Revisiting the impact of perceived social value on consumer behavior toward luxury brands

In recent years, the luxury market has come to face important structural changes, such as the entry of new segments into the market and the use of the Internet as a sales channel. In this context, luxury brands must understand their young consumers' perception of social value while adapting to environmental changes. This study aims to validate an up-to-date model to determine the impact of perceived value of luxury brands on consumer behavior. To validate the model, we analyze attributes of luxury brands and the value assigned to those attributes. We collect the data from a survey (n = 225) and analyze the results with partial least squares-structural equation modeling. The results show that in our up-to-date model of perceived social value of luxury brands, the social component, as the only antecedent, has a major influence on consumer behavior; the results, however, fail to support our expectations of the impact of financial and functional brand perceptions. Furthermore, we find a relationship between overall luxury brand perception and behavioral and emotional outcomes for young consumers such that companies might consequently tailor their business strategies.     

Transformative Power of e-Business Over Consumer Brands

Should we consider e-Business a threat or an opportunity for consumer brands? Responses differ between mass and selective brands, between services and products. Customer involvement and trust are key moderators. But other new, and sometimes scheming, paradigms appear among consumer online and offline behaviors. Multiplication of loyalties and increased mobility drive new buying criteria, possibly diluting the role of brand. Obviously, consequences on branding policy are important. The stake is high. A strategic analysis of new business models and resulting market behaviors is essential. A first set of reflection tracks, ideas and tentative positions are advanced.     

消费行为中的民族中心与民族淡漠倾向

消费者民族中心主义反映了消费者的国货中心意识。通过测量京、穗、渝三地的消费者民族中心主义倾向,调查三地消费者对三个产品类别中外品牌的态度,运用因子分析和多变量方差分析(MANOVA)研究发现,中国消费者同时存在民族中心和民族淡漠两种复杂或矛盾的心理倾向。文章分析讨论了中国消费者行为中这种矛盾心理的社会经济原因。     

Recasting the dynamics of post-acquisition integration: An embeddedness perspective

M&A scholars have generally assumed that post-acquisition integration is a self-contained process. However this ignores that this process rarely unfolds as the only ongoing initiative in an organization. We contend that post-acquisition integration is not detached from other simultaneous change processes in the organizational context and this has important implications for our understanding of how integration dynamics actually evolve. To further understand this embeddedness we examine the unfolding of a post-acquisition integration process in a company faced with an unanticipated drop in demand due to the global economic crisis. Through a qualitative, longitudinal study conducted over three years, we carried out 151 interviews to uncover the unfolding of the post-acquisition process. We find that post-acquisition integration is embedded in a set of co-evolving processes. We highlight four mechanisms (coordination, cohesion, disconnection, alienation) that arise from the co-evolution of processes that either facilitate or impede integration. Our findings contribute to our understanding of post-acquisition integration dynamics by recasting the integration process as embedded in a set of co-evolving processes that shape its unfolding.     

Interactive profit-planning systems and market turbulence: A dynamic capabilities perspective

This article describes, theorizes and empirically investigates the concept of interactive profit-planning systems (PPS) through the lens of the dynamic capabilities logic. With this conceptualization: interactive PPS capabilities comprise budgeting, forecasting and results-reporting routines, in which top and middle managers interact to create knowledge for sensing, seizing, and business model reconfiguring (to manage strategic business change). Survey data from 331 Australian firms is analyzed employing partial least squares structural equation modeling. The data provides support for two hypotheses: (1) greater market turbulence strengthens the positive effect of interactive PPS capabilities on business unit performance; and (2) greater market turbulence strengthens the positive effect of flexibility values (of organizational culture) on interactive PPS capabilities. Our findings show that interactive PPS capabilities function according to the salient tenets of the dynamic capabilities logic, and clarify the beneficial roles of formal cybernetic control systems and the intertwined involvement of top and middle managers in using dynamic capabilities.     

Value drivers of social businesses: A business model perspective

Hybrid organizational forms that combine commercial and welfare institutional logics play an increasingly important role in addressing the grand societal challenges we face today. Building on the literatures on hybrid organizations and social business models, we explore the characteristics of social businesses from a business model perspective. This study seeks to better understand the particularities and value drivers of hybrid social purpose in contrast to purely commercial business models. We follow a grounded theory approach and our findings are based on interview data from 17 social business firms. Building on social businesses' identified particularities, we propose four value drivers of social business models: 1) responsible efficiency, 2) impact complementarities, 3) shared values, and 4) integration novelties. We link our findings to the literature, contributing new insights into social businesses models and implications for practitioners.     

