Improving Supplier New Product Development Performance: The Role of Supplier Development

Suppliers play an increasingly central role in helping firms achieve their new product development (NPD) goals. The literature implicitly assumes that suppliers are able to meet or exceed the quality standards and technological expectations of the firm, and yet, in practice, suppliers often lack the technological capabilities needed to undertake collaborative NPD. In such situations, a firm may choose to intervene and actively develop the supplier's technological and product development capabilities. We develop a theoretical framework that conceptualizes supplier development activities within interorganizational NPD projects as part of a bilateral knowledge‐sharing process: design recommendations, technical specifications, and new technology flow from supplier to the firm, and in turn, the firm can implement supplier development activities to upgrade the supplier's technological capabilities. Antecedents (supplier responsibility, skills similarity, single sourcing strategy) and consequences of supplier development activities (on supplier, product, and project performance) are examined using a sample of 153 interorganizational NPD projects within UK manufacturers. We find broad support for our hypotheses. In particular, we show that the relational rents (in the form of improved product and project performance) attained from supplier development activities in new product development are not achieved directly, but rather indirectly, via improvements in the supplier's creative and technological capabilities. Our results emphasize the importance of adopting a strategic view of the potential returns available from investing in the NPD capabilities of key suppliers, and provide clues about underlying reasons for the suboptimal experiences of many companies' collaborative NPD projects.     

Research note: religious doctrine and its influence on the choice to gamble as a leisure pastime among African American Methodists

This research note examines the relationship between adherence to religious doctrine and participation in gambling as a leisure pastime. In the United States, recreational gambling is a common leisure pastime for many African Americans. Our ideals about the value of gambling are often shaped within families, based on their lived experience with recreational gambling and also within religious communities. Two doctrinal statements from the Methodist strand of Protestantism provide critical assessment of gambling as a leisure pastime. This case study examined African American Methodists’ perceptions about religious doctrine that addresses gambling; their choice to gamble despite their familiarity with the doctrinal position of the Church; and the perception of gambling as a sinful leisure pursuit. Religious doctrine may deter some adherents from participating in gambling as a leisure pursuit but not everyone. Many can be familiar with religious doctrine, may not agree with it and will proceed to gamble. Finally, even if gambling is perceived as a sinful leisure activity, it concurrently can be viewed as a ‘harmless’ vice.     

Selling Versus Leasing of Durable Goods: The Impact on Marketing Channels

While many durable products are sold through intermediaries, there is limited understanding of how channel performance is influenced by transactions involving durable goods in a competitive market. In particular, extant research shows that intermediaries can significantly impact the leasing versus selling policy of a monopolistic manufacturer. This article seeks to fill that gap by examining the selling versus leasing choice of duopolistic manufacturers in the context of decentralized channels. Our analysis demonstrates that in addition to the unique equilibrium of selling, a prisoner's dilemma may arise where both manufacturers are better off if they were to lease their products.     

Trading off learning and performance: Exploration and exploitation at work

Employees are increasingly given control over how they learn, and their choices for training are diverse and varied, yet employees must balance competing demands. On one hand, they are expected to be increasingly efficient in their current job duties – on the other hand, they are expected to develop new skills and competencies that enable them to adapt and respond to changing job demands. Drawing from the organizational learning literature, we propose a model of worker and work characteristics that inform choices between two mindsets related to learning at work. The first mindset is exploration, or the pursuit of learning outside one’s current knowledge domain; the second mindset is exploitation, the refinement/deepening of one’s existing knowledge stock focusing on the task at hand. We further propose that these strategic choices, or trade-offs, influence employee learning and performance in unique ways, with different implications for both routine and adaptive performance. Finally, we incorporate the notions of feedback loops and risk assessments that influence ongoing decisions between exploration and exploitation mindsets. Recommendations for future research and extensions of the theoretical model are also proposed.     

Critical representations of Southern African inequality: Transcending outmoded exhibition and museum politics

ABSTRACT

Illustrating inequality to a more general public – beyond those concerned purely with public policy and research – presents various challenges. Museums have often served a function of memorialising both the impressive steps forward and major barriers to social progress, as a form of remembrance and understanding, although the twentieth century format in South Africa was generally embedded within colonial and racist self-glorification. The potential to transcend outmoded exhibition and museum politics with a new approach based on dialogical not didactic presentation, arises with inequality. In this exploration of how such an approach might unfold in the world's most unequal major city (as judged by the Palma Ratio), Johannesburg, the concept of threshold is introduced. Physical and conceptual access through overcoming thresholds is explored through a specific site, the Old Post Office, and through two artifacts that reveal structural power that generates inequality: Durban's sanitation system and Eastern Zimbabwe's diamond fields.     

Interlocking Lives: Employment Mobility and Family Fixity in Three Gentrifying Neighbourhoods of Montreal

This article explores the relationship between employment mobility, family fixity, and gentrification in the lives of 36 residents in and extended commuters to Montreal's southwest borough. Once described as the birthplace of industry in Canada, the neighbourhoods of Saint-Henri, Little Burgundy and Point Saint-Charles have undergone sweeping changes in recent decades. Inner-city areas are not necessarily where one expects to find mobile workers, but this is changing due to shifting gender roles, the rise of dual-income households and gentrification. Michael Savage's concept of ‘elective belonging’ proved particularly useful in understanding this connection. With its proximity to childcare, schools, stores and workplaces, the central city permits a more equitable division of labour within the household. Our place-based approach to mobile work enables us to capture a wide spectrum of experience, ranging from people with extended daily commutes to those whose work takes them away from home for days, weeks or months at a time. Our interviews reveal a connection between employment mobility and family gentrification, as upwardly mobile families find ways to localize other aspects of their lives. The simultaneity of mobility and immobility are often essential, especially in dual-income households. One parent's mobility often leads to the relative immobility of other family members.     

Revenue Sharing with Heterogeneous Investments in Sports Leagues: Share Media,Not Stadiums

This study examines revenue sharing in sports leagues where franchises engage in multiple types of investments. Previous literature typically treats revenues and investments as homogeneous, but we add to the literature by differentiating between investment types and revenue sources. This is important because investment in talent leads to winning, which is a zero-sum game for the league and therefore owners have an incentive to limit talent investment. However, other investments, such as stadiums, are not a zero-sum game, and therefore the implications of revenue sharing are different for the league. We provide sufficient conditions under which it is more efficient to share media revenue compared to stadium revenue. We conclude by providing applications of this model.     

EU-US Relations: Reinventing the Transatlantic Agenda

Intereconomics - With Joe Biden’s victory, there is at least a four-year window to revive ‘an alliance of democracies’, face up to authoritarian powers and closed economies that...