Commercial Expertise Research Articles

Features of forensic commercial expertise of jewelry products

Features of forensic commercial expertise of jewelry products

Political Economy in the Baltic Borderlands: Commercial Interests and the Anglo‑Russian Treaty of Commerce, 1766

Commercial treaties between states played a crucial role in shaping overseas trade and the mercantile communities that lived among in the Baltic borderland. This article takes as its example the Anglo‑Russian treaty of commerce of 1766 between Britain and Russia to explore how Britain in particular negotiated commercial treaties. It shows the crucial role of commercial expertise, and particularly the British Russia Company, in shaping the treaty to best serve British interests. Britain’s reliance on commercial interests for expertise, meanwhile, was crucial to maintaining its supply of naval stores. The article then explores the impact of the treaty on mercantile networks in the Baltic, arguing that the fluidity of citizenship and national affiliation allowed the merchants of the former Hanseatic towns in particular to adapt and benefit from commercial treaties between states, a process that merits further research. The intersection of state and commercial interests was fundamental to commerce in the Baltic borderlands.

Developments in Singapore Company Law in 2021

Singapore’s common law-origin corporate law regime ranks highly on corporate law and governance indices and is administered in part by superior courts served by judges with significant commercial expertise. As part of the Singapore Academy of Law’s Annual Review of Cases, this Paper reviews decisions of the Singapore superior courts (comprising the High Court and the Court of Appeal) decided in 2020. The cases reviewed feature a wide range of issues with domestic and international significance, including private enforcement of directors’ duties, corporate attribution, corporate veil piercing and shareholder disputes. This Annual Review will be useful for academics and lawyers who wish to stay up to date on legal developments in a leading Asian, common law jurisdiction, and on the reception of landmark common law cases in a leading Anglo-Commonwealth jurisdiction.

Jacksonian Consular Reform and the Forging of America’s First Global Bureaucracy

AbstractAs revolutions swept across Central and South America in the 1820s and 1830s, Andrew Jackson’s administration undertook a landmark reform that transformed the US foreign policy apparatus into the nation’s first global bureaucracy. With the introduction of Edward Livingston’s 1833 consular reform bill to Congress, the nation embarked on a long path toward the modernization of its consular service in line with the powers of Europe and the new American republics. Despite the popularity of Livingston’s plan to turn a dated US consular service comprised of mercantile elites into a salaried professional bureaucracy, the Jacksonian consular reform dragged on for more than two decades before the passing of a consular bill in 1856. Contrary to Weberian models positing a straightforward path toward bureaucratization, the trajectory of Jacksonian consular reform demonstrates the power of mercantile elites to resist central government regulation just as much as it highlights how petty partisans—the protégé consuls appointed via the Jacksonian “spoils system”—powerfully shaped government policy to achieve personal advantages. In the constant tug-of-war between merchant-consuls and Jacksonian protégés, both groups mobilized competing visions of the “national character” in their correspondence with the Department of State and in the national press. Ultimately, the Jacksonian reform vision of an egalitarian and loyal consular officialdom prevailed over the old mercantile model of consulship as a promoter of national prestige and commercial expertise, but only after protégé consuls successfully exploited merchant-consuls’ perceived inability to compete with the salaried European officials across the sister-republics of the southwestern hemisphere.

A Limb Hypothermia Wearable for Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy: A Mixed-Methods Approach in Medical Product Development.

Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy (CIPN) is a common dose-limiting side-effect of taxane-based chemotherapy, causing progressive and often irreversible pain/sensitivity in the hands and feet. Prevention/treatments for CIPN are not well-developed and urgently needed. Limb cryocompression during chemotherapy has demonstrated promising early data of preventing/reducing CIPN severity. Currently there are no medical devices available that are dedicated to the specific requirements of CIPN prevention. As part of our ongoing development of a dedicated CIPN-prevention limb cryocompression system, this study documents the design & development of the wearable arm wrap, a central component of the system, from initial concept to a trial-ready prototype. A collaborative and multidisciplinary approach was adopted to address the complex and high-risk nature of this SME (Small Medium Enterprise)-centered medical device design & development process. The complementary collaboration unites multidisciplinary expertise spanning the scope of the project. Alongside the clinical, academic, and design & development expertise, the integration of commercial expertise is imperative to promote the market viability, and ultimate success, of the development. As the global leading experts in scalp cooling specializing in the prevention of chemotherapy-induced alopecia, UK-based SME Paxman Coolers Ltd is optimally positioned to support the commercial and regulatory dimensions. Development and adoption of a novel mixed-methodology (HudPAX) facilitated the integration of evidence-based and user-centered techniques to optimize the design & development approach and ensure integration of all critical design inputs. Alpha prototypes were designed through evidence-based approaches, with data from existing clinical trials utilized to determine the preliminary design inputs, alongside 3D ergonomic data. Investigations utilized computer-aided design, rapid prototyping, additive manufacturing, sketch modeling, and fast ideation. User-based approaches facilitated stakeholder-feedback through expert focus groups, informing further design & development and projecting the design into the next stage, Beta prototyping, for use in large-scale efficacy trials and upscaling manufacturing. This paper demonstrates a novel mixed-methods approach, which promotes cross-sector multidisciplinary collaboration, to address the complex multi-layered challenges posed by an early-stage medical device design & development process.

Evaluation of Geological Risks of Commercial Development of Complex Structured Coal Deposits

The main risk in the commercial development of complex located coal deposits is a geological risk, which is assessed by the results of coal resources classification at sufficient confidence. In conditions of complex located coal deposits, the main factor which determines categories of coal Reserves is the confidence of geological structural data, a reliable estimation of which is provided only with the use of quantitative methods. The use of conventional geostatistical and geometrical approaches to the reserves categorization in this kind of deposits is impossible. The confidence of complex located coal deposits is proposed to be quantitatively evaluated by the similarity degree of seams position on the adjacent exploration lines. This similarity is estimated with a special similarity coefficient varying from 0 to 1, determined based on curves correlation, which is adapted to the problem-solving method, in the complex plane. The obtained results provide the quality increase of the geological materials confidence evaluation and can be used to solve issues of the geological risk evaluation of the development of complex located coal deposits, during commercial or state expertise of geological information.

Corporate association as antecedents of consumer behaviors: The dynamics of trust within and between industries

This study aimed to clarify the effects of consumers’ corporate association (commercial expertise association and social responsibility association) on consumer citizenship behavior. In addition, the study examines the moderating effects of consumer trust and industry type on consumers’ perceptions of corporate association. The sample consisted of 633 consumers in South Korea. The results showed that the consumers’ perceptions of corporate association had a significant and positive effect on consumer citizenship behavior. In particular, commercial expertise association had a greater effect than social responsibility association. In addition, the moderating effects of consumer trust and industry type in the causal relationship between corporate association and consumer citizenship behavior were verified. The results revealed no moderating effect on the path between social responsibility association and consumer citizenship behavior. However, according to consumer trust and industry type, a significant moderating effect was found on the relationship between commercial expertise association and consumer citizenship behavior.

