428 research outputs found
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Service providers and firm performance: investigating the non-linear effect of dependence
PurposeServitized manufacturers can leverage close relationships with external providers of product-related services to mobilize value creation and improve the responsiveness of their offerings to customer needs. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic link between the relational embeddedness of external service providers, as arising from the key dimension of dependence, and firm performance.Design/methodology/approachThe study evaluates financial statement data pertaining to 190 dyadic relationships of servitized manufacturers with service providers operating in downstream channels and accounting for more than 10 per cent of their revenue.FindingsThe results indicate that service providers’ dependence has an inverted U-shaped relationship with manufacturers’ return-on-assets (ROA), via non-linear effects on return-on-sales and asset turnover. The results therefore suggest that the observed U-shaped relationship for ROA is driven by diminishing returns of dependence in terms of both differentiation ability and operational efficiency.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research could examine other dimensions of embeddedness, as well as contingency factors that may influence the embeddedness–performance relationship.Practical implicationsThe study conclusions suggest that managers of servitized firms should foster the embeddedness of external service providers, but they should also be careful to maintain an adequate level of dependence to maximize benefits and minimize liabilities.Originality/valueThe study adds to the limited research delving into inter-firm relationships between servitized manufacturers and external service providers. It empirically demonstrates the economic effects of service providers’ dependence-based embeddedness, challenging the general assumption about a monotonic positive effect of relational embeddedness.</jats:sec
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Examining the influence of service additions on manufacturing firms’ bankruptcy likelihood
By evaluating secondary data from 74 bankrupt manufacturers and 199 matched non-bankrupt competitors, this study investigates the relationship of manufacturers' service offerings to their survival. While showing that the number of services offered is not significantly associated with bankruptcy likelihood, the results suggest that greater numbers of product-related and product-unrelated service offerings do reduce bankruptcy likelihood when properly complemented by firm-level contextual factors. Offering more product-related services causes bankruptcy likelihood to decrease for those companies that have a sufficiently diversified product business. In turn, companies with sufficient slack resources can expect bankruptcy likelihood to be reduced from the offering of more product-unrelated services. In contrast, companies should not expect that successful product sales performance will increase their chances of survival by focusing on product-dependent services. In light of these findings, this study challenges the notion from conceptual literature that additional services per se increase the chances of firm survival; it extends prior empirical studies in uncovering critical firm-level context effects; and it proposes portfolio theory as a theoretical foundation to examine manufacturers' service expansions.This is the author accepted manuscript. It is currently under an indefinite embargo pending publication by Elsevier
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ISO-LWS grating spectroscopy: the case of R CrA star forming region
We present the far infrared spectra of the R CrA star forming region obtained with ISO-LWS. We collected a pointed observation on the Herbig Ae star R CrA and a raster scan covering the surrounding region, where HH100 (with its exciting source) and the pre-Main Sequence star T CrA are located. The OI 63ÎĽm and the CII 158ÎĽm lines have been detected in all the pointed positions, with a ratio consistent with PDR excitation. CO rotational lines (between Jup=14 and Jup=19) are detected on R CrA; from their intensities we derived, using a LVG model, the density and temperature of the emitting region. Other molecular transitions (OH and H2O) have been detected on the investigated objects; the derived cooling of all the molecular species is in agreement with C-shock as the likely excitation mechanism. The continuum emission of R CrA peaks around 100ÎĽm (as expected for a Herbig star) while the other sources (T CrA, HH100) show increasing continua up to ~200ÎĽm, indicating that they are probably less evolved sources
The clumpy structure of the chemically active L1157 outflow
We present high spatial resolution maps, obtained with the Plateau de Bure
Interferometer, of the blue lobe of the L1157 outflow. We observed four lines
at 3 mm, namely CH3OH (2_K-1_K), HC3N (11-10), HCN (1-0) and OCS (7-6).
