Lock-in Model Research Articles

Mastering customer lock-in by servitization innovation strategies of asset specificity

PurposeThis study aims to explore how manufacturing firms master customer lock-in through value creation by servitization innovation strategies from the perspective of asset specificity.Design/methodology/approachA multiple case study with triangulation fashion is adopted to identify servitization innovation strategies. Several manufacturing firms were investigated, which are distributed in different positions of the value chain. Content analysis and abductive approaches are adopted to analyze the data. Moreover, an in-depth interview and participatory observation were conducted to refine the analysis results.FindingsThis study identified four different focusing points of servitization operations. Based on these, the paper further induces an innovative servitization strategy matrix of customer lock-in, concerning communion, intellectual, existential and insubstantial strategies. Furthermore, a conceptual model of customer lock-in by servitization innovation from the perspective of asset specificity is elaborated. It is suggested that companies can use tangible or intangible resources by sharing or storing operations to create servitization value.Originality/valueThis study theoretically proposes a conceptual model to extend servitization innovation as an intangible asset and adopt the new perspective of asset specificity to illustrate the value creation in servitization to generate customer lock-in.

The capital gain lock-in effect and seasoned equity offerings

We extend the capital gain lock-in model developed in Klein (1998) to explain the drop in the price of a company's shares when it conducts an SEO. We show that investors which are locked-in may not be willing to participate in an SEO. As a result, the equilibrium price after the SEO needs to be lower than it would be otherwise in order that the remaining investors are willing to bear the additional investment risk of the SEO. We provide numerical examples to demonstrate our theoretical results. Our theory is well supported by empirical tests of SEO issue-day returns using data on the accrued capital gains of tax-sensitive and tax-insensitive institutional investors.

Managing uncertainty and expectations: The strategic response of U.S. agricultural cooperatives to agricultural industrialization

The 20th century industrialization of agriculture confronted U.S. agricultural cooperatives with responding to an event they neither initiated nor drove. Agrarian-influenced cooperatives used two metaphors, “serfdom” and “cooperatives are like a family” to manage uncertainty and influence producer expectations by predicting industrialization's eventual outcome and cooperatives’ producer driven compensation. The serfdom metaphor alluded to industrialization's potential to either bypass family farmers, the cornerstone of the economy according to agrarian ideology, or to transform them into the equivalent of piece-wage labor as contract growers. The “family” metaphor reflects how cooperatives personalized the connection between cooperative and farmer-member to position themselves as the exact opposite of serfdom. Hypotheses advanced by Roessl (2005) and Goel (2013) suggest that intrinsic characteristics of family businesses such as a resistance to change and operating according to a myth of unlimited choice and independence reinforced the risk of institutional lock-in posed by agrarian ideology. To determine whether lock-in occurred, Woerdman's (2004) neo-institutional model of lock-in was examined in the context of late 20th century cooperative grain and livestock marketing. Increasingly ineffective open markets prompted three regional cooperatives to develop their own models of industrialized pork production. Direct experience with producer contracting allowed cooperatives to evade institutional and ideological lock-in.

Noise Reduction in Coarse Bifurcation Analysis of Stochastic Agent-Based Models: An Example of Consumer Lock-In

We investigate coarse equilibrium states of a fine-scale, stochastic agent-based model of consumer lock-in in a duopolistic market. In the model, agents decide on their next purchase based on a combination of their personal preference and their neighbours' opinions. For agents with independent identically-distributed parameters and all-to-all coupling, we derive an analytic approximate coarse evolution-map for the expected average purchase. We then study the emergence of coarse fronts when spatial segregation is present in the relative perceived quality of products. We develop a novel Newton-Krylov method that is able to compute accurately and efficiently coarse fixed points when the underlying fine-scale dynamics is stochastic. The main novelty of the algorithm is in the elimination of the noise that is generated when estimating Jacobian-vector products using time-integration of perturbed initial conditions. We present numerical results that demonstrate the convergence properties of the numerical method, and use the method to show that macroscopic fronts in this model destabilise at a coarse symmetry-breaking bifurcation.

