B‐TO‐B E‐COMMERCE: A CONTENT ANALYTICAL ASSESSMENT OF MOTOR CARRIER WEBSITES

An Internet presence is a critical early component in the process of building towards a fully operational and unified e‐commerce strategy. E‐commerce has significantly impacted logistics/supply chain strategies and the development and implementation of a website have become key issues for many firms within the transportation industry. This study provides an overview of website content within the motor carrier industry. Content analysis was used to assess the site design, informational content, and the interactive content of 152 motor carrier websites, and to compare the features offered on the Top 100 motor carrier firm websites with those offered on the sites of smaller carrier firms.     

Web information tracking using ontologies

Bringing knowledge management to practice one typically has to focus on concrete problems that exist in the daily work of the knowledge worker. We consider the task of tracking relevant information on the Web as important and time consuming, and thus as a concrete problem. In this paper we introduce an integrated approach for Web information tracking using ontologies. The overall approach has been implemented within a case study carried out at DaimlerChrysler AG. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of the WARN Act on firm value

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act of 1989 mandated that at least 60 days advance notice be given to employees. Critics argued that its passage would decrease managerial flexibility in closing plants, subsequently reducing firm values. This study addresses this issue by examining the stock market's reaction to announcements leading to the eventual enactment of the WARN legislation. We find evidence indicating negative effects of the legislation on stock returns of small firms.     

Shape optimal design criterion in linear models

Within the framework of classical linear regression model optimal design criteria of stochastic nature are considered. The particular attention is paid to the shape criterion. Also its limit behaviour is established which generalizes that of the distance stochastic optimality criterion. Examples of the limit maximin criterion are considered and optimal designs for the line fit model are found.     

Clever agents in adaptive learning

Saez-Marti and Weibull (J. Econom. Theory 86 (1999) 268) investigate the consequences of letting some agents play a myopic best reply to the myopic best reply in Young's (J. Econom. Theory 59 (1993) 145) bargaining model, which is how they introduce “cleverness” of players. I analyze such clever agents in general finite two-player games and show Young's (Individual Strategy and Social Structure, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1998) prediction to be robust: adaptive learning with clever agents does select the same minimal curb set as in the absence of clever agents, if their population share is less than one. However, the long-run strategy distribution in such a curb set may vary with the share of clever agents.     

Essentiality,Efficiency, and the Efficient Component-Pricing Rule

The determination of interconnection charges to essential facilities is an important problem in regulated telecommunications markets in the wake of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This paper defines mathematical conditions for the essentiality of upstream productive inputs and examines their implications for efficient interconnection pricing. The paper shows conditions under which the efficient component-pricing rule (ECPR) can be derived as a special case of a Ramsey pricing rule. The paper also shows how efficient pricing differs from the ECPR for a number of interesting cases.     

Work and Welfare in Economics:

Abstract . Today's conventional economics typically ignores the impact of alternative forms of work organization upon the welfare of the worker. In effect, its methodology is concerned with the welfare of the individual as a consumer, but not with the welfare of the individual as a worker. Hence, welfare conclusions of economics are subject to challenge on grounds of being incomplete. Whether the worker is alienated or achieves self-fulfillment, etc., stands in no necessary relationship to either the formal lines of enterprise ownership, political ideology or form of economic system. Questions of authority and power in work organizations and the workplace conditions affecting the worker on the job transcend them.     

How does perceived underemployment influence expatriate job-related outcomes? A moderated mediation study

Abstract

Although research has investigated the consequences of underemployment in domestic settings, research on the effects of underemployment among expatriates remains limited and has yielded inconsistent results. From a theoretical perspective, there is a need for a better understanding of the mechanisms through which underemployment affects various work-related outcomes and to account for potential contingencies. Drawing on the person-job fit literature and research on organizational identification, we theorise and empirically examine how and under what conditions underemployment influences expatriate performance. Using an original primary data-set of 103 Japanese expatriate managers in the UK, we find that underemployment affects expatriate work outcomes by increasing expatriates’ maladjustment and that this effect is moderated by the level to which expatriates identify with their organization.     

Dynamic R&D competition with memory

We consider a differential game of R&D competition and explore the impact of rivalry on the firms' investment behavior over time. Using closed-loop strategies and hence allowing for strategic interactions among rival firms we show that R&D spending by the individual competitor is increased due to competition in the race for priority. This leads us to argue that competitive encounters enhance R&D activities at the same time as increasing efficiency in the race for a technological breakthrough.     

Wealth inequality and collective action

We study the effect of inequality in the distribution of endowments of private inputs (e.g., land, wealth) that are complementary in production with collective inputs (e.g., contribution to public goods such as irrigation and extraction from common-property resources) on efficiency in a class of collective action problems. We focus on characterizing the joint surplus maximizing level of inequality, making due distinction between contributors and non-contributors, in a framework that allows us to consider a wide variety of collective action problems ranging from pure public goods to impure public goods to commons. We show that while efficiency increases with greater equality within the groups of contributors and non-contributors, so long the externalities (positive or negative) are significant, there is an optimal degree of inequality between these groups.