Intermediary Organisation Research Articles

The Effect of Marketing Capabilities and Distribution Strategy on Performance of MSP Intermediary Organisations’ in Nairobi County, Kenya

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of marketing capabilities and distribution strategy the performance of MSP intermediary organizations. The mobile service providers sector is a major contributor to the country’s economic growth and achievement of development goals and vision 2030. Nevertheless, the performance of MSP intermediary organisations appears to have stagnated and is even on a declining trend in some cases. This study employed a descripto-explanatory cross-sectional survey research design. The study collected primary data from 219 respondents drawn from a target population of 397 selected using stratified and simple random sampling procedures. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics in the form of frequencies and one sample t-tests. Simple linear regression and multiple linear regression in SPSS were used for inferential statistical analysis. This study established that marketing capabilities and choice of distribution strategy had a composite effect in contributing significantly to the MSP Intermediary organisations ‘performance. The study recommends MSP intermediary organisation sales managers need to lobby management to invest in training and appropriate performance compensation plan for its sales people as well as the ICT system that will enable efficient routing of the customers, where daily actual/targets and retailer information is availed, enhancing proper monitoring and evaluation of the sales team and their activities which will lead to improved performance of the MSP intermediary organisation. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Table Normal; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

The Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation promotes academic cooperation between excellent scientists and scholars from abroad and from Germany. To this end, it grants more than 700 research fellowships and research awards annually. These allow scientists and scholars from all over the world to come to Germany to work on a research project they have chosen themselves together with a host and collaborative partner. Scientists or scholars from Germany can also profit from the support and carry out a research project abroad as a guest of one of well over 26,000 Humboldt Foundation alumni worldwide – the Humboldtians. Once a Humboldtian, always a Humboldtian. Even after the stay in Germany has come to an end, the Humboldt Foundation maintains close links with their alumni. The alumni sponsorship is tailored to the needs of every single Humboldtian, providing flexible support for the particular development and path in life as well as for cooperation with others. The Humboldt Network includes 49 academics who have been awarded the Nobel Prize. In 2011, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was divided among Humboldtians Bruce A. Beutler from the United States, Jules Alphonse Hoffmann from Luxembourg and Canadian Ralph M. Steinman. Beutler and Hoffman jointly received one half of the prize for their discovery of innate immunity. Steinman received the other half for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity. From 2008 to 2012, a total of 2,830 fellowships were granted to academics abroad from all disciplines. For the same period, the Humboldt Foundation received 1,779 applications and approved 526 fellowships to researchers from the life sciences. The application and approval figures for medicine for the years 2008 to 2012 were 260 and 63, respectively. As an intermediary organisation for German foreign cultural and educational policy the Humboldt Foundation promotes international cultural dialogue and academic exchange. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety as well as other national and international partners.

The Intermediary Organisation of Low Carbon Cities: A Comparative Analysis of Transitions in Greater London and Greater Manchester

Making a low carbon economic future for the UK has been declared a key priority by both the previous Labour government and also the current coalition government. Yet there is a large gap between the symbolic representations of a low carbon future and their material manifestations in low carbon technologies and infrastructure in particular places. This paper addresses this gap through focusing on the organisation of urban low carbon transition activity. There is often significant capacity to act in reconfiguring urban energy systems that remains latent due to a missing organisational context for its co-ordination according to a mutually defined rationale or vision. This paper develops a conceptual framework to demonstrate and understand different modes of urban energy intermediation. Examples are used of intermediary organisation in London and Manchester to understand the strengths and partiality of each mode of intermediation and the necessity to integrate these different aspects of urban intermediary governance.

Participatory budgeting - the Australian way

For the first time in Australia a local council has used a deliberative democracy approach to obtain citizen advice on key decisions regarding the full range of Council services, service levels and funding. Typically a participatory budget (PB) gives citizens authority in relation to a component of the local government budget. The City of Canada Bay Council, in metropolitan Sydney, went well beyond this. In this paper the Canada Bay Citizens’ Panel (CP), the name given to the PB, is compared to the traditional PB process highlighting three distinctive features of this process: (1) the use of a randomly selected group of citizens; (2) the role of the newDemocracy Foundation as a ‘nonpartisan intermediary organisation’ (Kadlec and Friedman, 2007); and (3) the engagement of council staff through a parallel process convened by the Council, using a randomly selected staff panel. Whilst it is too early yet to make any final judgments, there is promising evidence that the recommendations of this CP will be seriously considered and that this engagement model will be used again by the City of Canada Bay, for the next four-year delivery plan and other contentious issues. Even though the Canada Bay Citizens’ Panel process is not yet complete, it is already clear that its impact will be felt, not only on the budget of the City of Canada Bay, but more broadly as an exemplar for local governments in Australia thinking about engaging their citizens.

