brokerage in sme networks this study focuses on sme networks of design and high tech companies in southeast netherlands by highlighting the personal networks of members across design and high tech industries the study attempts to identify the main brokers in this dynamic environment in addition we investigate whether specific characteristics are associated with these brokers the main contribution of the paper lies in the fact that in contrast to most other work it is of a quantitative nature and focuses on brokers identified in an actual network studying the phenomenon of brokerage provides us with clear insights into the concept of brokerage regarding sme networks in different fields in particular we highlight how third parties contribute to the transfer and development of knowledge empirical results show among others that the most influential brokers are found in the non profit and science sector and have a long track record in their branch

gone but not lost the different performance impacts of employee mobility between cooperators versus competitors this article extends research on the relationship between employee mobility and firm performance by exploring how mobility between competitors and mobility between potential cooperators are differe

the social structure of a national securities market in this article a national securities market the stock options market is characterized as a social structure represented by the networks of actors who traded options on the floor of a major securities exchange trading among actors exhibited distinct social structural patterns that dramatically affected the direction and magnitude of option price volatility the argument that this market is socially structured is constructed in four parts behavioral assumptions about the nature of economic actors models of micronetworks models of macronetworks and price consequences in the ideal typical model of the market actors are assumed to be hyperrational and never to act opportunistically with these behavioral assumptions the micronetworks of actors should be expansive a condition which would result in undifferentiated and homogeneous macronetworks such macronetworks would tend to reduce the volatility of option prices but in the empirical market studied here actors are subject to bounded rationality a

opening the black box of agglomeration economies for measuring cities competitiveness through international firm networks the ability of cities to operate in global networks is usually measured according to their central position within multinational firm linkages these measures are often used at the interurban level and neglect the intraurban processes of multiplier effects the present study demonstrates that this affects the measurement of city centrality in business networks intraurban capabilities of interaction are considered in the measurement of interurban indices the study is based on hypothetical networks at a micro level between long range links and it mobilises processes as agglomeration economies social capital developments and transaction costs these processes at the intraurban level strengthen the efficiency of interurban linkages it is suggested that the indices used to measure city centrality should include these local effects applied to a small sample of six firm networks the methodology shows advantages for emerging large metropolises but insufficient local effects for specialised clusters the mu

cooperation and entry induction as an extension of technological rivalry abstract this paper investigates how the structure of cooperation in an industry influences the dynamics of entry by start up firms competition over technological dominance induces the entry of start up firms into new subfields as incumbent firms seek to expand the consumer base using their technology by cooperating incumbent firms succeed to varying degrees in establishing their technologies as a dominant standard by building central positions in a cooperative network start ups tend to enter however if there is reasonable certainty that a dominant technology has been established we find strong support for the relationship between network centrality as a measure of technological dominance of a standard and the entry of start up firms into the semiconductor industry

social capital informal governance and post ipo firm performance a study of chinese entrepreneurial firms social capital can serve as informal governance in weak investor protection regimes using hand collected data on entrepreneurs political connections and firm ownership we construct several original measures of social capital and examine their effect on the performance of entrepreneurial firms in china after their initial public offerings political connections or a high percentage of external investors tend to enhance firm performance but intragroup related party transactions commonly lead to performance decline these forms of social capital have a strong influence on the performance of chinese firms whereas formal governance variables such as board size or board independence have little effect although social capital may serve as an informal governance mechanism and effectively substitute for formal governance mechanisms in an emerging market this role of social capital raises several ethical concerns notably the development of rent seeking and crony capitalism

information gathering through alliances abstract the effect of a firm s uncertainty regarding technological development on the formation of alliances is examined and it is shown that this uncertainty is positively related to the number of alliances however higher uncertainty also makes the firm less likely to ally with others if the collected information is redundant the higher the similarity between the technological regimes of potential alliance partners the lower the incentive to ally also direct ties are preferred to indirect ones if uncertainty is high since direct ties yield more accurate information than indirect ties

global value chain governance a relational perspective global value chain gvc governance is an established field within international business research yet the relational aspects of gvcs have to date garnered less scholarly attention than have efficiency considerations this conceptual study s objective is to explore the relational dynamics of gvc governance using an internalization theory perspective and by linking gvc research with insights from the business network literature gvcs are argued to be a distinct form of asymmetrical networks associated with economizing and capability creation features as well as costs the orchestrating firm can thus enhance efficiency outcomes of the gvc using social mechanisms similar to those adopted by core actors in a business network in the study six such mechanisms were identified 1 selectivity 2 inclusion of non business intermediaries 3 joint strategizing 4 relational capital 5 multilateral feedback and 6 rules for equitable value distribution while safeguarding the gvc s efficiency the above social mechanisms are associated with challenges and limitations and therefore do not guarantee international competitive success however deployed in an integrative fashion these social mechanisms facilitate coordination thus economizing on bounded rationality reduce the hazards of imperfect effort by partners thus economizing on bounded reliability and foster innovation and new capability development

structural change competitive balance and the rest of the major leagues i introduction competitive balance is the object of significant attention in the analysis of pro sports leagues under rottenberg s 1956 uncertainty of outcome hypothesis enough imbalance may actually drive down the demand for pro sports and league revenues with it but the analysis of competitive balance itself also is insightful for the impact of league self regulation choices in this paper we extend recent approaches in time series analysis found in schmidt 2001 schmidt and berri 2001a 2001b 2003 2004 lee and fort 2005 henceforth lf and fort and lee 2006 beyond its exclusive focus on major league baseball mlb to the national basketball association nba the national football league nfl and the national hockey league nhl we restrict ourselves only to north american leagues henceforth nals although davies downward and jackson 1995 simmons 1996 and dobson and goddard 1998 provide interesting time series analysis in world leagues as well these works add dramatically to the understanding of structural impacts found from ad hoc cross section approaches the review is in lf in nals a number of structural changes have been hypothesized to dramatically alter competitive balance among teams over time first there are the familiar macro occurrences of depression and war and exogenous league factors like the fundamental alteration in local revenue brought on by increases in the value of local tv broadcast rights beginning in the late 1970s second there are more direct league circumstances changes in the rules of the games the draft the end of the reserve clause changes in the number of teams merger and expansion and their locations salary caps and labor issues lf also examined the impact of racial integration on competitive balance but for the rest of the nals there is no clearly defined point marking their racial integration finally schmidt and berri 2003 and eschker perez and siegler 2004 have begun to investigate the impacts of the influx of foreign born players we apply break point detection techniques described at length in lf to within season competitive balance measures in the rest of the nals there are a number of interesting insights all breaks detected for these other nals occur after 1966 and not until 1970 in the nba rule changes in the nfl in the late 1970s correspond with a break point in that league but generally rule changes do not correspond to any break points the imposition in nals of the draft and free agency conform to rottenberg s invariance proposition ip except for a general negative trend in competitive balance in the nba when they do correspond with break points league expansion and team relocation have predictable impacts but some of these alterations do not have corresponding break points mergers in all three of the other nals correspond in interesting ways with break points that enhance competitive balance but not all mergers correspond with break points there is no correspondence between the break points and the imposition of the salary caps in the nba and the nfl finally we can find no correspondence between break points and any labor issues in any of these leagues except for enhanced balance that followed after the 1998 nba lockout explanations for the negative trend in nba are consistent with the idea that there is a short supply of tall people that is a truly physical limit on talent inputs in the nba originally proposed by berri et al 2005 and an explanation for the second break point in the nhl may have to do with the influx of european players the paper proceeds as follows in section ii we specify the empirical approach and handle the important details of stationary series and detrending the results are shown and discussed within the context of the limits of the break point technique in section iii conclusions round out the paper in section iv ii

