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This paper specifies an empirical framework for estimating both technical and allocative efficiency, which is applied to a large panel of European banks over the years 1996 to 2003. Our methodology allows for self-consistent measurement of technical and allocative inefficiency, in an effort to address the issue known in the literature as the Greene problem. The results suggest that, on average, European banks exhibit constant returns to scale, that technical and allocative efficiency are close to 80% and 75% respectively, and that overall economic efficiency shows a clearly improving trend. We also show through the comparison of various estimators that models incorporating only technical efficiency tend to overestimate it.

The goal of this dissertation is to contribute to the corporate foresight research field by investigating capabilities, practices, and challenges particularly in the context of interorganizational settings and networked organizations informed by the theoretical perspectives of the relational view and dynamic capabilities. Firms are facing an increasingly complex environment and highly complex product and service landscapes that often require multiple organizations to collaborate for innovation and offerings. Public-private partnerships that are targeted at supporting this have been introduced by policy-makers in the recent past. One example for such a partnership is the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) with multiple Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs). The EIT has been initiated by the European Commission in 2008 with the ambition of addressing grand societal challenges, driving innovativeness of European companies, and supporting systemic change. The resulting network organizations are managed similarly to corporations with managers, boards, and firm-like governance structures. EIT Digital as one of the EIT KICs are a central case of this work. Research in this dissertation was based on the expectation that corporate foresight activities will increasingly be embedded in such interorganizational settings and a) can draw on such settings for the benefit of themselves and b) may contribute to shared visions, trust building and planning in these network organizations. In this dissertation the EIT Digital (formerly EIT ICT Labs) is a central case, supplemented with insights from three additional cases. I draw on the rich theoretical understanding of the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, and particularly the relational view to further the discussion in the field of corporate foresight—defined as foresight in organizations in contrast to foresight with a macro-economical perspective—towards a relational understanding. Further, I use and revisit Rohrbeck’s Maturity Model for the Future Orientation of Firms as conceptual frame for corporate foresight in interorganizational settings. The analyses—available as four individual publications complemented by on additional chapter—are designed as exploratory case studies based on multiple data sources including an interview series with 49 persons, two surveys (N=54, n=20), three supplementary interviews, access to key documents and presentations, and observation through participation in meetings and activities of the EIT Digital. This research setting allowed me to contribute to corporate foresight research and practice by 1) integrating relational constructs primarily drawn from the relational view and dynamic capabilities research into the corporate foresight research stream, 2) exploring and understanding capabilities that are required for corporate foresight in interorganizational and networked organizations, 3) discussing and extending the Maturity Model for network organizations, and 4) to support individual organizations to tie their foresight systems effectively to networked foresight systems. Das Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es zu dem Forschungsfeld Corporate Foresight beizutragen, indem Fähigkeiten, Praktiken und Herausforderungen insbesondere in interorganisationalen Kooperationen und vernetzten Organisationen untersucht werden. Die Arbeit bedient sich dabei der theoretischen Perspektiven des Relational View und Dynamic Capabilities in Ergänzung zum aktuellen Forschungsstand im Forschungsfeld Corporate Foresight. Unternehmen sind mit einer zunehmend komplexen Umwelt und hochkomplexen Produkt- und Servicelandschaften konfrontiert, die vielfach die Zusammenarbeit mehrerer unterschiedlicher Organisationen erfordern, um Innovationen zu ermöglichen. Public Private Partnerships mit dem Ziel ebendies zu unterstützen, wurden in der jüngeren Vergangenheit zunehmend initiiert. Ein Beispiel für eine solche Partnerschaft ist das Europäische Institut für Innovation und Technologie (EIT) mit mehreren Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs). Das EIT wurde 2008 von der Europäischen Kommission mit dem Ziel, die großen gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen zu adressieren, die Innovationskraft europäischer Unternehmen zu fördern und systemische Veränderungen zu unterstützen, ins Leben gerufen. Die entstandenen Netzwerkorganisationen werden ähnlich wie Unternehmen geführt, mit Managern, Vorständen und firmenähnlichen Governance-Strukturen. EIT Digital (ehemals EIT ICT Labs) als eines der EIT KICs ist eine zentrale Fallstudie dieser Arbeit, die durch Erkenntnisse aus drei weiteren Fällen ergänzt wird. Die Forschung in dieser Dissertation basierte auf der Annahme, dass Corporate Foresight-Aktivitäten zunehmend in solch interorganisationale Kontexte eingebettet werden und a) diese Settings zum Vorteil einzelner Unternehmen beitragen sollen und b) zu gemeinsamen Visionen, Vertrauensbildung und Planung in diesen Netzwerkorganisationen beitragen können. Die Arbeit stützt sich auf das reichhaltige theoretische Verständnis des strategischen Managements, genauer des Resource-Based Views, der Dynamic Capabilities und insbesondere des Relational View, um die Diskussion im Bereich Corporate Foresight - definiert als Vorausschau in Organisationen in Abgrenzung zur Vorausschau mit einer makroökonomischen Perspektive - in Richtung eines relationalen Verständnisses weiterzuentwickeln. Dabei wird das Reifegradmodell für die Zukunftsorientierung von Unternehmen als konzeptioneller Rahmen verwendet. Die Studien - verfügbar als vier Einzelpublikationen, ergänzt durch ein zusätzliches Kapitel - sind als explorative Fallstudien konzipiert und basieren auf mehreren Datenquellen, darunter eine Interviewserie mit 49 Personen, zwei Fragebogen-basierte Umfragen (n=54, n=20), drei ergänzende Interviews, Zugang zu internen Dokumenten und Präsentationen sowie Beobachtungen durch Teilnahme an Meetings und Aktivitäten des EIT Digital. Diese Arbeit leistet so einen Beitrag zur Corporate Foresight-Forschung und -Praxis, indem 1) relationale Konstrukte, die primär aus dem Relational View und der Dynamic-Capabilities-Forschung stammen, in die Forschungskanon Corporate Foresight integriert werden, 2) das Wissen über Fähigkeiten, die für die Anwendung von Corporate Foresight in interorganisationalen und vernetzten Organisationen erforderlich sind, vertieft wird, 3) das Reifegradmodell für die Zukunftsorientierung für Netzwerkorganisationen diskutiert und erweitert wird und 4) praxisrelevante Aspekte für die effektive Nutzung von interorganisationalen Kooperationen für Corporate Foresight Systeme diskutiert werden.

