Business-to-business selling in the post-COVID-19 era: Developing an adaptive sales force

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how salespeople interact with customers and with business-to-business (B2B) organizations. Organizations must confront the shifts in how their salespeople operate. Recent research recommends firms develop an adaptive sales force to address disruptions like a pandemic and be prepared to meet such challenges in the future. Based on interviews with marketing and sales executives, we explore how firms have responded to these interconnected changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and offer insight into best practices deployed across industries.     

What has New Zealand gained from The FTA with China?: Two counterfactual analyses†

We investigate the effects of the 2008 New Zealand (NZ)–China free trade agreement (FTA) on exports from NZ to China, and real GDP per capita in NZ using the synthetic control method to estimate the counterfactuals. NZ exports to China were more than 200% higher in 2014 than what they would have had the FTA never been signed. NZ's food and live animals exports to China were more than 180% higher in 2014 than the counterfactual. Our counterfactuals indicate a small but negative effect of the FTA on NZ's real GDP per capita between 2009 and 2012.     

Digital marketing communication in global marketplaces: A review of extant research,future directions,and potential approaches

Digital marketing communication, that is, communication through digital or electronic media among businesses and consumers, is growing rapidly, especially during the COVID-19 era. We propose a framework for analyzing digital marketing communication along four major dyads, business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B). We review and summarize, for researchers and practitioners, the literature during 2000–2021 in these dyads along four major components: goals; channels, media, and platforms; content; and responses. We find that extant research in digital marketing communication pertains mostly to a specific, national level rather than a global level, despite the porousness of national boundaries for digital marketing. We derive important insights, identify key research gaps and questions in each of the dyads along these dimensions. We suggest approaches to address these research questions under three major components: substantive issues, data, and methods. These approaches can offer the insights that managers need to better formulate digital marketing strategies in local and global contexts.     

Is the system reliability profitable for retailing and consumer service of a dynamical system under cross-price elasticity of demand?

Retailing strategy is one of the most crucial factors for industries. A proper retailing strategy can help to enhance consumer service and increase the industry's profit. An improved approach to retailing is suggested in this research to deliver superior customer service while maximizing profits in a dynamic system. The study analyzes a retailing strategy for a demand with cross-price elasticity upon the retail price. A product's cross-price elasticity and the system reliability are critical factors in retailing. Understanding the cross-price elasticity of demand between products helps retailers to make pricing decisions that maximize profits by maintaining demand. Imperfect products are produced due to an imperfect production system. The imperfect ones must be adjusted with some costs to make them perfect for better retailing. The system failure rate is crucial for retailing under cross-price elasticity of demand patterns. Production system reliability, cross-price elasticity of demand, and consumer service are all essential factors that can impact a company's success in the market. The production rate is considered time- and system failure rate-dependent. Contradictory to the literature, a dynamical system is proposed for improved retail management, which is solved using the Euler-Lagrange theory. Finally, one can achieve the expected maximum profit for this retail system with optimum selling prices for different products by reducing the system failure rate. Some numerical illustrations with graphical representations are provided to validate the current study. Numerical examples show that applying cross-price elasticity of demand for more than two identical products provides 35% more profit for the retail industry than a single type of product.     

Crony capitalism,the party-state,and the political boundaries of corruption

We build a model that puts together crony capitalism, the hierarchy of the Chinese communist party-state, and the decision-making process inside the Party Center. We show that inefficient economic institutions create local corruption that raises realized productivity, while generating rents that flow along the party-state hierarchy up to the provincial level, threatening the Center’s control in potential crises. Although both stronger crisis control and higher economic performance help the Center’s goal to stay in power, we show that given a general fat-tailed risk of crisis, the Center will maximize crisis control at the expense of the economy when choosing its tolerance of local corruption. Power structure and corruption within the Center and reciprocal accountability between central and provincial leaders are also analyzed. Our analysis suggests conditions under which China’s communist regime will or will not deal with the existential threat presented by corruption.     

