Knowledge centres: A technology & engineering hybrid

A Knowledge Centre is defined as a group of experts in a specific field, with some designated equipment and software.
Such groups were recognized for the first time (in a given matrix organization) as the real carriers of the accumulated knowledge of science and technology disciplines.
To be reckoned as a knowledge centre (K.C.), the group has to be ready to participate in development projects, as well as to lead research for improved technologies and advance knowledge in its field.
It was found that by nurturing knowledge centres, the organization has succeeded in per-forming an interdisciplinary R&D while at the same time maintaining and advancing a strong technology base. The K.C. has some distinctive lifecycle phases. Consequently, the organization applies different considerations and different planning and control methods for each phase. An emerging K.C. needs sensitive care and support. A mature K.C. calls for firm guidance and control, a declining K.C. should be directed to another field, or be dismantled.
This report also describes some of the procedures employed by the organization to maintain and control its K.C.s, and a management attempt to use them as a tool for managing the advancement of technology within the organization. The authors predict that a system of K.C.s may be defined and serve other R&D laboratories in a similar way. This thesis has to be verified by additional studies. Some additional areas for further research are identified, too.     

Book Reviews

Technological Innovation: University Roles. The Association of Commonwealth Universities, London
Eurotronics—European Working Party for Forecasting Electronics Markets
Micro Electronics in Western Europe—The Medium Term Perspective 1983–1987, K. P. Friebe and A. Gerybadze (Eds)
New Product Development in Engineering: A Comparison of the British and West German Machine Tool Industries. Stephen T. Parkinson
Stakeholders of the Organizational Mind. I. I. Mitroff.
How companies manage R&D. Niall Lothian. Published by Institute of Cost and Management Accountants, March 1984
The financial side of industrial research management. Lynn W. Ellis. John Wiley & Sons Inc.
The costs of evaluation, edited by Marvin C. Atkin and Lewis C. Solmon.
Personal-Management in der industriellen Forschung and Entwicklung, edited by Michel Domsch and Eduard Jochum. Carl Heymanns Verlag, Cologne
Managing Interdisciplinary Research. Edited by Epton, Payne and Pearson. John Wiley
Optimisation Models for Strategic Planning, edited by T. H. Naylor and C. Thomas
The Next Industrial Revolution—Reviving Industry Through Innovation. Robert U. Ayres.
Management Compensation in High Technology Companies. Jay Schuster.
A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times. Donald Hill.     

Employee Reactions to Supervisory Direction in Four Types of Firms in Taiwan: The Effects of Company Policy, Peer Consensus and Independent Assessment

Employees in four firms in Taiwan—a small family business (A), a state-owned enterprise (B), a large private corporation (C), and a U.S.-owned venture (D)—and one firm in the U.S. (E) responded to supervisory directions. A's employees were the most compliant, followed by B's, then by C's, D's, and E's. In A and B, employee compliance was impacted by company policy. In C, D and E, employee compliance was influenced by peer consensus. Except for those in A, employees' tendency to accept supervisory direction was enhanced when they assessed the direction as beneficial to their organization.     

Theorizing the Employment Relationship: Materialists and Institutionalists

Books reviewed: Paul Blyton and Peter Turnbull. The Dynamics of Employee Relations.
Bruce E. Kaufman, editor. Theoretical Perspectives on Work and the Employment Relationship.
Reviewed by Peter Ackers Harry C. Katz, Wonduck Lee and Joohee Lee, editors. The New Structure of Labor Relations — Tripartism and Decentralization.
Reviewed by Lorenzo Bordogna Ian Fitzgerald and John Stirling, editors. European Works Councils: Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will?.
Reviewed by Richard Hyman John McIlroy, Alan Campbell and Keith Gildart, editors. Industrial Politics and the 1926 Mining Lockout: The Struggle for Dignity.
Keith Gildart. North Wales Miners: A Fragile Unity, 1945–1996.
Reviewed by Richard Croucher Massimo Florio. The Great Divestiture — Evaluating the Impact of the British Privatisations 1979–1997.
Reviewed by Michael G. Pollitt Elizabeth C. Dunn. Privatizing Poland — Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor.
Reviewed by Tatjana Thelen Jonathan Brock and David B. Lipsky, editors. Going Public: The Role of Labor‐Management Relations in Delivering Quality Government Services.
Reviewed by Rebecca Kolins Givan William J. Baumol, Alan S. Blinder and Edward N. Wolff. Downsizing in America — Reality, Causes, and Consequences.
Reviewed by John Schmitt D. Grant, C. Hardy, C. Oswick and L. Putnam, editors. The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse.
Reviewed by Barbara Townley     

The impact of emerging institutional norms on adoption timing decisions: evidence from C‐TPAT—A government antiterrorism initiative

