GDP nowcasting: application and constraints in a small open developing economy

Despite data limitations, an attempt is made to find out if a GDP nowcasting model can provide reliable forecasts for a small open economy. Two competing Bayesian vector autoregressive models are tested rigorously to obtain the optimal model by minimizing in-sample forecasting errors. The main finding of this study is that GDP nowcasting can produce reliable results for a small open economy despite the unavailability of sufficient data sets and the lack of high frequency indicators.     

Managing seller-buyer new product development relationships for customized products: a contingency model based on transaction cost analysis and empirical test

Sellers often customize their product offerings in order to increase the value offered to individual buyers and gain a competitive advantage over the seller’s competitors. However, such customization has a downside—it usually requires considerable seller-buyer interactions aimed at matching the seller’s technological capabilities with the buyer’s needs, which can pose exchange risks such as the safeguarding and adaptation problems noted in the transaction cost analysis literature. In the present study, we develop a contingency model to investigate the impact of product customization on sellers’ perceived relationship satisfaction and subsequent expectations of relationship continuity. We draw on the logic of transaction cost analysis to hypothesize that product customization’s effect on satisfaction and continuity may be moderated by three activities that sellers may engage in during the new product development (NPD) process: education, product knowledge generation, and joint new product development.Our substantive hypotheses were tested with data from a national survey of 296 small to medium size firms in several high-tech industries using a series of hierarchical OLS regression models. Overall, we found mixed support for our hypotheses. The results indicated that joint new product development reduced the negative effect of product customization on seller satisfaction and enhanced customization’s positive effect on continuity, as expected. Contrary to our expectations, product knowledge generation activities increased the negative effect of customization on satisfaction; it also had no significant moderating impact on continuity. Buyer education activities were found to reduce the negative impact of customization on satisfaction, but showed no moderating effect on continuity.This study offers important theoretical and managerial implications. It is one of the first to rely on transaction cost analysis as a basis for examining how various relationship activities conducted during the new product development process moderate product customization’s effect on qualitative outcomes. Whereas traditional NPD processes have emphasized unilateral approaches to product development, our study provides evidence of how bilateral approaches to NPD can benefit sellers of innovations. We provide new insights for managers to consider when deciding whether to engage buyers early on and then continue interacting with them throughout the product development process when developing customized products.     

Negligence,capture, and dependence: safety regulation of the design of India’s Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor

This article contributes a case study of regulation of the design of India’s Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR). This reactor is the first of its kind in India, and perceived by the nuclear establishment as critical to its future ambitions. Because fast breeder reactors can experience explosive accidents called core disruptive accidents whose maximum severity is difficult to contain, it is difficult to assure the safety of the reactor’s design. Despite the regulatory agency’s apparent misgivings about the adequacy of the PFBR’s design, it eventually came to approve construction of the reactor. We argue that the approval process should be considered a case of regulatory failure, and examine three potential factors that contributed to this failure: institutional negligence, regulatory capture, and dependence on developers and proponents for esoteric knowledge. This case holds lessons for nuclear safety regulation and more generally in situations where specialized, highly technical, knowledge essential for ensuring safety is narrowly held.     

Measuring and forecasting mobile game app engagement

Monetization strategies in the large and strongly growing mobile app space must go beyond traditional purchase revenue as most mobile apps are now free to download. One key marketing innovation allows mobile app publishers to monetize ongoing engagement — in-app advertising.We study ongoing user engagement with a mobile app after the initial download decision using the $40 billion mobile gaming industry as an example. Our study investigates and forecasts user engagement after the initial download aiming to help publishers to monetize their engagement via in-app advertising. We leverage a novel dataset containing user-level engagement for 193 mobile games and propose a hierarchical Poisson model on a mobile-game level. We find significant usage heterogeneity across the mobile games studied and generate forecasts publishers can use when trying to monetize engagement via pre-sold contracts.     

