Internationalization and performance: The moderating effects of organizational learning

By proposing a conceptual outline for a general model that explains the internationalization–performance link, we test the moderating effects of organizational learning on the relationship between internationalization and performance empirically. Integrating two distinct literature streams from the organizational learning perspective and the resource-based view, we present an integrated, multidimensional framework for analyzing multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) resources, internationalization, and organizational learning, as well as their associated impact on firm performance. Specifically, using a sample of 110 American MNEs, we find that while certain MNE resources motivate and precede internationalization, social and market learning (whereas technological learning does not) moderates the relationship between internationalization and performance. These findings extend prior research by establishing the importance of the relationships among MNE resources, internationalization, organizational learning, and firm performance.     

政治关联、多点接触与企业绩效——市场互换性的调节作用

 随着多元化经营趋势的发展,企业与竞争对手在多个市场上相遇并形成多点接触早已成为常态。在企业与竞争对手间形成多点接触的背景下,许多学者验证了多点接触会对企业绩效产生一定的影响。同时在转型制度环境下,政治关联将有助于降低市场壁垒使企业进入对方所在的市场,这会增强企业间的多点接触程度并降低竞争强度。然而,对政治关联如何影响多点接触进而影响企业绩效的内在机制还鲜有研究。        基于政治关联对企业进入对方所在市场行为影响的逻辑,将市场互换性作为调节变量,利用STATA软件和OLS回归分析方法,以2008年至2014年中国9家上市民营房地产企业在151个区域市场分布变化情况作为样本,结合相互容忍假说,探讨在多点竞争环境下政治关联和多点接触与企业绩效的关系。        实证分析结果表明,政治关联可以降低市场进入壁垒,使企业达到主动增加与其主要竞争对手多点接触程度的目的,进而对企业绩效有积极的影响;另外,市场互换性能负向调节政治关联与企业绩效的关系。        在中国制度环境下,讨论多点接触对企业经营过程产生的影响,为中国企业在多点竞争环境下实现提升绩效的目的提供一个方向,为企业有效增加多点接触程度提供更多的解决方法,也为日后进行多点接触问题的研究拓宽了思路。     

Changes at Corporate Headquarters: Review,Integration and Future Research

In modern corporations, the corporate headquarters (CHQ) unit is considered central to the fortunes of the overall firm. In light of ever‐changing environments, changes at the CHQ have become a crucial concern in management research and practice, and scholars have studied a variety of changes at the CHQ. Despite the common focus on the CHQ entity and the potential for cross‐fertilization across several research tracks, a coherent picture of this dispersed body of knowledge is lacking. This paper reviews 25 years of research on changes at the CHQ. In so doing, it advances a common language and an overarching framework that integrates the existing knowledge in the intellectual domains of strategy, organizational design and international business research. On this basis, the authors suggest directions for future research to advance knowledge of: (1) the pressure for and resistance to changes at the CHQ; (2) interrelationships among changes at the CHQ; (3) change processes at the CHQ; (4) agents involved in changes at the CHQ; and (5) adaptive and disruptive effects of changes at the CHQ. Overall, the study provides a conceptual basis for combining the existing knowledge of changes at the CHQ and serves as a guide for future research.     

整合能力与企业绩效：商业模式创新的中介作用

经济全球化的背景下,企业为了构建竞争优势,获取更好的绩效,开始利用整合能力和商业模式创新应对多变的外部环境。然而,当前研究对于两者之间存在何种联系的认识是模糊的。针对理论研究的缺陷,基于动态能力的理论视角,通过分析商业模式创新对整合能力与企业绩效的中介作用,揭示企业整合能力和商业模式创新促进企业绩效提高的内在机制,采用中国6省1市319个企业样本数据,运用线性回归的统计方法对理论假设进行实证检验。研究结果表明,整合能力和商业模式创新都对企业绩效具有正向的促进作用,同时整合能力与企业绩效之间存在着一定的中间机制。整合能力通过提高组织变革和价值创造效率两个方面促进商业模式创新,而商业模式创新作为中间纽带将整合能力与企业绩效联系起来。企业的整合能力越高,越有利于开展商业模式创新,进而促进企业绩效的提高。研究揭示了整合能力和商业模式创新共同促进企业绩效提高的内在理论机制,打开了能力与绩效间关系的“黑箱”,对于中国企业开展商业模式创新具有重要的实践指导意义。     

