Evolutionary Business

The goal of this study is to identify key factors in travel agent management and then differentiate their impact on the value creation of these companies. Researchers group methodologies for analyzing value creation in travel agencies into several main categories. The methods are interview and economic-financial analysis. Then we identify value creation indicators to determine economic value-added options, then we conduct empirical contrast. The research results reveal that travel agents, acting as intermediaries, have become highly relevant, absorbing nearly all industries of this sector's production. The historical analysis concludes that travel agents underwent a positive evolution in value creation during the studied period. The revolution in information technology, which increased staff productivity, and the process of sector concentration and association, which increased rotation, are the main factors driving this evolution. Investments in financial assets, tangible assets, and intangible assets also play an important role in transforming the sector's productive structure. While the evolution of margins plays a less significant role in value creation, the sector faces challenges due to price wars and strong competition. The positive impact of the sector's debt also increased, contributing to a significant increase in economic value-added. Finally, travel agents need to pay attention to these factors in their management in order to remain competitive and achieve their ultimate goal of creating value in this sector.

A analytic model is presented that considers the evolution of a market of durable goods. The model suggests that after introduction goods spread always according to Bass diffusion. However, this phase will be followed for durable consumer goods by a diffusion process governed by a variation-selection-reproduction mechanism and the growth dynamics can be described by a replicator equation. The theory suggests that products play the role of species in biological evolutionary models. It implies that the evolution of man made products can be arranged into an evolutionary tree. The model also suggests that each product can be characterized by its product fitness. The fitness space contains elements of both sites of the market, supply and demand. The unit sales of products with a higher product fitness compared to the mean fitness increase. Durables with a constant fitness advantage replace other goods according to a logistic law. The model predicts in particular that the mean price exhibits an exponential decrease over a long time period for durable goods. The evolutionary diffusion process is directly related to this price decline and is governed by Gompertz equation. Therefore it is denoted as Gompertz diffusion. Describing the aggregate sales as the sum of first, multiple and replacement purchase the product lifecycle can be derived. Replacement purchase causes periodic variations of the sales determined by the finite lifetime of the good (Juglar cycles). The model suggests that 2 both, Bass-and Gompertz diffusion may contribute to the product life cycle of a consumer durable. The theory contains the standard equilibrium view of a market as a special case. It depends on the time scale, whether an equilibrium or evolutionary description is more appropriate. The evolutionary framework is used to derive also the size, growth rate and price distribution of manufacturing business units. It predicts that the size distribution of the business units (products) is lognormal, while the growth rates exhibit a Laplace distribution. Large price deviations from the mean price are also governed by a Laplace distribution (fat tails). These results are in agreement with empirical findings. The explicit comparison of the time evolution of consumer durables with empirical investigations confirms the close relationship between price decline and Gompertz diffusion, while the product life cycle can be described qualitatively for a long time period.

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This Whitepaper is the outcome of a joint conference on ‘Transforming Ownership in Times of Overlapping Crisis’, held in Amsterdam on October 5-6, 2023. Instead of focusing on short-term profits, European
businesses can be diverse and sustainable in their ownership
design, and thereby competitive in the long run.
This requires diversifying the ownership forms of European
businesses compared to the current monoculture
of mainstream companies. The solutions are for a large
part already there, but they remain still too marginal. In
order to facilitate and promote these diverse, sustainable
ownership forms, this whitepaper proposes several industrial
policy instruments in order to level the playing field
and promote sustainability by design. The various contributions
in this whitepaper demonstrate the problems
with the mainstream ownership forms and the obstacles
faced by people, who want to use sustainable ownership
forms. Moreover, many of the contributions also articulate
concrete ways for using the industrial policy tools to
overcome these obstacles. We provide an overview of the
content of these contributions at the beginning of each
of the four parts.

We combine theory and empirical research on the origins of innovation to investigate the determinants of complexity and degrees of novelty in the emergence new innovations. We link up two important dimensions of technological change in both looking at the degree of novelty of the innovation (incremental/radical) and the complexity of the innovation (simple/complex). Using a novel dataset of major Finnish innovations from 1985-1998, we examine the role of technological opportunities, customers, breadth of collaboration with different communities of practice, the breadth of the sources of inspiration for the innovation, and competitive pressures in shaping the emergence of innovations. We find that taking into account both dimensions is imperative to the understanding of the origins of innovations.

