Rival Companies Research Articles

INFLUENCIA EN LAS REACCIONES COMPETITIVAS DE LAS CARACTERÍSTICAS DE LA ACCIÓN Y DEL LIDERAZGO DE LA EMPRESA

La dinámica de la estrategia competitiva se refleja en las acciones y reacciones específicas de las empresas. A diario podemos ver como las acciones desarrolladas por una organización para el logro de sus objetivos, son contrarrestadas por reacciones de sus rivales. Con esta interdependencia, la efectividad de una estrategia no puede valorarse sin evaluar las respuestas del resto de empresas del sector. La corriente de investigación centrada la dinámica de las acciones-reacciones plantea que el número de empresas rivales que responderá a un ataque competitivo está influido por las propias características de la acción, así como del liderazgo de la empresa iniciadora. El modelo “acción-reacción” permite justificar teóricamente un conjunto de hipótesis que, posteriormente, se contrasta empíricamente, mediante técnicas de análisis multivariante, con datos proporcionados por directores comerciales y de marketing de empresas españolas. The dynamic of a competitive strategy is reflected in the actions and reactions of rival companies within the marketplace. Daily we can see how the actions taken by a company in order to achieve its goals are counter reacted by its rivals. Given this relationship, the effectiveness of a strategy can not be analyzed without considering the responses, or reactions, of other companies in the industry. The line of research based on the action-reaction dynamics implies that the probability that rival companies respond to a competitive attack is influenced by the characteristics of: the action itself as well as those of the initiating company. The “action-reaction” model allows us justify theoretically a series of hypothesis which link the characteristics of a competitive action with the number of companies responding to such action. Afterwards, we will empirically check this hypothesis -using multivariate analysis- with data obtained from the responses of a survey mailed to the Marketing managers of Spanish Companies.

Proposal of an Instructional Design for Teaching the Requirement Process for Designing Information Systems

Introduction In the field of information systems (IS) design, the requirement process and related fields are growing in importance. Despite their importance, the development of human resources in these fields does not appear to be proceeding in tandem with their requirements. It is urgent that both industry and education focus on fostering human resources who can direct the requirement and design processes of information systems. For systems vendor companies, the development of high value-added systems analysts and architects has become a critical measure to survive and cope with rival foreign companies who provide cheaper systems. For systems user companies, fostering human resources with capabilities and skills has become a strategic issue. These capabilities and skills include the ability to elaborate an enterprise information systems architecture that matches the business structure and determine system requirements and specifications for individual systems based on the enterprise architecture. Japanese government and industry have advocated a proposal (Information Service and Software Sub-committee, 2007) to promote the fostering of IT human resources at an advanced level. Figure 1 shows the relationship between the levels of required human resources of this proposal and our target discussed later in this article. This proposal classifies IT human resources into seven levels. Level one is the entry level, levels two and three correspond to the middle levels, and levels four to seven correspond to the advanced level. The critical issue is how to raise human resources to at least level five. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The first step in developing information systems involves shaping business activities in the targeted domain as requirements. After the desired outcomes are described to them, architects must have the competencies to analyze and map business structures and processes into an information system. The human resources who take charge of this field should have the ability to understand and describe business structure in the targeted domain as well as in information systems. In addition to standard data-based education, education based on experience may be required to develop human resources. Many researchers claim that on-the-job training (OJT) is suitable for this purpose. Although many companies apply OJT, much of the training does not succeed because of a lack of competent instructors. Often, those most suitable to become OJT instructors are busy people who do not have sufficient time to provide training. In consequence, trainees do not receive enough guidance, and thus not enough results, from their training. The means by which to foster capable human resources must be considered an urgent and important issue for educational programs, especially for professional graduate school programs in information systems. As a part of a program that advances IT human resources, we have implemented a course of business modeling by means of a seminar to foster the human resources described above. This paper describes the design of the learning process and assesses the applicability and effectiveness of the instructional process. Describing a Business Structure with Conceptual Data Modeling Information Systems Requirements and Conceptual Data Modeling The first issue in developing information systems is determining how to design the system according to client requirements. It is necessary to visualize the potential requirements of both clients and business experts in an objective domain. In conjunction with visualization, consensus building between stakeholders, including both clients and information systems architects, is indispensable. Much research and many studies (e.g. Davis, 2004; Jackson, 1995) have been produced on client requirements. The essential point of the requirement process is inheres how to describe a real-world process. …

