dynamic price competition with fixed capacities in this paper we study price competition for an oligopoly in a dynamic setting where each of the sellers has a fixed number of units available for sale over a fixed number of periods demand is stochastic and depending on how it evolves sellers may change their prices at any time this reflects the fact that firms constantly and almost costlessly change their prices reacting to updates in their estimates of market demand competitor prices or inventory levels in a setting with demand uncertainty we show that there is a unique subgame perfect equilibrium for a duopoly in which all states sellers engage in bertrand competition and the seller with the lower equilibrium reservation value sells a unit at a price equal to the competitor s equilibrium reservation value this structure therefore extends the marginal value concept of bid price control used in many revenue management implementations to a competitive model we give a closed form solution to the equilibrium price paths for a duopoly and extend all the results to an n firm oligopoly we then study extensions to multiple customer types uncertain valuations and differentiated products this paper was accepted by martin lariviere operations management

the empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change a research agenda abstract technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability however the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context based on a careful review of the literature this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels i e regarding the conceptual framework the thematic scope of the studies some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable first an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change i e factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies and all the stages of this process with a greater emphasis on the invention stage should be developed other aspects should then be tackled including a focus on several themes i e a greater attention to cross sectoral technologies the barriers to different types of environmental technologies the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises methodological issues combination of case studies and econometric modelling and several issues related to the environmental policy variable

optimal dynamic pricing of inventories with stochastic demand over finite horizons in many industries managers face the problem of selling a given stock of items by a deadline we investigate the problem of dynamically pricing such inventories when demand is price sensitive and stochastic and the firm s objective is to maximize expected revenues examples that fit this framework include retailers selling fashion and seasonal goods and the travel and leisure industry which markets space such as seats on airline flights cabins on vacation cruises and rooms in hotels that become worthless if not sold by a specific time we formulate this problem using intensity control and obtain structural monotonicity results for the optimal intensity resp price as a function of the stock level and the length of the horizon for a particular exponential family of demand functions we find the optimal pricing policy in closed form for general demand functions we find an upper bound on the expected revenue based on analyzing the deterministic version of the problem and use this bound to prove that simple fixed price policies are asymptotically optimal as the volume of expected sales tends to infinity finally we extend our results to the case where demand is compound poisson only a finite number of prices is allowed the demand rate is time varying holding costs are incurred and cash flows are discounted the initial stock is a decision variable and reordering overbooking and random cancellations are allowed

order backlogs and strategic pricing the case of the u s large turbine generator industry this paper illustrates the usefulness of game theory for strategic management through theoretical and empirical analysis of price competition in the presence of production backlogs game theoretic analysis predicts a different relationship between relative prices and backlog levels than does analysis that ignores the sorts of interactive considerations emphasized by game theory empirical analysis based on data for the u s market for large turbine generators between 1951 and 1963 corroborates the game theoretic prediction the paper concludes with a discussion of the sorts of situations in which game theoretic reasoning is particularly likely to prove useful 1998 john wiley sons ltd

factors determining the location decisions of spanish mnes an analysis based on the investment development path on the basis of theoretical assumptions approached via the investment development path idp this study examines the most important factors for and against the location decisions in foreign direct investment taken by multinational enterprises considering host countries at very different stages of economic development latin american and european union countries we carry out different kinds of analysis on a sample of 103 firms belonging to a medium sized country that has recently achieved the status of developed country the results reveal that the importance that home country firm managers give to diverse location factors depends to a certain extent on the stage that each group of host countries has reached in the idp in line with prior research we find that firm managers consider mainly the group of factors associated with strategic asset seeking when deciding to locate their investments in the group of more developed countries european union in contrast our results show that when these firm managers choose the group of less developed countries latin america social and cultural factors play a more determinant role thus suggesting the importance of historical and cultural ties between the home and host countries

dynamic pricing of perishable assets under competition we study dynamic price competition in an oligopolistic market with a mix of substitutable and complementary perishable assets each firm has a fixed initial stock of items and competes in setting prices to sell them over a finite sales horizon customers sequentially arrive at the market make a purchase choice and then leave immediately with some likelihood of no purchase the purchase likelihood depends on the time of purchase product attributes and current prices the demand structure includes time variant linear and multinomial logit demand models as special cases assuming deterministic customer arrival rates we show that any equilibrium strategy has a simple structure involving a finite set of shadow prices measuring capacity externalities that firms exert on each other equilibrium prices can be solved from a one shot price competition game under the current time demand structure taking into account capacity externalities through the time invariant shadow prices the former reflects the transient demand side at every moment and the latter captures the aggregate supply constraints over the sales horizon this simple structure sheds light on dynamic revenue management problems under competition which helps capture the essence of the problems under demand uncertainty we show that the equilibrium solutions from the deterministic game provide precommitted and contingent heuristic policies that are asymptotic equilibria for its stochastic counterpart when demand and supply are sufficiently large this paper was accepted by yossi aviv operations management

the attention stimulus of cultural differences in global services sourcing contrasting with extant research centred on the organizational challenges of sourcing services in culturally distant countries we show that cultural differences between home and host countries do not prevent firms from achieving their cost savings targets instead the effect is positive both for the captive and outsourcing governance models using insight from social psychology research and the theory of organizations we build the argument that the positive effect is due to cultural differences providing an attention stimulus for decision makers to thoroughly gather and process information on the costs and benefits of global sourcing thereby reducing the risk of cost estimation errors the empirical validation uses a data set of 624 global services sourcing initiatives obtained from the offshoring research network complemented with multiple external sources of cross country data on cultural differences languages geographic distance and education levels the main contribution of the article is to add much needed nuance to the otherwise monotonic negative view of cultural differences in extant global sourcing literature moreover the original theoretical framework and resulting attention stimulus argument we develop open new avenues for research on the consequences of cultural differences in international business operations more broadly

