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The main purpose of this paper is the evaluation of previous German and Spanish research conducted related to oral communication capability in a different cultural surrounding. In order to test the validity of the European findings, a new sample was drawn using membership data of the U.S. based National Institute of Governmental Purchasing. The results of this paper corroborate that oral communication capability is a construct consisting of three dimensions. The model obtained in Europe for managers from private sector purchasers is also applicable in the U.S. for public purchasers. Furthermore, European results proposed four distinct types of communicators, while in the U.S. two additional groups of purchasers were found. Nevertheless, there is limited evidence for demographic or cultural influences on the oral communication capabilities of purchasers.

Management approaches, such as supply chain management addressing cooperation among firms emphasize communication among people from different companies. The objective of this research was to investigate the impact of individual and contextual factors on the external communication behavior of purchasing managers in Germany.

Based on the literature, oral and written communication capabilities, purchasers' attitudes and the internal communication climate were identified as potential impact factors. A structural equation model containing 11 constructs was designed. Six hundred and seventeen responses were available for statistical analysis.

Summing up the results, oral communication capability and purchasers' attitudes toward individual communication with the suppliers play important roles in explaining external communication behavior of purchasers. Regarding indirect effects, there are strong total effects of the oral communication capability and the attitudes on the supplier management success as well as satisfaction.

Several measures were operationalized using two‐item or three‐item scales. Future research should focus on the development of more comprehensive scales.

Various conclusions from the results were drawn. Particularly, there are important managerial impacts on supply management and human resource management.

The paper provides the first scientific insight into the relationships between oral communication capability, attitudes toward communication, communication behavior and managerial performance in the field of supply management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is an impact, from a provider's perspective, of customer‐specific adaptations by third‐party logistics (3PL) providers on the success of 3PL‐relationships.

A document analysis is presented and hypotheses are developed based on research in 3PL, relationship marketing and transaction cost theory. Structural equation modelling and causal analysis with partial least square were used to test the hypotheses.

This study provides evidence that customer‐specific adaptation by providers is an important prerequisite to 3PL‐performance. Furthermore, according to the transaction cost theory, the results express the importance of providers' adaptation to maintain 3PL‐relationships.

Further research should compare customers' perceptions of partner‐specific adaptations and 3PL‐relationship success with the results of this study.

The paper shows that 3PL‐providers should adapt their systems and procedures to customers' specific requirements, to ensure high‐relationship performance. Satisfied customers should promote the providers' adaptations, because these adaptations enhance the probability of contract renewal and reduce the risk of providers' unexpected termination of the contract.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

During the last years of his life, the mathematician Karl Menger worked on a biography of his father, the economist and founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger. The younger Menger never finished the work. While working in the Menger collections at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, we discovered draft chapters of the biography, a valuable source of information given that relatively little is known about Carl Menger’s life nearly a hundred years after his death. The unfinished biography covers Carl Menger’s family background and his life through early 1889. In this chapter, the authors discuss the biography and the most valuable new insights it provides into Carl Menger’s life, including Carl Menger’s family, his childhood, his student years, his time working as a journalist and newspaper editor, his early scientific career, and his relationship with Crown Prince Rudolf.

This chapter examines the relationship between finance capital and the transformation of the state in Rudolf Hilferding’s thought. Hilferding defines finance capital as the fusion of banking and industry, a situation that presupposes a high degree of development of capitalist relations. Finance capital prompts a transformation of the state economic functions. This chapter considers the transfor­mation of the state and its consequent ability to deal with crises of finance capital era. It also highlights Hilferding’s pioneering contribution in sketching the bases for the great contemporary theories of State intervention in crises regulation.

The author attempts to provide an ethnography of a set of medical ideas and of their relationship to a distinctive religious system and to raise some questions about the nature of ethnographic description.

Large-scale projects are the typical delivery model in the engineering and construction industry, with their very own characteristics. Even though well established, only 1 in 1,000 large-scale projects is successful (Flyvbjerg, 2011). A lack of effective supply chain risk management (SCRM) has repeatedly been identified as one of the main causes. While the SCRM body of knowledge seems increasingly well established, a lack of effective methods meeting the specific requirements of large-scale projects can be observed.

This paper presents a structured and prioritized view on the supply chain risk portfolio in this sector: first, the authors identified and categorized the key supply chain risks in the recent literature. Next, the authors surveyed large-scale project managers across multiple industries, mainly coming from the domains of supply chain management and project management. Finally, the authors provide a contextualized risk taxonomy for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) projects.

The identified risk portfolio deviates from generic projects significantly and shows a very high inherent risk exposure of large-scale projects. In particular, behavioral risks are identified as crucial. Additionally, a bias to considerably underestimate risks at project beginning is found.

The contextualized SCRM taxonomy offers a systematic and structured view on the key supply chain risks in EPC large-scale projects. The identified risks are considerably different in their characteristics compared to generic projects or classical SCRM approaches. The authors thus provide a new perspective on SCRM in this specific setting and complement traditional risk and project risk management techniques.