Business Innovation through Customer Value Creation-Type Businesses

In the last few years, Japan has seen rapid growth in the multipoint connection service market, which is associated with multimedia videoconferencing systems. Behind this trend was the birth and explosive growth of the multipoint video communications market, which was initiated by NTT, Japan's largest telecommunications carrier, in alliance with a joint venture business (NTT Phoenix Network Communication Inc.: hereafter, NTT Phoenix) comprised of heterogeneous U.S.-Japan joint businesses. This article takes up the case of the world's largest multi-point connection venture business, and considers how an NTT Phoenix's customer value creation-type business created a new video network service market in Japan.     

Trust,Morality, and the Privatization of Water Services in Developing Countries

This article examines the business of water privatization and the ethics implied in the transformation of the water services sector in developing countries. Drawing on data derived from field visits and semi‐structured interviews held with members of government, nongovernmental organizations, and other stakeholders in one country undergoing transformation in this sector, Ghana, the article considers the ethical perspectives of the various involved stakeholders. The analysis draws on three perspectives—Gilligan's ethic of care, Rawls’ principles of justice, and virtue ethics—which together highlight the economic, class, and gender‐based dimensions of the privatization debate. Finding that endemic mistrust characterizes this debate, the article considers what is needed to re‐instill trust among stakeholders. Specific implications are provided for business leaders and government policymakers.     

基于飞行品质数据的飞行员调度模型研究

随着近几年我国航空业的迅猛发展,各大航空公司都在不断扩张自身规模,增加任务量,同时各公司又必须在保障安全的前提下进行飞行生产活动,这就使得飞行员的调度工作更为重要。本文在传统的飞行员调度模型基础上充分考虑安全的因素提出基于飞行品质数据的飞行员调度模型。通过考察调度过程中飞行员前期飞行品质表现情况,对飞行品质数据进行分类,设定搭配规则限制某些飞行品质分类级别较低的飞行员组成机组,实现提高排班安全性的目的。文中提出了根据飞行员工龄和千次率的分类方法,并运用列生成算法求解以周为单位的调度模型,这对于我国航空公司"安全第一,保障生产"的要求有着一定的借鉴意义。     

Wird die Relevanz von Ertragsteuern für die Unternehmensrechnung nach rechtlichen oder ökonomischen Kriterien beurteilt?

Textbooks in the areas of Management Accounting, Finance and Valuation treat taxes very differently. Finance and Valuation increasingly consider tax effects. Management Accounting considers taxes only if they meet certain legal “cost” criteria. These criteria follow tax law rules, but not economic rules and primarily consider tax effects of the local business tax only. This view is also reflected in recent cost accounting regulations. We present evidence from a survey of managers and chambers of commerce, according to which practitioners’ views of whether the local business tax is a cost are heterogeneous. The majority of managers do not consider the local business tax as a cost and do not pass it on to customers. The chambers of commerce however still consider the local business tax as a cost.     

A Study of the Role Played by Manufacturing Strategic Objectives and Capabilities in Understanding the Relationship between Porter's Generic Strategies and Business Performance

An appropriate alignment between business strategy, manufacturing strategic objectives and manufacturing capabilities reportedly influences business performance positively. However, few papers empirically analyse this proposition for the case of Porter's generic strategies of cost leadership and differentiation, and none jointly considers all four elements. This paper integrates strategies, capabilities and performance in a single model and proposes that both manufacturing competitive priorities and capabilities, articulated in terms of cost and flexibility, are essential for explaining the link between generic business strategies and business commercial and financial performance. Within this analytic framework, we test whether companies that emphasize one business strategy rather than another achieve a better alignment and superior performance. The analyses conducted with a sample of 148 Spanish manufacturers provide general support for these propositions and contribute to a deeper understanding of the role played by functional strategies in understanding the outcomes of business strategy.     

Maintaining Relevance in Business Education. A Framework for Exploring Alternative Teaching Paradigms

Relevance has become a critical factor in business education programs. Such programs must deliver the skills and knowledge that enable participants to learn and thrive in a context of change, growing business complexity and technological sophistication. This paper explores the need to realign our teaching approach to the new demands of business managers in pursuit of maintaining relevance. It considers the changes this requires in the learner: teacher relationship, and the way in which information communication technologies have a powerful role to play in developing and managing this new relationship. A model is proposed to explore the alternative teaching paradigms associated wich might be best described as seismic shifts in the learning landscape. For educators it suggests a change in teaching values that emphasise stronger attention to process skills, less teacher autonomy, direction and control, and a more creative use of technology to encourage diversity, dialogue and distributed team learning. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

