R&D–Marketing Integration Mechanisms, Communication Flows, and Innovation Success

Rudy Moenaert, William Souder, Arnoud De Meyer, and Dirk Deschoolmeester report the results of their study of forty technologically innovative Belgian companies to examine the interaction between marketing and R&D. They studied one commercially successful and one commercially unsuccessful technological product innovation project in each participating company and collected data from one marketing and one R&D respondent per project. Communication flows between marketing and R&D are increased under conditions involving formalization of projects, decentralization, positive interfunctional climate, and role flexibility.     

Competition Among Universities and the Emergence of the Élite Institution

We consider an environment where two education institutions compete by selecting the proportion of their funding devoted to teaching and research and the criteria for admission for their students, and where students choose whether and where to attend university. We study the relationship between the cost incurred by students for attending a university located away from their home town and the equilibrium configuration that emerges in the game played by the universities. Symmetric equilibria, where universities choose the same admission standard, only exist when the mobility cost is high; when the mobility cost is very low, there is no pure strategy equilibrium. For intermediate values of the mobility cost, only asymmetric equilibria may exist; the final section of the paper provides an example where asymmetric equilibria do indeed exist for a plausible and robust set of parameters.     

Interpreting IS alignment: A multiple case study in professional organizations

This paper centers on the interpretation attributed by organizational members to the information systems (IS) alignment concept. Its objective is to study IS alignment in professional organizations. Specifically, it reports on an interpretive study conducted in five Chilean organizations; four professional and one entrepreneurial, of which two are private and three are public. The theoretical background of our study is derived from three IS strategic alignment conceptualizations: managerial, emergent and critical. These concepts formed our theoretical framework that guided data collection and analysis. The study centers on the meanings organizational members assigned to IS strategic alignment, as well as their views on the barriers that hinder achieving this level of organizational integration. The analysis results are summarized in seven hermeneutic themes that point out the different connotations the organizations assigned to IS alignment. The significance of the findings are summarized in four insights that formulate theoretical and practical implications. These insights refer to: (1) the difficulties of achieving alignment for professional organizations, particularly public ones, (2) the limitations these organizations have in being agile, (3) the rationale for acquiring technology and determining IT skills, and (4) the imperative meaning that CIOs attribute to IS alignment. The paper concludes with a reflection on the limitations and relevance of the research.     

On Conditional Density Estimation

With the aim of mitigating the possible problem of negativity in the estimation of the conditional density function, we introduce a so-called re-weighted Nadaraya-Watson (RNW) estimator. The proposed RNW estimator is constructed by a slight modification of the well-known Nadaraya-Watson smoother. With a detailed asymptotic analysis, we demonstrate that the RNW smoother preserves the superior large-sample bias property of the local linear smoother of the conditional density recently proposed in the literature. As a matter of independent statistical interest, the limit distribution of the RNW estimator is also derived.     

Inflation dynamics in Kazakhstan1

In January 1992, Kazakhstan initiated a reform programme to move towards market-determined prices. The price liberalization process was characterized by large relative price shifts and an increase in the overall price level towards those observed in market economies. The paper shows how the piecemeal manner in which prices were liberalized resulted in strong relative price variability over a prolonged period of time, against a background of high inflation. Convergence towards international relative and absolute price levels has progressed but is not complete, with prices for energy and services in particular still below market economy levels.     

Stepwise multi-criteria evaluation

In this article we show that quantitative methods for multi-criteria evaluation have three serious shortcomings. First, the addition of an alternative which has bad criterion scores may distort the comparison between other alternatives. Second, the addition of a criterion which does not differentiate between alternatives may distort the comparison between alternatives. Third, when a ranking of alternatives is derived from a multi-criteria evaluation, it suggests complete transitivity. It is shown that intransitivity may occur.Therefore a stepwise procedure is recommended. It involves the removal of all criteria which do not or hardly differentiate between the alternatives and a pairwise evaluation of alternatives.     

Theological ethics and business ethics

Philosophers have constituted business ethics as a field by providing a systematic overview that interrelates its problems and concepts and that supplies the basis for building on attained results. Is there a properly theological task in business ethics? The religious/theological literature on business ethics falls into four classes: (1) the application of religious morality to business practices; (2) the use of encyclical teachings about capitalism; (3) the interpretation of business relations in agapa-istic terms; and (4) the critique of business from a liberation theological point of view. Theologians have not adequately addressed the questions of whether there are particular theological tasks in the field as they define it, and whether, if they define it, the theological definition is different from the philosophical.