emergent properties of a new financial market american venture capital syndication 1960 2005 the recorded transactions of venture capital investments permit a direct examination of the braudel hypothesis that regional markets evolve dynamically and interdependently in reference to a global system this hypothesis contradicts the popular belief that regional financial development is anchored in dense clusters using methods of complex graphs we analyze 159 561 transactions over nearly 45 years to demonstrate the rapid emergence of a national network of syndications a giant component emerges early in the history of the industry which subsumes the regional and sectoral subgraphs the results confirm the braudel hypothesis over the role of regional clusters rejects preferential attachment in favor of repeated ties among trusted partners and emphasizes the importance of dynamics and complex weighted graphs for the analysis of social and economic behavior

agreements between firms and the technological life cycle model evidence from information technologies abstract contrarily to most previous contributions which have addressed the issue of cooperative agreements essentially in a perspective of comparative statics in this paper a model is proposed that relies on the technological trajectory notion suggested by evolutionary theories and emphasizes the relevance of the technological and market dynamics in explaining why and to what extent firms have recourse to agreements in particular it is claimed that the propensity of firms towards collaborative ventures and the characteristics of the cooperation depend upon the phase of the technological life cycle of the industry branch in which the cooperation takes place based on a cross sectional analysis of 45 industry branches in the information technology industrial system the paper also provides empirical evidence supporting the argument that the propensity towards agreements and the nature of the agreements concluded do change during the technological life cycle to this end it takes advantage of the arpa database developed at the polytechnic of milan and containing detailed information on over 2 000 agreements concluded in the 1980 1986 period all over the world in the semiconductor data processing and telecommunications industries

home country networks and foreign expansion evidence from the venture capital industry we propose that home country network advantages shape firms foreign expansion we argue that a social status advantage is transferable from one market to another as a signal of quality but that a

technological accumulation diversification and organisation in uk companies 1945 1983 a survey of more than 4 000 significant innovations and innovating firms in the uk from 1945 1983 shows that the scope and organisation of technological activities vary greatly as functions of firms principal activities and size 1 technological opportunities and threats are greatest in firms in chemicals and engineering opportunities in such science based and specialist supplier firms in general emerge horizontally in related product markets and downstream in user sectors in scale intensive e g steel vehicles and supplier dominated e g printing construction firms opportunities tend to be upstream in related production technologies breakthrough innovations in science based firms also induce clusters of technological opportunities upstream for suppliers horizontally for partners and downstream for users their effective exploitation requires diversity of firms technological activities greater than that strictly required for current output 2 the nature of technological opportunities and of organisation for their exploitation also varies with firm size firms with fewer than 1 000 employees have major opportunities with specialised strategies in mechanical engineering and instruments the prevalence of broad front technological strategies and of divisionalisation increases sharply with firm size together with dependence on formal r and d activities the size of innovating divisions has diminished sharply over the period divisionalisation improves the goodness of fit between the core business of innovating divisions and the innovations themselves but 40 have remained consistently outside the core business of divisions 3 these findings help identify the key tasks of technological strategy in firms in different industries and of different sizes thus in large firms divisionalisation can create the small size of unit conducive to effective implementation but it cannot absolve central management from the continuous task of matching technological opportunities with organisational forms and boundaries

interorganizational alliances and the performance of firms a study of growth and innovation rates in a high technology industry this paper investigates the relationship between intercorporate technology alliances and firm performance it argues that alliances are access relationships and therefore that the advantages which a focal firm derives from a portfolio of strategic coalitions depend upon the resource profiles of its alliance partners in particular large firms and those that possess leading edge technological resources are posited to be the most valuable associates the paper also argues that alliances are both pathways for the exchange of resources and signals that convey social status and recognition particularly when one of the firms in an alliance is a young or small organization or more generally an organization of equivocal quality alliances can act as endorsements they build public confidence in the value of an organization s products and services and thereby facilitate the firm s efforts to attract customers and other corporate partners the findings from models of sales growth and innovation rates in a large sample of semiconductor producers confirm that organizations with large and innovative alliance partners perform better than otherwise comparable firms that lack such partners consistent with the status transfer arguments the findings also demonstrate that young and small firms benefit more from large and innovative strategic alliance partners than do old and large organizations copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

international research networks in pharmaceuticals structure and dynamics abstract knowledge production and scientific research have become increasingly more collaborative and international particularly in pharmaceuticals we analyze this tendency in general and tie formation in international research networks on the country level in particular based on a unique dataset of scientific publications related to pharmaceutical research and applying social network analysis we find that both the number of countries and their connectivity increase in almost all disease group specific networks the cores of the networks consist of high income oecd countries and remain rather stable over time using network regression techniques to analyze the network dynamics our results indicate that accumulative advantages based on connectedness and multi connectivity are positively related to changes in the countries collaboration intensity whereas various indicators on similarity between countries do not allow for unambiguous conclusions

the power lessness of industry self regulation to promote responsible labor standards insights from the chinese toy industry the provision of responsible labor standards along the entire value chain poses considerable challenges for corporations in particular management shortcomings and institutional deficits which are partly related to cultural issues frequently impede the realization of responsible business practices in emerging and developing countries it is widely established in theory that industry self regulation constitutes a particularly promising approach for overcoming these challenges nonetheless it is still an open question as to whether industry initiatives effectively promote responsible standards in practice this contribution aims to enrich the current discussion about the power of industry self regulation to ensure responsible labor standards in factories in emerging and developing countries for this purpose we analyze the icti care process icp the self regulation initiative of the international toy industry that aims to promote responsible business practices in chinese toy factories the assessment of the icp shows that corporations buying behavior is decisive in order for industry self regulation to become an appropriate means of improving labor standards based on the insights from the study and from theoretical reasoning we develop a framework for effective industry self regulation that integrates the perspective of factories

ownership of property rights and the allocation of talents under the reserve clause system that assigns the property rights on the major league baseball players services to teams player transfers are negotiated between teams without the involvement of players in contrast under the current free agency system players with free agent status negotiate directly with potential suitors thus the system assigns the property rights to players using data extracted from the baseball archive http baseball1 com this article examines the effect of the change in the property rights assignment on the allocation of talents across teams we find that the change increased large market teams shares of veteran all star players and the concentration of senior players

firm scope experience historic multimarket contact with partners centrality and the relationship between structural holes and performance this study investigates characteristics that affect the relationship between firms positions in a network of collaborative ties with other firms and their performance firms located in similarly structured networks rich in structural holes may obtain different performance results depending on their 1 capacity to absorb heterogeneous information 2 ability to protect against partner noncooperation and 3 bargaining power in this paper i argue that firms with a wide scope of experience have superior absorptive capacity for dealing with heterogeneous information hence such firms will be able to extract performance improvements from network positions rich in structural holes furthermore firms with a high level of historic multimarket contact mmc with their partners are able to reduce the risks of partner noncooperation hence augmenting their performance compared to firms in open networks that do not enjoy mmc with their own partners finally firms of low centrality in the industry s network of alliances will extract performance benefits from enhancing bargaining power as a result of exploiting brokerage opportunities in open networks these arguments are corroborated in a study of relationships formed among investment banks advising on the merger and acquisition transactions in the united kingdom between 1992 and 2001