cosmopolitan consumers as a target group for segmentation for international companies the literature recommends directing segmentation efforts at customer characteristics rather than country characteristics consumers degree of cosmopolitan orientation has been suggested as a powerful segmentation base as this characteristic is expected to drive consumers tastes and preferences to advance research on this segmentation base this article offers a conceptualization of the consumer cosmopolitanism construct by 1 delineating its conceptual domain 2 highlighting its key dimensions namely open mindedness diversity appreciation and consumption transcending borders and 3 examining its links with theoretically relevant variables specifically consumer ethnocentrism and global consumption orientation based on the aforementioned conceptualization a consumer research specific and psychometrically sound measurement instrument the c cosmo scale is subsequently developed and tested in a series of complementary studies finally empirically based insights into the characteristics of cosmopolitan consumers are offered by 1 profiling them on consumption relevant variables innovativeness risk aversion susceptibility to normative influence consumer ethnocentrism and demographic characteristics 2 examining the link between consumer cosmopolitanism and willingness to buy foreign products and 3 developing an empirically based typology of cosmopolitan local consumers using a cluster analysis approach from a managerial perspective findings suggest that the identification and subsequent targeting of cosmopolitan consumers may well represent an appropriate strategy for internationally active companies

peer conformity attention and heterogeneous implementation of practices in mnes how do subsidiaries respond to normative demands from both their headquarters and local external constituents we propose that subsidiaries pay varying levels of attention to demands depending on their peers norm conforming behavior resulting in heterogeneous practice implementation we study the implementation of 25 practices associated with three corporate social responsibility csr issues in 101 worldwide subsidiaries of a multinational enterprise mne consistent with the idea that attention is limited and therefore selective we find that external peers conformity to the csr norm directs subsidiaries attention toward the csr related demands of external constituents at the expense of the demands from the headquarters however internal peers conformity increases attention to both external and headquarters demands related to csr as higher attention levels result in higher practice implementation internal and external peers conformity drives the heterogeneity of practice implementation in the mne our results suggest the need to rethink the influence of peers conformity on subsidiaries implementation of practices as it not only triggers mimicry based on legitimacy but also and simultaneously a more strategic response based on internal and external competitive threats and attention allocation

execution risk in high frequency arbitrage in this paper we investigate the role of execution risk in high frequency trading through arbitrage strategies we show that if rational agents face uncertainty about completing their arbitrage portfolios then arbitrage is limited even in markets with perfect substitutes and convertibility using a simple model we demonstrate that this risk arises from the crowding effect of competing arbitrageurs entering the same trade and inflicting negative externalities on each other our empirical results provide evidence that support the relevance of execution risk in high frequency arbitrage this paper was accepted by wei xiong finance

the influence of parent control structure on parent conflict in vietnamese international joint ventures an organizational justice based contingency approach there has been significant interest in understanding how the distribution of parental control over international joint ventures ijv influences ijv outcomes e g parent conflict survival performance yet the accumulation of research on the relationship between control structure and ijv outcomes has been somewhat inconclusive and even contradictory we contribute to this research stream by developing an organizational justice based contingency model relating parental control structure to parent conflict we suggest that the level of conflict between ijv parents will depend on the consistencies between the control structure and parents contribution of proprietary resources and between control structure and the parents abilities to effectively monitor operations our analysis of vietnamese joint ventures provides some support for our model and suggests that the relationship between parent control structure and ijv outcomes is perhaps more complex than previously thought

barriers and drivers in the adoption of advanced wastewater treatment technologies a comparative analysis of italian utilities abstract the adoption of new environmentally friendly technologies is becoming a key issue in both public debate and policy arenas the paper focuses on innovation adoption by wastewater utilities and investigates why stringent environmental regulations are not sufficient to foster it the adoption of advanced wastewater treatment technologies is made complex by the sunk nature of highly specific infrastructures and the consequent exposure of utilities to political and institutional influences in addition it requires the involvement of various actors utilities suppliers contractors and is influenced by various stakeholders communities business users citizens associations that generally have no aligned objectives with reference to the aforementioned theoretical background our paper develops and analyzes a conceptual framework that unfolds over two dimensions a the role played by firm specific characteristics i e technological and organizational capabilities and managerial professionalism b the influence of community level factors i e citizens voice and pressure exerted by local stakeholders we investigate these issues through multiple descriptive case studies based on semi structured interviews with the ceos and top managers of 11 wastewater utilities operating in a region in north italy the results suggest that firm specific resources could spur wastewater utilities into adopting innovation despite an adverse institutional environment at the same time on the community level side the analysis shows that residents and local businesses are able to mobilize resources and exert pressure to either drive or hinder the adoption of water innovations

long run competition in capacity short run competition in price and the cournot model in this article we investigate the nature of equilibrium in markets in which firms choose the scale of operation before they make pricing decisions we analyze a duopoly model in which firms choose their capacities before engaging in bertrand like price competition we demonstrate that the cournot outcome is unlikely to emerge in such markets and that the equilibrium tends to be more competitive than the cournot model would predict in addition our results indicate a tendency toward asymmetric firm sizes and price dispersion that results from the mixed strategies firms use in equilibrium

the impact of legitimacy pressure and corporate profitability on green innovation evidence from china top 100 abstract green innovation is an important approach for achieving sustainable development most research on determinants of corporate green innovation has focused on either external or internal drivers combining institutional theory and resource based view the scientific value of this study lies in simultaneously exploring the influence of external legitimacy pressure and internal corporate profitability and their interaction on green innovation samples of the top 100 listed companies in china from 2008 to 2012 were used and the results demonstrated that legitimacy pressure from stakeholders has a significantly positive influence on both corporate green product innovation and process innovation the results also revealed that corporate profitability positively affects green product innovation while there was found to be no significant influence on green process innovation moreover corporate profitability positively moderates the relationship between legitimacy pressure and green product innovation the results show that not only the single factor of external legitimacy pressure and internal profitability but also their interaction affects corporate green innovation practices this offers an integrating perspective on how corporations can be more innovative in sustainability

