Asking for Individual or Household Willingness to Pay for Environmental Goods?

The aggregate welfare measure for a change in the provision of a public good derived from a contingent valuation (CV) survey will be higher if the same elicited mean willingness to pay (WTP) is added up over individuals rather than households. A trivial fact, however, once respondents are part of multi-person households, it becomes almost impossible to elicit an “uncontaminated” WTP measure that with some degree of confidence can be aggregated over one or the other response unit. The literature is mostly silent about which response unit to use in WTP questions, and in some CV studies it is even unclear which type has actually been applied. We test for differences between individual and household WTP in a novel, web-administered, split-sample CV survey asking WTP for preserving biodiversity in old-growth forests in Norway. Two samples are asked both types of questions, but in reverse order, followed by a question with an item battery trying to reveal why WTP may differ. We find in a test between samples that the WTP respondents state on behalf of their households is not significantly different from their individual WTP. However, within the same sample, household WTP is significantly higher than individual WTP; in particular if respondents are asked to state individual before household WTP. Our results suggest that using individual WTP as the response unit may overestimate aggregate WTP. Thus, the choice of response format needs to be explicitly and carefully addressed in CV questionnaire design and further research in order to avoid the risk of unprofitable projects passing the benefit-cost test.

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Social capital dynamics and foreign market entry

This paper explores the dynamics of social capital in 121 new foreign market entries (FMEs) of 24 Swedish and New Zealand small- to medium-sized enterprises in the early and later phases of their internationalization. Its main contribution is the systematic assessment of the roles and forms of social capital over time and across countries, thus providing greater insight into the social capital concept. We separate social capital into efficacy and serendipity roles (economic dimension) and direct and indirect relationships (structural dimension). Efficacious and direct social capital is associated with early FMEs, while serendipitous and indirect social capital is more prevalent with later FMEs, indicating that social capital changes with (and is dependent on) FME. Moreover, while geographical proximity does not appear to affect the economic dimension of social capital, it is important for the structural dimension.     

The Struggle is Real: Insights from a Supply Chain Blockchain Case

Despite the anticipated benefits and the numerous announcements of pilot cases, we have seen very few successful implementations of blockchain technology (BCT) solutions in supply chains. Little is empirically known about the obstacles to blockchain adoption, particularly in a supply chain's interorganizational setting. In supply chains, blockchains' benefits, for example, BCT‐based tracking and tracing, are dependent on a critical mass of supply chain actors adopting the technology. While previous research has mainly been conceptual and has lacked both theory and empirical data, we propose a theory‐based model for interorganizational adoption of BCT. We use the proposed model to analyze a unique in‐depth revelatory case study. Our case study confirms previous conceptual work and reveals a paradox as well as several tensions between drivers for and against (positive and negative determining factors, respectively) of BCT adoption that must be managed in an interorganizational setting. In this vertical context, the adoption and integration decision of one supply chain actor recursively affects the adoption and integration decisions of the other supply chain actors. This paper contributes midrange theory on BCT in supply chain management (SCM), future research directions, and managerial insights on BCT adoption in supply chains.     

Nonlinear modelling of the Finnish Banking and Finance branch index

It is well documented that daily returns of several financial assets cannot be modelled by pure linear processes. It seems to be generally accepted that many economic variables follow nonlinear processes. The sources of nonlinearity can be divided in two classes: those where nonlinearities stem from the conditional variance and those where non-linearities enter through the conditional mean. Efforts in modelling the former have resulted in development of the ARCH-family models. There is, however, less evidence on nonlinearity in the mean of financial time series. One family of models that is applied in finance is the STAR. In this paper some nonlinear modelling techniques are applied to a Finnish financial time series, the daily Banking and Finance branch index on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. The techniques include a variance-nonlinear model from the ARCH family, a mean-nonlinear model, namely Smooth Transition Autoregression (STAR)-model and a neural network. Linearity is tested for by standard autocorrelation tests, LM-tests against the specific nonlinear models and the BDS-test. The study provides supplements to a range of earlier research. It demonstrates that the stock series is both linearly and nonlinearly dependent. Adapting an ARCH(3) eliminates the dependencies most satisfactorily. The ARCH-models and STAR-models were estimated using the SHAZAM-package.     

Goals,Conflict, Politics,and Performance of Cross-Functional Sourcing Teams—Results from a Social Team Experiment

Strategic sourcing is carried out in cross-functional teams to account for the complexity and multidimensionality of modern procurement decisions. However, such teams not only enable the integration of distinct interdependent skill sets and viewpoints, they are also characterized by functional goal misalignment. We focus on the resulting behavioral challenges, namely conflict and politics, and their effects on team satisfaction and rationality, which ultimately leads to observed outcomes. We test our hypotheses in a structural equation model based on data gathered from 468 participants in a social team experiment. We find a mediated effect of goal misalignment on political behavior via two types of team conflict. Political behavior, in turn, obstructs rational team sourcing decisions and reduces team members’ satisfaction with the process. Our study indicates that behavioral challenges in the framework of Organizational Buying Behavior not only co-occur but affect each other via mediation. Hence, managers need to closely monitor the escalation chains’ origin, task conflict, which constitutes a necessary condition for further emotional dissent and political biasing. We contribute to the understanding of the challenges in cross-functional sourcing teams, thereby providing advice to executives in their pursuit to rationalize and improve sourcing team decisions and their outcomes.     

Experiences of the development and use of scenarios for evaluating Swedish environmental quality objectives

This paper presents and evaluates a method for encouraging long-term thinking and for considering a variety of scenarios in environmental policy processes. The Swedish environmental policy is based on 16 environmental quality objectives (EQOs) that national authorities are obliged to observe. These objectives are reviewed annually and evaluated in depth every four years. Here we describe and explore a futures study project for introducing more long-term thinking into work on the EQOs, which we tested in the in-depth evaluation in 2008. We found it difficult to design a collective scenario for a case with a wide variety of objectives and individuals with different backgrounds. However, this difficulty makes it even more important to incorporate futures studies into the work of the relevant authorities. Scenario work is often subcontracted, leading to a constant lack of futures studies expertise and thinking within authorities. Despite the difficulties, we found that experts within the authorities did begin to recognise the opportunities provided by futures studies. The project revealed an interest and need for futures studies within the authorities in charge of Swedish environmental quality objectives and our findings show that the authorities need to build up their own skills in futures studies.