towards a vanishing middle competition in the world garment industry abstract the international garment industry falls broadly into two segments one which may be referred to as the fashion segment is governed by competition based on new product introduction and quality improvements the other segment comprising of mass produced garments is governed by price competition while there is some evidence that the fashion sector is growing in importance our concern in this paper will be the price competitive sector which has been and continues to be predominantly the main arena in which newly industrializing and developing countries participate

distributed energy infrastructure paradigm community microgrids in a new institutional economics context abstract this paper provides a theoretical framework based on new institutional economics nie concepts to guide the development of community microgrids given limited application thus far of such energy systems this paper also draws on empirical studies and experiences from the planning and development of other public community infrastructure and utility services in the development of this framework it links an efficient ownership and governance structure with transactional characteristics such as asset idiosyncrasy frequency and uncertainty defined in section 3 1 the key role of the customers and the microgrid service provider and more specifically their bilateral monopoly relationship and its effects on the choice of institutional structure is highlighted the paper examines the optimum conditions for public private or hybrid financial ownership and for unified or network governance through long term contracting this allows ex ante investment uncertainty and ex post appropriation risks to be efficiently managed the analysis suggests that long term contract completeness future demand for electricity and level of uncertainty are the determining factors in the selection of institutional structure this has significant real world implications for the communities seeking to achieve electricity self sufficiency and environmental benefits through community microgrids service providers and other private or public actors

policy technology and management strategies for achieving sustainable agricultural intensification considerable agreement exists among researchers development practitioners and policymakers regarding the goals of sustainable agricultural intensification sai they include achieving agricultural productivity growth household food security and improved rural livelihoods and employment while simultaneously mitigating environmental degradation however the multiplicity of these objectives as well as the choice of approaches to achieving them and the site and context specificity of specific technological and institutional interventions assures that the research and policy challenges to achieving sai will remain considerable this article summarizes the contributions of the articles in this special issue in four areas of the literature first labor market constraints the labor intensity of specific agricultural technologies and practices and labor s substitutability or complementarity with other inputs are shown to widely influence their viability and related input efficiencies second the articles identify specific tradeoffs and synergistic relationships that arise in the attainment of these multiple goals stemming from technologies management practices and policies introduced under specific agroclimatic market and institutional conditions third these papers contribute to the literature on agricultural technology adoption by furnishing additional empirical evidence on the determinants and effects of investment behavior and adoption of specific technologies and management practices finally the articles in this special issue emphasize that there is no single policy nor technological management or institutional innovation that unambiguously promotes sai preferred policies must be contextualized and sensitive to initial biophysical market and institutional conditions

mergers acquisitions and innovation performance in the telecommunications equipment industry the worldwide telecommunications equipment industry has experienced an enormous number of mergers and acquisitions m a this article examines the innovation determinants of m a activity a

toward a theory of conflict in the franchise system abstract a focused review of the literature is presented in support of a definition of franchising as an interorganizational form examined from the entrepreneurship perspective then microeconomic and relational exchange theories provide guidance within a transaction cost economics theoretical framework to begin the formulation of a theory of conflict in franchising the analysis provided in this article involves business format franchising we submit that the essential core and uniqueness of business format franchising is the relationship between the franchisee and franchisor our definition of franchising requires a review of individual franchisee and franchisor organizational structures therefore our theoretical analysis begins with a fundamental look at the economic structural differences of the average franchisor and franchisee firms using microeconomic theory this review points to the potential for conflict in profit maximizing behavior between franchisee and franchisor the likelihood is that the differences in behavior will manifest in pricing promotion and new store development next because most business format franchising is contractually based and long term we investigate the theoretical support for establishing and continuing a relationship with fundamental areas of conflict relational exchange theory is used for this analysis transaction cost economics provides a perspective on the governance of the interorganizational form and guides us in the investigation of the ongoing state of the relationship a key to transaction cost analysis is shared assets in the relationship and the degree of transferability of those assets therefore building and maintaining the franchise trademark becomes the theoretical focus for governance of the relationship we propose that franchisor provided services is the principal method of franchisor contract fulfillment and is the framework for informal governance of the relationship the importance and adequacy of the transactions between the franchisee and franchisor affect the perceived value of the trademark and are key to continuing the franchise relationship finally the conflict literature is briefly reviewed to provide a context for the discussion of conflict in franchising and to illustrate that conflict can have a positive or negative effect on the relationship