Dans l'article, les auteurs se concentrent sur différents aspects de la fracture numérique "spatiale" et cherchent à répondre à trois questions : existe-t-il encore aujourd'hui des inégalités spatiales dans l'adoption de ces technologies ? Existe-t-il une fracture spatiale dite de "second niveau" caractérisée par une faible utilisation d'Internet et du mail par des entreprises ayant pourtant adopté ces outils ? Peut-on observer des processus d'appropriation et/ou des logiques de diffusion distincts parmi les entreprises adoptantes selon leur zone de localisation (urbaines vs. rurales) ? Pour y répondre les auteurs ont construit un modèle original de diffusion de technologies (de type Battisti et Stoneman, 2005) qui cherche à combiner les modèles se concentrant sur les effets de la contagion et ceux dits d'équilibre modélisant la décision de l'adoption comme le résultat d'un calcul économique des agents en fonction de leurs caractéristiques propres et de celles de leur environnement concurrentiel, industriel et local. Ce modèle est testé sur une enquête nationale récente (TIC et commerce électronique, 2002). L'un des principaux résultats est que si, à taille et à secteur des entreprises donnés, des inégalités spatiales liées à l'adoption des TIC ne sont plus à l'oeuvre en France, elles demeurent en revanche toujours très importantes dans les processus d'appropriation et d'usage de ces technologies par les firmes.

Greece’s currently planned institutional reforms will help to get the country going with limited economic growth. With an economy based primarily on tourism, trade, and agriculture, Greece lacks an established competitive industry and an innovation-friendly environment, resulting in a low export ratio given the small size of the country and its long-time EU-membership. Instead, Greece exports only its nation's talent, with low returns. To become prosperous, the country must better capitalize on its Eurozone membership and add innovative sectors to its economic structure. Given Greece's hidden assets, such as the attractiveness of the country, a small number of strong research centers and an impressive diaspora in research, finance and business, we envision a Greek “Silicon Valley” and propose a ten point policy plan to achieve that goal., Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe, 896

How do domestic Örms respond to the threat of foreign competition? This paper quantifies the threat of competition from foreign multinational firms by exploring investment news that appear in over 35,000 newspapers, trade presses, magazines, newswires, and other forms of media in 200 countries. The analysis shows that, on average, domestic Örms respond to foreign multinational threats by increasing productivity, R&D, labor training, patent applications, and advertising expense and changing product composition. However, the response exhibits substantial heterogeneity oss industries and Örms: industries with "neck-to-neck" competition are more likely to upgrade productivity; within each industry, the right tail of the domestic productivity distribution responds by increasing innovation while the left tail escapes competition threats by dropping threatened products. Moreover, the degree of response increases significantly with the size of the threat, the influence of the news, the amount of information embedded in the news--on, for example, the credibility of the threat, and the number of news in downstream industries. The main findings are robust to placebo tests and IV analyses that explore detailed and unique characteristics--such as the publishing timing and location, the primary consumers, and the substance--of each news.

Policy makers as well as entrepreneurs pay much attention to the success of firms. This is because the performance of firms can promote directly and indirectly the economic growth in a country. For instance, after financial crisis in 1997, the Korean economy experienced the rapid recovery. It is recognized that the improvement of firm performance has played a crucial role in such recovery. We focus on the determinants of improving the Korean firm total factor productivity (TFP) because TFP can explain performance not explained by inputs a firm employs. This paper suggests management practices as one of crucial factors to improve firm TFP. For empirical analysis, we use an instrumental variable approach by using a set of four firm-level instrumental variables including motivations for organizational change, large-scale organizational change, empowerment, and IT investment during the past organizational change. The results of the instrumental variable estimation show that better management practice leads to a higher level of firm TFP, statistically significantly; whereas the effect of management practices is statistically insignificant in the ordinary least square estimation.

We study how the strength of property rights to individual extractive firms affects a regulator’s choice over exploitation rates for a natural resource. The regulator is modeled as an intermediary between current and future resource harvesters, rather than between producers and consumers, as in the traditional regulatory capture paradigm. When incumbent resource users have weak property rights, they have an incentive to pressure the regulator to allow resource extraction at an inefficiently rapid rate. In contrast, when property rights are strong, this incentive is minimized or eliminated. We build a theoretical model in which different property right institutions can be compared for their incentives to exert influence on the regulator. The main theoretical prediction - that stronger individual property rights will lead the regulator to choose more economically efficient extraction paths - is tested empirically with a novel panel data set from global fisheries. Exploiting the variation in timing of catch share implementation in our panel data, we find that regulators are significantly more conservative in managing resources for which strong individual property rights have been assigned to firms; this is especially pronounced for resources that have been overexploited historically.

