Fibre-to-the-home,high-speed and national broadband plans: Tales from Down Under

In recent years governments in many countries have acknowledged the higher complexity involved in finding the more efficient path towards a so-called broadband ecosystem. As the first decade of the twenty first century was ending, the governments of Australia and New Zealand committed to the construction of high-speed, fibre-optics next-generation access networks. This paper is about the approach followed by Australia and New Zealand to developing broadband infrastructure, the means deployed to build the network, and policy and market issues. The paper critically analyses the short history of each experience, including the political process, the reasons exhibited to justify the governments' involvement in infrastructure deployment, and the institutional arrangements introduced to manage the participation of private partners. The paper proposes a framework for analysis and uses its elements to critically analyse policy and regulatory decisions affecting the deployment rate and goals set by Australian and New Zealand government for their respective fibre-based next-generation platforms. The framework is used to draw comparisons between the two country cases and in so doing allowing the appreciation of commonalities and differences in the development and expectations for the future of telecommunications markets in the region.     

Securing and managing an organization's network legitimacy: The case of Motorola China

This study combines concepts from institutional and network theory to explain the currently observed behaviors of organizations in securing their network legitimacy. Organizations secure their network legitimacy by engaging in business, social, and political activities, with key network actors and institutions. This is achieved within an institutional framework of rules, regulations, and ideologies, including any consequential contextual changes. But while network legitimacy plays an important part in an organization's survival, limited attention has been paid to the development of a conceptual framework. In this article we provide one such framework and, specifically examine attributes of successful network legitimacy through an inductive, interpretative case analysis of Motorola China, in a transitional Chinese telecommunication sector.     

Mainframes and mandarins: The impact of internet use on institutional trust in East Asia

The roles of contextual determinants such as culture and political regime in existing studies of Internet use and institutional trust remain underexplored. Adopting a cultural-institutional perspective, we ask: How does Internet use relate to institutional trust? Under what conditions is the impact of Internet use on institutional trust most potent? Do authoritarian orientation and perceived institutional responsiveness mediate the relationship? Is this mediating process moderated by the degree of democratic freedom? A total of 20,667 respondents from 14 East Asian countries/territories completed questionnaires. Our results show that the indirect effect of Internet use on institutional trust via authoritarian orientation was stronger for countries/territories with a low degree of democratic freedom, while the indirect effect of Internet use on institutional trust via perceived institutional responsiveness was stronger for countries/territories with a higher degree of democratic freedom.     

Conformity,political participation,and economic rewards: The case of Chinese private entrepreneurs

Using institutional and resource dependence theories as the conceptual framework, this study identifies three forms of conformity—political, economic, and social—that can affect the level of private entrepreneurs’ formal political participation in a transition economy. Data from a 2004 national-wide survey of 3,012 private firms in China show that political conformity (indicated by membership in the ruling party), economic conformity (amount of taxes paid), and social conformity (amount of charity donated) are each antecedents to private entrepreneurs’ formal political participation. Moreover, political conformity negatively moderates the relationship between social conformity and private entrepreneurs’ formal political participation—for party members, a lesser amount of charity is associated with higher levels of political position as compared to non-party members. We also found that the rewards of formal political participation have institutional boundaries: political participation can indeed bring private entrepreneurs economic rewards such as a greater amount of loans from state banks but not from shareholding and underground banks.     

Global political economy of technology standardization: A case of the Korean mobile telecommunications market

This paper examines empirical cases of standardization in the Korean mobile market as vehicles for approaching the broader political and institutional context of standardization in telecommunications. A consideration of Korean standardization in the mobile telecommunications market is particularly interesting because it reveals how the state's political interests influence standards decisions, which are primarily driven by market and technological changes in telecommunications. Judged from the social construction of technology perspective which sheds light not only on technology itself but also on political, social and economic interests that surround transformations in technology, this paper highlights power relations among the major actors that have made technology standards decisions in Korea regarding second (2G) and third-generation (3G) mobile telephony. The paper also attempts to show how the Korean government has dealt with the diverse interests of various market actors while pursuing its own policy agenda.     

