The determinants of competitive success in the interwar British radio industry

This article discusses the sources of competitive advantage in the interwar British radio industry. Specifically, it examines why sections of the industry that reaped substantial monopoly rents from the downstream value chain failed to dominate the industry. During the 1920s Marconi (which controlled the fundamental UK patents) had a key cost advantage, as had other members of the ‘Big Six’ electrical engineering firms which formed the BBC and were granted preferential royalties. Meanwhile the valve manufacturers' cartel was also able to extract high rents from set manufacturers. The vertical integration literature suggests that input monopolists have incentives to control downstream production. Yet—in contrast to the gramophone industry, which became concentrated into two huge companies following market saturation in the 1930s—radio retained a much more competitive structure. The Big Six failed to capitalize fully on their initial cost advantages owing to logistical weaknesses in supplying markets subject to rapid technical and design obsolescence. Subsequently, during the 1930s, marketing innovations are shown to have played a key role in allowing several independents to establish successful brands. This gave them sufficient scale to provide strong bargaining positions with input suppliers, negating most of their initial cost disadvantage.

Formal theory building for the avalanche game: explaining counter-intuitive behaviour of a complex system using geometrical and human behavioural/physiological effects

In 'Avalanche', an object is lowered, players staying in contact throughout. Normally the task is easily accomplished. However, with larger groups counter-intuitive behaviours appear. The paper proposes a formal theory for the underlying causal mechanisms. The aim is to not only provide an explicit, testable hypothesis for the source of the observed modes of behaviour-but also to exemplify the contribution that formal theory building can make to understanding complex social phenomena. Mapping reveals the importance of geometry to the Avalanche game; each player has a pair of balancing loops, one involved in lowering the object, the other ensuring contact. For more players, sets of balancing loops interact and these can allow dominance by reinforcing loops, causing the system to chase upwards towards an ever-increasing goal. However, a series of other effects concerning human physiology and behaviour (HPB) is posited as playing a role. The hypothesis is therefore rigorously tested using simulation. For simplicity a 'One Degree of Freedom' case is examined, allowing all of the effects to be included whilst rendering the analysis more transparent. Formulation and experimentation with the model gives insight into the behaviours. Multi-dimensional rate/level analysis indicates that there is only a narrow region in which the system is able to move downwards. Model runs reproduce the single 'desired' mode of behaviour and all three of the observed 'problematic' ones. Sensitivity analysis gives further insight into the system's modes and their causes. Behaviour is seen to arise only when the geometric effects apply (number of players greater than degrees of freedom of object) in combination with a range of HPB effects. An analogy exists between the co-operative behaviour required here and various examples: conflicting strategic objectives in organizations; Prisoners' Dilemma and integrated bargaining situations. Additionally, the game may be relatable in more direct algebraic terms to situations involving companies in which the resulting behaviours are mediated by market regulations. Finally, comment is offered on the inadequacy of some forms of theory building and the case is made for formal theory building involving the use of models, analysis and plausible explanations to create deep understanding of social phenomena.

Climate change and the emergence of new organizational landscapes

There is general agreement across the world that human-made climate change is a serious global problem,although there are still some sceptics who challenge this view. Research in organization studies on the topic is relatively new. Much of this research, however, is instrumental and managerialist in its focus on ‘win-win’ opportunities for business or its treatment of climate change as just another corporate social responsibility (CSR) exercise. In this paper, we suggest that climate change is not just an environmental problem requiring technical and managerial solutions; it is a political issue where a variety of organizations – state agencies, firms, industry associations, NGOs and multilateral organizations – engage in contestation as well as collaboration over the issue. We discuss the strategic, institutional and political economy dimensions of climate change and develop a socioeconomic regimes approach as a synthesis of these different theoretical perspectives. Given the urgency of the problem and the need for a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy, there is a pressing need for organization scholars to develop a better understanding of apathy and inertia in the face of the current crisis and to identify paths toward transformative change. The seven papers in this special issue address these areas of research and examine strategies, discourses, identities and practices in relation to climate change at multiple levels.

Cartels and rent sharing at the farmer–trader interface: evidence from Ghana’s tomato sector

Itinerant traders provide an important route for West Africa’s farmers’ to get their perishable produce rapidly to the distant urban markets. But these farmers often accuse the traders of offering “unfairly” low prices while preventing direct access to these markets. Using Ghana’s tomato sector as a case study, we provide the first detailed exploration of the interface between Ghana’s farmers and traders, combining a theoretical model with novel empirical data on daily sales prices and tomato quality. We find that although the prices traders pay farmers are lower than prices in the urban markets, taking into account transport costs, these prices are higher than farmers receive from the local rural market. Our article suggests that policymakers would do better to focus on opening up access to the urban markets rather than on strengthening farmers’ bargaining power with the traders, which restricts market volumes further and harms farmers unable to sell to traders.

