Evolution: Complexity, uncertainty and innovation

Complexity science provides a general mathematical basis for evolutionary thinking. It makes us face the inherent, irreducible nature of uncertainty and the limits to knowledge and prediction. Complex, evolutionary systems work on the basis of on-going, continuous internal processes of exploration, experimentation and innovation at their underlying levels. This is acted upon by the level above, leading to a selection process on the lower levels and a probing of the stability of the level above. This could either be an organizational level above, or the potential market place. Models aimed at predicting system behaviour therefore consist of assumptions of constraints on the micro-level – and because of inertia or conformity may be approximately true for some unspecified time. However, systems without strong mechanisms of repression and conformity will evolve, innovate and change, creating new emergent structures, capabilities and characteristics. Systems with no individual freedom at their lower levels will have predictable behaviour in the short term – but will not survive in the long term. Creative, innovative, evolving systems, on the other hand, will more probably survive over longer times, but will not have predictable characteristics or behaviour. These minimal mechanisms are all that are required to explain (though not predict) the co-evolutionary processes occurring in markets, organizations, and indeed in emergent, evolutionary communities of practice. Some examples will be presented briefly

Customer Relationship Management : Concept, Strategy, and Tools -3/E

Customer relationship management (CRM) as a strategy and as a technology has gone through an amazing evolutionary journey. After the initial technological approaches, this process has matured considerably – both from a conceptual and from an applications point of view. Of course this evolution continues, especially in the light of the digital transformation. Today, CRM refers to a strategy, a set of tactics, and a technology that has become indispensable in the modern economy. Based on both authors’ rich academic and managerial experience, this book gives a unified treatment of the strategic and tactical aspects of customer relationship management as we know it today. It stresses developing an understanding of economic customer value as the guiding concept for marketing decisions. The goal of this book is to be a comprehensive and up-to-date learning companion for advanced undergraduate students, master students, and executives who want a detailed and conceptually sound insight into the field of CRM

Contract Design in the Shadow of Regulation

Does the threat of legal reform encourage companies to adopt high-quality contract terms that consumers ignore so that companies can use them in lobbying efforts to avoid reform? That may be an overlooked answer to a puzzle about consumer contracts. Consumers ignore most contract terms at the time of acceptance, so scholars usually expect companies to pick ignored terms of the lowest possible quality that courts will let them get away with. But some companies pick terms that are surprisingly high-quality. Courts do not require these terms that consumers ignore, so firms that pick them incur costs for seemingly little gain. This Article identifies a novel function of these terms: their audience is not courts or consumers but policymakers deciding whether to reform status quo legal rules from which companies profit. Drawing on behavioral law and economics, and illustrating with a case study of lobbying surrounding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s bank account overdraft rule, this Article shows how companies use the high-quality terms they adopt in anticipation of regulation to “frame” the status quo rule. High-quality terms help show how the status quo rule might benefit consumers, letting companies appeal to policymakers’ cognitive biases so they are more likely to support the status quo rule. This Article addresses several practical and theoretical implications of anticipatory self-regulation to frame reform. On one hand, even the threat of legal reform might influence the kinds of contract terms businesses adopt. On the other, a small minority of contract terms can take on outsized role in policy debates about legal reform, potentially distorting policymaking. As a theoretical matter, moreover, the Article complements information revelation models of sequential policymaking by showing how actors at one stage can frame information so policymakers at a later stage resort to decision-simplifying heuristics that favor the status quo. I. Introduction II. Unexpectedly High-Quality Nonsalient Terms ... A. The Expected Race to the Bottom ... B. Puzzling Examples of High-Quality Nonsalient Terms ... 1. Overdraft Protection ... 2. Website Privacy Policies ... 3. Pro-Consumer Clauses in Relational Contracts of Adhesion ... 4. Do We See Anticipatory Self-Regulation Elsewhere? III. Anticipatory Self-Regulation and Framing Effects ... A. Framing the Status Quo in Policy Discourse with Contract Terms ... 1. Framing Effects ... 2. Contract Terms’ Salience to Policymakers ... B. Case Study: Using Anticipatory Self-Regulation to Frame Policy Choice ... 1. Status Quo Bias ... 2. Loss Aversion ... 3. Availability ... C. A General Account of Anticipatory Self-Regulation to Frame Policy ... D. Objections and Alternative Explanations ... 1. Assessing Objections … 2. Alternative Explanations to Anticipatory Self-Regulation IV. Implications ... A. Theoretical, Empirical, and Normative Implications ... B. Practical Implications for Policymakers and Reformers V. Conclusio

