The biological reserve: The future's last stand

This article addresses the societal and cultural aspects of bioreserves and environmental restoration programmes. It begins with a discussion of bioreserves, then uses the example of a Man and Biosphere (MAB) inspired study of the US Everglades to illustrate how land has been shaped historically by culture and technology. It then demonstrates how current conflicts of values and culture, from both inside and outside the region, from interest groups with both pragmatic and emotional stances, are determining the future of an environment—the Everglades. The article thereby shows how human values and perceptions impact on the development of a sustainable Everglades, using the findings of surveys and public meetings to highlight the interests of the competing communities, ethnic and interest groups involved. If bioreserves are to survive they cannot become alienated from the people in the regions in which they are located.     

Slack-adjusted efficiency measures and ranking of efficient units

In non-parametric methods many units are calculated as efficient. The article suggests a method for ranking efficient units, not by their efficiency, but by importance as benchmarks for the inefficient units, in contrast to earlier suggestions in the literature which rank units high if they are specialized. However, the total potentials for improvement frequently remain unrevealed by calculating radial efficiency measures of the Farrell type only. The article therefore first develops efficiency measures that explicitly extend the radial measures to include slacks. The new measures are applied to a typical multidimensional small-sample data set for Norwegian employment offices.     

Exploring purchasing integration in product development

With increasing outsourcing and the growing importance of product innovation as a means for creating competitive advantage, the integration of purchasing and product development processes has become a key issue for many firms. Although, consequently, the integration of purchasing and suppliers in product development has attracted growing attention from practitioners and researchers, most research on the topic remains limited to the context of single development projects. The integration with long-term issues such as technological alignment between supplier and manufacturer is often neglected. This limited conception and the lack of a coherent definition of what purchasing integration in product involvement is form a major impediment to the advancement of knowledge in this field. Therefore, this article develops a framework encompassing various activities across different management levels, which embody the alignment and integration of purchasing and product development processes.     

The impact of purchasing strategy-structure (mis)fit on purchasing cost and innovation performance

The organizational design literature strongly supports the notion of “structure follows strategy”, and suggests that a misfit between the two has a negative effect on performance. Building on this line of argument, we examine to what extent the (mis)fit between purchasing strategy and purchasing structure impacts purchasing performance. We focus on cost and innovation purchase category strategies, and examine how the deviation from an ideal purchasing structure defined along three dimensions (centralization, formalization, and cross-functionality) impacts purchasing performance. Analysing data collected from 469 firms in ten countries, we demonstrate that a strategy-structure misfit negatively impacts purchasing performance in both cost and innovation strategies. We also find that purchasing proficiency is a mediator in this relationship between misfit and performance. Our findings aid managerial decision making by empirically validating the necessity of having the right purchasing structure for successfully executing different purchasing strategies.     

Combining value and price to make purchase decisions in business markets

The authors investigate how purchasing managers combine information about product offerings' values and prices to make purchase decisions. The results of two field studies show that managers do not regard monetarily-equivalent changes in value and price to be the same. Using reference-dependent theory, the authors show that, rather than a single utility function, separate functions for value and price appear to underlie purchasing managers' decisions. The authors also address means of inducing managers to choose higher-valued, higher-priced product offerings.     

Buyer–supplier interaction in business-to-business services: A typology test using case research

We empirically test a theory specifying distinct ideal interaction patterns for four business-to-business service types, which differ with regard to how they are used by the buying company. The ideal interaction patterns are conceptualised as configurations of five different interaction dimensions: the key objectives in the interaction, the critical capabilities on either side of the relationship, the type of functional involvement from the buying firm and the key issues in the buyer–seller dialogue. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data from 23 cases of service exchange at six buying organisations we test whether similarity between the ideal interaction pattern and an actual, observed interaction pattern is a continuous necessary condition for successful ongoing service exchange. The findings suggest for each of the four service types that, in order for a service exchange to be successful, buying companies should design their interactions with their service providers to closely resemble the specified ideal pattern for that specific service type. Besides contributing to the knowledge on how to effectively structure buyer–supplier interactions across the heterogeneous spectrum of services bought, a methodological contribution is made by showing how case research can be used for theory-testing purposes. As this study is the first real test of the typology, further replications with new data, preferably obtained from both sides of the buyer–supplier dyad, are necessary.     

Efficiency Gains Under Exchange-Rate Emission Trading

In the case of emission of non-uniformly dispersed pollutants such as SO2 the negative effects depend on the location of the sources. A unit increase at one source must be compensated by either a larger or smaller reduction at another source to keep the negative effects at the same level. Emission trading between countries is possible under the Second Sulphur Protocol. Exchange rate trading and third party problems are studied within a simultaneous model facilitating impositions of various environmental constraints. Simulations based on the negotiated emission quotas are offered. Results indicate potential cost savings of 19%.     

Economic implications of proposed accounting for stock-based compensation

This article examines the market expectations of the proposed accounting changes for stock-based compensation in the exposure draft that preceded the Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 123. The exposure draft made recommendations that significantly differed from current practice. Affected firms expressed concern that the proposed changes would drastically reduce their reported earnings. This could lead to firms becoming less attractive to capital sources (resulting in higher costs of capital) and firms refraining from using stock options to attract talented managers and entrepreneurs. The market test shows that affected firms experienced negative security market prices contemporaneous with issuance of the exposure draft. Cross-sectional analyses indicate that the magnitude of price decline is associated with measures of high risk and less mature firms.     

Supplier Development Responsibility and NPD Project Outcomes: The Roles of Monetary Quantification of Differences and Supporting‐Detail Gathering

Firms increasingly rely on suppliers to perform tasks in new product development (NPD). Research has only recently begun to focus on the processes to manage this supplier development responsibility, and has hardly investigated how firms collect and analyze information regarding the cost and performance of alternative supplier offerings. Our study addresses this gap, through a field survey among 144 paired samples of project leaders and cost analysts involved in the same NPD projects. On the basis of literature and qualitative research, we conceptualize a substantive model. We first use a substantive validity assessment to vet the measures for the proposed constructs. We then test the substantive model with structural equation modeling using a multiple‐sample analysis. The results strongly show that monetary quantification of differences and detail gathering play significant roles in successfully leveraging supplier development responsibility. The findings support the hypothesis that the extent of development responsibility that suppliers have leads the development team to a more focused monetary quantification of the differences in alternative supplier offerings. Monetary quantification of differences has a significant, positive effect on the extent of supporting‐detail gathering and on the development speed of the project, whereas supporting‐detail gathering has a significant, positive effect on the product advantage of the new product as well as development speed. These findings are robust across the two functional perspectives. Our study complements the literature on interfirm control and monitoring by demonstrating the effects of selective and focused output controls.