Mixing family with business: A study of Thai business groups and the families behind them

How does the structure of the families behind business groups affect the group's organization, governance, and performance? We construct a unique dataset of family trees and business groups for 93 of the largest business families in Thailand. We find a strong positive association between family size and family involvement in the ownership and control of the family businesses. The founders’ sons play a central role in both ownership and board membership, especially when the founder of the group is dead. Greater involvement by sons is also associated with lower firm-level performance, especially when the founder is dead. One hypothesis that emerges from our analysis is that part of the decay of family-run groups over time is due to the dilution of ownership and control across a set of equally powerful descendants of the founder, which creates a “race to the bottom” in tunneling resources out of the group firms.     

Family meals and disparities in global ecosystem dependency. Three examples: Ghana,Russia and Sweden

This article highlights globalization in terms of dependency on local and global ecosystems when it comes to family diets. In an exploratory case study, one typical meal in three household settings in different parts of the world: Ghana, Russia and Sweden, is examined. Food paths are traced to compare the scale of ecosystem dependency. The result shows that ecosystem dependency varies greatly with implications for environmental impact. The Swedish household, as opposed to the Ghanaian and the Russian, is not dependent on local ecosystems for food provision, but increasingly on global systems. Opportunities and constraints for lowering environmental impacts related to diets in different economies are discussed. It is concluded that it is of great importance to create awareness in high‐income countries of the dependency on the global ecosystem and the resulting environmental impacts. It is in these countries that opportunities are available for change towards more sustainable diets. It is suggested that further research need to explore in greater depth how ecosystem dependency differs and how that translates into broad spectra of environmental impacts, considering other dimensions of sustainable development as well.     

Exchange Rate Expectations,the Forward Exchange Rate Bias and Risk Premia in Target Zones

Expected rates of depreciation within the target zone for the exchange rates of four Nordic countries during 1979–1989 are estimated. Combining these with expected rates of devaluation estimated by Edin and Vredin (1993) we obtain time-series of the overall expected exchange rate change. We can thus construct time-series of foreign exchange risk premia and expectational errors, following which we decompose the forward exchange rate bias into portions attributable to expectational errors and/or risk premia. The conclusion is that time-varying risk premia appear to be the dominant cause of deviations from uncovered interest parity while the role of expectational errors is less clear.     

Partnering relationships in construction: A literature review

There is no unified view as to what partnering relationships are in the construction industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature in order to identify the main assumptions about partnering relationships in construction research and practice. The literature is compared to the Construction Industry Institute’s (CII, 1991) frequently cited definition of partnering as a long-term commitment between two or more parties in which shared understanding and trust develop for the benefits of improving construction. The literature review reveals a tendency to focus on project partnering in dyads between clients and contractors and there is also an emphasis on formal tools to develop these relationships, even if social aspects and relationship dynamics are recognised. The paper discusses these findings and suggests that, in order to increase the understanding of the substance and function of partnering relationships, it could be useful to incorporate knowledge from theoretical perspectives that are more in line with the CII definition. Two perspectives that seem particularly interesting in this respect are Supply Chain Management (SCM) and the Industrial Network Approach (INA), both of which focus on long-term relationships between actors beyond the dyad. INA also emphasises the informal aspects of relationship development. Incorporating these dimensions of partnering relationships requires processual and longitudinal studies, which are relatively rare in the contemporary partnering literature.     

Spacing identity: Unfolding social and spatial-material entanglements of identity performance

In this paper, we analyze how architectural design, and the spatial and material changes this involves, contributes to the continuous shaping of identities in an organization. Based upon a case study of organizational and architectural change in a municipal administration at a time of major public sector reforms, we examine how design interventions were used to (re)form work and professional relationships. The paper examines how engagements with spatial arrangements and material artifacts affected people’s sense of both occupational and organizational identity. Taking a relational approach to sociomateriality, the paper contributes to the further theorizing of space in organization studies by proposing the concept of spacing identity to capture the fluidity of identity performance.     

A small country's high-tech dilemma: the challenge facing new technology-based firms in Norway

Judging from their profit trends, new technology-based firms have not been very successful in Norway. After ten or more years of activity, fewer than half a dozen has accumulated profits over £1 million. Those that risked large initial investments in order to standardize an innovative new technology enjoyed the greatest amount of success. Most firms were able to develop a prototype, but many had great difficulties gearing up for production. Insufficient financing and know-how were the main problems. Firms have had more problems with production than with marketing, but very few seem prepared for the costs and challenges of an international marketing effort. Most lacked a clear marketing strategy or business plan. Financing was often a problem: there was little private investment, and equity capital was often scarce with a mean debt to equity ratio of less than 30%. Most firms received some sort of public funding, usually in support of product development, but so far it has had little impact on profit trends. A multi-national follow-up study with access to a larger data base would provide many more insights.     

Minimax optimality of CUSUM for an autoregressive model

Different change point models for AR(1) processes are reviewed. For some models, the change is in the distribution conditional on earlier observations. For others, the change is in the unconditional distribution. Some models include an observation before the first possible change time – others not. Earlier and new CUSUM type methods are given, and minimax optimality is examined. For the conditional model with an observation before the possible change, there are sharp results of optimality in the literature. The unconditional model with possible change at (or before) the first observation is of interest for applications. We examined this case and derived new variants of four earlier suggestions. By numerical methods and Monte Carlo simulations, it was demonstrated that the new variants dominate the original ones. However, none of the methods is uniformly minimax optimal.