Sustainable Development in Supply Chain Management: The Role of Organizational Learning for Policy Implementation

Implementing sustainable policies in supply chains is a significant challenge for businesses. Recent evidence has shown that failure to manage supply chains responsibly can have significant impacts on firms' reputation and financial performance. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework, which focuses on organizational learning, and outline specific channels through which firms can generate learning processes and build appropriate capabilities to successfully implement social and environmental supply chain policies. Drawing on 57 in‐depth interviews from a cross‐sectional sample of seven UK and nine German companies, we empirically assess our conceptual framework in accordance with a grounded, in‐depth case study analysis approach. We find compelling evidence to suggest that organizational learning is an important factor for a successful implementation of sustainable supply chain management. Organizational learning is often established as a result of training, knowledge acquisition, stakeholder engagement and collaboration between intra‐organizational and inter‐organizational partners, including suppliers and NGOs. Nonetheless, our results also emphasize that firms often have few systematic processes through which organizational learning is developed, and that such learning processes are often ad hoc at best, which in turn has significant implications for the responsible supply chain practices. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Trust Deterioration in an International Buyer-Supplier Relationship

Despite an abundance of research on inter-organizational trust, researchers are only beginning to understand the process of trust deterioration as an inter-organizational phenomenon. This paper presents a case study examining the deteriorating relationship between two international high-tech firms. We surveyed respondents from the supplier firm to identify major elements that reduced the supplier's trust in its customer, using the dimensions of trust identified by Mayer et al. (1995). While violations of ability, integrity, and benevolence all contributed to trust reduction, early violations of trustee benevolence contributed importantly to trust deterioration. Over time, the relationship became "sensitive," and respondents reported many incidents of trust violation. Managers reported primarily integrity- and benevolence-related incidents, while no pattern emerged among operations personnel. We examine the results in light of Hosmer's (1995) ethically-based trust principles. The supplier and customer would likely differ in their opinion of whether the customer was acting "ethically." This suggests that scholars need to examine how many principles can be violated before trust is eliminated, and whether any of the principles are particularly salient in business relationships.     

Fostering technology transfer through industry—university cooperation: A practitioner's view at MIT

The traditional relationship between academia and industry in the United States is no longer an effective vehicle for technology development and deployment. The infrastructure of research, development, and implementation (RD&I) in our country must change in order to achieve better technology transfer. To address this issue, MIT continues to develop newer, more productive modes of cooperation with industry that effectively use the transfer sciences to develop and transfer technology. This paper describes various modes of cooperation between MIT and industry, ranging from industrysponsored single-researcher projects to formal organizations, like the Manufacturing Institute.     

LE SYSTEME ACTUEL DE COMPTABILITE NATIONALE ET LA PLANIFICATION

The present system of national accounting (revised SNA and existing national systems) is a good framework for physical projections of goods and services produced by enterprises. It is less well suited to planning in value terms, because data on income are poor and the system is badly adapted to analysis at the level of decision-making centers of the relationships of production, prices, income, and investment; the picture which it gives of the non-market economy is inadequate; and it yields a static view of successive states of the economy, the last accented by the scarcity of structural information. The usefulness of the accounts for the formation of economic policy varies greatly according to the problems considered. Important for general aspects of economic policy in the relatively short term, they are limited in terms of fine decisions on public intervention in the market economy, and for the relatively detailed study of economic policy in the public sector itself. These shortcomings, although in part remediable, raise questions concerning the scope, object, flexibility, and spacial and temporal coverage of national accounting. Finally, the newly emerging needs of planning, especially those arising from the extension of the dialogue between social groups, the attempts at planning in value terms, and the increasing interest in the non-market economy, suggest a need for some deconsolidation of the system. To answer these demands, a more flexible system is needed. Such a system might comprise two stages. One, a statistical framework and presentation of data, would remain close to business and public accounting. The other, a more abstract and elaborate framework for macro-economic analysis, would correspond in large part to the present system. This system would include, around the central nucleus, a number of satellite accounts, consistent with the nucleus but articulated with it by very flexible and diverse rules. It could be extended to new fields where quantification without valuation is possible.     

