Service Delivery Networks and Employment Relations at German Airports: Jeopardizing Industrial Peace on the Ground?

In this article, we ask how organizational restructuring towards a network form of service delivery challenges an established form of employment relations in Germany, that is labour–management collaboration. Building on a theoretical discussion of the marketization hypothesis, we develop a structuration perspective on the relationship between network restructuring and labour–management collaboration, which highlights the political economy of inter-firm networks. Empirically, we focus on two major airport authorities in Germany. Our findings show how these authorities at the core of service delivery networks face a strategic trade-off between short-term labour cost reductions and more adversarial employment relations. Apart from coinciding with a deterioration in working conditions for service workers, the handling of this trade-off depends on managers’ and worker representatives’ commitment to collaboration across the network. While unions and works councils initially continued with social partnership-type practices, the more adversarial management practices for enacting the network restructuring cause a fragmentation on the workers’ side and increase the conflict potential. We conclude that the agency of management and worker representatives in the enactment of inter-firm networks oscillates between more partnership-like and more conflictive practices, which turn the network restructuring into a political process with divergent outcomes for employment relations.     

On the competition enhancing effects of exclusive dealing contracts

Antitrust scholars have argued that exclusive contracts have anticompetitive, or at best neutral effects, if no efficiencies are generated. In contrast, this paper shows that exclusive contracts can have procompetitive effects, provided buyers are imperfect downstream competitors and contract breach is feasible. In that case, an efficient entrant is not necessarily foreclosed through exclusive contracts but induces buyers to breach. Because breaching buyers have to pay expectation damages to the incumbent, the downstream profits they obtain when breaching must be large enough. Therefore, the entrant needs to set a lower wholesale price than absent exclusive contracts, leading to lower final consumer prices and higher welfare.     

Home-field advantage or a matter of ambiguity aversion? Local bias among German individual investors

This paper investigates whether familiarity induced by ambiguity aversion can help explaining the local bias phenomenon among individual investors. Using geographic closeness as a proxy for investor familiarity, we find that investors pull out of (unfamiliar) remote stocks and pour into (familiar) local stocks during times of increased market uncertainty. Moreover, the magnitude of this ‘flight to familiarity’ increases in the spread of an investor's ambiguity (about expected returns) between local and remote stocks. Our results prove robust to a number of alternative explanations of local bias. Specifically, we rule out a ‘home-field advantage’, where investors are able to translate information advantages about nearby companies into excess returns on their local stockholdings. We conclude that individual investors’ local bias is induced by ambiguity aversion in the portfolio selection process rather than a trading strategy based on superior information about local companies.     

Client–consultant interaction: Capturing social practices of professional service production

Based on the investigation of seven consultancy projects within an international technical consulting firm, we identify three major practices that characterize client–consultant interaction – shaping impressions, problem-solving, and negotiating expectations – and discuss their respective characteristics, activities, and contingencies. Our discussion of these practices provides not only a more differentiated picture of client–consultant interaction but also uncovers the critical role that clients play in these practices.     

Das Versicherungsaufsichtsrecht der Russischen Föderation

In recent years the Russian insurance market passed through a remarkably dynamic phase measured by the figure of licensed insurers. Nevertheless basic problems for its future development still exist. Consequently the Russian lawmaker sees need to take action. The article therefore inquires on the existing market regulation. The topic of this contribution focuses on insurance supervision law of the Russian Federation.     

A cross-national comparison and taxonomy of DEA-based hospital efficiency studies

This paper provides the first taxonomy of hospital efficiency studies that uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) and related techniques. We provide a systematic review of 79 such studies published from 1984–2004 that represent 12 countries. Only studies written in English are considered. A cross-national comparison reveals significant differences with respect to important study characteristics such as type of DEA model selected and choice of input and output categories. Compared with US studies, European efforts are more likely to measure allocative rather than technical efficiency, use longitudinal data, and use fewer observations. We take a longitudinal perspective that illustrates the life cycle of this research, as well as its diffusion across disciplines. Our taxonomy can be used by policy makers and researchers to review past, and assemble new, DEA models.     

The Influence of Informality in a Local Agri-food Supply Chain in Brazil

During qualitative research on trust, conducted in a mariculture chain in southern Brazil, the theme of informality emerged spontaneously in most interviews. Although it is difficult to measure, some data and estimates point out that informality is still quite present worldwide, but especially in emerging and developing countries, and this situation was confirmed in the studied supply chain. In analysing the narratives, we noticed that this is a chronic issue which bothers the producers that are properly formalised mainly because of unfair competition, and hinders the organisation of the chain. Some factors foster the persistence of informality, such as family labour and temporary jobs, the low educational level of entrepreneurs, lack of adequate supervision and cultural aspects of producers and their families. We could corroborate the perspectives of modernisation (informality is still persistent), neo-liberal (informal entrepreneurs reject the bureaucracy of an over-regulated market) and post-structuralist (informality is a way of life related to identity, social position and/or resistance against the formal structure) theories. Our research has shown us that the situation found is contributing to a reduction in the number of formal producers and impairing the development of that local supply chain, as well as its sustainability.