We develop a valid definition of technological radicalness which states that a successful radical invention is: (1) novel; (2) unique; and (3) has an impact on future technology. The first two criteria allow us to identify potentially radical inventions ex ante market introduction; adding the third condition, we can ex post determine if an invention served as an important change agent. Empirically testable condition selected 6 of 581 tennis racket patents granted between 1971 and 2001. Two of the identified patents-the oversized and the wide-body rackets-are considered radical inventions by industry experts. Applying our definition and operationalization would allow researchers to achieve greater generalizability across studies, avoid endogenous definitions of radicalness, and study predictors of market success for radical inventions.

2 both, Bass-and Gompertz diffusion may contribute to the product life cycle of a consumer durable. The theory contains the standard equilibrium view of a market as a special case. It depends on the time scale, whether an equilibrium or evolutionary description is more appropriate. The evolutionary framework is used to derive also the size, growth rate and price distribution of manufacturing business units. It predicts that the size distribution of the business units (products) is lognormal, while the growth rates exhibit a Laplace distribution. Large price deviations from the mean price are also governed by a Laplace distribution (fat tails). These results are in agreement with empirical findings. The explicit comparison of the time evolution of consumer durables with empirical investigations confirms the close relationship between price decline and Gompertz diffusion, while the product life cycle can be described qualitatively for a long time period.

We develop a valid definition of technological radicalness which states that a successful radical invention is: (1) novel; (2) unique; and (3) has an impact on future technology. The first two criteria allow us to identify potentially radical inventions ex ante market introduction; adding the third condition, we can ex post determine if an invention served as an important change agent. Empirically testable condition selected 6 of 581 tennis racket patents granted between 1971 and 2001. Two of the identified patents-the oversized and the wide-body rackets-are considered radical inventions by industry experts. Applying our definition and operationalization would allow researchers to achieve greater generalizability across studies, avoid endogenous definitions of radicalness, and study predictors of market success for radical inventions.

Chapter 17 describes how the concept of mutuality extends well beyond that of mutually owned businesses. Mars itself is entirely owned by the Mars family. Many of the companies described in the book are stock corporations with external shareholders. One of the ways in which family firms can retain a focus on the common purpose of the business after the family has withdrawn or sold out to other shareholders is through ‘industrial foundations’ that confer a substantial fraction of the ownership of firms on foundations. These are particularly commonplace in Denmark and Germany, and some of the most successful companies in the world, such as the shipping company Maersk and the media firm Bertelsmann have these ownership forms. The principle of the Economics of Mutuality is about aligning the interests of diverse parties to a common purpose. This can be adopted in companies with any type of ownership but where it takes the form of, for example, mutuals or foundations, then it creates a c...

A great deal of interest has been generated on understanding linkages between work commitment, job motivation and productivity. The purpose of this paper is to consider the link between employee commitment and motivation, on the one hand, and productivity ...

Purpose-This paper aims to look at the three areas of corporate governance, intellectual capital and strategic business valuation from the perspective of a long-term value investor. Design/methodology/approach-The paper begins by briefly laying out the investment tenets of a long-term value investor and then proceeds to align long-term value investing with long-term stewardship of economic resources. The paper is a transcript of a keynote presentation delivered at the 1st McMaster World Congress on Strategic Business Valuation. Findings-In the area of intellectual capital the paper points out that the concept of intellectual capital falls far short of the fuller and more necessary view on intellectual knowledge which should be replaced or at least augmented with the notion of wisdom. Practical implications-Any notion of strategic valuation or pricing of assets based on their economic value will be significantly impacted by one's investment principles and time horizon. The paper mentions two examples of inefficiencies in the market due to divergent time horizons. The two examples discussed are income trusts and principal protected notes. Originality/value-One's investment philosophy or principles which largely determine time horizon will have a significant impact on how one approaches the important areas of corporate governance, intellectual capital and strategic business valuation. The concern of the paper is to the extent that we have become more short-term in our investment principles; this will have serious long-term negative impacts on the capital markets.

