Entrepreneurship and path dependency in regional development

This paper describes a case study of path-dependent industrial development in a specialized medium-sized region characterized by a specialized high-tech industry cluster, located near Norway's capital, Oslo. The case study examines the path-dependent process of new industry arising from technology-related industries through three main branching mechanisms: entrepreneurship, mobility, and social networks. More particularly, the study explores the extent to which regional branching mechanisms relate to different path-dependent processes of path extension, path renewal, or path creation. The case study of industrial development in a medium-sized region that critically examines the concepts of path dependence, and argues that specialized medium-sized regions follow different path processes from core regions due to regional branching that does not happen automatically but instead may require policy action and external investment to avoid stagnation or negative lock-in.     

How Does Executive Strategic Human Resource Management Link to Organizational Ambidexterity? An Empirical Examination of Manufacturing Firms in China

Despite a plethora of studies that demonstrate the positive impact of strategic human resource management on firm performance, existing knowledge of the processes through which such gains can be achieved remains limited. This study aims to extend our knowledge by investigating the mechanism through which a teamwork‐oriented executive strategic human resource management system impacts organizational ambidexterity. Specifically, by integrating the resource‐based view and information‐processing theory, we examine the mediating role of top management team effectiveness and the moderating role of knowledge–sharing intensity from middle managers to top management teams. Drawing on a multiple‐source and multiple‐respondent survey from 144 manufacturing firms in China, we show that top management team effectiveness partially mediates the effect of the executive strategic human resource management system on organizational ambidexterity. Moreover, knowledge‐sharing intensity from middle managers to top management teams strengthens the effect of the executive strategic human resource management system on organizational ambidexterity. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

市场导向对物业服务企业绩效的影响——基于组织学习的中介效应研究

以北京、山东、湖南、广东四省市的物业服务企业为样本,借鉴成熟的市场导向量表和组织学习量表设计调查问卷,就物业服务企业市场导向对绩效的影响进行实证研究,结果表明,市场导向对企业绩效有正向的直接作用,同时通过组织学习对企业绩效产生间接的正向作用,即组织学习为不完全中间变量。研究证明,我国物业服务企业实施市场导向战略能够有效提升企业绩效,基于环境和行业发展的独特性,在实施市场导向战略时尤其要注重开展组织学习。     

品牌经济学的理论基础——引入品牌的需求曲线及其经济学分析

需求定律是经济学分析的理论基础之一,品牌经济学的理论基础为引入品牌的需求曲线或考虑选择成本的需求定律。把品牌引入经济学中后,品牌信用度的提高使需求曲线右移并变得更为陡峭,同时品牌信用度的提高改变了需求曲线的位置,使得均衡价格提高,均衡数量增加,增加了消费者剩余和生产者剩余,提高了社会福利水平。文章为“品牌战”替代“价格战”提供了理论依据,即通过品牌建设提高品牌信用度,使得在价格提高的条件下需求量增加,而这只有在需求曲线改变位置时方能做到。     

Economic Theory as a Guideline for Government Intervention and Control: Comment

This paper provides an institutionalist analysis of the impasse over labor issues that has stalled much needed reform of U.S. immigration policy. While it is unlikely that institutional economics can dislodge a century of conventional wisdom regarding the impact of immigrants on the labor market, a more modest goal is to refute the mainstream economic assertion that what the United States needs to do is to reduce the supply of immigrants, a conclusion that fuels the disgraceful "war on immigrants" that has long plagued reasonable debate over immigration policy.     

Understanding the demand-side of economic change: a contribution to formal evolutionary theorizing

An outstanding fact of capitalist change in the last few centuries is the ongoing emergence of new consumption alternatives which accompany income and productivity growth in expanding economies. Far from satiating consumers, exponential economic growth seems to stimulate human desires by providing novelty and variety embodied in a persuasive flow of unsettling goods. Although this is a well-known fact characteristic of capitalist change, little attention has been paid by modern growth theorists to the understanding of demand-side phenomena related to the increasing significance of consumption activities in our societies. Against this background, in this article, we show that as soon as we start drawing the demand-side contour of economic change, new phenomena appear which enrich our understanding of economic growth and structural change. By using ‘replicator dynamics’ systems, consumption dynamics are formally linked to the ongoing generation of innovations in capitalist economies. Certain emergent properties concerning economic growth and structural change and several policy implications follow.     

