Search results

The digital economy, which heralds the start of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4), is upon us. What can history teach international business scholars about how firms are likely to respond to this new form of technological change? Who are the likely winners or the likely losers? For 30 years, the author has lived through, studied, and written about the Third Industrial Revolution and other major environmental shocks, ranging from new entrants to academia to regional integration to outbreak of war, looking at the fundamental issues of how individuals, firms, communities, and countries respond to and are affected by life-changing events. In this chapter, the author tells seven brief stories about living through and studying “shocks and responses.” Perhaps, some of these stories may provide useful lessons to the scholars of IR4.

Management accounting, inter alia, gives information on how resources are allocated within organisations. If managers wish to change patterns of resource allocation, accounting knowledge is pivotal to any change processes. In health care organisations resources follow decisions made by clinicians, hence to have an impact on resource allocations managers must influence them. Direct managerial control over clinicians is not possible or desirable in health care organisations. This article suggests that incentives are an alternative to control in health care and investigates the impact of financial incentives within hospitals, utilising a naturally occurring experimental situation that has arisen between the UK and Canada.

Traditionally in health care and in the public sector more generally, little thought has been given to the impact of provider‐oriented incentives on the delivery of services. There has been an assumption that the language of incentives belonged to the private sector and was inappropriate in the public sector. Instead, the governance of health care has relied on the professional ethos of clinicians to direct decision making. Implicitly there has been an expectation that the ethical stance of clinicians would ensure that their actions were always in the best interest of patients. However, in the context of a heightened awareness of cost constraints there has been a greater emphasis on the active management of resources in medical organizations. This article argues that the structure of incentives in health care is highly significant in resource allocation, as medical ethics does not provide an unambiguous guide to clinical decision making. The paper defines the nature of the financial and professional incentives in medical organizations and discusses their impact on the delivery of services through an analysis of positive and negative effects. By undertaking a comparison between the UK and Canada, the paper identifies the differential nature of the incentives present in the health care systems of these two countries and discusses some of their consequences.

Part I of this issue begins with a paper by Colin Eden and Fran Ackermann on “Competences, distinctive competences, and core competences.” Eden and Ackermann draw on their extensive work with top management teams in workshops focused on identifying the competences of an organization. They describe an interactive process of engagement with managers through which an organization's competences are identified, some of which are further judged to be “distinctive competences” of the organization. Analysis of the interrelationships among a firm's identified competences then leads to the discovery of a pattern of competence interactions in which some competences appear to be at the “core” of the organizations distinctive competences. The paper presents an interesting perspective on how the capabilities and competences of a firm are often interrelated in ways that invite special attention and development by managers. Further, the paper explains the systems methodology that the authors have developed for use with managers to help identify and assess an organization's competences.

In order to elaborate the concept of resources (a key component of the well-established resource-based theory of the firm) this paper concentrates on exploring and elaborating the associated concept of competences, in particular distinctive and core competences. This exploration includes an examination of the extant literature, alongside and in parallel with, an extensive body of action research undertaken over 15 years and with 44 top management teams engaged in strategy making. As such the concepts are scrutinized both in terms of their theoretical underpinnings as well as their impact on practice. The research reinforces the view that distinctiveness emerges most powerfully from the identification (or creation) of unique bundles or combinations of competences and that effective and meaningful core competences can be identified from understanding and refining the links between competences and organizational goals. The resultant conceptualization of the systemic competence/goals structure emerges from the interaction of theory and practice.

Regardless of extent of substitutability and complementarity in a conventional general equilibrium model with three factors and two sectors, there is no possibility that factor rewards of the extreme factors will reverse their ranking in response to a change in relative prices.

In this paper we present a systemic approach to modeling coopetition between firms that provides a methodology for analyzing the strategic incentives for organizations to engage in coopetition relationships (the why) and the organization design required to address the complexities inherent in such multifaceted relationships (the how).

We pursue a model-based approach that incorporates important conceptualizations adapted from competence-based management (CBM) theory and value network approach. We illustrate the applicability of our approach by applying it to the case of coopetition between IBM and Apple in the development of PowerPC CPU.

We show how modeling can contribute to our understanding of the strategic incentives for the organizations to develop a coopetitive relationship (“the why” of coopetition) and the organization design required for accommodating and addressing the complexities and dynamics of such a multifaceted relationship (“the how” of coopetition).

First, our findings echo some of the perspectives developed in coopetition literature. Second, the study has utilized value network-level analysis in examining coopetition.

The modeling framework reported in this paper can help management practitioners in structuring choice situations involving coopetition, both in terms of the incentives to engage in a coopetitive setting and the design of a value network that can accommodate the complexities inherent in such multifaceted relations.

Evaluates changes in the welfare system in Sweden, the UK and the USA over a decade, basing arguments on the divergence of economic globalization and domestic forces. Presents brief economic snapshots of each country, stating quite categorically that the welfare state is an impediment to capitalist profit‐making, hence all three nations have retrenched welfare systems in the hope of remaining globally economically competitive. Lays the responsibility for retrenchment firmly at the door of conservative political parties. Takes into account public opinion, national institutional structures, multiculturalism and class issues. Explores domestic structures of accumulation (DSA) and refers to changes in the international economy, particularly the Bretton Woods system (Pax Americana), and notes how the economic health of nations mirrors that of the US. Investigates the roles of multinationals and direct foreign investment in the global economy, returning to how economic policy affects the welfare state. Points out the changes made to the welfare state through privatization, decentralization and modification of public sector financing. Concludes that the main result has been an increase in earnings inequality and poverty.

Most years, several AIB members are elected as AIB Fellows on account of their excellent international business scholarship, and/or past service as AIB President or Executive Secretary. The Fellows are in charge of electing Eminent Scholars as well as the International Executive and International Educator (formerly, Dean) of the Year, who often provide the focus for Plenary Sessions at AIB Conferences. Their history since 1975 covers over half of the span of the AIB and reflects many issues that dominated that period in terms of research themes, progresses and problems, the internationalization of business education and the role of international business in society and around the globe. Like other organizations, the Fellows Group had their ups and downs, successes and failures – and some fun too!