an evolutionary model of bertrand oligopoly we analyze the long run outcome of markets in which boundedly rational firms with a decreasing returns to scale technology compete in prices the behavior of these firms is based on limitation of success and experimentation in this framework we introduce a new approach to model boundedly rational behavior based on the idea of behavioral principles i e formal descriptions even with the simplest ones the result is that the prices announced are a strict refinement of the set of nash equilibria with more sophisticated behavioral principles the long run outcome corresponds to the concept of central prices wich are also nash equilibria introduced here this is a robust and clear cut prediction wich under quadratic costs and arbitrary demand essentially coincides with the walrasian equilibrium

does observance of religious holidays affect agricultural productivity and household welfare evidence from rural ethiopia abstract this study examines whether traditional customs affect household s welfare by taking the case of the work prohibition related with religion in rural ethiopia although the anecdotal evidence suggests that work prohibition by the ethiopian orthodox church to observe the religious holidays is one of the reasons for the high poverty incidence in ethiopia the estimation results do not show that there is a significant effect of the number of religious holidays observed on agricultural productivity and household welfare observance of religious holidays affects crop choice and income source

imitation by price and quantity setting firms in a differentiated market abstract we study the evolution of imitation behaviour in a differentiated market where firms are located equidistantly on a salop circle firms choose price and quantity simultaneously leaving open the possibility for non market clearing outcomes the strategy of the most successful firm is imitated behaviour in the stochastically stable outcome depends on the level of market differentiation and corresponds exactly with the nash equilibrium outcome of the underlying stage game for high level of differentiation firms end up at the monopoly outcome for intermediate level of differentiation they gravitate to a mutually non aggressive outcome where price is higher than the monopoly price for low level of differentiation firms price at a mark up above the marginal cost market clearing always results endogenously

questions on international trade in textiles and clothing questions of importance for the negotiations on the extension of the arrangement regarding international trade in textiles focus on i relative importance of trade in textiles and clothing ii the participants in this trade iii products that succeed for developing countries iv market penetration in developed country markets v overall trends and vi effects of protectionist activities six conclusions are drawn 1 developed countries continue to generate the bulk of the world s exports of textiles 2 industries in developing countries are too small to threaten the developed countries industries 3 developed countries collectively enjoy a large and sustained surplus in textile trade offset by a larger and growing deficit in clothing 4 only hong kong south korea taiwan and india have large trade surpluses among developing countries 5 import penetration by developing countries is modest and 6 because of protection developing countries exports of textiles and clothing have no longer outstripped the growth of all trade in textiles and clothing since 1976

industrial districts old wine in new bottles harrison b 1992 industrial districts old wine in new bottles reg studies 26 469 483 according to the theory of industrial districts a new wave of economic growth is being led in a number of regions in europe north america and east asia by spatially concentrated networks of mostly small and medium sized enterprises often using flexible production technology and characterized by extensive local interfirm linkages does this amount to a re emergence of the dominance of what urban and regional economists call agglomeration economies over the well known pressures on business to spatially disperse its operations neoclassical economic theorizing from marshall to perroux provides one perspective on the contemporary industrial district phenomenon another is afforded by granovetter s more recent elaboration of the ideas of embedding under and over socialization confronting each of these theoretical approaches with the other leads me to conclude that the industrial district prototypes involv

survival at the center the stability of minimum differentiation abstract we model a hotelling market with multidimensional product differentiation in an evolutionary framework both evolutionary stability in the sense of schaffer 1989 and stochastic stability following kandori et al 1993 young 1993 are analyzed it is shown that firms move towards the center in product space i e a principle of minimum differentiation on all dimensions of the product space applies

public versus private sector procurement ethics and strategy what each sector can learn from the other the government purchasing market constitutes the largest business sector in the world while marketers would benefit from a deep understanding of both sectors how the two sectors differ in terms of ethics and strategy largely remains unknown the purpose of this research therefore is to explore differences between the for profit and not for profit sectors on two critical aspects of business to business procurement ethics and strategy using survey data from a sample of 328 procurement professionals in the for profit and not for profit sectors key differences are explored findings suggest that buyers in the for profit sector are more likely to behave opportunistically conversely the buyers leaders in the not for profit sector behave more opportunistically and are more willing to turn a blind eye to their subordinate buyers opportunistic behaviors in addition key differences in procurement strategy are unveiled suggesting that not for profit procurement practices have some room for improvement based on the findings theoretical and managerial implications are drawn and a future research agenda is proposed