可转换债券:融资工具还是制度安排——基于贝恩资本投资国美电器可转换债券的案例研究

本文通过梳理可转换债券的理论研究文献,并结合机构投资者投资可转换债券的实践,提出了基于机构投资者视角的可转换债券理论分析框架。本文以贝恩资本投资国美电器可转换债券案例为研究对象,对上述理论框架进行了检验。研究发现,可转换债券不仅是一种融资工具,更是一种制度安排,具备公司治理功能,使得机构投资者能够参与发行企业的公司治理实践。而且,机构投资者投资可转换债券使发行企业不仅面临价值变动风险,还面临控制权转移风险。本文拓展了可转换债券研究的理论框架,也为企业设计和发行可转换债券提供了现实启示。     

A Budgeting Method Using Quality Function Deployment

One of the problems in budgetary planning is the lack of structure of the process. It is very hard to assess the impact of elementary decisions in the whole solution. Usually, people involved at political levels define the policies or strategies, but the implementation of such a policy or strategy is done at lower levels. Paradoxically, the budgetary requirements done by the experts suffer cuts at the political level without a clear understanding of the consequences. This paper introduces a method based on QFD to assess the impact of decisions made at the different levels, and presents a framework to support the incremental development of a budget that reduces the communication difficulties.     

The making of public investments: The role of champions,co-ordination,and characteristics of nutrition programmes in Mozambique

This study examines governance and institutional factors that influence how public resources are allocated for nutrition interventions in the context of a developing country—Mozambique—with very high rates of malnutrition. Based on qualitative empirical analysis building on a political economy framework, we explore the importance of two agent-centred and two investment-centred factors that determine how decisions on budget allocation to nutrition are made. The analysis finds that public decisionmakers strongly favour highly visible nutrition investments and those with a short duration between the time that spending is incurred and outcomes or outputs are achieved. Co-ordination has been quite successful among donors, and mainly of a spatial nature. Co-ordination is significantly weaker among government agencies, given the absence of fiscal tools of the co-ordinating agency, and its placement in a sector ministry rather than at a supra-sectoral level. Champions as change agents have had a truly influential role in attracting more funding to nutrition and improving its allocation. But their influence is also fleeting and difficult to sustain.     

Universal service in Turkey: Recent developments and a critical assessment

The meaning of universal service in telecommunications has changed considerably in the last decade. Technological advances have created the necessity to redefine the legal framework. While the demand for old universal services falls, new and wider services are to be included in the scope of legal obligations such as broadband. In this transformation of public policy toward universal services, political preferences take precedence over economic considerations. Turkey provides a good case in point. In this paper, the authors assess the legal framework of universal services and its institutional structure in Turkey. The tension between enlarging the scope of universal service and pressures on using revenues efficiently is emphasized.     

Rethinking Institutions and Institutional Change in European Industrial Relations

This article traces the process of institutional change in industrial relations in Britain, France and Sweden over the last quarter‐century in order to identify the mechanisms and forms of institutional change. These three cases demonstrate a high degree of institutional plasticity, and a greater convergence in industrial relations than comparisons of national institutions have tended to suggest. These findings in turn suggest the need to rethink both the role of institutions and the nature of institutional change in comparative political economy.     

Institutional Change and Union Membership: A Longitudinal Analysis of Union Membership Determinants in Israel

We examine the degree to which factors associated with workers' union membership decisions are sensitive to shifts in the institutional environment of unions. Comparative logit analyses of the relationship between potential determinants of membership and actual union membership over time suggestthat the factors associated with membership are elastic and may reflect shifts in the institutional context of unions.     

The New Competition Law in Thailand: Lessons for Institution Building

The new competition law in Thailand, which replaces the totally ineffective 1979 anti-monopoly law, aims to enhance the competitive process by improving the enforcement mechanism. Unfortunately, the Trade Competition Commission's rulings on the first two complaints about allegedly illegal conduct by two large companies with obvious market power were disappointing. Although political pressure was a significant factor affecting the decisions, this paper argues that there were also other important issues. The complex legal, business, and economic problems in both cases, the weakness of the competition law, poor institutional design, inadequate resources and lack of experience among the officials involved have all contributed to the unfortunate decisions, and will certainly affect the performance of competition law enforcement in the future.     

