Small Business–Bank Relationships and the Role of Internet Banking

In the aftermath of the Cruickshank Report (2000) Cruickshank, D. 2000. “Competition in UK banking (A Report to the Chancellor of the Exchequer)”. London: The Stationery Office.  [Google Scholar] and the Competition Commission's investigation (2002) Competition Commission Report. 2002. “The supply of banking services to SMEs”. HM Treasury, available at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk (accessed 2 December 2002) [Google Scholar] into SME–bank relationships, this paper examines the current state of the small business–bank relationship and ascertains whether the Internet could be used to improve the quality of the relationship. It utilises a qualitative research method, which consisted of 24 interviews with small business owners and relationship managers in banks. The interviews, inter alia, address the following main research questions: what are the needs and expectations of small business owners from their relationships with banks? What do small businesses think about the overall quality of service provided by banks in the relationship context? What was the delivery preference of small businesses and banks in the relationship? What did small business owners and banks think had been the main effects of e-banking on relationship management. The paper incorporates a discussion of the main findings and makes pragmatic policy and practice recommendations based on the results.     

Relationship Quality—Relationship Value and Power Balance in Business Relationships: Descriptives and Propositions

Purpose: The objective of this study is to develop understanding of the interplay between the perceptions of power balance, relationship value, and relationship quality between retail distributors and their suppliers.

Methodology: The authors applied a phenomenological approach in both qualitative and quantitative data collections and analyses. Key informants in 27 of the dominant retail distributors within 5 Norwegian industries and 50 of their most important suppliers were interviewed.

Findings: The power balance seems to favor the retail distributors. Retail distributors and suppliers tell of somewhat different characteristics pertaining to “best” and “worst” relationships relating to economic-, capability-, and integration-based values as perceived between retail distributors and their suppliers.

Research limitations/implications: The empirical findings indicate the complexity in assessing relationship quality and show a rich basis for further research, thereby contributing to knowledge and insights in characterizing relationship quality when power is asymmetrically distributed between distributors and their suppliers. However, personal interviews may reveal answers at rational, cognitive, and even emotional levels, thus complicating subjective analysis.

Practical implications: The results of the study are important for both researchers and practitioners on both sides of retail distributor–supplier relationships.

Originality/value: This study advances the work on what characterizes relationship quality in asymmetric power business relationships.     

Business History and the Business–Man

This paper refutes the hypothesis put forward by W.D. Rubinstein that a disproportionately large share of Britain's wealth makers were active in commercial and financial trades in London. We use a data set of businessmen active in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain and quantitative methods to show that the pattern of wealth holding was much more diverse than supposed by Rubinstein. A large fortune could be made in a variety of regions and occupations. Big industrialists active in the provinces were equally capable of generating wealth similar in size and significance to the City elite. More generally, London was not the centre of wealth making in this period. Neither was there a subordination of industrial and manufacturing to commercial and financial wealth.     

Cloud Computing – A Classification, Business Models, and Research Directions

Lately, a new computing paradigm has emerged: “Cloud Computing”. It seems to be promoted as heavily as the “Grid” was a few years ago, causing broad discussions on the differences between Grid and Cloud Computing. The first contribution of this paper is thus a detailed discussion about the different characteristics of Grid Computing and Cloud Computing. This technical classification allows for a well-founded discussion of the business opportunities of the Cloud Computing paradigm. To this end, this paper first presents a business model framework for Clouds. It subsequently reviews and classifies current Cloud offerings in the light of this framework. Finally, this paper discusses challenges that have to be mastered in order to make the Cloud vision come true and points to promising areas for future research.     

Twenty Years of European Business Ethics – Past Developments and Future Concerns

Over the past 20 years business ethics in Europe witnessed a remarkable growth. Today business ethics is faced with two challenges. The first comes from the social sciences and consultants who have both reclaimed the topics of business ethics, regretfully often at the loss of the proper ethical perspective. The second comes from the remarkable rise of corporate social responsibility which has pushed aside the mainstream business ethics methodology with its emphasis on moral deliberation by the individual. These challenges can be tackled by an institutional transformation in business ethics that links up to the long-standing European tradition of institutional analysis of the market. The second remedy is an enlargement of the research agenda in business ethics by coming closer to other parts of applied ethics where the business ethics view is at this moment grossly neglected.     

Business Ethics and the Well-Being of Nations – Is There a Connection?

The aim of this paper is to examine whether and how business ethics is connected with the well-being of a nation. There has been active research in the well-being of nations across the globe in the last two decades, resulting in substantial theoretical progress and a wealth of empirical data on the well-beings of different nations across the globe. Dissatisfied with the conventional measures such as the GDP, well-being researchers have been developing alternative measures that can better capture the true nature of the well-being of a country. The paper begins by examining why the GDP is inadequate as a good measure of the well-being of a country. Major alternative proposals on well-being or similar measures are summarized. Objective well-being of a nation refers to the conditions of well-being of a country. Subjective well-being of a nation is the perceptions of its citizens with regard to their satisfaction with the major conditions of living in that nation. The paper presents two central arguments leading to the conclusion that business ethics is an integral part of the well-being of a country. The first argument utilizes the concept of workplace well-being to establish the linkage. The second argument uses evidence from a recent survey of the perceptions of Taiwanese people on business ethics in relation to the well-being of a nation. The paper also reveals that common values tie the two together at a deeper level.     