competitive balance measures in sports leagues the effects of variation in season length appropriate measurement of competitive balance is a cornerstone of the economic analysis of professional sports leagues we examine the distributional properties of the ratio of standard deviations rsd of points percentages the most widely used measure of competitive balance in the sports economics literature in comparison with other standarddeviation based measures simulation methods are used to evaluate the effects of changes in season length on the distributions of competitive balance measures for different distributions of the strengths of teams in a league the popular rsd measure performs as expected only in cases of perfect balance if there is imbalance in team strengths its distribution is very sensitive to changes in season length this has important implications for comparisons of competitive balance for different sports leagues with different numbers of teams and or games played jel l83 d63 c63

is western europe losing the technological race abstract using a variety of indicators this paper compares technological levels in japan the usa and w europe there is no justification for assuming general european technological backwardness whilst it lags in electronics and since 1975 has had a relatively slow rate of growth of innovative activities it also has sectors of strength chemicals machinery production engineering and countries whose relative commitments of resources to innovative activities are at least equal and sometimes superior to those of japan and the usa frg sweden switzerland its main policy challenges are to increase the rate of growth of innovative activities in lagging countries and to ensure pervasive applications of information technology similarly there is no convincing evidence that w europe is relatively backward in converting technology into economically efficient innovations some policy problems are significant in all three regions skill shortages whilst others are in the usa and w europe short term planning horizons of top management particular european problems are the effects of social legislation on worker flexibility and mobility of national regulations on intra european competition and of slow rates of growth of output on the growth of innovative activities japan and the usa have their problems with the latter continuously under challenge from the former and increasingly specialised in defence and raw materials related technologies

entrepreneurial strategy and the presence of small firms a model is presented hypothesizing that the level of small firm presence in any given industry emanates from the exogenous stock of entrepreneurial talent a stochastic element of managerial and entrepreneurial talent entry deterrence and the entrepreneurial strategy deployed by small firms using data newly released by the u s small business administration the hypothesis is tested for a sample of 247 four digit standard industrial classification industries spanning the entire spectrum of firm sizes we find that consistently for all the measures of small firm size and for all of the time periods used the existence of entry deterrence and reliance upon innovative strategy explains a significant proportion of the variation in the presence of small firms

the firm as a nexus of treaties part 1 knowledge its acquisition sharing and or asymmetry the participatory generation of information rents and the theory of the firm masahiko aoki common knowledge and the co ordination of economic activities jacques cremer profit sharing information and employment matti pohjola part 2 vertical integration and the strategic management of the enterprise what is vertical integration michael h riordan vertical integration transaction costs and learning by using kurt lundgren the firm as a nexus of internal and external contracts torger reve part 3 issues of labour organization the viability of worker ownership an economic perspective on the political structure of the firm henry hansmann intellectual skill and the role of employees as constituent members of large firms in contemporary japan kazuo koike the implicit contract for corporate law firm associates ex post opportunism and ex ante bonding robert h mooking part 4 finance and the political structure of the firm capital structure as a mechanism of control a comparison of financial systems erik berglof long term contracts in financial markets hakan lindgren the principle of external accountability in competitive markets herbert gintis union militancy and plant designs kar ove moene can transaction cost economics explain trade associations marc schneiberg and j rogers hollingsworth

social capital for hire mobility of technical professionals and firm influence in wireless standards committees the movement of personnel between firms has been shown to have important implications for firms yet there has been little direct investigation of the underlying mechanisms we propose that in addition to their human capital mobile individuals carry social capital affecting the outcomes of the firms they join and leave by altering the patterns of interaction between firms in this study we examine how job mobility affects firm influence in a technical standards setting committee for u s wireless telecommunications we hypothesize and find that hiring individuals who are richer in social capital increases firm influence in technical standards setting committees by increasing the hiring firm s social capital we also find the benefits of hiring social capital are attenuated when an interfirm relationship is maintained by multiple individuals in contrast we find that the loss of personnel does not affect a firm s social capital or influence over standards directly but that it does have an effect on firm social capital and influence contingent on changes in the firm s business strategy in advancing these arguments we address the broader question of individuals as carriers of social capital and the conditions under which interpersonal connections are appropriable by firms

multinational corporate power influence and responsibility in global supply chains this paper examines the question of how to determine the extent of a multinational corporation mnc s corporate social responsibility for actions by its suppliers drawing on three theories of power and influence from the organization and management literature resource dependence theory social exchange theory and social network theory this paper presents a conceptual framework for analysing the extent of power and influence of an mnc in a global supply chain based on a consideration of i economic and non economic exchanges and ii direct and indirect exchanges in the mnc s industry network the paper also shows how the legal concept of complicity can be incorporated by considering the knowledge links of the mnc to other organizations in the industry network finally the paper demonstrates how the concepts can be integrated to construct a power assessment grid which can be used to assess the extent of responsibility of an mnc for the actions of its suppliers and other parties in the industry as well as a map of power and knowledge relationships between organizations in the industry which can be used for further analyses using social network analysis techniques

racial integration as an innovation empirical evidence from sports leagues this paper treats racial integration as an innovation in economic process in which economic entities find it advantageous to utilize potentially more productive inputs previously unavailable due to law custom or managerial discretion data on the racial integration of major league baseball and atlantic coast conference basketball are employed to address this issue the central question examined is which type of team integrated first losers or winners the results strongly support the idea that entrepreneurship trumps competitive rivalry that is winning teams led the process of racial integration jel li j7 one of the watershed events in u s history is the struggle to achieve a racially integrated society while the civil rights laws and court rulings in the 195o s 196o s and 197o s are among the major changes in public policy that gradually led to a breakdown of jim crow rule in the american south other changes in law and custom also motivated the process of racial integration across time and place indeed segregation was not limited to the south but was a prominent feature of many national organizations and markets despite the extensive commentary on these events from various perspectives there has been very little economic analysis of the actual process of racial integration economists have focused their efforts on the economics of discriminatio n while the actual process by which individuals firms and

the propensity to patent abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between 1974 rd among the exceptions the tendency was toward diminishing returns variables measuring overseas sales federal r d support diversification scope of invention use and invention type had only modest explanatory power there was no significant evidence of disproportionate patent accumulation in the more highly concentrated industries

evaluating public policy mechanisms for climate change mitigation in brazilian buildings sector abstract this paper applies a multi criteria analysis mca and marginal abatement cost curves macc to evaluate public policies mechanisms to promote the dissemination of energy efficiency ee and on site renewable energy sources res technologies in brazilian buildings sector the objective here is to bring together the advantages of both methods in order to provide more valuable insights to policy makers the mca results show that in the case of more integrative policies which considers for instance potential of jobs creation the mechanisms to foster distributed res and solar water heaters are better ranked than in macc analysis where only cost effectiveness of each option is evaluated other key finding is that 1 there is a significant cost effective potential that could be reached through alternative mechanisms not implemented yet in the country such as public procurement regulation and building codes and 2 minimum energy performance standards meps could be broader in scope and more stringent and include the use of energy in standby mode and tubular fluorescent lamps in particular some important appliances such as large air conditioning devices should have more aggressive meps

