Learning intuition--less college and more kindergarten: the leader's challenge

Learning to think instinctually and to depend on our intuition means, for many of us, going back to kindergarten and focusing more on our instinctual side to balance the linear approach that we've learned in many college and business school courses. It also means building time into our lives for reflection and allowing our brains the time to reorganize the events of our lives into patterns that we will recognize in the future. The process of the incubating experience and data in our minds over time will build the intuition and instincts that will help us all to learn how to be great leaders (Gardner, 1995). We can learn much from the training of clinicians in pattern recognition and intuitive analysis of clinical situations. Many of us who were clinicians first understand the intuitive side of clinical practice and of administrative practice because we were educated in both worlds. We have the advantage of knowing the concepts of intuitive thinking and must remember to apply those concepts daily to our practices in leadership. Toffler said "You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment" (Boone, 1999, p. 80). As we acquire more experience and wisdom, we learn to trust our own intelligence and judgment. What we came to know in kindergarten is as valuable as the analytical knowledge we have since acquired. In leadership, we will do well to remember our clinical roots and to continually hone our skills in intuition and thinking with our gut.     

Seniority and Incumbency in Legislatures

In this article, we elaborate on a strategic view of institutional features. Our focus is on seniority, though we note that this general approach may also be deployed to understand other aspects of institutional arrangements. We have taken the initial game‐theoretic model of seniority of McKelvey and Riezman ( 1992 ), simplified it in order to characterize its fundamental implications, generalized these results in several ways, and extended the model by deriving additional implications. The broad messages of our article, articulated by McKelvey and Riezman as well, are two. First, the endogenous choice of institutional features like seniority by self‐governing groups is strategic. While the fine‐grained ways of doing things in an institutional context surely serve internal functional objectives, these are not the only objectives. Agents making choices on how to govern themselves have private motivations – in the case of elected politicians they often revolve around re‐election. This leads to our second broad message. The institutions through which self‐governing groups conduct their business do not exist in a vacuum. They are embedded in a broader context. Those offering functional explanations for various institutional features overlook this. Particular institutional arrangements have effects outside the governance institution itself. These effects, in principle, could be accidental by‐products. Our strategic approach, however, argues that they may well be the primary reasons for a practice being instituted.     

The role of top management team diversity in shaping the performance of business model innovation: a threshold effect

Business model innovation is one of the firm’s most important strategic decisions. Top management team (TMT), as the critical decision-makers, has essential influence upon such decisions. However, the role of TMT diversity in shaping the performance of business model innovation is less explored in the literature. Based on a sample dataset of 906 observations of small and medium enterprises from China Startups Stock Market during the period of 2009–2011, we find that TMT diversity exhibits a significant threshold effect on the relationship between business model innovation (in terms of novelty-centred and efficiency-centred business model) and firm performance. More specifically, when TMT functional diversity arrives at a certain level, the positive relationship between novelty-centred business model and firm performance becomes more pronounced. On the other hand, the positive relationship between efficiency-centred business model innovation and firm performance will be more significant when TMT tenure diversity increases to a certain level.     

中间性组织的组织形态及其相互关系研究

层级组织和市场组织是两种最基本的经济组织形态.而在现实世界,还有很多经济组织既具有层级组织的某些特征,也具有市场组织的某些特征.处于二者之间的中间地带上有着多种类型的经济组织,如虚拟企业、网络企业、企业簇群、战略联盟、企业集团等,它们统称为"中间性组织".这些纷繁复杂的组织形态既有共性又表现出千差万别的个性特征.弄清各组织形态的特征,揭示各组织形态间的相互关系,恰当地选择和构建有效率的经济组织将成为提高国家与地区、产业与企业竞争力的关键.     

Strategic Research Partnerships: A Managerial Perspective

Private sector incentives to participate in research partnerships can be grouped roughly into two categories: cost-economizing incentives and strategic incentives. This paper summarizes the argument in two streams of thought that are often identified with these two sides: the transaction-cost/incomplete contracts approach and the strategic management approach. The paper recounts business motives to engage in research partnerships in each and points out that differentiating between more traditional economic perspectives (transaction costs, incomplete contracts) and strategic management/organizational theory perspectives (strategic networks, resource-dependent view, dynamic capabilities, knowledge-based view, organizational learning, options approach) may not be as sharp as one might suppose at first. The complementary nature of these perspectives should be encouraging for theoreticians looking for a more integrated model of collaboration.     