Many organizations fund their spending out of a fixed budget that expires at year’s end. Faced with uncertainty over future spending demands, these organizations have an incentive to build a buffer stock of funds over the front end of the budget cycle. When demand does not materialize, they then rush to spend these funds on lower quality projects at the end of the year. We test these predictions using data on procurement spending by the U.S. federal government. Using data on all federal contracts from 2004 through 2009, we document that spending spikes in all major federal agencies during the 52nd week of the year as the agencies rush to exhaust expiring budget authority. Spending in the last week of the year is 4.9 times higher than the rest-of-the-year weekly average. We examine the relative quality of year-end spending using a newly available dataset that tracks the quality of $130 billion in information technology (I.T.) projects made by federal agencies. Consistent with the model, average project quality falls at the end of the year. Quality scores in the last week of the year are 2.2 to 5.6 times more likely to be below the central value. To explore the impact of allowing agencies to roll unused spending over into subsequent fiscal years, we study the I.T. contracts of an agency with special authority to roll over unused funding. We show that there is only a small end-of-year I.T. spending spike in this agency and that the one major I.T. contract this agency issued in the 52nd week of the year has a quality rating that is well above average.

This paper evaluates the effects of capital controls on firm-level stock returns and real investment using data from Brazil. On average, there is a statistically significant drop in cumulative abnormal returns consistent with an increase in the cost of capital for Brazilian firms following capital control announcements. Large firms and the largest exporting firms appear less negatively affected compared to external-finance-dependent firms, and capital controls on equity inflows have a more negative announcement effect on equity returns than those on debt inflows. Overall, the findings have implications for macro-finance models that abstract from heterogeneity at the firm level to examine the optimality of capital control taxation.

We test the effectiveness of team incentives by running a natural field experiment in a retail chain of 193 shops and 1,300 employees. As a response to intensified product market competition, the firm offered a bonus to shop teams for surpassing sales targets. A bonus to teams rather than individuals was a natural choice because the firm does not measure individual performance and relies on flexible task allocation among employees. On average, the team bonus increases sales and customer visits in the treated shops by around 3%, and wages by 2.3%. The bonus is highly profitable for the firm, generating for each bonus dollar an extra $3.80 of sales, and $2.10 of operational profit. The results show the importance of complementarities within teams and suggest that improved operational efficiency is the main mechanism behind the treatment effect. Our analysis of heterogeneous treatment effects offers a number of insights about the anatomy of teamwork. The firm decided to roll out the bonus to all of its shops, and the performance of treatment and control shops converged after the roll-out.

Science and Technology Parks (STPs) has become fairly widespread through the world, although their effect on firms' innovation performance is still a very debated issue. A recent stream in the literature points to heterogeneity of tenants and of parks themselves being a key concept when assessing STPs effect on tenants' performance. An important source of STPs heterogeneity that has been disregarded so far is the degree of university involvement in these parks. At the extremes, there are parks that are owned and managed by universities, and parks with no formal links with a university. We use data from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) for Spain and a survey of STP park managers to analyse how the degree of involvement of a university in the STP is related to innovation outputs of its tenants and their links with universities. We show that higher involvement of a university in the STP is positively related to the number of patent applications, but negatively related to tenant's innovation sales. In addition, we find no robust evidence that higher involvement of a university in the STP is positively related to the propensity for park firms to cooperate with a university or to purchase external R&D services from the university.

We present evidence on the labor supply of CEOs, and on whether family and professional CEOs differ on this dimension. We do so through a new survey instrument that allows us to codify CEOs' diaries in a detailed and comparable fashion, and to build a bottom-up measure of CEO labor supply. The comparison of 1,114 family and professional CEOs reveals that family CEOs work 9% fewer hours relative to professional CEOs. Hours worked are positively correlated with firm performance, and differences between family and non-family CEOs account for approximately 18% of the performance gap between family and non-family firms. We investigate the sources of the differences in CEO labor supply across governance types by exploiting firm and industry heterogeneity, and quasi-exogenous meteorological and sport events. The evidence suggests that family CEOs value-or can pursue-leisure activities relatively more than professional CEOs.

This article presents the results of a survey of Bulgarian industrial organizations with respect to their clashes with the world financial and economic crisis’s effects on local economy. The crisis manifestations under business environment specificity factors and important cultural aspects of dominating managerial behavior in these companies are described and analyzed. The concrete research encompasses two groups of industrial companies, representing two opposite views to crisis – as a threat or as an opportunity. Attitudes to crisis, undertaken anti-crisis measures in key functional areas, preferred strategic moves of these companies are surveyed, analyzed and summarized, i.e. unravelling dominating attitudes among the majority of managers to perform serious cuts in expenditures in important functional spheres as human resources, investments, innovations, marketing, etc., and also noticing the minority of organizational leaders that accept the challenges of re-inventing current business models and/or re-formulating company vision and mission statements. Keywords: industrial organizations, crisis management, Bulgarian companies, firm management, business strategy. JEL classification: L1, L2, L6, D2, J3, J5, https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=548843 https://ideas.repec.org/a/aic/journl/y2011v58p203-234.html https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Characteristics-of-Preferred-Strategic-Postures-Dimitrov/35a1c8be4dedc14e42c7b6beb35c1448bbc40783

We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions yield agglomeration clusters that are much larger than the underlying agglomerative forces themselves. Empirically, we demonstrate that our model’s assumptions are present in the structure of technology and labor flows within Silicon Valley and its surrounding areas. Our model further identifies how the lengths over which agglomerative forces operate influence the shapes and sizes of industrial clusters; we confirm these predictions using variations across both technology clusters and industry agglomeration.

