The Consequences of Globalisation: India's Software Industry and Cross‐border Labour Mobility1

The Indian software industry is a prime example of globalisation. The industry has been characterised by large cross‐border mobility of its skilled labour force. Using a unique survey of Indian software firms, our paper quantifies the extent and impact of mobility on firm behaviour and performance. Cross‐border labour mobility in the paper refers to both temporary and permanent labour flows by Indian software professionals. The picture that emerges is of a highly mobile world in which temporary mobility has been an important characteristic of the industry. A significant number of workers have work experience abroad in a developed country. Moreover, the share of skilled workers with such experience has been positively associated with the incidence of skilled migration from the firm. This suggests network effects are at work. In terms of the impact on performance – as measured by the change in turnover per worker and the change in the employment size of the firm – the paper finds little evidence of a robust adverse effect. Further, the evidence suggests that there have been important external effects at work, as through changes in the willingness of workers to acquire skills, as well as through increased provision of educational services. These have further abated the risk of a brain drain. However, the software industry may be rather different from other industries. Our results need to be interpreted as the outcome of a particular case of skilled migration and not one necessarily representative of all types of skilled migration and source sectors.     

Conditionally heteroscedastic intensity‐dependent marking of log Gaussian Cox processes

Spatial marked point processes are models for systems of points which are randomly distributed in space and provided with measured quantities called marks. This study deals with marking, that is methods of constructing marked point processes from unmarked ones. The focus is density‐dependent marking where the local point intensity affects the mark distribution. This study develops new markings for log Gaussian Cox processes. In these markings, both the mean and variance of the mark distribution depend on the local intensity. The mean, variance and mark correlation properties are presented for the new markings, and a Bayesian estimation procedure is suggested for statistical inference. The performance of the new approach is studied by means of simulation experiments. As an example, a tropical rainforest data is modelled.     

Research Opportunities Related to Consumer Response to Product Design*

This essay identifies five research opportunities that concern consumer response to product design. The first opportunity involves the need for more research on the interaction between form and function in consumer product evaluations. To this end, more knowledge about how product appearance characteristics influence consumer evaluation of both product form and function, and how this differs between countries and in time, is needed. The second research opportunity concerns the influence of consumer input in the front end of new product development on product success. Although the positive effect of market information use on product success is known, more actionable insight into which consumer information or input is beneficial in which circumstances is largely missing. The third opportunity for research concerns how to include subjective product attributes in concept testing. Getting valid feedback from consumers, which includes functional as well as emotional and experiential aspects, can improve proficiency in the early stages of product development. In this essay, several ways of approaching this research endeavor are highlighted. Next to enhancing market receipt and the assessment of product design, two topics that concern consumer response to product design from a more managerial viewpoint are identified. The first of these is strategic management of product styling. The importance and opportunities of visual design for brand management has gained more attention in the literature; different strategies and the cases in which they are beneficial are issues for further research. And finally, the design of product service systems (PSSs) provides opportunities for future research. Here, engendering perceptual unity between products and services and an explicit managing of meanings and feelings that PSSs should communicate are issues at play.     

The economic impact of migration: productivity analysis for Spain and the UK

Over the past 20?years labour has become increasingly mobile and whilst employment and earnings effects in host countries have been extensively analysed, the implications for firm and industry performance have received far less attention. This paper explores the direct economic consequences of immigration on host nations?? productivity performance at a sectoral level in two very different European countries, Spain and the UK. Whilst the UK has traditionally seen substantial immigration, for Spain the phenomenon is much more recent. Our findings from a growth accounting analysis show that migration has made a negative contribution to labour productivity growth in Spain and a negative but negligible contribution in the UK. This difference is driven by a positive impact from migrant labour quality in the UK. This finding broadly holds across all sectors, but we note considerable variation in magnitudes. Labour productivity growth has a neutral contribution from migrant labour in construction and personal services in the UK, whilst in every case in Spain the effect is negative, most strongly in agriculture. Using an econometric approach to production function estimation we observe a positive long term effect on total factor productivity from migrant workers in the UK and a negative effect in Spain. Our findings suggest that either the UK is better at assimilating migrants or is more selective in terms of who is permitted to migrate.     

Institutional Aspects of Youth Employment and Training Policy: A Comment on Marsden and Ryan

This Comment questions the reasons why Marsden and Ryan (1990) have come to favour prescribing apprenticeship and occupational markets for reviving training in Britain. Their assessment failed to take account of (a) other advantages of internal labour markets over occupational markets, (b) institutions other than those in labour markets, and (c) training features common in well functioning occupational and internal markets as revealed by a comparison of Germany and Japan. The examination of these factors casts a doubt on the feasibility and desirability of Marsden and Ryan's policy recommendation.     

