Market and technology shifts in the 1990s: Market fragmentation and mass customization

This paper highlights demographic and psychographic population shifts, which, together with a rapid increase in the flexibility and cost‐efficiency of production processes, will force marketers into more complex market segmentation and niche marketing strategies. The accelerating trends in market fragmentation and “mass‐customization” of production will challenge traditional marketing thinking and strategies during the 1990s.     

Inter-industry technology flows in the US food-processing industries

The study examines the origins of technology important to improving productivity in the food-processing industries. Technology flows were measured both by patents in patent classes closely identified with six food industries, and by a sample of significant food-processing innovations. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that interindustry technology flows are the most significant determinant of productivity improvements in the food industries. These findings solve the enigma that the food-processing industries have enjoyed rapid improvements in productivity despite making very modest investments in research and development.     

Editorial

Editorial Introduction

Editorial     

A cross cultural study of gender-role orientation and entrepreneurial self-efficacy

The study of gender differences in entrepreneurial self-efficacy to date has produced inconclusive results. Cross-cultural studies are virtually non-existent. The present study seeks to understand the complex interplay of biological sex, socialized gender-roles, and culture on entrepreneurial self-efficacy and motivation to become an entrepreneur. Findings indicate that among American business students the traditional view of “entrepreneur as male” is fading. For the next generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs, a new entrepreneur stereotype is emerging that balances stereotypical feminine and masculine characteristics. These findings were not replicated in Spain where traditional gender-role stereotypes associated with entrepreneurship persist, even among business students. Implications for entrepreneurial education are discussed as they relate to the development of skills associated with venture creation.     

Formal and Informal Practices of Knowledge Sharing Between Project Teams and Enacted Cultural Characteristics

This article investigates the process of knowledge sharing between project teams and uses a case study approach. This is especially relevant, as organizations face both the needs for separating work into projects and integrating knowledge created in projects into the organization. The results provided by the analysis technique of GABEK^® indicate that, although projects create boundaries, employees and project team leaders use formal mechanisms and develop informal practices for knowledge sharing between project teams. Furthermore, the article identifies organizational cultural characteristics enacted in these practices that can stimulate the discussion in “knowledge culture research” regarding the relationship of organizational cultural characteristics and (specific) knowledge processes.     

Critical resource: An institutional economics of the Internet addressing-routing space

This paper links the analysis of IP address policy to the established vocabulary and concepts of institutional economics. Internet addressing and routing are usually discussed in technical terms, yet embedded in this highly technical discourse are a number of critical economic concepts, such as scarcity, externalities, common pool resources, tragedy of the commons, and conflict over the distribution of costs. To solve these problems, governance institutions native to the Internet have evolved. Yet despite the centrality of addressing and routing to Internet governance, there is very little research literature that bridges economic, institutional and technical discussions of IP addressing and routing. This paper connects the techno-economic discussion to analysis of institutions and governance arrangements.     

Constitutional quandaries in Europe

Most of the constitutional political economy literature has followed Buchanan and Tullock by remaining inherently normative, but a small literature has appeared that examines the properties of constitutions by considering the motives of the people who actually write the constitution. This literature is in the positive public choice tradition, in that it assumes that the people who write a constitution are interested in advancing their interests and not those of someone else. This note discusses the need for and nature of a constitution that would advance the interests of all citizens, and then the procedures that would be necessary to create and adopt such a constitution.