An Experiment on Prisoner's Dilemma with confirmed Proposals

We apply an alternating proposals protocol with a confirmation stage as a way of solving a Prisoner’s Dilemma game. We interpret players’ proposals and (no) confirmation of outcomes of the game as a tacit communication device. The protocol leads to unprecedented high levels of cooperation in the laboratory. Assigning the power of confirmation to one of the two players alone, rather than alternating the role of a leader significantly increases the probability of signing a cooperative agreement in the first bargaining period. We interpret pre-agreement strategies as tacit messages on players’ willingness to cooperate and on their beliefs about the others’ type.

An experiment on Prisoner’s Dilemma with confirmed proposals

We suggest an alternating proposals protocol with a confirmation stage as a way of solving a Prisoner's Dilemma game. We interpret players' proposals and (no) confirmation of outcomes of the game as a tacit communication device. The protocol leads to unprecedented high levels of cooperation in the laboratory. Assigning the power of confirmation to one of the two players alone, rather than alternating the role of a leader significantly increases the probability of cooperation in the first bargaining period. We interpret pre-agreement strategies as tacit messages on players' willingness to cooperate and as signals pursuing individualistic objectives like publicizing one's bargaining abilities or eliciting those of the opponent.

Gender differences in ultimatum games: despite rather than due to risk attitudes

We analyze experimental data obtained from an ultimatum game framed as a situation of employee-employer negotiation over salaries. Parallel to this, we elicit subjects' risk attitudes. In the existing literature, it has often been conjectured that gender differences in strategic environments are partly due to differences in risky decision making. Our evidence suggests that both gender and risk-related effects co-exist in ultimatum bargaining. However, differences in risk attitudes cannot explain gender effects in ultimatum bargaining.

Strong armies, slow adaptation: civil-military relations and diffusion of military power

Why are some states more willing to adopt military innovations than others? Why, for example, were the great powers of Europe able to successfully reform their military practices to better adapt to and participate in the so-called military revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries while their most important extra-European competitor, the Ottoman Empire, failed to do so? This puzzle is best explained by two factors: civil-military relations and historical timing. In the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of an institutionally strong and internally cohesive army during the early stages of state formation—in the late fourteenth century—equipped the military with substantial bargaining powers. In contrast, the great powers of Europe drew heavily on private providers of military power during the military revolution and developed similar armies only by the second half of the seventeenth century, limiting the bargaining leverage of European militaries over their rulers. In essence, the Ottoman standing army was able to block reform efforts that it believed challenged its parochial interests. Absent a similar institutional challenge, European rulers initiated military reforms and motivated officers and military entrepreneurs to participate in the ongoing military revolution.

Transaction costs, information technologies and the choice of marketplace among farmers in Northern Ghana

Using a transactions costs framework, we examine the impact of information and communication technologies (mobile phones and radios) use on market participation in developing country agricultural markets using a novel transaction-level data set of Ghanaian farmers. Our analysis of the choice of markets by farmers suggests that market information from a broader range of markets may not always induce farmers to sell in more distant markets; instead farmers may use broader market information to enhance their bargaining power in closer markets. Finally, we find weak evidence on the impact of using mobile phones in attracting farm gate buyers.

Institutions, unionization and voice: the relative impact of context and actors on firm level practice

Trade unions provide a voice in the way firms are run, an input into reward systems and increased security of employment. But these vary with national context. Using transnational survey evidence, this article explores the relative impact of setting, and of unions and collective bargaining, on these issues. It is found that, irrespective of context, organizations are significantly more likely to make use of compulsory redundancies in the absence of unions and collective bargaining. However, in other areas, the impact of unions appeared less pronounced than that of the wider context. The article explores the reasons behind this, and the broader policy implications thereof.

Union inclusiveness and temporary agency workers: the role of power resources and union ideology

This article investigates the determinants of union inclusiveness towards agency workers in Western Europe, using an index which combines unionization rates with dimensions of collective agreements covering agency workers. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we identify two combinations of conditions leading to inclusiveness: the ‘Northern path’ includes high union density, high bargaining coverage and high union authority, and is consistent with the power resources approach. The ‘Southern path’ combines high union authority, high bargaining coverage, statutory regulations of agency work and working-class orientation, showing that ideology rather than institutional incentives shapes union strategies towards the marginal workforce.

Environmental agreements as a Hawk-Dove game with confirmed proposals

This paper aims at two different contributions to the literature on international environmental agreements. First, we model environmental agreements as a generic situation, characterized as a Hawk-Dove game with multiple asymmetric equilibria. Second, the article applies the theory on non-cooperative games with confirmed proposals, based on an alternating proposals bargaining protocol, as a way of overcoming the usual problems of coordination and bargaining failures in environmental agreement games, due to payoff asymmetry and equilibrium multiplicity.