Risk Management as Passionate Imitation: The Interconnections Among Emotions,Performance Metrics,and Risk in a Global Technology Firm

This paper traces the evolution of risk management practices in a global technology company between 2000 and 2015. We extend recent research that has highlighted the emotional aspects of riskwork. We detail how a passionate interest—‘we can do better at risk management’—emotionally ‘hooked’ the staff in the company's Sourcing Unit. Risk management, emotion, and management controls were intertwined. When top management singled out one of the key metrics clearly as a risk‐related metric for the Sourcing Unit, the employees felt a strong sense of relief, which gave rise to subsequent extensive risk measurement. We also contribute to the more general debate about accounting and its entanglement with emotions. Little is known about the ‘birth’ and the reasons for durability of passionate interests. Following Tarde (1903/2013), such ‘birth’ and endurance can be explained by analyzing how passionate imitation emerges as a result of a series of dislocal events—in our case a fire, new performance metrics, and natural disasters. These events triggered emotions that provided the necessary energy for three forms of passionate imitation: a) ‘we need to imitate our main competitor’ and risk mapping; b) ‘others in the organization are imitating us and our suppliers should imitate us’ and risk measurement; and c) ‘others in the organization (more specifically the Product Development Unit) should imitate us’ and proactive risk avoidance. This passionate imitation helped explain why the sourcing staff continued to be emotionally ‘hooked’ to risk management, that is, how the passionate interest endured and became vested.     

Cultural Diversity in Large Enterprises: A Qualitative Analysis from the Alpine Rhine Valley

International expansion requires specific management methods to adapt to differences between cultures, thus requiring global strategies that ensure efficient diversity management. The increasing diversity in the workforce is thus gaining more importance in determining knowledge of efficient and better business performance. The results of the study illustrate the importance of cultural diversity and the high benefits for companies. The key findings are a high degree of creativity, a practical understanding of the market, better access to international markets, a high degree of linguistic diversity and efficient innovation management. The starting point of cultural diversity lies in the respective corporate cultures.     

POPULATION DYNAMICS AND MILK SUPPLY RESPONSE IN THE US LAKE STATES

This paper develops a dynamic model of a dairy cow population and of milk supply response. When applied to the US Lake States, the model provides evidence against the Nerlovian model. It suggests that the pattern of dynamic effects of prices on cow numbers varies for different prices. The estimated dynamic supply elasticities provide some useful information on the nature of dairy production adjustments. For example, the response of milk supply to market prices is found to be very inelastic in the short run. It takes at least 7 years of sustained change to obtain an elastic response to milk price. Also, feed price and slaughter cow price are found to have smaller effects on dairy supply than milk price, but larger effects than risk, hay price or capital cost.     

A POST-KENNEDY ROUND LOOK AT SOME PROBLEMS IN AGRICULTURAL TRADE

The Kennedy Round, concluded in 1967, ws the most far-reaching in the series of trade negotiations. The United States insisted on the inclusion of agricultural products, with the support of other foodexporting countries. The results for agriculture should not be underestimated. The agreement on cereals gave practical recognition of joint responsibility in food aid. There were also many agricultural tariff concessions. However, it is domestic agricultural policies, not tariffs, which really hamper agricultural trade. The cost of these policies and the extent to which they achieve their objectives are questionable. Competition becomes fiercer for the remaining accessible markets, and export subsidies multiply. The Kennedy Round left the basis problems untouched. It did, however, strengthen the “global” or comprehensive, multilateral approach.     

Das stochastische Re-Reserving

Next to premium risk, reserve risk is an essential part of underwriting risk for property and casualty insurers. Up to now, the literature on non-life reserve risk for the most part only considered an ultimative point of view, which means that the reserve risk uncertainty would be quantified up to final settlement. In the context of the new Solvency II project, as well as against the background of internal models in a several year context, for now an intensified discussion about a one-year horizon has occurred. Thereby, the reserve risk uncertainty would only be quantified up to a one-year claims development result. In this paper we would like to present a simulation method, called stochastic Re-Reserving for modelling the reserve risk on a yearly basis. In addition to that, we would like to make a paradigmatic comparison between stochastic Re-Reserving and an analytical approach, called claims development result method (see Merz and Wuethrich, Modelling the claims development result for solvency purposes. In: CAS E-Forum, pp. 542–568, 2008).     

The art of crafting a systematic literature review in entrepreneurship research

Systematic literature reviews are an increasingly used review methodology to synthesize the existing body of literature in a field. However, editors complain about a high number of desk rejections because of a lack in quality. Poorly developed review articles are not published because of a perceived lack of contribution to the field. Our article supports authors of standalone papers and graduate students in the Entrepreneurship domain to write contribution-focused systematic reviews e.g. by providing a concrete guideline. Our article analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of a systematic literature review and how they can be overcome. Furthermore, we provide a combined list of highly ranked journals in the Entrepreneurship domain as a basis for quality appraisal. Finally, this article builds a scenario for the future of the systematic literature review methodology and shows how technological improvements have changed this methodology and what can be achieved in the future.

     

Economies of scale in networks

A network's capacity can typically be increased in a variety of ways. For example, in a highway network, existing roads can be made wider or new roads added. This paper is concerned with the determination of the degree of local economies of scale in the cost function for the outputs of a congestible network when there are multiple margins for making adjustments to capacity. The main result is that under the provision of a cost-minimizing network—one for which the sum of user and capacity costs for the network's outputs is at a minimum—the degree of local economies of scale in the cost function for the network's outputs is the same along all margins for adjusting capacity. This includes what routes to establish.