Are business‐to‐business relationships inherently unstable?

The intangible nature of relationships makes for certain difficulties in analysing both “relationships;” themselves and the circumstances in which they might exist. Using an adaptation of Bosiot's I Space, it is suggested that relationships may often effectively be the product offered in business‐to‐business relationships. However, the combination of market forces and the behaviour of managers is identified as the source of the instability of relationships.     

Values,the key to business in 1990 and beyond∗

This article is concerned with the changes which have affected the personal selling function in industrial markets in recent years. It reviews research findings from the UK, Europe and America, and discusses the implications for sales force management and sales training. It concludes that industrial marketing must focus upon key account relationship management, rather than the manipulation of the four Ps in order to create competitive advantage, and that radical new approaches are needed in sales training which reflect the changing nature of the sales person's role, and which may be demonstrated to have a positive affect on selling effectiveness.     

Entrepreneurial enterprise and ‘image’ in the nineteenth-century trading firm: Shaping the legal environment for business

Jardine Matheson & Company, a 200-year-old Hong Kong trading company that began as a house of agency, has evolved to become a contemporary Asian multinational. This article focuses on the entrepreneurial ambition of founders William Jardine and James Matheson, the importance of reputation both to legitimacy and the survival and growth of the firm, with emphasis on the role played by the founders in shaping the legal environment for trade with China. The study uses Edith Penrose's Theory of the Growth of the Firm as a principal interpretive framework and draws its evidence from the founders' original letters and a previously unexamined resource, the free trade treatise of James Matheson called Present Position and Prospects of the British Trade with China.     

Beyond the corporation: Who represents business to the government and public?

A new kind of business leadership has emerged during the past decade, a leadership devoted to the public interest. What are the stages that characterize the development of these leaders?     

Money in the real and the virtual world: e‐money,c‐money and the demand for cb‐money

Electronic money seems to become a new form of means of payment, not only for the Internet. It therefore will compete with other means of payment as central bank money and credit cards. There is an extensive literature on the technical and security aspects of the several forms of electronic money, but only a few papers on the economic aspects exist. In this paper, a Lancaster approach to the demand for means of payment is employed to scrutinize closer the relationship between electronic money and central bank money and credit cards. It is shown that in a two characteristics world of liquidity (acceptability) and security, there is a place for electronic money. Furthermore, it is shown that at present none of the existing monies has the potential for being a dominant means of payment. However, if the network externality problem of electronic money can be solved, electronic money may supplant the others. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Back to the cave or playing away? Gender roles in home-from-home environments

Abstract: This paper theorizes the gender roles that are played out in the alternative spaces acquired by purchasers of second homes in foreign rural environments. These homes are often constructed by their owners (both men and women) as bolt-holes, simple places of escape from normal routines; the lived reality is that they become arenas in which men often play at cave-building or peasant-style farming, while women find a different context for creative home-making, shopping and socializing, and the caring ethic of being involved with children, grandchildren and visitors. Both genders are freed from the constraints of their normal working lives, but the ambivalent nature of the context which is both home and holiday is one in which work is present, in the form of do-it-yourself or doing the domestic, while at the same time it provides opportunity for forms of ludic behaviour. Drawing from a series of unstructured interviews, I examine the consumption practices of second home owners and analyse the ways in which informants reflect on their activities and identities. The home-and-yet-away context allows the experiences and meanings of home and away from home to be explored from both genders’ perspectives, leading to conclusions about the dynamics of gender relationships in situations that combine routine and novelty.     

Cross-country differences in attitudes to business associations during the 2007–2010 recession

This paper uses empirical data gathered through an on-line survey of 206 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), conducted in France, Sweden and the UK. The paper examines cross-country differences in SME managers’ perceptions of business associations as sources of political intelligence and their ability to influence policy responses to financial crises. Findings demonstrate that the respondents’ countries of origin are significantly correlated with (1) their use of information sources to gather political intelligence, (2) their perceptions regarding the effectiveness of business associations in influencing policy outcomes, and (3) their perceptions regarding policymakers’ appreciation of information provided by SME associations.     

