Home-owned versus foreign-owned firms in the UK automotive industry: Exploring the microfoundations of ambidextrous production and supply chain positioning

The UK automotive industry is home to a large number of foreign firms, demonstrating the open nature of competition. However, the industry necessitates both exploitative and explorative capabilities. Contingency theory suggests that firms align their internal structure with contextual factors. As such, the aims of this study were to investigate whether it was possible to distinguish home-owned (UK) and foreign-owned firms based upon: a) the microfoundations of ambidextrous production, which are conceptualised as lean and agile routines; and b) the tier at which these firms operate in the automotive supply chain. Survey data were collected from 85 home-owned and 55 foreign-owned firms within the UK Midlands automotive industry. Logistic regression results revealed that home-owned firms were significantly more likely to be implementing explorative (agile) production methods, whereas foreign-owned firms were significantly more likely to be implementing exploitative (lean) production. Home-owned and foreign-owned firms were found to be significantly more likely to be operating upstream and downstream in the automotive supply chain respectively. Thus, the findings support a contingency theory explanation, suggesting that firms align their performance priorities with contextual factors, but we argue that home-owned and foreign-owned firms have evolved to compete based on their different innovative capabilities, which are located at different tiers of the automotive supply chain. On this basis, although neither home-owned nor foreign-owned firms were found to be endogenously ambidextrous, we argue that foreign-owned firms internationalise into the UK automotive sector to exploit the explorative capabilities acquired by home-owned firms operating upstream in automotive supply chains, thus enabling ambidextrous capabilities at an exogenous, industrial level.     

‘Where everybody knows your name’: Lessons from small business about preventing workplace violence

Recently, we have seen a number of high profile examples of workplace violence. Large organizations are armed with many of the programs that have been developed to minimize the occurrence of workplace violence. In contrast, smaller organizations—which constitute the majority of businesses in the United States—possess neither the resources nor the manpower to implement the aforementioned programs. Additionally, due to a number of individual, social, and situational factors, small businesses appear to be more vulnerable to workplace violence than large businesses. Despite these disadvantages, however, it seems that small businesses do not experience higher levels of workplace violence than their more sizeable counterparts. In this article, we uncover a number of small business practices that may counteract the threat of workplace violence, and proffer these as lessons for all managers who wish to work toward that goal.     

Some Guidelines for Acquisitions

Since its introduction by Dworkin and Grimlund (1984), the moment bound has emerged as a less conservative method of evaluating monetary-unit samples than existing methods for estimating the total error amount in substantive auditing. Arthur Andersen has recently adopted it in place of the Stringer bound (Felix et al., 1990). In this paper we examine its performance with unrestricted random, cell and sieve sampling; the behaviour of the sampling methods is compared by means of an empirical investigation using two new accounting populations. Our results show that the method of sample selection has no effect on the tightness of the moment bound, but does appear to affect the reliability and precision. While the moment bound is reliable in most cases, some reliability problems arise and these are most frequent with unrestricted random sampling. We also observe substantial gains in the precision of the moment bound with cell and sieve sampling in populations with large line items. The reduction in sample size resulting from these gains is demonstrated using the design effect (Kish, 1965).     

Pay to Play in Parks: An Australian Policy Perspective on Visitor Fees in Public Protected Areas

Many public protected areas worldwide charge fees for entrance, overnight camping, and commercial tour permits. These visitor or user fees raise revenue and may also influence visitor behaviour. Many protected areas are forced to charge fees because government funding is inadequate for conservation and visitor management in the face of rapidly rising visitor numbers and demands. Acceptance and effects of fees, however, depend on the historical, political, legal, economic and social context. Two issues are particularly significant: (a) equity between various social groups; and (b) control and use of funds raised.     

Valuation differences between quoted and unquoted companies- empirical evidence from the UK

This paper focuses upon differences in the valuation of UK quoted and unquoted companies. It draws on empirical evidence over the period from 1991 to 1997. It commences with an overview of the published literature. This suggests a broad spectrum of valuation statistics ranging from very minor discounts for non-listed companies relative to their quoted brethren, up to a discount as high as 40%. The empirical analysis uses PE ratios, derived from the publication Acquisitions Monthly, in respect of non-listed, private companies selling out in takeover deals. These are compared with average PE ratios for quoted companies in Britain. A raw statistic of approximately 40% was found as the discount for non-listed firms relative to quoted companies. However, this is dramatically different when corrected for size. For size varying from less than GBP 0.5 million to about GBP 55 million, the discount ranges, respectively, from 16% to 6% with an average of around 10%. Regression equations relating size and PE ratio are presented.     

Measures of international competitiveness: A critical survey∗ †

An examination of the extant literature on competitiveness reveals a wide variety of notions and extreme difficulties of measurement and application.

Single measures of competitiveness do not capture all the elements of the concept. Useful measures have to specify the level of analysis (national, industry, firm or product) and encompass competitive performance, its sustainability through the generation of competitive potential and the management of the competitive process. The interrelationship between these three key elements are also important in a dynamic context.

The effectiveness of management is essential to this analysis and the concept of industrial effectiveness at the management level enables a link to be established between the concept of competitiveness and an empirical investigation of decision making. A framework is derived which is of general use and specific measures are proposed to fill the “empty boxes” suggested.     

Rush as a key motivation in skilled adventure tourism: Resolving the risk recreation paradox

At least 14 different motivations for adventure tourism and recreation, some internal and some external, have been identified in ∼50 previous studies. Skilled adventure practitioners refer to ineffable experiences, comprehensible only to other participants and containing a strong emotional component. These are also reflected in the popular literature of adventure tourism. This contribution draws on >2000 person-days of ethnographic and autoethnographic experience to formalise this particular category of experience as rush. To the practitioner, rush is a single tangible experience. To the analyst, it may be seen as the simultaneous experience of flow and thrill. Experiences which provide rush are often risky, but it is rush rather than risk which provides the attraction. Rush is addictive and never guaranteed, but the chance of rush is sufficient motivation to buy adventure tours.     

An overview of returns in Europe

This paper is an attempt to present a digest of European security returns. In this respect, Table 7 summarizes key data over recent years. The table presents information for the period 1967 to 1990. By and large, within Europe, equity returns appear to be very similar. To the extent that if differences exist, they can probably be attributed to too short a period for utterly unambiguous data on returns to be achieved. But there may be another explanation which relates to an international capital asset pricing model and the sinews of this topic are explored towards the end of the paper. Data are presented which compare and contrast the part played by equity markets in the structure of corporate financing in Europe. These show the contrasting cult of the equity share, with its high emphasis in Britain and much lower role in Germany and France, for example. Other statistics reveal differing share ownership structures and pension fund portfolio distributions in European countries. That the topic of realized European security returns requires further research is obviously the case. It is hoped that this paper — and others in this issue — will stimulate a desire to undertake the necessary investigations.