ІСТОРІЯ СТВОРЕННЯ ТУРИСТИЧНИХ ПІДПРИЄМСТВ ТА ЇХ СУЧАСНЕ БІЗНЕС-ПЛАНУВАННЯ

The article analyzes history of creation and considers current problems of business planning of new tourist enterprises. The author came to conclusion that historically first tourist enterprises appeared in second half of nineteenth century. A tourist enterprise is a self-governing entity that owns rights of a legal entity, which, on basis of use of a labor collective of property, produces and sells products, performs work, renders services in field of tourism. Іn 1872, Т. Cook formed a partnership with his son, John Mason Cook, and renamed travel agency as Thomas Cook & Son. They acquired business premises on Fleet Street, London. The office also contained a shop which sold essential travel accessories, including guide books, luggage, telescopes and footwear. Thomas saw his venture as both religious and social service; his son provided commercial expertise that allowed company to expand. In accordance with his beliefs, he and his wife also ran a small temperance hotel above office. Their business model was refined by introduction of 'hotel coupon' in 1868. Detachable coupons in a counterfoil book were issued to traveller. These were valid for either a restaurant meal or an overnight hotel stay provided they were on Cook's list. Conflicts of interest between father and son were resolved when son persuaded his father, Thomas Cook, to retire at end of 1878. He moved back to Leicester and lived quietly until his death. The firm's growth was consolidated by John Mason Cook and his three sons, especially by its involvement with military transport and postal services for Britain and Egypt during 1880s, when Cook began organising tours to Middle East. In 1880, Italian government joined Cook's tour company. The Italian economy benefited from additional tourism profits in which Cook programmed and executed as a system. Cook certainly played a key role in not only boosting Italian economy but also bringing atmosphere and morale of Italian unification. Italians physically felt their country from place to place by traveling. By 1888, company had established offices around world, including three in Australia and one in Auckland, New Zealand and in 1890, company sold over 3¼ million tickets. John Mason Cook promoted, and even led, excursions to, for example, Middle East where he was described as the second-greatest man in Egypt. However, while arranging for German Emperor Wilhelm II to visit Palestine in 1898, he contracted dysentery and died following year. Disclosure of theme became possible through use of general scientific methods of cognition: analysis, synthesis, system, generalization, concreteness, historicism and dialectical method. The scientific research also uses special scientific methods of research: historical-comparative, historical-synthetic, historical-diachronic, empirical analysis, etc.

Companies pair up for natural colors

The Japanese pigment firm DIC and Fermentalg, a French microalgae specialist, have signed a multiyear agreement to develop natural food colorings. Fermentalg will contribute its biotechnology platform and bank of microalgae strains, while DIC will bring applied research and commercial expertise to the partnership. Microalgae-derived phycocyanin is the main blue pigment used in natural food coloring. DIC says it supplies 90% of the natural blue coloring market from a facility in California.

“Enjoy your feeling”: A media archaeology of material publics

Ubiquitous technology depends upon imposing standards. Choices in function and form reflect the homogenization of artifacts, necessitated by the intentions of experts to satisfy a plurality of users. In material publics, users with expert knowledge can develop customized artifacts satisfying desired affordances or aesthetics. This project involves a media archaeology of computer keyboard design to explore the relationship between experts, publics, and the creation of these artifacts. Participation in these communities and study of enthusiast records result in a public-expert knowledge. The importance granted to minutia of design, from the choice of plastics to spring tensioning, parallels new form factors that reflect highly personalized choices. These reassert user control over the materiality of an otherwise ubiquitous and mundane mediating artifact. Publics then create a new political materiality by recomposing artifacts beyond what commercial expertise prescribes.

A Trail of Trials. A 'Flemish' Merchant Community in Sixteenth-century Valladolid and Medina del Campo

This article explores whether or not Flemish commercial networks reached the interior of the Iberian Peninsula and if so, how they functioned. By analysing the case of the Valladolid region through hitherto unexplored sources, this study shows that the economic opportunities offered by this region did not pass unnoticed by the Flemish merchants. While previous research focused on the conceptual dichotomy between ambulant and sedentary migration, this article shows that in practice, the Flemish merchant community in the Valladolid region covered the whole spectrum between these two positions. In fact, the hybrid nature of this Flemish merchant community seem to have been its strength as it connected different trade networks to each other and permitted the transfer of commercial expertise.

Certainty in Decision-Making: An Assessment of the Australian Takeovers Panel

Certainty in Decision-Making: An Assessment of the Australian Takeovers Panel

Flexibility in Decision-Making: An Assessment of the Australian Takeovers Panel

The Australian Takeovers Panel (‘the Panel’) became the primary forum for resolving takeover disputes in the context of corporate law on 13 March 2000. This resulted from the implementation of the reforms in the Corporate Law Economic Reform Program Act 1999 (Cth) (‘CLERP reforms’). In replacing the previous role of the courts with the Panel, the CLERP reforms sought to inject legal and commercial specialist expertise into takeover dispute resolution, provide ‘speed, informality and uniformity’ in decision-making, minimise ‘tactical litigation’ and free up court resources.