on a source of social capital gift exchange the concept of social capital helps to explain relations within and between companies but has not crystallized yet as such the nature development and effects of such relations remain elusive how is social capital created how is it put to use and how is it maintained can it decline and if so how we argue that the concept of social capital remains a black box as the mechanisms that constitute it remain underdeveloped and that it is a black hole as many empirical phenomena are attributed to its presence we use and develop the literature on gift exchange to provide a firmer theoretical basis for the concept of social capital

digitalized service multinationals and international business theory banalieva and dhanaraj argue that digital service multinationals dsmncs possess a new category of firm specific advantage fsa the network advantage and that contrary to extant theory they use networks as a mode of governance i review the business models used by dsmncs compare them to non digital ones and explore what we can learn about them from extant ib theory i conclude that network advantages are not a new category of fsas that networks are not a mode of governance and that their use by dsmncs is well explained by extant theory

individual team incentives and managing competitive balance in sports leagues an empirical analysis of major league baseball abstract major league baseball and other professional sports leagues have long been concerned with competitive imbalances caused by differences in local revenues the fear is that in the absence of salary caps or other regulatory mechanisms smaller market teams will be unable to remain competitive this research uses a structural dynamic programming model to analyze ownership s payroll investment decisions this model estimates the relationship between optimal payrolls and local market populations and the influence of long term customer equity dynamics on payroll investments in addition the author analyzes the impact of a recent policy intervention that implemented revenue transfers from high local revenue markets to low local revenue markets the statistical results indicate that market population has a significant impact on the value of a team s payroll investments for example optimal payrolls double as the population increases from 2 5 million to 7 5 million furthermore rather than improving com

market networks and corporate behavior data on market relations between a large population of corporations and investment banks are used to study the organization market interforce the pattern of direct market ties between a firm and its banks forms of interfaces range from a long term exclusive tie the relationship interface to many short lived episodic ties the transaction interface with hybrid forms between the two poles contrary to widespread belief the article finds that strong relationships still exist transactions interfaces are rare most firms use hybrid interfaces a firm s interface is conceptualized as the intentional result of its efforts to reduce dependence and exploit power advantages observed interfaces are shown to be related systematically to various power dependence concepts including resource intensity number of transactions and dollar amounts raised criticality the availability of resource alternatives power asymmetry between a firm and its main bank organization size standardization of exchange and

corporate strategic technological partnerships in the european information and communications technology industry abstract in the era of alliance capitalism the increasing number of strategic technological partnerships stps has been mainly recorded in the science based fields of which information and communications technology ict is a leading sector the establishment of stps has also characterised the european ict industry the growing technological interrelatedness and the need to acquire capabilities in related fields have been identified in the literature as major explanations for the increase in corporate technological co operation this paper investigates the role of corporate technological specialisation factors in the conclusion of stps in the european ict industry by carrying out a dynamic analysis accordingly the patterns followed by corporate technological partnerships in the industry in question are investigated since the late 1970s based on us patent data granted to the world s largest firms as well as stps data the results of the econometric analysis are consistent with the view that the more similar partners technological portfolios are with one another the easier it is to absorb each other s capabilities

reappraising the eclectic paradigm in an age of alliance capitalism this article discusses the implications of the advent of alliance capitalism for our theorizing about the determinants of mne activity in particular it argues that due to the increasing porosity of the boundaries of firms countries and markets the eclectic or oli paradigm of international production needs to consider more explicitly the competitive advantages arising from the way firms organize their inter firm transactions the growing interdependencies of many intermediate product markets and the widening of the portfolio of the assets of districts regions and countries to embrace the external economies of interdependent activities

choosing organizational modes of strategic technology partnering international and sectoral differences this paper focuses on international strategic technology partnerships and the choice that companies have in terms of the organizational mode either through complex inter organizational modes involving equity sharing or contractual non equity alliances the empirical results show that the choice of particular mode of cooperation varies with the technological characteristics of sectors of industry joint ventures are disproportionately represented in relatively mature industries contractual alliances dominate strategic technology partnering in so called high tech industries

the international entrepreneurial dynamics of accelerated internationalisation the initial stages of internationalisation prior to firms having established their definitive sources of advantage remain the relatively unexplored area of the international business ib literature at these early stages where firms are seeking to establish themselves and new multinational firms are appearing to exploit new opportunities created by globalisation the entrepreneurial aspects of internationalisation come to the fore in this paper we aim to delineate an emerging field of ib scholarship we use the appearance of international new ventures and the phenomenon of accelerated internationalisation that they feature to identify a set of issues that has slipped through the net of some of the existing ib frameworks we propose that the salient features of accelerated and early internationalisation by the newly internationalising firm are best captured in a framework that is found at the intersection of entrepreneurial and internationalisation perspectives which we propose be known as international entrepreneurial dynamics we discuss such a framework in terms of entry points and pathways mapped by firms as they probe the ib arena and the key factors that impinge on behaviour and strategic choices in line with recent developments in the entrepreneurship literature these are grouped into three milestones of entrepreneurial processes that extend across national boundaries 1 the discovery of new opportunities 2 the deployment of resources in the exploitation of these opportunities and 3 the engagement with competitors implications for mne and internationalisation theory are discussed

social capital structural holes and the formation of an industry network the formation of a network is determined by the opposition of two forces the first is the reproduction of network structure as a general social resource for network members the second is the alteration of network structure by entrepreneurs for their own benefit the idea of reproduction is a conventional one in organizational sociology but has taken on increased importance due to the work of bourdieu and coleman in contrast burt stresses the entrepreneurship of individual agents in exploiting structural holes that lie between constrained positions though complementary the theories of social capital and structural holes have fundamentally different implications for network formation this paper investigates these theories by examining empirically the formation of the interorganizational network among biotechnology firms we propose that network structure determines the frequency with which a new biotechnology firm or startup establishes new relationships network structure indicates both where soci

linking least cost energy system costs models with mca an assessment of the eu renewable energy targets and supporting policies there are several technoeconomic modeling approaches that provide quantitative results such as costs and the level of achievement of certain renewable energy re policy targets these approaches often do not consider other important factors for policy implementation such as socio political aspects and stakeholders preferences recent multicriteria analysis mca approaches attempt to integrate these multiple aspects in decision making process in this respect aim of this paper is to combine technoeconomic modeling and mca approaches in a general analytical framework incorporating multiple aspects each method in an re policy interaction problem can feed in the necessary policy information for the subsequent steps of an ex ante and an ex post assessment in a decision tree starting from recognizing the need for implementing a new policy in parallel to the incumbent ones assessing the actual policy costs and finally identifying the social acceptability of these re policies

evaluating public policy instruments in the greek building sector abstract this paper applies a multi criteria analysis mca to evaluate public policy mechanisms that foster energy efficiency and renewable energy sources in the greek building sector based on stakeholders understanding and perceptions of the functionality of policy instruments the objective is to shed light on the implementation of currently employed policy mechanisms that aim to achieve the 2020 energy savings targets and beyond providing useful information to policy makers for future policy re formulations in this framework policy instruments were evaluated against process related criteria such as implementation costs distributional effects and coherence of policy processes so as to highlight successful policy practices during their implementation phase as well as to unveil cases of policy underperformance or unintended policy outcomes to hedge uncertainties related to policy instrument selection the method employs probabilistic evaluations of every alternative against each criterion the mca results showed that the country is still missing significant energy saving opportunities that could be reached through more streamlined implementation practices and political support in times of fiscal crisis the greek government should also revitalize the implementation of alternative funding mechanisms and support policy alternatives such as green public procurement voluntary agreements and energy performance contracting

