131 research outputs found
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The Fight For The Middle: Upgrading, Competition, And Industrial Development In China
Full text linkWhen China acceded to WTO in 2001, there were fears that Chinese firms would lose market share in key sectors to foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). Although aggregate data often indicate a shift in favour of FIEs, indigenous firms in many cases have slowly increased market share and deepened their technical capabilities. Through an analysis of aggregate industry-level data and interview data from both OEM and key supply firms in three sectors, we show how the dynamics of competition between Chinese and FIEs in China’s domestic market enhance the upgrading prospects for Chinese firms. China represents a new development model in which industrial upgrading efforts are domestically-driven and globally integrated and intensely competitive
Scale, Scope, and Spillovers: Evidence from Franchised Chains
Full text linkWe use data on the largest U.S.-based franchised chains, measured by worldwide sales, from 1998 to 2007, to explore scale and scope (or spillovers) effects. Because franchised chains are fundamentally single-product or single-concept entities, we can distinguish scale from scope effects much better than in most of the literature to date. We can also identify takeovers straightforwardly. After controlling for chain unobserved heterogeneity using fixed effects, we find strong evidence of positive scale effects within a chain, suggesting positive spillovers or network advantages from being large. As for the effect of parent company scope, measured by worldwide sales of other chains owned by the parent in the previous year, we find no effect on chain-level sales per store, but a negative effect on the number of outlets. Our analyses of what occurs upon chain takeovers further support these findings and conclusions. We find that takeovers have no effect on sales per unit in the target chain, but they lead to lower numbers of outlets in the years that follow. Moreover, controlling for takeovers is necessary to obtain unbiased estimate of the scope effects. Our findings overall are most consistent with firms engaging in some form of rationalization, or reducing competition among their chains, after taking them over
Industrial Relations Experiments in China: Balancing Equity and Efficiency the Chinese Way
Full text linkChina should build socialism by "crossing the river by feeling for stones" (Deng Xiaoping). Chinese industrial relations are changing accordingly. Local union experiments have implemented local-level changes experimenting with institutional reforms that address efficiency and equity imbalances. Local union leaders have exercised autonomy to develop multi-employer “community unions” in Changchun’s Chaoyang District to represent peasant migrant workers employed by small firms by targeting small geographic zones and hiring union presidents as organizers, aggregating union members into amalgamated units. While the union’s role still includes social harmonization, unions have undertaken an additional representative role. Similar efforts elsewhere have given the union representation experience. Unions have organized multi-employer federations across industries. Unions also have collaborated with local governments on innovative structures to ensure that companies in some industries, such as construction, post a “bond” to guarantee end-of-year compensation. Finally, this paper discusses the role of the new Labor Contract Law in institutionalizing these changes. The LCL defines more precisely employment relationships and workers’ legal rights and seems to increase unions’ legal authority to ensure that employers respect individual workers’ rights, supports the extension of collective contracts to more enterprises, and appears to give unions greater authority to represent workers within the employment relationship and before legal authorities. These changes may provide a material basis for balancing efficiency with equity. We think these experiments have political foundations, whether it is “harmonious society” or simply to extend the union’s organizing maintain political status. Further research will determine whether these experiments are successful
Does Organization Ownership Matter?: Structure and Performance in For-Profit, Nonprofit, and Local Government Nursing Homes
Full text linkWe compare the structure and performance of for-profit (FP), nonprofit (NP) and local government (LG) organizations. These organizations differ in their ownership structure, objectives and agency relations. We conjecture that, compared to NP and LG, FP firms (a) delegate less decision-making power to employees, (b) provide more incentives and fewer fringe benefits, (c) monitor less, and (d) rely less on social networks to recruit employees. We also hypothesize that, relative to NP and LG, FP firms (i) are more efficient, (ii) provide similar levels of service elements that observable to their customers, (iii) provide lower levels of less-well observable elements, and (iv) provide less of the relational elements. Differences in structure and performance are likely to be tempered by regulation, market competition and institutional pressures for similarity. We study detailed performance outcomes for all the 369 Minnesota nursing homes included in federal and state datasets, and organization structure for a subsample of 105 homes that responded to our survey. Our empirical investigation generally supports our hypotheses. In particular, we find that FP homes serve more residents than NP and LG, after controlling for quality differences. However, FP homes provide lower quality services on a large array of attributes, especially those that are less observable by nursing home residents and their families. The differences among different types of organization are small, but significant
Social capital and the Creation of Knowledge
Full text linkThis paper examines the relationship between the social capital and knowledge creation in research, mostly in the context of universities. The analysis is developed considering all of the following critical aspects of social capital: direct ties, strengths of direct ties, density, structural holes, centrality, and external-internal index in terms of fields of knowledge. Two important results arise from this research. First, the overall results suggest that, when controlling for other network variables and individual heterogeneity, the effects of the structural holes variable disappear. This result stands in contrast to the established idea that structural holes is the most important variable to represent social capital and, therefore, is seen as contributing to superior performance. Second, the results show that with this strong set of controls, what matters in social capital is having many direct ties, being in a central position, having partners from different areas of knowledge, and being part of a non dense network
Productivity and Efficiency Impacts Of Human Resources Practices in Food Retailing
