The Effects of the Economic Downturn on Interdependent Buyer–Supplier Relationships

The management of strategic buyer–supplier relationships is a critical concern for sourcing managers. The selection of key suppliers and how relationships with these suppliers are managed and incentivized can dramatically affect the buying company's performance. While the extant literature focusing on industrial buyer–supplier relationships is significant, the severe economic downturn beginning in 2008 tested buyer–supplier relationships in unprecedented ways, yielding new insights. The research presented in this paper uses dyadic cases to investigate transformations within industrial relationships during the economic downturn. Propositions are formulated that focus on why and how firms responded to the downturn. Three primary types of relationships are identified. The results indicate variation in the ways buying companies managed their key supplier relationships during the downturn: some firms behaved more cooperatively and found ways to jointly confront the effects of the downturn, while others responded by behaving competitively to maximize their individual outcomes. The results further suggest that researchers need to revisit existing models of relationship development and dissolution to understand how these relationships evolve or devolve. The research also raises questions about the value of physical and human asset specificity, and social investments in curtailing opportunistic behavior in times of severe economic stress.     

Evaluating the Relative Innovative Position of European Union Member Countries: An Empirical Analysis

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence about the relative positions of European Union member states on innovation and, more specifically, on innovation in manufacturing. These positions were obtained from the aggregation of different innovation variables using the principal component analysis. We do not provide, from the statistical viewpoint, a synthetic indicator, even if, from the economic perspective, the information we obtained was similar to what such an indicator would provide. Our unit of analysis is the sector in each country, what we will term ‘country‐sector’, covering both innovative and non‐innovative firms.     

和谐社会背景下农民工的社会适应问题研究

随着我国城市化、工业化步伐的加快,数以亿计的农村剩余劳动力迁移到城市.如何让这些农民工成功融入城市,成为城市的一员,已经成为各个学科研究的热点,很多学者从社会排斥的角度探讨了农民工如何被城市排斥问题.笔者认为,农民工成功融入城市的关键是如何适应的问题,包括职业适应、生活适应、人际关系适应、心理适应等,而影响农民工社会适应的因素主要包括制度障碍、文化障碍、社会排斥,以及农民工自身文化素质低、维权意识能力弱、行为修养不得体等,因此需要从国家、城市、农民工三个方面入手加以解决.     

大西北种树种草要遵循自然与经济规律

提倡种树种草必须遵循生态适应性规律与地域分异性规律。乔木耗水多,草与灌木耐旱。在西北地区要根据降水量多少确定草灌乔的分布。治理水土流失要因地制宜,采取工程与生物相结合的综合措施,“以林为主”的提法值得商榷。     

Limited monitoring and the essentiality of money

Monetary theory emphasizes that imperfect monitoring is necessary for money to be essential, that is, for money to achieve socially desirable allocations. Little is known about how limited monitoring must be if money is to be essential, though. Understanding sufficient conditions for the essentiality of money is important since monitoring is a natural way in which credit is introduced in monetary models. In this paper, we show that money can fail to be essential even if monitoring is quite limited. This indicates that one must be careful when introducing monitoring in monetary models to allow for the coexistence of money and credit.     

The Development of Agrarian Capitalism in Post‐Soviet Russia

A core set of criteria have been met, so that it is accurate to speak of an agrarian capitalist system in Russia. The development of agrarian capitalism carries with it increased stratification, which is analysed along five dimensions: earned income, land expansion, use of credit, income from food sales and income from household enterprise. The paper demonstrates increasing differentiation between households, between professional cohorts and within professional cohorts. The data showing stratification within professions suggest that intra‐cohort stratification is driving most of the inter‐cohort stratification. The Russian model of agrarian capitalism and its processes of stratification have yielded a bifurcated countryside in which a thin stratum of ‘super winners’ has emerged. Economic processes have developed beyond simple stratification and have created the basis from which a rudimentary class structure appears to be forming.     

控制理论与过程控制技术的发展和态势

综述了控制理论和过程控制技术的发展和态势,并对现代控制理论和技术所研究的几个主要控制系统进行了简要的评述,还总结了几种控制系统的基本概念、理论基础、系统类型、主要特点、适用场合以及该系统进一步发展的可能方向。     

Knowing but not knowing: Systematic conservation planning and community conservation in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca,Mexico

Systematic conservation planning (SCP) seeks to propose new reserves through a scientifically rigorous process using databases and research selection algorithims. However, SCP exercises have been criticized for “knowing but not doing”, i.e. not implementing the proposed reserve. But there is an additional problem that can be called “knowing but not knowing”, knowing things from databases, but not knowing crucial contextual information about community-based social processes that have supported the high forest cover and biodiversity detected. Examined here is how a common property region of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico has maintained high forest cover in the absence of public protected areas, while multiple SCP exercises have advocated for the creation of public protected areas in communal tropical montane cloud forests and pine forests as strategies for biodiversity conservation and resilience to climate change. Methods included archival research, review of community documents, focus group interviews, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, land use transects, and GIS analysis and remote sensing. Conservation in the region originally occurred because of low population densities, steep slopes and a lack of agricultural subsidies, supported by locally adapted agricultural practices. In the 1990s, a transition from passive to active conservation took place with land use zoning plans, community conservation rules, community forestry enterprises and payments for environmental service programs that consolidated a trend towards high, unthreatened forest cover. Today, the study communities have an average of 88.3% forest cover, with 61% of that in informal conservation based on community land use zoning and rules and another 14% governed by forest management plans approved by the Mexican government. We argue that truly systematic conservation plans would seek to understand how communities in the region are already managing forests for conservation. It is pointless and uninformed to advocate for top-down conservation interventions of forests that are already robustly conserved and resilient to climate change due to community action.     

The outsider consumer co-operative: lessons from the Community Co-operative Store (Nuriootpa), 1944–2010

Current models of co-operative survival need to be modified to consider those national experiences where consumer co-operatives become ‘outsider co-operatives’; they cannot rely on a broader co-operative movement or network. The Nuriootpa Co-operative is a prime example of such a co-op. Its ability to deal with issues of capitalisation, ideological appeal and relationships with the local community has historically been central to the survival and growth of this Australian Rochdale co-operative. However, without the support of a broader movement or network, its adoption of the franchising model has proved to be a key to the success of this co-operative.     

旅游企业与社区居民利益冲突及协调博弈研究

随着旅游业发展的深入,旅游企业与社区居民的利益冲突及协调问题成为影响旅游业发展的重点问题。从旅游企业和社区居民的单次博弈入手建立模型,并通过重复博弈模型分析,探索实现利益协调的路径。提出完善社区居民旅游开发参与机制和构建收益均衡分配机制,解决旅游企业与社区居民的利益协调问题。