This paper develops a simple model of trade and “quality-ladders” growth without scale effects to study the implications of general purpose technologies (GPTs) for international trade. GPTs refer to a certain type of drastic innovations, such as electrification, the transistor, and the Internet, that are characterized by the pervasiveness in use, innovational complementarities, and technological dynamism. The model presents a two-country (Home and Foreign) dynamic general equilibrium framework and incorporates GPT diffusion within Home that exhibits endogenous Schumpeterian growth. The model analyzes the long-run and transitional dynamic effects of a new GPT on the pattern of trade and relative wages. The main findings of the paper are: 1) when the GPT diffusion across industries is governed by S-curve dynamics, there are two steady-state equilibria: the initial steadystate arises before the adoption of the new GPT and the final one is reached after the GPT diffusion process has been completed, 2) when all industries at Home have adopted the new GPT, Home enjoys comparative advantage in a greater range of industries compared to Foreign, 3) during the transitional dynamics, Foreign gains back its competitiveness in some of the industries that lost its comparative advantage to Home.

This paper analyzes how different organizational structures between funding and implementing agencies affect the quality of aid delivered and social agendas pursued across neighboring villages in a set disaster context. We model the implied objective functions and trade-offs concerning aid quality, aid quantity, and social agendas of different types of agencies. We analyze three waves of survey data on fishermen and fishing villages in Aceh, Indonesia from 2005-2009, following the tsunami. Different organizational structures result in significantly different qualities of hard aid, differential willingness to share aid delivery with other NGOs in a village, and differential promotion of public good objectives and maintenance of village religious and occupational traditions. This is the first time these aspects have been modeled and quantified in the literature. Some well known international NGOs delivered housing with relatively low rates of reported faults such as leaky roofs and cracked walls; others had relatively high rates. For boats, some had very high rates of boat "failure", boats that sank upon launch, were not seaworthy, or fell apart within a month or two. We also document how a social agenda of particular agencies to promote greater equality can be thwarted and distorted by village leaders, potentially increasing inequality.

We document the presence of multiple and varied constraints to small and medium firm growth. This presents both a practical problem for business training programs and a challenge to academic economists trying to identify mechanisms though which these programs may affect outcomes. External validity needs theory. This pushes researchers to narrowly defined and highly selected sample frames, which limits the potential for clear, generalizable policy prescriptions. Ultimately, larger samples, multi-arm evaluations, process documentation, and narrowly-focused, theory-supported empirical work are all needed, but the complexity of the problem limits what we learn from any single study.

This paper provides new evidence on the link between the export status and growth of small and medium-sized enterprises. The data consists of CIS 2010 data for 20 EU countries with about 113,000 firm-level observations. The results show that growth rates of both output and employment of exporting SMEs are significantly higher than those for non exporting SMEs. On average exporting SMEs have a 0.6 percentage points higher average employment growth rate and a 0.9 percentage points higher average output growth rate (in current prices) per year for the period 2008-2010. However, there is a large variation in the strength of the link between firm growth and export status with higher magnitudes for SMEs in manufacturing and business services and lower in the remaining service industries.

To know yourself and to act accordingly has been seen as a moral imperative throughout history. The aim of this research was to determine potential of students for authentic leadership and relation between their authentic personality and potential for authentic leadership. The sample consisted of students (N=133) from Serbia (male – 59% and female – 41%). The average age of students was M=21.9. Instruments used were Authenticity Scale (Wood et al., 2008) and Authentic Leadership Self-Assessment Questionnaire (ALQ – Walumbwa et al., 2008). Authenticity scale had three subscales – authentic living, accepting external influence and self-alienation. Authentic Leadership Self-Assessment Questionnaire had four subscales – self-awareness, internalized moral perspective, balanced processing and relational transparency. Results showed that students are authentic persons - M=43.16 (with theoretical range of scores from 12 to 84) and have a potential for authentic leadership – M=57.41 (with theoretical range of scores from 16 to 80). Authentic personality in students is not a predictor of authentic leadership (R2=.001,F(1,132)=.08, p

This paper examines the links between the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the firm's performance using a sample of Luxembourgian manufacturing and services firms (2 183 firms). The data used is the 2008 Survey on ICT Usage and e-Commerce in Enterprises in the case of Luxembourg (STATEC, 2006, 2007). We found four original results. First, the use of the latest generation of ICT increases firms' revenues (short term returns) if the ICT use serves to customize their products. Second, the use of the latest generation of ICT enables long run returns if they are used for several purposes such as setting a catalogue online, developing e-commerce solutions and customizing the website. Third, while ICT seems to need dedicated human capital and technological absorptive capacity for increasing revenue, this is not valid for reaching new customers. Finally, we found also that “belonging to a group†has no impact on increasing the revenue of the firm when it uses ICT, while it has a negative effect on capturing new customers.

This qualitative case study was conducted to investigate and analyze the perceptions and lived experiences of 20 training department staff at a New York-based early childhood multi-service healthcare company. The study was used to discover the leadership practices involved in creating a positive corporate culture in a work environment with outsourced and internal employees working concurrently together. There were six emergent themes that resulted from the study. It was discovered in the study that leaders who do the following activities continually engage the employees, whether they are internal or outsourced: (1) lead to the specific needs of each staff, whether internal or external, (2) create an environment of fun, (3) create an environment that purports familial ties with all team members, (4) ensure that learning exists continually, (5) honor the employees who have worked in the industry the longest, and most importantly, (6) lead as a socially and emotionally intelligent leader.

The real world impact of vertical integration on prices for consumers remains a controversial topic. Economic theory suggests that there are multiple effects of vertical integration on prices which work in opposite directions. This paper employs high frequency panel data from a regional U.S. market to determine which effects are dominant at retail gasoline stations. Using two different techniques, I find that vertically-integrated company-operated gasoline stations charge prices five to eleven cents lower than non-integrated, lessee-operated gasoline stations.