Thiscompanysucks.com: the use of the Internet in negative consumer‐to‐consumer articulations

The Internet has provided a forum through which consumers who are dissatisfied with various companies can vent their anger towards these corporations. A number of World Wide Web (WWW) sites have cropped up on the Internet, their specific aim being the fomenting of negative communication about companies: these are known as corporate complaint WWW sites. Little research has been conducted on negative on‐line consumer‐to‐consumer articulations and the possible impact that these might have on consumers' perceptions and attitudes. This paper attempts to foster discussion on the use of the Internet in facilitating consumer‐to‐consumer communication, particularly negative communication. First, background information on corporate complaint WWW sites is provided. Then, a survey that was conducted in order to glean information on consumer knowledge of and responses to these kinds of WWW sites is discussed. The results indicate that, among the population used in this study, the awareness of corporate complaint WWW sites was moderate. However, when respondents were aware of them, they were likely to visit them. Social influence plays a role in influencing awareness and prompting visits to corporate complaint WWW sites. In addition, an individual difference factor, attitudes towards complaining, influenced the kinds of activities in which the respondents engaged when they visit corporate complaint WWW sites. Future research directions are proposed.     

Standing in the shadow of the corporation: women’s contribution to Swedish family business in the early twentieth century

This article investigates the role of wives in the Swedish business elite in the early 1900s, through letters and diaries. The Swedish case is particularly interesting, since the country has a long tradition of successful corporate families. The corporate wife was expected to perform duties linked to the family business. To get more directly involved in the firm, the husband had to give his permission. By offering support the wife could gain tacit knowledge of her husband’s work. Her emotional efforts influenced the achievements of the family business, sometimes even its survival.     

Born to be similar? Global isomorphism and the emergence of latecomer business schools

By building on insights from institutional isomorphism, this paper investigates the development paths of latecomer business schools in Hong Kong, (South) Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. The global isomorphic pressure prevalent in higher education (e.g. the global regime of rankings) drives latecomers to imitate the practices of incumbents in order to enhance their academic impact through business and management research. Our study argues that latecomers respond to global isomorphism by forging their own paths. Our analysis shows that business knowledge production in Hong Kong and Singapore was more responsive to coercive (research strategy) and normative (faculty recruitment strategy) isomorphic pressure than Korea and Taiwan. The response to mimetic isomorphic pressure (co-authorship strategy) was less salient in Hong Kong and Taiwan than in Singapore and Korea. Further, we find that research, faculty recruitment, and co-authorship strategies affect the academic impact (citations) of the higher education institutions across each country differently. Our study sheds new light on the role of global isomorphism in the emergence of latecomer business schools.     

A network text analysis of published papers in service business, 2007–2017: research trends in the service sector

The service sector has become the most important part of the global economy. Thus, Service Business: An International Journal (SB) was launched in 2007 to deliver innovative studies that can provide resonating insights to researchers and practitioners in services. This study analyzed 311 articles published in SB during the past 10+ years (2007–2017) by conducting network text analysis (NTA). The published papers’ keywords link relations were analyzed to create network maps of research topics, ranging from traditional to emerging ideas of researchers. Influential research topics and their clusters were identified using centrality and community analyses. Research trends were identified for the first 5 years (Volume 1–5) and later years (Volume 6–11) separately through NTA. The results reveal interesting change in research topics over time. Common keywords of studies published in the first 5 years were: Service, Innovation, Customer, Strategy, Tourism, and Quality. The primary frequent keywords of articles published during 2012–2017 were: Customer, Quality, Satisfaction, Innovation, Mobile, and Technology. The results of the study shed valuable insights to the researchers and practitioners in the service sector. Applications of keyword network building and analysis methods provided in this study would be helpful to researchers who are interested in exploring trends of emerging new topics.     

