Market-oriented product innovation at Høyang Polaris and Jøtul

This report is concerned with an action research project on market oriented product innovation at Høyang Polaris and Jøtul, where a system for assessment of user needs has been planned and implemented. Based on experience from the project, a model has been developed for the introduction of a need assessment system comprising problem analysis, planning, information, training, demonstration, application, and development.The introduction of need assessment methods may be handled as an operational problem or treated as a strategic issue. When handled as an operational problem, systematic need assessment can be introduced as a project or treated as a process integrated with the daily activities of the product innovation staff.The practical operation of a need assessment system in product innovation projects involves definition of a target group, selection of one or several need assessment methods, implementation of the study, and formulation of the need specification.The responsibility for need assessment studies may be assigned to a special staff unit or to the employees participating in the product innovation process.     

From natural resources and environmental accounting to construction of indicators for sustainable development

Norway has a long history in trying to develop management tools for sustainable development. From the early development of natural resources accounts in the 1980s, through discussions of the usefulness of indices like “green GDP” to efforts of developing sustainable development indicators, experiences have been gained. The paper seeks to both describe the landscape and discussions associated with the key terms, and to communicate some lessons drawn from the Norwegian experiences. The conclusion focuses on the fact that whatever information is collected and organised to support the relevant decision-making processes, the final outcome should always be judged in terms of its impacts on policy processes. Thus, we issue a warning against large-scale development of information systems, without due regard to the final utilisation of the output.     

Trends in ICT standards: The relationship between European standardisation bodies and standards consortia

Theoretical analyses have dealt with the relationship between standardisation activities in formal standardisation bodies and in standards consortia. However, the empirical evidence is rather weak. Besides various case studies, there is no broad and quantitative approach for examining the relationship between formal and informal standardisation processes. This paper quantifies the standardisation activities in information and communication technology (ICT) of formal and informal standardisation bodies by utilising the database PERINORM containing formal standards and by analysing two CEN/ISSS surveys of standardisation consortia in 2000 and 2004. The two major insights gained are that the technical content of activities of formal and informal standardisation bodies is complementary rather than substitutive, which means most technical issues are addressed by both formal standardisation bodies and standardisation consortia. In addition, there has been a consolidation of consortia activities through a significant reduction in the number of consortia. However, this reduction has not changed the distribution of consortia activities by technical fields and complementary relations with the activities of formal standardisation bodies. Based on these new insights, some challenges emerge both for future theoretical analysis of decisions on standardisation types and for ICT policy regarding the interaction between standardisation and technical regulation and the role of standards in public procurement.     

Strategic partitioning of emission allowances under the EU Emission Trading Scheme

The EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) is breaking new ground in the experience with emission trading regimes across multiple jurisdictions. Since the EU ETS covers only some industries, it implies a hybrid emission control scheme where EU member states must apply complementary domestic emissions regulation for the non-trading sectors of their economies in order to comply with their national emission reduction targets. The EU ETS thus opens up for strategic partitioning of national emissions budgets by the member states between trading and non-trading sectors. In this paper we examine the potential effects of such strategic behavior on compliance cost and emissions prices. We show that concerns on efficiency losses from strategic partitioning are misplaced. In turn, our analysis implicitly indicates significant political economy forces behind EU climate policy, as both cost-effective and strategically motivated partitioning of national emission budgets are far off from the actual break-down between trading and non-trading sectors.     

An extended production/recycling model with stationary demand and return rates

A production–recycling system is investigated. A constant demand can be satisfied with production and recycling. The used items are bought back and then recycled. The non-recycled products are disposed of. Two types of models will be analyzed. The first model examines the EOQ-related costs and minimizes the relevant costs. The second model generalizes the first model with the introduction of the cost function with linear waste disposal, recycling, production and buyback costs. It is asked whether the pure (either production or recycling) or mixed strategies are optimal and it will be shown that under these circumstances the mixed strategies are dominated by the pure strategies. The paper generalizes a former model proposed by the authors for the case of one recycling and one production batch to the case of arbitrary batch numbers.     

Have Standard VARS Remained Stable Since the Crisis?

Small vector autoregressions are commonly used in macroeconomics for forecasting and evaluating shock transmission. This requires VAR parameters to be stable over the evaluation and forecast sample or modeled as time‐varying. Prior work has considered whether there were sizable parameter changes in the early 1980s and in the subsequent period until the beginning of the new century. This paper conducts a similar analysis focused on the period since the recent crisis. Using a range of techniques, we provide substantial evidence against parameter stability. The evolution of the unemployment rate seems particularly different relative to its past behavior. We also evaluate alternative methods to handle parameter instability in a forecasting context. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Customers were not objects to suck blood from’: Social relations in UK retail banks under changing performance management systems

Utilising an analytical framework informed by a moral economy approach, this article examines the social relationships between bank workers and customers in the context of changing performance management. Informed by 46 in‐depth interviews with branch workers and branch managers from UK banks, this article focusses on the interplay of the pressures arising from an intensified and all‐encompassing performance management system and bank workers lay morality. The article seeks to analyse why one group of bank workers engages with customers in a primarily instrumental manner, while another group tends to mediate and engage in oppositional practices which aim to avoid such an instrumentalisation. The article argues that moral economy gives voice to the agency of workers and the critical concerns of the social, economic and moral consequences of market‐driven and purely profit‐oriented workplace regimes.     

How stakeholders view the impacts of international ICT standards

Assessing the impacts of standards is a challenging task. A survey instrument was developed aiming at assessing standards impacts from the point of view of stakeholders in the standard development process. The survey was administered to members of ETSI (European Telecommunication Standards Institute), ITU (International Telecommunication Union) and CEN/ISSS (European Committee for Standardisation/Information Society Standardisation System) standards committees. Many of the findings either countered the predictions of much current theory or otherwise raised new grounds to question many common assumptions about the impacts of standards. Although many variations were found according to whether the standards were formal, informal or proprietary, several strong general findings emerged also. Overall, the findings indicate that cost-related impacts are less relevant to stakeholders than various market shaping aspects. Stakeholders perceived the main positive impacts in terms of the ability to increase product variety and to develop new global outsourcing opportunities. Finally, the impacts of formal standards were rated significantly higher and more positively than the other types of standards. It was concluded that the changes in the institutional landscape of standardisation in the ICT sector represent a challenge both for the theory of standardisation and for the development of adequate methodologies to assess their impacts.     

Ethics of care and co‐worker relationships in UK banks

Utilising an analytical framework based on an ethics of care approach, this article examines the changing nature of co‐worker relationships in UK banks under the rise of performance management practices. It illustrates that with the implementation of performance management practices in general, and electronic performance management monitoring in bank branches in particular, co‐worker relationships have become increasingly objectified, resulting in disconnected and conflict‐ridden forms of engagement. The analysis reveals the multi‐layered and necessarily complex nature of co‐worker relationships in a changing technologically driven work environment and highlights the possibilities for people to defend the capacity to care for others from the erosive tendencies of individualised processes.