Linking Individual‐Level Knowledge Sourcing to Project‐Level Contributions in Large R&D‐Driven Product‐Development Projects

This paper focuses on the link between individuals’ knowledge sourcing and their creative contributions, such as new ideas and solutions in R&D‐driven product‐development projects; creative contributions were both self‐ and peer‐assessed. The paper reveals that, for individuals, knowledge sources internal to the organization were generally regarded as more important than external knowledge sources. However, external parties such as customers, partners, and suppliers constitute the knowledge source that best predicted creative contributions at the project level. Informal external contacts were deemed the least important knowledge source by individuals; however, this was positively related to self‐assessed creative contributions. The paper thus finds that there is a discrepancy between the knowledge sources deemed important by individuals and the sources that are associated with creative contributions at the project level.     

A vintage model of urban growth

This paper develops a vintage model of residential housing for an open city, where the utility level of residents is given by an exogenous function of time. Producers behave myopically in that they believe the future price per unit of housing services will equal the current price. Demolition occurs when the expected present value of profits from continuing to operate an existing structure equals the expected present value of profits from redevelopment. The model is analyzed under the assumption of Cobb-Douglas utility and production functions and constant rates of growth for income, commuting cost, the utility level, and the prices of non-land capital and agricultural land. Computer simulation provides a concrete example of a city which grows according to the model.     

Community engineering for innovations: the ideas competition as a method to nurture a virtual community for innovations

'Crowdsourcing' is currently one of the most discussed key words within the open innovation community. The major question for both research and business is how to find and lever the enormous potential of the 'collective brain' to broaden the scope of 'open R&D'. Based on a literature review in the fields of Community Building and Innovation Management, this work develops an integrated framework called 'Community Engineering for Innovations'. This framework is evaluated in an Action Research project – the case of an ideas competition for an ERP Software company. The case 'SAPiens' includes the design, implementation and evaluation of an IT-supported ideas competition within the SAP University Competence Center (UCC) User Group. This group consists of approximately 60,000 people (lecturers and students) using SAP Software for educational purposes. The current challenges are twofold: on the one hand, there is not much activity yet in this community. On the other, SAP has not attempted to systematically address this highly educated group for idea generation or innovation development so far. Therefore, the objective of this research is to develop a framework for a community-based innovation development that generates innovations, process and product ideas in general and for SAP Research, in particular, combining the concepts of idea competitions and virtual communities. Furthermore, the concept aims at providing an interface to SAP Human Resources processes in order to identify the most promising students in this virtual community. This paper is the first to present an integrated concept for IT-supported idea competitions in virtual communities for leveraging the potential of crowds that is evaluated in a real-world setting.     

International outsourcing when labour markets are unionized

Abstract. We consider the implications of international outsourcing in a simple general equilibrium model where the wage rate is the outcome of negotiations between a firm and a trade union. The effects of potential, but non‐realized, international outsourcing, is a reduction in the wage rate and an increase in employment. Aggregate welfare increases, but the trade union becomes worse off while owners of capital become better off. Realized international outsourcing gives rise to an increase in the wage rate and a reduction in employment. Aggregate welfare decreases, but the trade union becomes better off, while owners of capital become worse off.     

The implementation of customer profitability analysis: A case study

By using customer profitability analysis (CPA), firms can determine the profit contribution of customer segments and/or individual customers. This article presents an approach for the implementation of CPA. The implementation process is illustrated using a case study of a firm producing and selling professional cleaning products. The case study highlights specific issues related to CPA in an industrial setting, and the results provide examples of the possible benefits of implementing a process of regular CPA.     

Information needs and risk perception as predictors of risk information seeking

This paper introduces a theoretical framework that describes the importance of public's information sufficiency, risk perception, and self‐efficacy as predictors of intended risk information seeking behaviour. Based on theoretical assumptions, measurement instruments for relevant concepts were developed and validated using data from a mail questionnaire. Relationships among selected determinants of risk information seeking behaviour were analysed. Results indicate that information needs, risk perception, and current knowledge are direct predictors of intentions to seek information. Trust, engagement, social influence, and self‐efficacy affect risk perception and the need for information is influenced by engagement and social influence.     

Generalized extreme value discrete choice demand models : Existence and uniqueness of market equilibria

Generalized extreme value (GEV) random utility choice models have been suggested as a development of the multinomial logit models that allows the random components of various alternatives to be statistically dependent. This paper establishes the existence of and provides necessary and sufficient uniqueness conditions for the solutions to a set of equations that may be interpreted as an equilibrium of an economy, the demand side of which is described by a multiple-segment GEV random choice model. The same equations may alternatively be interpreted in a maximum likelihood estimation context. The method employed is based on optimization theory and may provide a useful computational approach. The uniqueness results suggest a way to introduce segregation/integration effects into logit type choice models. Generalization to non-GEV models are touched upon.     

Inflationary bias in middle to late transition Czech Republic

A series of studies has now confirmed the Filer and Hanousek’s [Economic Systems 24 (2000) 285] suggestion that inflation mismeasurement during the transition is a serious problem of the same relative magnitude (and greater absolute magnitude), as in advanced market economies. During the 1990s in the Czech Republic, inflation was overstated by more than four percentage points a year. The largest portion of this bias is due to uncaptured quality changes. In effect, Czech consumers are living considerably better after the fall of communism, but this increase in living standards is manifested through better quality, rather than greater quantities of goods consumed.     

Characteristic-based mean-variance portfolio choice

We study empirical mean-variance optimization when the portfolio weights are restricted to be direct functions of underlying stock characteristics such as value and momentum. The closed-form solution to the portfolio weights estimator shows that the portfolio problem in this case reduces to a mean-variance analysis of assets with returns given by single-characteristic strategies (e.g., momentum or value). In an empirical application to international stock return indexes, we show that the direct approach to estimating portfolio weights clearly beats a naive regression-based approach that models the conditional mean. However, a portfolio based on equal weights of the single-characteristic strategies performs about as well, and sometimes better, than the direct estimation approach, highlighting again the difficulties in beating the equal-weighted case in mean-variance analysis. The empirical results also highlight the potential for ‘stock-picking’ in international indexes using characteristics such as value and momentum with the characteristic-based portfolios obtaining Sharpe ratios approximately three times larger than the world market.