Technology-driven service strategy

Advancements in technology are radically transforming service, and increasingly providing the underlying basis for service strategy. In this paper, we develop a typology and positioning map for service strategy, in the context of rapid technological change, and outline the process for firms to position or reposition their service strategies. Which strategy to choose is based on the degree to which customer demand is heterogeneous, and the degree to which potential customer lifetime value varies across customers. This results in four strategies: the McService strategy that is standardized and transactional, the Relational Service strategy that is standardized and relational, the Customized Transaction strategy that is personalized and transactional, and the Adaptive Personalization strategy that is personalized and relational. We provide firms a roadmap for identifying a “sweet spot” strategy in relation to a segment’s realized or potential customer lifetime value, combined with the firm’s technological capabilities. Because technological capabilities inevitably advance, firms will tend to move from standardized to personalized and from transactional to relational over time, implying that firms should be alert to technological opportunities to personalize their relationships with customers. Our strategic framework also produces a useful bridge from marketing practice to the conceptual evolution of the service literature, showing how the historical trends toward continuing customer relationships and co-productive personalization should drive strategic thinking in service.     

An institutional perspective of public policy and network effects in the renewable energy industry: enablers or disablers of entrepreneurial behaviour and innovation?

This study extends theory on the effects of public policies stimulating technology demand and of industry network ties on firm-level entrepreneurial behaviour. We take an institutional perspective to develop a theoretical model examining the mechanisms through which public policies, regulatory uncertainty, and industry network ties affect firm-level entrepreneurial decision-making processes and the ability to introduce highly innovative products and to sustain superior performance. We focus on firm-level effects, which enables the study of the tension between institutional pressures of homogeneity and competitive pressures of heterogeneity for entrepreneurial decision-making processes in environments characterized by policy-induced market demands. To test our hypotheses, we draw on data from a large-scale survey among German renewable energy firms. Our results show that public policies can constrain firm innovativeness and risk-taking behaviour because they steer firms towards a more conservative attitude and discourage the pursuit of high-risk innovation projects. However, firms can counteract these influences and enhance their innovativeness by maintaining close network ties with research associations as we find that innovativeness and a highly innovative product portfolio are key success factors. In summary, these findings provide important implications for the study of public policy effects, industry network ties and entrepreneurial behaviour.     

Motivations for enterprise system adoption in transition economies: insights from Poland

Enterprise system (ES) adoption can bring many benefits, but may also put tremendous strain on an organisation or business, sometimes with disastrous outcomes. The specific motivations and expectations that lead to ES adoption may impact the success or failure of these endeavours, and understanding these motivations may be useful in predicting the success of ES projects. Most of the published research on ES adoption motivation has been in the context of highly developed countries. The social, cultural, economic and political conditions in developing, emerging and transition economies make for a different business environment, and insights obtained from developed countries may not always transfer to these settings. This study seeks to identify and help understand the motivations for ES adoption specifically in transition economies, as these economies play a significant role in the global market, but have not been receiving adequate research attention. Drawing on the experience of 129 ES adopters in Poland, a transition economy, this study categorises motivations into coherent groups of issues and evaluates the influence of discovered motivations on ES adoption success. Further, motivations revealed by this study are compared with motivations reported by prior research conducted in developed countries.     

The Optimal Speed of Transition: A General Equilibrium Analysis

We present a benchmark model for the optimal speed of transition from a state-owned to a private market economy, based on the consumption-savings decision in a closed economy. We abstract from frictions to focus on the macroeconomic conditions for accumulation of private capital and closure or restructuring of state-owned enterprises. It is shown that hard budget constraints compensate for too slow speed of enterprise closure but that an excess speed of closure may slow down transition because of output contraction effects. This will especially be the case if such a deviation occurs at early stages of transition.     

Can money endogeneity be generalized? Empirical evidence from Caribbean economies

This study investigates the direction of causality between the money supply and reserve money for some selected Caribbean countries using recently developed techniques of causality tests. The findings suggest that neither money endogeneity nor money exogeneity can be generalized to all small, open economies. The causal patterns may differ according to whether the monetary arrangements of the countries follow either a fixed or flexible exchange rate regime. Moreover, this-study highlights the fact that a mixed bag of policies must be implemented by respective central banks to maintain macroeconomic stability.     

Attitudes towards immigration—Perceived consequences and economic self-interest

Using the European Social Survey 2002/3, we develop a new test of whether economic self-interest influences people's attitudes towards immigration, exploiting that people have widely different perceptions of the consequences of immigration.     

Specialization and Welfare in the Presence of Imperfectly Integrated Capital Markets and Learning-by-doing

We study a two-sector, two-period model with learning externalities in the modern sector and imperfectly integrated capital markets. We find that higher capital market integration lowers the requirements on the learning pattern necessary for free trade to lead to an equilibrium with maximal specialization in modern sector activities. We further find that the equilibrium with maximal specialization in modern sector activities Pareto dominates, if it exists, any other free trade equilibrium, and that autarky can Pareto dominate free trade if capital markets are poorly integrated, even when there is maximal specialization in modern sector activities under free trade.

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Enforcing Competition Among Governments: Theory and Application to the European Union

Horizontal competition among governments has to be enforced by a higher-level institution, but this institution must not be the federal or union government, parliament or court, because these have a vested interest in intergovernmental collusion and ultimately in monopolization. The European Union institutions have been interested in removing national protection, regulations and subsidies because, by doing so, they could induce the interest groups, politicians, and bureaucrats of the member-states to demand more European protectionist measures, regulations, and subsidies. The establishment of a directly elected European Senate is proposed which would have no other powers than to enforce competition among governments on the basis of qualified minority decisions.     

Zu den zwei Versicherungsbegriffen von Werner Mahr und ihrer Bedeutung in der heutigen Zeit

Werner Mahr differentiates between two notions of insurance based upon either the mutuality or the speculation principle. While Mahr however supposes that these two principles melt into the pure insurance-technological economics through the interplay of the probability principle, the differences will be stressed. In the first step, the (theoretical) distinctions are elaborated between the “ideal” insurance model of K. J. Arrow, based on the mutuality principle, and the “classical” insurance model of K. Borch, building on the speculation principle or the reserve theory according to A. Willett. In the second step, these differentiations are elucidated with the help of three examples: uncertainty about the risks, correlated risks, and macroeconomic, in particular demographic risks.