Mediating the Use of Global University Rankings

This study explores responses to rankings from a group of staff working as education partnership facilitators for a professional intermediary organisation, the British Council. The study adopts an activity systems perspective from which to view the contexts in which rankings are encountered and the range of practices used to reduce tensions created by rankings, or reconcile their effects. The article illustrates how rankings have become embedded as a new form of infrastructure in the international education “context of practice”; as a tool (to enable benchmarking); as a form of exchange (to demonstrate credentials to customers and stakeholders); and as a division of labour (in the task of assessing value across national borders). The range of responses to rankings displayed by respondents in this study demonstrates a significant space that has been created for interpretation and reconstruction of meaning. The implications of this analysis for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers are discussed.

Intermediary organisations to foster the agricultural system of innovation: the Mexican Produce Foundation

The building of innovation capabilities in industrial firms has received a great deal of attention in the last three decades; however, innovation capabilities within agriculture has barely been explored. This study contributes to this under-researched area by presenting a novel conceptual framework to analyse the dynamics of innovation capabilities building in an intermediate organisation, the Mexican Produce Foundations. These foundations support agricultural research, extension, and innovation activities in Mexico, and have had major and diverse impacts on the Mexican agricultural innovation and research systems. An intermediary organisation actively facilitates interaction among actors who seek to innovate. The facilitation includes exchanging technical and commercial information, identifying potential partners, brokering interactions and fostering exchanges of resources and knowledge. Derived from a case study, this article investigates the PFs’ path to success. Drawing on a diverse literature on innovation systems, complexity theories, and organisational cultures and governance, the authors explore how these institutions have sustained organisational innovation over time and affected the Mexican agricultural innovation system. This study will be valuable for researchers, policy-makers, and others interested in improving the design and implementation of research and innovation systems in developing countries.

New models of apprenticeship and equal employment opportunity. Do training networks enhance fair hiring practices?

This study investigates whether occupational training networks enable the selection of apprentices to be less discriminatory. Training networks are a new organisational form of VET that is becoming increasingly widespread in Switzerland, as well as in Germany and Austria. In the Swiss model, an intermediary lead organisation recruits the candidates. It also attends to the apprenticeship itself and effects a placement of the young adults with the training network companies every year anew. The study is based on the sociology of conventions, which allows organisational mechanisms of selection in training institutions to be understood and the dangers of discrimination harboured therein to be appreciated. Based on a case study of a medium-sized training network, the study shows how this form of organisation permits a fairer selection, i.e. one that is gauged more by performance and less by social attributes of the applicants, as compared to selection processes in single SMB.

Channel Management and Differentiation Strategies in the Supply Chain for Fresh Produce

The article analyses the current differentiation strategies in the market for fresh produce. The article is arranged into three parts. First a short review of the literature on channel structure and product differentiation is presented in order to identify, on a theoretical grounding, the incentives for differentiation strategies. Second, the fresh produce sector is reviewed and analysed. Finally, an empirical investigation is made of a UK channel intermediary organisation carrying out differentiation policies in the fresh produce category (on behalf of UK multiple retailer customers') supplied by a dedicated Italian grower. Results show that in the fresh produce industry there is room for product differentiation, but with contradictory welfare effects.

Balancing multiple interests: Embedding innovation intermediation in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the emergence, embedding and optimal design of intermediaries who act as a bridge between demand and supply in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure. Using a case-study approach, the paper focuses on the relationships between a for-profit intermediary organisation in The Netherlands and several parties for which it performs various bridging functions, i.e., coupling these parties in particular innovation processes and channelling their subsequent interactions. The findings suggest that although innovation intermediation is seen as beneficial, tensions emerge regarding the innovation intermediary's governance structure, the way it generates its revenues and the different activities it performs. A clearer delineation between its different activities has to be made in order to minimise competition with other providers of R&D and knowledge intensive business services, and to protect its credibility and impartiality. Furthermore, some tasks of innovation intermediaries are best funded publicly, whereas others should be funded privately. The originality of the paper lies in the fact that it focuses on relationships between an innovation intermediary and the supply side of the knowledge infrastructure, whereas typically the focus is on interactions with end-users of knowledge and information.

