Like a marker pen on a map, the Covid-19 pandemic drastically highlighted the persisting existence of borders that used to play an ever decreasing role in people´s perception and behavior over the last decades. Yes, inner European borders are open in normal times. Yes, people, goods, services and ideas are crossing the border between Germany and the Netherlands freely. Yet we see that the border can turn into a barrier again quickly and effectively and it does so in many dimensions, some of them being not easily visible. Barriers hinder growth, development and exchange and in spite of our progress in creating a borderless Europe, borders still create barriers in many domains. Differing labor law, social security and tax systems, heterogeneous education models, small and big cultural differences, language barriers and more can impose severe limitations on people and businesses as they cross the border to travel, shop, work, hire, produce, buy, sell, study and research. Borders are of all times and will therefore always exist. But as they did so for a long time, huge opportunities can be found in overcoming the barriers they create. The border must not necessarily be a dividing line between two systems. It has the potential to become a center of growth and progress that build on joint efforts, cross-border cooperation, mutual learning and healthy competition. Developing this inherent potential of border regions asks for politics, businesses and research & education on both sides of the border to work together. The research group Cross-Border Business Development at Fontys University of Applied Science in Venlo conducts applied research on the impact of the national border on people and businesses in the Dutch-German border area. Students, employees, border commuters, entrepreneurs and employers all face opportunities as well as challenges due to the border. In collaboration with these stakeholders, the research chair aims to create knowledge and provide solutions towards a Dutch-German labor market, an innovative Dutch-German borderland and a futureproof Cross-Border economic ecosystem. This collection is not about the borderland in times of COVID-19. Giving meaning to the borderland is an ongoing process that started long before the pandemic and will continue far beyond. The links that have been established across the border and those that will in the future are multifaceted and so are the topics in this collection. Vincent Pijnenburg outlines a broader and introductory perspective on the dynamics in the Dutch-German borderland.. Carla Arts observes shopping behavior of cross-border consumers in the Euregion Rhine-Meuse-North. Jan Lucas explores the interdependencies of the Dutch and German economies. Jean Louis Steevensz presents a cross-border co-creation servitization project between a Dutch supplier and a German customer. Vincent Pijnenburg and Patrick Szillat analyze the exitence of clusters in the Dutch-German borderland. Christina Masch and Janina Ulrich provide research on students job search preferences with a focus on the cross-border labor market. Sonja Floto-Stammen and Natalia Naranjo-Guevara contribute a study of the market for insect-based food in Germany and the Netherlands. Niklas Meisel investigates the differences in the German and Dutch response to the Covid-19 crisis. Finally, Tolga Yildiz and Patrick Szillat show differences in product-orientation and customer-orientation between Dutch and German small and medium sized companies. This collection shows how rich and different the links across the border are and how manifold the perspectives and fields for a cross-border approach to regional development can be. This publication is as well an invitation. Grasping the opportunities that the border location entails requires cooperation across professional fields and scientific disciplines, between politics, business and researchers. It needs the contact with and the contribution of the people in the region. So do what we strive for with our cross-border research agenda: connect!
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The Scandinavian e-commerce market is growing exponentially. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were all ranked in the top 10 of cross-border countries. This is an annual ranking of the best 16 European countries in cross-border online shopping by CBCommerce. These countries are thus of high interest for e-retailers to expand to. Furthermore, these countries are frontrunners leading the way for the rest of Europe in technology and sustainability. But what is important to know about these countries?
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from the article: Web-shop entrepreneurs generally overlook success factors during the expansion process of applying cross-border trade, resulting in failure or even high financial losses. The solution to this issue may be a decision supporting model, that supports SME web-shop entrepreneurs in their cross border decision-making. Thuiswinkel.org, the industry organisation for web-shops in The Netherlands, actively supports the cross-border information requirements of these entrepreneurs by supporting knowledge on the marketing factors that influence the cross-border decision. This research focusses on identifying a decision supporting model answering the question: How does the supply chain as factor relate to other decisive factors used by web-shop entrepreneurs in their cross-border trade-expansion decision? The model has been developed through three research steps: semi-unstructured interviews to find the first indication for decision factors, literature research to develop contours of a decision supporting model, and an online survey to test the initial model found. To determine a weight to the factors, the KANO-model is used from a customer satisfaction viewpoint. The conceptual model shows that ‘supply chain partner(s)’, is a necessary basic factor to consider during the cross-border trade-expansion decision. However, customer satisfaction as operational logistics service determines the success of the cross-border trade-expansion.
