Post-merger performance in the software industry: The impact of characteristics of the software product portfolio

This article studies the impact of the characteristics of software product portfolios on the performance of firms involved in a merger of software companies. The short-term financial results reveal that markets generally seem to neglect the characteristics of software product portfolios when the merger is announced. Nevertheless, such portfolios appear to have a positive impact on the price/book value ratio of merged software firms. The empirical evidence presented in this paper suggests that, in the long term, the performance of business combinations in the software industry is related to certain factors that are attributable to virtual network effects.     

China‐commodity nexus at the heart of global upturn

• ? The China‐commodity nexus has been at the heart of the global upturn in trade and industry. It could directly and indirectly account for as much as 70% of the recovery since mid‐2016, based on our analysis. We think this nexus will continue to support world growth in the near term, but the global upturn is vulnerable to moderating Chinese growth and slippage in commodity prices.
• ? China has directly accounted for around a third of the upturn in world trade, similar to the contribution of G7 countries. But adding in indirect effects, China's influence is likely to have been much more significant. Stronger Chinese demand has contributed to an improvement in the trade performance of its Asian trading partners, commodity exporters and other advanced economies.
• ? Using a model simulation that introduces positive shocks to imports in “greater China” and to commodity prices (based on the scale we have seen since mid‐2016), our top‐end estimate for China's contribution to the upturn in world trade is around 70%.
• ? The simulation points to especially strong improvements in output and exports for economies such as South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and some commodity exporters. This broadly matches the pattern of performance seen over recent months, though commodity exporters' performance has been quite mixed.
• ? G7 investment growth is likely to have played only a modest role in the recent global upturn. But Japan is an exception, while upgrades to investment forecasts for South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong have also been large.
• ? A 1% rise in commodity prices could raise commodity exporters' investment by 0.3–0.6%, based on our analysis. As a result, there could be additional improvement in commodity exporters' investment this year, supporting world growth. However, with our forecasts suggesting that commodity prices are set to slip further over the coming quarters, this boost could prove short‐lived.

     

Organising non‐standard workers: union recruitment in the Irish care sector

In 2004, Ireland's largest union initiated its most comprehensive organising campaign to date, resulting in 12,000 care workers being organised. This article explores how unions can sustain campaigns among a dispersed workforce, and how public support and worker commitment can be leveraged to achieve structural changes in an emerging sector.     

Lisbon After the Crisis: From Credit‐fuelled Suburbanization to Tourist‐driven Gentrification

This article examines Lisbon's post‐crisis transition from a once dominant process of suburban expansion enabled by abundant credit to one of ongoing gentrification of its historic centre. In my research, I draw on quantitative and qualitative data to illustrate the remarkable growth of the metropolitan area's population and dwelling stock until the global financial crisis—which affected the Portuguese economy in the course of a process of financialization that relied heavily on the housing industry—and the intensity of urban rehabilitation in subsequent years. However, there is evidence that the latter has not halted nor reduced the loss of long‐term residents in the historic centre, as tourists and other international gentrifiers occupy the upgraded dwelling stock amid an escalation of house prices and rents. The specific contribution of this research lies in the link that it establishes between Lisbon's ongoing process of inner‐city gentrification and the lack of suburban expansion after 2007. By showing that the credit crunch triggered a shift in the geographic location of real‐estate capital that materialized in a new urban development model, this research adds an empirical layer to the study of the spatial effects of the crisis and contributes to the literature on the subsequent restructuring of southern European housing markets.     

