Social dialogues—the state of the art a decade after Maastricht

The article asks whether social dialogues, according the procedures of the Social Protocol and the Amsterdam Treaty, have proved to be valuable instruments able to make major contributions to the development of social integration. More recent developments at the inter‐professional as well as at the sectoral level are evaluated. Furthermore, major trajectories for likely future trends at both levels are highlighted. The final part discusses the problem of whether social dialogues will profit from the introduction of new modes of governance, especially the more recently preferred open method of co‐ordination.     

Standards anwenden – Harnwegsinfekte vermeiden

Katheterassoziierte Harnwegsinfektionen - Noch vor einigen Jahren erlitten 50% der dauerkatheterisierten Patienten nach 24 Stunden und 100% nach 36 Stunden eine Infektion. Diese Rate hat sich mittlerweile deutlich verbessert, doch der Trend darf kein Ruhekissen sein. Denn circa 3,5% aller station?r behandelten Patienten in Deutschland erleiden eine nosokomiale Infektion. Spitzenreiter dabei sind Harnwegsinfektionen.     

Brand Equity Management in a Multichannel,Multimedia Retail Environment

Today's multichannel, multimedia retail marketing environment presents a number of brand management challenges. From a micro perspective, marketers must manage each individual channel and communication option to maximize their direct sales and brand equity effects, as well as any indirect brand equity effects from being associated with a particular channel or communication option. From a macro perspective, marketers must design and implement channel and communication options such that sales and brand equity effects are synergistic. Concepts, frameworks, and future research directions are put forth to address these different challenges.     

NPO branding: preliminary lessons from major players

• Are nonprofits (NPOs) exhibiting the brand orientation believed to be critical to successful outcomes? To answer this question, we investigate the brand orientation and brand management of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), American Red Cross (ARC), and The Salvation Army to assess the implementation of brand concepts in two different locations within the USA compared to each agency's central body. Despite the support of some propositions, there exists inconsistent evidence of strong brand management in the organizations studied. The variation of brand visuals, missions, and taglines indicates that good structure, policy, and guidelines are not enough. There must be true brand orientation, which includes oversight of consistent application of all brand constructs to achieve organizational goals. This study provides a framework upon which future in‐depth empirical research may be based. The authors outline these next steps as a foundation for enhancing the study and practice of brand management in NPOs.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Uncertainty and the size distribution of rewards from innovation

 Previous research has shown that the distribution of profit outcomes from technological innovations is highly skew. This paper builds upon those detailed findings to ask: what stochastic processes can plausibly be inferred to have generated the observed distributions? After reviewing the evidence, this paper reports on several stochastic model simulations, including a pure Gibrat random walk with monthly changes approximating those observed for high-technology startup company stocks and a more richly specified model blending internal and external market uncertainties. The most highly specified simulations suggest that the set of profit potentials tapped by innovators is itself skew-distributed and that the number of entrants into innovation races is more likely to be independent of market size than stochastically dependent upon it.     

Technology transfer through imports

Abstract .  We study international technology transfer through R&D spillovers in sixteen countries' manufacturing industries since the early 1970s. The analysis shows that the productivity impact of international technology transfer often exceeds that of domestic technological change, more so in high-technology industries. Moreover, technology transfer is found to be strongly varying across country-pairs and tends to decline in geographic distance, pointing to goods trade as the transfer channel. We directly evaluate this hypothesis, and results suggest that trade is crucial for technology transfer from Germany, France, and the UK, while for the US, Japan, and Canada non-trade channels are more important.     

Dismantling terrorist networks: Evaluating strategic options using agent-based modeling

Dismantling dark networks remains a critical goal for the peace and security of our society. Terrorist networks are the most prominent instantiation of dark networks, and they are alive and well. Attempts to preemptively disrupt these networks and their activities have met with both success and failure. In this paper, we examine the impacts of four common strategies for dismantling terrorist networks. The four strategies are: leader-focused, grassroots, geographic, and random. Each of these strategies has associated pros and cons, and each has different impacts on the structure and capabilities of a terrorist network. Employing a computational experimentation methodology, we simulate a terrorist network and test the effects of each strategy on the resiliency of that network. In addition, we test scenarios in which the terrorist network has (or does not have) information about an impending attack. Our work takes a structural perspective to the challenge of addressing terrorist networks. Specifically, we show how various strategies impact the structure of the network in terms of its resiliency and capacity to carry out future attacks. This paper also provides a valuable overview of how to use agent-based modeling for the study of complex problems in the terrorism, conflict studies, and security study domains.     

Ex ante identification of disruptive innovations in the software industry applied to web applications: The case of Microsoft's vs. Google's office applications

This paper analyzes the question whether web applications pose a disruptive threat to incumbents or a disruptive growth opportunity for entrants in the application software industry using a novel method for ex ante identification of disruptive innovations in the software industry. Building on the theory of disruptive innovations, network effects and existing frameworks for the ex ante identification of disruptive innovations a new method of analysis is deduced. The analysis is based on a list of criteria that indicate a disruptive innovation and trajectory maps of the technologies' performance attributes. This method is applied to study the potential disruption of Microsoft's desktop office applications by Google's web-based office applications.The chosen method of analysis indicates a small likelihood for web applications to pose a disruptive threat to Microsoft, and by extension, to incumbents in the software industry. While web applications show a potential to satisfy market demand in established performance attributes, strong network effects in existing software products should give incumbents enough time to co-opt the innovation. The case illustrates how our new method to analyze disruptive potential in the software industry ex ante can help to apply the theory of disruptive innovation better for forecasting purposes and to provide novel strategic insights for the players involved.     

Passive learning: a critique by example

In models of learning by experimentation that exhibit signal dependence, a benchmark using a passive learner has been proposed. The use of this benchmark is flawed – first, passive learning does not disentangle the effects of knowing that beliefs, as well as other state variables, might change, and we address this issue directly by introducing a naïve learner. Secondly, and more tellingly, passive learning does not do what it is supposed to do, namely help measure the gains from active experimentation; the naïve learner enables us to illustrate this point in the context of a particular example.