Inter‐Organizational Learning in Supply Chains: A Focus on Logistics Service Providers and Their Customers

The learning process between supply chain entities is explored from the perspective of senior third‐party executives. Through grounded theory, a theoretical framework emerged that extends our understanding of learning within a supply chain by identifying the major constructs and learning stages comprising the basic social process of inter‐organizational learning. This framework provides significant insights into the complex process employed in a supply chain to share, disseminate, and store information; co‐create knowledge; and to derive a competitive advantage.     

A Reform in Search of a Purpose: French Insolvency Law Changes (Again!)

This article charts the additions made by the French legislator to the insolvency framework, reformed relatively recently in 2005 and 2008, consisting in a fresh set of amendments in 2014 aimed at encouraging more take up of upstream rescue proceedings as well as improving the existing procedures.     

The Power of Social Network Construction and Analysis for Knowledge Discovery in the Medical Referral Process

The social network model is powerful enough to provide for the analysis and study of a variety of application domains from daily life, including health care and health informatics. After the widespread appearance of automated tools capable of deriving and analyzing social networks, social network analysis (SNA) and mining in the health care domain has recently received considerable attention for its key role in understanding how various bodies within the health care system form communities and how they are socially connected with each other. This understanding helps enhance the organizational structures and process flows, among others. In this article, we show how SNA techniques can solve issues in the medical referral system in the Canadian health care system and the like, by analyzing the social network of general practitioners (GPs) and specialists (SPs). One of the main targets is to optimize the communication between GPs and SPs with hopes of decreasing the waiting time of patients to be seen by SPs. Various SNA and mining techniques are described and analyzed, backed by reporting some experimental results.     

The trade balance effects of infrastructure services regulation

This paper addresses the relationship between the design of incentives to firms under regulation, mainly the rule for adjusting tariffs, and trade balance performance of the country. We also explore whether this relationship is relevant or not for a typical developing economy like Argentina. We find it is. To study these issues we perform comparative static numerical exercises using a CGE model where service obligation and no entry in regulated industries are assumed. We show that the capital account openness and the rate of exchange regime could be key elements to match with the regulatory regime. The potential inconsistency between the international trade regime and the regulatory regime should not be rejected a priori.     

Market orientation practices among small and medium hotels (SMHS) in tourist destination island of Langkawi

The purpose of the study is to investigate the underlying components of market orientation practices and their effect on the Small and Medium Hotels (SMHs) performances on tourist destination island of Langkawi. Fifty SMHs were randomly selected from a sampling frame of a list of SMHs registered with Malaysian Tourism Board. For data collection purposes, structured questionnaires were personally delivered and collected. Rotated component matrix factor analysis of the data extracted four underlying factors that explain seventy nine point four six percent of the total variances and alpha reliability coefficient of ninety eight percent. Those components were named as customer orientation, interfunctional orientation, service orientation, and competitor orientation. One sample Kolmogorov‐Smirnov Test indicates that SMHs in Langkawi practices market orientation in their operations and businesses. However, the finding of the study showed that their performances in 1998 was lower than 1997. We believe that this outcome is due to the effect of national and regional economic downturn in 1998.     

Disclaiming onerous property in insolvency: A comparative study

Insolvency practitioners in charge of certain insolvency procedures have a facility open to them to disclaim property deemed to be onerous and whose retention as part of the debtor's estate may affect the mass of creditors. This article takes a comparative survey of a number of jurisdictions in the common‐law and civil‐law worlds. Its purpose is to assess whether work carried out at international level seeking to benchmark insolvency procedures generally should be revised to take into account enviornmental concerns in relation to such disclaimed property. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Large Looms the Ghost of the Past? State Dependence versus Heterogeneity in Coordination Games

In games with multiple, Pareto‐rankable equilibria and repeated play, does a history of playing an inefficient equilibrium make it harder for players to reach the efficient equilibrium? In other words, can people “get stuck” in bad equilibria? Previous studies have found support for this, but they have relied on naturally occurring variation in precedent. I implement randomized control to establish that precedent effects are important, but that naturally occurring variation exaggerates the importance of precedent. I present evidence that some of the endogeneity of naturally occurring precedents is due to variation in risk attitudes. This is because in the coordination games used, the inefficient equilibrium is associated with a safe strategy. Understanding the causal effect of precedent is important since many development problems are viewed as coordination games. Moreover, an appreciation of the way in which potential heterogeneity may interact with the policy is essential when trying to lift groups out of bad precedents.     

Political instability and inflation in Pakistan

This study investigates the effects of political instability on inflation in Pakistan. Applying the Generalized Method of Moments technique and using data from 1951 to 2007, we examine this link through two different models. The results of the ‘monetary’ model suggest that the effects of monetary determinants are rather marginal and that they depend upon the political environment of Pakistan. The ‘nonmonetary’ model's findings explicitly establish a positive association between political instability and inflation. This is further confirmed through analysis based on interactive dummies that reveal political instability significantly leading to high (above average) inflation.     

UK Cross‐Border Cooperation: Extending Rescue to Jersey Debtors on a ‘Passporting’ Basis

This article looks at the scope of using, via the Letter of Request method, the insolvency laws of another jurisdiction in circumstances where the laws of the requesting jurisdiction do not adequately cater for the type of proceeding required. Copyright © 2013 INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Few Opportunities, Much Desperation: The Dichotomy of Non-Agricultural Activities and Inequality in Western Kenya

Using data from Western Kenya, we confirm the existence of a dichotomous non-agricultural sector. The poverty and inequality implications of the differently motivated diversification strategies only partly correspond to expected patterns. While high-return activities are indeed confined to richer households, low-return activities constitute an important income source for households across the entire income distribution. Finally, we examine the wider implications of our findings for rural livelihoods. We find that only engagement in high-return non-agricultural activities is significantly associated with increased agricultural productivity. It seems that such high-return activities play a key role in triggering cumulative effects of relative livelihood success.