Drawing upon an institutional theoretic perspective, this study explores the performance outcomes associated with adoption timing and level of investment in a government antiterrorism initiative—the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C‐TPAT). Using a large‐scale sample of C‐TPAT certified importers, this study found that performance outcomes for high levels of investment in adoption processes differ depending upon the strength of institutional forces. Specifically, early adopters of C‐TPAT processes in a weak institutional context that reported high levels of investment performed no better than firms who invested nominally in the processes, while late adopters in a strong institutional context that reported high investment levels outperformed those that invested nominally. This finding can be explained by viewing C‐TPAT as an ‘emerging’ institution, where forces are coalescing. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Promoting Effective Consultation? Assessing the Impact of the ICE Regulations

Drawing on evidence from longitudinal case studies in 25 organizations, this article examines whether information and consultation (I&C) bodies established in the context of the UK's Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 have been the vehicle for effective consultation, based on objective criteria. Assessed against the regulations' default provisions that require I&C concerning strategic business issues and major organizational change, a substantial minority of participating organizations were categorized as ‘active consulters’, while a majority were ‘communicators’. The differing trajectories of I&C primarily reflected internal organizational dynamics, particularly management's approach to consultation. Beyond providing the catalyst for managerial moves to introduce I&C, the influence of the statutory framework proved largely peripheral.     

Multivariate statistics in industrial marketing management: A practitioner tool kit

Much published work over the years has pointed to the differences between business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketing. An undesirable by-product of this sometimes misdirected distinction is that managers working within B2B environments have generally not considered the use of what are seen as B2C techniques, such as multivariate statistical analysis. This article is structured in three parts. First, the argument for the similarities between B2B and B2C marketing is developed; second, three different multivariate statistical techniques are presented and combined to form a practical tool kit for use by B2B managers on strategic, operational, and tactical levels; and third, the results of an application of the techniques in the life science research chemicals industry is reported, demonstrating that the tool kit substantially enhanced managerial understanding of customer decision processes.     

Analyzing the impact of user-generated content on B2B Firms' stock performance: Big data analysis with machine learning methods

Marketing scholars are interested in the big data of user-generated content (UGC) from social media platforms. However, the majority of current UGC studies have been conducted in the business-to-consumer (B2C) context. To fill the knowledge gap in business-to-business (B2B) research, we investigate whether UGC has differential impacts on stock performance for B2B and B2C firms by using big data. We collect a large dataset of 84 million tweets from 20.3 million Twitter accounts and 8 years of stock data for 407 companies from the S&P500 index. The results from machine learning methods are transformed into a monthly panel data. We conduct fixed effects model on the panel data. We find that UGC has a significant impact on firms' stock performance and that its impact on stock performance is much stronger among B2C firms than among B2B firms. While consumers' positive sentiment does not play a significant role in stock performance, consumers' negative sentiment and WOM significantly impact stock prices.     

Antecedents and consequences of the quality of e-customer-to-customer interactions in B2B brand communities

The opportunities that interactions in business-to-business (B2B) brand communities offer companies as well as brand community members have already been recognized by B2B firms, but are still an underexplored field of B2B academic marketing research. To provide a first step in analyzing B2B brand communities, we develop a conceptual framework of the quality of customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions in B2B brand communities by drawing on several theories and concepts (e.g., social exchange theory, uses and gratifications approach and value-in-the-experience). Based on an online survey (n = 330) spanning three virtual B2B brand communities in the IT-sector, we test our framework using structural equation modeling. Our results reveal that brand trust has a positive impact on brand community trust. Brand community trust leads to an increase in the quality of C2C interactions in B2B brand communities. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the quality of C2C interactions in B2B brand communities has a positive impact on functional, experiential, and symbolic brand community benefits, which, in turn, foster brand loyalty.     

Sequestering carbon in soils of agro-ecosystems

Soils of the world’s agroecosystems (croplands, grazing lands, rangelands) are depleted of their soil organic carbon (SOC) pool by 25–75% depending on climate, soil type, and historic management. The magnitude of loss may be 10 to 50 tons C/ha. Soils with severe depletion of their SOC pool have low agronomic yield and low use efficiency of added input. Conversion to a restorative land use and adoption of recommended management practices, can enhance the SOC pool, improve soil quality, increase agronomic productivity, advance global food security, enhance soil resilience to adapt to extreme climatic events, and mitigate climate change by off-setting fossil fuel emissions. The technical potential of carbon (C) sequestration in soils of the agroecosystems is 1.2–3.1 billion tons C/yr. Improvement in soil quality, by increase in the SOC pool of 1 ton C/ha/yr in the root zone, can increase annual food production in developing countries by 24–32 million tons of food grains and 6–10 million tons of roots and tubers. The strategy is to create positive soil C and nutrient budgets through adoption of no-till farming with mulch, use of cover crops, integrated nutrient management including biofertilizers, water conservation, and harvesting, and improving soil structure and tilth.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Conflict or Co-operation: The Growth of Industrial Democracy, by John Elliot. Kogan Limits to Co-determination? Industrial Democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany 1945–1977, by D. W. F. Bendix Socialist Labour and Politics in Weimar Germany. The General Federation of German Trade Unions, by Gerard Braunthal The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism: Work, Unions and Politics in Sweden, by Walter Korpi The Resurgence of Class Conflict in Western Europe since 1968 (2 volumes), C. Crouch and A The Soviet Industrial Worker: social class, education and control, David Lane and Felicity O'Dell L'évolution des emplois et la main d'oeuvre dans l'industrie automobile: problèmes el perspectives, by CEREQ Labour And The Law, by Sir Otto Kahn Freund Q.C Industrial Conflict in Britain edited by E. W. Evans and S. W. Creigh The Images of Occupational Prestige, by A. P. M. Coxon and C. L. Jones Managers and Work Reform: a limited engagement, by Ivar Berg, Marcia Freedman and Michael Freeman Influencing Organisational Change, by Charles Margerison     