Co‐creating nonprofit brand equity

• The concept of brand equity (BE) has been the subject of much recent discussion in the field of nonprofit branding and also has been the concept of brand co‐creation in the field of branding. This study combines these aspects and examines the BE co‐creation of a nonprofit entity, the Finnish Defence Forces military driving school. Empirical data were collected from industrial logistics service providers and military recruits. A theoretical BE model was further developed using structural equation modeling in an exploratory manner to reveal whether the BE model of the military driving school is similar from both viewpoints. Similar workable models were found, indicating strong BE co‐creation and thereby contributing to the field. To support the future co‐creation of BE of the military driving school, it is important to ensure that the recruits take positive experiences from the school and industrial logistics service providers carefully consider how they relay their experiences about the school to other truck drivers. The attitudes of recruits towards the military driving school are likely eventually to conform to those of civilian truck drivers. Finding workable models required omitting some BE dimensions and measures of earlier models. Moreover, using data from one country alone may be a limitation of the study. Therefore, nonprofit BE measures should be further developed and tested with data from further afield.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eating Sustainably? Practices and Background Factors of Ecological Food Consumption in Four Nordic Countries

This article examines sustainable food consumption in the Nordic context, studying to what extent people in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have food consumption patterns that are in the current discourse promoted as sustainability enhancing. The article analyses the association of sustainable food consumption to attitudinal support for environmental policy measures, interest in cooking, and healthy eating practices as well as sociodemographic background factors. The comparison of four countries enables an analysis of the importance of the national context in sustainable food consumption. The study is based on data from a 2012 Nordic Web survey (N?=?8248). The results show that carrying out sustainable activities was not very widespread. Buying local food was the most popular, eating meat less often the most unpopular sustainable activity. The level of participation in sustainable practices varied across the four countries. Swedish respondents were the overall most active, Norwegians the least. However, results from analysis of variance (anova) indicated that the individual explanatory factors of sustainable food consumption were relatively similar in the four countries. Healthy eating patterns, interest in cooking, and supporting environmental policy measures were all positively correlated to sustainable food consumption. Women and the elderly were more active in sustainable practices than were men and the young. Education and occupational position played a role, too, but their effect was not totally systematic across countries. The findings suggest that sustainable food consumption is not a strongly socially stratified phenomenon, but it is related to other practices of eating regarded as “proper,” such as interest in cooking and healthy eating. Broader and more inclusive policies are needed to better engage people in sustainable activities.     

Globalisation and its discontents: an Indonesian perspective

It is indeed a great honour for me to give the 2011 Heinz Arndt Memorial Lecture. The first time I met the great Professor Heinz Arndt was as a nine‐year‐old back in 1966 when our family first came to Canberra and Heinz was my father's (Panglaykim) new boss. I recall that he picked us up at the airport and within the first week we had visited his house in Deakin, where he gave me and my two brothers games such as Chinese checkers and books that his own kids had outgrown. So my first thought was: what a kind and thoughtful man. Little did I know that I would end up being what he often termed his ‘academic grandchild’. I never took a class from Heinz or was fortunate enough to be supervised by him. However, I had many interactions with him when I was a student at the Australian National University (ANU) and, upon graduation, as an aspiring young academic. He had an important influence on the course of my life. First, he encouraged me to do my PhD in the USA. After I completed my masters at the ANU under Peter Drysdale, I toyed with the idea of continuing with a PhD at the Research School of Pacific Studies. However, Heinz convinced me to go to the USA because he thought it would widen my horizons. He was right. Second, there was the importance of being disciplined and thorough in undertaking country or regional research. One of the most important initiation exercises for an academic working on Indonesia was to do a ‘Survey of Recent Developments’ for the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies. I recall being given a yellowed document that had been formulated by Heinz with precise guidelines on topics, structure, and people to see and interview. We found similar guidelines on regional surveys when we did economic surveys of all the provinces a few years later. I found that doing the research and interviews for the survey was the easy part. The hard part was the two weeks spent in Canberra writing up the survey and being subjected to peer review. The draft was presented to the ‘editorial team’ and others, including, of course, the venerable Professor Arndt. I am glad to say that I passed in terms of substance; but of course there were lots of edits to do following Heniz's traditional typed‐up comments, both general and specific! Third, despite being a formidable figure and someone with a reputation for strong opinions, Heinz was the same kind and thoughtful man I remembered as a nine‐year‐old. He always had the time of day for the young academics, especially those from Indonesia. I had many cups of tea with him as a student and later as an aspiring academic. I still recall his room in University House filled with his books and the filing cabinet near the bathroom, where he would inevitably pull out the right references and reading materials that one needed. I learned a lot about the importance of mentoring and encouraging the young—many of whom have succeeded and are in the room today. This lecture is to honour Professor Heinz Arndt. I believe Professor Arndt was a true internationalist and therefore he would tackle with gusto the rumblings of discontent on globalisation. He would be thorough in trying to understand the manifestations of globalisation and its sources of discontent. He would also be of the firm belief that the benefits of globalisation outweigh its costs and come up with strategic ideas on how to best manage globalisation to counter ‘globaphobia’. I hope I do justice to this topic in the Heinz Arndt tradition.     

Exploring service design in the context of architecture

Development of services is a demanding task and requires new perspectives as well as appropriate tools and techniques. This paper forms an overview of the concept of service design, which has recently gained ground. This concept is applied to an empirical study, which explores how professional designers develop services. The main method of the study is participant observation taking place in an architect's office. As a result, the study describes in detail how services are designed in the context of architecture. The study suggests that professional designers apply several methods, which could increase our understanding of service design and service development.