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Determinants of multi-unit franchising: an organizational economics framework
No full textInternational audienceIn this paper, we use organizational economics theories to explain the percentage of multi-unit franchisees within franchise chains. We use transaction cost theory, property rights view and agency theory to formulate three research hypotheses that are related to franchisees' transaction-specific investments, intangibility of system-specific assets and risk of franchisee free-riding, respectively. These hypotheses are tested in the French franchising context by using a sample of 138 franchisors. The empirical results are largely supportive of the hypotheses. We extend the franchising literature by arguing that the explanation of the franchisor's use of multi-unit franchising requires the combined application of different theoretical perspectives
Simulation of unbalanced buffer allocation in unreliable unpaced production lines
No full textInternational audienceThis article presents the results of a study investigating the performance of unpaced unreliable production lines (i.e. subject to breakdown) that are unbalanced in terms of their buffer storage sizes. Simulation is carried out for five, eight and 10 station lines with mean buffer space set at two, four and six units. Buffer capacity is allocated in different configurations for each of these lines. Performance indicators on throughput, idle time and average buffer level are analysed using a range of statistical tools, and relationships between the independent and dependent variables are determined. Overall results show that the best patterns for unreliable lines in terms of generating higher throughput rates (or lower idle times) as compared to a balanced line are those where total available buffer capacity is allocated as evenly as possible between workstations. In contrast, concentrating more buffer capacity towards the end of the line gives best average buffer level results
E-SUPPLY CHAIN ET PRODUCTIVITE : LE CAS DE LA DISTRIBUTION ALIMENTAIRE
No full textInternational audienceCe papier analyse d'une part les transferts d'activités constatés au sein de la supply chain alimentaire entre consommateurs, distributeurs et fournisseurs suite au développement des cybermarchés, et d'autre part en évalue les incidences sur la productivité de chaque acteur. L'objectif est l'étude de la productivité dans un contexte multicanal et dans une perspective holistique sur l'intégralité de la supply chain. Ce travail permettra donc une meilleure réflexion sur d'éventuelles améliorations de la gestion globale de la supply chain dans une stratégie transcanal des différents canaux marketing
Strategic Incentive Systems For Open Innovation
No full textInternational audienceOur paper presents a cross-sectional study of incentive systems for open innovation practices. Organisations face the challenge to design and implement strategic incentive systems which reward active contributions of individuals to open innovation practices. We refer to contributions from psychology and economics to develop a framework for organisational incentive systems. We have conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 experts in Germany and the Netherlands. The experts work in firms which are both international top players and open innovation pioneers in their respective industries. The results show that all organisations in the sample develop incentives for open innovation. The key strategic function of incentive systems is to open mind-sets of the workforce and to overcome mental barriers of the 'not invented here' syndrome. Immaterial and in particular task content incentives have been judged to have a more efficient long-term impact than material incentives. While experts have emphasised the importance of aligning incentives systems to open innovation strategies, in practice many incentive approaches still remain patchwork and lack a clear strategic focus
Smart regions. Two cases of crowdsourcing for regional development
No full textInternational audienceDespite a certified need for stronger ties between regional entrepreneurial ecosystems and larger networks, and despite an emerging discourse on beneficial interlinks between crowdsourcing and urban development, the relationship between crowdsourcing and regional development is underexplored. Unlike the few existing reports on voluntary bottom-up crowdsourcing initiatives for regional development, the focus of the present article is on two cases of top-down initiatives of crowdsourcing for regional development launched by institutional actors in the Swiss Canton of Valais and the Italian autonomous province, South Tyrol. The results of a comparison of the two cases suggest consideration of the strength of regional ties as factors that undermine crowd wisdom and flow as well as exercising caution with quantitative idea selection processes, at least in the context of smaller regional crowdsourcing projects
The Effects of Facial Attractiveness and Gender on Customer Evaluations during a Web-Video Sales Encounter
