Strategic Alliance Research in the Era of Digital Transformation: Perspectives on Future Research

The emerging digital transformation in the twenty‐first century is rapidly and significantly changing the business landscape. The fast‐changing activities, expectations and new modes of collaboration suggest it is time to review the current theoretical insights from strategic alliance (SA) research, which are based on assumptions from a different era. We therefore aim to stimulate multidisciplinary debate and theoretical reflections to better understand emerging paradoxes and challenges that contemporary firms face in the formation, evolution and dissolution of strategic alliances. Specifically, we offer alternative visions of SA research and suggest fresh applications or supplements of existing theoretical perspectives and research methods that can better address the research questions emerging from an era of digital transformation.     

Monitoring the parameter changes in general ARIMA time series models

We propose methods for monitoring the residuals of a fitted ARIMA or an autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (ARFIMA) model in order to detect changes of the parameters in that model. We extend the procedures of Box & Ramirez (1992) and Ramirez (1992) and allow the differencing parameter, d to be fractional or integer. Test statistics are approximated by Wiener processes. We carry out simulations and also apply our method to several real time series. The results show that our method is effective for monitoring all parameters in ARFIMA models.     

How Welfare Policies Affect Adolescents' School Outcomes: A Synthesis of Evidence From Experimental Studies

Using data from 8 random assignment studies and employing meta‐analytic techniques, this article provides systematic evidence that welfare and work policies targeted at low‐income parents have small adverse effects on some school outcomes among adolescents ages 12 to 18 years at follow‐up. These adverse effects were observed mostly for school performance outcomes and occurred in programs that required mothers to work or participate in employment‐related activities and those that encouraged mothers to work voluntarily. The most pronounced negative effects on school outcomes occurred for the group of adolescents who had a younger sibling, possibly because of the increased home and sibling care responsibilities they assumed as their mothers increased their employment.     

Awkward Customers? Parents and Provision for Special Educational Needs

This article selectively reports on a small-scale qualitative exploration of the experiences of families who had undergone recent conflict with special educational needs (SEN) professionals. The data were collected over the spring and summer terms of 2001 from 10 families in two local education authorities (LEAs) in the English midlands. The research aimed to examine the parents' perspectives on points of conflict or dissatisfaction between themselves and education professionals. It was concerned with the parents' points of view regarding their pursuit of desired outcomes for their children and the factors that helped or hindered their endeavours. The project found that the parents' negotiation of the SEN system was held by them to be exceptionally difficult and stressful compared to other troubling issues in their lives. The research suggests that dissatisfactions with SEN provision have important implications for the management of LEA Parent partnership Schemes (PPS) in ameliorating the differences between parental aspirations and governmental ambition.     

Asylum Seekers in Scotland: The Accommodation of Diversity

This article explores the experiences of asylum seekers who have been housed in Glasgow under the government's dispersal policy. It notes the work of the Audit Commission in identifying those factors which may be considered when assessing the suitability of areas for asylum-seeker settlement. These factors are then discussed in detail in relation to the Glasgow case study, using information derived from interviews with asylum seekers themselves, with service providers and various community and voluntary organizations. The article notes the impact of additional factors such as media coverage, which were not considered by the Audit Commission. The article discusses the appropriateness of cities such as Glasgow, with relatively small minority ethnic populations, as locations for asylum-seeker settlement, and explores the impact of devolution. It concludes by suggesting that areas such as Glasgow may, with the appropriate commitment, become places where asylum seekers may successfully settle, once they have received refugee status, with new multicultural communities being created.     

Patterns in Cross Shopping for Groceries and their Implications for Co-operation in Retail Location

One determinant of the success of a retail outlet is its location. The location strategies adopted by many retailers of convenience products, including those marketing groceries, have been based upon the principle of siting stores away from competition. Recent moves by leading grocery retailers to develop out of town and other sites jointly, where they would trade side by side, mean that methods are needed to appraise the selection of location partners to supplement or replace traditional, spatial analyses. A method based on similarity of image and cross-shopping behaviour is proposed and tested on two substantial data bases. A concept, drawn from theory on brand switching, that customers would treat outlets seen as similar in a similar way, is found not to apply to source switching. Source switching behaviour is found instead to vary with the source itself, according to two distinct patterns. In one, shoppers cross shop more to retailers perceived to be similar; in the other, shoppers cross shop more to retailers perceived to be different. The strategies currently adopted by four grocery retailers in joint site development are appraised against the model of source switching that can be defined from these patterns. Some location alliances are predicted to be potentially more valuable to one partner than another both in the short and long term. The anomalies identified in the selection of location partners are analysed by reference to concepts drawn from the literature on co-operation. Two different types of relationship exist between the various retail partners; a longer term alliance at each site and shorter co-operation between head offices. It is suggested that the nature of the second could prejudice the outcome of the first.