Assessing new cell phone text and video services

The cell phone is a social medium developing into a multimedia digital platform that provides, obtains, and shares personal and social information. Thus, digital divide, social support, and privacy issues familiar to students of the Internet are here applied to understanding why people may be more or less interested in new text and video cell phone services. The first part of this study develops a basic model of demographic, social, and prior technology use influences on interest in three categories of cell phone text and video services derived from uses and gratifications studies of traditional and new media services—surveillance, entertainment, and instrumental. Hypotheses from this model were tested using data from an April 2007 US national random-digit dialing telephone survey. The by-now familiar digital divide demographics had both indirect and direct influences on assessments of these sets of services, although primarily for entertainment services (which were also negatively influenced by concerns about privacy threats). Surveillance services—here, providing location of family, friends and self to each other—were more positively assessed when family and friends lived closer, and with less prior communication technology use. Instrumental services—such as directions when lost and health emergency information—were more positively assessed by those with greater social support and a stronger belief in privacy rights. Thus, while overall only the entertainment services were even moderately explained, there were understandable differences in influences among the three sets of services, with demographic factors predominating.     

Why is the international accounting rate system in terminal decline, and what might be the consequences?

This paper looks at the incentives and opportunities existing in the provision of international telephony and argues that the present accounting rate system is unsustainable. The paper also provides a framework within which current or proposed regulations governing trade in international telecommunications services can be analysed. The enormous profits available in this sector, together with developments in digital and fibre optic technology, are resulting in a breakdown of the Implicit cartel arrangements which have largely prevented operators from on-selling services (a type of arbitrage). However, liberalization by only part of the world will give rise to a potentially serious new problem—monopoly opportunism by operators in non-liberalized countries. The paper analyses this and other potential problems that can be expected to arise in the future.     

Social networking relationships,firm‐specific managerial experience and firm performance in a transition economy: A comparative analysis of family owned and nonfamily firms

The effect of social networking relationships, firm‐specific managerial experience, and their interactions on performance between family owned and nonfamily firms are studied. Using data from 106 organizations in Ghana, the findings show that family owned firms benefit more from networking relationships with bureaucratic officials than do nonfamily firms. However, nonfamily firms benefit more from networking relationships with community leaders and firm‐specific managerial experience than do family owned firms. Networking relationships with politicians impede performance for nonfamily firms. Nonfamily firms are better able than family owned firms to use their firm‐specific managerial experience to manage the resources and capabilities obtained from networking relationships with community leaders to create value. Moreover, firm‐specific managerial experience attenuates the detrimental effects of networking with politicians for both types of firms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interceptability of telecommunications: Is US and Dutch law prepared for the future?

For many decades, governments have successfully intercepted telecommunications to collect information about—potential—criminals and terrorists. A crucial part of contemporary policy is legislation that requires telecommunications providers to make their networks and services interceptable. This paper discusses two examples of interceptability legislation: the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in the US and the Telecommunications Act in the Netherlands, in order to focus on basic questions, considerations, and trade-offs relevant to designing legal interceptability laws.     

Pro-poor agricultural biotechnology: Can the international research system deliver the goods?

While global investment in agricultural research by the private sector is increasing with growth in developing country markets and the emergence of new technologies, complementary public sector investment is stagnating or declining in many developing countries. This review argues that the changing roles of the public and private sectors in generating new scientific knowledge may adversely affect the diffusion of explicitly pro-poor technologies—technologies that are simultaneously yield-enhancing and poverty-reducing. Comparing historical evidence from the Green Revolution with recent evidence from the emerging era of agricultural biotechnology, this review argues that a more pluralistic international system for agricultural research will be more responsive to poverty only if the strategic leadership role of the public sector is strengthened, certain research functions are reallocated to the private sector, and new policy and organizational mechanisms are used to stimulate pro-poor research in and for developing-country agriculture.     

