Value co-creation in knowledge intensive business services: A dyadic perspective on the joint problem solving process

This paper examines the collaborative process of value co-creation in the context of knowledge intensive business services. Through 120 qualitative interviews with suppliers and buyers of knowledge intensive services, the extensive exploratory study analyzes the activities, roles and resources of buyers and suppliers in the reciprocal value co-creation process, and their implications for the resulting value-in-use. The paper draws on the literature on value creation, solutions and professional services marketing, and service-dominant logic. It provides a framework depicting value co-creation that occurs through a dyadic problem solving process, comprising activities such as diagnosing needs, designing and producing solutions, organizing the process and resources, managing value conflicts, and implementing the solution. The framework serves as a managerial tool to determine critical resources and roles for suppliers and customers, facilitate joint activities, and optimize resource utilization. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the contexts of knowledge intensive and solutions business.     

Corporate responsibility activities and economic performance: a theory of why and how they are connected

Whether a firm undertakes corporate responsibility (CR) activities for strategic or altruistic reasons, it is important to understand the relationship between such activities and economic performance. CR activities may be distinguished based on which combination of three possible outputs – learning, reputation and CR outcomes – they produce. This distinction matters not only for the ultimate environmental and social sustainability but also for the relationship between CR activities and economic performance. Taking advantage of this distinction, an integrative synthesis of knowledge of the relationship between CR activities and economic performance can be developed that presents the relationship in terms of a dynamic, case‐specific, inverted U‐shaped efficiency frontier and the vertical distance from this frontier. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Let’s Talk about Language: A Review of Language‐Sensitive Research in International Management

This paper explores the assumptions underlying the core concept of language used in the growing field of language‐sensitive research in international management. We reviewed 92 articles on the topic of language(s) in multinational corporations published during the period 1997‐2015, and applied a linguistic lens to uncover how these articles ‘talk about language’. The assumptions found in these articles can be grouped into three complementary categories that take a structural, functional or social practice view of language. We go beyond the review by also reflecting on the consequences that these underlying assumptions have for the study of language in multinationals. We consider the social practice view the most promising one, and propose a future research agenda for advancing it and thereby contributing to theorizing about the multinational corporation more broadly.     

Socio-cultural transformations through tourism: a comparison of residents' perspectives at two destinations in Kerala,India

Kerala, a state in Southwestern India, evolved into a prominent international tourism destination primarily by linking tourism experiences with nature. Although sufficient significance has been accorded to tourism as a development strategy in Kerala, tourism's contributions to the development processes and the sustainability of tourism activities remain unexplored. Though tourism impacts have been extensively studied, researchers have rarely compared socio-cultural transformations in destinations with and without a planned intervention in tourism. This paper compares residents' perceptions on socio-cultural impacts of tourism at Kumily and Kumarakom in Kerala. The article explores whether tourism activities in Kumily, with its planned intervention, are more sustainable than in Kumarakom, without any interventions. The conversion of ex-poachers into forest protectors and the involvement of the marginalized people in community-based ecotourism are a few among the many transformations that have occurred at Kumily while haphazard tourism development at Kumarakom gave rise to several socio-cultural challenges. Primary data were collected through residents' survey, and the findings indicate that Kumily with its planned intervention has a more sustainable tourism development pattern than Kumarakom.     

Networks for the commercialization of innovations: A review of how divergent network actors contribute

