The 2008 crash has left all the established economic doctrines - equilibrium models, real business cycles, disequilibria models - in disarray. Part of the problem is due to Smith’s "veil of ignorance": individuals unknowingly pursue society’s interest and, as a result, have no clue as to the macroeconomic effects of their actions: witness the Keynes and Leontief multipliers, the concept of value added, fiat money, Engel’s law and technical progress, to name but a few of the macrofoundations of microeconomics. A good viewpoint to take bearings anew lies in comparing the post-Great Depression institutions with those emerging from Thatcher and Reagan’s economic policies: deregulation, exogenous vs. endoge- nous money, shadow banking vs. Volcker’s Rule. Very simply, the banks, whose lending determined deposits after Roosevelt, and were a public service became private enterprises whose deposits determine lending. These underlay the great moderation preceding 2006, and the subsequent crash.

The Economic Institutions of Capitalism

Models that depict innovation as a smooth, well-behaved linear process badly misspecify the nature and direction of the causal factors at work. Innovation is complex, uncertain, somewhat disorderly, and subject to changes of many sorts. Innovation is also difficult to measure and demands close coordination of adequate technical knowledge and excellent market judgment in order to satisfy economic, technological, and other types of constraints—all simultaneously. The process of innovation must be viewed as a series of changes in a complete system not only of hardware, but also of market environment, production facilities and knowledge, and the social contexts of the innovation organization.

An Overview of Innovation

Everybody knows that digital technology has revolutionized our economy and our lifestyles. But how many of us really understand the drivers behind the technology – the significance of going digital; the miniaturization of electronic devices; the role of venture capital in financing the revolution; the importance of research and development? How many of us understand what it takes to make money from innovative technologies? Should we worry about manufacturing going offshore? What is the role of India and China in the digital economy? Drawing on a lifetime’s experience in the industry, as an engineer, a senior manager, and as a partner in a global venture capital firm, Henry Kressel offers an expert personalized answer to all these questions. He explains how the technology works, why it matters, how it is financed, and what the key lessons are for public policy.

Competing for the Future

Historically, management theory has ignored the constraints imposed by the biophysical (natural) environment. Building upon resource-based theory, this article attempts to fill this void by proposing a natural-resource-based view of the firm—a theory of competitive advantage based upon the firm's relationship to the natural environment. It is composed of three interconnected strategies: pollution prevention, product stewardship, and sustainable development. Propositions are advanced for each of these strategies regarding key resource requirements and their contributions to sustained competitive advantage.

A natural resource-based view of the firm

An intertwined supply network (ISN) is an entirety of interconnected supply chains (SC) which, in their integrity secure the provision of society and markets with goods and services. The ISNs are o...

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02568319/document

Viability of intertwined supply networks: extending the supply chain resilience angles towards survivability. A position paper motivated by COVID-19 outbreak

Dispersed Manufacturing Networks: Challenges for Research and Practice

Purpose – Maintaining and improving productivity of product design and engineering processes has been a paramount challenge for design-driven companies, which are characterised a high degree of development of products and processes in order to meet particular customer requirements. Literature on this issue is fragmented and dispersed and a concise and systematic overview is lacking. Hence, it remains unclear, which methods are applicable for design-driven companies to improve the productivity of limitedly available engineering resources (a challenge companies and nations face currently). The purpose of this paper is to develop such a systematic overview. Design/methodology/approach – An unusual approach was utilised by combining the outcomes from a systematic literature review and the results of a Delphi study. From both research approaches complementary and overlapping methods for improving the productivity of product design and engineering processes could be drawn. Findings – The unique systematic overv...

Productivity of product design and engineering processes: unexplored territory for production management techniques?

Currently, collaborations in production industry are experiencing a failure rate of 50%, if not more, and control of outsourcing is proving difficult; both findings from earlier research express the difficulties for managing networked enterprises The lack of a problem-oriented understanding of the required systems setup and underlying control mechanisms might cause this So far, academic research in management science has expanded models based on the individual company as an entity to address challenges posed by networks Complementary approaches are required to match the specific characteristics of industrial and enterprise networks The application of principles of complex systems from natural sciences to collaborative enterprise networks as socio-technical systems might yield these complementary approaches Five themes emerge from this point of view: dynamic description, coordination possibilities, integrative innovation, path dependency and information sharing Interdisciplinary research should expand the available knowledge on the underlying mechanisms of collaborations by adopting models from the natural sciences (science of complex systems, network sciences, science of complexity, evolutionary models), and may possibly offer new perspectives to avoid traditional pitfalls (culture, leadership, trust) and to address the five themes

Collaborations in Industrial Networks: The Co-Evolutionary Perspective

Purpose – Scientific progress in a field is mostly discussed within disciplines. Far less attention is paid to outside or between disciplines' work. To speed up research progresses for collaborative networks (CN) in manufacturing, a base for further grounded theory establishment is propagated, recalling some of the most relevant chapters of philosophy of science. The focus is put onto the roles of disciplines and their scholars involved in interdisciplinary contexts, in order to further motivate as well as to hint at a number of catalysing forces and fruitful impacts of outside disciplines' work.Design/methodology/approach – The intentions of this Special Issue are mirrored to important and well‐accepted findings in the philosophy of science. All papers that are included in this journal issue are positioned within a general framework of scientific disciplines and theory building understanding.Findings – Interdisciplinary work is speeding up theory building and innovation in CNs in general and in all appli...

Some thoughts on interdisciplinarity in collaborative networks' research and manufacturing sciences

The research question is whether the positive relationship found between supplier involvement practices and new product development performances in developed economies also holds in emerging economies. The role of supplier involvement practices in new product development performance is yet to be substantially investigated in the emerging economies (other than China). This premise was examined by distributing a survey instrument (Jayaram’s (2008) published survey instrument that has been utilised in developed economies) to Malaysian manufacturing companies. To gauge the relationship between the supplier involvement practices and new product development (NPD) project performance of 146 companies, structural equation modelling was adopted. Our findings prove that supplier involvement practices have a significant positive impact on NPD project performance in an emerging economy with respect to quality objectives, design objectives, cost objectives, and “time-to-market” objectives. Further analysis using the Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm, yielding a more credible and feasible differentiation, confirmed these results (even in the case of an emerging economy) and indicated that these practices have a 28% impact on variance of NPD project performance. This considerable effect implies that supplier involvement is a must have, although further research is needed to identify the contingencies for its practices.

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New Product Development in an Emerging Economy: Analysing the Role of Supplier Involvement Practices by Using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo Technique

Rob Dekkers

Papers

Dispersed Manufacturing Networks: Challenges for Research and Practice

Productivity of product design and engineering processes: unexplored territory for production management techniques?

Collaborations in Industrial Networks: The Co-Evolutionary Perspective

Some thoughts on interdisciplinarity in collaborative networks' research and manufacturing sciences

New Product Development in an Emerging Economy: Analysing the Role of Supplier Involvement Practices by Using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo Technique