Industrial examples Shaw Industries

Figure 11.17 Examples of PTT applications (a) Solo soft, stretch casual wear by Asahi (b) cut-pile carpet marketed by Shaw Industries...

When diagnosing stakeholder value it is important to understand that perceptions can be as important as scientific facts. For example, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) producers defend PVC on the basis of scientific arguments such as energy efficiency, low biomass accumulation, and product safety in normal use. Customers such as Nike, Sony, and Shaw Industries that have committed to eliminating PVC in their products as a precaution for their customers due to perceived health and environmental risks, are unlikely to change their perspective based on additional scientific facts provided by the chemical industry. As in the PVC case, manufacturers are vulnerable to value loss as a result of their customers perceptions of risks. 

The question of what influences variance in MEP performance is of obvious importance. From a network perspective, a crucial predictor of system performance is system structure. Future research should examine the relationship between the structure of MEPs and their relative performance. It could be hypothesized, for example, that MEPs with denser network structures will outperform those with sparser network structures because network density can increase the flow of information and resources and enhance trust and coordination among system members. There is convergent support for this line of reasoning from prior work on human groups in the laboratory (Shaw, 1964), social capital in human communities (e.g., Coleman, 1988), and work on the U.S. auto industry (Gulati Lawrence, 1999). 

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