A POST-KENNEDY ROUND LOOK AT SOME PROBLEMS IN AGRICULTURAL TRADE

The Kennedy Round, concluded in 1967, ws the most far-reaching in the series of trade negotiations. The United States insisted on the inclusion of agricultural products, with the support of other foodexporting countries. The results for agriculture should not be underestimated. The agreement on cereals gave practical recognition of joint responsibility in food aid. There were also many agricultural tariff concessions. However, it is domestic agricultural policies, not tariffs, which really hamper agricultural trade. The cost of these policies and the extent to which they achieve their objectives are questionable. Competition becomes fiercer for the remaining accessible markets, and export subsidies multiply. The Kennedy Round left the basis problems untouched. It did, however, strengthen the “global” or comprehensive, multilateral approach.     

Das stochastische Re-Reserving

Next to premium risk, reserve risk is an essential part of underwriting risk for property and casualty insurers. Up to now, the literature on non-life reserve risk for the most part only considered an ultimative point of view, which means that the reserve risk uncertainty would be quantified up to final settlement. In the context of the new Solvency II project, as well as against the background of internal models in a several year context, for now an intensified discussion about a one-year horizon has occurred. Thereby, the reserve risk uncertainty would only be quantified up to a one-year claims development result. In this paper we would like to present a simulation method, called stochastic Re-Reserving for modelling the reserve risk on a yearly basis. In addition to that, we would like to make a paradigmatic comparison between stochastic Re-Reserving and an analytical approach, called claims development result method (see Merz and Wuethrich, Modelling the claims development result for solvency purposes. In: CAS E-Forum, pp. 542–568, 2008).     

Risk Management as Passionate Imitation: The Interconnections Among Emotions,Performance Metrics,and Risk in a Global Technology Firm

This paper traces the evolution of risk management practices in a global technology company between 2000 and 2015. We extend recent research that has highlighted the emotional aspects of riskwork. We detail how a passionate interest—‘we can do better at risk management’—emotionally ‘hooked’ the staff in the company's Sourcing Unit. Risk management, emotion, and management controls were intertwined. When top management singled out one of the key metrics clearly as a risk‐related metric for the Sourcing Unit, the employees felt a strong sense of relief, which gave rise to subsequent extensive risk measurement. We also contribute to the more general debate about accounting and its entanglement with emotions. Little is known about the ‘birth’ and the reasons for durability of passionate interests. Following Tarde (1903/2013), such ‘birth’ and endurance can be explained by analyzing how passionate imitation emerges as a result of a series of dislocal events—in our case a fire, new performance metrics, and natural disasters. These events triggered emotions that provided the necessary energy for three forms of passionate imitation: a) ‘we need to imitate our main competitor’ and risk mapping; b) ‘others in the organization are imitating us and our suppliers should imitate us’ and risk measurement; and c) ‘others in the organization (more specifically the Product Development Unit) should imitate us’ and proactive risk avoidance. This passionate imitation helped explain why the sourcing staff continued to be emotionally ‘hooked’ to risk management, that is, how the passionate interest endured and became vested.     

Cultural Diversity in Large Enterprises: A Qualitative Analysis from the Alpine Rhine Valley

International expansion requires specific management methods to adapt to differences between cultures, thus requiring global strategies that ensure efficient diversity management. The increasing diversity in the workforce is thus gaining more importance in determining knowledge of efficient and better business performance. The results of the study illustrate the importance of cultural diversity and the high benefits for companies. The key findings are a high degree of creativity, a practical understanding of the market, better access to international markets, a high degree of linguistic diversity and efficient innovation management. The starting point of cultural diversity lies in the respective corporate cultures.     

Co-evolution of trust and dependence in customer–supplier relationships

The relational and dynamic aspects of interfirm trust and dependence produce a crucial, but insufficiently addressed, challenge for successful relationship coordination. In this paper we concentrate on this issue by examining how trust and dependence co-evolve in customer–supplier relationships. Building on a case study, we develop propositions and a model that illustrates how interorganizational trust and dependence co-evolve through the different phases of customer–supplier relationships and how we may distinguish cooperative and trustworthy actors from those who will behave opportunistically. Theoretical and practical implications are offered.     