Uncertainty, human action and scenarios

The “scenario method,” “scenario building,” or “multiple futures analysis” emerged during the last decades as a premier instrument for strategic planning and decision making in conditions of uncertainty. This article demonstrates that there is an intrinsic link between the scenario method and Austrian theory not only at the level of basic epistemological principles but also at the methodological and applied levels. The article also argues that the scenario method could easily be embraced as a part of the Austrian family of ideas and more precisely as one of the key policy applications or decision support tools informed by that school of thought. Blending explicitly and systematically the scenario method with the Austrian ideas and forcefully making the case for the scenario approach as a policy and business administration tool, is thus one of the most effective ways of reasserting the importance of Austrian insights in areas such as business studies, public policy, and organizational theory, areas that currently have a limited exposure to Austrian ideas.     

Strategic Research Partnerships: A Managerial Perspective

Private sector incentives to participate in research partnerships can be grouped roughly into two categories: cost-economizing incentives and strategic incentives. This paper summarizes the argument in two streams of thought that are often identified with these two sides: the transaction-cost/incomplete contracts approach and the strategic management approach. The paper recounts business motives to engage in research partnerships in each and points out that differentiating between more traditional economic perspectives (transaction costs, incomplete contracts) and strategic management/organizational theory perspectives (strategic networks, resource-dependent view, dynamic capabilities, knowledge-based view, organizational learning, options approach) may not be as sharp as one might suppose at first. The complementary nature of these perspectives should be encouraging for theoreticians looking for a more integrated model of collaboration.     

How to improve scenario analysis as a strategic management tool?

Scenarios are claimed to support strategic decision makers. They are especially effective in dealing with uncertainties. This paper addresses some drawbacks of the conventional scenario method, which is especially directed at handling these uncertainties, and indicates possible avenues for methodological adaptations. We take the approach, which rests in the Shell tradition, as exemplary for our discussion on the mainstream scenario methodology. This approach has some limitations when it comes to dealing with simultaneous trends and countertrends, and trends or clusters of trends that are not thought of beforehand, especially the methodological requirements of causality and consistency, which might be limiting factors in this respect. This paper indicates alternative ways for scenario construction. It discusses the use of either recombinant scenarios, context scenarios, or inconsistent scenarios and/or combinations of these scenarios. These options explicitly incorporate the notion of ‘paradoxical trend’ as the codriver of future developments into the methodology.     

The endogeneity of the Optimum Currency Area criteria in East Asia

The Asian financial crisis in mid-1997 has increased interest in policies to achieve greater regional exchange rate stability in East Asia. It has renewed calls for greater monetary and exchange rate cooperation. A country's suitability to join a monetary union depends, inter alia, on the trade intensity and the business cycle synchronization with other potential members of the monetary union. However, these two Optimum Currency Area criteria are endogenous. Theoretically, the effect of increased trade integration (after the elimination of exchange fluctuations among the countries in the region) on the business cycle synchronization is ambiguous. Reduction in trade barriers can potentially increase industrial specialization by country and therefore resulting in more asymmetry business cycles from industry-specific shocks. On the other hand, increased trade integration may result in more highly correlated business cycles due to common demand shocks or intra-industry trade. If the second hypothesis is empirically verified, policy makers have little to worry about the region being unsynchronized in their business cycles as the business cycles will become more synchronized after the monetary union is formed. This paper assesses the dynamic relationships between trade, finance, specialization and business cycle synchronization for East Asian economies using a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach. The dynamic panel approach improves on previous efforts to examine the business cycle correlations — trade link using panel procedures, which control for the potential endogeneity of all explanatory variables. Based on the findings on how trade, finance and sectoral specialization have effects on the size of common shocks among countries, potential policies that can help East Asian countries move closer toward a regional currency arrangement can be suggested. The empirical results of this study suggest that there exists scope for East Asia to form a monetary union.     

Does a bank's business model affect its capital and profitability?