Food Safety in the Domestic Environment: An Interdisciplinary Investigation of Microbial Hazards During Food Preparation

It has been established that, to a considerable extent, the domestic hygiene practices adopted by consumers can result in a greater or lesser microbial load in prepared meals. In the research presented here, an interdisciplinary study is reported in which interviews, observations of consumers preparing a recipe, and microbial contamination of the finished meals were compared. The results suggest that, while most consumers are knowledgeable about the importance of cross-contamination and heating in preventing the occurrence of foodborne illness, this knowledge is not necessarily translated into behavior. The adoption of habitual cooking practices may also be important. Potentially risky behaviors were, indeed, observed in the domestic food preparation environment. Eighteen of the participants made errors in food preparation that could potentially result in cross-contamination, and seven participants allowed raw meat juices to come in contact with the final meal. Using a tracer microorganism the log reduction as a result of consumer preparation was estimated at an average of log 4.1 cfu/salad. When combining these findings, it was found that cross-contamination errors were a good predictor for log reduction. Procedural food safety knowledge (i.e., knowledge proffered after general open questions) was a better predictor of efficacious bacterial reduction than declarative food safety knowledge (i.e., knowledge proffered after formal questioning). This suggests that motivation to prepare safe food was a better indicator of actual behavior than knowledge about food safety per se.     

Building dynamic capabilities for digital transformation: An ongoing process of strategic renewal

In this qualitative study, we explore how incumbent firms in traditional industries build dynamic capabilities for digital transformation. Digital transformation has been defined as the use of new digital technologies, such as mobile, artificial intelligence, cloud, blockchain, and the Internet of things (IoT) technologies, to enable major business improvements to augment customer experience, streamline operations, or create new business models. In making sense of digital transformation, we discovered that leaders in various industry circles use the term inconsistently to describe various strategizing and organizing activities; in addition, the term has gained limited scholarly attention as a context for study of strategic change. Drawing on senior executives' experiences with leading digitalization projects at incumbent firms, we propose a process model comprising of nine microfoundations to reveal the generic contingency factors that trigger, enable, and hinder the building of dynamic capabilities for digital transformation. Our findings reveal that digital transformation is an ongoing process of using new digital technologies in everyday organizational life, which recognizes agility as the core mechanism for the strategic renewal of an organization's (1) business model, (2) collaborative approach, and eventually the (3) culture.     

Intergenerational succession and internationalisation strategy of family SMEs: Evidence from China

Internationalisation is a key dimension of a firm's strategy process. Yet, research on why and how family firms internationalise is underdeveloped. As one of the most critical issues family firms face, how intergenerational succession can influence their internationalisation remains an important question. Given the extraordinary succession and internationalisation circumstances pertaining to China, we conducted a qualitative case study analysis of eleven newly internationalised Chinese small- and medium-sized family firms that had recently undergone a succession from the first to the second generation. Three distinct intergenerational succession patterns among our case firms were identified, revealing three underlying types of incumbent-successor relationships. Based on our findings, we put forth propositions on how these patterns influence the next-generation's level of attitudinal commitment toward and resources available for internationalisation, and link these to the firm's overall internationalisation capabilities and international involvement. Our findings suggest that the connection between intergenerational succession and internationalisation strategy of family firms is significantly influenced by the nature of the underlying incumbent-successor relationship and therefore much more complex than previously considered.     

High value manufacturing: Capability,appropriation, and governance

Manufacturing competitiveness is on many policy agendas, born out of a concern for firms in high-cost economies finding themselves outcompeted by low-cost rivals. Government policy makers and manufacturing firm strategists have put their faith in what we label as high value manufacturing (HVM). We see HVM as an incipient phenomenon currently in a situation of prescience, as something that is still “in-the-making,” with manufacturing firms trying to find ways to be able to step away from having to compete on price. This paper consults relevant strategy theories with the purpose to pinpoint the issues and problems that need to be accommodated for bringing HVM into being and for creating the effects that are anticipated. We found that HVM must be seen as a distributed activity, thus realizing complex functionality for a system-of-use, while being subjected to path constitution. For HVM to function, the firms involved need to find solutions to the capability problem, the appropriation problem, and the governance problem. We suggest that further research needs to involve itself in problem-solving activity to assist in bringing HVM about while simultaneously further developing strategy theory geared toward firms that are involved in a distributed activity like HVM.     