Introduction 1. Ownership as employee engagement Employee ownership in the UK What is employee ownership good for? When employee ownership matters Case study: Mondragon-scaling up cooperative ownership Key text: William Davies-Reinventing the Firm 2. Ownership as corporate governance Severing ownership from control: the peculiar development of the UK's corporate governance regime Frameworks of ownership and control Shareholders and stakeholders Case study: Private equity-in pursuit of shareholder value 3. Ownership as mutuality in the public sector Mutuality and social enterprise in the UK public sector Orienting to social provision and community responsibility Key text: Phillip Blond's The Ownership State Conclusion References List of Boxes and Figures Box 1: Public policy and UK corporate governance-dogs that don't bite? Box 2: Differential forms of share owners: are they really so bad? Box 3: Structural Innovation in the ownership of social enterprise 'over' companies, and to explore their respective impact on good work outcomes; Explain why share ownership schemes only generate good work outcomes when they are 4. combined with other means of employee engagement and participatory decision-making; Explore innovations in ownership that serve to embed the constitutional means necessary 5. for good work outcomes. To achieve these aims, the report first examines the impact of employee ownership structures 'in' the workplace. This includes an examination of the evidence that supports the proposition that enhanced employee ownership increases productivity, the relationship between ownership and motivation and the actual mechanisms by which employee share schemes serve to align the interests of employees and owners. To observe how ownership 'in' the workplace actually functions, we present here a case study of the Mondragon Corporation. Finally, we examine a key text in current debates on the future of firm ownership and the role played by employee owners.

Family enterprises are considered to be one of the oldest and still dominant forms of business organisations. However, their innovation activity is an emerging area of research, especially in the Central and Eastern European region. The aim of our study is to address this research gap by investigating, with the help of statistical tools, the relationship between the familiness of the firms, their innovation activity, and their export activity on representative samples of Hungarian SMEs in the years 2017, 2020, and 2022. Our results suggest that the innovation activity of exporting Hungarian SMEs is more significant than that of non-exporting SMEs. However, the relationship between familiness and innovation activity is not uniform in the three analyzed years, and the relationship between familiness and export activity is not significant. The findings of this study, that firms’ innovation and exporting activities can be mutually reinforcing, can be used by policymakers, curriculum dev...

Shareholder-owned corporations were dominant for much of the 20th century in the US, yet their numbers are substantially declining in the 21 st. This article argues that we are observing a regime shift in the transaction costs of organizing that disfavors traditional corporations. We are also seeing the emergence of low-cost, small-scale production technologies that will allow locallybased universal fabrication facilities. In combination, these changes are compatible with new forms of non-corporate enterprise. While corporations are basic units of production in many theories about the economy, they should be regarded as only one hypothesis about how production is and can be organized. Traditional alternatives to the corporation include producer and consumer cooperatives (e.g., Land o' Lakes, REI) and mutuals (State Farm, Vanguard). More recent possibilities include commons-based peer production (such as Linux and Wikipedia) and "platforms" that connect buyers and sellers (Uber, Airbnb). The raw materials are available for more democratic and locally-oriented enterprise. Management scholarship has an opportunity to document and encourage this movement.

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Franchised business networks consist of corporately management and independently owned channel outlets. This analysis employs transaction cost economics and agency theory to explain net ownership shifts between franchisors and franchisees. Hypotheses are developed and a preliminary test is made using secondary data. The results indicate that net conversions to franchisor ownership are associated with quality control factors, projected growth, and revenues.

The previous Labour and Coalition governments both promoted experimentation in mutual and social enterprise run services, a trend the current government continues. At the same time, complexity in the range of stakeholders and vehicles for public service delivery has led to calls for agencies to share a common public service ethos. John Maddocks and Jan Myers explore the combination of mutual and public to see if there is room for a blended approach, and if so who will benefit from it.

In spite of substantial body of theoretical and conceptual contributions, empirical evidence of nature of dynamic capabilities and their influence on firm performance is still relatively scarce. We present review of empirical studies of well-known processes that highlight ...

