The City as Experiential Space: The Production of Shared Meaning

Cities obviously differ from each other. Sociologically, this difference becomes significant when your aim is to ascertain the influence of local factors in a globalizing world or to understand processes of societal differentiation. To do so, scholars in the areas of urban and regional sociology, community research and local policy can turn to a number of theoretical and empirical studies on cities, municipalities, or, less specifically, the local setting as societally formative units that resist global influences. In this article I continue to ask how cities socialize in a way that allows shared experience to emerge in communities. Grounded in the sociology of knowledge shaped by German thinkers such as Max Weber, Alfred Schütz, Karl Mannheim, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, my aim is to illustrate that specific stocks of knowledge based on habitualized experience arise in every city. Intrinsic logic captures the hidden structures of cities as locally well‐established, operative processes of sense‐making along with their physical, material manifestations.     

Control and its role in the process of ensuring knowledge continuity

With the commencement of the 21st century, the information age, knowledge economy and integration of information and knowledge among production factors, organizations show increasing interest in knowledge management. Managers are trying not only to preserve knowledge and transfer it efficiently within their organization, but also to ensure that it is not lost when a knowledge employee leaves the organization. Therefore, it is indispensable for organizations to monitor, record, transfer and preserve their knowledge. In order to ensure efficient preservation of knowledge by the organization, it is essential to integrate the area of the so-called knowledge continuity into the general management and ensure its maximum value. The goal of the article is to identify the role of control in the transformation process and its impact on ensuring knowledge continuity within the organization. A partial goal lies in identifying output quality control by means of productivity One of the conclusions of the article is that in today＇s economic situation, ignoring the existence of knowledge continuity could result in a crisis of management of knowledge and its loss.     

Early Tracking and the Misfortune of Being Young

Recent research suggests that the relative age of a student within a grade has a causal effect on educational achievement, and that this effect fades with the duration of schooling. In this study, we estimate the causal relative‐age effect on track choice in Austria, a country where students are first tracked in grade 5 (at the age of 10 years), and again in grade 9. We find a strong positive relative‐age effect on track choice in grades 5–8. The age effect persists beyond grade 8 for students from less‐favorable socioeconomic backgrounds and students in urban areas.     

Testing the trade credit and trade link: evidence from data on export credit insurance

Trade finance has received special attention during the financial crisis as one of the potential culprits for the great trade collapse. Several researchers have used micro level data to establish the link between trade finance and trade, especially so during the financial crisis, and have found diverting results. This paper analyses the effect of trade credit on trade on a macro level through a whole cycle. We employ Berne Union data on export credit insurance, the most extensive dataset on trade credits available at the moment, for the period of 2005–2011. Using an instrumentation strategy we can identify a significantly positive effect of insured trade credit, as a proxy for trade credits, on trade. The effect of insured trade credit on trade is very strong and remains stable over the cycle, not varying between crisis and non-crisis periods.     

The effect of shipping fee structure on consumers’ online evaluations and choice

This research examines how consumers respond to different shipping fee structures. Focusing on two of the most common shipping fee structures, flat rate shipping and threshold-based free shipping, we first demonstrate that offer evaluations are less (more) favorable with threshold-based free shipping when order value is below (above) the free shipping threshold compared to flat rate shipping. However, when an alternative more important referent is present, the effect of shipping fee structure is attenuated. Second, we show that although perceptions of shipping fees as a profit generator are higher (lower) under threshold-based free shipping relative to flat rate shipping for order values below (above) the free shipping threshold, providing a justification for the shipping fee by explicitly linking it to delivery costs encourages consumers to view the shipping fee as a cost of doing business rather than as a profit generator, thus raising offer evaluations.     

The care-less marketplace: exclusion as affective inequality

ABSTRACT

The care-less marketplace is a discrete site which reinforces structural inequality in the affective domain of life. Drawing on the work of pro-care feminist theory, this empirical paper explores marketplace exclusion from the perspective of economic disadvantage and its impact on relations of love, care and solidarity. Adopting a voice-centred-relational approach, this interpretative study examines the narrative accounts of a diverse group of women living in diverse poverty contexts. Articulating marketplace exclusion as a series of affective burdens, material struggles and disconnections embedded within the relational web of family, friends and community – these experiences mirror participants’ imposed exclusion in the marketplace due to chronic economic hardship. Through the diffusion of an alternative theoretical lens, affective inequality surfaces the importance of care and how it is often most visible in the lives of vulnerable consumers when it is absent or broken.     

Neither passive nor powerless: reframing economic vulnerability via resilient pathways

ABSTRACT

Resilience, as an emerging construct within the contemporary field of consumer vulnerability, has received limited empirical attention within the context of economic adversity. This paper examines how low-income women strive to reframe their relationship to the market via resilient pathways. It establishes how through active agency, self-care practices and relational coping, women maximise care of self and care of others with limited economic means. Comprised of multidimensional coping resources for positive adaptation, resilient pathways offer vulnerable consumers distinct trajectories to well-being and overturn deficit-focused views about how those facing chronic economic disadvantage, (re)assert themselves in vulnerable consumption contexts.     

Linking inward/outward FDI and exploitation/exploration strategies: Development of a framework for SMEs

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between exploitation/exploration strategy and foreign direct investment (FDI) involving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on qualitative data collected from 45 FDI projects reported by 38 SMEs in a small open economy (SMOPEC), we develop an empirically grounded framework and research propositions that suggest inward FDI (into the SME) is associated with exploration driven by a strategic asset-seeking motive, and outward FDI (by the SME) is associated with exploitation driven by market and efficiency-seeking motives. Further, for the SMEs in this study, ambidextrous exploration and exploitation appear complementary and co-occur either simultaneously through an inward FDI project, or sequentially through separate inward and outward FDI projects, respectively. Our findings, however, reveal a lack of clear sequencing between inward and outward FDI, in contrast to previous research that has conceptualised inward FDI as a strategic means to achieve outward FDI. Implications for theory, practice and policy are discussed.     

Erlebniskommunikation — Vermittlung emotionalen Zusatznutzens

Zunehmende technische Konvergenz führt zu immer ?hnlicheren Produkten auf reifen M?rkten. Auf Basis physischer Produkteigenschaften lassen sich kaum noch Wettbewerbsvorteile erzielen. Anbieter versuchen deshalb gezielt mit ihren Produkten und Marken Mehrwert in Form von emotionalem Nutzen zu schaffen. Eine M?glichkeit, diesen zu transportieren, stellt die neue, innovative Kommunikationsform der Erlebniswelt dar, die bisher insbesondere von Automobilherstellern genutzt wird.