Sustainability and the False Sense of Legitimacy: How Institutional Distance Augments Risk in Global Supply Chains

Supply chain scholars have begun to recognize the institutional influences on supply chains, yet scarce attention has been directed toward the fact that global supply chains often comprise different institutions. This omission represents a severe shortcoming because the understanding of what constitutes legitimate behavior may vary substantially between contexts. This conceptual study employs the institutional distance concept to the case of supply chain sustainability risks. It focuses initially on paradoxical situations in which both the buyer and the supplier fully comply with stakeholder expectations within their own legitimacy contexts, yet the buyer's stakeholders still withdraw legitimacy from and harm the buyer. The study analyzes the causal microfoundations of how and why such paradoxical risks manifest, drawing on stakeholder theory and institutional theory. The analysis shows that accounting for the differing legitimacy contexts is necessary for explaining these risks, thereby substantiating our initial claim that institutional distance matters to global supply chains. The study yields important implications for corporate practice in that it highlights an inherent trade‐off in many global supply chains.     

Consumers and the conflict of laws in Dutch legal practice

Kaffeefahrt is the keyword for a survey of the situation of the consumer when it comes to the practice of conflict of laws in the Netherlands.The number of international consumer conflict of law cases that are met in Dutch legal practice seems to be quite low. However, the factual circumstances ofKaffeefahrten are similar to the sale of time-sharing developments in Southern Europe. This seems to be the most common example of internationalKaffeefahrt cases.

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Konsumenten und Rechtskonflikte in der hollÄndischen Rechtssprechung

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag gibt unter dem StichwortKaffeefahrt einen überblick über die Situation des niederlÄndischen Konsumenten in FÄllen, die durch zwei beteiligte Staaten rechtlich unterschiedlich geregelt werden. Der Autor behandelt zunÄchst einige wenige FÄlle von Rechtsstreitigkeiten nach einer Kaffeefahrt, wo Konsumenten in ein Nachbarland gefahren werden und dort bei einer Tasse Kaffee zum Abschlu\ irgendeines Kaufvertrages aufgefordert werden. Der Autor übertrÄgt seine überlegungen zu der Frage, welches Recht anzuwenden ist, auf die hÄufiger werdenden FÄlle von kaffeefahrtartiger Anbahnung von VertrÄgen über die Teilzeitnutzung von Ferienwohnungen in alpinen oder mediterranen LÄndern.

     

The German economy in the Autumn of 1995

The German economy in the Autumn of 1995     

Repercussions of reunification: patterns and trends in the socio-economic transformation of East Germany

This article presents empirical evidence about the first stage of the social and economic transformation process of East Germany after political reunification. It shows that, while political and institutional unification may have been achieved in 1990, the social and economic gaps have been widening since then. The authors identify groups which have become clear winners in this transition as well as the losers.     

The internationalization of corporate research and development

Foreign direct investment has grown rapidly in recent decades and, along with it, foreign research and development activities. The following article analyzes the reasons for the internationalization of R&D, examines its patterns in relationship to Germany and discusses the implications for future policy.     

Determinants of price flexibility in oligopolistic markets: Evidence from austrian manufacturing

In this paper, we examine the impact of market structure (concentration) on three different characteristics of industrial pricing behavior: 1) the sensitivity of prices to cost and demand changes, 2) the speed of price adjustment, and 3) the asymmetry of price behavior. We find the relationship between concentration and the sensitivity of prices to cost changes to be the most robust one. Cost changes are less fully transmitted into prices in highly concentrated industries. Overall, differences in the pricing behavior across industries can be “explained” fairly well with industry differences in concentration, capital intensity, inventoriability, and the length of the production period.     

Shadow prices,fractional Brownian motion,and portfolio optimisation under transaction costs

The present paper accomplishes a major step towards a reconciliation of two conflicting approaches in mathematical finance: on the one hand, the mainstream approach based on the notion of no arbitrage (Black, Merton & Scholes), and on the other hand, the consideration of non-semimartingale price processes, the archetype of which being fractional Brownian motion (Mandelbrot). Imposing (arbitrarily small) proportional transaction costs and considering logarithmic utility optimisers, we are able to show the existence of a semimartingale, frictionless shadow price process for an exponential fractional Brownian financial market.