Contracts, relationships and innovation in business-to-business exchanges

Purpose: – This paper aims to contrast two approaches to the study of contracts in business and industrial marketing: first, as a legal document in shaping at the outset exchanges and interactions, for instance in projects; and second, as relational norms in becoming integrated into a business relationship through interactions, for instance as a resource. Design/methodology/approach: – The paper draws on cross-case comparison of three projects, as actors develop an engineering service for optimizing the maintenance of large-scale capital equipment by analyzing real-time data from sensors and user records. Comparison is by coding interview and observational data as micro-sequences of interactions among actors. Findings: – Preparing contracts allows a project to commence and is an early form of interaction, intensifying new relationships or cutting into and recasting established ones. Relational norms augment and can supersede the early focus on the contract, thus incorporating incremental innovation and absorbing some uncertainties. Research limitations/implications: – The research approach benefits from detailed comparison and captures some variety across its three cases, but the discussion is limited to theoretical generalization. Practical implications: – The analysis and discussion highlights and focuses on when different approaches to understanding contracting are more apparent across durable business relationships. Transitions from a contractual document to a view of relational norms are subtle, vulnerable and not always made successfully. Originality/value: – This paper’s originality is in it comparison of overlapping approaches to understanding businesses’ uses of contacts in business and industrial marketing, of contract and relational norms. It develops a valuable research proposition, in the transition from a mainly contractual to a mainly relational uses of contracts, thus identifying contract as a particular business resource, to be deployed and embedded

Charcas de vida para el tritón pigmeo y el galápago leproso

Ponds are important resources of freshwater; they provide ecologic stepping-stones and have a significant importance as habitats for a multiplicity of plants and animals. But today the European ponds are declining dramatically going along with the disappearing of many species that depend on them. Fundación Monte Mediterráneo, a foundation for nature conservation and ecologic agriculture, launches a project to rescue the ponds. On the Dehesa San Francisco, an area in Huelva/Andalusia (Spain), still existing ponds will be conserved and optimized and new ponds will be created for the rescue of the aquatic species like the southern marbled newt Triturus pygmaeus (Wolterstorff 1905) an the spanish pond turtle Mauremys leprosa (Schweigger 1812)

Kollokationen im Lernerwörterbuch – Anspruch und Wirklichkeit

This article outlines an approach which explores how frequent lexical collocations can be identified for a representative extract of the German lexicon. It takes into account corpus-linguistic and phraseological criteria. The lexical foundation for this study is a corpus-driven and thematically-classified frequency dictionary of German. Additionally, the extensive DWDS corpus and a manual linguistic selection were used to identify typical collocations. Finally, after identifying 56 high-frequency collocations, four of the foremost learner dictionaries in the field of German as a foreign language were analyzed quantitatively for the presence of these collocations

Kollokationen im Lernerwörterbuch – Anspruch und Wirklichkeit

This article outlines an approach which explores how frequent lexical collocations can be identified for a representative extract of the German lexicon. It takes into account corpus-linguistic and phraseological criteria. The lexical foundation for this study is a corpus-driven and thematically-classified frequency dictionary of German. Additionally, the extensive DWDS corpus and a manual linguistic selection were used to identify typical collocations. Finally, after identifying 56 high-frequency collocations, four of the foremost learner dictionaries in the field of German as a foreign language were analyzed quantitatively for the presence of these collocations

Approximation Algorithms for Stochastic Inventory Control Models

Approximation Algorithms for Stochastic Inventory Control Model

Erwerbsminderungsrentner: Sinkende Leistungen und wachsende Einkommensunterschiede im Alter

Die Zahl der Zugänge in die Erwerbsminderungsrente ist nach Angaben der Deutschen Rentenversicherung seit den 90er Jahren stark gesunken. In den Jahren 2005 bis 2010 erfolgte ein leichter Wiederanstieg. Seit 2001 haben sich auch die Zahlbeträge bei den Zugängen zur Erwerbsminderungsrente verringert. Damit ist die materielle Absicherung bei Erwerbsminderung wieder in den Blickpunkt der sozialpolitischen Diskussion gerückt. Die Daten der Längsschnittstudie Sozio-oekonomisches Panel (SOEP) bestätigen die langfristig zunehmenden Einkommensrisiken bei Erwerbsminderungsrentnern. Im Mittel lebten im Zeitraum von 2001 bis 2011 ein Viertel aller Bezieher einer Erwerbsminderungsrente in Einkommensarmut. Zudem weisen die Analysen zu den relativen Einkommenspositionen der Bezieher einer Erwerbsminderungsrente darauf hin, dass dieser Personenkreis nach Erreichen der Regelaltersgrenze im Durchschnitt ein geringeres Haushaltseinkommen aufweist als die übrigen Rentner und dass diese Differenz im Zeitverlauf wächst.According to the Deutsche Rentenversicherung (German statutory pension insurance scheme), since the mid-1990s, the number of people claiming a reduced earnings capacity pension has plummeted. However, 2005-2010 saw a slight rise. Since 2001, the actual level of reduced earning capacity payments has also fallen. Consequently, the financial security of recipients has, once again, become the focus of socio-political debate. SOEP data confirm the income risks that those claiming reduced earnings capacity pensions will increasingly be subject to in the long term. In the period from 2001-2011, on average, one-quarter of all recipients were living in income poverty. Moreover, analyses using data from the SOEP longitudinal study also indicate increasingly negative income disparities among recipients of reduced earnings capacity pension once they have reached the statutory retirement age

Fragmentation Phase Transition in Atomic Clusters II - Coulomb Explosion of Metal Clusters -

We discuss the role and the treatment of polarization effects in many-body systems of charged conducting clusters and apply this to the statistical fragmentation of Na-clusters. We see a first order microcanonical phase transition in the fragmentation of $Na^{Z+}_{70}$ for Z=0 to 8. We can distinguish two fragmentation phases, namely evaporation of large particles from a large residue and a complete decay into small fragments only. Charging the cluster shifts the transition to lower excitation energies and forces the transition to disappear for charges higher than Z=8. At very high charges the fragmentation phase transition no longer occurs because the cluster Coulomb-explodes into small fragments even at excitation energy $\epsilon^* = 0$.Comment: 19 text pages +18 *.eps figures, my e-mail adress: [email protected] submitted to Z. Phys.