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Cross-border e-commerce is flourishing worldwide and is particularly intriguing because it allows sellers and buyers to regularly cross national borders to distant and distinct countries via the Internet. Marketers need to understand the challenges retailers and consumers may face to develop effective marketing strategies, attract foreign consumers to retailers’ websites, and convert their visits into actual purchases. This dissertation contributes to the growing literature on cross-border e-commerce by examining how e-retailers can shape their marketing strategy to reach foreign consumers who may make a purchase and what drives consumers’ perceptions and preferences before making thatpurchase. To this end, study 1 examines how and to what extent small e-retailers can shape their marketing strategies to increase their use of digital marketing tactics and thereby improve their performance in foreign markets by comparing e-retailers originating from developed and emerging e-commerce markets. Study 2 focuses on how store values and country stereotype perceptions leadto higher trust between consumers and retailers in foreign e-stores, and how this differs for European consumers shopping at U.S. and Chinese e-stores. The thirdstudy addresses why consumers buy from foreign e-stores when they can buy domestically. It examines three different categories of determinants across generational cohorts: e-store characteristics, domain-specific values, and human values. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the drivers of small retailers’ business performance and consumers’ purchase intentions in cross-bordere-commerce while showing that neither e-retailers nor consumers should be considered uniform or generalizable.
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The purpose of this paper is to gain deeper insight into the practical judgements we are making together in ongoing organizational life when realizing a complex innovative technical project for a customer and so enrich the understanding of how customer orientation emerges in an organization. The outcome contributes to the knowledge of implementing customer orientation in an organization as according to literature (Saarijärvi, Neilimo, Närvänen, 2014 and Van Raaij and Stoelhorst, 2008) the actual implementation process of customer orientation is not that well understood. Saarijärvi, Neilimo and Närvänen (2014) noticed a shift from measuring the antecedents of customer orientation and impact on company performance, towards a better understanding how customer orientation is becoming in organizations. A different way of putting the customer at the center of attention can be found in taking our day-to-day commercial experience seriously, according to the complex responsive process approach, a theory developed by Stacey, Griffin and Shaw (2000). The complex responsive processes approach differs from a systems thinking approach, because it focuses on human behavior and interaction. This means that the only agents in a process are people and they are not thought of as constituting a system (Groot, 2007). Based on a narrative inquiry, the objective is to convey an understanding of how customer orientation is emerging in daily organizational life. Patterns of interaction between people are investigated, who work in different departments of an organization and who have to fulfill customer requirements. This implies that attention is focused towards an understanding in action, which is quite distinct from the kind of cognitive and intellectual understanding that dominates organisational thought. The reflection process resulting from this analysis is located in a broader discourse of management theory.
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Guest post by Lieke Wissink. Lieke is an anthropologist and philosopher who works at the Youth and Society knowledge center, University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam. She engages in an action-research project with undocumented youths at a day shelter, and carries-out participant observation, group workshops and interviews with residents. This blogpost reflects on feelings of empowerment and precarity as expressed by the shelter members during the Covid-19 pandemic. This post is part of our new themed series on border control and Covid-19.
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In deze rapportage worden de bevindingen gepresenteerd van een studie naar de huidige en toekomstige focus van de toeristisch-recreatieve beleidskaders en samenwerkingsmogelijkheden van Emsland-Drenthe.
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Digital surveillance technologies using artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as computer vision and facial recognition are becoming cheaper and easier to integrate into governance practices worldwide. Morocco serves as an example of how such technologies are becoming key tools of governance in authoritarian contexts. Based on qualitative fieldwork including semi-structured interviews, observation, and extensive desk reviews, this chapter focusses on the role played by AI-enhanced technology in urban surveillance and the control of migration between the Moroccan–Spanish borders. Two cross-cutting issues emerge: first, while international donors provide funding for urban and border surveillance projects, their role in enforcing transparency mechanisms in their implementation remains limited; second, Morocco’s existing legal framework hinders any kind of public oversight. Video surveillance is treated as the sole prerogative of the security apparatus, and so far public actors have avoided to engage directly with the topic. The lack of institutional oversight and public debate on the matter raise serious concerns on the extent to which the deployment of such technologies affects citizens’ rights. AI-enhanced surveillance is thus an intrinsically transnational challenge in which private interests of economic gain and public interests of national security collide with citizens’ human rights across the Global North/Global South divide.
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Expectations are high for digital technologies to address sustainability related challenges. While research into such applications and the twin transformation is growing rapidly, insights in the actual daily practices of digital sustainability within organizations is lacking. This is problematic as the contributions of digital tools to sustainability goals gain shape in organizational practices. To bridge this gap, we develop a theoretical perspective on digital sustainability practices based on practice theory, with an emphasis on the concept of sociomateriality. We argue that connecting meanings related to sustainability with digital technologies is essential to establish beneficial practices. Next, we contend that the meaning of sustainability is contextspecific, which calls for a local meaning making process. Based on our theoretical exploration we develop an empirical research agenda.
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This book is about you. Are you, as a customer, as an entrepreneur, as an individual, ready for the Internet and e-business? Do you see the possibilities and do you actually use these? Do you have an idea of where it will end? Did you ever list how the Internet changes your life as an entrepreneur? And, do you make the next move or do you let it all happen to you? About the fact that the Internet is much more than e-mail, shopping, chatting and searching. About how the Internet as a driver of e-business changes the set-up of your company or educational institution and maybe your very business in a very positive and still “e-secure” way: marketing & sales, operations, purchasing, recruitment & selection, e-HRM. We go through six related trends with you, without pretending to be complete.
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