ICT-based solution approach for collaborative delivery of customised products

Growing interest on business collaboration motivates today’s industries, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to establish and manage dynamic and non-hierarchical business networks to respond to market opportunities with added business benefits. This business environment requires concurrent work and real-time information sharing between key business partners in order to design and develop customised products. The use of traditional communication media such as e-mail, phone and fax is not satisfactory to get real-time information and is time-consuming and most often ineffective. In such environments, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT)/Web-based technology supports real-time information sharing among networked SMEs for the collaborative design and manufacturing of customised products. This study proposes an innovative ICT platform supporting SMEs collaboration, through Web and the Internet of Things technologies, which follows the Net-Challenge conceptual approach and methodological guidelines for SMEs to form and operate virtual organisations for the collaborative development and delivery of customised products. The ICT Platform was assessed in three different industry domains, namely the textile and apparel, the footwear and the machine tools, respectively. This ICT solution promotes collaboration, with substantial advantages for SMEs including the reduction of costs and delivery time and improvement of the innovation potential.     

需求信息滞后下的零售商决策与牛鞭效应分析

牛鞭效应是一种在企业经营中广泛存在的普遍现象,对企业的生产经营产生了极大的负面影响。本文考虑一个供应商和一个零售商组成的简单两级供应链系统。在这个系统中,首先建立在需求信息滞后情况下的零售商库存决策和混合决策(库存决策和定价决策)模型;然后进行决策对牛鞭效应的影响分析。结果显示:在需求信息存在滞后的情况下,零售商最优决策的定价和订货点的期望值是确定的,与需求信息滞后期的长度无关;零售商的库存决策能产生牛鞭效应,且牛鞭效应会随需求滞后期增加而逐渐减少;零售商的混合决策能否产生牛鞭效应,取决于需求自相关系数的变化,而与需求滞后期无关,但随着需求滞后期会改变期变化程度。此外,库存决策还是混合决策,在需求不具有滞后时较具有滞后时牛鞭效应表现得较为为减弱;零售商的混合决策与库存决策相比,只有在需求的自相关系数取较小值时,才表现得更为强烈,否则会减弱。因而对于零售商而言,适当的需求信息滞后以及供应商对零售商的定价柔性能减少牛鞭效应。     

The future of the stock exchange

What is the future of the Stock Exchange? In this article the author considers the question from the point of view of the U.K. His analysis will be of interest to planners in many types of organization. He concludes that provided the British economy remains one where private enterprises, funded by private savings voluntarily dispersed, the Stock Exchange will have a central part to play. At the same time, as the business of securities trading becomes more and more international so will the business of the Stock Exchange.     

Business models as a basis for regulation of financial reporting

The paper observes that the term ‘business model’ has been incorporated in recent financial reporting regulations. The first section of the paper describes various meanings of ‘business model’ and demonstrates that the term has no settled or agreed meaning. The second part of the paper considers the suitability of the term ‘business model’ as a basis for a measurement standard (IFRS 9) or for requirements for narrative reporting and concludes it is not suitable for either purpose. Examples from the UK FTSE 100 index companies are used to illustrate existing usage in narrative reporting, finding varying levels of informativeness of disclosures about business models. The final part of the paper discusses reasons for incorporating an ambiguous and contested term in reporting guidance. It identifies parallels with ambiguity in other branches of financial reporting and the potential utility of ambiguity in allowing consensus to be arrived at on a form of words, apparently tightening up reporting regulation, while allowing participants ‘wiggle room’.     

Strategic planning as an organizational change process—Some guidelines from practice

Learning to cope with the problems and uncertainties created by today's changing business environment is a task which faces ever company. Coping with the challenge of change is not just a question of adapting or reacting to the changes, it may also involve taking new initiatives in relation to the environment itself in order to exploit the opportunities which exist.A company may need to make fundamental adjustments to its philosophy, strategies, organization and practices in order to meet the newer demands of the environment. A prime difficulty is that companies are rarely in a position to start from scratch, they have existing organizational arrangements, power distributions, well established strategies and vested interests all of which tend to resist any kind of change which is likely to upset the ‘status quo’. They also have to overcome outdated beliefs and norms if they are to progress.This article considers the use of a modified approach to strategic planning as a mechanism for helping a company to acquire the norms, organization and strategies needed to cope with today's business environment. It is based on experience gained in helping to re-organize business enterprises engaged in textiles, steel tube manufacture, light engineering, distribution (world wide) and vehicle sales and servicing and also the Government of Jersey, Channel Islands.     

Industrial policy: The case for national strategies for world markets

This article considers the objectives of an industrial policy that would develop national strategies for world markets. It describes the tools used to implement such strategies and how the strategies would be organized. The author also considers some of the advantages and disadvantages of developing national strategies for world markets.     