The external shareholders’ impressions regarding corporate reputation in educational organizations

A good reputation can create barriers to competition and inhibit the mobility of rival companies, attractthe best supply chain and business partners, create a premium value for a company’s products andservices (Sherman 1999, 10). On the one hand, reputation is valuable; it has bottom-line effects onfirms. On the other hand, reputation buffers firms from the immediate reaction of stakeholders in theirenvironment when controversial events occur (Schultz et al 2000, 79).

An analogy between management and war strategies

It is said that business and economic warfare are both complex and dynamic subjects that are shaped by defined established principles, which ask for practical and well-structured methods in order to reach positive results and success from them. The aim of this article is to outline na analogical reflection on the two subjects above, by means of articulating discussions strategies that were adopted to not only hit the rival companies but also search for competitive advantages in the business market.

International actors and multinational water company strategies in Europe, 1990–2003

International actors and factors, including multinational companies, have constrained and influenced local decision-making on the structure of water systems in Europe since 1990. The EU itself has exercised a major influence through environmental directives, fiscal policies associated with economic and monetary union, and internal market policies. International financial institutions have also influenced developments, especially in central and eastern Europe, through policies and conditionalities linked to loans. The multinational water companies adopted policies of expansion in selected cities throughout Europe, achieving the privatisation of water services which had previously been directly provided by public authorities. This behaviour is subject to analysis in terms of the political economy of multinational company strategies, including the relationships between these strategies and political structures and developments. The multinational companies have been the most significant international actors, but their impact has been largely through political strategies rather than through competition with rival local companies.

An Interaction Between Aspirin and Valproate: The Relevance of Plasma Protein Displacement Drug-Drug Interactions

An Interaction Between Aspirin and Valproate: The Relevance of Plasma Protein Displacement Drug-Drug Interactions

How companies can preserve market dominance after patents expire

Patents provide market protection for companies that invent a process or product and therefore they influence financial success. When patents expire however the profit streams can run dry as rival companies introduce their own, often cheaper, versions. This paper describes how companies with patents can forestall the impact of such competition and extend the profitability of the product or process. It discusses the nature of patent protection and identifies three options that are open to companies looking to put a pre-expiration strategy into place: pre-emptively launching a generic product; layering innovations; and creating line extensions. The author illustrates these strategies with examples from three sectors that rely on innovation: the pharmaceutical, semiconductor and software industries.

UPS delivers on home‐grown talent

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reviews the latest policies in recruitment and retention, paying particular attention to initiatives at UPS.

Public welfare agenda or corporate research agenda?

