Why art matters: Artistic consumer‐entrepreneurship in subsistence marketplaces

This reflective essay explores the role art can play in subsistence marketplaces, focusing particularly on its role in consumer‐entrepreneurship. Using informal field engagement in Mexico, Tanzania, and Native American tribes, in dialogue with the literature, it poses three questions as the basis for a research agenda: How can consumer‐entrepreneurs preserve art and heritage to sustain socioeconomic value? What transformative role does art play in subsistence marketplaces for the consumers and entrepreneurs involved? How can indigenous consumers and entrepreneurs protect their cultural identity and sovereignty through art? Directions for future research include the need to better understand the role of assemblages and intermediaries for artisan consumer‐entrepreneurs, an issue with evident policy implications. As indigenous and near‐indigenous societies seek identity, meaning, and cohesion in a turbulent world, art can preserve, transform, and assert.     

Time-Series Momentum Trading Strategies in the Global Stock Market

In recent years, the presence of abnormal profits in stock markets has been empirically validated, thereby putting the Efficient Market Hypothesis on trial; and the assertion that the market knows everything or the market cannot be beaten has been proven to be a myth. With the presence of profitable trading rules in stock markets, speculation becomes a common phenomenon making the financial system intrinsically instable, vulnerable to shocks, and prone to crashes. This study, while exploring the presence of profitable trading rules in the global market in recent years, finds that developed countries’ submarkets are more vulnerable to speculating activities     

The information industry for the industrial marketer

The authors explore the nature and structure of the information industry supplying the industrial product market. They examine the means by which current scientific and technological information can be obtained, and the implication for industrial users.     

Some concepts of technology transfer: adoption of innovations in organizational context

This paper is based on the review of literature on technology transfer and diffusion of innovations. Models and propositions developed by scholars in various disciplines were analyzed. The definitions and concepts frequently encountered in the literature were discussed to understand the process of technology transfer at various levels. Problems of inter-organizational technology transfer were discussed at length.     

Stock prices and merger movements: Interactive relations

Zusammenfassung Die wechselseitigen Beziehungen zwischen Aktienkursen und Firmenzusammenschlüssen. - Der Aufsatz untersucht die Beziehungen zwischen Firmenzusammenschlüssen und makro?konomischen Variablen. Es werden Kausalit?tstests mit US-Daten der Periode 1919–1979 durchgeführt, die zeigen, da? Zusammenschlüsse und Aktienkurse in derselben Periode aufeinander einwirken und da? keine Lead- oder Lag-Beziehungen bestehen. Die Zeitreihenanalyse deutet darauf hin, da? die Reihe der Zusammenschlüsse einem autoregressiven Proze? 2. Ordnung folgt, die „random walk”-Hypothese also abzulehnen ist.

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Résumé Cours des actions et mouvements de fusion: Relations interactives. - Dans cet article l’auteur examine la relation entre des mouvements de fusion et des variables macro-économiques. Après avoir testé la causalité avec des données des E.U. pour la période 1919–1979, l’évidence démontre que l’activité de fusion et les cours des actions interagissent dans la même période et ne revèlent pas une relation d’avance ou à retard. L’analyse des séries chronologiques indique que la série de fusion suit un processus AR (2), refusant l’hypothèse de ?random walk?.

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Resumen Precios de valores bursátiles y la pauta de fusiones: relaciones interactivas. - En este trabajo se examina la relación entre la pauta de fusiones y variables macroeconómicas. Los resultados de tests de causalidad utilizando datos de los EE UU para el período 1919–1979 muestran que las fusiones y los precios de las acciones interactúan en forma comtemporánea y no revelan rezago o adelanto alguno. El análisis de series de tiempo indica que las series de fusiones responden a un proceso AR(2), lo cual significa un rechazo de la hipótesis del ?random walk?.

     

Targeting technical information to organizational positions

This article describes the importance of scientific and technical information for the technical personnel at various organizational hierarchies and how these people satisfy their information needs. Inter- and intraorganizational channels used for information acquisition are discussed. Implications of these channels are discussed for industrial marketing.     

Does it pay to acquire technological firms?

Abstract The paper focuses on several research questions: How do the firms differ in terms of their strategic objectives for foreign acquisitions? What are the determinants of ‘success’ of acquisition? What are the differences between the American and German firms in terms of their acquisition strategies and successes? Our special interest was to get a closer look into the technological motive of the foreign acquisitions. This made a two-step procedure necessary. A first survey of 86 firms had to identify those acquisitions which were motivated by technological interests through a questionnaire. Findings: There are four classes of companies with different motives for acquisitions: Market oriented entrepreneurs, Short-term profit seekers, Technological acquirers, Preemptive market protectors. The second survey investigated the process and the results of acquisitions with a special view on the role of research and development through 60 interviews in 30 acquisition cases in both acquiring and acquired units. Findings: A network of variables explains the success. The most important are context variables (uncertainty, cultural differences), size of both firms, low degree of formalization, expertise, and lack of conflicts about technological philosophy.     

Drivers of ad spend trends among global marketers

This research study attempts to examine whether there is consistency in the advertisingto-sales ratio (%) pattern for global marketers in their home region and at a worldwide level, through a systematic sequence of analyses. It attempts to understand the variation in the advertising spend to sales ratio for the home region and global markets for a sample of marketers by analysing along the variables of category (surrogate for advertising task), region (home base) and companies themselves. This has been done by applying the C&RT technique of the automatic interaction detector (AID) family. The key point emerging from this analysis is that, at every level, the category is the main determinant for explaining the variation in global advertising to spend ratio as well as the home region advertising to spend ratio.     

Emergence of anti-coordination through reinforcement learning in generalized minority games

In this paper we propose adaptive strategies to solve coordination failures in a prototype generalized minority game model with a multi-agent, multi-choice environment. We illustrate the model with an application to large scale distributed processing systems with a large number of agents and servers. In our set up, agents are assigned responsibility to complete tasks that require unit time. They request servers to process these tasks. Servers can process only one task at a time. Agents have to choose servers independently and simultaneously, and have access to the outcomes of their own past requests only. Coordination failure occurs if more than one agent simultaneously requests the same server to process tasks at the same time, while other servers remain idle. Since agents are independent, this leads to multiple coordination failures. In this paper, we propose strategies based on reinforcement learning that minimize such coordination failures. We also prove a null result that a large category of probabilistic strategies which attempts to combine information about other agents’ strategies, asymptotically converge to uniformly random choices over the servers.