Networks and geography in the economics of knowledge flows: a commentary

In the paper “Networks and geography in the economics of knowledge flows” Maggioni and Uberti provide a rich and detailed overview of the current state-of-art and future challenges of the analysis of knowledge flows in economics. Maggioni and Uberti illustrate how geographical factors and network factors can explain spatial patterns of knowledge flows. This commentary portrays where the type of studies discussed by the authors fit in the wider literature on geography, networks and knowledge flows. Second, the commentary discusses the suggestions of future research the authors describe and proposes some further avenues for future research that are in line with those suggested by the authors. In particular, it zooms in onto the role of comparative statics in studies of network dynamics, stochastic estimation models of network evolution and content-based network analysis in pushing the frontier of research on networks, geography and knowledge flows.     

Strategies for successful organizational downsizing

This article reports the results of a study of 30 organizations that engaged in downsizing over a four-year period. Three questions were investigated: (1) What general strategies are used by organizations to downsize? (2) What are the effects of downsizing on organizational performance? (3) What are downsizing's “best practices?” or, What are the differences between organizations that effectively downsize and those that do not? Three main strategies for downsizing are explained, the managerial actions to overcome the negative effects of downsizing are enumerated, and the best practices of successful downsizing firms are presented.     

基础设施REITs:中国REITs的新突破

中国的REITs仍然处于探索阶段,基础设施公募REITs试点的展开可视为一个重要的突破,必将对中国REITs的发展产生极为深远的影响。那么此次基础设施REITs有何特点?将会给中国经济发展带来哪些影响?对以后的基础设施建设特别是"新基建"又将产生怎样的影响?本期文章将从多个角度、多个层面分析和解答以上问题,以飨读者。     

功在当下 造福千秋——珠三角绿道网建设的调查报告

广东于2010年1月开始建设珠三角绿道网,效果初显,深受民众欢迎。许多省市也开始规划建设绿道网。通过实地考察、调查,试图回答什么是绿道、广东为什么要下大力气抓绿道网、是怎么做的、有什么成效经验和启示,以期给各地提供参考。     

Women leaders—challenges,successes, and other insights from the top

The reasons for the persistent lag of women as leaders are complex. Attrition is an issue for women for many reasons, including traditional gender roles that may affect how women are perceived and the choices they have available (or they make), a lack of role models, the undervaluing of women's traditional communication and leadership styles, and organizational culture. Within medicine (clinical environments) and academic medicine (medical school and clinical environments), it is clear that the lack of women in leadership positions is more than a pipeline or a labyrinth problem. We undertook this case study to better understand the current challenges experienced by women aspiring to leadership positions in medicine and academic medicine. What types of challenges do women face as they move up in an academic or medical environment? And which challenges impact more than others in attaining leadership roles in these organizations: race and ethnicity, differences in leadership style and skills, mentorship and network, life experiences and family responsibilities, organizational culture, or gender? Our study addresses a gap in the literature by examining the leadership experiences of eight successful women in the fields of medicine and academic medicine. The emerging insights from these leaders may be useful for women from diverse backgrounds aspiring to be senior leaders in the future.     

社会价值、经济价值与社会企业创业策略的选择 ——基于制度逻辑理论的案例研究

社会企业在创业过程中如何选择市场逻辑与公益逻辑,以平衡社会价值和经济价值之间的冲突,促进企业的可持续发展?其作用机理是怎样的?影响不同逻辑选择背后的因素是什么?基于制度逻辑视角,以三家典型社会企业为研究对象,对上述问题进行了研究,发现:①相对于单一的公益逻辑、单一的市场逻辑,混合逻辑是社会企业最佳的创业策略,可以很好地...     

Inter-organizational geographical proximity and local start-ups' knowledge acquisition: a contingency approach

Entrepreneurship studies offer conflicting answers to a key research question: What impact does geographic proximity have on the process of knowledge acquisition by start-ups? This study proposes a new, dynamic framework of three interrelated factors that may moderate this impact; it anticipates that the importance of local and distant knowledge networks depends on the life cycle stages reached by both start-ups and industrial clusters, as well as on the dyadic relationships between local start-ups and their business partners. Some additional variables help strengthen the conceptual model and the key research propositions. This study thus offers a new perspective on entrepreneurship research, namely the configuration of start-ups in both spatial and social contexts. Such a view offers two substantial benefits: a greater understanding of the role played by geographical proximity in knowledge acquisition and an impetus for further empirical research in this field. This article concludes with various implications of the proposed model for both theoretical and managerial purposes.     

