Management Sciences

The objective of the research is to determine whether past economic performance has an impact on a firm's ability to innovate. Specifically, the concern is with producing a world-first innovation, a Canada-first innovation and a first-to-the firm innovation taking prior performance into consideration. Ordered logistic regression coefficients for market share, labour productivity and profit are statistically significant for seven out of 12 industries. However, when compared to other firm level characteristics such as strategies, competitive environment, information sources, R&D and use of patents the importance of economic performance fades quite drastically. Across all industries this study found that internal information was a very important factor for innovation. In three of the 12 industries (clothing and textiles, metal, and electric and computer) internal, external and general information were utilized by managers extensively. Managers in the wood and paper, furniture, vehicles, and miscellaneous industries utilize internal and general information. While the plastics and machinery industries rely on internal and external information sources. The remaining industries food, non-metal, and petrochemicals, rely on internal sources of information exclusively. r contents 0166-4972/$ -see front matter r

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between innovation type, technology use and establishments' economic performance in the Canadian food processing industry. In general, it was found that technology use is better at explaining performance than is the type of innovations pursued by the plant.

This paper examines recent demand systems literature from a methodological standpoint. A survey of the empirical demand systems literature has been assembled that includes 66 articles from 19 separate journals. The paper classifies empirical demand studies according to different methodological paradigms to ascertain if there is a pattern in the demand systems literature and to determine the implications of that classification. The results indicate that the bulk (67%) of demand systems research is implicitly falsificationist (for at least part of the research program). The remainder of the research program follows a conventionalist doctrine. Nous passons en revue la bibliographie récente sur les systèmes empiriques de demandes au point de vue méthodologie. Ce survol couvre 66 articles provenant de 19 différentes revues. Nous classifions les études empiriques sur la demande selon différents paradigmes méthodologiques dans le but de voir si ces publications suivent une tendance déterminée et aussi de dégager les incidences de cette classification. Il se dégage de cet examen que le gros, c.-à-d. 67 %, des recherches sur les systèmes de demande sont, du moins, en partie implicitement de type falsifiable. Le reste des recherches suit une doctrine de type conventionnaliste.

This paper examines the factors that affect market dominance in a standards competition by comparing the VHS-Beta war in the 1980s with that between Blu-ray and HD-DVD in the 2000s. We first look at the changing home video market in terms of technological development. Then we move on to discuss three main strategies in a standards war: first-mover advantage, indirect network effects and software provision, and strategic alliances of hardware firms. We find that technological innovation is essential. Being a first mover is helpful, but not sufficient, in building a dominant position in the market. Historical evidence shows that Sony created a network of complementary firms for Blu-ray. Consequently, an effective strategy to become a winner in a standards competition appears to be building a network of complementary products and subsequently an installed base.

This paper examines the factors that affect market dominance in a standards competition by comparing the VHS-Beta war in the 1980s with that between Blu-ray and HD-DVD in the 2000s. We first look at the changing home video market in terms of technological development. Then we move on to discuss three main strategies in a standards war: first-mover advantage, indirect network effects and software provision, and strategic alliances of hardware firms. We find that technological innovation is essential. Being a first mover is helpful, but not sufficient, in building a dominant position in the market. Historical evidence shows that Sony created a network of complementary firms for Blu-ray. Consequently, an effective strategy to become a winner in a standards competition appears to be building a network of complementary products and subsequently an installed base.

Efforts to reduce the perceived "Innovation Gap" of Canada have led to significant public expenditures on scientific research and exploratory development, with a high emphasis on academic undertakings. An extensive pan-industry study was therefore undertaken in 2011 and has uncovered significant deficiencies in Canadian industry capabilities for effective commercialization of innovations-notably poor competitive competencies, a weak culture of collaboration, and a pervasive lack of funding and smart support for innovation in commercialization. This paper highlights the key aspects of Canada's "commercialization gap", and brings forward a methodology for analyzing the competitive position of a company (or that of an entire industry sector) in order to determine the priority areas requiring innovative development. The paper proposes a multidimensional competitive self-assessment of companies aimed at helping them enhance their market standings. As well, recommendations are made to governments for better adjusting their policies and programs in support of effective industry innovation.

Few studies have examined the relationship between inter-industry, intercorporate ownership (ICO) patterns and inter-industry resource exchange patterns. Using data from Statistics Canada, this paper reveals a positive association between the degree of ICO linkages and the degree of input-output dependence among Canadian industry groups. This provides empirical support for the primary assertion of resource dependence theory: that corporations employ ICO linkages to manage their input-output dependence resulting from recurrent resource exchanges. This research differs from extant tests of resource dependence in that it uses data for the population of firms (over a size threshold) in Canada and includes all forms of interdependence between enterprises. The findings suggest scenarios in which corporations can adopt ICO linkages to manage resource dependence and reduce transaction costs.

People spend much of their life in an attempt to assess their aptitude for numerous tasks. For example, students expend a great deal of effort to determine their academic standing given a distribution of grades. This research finds that students use their absolute performance, or percentage correct as a yardstick for their self-assessment, even when relative standing is much more informative. An experiment shows that this reliance on absolute performance for self-evaluation causes a misallocation of time and financial resources. Reasons for this inappropriate responsiveness to absolute performance are explored.

This study examines the role of crime consciousness and access device type on consumers' online purchase decisions. We use a two-step hurdle approach to estimate consumer behavior. In the first step, the decision of whether to engage in ecommerce is estimated and in the second step, how many orders to place is estimated. We use a large multi-year survey sample of households from Canada's national statistical agency-Statistics Canada. The sample size is such that we are able to conduct sub-sample analysis of PC-only users, mobile-only users, and other-users. We show that online security and price significantly influence mobile ecommerce. We also show that there is a statistically significant difference in the intensity of ecommerce engagement across device type and consumer type (crime consciousness).

This study examines the role of perceived risk and access device type on consumers' on-line purchase decisions. We use a two-step hurdle approach to estimate consumer behavior. In the first step, the decision of whether to engage in eCommerce is estimated and in the second step, how many orders to place is estimated. We use a large multi-year survey sample of households from Canada's national statistical agency-Statistics Canada. The sample size is such that we are able to conduct sub-sample analysis of PC-only users, mobile-only users, and other-users. We show that online security and price significantly influence mobile eCommerce. We also show that there is a statistically significant difference in the intensity of eCommerce engagement across device type and consumer risk type (high / low). One of our main findings is that perceived risk affects purchase decisions for mobile users more than PC users, however additional comparisons are carried out with our analysis.