Zooming in on co-creation practices of international franchisors

There is limited knowledge on value co-creation in international franchising despite the collaborative nature of this major foreign entry mode. This article zooms in on international franchisors' co-creation practices through in-depth interviews with 28 French franchisors and 25 of their foreign franchisees, offering three main contributions. First, the interviews reveal that franchisors do not always co-create value with their franchisees. Instead, franchisor-franchisee co-dependency manifests in both value co-creation and facilitation. Second, this research offers a typology of the domains of co-creation in franchising, showing that franchisors can participate in foreign franchisees' value creation processes during the set up and launch of the franchise abroad, training and knowledge dissemination, adaptation of the offering, and management of problems. Third, it offers a typology of seven franchisor co-creation styles – mentor, custodian, broker, partner, strategically focused, controlling principal, and chameleon – and their underlying dimensions in terms of franchisor activities and preferences. The mapping of co-creation domains and styles offers international franchisors a detailed account of the practical ways to support their foreign franchisees' value creation processes depending on their preferences, resources, and capabilities.     

Determinants of capital structure of australian trading banks

Using pooled time series/cross section data of Australian trading banks over the 1967–1988 period, this study examines the determinants of bank capital ratios. Little evidence is found to support the tax benefit/bankruptcy cost trade-off, whereas evidence is broadly consistent with the predictions of Myers' pecking order theory in the presence of transactions costs and asymmetric information. Institutional factors, including bank deregulation and type of bank, are also significant determinants of capital management of Australian trading banks.The author is from the University of New South Wales, Kensington, N.S.W. Thanks are due to Neil Esho, Paul Gatward, Warren Hogan, Michael Skully and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Key Determinants of the Stage of Internationalisation of Australian Wineries

A four stage measure capturing, awareness, interest, trial and adoption is employed to identify the key determinants of the stage of internationalisation of Australian wineries. Drawing from data from 292 wineries and using structural equation modelling techniques, this paper analyses the effects of a multitude of factors previously hypothesised to influence the stage of internationalisation. The results indicate that while these wineries exhibit characteristics described in the extant literature, significant differences remain. The paper concludes by discussing the limitations and areas for further research.     

Internationalisation in the telecommunications services industry: Literature review and research agenda

A review of 356 publications addressing internationalisation aspects of the telecommunications services industry (TSI) shows a growing body of contributions, mainly covering research themes like settlement and regulation policy, strategic alliances and incumbents’ reactions to deregulation as well as opening of markets in-depth until recently. Wireline telephony TSI has been the dominant segment in most contributions, while the mobile or broadband Internet segments only featured in more recent work. Segment characteristics like non-uniform barriers to entry, different reasons for alliances and non-uniform levels of internationalisation differentiate these TSI segments pose a number of additional questions concerning telecom firms’ internationalisation strategy and success promising for future research.     

以德理财以智理财以法理财——说说在总会计师岗位上的几点体会

总会计师的岗位,无论在企业还是事业单位,都是十分重要的。如果说在计划经济时代这种重要性还不明显,那么在我们党把工作重点转移到以经济建设为中心的轨道上来了以后,在建立有中国特色的社会主义市场经济体制的伟大事业中,会计人员、总会计师就是经济工作一线举足轻重的人物了。我这么说,没有半点自我吹嘘的意思。1998年5月初,我参加入事部举办的全国92家国有大型企业的总会计师学习班,曾经在中南海聆听过朱镕基总理的讲话,他当时就是把总会计师放在与企业党委书记、总经理一样重要的位置上来加以强调的。当然,现实生活中的情况并非全是这     

Learning by supplying

Outsourcing in many industries has advanced beyond simple component supply to encompass manufacturing of entire products, often by suppliers in emerging economies. Understanding the evolving role and capabilities of suppliers in global supply chains is thus a pressing strategic issue for suppliers and customers alike. We analyze a novel panel dataset of supply relationships in the mobile telecommunications industry to answer the following questions: What factors contribute to a supplier's ability to build technological and market capabilities? Does it matter to whom the firm supplies? Is involvement in product design important, or is manufacturing the key to learning? Do the same types of relationships that support technological innovation also facilitate successful introduction of own‐brand products, or does this require a different “locus” of learning? Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Change by Design

Over the course of a century of professional practice, designers have mastered a set of skills that can be productively applied to a wider range of problems than has commonly been supposed. These include complex social problems, issues of organizational management, and strategic innovation. Conversely, non‐designers—those in leadership positions in companies, governmental and non‐governmental organizations, professionals in a broad range of services and industries—can benefit from learning how to think like designers. We offer some large‐scale and more finely grained ideas about how this might happen.     

