What happened with the grandiose plans? Strategic plans and network realities in B2B interaction

Research concerned with business relationships and organizational levels, respectively, has addressed companies' difficulties in realizing their strategies. Studies of business relationships explain this through actions and reactions among business partners. Organizational studies note gaps between strategic and operational organizational levels in perceptions and goals. This paper combines these perspectives to obtain new insights into why company strategies may not materialize. The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss how actor bonds on various organizational levels in business relationships affect strategy realization. The paper shows that actors on similar organizational levels representing different companies may actually share more understandings and activities than actors within the same company. The paper contributes to research on dyadic business relationships by highlighting differences in perspectives on various organizational levels, adds insights into research studying organizations by including a business-relationship aspect, and increases understanding of why strategic plans sometimes fail to succeed.     

“Development strategies at station areas in southwestern China: The case of Mianyang city”

This paper analyses the possibilities for implementing a TOD model around a railway station in Mianyang City, in southwestern China, through a Node-Place model to determine the potential for developing the areas around railway stations to foster a sustainable economic and urban development. For this purpose, the implementation of a TOD model means an interesting sustainable way for smart growth, whose successful implementation will strongly depend on the context, where the Growth Pole Theory is being implemented through the Western Development Strategy to strengthen the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone. The Hukou system (household registration) and the current rapid urbanization and motorization trends are featuring the economic growth, creating inequities among urban population, informal settlements and problems in the accessibility of low-income residents. Therefore, not only does it lead to an analysis of the most important station areas in northeastern Sichuan Province but also of the socio-economic trends of one of the most underdeveloped regions of the country, yet with a high potential to be developed. Consequently, the real situation of the Northeast of Sichuan province is studied through fieldworks which complement the lack of reliable information, determining the most suitable features for achieving the best urban planning solution.     

Will urban farming survive the growth of African cities: A case-study in Kampala (Uganda)?

Despite the fact that urban farming is widespread in many African cities there is not yet a clearly defined view on how to deal with these activities in urban planning and management. On the basis of field interviews in the rapidly expanding metropolitan area of Kampala (Uganda) three different urban farming types were identified: subsistence farming, garden farming and commercial farming. These three urban farming types have their own spatial organisation logic and each interact in a specific way with urban expansion. In this paper the possible outcome of three alternative urban management strategies for Kampala (urban sprawl, urban infilling and a combination of both) were translated into spatially explicit land use scenarios for the years 2020 and 2030. This allowed to evaluate the spatial impact of each scenario on the future viability of the different urban farming practices. Urban sprawl fragments large open spaces thereby reducing the space for subsistence farming with 80% by 2030. Urban infilling, on the other hand, decreases the opportunities for small to medium scale garden and commercial farming by a possible reduction of 62% of the available farming land by 2030. The results of the analysis are useful for urban planners as they give insight in the potential future effects of proposed planning strategies on urban farming.     

Facilitating public participation in tourism planning on American Indian reservations: A case study involving the Nominal Group Technique

Tourism is frequently cited as a tool by which American Indians can strengthen the economies of their reservations. However, successful tourism development on such reservations requires effective tourism planning, and effective tourism planning requires public participation in the planning process. The Nominal Group Technique (NGT) has proved to be a useful group process in the tourism field but its application to tourism planning on American Indian reservations has been unexplored. This article helps to fill this knowledge gap by reporting on an NGT workshop conducted on the Lake Traverse Reservation of the Sisseton–Wahpeton Oyate (people, nation) in North and South Dakota, USA. Rich information on tourism development possibilities for three lakefront properties was obtained. Possible success factors are discussed and suggestions for conducting similar future workshops on American Indian reservations are advanced.     

Factors influencing repeat visits to a destination: The influence of group composition

This paper is an analysis of the likelihood for repeat visits to a sun and sand destination by tourists. For this purpose, an empirical study was conducted using tourists who had visited the destination. The analysis took into account the travelling group composition. The results showed that, for the total tourist sample, overall satisfaction had the biggest influence on the decision of whether to revisit a destination, while the least important influence was the tourist's perceived image. These influences varied, however, when different travelling group compositions were considered. The results are of vital importance in tourism management policies, because they can contribute to the better design and development of tourism promotion strategies.     

Reformulation and assessment of the inventory approach to urban growth boundaries

Based on the theoretical framework, in this article we demonstrate how Decision Network can be used to formulate the inventory approach to urban growth boundaries (UGBs) as an application of the planning tool to a general case. In particular, in the inventory approach expansions of UGBs are considered as decision situations, land consumptions as problems, and order sizes of UGBs as solutions. We compare the time- and event-driven systems of the inventory control problem based on the decision network framework. The former in the framework is considered as making single, independent decisions in time, whereas the latter as making multiple, linked decisions in time. Our numerical example shows that the event-driven system is more effective than the time-driven system in that the former incurs less total cost than the former in the UGBs context. The implication is that making multiple, linked decisions, as manifested by Decision Network, would yield more benefits, such as lowering the total cost, to the planner than making these decisions independently.     

“小汽车家庭化”与宏观交通决策

我国部分城市和沿海发达地区已经进入“小汽车家庭化”的阶段。家庭对私人小汽车的需求极大地推动了我国汽车工业及其相关产业链的发展,但也带来了一系列严重的交通问题。根据对国外不同城市交通发展模式的分析,结合我国的具体国情,我国的宏观交通决策仍应坚持公共交通为主导,适度鼓励发展节能环保的微型汽车,对私人小汽车的使用方式进行引导,同时通过城市道路系统的改造和建立先进的交通管理系统,应对“小汽车家庭化”带来的挑战。     

美国企业集团产融结合的特点及其对我国的启示

本文从制度变迁、金融创新、资源整合等方面分析和归纳了美国企业集团产融结合的经验,针对我国企业集团产融结合中存在的问题,结合我国国情和企业集团的现实情况,从制度变迁、风险控制等方面提出了对我国企业集团产融结合发展的启示。     

Group competition for rents

This paper examines rent dissipation in a two-stage group rent-seeking contest without a predetermined distribution rule. the rent in this setting exhibits both public and private good characteristics depending on the stage of the contest. Focusing on the relationship between group size and aggregate rent seeking we find that social waste depends not only on total numbers but also on the distribution of population across groups. We show that group size asymmetry acts to reduce rent dissipation.     

On the (nonlinear) relationship between exchange rate uncertainty and trade — An investigation of US trade figures in the group of seven

In this paper bilateral models formalizing monthly growth of US imports and exports are employed to investigate the potential of nonlinear relationships linking exchange rate uncertainty and trade growth. Parametric linear and nonlinear as well as semiparametric time series models are evaluated in terms of fitting and ex ante forecasting. The overall impact of exchange rate variations on trade growth is found to be weak. In periods of large exchange rate variations, trade growth forecasts gain from conditioning on volatility. Empirical results support the view that the relationship of interest might be non-linear and, moreover, lacks homogeneity across countries and imports vs. exports. JEL no. C14, C22, F31, F41