Moreover, the bright B1 clump has also been observed at better spatial
resolution in CS (2-1), CH3OH (2_1-1_1)A-, and 34SO (3_2-2_1). These high
spatial resolution observations show a very rich structure in all the tracers,
revealing a clumpy structure of the gas superimposed to an extended emission.
In fact, the three clumps detected by previous IRAM-30m single dish
observations have been resolved into several sub-clumps and new clumps have
been detected in the outflow. The clumps are associated with the two cavities
created by two shock episodes driven by the precessing jet. In particular, the
clumps nearest the protostar are located at the walls of the younger cavity
with a clear arch-shape form while the farthest clumps have slightly different
observational characteristics indicating that they are associated to the older
shock episode. The emission of the observed species peaks in different part of
the lobe: the east clumps are brighter in HC3N (11-10), HCN (1-0) and CS (2-1)
while the west clumps are brighter in CH3OH(2_K-1_K), OCS (7-6) and 34SO
(3_2-2_1). This peak displacement in the line emission suggests a variation of
the physical conditions and/or the chemical composition along the lobe of the
outflow at small scale, likely related to the shock activity and the precession
of the outflow. In particular, we observe the decoupling of the silicon
monoxide and methanol emission, common shock tracers, in the B1 clump located
at the apex of the bow shock produced by the second shock episode.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in the MNRA
The B1 shock in the L1157 outflow as seen at high spatial resolution
We present high spatial resolution (750 AU at 250 pc) maps of the B1 shock in
the blue lobe of the L1157 outflow in four lines: CS (3-2), CH3OH (3_K-2_K),
HC3N (16-15) and p-H2CO (2_02-3_01). The combined analysis of the morphology
and spectral profiles has shown that the highest velocity gas is confined in a
few compact (~ 5 arcsec) bullets while the lowest velocity gas traces the wall
of the gas cavity excavated by the shock expansion. A large velocity gradient
model applied to the CS (3-2) and (2-1) lines provides an upper limit of 10^6
cm^-3 to the averaged gas density in B1 and a range of 5x10^3< n(H2)< 5x10^5
cm^-3 for the density of the high velocity bullets. The origin of the bullets
is still uncertain: they could be the result of local instabilities produced by
the interaction of the jet with the ambient medium or could be clump already
present in the ambient medium that are excited and accelerated by the expanding
outflow. The column densities of the observed species can be reproduced
qualitatively by the presence in B1 of a C-type shock and only models where the
gas reaches temperatures of at least 4000 K can reproduce the observed HC3N
column density.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figure
Broad N2H+ emission towards the protostellar shock L1157-B1
We present the first detection of N2H+ towards a low-mass protostellar
outflow, namely the L1157-B1 shock, at about 0.1 pc from the protostellar
cocoon. The detection was obtained with the IRAM 30-m antenna. We observed
emission at 93 GHz due to the J = 1-0 hyperfine lines. The analysis of the
emission coupled with the HIFI CHESS multiline CO observations leads to the
conclusion that the observed N2H+(1-0) line originates from the dense (> 10^5
cm-3) gas associated with the large (20-25 arcsec) cavities opened by the
protostellar wind. We find a N2H+ column density of few 10^12 cm-2
corresponding to an abundance of (2-8) 10^-9. The N2H+ abundance can be matched
by a model of quiescent gas evolved for more than 10^4 yr, i.e. for more than
the shock kinematical age (about 2000 yr). Modelling of C-shocks confirms that
the abundance of N2H+ is not increased by the passage of the shock. In summary,
N2H+ is a fossil record of the pre-shock gas, formed when the density of the
gas was around 10^4 cm-3, and then further compressed and accelerated by the
shock.Comment: ApJ, in pres
The CHESS survey of the L1157-B1 bow-shock: high and low excitation water vapor
Molecular outflows powered by young protostars strongly affect the kinematics
and chemistry of the natal molecular cloud through strong shocks resulting in
substantial modifications of the abundance of several species. As part of the
"Chemical Herschel Surveys of Star forming regions" guaranteed time key