Stakeholder management in sustainable supply chains: A case study of the bioenergy industry

Engaging with stakeholders and managing their issues when striving for a sustainable supply chain (SC) is a significant challenge. Although most studies on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) consider stakeholder management necessary, little is known about related stakeholder management practices in SSCM. Thus, this paper seeks to enrich the theoretical debate on stakeholder management practices in SSCM through a case study approach to bioenergy SCs in Chile. Based on 28 interviews with SC actors and representatives from the surrounding stakeholder environment, the deductive–inductive analysis reveals that stakeholder management combines different practices to discuss stakeholder concerns, address them, and evaluate the process at the SC's external and internal levels. We propose structuring these practices based on two dimensions: “practices to address stakeholder requirements” and “practices whereby stakeholders are integrated.” The analysis' results indicate that although two-way communication with stakeholders can be seen as the core of stakeholder management, a certain willingness to learn and transform SC design is a prerequisite for true orientation toward stakeholder management in SSCM. Additionally, linkage development and local anchoring are practices used to obtain further legitimacy at the external level. Building on these findings, this study can guide practitioners in engaging with stakeholders and managing their issues across the SC.     

The speed of human capital formation in the baseball industry: the information value of minor‐league performance in predicting major‐league performance

Using a data set of well over 1200 different pitchers covering an almost 20‐year time period, this paper reveals that the process of human capital formation for professional baseball pitchers is relatively slow, rendering minor league statistics to be of limited value when projecting major league performance. This indicates that a considerable amount of the performance differences across pitchers at the major league level are revealed only after they reach the majors, and hence is unforeseen given their minor league statistics. These findings illustrate just how difficult it is for all organizations to predict the future success of their apprentice‐level employees. Even in an industry such as baseball—where employee output is easily measurable and highly quantifiable, and where the nature of the work at the developmental level is identical to that at the advanced level (i.e. pitching a baseball)—apprentice‐level performance only provides modest insights into how that employee will ultimately perform at the advanced level. Thus, firms that erroneously overestimate the importance of apprentice‐level performance are at risk of making systematic errors in personnel decisions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Higher education: marketing in a quasi‐commercial service industry

The UK Government is promoting widening participation and asking universities to develop their student intake of 18–30 year‐olds by 50 per cent by 2010. The financing of these changes is encouraging a marketing emphasis shift, as funding is reduced and alternative revenue methods sought. Traditional marketing of charitable educational institutions sought to ensure sufficient student enrolments for solely government‐funded core activities. Further marketing is now seen in quasi‐commercial activities. This paper investigates the need for a further marketing approach to satisfy these government policy changes. Using the comparative method, the paper looks at the complexity of the issues around US and UK higher education and their revenue value conflicts, marketing perspectives and, finally, the differences in perspectives and expectations between commerce and education. As the matter is current and ongoing, the main form of collecting evidence is through personal interview and recent media releases. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Quasi‐rational and ex ante price expectations in commodity supply models: an empirical analysis of the US broiler market

A statistically optimal inference about agents' ex ante price expectations within the US broiler market is derived using futures prices of related commodities along with a quasi‐rational forecasting regression equation. The modelling approach, which builds on a Hamilton‐type framework, includes endogenous production and allows expected cash price to be decomposed into anticipated and unanticipated components. We therefore infer the relative importance of various informational sources in expectation formation. Results show that, in addition to the quasi‐rational forecast, the true supply shock, future prices, and ex post commodity price forecast errors have, at times, been influential in broiler producers' price expectations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Globalised management and local labour: the case of the white‐goods industry in Turkey

This paper is concerned with the situation where goods are produced by workers in underdeveloped countries, in this case, consumer durables, under the direction of managements which have access to modern management techniques. In particular, it considers the significance of new management methods, especially Total Quality Management, for workers employed in white‐goods manufacture in Turkey.     

Understanding the elements of empathy as a component of care‐driven leadership

Empathy plays a pivotal role in educational leadership practice. It creates and maintains a sound and dynamic interpersonal milieu in dynamic social enterprises such as schools, colleges, and universities. A phenomenological study was conducted to probe deeper the meaning of empathy as it is lived and constituted in the awareness of a select group of 13 Filipino academic administrators representing colleges in the Philippines. Anchored on the central question, “how do Filipino academic administrators collectively typify in their school leadership practices the elements of empathic concern, perspective taking, and empathic matching,” semistructured (Patton, 1990) and in‐depth interviews were conducted. Field texts were analyzed via a repertory grid. Through constant comparative analyses, an interesting set of conceptual categories notably describes the human and humane side of a caring leader, typified in the ability to effect listening, confluencing, and scaffolding in the journey with the faculty.     

