The changing boundaries of system companies

While project marketing and systems selling are mainly concerned with market relations of companies organized on a project basis, it is important to conceptualize the interactions between market conditions and long term technology problems of these firms.The paper deals with strategic problems of system companies. By system companies the authors mean those large, multi-technology, multi-business firms that are typically active in systemic industries in most industrialized countries. In these industries market demand has some peculiar features: discontinuity, heterogeneity and customization, long and complex buying process, variable specification capability of customers. On the supply side, system companies produce unique or small series products, on a customized basis, by using a large array of technologies.System integration is the distinctive strategic capability of these companies. It is argued that system integration involves the management of a peculiar kind of uncertainty. The long run strategic objective of system companies is to maintain the global control of the technological dynamics of the system. However, there are many possible changes in the boundaries of product systems that may threat the viability of control. To gain strategic control, system companies have to manipulate simultaneously market and technology leverages. The paper offers a rich conceptual discussion of these problems.     

INFLATION TARGETERS IN PRACTICE: A LUCKY LOT?

Some observers have attributed the success of inflation targeters in reducing inflation to the global disinflation of the 1990s. As a result, inflation targeting countries have been considered to be a lucky lot. One key policyimplication of that is that if the international environment becomes again hostile to low inflation in the future, inflation targeting will prove to have been a mere fad. This article views inflation targeting not just as a rule but as a framework for the conduct of monetary policy, and it argues that currently available analyses of the experience of inflation targeting countries have serious weaknesses. One weakness is that those studies have not taken into account that regime changes may alter the quantitative and qualitative interaction among small, open economies and the rest of the world. Another weakness is that those studies have not recognized that the extraction of common trends and cycles is contingent on the nature of the monetary policy regime. It is likely that inflation targeting frameworks may imply a new beneficial trend in monetary policy making. This suggests that if the international environment becomes again hostile to low inflation in the future, an inflation targeting framework may become a viable alternative to a central bank that remains committed to price stability.     

Sanfte Berührung

Das Konzept respectare^? - Bei der Begleitung von Sterbenden fühlen sich Pflegende und Angeh?rige oft hilflos, weil Worte den Schwerkranken nicht mehr erreichen. Respektvolle Berührungen k?nnen ein Weg sein, Kontakt aufzunehmen und N?he herzustellen. Simone Franz stellt ein besonderes Konzept vor.     

What drives spreads in the euro area government bond market?

Spreads between euro area government bond yields are related to short-term interest rates, which are in turn related to market liquidity, to cyclical conditions, and to investors' incentives to take risk. In theory, lower interest rates are associated with lower degrees of risk aversion and smaller government bond spreads. Empirically, the Eurosystem's short-term interest rates are positively related to those spreads, which our econometric model finds to include significant and policy-relevant default risk and liquidity risk components.
— Simone Manganelli and Guido Wolswijk     

Companies' participation in EMAS: The influence of the public regulator

When adopted in 1993, the European Union's Eco‐Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) was viewed as emblematic of a new policy approach involving more flexible and market‐based environmental instruments. A few years after coming into force, EMAS does not appear to be a tremendous success in terms of industrial participation. Apart from in Germany and Austria, participation is insignificant and comparatively very far behind that in ISO 14001, the environmental management standard of the International Organization for Standardization. The paper seeks to explain this modest result. It focuses on the influence of the European and national regulators on industrial participation. Using a comparative analysis of the implementation of EMAS in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, it argues that the most powerful participation leverage has been the granting of regulatory relief for registered companies. This leads one to be pessimistic as to the future of EMAS. The possibility and scope for a lighter regulatory touch are primarily nationally specific since they are related to the national regulatory traditions. Consequently, the systematic and comprehensive use of this leverage is unlikely to generalize. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.     

Local discourse and global competition: production experiences in family workshops of the Brianza

One of the most important consequences of post‐Fordist global restructuring has been the ‘deterritorialization’ of capital and its increasing geographic expansion. Another and quite different view emphasizes the fact that capitalist activity can be organized by means of localized or territorially based systems of specialized production. In this article my purpose is to show how these two disciplinary discourses are actually not mutually exclusive. Developed local economies are not immune from concerns of deterritorialization, nor should their economic achievement gloss over the glitches that are emerging at the local level due to stiffer global competition. These two aspects become immediately apparent as I illustrate the local discourse that emerges among workshop owners within an industrial district of the Brianza in the Italian region of Lombardy. After a discussion about the origin and the characteristics of this regional economy, I illustrate by way of ethnographic examples how innovation and competitiveness within and outside this industrial district mask forms of exploitation and contradictions amidst family‐run workshops. In discursive terms, exploitation is articulated in various ways, but two in particular seem to be most recurrent in the narrative of small entrepreneurs of this region. One is the ideology of ‘hard work’ and the other, more recently heard of, is the ideology of ‘high quality product’. In the brief concluding section I will stress the point that these two discourses emerging from exploitative social relations of production are to be viewed as responses to the concerns regarding the possible deterritorialization of some factories and the increasing competition with crossboundary markets.     

International status seeking, trade, and growth leadership

Abstract .  We study a two-country endogenous growth model where the utility of agents in developing countries is affected by consumption gaps with advanced economies. International status seeking tends to revert growth differentials in favour of the developing country. Preferences with endogenous status desire generate convergence in growth rates in the presence of structural gaps and convergence in income levels if productivity differences disappear. This process is driven by declining terms of trade and faster capital accumulation of the status seeker. The model predictions are shown to be consistent with the stylized facts that characterized the growth performance of East Asian economies.     

Nature of innovation and technology management in system companies

Competition in the industries that develop complex products (such as aircraft engines and radar) depends on the integration of organizational systems as well as the pace of technological change.
Companies in these industries can be regarded as 'system companies'. A framework and taxonomy are developed to indicate the characteristics and types of companies and to understand how organizational learning and integration take place. This makes it easier for companies to anticipate strategic change and some implications of this kind are described.     

Intergenerational externalities,sustainability and welfare—The ambiguous effect of optimal policies on resource depletion

This paper studies an endogenous growth model with exhaustible resources, overlapping generations and human capital externalities. In the competitive equilibrium, selfish behavior and inefficient skills accumulation may prevent sustained growth. Implementing the utilitarian optimum likely induces sustainability via increased knowledge formation, but resource depletion may be faster or slower than under laissez-faire depending on the social discount rate. Heavy (modest) social discounting delays (anticipates) the achievement of net welfare gains for newborn agents and successors. The reason is that human capital accumulation magnifies the positive growth effects of policies that lower the rate of resource destruction, preserving the welfare of newborn agents. Resource-depleting policies, instead, hamper growth and reduce lifetime welfare of early-in-time generations—the first loser being the currently young.