Family Transfers Involving Three Generations

Most models of family transfers consider only two generations and focus on two motives: altruism and exchange. They also assume perfect substitution between inter-vivos downward transfers and bequests. Based on French evidence, we show that parent-to-child transfers belong to three distinct categories (investment in child's education, financial assistance, wealth transmission), and advocate a three -generation framework. Thus, transfer behavior of parents toward their children is strongly influenced by the behavior of their own parents. There is also some evidence of the Cox and Stark demonstration effect: parents help their own parents, expecting to receive comparable support from their children. Such behavior can be regarded as indirect reciprocity : the beneficiary does not give back to the initial giver but to a third person of another generation.
JEL classification : D 10; D 31; D 63; D 64     

Impacts of Vessel Capacity Reduction Programmes on Efficiency in Fisheries: the Case of Australia’s Multispecies Northern Prawn Fishery

Capacity reduction programmes, in the form of buybacks or decommissioning, have had relatively widespread application in fisheries in the US, Europe and Australia. A common criticism of such programmes is that they remove the least efficient vessels first, resulting in an increase in average efficiency of the remaining fleet, which tends to increase the effective fishing power of the remaining fleet. In this paper, the effects of a buyback programme on average technical efficiency in Australia’s Northern Prawn Fishery are examined using a multi‐output production function approach with an explicit inefficiency model. As expected, the results indicate that average efficiency of the remaining vessels was generally greater than that of the removed vessels. Further, there was some evidence of an increase in average scale efficiency in the fleet as the remaining vessels were closer, on average, to the optimal scale. Key factors affecting technical efficiency included company structure and the number of vessels fishing. In regard to fleet size, our model suggests positive externalities associated with more boats fishing at any point in time (due to information sharing and reduced search costs), but also negative externalities due to crowding, with the latter effect dominating the former. Hence, the buyback resulted in a net increase in the individual efficiency of the remaining vessels due to reduced crowding, as well as raising average efficiency through removal of less efficient vessels.     

Individual‐Level Ambidexterity and Entrepreneurial Entry

This study examines the organizational drivers of entrepreneurial entry through the lens of individual‐level ambidexterity. We theorize that employees that both explore and exploit new activities within organizations are more likely to become entrepreneurs outside the organization. Multilevel analysis results from a large sample of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey data support this hypothesis. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by highlighting the role of individuals' prior ambidexterity experiences in organizations as foundational building blocks of entrepreneurial entry. The study links entrepreneurship and ambidexterity theories with evidence that an individual's ambidexterity and entrepreneurial activities are related.     

Foreign Direct Investment,Imports and Innovations in the Service Industry

The paper analyses for the first time empirically the impact of foreign competition due to inward foreign direct investment and imports on the innovation activities using data of German service firms. Based on the hypothesis that foreign competition has a disciplining effect on domestic markets derived from the manufacturing sector, a positive impact can be expected on innovation in the service sector, while other theoretical considerations do not absolutely support this optimistic view. In the empirical analysis, variants of two probit models are estimated for a sample of 2,019 service firms to explain their product and process innovation activities. The results show that both foreign direct investment and imports have highly significant positive effects on product and process innovations. Vice versa, the export and foreign production activities of domestic firms support innovations, too.     

Local Care Services: A Reflection on the Conditions for their Emergence and Development

Local care services are making a comeback in the headlines (with the Borloo plan, CAE report). The development of this market (or markets) and the policies linked with them nonetheless give rise to problems. This article seeks to identify the levers on which current policy can rely to become effective and emphasises the shortcomings that need to be resolved to ensure impetus. It attempts to specify certain macrosociological and macroeconomic conditions, and analyse the conditions specific to demand and the constraints in building efficient supply that may explain the failures of the policies implemented so far.