Relations between communist and third world countries

Despite the unproportionately low level of Soviet economic assistance, Soviet influence in the Third World is quite considerable at present. Taking this fact as a starting point the following article examines the principles guiding relations between communist and developing countries.     

Urban Citizenship and Right to the City: The Fragmentation of Claims

In this symposium, we explore how urban citizenship is about expressing, if not producing, difference, and how fragmentation of claims affects urban citizenship and right to the city movements with their universal, all‐inclusive ideals. Investigating social movements, political participation and conflicting diversities in public space in Tel Aviv and Berlin, we see a trend towards a diversification of interests, a weakening of movements, and even a competition over rights and resources rather than a development of mutual support and solidarities among various groups on the pathway to a livable city. This tension, we argue, deserves attention. Radical urban scholarship and politics need to better understand the historical and place‐specific contexts that structure the formation of citizenship claims and the courses that citizenship struggles take. Celebrations of urban citizenship as a more contextualized, community oriented, and bottom‐up framework (in comparison to national citizenship) should therefore be complemented by a careful investigation of their fragmented and fragmenting practices.     

Packaging logistics in supply chain practice – current state,trade-offs and improvement potential

Packaging affects the logistical and environmental efficiency of supply chains. The purpose is to increase knowledge of the current state, trade-offs and improvement potential of packaging logistics in supply chain practice. The research is based on 22 cases, each of which consists of supply chain mapping and structured interviews with three supply chain actors (manufacturer, distributor and retailer). The paper identifies and explains improvement areas, trade-offs and gaps in packaging systems from a supply chain perspective for the whole packaging system, each packaging level and each actor. The results highlight a supply chain potential of better incorporating the packaging system requirements from actors not responsible for developing or selecting packaging. The paper discusses models for cost and benefit sharing and for identification and decision-making about trade-offs in packaging systems. Companies should collaborate, apply an integrated approach and find new approaches to integrate customers and suppliers into the packaging development process.     

Designing <Emphasis Type="Italic">interaction</Emphasis>: How do interaction design students address interaction?

Interaction design is usually described as being concerned with interactions with and through artifacts but independent of a specific implementation. Design work has been characterized as a conversation between the designer and the situation and this conversation poses a particular challenge for interaction design as interactions can be elusive and difficult to describe. Moreover, current trends in interaction design introduce physical materials to a higher degree resulting in even more complex design situations. There is a lack of knowledge about how interaction designers, and especially students, address the very phenomenon of interaction. This study contributes by describing how interaction design students attempt to address aspects of interaction and by presenting an in-depth analysis in the context of an interactionary-type design exercise. The quantitative and qualitative findings showed that (1) the design students brought up aspects of interactivity and dynamics through talk and gestures but (2) a comprehensive design idea about interaction did not guide the design work and they were to a little degree engaged in planning sequences of interactions or interaction on a longer time scale, (3) using physical materials disrupted interaction design, and, (4) there was a lack of continuity when addressing interaction compared to how proposals about artifacts were pursued. As interaction is the core of interaction design, the findings are discussed in terms of how the immaterial design materials may “talk back” to designers. Practical strategies for how the observed phenomena could be constructively addressed within interaction design education are suggested.     

Internal Embeddedness,Headquarters Involvement,and Innovation Importance in Multinational Enterprises

In this paper we apply a business network perspective to investigate the effects of internal embeddedness and headquarters involvement on subsidiaries' innovation‐related competencies, and on the perceived importance of innovation in multinational enterprises. A model framed in the innovation context is developed and six hypotheses are tested on 85 innovation projects in 23 multinational enterprises using partial least squares based structural equation modelling. The results suggest that, contrary to predictions of the business network perspective, headquarters involvement in the innovation development process improves subsidiary competencies while internal embeddedness does not. Headquarters involvement, driven by subsidiary internal embeddedness, enhances the innovation impact on the subsidiary, which in turn influences innovation importance at corporate level. Thus, the business network perspective is challenged but at the same time expanded in terms of highlighting the role of, and interplay between, different internal corporate actors, particularly the role of headquarters, in developing competencies and creating competitive advantage.     

The effectiveness of personalized marketing in online banking: A comparison between search and experience offerings

This study reports the results of personalized online promotions in a context where personalization has not been researched before – in online banking. Genuine online bank customers were shown personalized banner advertisements when they logged in to their online bank account. Three financial offerings consisting of different search and experience attributes were promoted to three groups of customers. We examined the attention, elaboration and choice measures, and compared the effectiveness of personalized banners to default banners, and the online promotions to direct-mail promotions. Despite the goal-directed routines that reflect the dominant customer behaviour in online banking, personalized banners attracted more attention than default banners. Furthermore, messages that promote fairly simple search-type offerings that are easy to apply and are linked to the context in which the promotion occurs are more effective than messages that do not fulfil these criteria. The results offer implications both for research and practice.     

Fatal occupational accidents in Danish fishing vessels 1989-2005

The purpose of the study was to study the circumstances and incidence rates of fatal accidents in inspection obligated and non-inspection obligated Danish fishing vessels to identify areas for prevention. Information about the fatalities came from maritime authority reports, including vessel disaster reports, post mortem reports, maritime inquiries and police reports. The person- and vessel years at risk came from the Danish Directorate of Fisheries. During the period 1989-2005, 114 fatalities occurred. Sixty-one of the fatalities occurred in 36 vessel disasters mainly caused by foundering/capsizing due to stability changes in rough weather and collisions; 39 fatal occupational accidents mainly occurred on the larger inspection obligated trawlers during fishing. In the remaining 14 other fatal accidents, the main causal factors were difficult embarking/disembarking conditions by darkness in foreign ports and alcohol intoxication. In the period 1995-2005, the overall incidence rate was 10 per 10,000 fishermen per year with no down-going trend during that period. The fatal accident rates are still too high, despite the efforts to reduce the risk. Increased focus on regular and repeated safety training for all fishermen and improved safety measures are needed, especially in the underscored areas of sea disasters concerning small vessels and occupational accidents on big vessels. Better registration of time at risk for fishermen is needed to validate the effect of the safety measures.     

Measuring overconfidence: Methodological problems and statistical artifacts

Psychological studies are frequently cited in the business and finance literature to bolster claims that various kinds of economic disasters, from the large proportion of start-ups that quickly go out of business to the exaggerated confidence of financial investors, can be attributed to overconfidence. This article reviews some of the problems associated with concluding that people overestimate the accuracy of their judgments based on observed overconfidence measured as the difference between mean subjective probability and proportion correct. Methodological and statistical artifacts, such as regression, can explain many of the observed instances of apparent overconfidence.     

Regulating a Polluting Firm Under Asymmetric Information

This paper reinterprets the Laffont-Tirole model of regulation under asymmetric information to cover the case of pollution control. The asymmetry of information concerns the firm's cost of lowering its pollution. The regulator has three objectives: Ensuring an efficient abatement level, generating 'green taxes' and securing the survival of the firm. We show that when optimal abatement is important relative to tax generation, the regulator cannot use the policy of offering the firm a set of linear tax schemes from which to choose. By contrast, this policy is optimal in the Laffont-Tirole model under certain not very restrictive assumptions. We proceed to establish a simple rule for when to shut-down inefficient types. In an example with specific functional forms, we derive the optimal tax function both analytically and graphically. We show the effect on the optimal tax system of a change in a technological parameter.