cross border mergers and acquisitions by oil and gas multinational enterprises geography based view of energy strategy abstract given that global crude oil prices are significantly dropped and business consolidation transactions are markedly increased in recent years this paper to date is the first to examine the cross border merger and acquisition strategy of oil and gas multinational enterprises using a fine tuned sample of 150 large scale oil acquisition transactions us 535 billion announced by oil and gas enterprises from over 50 countries during the period 2005 2015 we endeavor to answer four fundamental research questions who is where what for who is there why who is where and there and who is a serial acquirer to do so we propose an integrated framework of geography based view of energy strategy by leveraging theoretical insights from the energy economic geography international business strategy and corporate finance literature on top of that we discuss the dynamics of the oil and gas industry and show the remarkable trends in the crude oil prices over the past three decades 1990 2016 our geographic analyses highlight that state owned oil companies from asia and a less extent europe have rapidly expanded into resource rich countries such as canada and the us to secure oil reserves as well as acquire industry specific strategic assets this research contributes to the geography based view of energy strategy and discusses policy and managerial implications to sustain the world oil and gas industry

does being r d intensive still discourage outsourcing evidence from dutch manufacturing being r d intensive has traditionally been seen as an impediment to outsourcing this study confirms that empirically this was the case for a set of manufacturing industries in the netherlands in the early 1990s but also shows that r d intensity became a positive predictor for changes in outsourcing levels over the 1990s suggesting firms in r d intensive industries have increasingly started to rely on partnership relations with outside suppliers this confirms the need to move the analysis from scale opportunism and appropriation concerns to a relational perspective when studying outsourcing in r d intensive industries

global and local subcontracting space ethnicity and the organization of apparel production abstract labor intensive apparel production has shifted to low wage asian nations yet continues to flourish in the united states and other high wage areas this paper explains this apparent contradiction by concluding that in addition to labor costs firm size ethnicity market strategy and trade regulations powerfully affect the location of apparel production large firms are more able to disperse production globally than small firms us based firms owned by ethnic asians are more likely to produce in asian factories than firms of other ethnicities and firms producing for rapidly changing fashion markets are less likely to produce offshore than firms producing less fashion intensive products finally trade restrictions powerfully affect the location of production albeit in ways different than intended by policy makers

imitation and price competition in a differentiated market abstract we study the stable market outcome that evolves in a spatially differentiated market when price competing firms choose actions by imitation of the most profitable firm we compare and contrast the stable outcomes under two imitation procedures one where each firm immediately imitates the most profitable firm and the other when a firm imitates another firm only if it is more profitable while being sufficiently similar in context of the market segment it operates in or sufficiently close in either case the symmetric pure strategy nash equilibrium is always a stable outcome however when imitation of the most profitable firm is immediate and market differentiation is moderate states with prices lower than the nash equilibrium are also stable in contrast when imitation of the most profitable firm is more gradual and market differentiation is below a threshold states with prices above the nash equilibrium are also stable thus while competitive evolutionary pressure in this imitation based model does result in the nash equilibrium always being stable other outcomes may be stable as well interestingly the states that are stable under gradual imitation give the firms a higher profit than the stable states under immediate imitation

the stability of american markets much of the evidence of coordination between corporations and their markets comes from cross sectional conducted within portions of the american economy during the past two decades we know especially for manufacturing during the late 1960s that certain structural qualities of markets predict profits and the organization of large firms but this evidence is open to an uncomfortable empirical question to what extent did the social structural qualities determining resource dependence in american markets change during the 1960s and 1970s so as to limit the generalizability of cross sectional evidence the analysis here shows that markets were dramatically stable in he social structure of production relations known to predict the structure of large firms relying principally on department of commerce data the article traces the american economy through the 1960s and 1970s in terms of 77 broadly defined markets describing the stability of market boundaries and patterns of transactions with suppliers and c

