Книги

Business Market Management explores the process of understanding, creating and delivering value to targeted business markets and customers. Relying upon assessment of value in the marketplace, it provides a means of gaining an equitable return on value delivered and enhancing a supplier firm's present and future profitability. This book reflects the principles and practices of the discipline, and — by conducting and presenting management practice research — strives to advance the field. It brings together venerable past thinking and leading-edge thinking to provide a progressive approach to managing business markets.

Рекомендуется для использования в курсах «Промышленный маркетинг» и «В-2-В маркетинг» продвинутого уровня. Готовится к выходу второе издание книги. В книге представлены принципы и практика управления бизнес-рынками, охватывающие вопросы понимания, создания и донесения ценности до целевых бизнес-рынков и бизнес-потребителей.

In Honduras, traditional coffee processing is the cause of two major problems: poor coffee quality and contaminated water. In this paper we present a method that determines the trade-off between economic efficiency and contamination in a Honduran sub-watershed. The method is a bioeconomic model based on mathematical programming that simulates the functioning of the interlinked economic and ecological processes in the sub-watershed. We compare various scenarii where the model is given the possibility of replacing traditional coffee processing plants with a network of improved ecological plants. For different levels of contamination the model determines the optimal location and size of new coffee processing plants along river streams by minimizing transport, variable and fixed costs. The restrictions of the system are the volume of wet coffee to be processed, the available stream water, and in the alternative scenarii, investment capital and contaminant concentration in the river. We apply the method to a typical sub-watershed in the hillsides of western Honduras and show that coffee quality can be improved and contamination can be reduced substantially at a relatively low cost.

Учебник «Планирование и контроль на сельскохозяйственном предприятии» ставит целью обучить современным техникам организации и управления предприятием в сельском хозяйстве при увеличении размеров, углублении специализации и интенсификации производства. Книга состоит их четырёх основных частей – организация ресурсов, организация предприятий, комбинация предприятий, контроль над ресурсами и предприятиями. То есть, для оптимального использования ресурсов фермерам необходимо определить какие ресурсы использовать, как организовать их использование в размерах предприятия, и как объединить предприятия в единую аграрную систему. Более того, важное место отводится системе планирования и контроля за принятыми решениями.

This article investigates what learning groups there are in organizations, other than the familiar communities of practice. It first develops an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for identifying, categorizing and understanding learning groups. For this, it employs a constructivist, interactionist theory of knowledge and learning. It employs elements of transaction cost theory and of social theory of trust. Transaction cost economics neglects learning and trust, but elements of the theory are still useful. The framework is used in an empirical study in a consultancy company, to explore what learning groups there are, and to see if its theory can explain their functioning and their success or failure.

This paper discuss the design of multidimensional yardstick based procurement auction. The suggested design combines Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based yardstick schemes with the multidimensional score auction. The principal select a single winner to perform a project, characterized by a multidimensional vector. The design is especially useful when there are uncertainty about the underlying common cost structure as well as the principal’s valuation function. Potential applications in natural resource management is provided.

The ongoing negotiations in the WTO will most certainly lead to a further liberalization of the global agricultural trade. Related to this, many national governments, including Norway, Switzerland and Japan have placed substantial emphasis on the so-called non-trade concerns. In addition to the production of food and fiber, agriculture also provides or may provide national food security, environmental benefits, and viable rural areas. The term “Multifunctional Agriculture” has been applied to describe these additional functions. In this paper, we will show how the economic concepts of “positive and negative externalities” and “public goods” can be used to analyse non-trade concerns and multifunctionality, especially with reference to agriculture’s impact on the environment. We conclude the paper with suggestions for international trade rules that can allow countries to meet domestic environmental policy objectives in a minimally trade-distorting manner.

Capturing and diffusing the knowledge generated on projects is highly problematic due to the idiosyncratic, complex and dynamic nature of projects. In particular, the recurrent re-organisation required by projects especially the constant re-formation of project teams militates against the systematic codification of knowledge or its embodiment in the knowledge base of project teams. This paper reports on on-going research in the UK that is designed to explore organisational and other factors inhibiting and enabling project-based learning. This research compares and contrasts project-based learning across a range of industrial sectors (including medical technology, telecommunications, health and public services). It emphasises the inherently social nature of project-based learning and the difficulties this creates for attempts to capture and codify project-based learning.

Performance appraisal and managing performance are they one and the same or fundamentally different? The first suggests a reactive stance while the second indicates proactivity. Although effective performance management has been touted as the key lever for change that may boost individual and team accomplishment in organisations, the results will be limited if it is a case of old wine in new bottles. Specifically, the preliminary results of two case studies indicate that performance management systems operate in the same way as old performance appraisals. Some interviewees perceived that knowing how to play the corporate game was as important as performing well. Those who play the game well, were perceived as advancing in the organisation, while those who performed but did not play the game were left confused about their performance, and subsequently, their future. Initial data analysis suggests that if managers want to introduce more innovative ways of managing performance, the solution could be in the level and frequency of informal feedback occurring between managers and employees.