gibt eine Einführung in Grundbegriffe und Grundideen der Optionspreisbestimmung im Rahmen von Modellen in diskreter Zeit. So lässt sich z.B. auf einfache Weise das grundlegende No-Arbitrage-Prinzip und die sich durch ein geeignetes Hedging-Argument daraus ergebende Festlegung des fairen (arbitragefreien) Preises erläutern. Dieser Zugang erlaubt es mit geringem technischen Aufwand wesentliche Begriffe und Methoden einzuführen und z.B. mittels Approximation die Black-Scholes-Formel herzuleiten. Sei (S t) t≥0 der Preisprozess eines Wertpapiers (stock) das in einem Markt gehandelt wird. Weiter gebe es auf dem Markt eine risikolose, festverzinsliche Anlage (B t) t≥0 (bond), die verzinst wird mit dem Zinsfaktor r ≥ 0. Der Wert des Bonds zur Zeit t = 0 ist also 1 (1+r) t des Wertes zur Zeit t: B 0 = 1 (1 + r) t • B t. Gehandelt werden im Markt sowohl Wertpapiere über Basisgüter (z. B. Weizen, Öl, Gold) als auch Derivate, d. h. Kontrakte (Funktionale) über Basisgüter. Zu den Derivaten gehören beispielsweise Forwards, Futures und Optionen wie Puts und Calls. Forwards und Futures Darunter versteht man Verträge, die dem Marktteilnehmer das Recht geben, ein Basis-bzw. Finanzgut zu einem Zeitpunkt T in der Zukunft bzw. in einem zukünftigen Zeitraum [T , T ] zu einem festgelegten Preis K zu kaufen bzw. zu verkaufen. Man unterscheidet zwischen einer • long position: Eingehen eines Kaufvertrages und einer • short position: Eingehen eines Verkaufvertrags

SME's and family businesses are central elements in Spain's modern economic growth. However, their process of internationalization has been little explored in recent research, particularly when it has been primarily aimed at emerging economies.  The article aims to understand and explain the internationalisation process of SME's in the Valencian region in Latin America. Through a set of cases of companies from different sectors (Metal, Machinery, Chemical, Ceramics, Textile, Furniture) it is showed that since 1990, the different Latin American countries have been increasing their presence in the preferential markets of most of the 22 companies studied. The growing role of the region in the investments of Valencian SME's shows the diversification and expansion of destination markets, including geographically not only the traditional European or Arab countries but also those of Latin America. Different reasons underlie this internationalisation: but the enterprises ana...

SME's and family businesses are central elements in Spain's modern economic growth. However, their process of internationalization has been little explored in recent research, particularly when it has been primarily aimed at emerging economies.  The article aims to understand and explain the internationalisation process of SME's in the Valencian region in Latin America. Through a set of cases of companies from different sectors (Metal, Machinery, Chemical, Ceramics, Textile, Furniture) it is showed that since 1990, the different Latin American countries have been increasing their presence in the preferential markets of most of the 22 companies studied. The growing role of the region in the investments of Valencian SME's shows the diversification and expansion of destination markets, including geographically not only the traditional European or Arab countries but also those of Latin America. Different reasons underlie this internationalisation: but the enterprises ana...

Mutual and Employee-owned businesses (MEOBs) continue to experience a revival in the UK, be it through the growth of building societies and financial mutuals, or the success of employee-owned businesses (see Co-operatives UK 2013a; EOA 2013). In addition, government has promoted MEOBs by transferring public services into new corporate forms, citing reports of resilience and long-term success of MEOBs. Yet despite these developments, there appears to be some ambiguity as to how to evaluate the performance of MEOBs. The lack of a coherent framework that takes the values, principles and structures into account when assessing outputs and outcomes results in a narrow understanding of MEOB performance, often focused on quantitative measures irrespective of the values and principles held by these types of organisations, and indeed their purpose. In an effort to advance such work, this paper seeks to outline a framework to evaluate mutual and employee-owned businesses taking account of a variety of dimensions that affect how MEOBs do business, and the outcomes they produce, to broaden the idea of performance by joining up values and principles that are at the centre of the mutual model with the outputs and outcomes that are being created.

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The key idea of this model is that firms are the result of an evolutionary process. Based on demand and supply considerations the evolutionary model presented here derives explicitly Gibrat's law of proportionate effects as the result of the competition between products. Applying a preferential attachment mechanism for firms the theory allows to establish the size distribution of products and firms. Also established are the growth rate and price distribution of consumer goods. Taking into account the characteristic property of human activities to occur in bursts, the model allows also an explanation of the size-variance relationship of the growth rate distribution of products and firms. Further the product life cycle, the learning (experience) curve and the market size in terms of the mean number of firms that can survive in a market are derived. The model also suggests the existence of an invariant of a market as the ratio of total profit to total revenue. The relationship between a neo-classic and an evolutionary view of a market is discussed. The comparison with empirical investigations suggests that the theory is able to describe the main stylized facts concerning the size and growth of firms.

