriel Flores, Ricardo (2015)

  An extensive body of research in international business (IB) theoretically and empirically examines factors that determine international location decisions of multinational companies (MNCs). Most of this research, however, does not address the heterogeneity observed in the locations choices of MNCs. Specifically, why do some firms make more novel location choices vis-à-vis others? This conceptual paper seeks to answer this question by examining the role of top management team's (TMT) task-related experiences and characteristics in shaping these strategic decisions. Combining insights from upper echelons (UE) and faultlines theories, we develop a framework to explore how TMT level task-related faultlines impact the novelty of international location decisions of MNCs. Moreover, we also examine how power dynamics across subgroups arising from these faultlines influence the relationship between faultline strength and novelty of locations. In doing so, we identify contextual conditions under which TMT level characteristics are especially important for novelty of location choices. Implications for UE, faultlines and location choice theories are discussed.

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