Resource allocation in the nationalized energy sector of the United Kingdom

Resource allocation in the energy sector of the United Kingdom is a difficult area to plan, because demand and supply projections need to embrace both the large private sector oil industry and the public sector fuel industries. In addition, relationships between the latter are complex as they involve both competition and co-ordination. One approach to the problem has been to find common ground in the concept of marginal cost pricing, but there are practical difficulties in application. Government has encouraged the use of analytical techniques, such as corporate planning, by the fuel industries as a means of co-ordination in areas where market mechanisms may no longer always be effective.     

A tactical retreat? Conceptualising the dynamics of European grocery retail divestment from East Asia

The internationalisation of the firm is a highly dynamic process, in which periods of investment and expansion intermingle with periods of divestment and retrenchment. Academic research to date has focused on identifying the reasons for and the processes of divestment. Empirical studies either evidence generic pressures or provide case studies of specific incidents. There few longitudinal studies of international divestment, consequently the dynamic interactions between host market, home market and firm level factors, and how the institutional context changes over time is underplayed. This paper seeks to rectify this gap in our understanding.We explore the rationale and evolving dynamics of European grocery retail divestment in East Asia over a thirty year period. Taking an inductive approach and drawing on analysis of contemporary narratives drawn from company documentation, trade journals, newsfeeds and market reports, three phases can be identified characterised by specific factors and combinations of factors which intersect to provide the key pressures and stimuli for divestment. We conclude that at different time periods, different internal and external contextual influences manifest themselves through different priorities within the firm’s strategy – marked by a switch from local (host) market, to regional, to global firm-centric considerations. Longitudinal analyses allow a greater recognition of this dynamic interplay of factors, and the changes in these relationships, and provides a more nuanced understanding of the international divestment process.     

Family,Place and the Intergenerational Transmission of Union Membership

This article examines the importance of family, gender and place to the intergenerational transmission of trade union membership. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey, we show that union membership among parents influences the union joining behaviour of young workers. These effects are particularly apparent among daughters and where both parents are members of unions. The effects of parental membership are also stronger among those born in areas characterized by relatively high levels of union density. Parental effects are therefore important to our understanding of the persistence of regional variations in levels of trade union membership.     

Configuring the Field of Play: How Hosting the Olympic Games Impacts Civic Community

abstract    I theorize and empirically illustrate how the mega-event of the Olympic Games configures relational and symbolic systems within the host city. I focus on a field at the level of the local geographic community and explore how city character and traditions enable both persistence and change in institutional elements even when potentially disruptive events occur. I present two exploratory studies. The first shows how the event of the Olympics is rooted in the local field of the host city but varies by communities; the second explores the dynamics of configuring the field of one Olympic city: Atlanta, host of the 1996 Olympic Games.     

Production Functions for Large-scale Forest and Range Condition Indicators

This paper estimates production functions for environmental outputs (measured with condition indicators) from forest and rangelands at the national scale. A particular production structure is discussed for this purpose, and two approaches to handling the spatial nature of the data are investigated. Improved explanatory power appears to result from “kriging” the data into a uniform grid of observations, as opposed to aggregating the data into the lowest common unit (in this case, counties). The equations themselves are also discussed, and elasticities are utilized to interpret independent variable effects that include levels and interactions terms.     

Procuring complex performance in construction: London Heathrow Terminal 5 and a Private Finance Initiative hospital

This paper takes as its starting point the fact that complex projects, interpreted as multiple dependent interactions between many stakeholders over time, challenge traditional procurement practices based on the serial purchase of discrete components. The paper examines how the procurement management of such projects – procuring complex performance – can be conducted. The paper utilises two contrasting case study examples of high-profile UK construction project procurement. The findings suggest that the choice of mechanisms or interfaces for the governance of upstream supply relationships critically relates to subsequent performance. The theoretical contribution is a fusion of procurement literature with the influential CoPS literature.     

Project management systems: Moving project management from an operational to a strategic discipline

This article illustrates one aspect of the concept of “fit” between an organization's implementation of project management and its organizational context by exploring how the underlying drivers of an organization's strategy might influence not only the nature of the projects that it undertakes, but also the appropriateness of the arrangements that it makes to manage those projects. Using a model conceptualized from the literature on strategic management, an analysis of four organizations that have made significant investments in project management over the past 5 years supports the hypothesis that the degree of “fit” between an organization's strategic drivers of value and the configuration of its project management system influences the value it obtains from project management.     

The mobile shopping revolution: Redefining the consumer decision process

The use of mobile devices by consumers and the accompanying response by retailers is rapidly revolutionizing the retail environment. In the past, retailers have focused primarily on the outcome (to purchase or not to purchase) of the consumer decision process, but now mobile technologies give retailers the opportunity to more actively influence the entire consumer decision-making processes. The increasing use of mobile devices by consumers makes shopping a continuous rather than discrete activity that requires retailers to engage with their customers at critical touch points of the decision process in order to provide a more customer-centric experience. This change in focus from the decision outcome to the decision process signifies an important paradigm shift for the retailing industry. After an extensive review of the literature, we identify four pillars that form the foundation for the mobile shopping revolution and represent the essential ways and means through which retailers can engage with consumers during the decision process. We also discuss the different areas in which the pillars can enable retailers to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the mobile shopping era.     

Wealth inequality: Theory,measurement and decomposition

This paper reviews the basic principles of inequality measurement, underlining the advantages and shortcomings of alternative measures from a theoretical standpoint and in the context of the study of the distribution of wealth. Adopting the two most popular measures, the Gini index and the P‐shares, the paper documents wealth inequality in Canada using the 1999, 2005 and 2012 Survey of Financial Security (SFS). It carries out several decompositions with covariates, featuring DFL‐type reweighting methods and Gini and P‐shares RIF regressions. The latter parallel decompositions deepen our understanding of how changes in socio‐demographic characteristics, including the compensating role of family formation and human capital, impact wealth inequality.     

Fixed Costs, Foreign Direct Investment, and Gravity with Zeros

Fixed costs play a crucial role in current models of foreign direct investment (FDI), yet they are almost entirely ignored in empirical treatments of FDI. We fill this gap by using a 1989–2001 panel of FDI flows into Iceland to examine the determinants of fixed costs for multinational firms and how these influence aggregate patterns of investment. Our additions to research in the field include usage of several natural-resource variables, and the analysis of data on initial entry of FDI into a developed country. We use the Heckman two-step procedure, which allows us to account for fixed costs and their impact on estimation. Taken together, we find that the standard OLS approach to the data incorrectly links the quantity of FDI to source-country variables while in fact most of their role is in determining whether FDI takes place at all.