Strategic alliances, organisational learning and new product development: the cases of Rover and Seat.

The importance of the automotive industry in the global economy is widely recognised. The sector has undergone enormous changes in order to prepare for the fierce competition of the 21st century. Among these transformations, the most relevant are those technologies developed for the rapid evolution of activities linked to new designs, new products, and new manufacturing processes and systems. Innovative Japanese carmakers have stimulated international performance comparisons in these activities. International technology alliances may be one way of gaining access to new competitive technologies. Risks and costs associated with new product development can be shared among the partners and more effective use can be made of manufacturing facilities and production capabilities. Sometimes, an alliance agreement may lead to the deployment of new capabilities. However, in spite of this potential, the literature presents the success rate of alliances at less than 50%. Our study considers two examples of companies that developed international joint ventures (IJVs): Rover with Honda, and Seat with Volkswagen. Since these two European peripheral companies, Rover and Seat, no longer remain as independent firms, we are interested in identifying the reasons leading to the success or failure of these IJVs as regards the New Product Development (NPD) process. In particular, in both cases the paper looks at the problems of the weaker partner becoming increasingly dependent on the other partner and the need for a well-defined strategy to benefit from IJVs.Alianzas estratégicas; desarrollo de productos; Rover; Seat;

On ‘A Piece for Two (Lovers)’ - an unrehearsed performance piece

This essay consists of three 15-minute audio files and a written essay. Audio files #1 and #2 are performance scores made by dance artists Antonio de la Fe and Robert Vesty for A Piece For Two (Lovers), a performance of which was realised on February 20, 2015 at Royal Holloway, University of London. # 3 is a conversation between de la Fe and Vesty recorded unrehearsed for this special issue of RiDE. Together, the essay draws attention to the way in which the performance piece theatricalised its inherent precariousness. De la Fe and Vesty have been in a romantic relationship since December 2012 and the piece draws on themes of volatility and strength. The essay then goes on to propose de la Fe’s notion of unrehearsed not just as a mode of making that can be seen as an ‘artrepreneurial’, (to use Jen Harvie’s term), disruption of conventional modes of making artistic work, but as way to simultaneously reclaim and denounce precarity by re-thinking unrehearsal as a vital choreographic process

Empire\u27s Children: Soviet Childhood in the Age of Revolution

Ideas of childhood and citizenship stood at the center of the Soviet Union’s empire-building project during the 1920s and 1930s. After the 1917 Revolution the Bolsheviks were faced with the challenge of establishing a new state structure and governing a vast territory inherited from its tsarist predecessor. In the early years of the Soviet project, new leaders enlisted a cadre of professionals tasked with not only creating the norms of childhood and the everyday, but also implementing policies to modernize habits and values of the empire’s younger citizens. To understand how children became a prime focus of Soviet imperial and ethno-cultural politics, my dissertation employs discourse analysis and compares the ways in which Soviet imperial policies were implemented in two ethnically different regions: the Buddhist Republic of Kalmykia as the colonial case study and Moscow as the Metropole. The current project examines newspapers, treatises, and inspectors’ reports over the span of twenty years. It finds that the Bolsheviks’ initial values and discourses in the realm of children’s education, health, leisure and nutrition, all which were scientifically designed to transform children into ideal Soviet and modern citizens, changed over time as a result of the competing ideologies among local elites and the challenges they faced while intervening in children’s everyday lives. The most significant conclusion in this dissertation reveals that, contrary to previous scholarly arguments, the modernization projects that took place in Moscow and Kalmykia were more similar in the challenges and outcomes that local officials faced when implementing state policies

Producción de autores cubanos en las revistas sobre ciencias de la computación registradas en el Journal Citation Report en el período 1990-2005

The features of the Cuban scientific production on computing science and informatics as registered in the main group of magazines mentioned within the 6 science disciplines defined by the Journal Citation Report in the period 1990-2005 are identified and described. For the information processing and presentation, the software Ucinet 6.0, Statistic 6.1, MS Excel 2003, Bibexcel and EndNote 9 were utilized. 95 articles were identified as published with the participation of Cuban authors in 44 magazines. Traditional bibliometric indicators, co-citation web analysis and co-citation maps generated with multidimensional escalation techniques were used. The disciplines with a greater presence in the production, as well as the main authors, institutions, magazines and collaboration levels among the authors, were identified