Towards precision prevention: Technologies for identifying healthy individuals with high risk of disease

The rise of advanced technologies for characterizing human populations at the molecular level, from sequence to function, is shifting disease prevention paradigms toward personalized strategies. Because minimization of adverse outcomes is a key driver for treatment decisions for diseased populations, developing personalized therapy strategies represent an important dimension of both precision medicine and personalized prevention. In this commentary, we highlight recently developed enabling technologies in the field of DNA damage, DNA repair, and mutagenesis. We propose that omics approaches and functional assays can be integrated into population studies that fuse basic, translational and clinical research with commercial expertise in order to accelerate personalized prevention and treatment of cancer and other diseases linked to aberrant responses to DNA damage. This collaborative approach is generally applicable to efforts to develop data-driven, individualized prevention and treatment strategies for other diseases. We also recommend strategies for maximizing the use of biological samples for epidemiological studies, and for applying emerging technologies to clinical applications.

Getting it Right the First Time: The Intevep-Honeywell Alliance

INTEVEP, the R&D unit of Venezuela's national petroleum company, entered into a strategic alliance with Honeywell's industrial automation unit. The goal of the alliance was to jointly develop and commercialize new technology. The case describes how both companies executed a plan designed to ensure that the alliance succeeded. This case is used both to explore the basic foundational elements of successful alliances, as well as to look more broadly at the process of partnering. Excerpt UVA-OB-0690 Rev. Oct. 9, 2013 GETTING IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME: THE INTEVEP–HONEYWELL ALLIANCE Silvana Cusati, INTEVEP's deputy manager for technology, was heading down to the reception area. She had just received a call from the security gatehouse that Phil Imbesi from Honeywell had arrived. In a few short moments, he would be at the entrance to the building. INTEVEP was the research and development unit of Venezuela's national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). (See Exhibit 1.) INTEVEP and Honeywell, a large U.S.-based industrial automation firm (see Exhibit 2), had recently agreed to form a strategic alliance. The basic business proposition was to take specialized and proprietary process technology developed at INTEVEP and combine it with Honeywell's engineering, manufacturing and commercial expertise to create a marketable product for worldwide applications. Both companies would share the benefits. The product was a Water–Oil Content Analyzer, a piece of oil-field monitoring equipment, and was colloquially known as WOCA. As INTEVEP's leader for the alliance, Cusati had seen dozens of Honeywell executives and managers while both companies conducted their due diligence. Now Cusati was ready to get to work. Imbesi's arrival marked the point where the alliance had shifted from planning and coordinating to executing. It had taken some time to actually come to this point, and Cusati strongly believed that the alliance had every reason to succeed: . . .

Constructing accounts of organisational failure: Policy, power and concealment

An example of contracting arrangements within the National Health Service (NHS) provides the focus for considering accounts of organisational behaviour and failure. Public accounts of the outcome are contrasted with information disclosed in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. While the former focused on shortcomings in commercial expertise, sometimes at lower levels within organisational hierarchies, the latter suggests a need to consider the environment of social networks and power relationships. The data suggests obstacles to information flows across organisational boundaries were a contributory cause of failure, but a desire to present the implementation of policy in a positive light encouraged subsequent concealment of what Goffman (1959/1990) described as ‘dark secrets’. Through this example, the article provides an exploratory use of FOIA to examine social processes that frequently elude investigation.