Service tasks of board of directors: A literature review and research agenda in an era of new governance practices

In their seminal review article on board of directors, Johnson, Daily, and Ellstrand (1996) distinguished between the control, service, and resource dependence tasks of the board and called for a stronger focus on board service tasks. Following this call, service tasks of boards have been subject to increased scholarly attention, with new theoretical perspectives and methods introduced. This paper aims at presenting the current state of research on board service tasks, departing from, and building on, the contribution of Johnson and colleagues. In doing so, we employ an Input-Process-Output-Context framework and craft an agenda for how future research could accommodate new governance practices and progress the field. Our review is relevant and timely as studies on the subject are gaining traction both in corporate governance and general management journals. Furthermore, our review on board service tasks proposes new alternative approaches to studying corporate governance which are especially appropriate in times in which a rethink of corporate governance frameworks and concepts is urgently needed.     

Cognitive antecedents of business models: Exploring the link between attention and business model design over time

A firm's ability to conceive performance-enhancing business models (BMs) has become a cornerstone of competitive advantage. There is consensus that external triggers spur such BM change, but the literature has remained silent on the role of internal and cognitive antecedents such as managerial attention. In our inductive case study of four corporate spin-offs, we find that top management teams (TMTs) with a specific set of attention patterns are more likely to develop performance-enhancing BM designs. However, our findings provide evidence that specific attention foci are not sufficient to enhance particular BM designs, as it is also a matter of the intensity of attention. We further find that, over time, TMTs attention patterns shift and cause changes in BM designs. The emergent theoretical framework highlights that attention is an antecedent in explaining BM designs.     

Divide and rule: The effects of diversity and network structure on a firm's sustainability performance

To tackle sustainability, firms often use partnerships with organizations from different industries or societal sectors such as government and civil society. While partnerships show potential for firms to improve their sustainability performance, they not only lead to a potential to learn from diversity but also to tensions due to a lack of unity between partners. In partnerships for sustainability, this unity-diversity tension particularly manifests itself in different views of sustainability. This paper examines how this tension affects the sustainability performance of firms taking part in partnerships for sustainability in developing countries. To address this question, this tension is conceptualized as being the result of differences in organizational frames and institutional logics between a focal firm and other organizations in the partnership. It is also taken into consideration that firms are embedded in an overarching, relational network structure that allows them to manage the diversity in frames and logics. To test the hypotheses, the study analyses 1353 greenhouse gas emission reduction projects of 322 firms from developing countries active in the carbon-offset market from 2007 to 2009. The findings show that if partners hold different frames and belong to different sectors, a firm's sustainability performance improves first due to learning from diversity but after a turning point decreases from a lack of unity. This inverse U-shape relationship is flipped if a firm occupies a brokerage position in its network.     

Effects of data breaches from user-generated content: A corporate reputation analysis

A threat for a growing number of firms in various industries is the occurrence of different breaches of sensitive corporate data. These critical events represent vulnerability for firms' corporate reputations, whose multiple dimensions are affected by customers negative perceptions in various ways. Further, in the Industry 4.0 era, the redundancy of scandals on social media can exacerbate negative effects. This paper reports an investigation into the effects of data breaches on corporate reputation dimensions. In this context, the study conducted latent Dirichlet allocation analysis on social media user-generated content (UGC) for a sample of 35 firms in nine industries that suffered a data breach incident between 2013 and 2016. Incidents have been categorized into three categories: “intentional and internal,” “unintentional and internal,” and “intentional and external” data breaches. The aim of the study was to discover how reputational dimensions changed after these critical events and to identify the differences among the types of data breaches.Results reveal that after critical events, more reputational dimensions appear to be relevant. While before critical events, users typically discuss the “perceived quality” of a firm's offer, after all three types of data breaches, users also pay attention to “customer orientation” and “corporate performance” dimensions. Another key reputation dimension, especially after intentional and internal data breaches, is the “firm as employer,” particularly in the context of a lack of investment in training regarding these events.These findings provide key insights for academics and practitioners to understand large-scale data breaches effects and reputational drawbacks after such incidents.     