What Governance Roles do Municipalities use in Dutch Local Social Support Networks?

Abstract

Until now, there is no consensus about variations in governance roles. This consensus is necessary to enable researchers to examine how network are governed well. In this article, the governance roles are considered to be clusters of consistent choices on a top-down versus bottom-up continuum, regarding nine governance activities. Our results reveal that three governance roles can be discerned: top-down, intermediate and bottom-up governance roles. Furthermore, these roles are applied by municipalities with specific (network) characteristics. Our results open the black box of network governance and might facilitate municipalities to make choices regarding their role in the new network era.     

Political culture and foreign direct investment: The case of Italy

Does the political culture of an area have any impact on the foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions of multinational corporations (MNCs)? This question is difficult to address empirically, as locations differ in many dimensions. We therefore address this question by examining MNC investment location decisions with regard to different regions within a single country. The country we examine is Italy, which exhibits one of the highest levels of variation with regard to the political culture of its geographical regions. We find that political culture as represented by the pattern of support for political parties at different points on the political spectrum has a significant impact on the MNC investment location decision. Thus, in choosing between locations on a short list, where economic and financial location factors are roughly similar, political culture can have a determining influence. In the case of Italy, a Center-right orientation is conducive to MNC FDI, while a Center-left orientation is not. A Far-left orientation is found to have a very negative effect on FDI.     

Opening entrepreneurial ecosystem’s black box: the power of networks in African low-income countries

What makes one type of entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) more conducive to entrepreneurial dynamics than another? EE research is a hot topic, and considerable progress has been made as regards its elements, network, and actors’ components. However, some scholars regret the absence of an empirical analysis of EE as a whole to understand how EE configuration operates. To introduce this perspective, we propose an unexplored inter-organizational ties analysis among all EE actors, at a country-level scale. Based on the network theory perspective, we conduct an exploratory research in five low-income African countries, using innovative research methods (the quantitative graph theory, web scraping, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis) to understand the organizational patterns in these EEs, and their impact on entrepreneurial outcomes. At the core of this perspective lie inter-organizational ties measures of closeness, cohesiveness, and inter-connectedness, which are key causal conditions for high entrepreneurial dynamics levels and rates in low-income countries. This research underlines the importance of EE network attributes to facilitate the easy distribution of entrepreneurial nurturing components to entrepreneurs. It also highlights the importance of ease of information and knowledge flow, as well as a strong collaborative and coopetitive environment to make an EE more conducive to entrepreneurial dynamics.

     

Managing change strategically: the technical, political, and cultural keys.

Managing strategic change is increasingly a way of life for organizations faced with the turbulent economic, political, and cultural forces of the 1980s. To manage such change, organizations and their managers will have to confront basic questions regarding the organization's technical, political, and cultural foundations. The technical questions include: What business(es) should we be in? How should we be organized to accomplish our strategy? What kinds of people do we need, and how will they be acquired, developed, and rewarded? The political questions include: Who gets to influence the mission and strategy of the organization? How is power allocated both vertically and horizontally across the organization? Who gets promoted to what key positions? The cultural questions include: What values and beliefs are necessary to support the organization's strategy? What subcultures are desirable, and should there be an overarching corporate culture? How should the human resources system shape and mold the culture?     

Coverage and effectiveness of family-responsive workplace policies

In this article, we review what is and what is not known about “family-responsive” employment practices. What is claimed about the benefits of these practices? What evidence is available to evaluate the effectiveness of new employment practices in fostering increased employee productivity or lowered business costs? What do we still need to know, and what is the best way to obtain good evaluative information? This essay is divided into three parts: The first covers the market-based model for accommodating employee family responsibilities and available information on unmet employee needs, the second covers the literature on the types of new employment practices and their effectiveness in fostering organizational productivity, and the third provides a framework for future evaluation research that might better provide us with the information that we need to effectively fashion family-responsive workplaces that best meet the needs of employees and employers.     