Zum Einfluss der Inhaberführung auf die Betriebsrat-Geschäftsführer-Beziehung – Eine theoretische und empirische Analyse in mittelständischen Unternehmen

This paper examines the quality of the relationship between business managements and works councils in small and medium-sized enterprises and strives for answering the question, which factors determine the quality. As ownership is an important determining factor of the establishment of works councils in small and medium-sized businesses, especially the impact of ownership on this relationship has been investigated. Agency theory and stewardship theory give hints that the owner management can have different impacts on this relationship. In order to test these contradictory hypotheses we have estimated a Heckman selection model to investigate which factors determine the quality of the relationship between business managements and works councils. Our results based on data generated from a survey in small and medium-sized enterprises conducted by the IfM Bonn in the years 2005 and 2006 indicate that ownership has a negative influence on the establishment of works councils, but a positive one on the quality of the relationship between business management and works council. Thus, the hypotheses predicting the existence of stewardship behaviour among owners and the existence of agency behaviour among managers can be confirmed.     

Assigning students to academic majors

We address here the problem of assigning undergraduate students to academic major areas at a Middle-Eastern business school, which is quite different from what one usually faces in the West. Our formulation considers the student's preference in the light of his/her performance in certain bellwether courses and various practical constraints in arriving at an initial solution. We present a linear program that maximizes the overall value of the assignments to the students as well as the academic units concerned. We show through a real example how this approach has been implemented as one step in the major-assignment process.     

Effective eProcurement implementation process

As eProcurement is gaining popularity in business practice, researchers as well as practitioners have addressed the need of defining a proper eProcurement implementation strategy. This article aims to build an eProcurement implementation framework, which considers the main variables that have an impact on the eProcurement success and the links among them. The goal is to identify the main decisions that companies should take during the three principal phases of the eProcurement adoption (pre-implementation; implementation and post-implementation). Six case studies at different levels of eProcurement adoption have been used to identify the peculiarities of each phase of the process and to provide contingent guidelines.     

Understanding the transgenerational orientation of family businesses: the role of family governance and business family identity

The development of a transgenerational orientation is one of the most significant challenges that family businesses face and only a small number actually survive across generations. While prior research has focused on the business unit to provide us with a solid understanding of how corporate governance affects business performance and continuity, the role of the business family in the development of a transgenerational orientation has received less attention. To address this gap, this article applies a new systems and social identity theory framework to examine how family governance and business family identity can contribute to strengthening the transgenerational orientation of the business. A transgenerational orientation is defined as a decision premise to maintain the family’s control over the business across generations. Using a large data set, findings show that the presence of family governance measures and the business family’s identity are positively related to a transgenerational orientation of the business, with business family identity acting as a mediator. Thus, the development of family governance measures can foster communication within the business family and enhance the family members’ emotional investment in the business which strengthens the transgenerational orientation in the business.     

Towards a Variety of Meanings – Multiple Representations of Reputation in the Small Business Context

This paper examines the discursively constructed meanings for reputation in the small business context – an area of reputation research that has so far attracted little attention. We argue that viewing reputation as a social construction makes it possible to uncover and understand the variety of meanings attached to the concept in small businesses. On the basis of 25 thematic interviews with owner‐managers we (re)constructed four meanings for reputation: reputation as an economic resource, as social recognition, as a restrictive control mechanism and as a risk for personal status. We also investigate the variety of discursive events in which these meanings are created. The study further emphasizes reputation as a phenomenon in which a small business becomes identified with its owner‐manager, adding to the complex and conflicting nature of reputation, including both positive and negative aspects.     

Microfoundations of Small Business Tax Behaviour: A Capability Perspective

Small business tax behaviour has received surprisingly little attention. We argue that an organizational capability perspective using microfoundations will allow us to better understand the relationships between different drivers and the dynamics of small business tax behaviour. This study draws on in‐depth interviews with 42 small business owners who are matched with the firms’ factual tax compliance status. Using grounded theory, we build a framework that (a) identifies different microfoundations of small business capability to manage tax and (b) explains the dynamic nature of the relationship between organizational capability and compliance. Findings suggest that high capability does not necessarily translate into high tax compliance and this relationship is mediated by the owner‐managers’ perceptions of taxation as well changes in the economic and regulatory environment.     

Establishing a financial objective— A practical approach

Just about the only feature of the business environment which has remained constant in recent years is its rate of change. In particular, changes in the internal and external values of the world's leading currencies, in taxation laws, and in accounting practice, have combined to confuse the tasks of objective setting and performance measurement.

This article sets out to clear a path through that confusion. It considers the various factors to be taken into account when establishing a financial objective for use as a criterion in resource allocation decisions. It shows how, in the U.K., a growth rate objective is an essential companion to a return on investment objective.