It is widely acknowledged that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) cannot afford underutilize their workforce and owner/managers encourage ways to involve employees. In this article, we focus on what is known about formal employee involvement and participation (EIP) practice in SMEs. Based on a systematic, "aggregative" literature review (Briner and Denyer 2012; Gough et al. 2012) we identify key research on EIP in SMEs that is embedded in practice and provides utility for practitioners and policy makers. The findings not only allow us to comment briefly on the evolution of EIP research in SMEs, but to identify methodically what is known and not known about EIP practice in SMEs. We go therefore beyond the limited review provide by Sameer and Őzbilgin (2014) and identify with a higher level of confidence three key directions for future academic research.

This study proposes the concept of disruptive firms: they are firms with market leadership that deliberate introduce new and improved generations of durable goods that destroy, directly or indirectly, similar products present in markets in order to support their competitive advantage and/or market leadership. These disruptive firms support technological and industrial change and induce consumers to buy new products to adapt to new socioeconomic environment. In particular, disruptive firms generate and spread path-breaking innovations in order to achieve and sustain the goal of a (temporary) profit monopoly. This organizational behaviour and strategy of disruptive firms support technological change. This study can be useful for bringing a new perspective to explain and generalize one of the determinants that generates technological and industrial change. Overall, then this study suggests that one of the general sources of technological change is due to disruptive firms (subjects), ra...

Franchised business networks consist of corporately management and independently owned channel outlets. This analysis employs transaction cost economics and agency theory to explain net ownership shifts between franchisors and franchisees. Hypotheses are developed and a preliminary test is made using secondary data. The results indicate that net conversions to franchisor ownership are associated with quality control factors, projected growth, and revenues.

This article studies how Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) operating in emerging economies implement adaptative strategies to respond to constant changes in demand and global uncertainties, such as those stemming from the current SARS-COV2 pandemic. In this study the knowledge management capabilities used by SMEs in the craft beer sector in a region of northern Mexico are the focus of analysis. The objective is to present the competitive capabilities that craft beer sector has demonstrated in Baja California region and how small companies compete with the national industrial brewery and survive. Sources are data from a sample of companies and interviews with brewery owners, with which the analysis approaches, also, the Baja California business environment. The article highlights the routes of creativity, innovation, and symbolic capital of the companies in the region, and uses ideas from dynamic capabilities and knowledge management theoretical frameworks, to understand the craft ...

Argentina was viewed as the least Americanized country in Latin America at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, the role U.S. companies in shaping the Argentinean economy in the first decades of the twentieth century has not yet been fully documented. For this reason, this article provides a new estimate of the scope and characteristics of U.S. interests in Argentina, and try to explain the role and impact of U.S. firms in Argentina's economic growth to 1930. It proposes that the impact of U.S. investments on the Argentinean economy was of longer standing and more widely diversified than has generally been assumed.

La relacion entre el caracter familiar de la empresa y la estrategia de internacionalizacion ha sido ampliamente abordada en la literatura sobre empresa familiar. Sin embargo, no existen trabajos que hayan analizado este tema para el caso concreto del sector hotelero espanol, aun siendo un sector que cuenta con una alta presencia de este tipo de empresas y, ademas, estar altamente internacionalizado. Por este motivo, el objetivo del presente trabajo es determinar si el caracter familiar de las cadenas hoteleras espanolas ha condicionado su estrategia de internacionalizacion.

PurposeThis paper aims to look at the three areas of corporate governance, intellectual capital and strategic business valuation from the perspective of a long‐term value investor.Design/methodology/approachThe paper begins by briefly laying out the investment tenets of a long‐term value investor and then proceeds to align long‐term value investing with long‐term stewardship of economic resources. The paper is a transcript of a keynote presentation delivered at the 1st McMaster World Congress on Strategic Business Valuation.FindingsIn the area of intellectual capital the paper points out that the concept of intellectual capital falls far short of the fuller and more necessary view on intellectual knowledge which should be replaced or at least augmented with the notion of wisdom.Practical implicationsAny notion of strategic valuation or pricing of assets based on their economic value will be significantly impacted by one's investment principles and time horizon. The paper mention...