the structure of political institutions and effectiveness of corporate political lobbying this paper investigates how the structure of political institutions influences the effectiveness of corporate political lobbying by shaping the veto points and entry points that lobbying firms encounter and require respectively when attempting to influence public policies in so doing this study deepens our understanding of the strategic implications of institutional environments using large sample and cross country firm level data we find that the influence of firms lobbying activities on public policies is weakened when there are tighter constraints generated as a result of greater political partisan competition and more subnational government tiers we find that the negative association between the effectiveness of lobbying and political partisan competition is particularly pronounced in countries with lower electoral accountability and that the negative association between the effectiveness of lobbying and subnational government tiers is particularly pronounced in more centralized politi

internal equity financing and the performance of multinational subsidiaries in emerging economies we examine the internal equity financing of the multinational subsidiary which retains and reinvests its own earnings internal equity financing is a type of firm specific advantage fsa along with other traditional fsas in innovation research and development brands and management skills it also reflects subsidiary level financial management decision making here we test the contributions of internal equity financing and subsidiary level financial management decision making to subsidiary performance using original survey data from british multinational subsidiaries in six emerging countries in the south east asia region our first finding is that internal equity financing acts as an fsa to improve subsidiary performance our second finding is that over 90 of financing sources including capital investment by the parent firms in the british subsidiaries come from internal funding our third finding is that subsidiary level financial management decision making has a statistically significant positive impact on subsidiary performance our findings advance the theoretical empirical and managerial analysis of subsidiary performance in emerging economies

life satisfaction and self employment a matching approach despite lower incomes the self employed consistently report higher satisfaction with their jobs but are self employed individuals also happier more satisfied with their lives as a whole high job satisfaction might cause them to neglect other important domains of life such that the fulfilling job crowds out other pleasures leaving the individual on the whole not happier than others moreover self employment is often chosen to escape unemployment not for the associated autonomy that seems to account for the high job satisfaction we apply matching estimators that allow us to better take into account the above mentioned considerations and construct an appropriate control group in terms of balanced covariates using the bhps dataset that comprises a large nationally representative sample of the british populace we find that individuals who move from regular employment into self employment experience an increase in life satisfaction up to 2 years later while individuals moving from unemployment to self employment are not more satisfied than their counterparts moving from unemployment to regular employment we argue that these groups correspond to opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship respectively these findings are robust with regard to different measures of subjective well being as well as choice of matching variables and also robustness exercises involving simulated confounders

seeking commonalities or avoiding differences re conceptualizing distance and its effects on internationalization decisions past research established distance s key influence on internationalization however theoretical issues methodological challenges and inconsistent results hinder scholarship on why distance plays such an influential role to address these problems we draw from cognitive research on similarity comparisons to re conceptualize distance and test a model of internationalization decisions analyzing the verbal protocols of executives considering a series of internationalization opportunities we demonstrate that over and above objective distance indicators considerations that reduce distance commonalities and considerations that augment distance differences have distinct effects on decisions of where when and how to internationalize as such our study contributes new insights for understanding the nature and effects of distance across different dimensions of distance and internationalization decisions moreover internationalization theories have come to emphasize different theoretical rationales for explaining the influential role of distance on different decisions by integrating these rationales together with the notion that distance reducing commonalities and distance augmenting differences have distinct implications for internationalization decisions we introduce the notion that it is not only the addition of distance considerations that matters but also the directionality of such changes doing so our study points to new theoretical and methodological insights to help address prior criticisms and advance future research

managerial metric use in marketing decisions across 16 countries a cultural perspective research on metrics is consistently designated a priority by academics and practitioners however less is known about how culture and cross national differences can potentially impact metric use which is theoretically and managerially limiting this work develops a model that examines national and organizational cultural antecedents while controlling for the decision setting testing the model on data collected from 4384 managerial decisions from 1637 firms in 16 countries reveals that both levels of culture are associated with metric use but each has varying effects our results enable multinational executives to better understand and increase managerial metric use across different cultures and settings

moral degradation business ethics and corporate social responsibility in a transitional economy this article theoretically proposes and empirically verifies an understudied issue in the business ethics be and corporate social responsibility csr literature how moral degradation md in a society influences the relationship between be or csr and firm performance i e corporate legitimacy and competitive advantage building on strategic choice theory we propose that both be and csr become more important in enhancing business success when the perceived md is heightened our analysis of 300 firms operating in china statistically confirms our hypotheses first under high md firms engagement in csr results in higher corporate legitimacy and competitive advantage and second their adherence to ethical business codes leads to higher corporate legitimacy we conclude the article by outlining the implications for both theory and practice

science s reproducibility and replicability crisis international business is not immune international business is not immune to science s reproducibility and replicability crisis we argue that this crisis is not entirely surprising given the methodological practices that enhance systematic capitalization on chance this occurs when researchers search for a maximally predictive statistical model based on a particular dataset and engage in several trial and error steps that are rarely disclosed in published articles we describe systematic capitalization on chance distinguish it from unsystematic capitalization on chance address five common practices that capitalize on chance and offer actionable strategies to minimize the capitalization on chance and improve the reproducibility and replicability of future ib research

productive labour price value ratio and rate of surplus value theoretical viewpoints and empirical evidence productive labor is defined in the sense of indirect social labor which includes circulation and supervisory labor as well the calculation of the macroeconomic price value ratio provides an easy method to arrive at theoretically correct estimates of the rate of surplus labor at macro or micro levels and to study the evolution of total labor productivity here in the wage good sector the level and general tendencies of the macroeconomic rate of surplus value appear to be fairly similar in eec countries over the period 1970 86 while productivity increases are much more important in the latter copyright 1990 by oxford university press

on the existence of a unique price equilibrium for models of product differentiation abstract we prove the existence of a unique price equilibrium for models of product differentiation these models are characterized by demand functions that depend on differences in prices and have log increasing differences in own price and other prices which implies that best response correspondences are increasing many discrete choice models satisfy these conditions including logit models and nested logit models and the existence theorem can be applied directly with the logarithmic transformation the existence theorem can be extended to models with homogeneous demand functions which characterizes representative consumer models