Removal of heavy metals from aqueous media using native cassava starch hydrogel

Graft copolymers of cassava starch and acrylonitrile were synthesized in aqueous solution using ceric ammonium ion as the initiator. Saponification of grafted copolymer was done by reaction with sodium hydroxide and precipitated with methanol. Grafting was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The grafted copolymer and the hydrolyzed graft copolymer (hydrogel) were used as sorbent for the uptake of heavy metals from the aqueous media. The sorption capacity was evaluated by measuring the extent of sorption of nickel, copper, and leads metals ions, under equilibrium conditions. Using the sorption isotherm models, the Freundlich model was found suitable because of good fitness and equilibrium data yielded the following ultimate capacity values for the sorbent of the grafted copolymer: 54 mgPb/g, 64.5 mgCu/g and 71.1 mgNi/g and for the hydrogel: 72 mgPb/g, 76.6 mgCu/g and 86.5 mgNi/g. Hydrolysis increases the sorption affinity of grafted copolymer toward metal ions. Acid stripping with 2% HCl resulted in 99.6% metal recovery for the hydrogel and 52.2% for the grafted copolymer. This shows the ability of the product to be reused, upon drying between treatments.Key words: Acrylonitrile, cassava starch, grafted copolymer, heavy metals, hydrogel, sorption

Strategic alliances, organisational learning and new product development: the cases of Rover and Seat

The importance of the automotive industry in the global economy is widely recognised. The sector has undergone enormous changes in order to prepare for the fierce competition of the 21st century. Among these transformations, the most relevant are those technologies developed for the rapid evolution of activities linked to new designs, new products, and new manufacturing processes and systems. Innovative Japanese carmakers have stimulated international performance comparisons in these activities. International technology alliances may be one way of gaining access to new competitive technologies. Risks and costs associated with new product development can be shared among the partners and more effective use can be made of manufacturing facilities and production capabilities. Sometimes, an alliance agreement may lead to the deployment of new capabilities. However, in spite of this potential, the literature presents the success rate of alliances at less than 50%. Our study considers two examples of companies that developed international joint ventures (IJVs): Rover with Honda, and Seat with Volkswagen. Since these two European peripheral companies, Rover and Seat, no longer remain as independent firms, we are interested in identifying the reasons leading to the success or failure of these IJVs as regards the New Product Development (NPD) process. In particular, in both cases the paper looks at the problems of the weaker partner becoming increasingly dependent on the other partner and the need for a well-defined strategy to benefit from IJVs.This research is partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Educación y Cultura, Dirección General de Enseñanza Superior (DGES) projects PB94-0372, PB97-0089, and PR95-583Publicad

Un análisis de los costes y beneficios de la privatización de Seat

La literatura sobre privatizaciones es básicamente teórica, de forma que el número de trabajos empíricos sobre sus resultados, especialmente el relativo al intercambio de recursos que generan, es muy reducido. Habida cuenta de los diferentes grupos y agentes con intereses diversos -y a menudo contrapuestos-que se generan en torno a estos procesos, parece interesante estudiar en qué medida y cuantía las privatizaciones afectarán a estos grupos. Comparar los beneficios y costes de estas decisiones públicas, en las que se comprometen recursos escasos, puede ser una vía sensata de actuación dentro del sector público. El objetivo del presente trabajo consiste en evaluar los beneficios y costes derivados de la privatización de Seat, identificando los agentes ganadores y perdedores tras la adopción de dicha decisión. En la realización de la evaluación se han seguido muy de cerca las pautas metodológicas aplicadas por Galal y otros (1994) en lo referente al estudio de casos. En primer lugar se expone la metodología utilizada. El apartado siguiente se dedica al análisis de la evolución experimentada por el Beneficio, la Inversión Neta, la Rentabilidad y la Productividad de Seat tras la privatización, describiéndose en las siguientes secciones los efectos fiscales y sobre el Excedente del Consumidor. A continuación se compara la evolución de las variables mencionadas con las representativas de las empresas del sector, para, seguidamente, reconstruir el previsible comportamiento de Seat, bajo la hipótesis de que no hubiera sido privatizada, a fin de su comprobación con el efectivamente logrado. El artículo se cierra con las conclusiones más relevantes