Top management team composition and organizational ecology: a nested hierarchical selection theory of team reproduction and organizational diversity

The “upper echelon” literature has mainly produced static empirical studies on the impact of top management team composition on organizational outcomes, ignoring the dynamics of industrial demography. Organizational ecology explicitly studied the dynamics of organizational diversity at the population level, however largely ignoring how the entry and exit of executives shapes organizational diversity over time. In this paper, we try to integrate both streams of demography research and develop a multi-level behavioral theory of organizational diversity, linking selection processes at both levels of analysis. The behavioral mechanism connecting the two levels of analysis is the stylized empirical fact that small groups, including top management teams, routinely reproduce their demographic characteristics over time. We argue that, under certain conditions, the potent forces of team homogenization coevolve with those of population-level selection to sustain between-firm diversity

Estratégia de operações das empresas sociais: recursos, práticas e competências

In the last years, social enterprises have emerged as an important element in the organisational landscape and in the response to social challenges. These organisations, also acknowledged in the literature as hybrid organisations, are characterized essentially by a dual organisational identity, combining social and economic aims under the same organisational structure. This duality of objectives that characterizes social enterprises challenges the existing knowledge on operations strategy, as it raises questions about the objectives to which the operations function must respond, as well as about the existing resources and practices at the operational level which lead to the development of distinctive operational capabilities. Thus, the main objective of this research work is to understand how social configure their operations strategy. In order to meet this objective, it was conducted an exploratory study, adopting a mixed methods research approach. In a first instance, a taxonomy was developed aiming to characterize social enterprises in Portugal according to their organisational identity. Afterwards, case studies were conducted in social enterprises with different characteristics to understand how they configure their resources and practices in order to develop distinctive capabilities. The results suggest the existence of four social enterprise profiles, exhibiting different levels of commitment towards social and market aspects, as well as differences in terms of mission characteristics and performance. Regarding their operations strategy, community engagement is identified as one of the operational performance dimensions of such organisations. However, they tend to combine multiple operational performance dimensions as a response to conflicting demands. Motivated by resources constraints and the benefits associated with the existence of a collaborative environment, social enterprises adopt a greater diversity of practices aiming the development of improvement and cooperation capabilities. Their specificities also lead to the development of the mobilization of resources capability and the openness capability.Nos últimos anos, tem-se assistido à emergência de empresas sociais como um importante elemento no panorama organizacional e na resposta aos desafios sociais. Estas organizações, também reconhecidas na literatura como organizações híbridas, caracterizam-se essencialmente por uma dupla identidade organizacional, combinando objetivos sociais e objetivos económicos dentro da mesma estrutura organizacional. Esta dualidade de objetivos que caracteriza as empresas sociais desafia o conhecimento existente no domínio das estratégias de operações, uma vez que levanta questões sobre os objetivos aos quais a função de operações deve responder, bem como os recursos e as práticas existentes ao nível operacional que levam ao desenvolvimento de competências operacionais distintivas. Assim sendo, o principal objetivo deste trabalho de investigação é compreender como as empresas sociais configuram a sua estratégia de operações. Para tal, foi conduzido um estudo exploratório, adotando uma abordagem de investigação multi-método. Numa primeira instância, foi desenvolvida uma taxonomia com o objetivo de caracterizar as empresas sociais em Portugal de acordo com a sua identidade organizacional. Posteriormente, foram conduzidos casos de estudo em empresas sociais com diferentes características para perceber como elas configuram os seus recursos e práticas de forma a desenvolver competências distintivas. Os resultados sugerem a existência de quatro perfis de empresas sociais, que exibem diferentes níveis de comprometimento para com aspetos sociais e de mercado, assim como diferenças ao nível das características da missão e do desempenho. Em relação às suas estratégias de operações, identifica-se o envolvimento da comunidade como uma das dimensões de desempenho operacional deste tipo de organizações. No entanto, elas tendem a combinar várias dimensões de desempenho operacional como resposta à sua dupla identidade. Motivadas pelas restrições ao nível dos recursos e os benefícios associados à existência de um ambiente colaborativo, as empresas sociais adotam uma maior diversidade de práticas que visam o desenvolvimento das competências operacionais de melhoria dos processos e cooperação. As suas especificidades levam também ao desenvolvimento das competências de mobilização de recursos e de abertura.Programa Doutoral em Engenharia e Gestão Industria

