We review the recent literature on market structure, firm strategies and public policy in network industries. In particular, we focus on the latest applied work, including case studies and empirical work as well as refinements of the established theoretical results. We group each set of results...

Does good management and higher productivity come at the expense of work-life balance? Or is good work-life balance an important component of the management of successful firms? New research by Nick Bloom, Tobias Kretschmer and John Van Reenen finds evidence for a hybrid view between these two...

Non-union direct voice has replaced union representative voice as the primary avenue for employee voice in the British private sector. This paper provides a framework for examining the relationship between employee voice and workplace outcomes that explains this development. As exit-voice theory...

In this paper we treat workplace voice and systems of high-commitment human resource management (HCHRM) as technological innovations in order to account for the uneven diffusion patterns observed across establishments. Using British data, the paper finds that variables highlighted in the...

Firms faced with the decision of whether to standardize or not prior to introducing a new network technology face a tradeoff: Compatibility improves the technology’s chances of consumer acceptance, but it also means having to share the resulting profits with other sponsors of the standard. In...

Microsoft has been dominating the market for PC operating systems (OS) for the last two decades. This paper analyzes the decision of firms to standardize on the mainstream OS family and assesses whether upgrading to the latest version within the MS family is a substitute for using niche OS. We...

This paper studies the effects of a country’s regulatory setting and competitive environment on the performance of second-generation (2G) mobile telecommunication. We consider three dimensions of sector performance: entry time, service prices and diffusion. We address the question of...

In this paper, we study the dynamics of the market for Database Management Systems (DBMS), which is commonly assumed to possess network effects and where there is still some viable competition in our study period, 2000 – 2004. Specifically, we make use of a unique and detailed dataset on...

We study the determinants and consequences of family-friendly workplace practices (FFWP) using a sample of over 450 manufacturing firms in Germany, France, U.K., and U.S. We find a positive correlation between firm productivity and FFWP. This association disappears, however, once we control for...

We offer an explanation for the phenomenon of declining democratic engagement by assuming that what happens at work is the primary driver of what occurs outside of the workplace. If workers are exposed to the formalities of collective bargaining and union representation, they also perhaps...