Hong Kong's Roles in Supporting the Economic Development of China

If China was the startup economy star of the late 20th century, Hong Kong was its main angel investor. But Hong Kong’s roles in supporting the economic development of China go well beyond investment. During the Cold War, Hong Kong helped China through the pressures of allied embargo and today Hong Kong facilitates the controlled liberalization of the Chinese currency and capital markets. When Chinese markets were vastly underdeveloped, Hong Kong served as the international funding portal for Chinese enterprises. Merchants in Hong Kong were some of the first to build sophisticated commercial networks in mainland China following 1978, and Hong Kong has provided commercial and legal expertise as mainland China gradually built its legal and regulatory institutions during recent decades. Now, as Hong Kong links ever more closely with mainland China, its institutions and law are influencing the neighboring city of Shenzhen while the capital markets of the two cities are being physically linked. The most recent stage of this relationship has brought significant social stress to Hong Kong, as mainland Chinese buyers drove up property prices, large numbers of mainland entrants filled Hong Kong jobs, and mainland visitors flooded the community with contrasting ethical and civic behavior. The resulting tensions have been dangerously simplified by some into a struggle of Hong Kong “freedom fighters” repelling “authoritarian” China, and one aim of this paper is to reinstate an acceptable level of factual detail to the matter. Rather a neo-cold war battle, the tension in Hong Kong’s relationship to mainland China should be understood as a difficult juncture among long-standing partners. Public sentiment evidences the discomfort of Hong Kong’ tidy rule-of-law culture as increasingly immersed within a mainland China still lurching through a tumultuous period of internal development. If freed from the cold war caricature, Hong Kong’s vocal discontent can be understood as its most recent contribution to China’s development toward rule of law.

Human capital and financial capital in the Atlantic space: from America to Catalonia, 1829–1855

Spanish emigration to the Americas during the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century gave rise to the figure of the “indiano” or “americano” in Spain – those men who returned to the peninsula with huge fortunes. In this article, we look at the roles played by indianos in Catalonia's financial development. Our research indicates that returnees not only made important investments in the Catalan economy; they exerted an impact that, although harder to quantify, was equally significant: the deployment of their human capital, constituted by extensive international commercial and financial expertise and participation in social and business networks, evidenced in multiple alliances and businesses set up in the peninsula. Centered on the financial sector, the article shows that indianos were thus key players in the modernization of Catalan finances through the first half of the nineteenth century.

Arbitrator Consultants – Another Way to Deal with Technical or Commercial Challenges of Arbitrations

International commercial arbitrations are often complex and of a technical nature. Ensuring that arbitral tribunals have, or acquire, the necessary technical or commercial know-how is a challenge - for the parties as well as for the arbitrators. The standard solutions (party- and/or court-appointed experts) are time-consuming, costly and often carry the risk of delegating decision-making powers to the experts. Another way to ensure a technically or commercially sound and enforceable award is through the use of a consultant to the arbitral tribunal ("Arbitrator Consultant"). This tool was recently field-tested and successfully implemented in a major international energy price review arbitration in which the authors were involved. An Arbitrator Consultant is neither an expert, nor an arbitrator. Rather, he is a special assistant providing technical or commercial expertise to the arbitral tribunal "upon demand". He advises the arbitrators on limited technical or commercial language and/or calculation questions. However, he does not prepare an expert report, nor is he subject to cross-examination by counsel. The Arbitrator Consultant is, with the approval of the parties, an assistant in the sense that he helps to "translate" the arbitrator's decision into the particular technical or commercial language of a contract, or vice versa.

The effect of corporate associations on consumer behaviour

PurposeIn the present paper, the authors aim to study the relationship between corporate associations and loyalty by analyzing the role of identification with the company and satisfaction in this connection.Design/methodology/approachThe effects of corporate associations on consumers' loyalty were tested through a structural equation model for a sample of 781 financial services users.FindingsThe results confirm the value of commercial expertise (CE) as one of the most important determinants of both consumer satisfaction and identification with their financial services provider. Besides, corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributes to building consumer identification with the company, which is positively correlated to satisfaction too. Satisfaction is thus presented as both an affective and cognitive consumer response in the financial industry, which, along with identification, finally determines the attitudinal loyalty a consumer shows towards their provider.Originality/valueWith this study, the authors try to contribute to a better knowledge of the consumer loyalty formation process as it begins with the perception of corporate associations for its commercial expertise and its social commitment. The researchers take into account the role of two variables – i.e. identification and satisfaction with the company – that had not been studied in depth in research analyzing the role of corporate associations in consumer loyalty. Moreover, CSR associations are also studied from a multidimensional point of view, as suggested in recent studies and in comparison to the vast majority of previous research, which has concentrated on specific and narrow dimensions of the concept, especially the social dimension.