dynamic pricing in the presence of strategic consumers and oligopolistic competition we present a dynamic pricing model for oligopolistic firms selling differentiated perishable goods to multiple finite segments of strategic consumers who are aware that pricing is dynamic and may time their purchases accordingly this model encompasses strategic behavior by both firms and consumers in a unified stochastic dynamic game in which each firm s objective is to maximize its total expected revenues and each consumer responds according to a shopping intensity allocation consumer choice model we prove the existence of a unique subgame perfect equilibrium provide equilibrium optimality conditions and prove monotonicity results for special cases the model provides insights about equilibrium price dynamics under different levels of competition asymmetry between firms and multiple market segments with varying properties we demonstrate that strategic behavior by consumers can have serious impacts on revenues if firms ignore that behavior in their dynamic pricing policies moreover ideal equilibrium responses to consumer strategic behavior can recover only a portion of the lost revenues a key conclusion is that firms may benefit more from limiting the information available to consumers than from allowing full information and responding to the resulting strategic behavior in an optimal fashion

do country level institutional frameworks and interfirm governance arrangements substitute or complement in international business relationships interfirm relationships among partners from institutionally distant environments are subject to governance difficulties owing to the paucity of shared cognitive and regulatory frameworks we examine the potential of formal contracting and relational governance developed at the partnership level to overcome the formal and informal institutional gap at the country level empirical results from a sample of 184 international partnerships of large us firms support an overall substitutive relationship between informal institutional frameworks and interorganizational relational arrangements whereby the performance benefits of relational governance are reinforced at higher degrees of informal institutional distance contrastingly formal institutional frameworks and contractual governance are found to have a complementary relationship with performance gains from formal contracting undermined at higher degrees of formal distance

explaining interaction effects within and across levels of analysis many manuscripts submitted to the journal of international business studies propose an interaction effect in their models in an effort to explain the complexity and contingency of relationships across borders in this article we provide guidance on how best to explain the interaction effects theoretically within and across levels of analysis first in the case of interactions within the same level of analysis we suggest that authors provide an explanation of the mechanisms that link the main independent variable to the dependent variable and then explain how the interaction variable modifies these mechanisms moreover to ensure that the arguments are theoretically complete we suggest that authors theoretically rule out the potential reverse interaction effect between the main variable and moderating variable second in the case of interactions across levels of analysis we suggest that authors identify the cross level nature of the moderating relationships specify the level of analysis of the main relationship and the nested nature of the cross level influences and theoretically explain these cross level influences additionally we suggest that authors pay particular attention to nesting in order to theoretically rule out reverse interactions

autonomy delegation to foreign subsidiaries an enabling mechanism for emerging market multinationals current theory on foreign subsidiary autonomy is insufficient to examine a situation where a multinational lacks experience to organize global operations and yet intends to compete extensively with established multinational enterprises mnes from advanced economies by building on theoretical perspectives developed for emerging market multinational enterprises emnes we advance the idea that foreign subsidiary autonomy is a strategic mechanism to overcome the emne s weaknesses in managing globally dispersed businesses and their home country disadvantages after foreign entry subsidiary autonomy delegation assists in performing the learning functions necessary for overcoming resource and capability voids as well as for distancing the subsidiary administratively from the parent s negative home country institutional heritage analyses of survey data collected from headquarter senior executives of 240 chinese mnes suggest that subsidiary autonomy delegation is higher among firms relying on foreign markets as a springboard to acquire strategic assets whose top managers at the headquarters perceive high domestic institutional constraints and which do not count on government assistance to expand internationally further we demonstrate that these relationships are strengthened with greater inward foreign direct investment cooperative experience and with the use of merger and acquisition entry modes these findings have important implications for theories on subsidiary autonomy

from the editors can i trust your findings ruling out alternative explanations in international business research the complex nature of international business research with its cross country and multilevel nature complicates the empirical identification of relationships among theoretical constructs the objective of this editorial is to provide guidance to help international business scholars navigate this complexity and ensure that readers can trust their findings we provide suggestions for how to rule out alternative explanations explaining key considerations not only in empirical analyses but also in theory building and in research design our discussion covers both qualitative and quantitative studies because we believe that it is imperative to understand how trustworthiness is established in both traditions even for international business researchers who self identify with only one this enables scholars to have a broader scope of knowledge when interpreting past research in the field and to be more adept at explaining their design choices to a diverse audience

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

from the editors common method variance in international business research jibs receives many manuscripts that report findings from analyzing survey data based on same respondent replies this can be problematic since same respondent studies can suffer from common method variance cmv currently authors who submit manuscripts to jibs that appear to suffer from cmv are asked to perform validity checks and resubmit their manuscripts this letter from the editors is designed to outline the current state of best practice for handling cmv in international business research

pricing strategies in a dynamic duopoly a differential game model we formulate a differential game model for dynamic pricing in a duopolistic market firms demand functions are derived from utility maximizing behavior of consumers with the demand for a brand given by the logit model preferences for brands are assumed to evolve over time in the market in a manner akin to learning models postulated in the marketing literature we derive the differential equations governing the equilibrium open loop price paths over time and show that in steady state the brand with the higher preference level charges the higher price the formulation is extended to include the effects of consumer heterogeneity and equilibrium steady state prices are compared with those obtained when heterogeneity is ignored a comparison of steady state dynamic prices with myopic prices is provided an empirical example is discussed to show how steady state model predictions may be obtained from actual longitudinal purchase data

ready to export the role of export readiness for superior export performance of small and medium sized enterprises drawing on the entrepreneurship perspective and the network based view on internationalisation this exploratory study contributes to our understanding of why some exporters succeed while others do not through an empirical examination of export readiness factors the paper provides an operationalisation of export readiness for small and medium sized enterprises smes based on a sample of 96 new zealand smes we find that export readiness is a complex construct involving finance trade and exchange and marketing the study provides evidence that internal export stimuli are important antecedents of export readiness while factors traditionally assumed to be critical to export success such as importing and pre export domestic expansion may not be prerequisites to being export ready finally the study examines the link between export readiness and subsequent initial export performance and finds a strong positive relationship our study contributes to the export literature by providing a deeper and more integrated understanding of the antecedents of export readiness in a small open economy smopec and its implications for subsequent export performance