In this paper, we discuss a scenario in capital structure where two divisional managers compete for capital from a firm for their projects in a perfect information setting. We consider verifiable profits and study take-it-or-leave-it contracts where the managers ask for capital from the firm privately or sequentially in public and offer a part of the profit to the firm. Under capital constraint, we demonstrate that in private meeting, there is no sub game perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE) in pure strategies; but in sequential public meeting, SPNE exists in pure strategies and, for the firm it is better to operate under capital constraint to increase the competition among managers.

We use an innovative survey tool to collect management practice data from over 4,000 medium sized manufacturing firms across Asia, Europe and the US. These measures of managerial practice are strongly associated with firm-level performance (e.g. productivity, profitability and stock market value). Private Equity owned firms are significantly better managed than government, family and privately owned firms. Although they are also better managed on average than publicly listed firms with dispersed owners, this difference is not statistically significant. Looking at management practices in detail we find that Private Equity-owned firms have strong people management practices (hiring, firing, pay and promotions) but even stronger operations management practices (lean manufacturing, continuous improvement and monitoring). This suggests that Private Equity ownership is associated with broad based operational improvement in management rather than just stronger performance incentives. Finally, looking at changes in management practices over time, it appears that Private Equity targets poorly managed firms and these firms improve their management practices at a faster rate than other ownership types.

The general aim of this manuscript is to appreciate how social enterprise can create a space of relations and opportunities that impacts beneficially on community welfare and individual wellbeing. We refer to cooperative relations that are aimed at the pursuit of a social goal. In this sense we talk of the bright side of social capital, as opposed to relational networks that are mainly functional to the pursuit of exclusive interests even at the detriment of others. Consistently with the premise, in this work we focus on social enterprise which we define as values-based businesses set up for social and/or environmental purpose, driven by an entrepreneurial spirit. \ud \ud Specifically we regard social enterprises and their networks of cooperation as the immaterial assets of a community, as reservoirs of pro-social and cooperative attitudes that are able to create connectivity and engender flexible responses to community evolving needs. In other words, social enterprises can be seen as immaterial spaces which support individuals and communities in developing opportunities through activities of various nature as a response to contextual needs. The creation and use of space from this point of view is a reflection of specific values such as cooperation and the public interest. \ud \ud The study of how social enterprise create space for inclusive relations and opportunities that impacts on community welfare is supported using two illustrative cases, one on arts and one on health. The first connects access to creative spaces with inclusion and community welfare, the other connects community assets to generate social inclusion and to enhance the physical and psychological welfare of NHS patients. The two cases highlight a path for community development building on the nature and assets of social enterprise. The path goes from social enterprise to the creation of inclusive spaces, to the furthering of social inclusion, which ultimately enhances psychological and physical health. Both projects have developed over a medium time span so that we can trace the emerging path of activities and outcomes.

We explore how changes in ownership affect the productivity and profitability of producers. Using detailed data from the Japanese cotton spinning industry at the turn of the last century, we find that acquired firms’ production facilities were not on average less physically productive than the plants of the acquiring firms before acquisition. They were much less profitable, however, due to higher inventory levels and lower capacity utilization—differences that reflected problems in managing the uncertainties of demand. After acquisitions, less profitable acquired plants saw drops in inventories and gains in capacity utilization that raised both their productivity and profitability levels. (JEL D24, G32, G34, L11, L25, L66, N65) The influence of changes in corporate control of assets on productivity has been a focus of theoretical and empirical research for some time. In principle, mergers and acquisitions can reallocate control of productive assets to entities that are able to apply them more efficiently. Besides increasing the productivity of the individual production units that are merged or acquired, a broader process of such reallocations can also lead to aggregate productivity growth. Such a mechanism therefore has the potential to explain patterns of productivity at both the micro- and macro-levels. Implicit in the story of this mechanism—though not often treated explicitly in the empirical work on the subject—is the notion that productivity growth occurs when changes in ownership and control put assets in more able managers’ hands. 1

This paper investigates the relationship that exists between organizational climate as a factor of competitiveness in the franchising of fast food in Tijuana, BC. No doubt the primary asset of the organization is the human resource since it is through a good working team that the company achieves its objectives and goals. This ensures their development and market positioning and does not leave aside the organizational climate and the importance it has within the companies. Here the purpose of analyzing the organizational climate in the franchising of fast food, as a factor of competitiveness is to determine whether this influences directly growth and company success. We conducted 66 representative surveys to employees of fast food franchises registered on the system of the Mexican business information, (SIEM), corresponding to Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. The research was conducted in the last two semesters of 2012 and the year 2013.

In this note, we discuss the theoretical formulation of the concept of specificity and expose preliminary results showing that different types of asset specificity call for the use of different control rights. Contrary to transaction cost and property right theories, but in line with increasing empirical evidence, high levels of specificity do not necessarily lead to unified ownership.

El presente trabajo contempla una investigación para conocer la relación que existe entre el clima organizacional como factor de competitividad en las franquicias de comida rápida en Tijuana, B.C.; sin lugar a dudas el primordial activo de las organizaciones es el recurso humano ya que es a través de un buen equipo de trabajo que la empresa logra sus objetivos y metas asegurando así su desarrollo y posicionamiento en el mercado, no se debe dejar de lado el clima organizacional y la importancia que este tiene dentro de las empresas. De aquí la finalidad de analizar el clima organizacional en las franquicias de comida rápida, como factor de competitividad para determinar si esta influye de manera directa en su crecimiento e incluso en el éxito de la compañía. Para lograr los resultados se realizaron 66 encuestas representativas a los empleados de las franquicias de comida rápida registradas en el Sistema de Información Empresarial Mexicano, (SIEM), correspondiente a Tijuana, en Baja California, México, realizándose la investigación los dos últimos cuatrimestres del 2012 y todo el año 2013. La investigación cuantitativa se aplica para el levantamiento de encuestas, a través de cuestionarios a los empleados de las franquicias de comida rápida. (Modifique el resumen para poder poner en cuanto tiempo se llevo a cabo la organización).