Demand-side strategy and business models: Putting value creation for consumers center stage

Value creation for consumers, as the conditio sine qua non for value capture, is at the heart of demand-side strategy research and is a core element of almost any business model. In this paper, we discuss the unique ideas that demand-side strategy and business model research jointly contribute to the strategy literature, and we elaborate on the potential for cross-fertilization between both areas of study. We argue that both the demand-side perspective and the business model concept could jointly promote a better understanding of strategy-making by mutually relying on the distinctive insights from each stream; specifically, while research on demand-side strategy can help business model scholars gain a more robust and granular understanding of effective value propositions, business models can serve as a “bridging concept” that links the shared ideas of both areas of study to resource-based streams of strategy research.     

3 Merger and Acquisition Transactions and Executive Compensation: A Review of the Empirical Evidence

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing empirical evidence and provide an integrative framework for the growing body of literature that is situated at the intersection of two highly debated topics: merger and acquisition (M&A) activities and executive compensation. The proposed framework structures the literature along two dimensions, such as M&A phases and firm's role in a M&A deal, allowing us to identify three main streams of research and five different conceptualizations of causal relationships between M&A transactions and executive compensation. Making a comprehensive review of empirical studies conducted to date we aim at shedding more light on the current and emerging knowledge in this field of investigation, discussing the inconsistencies encountered within each stream of research and suggesting promising directions for further exploration.     

10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology,Work and Organization

Abstract

We begin by juxtaposing the pervasive presence of technology in organizational work with its absence from the organization studies literature. Our analysis of four leading journals in the field confirms that over 95% of the articles published in top management research outlets do not take into account the role of technology in organizational life. We then examine the research that has been done on technology, and categorize this literature into two research streams according to their view of technology: discrete entities or mutually dependent ensembles. For each stream, we discuss three existing reviews spanning the last three decades of scholarship to highlight that while there have been many studies and approaches to studying organizational interactions and implications of technology, empirical research has produced mixed and often‐conflicting results. Going forward, we suggest that further work is needed to theorize the fusion of technology and work in organizations, and that additional perspectives are needed to add to the palette of concepts in use. To this end, we identify a promising emerging genre of research that we refer to under the umbrella term: sociomateriality. Research framed according to the tenets of a sociomaterial approach challenges the deeply taken‐for‐granted assumption that technology, work, and organizations should be conceptualized separately, and advances the view that there is an inherent inseparability between the technical and the social. We discuss the intellectual motivation for proposing a sociomaterial research approach and point to some common themes evident in recent studies. We conclude by suggesting that a reconsideration of conventional views of technology may help us more effectively study and understand the multiple, emergent, and dynamic sociomaterial configurations that constitute contemporary organizational practices.     

Interorganizational Relationships in Marketing: A Critical Review and Research Agenda

Over recent decades, the area of marketing interorganizational relationships (IORs) has received increasing attention from both academics and practitioners, even if a comprehensive portrayal of past research is still lacking. Hence, the aim of the present paper is to review the literature on marketing IORs in order to develop a framework meant to organize the different contributions in this area and suggest new paths for future research. The analysis suggests that three main streams of research can be identified with regard to the type of relationship between variables investigated by each article. Moreover, taking into account the purpose of the IOR, common patterns within each stream may be identified. A critical analysis of articles grounded on both the streams and the purpose of marketing IORs suggests there are still substantial gaps in knowledge, which open new paths for future research regarding both methodological issues and hot topics.     