equity links and information acquisition in biotechnology alliances abstract we use a simple model of collaborative innovation to structure an empirical analysis of minority equity links in biotechnology alliances between clients and r d firms in the model an equity link is an investment in information acquisition it improves the ability of the client to learn about the r d firm s ability and the alliance project s quality the model generates several testable hypotheses about how the r d firm s project characteristics and previous alliances affect the use of equity links in new alliances we test the hypotheses using a large data set of biotechnology alliances and find empirical support

an evolutionary approach to understanding international business activity the co evolution of mnes and the institutional environment this paper examines the co evolution of mne activities and institutions external and internal to the firm we develop a theoretical framework for this analysis that draws on the more recent writings of douglass north on institutions as a response to complex forms of uncertainty associated with the rise in global economic interconnectedness and of richard nelson on the co evolution of technology and institutions we link historical changes in the character of mne activities to changes in the institutional environment and highlight the scope for firm level creativity and institutional entrepreneurship that may lead to co evolution with the environment we argue that the main drivers for institutional entrepreneurship are now found in the increasing autonomy of mne subsidiaries thus mne agency derives from more decentralized forms of experimentation in international corporate networks which competence creating nodes of new initiatives can co evolve with local institutions unlike most other streams of related literature our approach connects patterns of institutional change in wider business systems with more micro processes of variety generation and experimentation within and across individual firms this form of co evolutionary analysis is increasingly important to understanding the interrelationships between mne activities and public policy

leading companies and networks of strategic alliances in information technologies abstract strategic alliances joint ventures and a wide array of cooperative r d pacts have received considerable attention in recent years in this paper an attempt is made to understand not only some recent trends in inter firm cooperation in information technologies but also to reveal the role played by a large group of companies the research is based on a large databank with information on thousands of alliances and their participating companies applying a number of statistical techniques it is possible to identify the major players within information technology and its sub fields the analysis enables us to recognize the major international networks of inter firm alliances the changes over time and different positions taken by world leading companies in several industrial and technological settings

the small world of germany and the durability of national networks the globalization offinancial markets and the concomitant restructuring decisions of firms challenge the historical legacy of national systems of governance german corporate ownership patterns and restructuring events in the 1990 s are examined here in this light the results show that ownership links among german firms constitute a small world that has consequences for understanding mergers and acquisitions ownership links form closely knit clusters offirms that are nonetheless highly connected across the network as a whole restructuring events fall squarely in the center of this structure despite increasing global competition the german small world tends to replicate itself to illustrate this robustness potential disruptions to the observed german network are simulated this simulation shows that the properties of the small world remain intact even when ownership ties are changed these findings suggest that a more global economy in germany need not lead to the dissolution of the ownership structure but rather may be associated with a deepening of network ties

does family employment enhance mses performance integrating socioemotional wealth and family embeddedness perspectives abstract this paper analyzes the effect of family employment on performance in micro and small enterprises mses by combining two research perspectives that until now have been conducted separately the family embeddedness perspective of entrepreneurship aldrich and cliff 2003 and the socioemotional wealth sew approach to family business gomez mejia et al 2007 our integrated perspective allows us to highlight how the nature of the employment relationships in mses enhances the benefits derived from the socioemotional endowment associated with family labor and reduces the opportunity costs of employing relatives moreover we assert that this relationship is moderated by specific family characteristics that determine the firm s ability to preserve the sew while at the same time pursuing financial goals our results provide partial support to the enhancing role of family labour on mses performance employing family members increases sales but decreases profitability as measured by roa this effect also results in improved performance for women led firms and for firms that have received family funding but impairs mses performance when the business is the main source of the owner s household income

managing innovation in multi technology corporations abstract this paper introduces the concept of a multi technology corporation mtc and elaborates upon some critical problems in managing innovation in such a context a model that may aid in conceptualizing various technology strategies is presented two generic management of technology problems technology transition and technology transfer are presented and analysed two empirical case illustrations are given one case analyzes how the swedish telecommunications company ericsson managed its successful technological transition from old electro mechanical switching technology to new telephone exchanges based on spc stored program control and digital signal processing the other case analyzes how the swedish auto and aerospace company saab scania has attempted to manage technology transfer internally from each case a number of managerial lessons could be learnt regarding each of the two generic problems in managing technology in multi technology corporations in addition some implications for the theory of firm and industrial organization could be drawn based on the assumption that managerial development or learning takes place regarding technological development thereby the conventional view on innovation by invasion and creative destruction is challenged and the old schumpeter view is qualified finally in the appendix the empirical relevance of mtcs are discussed based on data from the 24 biggest r d spenders in sweden the association between growth product diversification and technological diversification has been analyzed

a literature based multi criteria evaluation of the eu ets abstract this article reviews the existing literature on the european union emission trading scheme eu ets focusing on empirical ex post research since the end of the first period 2007 the literature is presented through a multi criteria evaluation concerning environmental effectiveness despite over allocation during the first period abatement is estimated between 2 5 and 5 trade driven carbon leakage was not observed even if long term economic models predict divergent leakage estimates for certain at risk sectors the abatement target was likely to be below an economically efficient level but was reached in a fairly cost effective way even if free allocation gave rise to several distortional effects equity concerns were manifold and constitute a major drawback to the policy finally institutional feasibility can be considered positive in that the eu ets passed the european legislative process unlike the previously proposed eu wide carbon tax

specialization and size of technological activities in industrial countries the analysis of patent data abstract the determinants and direction of the technological specialization of advanced countries are investigated in this paper using patent counts and citations as technology indicators during the 1980s international patenting increased more rapidly than the resources devoted to r d indicating a globalization of technology markets paralleled by a growing degree of sectoral specialization of countries innovative activities a clear cut inverse relationship between countries technological size measured by cumulative r d expenditure and degree of specialization has been found only large countries can afford to spread their activities across most technological fields while small and medium sized countries are to some extent forced to specialize in more narrow niches some methodological aspects in the use of patenting as an internationally comparable indicator are also discussed considerable differences emerged between patent specialization profiles in the internal and in external markets firms tend to protect their internal market through patenting also in fields where they do not excel at the international level leading to a smoother specialization profile

network location and learning the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation this paper presents a dynamic firm level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances especially because alliances entail considerable hazards this study also assesses the importance of firms capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions i test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989 the results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms decisions to enter into new alliances this study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

a multi criteria evaluation of policy instruments for climate change mitigation in the power generation sector of trinidad and tobago even as small island developing states sids like trinidad and tobago t t increase industrialization and grapple with the challenges of increased pollution few studies provide guidance to policy makers of such countries on appropriate policy measures and instruments that can be implemented to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions here we apply a multi criteria evaluation methodology to ascertain preferences for policy measures and instruments in the power generation sector four broad policy measures and twelve policy instruments are assessed on criteria of environmental performance feasibility of implementation and political acceptability this method proves useful in t t since typical to many sids the intensive data required by other policy assessment methods is unavailable results indicate little difference in preference among the four policy measures thereby indicating that a multi pronged approach on several policy fronts is required the most preferred policy instruments to operationalize measures included provision of subsidies for energy saving technologies creating an industry wide carbon trading scheme and implementing a feed in tariff to increase the use of renewable energy sources this study therefore provides specific insights for policy makers in trinidad and tobago while also providing power generation sector specific guidance to other rapidly industrializing small island developing states

