Circle mapping your firm’s growth strategy

This article offers an innovative graphical approach to facilitating an interactive discussion about identifying and assessing potential growth opportunities. Our approach, circle mapping, visually conceptualizes growth as occupying space, where market space is defined by a set of concentric circles. The circle presently occupied by the firm is defined by its current set of customers and the value proposition offered to them, while the outer concentric circles represent growth opportunities that are defined by new customers and value propositions. The process of circle mapping prompts leadership teams to formulate a growth strategy by visually mapping the value proposition for future customers in relation to the firm’s capacity to access the resources and capabilities needed to successfully occupy those spaces. The model allows leaders to conceptualize growth strategies, such as leveraging success in one circle to target consumers in another. It can also allow leaders to evaluate the rewards and risks associated with different growth opportunities, while the visual aspect of the model assists with overcoming some common challenges of applying strategy frameworks to develop new strategies. By having leaders visually depict and justify where and why they want to grow, circle mapping helps firms conceptualize a profitable future and then confidently move toward that space.     

The embedded sales force: Connecting buying and selling organizations

Business-to-business firms are increasingly focusing on building long-term partnering relationships with key customers. Salespeople are often responsible for managing these relationships. To be effective as relationship managers, salespeople need to be embedded in both their firm’s and customers’ organizations. They need to have extensive knowledge of their customers’ business and also know and be able to leverage their firm’s resources to develop offerings tailored to their customers’ needs. Their companies and sales managers need to use different approaches to manage and support salespeople in this new role. In this paper, we examine some issues affecting the interfaces between elements of the embedded sales force and suggest some directions for future research and methods for examining these issues.     

Shipment frequency of exporters and demand uncertainty

This paper examines how exporting firms adapt to the uncertainty stemming from demand volatility. By using monthly customs data from France, we decompose exports into different extensive and intensive margins including two novel margins: the number of months the firms exported (frequency) and the average export value per month. We establish four empirical patterns. First, firms export less to markets with higher demand volatility. Second, this effect is mainly explained by the frequency margin. Third, volatility affects the frequency margin through two channels: indirectly through lower trade volume and directly through logistics re-optimization. In particular, our results suggest that firms send less frequent, larger shipments to more uncertain markets conditional on total exports. Fourth, the effect of demand volatility is magnified on markets with longer time-to-ship. We propose that these observations are in line with simple stochastic inventory management approaches.     

Governance and Timber Harvests

Resource economics theory implies that risks associated with weak governance have an ambiguous impact on extraction, with the net impact depending on the relative strengths of depletion and investment effects. Previous empirical studies have found that improved governance tends to reduce deforestation but to raise oil production. Here, we present evidence that the marginal impact of improved governance on timber harvests in developing countries during 1984–2006 was nonmonotonic. It tended to raise harvests in countries with weaker governance but to reduce harvests in countries with stronger governance. This nonmonotonic impact occurred for both an index of governmental integrity (corruption, bureaucracy quality, law and order) and an index of governmental stability. A simulation of hypothetical increases in these governance indices to the maximum 2006 values observed in the sample predicted that improved governance would reduce harvests in most countries but could raise harvests in some, with large increases occurring in countries with the weakest governance.     

Employment relations,cost minimisation and inter‐organisational contracting

This article explores and theorises the employment relations consequences of cost minimisation in the management of inter‐organisational contracts for less‐skilled work. Case‐study data reveal that cost minimisation creates and exacerbates employment relations problems, with the ‘success’ of particular tactics dependent on the relative tractability of broader economic conditions and social relationships.     

Effects of experiential learning on students: an ecotourism service-learning course

Experiential learning is used to address the abstractness of classroom discussion and motivate long-lasting learning. The aims of this study were to measure the effects of a tourism service-learning course on the development of students’ generic competencies and to evaluate the influence of experiential learning on hospitality and tourism education. Preproject and postproject self-administered surveys and postproject reflective journals were completed by students enrolled on a service-learning course entitled Ecotourism in Rural and Developing Regions. The majority of the students were found to value the service-learning course, particularly a service project conducted outside the classroom setting, which made them aware of the needs of the underprivileged within the service community. The students also showed significant improvements in their generic competencies, specifically their teamwork and sense of social responsibility.     

French Firms' Exports During Downturns: Evidence from Past Crises

This paper makes use of detailed French firm‐level data on a quarterly basis to investigate the impact of past crises on exports and the margins of adjustment. We first detect crises periods using quantitative criteria and classify them into banking crises, currency crises, simultaneous banking and currency crises, and other crises. Our results underline the prevalence of the intensive margin of adjustment to large shocks, that is, firms reducing their average sales per product while staying on the market. The extensive margin of trade is, however, dominant in currency crises. On average, a crisis reduces the growth rate of exports over six quarters. Finally, we show that exports overreact to demand variations during crises, and that the extensive margin is more responsive to demand. Other factors, not directly related to demand, mostly affect the intensive margin.     

Rethinking the ‘mirroring’ hypothesis: implications for technological modularity,tacit coordination,and radical innovation

Studies of the ‘mirroring’ hypothesis have demonstrated the relationships between technological modularity and explicit coordination, yet little is known about the ‘mirroring’ relationship between technological modularity and tacit coordination, and how the ‘mirroring’ relationship may affect radical innovation. This paper contributes to the ‘mirroring’ hypothesis by identifying the interaction mechanisms embedded in and surrounded over the mirroring relationships. Using survey data of 121 high-tech firms in China, our study indicates that technological modularity enhances interfirm tacit coordination between module-makers (‘mirroring’ hypothesis), and will also positively influence radical innovation (‘outcome’ hypothesis). Moreover, tacit coordination negatively moderates the impact of technological modularity on radical innovation (‘interaction’ hypothesis), indicating that the ‘mirroring’ relationship may offset the benefit obtained from modularization. It also suggests that, in a high-technology industry in underdeveloped areas, tacit coordination could lead to exposure of hidden knowledge, thus lowering module-makers' motivation for technology breakthrough.