Supplier integration,operational capability and firm performance: an investigation in an emerging economy environment

Abstract

The literature on supplier integration’s (SI) impact on firm performance is intertwined with mixed findings in terms of definitional differences, study context, specific integration components, and the types of relationships examined. This study contributes to the supplier integration and firm performance (SI-FP) literature by investigating how and when supplier integration influences firm performance. Drawing on the relational view, the resource-based view, and the Dynamics Capability theories, we suggest that improvements in firm performance from the supplier integration perspective are dependent on gains in operational capabilities. We test this dependency with survey data from firms in Ghana, a developing economy. The results show positive significant relationships between supplier integration and competitive operational capabilities and between supplier integration and firm performance. Our results highlight the importance for managers in developing economies and elsewhere to improve their firms’ operational capabilities and competitiveness by investing in supplier integration. We also discuss implications of these findings for research.     

Ambidexterity as a dynamic capability: Resolving the innovator's dilemma

How do organizations survive in the face of change? Underlying this question is a rich debate about whether organizations can adapt—and if so how. One perspective, organizational ecology, presents evidence suggesting that most organizations are largely inert and ultimately fail. A second perspective argues that some firms do learn and adapt to shifting environmental contexts. Recently, this latter view has coalesced around two themes. The first, based on research in strategy suggests that dynamic capabilities, the ability of a firm to reconfigure assets and existing capabilities, explains long-term competitive advantage. The second, based on organizational design, argues that ambidexterity, the ability of a firm to simultaneously explore and exploit, enables a firm to adapt over time. In this paper, we review and integrate these comparatively new research streams and identify a set of propositions that suggest how ambidexterity acts as a dynamic capability. We suggest that efficiency and innovation need not be strategic tradeoffs and highlight the substantive role of senior teams in building dynamic capabilities.     

Relationship between Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management: An Empirical Investigation

Two important streams of the literature have examined intellectual capital (IC) and knowledge management (KM). Surprisingly, they have developed in parallel, without any empirical research on the relationship between them. This article empirically examines how IC and KM affect each other, and also investigates their consequences, viewing three intermediate consequences (dynamic capabilities, efficiency, and innovativeness) to mediate their effects on firm performance. In addition, this article examines the effects of the organization's culture on IC and KM. To address these issues, a comprehensive model is developed and tested using a combination of survey and secondary data of 533 companies in Taiwan. The results support the theoretical model. Major findings include the following: IC affects KM and dynamic capabilities; KM facilitates innovation but not dynamic capabilities or IC; a learning culture facilitates IC and innovation but not KM; firm performance depends on efficiency and innovation, but not directly on dynamic capabilities; and efficiency does not depend on any of the other constructs in the study. The article's implications for research and practice are examined.     

Routines Revisited: Exploring the Capabilities and Practice Perspectives

Organizational routines, repetitive patterns of interdependent organizational actions, have been investigated through the lens of capabilities, rooted in organizational economics, and the lens of practice, grounded in organization theory. The former approach emphasizes the “what” or “why,” while the latter emphasizes the “how.” In this review, we summarize both of these literatures and explore recent empirical studies in each stream, identifying common themes. In particular, we compare and contrast how each perspective incorporates the effects of individual actors, tacit knowledge, ambidexterity, and context specificity. We find that the two streams of work have distinct trajectories and strengths, but elements of each can be complementary to developing a more holistic understanding of organizational routines.     

The role of internal social capital in organisational innovation. An empirical study of family firms

Using a sample of 172 Spanish family firms and two responders per firm, consisting of a family member and a non-family member (344 returned questionnaires), we examine the effects of internal social capital on organisational innovation. Building on the relational, cognitive, and structural view, and on social capital theory, we propose that internal networking relationships between family members (family social capital) and between non-family members (non-family social capital) in family firms facilitates innovation. Moreover, its benefits flow from the relationships among the firm's internal groups. The results of structural equation models indicate that the social capital of both family members and non-family members has a direct and positive effect on innovation. Further, our findings provide evidence that non-family social capital is just as effective as family social capital for family firm innovation, establishing a new line of research from an empirical perspective. The findings also test whether social factors are key assets of family firm innovation.     