the long run link between money growth and inflation is inflation always a monetary phenomenon many economists believe that the link between money growth and inflation in the u s has weakened over the last two decades due in part to the federal reserve s policy experiment in 1979 1982 and innovations in the financial sector of the economy i find that the long run relationship between money growth and inflation is strong in a statistical sense and important economically the key result is that the trend or growth component in cpi inflation is entirely due to the trend component of monetary base growth jel c32 e31 e51

a social capital paradox entrepreneurial dynamism in a small world clean technology cluster abstract clean tech entrepreneurs have struggled to gain investor confidence because of some particular characteristics and circumstances of the industry this research combines network and sustainable development literature in the clean tech context to support the logic of a new investment approach that may stimulate sustainable investing in clean tech theory is proposed to suggest that there may be an advantageous social capital paradox where strong ties in a cluster lead to dynamism rather than decay the clean tech industry provides a context where strong ties offer network stability in a small world cluster such that it is a value creating organizational form offering greater dynamism two related propositions are developed to support the social capital paradox they lead to a theoretical conclusion that long term integrated partner solutions where partners are also resource constrained lead to successful alliances supporting a dynamic cluster that will grow over time a practical conclusion is that investing in a connected cluster of firms might be less risky compared to investing in a new firm or even a portfolio of well diversified assets de risking clean production investments may be achievable through a small world network cluster backed security

the evolution of collective strategy frames in high and low velocity industries we argue that the collective assumptions of firms drive their actions and practices and create the conditions of industry velocity in our view cognitive construction by firms is the primary driver of industry velocity this is in contrast to the contingency views common in the literature which hold that industry velocity plays a role by constraining and shaping firm strategies specifically we suggest that firms develop unique assumptions social networks and feedback mechanisms that these mechanisms perpetuate patterns of changes in collective beliefs and aggregate actions and that these patterns in turn shape high and low velocity conditions we examine these assertions by tracing the collective beliefs of three aircraft low velocity and semiconductor high velocity firms over a 20 year period 1977 1997 our results suggest that the cognitive construction view of industry velocity is reasonable

structure learning and the speed of innovating a two phase model of collective innovation using agent based modeling continual increase in the complexity of technologies and innovations has resulted in actors i e individuals or organizations becoming more dependent on other actor s knowledge and skills to complement their own skills in the innovation process as a result networks have become more and more prominent in affecting the innovation process conceptualizing innovation as a search and learning process that results in a successful product we introduce a two phase model of collective innovation that accounts for the deliberateness of the innovation process using agent based modeling we explore how interaction structure among a group of actors affects the speed at which the group can collectively innovate in addition we present results from counterfactual simulations to highlight the importance of deliberate search and changing realized connections in modeling collective innovation process moreover we discuss the effects of the structure under different mechanisms of learning and different levels of actor s learning capabilities copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

prescriptions for network strategy does evidence of network effects in cross section support them although intuitively appealing and common drawing network strategy implications from empirical evidence of network performance effects in pooled cross section is not necessarily warranted this is because network positions can influence both the mean and variance of firm performance strategic prescriptions are warranted if empirically observed network effects reflect increases in mean firm performance if network effects reflect increases in firm performance variance however such prescriptions are warranted only if the increase in the odds of achieving high performance is sufficient to compensate for the concomitant increase in the odds of realizing poor performance our simulation study designed to examine network performance effects in both pooled cross section and within firm over time across a wide range of conditions counsels caution in drawing implications for network strategies we discuss the implications of our findings for research on network effects and more broadly for drawing strategic inferences from studies of firm performance in pooled cross section

uncertainty networks and real options abstract two pervasive features of industries experiencing rapid technological progress are uncertainty with regard to the technological feasibility and marketabilility of an innovation and networks the dense web of research alliances and joint ventures linking firms to each other this paper connects the two disparate phenomena using the notion of real options it visualizes firms as nodes and the links connecting them as call options that give each pair of interlinked firms the right but not the obligation to sink additional resources into a project at some future date conditional on favorable technical market information the formation of networks is endogenous as firms establish links with others by appraising their value using option pricing methods our model explains the following why networks are particularly ubiquitous in industries that are subject to high uncertainty why networks often display an interconnected hubs and spokes architecture why small or peripheral spoke firms often sink resources into relatively higher risk higher return investment projects and those too with only large or hub firms and why so many research alliances are continuously formed and dissolved our paper also outlines the conditions under which ex ante symmetric firms end up ex post forming complex asymmetric networks

investigating the microstructure of network evolution alliance formation in the mobile communications industry theories of network evolution frequently focus on network endogeneity which stresses predictable path dependent evolution rooted in previous network structure however theories of technological evolution and innovation remind us that networks may undergo significant change as technological discontinuities exert pressures on existing relationships and firms engage in exploratory search how can we incorporate sources of change into our theories of network evolution instead of focusing so squarely on sources of inertia by using recent advances in graph theory we develop a more flexible theory of network evolution by examining two patterns of partner selection that have the potential to change networks shortcut formation between relatively unconnected partner clusters and the entry of new firms into the main component of incumbent partners our findings suggest an important contingency for the endogeneity perspective structural homophily predicts shortcut formation but not alliance formation within clusters furthermore we demonstrate that the pattern of alliance formation between incumbents and new entrants to the alliance network is driven by a combination of endogenous and exogenous mechanisms new entrants attach to more prominent incumbents but they are more likely to attach with an alliance deal that comprises multiple partners we demonstrate these findings in an industry where systemic technology encourages cooperation and where network entry is prevalent the mobile communications industry from 1993 2002

on the evolution of competitive balance the impact of an increasing global search the coase theorem maintains that where free market precepts exist the allocation of property rights does not impact the distribution of resources an application to major league baseball suggests that institutions such as free agency and the reverse order amateur draft would not impact player distributions and therefore would not impact competitive balance the present study finds that the distribution of wins is generally consistent with the precepts of the coase theorem and therefore suggests a course for those who wish to alter the level of competitive balance major league baseball should increase its focus on expanding the size of its labor pool jel o15 l83 c22

inter firm collaboration and technology development partnerships within us manufacturing industries the paper examines the conditions under which firms enter into technology development partnerships with customers suppliers and other firms three conceptual approaches to inter firm collaboration are examined namely transactions costs theory resource strategy theories of the firm and network theory drawing upon data collected in a mailed questionnaire survey of us manufacturing establishments in the chemical electronics and instruments industries i assess empirically various determinants of inter firm collaboration in technology development the empirical work suggests that large firms and firms located in major urban centres are more likely to enter into technology development partnerships firms located in a specialized industrial agglomeration do not demonstrate a greater propensity toward entering into technology development partnerships with customers suppliers or other firms cet article cherche a examiner les conditions sous lesquelles les entreprises concluent des partenariats technolo

