Strategic Goals and Practices of Innovative Family Businesses

A profile of 231 Washington state family businesses is presented. This article focuses on the business strategies of these firms, analyzing the relationship between strategy, performance, and business practices. Firms categorized as Prospector firms reported more gains in their current market position than all other strategic types. These firms were more likely to value an effective management and employee team and to develop new quality products and services and career development plans for non-family employees. Implications for family businesses are discussed.     

The geography of output volatility

This paper examines the structural determinants of output volatility in developing countries, and especially the roles of geography and institutions. We investigate the volatility effects of market access, climate variability, the geographic predisposition to trade, and various measures of institutional quality. We find an especially important role for market access: remote countries are more likely to have undiversified exports and to experience greater volatility in output growth. Our results are based on Bayesian methods that allow us to address formally the problem of model uncertainty and to examine robustness across a wide range of specifications.     

The Effects of Market Network Heterogeneity on Innovation Diffusion: An Agent‐Based Modeling Approach

Innovations usually have an initial impact on very few people. The period of learning or early evaluation precedes the diffusion of the technology into the wider addressed population. More than a transfer, this is best characterized as communication of benefits, costs, and compatibility with earlier technologies and a relative assessment of the new state of the art. Innovation development by an organization or individual creates not just a device (i.e., process or tacit knowledge) but concomitantly a capacity on the part of other organizations or persons to use, adopt, replicate, enhance, or modify the technology, skills, or knowledge for their own purposes. How innovations actually diffuse is to understand the communication of progress, and this framing helps one to design innovations and also design the marketing and testing programs to ready innovations for market and launch them efficiently. Diffusion theory's main focus is on the flow of information within a social system, such as via mass media and word‐of‐mouth communications. This theory presents often in the form of mathematical models of innovation and imitation. Distinct from classical diffusion models, however, consumers are not all identical in how they connect to others within a market or how they respond to information. We examine the effects of various network structures and relational heterogeneity on innovation diffusion within market networks. Specifically, network topology (the structure of how individuals in the market are connected) and the strength of communication links between innovator and follower market segments (a form of relational heterogeneity) are studied. Several research questions concerning network heterogeneity are addressed with an agent‐based modeling approach. The present study's findings are based on simulation results that show important effects of network structure on the diffusion process. The ability to speed diffusion varies significantly according to within‐ and cross‐segment communications within a heterogeneous network structure. The implications of the present approach for new product diffusion are discussed, and future research directions are suggested that may add useful insights into the complex social networks inherent to diffusion. A simple summary is that discovery of significant prime communicator nodes in a network allows innovation development practices to be better calibrated to realistically multiple market segments.     

The migration and development nexus in Southern Africa Introduction

The role of international and internal migration in facilitating or inhibiting development is currently attracting considerable attention globally. In southern Africa, the migration–development nexus has been researched for a number of years and policy makers in both the development and migration fields are now paying it increasing attention and increasingly recognising the significance of migration for development and poverty reduction. Much of the international debate on this nexus is hampered by the absence of sound, reliable national and local data. This collection of essays by southern African researchers combines the national with the local, the quantitative with the qualitative, and addresses several prominent themes in the global migration–development debate: remittances, the brain drain and migrant rights. It also focuses on key migration–development issues which have received less attention globally, but which are of critical importance to southern Africa: migration and HIV/AIDS, migration and food security and the rural impact of migrant retrenchments. This Introduction to the collection contextualises the essays within current international and local debates.     

IMPACT OF THE MINIMUM WAGE ON THE INCIDENCE OF SECOND JOB HOLDING IN BRITAIN

The advent of any earnings boost, such as provided by the introduction of a minimum wage, might be expected to reduce the supply of low‐paid individuals wanting to hold a second job. This paper uses difference‐in‐differences estimation on a panel of individuals matched across successive Labour Force Surveys around the time of the introduction of the national minimum wage in the United Kingdom in order to estimate the impact of the minimum wage and its subsequent upratings on second job working. There is little evidence to suggest that the extra pay provided by the introduction of the minimum wage was sufficient to affect the incidence of second job holding significantly. However, hours worked in the main job by second job holders may have risen relative to those not covered by the minimum wage; and hours worked in second jobs may have fallen for those whose second job was initially below the minimum.     

Foreign Direct Investment,Economic Growth,and the Human Capital Threshold: Evidence from US States*

The United States has experienced a dramatic increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) in recent years. While foreign firms bring immediate benefits of high‐paying jobs, data limitations have prevented detailed study on FDI's long‐term effects on the states receiving it. By creating a new stock measure of FDI based on employment, we are able to capture these long‐term effects. Results demonstrate that FDI has a greater impact on per capita output growth than domestic investment for US states that meet a minimum human capital threshold. Ironically, the most active states in the recruitment of FDI tend to fall below this threshold.     

挖掘汽车分销潜力的成功要素

为了自身的利益，美国的经销商和制造商能够而且必须联合起来。     

Motivation in project management: The project manager's perspective

Project motivation is a key aspect to a successful project, yet few studies exist that shed light on this important subject. This article reviews the current literature and theoretical aspects of motivation and provides an analysis of the data. A survey was conducted by soliciting project managers to tell how they perceive their ability to influence motivation. In total, 115 certified project managers responded to the survey. A discussion and suggestions for future research follow the data.