The goal of this paper is to estimate the maximum price consumers are willing to pay (MPWTP) for organic beef meat. To this purpose, a theoretical and econometric approach is presented, based on the RUM model and on a Contingent Valuation technique.

The results show that consumers’ MPWTP is quite high, thus suggesting that organic beef meat might gain an appreciable market share. This is also an encouraging signal for prospective producers of organic meat, who might compensate the likely increase in production costs with a substantial premium for the new good.

In this paper, models for estimating the maximum price consumers are willing to pay (MPWTP) for organic beef meat, and the maximum quantity-constrained price (i.e., when buying the same quantity they bought of regular meat) consumers are willing to pay (MQCP), are presented. To this purpose, the relevant theoretical and econometric approaches are presented, based on the RUM model and on a Contingent Valuation technique.

В основе данной книги лежит долгий опыт консалтинговой работы авторов в фирме «Arthur D. Little», где они занимались консультированием ведущих компаний мира. Авторы предлагают модель высоко продуктивной фирмы, которая состоит из трех элементов: клиенты, собственники и сотрудники фирмы. Продуктивность фирмы зависит от степени удовлетворенности всех трех элементов. На основе своего опыта работы авторы утверждают, что в совокупности концепции и методы, представленные в книге, являются лучшими из существующих на практике во время написания книги.
Книга состоит из одиннадцати глав, объединенных в три части. В двух первых главах первой части изложены основы теоретической модели высоко продуктивной компании, а также обсуждается вопрос баланса между качеством продукции и издержками производства. Авторы выделяют следующие стратегии, которые могут использовать компании: «пролиферация продуктов», «стоимость за деньги» (value for money), «непрерывная продуктовая инновация» (continuous product innovation), «скорость создания стоимости для клиентов». Во второй части рассматриваются конкретные способы развития стержневых компетенций компании для претворения в жизнь рекомендованных стратегий. Рассматриваются вопросы внедрения изменений в процесс разработки продуктов, создание междисциплинарных (кросс - функциональных) команд, наделение менеджеров полномочиями, ускорение процесса создания продуктов. В третьей части книги авторы рассматривают вопросы реорганизации фирмы для внедрения необходимых изменений.
Эта книга, несомненно, будет очень полезна для практиков. Исследователи, в свою очередь, смогут найти в книге интересные гипотезы относительно влияния описанных организационных изменений на процесс разработки инновационных продуктов.

This book expounds trade theory emphasizing that a trading equilibrium is general rather than partial, and is often best modelled using dual or envelope functions. This yields a compact treatment of standard theory, clarifies some errors and confusions, and produces some new departures. In particular, the book (i) gives unified treatments of comparative statics and welfare, (ii) sheds new light on the factor-price equalization issue, (iii) treats the modern specific-factor model in parallel with the usual Heckscher-Ohlin one, (iv) analyses the balance of payments in general equilibrium with flexible and fixed prices, (v) studies imperfect competition and intra-industry trade.

The Frontiers of the New Institutional Economics presents new essays written specifically for this volume. These essays provide an introduction to the nature and practice of the New Institutional Economics, with a special emphasis on economic history and political economy. Among the contributors are Nobel Prize winners Douglass North and Robert Fogel.

This book presents a representative collection of state-of-the-art papers on international trade, one of the most dynamic sub-fields in economics. The contributions range over all the major areas of current research, including articles on the geographical aspects of international trade by Paul Krugman and Alan Deardorff, on dynamic stochastic economies by Avinash Dixit, and on endogenous growth by Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman. In addition to the theoretical contributions, the book also contains work on important policy issues such as auction quotas, discussed by Kala Krishna, and the role of government in economic development, by Anne Krueger. Also included is an assessment by Bill Ethier of the theoretical achievements of a leading authority in international trade theory, Ronald Jones, in whose honour the essays were written.

The present study attempts to offer more insights into the Greek wine market with emphasis on wines produced from organically grown grapes by relating wine choice to consumers’ personal value structure. With the use of a qualitative sample and applying the Means-end Chains methodology and the corresponding “laddering” interviewing technique, it attempts first to reveal the way basic motives are linked to wine shopping behaviour of consumers and the way wine purchase-relevant knowledge is stored and organised in their memory in relation to their personal values. Then, by discriminating between organic food buyers and non-buyers, the study identifies motivational and cognitive discriminating differences between the two consumer types, which can offer a solid explanation as to their distinctive purchasing behaviour in respect of the organic products.