Recurrent Collusion: Cartel Episodes and Overcharges in the South African Cement Market

Review of Industrial Organization - Cartel cases may involve recurrent collusion, with cartel periods interspersed by periods of greater competition. An empirical model of recurrent collusion must...     

Giving young people a well-rounded education: a study of the educational goals parents attach to the leisure activities of their children

Policymakers strongly stimulate young people’s participation in organised leisure activities because it is believed to provide young people with important ‘work’ skills and attitudes. Special attention is paid to the underrepresented working-class youth. To stimulate (especially working-class) parents to play an active ‘guiding’ role, policymakers often assume that they have to be made aware of the educational benefits of engagement in leisure activities. The empirical basis of this assumption is, however, thin. Therefore, this study examined the educational goals middle- and working-class parents attach to their adolescents’ leisure activities on the basis of 32 interviews conducted in a small city in Belgium. Although there were subtle socio-economic differences in some goals parents pursued through their children’s leisure activities (i.e. teaching skills and societal values and norms, belonging to a peer group, independent thinking and relaxation), these were not of a magnitude that they could contribute to our understanding of socio-economic differences in parents’ role and in turn, in young people’s leisure use. We argue that further research needs to focus on socio-economic differences in available resources from which parents construct particular strategies to shape their young people’s leisure spending.     

Are conservative approaches to new product selling a blessing in disguise?

A new product’s success in the marketplace largely depends on salesforce actions. Many B2B salespeople display conservatism when confronted with new products in their portfolio, such that they maximize their efforts to sell existing products before engaging in efforts to sell the new product. So far, it is unclear whether this conservative selling behavior (CSB) is harmful to new product selling performance, and how this behavior can be managed. Building on perceived risk processing theory, and employing multi-level structural equation modeling on a multi-source dataset, the authors empirically substantiate that salespeople’s CSB makes their effort to sell new products more effective. Remarkably, such effort is then valued less by sales managers. The authors also find that CSB is a result of a risk assessment and evaluation process, in which internal marketing efforts (i.e., providing salespeople with information on the new product) determine the weight of perceived performance risk (i.e., new product radicalness), social risk (i.e., managerial new product orientation), and financial risk (i.e., long-term rewards). Managers looking to control the levels of CSB in their salesforce should carefully align their information support activities with the perceived risk dimensions of the new product selling situation.     

“I have to go the extra mile”. How fat female employees manage their stigmatized identity at work

This study explores how fat female employees engage in identity work to manage stigmatizing expectations grounded in healthism and obesity discourse that construct fat people as unhealthy, stupid, unprofessional, and lazy. We interviewed 22 women who self-identified as fat, full-figured or obese. Our analysis reveals how our participants engaged in identity work strategies in order to project a professional appearance and highlight their work performances. Many strategies reproduced dominant notions about fatness such as ‘smartening up’, ‘distracting’, ‘hiding’, ‘concealing’, ‘humour’, ‘compensating’, ‘explaining’ and ‘defensive Othering’. Yet at times some participants also used strategies that challenged dominant discourses about size, such as ‘flaunting’, ‘irony’ and ‘self-acceptance’. The identity work strategies our participants engaged in were not just narrative; many involved what they did with their bodies. We therefore argue the need for further theorizing embodied identity work, specifically with regards to how size matters in the context of employment.     

Network position and firm performance – the mediating role of innovation

Analysing a unique, domain-similar database including all horticulturalists in a major flower-producing country, this paper shows that a firm’s central position in a network significantly improves its financial performance. The effect of strategic positioning in a network is in large part mediated through its enhanced innovativeness. Strategically positioning in a network of firms contributes more to firm performance, both directly as well as indirectly, than other strategic options a firm has available, such as seeking scale, seeking to diversify, pursuing cost advantages, or locating in a cluster.     

Beyond the water cooler: using socialization to understand use and impact of networking services on collaboration in a business incubator

Scholars and policymakers claim that Business Incubators (BIs) add value by facilitating internal cooperation between tenant firms. Taking a tenant perspective, this research investigates the impact of a tenant's length of BI tenure on the use of formal internal networking services the BI management provides, and then on the tenant's level of intra-BI cooperation. The premise is that BI tenants use and benefit more from formal internal networking services when their socialization through participation in BI informal networking activities is low. When socialization is high they will enjoy a stronger direct effect of tenant tenure on cooperation with other tenants. Findings from data collected from a Dutch BI confirm the premise of our moderated-mediation model. Results also show that both mechanisms complement each other and that each contributes significantly to tenants' sales growth. It lends support to the effectiveness of BI formal internal networking services, but also stresses the importance of socialization through informal networking activities.     

Narratives from a wetland: Sustainable management in Lukanga,Zambia

Wetlands are a key livelihood resource in southern Africa. Historically they have been managed using local knowledge systems, but these systems have in many instances been undermined by colonial and postcolonial legal requirements. The IUCN's Ramsar initiative, supported by organisations such as BirdLife International and the WWF, seeks to protect wetland resources. This qualitative study examined the political ecology of the Kapukupuku and Waya areas of the Lukanga wetlands in Zambia, designated a Ramsar site. This designation has given rise to competing ‘narratives’ by politicians and local community leaders over how Lukanga should be managed and used, and the resulting conflict is threatening its sustainability. The paper warns that the various parties' arguments are value-laden and that power asymmetry threatens to exclude poor local communities. Policy must take power interests into account to ensure that developments in the name of the poor really do benefit the poor.     

Should SMEs get out of the building? Examining the role of customer co-creation on radical organizational creativity*

Facing the liability of smallness, SMEs face substantial challenges in internally developing solutions to spur the generation of new ideas that challenge existing practices. In this study, we point to co-creation with customers as an external solution to boost radical organizational creativity. Relying on a sample of SMEs in the Northern Netherlands, we examine the impact of co-creation on radical organizational creativity. Following insights from organizational learning theory, we also test the moderating effect of the nature of the organizational structure and the level of organizational creativity support. We find that customer co-creation has a positive impact on SME’s radical creativity. Surprisingly, we find that organizational creativity support negatively moderates this relationship. Together these findings enrich our theoretical understanding of the drivers of radical organizational creativity. Moreover, they provide SME managers specific guidelines on how to generate radically new ideas.