The impact of buyer dependence on buyer opportunism in buyer–supplier relationships: The moderating role of relational norms

The impact of buyer dependence on opportunism against the supplier is examined in this research. Extant literature provides support for both a positive and an inverse relationship between these constructs. In this research, these competing predictions are subsumed under a more general model where the effect of dependence on opportunism is moderated by the level of relational norms present in the buyer–supplier relationship. Results of an experiment with purchasing managers and one replication provide support for the hypotheses that (a) dependence and opportunism will be positively related under low relational norms, and (b) dependence and opportunism will be inversely related under high relational norms. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Corporate Ecological Responsiveness: Antecedent Effects of Institutional Pressure and Top Management Commitment and Their Impact on Organizational Performance

Institutional theory argues that conformity to institutional pressure enhances the survival probability of organizations. Two key limitations of institutional theory have been proposed in recent literature: one, that it ignores the role of top management, and two, that it focuses only on survival as a benefit to the exclusion of more strategic benefits such as growth and profitability. In this research, we build a conceptual model that addresses both of these limitations in the context of institutional pressure on organizations to behave more responsibly vis‐à‐vis the natural environment. Results from a survey of 199 manufacturing firms show that the relationship between institutional pressure and corporate responsiveness to the pressure (i.e. corporate environmental responsiveness) is enhanced when top management commitment to the environment is high. Moreover, results show that organizational conformity to institutional pressure enhances the strategic benefits that organizations receive. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Social Partnership or a ‘Complete Sellout’? Russian Trade Unions’ Responses to Conflict

In 1990 the former communist trade unions in Russia adopted a programme of social partnership, the aim of which was to defend their members’ interests during transition while also maintaining social peace. But critics of social partnership within the union movement argue that it amounts to little more than an excuse for inaction. To examine whether social partnership represents a departure from the collaborationist habits of the Soviet past, I examine 33 case studies of conflict at enterprise level conducted between 1999 and 2000. This analysis reveals considerable continuity with Soviet practice.     

Russia's official trade unions: renewal or redundancy?

Russia's official trade unions claim to have reformed themselves into independent organisations representing workers' interests. This article takes one branch union, the official miners' union, and, on the basis of research in the South Kuzbass mines, considers how far enterprise level unions have changed, and the potential for reform.     

OEM implementation of supplier-developed component innovations: the role of supplier actions

For suppliers to secure a positive return on their investment in the creation of component innovations, they must ensure that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) implement these component innovations. The objectives of this study are to (1) identify the activities that suppliers undertake to foster innovation implementation, (2) articulate the theoretical mechanisms that mediate the impact of these activities on innovation implementation, and (3) establish the inter-related effects of these mediating theoretical mechanisms on innovation implementation. The results from a survey of 173 supplier–OEM dyads reveal that functional advantage is the theoretical mechanism that mediates the impact of two supplier actions—knowledge acquisition and installation support—on innovation implementation. The results also show that reputational advantage mediates the effect of innovative OEM endorsement and that relational advantage mediates the effects of supplier asset specificity and supplier innovativeness on innovation implementation. In terms of the inter-related effects of the mediating mechanisms on innovation implementation, the results indicate that relational advantage complements the positive impact of functional advantage on innovation implementation. In addition, the results reveal that innovation implementation has a positive impact on the financial performance of component innovations.     

Does international integration matter for financial development in Africa?

This article analyses the links between international financial and trade integration and financial development in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. It is based on a panel data set using methods that tackle slope heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence and nonstationarity. The results do not point to a general direct robust link between trade and financial integration and financial development in SSA, once we control for other factors such as GDP per capita and inflation. The findings may be due to a number of factors including distortions in domestic financial markets, relatively weak institutions and/or poor financial sector supervision. We find some indication that financial integration is more important for financial development in countries with better institutional quality. Stronger scores in some measures of the quality of banking regulation and supervision are also linked to a positive association between integration and financial development in some of our results. Thus, African policy-makers should be cautious about expectations regarding immediate gains for financial development from greater international integration. Such gains are more likely to occur slowly and through indirect channels.