Model of lock-in in a ring laser and a semiconductor laser gyro

It is assumed that the process of lock-in in a ring laser has a finite transient time. This assumption serves as a basis for developing a semiconductor laser gyro. A semiconductor optical amplifier is applied as an amplifying medium, and a ring resonator represents a long optical fiber. The injection of an external single-frequency light into a ring resonator with subsequent circulation of counterpropagating waves is used. The light characteristics of the semiconductor laser gyro are discussed, and the rotation sensitivity of the gyro is demonstrated.

Orientation relationships of copper crystals on c-plane sapphire

Copper particles have been grown on sapphire (0 0 0 1) substrates by dewetting a copper film either in the solid or the liquid state. After equilibration the particles adopt different orientation relationships (ORs). Solid state dewetting produces a single OR: Cu(1 1 1) [ 1 1 ¯ 0 ] ||Al 2O 3(0 0 0 1) [ 1 0 1 ¯ 0 ] . In contrast, dewetting in the liquid state (followed by solid state equilibration) produces four additional ORs, Cu(1 1 1) [ 1 1 ¯ 0 ] ||Al 2O 3(0 0 0 1) [ 2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 0 ] , Cu(1 1 0) [ 1 1 ¯ 0 ] ||Al 2O 3(0 0 0 1) [ 2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 0 ] , Cu(3 1 1) [ 0 1 1 ¯ ] ||Al 2O 3(0 0 0 1) [ 2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 0 ] and Cu(2 1 0)[0 0 1]||Al 2O 3(0 0 0 1) [ 2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 0 ] , which have been found to have a similar interfacial energy. All of the ORs observed in this study are consistent with the Fecht and Gleiter lock-in model, from which one would expect that densely packed directions in the interface plane of the metal crystals will tend to align with relatively dense directions in the substrate surface. The 30° change in alignment direction on the c-sapphire side of the interface, from Al 2O 3 [ 1 0 1 ¯ 0 ] for solid state dewetted samples to Al 2O 3 [ 2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 0 ] for samples dewetted in the liquid state, appears to be related to a reconstruction of the copper–c-sapphire interface that occurs at a temperature between those at which the two types of samples are processed.

Competing Recombinant Technologies for Environmental Innovation: Extending Arthur's Model of Lock-In

This article presents a model of sequential decisions about investments in environmentally dirty and clean technologies, which extends the path-dependence framework of B. Arthur (1989, Competing technologies, increasing returns, and lock-in by historical events, The Economic Journal, 99, pp. 116–131). This allows us to evaluate if and how an economy locked into a dirty technology can be unlocked and move towards clean technology. The main extension involves the inclusion of the effect of recombinant innovation of the two technologies. A mechanism of endogenous competition is described involving a positive externality of increasing returns to investment which are counterbalanced by recombinant innovation. We determine conditions under which lock-in can be avoided or escaped. A second extension is “symmetry breaking” of the system due to the introduction of an environmental policy that charges a price for polluting. A final extension adds a cost of environmental policy in the form of lower returns on investment implemented through a growth-depressing factor. We compare cumulative pollution under different scenarios, so that we can evaluate the combination of environmental regulation and recombinant innovation.

Locked In Segregation

In earlier work, I have developed the lock-in model of inequality, which compares persistent racial inequality to persistent market monopoly power. In this article, I explore the implications of applying the lock-in model to the problem of residential segregation. Here, I put forward two central arguments. First, I argue that residential segregation constitutes an example of a locked-in racial monopoly. During the days of Jim Crow, white racial cartels (e.g., homeowners' associations and real estate boards) engaged in conduct to exclude blacks and monopolize access to good neighborhoods. That early neighborhood advantage has now become locked-in via certain self-reinforcing neighborhood effects, namely through public school finance and neighborhood job referral networks. Because the (white) rich get richer in neighborhoods with good schools and good job networks, non-whites are relatively less able to move into more expensive white neighborhoods. Second, I argue that anti-discrimination law should shift its focus from individual intent to a lock-in framework. In contrast to the individual intent model, the lock-in model suggests that the definition of discrimination be expanded, to include persistent racial inequality that can be traced historically to earlier anti-competitive conduct. This definition, and the lock-in model itself, bring to light the historical, institutional and collective dimensions of racial inequality that the individual intent model suppresses.