International audience; The Framework programmes created by the European Union are the main financial tools used to support cooperative R&D activities in the EU. Unlike previous empirical studies, this paper suggests that their impact on firms’ competitiveness is significant. We analyze industry-oriented research joint ventures supported by the Fifth European Framework Programme between 1998 and 2002. A key feature of this Programme is that funding is available to the firms based on social and economic concerns instead of pure performance criteria, which guarantees that financial support is not granted conditional on technological opportunities. This allows us to identify the causal effect of the programme on firms’ performance using the funding available to the firms in their respective industries as a source of exogenous variation in the decision to participate in the programme. Our results suggest that participation in research projects may raise labor productivity by at least 44.4% while it has very limited effect on profit margin.

The main goal of this study is to demonstrate the existence of a significant empirical link between infrastructure and financial sectors reforms the effects of which are reflected in infrastructure sectors performance. This paper reports on the findings of an exploration of this issue for the case of the power sector in developing countries. We estimate the impact of the four main components of the power sector reform in these countries, namely, the creation of an independent regulatory agency, the unbundling of generation, transmission, and distribution, the introduction of competition and the implementation of privatization programs in the generation and distribution segments, on some of this sector’s performance outcomes, and attempt to assess the contribution of the domestic financial systems’ reforms to these outcomes. In a dataset on 42 developing countries covering the 1990-2005 period, we find that private participation in generation and distribution has significantly improved power supply as reflected in higher electricity generation per capita and technical and labor efficiency in the distribution segment. The unbundling of generation, transmission, and distribution has contributed to improving productive efficiency through a better use of the labor factor in the distribution segment. We find that the creation of a separate regulatory agency has boosted the generation segment in terms of both capacity and sales and has generated better incentives for a more efficient use of labor input in the distribution segment. We also find that regulatory experience has significantly contributed to improving access to electricity. The results suggest that while the power sector, in particular, its generation segment, has significantly benefited from the introduction of independent regulation, the beneficial effects of (good) regulatory practices have been exacerbated by the modernization of the financial systems. More specifically, improved financial systems have eased access to capital for operators allowing them to upgrade their networks and decrease power losses in distribution. The overall results obtained in this paper strongly recommend that along with reforming the power sector, policy makers in developing countries should implement the financial reforms that would deepen their domestic financial systems thus allowing them to recover the full benefits of these systems’ positive externalities on the performance of the sector.

The aim of the study is to present the changes in US merger control policy at different stages of development of competition theories and views on pro- and anti-competitive effects of mergers (especially Harvard, Chicago, and Post-Chicago Schools of Competition). The research methods used in the study include literature review as well as the in-depth analysis of US legislation, antitrust agencies' enforcement policy and federal courts' adjudication practice with focus on changes in the economic analysis of mergers and their impact on market competition. This part of the study covers the period from the mid 1970s to the present time and comprises two stages of the development of US policy towards mergers. In the 1980s the Chicago School theories, efficiency primacy and minimum intervention principle prevailed in US antitrust policy. From the 1990s under the influence of Post-Chicago approach which no longer assumes that markets work perfectly the antitrust agencies have been more eager to intervene to block some (even vertical) mergers with potential anticompetitive effects (though the level of this intervention could be hardly compared with that of the 1960s). US merger enforcement policy has become more interdisciplinary with a more flexible approach to economic analysis as regards applied methodology which should be tailored to each transaction and supported by empirical evidence. Apart from consumer welfare its priority is protecting competitive process in the market.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the potential contribution of the flow–fund model to analysing the organisation of production processes by exploring the links with two other levels of analysis: namely, the input–output relations and innovative activity through the development of new knowledge. The flow–fund model focuses on the time dimension of production activities which require specific ‘knowledge how’, in addition to ‘knowledge that’. The flow–fund methodology allows us to analyse the task distributions and the organisation of production processes that are both absent from input–output models. The time-dimension of the flow–fund analysis provides the necessary bridge to explain the co-evolution of organisational settings and new productive knowledge.

We use firm level data to assess the role of exporting in the link between financial health and firm survival. The data are for the UK and France. We examine whether firms at different stages of export activity (starters, exiters, continuers, switchers) react differently to changes in financial variables. In general, export starters and exiters experience much stronger adverse effects of financial constraints for their survival prospects. By contrast, the exit probability of continuous exporters and export switchers is less negatively affected by financial characteristics. These relationships between exporting, finance and survival are broadly similar in the British and French sub-samples.

Although Greece is showing initial signs of recovering from its 2008 crash, its economy continues to suffer. It has become clear that the economy will not become prosperous only by the given recommendations of the so called Troika, namely by cutting costs and public expenditures, and by making institutional reforms, as much as these steps are needed. If nothing else changes, the country will have a steady, tourism-based economy supplemented by a food manufacturing base. However, these components will not yield substantial prosperity increases for the Greek society. At the same time the country has a number of unexploited hidden assets, in particular a small number of excellent research institutes and a great number of top researchers, most of them however working abroad. The central problem is the lack of an innovation-oriented industry structure and of a well-functioning innovation system connecting research output with the demand of entrepreneurs and high-tech start-ups in Greece. Greece needs a strategy for a strong capacity building towards the creation of new applied research institutes. If appropriate research networks are developed out of these and if innovative firms result, creating new products with high value-added, the country has the opportunity to transform into an innovation-driven economy.