As things stand today, whether we like it or not, industry funding is on the upswing. The whole enterprise of medicine in booming, and it makes sense for industry to invest more and more of one's millions into it. The pharmaceutical industry has become the single largest direct funding agency of medical research in countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.Since the goals of industry and academia differ, it seems that conflicts of interest are inevitable at times. The crucial decision is whether the public welfare agenda of academia, or the corporate research agenda of industry, should occupy center stage when they conflict.There is enough evidence to show that funding by industry is very systematic, and results that are supportive of the safety and efficacy of sponsor's products alone get the funds. It is no surprise, therefore, that one finds very few negative drug trials reports published, and whatever are, are likely to be by rival companies to serve their commercial interests.Renewed and continued funding by industry decides the future prospects of many academic researchers. At the same time there is now evidence that pharmaceutical companies attempt suppression of research findings, may be selective in publishing results, and may delay or stymie publication of unfavourable results. This is a major area of concern for all conscientious researchers and industry watchers.Industry commonly decides which clinical research/trial gets done, not academia, much though the latter may wish to believe otherwise. It finds willing researchers to carry this out. This can be one area of concern. Another area of pressing concern is when industry decides to both design and control publication of research.It makes sense for researchers to refuse to allow commercial interests to rule research reporting. Research having been reported, the commercial implications of such reporting is industry's concern. But, doctoring of findings to suit commerce is to be resisted at all costs. In this even pliant researchers need have no fear, for if they indeed publish what will work, the concerned sponsor will benefit in the long run. The only decision academia has to make is refuse to comply with predestined conclusions of sponsors for the ‘thirty pieces of silver’. Instead do genuine research and make sixty for themselves.The useful rule of thumb is: Keep the critical antenna on, especially with regard to drug trials, and more especially their methodology, and study closely the conflict of interest disclosed, and if possible undisclosed, before you jump on the band wagon to herald the next great wonder drug.There are three important lessons to be learnt by academia in all academia-industry relationships: i)Lesson number one: incorporate the right to publish contrary findings in the research contract itself. Which means, it makes great sense for academia to concentrate on the language and contractual provisions of sponsored research, to read the fine print very closely, and protect their research interests in case of conflict.ii)Lesson number two: a number of lawsuits successfully brought up against industry recently reflect earnest attempts by patient welfare bodies and others to remedy the tilt. It will result in a newfound confidence in academia that augurs well for academia industry relationship in the long run. Hence the second lesson for academia: do not get browbeaten by threats of legal actioniii)Lesson number three: Academia should keep itself involved right from inception of the clinical trial through to ultimate publication. And this must be an integral part of the written contract. The time to repeat cliches about the exciting future of the academia-industry connect is past. A concerted effort to lay a strong foundation of the relationship on practical ethical grounds has become mandatory.

Combined application of QFD and VA tools in the product design process

The aim of both value analysis (VA) and quality function deployment (QFD) is to reduce waste by avoiding redesign and providing optimal location of costs in general. To satisfy the consumer's most important needs, the VA prioritizes the increase in the cost of the product and not the subsequent price rise. QFD aims at generating clear engineering needs from consumer requirements thus, minimizing the reprojecting cost (“cost” should read “waste”) and changes in the products. The existing common concepts between two design tools, QFD (the project tool) and VA (the product optimization tool) motivated this study. QFD establishes a link among parameters such as the consumer needs, engineering requirements and a comparative analysis of the consumer perception against that of rival companies. The VA prioritizes a rise in the aggregate value (perceived by the consumer) by optimization development and production costs. The proposed methodology is capable of integrating these two tools, integrating costs with product development (“for the consumer”) for a joint analysis. This way it is possible to establish optimum cost values for each engineering requirement. It is also possible to evaluate the cost of each product function. Furthermore, the methodology provides a tool that supports decision making in product development and projects. This work evaluates the integrated use of the QFD and VA tools. Employing a survey that was carried out which intended to reveal the young male consumers’ requirements concerning a sports bicycle.

The Impact of Brand Personality and Customer Satisfaction on Customer's Loyalty: Theoretical Approach and Findings of a Causal Analytical Study in the Sector of Internet Service Providers

For the past few years, companies within the telecommunication and media industry have been operating within the environment of digital convergence. Internet Service Providers especially are, therefore, confronted with a new competitive landscape, which is characterized by an increased complexity and dynamics. This development implies a need for change in the strategic alignment, a change away from transaction towards relationship orientation understanding loyal customers as an asset. In many different industrial and service providing sectors customer satisfaction is regarded as the key to customer loyalty. However, this relationship is influenced by several other variables, such as the congruent perception of a brand's personality and customer's self‐concept, switching barriers or the attractiveness of products and services provided by rival companies. This paper examines the relationships between those constructs and provides a structural equation model with latent variables for modelling these complex ...