Services Grids in Industry – On-Demand Provisioning and Allocation of Grid-Based Business Services

Over the last few years Grid computing has attracted considerable attention from the industry, because it offers opportunities for new on-demand business services for enterprises. In this article, we depict the current trend of enterprises to source Grid services offered by third-party utility providers on a use-on-demand, pay-per-use basis, thus leading to faster IT response to changing business needs. We outline the emerging expansion of Grid computing in industry and discuss the significant challenges still needing to be solved to further promote the adoption of Grid technology in the business domain. This article is also available in German in print and via : Vykoukal J, Wolf M, Beck R (2008) Service-Grids in der Industrie – On-Demand-Bereitstellung und Nutzung von Grid-basierten Services in Unternehmen. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: . Accepted after two revisions by Prof. Dr. Buhl.     

Fads and Trends in Business and Information Systems Engineering and Information Systems Research – A Comparative Literature Analysis

The business and information systems engineering (BISE) discipline, dominating in the German-speaking countries, where it is called“Wirtschaftsinformatik”, is currently undergoing a phase of increasing internationalization and the U.S.-based Information Systems (IS) discipline is often considered an ideal. Studies show that BISE has often dealt with fads in the past – for IS there are no findings reporting on the diffusion of fads. The objective of the paper is to close this research gap. The authors conducted a literature analysis to investigate the development of topics and terms in BISE and IS from 1994 to 2007. Titles, abstracts and keywords of 2,564 articles in three BISE journals and 5,647 articles in five IS journals were analyzed. The results show that BISE is topically more diverse and concrete than IS. In addition, the rate of fads is higher in BISE than IS. Being engaged in fads is not necessarily negative – rather, it may considerably contribute to the relevance of research. However, it has to be considered that an overly intense orientation on fads may negatively influence a cumulative research progress. Hence, the authors conclude that for BISE and IS, which both have a theoretical and pragmatic mission, a balanced ratio of short- and long-term topics seems appropriate.     

Rethinking the Role of Value Communication in Business Corporations from a Sociological Perspective – Why Organisations Need Value-Based Semantics to Cope with Societal and Organisational Fuzziness

Why is it so plausible that business organisations in contemporary society use values in their communication? In order to answer this question, a sociological, system theoretical approach is applied which approaches values not pre-empirically as invisible drivers for action but as observable semantics that form organisational behaviour. In terms of empirical material, it will be shown that business organisations resort to a communication of values whenever uncertainty or complexity is very high. Inevitably, value semantics are applied in organisations first when the speakers are uncertain about which stakeholders to whom they have to address (uncertainty) or when different stakeholder groups have to be addressed simultaneously (complexity); second, when the identity of the organisation has to be described; and third, when future strategic options that cannot be expressed by quantitative terms have to be communicated. Values accordingly play a role in organisational practice when certain aspects are indeterminate. Therefore, they are a means for organisations to communicate under fuzzy circumstances. On the basis of these findings, new approaches to value management can now be formulated.     

Enhancing Communication and Achieving Mutual-benefits

The Third China International Small ＆ Medium Enterprises Fair and Sino-Italy Small ＆ Medium Enterprises Fair was completed successfully. The pageant for international small and medium enterprises, the third China International Small ＆ Medium Enterprises Fair and Sino-Italy Small ＆ Medium Enterprises Fair, was completed successfully recently in Guangzhou. During those several days, the fair has achieved great success.     

Business Opportunity Through Communication──An Interview with Mr. Jing Shuping

On September 12, 2000, reportersZhou, Xiaolin, Li Yan, and Chang, Zhanwith China Business Times interviewedwith Mr. Jing, Shuping, Vce-Chairmanof Chinese People's Political Consulta-tive Conference, Chairman of the WorldChinese Entrepreneur Convention (theWCEC) and Chairman of the Prepara-tory Committee for the Sixth Sessionof the WCEC. Mr. Jing answered thequestions concerning the coming ses-sion of the WCEC and spoke highly ofthe roles the mainland and the overseasChinese ha…     

Semantic Process Modeling – Design and Implementation of an Ontology-based Representation of Business Processes

An extension of process modeling languages is designed which allows representing the semantics of model element labels which are formulated in natural language by using concepts of a formal ontology. This combination of semiformal models with formal ontologies will be characterized as semantic process modeling. The approach is exemplarily applied to the languages EPC (Event-driven Process Chain), BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) and OWL (Web Ontology Language) and is generalized by means of an information model. The proposed formalization of the semantics of individual model elements in conjunction with the usage of inference engines allows the improvement of query functionalities in modeling tools and enables new possibilities of model validation. The integration of the approach in the IT-based work environments of modelers is demonstrated by a system architecture and a prototypical implementation. Evidently, advantages in the areas of modeling, model management, IT-business alignment, and compliance can be achieved by the application of modeling tools augmented with semantic technologies.     

Analysis of Informal Communication Networks – A Case Study

The structure and dynamics of informal communication networks are of central importance for the functionality of enterprise workflows and for performance and innovation of knowledge-centric organizations. While most executives are aware of this fact, there is a general lack of (semi-) automated, IT-supported methods and instruments to make informal communication networks measurable. Although logging of electronic communications has made considerable progress over the past few years, it is still extremely difficult to map personal interaction; manual approaches in particular are extremely error-prone. The article shows how informal communication networks can be investigated by IT-based methods. At the same time, the authors will be presenting an instrument (“Social Badges”) that collects personal communications automatically and more precisely than legacy approaches allow. The practical applicability of the approach is evaluated through a case study. This article is also available in German in print and via : Fischbach K, Gloor PA, Schoder D (2008) Analyse informeller Kommunikationsnetzwerke am Beispiel einer Fallstudie. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: . Accepted after three revisions by Prof. Dr. Buhl.