1,720,968 research outputs found
The stresses of retail internationalization: lessons from Royal Ahold's experience in Latin America
No full textWritten prior to the financial crisis of the world’s third largest retailer following its announcement of accounting irregularities on February 24 2003, this paper uses a case study of Ahold’s struggles to manage significant investment in the unpredictable business environments of Latin America to focus attention on the stresses internationalization poses for the retail firm. It offers a picture of retail multinationals facing distinctive organizational challenges as they seek to transpose internal and inter-firm practices to markedly different institutional environments, and of a highly contested retail internationalization process – not least by the suppliers of finance. It concludes by drawing out five lessons for retail internationalization theory from Ahold’s experiences. A postscript then summarizes the events following Ahold’s revelation of significant accounting irregularities through to the announcement of its decision on 3 April 2003 to withdraw from South America. That postscript assesses what further insights the corporate scandal has revealed about Ahold’s management of its significant investment in the region
Networks of organisational learning and adaptation in retail TNCs
No full textIn this article we contribute to a growing body of literature concerned with the socio-cultural dynamics of learning and adaptation inside firms. Specifically, we apply a ‘competence-based’ view of the firm to a newly emerging breed of retail-industry transnational corporations (TNCs). We situate these firms within the context of ‘relational networks’ and then consider – from a geographical perspective – the complex interplay between ‘extra-firm’ networks and ‘intra-firm’ networks, and between store-based learning and organizational adaptation. We argue that the competitiveness of the retail TNC increasingly rests upon its ability to adapt the portfolio of retail formats to different and rapidly changing business environments by mobilizing and blending knowledge from multiple locations. This, it is suggested, is leading to the emergence of a ‘reflexive’ or ‘hybridized’ model of retail globalization
Globalizing retail and the ‘new e-conomy’: The organizational challenge of e-commerce for the retail TNCs
No full textThis paper examines the organizational challenge of e-commerce for emerging retail transnational corporations (TNCs). The paper begins by scoping and conceptualizing the retail TNCs and in the process, draws attention to the high level of territorial embeddedness of these firms. This provides the framework for the remainder of the paper, where the organizational challenge of a ‘multi-channel’ paradigm (blending online and offline forms of retail distribution) is evaluated. Specifically, the paper argues that place, space and embeddedness continue to matter in the ‘new e-conomy’ of multi-channel distributio
Globalising retail : geographies of organisational learning and innovation
No full textThe globalisation of retailing remains a profoundly neglected topic in the mainstream debates of economic geography and the social sciences more broadly. In this thesis, I begin to redress this imbalance by conceptualising the geographies of organisational learning and innovation within a newly emerging breed of retail transnational corporations (TNCs). This approach is aligned with the 'new economic geography', in which there is a greater cognisance of the role of culture, knowledge and learning in the regulation of firms, and in turn, the importance of these 'soft assets' to the realisation of competitive advantage. I argue that the ability to learn and innovate is now the principal determinant of success in the globalising retail industry. The thesis critically analyses and theoretically contextualises the 'soft architecture' to globalising retail, while also identifying important lines of future enquiry. As such, I do not provide a detailed ground-level investigation of the retail TNCs. However, case-study evidence is incorporated into the thesis to enrich and thicken the conceptual observations. This evidence has been drawn from an extensive period of fieldwork, which involved a combination of interview- and conference-based research. In chapter 2,1 discuss the methodological issues involved in researching the retail TNCs. In particular, I emphasise the critical importance of the equity analyst as a 'gatekeeper' to wider networks of knowledge exchange about the retail TNCs. The remainder of the thesis is organised in four sections. Chapter 3 conceptualises the distribution-based TNC and shows that a defining characteristic of the retail TNCs is that they are embedded, to an unusual extent relative to production-based TNCs, in local cultures and geographies of consumption. This has important implications for our understanding of the geography of innovation within the retail TNCs, which, I suggest, remains inherently store-based. Chapter 4 continues this line of enquiry by exploring the nature of 'knowledge management' inside the retail TNCs. Here, I consider the mechanisms that are being used to extract, blend and transfer tacit knowledge across the transnational space of the firm to develop an adaptive and innovative portfolio of retail formats and merchandising strategies. The focus of the thesis then switches to a new technological innovation, revolving around e-commerce and and Internet-based distribution. managerial challenges that this innovation poses to the retail TNCs. Chapter 6 summarises the key findings of each chapter and highlights the contribution of the thesis to contemporary academic debates. 5 considers the organisational Chapter</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Transnationalism and the Internet: the case of London-based Chinese professionals
Full text linkThis thesis examines the role of internet use in migrants’ participation in, and articulation of, rising Chinese modernity. It explores the ways in which transnational subjectivity is produced through this process. It investigates how migrants’ various uses of the internet construct and make sense of their connections with China. It demonstrates a new generation of subjectivity among Chinese transnationals that is tech-savvy, modern and triumphal – a subjectivity embedded in the exchange between the (macro) political economy of China’s rise and the (micro) everyday practices surrounding the internet.This is an ethnographic study focusing on an emerging population within the broader Chinese diaspora; that is, mainland Chinese professionals who migrated for higher education and professional training in recent years as a result of China’s reform and economic power. This study locates its enquiries in three offline-grounded institutions – ethnic organisations, states and families. These institutions pre-date the internet but increasingly turn to the technology for transnational and local connections.Regarding Chinese organisations, utilising the internet to build co-ethnic sociality is read as a symbolic practice that signals the users’ belonging to a technologically-advanced, mobile and wealthy sector within the broader idea of the Chinese community. On the role of the state, internet use provides new modes of migrants’ access to China’s state-led development projects, thus opening up new spaces for the state’s disciplinary power to be exercised. This digital governance is enabled by a discourse of Chinese triumphalism constructed by both the state and the migrants. Regarding families, the digitalisation of the gendered division of labour in transnational families provides evidence of the segmented nature of China’s digital modernity and disrupts the triumphal portrait of transnational modernity constructed among the elite-stratum migrants.Overall, this study develops a dialogue between two literatures. On the one hand, it adds to diasporic internet studies by introducing an offline-grounded, geographically-informed approach and by bringing transnational modernity into its research agenda. On the other hand, it draws on Nonini and Ong’s (1997) theorisation of Chinese transnationalism as alternative modernity and further adds to this theorisation with a focus on internet technology and a discussion of the impacts of China’s rise. It contributes to human geography by revisiting a key concept in this discipline – transnationalism – with a discussion of the interweaving impacts of information technology and the geopolitical shift of China’s rising modernity
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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