Demand articulation in intermediary organisations: The case of orphan drugs in the Netherlands

Several aspects of a technology are uncertain when it is in its emerging phase, e.g. the demand for a technology. Demand articulation processes are regarded as important, but till now it is often treated as a black box. We present a conceptual framework for the analysis of demand articulation processes inside intermediary organisations, and in interaction with other stakeholders. The empirical basis of this framework is provided by a case study involving an event history analysis, in which the occurrence and the contents of demands are followed over time. We studied the processes within the ‘Dutch Steering Committee Orphan Drugs’, an intermediary organisation that supports new and emerging technologies in the context of orphan drugs. Our results show that due to the activity of the intermediary organisation demand articulation occurred, that interactions exist between the demands and the organisation's underlying values, and that in interaction with other actors a debate on the reimbursement of new drugs is settled. The major contribution of this paper lies in the design of a framework for studying demand articulation processes in intermediary organisations and the resulting impacts on the development of emerging technologies. In addition, the paper provides insights in the possibilities to reinforce the role of the intermediary organisation studied.

How Can We Reap the Fruits of Academic Research in Biotechnology? in Search of Critical Success Factors in Policies for New-Firm Formation

There is often a gap between the creation of knowledge and the use of new knowledge in the economy, a situation which has pushed many governments to establish programmes for knowledge transfer and new-firm formation. I examine the initiatives taken by the government in the Netherlands to advance new-firm formation in biotechnology. Drawing on experience in entrepreneurship—its institutional setting in general, and more specifically on developments in biotechnology start-ups—I aim to identify critical success factors for this policy. The policy seems promising in covering all development stages of start-up firms and in using a network approach—with implementation by an intermediary organisation as a solution for coordination problems. The low popularity of entrepreneurship, including some negative regulatory factors in biotechnology, and the danger of the policy focusing on the top innovative start-ups are threats to success. Other threats may be a fragmentation of ferees and a narrow focus on a national situation rather than cooperation with adjacent countries. I suggest a number of critical success factors that can be used in policies to enhance new-firm formation in biotechnology, and indicate some lines for further research.

Ethical guidance on human embryonic and fetal tissue transplantation: a European overview.

This article presents an overview of regulations, guidelines and societal debates in eight member states of the EC about a) embryonic and fetal tissue transplantation (EFTT), and b) the use of human embryonic stem cells (hES cells) for research into cell therapy, including 'therapeutic' cloning. There appears to be a broad acceptance of EFTT in these countries. In most countries guidance has been developed. There is a 'strong' consensus about some of the central conditions for 'good clinical practice' regarding EFTT. International differences concern, amongst others, some of the informed consent issues involved, and the questions whether an intermediary organisation is necessary, whether the methods of abortion may be influenced by the possible use of EFT, and whether EFTT should only be used for the experimental treatment of rare disorders. The potential use of hES cells for research into cell therapy has given a new impetus to the debate about (human) embryo research. The therapeutic prospects with regard to the retrieval and research use of hES cells appear to function as a catalyst for the introduction of less restrictive regulations concerning research with spare embryos, at least in some European countries. It remains to be seen whether the prospect of treating patients suffering from serious disorders with transplants produced by therapeutic cloning will decrease the societal and moral resistance to allowing the generation of embryos for 'instrumental' use.

Solar energy in The Netherlands recent progress

The Netherlands has a well advanced policy on energy and the environment. The Governmental “Policy Document on Energy Conservation” forms the basis for the programs on renewable energy. The aim is to have 5 % (163 PJ) of the total energy produced by renewable energy sources in the year 2010. The National Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic Energy Programmes 1990–1994 are managed and coordinated by Novem. Novem is an intermediary organisation acting between the government on the one hand and the marketplace on the other. Novem has a permanent staff of 270 and allocates about US$ 130 million annually as project funds. This paper provides an recent overview of the Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic Programmes in the Netherlands, after introducing the government policy.