Workers' Participation in Decision–Making Processes and Firm Stability

This paper argues that firm efficiency and stability, as well as workers' satisfaction, can be achieved through participatory decision–making rules. It offers theoretical rationales and empirical illustrations based on the framing and operation of European works councils. Employees should take part in establishing the rules; otherwise managers will make rules that allow them to retain control of the key points in the decision–making process. In constructing such rules the involvement of unions is required; however, once rules are set union activity becomes marginal. Government intervention remains marginal throughout.     

The graph of Lindahl correspondence as the unique von Neumann-Morgenstern abstract stable set

In this paper, we consider a continuum economy with a finite number of types of agent, and several private and public goods. The main result of the paper is that the graph of the equal-treatment Lindahl equilibria mapping is the unique abstract stable set with respect to the dominance relation in economies with crowding effects introduced by Vasil'ev et al. in 1995. The external stability of this mapping implies that, for any equal-treatment allocation x in , that is not a Lindahl equilibrium, there exists a subeconomy of such that one of its equal-treatment Lindahl allocations blocks x. This result is a counterpart of the theorem of Mas-Colell for Aumann's atomless market with private goods.     

Rawlsian pricing of access to public facilities: A unidimensional illustration

We consider a setting where citizens using a public facility face an idiosyncratic private access cost and must also contribute to the costs of facility. We show that if the population is uniformly spread over the real line, the cost of a facility is independent of location and access costs are linear in distance, the Rawlsian access pricing is the unique cost sharing solution that satisfies the “core property” of secession-proofness. The latter amounts to the voluntary participation principle under which no group of citizens should be charged more than the cost incurred if it had acted on its own.     

A Self‐Tuning Model for Smart Manufacturing SMEs: Effects on Digital Innovation

With the changing way people live, communicate, and work, enterprises are striving to shift their existing business model into a “self‐tuning” one. Enterprises are becoming more agile, adaptive, and ambidextrous in order to boost innovation in the current digital transformation era. Nowadays, “digital innovation” is closely associated with Industry 4.0 enablers and smart enterprises. Prior research has shown that while multinational enterprises—across many sectors—have already embraced the aforementioned advancements, their adoption by small and‐medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) has so far taken place mainly in the manufacturing sector. Thus, based on a sample of 280 self‐tuned smart manufacturing SMEs and having utilized the structural equation modeling (SEM), this study was aimed to investigate how digital innovation is influenced by the three pillars of self‐tuning models—agility, adaptation, and ambidexterity. Our paper has focussed on the digital systems in which SMEs, spurred by networking and open innovation solutions, operate and innovate in response to external triggers, displaying a balance between exploration and exploitation, and a strong agile capacity.     

Can the North American ski industry attain climate resiliency? A modified Delphi survey on transformations towards sustainable tourism

As global temperatures increase, does accelerating climate change represent an existential crisis or a manageable challenge for the ski industry? Despite considerable evidence demonstrating the global ski industry is in the early stages of a climate-induced transition, global research on ski industry stakeholder perspectives shows varied levels of climate risk awareness, a focus on future vulnerability, and limited engagement in adaptation. Within North America, research has focussed on the physical climatic impacts to ski operations and possible skier responses, yet there lacks insight into industry perceptions on current and future climate vulnerability. This study fills this important knowledge gap using a Delphi survey to engage 52 leaders from across the continent in a dialogue on strategic climate responsiveness. Results demonstrate North American ski industry leaders’ climate risk perceptions range widely, and opinions diverge over if or how to respond at both an industry and destination scale. Simultaneously, industry experts believe mountain tourists increasingly value nature-based activities, place-bound products, and corporate responsibility. Analysing industry leaders’ responses through Enlightened Stakeholder theory highlights how aligning supply-side environmental management with demand-side tourist experiences may create opportunities for new partnerships, innovations, policies, and strategies needed to achieve climate-resilient and sustainable futures.     

The resilience of formal and informal tourism enterprises to disasters: reef tourism in Phuket,Thailand

This paper explores the resilience of vulnerable tourism sectors to disasters in a period of global change and interdependence. The coral reef tourism industry is highly vulnerable to natural disasters and economic and political shocks. The paper also explains why enterprise resilience is central to sustainable tourism management, for economic, socio-cultural and environmental reasons. It extends the concepts of ecological and social resilience to that of enterprise resilience. Using scenarios and interviews with key enterprise staff, the study contrasts the levels of resilience of formal and informal reef tourism enterprises, and the factors associated with the enterprise resilience in Phuket, Thailand, following the 2004 tsunami and the 2008 political crisis. Informal enterprises reported better financial condition in a crisis scenario and higher levels of social capital in the form of government, family and community support than formal enterprises. Formal and informal enterprises both enjoy high lifestyle benefits from reef tourism, which supports resilience. Most formal enterprises had part foreign ownership/management (61%); no informal enterprise had any foreign ownership or management. Management policies supporting reef tourism should consider local nuances and the importance of lifestyle benefits for both formal and informal enterprises, and take steps to enable enterprise flexibility and cost-cutting during crises.     

On the theory of cost sharing

This paper investigates efficiency and equitability issues given a cost sharing method in an economy with a public commodity. We study the concept of a -cost share equilibrium and examine the set of all equilibrium allocations. Finally, we devise a mechanism to implement -cost share equilibria as strong equilibria of an associated non-cooperative game.This paper was written while Shlomo Weber was visiting the University of Bonn. Financial support from theSonderforschungsbereich 303 is gratefully acknowledged. We also would like to thank Dieter Bös for valuable comments.     

Interpreting the sources of market value in a capital goods market: R&D management in industrial sensors

This paper presents an integrated model for evaluating purchasers' perceptions of science-based products. The model combines a new approach to benchmarking, known as technometrics, that provides a quantitative profile of a product's key attributes, with direct and indirect methods for measuring buyers' perceptions regarding the relative importance of product attributes as a source of value. A new measure for the demand orientation is proposed, which shows the extent to which a product's 'supply' of characteristics matches the 'demand' for them in the market place. The model is illustrated using several types of industrial pressure sensors. The paper also demonstrates how the integrated model may be made effective for quality function deployment (QFD) during the R&D phase.     

行动学习:只要你去做

正我们需要改革各级教育,包括大学研究,培养个人的创造性思维。我们相信,改革教育以刺激创造性思维可以从研究生和本科生水平的创业教育开始。中国制造了一切——每年生产3.2亿台计算机(全球产出的91%)、1.09亿台空调(80%)、3.20亿盏节能灯(80%)、22吉兆太阳能蓄电池、18亿吨水泥(60%)、0.52亿吨猪肉(50%)、18亿吨煤炭(48%)……同时,从官方数据看,城市工人的年平均工资在过去十年涨了三倍多,因此,一些公司正在将其生产工厂搬到亚洲其他国家。体育用品公司耐克在越南雇佣的工人数量已经超出中国的雇佣人数。一些东南