Regional Headquarter’s Dual Agency Role: Micro‐political Strategies of Alignment and Self‐interest

The increased research focus on the networked perspective of the multinational enterprise (MNE) reflects a greater delegation of responsibility from corporate headquarters (CHQ) to subsidiary and intermediary units such as regional headquarters (RHQ). This shift has increased the intensity of political interactions between key actors within the MNE. Despite the recent rise in studies on the micro‐political perspective of the MNE to date, little empirical work has explored this issue in the context of the CHQ–RHQ relationship. Drawing insights from agency theory and micro‐politics, the authors focus on the context in which RHQs develop micro‐political strategies in order to manage the flow and exchange of knowledge with CHQ. They show how RHQ may exhibit a ‘dual agency’ role when dealing with CHQ, in that it is characterized as a principal and agent, each requiring different micro‐political knowledge strategies. As a principal, RHQ will develop micro‐political knowledge strategies to increase alignment with CHQ. As an agent, RHQ develops micro‐political knowledge strategies to pursue its self‐interests. Having identified different RHQ agency roles, the authors develop a conceptual model that outlines how alignment and self‐interest‐seeking behaviours from RHQ are manifest through different micro‐political knowledge strategies in its agency relationship with CHQ.     

Behavioral Modeling of Adversaries with Multiple Objectives in Counterterrorism

Attacker/defender models have primarily assumed that each decisionmaker optimizes the cost of the damage inflicted and its economic repercussions from their own perspective. Two streams of recent research have sought to extend such models. One stream suggests that it is more realistic to consider attackers with multiple objectives, but this research has not included the adaption of the terrorist with multiple objectives to defender actions. The other stream builds off experimental studies that show that decisionmakers deviate from optimal rational behavior. In this article, we extend attacker/defender models to incorporate multiple objectives that a terrorist might consider in planning an attack. This includes the tradeoffs that a terrorist might consider and their adaption to defender actions. However, we must also consider experimental evidence of deviations from the rationality assumed in the commonly used expected utility model in determining such adaption. Thus, we model the attacker's behavior using multiattribute prospect theory to account for the attacker's multiple objectives and deviations from rationality. We evaluate our approach by considering an attacker with multiple objectives who wishes to smuggle radioactive material into the United States and a defender who has the option to implement a screening process to hinder the attacker. We discuss the problems with implementing such an approach, but argue that research in this area must continue to avoid misrepresenting terrorist behavior in determining optimal defensive actions.     

A review of research on the negative accounting relationship between risk and return: Bowman's paradox

A cornerstone in finance theory continues to be the positive relationship between risk and return in spite of Fama and French (The Journal of Finance 47(2) (1992) 427–65) and several later papers finding no relationship between the two variables. Twelve years earlier, Bowman (Sloan Management Review 1980, pp. 17–31) studied the same relationship from organization theory, achieving similar results with accounting data, and developing a whole research stream known as “Bowman's paradox”. This stream has contributed to some curious and interesting ideas that could also be applied to other different streams: new risk measures, managerial goal selection, response to the decline in the organization, diversification strategy on risk and return, among others. Similar to the financial stream, a number of researchers have tried to study this issue from the strategic management perspective. Their inconclusive results have generated a considerable controversy, keeping this research stream alive. In this work, we describe and explore this phenomenon from “Bowman's paradox”, theoretical explanations, criticisms and future orientations.     