Effect of product and geographic diversification on company performance: Evidence during an economic crisis

Based on a novel sample of Spanish listed companies from nonfinancial sectors, we explore the effect of product and geographic diversification on company performance during an economic downturn. The study develops comprehensive models to understand the interaction effect of both strategies on company performance. We find a U-shaped geographic diversification–performance relationship and no evidence of a positive effect from product diversification, unless combined with high levels of geographic diversification. The results show that companies improved their performance by combining these strategies. The results are robust after controlling for the endogeneity of both types of diversification. Our findings highlight that geographic diversification is an effective and valuable strategy in economic downturns. Furthermore, this study confirms the importance of the interaction between product and geographic diversification to determine the total effect of product or geographic diversification on company performance.     

Conformance and performance roles of bank boards: The connection between non-performing loans and non-performing directorships

This study evaluates how non-performing loans and different types of board turnover—which we link to performing directorship (natural turnover) and non-performing directorship (forced turnover)—impact the economic performance (ROA) of banks. The proposed model and hypotheses, based on the conformance and performance roles of boards, are tested on a rich sample that includes all banking firms operating in Costa Rica between 2000 and 2012. The results indicate that the negative effect of non-performing loans on ROA is significantly greater in banks with non-performing directorship associated with high rates of unexpected changes in the board. The findings of the study highlight that the competence of boards matters. The results also give evidence of the importance of balancing financial and non-financial goals if superior governance and economic performance are the objectives pursued by organisations.     

Overcoming institutional voids as a pathway to becoming ambidextrous: The case of China's Sichuan Telecom

The paper examines how firms develop supply chain financing model to help overcome institutional voids (IVs) and become ambidextrous. This study presents a case analysis of a novel supply chain financing model instigated and implemented by China's Sichuan Telecom (ST) to help supply chain partners overcome IVs in their environments. We identified three unique stages in the evolution of the supply chain ambidextrous financing model: drivers for change (including identifying suppliers' problems and constraints), designing and implementing the supply chain ambidextrous financing model, and the tripartite performance effects. The analysis demonstrated how ST utilized its market power, resources and network ties to harness expertise and competences of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to overcome IVs and become ambidextrous. Sichuan Telecom aided the SMEs in solving the financing problem through order-based supply chain financing. Based on the analysis, we outline implications of this case for theory and policy.     

HR perceptions and the provision of workforce training in an AMT environment: An empirical study

Research literature indicates the importance of workforce development in the successful implementation of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs). However, the relationship between advanced technologies and workforce training is assumed to be a direct one with limited consideration provided to factors that may influence it. This study examines the impacts of environment and human resource (HR) manager perceptions on the provision of workforce development activities. A human-centered technology philosophy is proposed as a conceptual framework for examining the role of HR manager perceptions to mediate the relationship between AMTs and workforce development. Results from hierarchical regressions indicate that the perceptions of HR managers regarding technology-driven workforce need to explain a large portion of the variance for both individual and process development activities. Findings support that the managerial role of assessing workforce developmental needs from basic AMTs places HR managerial perceptions at the focal point of social–technical systems. The role of environmental uncertainty is also examined as a moderator of managerial perceptions of technology-driven needs in an AMT environment. The results suggest that environmental uncertainty did not moderate the relationship between HR perceptions as a predictor of workforce development activities. This could imply that HR managers may not consider critical external environment issues when making decisions of workforce development activities. The implications of these findings for HR perceptions in an AMT environment are discussed, and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Structural and contextual approaches to ambidexterity: A meta-analysis of organizational and environmental contingencies

This meta-analysis examines the conditions under which structural and contextual approaches help balance exploration and exploitation. Drawing on heterogeneous samples of prior ambidexterity studies, we apply moderated meta-analytic regression methods to 33,492 organizations sampled in 114 primary studies from 1991 to 2017 to test a contingency model. Our findings suggest that structural separation helps firms of all sizes to balance exploration and exploitation, and that structural separation is more conducive for balancing exploration and exploitation in high technology environments. Also, avoiding a structural separation approach benefits service firms. As research on ambidexterity enters the maturity stage we discuss the implications for future theory development, methodology, and for managers interested in developing ambidextrous organizations.