The Leeward Islands Company

It is a chilling irony that the lines of the prologue, which appear above, spoken on the opening night of a prosperous season for the American Company in Annapolis, unwittingly served as the epitaph on the last night of the Leeward Islands Company, whose playhouse on St. Croix was destroyed in the early hours of that very day, and they, themselves, heard no more. The two events remind us that, though David Douglass ultimately established his supremacy on the colonial American circuit, his American Company was by no means the only professional company that toured the Anglophone colonies. Indeed, throughout the eighteenth century, smaller, competing troupes performed a large provincial circuit that extended from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the north, to the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. What follows is the story of one rival company and their untimely demise, a history presently unknown and as yet untold by scholars of colonial American and Caribbean theatre.

Dividend Omissions and Intraindustry Information Transfers

AbstractWe examine potential information transfers from companies that announce dividend omissions to their industry rivals. Specifically, we examine the abnormal stock returns and abnormal earnings forecast revisions of rivals after a company makes a dividend‐omission announcement. Our results show negative and significant abnormal stock returns and negative and significant abnormal forecast revisions for rival companies in response to the announcement, and a significant and positive relation between the two. We conclude that a dividend‐omission announcement transmits unfavorable information across the announcing company's industry that affects cash flow expectations and ultimately stock prices.

Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden

Nearly two decades ago, a fast-food chain made advertising history with a feisty old woman gesturing at a rival company's hamburger and demanding, "Where's the beef?" Upon rereading Leo Marx's classic The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, which has remained continuously in print since 1964, a similar question startlingly arises: Where's the machine? As it turns out, "the machine" and the workings of "technology" appear more assertively in the book's title than anywhere in the text. Marx has little to say about specific machines or technologies. But he gives pride of place to the machine and technology in his title and subtitle, thereby seeming to relegate to secondary status "the garden" and "the pastoral ideal," concepts whose explication has actually consumed much of his half-century scholarly career. If The Machine in the Garden is indeed distinguished by the near absence of any discussion of actual technologies, then it makes sense to ask why many of us think of the book as a significant event in the formation of the history of technology as an academic discipline. A reexamination of Marx's work, now available in a thirty-fifth-anniversary edition with a new afterword, may contribute to an understanding of the early phases of the discipline.

Understanding executive remuneration: the contribution of CEO work histories

Investigates CEOs and their pay along with the various scandals attached to the company position. Urges more transparency with regard to directors’ pay to ease tension among other workers. Looks at how CEOs seemed to stay long‐term at companies before being lured away to rival companies for higher salaries in some cases.

