Ground handling services at European hub airports: Development of a performance measurement system for benchmarking

The liberalization of ground handling in Europe forces airports to assess their performance relative to their competitors in order to remain competitive and sustain long-term competitive advantage. Together with main EU hub airports, action research was conducted for one year to develop a holistic performance measurement system (PMS) for ramp services. The resulting PMS entails a process-based perspective and reflects the supply chain of airport logistics. As the findings of an ex-post validation suggest, the system represents a suitable basis for competitive benchmarking activities.     

Managing supplier sustainability risks in a dynamically changing environment—Sustainable supplier management in the chemical industry

Varying definitions and interpretations of sustainability standards have become a major concern for purchasing and supply management (PSM). As the foremost interface to an increasingly global supply base, PSM plays an important role in the mitigation of sustainability-related risks. By conducting responsible purchasing and supplier management, the risk of corporate reputational damage to the buying firm, caused by supplier misconduct, can be avoided. However, resources for effective risk-mitigation are limited and the applicability of supply risk assessment and supplier assessment methods have not been evaluated for sustainability. In this paper, we explore how leading PSM functions identify, assess, and treat supplier sustainability risks and elaborate on the integration of sustainability risk management in supplier management processes. Based on the findings from a multiple case study in the chemical industry and by drawing on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV), we propose that mature and sustainable supplier management capabilities are a source of competitive advantage in terms of lower exposure to reputational risks and enhanced operational performance.     

Purchasing Competence: A Stakeholder‐Based Framework for Chief Purchasing Officers

A specific research stream within the purchasing and supply management literature focuses on the development of purchasing competence frameworks. We apply stakeholder theory and multiple methods of data collection to develop and confirm a hierarchy‐specific purchasing competence management framework for Chief Purchasing Officers and validate it using confirmatory factor analysis on empirical data from 124 multinational companies. The results reveal a significant relationship between Chief Purchasing Officers purchasing management competence and different purchasing performance measures confirming the appropriateness of stakeholder theory for such a competence framework.     

International Propagation of the Credit Crisis: Lessons for Bank Regulation*

The authors use a large sample of non‐U.S. banks to examine the origins and spread of the 2007–2009 crisis. Using both stock market and structural variables, they test whether the effects of the crisis on individual banks are better explained by crisis models or by the VaR‐type analysis of the Basel system. The latter emphasizes risk weightings for individual assets while ignoring linkages that could leave banks exposed to systemic shocks. Consistent with crisis models, the authors find that a small set of pre‐crisis measures of a bank's international linkages, leverage, and the fragility of its liability structure does a good job of discriminating between banks that suffered a large impact and those that did not. (Indeed, these measures explain almost 50% of the differences among banks' stock returns during the crisis period, and almost 40% of the changes in the variability of those returns.) The authors also provide evidence of both a direct linkage among banks' stock returns and an indirect linkage that could reflect either linkages in the real economy or common demands by investors for liquidity. The authors run a “horse race” that demonstrates that simple measures of book leverage were better predictors of bank performance than the Basel capital ratios. They find that banks with lower Basel risk weightings prior to the crisis proved, on average, to be more exposed to the crisis. The authors' explanation is that banks with lower Basel risk measures tended to operate with higher leverage and more aggressive funding strategies, which in turn exposed them to greater crisis risk (even as they conformed to the letter of the Basel system in terms of asset risk measures). Finally, the authors find no evidence that substandard governance was a separate contributing factor to crisis exposure. Banks with substantial international business that were exposed to systemic shocks had high governance scores.     

Gains from international monetary policy coordination: Does it pay to be different?

In a two country world where each country has a traded and a non-traded sector and each sector has sticky prices, optimal independent policy in general cannot replicate the natural-rate allocations. There are potential welfare gains from coordination since the planner under a cooperating regime internalizes a terms-of-trade externality that independent policymakers overlook. If the countries have symmetric trading structures, however, the gains from coordination are quantitatively small. With asymmetric trading structures, the gains can be sizable since, in addition to internalizing the terms-of-trade externality, the planner optimally engineers a terms-of-trade bias that favors the country with a larger traded sector.     

Offshoring: Dimensions and diffusion of a new business concept

In order to leverage global cost differentials, companies are increasingly turning to offshoring. Nevertheless, discussions in research and practice on offshoring are characterized by the lack of a common definition as well as a theoretically grounded explanation for this phenomenon. This article presents an explicit definition in order to provide a stringent understanding of the term offshoring along the dimensions of contractual/legal arrangement and geographic location. Further, the driving forces of offshoring are analysed on the environmental and company levels. The article closes with a discussion of managerial implications and an outlook on aspects for further research.     

The unbearable tightness of being in a monetary union: Fiscal restrictions and regional stability

We study how constrained fiscal policy can affect macroeconomic stability and welfare in a two-region model of a monetary union with sticky prices and distortionary taxation. Both government spending and taxes can be used to stabilize regional variables; however, the best welfare outcome is obtained under some tax variability and constant regional inflations. We use a variety of rules to characterize constrained fiscal policy and find that strict fiscal rules coupled with a monetary policy that targets union-wide inflation result in regional inflation stability and the welfare costs of such rules are not as unbearable as one would expect. Fiscal authorities can enhance welfare by targeting the regional output gap, while targeting regional inflation is less successful since inflation stability is guaranteed by the central bank.     

No Vehicle Means No Aid—A Paradigm Change for the Humanitarian Logistics Business Model

The growing interest in humanitarian logistics is witnessed by an increasing focus of researchers and practitioners on that topic. Transportation in particular is emphasized as key to disaster relief. Despite its relevance, it suffers from a number of drawbacks, creating inefficiencies and limited effectiveness of aid. This article describes a paradigm change for fleet management in humanitarian organizations based on access‐based consumption. It further evaluates a case study among small‐scale producers in rural India, showing their acceptance for sharing vehicles. The newly created business opportunities will increase income and contribute to poverty alleviation. Taking part in the proposed vehicle‐sharing system can release them from ownership responsibilities and increase vehicle utilization, as well as improve vehicle availability, increasing the speed of aid from the perspective of humanitarian organizations. This article highlights the applicability of business models relying on the idea of access‐based consumption to not‐yet‐considered research fields, especially the transfer to rural areas of developing countries. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.