We use a data-driven classification of systemically important European banks into business models based on confidential granular supervisory data and investigate whether banks following different models differ with respect to their capitalisation and profitability. Our aim is to locate the banks' business model in a risk-return space. Using an instrumental variables approach, our econometric methodology addresses potential endogeneity issues. Overall, we find that wholesale funded and securities holding banks are positioned on a relatively high risk-return trade-off plane compared with commercial banks. On the other hand, traditional commercial banks earn lower returns with moderate risk.     

让学术研究回归社会需求是技术经济研究的努力方向

技术经济的研究有两个面向:面向学术和面向应用。面向学术有两个方面,一是面向国际,二是面向国内。面向国际,要在国际学术期刊发表论文,特别是在国际顶级期刊发表论文,必须有新发现、新结论,这很不容易,我们真正有原创性的研究还很少。面向国内的学术成果主要在国内发表,论文数量和水平在逐年提高,但相当多的文章是为了发表而发表。面向应用也有两个方面,一是面向政府,主要是为宏观的、战略决策和管理服务;二是面向企业,就是面向企业实际操作层面。这两个方面我们都做得很不够,存在越来越脱离实际的倾向。为此,我们要认真思考要不要改变,如何改变这种状况。     

Three very simple games and what it takes to solve them

We study experimentally the nature of dominance violations in three minimalist dominance-solvable guessing games. Only about a third of our subjects report reasoning consistent with dominance; they all make dominant choices and almost all expect others to do so. Nearly two-third of our subjects report reasoning inconsistent with dominance, yet a quarter of them actually make dominant choices and half of those expect others to do so. Reasoning errors are more likely for subjects with lower working memory, intrinsic motivation and premeditation attitude. Dominance-incompatible reasoning arises mainly from subjects misrepresenting the strategic nature (payoff structure) of the guessing games.     

地理信息系统在区域商业和经济中的应用初探

有效地开发和利用地理空间数据，可以优化配置资源，降低商业运行成本，并规划、监测、改善区域商业和经济环境。而地理信息系统，不仅是关于地理数据的获取、存储、转换、分析和表示的原则、方法和工具，而且提供了认识空间现象的思维方式和解决空间问题的方法，可用于定义、分析、表现复杂的空间经济现象。基于这样的认识，本文试图从理论上探讨地理信息、商业环境和区域经济发展间的关系，并结合中国广东的区域经济状况，初步分析地理信息系统在商业和区域经济中的潜在应用。     

华人社会关系营销探究——兼论金融海啸对关系营销的影响

论文以华人社会中的社会学理论为基础,通过实证研究验证了＂差序格局＂现象在华人社会关系营销中的存在,即亲人关系所带来的关系结果最高,熟人关系次之,生人关系最差;需求法则对应亲密,人情法则对应恩惠,公平法则对应信用;同时,论文发现了从关系法则到关系呈现方式,再从关系呈现方式到关系结果的线性路径,厘清了三者之间的逻辑关系。研究结果明确地揭示出华人社会商业运营中＂亲人＂、＂熟人＂、＂生人＂之间等级明确的运行体系,不同的关系类型对应各自的关系法则,然后形成不同的关系呈现方式,并最终带来关系结果,即市场绩效的差异。＂个人关系＂导致＂企业绩效＂的运行机制也在一定程度上被窥探出来。     

The healthy development of economies: A strategic framework for competitiveness in the health industry

Applying a strategic decision-making perspective on the economics of business, we suggest that a competitive locality in the health industry is one that, relative to other localities, is effective in: (1) providing the healthcare that enables everyone to participate fully in the democratic development of the locality; (2) providing the healthcare that is democratically identified as a direct objective of this development; (3) contributing through the health industry to any other democratically determined objectives of the locality's development. The paper hypothesizes that strategic decision-making in organizations is an especially significant determinant of the impacts of the health industry. We conclude that: (i) a locality that suffers concentration in the power to determine the objectives of its health industry could not be strictly competitive in that industry; (ii) the first best way to achieve competitiveness in the health industry would be to democratize its strategic decision-making. What this would entail in practice is discussed in some detail.     