创新是活力的源泉

时光荏苒,转眼又将是一年. 2005年是个不寻常的年头.后配额时代的第一年,针对中国纺织品服装的贸易摩擦纷争不断,这一方面体现了在中国纺织业强大的竞争力之下,贸易保护主义大有抬头之势,另一方面也预示着我们的增长方式亟待实现转变.     

成功离不开IC设计服务

IC设计服务业是一个拒绝胆小者的行业.当行业景气时,你要疲于应付大量的业务订单以至于会白日做梦般地希望克隆公司的高级工程师;但是当芯片业下滑导致行业不景气时,你又会首当其冲成为受害者.基于对IC设计服务市场巨大不稳定性的认识,你一定认为大多数公司都会退避三舍,尽量不涉足此项业务.然而,这次你却错了.     

Line by line,part by part: collaborative sketching for designing

While sketching has an established role in professional design, its benefits and role in design education are subjects that invite research and opinions. We investigated how undergraduates studying to become design educators and textile teachers used sketching to generate and develop design solutions in a collaborative setting. The students were given an authentic design assignment involving three detailed tasks, one of which was 2D visualisation by sketching. Adopting a micro-analytical approach, we analysed the video-recorded visualisation session to understand how teams used sketching to collaborate and to generate and develop design solutions. To that end, we set three research questions: (1) What ways of collaborative working are reflected in actions of sketching? (2) In what ways do sequences of collaborative sketching contribute to designing? (3) What kinds of collaborative sequences of sketching advance designing? Our analysis identified three collaborative ways of sketching (co-ordinated, collective and disclosed) and confirmed that sketching is an important facilitator of mutual appropriation, adaption and adoption. Next, we identified three ways of contributing to designing, as well as three functions and six capacities for advancing designing. Our analysis shows that sketching can lead to invaluable advances in designing, although each team had its own way of using and benefiting from sketching. We further consider that the teams’ diverse sketching processes and rich content owed, at least in part, to the task structure and imposed constraints. We continue to see sketching as an important design tool, one among many.     

分散发供电与联网供电的经济性研究

简要介绍了新型分散发电技术,综合比较分散发电和联网供电的可靠性和经济性,并探讨了分散发电对现有电力系统的影响。     

Edited by Wolodymyr Maksymiw

Creative technological change: the shaping of technology and organisations, Angus Bancroft Public Service Employment Relations in Europe: transformation, modernisation or inertia?, Chris Brewster East Asian Direct Investment in Britain,Christopher M. Dent     

Predation by noisy advertising

The paper considers a market where heterogeneous consumers are imperfectly informed about product characteristics, and an incumbent firm has developed a clientele. In this context, the paper addresses the following question: Can the incumbent advertise in such a way as to make survival by a recent entrant infeasible? The main conclusion is that such a policy, which is termed noisy advertising, can generally succeed in driving the recent entrant from the market, and is likely to prove attractive to the incumbent.     

Purchasing by Swedish grocery chains

In this article, the results from a study of the purchasing procedures in the two largest companies in Swedish grocery distribution are presented. Comparisons with similar studies are interwoven throughout the text concerning distribution companies in the U. S. A., Canada, the U. K., Finland and Norway. A tentative conclusion from the comparisons is that there are some general differences in purchasing procedures between North America and Europe. Factors which could explain these differences are market size and the degree of concentration in the food distribution industry.     

细节决定的法律风险

一、人身触电伤亡事件的相关资料保管和事故处理程序中应注意的问题随着供电企业外部环境日趋复杂,触电事故已成为供电企业的一个重大经营风险。2000年至今,宜宾电业局共发生涉电民事案件18起,涉及标的541.84万元。其中,人身触电损害赔偿案件14起,标的453.14万元。2002年11月,宜宾电业局江北供电局发生一名六岁儿童触电伤残案件,索赔标的高达201.5万元。就近几年涉及供电企业的人身触电伤亡赔偿案件看,发案率和索赔金额都呈直线上升趋势。在电力设施上发生触电伤亡事件后,如何采取措施,减少或免除供电企业不应承担的责任,已经成为供电企业必…