疫情之下中小企业路在何方

2020年伊始,我们就遇到了一只黑天鹅,而且是一只带着眼泪的黑天鹅——新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情。这次疫情影响颇著,对我国经济发展造成了较大的短期冲击。那么此次疫情对我国经济的冲击到底有多大?对中小企业影响几何?处境艰难的中小企业如何迈过这个坎?政策方面有哪些选项可供中小企业选择?本期文章从多个角度阐释疫情对中小企业的影响、帮助中小企业的政策建议等,以飨读者。     

The combined impact of managerial and relational capabilities on innovation in firms

In this paper, a survey of more than 1600 firms in the five largest city regions of Norway is described in order to examine how a firm's innovative capacity is affected by three types of factors: factors related to the manager, the structure of the firm and the broader geographical location. By combining perspectives from the fields of management and economic geography in a logistic regression analysis, we find that the two key drivers of firm-level innovation in Norway are the presence of open-minded managers and evidence of collaboration with international partners. Moreover, these two factors are mutually reinforcing, as firms with open-minded managers also tend to engage more with international partners and vice versa.     

Case studies of computer integrated manufacturing systems: A view of uncertainty and innovation processes

The adoption and implementation of new manufacturing processes are conceptualized in terms of coping with uncertainty. Manufacturing management opts for new equipment in order to reduce certain long run, nagging uncertainties, but at the expense of introducing considerable short run uncertainty associated with the innovation. Various coping strategies must be employed to deal with the situation. Our ideas are explored and developed by comparing how four firms in different countries adopted and implemented computer integrated manufacturing systems (CIM). Qualitative interviews with managers at different hierarchical levels and in different functions brought answers to the following questions: 1) What were the reasons for adopting a CIM? 2) What strategies were employed in order to facilitate the introduction of CIM's into the Firm? 3) What were the significant implementation problems that were encountered? In spite of cultural and other differences among the firms, coping with uncertainty explains significant aspects of their innovation processes.     

等待中国的德鲁克

我猜想——也纯粹只是一个猜测，中国确实已经在管理方面为世界做出了贡献，而这就是有关如何组织与引领“更快节奏的运营”     

Leaders' Networking Behaviours in a Time of Crisis: A Qualitative Study on the Frontline against COVID-19

What do leaders do when they interact with followers and stakeholders in a time of crisis? What networking behaviours do leaders manifest in such a context of emergency? We answer these questions through qualitative research and cluster analysis conducted on a sample of leaders involved in community management in the most affected region in northern Italy during the three key phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings span a period of 18-months and show that leaders display a behavioural repertoire that includes six networking actions. Grouped together, these actions identify three clusters of leaders: Churners, who engage mainly in network generation and network termination; Divergent leaders, who manifest high levels of network conflict and re-construal; and Sense-makers, who are high in network deepening and teleology. Our research contributes to unveil the idiographic micro-foundations of networking behaviour during organizational jolts.     

区域物流信息网络构建

区域物流信息网络是区域物流发展中的重要平台,构建一个高效的区域物流信息网络是物流发展中的关键。文章从三个方面对这个问题进行了阐述,首先阐述了构建区域物流网络的目标和原则,其次对区域物流网络的总体架构进行了分析,最后分析了构建区域物流网络的关键技术。     

儒家文化会影响企业审计行为吗？

儒家文化作为中国非正式制度的典型代表在规范社会成员行为方面具有一定影响力。以2010—2017年A股上市公司为样本,通过logit模型分析儒家文化对审计行为的影响,研究结果表明：在审计准备期,儒家文化与选聘的事务所规模、事务所地缘关系正相关,与事务所更迭负相关,即企业更愿意选择规模较大和具有较强地缘关系的本地事务所,并且不会轻易变更与事务所的合作关系;在审计实施和终结期,儒家文化与审计延迟负相关,与审计费用正相关,并且随着儒家文化影响程度加深,非标准类审计意见的出具概率也会上升。进一步检验高管儒家文化背景和外来文化冲击影响下儒家文化对审计行为的现实效应,结果发现儒家文化仍对企业审计行为产生显著作用。     

Markets with heterogeneous beliefs: A necessary and sufficient condition for a trader to vanish

What does it take to survive in the market? Previous literature has proposed sufficient conditions for a trader to vanish, which depend on pairwise comparisons of traders’ discounted beliefs. We propose a novel condition that focuses on the ratio of traders’ discounted beliefs and (approximate) equilibrium prices. Unlike existing conditions, ours is both necessary and sufficient for a trader to vanish and delivers the exact rate at which vanishing traders lose their consumption shares. As an application, we analyze the performance of two intuitive behavioral strategies: the “Follow the Leader Strategy” that prescribes mimicking the beliefs of the most successful trader, and the “Follow the Market Strategy” that prescribes to use beliefs which coincide with the state price density. Further, we show that the relative performance of vanishing traders cannot be studied in isolation. Our analysis highlights an intuitive point obscured by the existing conditions: trading in financial markets is qualitatively different from bilateral trading.