How social and human capital influence opportunity recognition and resource mobilization in India's handloom industry

Small-scale firms in rural areas play an extremely important role in the development of any country, and especially in developing countries. To understand entrepreneurs who operate in a low-technology industry, we rely on the network perspective on entrepreneurship. In this paper, we investigate how the social and human capital of entrepreneurs (in this case master weavers in the handloom industry) influence their ability to recognize opportunities and mobilize resources. In addition to examining the direct effects, we also explore the possibilities of social capital mediating between human capital, on the one hand, and opportunity recognition and resource mobilization on the other. This paper adds to existing literature in two ways: firstly, we expand the social capital paradigm by including different cultural settings and links to existing studies regarding small enterprises. Secondly, we provide additional evidence to the ongoing debate as to what constitutes a ‘good network’.     

Supervisor and Market Analysts: What Should Research be Seeking?

This article is primarily directed towards examining the desirability of incorporating market signals in the process of supervision of commercial banks by regulators and insurers. But the ideas developed here can also be applied to the general problem of using market information to assess the solvency and safety of any financial or non-financial institution.Market prices and yields of securities anticipate actions by regulators, central banks, and other players due to the fact that such actions may materially influence the risk and the expected return associated with investment decisions pertaining to those securities. It is well known that the yield curve of government securities such as T-bills, T-notes and T-bonds reflect the market's consensus regarding the actions that the Federal reserve may take as they pertain to the valuation of such securities. The extent to which the market has already discounted the future actions of the central bank will no doubt play a role in the way in which the central bank may think about its actions, its actual effect and how it relates to its intended effects.The extent to which market prices can provide useful guides depends on the underlying market structure and the practices in the industry.While markets may do lot of the hard work in aggregating and incorporating future actions, the task of supervision and regulation can never be put on automatic pilot. Ideally, supervisory policies should effectively combine the market signals with initiatives that serve to maintain the safety and the soundness of the underlying markets. I will begin by exploring the extent to which equity prices may be used as a signal of bank credit risk. I will then explore the advantages and disadvantages of using subordinated debt securities to derive a market signal.     

Asymptotic behavior of market shares for a stochastic growth model

Consider a market with finitely many firms, each enjoying an uncertain growth. We assume the (random) growth rates of these firms are independent and identically distributed. We show that the asymptotic probability distribution of the market shares gives each firm an equal probability of dominating the market (while all other firms are almost extinguished). In particular, these conclusions are independent of the initial market shares of the firms. We conclude that sample paths fluctuate between almost domination and almost extinction. We also demonstrate that these fluctuations may be very slow. Extensions to situations where the total demand is restricted are discussed.     

On large games with bounded essential coalition sizes

We consider games in characteristic function form where the worth of a group of players depends on the numbers of players of each of a finite number of types in the group. The games have bounded essential coalition sizes: all gains to cooperation can be achieved by coalitions bounded in absolute size (although larger coalitions are permitted they cannot realize larger per-capita gains). We show that the utility function of the corresponding "limit" market, introduced in Wooders (1988, 1994a) , is piecewise linear. The piecewise linearity is used to show that for almost all limiting ratios of percentages of player-types, as the games increase in size (numbers of players), asymptotically the games have cores containing only one payoff, and this payoff is symmetric (treats players of the same type identically). We use this result to show that for almost all limiting ratios of percentages of player-types, Shapley values of sequences of growing games converge to the unique limiting payoff.     

The use of organic models of control in JIT firms: generalising Woodward’s findings to modern manufacturing practices

Prior research indicates that technology plays an important role in the determination of management control systems. A fully developed JIT system represents a radical departure from the traditional approach to organising and managing mass production. In probing the management control implications of JIT, this study extends some well-established concepts from organisation theory to the modern manufacturing practices literature to develop a framework which suggests that mass production firms adopting JIT (a new technology) must abandon a mechanistic management control system and adopt an organic model of control. Findings from three case studies describing the control structures used in JIT firms are also presented as part of the theoretical and hypothesis development. In addition, survey results are reported which are highly consistent with the framework, indicating that Woodward’s findings (Industrial organization: theory and practice (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.) generalise (are robust) to a new technology. Finally, a preliminary examination into whether improvements in certain key areas are higher for those JIT firms utilising an organic model of management was performed and found to be consistent with expectations.     

User,Use & Utility Research

Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) is at a turning point. Planning, designing, developing and operating IT used to be a management task of a few elites in public ad-ministrations and corporations. But the continuous digitization of nearly all areas of life changes the IT landscape fundamentally. Success in this new era requires putting the human perspective – the digital user – at the very heart of the new digitized service-led economy. BISE faces not just a temporary trend but a complex socio-technical phenomenon with far-reaching implications. The challenges are manifold and have major consequences for all stakeholders, both in information systems and management research as well as in practice. Corporate processes have to be re-designed from the ground up, starting with the user’s perspective, thus putting usage experience and utility of the individual center stage. The digital service economy leads to highly personalized application systems while organizational functions are being fragmented. Entirely new ways of interacting with information systems, in particular beyond desktop IT, are being invented and established. These fundamental challenges require novel approaches with regards to innovation and development methods as well as adequate concepts for enterprise or service system architectures. Gigantic amounts of data are being generated at an accelerating rate by an increasing number of devices – data that need to be managed. In order to tackle these extraordinary challenges we introduce ‘user, use & utility’ as a new field of BISE that focuses primarily on the digital user, his or her usage behavior and the utility associated with system usage in the digitized service-led economy. The research objectives encompass the development of theories, methods and tools for systematic requirement elicitation, systems design, and business development for successful Business and Information Systems Engineering in a digitized economy – information systems that digital users enjoy using. This challenge calls for leveraging insights from various scientific disciplines such as Design, Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology and Sociology. BISE can provide an integrated perspective, thereby assuming a pivotal role within the digitized service led economy.     

Poverty, food security, and nutrition in Central Asia: a case study of the Kyrgyz Republic

This paper attempts to provide insights into poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition in Central Asia in the period following independence, and presents the available evidence from household-level data in the Kyrgyz Republic. It finds that although some improvement has been made in recent years, significant levels of poverty, food insecurity, and child malnutrition still exist. The paper argues that, in the short run, efforts should be made to protect vulnerable groups by investing in information generation and building capacity to design and implement food security and nutrition policies and programs. Increasing the speed of policy reforms and investment in productivity-enhancing agricultural research and rural infrastructure are fundamental for long-tern sustainable development in Central Asia.     

A quantitative determination of the food security status of rural farming households in the Northern Province of South Africa

The majority of South Africans living in rural areas are food insecure despite high levels of national food self-sufficiency. The household food security position of two groups of rural farming households in the Venda region was evaluated quantitatively: one group produces vegetables that are sold or consumed locally, the other group produces cash crops – mangoes and other subtropical fruits. Using the collected data, food availability and energy, protein and fat requirements were calculated and balances derived. It was found that more than 80 per cent of the households had a negative balance of energy, protein and fat intake. The average energy, protein and fat coverage consumption was the same for both groups of farmers. A number of agricultural determinants were tested, but only non-agricultural determinants were found to be significant. These include household size, household (food) expenditure and proportion of the budget spent on food.