Is more capability always beneficial for firm performance? Market orientation,core business process capabilities and business environment

This study examines the role of capabilities in core marketing-related business processes–product development management (PDM), supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM)–in translating a firm’s market orientation (MO) into firm performance. The study is the first to examine the interplay of all three business process capabilities simultaneously, while investigating how environmental conditions moderate their performance effects. A moderated mediation analysis of 468 product-focused firms finds that PDM and CRM process capabilities play important mediating roles, whereas SCM process capability does not mediate the relationship between MO and performance. However, the relative importance of the capabilities as mediators varies along the degree of environmental turbulence, and under certain conditions, an increase in the level of business process capability may even turn detrimental.     

Cooperation between business associations and the government in the Korean cotton industry, 1950–70

The Korean government intended to promote the cotton industry, and expected that the industry would play a positive role to decelerate the inflation rate and increase exports during 1950–70. However, the ability of Korean public servants to develop the industry was insufficient. Korea had a powerful business association in the industry, the Spinners and Weavers Association of Korea (SWAK), which did have enough organisational resources. The government asked SWAK to support its policies, and SWAK cooperated with the government with good results. SWAK did not simply implement government policies in the business world, but was a partner of the government in accomplishing targets.     

Head in the clouds or feet on the ground? CEO perspectives and the international business research agenda

In response to recent articles examining the current state and future direction of international business (IB) research, this article directly surveys CEOs of the largest Fortune 500 companies to solicit their views about university‐based IB research and to identify the most significant IB problems their firms encounter. Results suggest a consistently low appreciation by CEOs for university‐based IB research over an extended period of time. Data also suggest a window of opportunity to capture a constituency among those companies that anticipate a significant increase in their international activity. To capture a practitioner constituency, however, research should focus on key problem areas that have been identified in this article, and the findings should be presented in accessible forms and venues. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

British business and the telephone, 1878–1911

Most research into the early telephone system has focused on telephone providers rather than users, and this article begins to address that imbalance. The telephone was initially used to improve internal communications within firms, by connecting offices with warehouses, or by enabling staff working away from the office to report back. With the expansion of exchange networks, the commercial, intermediary and brokering sectors became heavy users of the technology for routine information transfer within business districts. Business elites continued to favour face-to-face contact for strategic business negotiations, however, and delegated telephone use to their employees.     

Japanese business culture: the government,mainstream enterprises and ‘mavericks’ in the steel industry

Some scholars have argued that Japanese business epitomizes organized capitalism, and no-one would deny that the government and trade associations were pivotal in the distinctive development of Japanese capitalism. But it is frequently emphasized that competition between firms was fierce. One interpretation is that Japanese firms co-operated in developing technologies, and also collaborated in pricing policy, output allocation and capital investment. This collaborative endeavour gives the impression of a business environment that was static and collusive. By contrast individual firms competed aggressively in the improvement of the product quality, in productivity and in marketing. Infrequently a few determined firms refused to follow government guidance and openly challenged it. Two examples, Kawasaki Steel in 1950 and Sumitomo Metal in 1965, require a wider perspective than business-government relationships. It is the triangular matrix of government, mainstream firms, and ‘mavericks’ that has to be considered. Mainstream firms have a close relationship with government and try to impede the aggressive behaviour of ‘mavericks’. Exploring these tripartite interactions is crucial to any understanding of Japanese industry.     

Using an integrated business experience to take the place of “introduction to management” in an integrated curriculum

Management education is an oft-criticized subject, with practitioners and scholars alike offering suggestions for improvement. A gap still exists in how management theory is introduced to students. The authors describe how their business school redesigned its undergraduate curriculum with an embodiment of three distinguishing characteristics: experiential learning, integration, and demonstration of achievement. The authors illustrate how they incorporate introduction to management theory within several courses and describe how this coursework relates back to their curriculum’s three characteristics. They conclude with a brief discussion of how their integrated curriculum allows for upper-level Bloom’s taxonomy cognitive processes, and further reinforcement and eventual mastery of management theory in third- and fourth-year courses.