the energy efficient transformation of eu business enterprises adapting policies to contextual factors abstract business contexts differ in their ability to foster the energy efficient transformation eet of enterprises accordingly energy efficiency policies have to be adapted to different situations the present paper analyzes the relationships between the eet of european union eu business end users and three contextual factors i e high energy prices stringency of regulations and society s alertness toward environment conservation enterprises from 9 eu member states have been grouped according to country industry and size the final sample includes 256 enterprise classes and the model controls for the innovation propensity and energy intensity of each enterprise class our results show that regulatory stringency is the most impactful contextual factor while the environmental alertness of society does not have a significant effect concerns over energy costs have not been found to drive eet per se but more energy intensive enterprise classes are more likely to react to high energy prices we discuss the implications of our results for the eu governments that are currently monitoring and refining the transposition of the 2012 energy efficiency directive

dynamic pricing competition with strategic customers under vertical product differentiation we consider dynamic pricing competition between two firms offering vertically differentiated products to strategic customers who are intertemporal utility maximizers we show that price skimming arises as the unique pure strategy markov perfect equilibrium in the game under a simple condition our results highlight the asymmetric effect of strategic customer behavior on quality differentiated firms even though the profit of either firm decreases as customers become more strategic the low quality firm suffers substantially more than the high quality firm furthermore we show that unilateral commitment to static pricing by either firm generally improves profits of both firms interestingly both firms enjoy higher profit lifts when the high quality firm commits rather than when the low quality firm commits this paper was accepted by yossi aviv operations management

price competition in a capacity constrained duopoly abstract this paper characterizes the set of nash equilibria in a model of price setting duopoly in which each firm has limited capacity and demand is continuous and decreasing in general there is a unique equilibrium so that comparative static exercises are meaningful the properties of the equilibrium conform with a number of stylized facts the equilibrium prices are lower the smaller is demand relative to capacity when demand is in an intermediate range the firms use mixed strategies they randomly hold sales if capacities are chosen simultaneously before prices the set of equilibrium capacities coincides with the set of cournot quantities

asset specificity and foreign market entry mode choice of small and medium sized enterprises the moderating influence of knowledge safeguards and institutional safeguards according to transaction cost economics tce reasoning firms choose equity as opposed to non equity foreign market entry modes to safeguard specific assets the present paper contextualizes the well researched relationship between asset specificity and foreign market entry mode choice by introducing knowledge safeguards international experience host country networks and imitation and institutional safeguards property rights protection and cultural proximity as alternative mechanisms for securing a firm s specific assets testing our hypotheses on a sample of 206 small and medium sized enterprises we find that knowledge safeguards and institutional safeguards weaken the effect of asset specificity on the choice of equity foreign market entry modes contextualizing the relationship between asset specificity and foreign market entry mode choice helps to enhance our understanding of the scope conditions of tce based entry mode studies and beyond

outside in global demand heterogeneity and dynamic capabilities of multinational enterprises we conceptualize the dynamic capabilities of multinational enterprises mnes as learning and adaptation capabilities that address the pressure of global integration and local responsiveness complementing the extant literature on dynamic capabilities which is focused on the supply side our study draws attention to the demand side influences especially in terms of global demand heterogeneity we propose that global demand heterogeneity provides pressures and opportunities for mnes to learn and adapt and thus positively relates to the development of mne dynamic capabilities however external sources per se may be insufficient firm specific advantages particularly human capital at the managerial and employee levels facilitate the internalization of external knowledge and pressure into the development of dynamic capabilities an empirical study of chinese multinational service firms strongly supports these arguments

from the editors how to write articles that are relevant to practice although the journal of international business studies is not a practice oriented journal thinking deeper about the practical relevance of our articles can only help enrich them and help decision makers implement better decisions however while many academic articles in social sciences go to great lengths to explain their theoretical and empirical impact in many cases their explanation of practical relevance is a paragraph in the conclusion section with a few cursory ideas that appear to be an afterthought rather than an integral part of the article here we provide suggestions for crafting a practical implications section that is relevant for decision makers

mentoring across global boundaries an empirical examination of home and host country mentors on expatriate career outcomes there has long been an interest in the effects of mentors on protege career outcomes and with scholars now beginning to examine mentoring across national boundaries using survey information as well as company records for 299 expatriates 163 men 136 women in 10 countries we examined the impact of home and host country mentors upon expatriate effectiveness we found that having a host country mentor had a significant positive effect on the expatriate s organizational knowledge organizational knowledge sharing job performance promotability and perceptions of teamwork having a home country mentor had a significant positive effect only on organizational knowledge job performance and promotability surprisingly our results revealed that having a home country mentor had a significant but negative effect on the expatriate s organization identification and job satisfaction contrary to the literature neither type of mentoring had a significant effect on job tension implications for practice as well as future research are detailed

analysis of the generation of economic results in the different phases of the pro environmental change process abstract much of the research in environmental management has focused on analysing whether a firm s environmental efforts can be considered an argument in favour of or against its economic results concluding that favourable results are not guaranteed but depend on different aspects this paper studies pro environmental change processes in firms focusing on how economic profit is generated during the process of changing to high degrees of environmental proactivity based on a sample of 303 spanish firms located in the aragon region we classify four cluster categories of pro environmental change the description and comparative analysis of these categories leads us to consider that pro environmental change is related to economic performance the study s conclusions show that the economic benefits derived from pro environmental change are greater when said change is more advanced or proactive

customer involvement and service firm internationalization performance an integrative framework to overcome the costs of doing business abroad researchers have suggested either legitimacy or efficiency based solutions however both types of solutions still treat host country customers as external to the theory we highlight the role of customers in the international professional business service setting and argue that customer involvement is positively related to the perceived internationalization performance of multinational corporations mncs mncs with managers who perceive higher legitimacy pressures and greater needs for local knowledge tend to undertake greater efforts to build customer involvement furthermore we develop a configuration framework between perceived strategic needs and mncs capabilities specifically mncs that match relational capability with legitimacy needs and absorptive capacity with knowledge needs are more likely to engage in customer involvement our survey of 175 chinese mncs provides evidence that customer involvement is positively related to perceived internationalization performance when mncs relational capabilities are stronger the positive relationship between legitimacy pressure and customer involvement increases by contrast mncs with greater perceived market ambiguity improve customer involvement only when they have stronger absorptive capacity we conclude that mncs may simultaneously reduce legitimacy and efficiency costs through customer involvement after considering the fit between perceived environmental pressures and firm capabilities