program, we aim at investigating the physical and chemical conditions of H20 in
the brightest shock region B1 of the L1157 molecular outflow. We observed
several ortho- and para-H2O transitions using HIFI and PACS instruments on
board Herschel, providing a detailed picture of the kinematics and spatial
distribution of the gas. We performed a LVG analysis to derive the physical
conditions of H2O shocked material, and ultimately obtain its abundance. We
detected 13 H2O lines probing a wide range of excitation conditions. PACS maps
reveal that H2O traces weak and extended emission associated with the outflow
identified also with HIFI in the o-H2O line at 556.9 GHz, and a compact (~10")
bright, higher-excitation region. The LVG analysis of H2O lines in the
bow-shock show the presence of two gas components with different excitation
conditions: a warm (Tkin~200-300 K) and dense (n(H2)~(1-3)x10^6 cm-3) component
with an assumed extent of 10" and a compact (~2"-5") and hot, tenuous
(Tkin~900-1400 K, n(H2)~10^3-10^4 cm-3) gas component, which is needed to
account for the line fluxes of high Eu transitions. The fractional abundance of
the warm and hot H2O gas components is estimated to be (0.7-2)x10^{-6} and
(1-3)x10^{-4}, respectively. Finally, we identified an additional component in
absorption in the HIFI spectra of H2O lines connecting with the ground state
level, probably arising from the photodesorption of icy mantles of a
water-enriched layer at the edges of the cloud.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 12 pages, 9 figures, 4 table
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Strong H<sub>2</sub>O and high-<i>J</i> CO emission towards the Class 0 protostar L1448-mm
The spectrum of the Class 0 source L1448-mm has been measured over the wavelength range extending from 6 to 190 μm with the Long Wavelength Spectrometer (LWS) and the Short Wavelength Spectrometer (SWS) on the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). The far infrared spectrum is dominated by strong emission from gaseous H2O and from CO transitions with rotational quantum numbers J ≥ 14; in addition, the H2 pure rotational lines S(3), S(4) and S(5), the OH fundamental line at 119 μm, as well as emission from [O I]63 μm and [C II] 158 μm are also observed. The strong CO and water emission can be consistently explained as originating in a warm gas component at T ~ 700-1400 K and nH2~(3-50) 104cm-3 , which fills about 0.2-2% of the ~ 75" LWS field of view (corresponding, assuming a single emitting region, to a physical size of about (3-12)" or (0.5-2) 10-2 pc at d = 300 pc). We derive an H2O/CO abundance ratio ~ 5, which, assuming a standard CO/H2 abundance of 10-4, corresponds to H2O/H2 ~ 5 10-4. This value implies that water is enhanced by about a factor ~ 103 with respect to its expected abundance in the ambient gas. This is consistent with models of warm shocked regions which predict that most of the free atomic oxygen will be rapidly converted into water once the temperature of the post-shocked gas exceeds ~ 300 K. The relatively high density and compact size inferred for this emission may suggest an origin in the shocked region along the molecular jet traced by SiO and EHV CO millimeter line emission. Further support is given by the fact that the observed enhancement in H2O can be explained by shock conditions similar to those expected to produce the abundant SiO observed in the region. L1448-mm shows the largest water abundance so far observed by ISO amongst young sources displaying outflow activity; we argue that the occurrence of multiple shocks over a relatively short interval of time, like that evidenced in the surroundings of L1448-mm, could have contributed to enrich the molecular jet with a high H2O column density
Coulomb corrections to low energy antiproton annihilation cross sections on protons and nuclei
We calculate, in a systematic way, the enhancement effect on
antiproton-proton and antiproton-nucleus annihilation cross sections at low
energy due to the initial state electrostatic interaction between the
projectile and the target nucleus. This calculation is aimed at future
comparisons between antineutron and antiproton annihilation rates on different
targets, for the extraction of pure isospin channels.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures (latex format
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