The interface of the energy and forest sectors—Potential players in the bioenergy business

The upcoming bioenergy business area opens up promising opportunities for the traditional energy and forest sectors. This has motivated us to study existing and potential bioenergy actors that could take up this unique opportunity and develop new business around the “green gold” of the forest. Light is shed on the interface between the energy and forest sectors through a comparison of the most focal bioenergy actors with traditional forest and energy companies. The analytical methods used include both parametric and nonparametric analysis of variance, and cluster analysis. The result is a better understanding of the players that have the potential to capitalize on the emerging business.     

Sectoral Differences in Plant Start-up Size in the Finnish Economy

New knowledge on the factors behind the choice of plant entry scale is important for understanding the entry process and the recruitment decisions of new plants in different sectors of the economy. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of various industry attributes on plant start-up size, measured with employment, using data on the entire Finnish business sector. The paper extends previous research by examining the differences between manufacturing and services and by using a richer set of explanatory variables. The relative importance of the covariates for different-sized entrants is taken into account by using a quantile regression approach. The results for manufacturing and services are remarkably similar. However, the findings imply that in the future analysis it is also important to consider the effect of the regional availability of educated and experienced work force on plant start-up size in these two sectors. The findings on the importance of scale economies and industry turbulence in determining start-up size correspond to the earlier studies. The results also show that single plant and multiplant entrants face a rather different entry environment. In addition, the employment share of foreign-owned entrants in the industry has to be taken into account.     

Chris Willett (Ed.): Public Sector Reform and the Citizen's Charter. London: Blackstone Press, 1996.

Journal of Consumer Policy -     

Environmentally friendly consumer: from determinism to emergence

Several attempts have been made by academics in the past to explain the so‐called ‘environmentally conscious’ consumer. These explanations share an important feature, namely determinism. This paper identifies three different sources of determinism that are distinguished in recent literature on the green consumer: cultural determinism, psycho‐socio‐demographic determinism and calculative determinism. An explanation of the green consumer in these terms, however, loses sight of the emergence and processuality of consumer behaviour. Process oriented constructionism, by contrast, is useful to recover these important aspects. This paper suggests a research agenda focused on socio‐material processes and situated actions that lead to the emergence and stabilization of a particular type of consumer behaviour.     

The intermediator role in value co-creation within a triadic business service relationship

This study aims to enhance the knowledge of the roles played in value co-creation adopted by parties to triadic service business relationships. We approach the research issue through theoretical considerations and explore it empirically with a qualitative case study of triadic service relationships in the property maintenance business.     

Experiences of learning styles in an intensive collaborative course

Computer science as a field requires curricular guidance, as new innovations are filtered into teaching its knowledge areas at a rapid pace. Furthermore, another trend is the growing number of students with different cultural backgrounds. These developments require taking into account both the differences in learning styles and teaching methods in practice in the development of curricular knowledge areas. In this paper, an intensive collaborative teaching concept, Code Camp, is utilized to illustrate the effect of learning styles on the success of a course. Code Camp teaching concept promotes collaborative learning and multiple skills and knowledge in a single course context. The results indicate that Code Camp as a concept is well liked, increases motivation to learn and is suitable for both intuitive and reflective learners. Furthermore, it appears to provide interesting creative challenges and pushes students to collaborate and work as a team. In particular, the concept also promotes intuition.     

The retraining and mobility motivations of key personnel: dependencies in the Finnish business environment

Key personnel's long-term commitment to an organization will soon become a fiction unless companies really begin to pay attention to improving it. To a great extent the cause of this development is the increasing uncertainty in the permanence of one's job, which leads those interested in career advancement to unexpected career changes. This paper studies the retraining and mobility motivations of 726 key personnel in Finnish companies, by endeavouring to discover possible correlations, on one hand, with the key person's background and set of values and, on the other, with various company-related factors. Most of those with both retraining and mobility motivations turned out to be dynamic young people either at the early or mid-stages of their career, although mobility motivation at least appeared to last throughout. Strong career commitment was linked with mobility motivation, whereas a commitment to personal and professional development was linked with retraining motivation. Thus, objective career development is promoted primarily by mobility, and subjective career development by retraining. Both motivations were linked with the company's poorly implemented career management programme. Consequently, companies should look upon this as an important covert personnel risk and endeavour to turn this into a personnel development opportunity through internal mobility or training, in order not to lose its key personnel with highest competence and development potential.     

Productivity dispersion: A case study

This paper studies productivity dispersion in a retail chain. We find that productivity is highly dispersed between the branches. Furthermore, productivity rankings are quite persistent. Accounting for employee skills and human resource management decreases the productivity dispersion only slightly. The results suggest that productivity dispersion is “real”.