the division of labour is limited by the rate of growth of the market the taiwan machine tool industry in the 1970s in 1974 i visited taiwan to make a study of its machine tool industry amsden 1977 late in 1981 i returned to visit the same factories i had visited seven years earlier in the interim taiwan was transformed from an amateurish supplier of machine tools to southeast asia into the fourth largest exporter of machine tools to the united states cremeans and dalton 1982 this paper analyses the remarkable changes which occurred in the machine tool industry in this short period the object is to study the process of capital accumulation in one industry in a newly industrialising country in order to gain a better understanding of the nature of the process generally between 1970 and 1980 machine tool production in taiwan rose by more than eleven times see table 1 one way to begin to understand the process of capital accumulation is to ask how such an extraordinarily rapid increase in demand alters the nature of production this is the focus adopted in what follows most historians acknowledge a phenomenon of cumulative causation in economic development or decline economies which begin to grow rapidly tend to grow even more rapidly but once growth falters there ensues a self reinforcing downward spiral most economists however recognise only one part of this cumulative process that which runs from technological progress typically taken as exogenous to increases in productivity to increases in output what tends to be ignored is that part which runs from increases in output to increases in productivity with technological change broadly defined sandwiched in between it is this which is examined below

knowledge transfer in multinational corporations productive and counterproductive effects of language sensitive recruitment this paper focuses on the multifaceted role of language and language sensitive recruitment in knowledge transfer in multinational corporations mncs in particular we develop a framework that helps to better understand how language sensitive recruitment is related to competence networks identity and power we started by conducting a qualitative interview based study of 101 mnc subsidiaries this analysis elucidates the productive and counterproductive effects of language sensitive recruitment on knowledge transfer related to communication competence networks identity and power to further understand the productive and counterproductive effects we conducted a quantitative study in 285 mnc subsidiaries we found an inverted u shaped relationship between language sensitive recruitment and knowledge transfer together these two studies provide a better understanding of the multifaceted and at times counterintuitive implications of language sensitive recruitment on knowledge transfer in mncs by elucidating these effects this paper contributes to the stream of research examining the role of language in mncs and international business more generally it further adds to research on mnc knowledge transfer that to date has focused little attention on language by elaborating on the potential unintended consequences of language sensitive recruitment this paper also has implications for international human resource management research

can mergers increase output evidence from the lodging industry we find that hotel mergers increase occupancy in some specifications price also rises because these effects occur only in markets with high capacity utilization and high uncertainty we reject simple models of price or quantity competition in favor of models of revenue management where firms price to fill available capacity in the face of uncertain demand

the impact of environmental management on firm performance environmental management has the potential to play a pivotal role in the financial performance of the firm many individuals suggest that profitability is hurt by the higher production costs of environmental management initiatives while others cite anecdotal evidence of increased profitability a theoretical model is proposed that links strong environmental management to improved perceived future financial performance as measured by stock market performance the linkage to firm performance is tested empirically using financial event methodology and archival data of firm level environmental and financial performance significant positive returns were measured for strong environmental management as indicated by environmental performance awards and significant negative returns were measured for weak environmental management as indicated by environmental crises the implicit financial market valuation of these events also was estimated cross sectional analysis of the environmental award events revealed differences for first time awards and between industries first time award announcements were associated with greater increases in market valuation although smaller increases were observed for firms in environmentally dirty industries possibly indicative of market skepticism this linkage between environmental management and financial performance can be used by both researchers and practitioners as one measure of the benefits experienced by industry leaders and as one criterion against which to measure investment alternatives

the existence of equilibrium in discontinuous economic games i theory the article presents information about the existence of equilibrium in discontinuous economic games in this paper and its sequel presents study the existence of nash equilibrium in games where agents payoff functions are discontinuous the enquiry is motivated by a number of recent studies that have uncovered serious existence problems in seemingly innocuous economic games in the sequel to this paper authors have explained the utility function in the economic games referred to earlier are neither continuous nor quasi concave however they demonstrate that the payoff functions in mildly modified versions of these constructs exhibit two weaker forms of continuity which together with the requirement of quasi concavity suffice for the existence of an equilibrium from this one may conclude that at least in the modified versions of these models discontinuities in the payoff functions are not the real source of the problem rather it is the failure of the payoff functions to the quasi concave which is responsible for the non existence of equilibrium these observations bear on the existence of nash equilibrium in pure strategies

global standardization or national differentiation of hrm practices in multinational companies a comparison of multinationals in five countries drawing on a dataset constructed from a parallel series of nationally representative surveys of multinational companies mncs we compare the performance management pm practices of mncs in the uk ireland canada spain denmark and norway in each country we analyze data relating to mncs from that country and of the foreign affiliates of us mncs we argue that there is evidence of standardization in the nature of practices across countries particularly evident in the analysis of us mncs standardization of practices among mncs is also evident in the rather limited variation in practices between us and indigenous mncs within each country moreover even where there is evidence of variation across and within countries this cannot be fully explained by adaptation to local institutional constraints but rather can be seen as the product of how distinct national contexts can promote the take up of practices

intellectual capital configurations and organizational capability an empirical examination of human resource subunits in the multinational enterprise building on the organizational capabilities literature and theories of the multinational enterprise this paper develops and tests a framework that examines the relationship between intellectual capital configurations and organizational capabilities in human resource hr subunits looking at 187 subunits from 20 mnes findings show that intellectual capital dimensions vary in their usefulness for generating sharing and implementing hr management practices in particular while certain resources may help in the development of one capability they may harm the development of another implications are that an organization s intellectual capital investments will differ depending on the desired capability