in search of complementary assets the determinants of alliance formation of high tech start ups abstract why do new technology based firms ntbfs cooperate starting from teece s teece d j 1986 profiting from technological innovation implications for integration collaboration licensing and public policy research policy 15 285 305 conceptual framework and taking advantage of subsequent literature on alliance formation in the resource and competence based tradition and in the social structure perspective we derive an empirical model that aims at highlighting the inducements and obstacles that these firms face in alliance formation according to firm specific characteristics and the nature of the alliance in particular a distinction is made between exploitative commercial alliances and explorative technological alliances the econometric estimates based on a large sample of italian young high tech firms that are observed from 1994 to 2003 provide strong evidence supporting two key intuitions of teece s work first the combination of specialized complementary assets appears to be a key driver of the formation of exploitative commercial alliances by ntbfs more specifically patent holding affects positively the likelihood to establish commercial alliances but this propensity is found to rapidly decrease with firm size suggesting that as long as ntbfs become larger and possess specialized commercial assets their urge for commercial alliances diminishes second following the parallelism set forth by teece between search for alliance partners and access to external financing the analysis indicates that potentially beneficial alliances may not take place because of the high transaction costs faced by smaller ntbfs in this respect our results clearly support the view that sponsor institutions as public research organizations venture and corporate venture capitalists may sensibly reduce these costs and that their role crucially depends on both the identity of the sponsor and the type of alliance

the duality of collaboration inducements and opportunities in the formation of interfirm linkages i argue that the linkage formation propensity of firms is explained by simultaneously examining both inducement and opportunity factors drawing upon resource based and social network theory literatures i identify three forms of accumulated capital technical commercial and social that can affect a firm s inducements and opportunities to form linkages firms possessing these capital stocks enjoy advantages in linkages formation however firms lacking these accumulated resources can still form linkages if they generate a radical technological breakthrough thus i identify paths to linkage formation for leading as well as peripheral firms i test these arguments with longitudinal data on technical collaborative linkages in the global chemicals industry copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

a note on the revisited uppsala internationalization process model the implications of business networks and entrepreneurship in their article from 2009 johanson and vahlne suggest a reformulation of the uppsala internationalization process model by incorporating business network theory and entrepreneurship theory into the model the present paper makes a critical examination of this reformulation the overall conclusion is that several issues have to be addressed regarding the relationship between business networks and firms internationalization the meaning of entrepreneurship as well as the possibility to combine business network theory and entrepreneurship theory in the uppsala model before the full potential of such an incorporation can be realized

network prominence bargaining power and the allocation of value capturing rights in high tech alliance contracts we suggest and provide empirical evidence that the bargaining power of alliance partners stemming from their prominence in alliance networks influences the ex ante allocation of value capturing rights in high tech alliance contracts network prominence can enhance the availability of alternative partners for a firm and thereby elevates the firm s bargaining power and enables the firm to receive i more value capturing rights vis a vis its partner i e more net value capturing rights and ii more rights to the unexpected outcomes vis a vis its partner we empirically investigate the content of research and development r d collaboration contracts between biotech and pharmaceutical firms and show that as the prominence of the client i e pharmaceutical firm increases it is able to attain i more net value capturing rights to outcomes within the area of collaboration and ii more rights to unexpected outcomes by contrast increased prominence of the r d firm i e biotech firm decreases both t

on the evolution of competition an application of nonlinear tests a corollary of the coase theorem maintains that where free market precepts exist the allocation of property rights would not impact the level of competition within an industry within the major league baseball industry for example the theorem would suggest that institutional arrangements such as free agency would not impact player distributions and therefore would fail to alter competitive balance in order to examine this implication the present paper investigates the univariate behaviour of competition balance in the end it appears that an increased labour pool rather than institutional changes is responsible for movements in competitive levels within the industry specifically the evidence suggests that competitive balance measures are trend stationary however the trend is nonlinear and is common to baseball s labour pool i e the two co trend

the impact of technological innovation on international trade patterns the evidence reconsidered abstract this paper presents some new evidence in relation to the role of technical change in particular industrial innovation on the international competitiveness of the various oecd countries its originality consists primarily of a using a technology output indicator to measure technological performance b presenting and comparing various measures of trade and technological performance for each individual oecd country with the exception of iceland c analysing at a relatively high level of product industry disaggregation the relationship between export performance and technological performance at the same time the very limited scope of the paper has to be emphasized a the analysis is purely static all the evidence presented relates to one year 1977 b most of the results obtained are preliminary and should be further substantiated by more detailed empirical and theoretical research c as a consequence little attention has been paid to policy implications which it was felt could only be discussed properly in a later stage the paper consists of four sections a brief review of the state of the art section 1 a discussion on definitions of technology intensity section 2 the development of the best technology output indicator section 3 and the empirical analysis itself section 4 the following most important results emerge from these various sections a there are serious shortcomings in using average technology intensity as bench mark for classifying products or industries in technology intensive or nontechnology intensive categories b there is a substantial difference between technology intensity as measured on the basis of a technology input proxy rd c yet as between countries the most traditional output and input indicators the number of patents granted and the amount spent on rd d foreign patenting in particular foreign patenting in the united states figs 1 and 2 section 3 is a more reliable technology output proxy than domestic patenting e in terms of technological comparative advantage as opposed to technology intensity it is the small oecd countries as opposed to the large ones which seem to base their trade comparative advantage on technological comparative performance table 7 section 4 1 f at the individual industry level it is found that i for most technology intensive industries defined however in a less restrictive way than us r d intensities a close relation exists between technological performance and export performance and ii that as compared to other country specific resource variables technological performance is the most important trade explanatory variable its elasticity increasing with the technology intensity of industries tables 11 and 12 section 4 2 space constraints prevented us from presenting the data in relation to the inter industry and inter country analysis these can however be obtained from the author

crime and punishment in major league baseball the case of the designated hitter and hit batters i introduction are you seriously going to throw at somebody when you re facing randy johnson curt schilling 1 in 1973 amid waning fan interest in baseball the american league al of major league baseball mlb instituted the designated hitter rule as an experiment the stated goal of this rule change was to boost offensive output by increasing the talent pool of batters in the lineup traditionally the competing teams field nine players who must play defense in the field and bat because of the importance of the pitcher who is responsible for putting every ball in play teams rely on pitching ability and ignore the hitting ability when choosing the pitcher in the lineup therefore pitchers tend to be very poor hitters by allowing teams to substitute a player of greater hitting ability known as the designated hitter dh to bat for the pitcher the total offensive output increases the experiment has since grown into an institution in the al that differentiates it from the national league nl where all players must bat and play in the field the dh succeeded in turning the al into the power league as intended but an unintended consequence of the rule change is that the al now has more batters hit by pitches than the nl traditional baseball lore holds that the lack of retaliatory punishment in the al for hitting batters is the cause of this phenomenon veteran nl manager dusty baker describes the deterrent impact from a pitcher s point of view you can be bold in the american league and get away with hitting batters it s different in our league where you have to hit 2 pitchers who do not have to bat where they might face retaliation are more willing to risk hitting batters than pitchers who do bat given that the rules of the game in both leagues are identical except for the use of the dh mlb created ideal conditions for a natural experiment to examine the impact of the dh on hit batters in a controlled setting 3 several economists have looked at the issue and found that there is a statistically significant relationship between the dh and hit batters however the reason for this difference is subject to much debate it is possible for the hit batter differential to exist without the deterrent effect of retaliation the rulebook punishment for hitting a batter awarding the hit batter first base makes retaliatory enforcement costly for teams to employ pitchers are typically poor hitters who rarely reach base via hitting while batters who are dhs are typically good hitters the fewer hit batters in the nl may reflect the lineup composition in which the pitcher must bat nl teams will try to avoid plunking pitchers because they are relatively less likely to reach base than non pitchers while al teams do not have this easy out in their batting lineups a problem with previous studies of the subject is their reliance on yearly aggregate data hit batters are rare events approximately 1 of all plate appearances result in a hit batter that occur in the course of game where other incentives are quite relevant this means that identifying small changes in pitcher behavior from specific factors will be difficult to identify with aggregate data differentiating between the two competing explanations for the hit batter differential between leagues deterrence and lineup composition requires micro level data where we can control for in game strategic incentives for hitting batters using a unique play by play data set that allows us to control for specific factors that affect hit batters we find that pitchers are still more likely to hit batters with a dh in the lineup than without and though pitchers are hit more rarely than other players pitchers do experience retaliation for hitting batters retaliation against pitchers who plunk batters which was not found in earlier studies is needed to generate an effective deterrent for pitchers in the nl

