Effects of Collaborative Communication on NPD Collaboration Results: Two Routes of Influence

Although NPD collaboration with external partners has become the next generation in NPD practice, the discussion concerning how to organize collaboration so as to obtain better results is far from over. Since communication is the most important element in successful interfirm exchange, this study focuses on the impact of collaborative communication and its facets—frequency, formality, reciprocal feedback, and rationality—on NPD collaboration results. In order to explain how collaborative communication can best be managed to enhance NPD collaboration results, this research combines the relational and resource‐based views, proposing the existence of two routes of influence: the direct resource‐based route and the indirect relational route mediated by trust. Using a sample of 207 NPD collaboration projects of innovative firms, empirical findings indicate that reciprocal feedback–rationality and frequency play an important role in product quality and adherence to budget and schedule, respectively, even without trust. Moreover, the trust between partners substantially reinforces the positive influence of reciprocal feedback–rationality on NPD collaboration results and makes the effect of formality significant. Therefore, the two alternative routes are confirmed as important paths to new product success, which provides relevant managerial implications.     

CONCURRENT ENGINEERING: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES AND MODERN DESIGN TOOLS EDITED BY HAMID R. PARSAEJ AND WILLIAM G. SULLIVAN Chapman & Hall,London, 1993, xiii + 497 pp. ISBN 0-412-46510-8. List: $75.00.

In a recent paper, Jones and Zydiak [2] discuss the steady state fleet design problem, which has no natural initial distribution of vehicles. For this problem, they develop a new optimality criterion of minimizing annual equivalent cost per vehicle because the traditional optimally criterion of minimizing annual equivalent cost can lead to paradoxical results, as shown by example, when applied to the fleet design problem. In a subsequent note, Hartman [1] argues that this paradox is actually a result of a replacement convention that ignores opportunity costs. In this response, we demonstrate that paradoxical replacement behavior can occur with the traditional criterion even when opportunity costs are accounted for in the replacement analysis. We further conclude that the problems considered respectively by Jones and Zydiak [2] and Hartman [1] are fundamentally different in nature.     

MONETARY POLICY IN A NON‐REPRESENTATIVE AGENT ECONOMY: A SURVEY

It is well known that central bank policies affect not only macroeconomic aggregates, but also their distribution across economic agents. Similarly, a number of papers demonstrated that heterogeneity of agents may matter for the transmission of monetary policy to macro variables. Despite this, the mainstream monetary economics literature has so far been dominated by dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with representative agents. This paper aims to tilt this imbalance towards heterogeneous agents setups by surveying the main positive and normative findings of this line of the literature, and suggesting areas in which these models could be implemented. In particular, we review studies that analyse the heterogeneity of (i) households’ income, (ii) households’ preferences, (iii) consumers’ age, (iv) expectations and (v) firms’ productivity and financial position. We highlight the results on issues that, by construction, cannot be investigated in a representative agent framework and discuss important papers modifying the findings from the representative agent literature.     

Technology and the services sector: The hidden competitive challenge

Information technology has always played an important role in the services sector of the U.S. economy. In recent years, however, services industries have stepped up their acquisitions of computers, telecommunications equipment, and other such products dramatically. As a result, the broad segment of the economy that can be classified as services providers now owns about 84% of the total U.S. stock of information technology items. Moreover, relative to goods-producing industries, a much larger proportion of the services sector's capital budgets is spent on information technology, revealing a significantly greater dependence by services on such technology as a factor of production. This reliance underscores technology's strategic importance in the United States' competitive challenge. With services now the predominant mode of economic activity in the United States, a productivity payback from information technology is absolutely essential to keep the economy on a longer term path of sustainable growth.So far, the services sector has little to show for its spending binge on technology. Quite simply, massive investments in information technology have failed to boost national productivity growth in the present decade. Furthermore, with manufacturing productivity now on the rebound, problems in the services sector loom increasingly large in the United States' broader competitive struggle. It is certainly not too late. New and creative applications of information technology could still enhance the productivity performance of the services sector's predominantly white-collar work force. Until that payback begins to occur, however, the role of technology spending will be under growing suspicion [3, 8, 9].In what follows, an attempt is made to provide a detailed industry-by-industry assessment of services sector spending on information technology. By way of background, the broad contours of capital formation in services industries are first examined over the post-World War II era.     

