Institutional Change and Factor Movement in Major League Baseball: An Examination of the Coase Theorem’s Invariance Principle

One version of the Coase Theorem suggests that the distribution of resources is invariant to the assignment of rights. The lack of real world examples has made empirical tests difficult. However, such a ‘rights’ change did occur in Major League Baseball in the 1970s where the ‘rights’ of players were switched from owners to players. We examine whether this change impacted the distribution of players. In the end, the characteristics of player movement do appear to have been impacted by the re-assignment of rights and therefore, calls into question the relevance of this version of the Coase Theorem.     

Governance and capabilities: Asia’s entrepreneurial performance and stock of venture forms

Asian economies display large evident differences in their entrepreneurial capabilities and performance. While existing explanations of these differences have largely focused on formal and informal background institutions, we instead emphasize differences in national stocks of venture forms. We suggest that alternate venture forms, because of their different governance characteristics, possess unique entrepreneurial capabilities and pursue distinct opportunities. Consequently, nations must possess a diverse and balanced stock of venture forms and have such forms engaged in the unique and complementary activities for which they are best suited. Viewed in this light, addressing national limitations in entrepreneurial performance requires changes in stocks of venture forms. In developing the policy implications of our analysis, we highlight the past successes and current development challenges of Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China.     

Recognition of entrepreneur’s social ties and firm innovation in emerging markets: explanation from the industrial institutional environment and survival pressure

Despite the extensive attention to the role of entrepreneurs’ business or political ties, few studies have distinguished the basis of those social ties. The aim of this study is to explore the different roles of the entrepreneurs’ personalized and formal social ties on the firms’ innovation performance. Based on renqing and formal rules, this study extends the social ties’ typology into four categories, namely, transactional business ties, transactional political ties, guanxi business ties, and guanxi political ties. Using data collected from 209 Chinese firms, we further identify the distinctive contributions of the different ties on the entrepreneurial firm’s innovation performance under different institutional environments and entrepreneurs’ survival pressure. This paper will help researchers and managers better understand the function of social ties in innovation in emerging markets, such as China.

     

Institutional environment and complementary assets: Business strategy in China’s 3G development

This paper develops a framework to assess the influences of institutions and markets on the business strategy of firms in transition economies. We argue that regulatory systems and markets in transition economies are interdependent. Their changing conditions will interact and influence the types of partnerships in new market entry. Using a case study approach based on historical data and interviews, we show how China’s telecommunications industry evolved between 1987 and 2007, and led to the development of a 3G (third generation mobile telecommunications) standard and networks. Our analysis based on the framework explains how regulative elements and market conditions shape the strategic choices of partnerships between domestic and foreign firms when entering China’s 3G market.     

The framing of innovation among European research funding actors: Assessing the potential for ‘responsible research and innovation’ in the food and health domain

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has recently emerged as a new framework for science and technology governance. The concept articulates the need for mutual exchange by which societal actors become responsive to each other early on in the process of innovation, with a view to facilitate ethically acceptable and sustainable innovation. There is relatively limited evidence to explore the extent to which the process of research and innovation under the terms of RRI is realised in practice, particularly in the context of food and health research. Although research to date has been examining innovation from the point of view of inputs and outputs—R&D funding and patents—we propose to examine the cognitive framing of innovation that shapes decisions of those who constitute a part of the innovation chain. This paper explores how the concept of innovation is understood and used in policy implementation, with a particular focus upon ‘food and health’ science and research policy and funding. Our analysis is based on 55 interviews of various actors engaged in research funding decision-making across eight European countries. Three themes emerged from the analysis: concept of innovation; conditions for innovation; and drivers of innovation; through these themes, the cognitive framing was drawn out. The cognitive framing suggests that innovation in the food and health domain is perceived to be focused on biosciences and marketable applications to the neglect of social sciences and broader public interest; that the “innovation network” is primarily viewed as centred around scientific/technical and industrial actors; and that the demand-pull dynamic is relevant to innovation in the area of food and health, despite having been relegated in contemporary thinking and policies around innovation. These findings point to the inadequate consideration of the normative issues—how problems are to be defined and addressed—among national research funders in the food and health domain, and indicate a gap between the ideas of innovation under the terms of RRI and innovation as conceptualised by those involved in its governance.     