Effect of best management practices on the performance and productivity of small firms

Abstract

Recent research on productivity finds that best management practices are a crucial but neglected element in explaining firm productivity. This stream of research also focuses on why a large number of firms may not implement best management practices despite their apparent benefits. In this paper, we examine the adoption of best management practices in small leveraged buyout (LBO) firms. Our choice of small LBO is motivated by the fact that these firms undergo extensive restructuring and, therefore, there is an opportunity to study the adoption process of best management practices. The findings show that buyout companies introduce best management practices (operations, monitoring, targets and incentive-related practices) at different stages of their development, and more importantly, these practices evolve in response to changes in various firm-level characteristics. For example, companies emphasizing cost leadership tend to follow targets and monitoring related practices while firms following a differentiation strategy are more likely to implement incentives and operations related management practices. Buyout sponsors’ board representatives and new CEO also play a critical role in the adoption of these best management practices which are linked to superior firm performance, measured as growth in revenues, productivity and return on assets.     

A stakeholder perspective on process improvement behaviours: delivering the triple bottom line in SMEs

Abstract

The primary focus of operations management is to add value through operational processes. Considerable attention has been given to using process improvement (PI) techniques to reduce costs and time, in order to develop a competitive advantage for the wider organization. However, this narrow definition of value at times overlooks the triple bottom line (TBL) which can result in a number of unintended consequences, specifically issues related to environmental and social measures of performance. To address this, a stakeholder theory lens will be used to analyze PI activities within the context of small and medium-sized enterprises. The TBL will be used to complement the stakeholder perspective, to interpret the benefits that are realized from PI activities. This article highlights both the direct benefits from PI as well as more indirect benefits realized by involving a selection of salient stakeholders in PI. It will show how a developed view of PI can provide an important mechanism for delivering improvements to a firm’s TBL. The work concludes by highlighting the contributions made to both PI practice and stakeholder theory, while acknowledging the need for more research on PI, both from a stakeholder perspective and how it impacts a firm’s TBL.     

Transnationality – Sharpening the Integration-Responsiveness vision in global professional firms

The “transnational” (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1988, 1989) has become a popular organizational construct, and is increasingly relevant to contemporary global firms. However, there is very little empirical research on the organizational aspects of this form, and there is a lack of knowledge regarding the transnational aspects in professional service firm theorizing. Building on some fundamental organizational and international management literature, as well as an understanding of contemporary global professional firms, we expect that the transnational will exhibit specific organizational structural features with both high levels globalization and local responsiveness. We then proceed to describe an exploratory study of ten global engineering firms—this context is important since engineering firms are far less tied to national (local) jurisdictions than are other professional firms. Our findings reveal that the leadership/management areas were largely globally integrated, the hiring/HR functions were singularly locally oriented, while the other organizational areas we studied – namely structure/process and project teams – exhibited both global and local features. These findings extend professional service firm theorizing, exposing the balance between axes of specialisation, norms of reciprocity and customer management system; to include organizational features that allow a balance between the globally integrated and locally responsive.     

Beyond Corporate Responsibility: Implications for Management Development

Since the mid‐1990s we have witnessed the rise of numerous constructive and positive activities aimed at developing or enhancing corporate responsibility and corporate citizenship as well as anti‐globalization and anticorporate activism. And, of course, in 2008, we witnessed the meltdown of financial markets and numerous financial institutions as well as some major companies teetering on the brink of collapse. What is actually needed to create the world that many people want to live in may in fact be a new relationship between business and society, that is, new ways of looking at the corporation and its role in society, both in practice and in management education? We will argue that some initiatives, such as Corporation 2020, have already begun to explore these issues by taking a more holistic perspective on different purposes and roles of the corporation in the future. Management education, which has been severely criticized in the aftermath of the economic crisis, has an important role to play, but in a changed form. Implications for leadership and management education include the need to shift cognitive, moral, and emotional levels of development, renewed emphasis on balance both individually and socially, a less is more sensibility, a holistic systems perspective, and shifting the purpose of the firm to encompass not just shareholder needs, but also societal, stakeholder, and ecological needs and interests. In this article we explore some of the ways in which these attributes might be engendered in future leaders, at least in those management development and education programs interested in fostering a new wave of progressive leadership in management for the future.