Purpose – The bulk of research on approved profit sharing and SAYE schemes tends to focus on the effects of their presence/absence, which says little about how effectively such initiatives are implemented, particularly with regard to different categories of employee. This paper ...

On July 9 th , 1925, a coup d'état overthrew the Ecuadorian government of the president Gonzalo S. Córdova. The Military Junta chose the new president, Dr. Isidro Ayora, who founded the Central Bank of Ecuador in 1927. The majority of historians emphasize the patriotic spirit of the military forces in order to eliminate the influence of private banks. Nonetheless, there is a less popular view of the process known as the Julian Revolution, which understands the coup d'état, and the foundation of the Central Bank of Ecuador, as the result of struggles between bankers due to controversies around currency emissions. The arguments behind the Julian Revolution were based on some economic facts. Even though real GDP did not decrease in any year from 1913 to 1927, there was a generalized perception of a critical economy due to the constant fluctuation in prices, the increasing of fiscal deficit, and the reduction of revenues from the trade balance. This article proposes two hypotheses: first, the economic crisis was not an isolated case in Latin America, on the contrary, it was part of a regional trend; second, the economic crisis only affected the urban areas, which account for less than half of the total population.

The aim of this work is to establish the personal income distribution from the elementary constituents of a free market; products of a representative good and agents forming the economic network. The economy is treated as a self-organized system. Based on the idea that the dynamics of an economy is governed by slow modes, the model suggests that for short time intervals a fixed ratio of total labour income (capital income) to net income exists (Cobb-Douglas relation). Explicitly derived is Gibrat’s law from an evolutionary market dynamics of short term fluctuations. The total private income distribution is shown to consist of four main parts. From capital income of private firms the income distribution contains a lognormal distribution for small and a Pareto tail for large incomes. Labour income contributes an exponential distribution. Also included is the income from a social insurance system, approximated by a Gaussian peak. The evolutionary model is able to reproduce the stylized...

Objectives: In light of the faster than expected take up of the Community Interest Company (CIC) in the UK, this paper revisits findings from a study undertaken in 2000 on the impact of asset-locks on the longevity, growth and management styles in cooperative social enterprises. Prior Work: The cooperative and employee-ownership movements played a leading role in the establishment of Social Enterprise London and the Social Enterprise Coalition. The heritage of the UK cooperative movement, however, differs from its continental counterpart in placing a much stronger emphasis on common ownership that inhibits the transfer of capital and assets to private interests. Approach: This paper is both conceptual and empirical. It examines different worker cooperative traditions and develops a meta-theory that explains underlying assumptions in different forms of cooperative social enterprise. Using empirical data from 5 common ownership cooperatives and 5 equity-based cooperatives , this exploratory study found differences in management style, access to finance and growth prospects both within and between the two groups. Implications: Devolution of management responsibilities was more prevalent in cooperatives permitting both individual and collective ownership, as opposed to common ownership. Access to external finance was less problematic for organisations where individuals had made investments. Despite this, it was not established that organisations with external equity or loan finance grew quicker or faired better over the longer term. Value: The value of the paper lies both in the development of a meta-theoretical framework for differentiating forms of worker cooperative , as well as empirical evidence on the impact of asset-locks in the management and development of social enterprises. The study suggests that the CLS version of the CIC, or abandonment of the CIC in favour of an appropriately structured CLS or IPS model, may be appropriate for social enterprises wishing to grow, but makes little difference in small service oriented social enterprises.

The main objective of this article is to analyze the evolution of Ecuadorian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME), their contribution to the national economy, institutional framework, and internal operating characteristics. To this end, the focus is on companies related to the manufacturing sector in Ecuador. The main periods of the analysis are: i) the 1990s, ii) 2000-2008 and iii) 2009-2019; however, the decades of the 1970s and 1980s have been included in the first part of the article for their relevance. Literature review is the main data collection methodology, and the databases used are from official sources. Data from the Banco Central del Ecuador (BCE, Central Bank of Ecuador), the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INEC, National Institute of Statistics and Census), regulations and research around the SME sector have been used. The main findings are that SMEs are crucial within the Ecuadorian industrial fabric, because of its specialization in products that con...