A lock-in model for the complex Matuyama-Brunhes boundary record of the loess/palaeosol sequence at Lingtai (Central Chinese Loess Plateau)

SUMMARY In most marine sedimentary records, the Matuyama-Brunhes boundary (MBB) has been found in interglacial oxygen isotope stage 19. In the magnetostratigraphic records of most Chinese loess/palaeosol profiles the MBB is located in loess layer L8, which was deposited during a glacial period. The MBB at Lingtai (central Chinese Loess Plateau) also occurs in L8 and is characterized by multiple polarity flips. The natural remanent magnetization is mainly carried by two coexisting components. The higher coercivity (harder) component dominates in loess layers and is thought to be of detrital origin. The lower coercivity (softer) component prevails in palaeosols and was most probably formed in situ by (bio-)chemical processes. A lock-in model for the Lingtai MBB record has been developed by extending the lithologically controlled PDRM model of Bleil & von Dobeneck (1999). It assumes two lock-in zones. The NRM of the magnetically harder component is physically locked by consolidation shortly after loess deposition, whereas the softer component is formed at greater depth by pedogenesis and acquires a chemical remanent magnetization of younger age. At polarity boundaries, grains carrying reversed and normal directions may therefore occur together within a single horizon. The model uses ARM coercivity spectra to estimate the relative contributions of the two components. It is able to explain the observed rapid multiple polarity flips and low magnetization intensities as well as the stratigraphic shift of the Lingtai MBB with respect to the marine records.

Barriers to Entry: A Market Lock-In Model of Discrimination

This article draws on recent literature in economics on increasing returns, network effects and market lock-in, to advance two types of arguments - one descriptive and one normative - about racism in the context of law school admissions. First, I suggest that it might be useful to view white dominance in law school admissions as the product of a locked-in, culturally and racially specific network standard that favors white applicants. Anticompetitive conduct by white professional leaders and law school administrators during the Jim Crow era created an overwhelming initial advantage, if not an outright monopoly, in early market competition for law student admissions. This monopoly, which lasted well over a century, may have produced a de facto standard that favors white cultural performances and disproportionately excludes people of color in admissions. Over time, reinforcing institutional networks have grown up around this culturally specific standard, and have effectively locked the standard into market structures. For example, to gain access to the legal profession network, law schools have had to adopt admissions criteria that rely on the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), which at least in its earlier incarnations was designed to exclude applicants of color. Law schools wishing to maintain their national ranking or place graduates in lucrative positions must admit students based on their scores, because legal professionals and law school rankings recognize high LSAT scores for the entering class as a signal of the school's quality. In turn, those schools wishing to attract applicants with high LSAT scores must maintain their national rankings and post-graduation employment rates. Thus, over time, the LSAT standard has become progressively more embedded into the network, creating significant barriers to entry for people of color whose cultural performances do not conform to the standard. Second, a lock-in model of discrimination may have several more normative implications. Initially, (and most controversially), it suggests that current admissions standards are not solely the race-neutral, efficient products of market competition, but rather are the self-reinforcing product of earlier anticompetitive conduct by whites. Because such anticompetitive behavior will not necessarily produce the most efficient market outcomes, there is no guarantee that law school admissions criteria produce applicants who are the best legal problem-solvers or even the best law students. In addition, the model suggests that racial disparities persist because communities of color do not enjoy true equal opportunity to compete. At the turn of the century, whites intentionally excluded people of color from participating in the establishment of the defacto standard in law school admissions and the legal profession. Currently, a locked-in market standard creates significant barriers to entry for people of color. Far from a level playing field, competition takes place in markets where white monopoly power may have become self-reinforcing. Finally, the model proposes a politically useful metaphor or analogy for discrimination and affirmative action. A market lock-in analogy frames racism in antitrust terms, as historically anticompetitive conduct that over time will continue to exclude people of color, even in the absence of continuing intentional discrimination. Likewise, the model redescribes affirmative action as a type of antitrust remedy, designed to dismantle a locked-in white monopoly on opportunity and resources.