Successful commercialization is of great importance to innovative firms, and the recent literature has increasingly acknowledged that networks make a contribution not only to research and development but also to commercialization. However, research on networks facilitating the commercialization of innovations is scattered across divergent disciplines. A single company is rarely capable of generating successful diffusion in the commercialization of an innovation; success often requires cooperation between individual actors and organizations, and support from stakeholders. Consequently, the network aspect of commercialization is crucial. The aim of this study is thus to integrate the knowledge on how current research and business has employed the network approach in commercialization, and how contributors external to the innovator firm can facilitate the commercialization of innovations. On the basis of an extensive metatheoretical literature review and a qualitative and quantitative content analysis on articles linking networks explicitly to commercialization, this study produces a conceptual synthesis on network actors' contribution potential to commercialization. The analysis identified divergent network approaches to commercialization and gathered extant knowledge on “commercialization networks” from the multidisciplinary literature of innovation management, marketing, management, technology, entrepreneurship, and other relevant disciplines. Networks for commercialization have been linked to divergent network approaches, such as industrial networks, social networks, strategic networks, and entrepreneurship networks. According to the findings, customers and users, distributors, complementaries, suppliers, investors, associations, public organizations, and policy makers and regulators can support commercialization by performing practical commercialization tasks, facilitating innovation adoption/diffusion and creating markets. We also identified four modes of contribution. In terms of methods, qualitative research dominates current examinations on the topic while longitudinal research and investigations from multiple network actors' perspectives are almost absent. The results also indicate a need to develop coherent conceptualizations and accumulate knowledge that would strengthen the theoretical basis of the research. A pivotal contribution of this article is that it is the first to generate an integrative framework and a research agenda on networks for commercialization — a theme that is emergent, multifaceted, and crucial to innovative companies.     

Ecological tax reform—a value chain level approach

This study assesses the effects of an ecological tax reform on three value chains. These case studies lead to an analysis of the business strategy options when companies face a shift in the relative prices of their production factors. The results support earlier research findings that the direct effects of an ecological tax reform on the price competitiveness of companies is on average rather small. However, the effects of the reform are shown to vary significantly between the different parts of the value chain. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment     

Shared human capital in project management: A systematic review of the literature

From the viewpoint of project success, the importance of human capital in projects cannot be overemphasized. Despite this, previous studies have only explored some segments of human capital in projects (e.g., commitment or trust). The aim of this study is to gather studies on the concept of human capital in project management and create an aggregating concept of recent studies. We report and discuss the findings from a systematic review of the research literature. This article focuses particularly on shared human capital (common meanings on the interfaces of the individual and team), and we conclude that the constructive elements of shared human capital are values, tacit knowledge, and social support.     

Forced Choice Restriction in Promoting Sustainable Food Consumption: Intended and Unintended Effects of the Mandatory Vegetarian Day in Helsinki Schools

This paper discusses the use of forced restriction of food choice as an instrument of food policy by using the mandatory Helsinki School District weekly vegetarian day as a natural experiment. Overall, the results show that the initiative produced a mixture of intended and unintended effects. On vegetarian days, there were clear signs of non-compliance in the short term, manifested as a decrease in the participation in school lunches and in the amount of food taken to the plate and as an increase in plate waste. In the medium term, the only sign of non-compliance was a decrease in the amount of food taken to the plate. The difference between the short- and medium-term effects can be interpreted as a weakening of non-compliance, as a change in the way it manifested itself, or a combination of both. The effects of the vegetarian day differed between school levels. In the short term, the clearest indications of non-compliance were found in lower-secondary schools. However, these schools also registered positive spillover effects in the medium term. The best way to reduce the unintended effects of a policy involving forced choice restriction depends on the causes of such effects. In the case of psychological reactance, default options may be preferable to forced choice restriction. For hedonic dislike, menu development should be prioritized, and moral suasion and information campaigns may help where non-compliance stems from a disagreement with the objectives and effectiveness of the intervention. Thus, forced choice restriction should be accompanied by detailed data collection to understand the possible causes of intended and unintended effects and to tailor the intervention to the target group.     

Communication as a determinant of organizational innovation

This study of 32 small and medium-sized industrial enterprises explored eight distinct aspects of communication, as appraised by the staff ( n  = 493), and innovative performance, assessed by two indicators: perceived innovation effectiveness and patent statistics obtained from the Patent Register at the National Board of Patents and Registration of Trademarks. The results showed that intra-organizational aspects of communication, such as encouragement of initiatives and critical evaluation of performance, were associated with both indicators of innovative performance. In addition, a participative climate and interaction between the personnel in R&D, marketing and production were related to perceived innovative effectiveness, whereas interaction with clients and other firms related to the number of patents in the organization. The link between communication and innovation was interdependent with the organizational and staff characteristics including the number of personnel, administrative and R&D intensity, the level of vocational training, and the age distribution of the staff.