internationalization as an evolutionary process the johanson and vahlne model of internationalization has been the main foundation of process research in international business since 1977 this model also known as the uppsala model provides a useful general framework for interpreting firm level processes increasing and occasionally decreasing resources committed to international operations however the model does not provide theoretical explanations of non linear and discontinuous dynamics of the process over time nor does it offer testable propositions we focus on the longitudinal dimension of internationalization specifically path breaking commitments that increase a firm s exposure to risk on this basis we examine the idea that the ip model represents an evolutionary process by emphasizing the role of novelty and introducing selection mechanisms we explain non linear and discontinuous dynamics of internationalization processes path breaking resource commitments create novelty and deviate from a gradual path of growth as firms take higher risks and hence face more intensive selection pressures in consequence firms are more likely to experience outstanding performance but are also more likely to experience failure this variation of outcomes is moderated by the resources a firm can draw upon in its ecosystem and by the volatility of its environment based on these ideas we develop testable propositions to advance the internationalization process model

rule changes and competitive balance in japanese professional baseball i introduction since rottenberg s 1956 classic analysis of baseball s reserve clause economists have been interested in whether the rules for initially allocating players among major league baseball mlb teams affect their final allocation el hodiri and quirk 1971 formalized rottenberg s analysis of player allocation rules for a sports league in which each team independently maximizes its profits within the league s institutional constraints 1 consider the effect of a player draft regime and an open bidding regime on the allocation of new players often called rookies if a player draft allows team a to claim initially a particular new player and that player would generate a higher marginal product with team b then the two teams have incentives to make an exchange and send the player to team b alternatively under an open bidding regime the new player signs with the team presenting the highest offer i e team b with which he generates the highest marginal product assuming that transaction costs of exchanging players are zero el hodiri and quirk showed that the final allocation of players across teams will be the same in both regimes this result that the final allocation of players does not depend on the rules governing the initial allocation of players is baseball s version of the coase theorem following coase s 1960 analysis this invariance result vanishes if there are obstacles to exchanging players after the initial allocation in an open bidding regime players are initially allocated to the team with which they have the highest marginal product thereby eliminating the need for player exchanges since the best players are likely to generate the highest marginal product with teams in cities that have a high demand for winning games in an open bidding regime these teams are likely to have higher winning percentages and win more championships than other teams 2 by contrast in a draft regime the best players are often initially allocated to a team located in a city with a low demand for winning games if there are obstacles to player exchange then players will be allocated more evenly across teams under a draft regime and competitive balance should improve both within a given season and over time 3 empirical studies have used performance data from north american mlb to analyze whether changes in the rules for allocating rookies among teams affect competitive balance fort and quirk s 1995 recent study found that mlb s change in 1965 from an open bidding to a draft regime for allocating new players increased competitive balance in the american league and had little effect on competitive balance in the national league the power of statistical tests conducted with the mlb data is however severely limited due to the small number of observations from the draft regime period this article uses a larger data set from japanese baseball to examine the same rule change that economists have analyzed for mlb remarkable as it may seem the japanese professional baseball league jpbl adopted the same rule change from an open bidding to a draft regime for rookies in the same year 1965 as major league baseball our goal is to examine how the rule change in the jpbl affected competitive balance in its two leagues and to compare the outcomes of these two remarkably similar experiments set in two very different cultures ii studies of north american mlb and japanese jpbl daly and moore 1981 compared player allocation in the two regimes for allocating rookies by examining mlb s 1965 switch from an open bidding to a draft regime they used pre and post 1965 performance data from the american and national leagues to examine several measures of competitive balance in the post 1965 draft regime they found substantially more competitive balance in the american league and somewhat more competitive balance in the national league using different tests for competitive balance fort and quirk 1995 1 282 86 also found evidence for more competitive balance in the american league but found no change in competitive balance in the national league

how do social defenses work a resource dependence lens on technology ventures venture capital investors and corporate relationships interorganizational relationships offer many potential benefits but they also expose firms to dangers such as misappropriation which pull partners apart this tension between collaboration and competition is central to tie formation especially for young technology firms that have both a high need for resources and high appropriability of their own resources prior work has examined legal and timing defenses that enable interorganizational ties by such low power firms we focus here on social defenses in a longitudinal study of equity tie formation between young firms and established corporate sharks spanning five technology based industries and 25 years we unpack the effects of social defenses and find intriguingly that centrally positioned third parties are a particularly powerful social defense and that third party social defenses are especially significant when more traditional defenses are unavailable we thus offer the insight that third party chaperones central venture capital investors play a key role in helping young firms to mitigate and navigate vulnerabilities while mobilizing resources

a multi criteria evaluation framework for tradable white certificate schemes recent years have witnessed regained political momentum on energy efficiency and interest in establishing markets is growing as a result tradable white certificate twc schemes of differing design have been implemented in great britain italy and france much attention is being paid to justifying and evaluating such schemes in this paper we develop and apply a multi criteria framework for evaluating twc schemes an approach that attempts to cover their individual design features a broad evaluation is conducted regarding energy saving and environmental effectiveness economic efficiency cost effectiveness transaction costs political feasibility administrative burden and technical change the results show the design and performance of twc schemes to be case and context specific and generalisations are thus inappropriate this evaluation supports the cost effectiveness modelled for the british scheme and the assumption that a twc scheme is an economically efficient policy instrument for the other more complex twc schemes more data and experience are needed to judge their ex post merit on the whole the proposed multi criteria evaluation requires considerable data and complementary methods however the framework improves the understanding of the broad effects and attributes of twc schemes it deals with various empirical and normative aspects that can be applied in their evaluation

structural change in mlb competitive balance the depression team location and integration no detectable break points in within season competitive balance 1901 99 occur after 1937 in the national league or after 1962 in the american league despite expansion free agency and the growth of local tv revenue disparity since then instead a continual improvement in competitive balance has occurred since those years associated with break points prior to these years 1 the al emerged from the depression much more unbalanced than the nl 2 team movement and league expansion alter balance in well known ways and 3 discriminatory preferences were stronger in larger revenue markets than in smaller revenue markets in both leagues jel c32 l83

internationalization of corporate technology through strategic partnering an empirical investigation this paper explores some trends in the internationalization of corporate r d efforts innovation output and strategic technology partnering in the past decade inter firm strategic technology partnering through which companies share their innovation efforts supplements the standard indicators of technological competence to broaden the scope from internal innovation processes to a wider range of innovative activities the international information technology industry is singled out for empirical study the main conclusion of this contribution is that even in a global industry such as information technology internationalization of innovation although by no means insignificant appears less important than expected