The influence of network effects on SME performance

The notions that firms are embedded within complex networks, and that managers spend time actively networking, have long been accepted by scholars within the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group. However, an issue that has not received the same attention is an assessment of how these two facets; network structure and external networking behaviors affect SME performance. In assessing their antecedents, in this research we move beyond the traditional IMP literature, using emotional intelligence and entrepreneurial style to assess CEOs' managerial style. Network structure was assessed by the extent to which structural holes and degrees of centrality were present. Data was collected from 227 CEOs of small Iranian information technology companies. To test our hypotheses, we combined the use of structural equation modeling and social network analysis — a dual methodology that has not been adopted before. The results show that emotional intelligence drives entrepreneurial style, network structure and external networking behavior. SME performance is influenced by both network structure and external networking behavior. The mediating role of network structure is also discussed. Here our results show that entrepreneurial style does not influence external networking behavior. Several managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

Sustaining the Flow of External Ideas: The Role of Dual Social Identity across Communities and Organizations

Firm‐hosted online communities are increasingly a part of innovation efforts that seek to provide a flow of external ideas into organizations. However, many online communities do not gain traction or die out over time. One possible but underresearched driver of sustained engagement by members of firm‐hosted communities is a social identity that makes community members feel like they are part of the firm. We sought to empirically derive the organizational practices that support community members having a dual social identity with both communities and organizations. We completed extensive field work and over 90 interviews regarding two firms that had a history of sustained engagement by members of their communities: T‐shirt firm Threadless and automotive firm Local Motors. We identified eight organizational practices that supported dual social identity. Four of these practices made members perceive a porous boundary between firm and community, including an “open house” policy and hiring from the community. Another four practices made members feel supported in community efforts, including promoting community projects and having top management active in the community. We describe the practices in detail and the implications for firms using online communities as one component of their portfolio of innovation efforts.     

Formal standards-setting for global telecommunications and information services. Towards an institutional regime transformation?

This paper reviews the nature and economic significance of the activities carried on by standards development organizations (SDOs), focusing in particular upon the telecommunications and information technology standards-setting work of the government-created public and quasi-public institutions, and the international treaty organizations that constitute the formal standards sector. It documents the current sources of tension within this regime and appraises various proposals for organizational reforms. There are especially pressing needs for adaptations of the inherited institutional mechanisms for technical coordination to provide for inter-operability in the development of new telecommunication networks and services. Among the manifold sources of strain on the old structure, those which seem at once most fundamental and potentially most threatening are the recently heightened industrial perceptions of the potential strategic value of standards as tools of business competition and national policy, and the incentives for ‘institutional by-pass’ that have been created by the rapid proliferation of technological possibilities. The paper considers some alternative organizational models for negotiated standard-setting that might be able to withstand, and better harness these forces for the continued production of standards as public goods.     

Individual customers' use and integration of resources: Empirical findings and organizational implications in the context of value co-creation

This article addresses the call for empirical work to contribute to the ongoing critique of service-dominant (S-D) logic, and for an assessment of its potential reach to practitioners. It examines the appropriateness of a model of the resource-based view of consumers in an organizational context — the British Library (BL) — and concludes that the model can be adapted to include individual customers with varying motivations (personal/business) for using the BL's services. A detailed analysis of individual customer's operant resources (enabled through access to 565 messages posted to a BL user support forum) provided a different lens through which the organization could consider strategies to support value co-creation. The outcomes, from a collaborative research process, with executives and senior managers of BL, suggest that a sub-division of customer operant resources into physical, cultural and social has empirical support and managerial relevance, and that a focus on individual customer resources can provide insights into how to manage co-creation of value.     

Smallholder market participation under transactions costs: Maize supply and fertilizer demand in Kenya

This paper assessed the effects of transactions costs—relative to price and non-price factors—on smallholder marketed surplus and input use in Kenya. A selectivity model was used that accounts for the effects of transactions costs, assets, technology, and support services in promoting input use and generating a marketable surplus. Output supply and input demand responses to changes in transactions costs and price and non-price factors were estimated and decomposed into market entry and intensity. The results showed that while transactions costs indeed have significant negative effects on market participation, institutional innovations—such as group marketing—are also emerging to mitigate the costs of accessing markets. Output price has no effect on output market entry and only provides incentives for increased supply by sellers. On the other hand, both price and non-price factors have significant influence on adoption and intensity of input use. Overall, the findings suggest that policy options are available other than price policies to promote input use and marketed surplus. The paper concludes with implications for policy to induce greater input–output market participation among smallholders in Africa.     