Intra-Industry Signals Resulting from Insurance Company Mergers

ABSTRACT Given the increasing consolidation in the insurance industry, the authors' objective is to determine how the market revalues the acquirer, target, and rival insurance companies in response to merger announcements. The authors find that target and acquirer insurance companies experience favorable valuation effects at merger announcements. The authors also find positive and significant intra-industry effects in response to the announcements of insurance company mergers, which supports the signaling hypothesis. Furthermore, the authors find that the magnitude of the intra-industry effects is conditioned on the type, size, and location of the insurance companies. INTRODUCTION In recent years, the insurance industry has experienced substantial consolidation as mergers have been consummated to increase shareholder value. (1) The merger between two insurance companies may be value-enhancing for the following reasons. First, the merger may achieve economies of scale, as the combined company provides services at a lower average cost. The underlying factors that allow economies of scale include the application of technology to a larger customer base, a more efficient distribution system, and more efficient funding that reduces financing transaction costs. Second, the merging of two insurance companies may reduce redundant operations or branches, which would allow the remaining resources to work more efficiently. Third, the combination of two insurance companies that emphasize different services may allow for each entity to benefit from the expertise of the other entity. Fourth, to the extent that unsystematic risk is valued (see Harrington, 1983; Williams, 1983; and Venezian, 1984), the combination of two insurance companies may reduce the risk (see Cox and Griepentrog, 1988). Fifth, a merger may serve as a better alternative than potential insolvency for insurance companies that are experiencing financial problems (see BarNiv and Hathorn, 1997). Although there are valid value-enhancing motives for insurance company mergers, the ultimate test of the validity of mergers from a shareholder perspective is based on how shareholder wealth is affected. Many studies have measured the valuation effects of mergers. These studies have generally focused on industrial firms or commercial banks. Although virtually all related studies have found that the target firms experience positive significant valuation effects, the results for the acquiring firms are mixed. The authors' objective is to assess the valuation effects that result from large mergers between insurance companies. More specifically, the authors (1) measure the valuation effects of acquiring and target insurance companies whose stock was publicly traded, (2) measure the valuation effects of rival insurance companies (intra-industry effects) in response to announcements of mergers between insurance companies, and (3) attempt to explain the cross-sectional variation in intra-industry effects among rival insurance companies. The authors find positive and significant valuation effects for publicly traded acquirer and target insurance companies. Second, the authors find positive and significant intra-industry effects in response to the announcements of insurance company mergers, which supports the signaling hypothesis. Third, the authors find that the magnitude of the intra-industry effects is conditioned on the type of insurance company target. The authors also find that the intra-industry effects of insurance company mergers are more pronounced for insurance companies that have a similar size and are located in the same region as the target insurance company. The remainder of this article is organized as follows: the second section develops the hypotheses for intra-industry effects, the third section outlines the data and methodology, the fourth section presents the empirical results, and the final section provides conclusions and implications. …

The discovery and synthesis of epinephrine.

Epinephrine (adrenaline) was the first hormone to be isolated. The events leading up to this were initiated by experiments conducted by an English physician on his son. The active compound of epinephrine was isolated as an iron complex and marketed in 1900 by Farbwerke Hoechst as Suprarenin. In 1901, Parke-Davis began to market Adrenalin, the manufacturing of which was challenged by rival companies. Further analysis of the product revealed a lack of purity, and further chemical structures were proposed. In 1906, Hoechst began production of synthetic epinephrine, the introduction of which made the hormone more cheaply available on the market. Although the hormone had initially been marketed as a vasoconstrictor to stop bleeding and to raise blood pressure in patients experiencing surgical shock, its main application had been the treatment of asthmatic attacks. Norepinephrine (noradrenaline) was discovered in 1907 to be not only a biosynthetic precursor of epinephrine, but also a neurotransmitter.

Real-time business analysis: How CI practitioners can assess internal competitor power structures

Identifying the real talent at a rival company can help predict the competitor's future directions, as well as its likelihood for long-term success. Grand-sounding titles can often be misleading as to who exercises actual influence regarding particular functions. Aside from occupying offices with considerable formal authority, truly powerful individuals in a corporate setting are those who acquire important resources, “absorb uncertainty” for the organization, have high visibility in terms of public relations efforts and external media coverage, and make the employer dependent upon themselves for the successful completion of certain key activities. Internet web sites and online databases and are a good place to begin researching who these individuals are. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Real‐time business analysis: How CI practitioners can assess internal competitor power structures

Identifying the real talent at a rival company can help predict the competitor's future directions, as well as its likelihood for long-term success. Grand-sounding titles can often be misleading as to who exercises actual influence regarding particular functions. Aside from occupying offices with considerable formal authority, truly powerful individuals in a corporate setting are those who acquire important resources, “absorb uncertainty” for the organization, have high visibility in terms of public relations efforts and external media coverage, and make the employer dependent upon themselves for the successful completion of certain key activities. Internet web sites and online databases and are a good place to begin researching who these individuals are. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Jacques in the Box

Subtitle: Jacques Saade, the CEO of beleaguered container line CMA CGM, finds himself walled in by rising debt obligations and a massive orderbook. As private equity and rival companies begin to circle, Richard Clayton looks at his options.