offshoring and the global distribution of work implications for task interdependence theory and practice a recent offshoring research network orn global survey of offshoring shows that since 2004 management concerns about operational issues on achieving the benefits of offshoring have increased significantly in this paper we examine inter task interdependence a key operational determinant of inter site interaction and communications in offshoring we analyze existing theories of interdependence to examine the extent to which they provide guidance for understanding the interaction and communication requirements between work segments that are offshored and distributed across the globe using a series of mini cases on globally distributed work gdw we show how the traditional typology of interdependence developed in the 1960s and 1970s is no longer adequate for understanding and managing task interdependencies in gdw we propose three concepts to address this problem integration interdependence hand offs and information stickiness we then show how our revised typology of interdependence enables a better understanding of the interactions and communication requirements between sites using this revised theory we propose guidelines for work design and examine their implications for practical offshoring and work distribution decisions implications for theory and practice for mnes engaged in offshore relationships are discussed

supply chain perspective on competitive strategies and green supply chain management strategies due to strategic motivations and pressures from various stakeholders firms are adopting green supply chain management gscm practices to extend environmental sustainability objectives to suppliers although it seems that an increasing number of firms is seeing environmental sustainability as a source of competitive advantage there is a large gap of research focusing explicitly on the connection between competitive strategy and gscm it is also necessary to examine gscm practices in several operational contexts this article refines the competitive strategy approach and examines external gscm strategies along the tiers of supply chain from the perspective of logistics users and providers using a dataset of 128 manufacturing 110 trading and 144 logistics firms operating in finland the results reveal a connection between competitive strategy and gscm strategy marketing differentiators and firms pursuing hybrid strategies tend to use more advanced gscm strategies to manage the environmental performance of their suppliers for them gscm seems to be a way to differentiate products and services and to minimise the risk of potential losses resulting from poor environmental performance by suppliers the results highlight the need to understand the role of competitive strategy in gscm adoption both in academia and in business

costly information and the evolution of self organization in a small complex economy abstract the core idea of evolution is that order in living systems emerges from a simple process of variation and selection in biological systems we usually understand the source of variation as best described by the mechanisms of genetics if human social systems are evolutionary systems however it would seem the variation that most explains the sources of change in these systems occurs not from a genetic mechanism but from individual learning we use an evolutionary computational methodology to explore the way individual learning and adaptation lead to the evolution of persistent self organized social and economic activity the basic idea behind these explorations is that the character and extent of self organizing social and economic activity depends upon the way the environment frames the costs of individual learning and adaptation we consider three different kinds of costs affecting learning and adaptation the costs of autonomous searching of communicating and of deciding individuals respond to these costs by carefully i e economically choosing to learn about and interact with familiar agents in familiar arenas in which they have relatively secure expectations about the outcome of their actions emerging from these choices are persistent relationships among agents that lead to social and economic structure and to the imperfect coordination of aggregate production the character and the extent of each are a function of the way the costs of information change with changing natural and human system conditions we use a learning classifier system lcs to model learning the logic of an lcs closely mimics the mechanisms of darwinian evolution but is applied to the evolution of an agent s decision rules we describe the environmental context necessary for an lcs to produce economizing behavior and apply the method to a multi agent simulation of the maine lobster fishery which we treat as a metaphor for competition based on the search for useful knowledge the structure and method of the model is similar to a conventional agent based model except we use lcs to evolve decision rules for each agent rather than supplying those rules ourselves this allows agents to change their behavior i e to learn and adapt as their environment changes modeling learning and adaptation as the source of behavioral variation makes it possible to use evolutionary theory to address important questions of social and economic emergence not possible with current methods

capital market development and firm restructuring during an economic shock we conceptualize capital markets in terms of resource access and governance and argue that more developed capital markets facilitate firm restructuring through more effective provision of capital and governance of transactions we then develop a contingency model that specifies that the effects of capital market development on restructuring vary by 1 types of restructuring 2 the nature of the economic environments and 3 firms access to resources we evaluate a broad range of restructuring actions among independent firms and business group affiliates in singapore and south korea before and during the economic shock of 1998 1999 results support our predictions of the impact of capital market development and of contingencies and highlight the value of incorporating an external capital markets perspective to complement internally focused theoretical explanations for firm restructuring