Cognitive radio systems specific for IMT systems: Operator’s view and perspectives

Cognitive radio (CR) is still an emerging and disruptive communication technology which is expected to improve the overall efficiency of the spectrum use. It is envisaged that cognitive radio systems (CRS) could impact many aspects of communications and in particular could facilitate accommodation of the increasing amount of services and applications in wireless networks. Intensive research on CR aims at maximising the utilisation of the limited radio spectrum resource. There have been many advances in CR regarding the technology development aspects; however supplementary research on regulation, policy and market structure reforms in relation with application specific deployment is still required before any CR-based spectrum access could be implemented for specific broadband mobile applications. Indeed, mobile community is still at an early stage of understanding and development of CR capabilities and it is premature to envisage wide deployment of CRS without careful consideration of regulatory and business issues. Therefore, this paper gives a classification of CR-based network and application scenarios, and investigates the feasibility of them from a regulatory perspective at a global level (ITU-R). Main part of this paper presents the wireless network operator’s approach to CRS specific for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) systems and proposes the radio environment map (REM) concept as a cognitive tool that increases environmental awareness in wireless network operator’s networks. Studies, which the authors performed internally and within the framework of a collaborative European project as well as within ITU-R yield the conclusion that, at shorter term, only intra-operator based CRS maximises the possibility for CR capabilities to be implemented.     

Adherence to WHO’s nutrition recommendations in the UK: Dietary patterns and policy implications from a national survey

Analysis of dietary patterns has largely focused on their association with diseases or risk factors, but limited research has been conducted on the heterogeneity of population dietary patterns and their adherence to international or national nutritional guidelines. As a result, the aim of this study is to identify latent dietary patterns of UK residents and to assess how well different segments comply with WHO dietary norms.To achieve this objective, the UK’s National Diet and Nutrition Surveys for 2011–12 dataset was analysed performing a latent class analysis on energy (kcals) derived from selected food groups. To assess adherence to different dietary patterns of the British population to nutritional guidelines, a traffic light system and a composite conformity index were developed to establish how well the identified segments comply with current dietary WHO norms regarding salt, free sugars, total fat, saturated fat, fruit and vegetables and dietary fibre.Results show four different segments which on the basis of heterogeneity of dietary patterns were named ‘high sugar/high fat consumers’, ‘prudent eaters’, ‘high fat consumers’ and ‘junk food eaters’. These segments show significant differences within and between groups in terms of dietary calories intakes and their adherence to WHO norms. Although ‘prudent eaters’ are closer to WHO dietary guidelines than other segments, none of the identified segments fully comply with dietary WHO norms. Policy implications of these findings are fully discussed in the conclusions arguing how current, future and potential dietary demand and supply measures affect consumers’ compliance with WHO norms.     

Women’s empowerment and gender equity in agriculture: A different perspective from Southeast Asia

Women’s empowerment is considered a ‘prerequisite’ to achieving global food security. Gender systems, however, are diverse and complex. The nature and extent of gender inequity and the conditions necessary to empower women vary across countries, communities and regions. The study of different gender systems is thus fundamental to capture cross-cultural variations in gender specific needs and constraints to effectively address gender gaps. Although the status of women in agriculture has received extensive attention in the literature in recent decades, a research gap persists regarding the state of gender inequity in Southeast Asian agriculture. The current paper contributes to the geographical scope of the literature by presenting empirical evidence of gender inequity from four Southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Using the framework recommended by the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), 37 focus group discussions were conducted with 290 women farmers in the above mentioned countries. The results reveal trends that contradict the conventional narratives of gender inequity in agriculture in certain domains of empowerment. In all four countries, women appear to have equal access to productive resources such as land and inputs, and greater control over household income than men. Important intra-regional heterogeneity is observed in terms of community-level empowerment. While women play an active role in agricultural groups in Thailand and in the Philippines, this is predominantly men’s territory in Indonesia and Myanmar. These findings imply that country-specific gender intervention frameworks are necessary to overcome gender gaps in agriculture.     

Treating the crowd fairly: Increasing the solvers’ self-selection in idea innovation contests

The success of idea crowdsourcing contests depends on the wideness of the number of solvers that voluntarily self-select to solve the problem broadcast by the seeker and previous research has started to highlight the role of fairness in the self-selection process of solvers. This study aims at deepening the understanding concerning how fairness can influence the solvers’ self-selection. By applying a netnographic research design, we identify possible unexplored facets of fairness in the crowdsourcing context, i.e., prize award, award guaranteed, and non-blind contest. Theoretically, we drew from the organizational justice and fairness literature to develop hypotheses about how the three fairness elements affect solvers’ participation in idea crowdsourcing contests. Then, to empirically test the hypotheses, we performed an econometric analysis building on a distinctive dataset of 1067 contests, broadcast on the 99designs crowdsourcing platform. We found that the three fairness factors which emerged from the netnography have a positive impact on the self-selection of solvers. The results of this study offer important contributions to previous literature and provide several implications for organizations and contest organizers in the idea crowdsourcing context.     