A NAASTy alternative to RAND pricing commitments

Voluntary standard setting organizations (SSOs) typically require participants to disclose their patents during the standard-setting process, and will endorse a standard only if patent holders commit to license them on reasonable and non-discriminatory or RAND terms. This policy is unworkable—the RAND standard is ambiguous and thus extremely hard to adjudicate. As an alternative, a policy of Non-Assertion After Specified Time, or NAAST pricing, is proposed. Under NAAST, technology vendors commit not to assert their patent after some previous specified time, but would be free to collect royalties as they wish up until that point. Under this proposal, technology producers would be compensated, vendors would have quick and eventually free access to standards and a large element of uncertainty due to litigation would be eliminated.     

Dynamics of asymmetric conflict: The case of the German Milk Conflict

The German Milk Conflict developed when an emerging farmer association challenged the large incumbent in the wake of an insufficiently communicated policy change, abolition of the milk quota. The organizations represent opposing sides of a common policy debate, market liberalization versus regulation. The study analyzed the patterns between the two organizations and proposed a grounded theory of asymmetric conflict. Due to the elevated level of emotions during the conflict, the study used a qualitative research approach based on 34 in-depth interviews. The analysis uncovered the interlocking patterns of simplification and emotionalization by the smaller association and rationalizing by the larger association. Results indicate how an active opponent can use policy changes to its advantage and how to prevent such a development. Recommendations based on the grounded theory developed, such as implementing suitable communication strategies, are transferable to a variety of changes and conflict situations in complex environments, such as the food and agricultural sector.     

Actor network pictures and networking activities in business networks: An experimental study

In recent years, there has been increasing interest among business-to-business marketing scholars in the processes of managerial cognition. In particular, actors' network pictures, defined as the cognitive representations of managers' business surroundings have attracted much attention. However, there has so far been no empirical research on the impact that network pictures have on managerial behavior. The purpose of this paper is therefore to understand if and how specific pertinent network picture characteristics — namely power, dynamics, broadness, and indirectness — are associated with different behavioral choices, i.e. networking strategies. Based on an experiment with 445 Executive MBA students, all international managers across different industries, we find that managers' choices when managing business relationships, their strategic actions, are affected by the way they perceive their surrounding business network. However, amongst the different theoretical models of networking activities tested, only the power dimension showed significant associations with all four network picture characteristics. This study represents the first to empirically study the connection between cognition and behavior in business-to-business markets, as well as one of the few to apply an experimental design to study a business-to-business marketing related phenomenon. Also, it paves the way for future understanding of the association between network picture characteristics and networking strategies in interaction between actors.     

Interoperability of interpersonal communications services – A consumer perspective

The European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) enables competent authorities to introduce interoperability obligations also for number-independent interpersonal communications services (NI-ICS) such as Facebook Messenger, LINE, Skype, WeChat and WhatsApp. Under such an obligation, consumers could interact not just with users of the NI-ICS where they have a user account themselves, but also with users of all then interoperable NI-ICS. While with traditional electronic communications services (ECS) economic theory and consumer interests align as regards interoperability since multi-homing across various operators is the exemption, it is not yet clear whether that is also true for NI-ICS for which multi-homing is the norm. Our paper draws on an online survey of n = 2044 consumers in Germany covering traditional ECS, email and 22 other NI-ICS to address this issue from a consumer point of view. We find that people proactively use the boundaries between communications services to compartmentalize their social contacts according to relationship closeness. Our finding echoes indications provided in a rich stream of computer-mediated communication (CMC) research and in particular psychological theories of relationship development. Specifically, people appear to follow a finely tuned cultural code implying a hierarchical order of communications services used depending on the closeness of the contacts. Consequently, our results provide a complementary explanation of how and why certain groups of social ties converge to a specific (set of) communications service(s) beyond network effects and shed a critical light on current policy debates around an interoperability obligation for interpersonal communications applications. They highlight that an interoperability obligation for NI-ICS would likely not be in line with consumer interests.     

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.     