Business model innovation: Identifying foundations and trajectories

Business model innovation is an emerging hot topic in management research. It has been developing steadily for 20 years and has gained enormous momentum in recent years. A solid basis has been created, and the first literature reviews summarize the topic. However, an analysis of the core literature and the general foundation of business model innovation literature is missing. This gap is closed with this bibliometric. It analyzes 30 core articles referenced in 380 business model innovation publications. From this, a total of four research clusters can be delineated. This foundation of the research area is supplemented with a trend analysis of recent publications, which identifies three trends for the future of this research stream. The analysis highlights that sustainability, dynamic capabilities, and small- and medium-sized enterprises are the most promising trends in business model innovation. Based on the results, we present a general model for business model innovation.     

Institutional distance and international networking

We focus on how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) adapt to differences in institutional logics (values, beliefs, and rules) in their networking when they enter an institutionally distant market. We address gaps in the literature, relating to the role of institutional logics in SME internationalization, and how institutional distance affects the formation of network ties. We show how the social interaction involved in internationalization is embedded in the institutional logics followed by partnering actors. Specifically, we demonstrate how institutional distance may constrain the networking activities of SMEs and identify practices that may support successful internationalization.     

Dual Information Systems: Supporting Organizational Working and Learning by Making Organizational Memory Transparent

The conceptual design of most computer-based information systems reflects a dualism of technology. During the development phase, part of the work-domain-related knowledge is formalized and encoded in the software, making it difficult for users to reflect on and use this knowledge. This design--use dualism contributes to the deterioration of the interpretive flexibility of information systems. In this article, we outline an information systems architecture called Dual Information Systems (DIS) that incorporates the concepts of an organizational memory information system (OMIS) in a broader framework. DIS help bridge the design--use dualism by providing organizations with a set of services that enable and reinforce both effective, institutionalized working and the questioning and (re)construction of computer-supported work routines. DIS have a 4-layered conceptual structure: (a) people draw on the business layer to work and learn; (b) people use the breakdown layer to handle unexpected break-downs; (c) self-organizing project teams use the project layer to create innovative work and information system (re)designs; and (d) the knowledge sharing server acts as an OMIS by storing these redesigns and making them organizationally available to facilitate working and learning as well as subsequent redesign efforts. We outline the theoretical background, conceptual structure, and generic services of DIS. We elaborate on the services and the conceptual design of the business and breakdown layers of DIS. The services help people work effectively and develop competence needed to handle breakdowns and participate in the redesign project teams. The conceptual design extends the hyperknowledge framework of Chang et al [1]. Finally, we demonstrate the conceptual design and services in a financial services organization with the help of the ReDIS prototype.     

A systemic evaluation framework for futures research

Evaluation of futures studies is a topic that has frequently aroused discussion. Futures studies often deal with great societal or strategic business issues, and thus the validity and reliability of the results is of great interest to stakeholders. Existing literature contains discussions of such important issues as ethics of futures studies, the nature of knowledge about the future, and futures methodology, which together contribute to the quality, validity and credibility of futures studies, but discussion on the evaluation of futures studies is more scant.Thus, the main research question that guides our study is: “how should we evaluate futures studies to ensure the reliability and credibility of the results?” We answer the question by deriving a systemic framework for evaluation following the input-process-output schema to ensure that the whole chain from the data to reporting and implementation contributes to the quality and impact of the study.The main contribution is the systemic evaluation framework. The framework will contribute to the evaluation of existing and ongoing studies by offering guidelines for evaluation, and as a net effect, we propose, it will increase the impact of futures studies by making the practices more transparent and thus generating more confidence in the results.     

Economies of scale in networks

A network's capacity can typically be increased in a variety of ways. For example, in a highway network, existing roads can be made wider or new roads added. This paper is concerned with the determination of the degree of local economies of scale in the cost function for the outputs of a congestible network when there are multiple margins for making adjustments to capacity. The main result is that under the provision of a cost-minimizing network—one for which the sum of user and capacity costs for the network's outputs is at a minimum—the degree of local economies of scale in the cost function for the network's outputs is the same along all margins for adjusting capacity. This includes what routes to establish.