Regulation and rent‐seeking: The role of the distribution of political and economic power

It is shown that the joint distribution of economic and political power plays a key role in determining regulatory and tax policies of national and subnational governments. If both economic and political power are evenly distributed across individuals, then regulatory and tax policies are efficient, but if they are unevenly distributed and positively correlated, then regulatory policy is used by subnational governments to redistribute income in favor of individuals with higher economic and political power at the expense of productivity and output. Consequently, the national government has to raise the tax rate to finance public expenditure. Moreover, if there exists a positive correlation between economic and political power, then the higher the fiscal gap, the larger the gap between equilibrium and efficient policies because subnational governments underestimate more the fall of public revenues caused by inefficient policies.     

Productivity differences in multiple output industries: An empirical application to electricity distribution

Given that electricity distribution is undertaken via a network, it is expected that costs of production are affected both by the nature of the network and the volume of physical output distributed via the network. This two-dimensional concept of firm size, that is involving network size (number of customers) and the level of physical output (kWh), also corresponds to the distinction between productivity measures of returns to density and returns to scale.This approach has been used to specify a restricted multioutput cost function and to estimate this function for the Norwegian electricity distribution industry through the use of a flexible functional form (translog). The results indicate that no economies of scale are present in the industry even for small plants when measured correctly, but that economics of density are present.     

Sustainability Strategy and Eco‐Innovation: A Moderation Model

This study develops a moderation model to examine the role of a proactive environmental strategy on eco‐innovation. Drawing upon the perspectives of contingency theory, this study argues that the impacts of sustainability strategy on eco‐innovation depend on market demand, innovation intensity and government subsidy. The sample used to test the hypotheses is obtained from the Community Innovation Survey in Taiwan. A total of 2955 manufacturing firms are included in the final sample. A logit moderating regression is adopted to analyze the models. The results reveal that market demand and government subsidy positively moderate the relationship between environmental strategy and eco‐innovation. Specifically, firms are more likely to adopt a proactive environmental strategy to improve eco‐innovation under high levels of market demand and government subsidy. Furthermore, the results indicate that innovation intensity affects the effect of environmental strategy on eco‐innovation, but the direction of the influence varies with different categories of eco‐innovation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Resource allocation in a general equilibrium model of production under uncertainty: The case of variable supply of labor

This paper examines the effects of a marginal change in uncertainty on resource allocation and factor rewards by relaxing the assumption of factor inelasticity. We demonstrate that integrating a variable labor supply into Batra's two-sector uncertainty model can mitigate or reverse many of the earlier results. Specifically, a marginal increase in uncertainty may trigger the resource to move from the certainty sector to the uncertainty sector in the presence of a backward-bending labor supply curve.     

The Resource Dependence, Service and Control Functions of Boards of Directors in Hong Kong and Taiwanese Firms

Since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990's, there have been numerous calls for the reform of East Asian corporate governance. Without reform, fears abound that the crisis will return. However, a baseline understanding of corporate governance in East Asia needs to be established before reform efforts can begin. In the West, three major functions of boards are commonly recognized: resource dependence, service, and control. These functions have yet to be examined in the context of boards of directors of Overseas Chinese firms in East Asia. In this exploratory study, we examine the extent to which these functions are performed, primarily by outside board members, in Overseas Chinese firms in Hong Kong and Taiwan. We find that the service and control functions are less pronounced for East Asian boards than what would be expected in the West, while the resource dependence function is more pronounced. We also findthat the governance of the region is being moved closer to international practices by a new generation of leaders that have been exposed to Western influences and intense global competition. The implications of our findings for managers, educators, and researchers are discussed.