Service level agreements: An essential aspect of outsourcing

This paper notes and explains the increasing use of service level agreements (SLAs), stresses their importance to insourcing and outsourcing relationships, proposes a taxonomy of service attributes, and recommends a hierarchical methodology for constructing SLAs. Evidence from interviews and examination of SLA documents suggests that well-designed SLAs contribute to fruitful relationships between business partners. The proposed methodology and taxonomy will simplify the time-consuming tasks of writing and negotiating SLAs. SLAs have not received academic attention proportionate to their commercial importance. Research to ascertain whether SLAs are used effectively and to seek better expression of business requirements in an SLA is appropriate.     

A Comparative Analysis of Curriculum in International Marketing and Business Between Peruvian and Guatemalan University Students

Business education is important for economic development. A skilled workforce allows for greater advancements in productivity, the creation of new business opportunities, increased employment, and enhances the quality of life of the citizenry. With the changing international business environment it is important for academics and practitioners alike to understand the methods, techniques, and activities being used to train future business leaders. This article investigates the context, content, and delivery of business education in Peru and Guatemala. It analyzes the business education structure and curriculum content of two universities that have successfully implemented comprehensive international business programs. Data for this article was collected in Peru and Guatemala and reflects the students' perspective on the international business curriculums of their respective programs of study.     

Emerging Market Multinationals: Coopetition for Global Growth

Since the dramatic geopolitical shift toward liberalization in the last century, emerging‐market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) have become major players in global markets and continue to account for an increasing share of global foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. Given this trend, the questions of how and why EMNEs pursue FDI deserve greater attention. This article builds on recent work that uses resource dependence theory (RDT) to explain EMNE internationalization strategies. We propose that EMNEs, while often resource deficient relative to their developed‐market competitors and, therefore, more dependent on others in the external environment, are uniquely positioned to overcome these deficiencies over time through simultaneous cooperation and competition—coopetition—with their global rivals and host‐ and home‐country governments. These propositions contribute to the EMNE internationalization literature by more fully incorporating RDT into current theories of internationalization, highlighting the importance of managing dependencies over time to maximize global growth. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Bank credit,public financial incentives,tax financial incentives and export performance during the global financial crisis

This paper investigates the extent to which access to credit, public financial incentives and tax financial incentives affect export performance using the EU-EFIGE/Bruegel-Unicredit data set, covering firms within Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary and the UK during the 2008 global financial crisis. The results show that firms receiving credit or benefiting from public financial incentives display higher export intensity and export a greater number of product lines compared to those that did not, especially in countries with better access to credit and/or financial incentives during the crisis. Further, firms benefiting from tax financial incentives show a better export performance compared to those that did not, regardless of the degree of access to credit and/or financial incentives in the country in which they operate. In addition, the effect of access to credit and public finance incentives on export performance is found to be size-dependent, while the effect of tax financial incentives is not. We suggest that governments should promote publicly funded financial incentives along with conventional schemes, such as R&D subsidies, to promote exports, particularly during a period of financial crisis.     

Shipping cost and development of the landlocked developing countries: Panel evidence from the common correlated effects approach

We estimate the impact of shipping cost on development for landlocked developing countries (LLDCs). Since container trade is important to them, we construct a country-specific measure of shipping cost, called HarpexCost, which combines the global cost of container shipping with information on how exposed to container shipping each LLDC is. We employ the common correlated effects (CCE) estimator of Pesaran (Econometrica, 2006; 55: 967) to first estimate the impact of HarpexCost on the LLDCs’ development, and then recover the actual impact of shipping cost from these estimates. Overall, we observe that shipping cost has large negative effects on the LLDCs. Building upon these results, we provide new estimates on the cost of landlockedness and how trade benefits their development.     

Challenges of Doing Business in Africa: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a systematic review of challenges to doing business in Africa. It complements the extant literature by answering two critical questions: what are the linkages between the ease of doing business and economic development; and what are the challenges to doing business in Africa? In providing answers to these questions, the nexus between the ease of doing business and economic development is discussed in six main strands, namely: wealth creation and sharing; opportunities of employment; balanced regional and economic development; Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and GDP per capita; standards of living and exports. Moreover, challenges to doing business are articulated along the following lines: (i) issues related to the cost of starting a business and doing business; (ii) shortage of energy and electricity; (iii) lack of access to finance; and (v) high taxes and low cross-border trade.     

Creative Problem Solving in GSS Groups: Do Creative Styles Matter?

Creative groups drive innovation and organizational change and collaborative systems can be used to pool creative team members across the globe. How individual creative preference impacts the group’s creative performance across different creative problem solving phases in a GSS environment is not well understood. The objective of this exploratory study was to understand if there are differences in group performance when groups with varying member creative styles interact solely via GSS. We conducted a quasi-experimental study that compared the performance of groups with two alternate member styles interacting only via group support systems during a creative problem solving process. Ideator and Evaluator groups were compared on their divergent and convergent phase performance. Significant differences were found between the Ideator groups and Evaluator groups on idea fluency, idea flexibility, idea novelty, idea elaboration and solution cost-effectiveness. No significant differences were found between the performance of the two groups on solution feasibility and novelty. Results indicate that member creative styles play an important role in determining the performance of technology-supported groups. These results aid researchers and practitioners by improving their understanding of the performance of creative teams interacting solely via collaborative support systems for creative problem solving tasks.     

AnnaLee Saxenian. The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. 424 pp. ISBN 0-674-02201-7, $27.95 (paper).

This book considers a fascinating aspect of new technology businessesand the network economies that support their development. Essentially,it is about the movement of technically skilled professionalswho have been drawn into the commercial environment of SiliconValley and their subsequent technology transfer relationshipwith the part of the world from which they were originally drawn.To use the phraseology of the book, this is about "brain circulation"as opposed to     

Quaker Business Ethics as MacIntyrean Tradition

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper argues that Quaker business ethics can be understood as a MacIntyrean tradition. To do so, it draws on three key MacIntyrean concepts: community,...