the effects of mnc parent effort and social structure on subsidiary absorptive capacity although the literature provides ample evidence that the global transfer and local implementation of knowledge represents a key advantage for multinational corporations mncs we lack comparable understanding as to whether knowledge creating mnc parents can actively expand the absorptive capacity of their subsidiaries using a teacher student lens this study examines the combined impact of specific structural mechanisms and motivational processes by mnc parents on the ability of 216 subsidiaries to absorb parent initiated marketing strategies the findings reveal that mnc parents can indeed cultivate subsidiaries ability to appropriate marketing knowledge through a combination of adopting specific social structures and investing in particular efforts however the effect of social structure on subsidiary absorptive capacity is indirect and accounted for by the parents intensity of effort a number of theoretical implications emerge from the findings for research on absorptive capacity in relation to the role of the knowledge source the need to examine organizational influences in relation to one another and validating the original absorptive capacity dimensions for managers in the global marketplace the findings lead to the suggestion that mncs devote attention to nurturing the absorptive capacities at different organizational levels in order to optimize the global transfer of knowledge

attitudes towards women s career advancement in latin america the moderating impact of perceived company international proactiveness while companies operating in latin america have witnessed increased female leadership participation the region remains characterized by traditional gender role attitudes this juxtaposition of traditional machismo attitudes towards women along with progress in women s leadership participation make this setting ideal for examining a topic of continued worldwide debate women s career advancement this study examines attitudes towards the career advancement of women a historically marginalized group in latin america building on the extant literature we test the negative association between traditional gender role orientations and attitudes towards women s career advancement both directly and via a mediated relationship through acceptance of women in the workplace we then theoretically and empirically extend this literature by examining an important context related moderator a company s international proactiveness which we contend serves as a mechanism for keeping traditional machismo attitudes from manifesting we examine these relationships within a sample of 973 respondents within the latin american countries of argentina bolivia brazil chile colombia dominican republic ecuador mexico panama peru and venezuela our findings support our hypotheses and provide practical insight into the important yet generally not considered effects of a company s internationalization efforts on attitudes towards the career advancement of women

trans specialization understanding in international technology alliances the influence of cultural distance in the information age the firm s performance hinges on combining partners specialist knowledge to achieve value co creation combining knowledge from different specialties could be a costly process in the international technology alliances itas context we argue that the combination of different specializations requires the development of trans specialization understanding tsu instead of the internalization of partners specialist knowledge this article examines the extent to which inter firm governance in itas shapes tsu and whether the development of tsu is endangered by cultural distance we hypothesize that relational governance product modularity and cultural distance influence tsu development which in turn influences firm performance we collected data from 110 non equity itas between software and hardware firms participating in the mobile device sector we analyzed the data using partial least squares path modeling our findings suggest that tsu largely depends on product modularity and relational governance in alliances however while cultural distance negatively moderates the path from relational governance to tsu it has no effect on the relationship between product modularity and tsu based on this we conclude that product modularity can substitute for relational governance when strong relational norms are not well developed in international alliances thus cultural distance does not invariably amount to a liability in itas

extending the internationalization process model increases and decreases of mne commitment in emerging economies the internationalization process model suggests that firms internationalize by building positions in foreign markets and networks following iterative cycles of learning and changes in commitment however as subsidiaries evolve commitments may be decreased as well as increased a phenomenon that has rarely been studied moreover it remains an open question why strategic intentions at the outset of an investment project differ from the actual operations established we address these questions by extending the model and combining it with mintzberg and waters framework of strategy formation specifically we suggest that commitment decisions correspond to statements of intended strategy while network positions correspond to realized strategies the processes of learning opportunity creation and trust building triggered by commitment decisions are however moderated by institutional influences that lead to divergences between realized and intended strategies we test propositions derived from this framework on a survey data set of subsidiaries of multinational enterprises in hungary lithuania and poland and find that institutional voids and institutional uncertainty affect subsidiary strategy implementation but in opposing directions under high institutional uncertainty investors prefer low commitment but flexible modes that enable later commitment increases whereas institutional voids increase up front information search and adaptation costs that reduce the likelihood of early post entry adjustments our analysis reinforces the need for more differentiated theoretical analyses of how institutions affect business strategies over time

repeated auctions with budgets in ad exchanges approximations and design ad exchanges are emerging internet markets where advertisers may purchase display ad placements in real time and based on specific viewer information directly from publishers via a simple auction mechanism advertisers join these markets with a prespecified budget and participate in multiple second price auctions over the length of a campaign this paper studies the competitive landscape that arises in ad exchanges and the implications for publishers decisions the presence of budgets introduces dynamic interactions among advertisers that need to be taken into account when attempting to characterize the bidding landscape or the impact of changes in the auction design to this end we introduce the notion of a fluid mean field equilibrium fmfe that is behaviorally appealing and computationally tractable and in some important cases it yields a closed form characterization we establish that an fmfe approximates well the rational behavior of advertisers in these markets we then show how this framework may be used to provide sharp prescriptions for key auction design decisions that publishers face in these markets in particular we show that ignoring budgets a common practice in this literature can result in significant profit losses for the publisher when setting the reserve price this paper was accepted by dimitris bertsimas optimization

global delivery models the role of talent speed and time zones in the global outsourcing industry global delivery models gdms are transforming the global it and business process outsourcing industry gdms are a new form of client specific investment promoting service integration with clients by combining client proximity with time zone spread for 24 7 service operations we investigate antecedents and contingencies of setting up gdm structures based on comprehensive data we show that providers are likely to establish gdm location configurations when clients value access to globally distributed talent and speed of service delivery in particular when services are highly commoditized findings imply that coordination across time zones increasingly affects international operations in business to business and born global industries

international knowledge brokerage and returnees entrepreneurial decisions based on the knowledge brokerage literature and the international entrepreneurship literature we investigate whether returnees international knowledge transfer affects their entrepreneurial decisions and the extent to which this relationship is contingent on perceived supportive policies for returnee entrepreneurship and returnees difficulties with cross cultural readjustment in their home countries analyzing first hand survey data we find a positive relationship between international knowledge transfer and returnees decisions to become entrepreneurs this positive relationship is strengthened by the perception of the home country s supportive policies for returnee entrepreneurship but is weakened by returnees perceived difficulties in readjusting to the local norms and culture in their home countries