Full text linkData from an annual survey of U.S. supermarkets including detailed information on store characteristics, operations, and performance are used to develop an index of human resource (HR) practices for food retailers. A stochastic frontier analysis demonstrates that human resource policies have a positive impact on value added in food retailing establishments while
efficiency is not adversely influenced by human resource practices. Managerial implications of the model link technical inefficiency estimates for retailers to slight declines in store level gross margins. Evaluated on the basis of technical efficiency, retailers choosing a portfolio of human resource practices which score high on the HR index are able to match the performance of
competitors pursuing an alternative low HR strategy. Visits with retail managers and in-store department heads along with a leading food retailing consulting firm confirmed the feasibility of adjusting human resource practices to improve store performance
Cross-Boundary Coordination Under Organizational Stress: Communication Patterns and Resilience
Full text linkCoordination is one of the key activities that organizations must carry out on a day-to-day basis to maintain reliable
performance in the face of changing conditions. When organizations come under stress it is important that they continue to
maintain high levels of coordination. Yet extensive evidence suggests that organizations and individuals within them respond
differently to stress, in ways that are sometimes functional and sometimes dysfunctional. We study the Continental air
control tower in Newark that was built to co-locate representatives from key airline functions and key external parties in
order to facilitate communication among them. Initial research was based on informal interviews and site visits, as well as
secondary analysis of company documents and industry reports. In addition, using communication network data, we
explore how cross-boundary coordination occurs under conditions of predictable and unpredictable stress, and how
co-location can facilitate adaptation to changing conditions
Enabling Environmentally-Informed Materials Selection Decisions: Robustness of Early Stage Lifecycle Assessment
Full text linkThis paper explores the robustness of materials selection decisions when using various life-cycle assessment methods. Improving the environmental performance of vehicles is a topic of growing concern met by today’s designer. One approach to this goal is through vehicle mass reduction, enabled through the implementation of a growing array of material candidates. While LCA methods are available to provide quantitative input into this selection decision, LCA applications are evolving and distinct. Specifically, this paper surveys the major analytical variations of LCA implementations and explores the implications of one major variant when applied to an automotive materials selection case study involving aluminum. This case study examines analytical variations in treatment of recycling by exploring allocation methods that affect product EOL. Preliminary results indicate that the choice of analytical method can have real impacts on individual metrics and there are sets of analytical variation over which strategic results are strongly affected
Who Profits from Innovation in Global Value Chains? A Study of the iPod and Notebook PCs
Full text linkIn an era when new ideas are brought to the market by global value networks of specialists rather than by one company, a key question is who captures the most value from innovation in such a structure, and why? This paper addresses the question of who benefits from innovation in global value chains by looking at specific computer and electronics products. We apply a novel industry studies methodology for measuring the distribution of financial value across the supply chains for two models from Apple’s iPod family and notebook PC models from Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard (HP). These are all examples of globally innovated products, combining technologies from the U.S., Japan, and other countries, and assembled in China.
Our analysis shows that the gross margins of Apple for its high-end iPod products are generally higher than those earned by HP and Lenovo for notebook PCs, although not so high as to be considered “supernormal.” A key reason for the difference is that Apple’s control of the core software, proprietary standards and complementary infrastructure of the iPod enables it to retain greater profits, whereas a large share of the PC industry profits are siphoned off to Microsoft and Intel who control key technical standards. Consistent with Teece (1986), our results confirm the importance of stages of technical evolution, appropriability regimes and complementary assets as determinants of profiting from innovation. On the other hand we find that manufacturing has become commoditized and is no longer a key to profiting from innovation in final electronic products. Also, contrary to recent suggestions in the literature, we find no evidence of a causal link between product and industry architectures. Instead, there is a vast electronics “industry architecture” that can easily support product-level value chain configurations ranging from modular to integrated
The Role of Incumbent Firms and Universities as Drivers of Innovation: Evidence from the Comparison of the Markets for Anti-cancer and AIDS-treatment Drugs
Full text linkIn this paper, I compare the dynamics of two different markets within the pharmaceutical industry: anti-cancer and AIDS-treatment drugs. The anti-cancer drug market was born in 1949 and had been in operation for decades prior to 1983, when the biotechnology revolution first disrupted it. In contrast, the market for AIDS-treatment drugs was born around 1985, during the biotechnology revolution. This implies that incumbents with respect to the biotechnology revolution can only be found in the former market. Based on field interviews, data on patented molecules from the Derwent World Patent Index collection 1994-2004, and data on drugs entering clinical trials from the Pharmaprojects database 1989-2004, I examine the differences in innovative output (measured in drug molecules per firm) among firms competing in each market. Preliminary results indicate that average productivity is higher in the anti-cancer drug market than in the market for AIDS-treatment drugs, but only for the early stages of R&D. At the point of approval, the markets exhibit equal rates. The reverse is true for differences across technological regimes: the differences are not significant in early stages but are significant later on. Lastly, differences in per-firm productivity are always significant across firm profiles (with incumbents always sustaining the highest rate) whereas total proportion of production of innovations is always led by the group of de novo firms. Universities do not lead in total proportion of innovations generated, nor do they play a significant role as co-assignees of other organizations in the generation of patented molecules. Although this paper offers only tentative initial analyses, with further work necessary to implement feedback from participants of the Sloan Industry Studies meeting, it has clear potential to contribute to understanding the role that large incumbents and universities play in shaping the dynamics of innovation