a framework to facilitate institutional arrangements for smallholder supply in developing countries an agribusiness perspective the industrialization of agriculture and the potential problem of small scale farmer marginalization calls for a fresh approach to the design of agribusiness supply chain arrangements in developing countries the objective of the paper is to contribute to a better understanding of institutional arrangements that can promote stable smallholder agribusiness contracting arrangements in a developing country context a case study approach incorporating a transaction cost framework is used to test whether trust can significantly change the contract characteristics of supply the results suggest that although the presence of trust can influence the contract characteristics of a supply arrangement it may not be significant because of other factors in a developing country context bearing this in mind a number of institutional arrangements are recommended in order to promote more stable contract conditions

strategies for sustainable intensification in east african highlands labor use and input efficiency strategies for poverty alleviation and sustainable natural resource management usually focus on land use options for improving yields increasing the returns to critical factors requires possibilities for input substitution inadequate timing of input applications or nonavailability of complementary factors can seriously hinder this substitution such constraints particularly apply in less favored areas where soil organic matter content is too low for enabling efficient nutrient uptake and soil structure limits water infiltration and moisture retention this article focuses attention on the importance of labor for crop management activities and input applications that enhance input efficiency in highland area cropping systems of northern ethiopia given the inherent complementarities between labor and nutrient supply during critical phases of the plant growth process input efficiency strongly depends on labor use we present a semiparametric bioeconomic modeling approach to analyze the available options for improving input efficiency in agricultural production input response equations are used that consider the returns per unit of land and labor as a function of specific combinations of material inputs and management practices critical trade offs may arise when opportunity costs for labor are considered or when complementary factors appear as binding constraints the model enables assessment of feasible pathways for enhancing sustainable intensification and poverty alleviation in typical settings of the east african highland region

the economics of organization the transaction cost approach the transaction cost approach to the study of economic organization regards the transaction as the basic unit of analysis and holds that an understanding of transaction cost economizing is central to the study of organizations applications of this approach require that transactions be dimensionalized and that alternative governance structures be described economizing is accomplished by assigning transactions to governance structures in a discriminating way the approach applies both to the determination of efficient boundaries as between firms and markets and to the organization of internal transactions including the design of employment relations the approach is compared and contrasted with selected parts of the organization theory literature

the evolution of walrasian behavior consider an evolutionary context where a given number of quantity setting oligopolists tend to mimic successful behavior occasionally experimenting with some small probability in this context it is shown that the unique long run outcome of the process has all firms playing walrasian i e choosing an output that maximizes profits when taking the market clearing price as given

flexible specialization and small size the case of caribbean tourism abstract if export industrialization was fashionable in the 1960s and 1970s today flexible specialization is definitely in appealing to the very heart of the developing world traditional small scale and craft production flexible specialization has become the new passport to development this article cautions that the prescription of small scale flexible specialization piore and sable 1984 leads to a very dangerous kind of optimism in the developing world the danger lies in equating flexibility with small size this is because small size may not be necessary and certainly is not a sufficient condition for flexible specialization the keys to flexible specialization lie elsewhere in information technology applications networks synergies systems gains scope economies production and organizational flexibility not in small size this argument is developed with reference to the caribbean tourist industry a comparative analysis of jamaica s superclub hotel chain and italy s benetton textile company is undertaken this is done with a view to determining the factors in the success of their flexible specialization strategies implications for policy are drawn out

a nonparametric approach to the von liebig paris technology we develop the dual implications of the von liebig paris nutrient response technology and parametric and nonparametric tests for this technology we discuss the nonparametric approach using two different representations corresponding to optimistic and pessimistic nonparametric approximations of the technology application of the nonparametric approach to two experimental data sets and to two data sets generated by monte carlo methods confirms the presence of yield plateaus but provides mixed evidence regarding input nonsubstitution the optimistic representation exhibits virtually no input substitution while the pessimistic representation shows considerable substitutability

transaction cost economics in global sourcing assessing regional differences and implications for performance this paper addresses two gaps in current research on transaction cost economics tce first the fundamental claim suggesting that firms that align their governance structure to transactions according to tce perform better than those that do not and second the application of tce to global sourcing transactions a research model is presented and evaluated using a set of 150 relationships between swiss buyers and foreign suppliers the findings suggest that there are significant differences in how transactions and governance structures are aligned with varying performance and with suppliers from western europe as compared to suppliers from other regions