The utilization of individual capabilities in group approaches to strategic decision-making

Previous research has found that groups using dialectical inquiry (DI) or devil's advocacy (DA) make better strategic decisions than groups using a consensus (C) approach. This paper explains those findings by using new data to show that the DI and DA approaches make better use of the capabilities of individual group members. Specifically, the DI and DA groups yielded significantly higher quality recommendations and assumptions than the average of the individuals in the respective groups, whereas the C groups did not. Moreover, the recommendations and assumptions of the DI groups and the recommendations of the DA groups significantly exceeded those of the best individual in the respective groups. There were no significant differences for the C groups.     

Windfalls of emperors' sojourns: Stock market reactions to Chinese firms hosting high‐ranking government officials

Research summary: We contribute to the corporate political activity (CPA ) literature by showing that investors value companies that host visits of high‐ranking government officials (P resident and P remier). We argue that investors may value host official visits for two reasons: (1) the signal received about possibility of firm accessing government‐controlled resources via promotion or protection; and (2) the certification effect from such high‐powered visitors elevating the firm's reputation and legitimacy. Results from an event study analysis of 84 high‐ranking government official visits in C hina from 2003 to 2011 indicate that investors responded positively to host firms as reflected by stock market performance. Furthermore, the greatest positive reactions accrued to firms experiencing weaker prior period financial performance and to firms that are privately compared to state‐controlled . Managerial summary: Do visits by high‐ranking government officials influence firm stock market performance? Studying a sample of C hinese public firms that hosted 84 visits by the C hinese P resident and the P remier from 2003 to 2011, we find that investors reacted positively to such visits compared with a group of non‐host firms from the same industry and with similar financial performance and size. In addition, firms with weaker prior financial performance and private firms benefit the most from hosting such visits. Our findings imply that hosting visits of high‐ranking government officials can signal future government‐controlled resource inflows and boost host firms' reputation and legitimacy . Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: British Industrial Relations, by Gill Palmer, Allen and Unwin Industrial Relations in Britain, edited by George Sayers Bain Unemployment: Cuuse and Cure by Patrick Minford Developments in Labour Market Analysis, by C. Joll, C. McKenna. R. McNabb and J. Shorey, George Allen & Unwin Managerial Strategies and Industrial Relations, edited by Howard F. Gospel and Craig R. Littler. White-Collar Unionism, by K. Prandy. A. Stewart and R.M. Blackburn The Democratic Class Struggle, by Walter Korpi Routledge and Kegan Capitalism, the State and Industrial Relations by Dominic Strinati     

Sessions organized by the Industrial Organization Society at the ASSA Meetings,Washington D.C., January 6–8, 1995

Sessions organized by the Industrial Organization Society at the ASSA Meetings, Washington D.C., January 6–8, 1995     

How Do Interaction Activities among Customers and between Customers and Firms Influence Market Performance and Continuous Product Innovation? An Empirical Investigation of the Mobile Application Market

Mobile application markets (MAMs) significantly differ from other existing marketplaces at least in two aspects. First, customers (app users) and firms (app providers) frequently interact with each other in real time, which is not common in the conventional marketplaces. Second, many app providers incorporate customers’ opinions or suggestions into their software upgrades, representing one of the most unique and interesting aspects of MAMs. Therefore, it has become critical to understand the impact of interaction activities not only among customers, but also between customers and firms on the market performances of new products in MAMs. One of the most significant issues firms face is whether firms reflect on customers’ postpurchase interaction activities, and the next interesting question is how firms respond to them. This study explores the effects of customer‐to‐customer (C2C), customer‐to‐firm, and firm‐to‐customer interaction activities on market performance. In addition, this study investigates how communication activities influence a firm's tendency to pursue continuous product innovation through research and development (R&D). Using data obtained from a major MAM, T store, three models that are respectively related to product sales, product lifetime, and a firm's R&D activity for product upgrades, are applied to empirically test hypotheses concerning the effects of interaction activities. In our analyses of market performance, a hierarchical log regression model with 10,840 weekly transactions data set related to product sales (model A) and 291 aggregate transactions related to product lifetime (model B) is used. Results indicate that C2C and customer‐to‐firm communication activities have a positive impact on sales, but little relationship with product lifetime. However, a firm's continuous product R&D has a positive impact on both sales and lifetime performance. Our analysis of a firm's R&D (model C) shows that C2C and customer–firm communication increases a firm's R&D activity. Taken together, these results have important implications for customer–firm interactions, market performance, and R&D strategies.     

