The Determinants of Seller‐Buyer Interactions during New Product Development in Technology‐Based Industrial Markets

A growing body of literature indicates that the new product development (NPD) process in technology‐based, industrial markets is characterized by collaborative seller‐buyer relationships. Unfortunately, the extant literature is deficient in some significant ways. For example, there is no theoretical framework that explicates the content of these relationships. Also, there is little empirical research on the antecedents or consequences of these relationships. Therefore, managers seeking guidance on how to manage their NPD relationships have lacked appropriate insights. Not surprisingly, ineffective relationship management is a major contributor to new product failure in such settings. Against this background, this study develops and tests a model of seller‐buyer interactions during NPD. The model is based on the relationship marketing literature and is rooted in Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA). It was tested using data from 296 small to mid‐sized firms in a variety of technology‐based, industrial markets. It specifies product co‐development, education, and post‐installation product knowledge generation as three key behavioral dimensions that characterize seller‐buyer interactions during NPD. Our results indicate that the intensity with which these dimensions are undertaken vary with buyer‐related (i.e., perceived buyer knowledge and prior relationship history) and innovation‐related (i.e., product customization and innovation discontinuity) characteristics. For example, perceived buyer knowledge has a positive impact on product co‐development while innovation discontinuity has a positive impact on education. Further, we find that a seller's satisfaction with undertaking these behaviors is moderated by the technological uncertainty in the seller's industry. As a case in point, satisfaction with undertaking product co‐development is reduced when technological uncertainty is high. Collectively, the overall support we find for our model can help NPD managers optimize their relationships with buyers during NPD.     

Integrated Reporting in an Internet and Social Media Communication Environment: Conceptual Insights

This paper discusses the potential role of Internet communication technologies, including social media, in the integrated reporting process. A media richness framework provides a conceptual basis to examine the features of Internet technologies, which can facilitate the important external communication aspect of integrated reporting. We find that Internet technologies possess rich features and capabilities that have potentially significant application in enhancing external communications with integrated reporting stakeholders. We also identify risks and challenges associated with utilising Internet technologies to enable the external communication aspect of integrated reporting. Through its focus on the potential role of Internet communication technologies in integrated reporting, the paper extends the nascent integrated reporting literature and accounting communications research. The paper also offers practical guidance and insights for business and accounting's integrated reporting communication practices. To our knowledge, this is the first conceptual paper to comprehensively examine the role of Internet communication technologies in integrated reporting.     

Serving SMEs Via the Stock Exchange: Historical Lessons from the Lisbon Stock Exchange

The development of large companies in the western world — many being huge multinational corporations — and the sheer size of their financial needs has given an added importance to tradability, a fact that can clearly be gauged by the recently discovered “high frequency trading” (HFT) operations which are only possible with large issues. Also contributing to the importance of tradability is the recent demutualization of most exchanges during the 1990s, which turned them into for-profit organizations. In fact, large issues of shares or bonds allow economies of scale, and generate experience in listing practices and trading operations, thereby enhancing the profitability of those commercially oriented stock exchanges. Thus, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are now much less attractive to these organizations, as compared to large enterprises (LEs), due to their inherent lack of liquidity and to the economies of scale. We discuss the barriers before SMEs, which require special accommodations to be able to raise stable funds for their development.     

Networking strategy of boards: implications for small and medium-sized enterprises

Development of linkages with the external environment, e.g. interlocks, is a mechanism to access scarce resources. Creating and maintaining these linkages may be an organizational capability that creates a competitive advantage for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A partial model of networking strategy is proposed, which includes measures of board composition, interlocks, entrepreneurial orientation and environmental hostility. Analysis of 70 community bank Chief Executive Officer (CEO) responses (58% response rate) lends support to the proposition that firms with a networking strategy performed better (higher return on assets (ROA) and higher return on expenditure (ROE)) than those firms that did not actively pursue the development of networks.     

Category Divergence,Straddling, and Currency: Open Innovation and the Legitimation of Illegitimate Categories

The organizational literature is increasingly interested in the origins and consequences of category emergence. We examine the effects of being affiliated with categories initially considered illegitimate (‘divergence’), and of organizational attempts to blur the boundaries between categories (‘straddling’), on capital market reactions to firm announcements. We develop arguments for how these effects likely vary with increasing legitimation (‘currency’) of the category. We apply event study methodology to the complete population of firms' announcements of open source activities, an open innovation model for software development that is novel and defies the extant dominant logic of software production and valorization. Over a ten‐year period, we find negative effects of divergence, positive effects of straddling, and that the magnitude of both these effects diminishes with increasing category currency. The implications for theories of organization and open innovation in the context of category emergence are discussed.     

Long-run versus short-run behaviour of the real exchange rates

This paper discusses the mean stationarity of real exchange rates by using new time series methods and new tests. The question whether the real exchange rates have a unit root or are level reverting is set in the general and flexible framework of fractionally integrated processes. The estimations and tests sustain the claim that real exchange rates may be nonstationary and not revert to any short-run parity. However, estimations also suggest that real exchange rates behave differently on the short and on the long run and that they may revert to parity in a century-long period.     

Perceived Environmental Uncertainty: The Extension of Miller's Scale to the Natural Environment

Large businesses are professionalizing their approach to environmental management, in pursuit of quality management, cost effective eco-efficiency and regulatory compliance. However, recent evidence suggests that business corporations are not integrating the natural environment into their strategic thinking. One of the major reasons for this is the contingent relationship between perceived uncertainty in the business environment and strategic decision making. This paper describes the development and testing of a Perceived Environmental Uncertainty (PEU) measurement scale for the natural environment. The new PEU scale is based on Miller's (1993) PEU scale for the commercial environment and grounded in the environmental management theory. It is also shown to possess very good reliability and dimensionality. The new PEU scale was applied in the form of self-report questionnaire. Respondents were senior executives (n = 198) from the UK textile industry. We specifically looked for variations in levels of executives' PEU along the industry supply chain. As a result of applying the new scale, our findings show that the natural environment presents significantly higher levels of PEU for executives in the textile making-up/retail sector. The major cause of uncertainty for the textile making-up/retail sector is that firms in this sector are at the end of the supply chain and therefore exposed to up-stream risk, which is often very difficult to manage.