Complaint management expectations: An online laddering analysis of small versus large firms

This study explores complaint management expectations in business relationships, particularly the qualities and behaviours that affect buying companies as part of the complaint handling encounter with a supplier. An exploratory empirical study uses a hard laddering approach which also allows us to compare the expectations of large and small companies to understand size-effects. The research indicates that complaining companies perceive disruptions of their supplier relationships in the context of the business network within which they are embedded, especially vis-à-vis the benefits associated with long-term supplier ties. However, these network concerns are more pronounced for large companies. Issues of effective complaint management in business-to-business settings therefore need to be addressed not just as isolated managerial activities with limited benefits for the parties involved, but should be seen as being part of a wider activity set of strategic networking activities with an impact on whole business systems. Thus, the findings enrich the existing limited stock of knowledge on the context of complaint management in business relationships and networks.     

How Hybrids Manage Growth and Social–Business Tensions in Global Supply Chains: The Case of Impact Sourcing

This study contributes to the growing interest in how hybrid organizations manage paradoxical social–business tensions. Our empirical case is “impact sourcing”—hybrids in global supply chains that hire staff from disadvantaged communities to provide services to business clients. We identify two major growth orientations—“community-focused” and “client-focused” growth—their inherent tensions and ways that hybrids manage them. The former favors slow growth and manages tensions through highly integrated client and community relations; the latter promotes faster growth and manages client and community relations separately. Both growth orientations address social–business tensions in particular ways, but also create latent constraints that manifest when entrepreneurial aspirations conflict with the current growth path. In presenting and discussing our findings, we introduce preempting management practices of tensions, and the importance of geographic embeddedness and distance to the paradox literature.     

How to Attract an Audience at a Conference: Paper,Person or Place?

We analyze the drivers of audience size and the number of questions asked in parallel sessions at the annual conference of the German Economics Association. We find that the location of the presentation is at least as important for the number of academics attending a talk as the combined effect of the person presenting and the paper presented. Being a presenter in a late morning session on the second day of a conference, close to the place where coffee is served, significantly increases the size of the audience. When it comes to asking questions, location becomes less important, but smaller rooms lead to more questions being asked. Younger researchers and very senior researchers attract more questions and comments. There are also interesting gender effects. Women attend research sessions more diligently than men, but seem to ask fewer questions than men. Men are less likely to attend presentations on health, education, welfare and development economics than women. Our findings suggest that strategic scheduling of sessions could ensure better participation at conferences. Moreover, different behaviors of men and women at conferences might also contribute to the lack of women in senior scientist positions.     

(Finding) Pathways out of homelessness: An engaged,trans-disciplinary collaborative in the City of Tshwane

ABSTRACT

Street homelessness in the City of Tshwane was brought to public attention in the winter of 2014. This led to a composite research project involving different constituencies, including homeless people, to reflect on ways of addressing street homelessness in the city. This article serves as a conceptual and epistemological introduction to this collaborative research project entitled Pathways Out of Homelessness. The article argues for the use of a broad working definition of street homelessness that allows for complexities of homelessness to emerge, in order to discern diverse and appropriate alternatives.     

Understanding types of organizational networking behaviors in the UK manufacturing sector

This research is aimed at understanding firms' different types of ‘networking behaviors’, i.e., how and why firms affect their strategic network position by activities/routines/practices aimed not just at their business partners, but beyond such direct relationships. Thus, we adopt a network perspective to examine how firms exploit their webs of direct and indirect business relationships in order to assess and embrace the potential opportunities and constraints in the network. Based on the industrial network approach (INA), this exploratory research specifically focuses on networking behaviors in the UK manufacturing sector. Thirty-one semi-structured interviews with executive managers from fifteen firms were conducted. We identify four types of organizational networking behaviors by the way in which firms utilize their web of relationships to achieve certain goals. By using the concept of networking behaviors based on the INA as well as the strong-and-weak-tie argument in economic sociology, purposeful networking behaviors can be categorized into the following: information acquisition, opportunity enabling, strong-tie resource mobilization and weak-tie resource mobilization. These four ‘types’ of organizational networking behaviors provide a deeper understanding of how firms operating in business-to-business exchanges relate to and exploit their webs of direct and indirect relationships, taking into consideration the embeddedness and interconnectedness of the network context.     

Innovativer Energiespeicher Bundeswasserstraßen

The present analysis provides a contribution to the question of how a system integration of large-scale energy storages can be implemented. It is to be investigated if and how federal waterways can be used for this purpose. Initially, a baseline study was carried out in which the federal waterways are systematically assessed with regard to their suitability for/as energy storage systems. Apart from the technical and the hydro mechanical implementation of the storage process, the advantages and disadvantages of the federal waterways in comparison to conventional pump storage stations play a significant role. A presentation and classification of the potentially available canal sections provides an overview of the suitable storage systems of the federal waterways. A specifically designed storage simulation on the basis of a sample application is used, in order to determine the capacity of the canal system for energy storage. Consequently, the simulation showed the theoretical capability of the federal waterways as energy storage systems, through their ability to balance the load and temporal fluctuations of the energy input. The simulation program Matlab was used on the basis of the synthetic load and delivery profiles. Finally, based on the example of the ships lock in Uelzen and the Scharnebeck boats lift, a simulation of the possible re-equipping options will be described, technically abstracted, economically analysed and combined with renewable energy facilities within a virtual power plant. The detailed formulation of further approaches and the calculation of possible application scenarios play a central role within this analysis.     

Life satisfaction and self-employment: a matching approach

Despite lower incomes, the self-employed consistently report higher satisfaction with their jobs. But are self-employed individuals also happier, more satisfied with their lives as a whole? High job satisfaction might cause them to neglect other important domains of life, such that the fulfilling job crowds out other pleasures, leaving the individual on the whole not happier than others. Moreover, self-employment is often chosen to escape unemployment, not for the associated autonomy that seems to account for the high job satisfaction. We apply matching estimators that allow us to better take into account the above-mentioned considerations and construct an appropriate control group (in terms of balanced covariates). Using the BHPS dataset that comprises a large nationally representative sample of the British populace, we find that individuals who move from regular employment into self-employment experience an increase in life satisfaction (up to 2 years later), while individuals moving from unemployment to self-employment are not more satisfied than their counterparts moving from unemployment to regular employment. We argue that these groups correspond to “opportunity” and “necessity” entrepreneurship, respectively. These findings are robust with regard to different measures of subjective well-being as well as choice of matching variables, and also robustness exercises involving “simulated confounders”.