caricom countries and appropriate technology abstract caricom governments believe that the growth and development of regional economies depend upon export oriented production moreover they are liberalizing their trade regimes in this environment some writers are urging them to adopt a more appropriate namely labor intensive technology this paper contends that the commitment to export oriented production the liberalization of trade regimes the shortage of financial resources and the poverty of regional infrastructure preclude the adoption of a labor intensive technology it therefore concludes that within the context of caricom the most appropriate technology is the most recent which is also the most capital intensive

can caricom countries replicate the singapore experience this article tries to ascertain whether caricom countries1 can replicate the economic success of singapore based on export oriented industrialisation whereas it is possible for caricom countries to increase exports of some manufactures to industrial countries the article contends that export oriented policies currently urged upon caricom countries will not effect a replication of the singapore experience in an age of growing protectionism rapid technological change an inadequate indigenous social infrastructure and existing labour relations in the region

bounded rationality lifecycle consumption and social security abstract this paper explores an overlapping generations model of bounded rationality in which consumers only foresee the future over a subset of their life span we focus in particular on whether the model can in general equilibrium produce a hump shaped lifecycle consumption profile with a peak that matches data for the average u s consumer for a simple four period model we show that an increasing income profile along with exogenously imposed retirement are sufficient to induce a hump with no other mechanism that can account for a hump besides bounded rationality the model best fits the salient features of consumption data with a planning horizon of 20 years which is well supported by the behavioral evidence found in surveys on retirement planning finally we show that the age of the consumption peak is robust to the introduction of social security mortality risk and another species of bounded rationality quasihyperbolic discounting moreover social security can be welfare improving with a short planning horizon we can calibrate the model to jointly explain the timing of the consumption hump and the optimality of the current social security system with quasihyperbolic discounting instead we can calibrate the model so the current social security system is optimal but we cannot also account for the timing of the consumption hump if we add quasihyperbolic discounting in addition to a short planning horizon the present bias has a negligible effect in equilibrium

should buyers or sellers organize trade in a frictional market to answer the question in the title this article characterizes the socially efficient organization of the market with search frictions the efficient organization depends on the relative elasticity in the supply between the two sides of the market the costs of participating in the market and organizing trade and the a symmetry in matching we also show that the social optimum can be implemented by a realistic market equilibrium where the organizers set up trading sites to direct the other side s search the results provide a unified explanation for why trade has often been organized by sellers in the goods market by buyers firms in the labor market and by both sides in the asset market the analysis also sheds light on how the efficient market organization can change with innovations such as e commerce and just in time production

a cross country input output analysis of intersectoral relationships between manufacturing and services and their employment implications abstract the paper examines the nature and the evolution of intersectoral relationships between manufacturing and services at different stages of industrialization as revealed by a cross country comparative analysis of input output tables of 26 countries at different income levels this paper suggests among many other findings that the intersectoral relationships between manufacturing and services generally characterize asymmetrical dependence namely service activities tend to depend on the manufacturing sector as a source of inputs to a far greater extent than vice versa moreover the employment absorptive capacity of the manufacturing sector is seriously underestimated when one only measures the direct employment effect of the manufacturing sector and ignores the intersectoral demand of the manufacturing sector for service inputs and its income induced demand for various types of services in effect the capability of the service sector to generate and sustain a high level of employment critically hinges upon its vital linkages with the manufacturing sector

evolution to equilibrium in an asymmetric oligopoly with differentiated goods abstract we present results on finite population evolutionarily stable strategies esss and stochastically stable states for a model of evolution with an imitative rule of strategy choice in an asymmetric oligopoly with differentiated goods and two groups of firms one group of low cost firms and one of high cost firms the firms play price setting and quantity setting oligopoly games under linear demand functions we will show that the stochastically stable state in a price setting oligopoly and that in a quantity setting oligopoly coincide

the textile and clothing industries under the fifth kondratieff wave some insights from the case of hong kong abstract this paper proposes that the world s textile and clothing industries have become increasing vertically disintegrated with a few flexible production regions the cream portion engaging in creative innovative dynamic and high value added activities and an expanding number and spatial extent of regions the cake portion taking part in low value added activities in between is an artificial layer protected by the international regulatory framework this layer has characteristics of both the cream and cake layers on the one hand the labor force in this layer suffers from low job mobility and low paid blue collar work of the cake portion and is dominated by female semi skilled workers on the other hand industrialists and governments in this layer enjoy the profits and high export values of the cream portion under the fifth kondratieff wave the textile and clothing industries have become increasingly coordinated and controlled by a thinner cream layer over time regions in the cake portion will find it increasingly difficult to transform themselves into cream because of deep seated structural and geographic differences