Assessing the Belt and Road Initiative as a narrative: Implications for institutional change and international firm strategy

This article explores the role of narratives as drivers that guide the institutional change associated with globalization and deglobalization. For China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to succeed as a driver of institutional change in favor of globalization, it must pass the narrative “virality” test and successfully contend with competing narratives. Rival narratives will be launched by firms and organizations worldwide that expect to win or lose from deglobalization or from new forms of globalization. This study develops a useful framework for establishing the extent to which China’s BRI is a genuine narrative or just a story. In this regard, four testable propositions are put forth to ascertain whether the BRI is values-based, extends an invitation to participate, is open-ended, and is associated with economic performance for both Chinese and non-Chinese participants. The analysis of the BRI-related institutional change that leads to globalization applies a theoretical lens centered on the narrative economics perspective and on the institution-based view and political economy perspective. Implications for BRI stakeholders, international business practitioners, and international business scholarship are outlined.

     

Mobilizing crisis management networks — Entrepreneurial behavior in turbulent contexts

Severe socio-economic issues that threaten peace, life or wellbeing of humans in specific regions of the world cannot be solved by any single actor. Wide networks of political, business, governmental, non-profit and humanitarian organizations are to be involved to change existing practices. Despite conflicting interests and competing behavior, involved organizations need to act collectively to initiate the change of commonly accepted practices, i.e. institutions. This is the space in the present study for examining network mobilization as a collective means to change institutions. Our aim is to answer the question: How are networks mobilized in crisis management to initiate institutional change processes in socio-economically turbulent contexts? We provide a framework of network mobilization for institutional change built on the IMP rooted network mobilization research and institutional entrepreneurship discussion. The framework is reflected upon by means of insights from an interview-based case study with representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations involved in worldwide humanitarian peace-building. We identify, firstly, incentivizing, reticent and adaptational behaviors of network mobilizers to utilize legitimacy and relationship sediments as mobilization enablers. Secondly, these behaviors help network mobilizers to overcome actor visibility and unpredictability as mobilization obstacles in turbulent contexts.     

Stakeholders, Structure and the Failure of Corporate Governance Reform Initiatives in Post-Crisis Thailand

This paper brings together institutional and political perspectives in a framework for mapping the process by which strategic change initiatives are introduced into a system but result in outcomes that may not be intended, expected or desired by the original architects of change. This general framework links stakeholders, structural elements and their interactions to emergent system-level phenomena. It also enables comparison across different systems undergoing change; for example, to understand why the outcomes of the “same” initiatives may very dramatically in different contexts. To illustrate the framework, we examine the process by which an initial flurry of corporate governance reforms in post-financial crisis Thailand have been largely stymied, in spite of a seemingly clear need for such reforms and the conviction of some domestic and foreign promoters of such reforms.     

Galvanizing political commitment in the UN Decade of Action for Nutrition: Assessing commitment in member-countries of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement

In pursuit of the global ambition of ending all forms of malnutrition, it is important to understand, measure and strengthen political commitment for nutrition. Building commitment involves advocating, establishing institutions, adopting policies, mobilizing resources and coordinating responses – within and outside of government, across sectors, from national to local levels – for as long as necessary to ensure results, sustained over time. As the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement enters its tenth year of existence, this study asks if political commitment for nutrition is evident in the 60 SUN member countries and how this commitment translates into results.Guided by a theoretical framework, we use indicators from the SUN Movement's Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) system to measure five forms of political commitment for nutrition - expressed, institutional, operational, embedded and system-wide - in countries stratified by income and duration of SUN membership. We further determine the association between assessed levels of commitment and progress towards achieving established global nutrition targets. In doing so, we identity important commitment gaps.Results show that countries that joined the SUN Movement early (2010–12) had higher expressed and institutional commitment scores compared with late joiners (2013–17), with no difference between low and middle-income countries. For operational commitment, early joiners had higher scores for the finance and legislation subcomponents but not for nutrition-specific intervention coverage. Low-income countries, however, had significantly lower scores for the nutrition-specific intervention coverage sub-component of operational commitment and lower embedded commitment scores compared with middle-income countries. A positive association was found between institutional and operational commitment, irrespective of country economic status. Early joiners in the SUN Movement were more likely to rank in the top half of SUN countries for all four forms of commitment. When divided into terciles based on their overall rank for system-wide political commitment, countries in the highest tercile were more likely to be making progress in the reduction of U5 child stunting.The results point to the importance of working to strengthen all forms of commitment, especially converting expressed and institutional commitments into operational commitment. While institutional commitment matters, it can be ‘tokenistic’ only if there is limited capacity to operationalise that commitment. Countries with system-wide political commitment appear to achieve better nutrition impact. It is difficult to determine whether early joiners were already more committed to nutrition and therefore more likely to join the SUN Movement or whether membership in the SUN Movement compelled such commitment. Most likely it is a combination of both, but it is hard to disentangle the direction of causality without measuring changes in commitments over time, and complementing this type of analysis with qualitative research on the perspectives of different stakeholders. Nonetheless, the ongoing measurement and reporting of political commitment can inform dialogue with country and global-level stakeholders on how to galvanize further commitment during the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition especially in view of the 2020 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Tokyo, Japan.     