No full textInternational audienceThe use of virtual environments as a support platform for demonstrating products and providing after-sales advice is today relatively commonplace. The Web-video interface represents a fundamental shift away from traditional selling atmospherics where the facial appearance of sales personnel replaces many traditional dimensions of service quality. Although salesperson attractiveness has previously been studied empirically, research into facial attractiveness remains scant. As gender has been proposed as a moderating factor in dyadic selling relationships, this study employs an experiment to test the combined effects of salesperson facial attractiveness, complainant gender, and salesperson gender, on three customer evaluations-satisfaction, perceived quality, and loyalty intentions-during a Web-video encounter. The findings show that facial appearance significantly affected satisfaction at the encounter level although not perceptions of overall service quality or intentions to repurchase. In addition, the study found that dyad gender mismatching resulted in higher customer satisfaction scores for an attractive salesperson. Based on these results, managerial implications and opportunities for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR
A property rights view of multi-unit franchising
No full textInternational audienceThis study develops a property rights explanation of the multi-unit (MU) ownership strategy of the franchise firm. According to the property rights theory, the allocation of residual rights of control (decision and ownership rights) in franchise firms depends on the contractibility of system-specific and local market assets (LMA). We develop and test the following hypotheses: Multi-unit franchising (MUF) is positively related to the franchisor’s intangible system-specific assets and negatively to the franchisee’s intangible LMA. In addition, we argue that impact of financial assets on the tendency toward MUF depends on the contractibility of LMA. Empirical results from the German franchise sector provide partial support of the hypotheses. Compared to the agency theory, which focuses on (complete) incentive contracts that specify residual income rights between the franchisor and franchisee, property rights theory focuses on incomplete contracts that allocate residual control rights between the franchisor and network partners. Furthermore, compared to the resource scarcity theory, property rights theory explains the impact of contractibility of resources/assets on the ownership strategy of the franchise firm
Online Video Advertisement Avoidance: Can Interactivity Help?
No full textInternational audienceThe objective of this research is to explain the factors contributing toward consumers online video advertisement (OVA) avoidance behavior. Empirical data from 207 online consumers in France supports the hypotheses concerning the effect of relevance of contents, perceived authenticity and interactivity of OVAs. The findings suggest that consumers avoid OVAs by using ad blocker software due to irrelevant advertisement contents, lack of perceived authenticity of advertisement contents and most importantly due to the lack of interactivity. We conclude the study by offering some suggestions for reducing consumers avoidance of OVAs by increasing interactivity
The Fairly Good Economy: Testing The Economization Of Society Hypothesis Against A Google Ngram View Of Trends In Functional Differentiation (1800-2000)
No full textInternational audienceThe present article considers the economization of society a hypothesis rather than a fact. The hypothesis is tested against the results of a Google ngram viewer analysis of the most frequent function system references in the Google Books corpus for the years 1800-2000. Despite the remarkable growth figures in the English, French, and German language corpora as related to economic word frequency shares, the results suggest the rejection of the economization hypothesis. In fact, the growth trends of economic word frequencies are stopped in all of the three language areas, in none of which the economy ever reached a dominant position throughout the entire 200 years. The results give reason to assume that the idea of an economized society is an intellectual artifact rather than a fact. This fact is emphasized not to prove the marginal relevance of research in economic risks and benefits, but rather in terms of a suggestion to consider refocusing research foci and drawing increased attention to function systems beyond the politicoeconomic double stars of social science. Maybe even the solution to the present "economic" "crises" is not in more, but rather in less attention to the economy
Social capital in Brazilian small-firm networks: the influence on business performance
No full textInternational audienceThis article investigates the influence of social capital on the business performance of firms participating in Brazilian small-firm networks. The study was based on a survey of 213 firms from 34 different small-firm networks. Four hypotheses were formulated and tested through multiple linear statistical regressions. We analysed the effects of the entrepreneurs' social capital in the following three dimensions: structural, relational and cognitive. In addition, we investigated how the centrality of the entrepreneur in the business network is related to its social capital. The results demonstrate the significant effects of the structural and relational dimensions of social capital on business performance and also show that entrepreneurs that occupy central positions in small-firm networks obtain benefits as social capital develops. This study contributes to the literature by showing that network managers can stimulate the development of social capital among members and positively influence the business performance of participating firms