Barriers to Entry: A Market Lock-in Model of Discrimination

This article draws on recent literature in economics on increasing returns, network effects and market lock-in, to advance two types of arguments - one descriptive and one normative - about racism in the context of law school admissions. First, I suggest that it might be useful to view white dominance in law school admissions as the product of a locked-in, culturally and racially specific network standard that favors white applicants. Anticompetitive conduct by white professional leaders and law school administrators during the Jim Crow era created an overwhelming initial advantage, if not an outright monopoly, in early market competition for law student admissions. This monopoly, which lasted well over a century, may have produced a de facto standard that favors white cultural performances and disproportionately excludes people of color in admissions. Over time, reinforcing institutional networks have grown up around this culturally specific standard, and have effectively locked the standard into market structures. For example, to gain access to the legal profession network, law schools have had to adopt admissions criteria that rely on the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), which at least in its earlier incarnations was designed to exclude applicants of color. Law schools wishing to maintain their national ranking or place graduates in lucrative positions must admit students based on their scores, because legal professionals and law school rankings recognize high LSAT scores for the entering class as a signal of the school's quality. In turn, those schools wishing to attract applicants with high LSAT scores must maintain their national rankings and post-graduation employment rates. Thus, over time, the LSAT standard has become progressively more embedded into the network, creating significant barriers to entry for people of color whose cultural performances do not conform to the standard. Second, a lock-in model of discrimination may have several more normative implications. Initially, (and most controversially), it suggests that current admissions standards are not solely the race-neutral, efficient products of market competition, but rather are the self-reinforcing product of earlier anticompetitive conduct by whites. Because such anticompetitive behavior will not necessarily produce the most efficient market outcomes, there is no guarantee that law school admissions criteria produce applicants who are the best legal problem-solvers or even the best law students. In addition, the model suggests that racial disparities persist because communities of color do not enjoy true equal opportunity to compete. At the turn of the century, whites intentionally excluded people of color from participating in the establishment of the defacto standard in law school admissions and the legal profession. Currently, a locked-in market standard creates significant barriers to entry for people of color. Far from a level playing field, competition takes place in markets where white monopoly power may have become self-reinforcing. Finally, the model proposes a politically useful metaphor or analogy for discrimination and affirmative action. A market lock-in analogy frames racism in antitrust terms, as historically anticompetitive conduct that over time will continue to exclude people of color, even in the absence of continuing intentional discrimination. Likewise, the model redescribes affirmative action as a type of antitrust remedy, designed to dismantle a locked-in white monopoly on opportunity and resources.

Random Lock-In Intervals for Tubular Structural Elements Subject to Simulated Natural Wind

This paper reports on wind tunnel experiments with an elastically suspended circular cylinder vibrating under the excitation of natural wind of high turbulence degree. The natural wind turbulence was simulated by superposing the low frequency part of the natural wind turbulence on the background high frequency turbulence of the wind tunnel flow. This was done by controlling the propeller rotation speed according to an artificially generated low frequency speed sample function drawn from a suitable random process model. The experiment provided statistical data on the intermittent random occurrence and size of strong lock-in vibrations in resonance with the vortex shedding excitation. The purpose of the experiment was to obtain data to support the formulation of a sufficiently detailed stochastic model to allow computer simulation of reasonably realistic fatigue damage accumulation at “hot spots” of tubular structural elements subject to the natural wind. The engineering relevance of the investigation is supported by comparing it with the unrealistic highly conservative rules of wind-induced fatigue commonly given in codes of practice. The stochastic lock-in model as well as the related fatigue calculation procedure is reported in the paper.

On Geometric Models for Interphase Boundaries

AbstractThe energy interphase boundaries can be described as a function of the lattice matching at the interface between two adjacent crystals, the chemical interaction and the interfacial entropy of the boundaries. Geometric models relating the energy of interphase boundaries (metal/metal and metal/non-metal) to their atomic structure can be based on the static distortion wave concept. This approach constitutes the physical basis for the lock-in model and the planar CSL-model proposed previously to describe the low energy configurations of such interfaces.

Epitaxy and interfacial energy of heterostructure interfaces

Abstract Geometric models relating the energy of composite interfaces to their atomic structure can be based on the concept of static distortion waves. This approach constitutes the physical basis for two-dimensional geometric models, including the ‘lock-in model’ previously proposed for metal/ceramic interfaces. Several examples are discussed, providing new insight into such phenomena as epitaxy of thin films.