Employer Organizations and Labour Immigration Policy in Australia and the United Kingdom: The Power of Political Salience and Social Institutional Legacies

This article examines employer organizations and labour immigration policy in Australia and the United Kingdom. Drawing on 102 elite interviews, it analyses employer organizations’ preferences and influence over recent reforms. The article builds on Culpepper's arguments relating to the significance of political salience and identifies the importance of various institutional factors, particularly social institutions, in shaping employer organizations’ decisions and engagement with the policy process. Political salience and social institutional legacies are critical for explaining why employer organizations played a central role in driving labour immigration reforms in Australia and a marginal role in the UK. Large intakes of workers from the European Union, which sustained immigration as a high salience issue and fuelled the Brexit campaign, also influenced the strategies of UK employer organizations.     

Small firms' interaction with political organizations in the European Union

About 99% of all firms in the European Union are small, and politicians are increasingly emphasizing their importance for job creation, technological development and prosperity. Consequently, the political focus is on these firms and a large number of decisions influencing their business activities are constantly taken by political actors at various levels. The aim of this article is to investigate small firms' interaction with political organizations in the EU. Previous studies have shown that these firms have been obliged to follow the coercive political decisions of the EU's political units. In this paper, however, we identify some changes which demonstrate political support and influence by small firms. Based on a case study approach as well as data from a Swedish survey, four propositions concerning small firms' interaction patterns within the political context of the EU will be highlighted and further discussed.     

Consumer surplus vs. welfare standard in a political economy model of merger control

This paper considers the political economy environment that an antitrust agency is operating in and asks under what circumstances a consumer surplus standard yields higher welfare than a welfare standard. In particular, we address how institutional settings—such as transparency and accountability—interact with the choice of an appropriate standard. We consider a framework in which the antitrust agency can be influenced by third parties (at a cost in terms of real resources) and in which the agency is imperfectly monitored. A welfare comparison between the two standards reveals that neither standard dominates. The consumer surplus standard is attractive relative to a welfare standard, when lobbying is efficient, when accountability is low, where mergers are large and when a marginal increase in merger size is highly profitable.     

The evolution of telecommunications policy-making: Comparative analysis of China and India

This paper is a comparative analysis of the telecommunications policy-making process in China and India. Adopting an institutionalist perspective and multi-streams framework, the paper analyzes the formal structures, rule-making procedures and interest groups involved in telecommunications policy-making in the two countries, in terms of their evolution over the last two decades. Though the two systems began this period with a somewhat similar ministerial-bureaucratic decision-making model, and faced similar problems of assimilating new interest groups and responding to international pressures, the paper finds that the decision systems in the two countries evolved in significantly different directions. China's telecommunications decision-making is significantly affected by the macro level political rearrangement and is more likely to be non-incremental. On the other hand, confronted by an increasingly litigious environment and a more fractious interest group culture, India represents a somewhat classical textbook case of incremental policy making. Nevertheless, numerous challenges remain in both countries, including institutional capacity and excessive regulatory deference to political authority.