基于SD模型的装配式建筑供应链脆弱性研究

装配式建筑供应链的运作存在很多不确定性。为提高供应链管理效率，促进建筑业的发展，运用供应链运作参考(SCOR)模型对装配式建筑供应链脆弱因子进行识别，将装配式供应链系统划分为6个子系统；通过系统动力学（SD）模型对供应链脆弱性进行仿真。结果表明，装配制造流程是脆弱性最大的子系统，整个供应链的脆弱性随着建筑项目的推进而增大。     

Direct intervention or indirect support? The effects of cooperative control measures on farmers’ implementation of quality and safety standards

In recent years, labor-intensive agricultural products from developing countries have exhibited inferior performance in international trade due to quality and safety incidents, among which pesticide residue is a major issue. Aiming to improve food quality and safety in the context of cooperatives, we introduced three categories of control measures: outcome control, process control and social control. Based on the Pre-Harvest Interval Standard (PHIS), we selected three indices, farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance to PHIS and relative distance to PHIS, to evaluate appropriateness of pesticides use, reduction of pesticide residue and safety improvements of agricultural products. By using random sampling survey data, we empirically analyzed the marginal effects of control measures and their combinations on food quality and safety standards. The empirical results show that implementing process control, namely, unified production standards or supply of unified agricultural inputs, can comprehensively improve farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance and relative distance to PHIS respectively by 34.9%, 3.2 days and 46.0% on average. While the effects of outcome control (safety inspection) and social control (bonus-penalty incentive or training) are restricted to other measures. Therefore, we suggest cooperatives should take farmers’ features, implementation conditions and the effects of control measures into consideration in order to make a sustainable management plan for improving food quality and safety and enhancing competitiveness in international markets.     

The impact of research collaboration on academic performance: An empirical analysis for some European countries

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of internal and external research collaborations on the scientific performance of academic institutions. The data are derived from the international SCOPUS database. We consider both quantity (the number of publications) and quality indicators (the field-weighted citation impact and the share of publications in the 10% most-cited articles) to evaluate universities' performance in some European countries (Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Russia). To this end, we develop a non-overlapping generations model to evidence the theoretical idea of research externalities between academic institutions. Moreover, we implement an empirical model to determine the extent to which the impact of internal and external collaborations on universities' performance is sensitive to the geographical dimension of the data.     

新中国成立70年农村基本经营制度的历史演进与发展取向——基于农村土地制度和农业经营制度的改革联动视角

研究目的:剖析农村土地制度和农业经营制度的关系,为完善农村基本经营制度提供参考。研究方法:比较分析法、文献研究法。研究结果:新中国成立70年来,农村基本经营制度先后历经新中国成立初期的"农民所有、家庭经营"、改革开放前期的"集体所有、集体经营"到改革开放后期的"集体所有、均田承包、家庭经营",再到现阶段的"集体所有、均田承包和多元经营"4个阶段。在这个过程当中,农村基本经营制度既遵循人口与土地关系、生存与发展关系以及政府与市场关系的大逻辑,又遵循着农村土地制度的"产权逻辑"、农业经营制度的"生产逻辑"等小逻辑。研究结论:为深化农村基本经营制度变革,需加强农村土地制度与农业经营制度联动改革的制度设计,发挥要素、组织和制度的作用,发展多种形式的适度规模经营,实现小农户与现代农业发展的有机衔接。     

粮食主产区耕地健康产能评价 ——以河南省温县为例

研究目的:探寻适合中国新时代耕地产能评价的新理论与方法,界定耕地健康产能内涵,构建评价指标体系,并应用河南省温县验证。研究方法:基于"需求—功能—维度—要素—指标"理论框架,构建耕地健康产能评价指标体系,运用综合算法、"1+X"累加模型法、图层叠加法定量评价耕地健康产能。研究结果:(1)温县耕地产能和耕地健康诊断结果地域分异特征明显,以青峰岭为界,北部耕地产能和健康状况较南部好;(2)耕地健康产能整体状况良好,乡镇间差异明显;(3)耕地健康产能结果更多取决于耕地健康诊断,主要受耕地生产环境和耕地系统弹性影响。研究结论:耕地健康产能评价指标体系和评价方法有应用性。