Marketing's Interfunctional Interfaces: The MSI Workshop on Management of Corporate Fault Zones

This paper first introduces the purposes and processesof the Marketing Science Institute's Workshop on Interfunctional Interfaces: The Management of Corporate Fault Zones. The motivatingissues of value migration and market orientation are considerednext followed by discussion of marketing's paradigm shift. Thelast half of the paper deals with several management problemsand research issues which were identified during the workshop.Hopefully, these questions and research needs will help to acceleratedevelopment of research into these interface issues.     

Organizational interfaces and innovation: The challenge of integrating supplier knowledge in LEGO systems

Suppliers have become increasingly important as partners in firms' innovation efforts. Reaping potential collaboration benefits is complex due to challenges in combining internal and external knowledge. The paper explores how various types of organizational interfaces between buyer and supplier create both opportunities and problems for their joint actions. The paper is based on a longitudinal case study of attempts to develop an innovative packaging solution for the toy manufacturer LEGO systems. The study shows that buying firms need to carefully analyse what form of organizational interface access to prioritize since each type offers its specific possibilities and drawbacks. Furthermore, the feasibility of organizational interfaces may change over time due to mutual organizational learning.     

Market Driven Manufacturing

World-Class Manufacturing has received a great dealof attention in the past few years, drawing largely on successfulJapanese manufacturing practices. There has also been a separateexplosion in the use of conjoint analysis to determine customerpreferences for marketing purposes. In this paper these two developmentsare used together to determine the most advantageous manufacturingpriorities for a given competitive situation. For illustrationpurposes we use customer preference data from automobiles; thesepreferences are segmented and we then show how the various segmentslink to differing sets of manufacturing priorities. Finally,we examine how strategic manufacturing priorities can be translatedinto specific action-oriented improvement programs.     

An actor-oriented approach to understanding dairy farming in a liberalised regime: A case study of Ireland’s New Entrants’ Scheme

With the abolition of dairy quotas in 2015 major change in Europe’s dairy industry is anticipated at the level of individual farms, with consequences for how land is utilised and managed. Critical questions in this context are how farmers react to the myriad challenges coming forth from changed policy circumstances and, more specifically, the factors that influence their responses to these challenges at farm level. As part of a broader multi-disciplinary research project, this paper presents a narrative analysis of dairy farmers participating in Ireland’s New Entrants’ Scheme, an initiative that has facilitated the establishment of over two hundred new dairy farms. Salient with an increasing literature on Agriculture Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKISs) within agriculture, the paper focuses specifically on the actors who influence the decisions of the New Entrants (NEs) at this critical juncture in the transformation of dairy policy. Led by Norman Long’s actor-oriented approach, we examine social interfaces involving NEs and different categories of actors. We found that interfaces conditioned by coercive behaviour on the part of actors had a narrow scope of influence on farmers’ decisions compared to interfaces characterised by relatively equal power relations. The latter interfaces had the capacity to be strongly influential on broad habitual production and management decisions. Interfaces involving family members, however, had ultimate influence on major strategic decision-making, including decisions to establish new enterprises. Overall, our analysis suggests that NEs are empowered decision-makers in their social interfaces with other AKIS actors and our biographical approach to the analysis indicates that quota deregulation itself has not led to radical changes in who influences NEs’ decision-making.     

二维码用作移动商务接口研究

针对二维码技术在移动网络技术和智能移动终端技术中广泛应用的现状,在系统解析二维码技术及其优越性的基础上,探讨二维码技术以主读方式和以被读方式在移动商务接口中的典型应用,并分别以实例对其应用的有效性进行了检验。     

An object-oriented architecture for group decision support systems

An object-oriented GDSS can produce a rich environment for easily accessing software tools or applications running under a Graphical User Interface and can provide communication among meeting participants. This requires definition of (1) objects to manage the meeting and participant sessions, (2) applications that can run under these sessions, and (3) data storage and data communications capability that handle both private and shared data. This article suggests that a GDSS system can operate under three layers of software: an application-layer, a GDSS environment, and an operating system environment. It defines the structure and behavior of the GDSS environment layer in terms of (1) objects and messages used to communicate among these objects and (2) a message passing protocol between the GDSS environment and the other two layers. These specifications result in an architecture that is sufficiently modular to enable addition of various GDSS software. This article also discusses a prototype implementation of the architecture that is developed in Smalltalk and runs under Microsoft's Windows 3.0.     

Open standards,vertical disintegration and entrepreneurial opportunities: How vertically-specialized firms entered the U.S. semiconductor industry

This paper shows how the emergence of open standards has created large numbers of entrepreneurial opportunities in the semiconductor industry by enabling vertical specialization. Integrating data on firms and technology evolution, we find a gradual increase in the percentage of firms represented by newly-founded “de novo” entrepreneurial startups, instead of “de alio” ones, as open standards emerged in semiconductor products and processes over the life of the industry. This standardization reduced transaction costs and fostered specialization, thus facilitating the entry of vertically-specialized new ventures. Vise versa, the rise of such new ventures further pushed the adoption of open standards, and the vertical disintegration of the industry. Our theory on how standardization creates opportunities for new ventures and our analysis of the semiconductor industry contribute to the technology entrepreneurship literature, as well as the industry architecture literature that has primarily focused on the impact of standardization on the disintegration of vertically-integrated incumbents.     

新时代景观设计中的“人景交互”

景观设计的目标与内容随时代的变化而变化,在数字信息时代到来之际,面对当代社会与当代人的生活特征,设计师应采取能够解决现实问题与挑战的应对策略和表达方式。在新时代的景观设计中引入"交互设计"的思维方式,把人的体验、人与环境的沟通作为切入点,利用新技术、新材料创造出不同寻常的景观环境与多元化的生活空间。     

快速时尚零售业的采购研究——建立快速响应采购策略

本文以欧洲快速时尚零售业市场为背景分析了快速时尚业的采购行为.现代的时尚业采购与传统的采购形式在很多方面都有所改变.为了适应顾客口味的快速变化,时尚行业的零售商们正在为建立一种同时具有敏捷性与柔性的供应链模式而不断改进自己的快速响应采购策略.为了支持这一模式的发展,零售商们采取的一系列的采购改进措施包括:应用混合型的采购方式即全球与地方的采购共用;将建立在信任基础上的供应商关系视为快速供应的质量保证;同时内部部门的整合与流程上的紧密合作也成为加速决策建立及提高供应链准确性的重要条件.本文便一一列举分析了这一系列的采购策略对建立正确的快速响应采购决策的影响以期对我国目前日益发展的时尚产业的采购决策制定有所帮助.     

Channel Structures of International After-Sales Service Networks

Abstract

The choice of an organizational architecture for providing after-sales services to customers spans two extremes. A firm may either supply the services itself, or it can supply them through an independent distribution network. Because of the importance of after-sales services both in establishing a firm's competitive advantage and in sustaining profitability, the choice of organizational design would appear to be of significant strategic importance. In order to explore this association, a comparative empirical study was made of the after-sales networks of two firms supplying international markets-one directly and the other through a network. Although there were trade-offs in the two organizations, there was equal success in providing customer service, which would suggest that a structure for this purpose does not exist. Instead, it was observed that contact near customer usage and devolved decision making were important in service success. Integrative devices, concerning both culture and knowledge, seemed to play a further role in maintaining these firms' competitive edge. In interpreting these results, network and temporary concepts were useful in describing processes of each organization. It was noted that the distribution channels for services were different from product distribution in both cases, which undoubtedly is of strategic importance in managing these operations.