Forms of cross‐border mobility and social capital in multinational enterprises

This paper discusses how different forms of cross‐border employee mobility all contribute to establishing social ties across different units of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Despite the growing recognition of the significance of employees' cross‐unit social ties in MNEs for both individuals and the organisation, the mechanisms for creating such ties remain underspecified. We contribute to closing this gap by identifying the role that an array of forms of international mobility can play in promoting employees' (cross‐unit) social ties inside MNEs. We draw upon empirical accounts of the job‐related international mobility experiences of 72 high‐skilled employees in three leading MNEs in the mobile telecommunications sector. Guided by a framework that utilizes some of the key concepts of the debate on social ties and social capital, we discuss traditional expatriation, short‐term assignments, localised transfers and business travel in terms of the structure and strength of the cross‐unit ties they engender, as well as their accessibility. We find (1) that it is not only traditional long‐term assignments in the form of expatriation that enable individuals to create cross‐unit social ties; and, (2) that different forms of international mobility promote cross‐unit social ties in variable ways and to different extents.     

The pandemic and SME supply chains: Learning from early experiences of SME suppliers in the U.S. defense industry

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been disrupting supply chains in an unprecedented fashion, one type of firms that has been particularly affected are small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We focus on these SMEs, specifically on SME suppliers to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and investigate the impact that the pandemic has had on these suppliers, as well as the effectiveness of various government procurement efforts to alleviate the challenges. In doing so, we rely on survey data collected by the National Defense Industry Association (NDIA) during the early stages of the pandemic in March and April 2020 to assess initial government responses and SME supplier receptions. To derive more granular insight, we scrutinize the results across firm size, dependence on the DoD, whether the SME is a first-tier supplier or not, and industry. Through this investigation, we for instance find that the weakest suppliers are the very small SMEs (1–49 employees), and that most government measures were judged to not be that effective—at least in these early stages of the pandemic. Overall, our study leverages insight from one of the few large-scale surveys conducted on the impact of the pandemic on SME suppliers and their relationship with government agencies in the very early phases of the pandemic.     

The optimal choice of internal decision‐making structures in a network industry: A multiproduct monopoly case

Focusing on the role of network compatibility effects between products of a multiproduct monopoly and on the form of consumer expectation for network sizes, we consider the optimal choice of internal decision‐making structures, that is, centralization and decentralization, and its welfare effect in a network industry. We demonstrate that if the degree of network compatibility effects is sufficiently large, the decentralized decision making is socially optimal. However, in the case of consumer ex post expectations, it is optimal for the firm's owners to choose the centralized decision making. We apply the model to the cases of price‐setting games, complementary products, and negative network externalities to examine the optimal choice of internal decision‐making structures.     

Northern Ireland's environmental industry: an examination of the eco‐capital equipment producing sector

In common with much of the rest of the European Union, Northern Ireland has a small but important and expanding environmental industry. The region's ‘green economy’ employs almost 13 000 people and is projected to grow by a further 4000–6000 jobs by the end of the millennium. This article focuses upon one small‐scale sub‐sector–the eco‐capital equipment producers–and analyses their recent industrial performance in the context of current regional development/industrial strategy theory. Drawing on empirical survey, comment is made on the sector's employment characteristics, production sequences, market structures and business operating experiences. Based on this discussion, a series of suggestions is offered that could help central and regional government improve the performance of the industry, and, in turn, the economy of the region, still further. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

2010年零售行业供应链发展趋势

2010年,经济环境虽已出现复苏迹象。但零售企业仍将面临挑战。在此背景下,零售行业的物流及供应链环节将呈现出新的特点。