Separate or Integrate? Assessing the Impact of Separation Between Product and Service Business on Service Performance in Product Manufacturing Firms

Purpose: Investigating how the separation of the product and service business mediates the effect of management's commitment to the service strategy on service performance in product manufacturing firms.

Methodology: The authors surveyed 216 European manufacturers in the high-value durable equipment industry moving into the service business. After assessing adequacy of measurement scales, the authors tested statistically for mediation. Their results hold when replicating the study using a structural equation modeling approach and while testing for common method biases.

Findings: The authors find evidence that the creation of a separate service organization, organized as a profit center, has a significant positive mediating effect between managerial commitment and the services' financial performance. Although separation also has a positive mediating effect between commitment and non-financial performance, organizing services as a profit center had a negative effect on the service's non-financial indicators.

Research Limitations: Research limitations include (a) a sample limited to German-speaking firms in the high-value durable equipment industry, (b) measurements based on self-reported managerial perceptions of service performance, and (c) conceptualization of service as a single strategic response.

Practical Implications: Although the complementarity between products and services is high in the market, the authors' research suggests few synergies to leverage their integration inside the organization. Accordingly, management should, at least in transition efforts similar to the ones included in this sample, look into creating a separate and distinct service organization.

Value/Contribution: This research was driven by practical concern on how to organize service operations in a manufacturing firm. Initial framing of the research through the creation of the construct of separation of product and service business was used.     

Convergence in a Dynamic Heckscher–Ohlin Model with Land

Convergence among nations that share the same preferences and technologies is a key result of the closed‐economy neoclassical growth framework that has received substantial support in the data. However, Heckscher–Ohlin versions of the two‐sector neoclassical growth model predict that nations that differ in their capital–labor ratios may not converge to the same steady state, even if they are identical in all other aspects. This is a puzzling result that warns us about potential dangers of international trade. In this paper we show that when land, an input in fixed supply, is introduced into the model, international trade in goods no longer limits the capacity of poor nations to catch up with the advanced world.     

Economic Convergence,Capital Accumulation,and Income Traps: Empirical Evidence

This paper examines the factors that increase the likelihood of economic transition to higher income status, thereby attempting to answer the question of why some economies move to a higher income country group while others do not. Using a quintile income distribution approach, we identify 62 economies that moved to a higher quintile income group in each decade from 1960s to the 2010s out of a sample of 182 economies. Our findings show that higher physical and human capital growth and oil revenues are significantly associated with a greater probability of transitioning to higher quintile income group, although their effects vary not only across income groups within a sample period but also across different periods. Our results indicate that economies that have attained substantial capital accumulation (either physical or human, or combination thereof) and/or are blessed with natural resources have avoided income traps and demonstrated a successful and often steady transition to higher income groups.     

The agrifood cooperative netchain. A theoretical framework to study its configuration

This paper proposes a research framework of the design and configuration of agrifood chains where the focal firm is a second-tier cooperative (group of affiliated cooperatives) in order to assess the alignment of (relational) governance structures and coordination mechanisms in these chains with supply chain management (SCM) principles. The theoretical framework draws on the Relational View of inter-organizational competitive advantage and the Theory of Networks given that inter-cooperative vertical relationships are embedded in horizontal ties between firms (first-tier cooperatives) of social rather economic nature. The conceptual framework developed herein will help theory building in SCM, but most importantly, it will advance current knowledge on the scope of SCM in the agrifood cooperative sector.     

Surprise and dispersion: informational impact of USDA announcements

We examine the role of information asymmetry on changes in bid‐ask spreads during major United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announcements. Our analyses, using corn, wheat, and soybean futures, indicate that information asymmetry is significantly higher on USDA announcement days compared to nonannouncement days. We further observe that the increased information asymmetry prior to news announcements is mainly driven by the divergence in private information possessed by market participants. However, once the USDA news is released, not only the dispersion in investors’ private information but also the surprises in news announcements contribute to increased information asymmetry and widening of bid‐ask spreads.     

Further education and training in the french public sector

Since 1989, the French public sector has imitated the private sector's further education and training mechanisms. But today, it seems that just as in the private sector, the training policies in the public sector have severe limitations. Based on a case study of a large public research institute and on a national survey making it possible to compare the private and public sectors, the paper studies the further education and training policies and their links with the organizational needs. In the public sector, the difficult balance between individual's choices and strategic management comes on the one hand from the specificities of the administrative rules of human resource management, and on the other hand from the unions' power and strategies. Faced with new challenges (demographic evolutions, decentralisation, new demands from the users of public services), the French public sector must develop new training policies.     

Agricultural and monetary shocks before the great depression: A graph-theoretic causal investigation

This paper uses graph-theoretic methods to investigate the causal relationships between agriculture, money, interest rates, prices, and real GDP in 12 countries during the years 1869–1929. We find that agricultural production directly and indirectly causes real GDP in two-thirds of the cases. Monetary shocks also play an important causal role in about half the cases, but unlike agriculture, the causal links are usually indirect through other variables to real GDP. The direct causal link between money and prices is also particularly strong. Between 1869 and 1929, money causes prices in nearly all of the countries in the sample.