Enabling marketing and innovation capability in the digital economy.

The present study examines the impact of marketing capabilities through a network perspective on innovative capabilities and firm performance. The market orientation and the resource-based view that underpin marketing capabilities have mainly treated marketing as internal capability of the firm. As firms are increasingly inter-connected and part of a business networks, a firm’s marketing capabilities need to be examined beyond a single firm. But, to date, no study has yet examined a firm's marketing capabilities from a network perspective in order to understand their influence on innovative capabilities. Thus, this study extends the existing research and conceptualisation of marketing capabilities from an internal perspective of a firm to external network relationships of the firm. This network perspective is based on a firm’s view of its network relationships, which accounts for inter-firm relationships, as well as through digital technology and learning orientation. With the advent of the Internet and information technology, this study conceptualises digital technology as an enabler of the relationship between marketing capability and innovative capability. Since capabilities evolve to become routines and/or deteriorate over time, a firm's learning orientation is also conceptualised for examining the extent to which capabilities impact on innovative capabilities. A survey data of 300 UK-based firms were analysed using statistical analysis to examine the influence of marketing capabilities on innovative capabilities and in turn, firm performance. In addition, interaction analyses were performed to test for mediating and moderating relationships of digital technology and learning orientation. Findings of the analysis show strong support for product development capability; marketing implementation capability; pricing capability. The results support the relative impact of marketing capabilities on innovative capabilities. While marketing capabilities may comprise interdependent capabilities, this finding suggests that firms can enhance innovative capabilities by emphasizing the salient marketing capabilities. Importantly, digital technology has a significant and positive mediating relationship for the relationship between marketing capabilities and innovative capabilities. This finding indicates that knowledge of the application of information technology would facilitate exploitation and exploration of marketing capabilities that enhance innovative capabilities. As indicated by the positive moderation of learning orientation for the relationship between marketing capabilities and innovative capability, the potential to harness marketing capabilities is better enhanced through learning orientation and digital technology. This new perspective of marketing capability analysis benefits from a firm’s network perspective that recognises a firm’s external relationships and inter-connected nature of business interactions. In this instance, digital technology extends the boundary of firm beyond a single firm, and learning orientation complements market orientation with learning and gathering of external market information. This research advances knowledge about specific types of marketing capabilities for improving innovative capability and firm performance through digital technology capability. The study also makes a significant contribution to building theoretical knowledge of the role of digital technology in enabling innovative capabilities by developing and empirically testing a new construct of digital technology. As the ability to mobilise digital technology is firm-specific, this study extends knowledge about the extent of learning orientation (moderator) to the marketing capabilities and innovative capabilities relationship through digital technology

Social Networks and Credit Access in Indonesia

Cataloged from PDF version of article.In this paper, we investigate how family and community networks affect an individual's access to credit institutions using new data from the Indonesia Family Life Surveys. Our theoretical framework emphasizes the family and community's role in providing information, thus lowering the search costs of the borrower and monitoring and enforcement costs for the lender. From our empirical results, community and family networks are important in knowing a place to borrow, as well as for loan approval. Consistent with an information-based explanation of networks, family and community networks have a larger impact on credit awareness of new credit institutions with a lower impact on awareness of established credit sources. Interestingly, we find that women benefit from participating in community networks more than men. There is no evidence that the rich benefit from community networks more than the poor. Our results on the benefits from participation in the community network are robust to the inclusion of community fixed effects. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Preferences for International Redistribution

This paper examines the preferences for international redistribution using unique data from Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the Generalized Social Surveys (GSS). The paper finds low rates of private giving to international aid organizations. In addition, most U.S. households support reducing foreign aid rather than increasing assistance to other countries. The authors investigate two main explanations: (1) households may prefer low levels of both private and public giving to international aid organizations and support for global public goods (2) Perceptions of high levels of government giving crowd out private contributions towards global public goods and international aid

Spatial implications of the organization of production in the automotive industry in Turkey

