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.     

Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington,D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project,June--July 1993

This paper reports the results of a prospective experiment in which a group of approximately 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi assembled in Washington, D.C., from June 7 to July 30, 1993. It was hypothesized that levels of violent crime in the District of Columbia would fall substantially during the Demonstration Project, as a result of the group's effect of increasing coherence and reducing stress in the collective consciousness of the District. A 27-member Project Review Board comprising independent scientists and leading citizens approved the research protocol and monitored the research process. Weekly crime data was derived from database records provided by the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (DCMPD), which are used in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Statistical analysis considered the effect of weather variables, daylight, historical crime trends and annual patterns in the District of Columbia, as well as trends in neighboring cities. Consistent with previous research, levels of homicides, rapes and assaults (HRA crimes) correlated with average weekly temperature. Robberies approximately followed an annually recurring cycle. Time series analysis of 1993 data, controlling for temperature, showed that HRA crimes dropped significantly during the Demonstration Project, corresponding with increases in the size of the group; the maximum decrease was 23.3% (p < 2 × 10–9) [24.6% using a longer baseline, with 1988--1993 data (p < 3 × 10–5)], coincident with the peak number of participants in the group during the final week of the assembly. When the same period in each of the five previous years was examined, no significant decreases in HRA crimes were found. Robberies did not decrease significantly. However, a model that jointly estimated the effect of the Demonstration Project on both HRA crimes and robberies showed a significant reduction in violent crimes overall of 15.6% (p = 0.0008). Further analysis showed that the effect of the coherence-creating group on reducing HRA crimes could not be accounted for by additional police staffing. The time series analysis for HRA crimes gave results that are highly robust to alternative model specifications, and showed that the effect of the group size was cumulative and persisted after the Demonstration Project ended. Also, calculation of the steady state gain based on the time series model predicted that a permanent group of 4,000 coherence-creating experts in the District would have a long-term effect of reducing HRA crimes by 48%.     

Analysis of accelerated life tests with weibull failure distribution via generalized linear models

Efficient industrial experiments for reliability analysis of manufactured goods may consist in subjecting the units to higher stress levels than those of the usual working conditions. This results in the so called "accelerated life tests" where, for each pre-fixed stress level, the experiment ends after the failure of a certain pre-fixed proportion of units or a certain test time is reached. The aim of this paper is to determine estimates of the mean lifetime of the units under usual working conditions from censored failure data obtained under stress conditions. This problem is approached through generalized linear modelling and related inferential techniques, considering a Weibull failure distribution and a log-linear stress-response relationship. The general framework considered has as particular cases, the Inverse Power Law model, the Eyring model, the Arrhenius model and the generalized Eyring model. In order to illustrate the proposed methodology, a numerical example is provided.     

The democratic elite: America's movie stars

This study presents a collective portrait of movie stars, an American artistic elite. It examines the social backgrounds and recruitment patterns of top movie stars in the United States from 1932 to 1984.Screen acting has involved an inherent conflict between its democratic populist ideology and its elitist practice. While the social base of the film elite is relatively open and democratic, few film players achieve stardom at any given time.The screen elite has been more democratic in composition and recruitment than other institutional elites. Movie stardom has regularly functioned as a channel of upward mobility for individuals of lower socioeconomic and ethnic minority background. And movie stars are selected by the public, as well as promoted by studios. However, more men than women achieve star status in Hollywood and ethnic minorities, such as Jews, have oftne had to change names and disguise ethnic characteristics to succeed. Nonetheless, movie stardom remains an important symbol of dominant American values, such as the rags to riches myth.

(Hollywood Hotel, 1937)

     

Longitudinal data analysis of animal growth via multivariate dynamic models

We propose models to analyze animal growth data with the aim of estimating and predicting quantities of biological and economical interest such as the maturing rate and asymptotic weight. It is also studied the effect of environmental factors of relevant influence in the growth process. The models considered in this paper are based on an extension and specialization of the dynamic hierarchical model (Gamerman & Migon, 1993) to a non–linear growth curve setting, where some of the growth curve parameters are considered exchangeable among the units. The inference for these models are approximate conjugate analysis based on Taylor series expansions and linear Bayes procedures     

Change-point approach to data analytic wavelet thresholding

Previous proposals in data dependent wavelet threshold selection have used only the magnitudes of the wavelet coefficients in choosing a threshold for each level. Since a jump (or other unusual feature) in the underlying function results in several non-zero coefficients which are adjacent to each other, it is possible to use change-point approaches to take advantage of the information contained in the relative position of the coefficients as well as their magnitudes. The method introduced here represents an initial step in wavelet thresholding when coefficients are kept in the original order.