组织学习的时空理论

从动态和系统的角度,从组织学习的来源出发,首先提出了组织学习的来源存在时间和空间两个维度,然后建立了基于时间和空间维度的组织学习时空理论。从时间维度(过去、现在和未来)和空间维度(内部和外部)构建了组织学习的6种基本模式,通过排列组合建立了64种组织学习方法,并进一步提出组织要根据外部环境的客观要求和内部实现的可行性选择合适的学习方法,以及组织选择的学习方法可能随着发展阶段的推移而变化等观点。     

Costs of providing infusion therapy for patients with inflammatory bowel disease in a hospital-based infusion center setting

Aims: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (e.g. ulcerative colitis [UC] and Crohn’s disease [CD]) severely impacts patient quality-of-life. Moderate-to-severe disease is often treated with biologics requiring infusion therapy, adding incremental costs beyond drug costs. This study evaluates US hospital-based infusion services costs for treatment of UC or CD patients receiving infliximab or vedolizumab therapy.

Materials and methods: A model was developed, estimating annual costs of providing monitored infusions using an activity-based costing framework approach. Multiple sources (published literature, treatment product inserts) informed base-case model input estimates.

Results: The total modeled per patient infusion therapy costs in Year 1 with infliximab and vedolizumab was $38,782 and $41,320, respectively, and Year 2+, $49,897 and $36,197, respectively. Drug acquisition cost was the largest total costs driver (90–93%), followed by costs associated with hospital-based infusion provision: labor (53–56%, non-drug costs), allocated overhead (23%, non-drug costs), non-labor (23%, non-drug costs), and laboratory (7–10%, non-drug costs).

Limitations: Limitations included reliance on published estimates, base-case cost estimates infusion drug, and supplies, not accounting for volume pricing, assumption of a small hospital infusion center, and that, given the model adopts the hospital perspective, costs to the patient were not included in infusion administration cost base-case estimates.

Conclusions: This model is an early step towards a framework to fully analyze infusion therapies’ associated costs. Given the lack of published data, it would be beneficial for hospital administrators to assess total costs and trade-offs with alternative means of providing biologic therapies. This analysis highlights the value to hospital administrators of assessing cost associated with infusion patient mix to make more informed resource allocation decisions. As the landscape for reimbursement changes, tools for evaluating the costs of infusion therapy may help hospital administrators make informed choices and weigh trade-offs associated with providing infusion services for IBD patients.     

Varieties of paternalism and the heterogeneity of utility structures

A principal source of interest in behavioral economics has been its advertised contributions to policies aimed at ‘nudging’ people away from allegedly natural but self-defeating behavior toward patterns of response thought more likely to improve their welfare. This has occasioned controversies among economists and philosophers around the normative limits of paternalism, especially by technical policy advisors. One recent suggestion has been that ‘boosting,’ in which interventions aim to enhance people’s general cognitive skills and representational repertoires instead of manipulating their choice environments behind their backs, avoids the main normative challenges. A limitation in most of this literature is that it has focused on relatively sweeping policy recommendations and consequently on strong polar alternatives of general paternalism and strict laissez faire. We review a real instance, drawn from a consulting project we conducted for an investment bank, of a proposed intervention that is more typical of the kind that economists are more often actually called upon to offer. In this example, the sophistication of current tools for preference attribution, combined with philosophical externalism about the semantics of preferences that makes it less plausible to attribute their literal self-conscious representation to people as propositional attitude content becomes more tightly refined, blocks applicability of the distinction between nudging and boosting. This seems to call for irreducible, context-specific ethical judgment in assessing the appropriateness of the forms of paternalism that economists must actually wrestle with in going about their everyday business.     

Causes of privatization in China

We test five hypotheses regarding the causes of privatization in China by using firm‐level panel data collected in 11 cities in the period 1995–2001. We have found that privatization is positively linked with hardened firm budgets and the extent of market liberalization, but is constrained by excessive debts and worker redundancy. Firm efficiency and state‐owned enterprises’ financial liabilities imposed on local governments are not factors of influence. These findings match the broad flow of events in China and highlight the role of market building in bringing about efficient institutional changes.