Managing cohesion in transnational organizations: an introduction

Aesthetic approaches seek to enrich knowledge about the ‘sensible’ aspects of experience. The ‘aesthetic dimension’ of shipboard organizational life is evoked and co‐created through multiple aesthetic categories such as the agogic, the sacred, and the sublime rendered through multiple sensory experiences of life aboard. A researcher and sailor‐informant co‐authored aesthetic reading contributes to a growing niche of aesthetic‐based research within organization studies. Our article explores collaboration as an important element of the aesthetic project. Possibilities for future aesthetic inquiries are also considered.     

First‐generation migrants become grandparents: how migration backgrounds affect intergenerational relationships

First‐generation migrants are not only reaching the age of retirement, but they are also becoming grandparents in the host society. Through the specific case of Portuguese migrants in Luxembourg, we look at what point their migration background becomes important to their intergenerational relationships. We have acquired the data for this article from biographical narrative interviews with ten older first‐generation grandparents and ten second‐generation parents. On the basis of these findings, we address three important aspects of intergenerational relations: (i) how first‐generation migrants socialize their grandchildren, (ii) grandparental mobility patterns and their embeddedness in practices of socialization and care, and (iii) the challenges produced by language in intergenerational relationships.     

Firefighters across frontiers: two fire brigades cooperating in the Dutch–German borderland

This article focuses on boundaries as symbolic constructs to overcome structural impediments to cooperation in a borderland constituted by two nation states – Germany and the Netherlands – that, from a global perspective, may be regarded as close cultural neighbours. Empirically, the vicissitudes of cross‐border cooperation are analysed at the level of a Dutch and a German fire brigade in adjacent borderland villages. The diminishing visibility of borders does not necessarily lead to more openness, but gives rise to the emergence of socially constructed symbolical boundaries, which has major effects on issues of national identity and loyalty within organizations operating in trans‐border spaces. Cultural differences can complicate processes of transnational coordination, harmonization, and negotiation. However, cooperation and trust, based on an affinity with a local culture in borderlands, may provide a more stable fundament for successful common ventures than do regulations enacted by state authorities. Addressing the question of how processes of transnationalization affect inter‐organizational cooperation, this article describes and analyses the ways in which European integration, national bureaucracies and cultural similarities and differences form partly converging and partly conflicting forces in cooperative efforts in the Dutch–German borderland.     

CHARITIES, NO; LOTTERIES, NO; CASH, YES: MAIN EFFECTS AND INTERACTIONS IN A CANADIAN INCENTIVES EXPERIMENT

The effects on response rates to mail surveys of prepaymentcash incentives, charitable donations, and the chance to wina lottery prize are examined in a true experimental design.A survey on environmental issues was conducted during the fallof 1994 among 3,088 households drawn from the Grand River watershedregion of southwestern Ontario, Canada. The 20-cell incentivesexperiment crossed three levels of prepaid monetary cash incentive($2, $5, and $10) with a control group (no cash incentive),plus the offer to make a charitable donation ranging from $2to $10 on behalf of the respondent, or participation in a lotteryfor prizes of $200. The overall response rate to the survey,with three follow-ups, was 70.7 percent with the effects ofthe prepaid cash rewards demonstrated, but not those for thelottery or charitable donations. Logistic regression analysisof response rate supports a main effects model for cash incentivesbut does not support either of two alternative models for maineffects of the lottery and charitable donations or interactions.Further analysis demonstrates a pattern of earlier responseas a result of prepaid incentives. The findings are discussedin terms of their cost-benefit implications and with respectto conceptualizations of respondents' motives for completingmail questionnaires.     

COLLUSION FACILITATING AND COLLUSION BREAKING POWER OF SIMULTANEOUS ASCENDING AND DESCENDING PRICE AUCTIONS

This article demonstrates that a robust tacit collusion evolves quickly in a "collusion incubator" environment but is destroyed by the simultaneous descending price auction. Theories of collusion-producing behavior, along with the detail of the states on which strategies are conditioned, lead to a deeper understanding of how tacit collusion evolves and its necessary conditions. These theories explain how the descending price auction destroys the collusion. The experiments proceed by conducting simultaneous ascending price auctions in the collusion incubator. Then, once the tacit collusion developed, changing to the descending auction. The change moved prices from collusive levels to near-competitive levels. ( JEL C71, C92, D43, D44)