Anatomy of a social partnership: A stakeholder perspective

We offer an anatomic analysis of a social partnership among a complex network of stakeholder organizations. Contributions of this research are twofold. First, we use explanatory case data to develop a framework of stakeholder collaboration in a complex setting involving a mix of for-profit and non-profit organizations. Our study is motivated by a need for understanding about how organizations can work within social partnerships to achieve their goals (be they profit related or otherwise). Second, we offer insight about lateral relationship exchange from the view of the entire project—a perspective not typically employed in the domain of relationship marketing. The focal issue in the case, use of technology to improve highway safety, is a social initiative which further sets our study apart in the relationship marketing literature. Using fieldnotes from 33 in-depth interviews, we employ a mix of inductive and deductive reasoning to formulate a conceptual framework and research propositions for the social partnership. The conceptual framework offers in-depth understanding of social partnership development and relationship dynamics. This, in turn, may help stakeholders achieve organizational goals more effectively in this unique environment.     

Demand for telecommunication services in developing countries

Living standards and economic growth in developing countries are invariably linked to the availability and use of telecom services. Effective policy decisions require the best estimates of the drivers of these services. In this paper, telecommunications demand is estimated in models for residential mainline and mobile telephone service for developing countries for the period 1996–2003. The paper tests for cross-price effects between mainline and mobile service and its findings have important policy implications. It finds residential monthly price elasticity to be insignificant for developing countries, but the connection elasticity is larger than generally found in the literature. Mobile monthly price elasticities are very large. A new and important empirical finding is that although wireline phones are substitutes in the mobile market, the contrary is not true—mobile phones are not substitutes in the wireline market, and in fact may be considered complements. This lack of symmetry has important implications for properly defining telecom markets. Universal service subsidies and competitive market initiatives should be reevaluated in light of the paper's elasticity estimates. Increased competition, income growth and enhanced education may be the ultimate universal service promoters.     

Mexico's international telecommunications policy: Origins,the WTO dispute,and future challenges

Mexico is by far Latin America's largest trader and the country with the most free trade agreements. Notwithstanding the success of its trade policy, the liberalization of its telecommunications sector was limited and generated a dispute at the WTO. This article offers an overview of Mexico's trade policy, with special emphasis on its policy regarding trade in telecommunications services and the 2002–2004 Mexico–United States dispute over telecommunications at the WTO. The dispute is the first one over trade in telecommunications services at the WTO and has generated interest among many developed and developing countries.     

Emerging issues confronting the renewable natural resources sector in sub-Saharan Africa

The renewable natural resources sector in Africa is highly important because of the relatively high proportion of livelihoods it supports relative to other developing regions. However, ongoing rapid population growth threatens the long-term survival of the sector. Key concerns include the need for agricultural intensification in the context of systems which are often located in marginal areas, the demands imposed by rapid urbanization, and access rights to essential resources such as water. The policy and institutional environment can make problems worse since trends toward greater democracy often prove destabilizing or deflect the political agenda toward short-term expediency instead of longer-term strategies essential to the renewable natural resources sector. Structural adjustment has yet to produce the expected benefits and it is clear that the private sector will be unable to meet growth and distributional objectives on its own. A broader-based strategy is needed which includes not only government institutions at national and local levels, but also nongovernmental organizations, community organizations, and regional and international bodies.     

The impact of the product to service shift in industrial markets and the evolution of the sales organization

Marketing is undergoing a paradigmatic shift that involves a change in focus from the exchange of goods, which are usually manufactured output, to providing a service, which is fundamental to economic exchange (Vargo & Lusch 2004).Evidenced by three decades of marketing transformation in B2B (business-to-business) sales organizations, this paper examines the evolution of sales organizations as a result of the shift from product- to service-focused commerce. This paper also identifies areas of future research and practice in marketing. Findings suggest that the traditional product-focused sales organization will evolve in two directions. First, enhanced use of technology will reduce some traditional sales functions and even face-to-face contact. Second, customers who are important to marketers will experience improvements in the level of customer contact—leading to growth in customer-focused sales organizations and an increase in global account management teams. Changes in sales organizations will also lead to changes in the selection, training, and recruitment of salespeople as well as their roles.Direction for future research and managerial implications are highlighted throughout the paper as are changes likely to occur in sales organizations.