Productivity is an essential component of lasting corporate success. It is also a critical ingredient in the recipe for making a vibrant and prosperous community. Economics recognizes that both capital and labor make contributions to productivity through the functions of investment and production. Enhancements to productivity can be obtained in multiple areas, including technological advancement, corporate expansion, market penetration, and product development. Sustained productivity growth, however, is predicated upon continual process improvement and market innovation. Identifying precisely “who” and “what” are contributing to productivity is challenging. Because capital and labor interact, it is difficult to determine whether the positive effect is due to the man or the machine. Evaluating the contributions of labor alone is complicated, as people are productive both as individuals and in working together as a group. It is hard to imagine a situation where a competitive advantage...

Productivity is an essential component of lasting corporate success. It is also a critical ingredient in the recipe for making a vibrant and prosperous community. Economics recognizes that both capital and labor make contributions to productivity through the functions of investment and production. Enhancements to productivity can be obtained in multiple areas, including technological advancement, corporate expansion, market penetration, and product development. Sustained productivity growth, however, is predicated upon continual process improvement and market innovation. Identifying precisely “who” and “what” are contributing to productivity is challenging. Because capital and labor interact, it is difficult to determine whether the positive effect is due to the man or the machine. Evaluating the contributions of labor alone is complicated, as people are productive both as individuals and in working together as a group. It is hard to imagine a situation where a competitive advantage...

This study examines the governance and accountability practices and reforms in UK building societies following the 2008 financial crisis. Theoretically, this study explores the notion of mutual accountability and governance systems in delineating the (re)structuring of UK building societies’ governance and accountability practices, in response to the crisis. Data for the study are derived from thirty-eight in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in building societies, including executives, non-executives, ex-directors, an auditor, a regulator and customers, as well as publicly available documents and non-participant observation of a number of members’ meetings. The findings of the study demonstrate that the industry’s internal, intermediate and external governance structures have significantly altered in the post-crisis era with a positive impact on the mutual accountability. Coercive pressure from regulators has led to improvements on building societies’ internal governance struc...

This study proposes the concept of disruptive firms: they are firms with market leadership that deliberate introduce new and improved generations of durable goods that destroy, directly or indirectly, similar products present in markets in order to support their competitive advantage and/or market leadership. These disruptive firms support technological and industrial change and induce consumers to buy new products to adapt to new socioeconomic environment. In particular, disruptive firms generate and spread path-breaking innovations in order to achieve and sustain the goal of a (temporary) profit monopoly. This organizational behaviour and strategy of disruptive firms support technological change. This study can be useful for bringing a new perspective to explain and generalize one of the determinants that generates technological and industrial change. Overall, then this study suggests that one of the general sources of technological change is due to disruptive firms (subjects), ra...

This study proposes the concept of disruptive firms: they are firms with market leadership that deliberate introduce new and improved generations of durable goods that destroy, directly or indirectly, similar products present in markets in order to support their competitive advantage and/or market leadership. These disruptive firms support technological and industrial change and induce consumers to buy new products to adapt to new socioeconomic environment. In particular, disruptive firms generate and spread path-breaking innovations in order to achieve and sustain the goal of a (temporary) profit monopoly. This organizational behaviour and strategy of disruptive firms support technological change. This study can be useful for bringing a new perspective to explain and generalize one of the determinants that generates technological and industrial change. Overall, then this study suggests that one of the general sources of technological change is due to disruptive firms (subjects), ra...

The paper brings together firm-level R&D spending information with patent information and aims to investigate the impact of different types of patented inventions on firm output growth performance controlling for R&D spending and other firm financials. We consider forwardlooking indicators of breakthrough and general innovation, and backward-looking indicators of originality and radicalness in innovation activities. Firm performance is estimated through a Cobb-Douglas production function. We allow for non-linearity in relationship between innovation strategy and firm performance and we investigate sectoral heterogeneity looking at the impact in health industries and ICT producers. Models are estimated using two-stage least squares and generalised method of moments to control for potential endogeneity of innovation indicators. Our findings confirm non-linearity and sectoral heterogeneity in relationship between the different types of innovation and firm performance. While ICT produce...

This paper provides a framework comprising of research agenda explicating the relations between IT Capability and Firm Innovation. Firm innovation is conceptualized as a combination of three constructs: networks, capabilities (absorptive capacity), and commercialization of innovations (CI). These three constructs have received a very lukewarm response from the IS research community. Inclusion of these three constructs, and examining how IT-capability affects the relationships between these constructs, is essential to examining the role of IT in innovation at the firm-level. Five research agendas are identified.