Farmers, seeds and varieties : supporting informal seed supply in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is characterized by an enormous diversity in agro-ecosystems, crops and varieties, with the informal seed systems dominant in seed supply for almost all crops. The book addresses strategies and approaches through which professionals can support informal seed supply, and links these with the conservation and use of the huge genetic resource base of crops and local varieties. The book looks at informal seed supply from a number of different angles, introduces key concepts and strategies, and presents case studies from Ethiopia and other countries. It deals with the technical aspects of, quality and availability of, and access to seed, and of supporting informal supply. It also deals with the role of farmers in the conservation and management of local crops and varieties, and the participation of farmers and communities in plant breeding and research. It takes a particular interest in the role of farmer organizations in seed supply, and how this role can be strengthened by developing community and small-scale seed enterprises. The aim of all the strategies, case studies and reflections on experiences presented in this book is to improve the availability of and access to quality seeds and varieties, thereby improving the livelihoods of small-scale farmers in Ethiopia and beyond

Comparison of Airline Co-Branded Credit Card Programs via Frequent Flyer Money Saver Analysis for Full-Service U.S. Carriers

Although airline alliances work fairly effectively for paid flight segments, passengers who want to redeem frequent flyer miles often encounter difficulties. Sometimes airlines demand an extensive amount of air miles to book requests for award seats to not only their partner airline customers but also their own customers. Furthermore, while the airline co-branded credit card award mile earnings and redemption rates fluctuate significantly between different airlines, passengers are not well informed about which airline co-branded credit card requires the minimum amount of credit card expenditure to fly with an award ticket to their desired travel destination. A more useful and practical system is necessary to fulfill passenger’s expectations to overcome the problems associated with earning and redeeming frequent flyer miles on flights via airline co-branded credit cards. Grounded in consumerism theory, this research acknowledges that buyers, relative to sellers, often lack important information as they seek to make purchases. As such, efforts to help consumers make more informed choices benefit not only consumers but also the wider marketplace. In the first part of this research, a quantitative model called the frequent flyer money saver (FFMS) analysis was used to compare the official credit cards offered by the leading carriers’ loyalty programs operating in the United States via simulation. In the second part, an exploratory structural equation model (SEM) was used to determine the FFMS ratio’s factors based on the route characteristics. According to the results, United Airlines outperformed other airlines in terms of FFMS ratio distribution, whereas Hawaiian Airlines held the lowest position. Regarding the SEM results, the route characteristics including market share and number of passengers carried were negatively associated with the FFMS ratio. Based on this dissertation’s findings, when compared with Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines, the members of big three airlines (Delta, American and United) offer significantly higher savings in aggregate to their customers with respect to redeeming miles for an award ticket. Tentative findings also suggest a potential relationship between route characteristics and the FFMS ratio that should be further explored

On the functions and consequences of the Internet for social movements and voluntary associations

"Voluntary associations are particularly prone to embrace the new Net technologies, because on the basis of these new tools, they are better able to be what they always aspired to be: democratically constituted collectivities relying on a complex interplay between internal and external, vertical and horizontal, upward and downward, informal and formal, bilateral and multilateral communications. As the most flexible, adaptive of all media - the Internet has very different functions and consequences under different environmental conditions, so that it can be fitted into almost existing socio-cultural settings and is more likely to consolidate and strengthen them than to act as a causal agent of change. Likewise, the conclusion is warranted that primary face to face interactions as well as conventional mass media communications will not become obsolete with expanding computer-supported interactions. On the contrary, they may have to be expanded and intensified before the full potentials of online communication can be exploited." (author's abstract)Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die Funktionen und Konsequenzen des Internet für soziale Bewegungen und Freiwilligen-Vereinigungen. Beide neigen besonders dazu, die neuen Netztechnologien zu verwenden, da sie die Grundlage dafür bilden, dass die Gruppen leichter in der Lage sind, das zu sein, was schon immer angestrebt wurde, nämlich demokratisch konstituierte Gemeinschaften, die auf eine komplexe wechselseitige Beziehung zwischen interner und externer, vertikaler und horizontaler, informeller und formeller, bilateraler und multilateraler Kommunikation aufbauen. Als das flexibelste aller Medien bietet das Internet viele verschiedene Funktionen und Konsequenzen, so dass es in fast alle soziokulturellen Zusammenhänge passt und diese eher stärken und konsolidieren kann anstatt die Ursache für deren Wandel zu sein. Es wird geschlussfolgert, dass weder die Kommunikation von Angesicht zu Angesicht noch die konventionelle massenmediale Kommunikation durch die expandierenden computergestützten Interaktionen obsolet wird. Ganz im Gegenteil, zunächst müssen diese expandieren und intensiviert werden, um das ganze Potential der Online-Kommunikation nutzen zu können. (ICDÜbers