Strategic Patenting in Biotechnology

Patents can be used by their owners in a variety of strategic ways in the market place that do not necessarily conform with the original idea of patents as a remedy against market failure. More patenting does not lead to more innovation in all cases. This article looks at the relevance of patents and their strategic uses in the biotechnology industry. The article considers the different motives for applying for patents and various strategies. Theoretical considerations are made based on empirical findings from a survey of the Swiss biotechnology industry carried out in 2003. The empirical data confirm that patents for biotechnological inventions are important as an incentive for investment in R&D and that patents are an efficient tool for protecting biotechnological inventions. Strategic patenting is not very common in Switzerland and there are no signs for an abusive level of strategic patenting.     

Diffusion of forest biorefineries in Scandinavia and North America

Biomass-based energy has become a major focus of attention from a variety of directions due to the global challenges of meeting our energy needs. Bioenergy and bio-products are also currently being explored intensively in the forest cluster, as many elements that have in the past guaranteed success have largely disappeared. As the bioenergy and biorefining economies are evolving, there is a need for realistic estimates regarding the factors which affect the diffusion of forest biorefineries. This paper outlines global and national drivers for forest biorefineries in Scandinavia and North America. It explores the financial, political, technological, and ecological and raw-material related factors, as well as business competencies, challenges and changes in the business environment. This study is based on data from an expert opinion survey and comments from the experts about the survey results yielded by a Delphi method. According to our results, key factors for the development of forest biorefineries are very similar in both studied areas. There needs to be support from the macro-scale environment particularly from governments, but also the involved industries themselves need to be active. Diffusion factors in the macro-scale business environment are better understood when compared to more industry-specific strategic factors. Both studied areas seem to have potential for success in the biorefinery business. However, a more realistic identification of national strengths as well as continuous development of competencies – while avoiding an overly optimistic attitude – is crucial.     

Circadian effects on strategic reasoning

The ability to strategically reason is important in many competitive environments. In this paper, we examine how relatively mild temporal variations in cognition affect reasoning in the Beauty Contest. The source of temporal cognition variation that we explore is the time-of-day that decisions are made. Our first result is that circadian mismatched subjects (i.e., those making decisions at off-peak time of day) display lower levels of strategic reasoning in the p<1 Beauty Contest but not in the p>1 game. This suggests that a cognitively more challenging environment is required for circadian mismatch to harm strategic reasoning. A?second result is that choice adaptation or mimicry (i.e., a?more automatic type of responding than what is typically considered to be “learning”) during repeated play is not significantly affected by circadian mismatch. This is consistent with the hypothesis that automatic thought is more resilient to cognitive resource depletion than controlled-thought decision making.     

Protecting Strategic Knowledge: Insights from Collaborative Agreements in the Aerospace Sector

This paper explores the dilemma that firms face with respect to knowledge sharing in strategic alliances. On the one hand, alliance success is associated with high levels of interaction and co-operation between partners. On the other hand, full and open co-operation exposes a firm's distinctive knowledge and skills and makes it vulnerable to opportunistic moves by alliance partners. Hence firms experience a fundamental paradox: to gain the greatest benefits they must exchange information and knowledge with external parties yet, at the same time, they must protect themselves against knowledge appropriation. This dilemma is particularly acute in the aerospace sector where political imperatives strongly influence partner choice and collaborators are often strong rivals in other contexts. In this paper we use data drawn from four collaborative agreements in the aerospace sector to explore the ways in which a focal firm has sought to protect its strategic knowledge and manage knowledge flows in alliance relationships. We find that existing theoretical lenses provide valuable but partial insights into the question of knowledge appropriation in alliances and offer limited guidance to managers charged with making alliances work. We suggest that some rich insights can be gained by focusing on the overlaps and interstices between existing theories and that greater exploration of the everyday working practices in alliances may offer a useful starting point for improved theorising.     

数智化如何赋能经济高质量发展——兼论营商环境的调节作用

数智化如何赋能经济高质量发展，是近年来实务界和学术界共同关注的焦点。从理论上分析数智化对经济高质量发展的影响机制，并探讨营商环境对两者关系的调节作用，然后以2009-2018年我国内地31个省、市、自治区数据为样本，实证检验上述影响机制和调节作用。研究发现，数智化转型与应用对经济高质量发展具有积极促进作用，营商环境在数智化与经济高质量发展之间具有显著调节作用，营商环境越优良，数智化对经济高质量发展的促进作用越显著。同时，营商环境的调节作用在我国存在显著的区域差异性，其在东部和中部地区的调节作用显著高于西部地区。