Labour Mobility and Returns to Experience in Foreign Firms*

This paper uses Finnish linked employer–employee panel data to study whether employees are able to appropriate returns to knowledge accumulated in foreign‐owned firms when moving to domestic firms. The estimates indicate that highly educated employees earn a return to prior experience in a foreign‐owned firm, which is over and above the return to other previous experience. These employees do not appear to pay for the knowledge they accumulate in the form of lower starting wages in foreign‐owned firms.     

Affirmative action in education: Evidence from engineering college admissions in India

This paper examines an affirmative action program for “lower-caste” groups in engineering colleges in India. We study both the targeting properties of the program, and its implications for labor market outcomes. We find that affirmative action successfully targets the financially disadvantaged: the upper-caste applicants that are displaced by affirmative action come from a richer economic background than the lower-caste applicants that are displacing them. Targeting by caste, however, may lead to the exclusion of other disadvantaged groups. For example, caste-based targeting reduces the overall number of females entering engineering colleges. We find that despite poor entrance exam scores, lower-caste entrants obtain a positive return to admission. Our estimates, however, also suggest that these gains may come at an absolute cost because the income losses experienced by displaced upper-caste applicants are larger than the income gains experienced by displacing lower-caste students. Limited sample sizes in our preferred econometric specifications, however, prevent us from drawing strong conclusions from these labor market findings.     

EVOLVING A THEORY OF PERFORMANCE‐BASED LOGISTICS USING INSIGHTS FROM SERVICE DOMINANT LOGIC

Performance‐based logistics (PBL) represents a strategy for sustaining complex systems following production. Despite several implementations, limited understanding exists regarding PBL and its implications. Research using grounded theory emerged a theoretical framework for PBL. Service dominant logic (SDL) is introduced as a theoretical lens for interpreting the results and understanding how trading partners achieve performance‐based outcomes.     

Retailers' management of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in their supplier relationships – does practice follow best practice?

The aim of this study is to further explore (a) the extent to which retailers deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) best practices to ensure social and environmental sustainability in international supplier relationships and (b) the association between firm characteristics and the retailers' CSR activities in the supply chain. As a first step, the study identifies eight best practices based on earlier research and the authors' qualitative studies of IKEA. As a second step, a survey of Swedish retailers was conducted. The results of the study suggest that a significant amount of the actors in the Swedish retail sector do not follow the majority of best practice as outlined and discussed in this study. Furthermore, it is found that sector belonging has a considerable impact on the extent that a retailer follows best practice, while firm size and internationalization experience also have a significant, albeit limited, impact on retailer behavior.     

Urban Informality and the State: Geographical Translations and Conceptual Alliances

Understandings of informality commonly derive from research undertaken in states perceived as lacking the capacity to regulate the practices of their populations. This Interventions forum aims to expand the geographical parameters of empirical research on urban informality. A more global approach, we argue, also necessitates questioning assumptions that undergird this concept—in particular the underlying conception of the state. In this vein, this collection of papers aims to rethink theories of the state through the lens of informality, and vice versa, to inform and refine the concept of informality through a more thorough understanding of states. In so doing, the contributions engage with concepts that have been central both to theories of the state and to the study of informality, namely governance, agency, legitimacy, sovereignty and legality. Following this introduction setting out our theoretical approach, the Interventions forum unites five empirical studies that discuss the nexus of informality and states in contexts that have been researched less extensively from this perspective, each tackling one of the above‐mentioned concepts. Based on these different entry points, the papers provide novel angles on a state‐theoretical understanding of informality. A concluding essay brings these approaches together, reflecting on the possibilities of translating concepts to different sites.     

Product chain collaboration for sustainability: A business case for life cycle management

Life cycle management (LCM) is frequently described as a holistic sustainability perspective along the product chain. It has mainly been a company internal practice. However, recent developments reveal a new type of LCM where companies collaborate in product‐chain‐specific initiatives. This raises questions concerning why corporations extend “corporate LCM” toward “product chain LCM”. Here, we explore rationales and challenges for corporations engaging in one such coalition: The Sustainable Transport Initiative. The study covers five companies in different product chain positions and practitioners in different corporate functions. The results show a broad range of rationales for engaging in product chain LCM, related both to self‐interest and a shared interest in the product chain. The importance of the “business case,” both for the individual companies and the product chain, is identified. The importance of sustainability managers as actors and as facilitators in discussions between managers from different corporate functions is also identified.     

Explicating the market dimension in the study of digital innovation: a management framework for digital innovation

Digital innovation is gaining momentum among academics and business practitioners. Featuring increasingly cross-industry and multi-actor innovation processes, digital innovation reveals the inherent technology bias in the dominant perspectives on innovation. This study aims to transfer the focus from technology-centred ideas of digital innovation to a more balanced concept in which digital innovation is conceptualised as a combination of multiple needs and solutions linked to various actors and their behaviours. The study builds on a longitudinal case study. The article contributes by providing a partial response to the explicit calls for strategic frameworks that capture the process of digital innovation. Furthermore, the article explicates the market dimension of digital innovation and extends the analysis of the market dimension from a limited view of customer information and user knowledge to further include needs, actions, and behaviours of market actors directly or indirectly using, complementing, or substituting the digital innovation and innovation process.     

Analyzing the Essence of Stakeholder Relationships: What do we Need in Addition to Power,Legitimacy, and Urgency?

This article contributes to the body of stakeholder literature by providing an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of stakeholder relationships as a part of change in value creation. The article presents an argument that the stakeholder salience model as a tool for analyzing stakeholder relationships is not sufficient for understanding business value creation. In the recent stakeholder literature, understanding business value creation has become an important theme. Through an analysis of an empirical case, the article shows how the three stakeholder relationship attributes, legitimacy, power and urgency help to reveal the definitive stakeholders and to capture dynamics of stakeholder relations. However, in the case of strategic change, where the value creation of a firm is in transition, a more profound understanding of stakeholder relationships is needed. As a result of our empirical analysis, six characteristics of stakeholder relationships were identified. To conclude, the question of who and what really counts should be replaced by the question of how value is created in stakeholder relationships.