dynamic oligopoly pricing evidence from the airline industry we explore how pricing dynamics in the european airline industry vary with the competitive environment our results highlight substantial variations in pricing dynamics that are consistent with a theory of intertemporal price discrimination first the rate at which prices increase towards the scheduled travel date is decreasing in competition supporting the idea that competition restrains the ability of airlines to price discriminate second the sensitivity to competition is substantially increasing in the heterogeneity of the customer base reecting further that restraints on price discrimination are only relevant if there is initial scope for price discrimination these patterns are quantitatively important explaining about 83 percent of the total within ight price dispersion and explaining 17 percent of the observed cross market variation of pricing dynamics

bertrand edgeworth oligopoly in large markets the relation between perfectly competitive and monopolistically competitive equilibria is analysed for a bertrand edgeworth model of a single market in which capacity constrained firms choose prices as strategies the market always has a nash equilibrium in pure or mixed strategies as the number of firms increases the corresponding equilibria converge in distribution to a perfectly competitive price this result provides a justification for perfect competition that is based on an explicit account of price formation however monopoly prices persist with a positive but vanishing probability regularity or well defined inverse demand functions are not required

letter from the editor in chief jibs publication criteria and their consequences overview of jibs 41 7 this issue of jibs contains eight articles that were all submitted to my editorial team the topics span a wide range of issues in international business ib studies each article makes a valuable contribution to ib research when assessed on the jibs three fold criteria for publication fit quality and contribution the issue opens with an article by ambos andersson and birkinshaw examining the consequences of initiative taking in mne subsidiaries in terms of bargaining power autonomy and influence two articles on institutions and ib follow chacar newburry and vissa on the role of home country institutions in performance persistence research and kim kim and hoskisson on the impact of institutional change on performance of business group mnes in korea sun mellahi and thun conduct a qualitative study of political embeddedness of foreign mnes in the chinese automotive industry the impact of returnee entrepreneurs fdi and interfirm employee mobility in affecting the innovation performance of chinese high tech firms is studied in liu lu filatotchev buck and wright the next two papers focus on international marketing dou li zhou and su analyze relationship satisfaction between global professional service firms and their clients in china lastly sinkovics jean and cavusgil examine the role played by information technology in international customer supplier relationships in taiwan the issue concludes with an article by colantone and sleuwaegen examining the impacts of globalization through international trade flows on the entry and exit patterns of manufacturing firms in eight european countries

dynamic price competition with discrete customer choices abstract for many years dynamic pricing has proven to be an effective tool to increase revenue in the airline and other service industries most studies however focused on monopolistic models and ignored the fact that nowadays consumers can easily compare prices on the internet in this paper we develop a game theoretic model to describe real time dynamic price competition between firms that sell substitutable products by assuming the real time inventory levels of all firms are public information we show the existence of nash equilibrium we then discuss how a firm can adapt if it knows only the initial but not the real time inventory levels of its competitors we compare a firm s expected revenue under different information structures through numerical experiments

limits to international entry mode learning in smes despite extensive research the literature is unclear about the circumstances under which a firm learns from its past foreign entry modes and how this experiential learning is related to future mode choices building on the internationalization process ip model and the idea that some experiential learning is location bound while other learning is non location bound we develop and test theory to explain how experiential learning about foreign operation modes and markets impact future mode choices in new foreign markets overall we argue that mode based experiential learning is limited through the repeated use of a specific operation mode firms develop routines and processes that are non location bound and can be replicated in new foreign markets leading to the use of this same mode type in new locations but when complemented by experiential learning about a target market region firms opt for operation modes with greater commitment in new foreign markets drawing on a sample of german smes and examining four different types of entry modes we find some support however we also identify a number of notable exceptions to our theory in this way we help provide unique new insights informing future ip model experiential learning and international entry mode research

the rate of surplus value in the postwar us economy a critique of weisskopf s estimates the rate of surplus value is one of the three key variables in marx s theory of capitalist crises along with the rate of profit and the composition of capital marx expected a secular tendency for the rate of surplus value to increase owing to the rise in labour productivity under capitalism in marx s theory the necessary condition for an increase in the rate of surplus value is that the productivity of labour increases faster than the average real wage marx argued that in general this condition would be fulfilled because of downward pressure on wages exerted by a large and growing reserve army of unem ployed workers marx 1977 chs 17 and 25 moseley 1982 ch 4 marx argued further that this increase in the rate of surplus value would delay but not prevent the tendency of the rate of profit to fall owing to a rise in the composition of capital marx 1982 part 3 weisskopf 1979 argued that the profit share of total income is a reasonable proxy for marx s concept of the rate of surplus value p 343 he estimated the profit share in the non financial corporate business nfcb sector of the us economy over the period 1949 1975 1 showing a secular decline of 28 over the period of study p 351 table 2 contrary to marx s expectation of a secular increase in the rate of surplus value 2 however there is a fundamental theoretical problem with weisskopf s estimates namely that they do not take into account marx s distinction between productive labour and unproductive labour a number of authors have argued that marx s distinction between productive labour and unproductive labour is an integral part of his theory of value and surplus value and that his concepts of surplus value and variable capital the

strategic alliance based sourcing and market performance evidence from foreign firms operating in china although foreign multinational firms from the triad regions increasingly use mainland china as both a sourcing and a marketing location no study has directly examined the sourcing strategy performance linkage using resource complementarity and resource dependence theory we extend the sourcing literature and apply these perspectives to an important transitional economy china these two theoretical perspectives suggest that product and uncertainty factors moderate the relationship between strategic alliance based sourcing sa sourcing of major components and market performance we find that at low levels of product innovativeness and technological uncertainty the use of sa sourcing is positively related to market performance however the effects of product differentiation and demand uncertainty on the sourcing performance relationship are insignificant journal of international business studies 2005 36 187 208 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400120