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During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life nearly a hundred years after his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this chapter, the authors discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf.

The main purpose of this paper is the evaluation of previous German and Spanish research conducted related to oral communication capability in a different cultural surrounding. In order to test the validity of the European findings, a new sample was drawn using membership data of the U.S. based National Institute of Governmental Purchasing. The results of this paper corroborate that oral communication capability is a construct consisting of three dimensions. The model obtained in Europe for managers from private sector purchasers is also applicable in the U.S. for public purchasers. Furthermore, European results proposed four distinct types of communicators, while in the U.S. two additional groups of purchasers were found. Nevertheless, there is limited evidence for demographic or cultural influences on the oral communication capabilities of purchasers.

Describes the country‐specific conditions and developments in Central and Eastern Europe, the risks and opportunities of sourcing in this region and the measures necessary to implement supply systems including eastern suppliers. In order to use the future capabilities of eastern companies, it will be necessary to shape long‐running, cooperative relations. Four major tasks of implementing procurement systems involving suppliers from Central and Eastern Europe can be distinguished: the establishment of an appropriate internal organization to facilitate sourcing in Central and Eastern Europe; the identification, assessment, and selection of eastern suppliers; the development of suppliers′ capabilities and performance; and the implementation of logistical and legal relationships between the buyer and the supplier necessary for the operation of the procurement system. Therefore, not only the purchase prices have to be considered in procurement decisions, but also any other related costs. Higher logistics costs and higher transaction costs are the prices which have to be paid for realizing large arbitrages caused by lower labour costs. Accordingly, the efficiency of sourcing from Central and Eastern Europe crucially depends on the ability of the western procurement managers to recognize specific conditions and to shape appropriate procurement systems. Then logistics and transaction costs will be endurable.

Management approaches, such as supply chain management addressing cooperation among firms emphasize communication among people from different companies. The objective of this research was to investigate the impact of individual and contextual factors on the external communication behavior of purchasing managers in Germany.

Based on the literature, oral and written communication capabilities, purchasers' attitudes and the internal communication climate were identified as potential impact factors. A structural equation model containing 11 constructs was designed. Six hundred and seventeen responses were available for statistical analysis.

Summing up the results, oral communication capability and purchasers' attitudes toward individual communication with the suppliers play important roles in explaining external communication behavior of purchasers. Regarding indirect effects, there are strong total effects of the oral communication capability and the attitudes on the supplier management success as well as satisfaction.

Several measures were operationalized using two‐item or three‐item scales. Future research should focus on the development of more comprehensive scales.

Various conclusions from the results were drawn. Particularly, there are important managerial impacts on supply management and human resource management.

The paper provides the first scientific insight into the relationships between oral communication capability, attitudes toward communication, communication behavior and managerial performance in the field of supply management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is an impact, from a provider's perspective, of customer‐specific adaptations by third‐party logistics (3PL) providers on the success of 3PL‐relationships.

A document analysis is presented and hypotheses are developed based on research in 3PL, relationship marketing and transaction cost theory. Structural equation modelling and causal analysis with partial least square were used to test the hypotheses.

This study provides evidence that customer‐specific adaptation by providers is an important prerequisite to 3PL‐performance. Furthermore, according to the transaction cost theory, the results express the importance of providers' adaptation to maintain 3PL‐relationships.

Further research should compare customers' perceptions of partner‐specific adaptations and 3PL‐relationship success with the results of this study.

The paper shows that 3PL‐providers should adapt their systems and procedures to customers' specific requirements, to ensure high‐relationship performance. Satisfied customers should promote the providers' adaptations, because these adaptations enhance the probability of contract renewal and reduce the risk of providers' unexpected termination of the contract.

FOR the student who has to choose a field of study in which to learn and exercise his bibliographic skills Sociology affords an interesting and attractive challenge. Indeed, to understand his chosen profession it must necessarily be placed within its social context. Most students at some stage of their development reflect on the social problems that beset the human situation, and some, as the mass media would have us believe, are anxious to remould the “sorry scheme of things” as represented by the existing social structure.

Large-scale projects are the typical delivery model in the engineering and construction industry, with their very own characteristics. Even though well established, only 1 in 1,000 large-scale projects is successful (Flyvbjerg, 2011). A lack of effective supply chain risk management (SCRM) has repeatedly been identified as one of the main causes. While the SCRM body of knowledge seems increasingly well established, a lack of effective methods meeting the specific requirements of large-scale projects can be observed.

This paper presents a structured and prioritized view on the supply chain risk portfolio in this sector: first, the authors identified and categorized the key supply chain risks in the recent literature. Next, the authors surveyed large-scale project managers across multiple industries, mainly coming from the domains of supply chain management and project management. Finally, the authors provide a contextualized risk taxonomy for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) projects.

The identified risk portfolio deviates from generic projects significantly and shows a very high inherent risk exposure of large-scale projects. In particular, behavioral risks are identified as crucial. Additionally, a bias to considerably underestimate risks at project beginning is found.

The contextualized SCRM taxonomy offers a systematic and structured view on the key supply chain risks in EPC large-scale projects. The identified risks are considerably different in their characteristics compared to generic projects or classical SCRM approaches. The authors thus provide a new perspective on SCRM in this specific setting and complement traditional risk and project risk management techniques.