What messages to post? Evaluating the popularity of social media communications in business versus consumer markets

Although social media usage in business markets continues to grow, managers still struggle with designing popular brand message posts. This research investigates the key factors that contribute to Facebook brand content popularity metrics (i.e., number of likes and comments) for Fortune 500 companies' brand posts in business-to-business (B2B) versus business-to-consumer (B2C) markets. Building on psychological motivation theory, the authors examine key differences in B2B and B2C social media message strategies in terms of branding, message appeals, selling, and information search. Using Bayesian models, they find noteworthy differences in the propensity of viewers to popularize brand posts. Specifically, the results indicate that the inclusion of corporate brand names, functional and emotional appeals, and information search cues increases the popularity of B2B messages compared with B2C messages. Moreover, viewers of B2B content demonstrate a higher message liking rate but a lower message commenting rate than viewers of B2C content.     

Should tweets differ for B2B and B2C? An analysis of Fortune 500 companies' Twitter communications

Business-to-business (B2B) marketers hesitate to embrace social media as a marketing tool, unlike their business-to-consumer (B2C) counterparts, and they struggle to implement successful social media strategies due to their limited understanding of the phenomenon. Drawing on communication and word-of-mouth theories, the authors investigate how marketers use Twitter differently across contexts and predict key factors likely to influence the message strategies used in each. A longitudinal content analysis and logistic regression support the assessment of a sample of more than 7000 tweets by Fortune 500 companies. Marketers in B2B and B2C settings exhibit significant differences in their branding and selling strategies; their use of message appeals; and the use of cues, links, and hashtags to support information searches. Whereas B2B marketers tend to use more emotional than functional appeals in their tweets, neither B2C nor B2B marketers have adopted “hard sell” message strategies.     

Double vision: Insights about the origin and interpretation of multiple IRRs

The ability of a project's internal rate of return (IRR) to quantify its economic return has been questioned by many scholars over the past 60 years, most recently by Magni (2010 Magni, C.A. (2010) Average internal rate of return and investment decisions: a new perspective. The Engineering Economist, 55(2), 150–180. [Google Scholar], 2013 Magni, C.A. (2013) The internal rate of return approach and the AIRR paradigm: a refutation and a corroboration. The Engineering Economist, 58(2), 73–111. [Google Scholar]). Although IRR is a plausible—albeit imperfect—measure of a project's economic return when the cash flow stream is conventional, IRR can be an untenable measure of an unconventional project's economic return. The goal of this article is to identify a simple, intuitive explanation of IRR, one that can be applied to any cash flow pattern. To do this, the article shows how a project's IRR systematically changes when it first crosses from the conventional into the unconventional realm (i.e., a small cash outflow is appended to a conventional cash flow stream) and then as it becomes progressively more unconventional. This process reveals that the most robust economic interpretation of IRR—for both conventional and unconventional projects—is that a project's IRRs are external benchmarks that divide the set of all plausible discount rates into positive and negative net present value (NPV) ranges, rather than internally generated returns. Because it can be difficult to estimate a project's cost of capital with precision, this information can help guide the sensitivity analysis of a project.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
New Horizons For American Labor by Joseph A. Beirne
The Use and Abuse of Trade Unions by Arthur Bottomley
The Quest for Industrial Peace by David L. Cole. McGraw-Hill
The Economics of Labor by E. H. Phelps Brown
The Practice of Collective Bargaining by E. F. Beal and E. D. Wickersham. Richard D
Collective Bargaining, Principles, Practices, Cases by Maurice S. Trotta
Labor and Industrial Society by Abraham L. Gitlow. Richard D
Labor Relations in the Lithographic Industry of North America by F. C. Munson.
Readings in Organization and Management , H. Madeheim, E. M. Mazze, C. S. Stein (eds.)
A History of British Trade Unionism by Henry Pelling
National Labor Movements in the Postwar World , Everett M. Kassalow (ed.)
The Irish in Britain by J. A. Jackson
Die Beteiligung der Arbeitnehmer an der öffentlichen Gewalt by Raymund Krisam
Work Study and Payment by Results , published by the TUC