Suchergebnisse

Instead of abolishing internal border controls in 1993, the European Union (EU) replaced them with VAT and statistical requirements that appear to be just as onerous. For Dutch businesses, the compliance costs of the new requirements are, on average, 5 % of the value of their intra-Eu trade. This figure is probably higher for other EU member states. Obviously, the costs constitute a (differentiated) border tax that impedes intra-Eu trade. The paper analyses the determinants of the compliance costs, as well as their effect on intra-Eu trade intensity. The paper submits that the differential compliance costs violate the non-discrimination provisions of the EU Treaty. Suggestions are made to reduce them.

Abstract

This paper examines the process of creating and exploiting synergies between business units of a multi‐unit corporation and the creation of internal value by combining and exploiting knowledge.


It offers a framework to create and manage such synergies and undertakes an empirical test through in‐depth study across three business units of Royal Vopak, a Dutch‐based global multi‐unit corporation. Finally, it offers lessons for corporate managers trying to create and manage cross‐unit synergies.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PurposePrior research from transaction costs economics argued that central firms perform better because they have superior access to information to discipline their alliance partners. Central firms may also, however, face higher costs and risks of unintentional learning and weaken their competence through structural inertia. We propose that these costs and risks are influenced by the learning capacities of the firms in the network and can explain different outcomes for focal firm performance.Design/methodology/approachTo test our predictions, we use instrumental variable–generalized method of moments estimation techniques on 15,517 firm-year observations from equity alliance portfolios in the global food industry across a 21-year window.FindingsWe find support for our predictions and show that the relationship between network degree centrality and firm performance is negatively influenced by partners' learning capacity and positively influenced by focal firms' learning capacity, while firms with low network degree centrality benefit less from their learning capacity.Research limitations/implicationsFuture developments in transaction cost economics may consider partner and focal firms' learning capacity as moderators of the network degree centrality – firm performance relationship.Practical implicationsIn alliance decisions, managers must consider that the combination of high network degree centrality and partners' learning capacity can lead to high costs, risks of unintentional learning, and structural inertia, all of which have negative consequences for performance. In concentrated industries where network positions are controlled by a few large firms, policymakers must acknowledge that firms may face substantial barriers to collaboration with learning-intensive firms.Originality/valueThis study is the first to develop and test a comprehensive transaction cost analysis of the central firm's unintended knowledge flows and structural inertia in alliance networks. It is also the first to incorporate theoretically and empirically the hazards of complex and unintended information flows on the relationship of network degree centrality to performance in equity alliance portfolios.

We investigate how the relational capital of a person within an organization affects the extent to which she or he conducts exploration activities. Our theory separates out a negative effect that comes from aligning goals with other organizational members from a positive effect that stems from acquiring knowledge from them. Our data from 150 members of the R&D teams of three leading R&D-intensive firms support the theoretical model. By developing and testing this theory, we contribute to the literature on exploration, which lacks understanding of the antecedents of individual exploration in organizations. We also contribute to relational capital literature, which has focused on organizational and group-level exploration, but which has shown inconsistent findings regarding the relationship between relational capital and exploration. A reason for this may be that this body of research has emphasized positive effects of relational capital for exploration only, and has not accounted for the different mechanisms that mediate the effects of relational capital on individual exploration activities. Our theory offers a more comprehensive view by explaining how relational capital may provide both benefits and liabilities to individual exploration activities.

In this paper, we attempt to reconcile contingency and institutional fit approaches concerning the organization–environment relationship. Whereas prior scholarly research has examined both theories and compared their impacts on organizational fit and performance, we lay the groundwork for a metafit approach by investigating how contingency and institutional fit interact to influence firm performance. We test our theoretical framework using a data set of 3,259 respondents from 1,904 companies, examining task environmental demands and institutional demands on organizational design across a broad range of industries and firm size classes. Our results show that contingency and institutional fit provide complementary and interdependent explanations of firm performance. Importantly, our findings indicate that for firms under conditions of "quasi fit" rather than perfect contingency fit or optimal institutional fit, improvements in contingency and/or institutional fit will result in better performance. However, firms with high contingency fit are less vulnerable to deviation from institutional fit in the formation of firm performance, whereas firms with perfect institutional fit will slightly decrease their performance when they strive to achieve contingency fit.

This research aims to compare the cultural dimensions of the automotive industry in three countries, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and discuss Hofstede model. Were using two techniques of analysis, the first being described in the model of Hofstede and Minkov (2013) and the second using the statistical technique indicated by critics of the model (McSweeney, 2013). The results found in regions of Brazil and Mexico indicate that in the same country there may exist different values of cultural dimensions. Regarding the critics indicated in the literature on the model used, this study found evidence in line with the critics that the model, although pointing to cultural differences are not supported by statistically significant differences, to measure and compare cultures between countries. As a contribution, this study indicates the need for the proposed model to consider robust statistical techniques, probabilistic sampling and comparative statistical analysis techniques to prevent misdiagnosis.