Since the 1980s, the restructuring tendencies of capital have been calling for the reorganization of production, reshaping of enterprises and reconsiderations of geographical space. Globalization and japanization emerged as the new concepts of the postfordist production era, the former implying the geographical enlargement of economic operations and markets while the latter representing a certain managerial model which has come to be considered a crucial element of the globalization process in the postfordist organization of production. Radical improvements in transportation and communication technologies resulted in the reduction of the associated costs which, in turn, made resources and markets all over the world accessible. However, this accessibility destroyed the oligopolistic advantages of business firms due to? their proximity to local markets (Thisse, 1994). Globalization forced them to seek for other types of competition whereby the survival of a firm depends on its performance in the diversity of its products, quality of goods and asociated services, its responsiveness to demand, ability to reduce lapse of time, and innovating capacity (Veltz, 1994). This new type of competitiveness requires intense interaction and cooperation inside firms, between various phases in the production cycle, between firms and their suppliers and clients, as well as between commodity markets and labour markets (Thisse, 1994). Thus, a new type of proximity becomes important for competitiveness. Territorial and local considerations are reinterpreted in reference to the global restructuring process of capital. Several questions are raised in this context: Will the big cities be increasingly interlinked in a global urban network? Will small towns which are not well linked to the network be facing increasing degeneration and poverty? What new links should be established between cities and their surrounding areas? (Derycke,1994). There are antithetic answers to those questions as far as urban hierarchy and local development is concerned. Some authors argue that the new form of competition would be to the detriment of traditional subcontracting networks based on proximity because of ?world sourcing?. Meanwhile, it would increase urban polarization because the new criteria of competitive survival and the need for flexibility against escalating uncertainty require location in large metropolises. On the other hand, other autors argue that ?global toyotaism, in comparison to global fordism, localizes more of the production process and therefore seems to be more conducive to local development in host nations? (Fujita&Hill, 1995). This paper attempts to analyse the spatial implications of the shift from fordist production to postfordist production, toyotaism in special, on the basis of data collected in the automotive industry in Turkey.

Labor-force Participation of Married Women in Turkey: A Study of the Added-Worker Effect and the Discouraged-Worker Effect

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We analyze married women's labor-supply responses to their husbands' job loss (added-worker effect) and worsening of unemployment conditions (discouraged-worker effect). We construct six two-year pseudopanels based on the previous year's labor market outcomes using nationally representative Turkish Household Labor Force Surveys from 2005 to 2010. We find that women whose husbands involuntarily transition from employment to unemployment are more likely to participate in the labor force. We pool the six-year pseudopanels and examine the effects of aggregate employment conditions on wives' transition to the labor force. A worsening of unemployment conditions has a small discouraging effect on wives' labor-supply responses

Intermediaries and Corruption

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Surveys of businessmen and anecdotal evidence blame intermediary agents (middlemen hired by corporations and individuals) for increasing corruption in the developing world. Although this problem has gained the attention of policy makers, there has been little formal analysis of it in the economics literature. In a game theoretic model analyzing the interaction between clients, public official and intermediary agents, we find that intermediary agents worsen the impact of corruption and that traditional methods of fighting corruption can actually increase corruption in the presence of intermediary agents. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

The Effects of Privatization on Efficiency: How Does Privatization Work?

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Uncovering the effects of privatization is difficult, because privatization of a particular firm usually is not an accident. This paper tests the effects of privatization on productive and allocative (market) efficiency using a rich panel data set of 22 privatized cement plants from Turkey in the 1983-99 period. Since, all public cement firms were privatized and we have preand post-privatization data for all, we are able to avoid the problem of endogeneity associated with sample selection. Our analysis goes beyond just examining the privatization effects and explores how privatization really works. Changes in objectives of the firm (ownership effect) and changes in market structure (environment effect) may both be responsible for privatization outcomes. We find that ownership effects are sufficient to achieve improvements in labor productivity. Our results on allocative efficiency, however, are dependent on changes in the competitive environment. While all plants seem to improve labor productivity through works force reductions, plants privatized to foreign buyers also increase their capital and investment significantly. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Implicit Goal Inference and Implicit Trait Inference: Two Ways of Understanding the Social World

Previous studies show that, when people learn about or observe behaviors of others, they tend to make implicit inferences from these behaviors (Uleman, Saribay, & Gonzalez, 2008). In the present research, we aimed to determine the conditions under which people are more likely to make implicit goal inferences vs. trait inferences. In Studies 1 and 2, we analyzed the role of behavioral information received in the type of inference made. Specifically, we manipulated consistency of the actors\u27 behaviors as well as the distinctiveness of the actions (i.e., if the action is initiated towards a specific entity or not) in light of Kelley\u27s (1967) covariation principle. Study 1 showed that people tend to implicitly infer goals more from behaviors that include low consistency and low distinctiveness information compared to behaviors that include high consistency and high distinctiveness information. Study 2 sought to replicate this finding using a separate paradigm. People were shown to make implicit goal inferences from behaviors with low consistency and low distinctiveness information. In Study 3, we analyzed inferences from simple behaviors (with no consistency or distinctiveness information) and the effect of perceivers\u27 motives on the type of inference made. We showed that people engage in both types of inferences from reading simple behaviors but only when they are motivated to make goal or trait inference. We also showed that chronic goals (related to personal need for structure and conservative ideology) may determine the type of inference made (i.e., higher tendency to make trait than goal inferences). Taken together, the present research revealed that the type of inference made depends on the type of information received as well as the specific (temporary or chronic) motivation of the perceiver