Geopolitics of the Cosmopolis

Through an analysis of a speech held by Finnish Minister of Defence Jyri Häkämies at CSIS in Washington in 2007, the article scrutinizes the new emergence of “geopolitics” in international politics. Although its novelty is debatable, in this new geopolitical discourse the main focus is not related to the spatial borders of a nation state but instead to securing territory beyond these borders. It seems that “common values”, basically undefined but allegedly including such ideas like democracy, are related to this new form of “geopolitics”. In contrast to traditional geopolitics and identity politics, the global or cosmopolitical “us” defending common values seems to be a changing coalition and other countries appear only as objects of its operations. Only Russia, waking from its decade-long hibernation, emerges as a potential challenge to “us”. Curiously enough, its awakening also brings geopolitics back. The analysis of the speech reveals that the “new situation” requires choosing friends and enemies that are not clearly defined in the classical geopolitical sense. Even in the traditional sense of protecting the borders etc., the geopolitical security of Finland is best protected through acting for the geopolitical security of the whole world, no matter where or when that might require our presence. But from where does, for instance, the legitimacy of the operations of “us” derive? In the speech of minister Häkämies, many of the classical themes of political theory reappear, though in a new form. It is guided by geopolitical concerns, but the geopolitics it entails is rather different from the traditional way of thinking about it. This also creates a need to rethink some central concerns of political theory.     

On the Interpretation of Value Efficiency

Halme et al., Management Science, 45, 103–115 (1999) have proposed Value Efficiency Analysis as an approach to incorporate preference information in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Generally, a value function includes only ordinal information and thus a value efficiency score does not provide information on the value difference. The score only describes the improvements in the input/output values that are needed in order to make the Decision-Making Unit (DMU) as preferred as the Most Preferred Solution (MPS). This Paper discusses two sets of additional assumptions that enable us to give the efficiency score a value difference interpretation.     

Closure in risk debates: Pre-assessment of Finnish forest biotechnology

The aim of this paper is to contribute to a more systematic and integrative pre-assessment of risk. The paper argues that although there are many insights into ‘pre-assessment’ within the field of risk studies, it suffers from a lack of robust methodological tools and approaches. A problem with the neglect of such approaches is that factors that set the stage for further steps in the risk-handling chain can remain in a state of implicit assumptions, impose biased interpretation of relevant risk issues and mislead the consideration of active intervention options. The suggestion of this article is that ‘social arena analysis,’ combined with the identification of ‘closure mechanisms,’ can provide a practical and theoretically anchored tool for the pre-assessment of risk. The value of this approach is demonstrated through the analysis of a debate on the future and risks of Finnish forest biotechnology, and in a final discussion on policy options emerging from the analysis.     

Do networks of financial intermediaries help reduce local bias? Evidence from cross-border venture capital exits

Contributing to the literature on local bias and financial networks, we examine how direct and indirect network ties of financial intermediaries mitigate the effects of distance and preference for local investments. In our analysis of cross-border venture capital exits, we find that proximity within networks facilitates cross-border transactions, which suggests that network distance is an important dimension of distance in addition to its geographical and cultural dimensions. The results also suggest that network distance affects the reach and quality of mediated information: indirect ties to partners' partners, with their broad reach, facilitate the identification of investment opportunities, whereas direct ties, which have certification effects, facilitate quality assessment.     

Review of studies on digital transaction platforms in marketing journals

ABSTRACT

Digital transaction platforms now intermediate a large number of transactions between end-customers and independent sellers and service providers in many parts of the economy. In retail, for example, Amazon.com now intermediates transactions between end-customers and hundreds of thousands of independent sellers worldwide, while Etsy.com connects artists, crafters, and collectors with buyers of a large range of niche and rare products. The growing popularity of digital transaction platforms, therefore, has significant implications for retail, marketing and distribution scholars as the existing interaction patterns in the value-chain are increasingly replaced by new digital intermediaries. The purpose of this review is, therefore, to examine, through an extensive and rigorous review of research on digital transaction platforms in marketing journals, what we know and what opportunities lie ahead to expand the theoretical and empirical understanding of digital transaction platforms. The review shows that despite increasing multi-disciplinary and managerial interest towards digital transaction platforms and the platform economy, they remain largely unexplored in marketing journals, and the existing research and theorizing attempts remain fragmented. Therefore, there are many opportunities for marketing, retail and distribution scholars to, for example, collaborate with industry and practitioners in order to gain new perspectives and access to novel data sources, and for example, meet the emerging funding requirements of many universities and governmental funding agencies for more rigorous multi-disciplinary research on digital markets and digital business models.     

Non-R&D SMEs: external knowledge,absorptive capacity and product innovation

The relationship between external knowledge, absorptive capacity (AC) and innovative performance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is investigated empirically. Using data from a survey on firms located in North Norway, we ask whether AC plays a mediating role between different external knowledge inflows and innovative performance. The results are consistent with AC as an important mediator for transforming external knowledge inflows into higher innovative performance if we include all SMEs in the sample. However, this result is not robust when considering the sub-sample of non-R&D SMEs only. External knowledge inflows have a much stronger direct effect on innovation performance for non-R&D firms and leave a weak mediating effect of AC. Our findings suggest that measures of AC should be developed further in order to make AC a more relevant concept for empirical studies of SMEs without in-house R&D.