Low energy heterophase boundaries in the system silver/nickel and in other weakly bonded systems

Observation of the rotation during sintering of single crystal spheres on a single crystal nickel substrate reveals eight types of low energy heterophase boundaries in the Ag/Ni system. The crystallography of these boundaries is discussed against the background of known low-energy configurations in the systems Au/LiF, Au/NaCl, Au/KCl, Au/MgO, Cu/MgO, and Ag/NaCl, which exhibit comparatively weak interface bonding similar to Ag/Ni. Certain boundary configurations recur in systems of different lattice misfit and bonding type, and two configurations emerge as specially favoured: the “parallel cube” type and the “half-twin” configuration, where one crystal is bounded by a (111) or (211) twin plane. It is shown that all configurations which involve high index limiting planes can be reduced to these simple types if facetting of the boundary or twinning in one crystal is assumed to occur. A minimal set of “irreducible boundaries” is identified, from which all observed boundaries can be hypothetically composed by combination with facetting and/or twinning; the irreducible boundaries themselves have all been observed directly in sphere rotation experiments, and they cannot be decomposed into any simpler configurations. All irreducible boundaries can be described in terms of both the coincidence and the lock-in model, but strains up to 3.7% are required to bring about reasonable lock-in periodicities and coincidence cell sizes. Boundary energies do not correlate with the density of coincidence or lock-in sites. It is concluded that in weakly bonded systems, which have low driving force for relaxation at the boundaries, the character of the limiting planes of the adjoining crystals and the parallelism of relatively close-packed directions are at least as important as the geometrical fit (coincidence or lock-in) of these planes.

Lock-in structures obtained in [formula omitted] and [formula omitted] interfaces at elevated temperatures

Measurements of the low energy orientation relationships between Au and MgO single crystals at 550, 750 and 900°C indicate a variation of the boundary energy with temperature. Over the whole temperature range studied the boundaries are ordered and can be described according to the lock-in model: low energy orientation relationships are obtained if a large number of close packed rows of atoms at the “surface” of the metal crystal locks-in the “valleys” between close packed rows of ions at the “surface” of the ionic crystal. A phase diagram of Au MgO interfaces is developed and exhibits highest thermal stability for interphase boundaries with close packed atomic structures. In addition, the validity of the lock-in model is checked by comparison with experimental data for the interfacial energy between Ag and NaCl crystals. Whereas the coincidence concept fails to describe low energy conditions for interphase boundaries between noble metals and ionic crystals accurately, it is demonstrated that the “lock-in model” is suitable to describe the structure/energy dependence of this type of interfaces. Low energy interfacial structures can be described by two-dimensional short period units of close packed directions matching at the boundary between both crystals.

Basis and Use of Lock-In Detection in Analytical Spectrometry

ABSTRACT The basic lock-in amplifier model will be briefly surveyed in order to present a few critical guidelines for its usage in analytical spectrometry. Expressions for the impulse response, time variant impulse response, the variant transfer function, the power transfer function, and the time variant time autocorrelation function of the lock-in amplifier are given. Figures of merit for the lock-in including the noise bandwidth and the signal-to-noise-improvement ratio are also given. The general conditions which must be met for successful shot noise limited application of lock-in detection are presented as well as how these conditions are applied to actual spectrometric systems.

A lock-in model for the atomic structure of interphase boundaries between metals and ionic crystals

The low energy interphase boundaries between noble metals (Au, Cu) and various ionic crystals (LiF, KCl, NaCl, MgO, A1 2O 3, mica) were determined at 550°C by means of the boundary energy induced rotation of small (~ 1 μm) spheres. The systems were chosen so that the effect of lattice mismatch (varied between 1.3 and 35.1%), the effect of lattice structure (cubic/cubic and hexagonal/cubic) and chemical effects could be studied. The results obtained suggest that boundary models based on the coincidence concept are not applicable to interphase boundaries between noble metals and ionic crystals because the low energy boundaries observed were not of the coincidence type and existing coincidence orientation relationships did not result in low energy boundaries. However, the atomic structure of the low energy interphase boundaries observed may be understood in terms of the following “lock-in model”. A low energy interphase boundary results if the close packed rows of atoms at the “surface” of the metal crystal fit into the “valleys” between close packed rows of atoms at the “surface” of the ionic crystal. This model seems to predict correctly the experimentally observed correlations between the interfacial energy and the boundary inclination, the lattice mismatch and the lattice structure of the two phases involved.