clothing chips and competitive advantage the impact of microelectronics on trade and production in the garment industry abstract this paper presents the results of a research project which examined the impact of microelectronics on the nature of production and the patterns of international trade in the clothing industry empirical evidence is given on the effects of microelectronics related innovations currently being used by clothing manufacturers in the developed countries radical innovations have been introduced in the pre assembly stage which have revolutionized this phase of production in contrast the introduction of microelectronics into assembly technology is still limited as a result the clothing industry remains reliant on labor intensive techniques that place it at a competitive disadvantage compared to low wage developing countries hence the determinants of international competitive advantage in the industry remain largely unaltered however due to increasing concentration and major new r d efforts in the public and private sector it is argued that the preconditions are being laid for a fundamental structural and technological transformation of the industry in the north which could have very important implications for the competitive position of third world clothing exporters emphasis is also placed upon the continued restraining effects of protectionist barriers imposed by the main importing nations and on the differential impact of this on the ability of newer entrants to achieve rapid and sustained export growth

influences of transaction costs in environmental policy abstract there is a growing literature reporting the extent of transaction costs for environmental policies however understanding why transaction costs occur and why they are small or large is also important for efficient policy selection and evaluation following an analysis of the organisational economics literature and reports of the extent of transaction costs for a number of environmental policies three key influences to transaction costs in environmental policies are identified these are the following 1 the characteristics of the transaction for the environmental good 2 the nature of the transactors and 3 the current institutional environment and arrangements these affect transaction costs to the government and all other parties influenced by a policy transaction costs occur due to actions of information collection and policy design policy enactment and establishment implementation and contracting administration and monitoring and enforcement an interrogation of transaction cost influences reveals that 1 the influence varies between parties and is affected by the actions and interactions of and between all parties to a policy 2 how transaction costs are experienced varies across time and 3 who experiences transaction costs depends on the policy itself future policy selection and refinement will benefit from empirical analysis of the causes of transaction costs

a memoir and reflection knowledge and an evolutionary theory of the multinational firm 10 years later the production of the 1993 article awarded the jibs decade award was written during a time when ideas regarding knowledge and the international expansion of the firm confronted a hostile audience the sources of these ideas were directly related in winter s and roger s prior work but also to a broader literature on category errors and technology transfer the theory of the firm as a social community is a distinctly sociological theory and though sharing many key ideas with the resource based view that developed at the same time is deeply opposed to engineering conceptions of firms as legomodular pieces that can be easily shifted bought and sold we describe our individual biographies and the subsequent intellectual development of the

coping with the upheavals of globalization in the shea value chain the maintenance and relevance of upstream shea nut supply chain organization in western burkina faso summary market globalization has had only a weak impact on the regional shea nut supply chain in western burkina faso despite the boom in the shea trade and the arrival of leading foreign firms we show that despite the fact that wholesalers have kept the shea chain locked in an oligarchic organization for the last 50 years they still play an important role in the smooth functioning of the chain and in profit sharing down the chain to the rural poor we suggest that development actors should consider shea traders and their role in the coordination of the chain more carefully 2014 the authors published by elsevier ltd this is an open access article under the cc by nc sa license http creativecommons org licenses by nc sa 3 0

the road taken origins and evolution of employment systems in emerging companies excerpt drawing on a unique archive of qualitative and quantitative data describing 100 bay area high technology firms within their first decade this paper examines the models of employment relations espoused by company founders and bow those models shaped the evolution of human resource management within their organizations information gleaned from interviews suggests that founders and others involved in designing and launching these companies had blueprints for the employment relation that varied along three key dimensions the primary basis of employee attachment and motivation the primary means for controlling and coordinating work and the primary criterion emphasized in selection based on combinations of these three dimensions firms in our sample cluster fall into one of four distinct types which we label the star factory engineering and commitment models multivariate statistical analyses document how the founder s employment model shaped the subsequent adoption and timing of various human resource policies and documents over these companies early histories as well as the speed with which the first full time human resource manager was appointed the findings are strongly suggestive of complementarities and a tendency toward internal consistency among dimensions of human resource management and of strong path dependence in the evolution of employment systems in organizations some implications of these findings for transactions cost perspectives on the employment relationship are discussed