Entrepreneurs’ resource background,innovation, philanthropy and the exit of external Investment in Private Ventures in China

Retaining external investment is an important task for private firms. However, the entrepreneurial financing literature has primarily focused on how to attract, instead of retain, start-up funding. Integrating social embeddedness, signaling, and strategic choice theories, we propose that entrepreneurs’ resource background, philanthropic, and innovative activities affect the exit speed of external investment for Chinese private ventures. In particular, we propose that external investment exits entrepreneurs with deprived resources faster than those more resourceful entrepreneurs. Yet, external investment stays longer when less resourceful entrepreneurs commit to innovative or philanthropic activities.

     

Implementing programming in school mathematics and technology: teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic challenges

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - The 2017 reform of the Swedish national curriculum requires that all compulsory school mathematics and technology teachers integrate...     

University – industry collaboration in R&D: the role of labor market rigidity

We investigate how R&D university – industry collaboration (R&D UIC) is influenced by labor market rigidity. While it is well-established that an educated and skilled workforce will facilitate R&D UIC, another aspect of these alliances has been under-researched: the role of labor market rigidity, in particular the difficulties employers face in hiring and firing workers. We hypothesize that the size of the R&D labor pool in a country will encourage R&D UIC, and that the ease with which employers are legally allowed to hire and fire will directly and indirectly influence R&D UIC. Integrating data from various sources, we test our model on a sample of 73 countries for which information on the size of the R&D labor pool and labor market regulations are available. We also conduct a robustness test using a different proxy for R&D labor pool on a larger sample of 109 countries. Results confirm the strong link between a country's R&D labor pool and R&D UIC, as well as direct negative impacts of hiring and firing rigidity and an indirect negative impact of hiring rigidity. The findings have implications for managers, policy makers, and researchers of R&D collaboration between universities and industry.     

Linear demand systems for differentiated goods: Overview and user’s guide

Linear demand systems and quasi-linear quadratic utility models are widely used in industrial economics. We clarify the link between the two settings and explain their exact origin as it seems to be little known by practitioners. We offer practical recommendations to achieve consistency, tractability and a reasonable degree of generality when using the linear demand framework. We show that all tractable versions of the model used in practice are (almost) identical and have a mean-variance structure. We provide concise, ready-to-use formulae for the symmetric model. Finally, we revisit and extend the asymmetric model of Shubik and Levitan.     

Motivation and strategy: MNCs׳ embeddedness in China׳s standardization based innovation

This paper aims to understand why MNCs choose different embedding strategies in standardization based innovation, and how MNCs׳ competitive landscapes evolve alongside the transition of indigenous innovation in China. Using the multiple case study approach based on the interviews and archival data about China׳s mobile standards, we find that MNCs may choose to proactively or reactively embed in China׳s business and institutional systems by aligning their interests with the standard-based indigenous innovation strategy. Although there are high risks in China׳s standardization, MNCs cannot ignore the huge benefits of China׳s mobile market, and may join in this standardization process when they are ensured the government support would sustain.     

Legal form of the firm and overseas market choice in India’s software and IT industry

Drawing upon the economics, international business, and law literatures, we hypothesize that variations in governance characteristics, associated with firms being public limited companies, private limited companies, or unincorporated enterprises, influence the internationalization patterns of the software and information technology (IT) companies in India. The results provide some support for our hypotheses, as variations in legal form were found to significantly impact regional sales in the US and Canada, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Organizational size and business type were also significantly related to sales in a number of regions. Implications of our findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Regional differences in business ethics in the People’s Republic of China: A multi-dimensional approach to the effects of modernisation

This paper investigates the influence of modernisation on the moral judgements of 211 managers in the People’s Republic of China, based on their responses to a series of vignettes depicting potentially unethical behaviour in organisations. Since modernisation can take many forms, this paper takes a multi dimensional approach to examining levels of modernisation in different provinces in China. Three different measures are used, believed to represent different aspects of the modernisation process. These include the level of industrialisation of various provinces, the level of marketisation, or progress toward a market-based economy, and a new measure of Westernisation, or the extent to which individuals adopt aspects of Western lifestyle and materialism. This latter measure is developed and tested in the present study. Statistically significant associations between these three measures of modernisation and managers’ moral judgements were observed and the implications of these findings are discussed.