THE VERTICAL COORDINATION CONTINUUM AND THE DETERMINANTS OF FIRM-LEVEL COORDINATION STRATEGY

A number of past authors have argued that vertical coordination strategies lie along a continuum running from spot markets to vertical integration. However, the strategies that make up the middle of this continuum have remained ill defined and the sense in which the continuum is truly a continuum has not been made specific. This paper attempts to define the continuum and its "middle" strategies in such a manner that the continuum is truly a continuum has not been made specific. This paper attempts to define the continuum and its "middle" strategies in such a manner that the continuum becomes a useful means by which firm-level decision makers could examine their options for vertical coordination strategy.Industrial Organization,

STRATEGIC CHOICE ALONG THE VERTICAL COORDINATION CONTINUUM

Fundamental changes are underway in the U.S. agri-food system, changes that are altering traditional marketing relationships. Parts of the food system are becoming tightly integrated, such as the poultry subsector and, increasingly, the pork subsector. The tightening of vertical linkages has been characterized by movement from open markets to various forms of managed coordination, e.g. contracting, strategic alliances, and single ownership of multiple market stages. 1998 AAEA SymposiumIndustrial Organization,

WHAT BUYERS ARE SAYING ABOUT MICHIGAN CELERY

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Compactness results in Symplectic Field Theory

This is one in a series of papers devoted to the foundations of Symplectic Field Theory sketched in [Y Eliashberg, A Givental and H Hofer, Introduction to Symplectic Field Theory, Geom. Funct. Anal. Special Volume, Part II (2000) 560--673]. We prove compactness results for moduli spaces of holomorphic curves arising in Symplectic Field Theory. The theorems generalize Gromov's compactness theorem in [M Gromov, Pseudo-holomorphic curves in symplectic manifolds, Invent. Math. 82 (1985) 307--347] as well as compactness theorems in Floer homology theory, [A Floer, The unregularized gradient flow of the symplectic action, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 41 (1988) 775--813 and Morse theory for Lagrangian intersections, J. Diff. Geom. 28 (1988) 513--547], and in contact geometry, [H Hofer, Pseudo-holomorphic curves and Weinstein conjecture in dimension three, Invent. Math. 114 (1993) 307--347 and H Hofer, K Wysocki and E Zehnder, Foliations of the Tight Three Sphere, Annals of Mathematics, 157 (2003) 125--255].Comment: Published by Geometry and Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTVol7/paper25.abs.htm

Quantifying Strategic Choice Along the Vertical Coordination Continuum

The qualitative and quantitative results of a study undertaken to test a decision framework firms might consider in choosing a vertical coordination strategy are presented. The posited five-step decision making process tested that a change in coordination strategy would occur if and only if a "yes" decision was made at each step. The results reported as case-based frequencies and as a discriminate analysis function provide strong support for the study's research propositions. The ability of an alternative to reduce the costliness of a coordination error and the acceptability of the risk/return tradeoff were critical to the willingness of a sample of producers to change coordination strategy. Implementability was significant, but not to the same extent as costliness of a coordination error or acceptability of the risk/return tradeoff.vertical coordination, vertical coordination continuum, discriminate analysis, willingness to change, unwillingness to change, coordination error, programmability, implementability, risk/return tradeoff, Industrial Organization,

When Consumers Diet, Should Producers Care? An Examination of Low-Carb Dieting and U.S. Orange Juice Consumption

From 2000 through 2004, per-capita orange juice purchases decreased by 12.3 percent in the United States, while the popularity and media coverage of low-carbohydrate dieting exploded. Content analysis was used to count selected newspaper articles topically related to low-carbohydrate dieting, the Atkins diet, and the South Beach diet. These data were included in a national orange juice demand model, where purchase data served as the independent variable and proxy for consumer demand of orange juice. Results indicate that media coverage of low-carbohydrate diets and dieting was negatively and significantly related to demand for orange juice in the United States.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

CHANGING PATTERNS OF ORANGE JUICE CONSUMPTION IN THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES

From 2000 through 2004, per capita orange juice purchases decreased by 12.3 percent while the popularity and media coverage of low-carbohydrate dieting exploded. Content analysis was used to count selected Southern region newspaper articles topically related to low-carbohydrate dieting, the Atkins diet, and the South Beach diet. This data was included in a Southern region orange juice demand model, where purchase data served as the independent variable and proxy for consumer demand of orange juice. Results indicated that media coverage of low-carbohydrate diets and dieting was negatively and significantly related to demand for orange juice in the Southern region.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Translanguaging as a political act with Roma: carving a path between pluralism and collectivism for transformation

Translanguaging claims to advance social justice as a transformative pedagogy. This paper analyses a tension which developed over the life span of a European research project which aimed to improve the educational experience for Eastern European Roma pupils through teachers’ employment of a translanguaging pedagogy. Roma are ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous, but as a minority group face continued racism, whilst Roma pupils face educational exclusion. The voices of Roma parents, pupils and activists and academics alerted us to potential threats in utilising translanguaging as a political act for transformation in education. They revealed a central tension between recognition of linguistic pluralism for emancipation at school level (with possibilities for policy level changes at local or national levels) and unifying endeavours for collective action towards equality and human rights at a (trans)national level. To understand this tension we reframed it in light of the postmodernist positioning of translanguaging, and critiques of the de-politicizing tendencies of postmodernism. In proposing a way forward for research and pedagogy, we carve a path between pluralism and collectivism by placing translanguaging pedagogy and associated research into Nancy Fraser’s integrative model of recognition and redistribution for transformation