Global value chains (GVCs) are playing an increasingly important role in business strategies, which has profoundly changed international trade and development paradigms. GVCs now represent a new path for development by helping developing countries accelerate industrialization and the “servicification” of the economy. From a firm perspective, production in the context of GVCs highlights the importance of being able to seamlessly connect factories across borders, as well as protect assets such as intellectual property. From the policy maker perspective, the focus is on shifting and improving access to resources while also advancing development goals, and also on the question of whether entry into GVCs delivers labor-market-enhancing outcomes for workers at home, as well as social upgrading. GVCs can lead to development, but, at the country level, constraints such as the supply of various types of labor and skills and inadequate absorptive capacity remain. GVCs can create new opportunities on the labor demand side, but supply and demand cannot meet if the supply is missing. This potential gap illustrates the importance of embedding national GVC policies into a broader portfolio of policies aimed at upgrading skills, physical and regulatory infrastructure, and enhancing social cohesion.

Traditional literature exploring the relationship between production and tax evasion ignores the impact of other activities on these two decisions. This paper incorporates firms' tax avoidance activities into the model of tax evasion. In contrast to conventional results, we find that profit tax is not necessarily neutral. In addition, the independency or separability of tax evasion and production decisions may not hold either whenever tax avoidance is present.

Using data from Nippon Professional Baseball, which is the Japanese professional baseball league, we examine the relationship between within-team salary disparity and team performance. We find that greater salary disparity tends to result in better team performance, which is the opposite of what prior studies have observed for Major League Baseball. Our results suggest that even within the same sport, the relationship may be partly affected by different institutional settings

This paper seeks to show that even though a product market competitor holds the least cost input production technology, it may outsource its input production to an independent input producer and buy inputs from the firm at a higher price instead of producing inputs in-house for itself. Technology transfer in the form of patent sale acts as a commitment. Assuming Cournot competition in the product market the paper shows that such an outsourcing occurs when the initial technological gap between the input producing firms is small. Under such strategic outsourcing, however, consumer welfare as well as social welfare goes down.

Whereas in functional organizations projects are used to drive special business activities, in project based organizations the project is the main business activity. They are characterized by a flexible and innovative form of executing projects in a dynamic and uncertain environment. In this paper an overview is given about the special characteristics of project based organizations and their success factors. From this the need for project capabilities is derived, as they are the source to reach the success factors. The close connection between success factors of project based organizations and the establishment of project capabilities is therefore developed. Then the question of how project capabilities can be build is addressed. Especially explanatory and exploitative learning methods are examined for this. The paper draws special attention to theoretical frameworks for capability building. A thorough understanding of this topic shows the necessity of building capabilities and future specialized research for practical work.

The aim of this paper is to study the process of symbolic value creation of human capital-intensive firms. Human capital is a critical resource for firms’ activities. Nevertheless, this dimension is often obscured by industrial economists. In the light of critical resource theory, we analyze how taking into account the inalienable and inimitable nature of specific human capital entails a reconsideration of the role and boundaries of the firm. We show that the firm seeks to coordinate the specialization of its key partners within the frame of its economic boundaries to ensure the long-term optimization of its potential of value. Therefore, the value of the firm depends on all the resources that the firm coordinates. Then we focus on the way HCIF can create different values. We suggest that the firm builds its competitive advantage on different forms of values, in particular the symbolic value incorporated in human capital. Finally, on the basis of these considerations, we identify the wealth included in the critical resources of the firm and to bring to light the process of symbolic value creation associated with it. We suggest that the firm is the value creating entity and the customer both recognizes and derives the value created from whatever it is that the firm provides. We propose a definition of this value and a schema of its creation process based on management works attempts. We conclude by proposing paths of research that could fruitfully be explored to further develop this new subject.

This paper examines the effectiveness of entrepreneurship development programs (EDP) of Ghanaian Polytechnics in achieving some objectives. Using a case study methodology the research tracked the entrepreneurship intentions and entrepreneurial tendencies of some Ho Polytechnic students at different stages of their studies over three years. The analysis revealed a very high increase in interest in business proprietorship after the EDP but showed quite a weak link between the programs and most of the entrepreneurial tendencies. The study also noted that the proportion of students who intend to move from school directly into business, though rising after the programs, remained very low.The study finally concluded that the gap between the high level of interest and the willingness to move directly from school into business is a strong case for more policy efforts to initiate programs and projects which can trigger graduates to undertake entrepreneurial activities.

The study was conducted to determine the managerial problems confronted by executive chefs working at 4 and 5-star hotels in Turkey. A survey developed by the researchers was employed as a data collection tool. Answers given by participants were analyzed using “T-test” and “ANOVA” analyses in order to determine whether there are significant differences of opinion on the subject (collated in answers to the survey questionnaire) amongst executive chefs, based on answers given by them (expressed as average figures) dependent upon such variables as their “Age”, “Gender”, “Educational Status” and “Star status of the hotel within which they worked.” The study results showed that the most important problem confronting executive chefs was “finding educated/trained kitchen personnel.” On the specific problem, “responsibility and authority is not clear within the kitchen,” there was a significant difference of opinion by the gender of the executive chefs. Moreover, there was a significant difference of opinion dependent upon the star status of the hotels within which the chefs worked on the problem of whether or not “the working hours of kitchen personnel were too long.” The findings suggest that there are important problems confronted by executive chefs. Moreover, male and female executive chefs have different opinions on the magnitudes of some specific problems. Whereas there are various reports and similar publications discussing problems faced by executive chefs, the present study is the first one in the literature that solely explore the managerial problems experienced at a kitchen context.

