Co-evolution of the strategic reorientation of port actors: insights from the Port of Rotterdam and the Port of Barcelona

This paper explores changes in the strategic orientation of port authorities and terminal operators towards the hinterland network in the Ports of Rotterdam and Barcelona. Port authorities and terminal operators are economically, institutionally and geographically related organizations. The argument here is that such organizations experience a mutually influential and interactive effect in their strategy over time. The research explores the evolution of the market, institutional and governance forces behind these organizations’ strategic orientation, while acknowledging their interdependence and interrelationship. To that end, it builds a conceptual framework analysing these organizations’ strategies in different points in time. It draws upon firms and port theories to design a co-evolutionary framework, which is later refined with insights gained from an empirical study of the port context.     

Dynamics of foreign exchange implied volatility and implied correlation surfaces

The prices of currency options expressed in terms of their implied volatilities and the implied correlations between foreign exchange rates at a given point in time depend on option delta and time to maturity. Implied volatilities and implied correlations likewise may thus be represented as a surface. It is well known that these surfaces exhibit both skew/smile features and term structure effects and their shapes fluctuate substantially over time. Using implied volatilities on three currency pairs as well as historical implied correlation values between them, we study the nature of these fluctuations by applying a Karhunen-Loève decomposition that is a generalization of a principal component analysis. We demonstrate that the largest share in the dynamics of these surfaces' fluctuations may be explained by exactly the same three factors, providing evidence of strong interdependences between implied correlation and implied volatility of global currency pairs.     

Anxiety of dependency in international joint ventures? An empirical study of drivers and consequences of relationship insecurity

This research introduces and delineates the concept of insecurity in IJV relationships. We define relationship insecurity as a parent firm's concerns about the continuance of the alliance arrangement and its partner's future provision of need satisfaction. According to interdependence theory, exchange partners that experience high dependence inevitably experience this ‘anxiety of dependency’, and the emergence of insecurity can destabilize the working relationship from within. We develop a conceptual model of the drivers and consequences of relationship insecurity in IJVs. Our survey results from 125 IJVs indicate that focal firm dependence and partner firm dependence both negatively affect insecurity, though the former is the dominant predictor. This surprising finding implies IJV partners experience ‘anxiety of low dependency’. The results suggest insecurity not only reduces directly IJV performance, but also lowers the quality of interpartner communication, which in turn dampens performance. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Different dimensions of knowledge in cooperative R&D projects of university scientists

An increasing speed of new knowledge generation and a growing specialization of individuals in specific fields make cooperative R&D projects indispensable to stay abreast of the latest technological developments. However, studies targeting this field of research have almost exclusively focused on industrial cooperation projects, neglecting the importance of academic R&D collaboration.We attempt to address this research gap by investigating completed R&D cooperation projects of 376 German professors of the chemical and biological sciences. Based on their evaluation, we can distinguish between successful and less successful projects mainly involving explicit or tacit knowledge. We further characterize these groups by identifying significant group differences regarding trust, the interdependency between partners, the frequency of communication and the closeness of partners. Overall, our study presents new empirical evidence that the codification of knowledge plays an important role for the success of cooperative R&D projects.     

Are cyclical patterns of international housing markets interdependent?

This paper investigates the relationships among the US, UK, and Canadian housing markets from two aspects: the driving forces of housing cycles and the structures of correlation coefficients in different phases of housing cycles. The results indicate that the structures of driving forces and correlation coefficients are deeply hinged on the international housing markets. For the US and Canada pair, the driving forces of cyclical patterns are related to each other and the regime-switching correlation coefficients are always positive. However, for the US and UK pair and the UK and Canada pair, the driving forces are independent and there is no consistent pattern for the correlations.     

Exploring perceptions of interdependencies: Strategic options in supplier-customer relationships

This paper investigates how three indicators, 1) convergence-divergence in actor characteristics, 2) relationship atmosphere, and 3) degree of overlap in the network pictures of collaborating partners, relate to the perceived interdependencies and strategic options seen in specific supplier-customer relationships. The paper presents the case of a Danish food company, which offers the same pallet of new products to different customers. Joint developments are coordinated equivalently across customer relationships, and the customers draw on the same company technology and knowledge resources. Still, the company perceives interdependencies and related strategic options as very divergent across the customer relationships.     

联盟关系治理对创新项目组合成功的影响：来自IT行业的实证

项目组合作为企业重要的创新战略实施工具,目前在实践中被广泛应用。针对仅将企业内部因素作为创新项目组合成功前因的研究现状,从企业外部组织环境——联盟关系治理视角出发,基于197家IT企业的问卷调查数据,发现联盟关系治理对创新项目组合成功有显著正向影响,资源柔性和协调柔性在二者关系中起中介作用,项目关联度则分别调节了资源柔性、协调柔性与创新项目组合成功的关系。研究结果可为企业实现高绩效创新项目组合提供借鉴。     

Representing tourists’ heterogeneous choices of destination and travel party with an integrated latent class and nested logit model

Aiming at a better understanding of heterogeneous interdependencies between destination and travel party choices in tourism, this study attempts to simultaneously represent these two choices by integrating the nested logit model with the latent class modeling approach to accommodate both types of nested model structures together. Empirical analysis confirmed the effectiveness of the developed model, using a data collected from more than 2000 tourists in Japan. It was observed that on average the two types of nested model structures are almost equally shared by samples and the model structures could significantly vary with income level and gender. Influential factors related to choices of destination and travel party were also explored. Concretely speaking, travel time, attractiveness of destination and number of tourism spots were found to be important influential factors in destination choice, and gender, age, marital status have important effects on travel party choice.     

Coordinating dispersed product development processes: A contingency perspective of project design and modelling

Managing worldwide supply pipeline operations concerns coordination and control of every step of the chain process starting from raw material sourcing, production, finally to distribution of market-specific items in retail places, all the way from product value inception and engineering, through manufacturing design, to the worldwide logistic planning. From systems perspectives, their relationships and interactions determine the overall performance. Coordinating such systems is very human-inclusive, characterised by abstract, ill-structured information interchange among well-partitioned expert groups. In this paper we documented the experience and implications of managing and modelling product development activities from a contingent perspective of interdependence. In our investigations amongst six international fashion corporations, crucial activity tasks in different countries were analyzed and evaluated within the context of launching schedule-driven fashion products. At the outset, we present the problem context, the issues arising from coordinating product development systems, and the approach we use to deal with the issues, i.e. modelling and manipulating the process interaction. We put forth a dependency-based process performance simulation, the related approach of data capture and the attribute constructs to represent the interactivity relationship. Finally, we discuss the computation process and evaluation strategy, which is indeed inspired by today's simulation-based optimization concepts. An effective GA heuristics is duly implemented.