The Great Crisis that started in 2007 deeply affected banks throughout Europe. Using the assessments of the two global agencies that publish ratings of the financial strength of individual banks, we study whether the crisis hit European banks differently depending on their organizational structure. We analyze the changes in the ratings during the crisis and how they are related to bank ownership. Our results lend support to the hypothesis that stakeholder banks, especially cooperative banks, were downgraded to a lesser degree than shareholder banks. However, the results differ somewhat across the rating agencies. We also discuss the sources of ratings disagreements in the paper. Our paper is among the first presenting statistically based evidence on the relative merits of different organizational structures during the recent financial and economic crisis.

A special topic covered in the research done in recent years is related to SME innovation. Because information is the key resource and output, the intangible economy is the source of economic value which affects all the markets transactions. This study is an exploration of the dynamics of the present Romanian firm's valuation in the financial markets landscape. I offer first an overview of the characteristics of the market value of firms and of the general impact of the recent crisis on the Romanian SMEs. I further outline the main constraints faced by the firm's market value in the specific Romanian context and sketch current trends of Romanian small enterprises. I employ hereby a holistic and monetary method - Tobin's Q - which I state as rewarding when investigating the evolution of market value of the Romanian small enterprises, and apply it to a set of empirical data, in order to assess the evolution of these Romanian small enterprises during the period 2009-2013. Based on the results of this analysis, I formulate in the conclusions a set of recommendations which are aimed to support the consolidation of the Romanian firm's value in the marketplace. Practitioners and academicians can benefit from this study’s insights.

This research explores whether management by family members creates or destroys firm value. We estimate the impact of family pervasiveness in top management (family members as executive officers or board members) on firm value as measured by Tobin's Q. Results indicate that family members acting as executive officers decreases firm value. More, this effect is exacerbated when the family relationships are farther away, i.e., second-degree vs. first-degree or in-law vs. same-kin relationships. We contribute to the literature in the Brazilian context, in which the influence of family management on firm value remains largely unexplored. We also propose a new way of measuring family management pervasiveness that takes into account the closeness of relationships, thus controlling for the costs and benefits of altruistic acts within the family.

This paper is mainly concerned with relationships between economic growth and gender discrimination in labor markets and education. Although discrimination in different fields has well been addresses and modelled in the economic literature, there are only a few growth models with endogenous wealth and human capital accumulation, gender time distribution between work, leisure and education under gender (positive or negative) discrimination. The production and economic structures, human capital accumulation are based on the Uzawa-Lucas model, while the utility function and gender division of labor, leisure time and study time are based on the model by Zhang. The model takes account of learning by education in modeling human capital accumulation. We simulate the model to demonstrate the existence of equilibrium points and motion of the national economy. We also conduct a comparative dynamic analysis in regard to changes in discrimination in the education sector, women’s propensity to stay at home, women’s propensity to receive education, women’s knowledge utilization efficiency, and the propensity to save.

Human resources strategy is an integral and means to solve problems of human resources to enable the organization to meet its objectives by ensuring the existence of the necessary capacities within the organization. In the present paper, we intend to introduce new approaches to the concept of "human resources strategy" in the literature and which are adapted to the new trends in the business environment. Presentation of information in the literature in a critical manner, which is the method used, can be useful business environment in Romania. So, the work is theoretical, but some conclusions to be drawn very relevant. Human resources strategy means accepting the Human Resources function as a strategic partner in formulating the company's overall strategy and in the implementation of these strategies through human resources activities such as recruitment, retention, motivation, and determination of staff rotation rewarding.

Using a moral hazard framework with limited liability with discrete effort levels we show that status incentives help in partially reducing the burden on monetary incentives. Yet, the disutility accruing from failure to achieve status dampens the efficiency of status as an incentive. The optimal bonus is independent of the return of the firm. Again, the optimal expected payoff of the agent decreases with an increase in the utility from status whereas exactly opposite happens when disutility from disgrace of failing to achieve status, increase. Thus this paper re-examines Besley and Ghatak (2008) when effort level is discrete.

Este estudio evalúa el impacto de asistencias técnicas a micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas (MiPyME) cofinanciadas por el Programa de Acceso al Crédito y Competitividad (PACC) en Argentina. El programa tiene como objetivo incrementar la competitividad de las MiPyME mediante aportes no reembolsables que cofinancian proyectos para desarrollar capacidades empresariales en distintas áreas. Para estimar los efectos del PACC se utiliza una base de datos con información sobre el universo de empresas empleadoras en Argentina desde 2005 hasta 2014 y se combinan metodologías de emparejamiento con efectos fijos y variable dependiente rezagada, explotando el límite inferior y el superior del efecto estimado (bracketing property) de estos dos métodos. Los resultados confirman que el apoyo del PACC es efectivo ya que mejora la competitividad de las firmas a partir de observar efectos positivos sobre empleo, exportaciones, supervivencia y salarios. Además, el estudio muestra que los efectos son heterogéneos de acuerdo al tipo de proyecto que se cofinancia o a la cantidad de apoyos, y también se encuentra que la mayor parte de los efectos se concentran en el primer apoyo recibido, lo cual genera información relevante que puede ser utilizada para un mejor diseño y focalización de este tipo de políticas. Los hallazgos confirman que la resolución de fallas de coordinación y asimetrías de información (vía señalización), que justifican la intervención pública en esta área, permiten que estos proyectos acontezcan y se traduzcan en ganancias de eficiencia para las MiPyME, lo que permite mejorar en última instancia su desempeño.