Exploring the impact of sustainable value proposition on firm performance

Considering the immense potential of sustainable business models in tackling the broader challenge of corporate sustainability, this paper integrates the literature streams on sustainability practices and organizational business models to analyze the performance implications of a firm's sustainable value proposition. Based on the analysis of a large panel dataset across different industries, consistent with the proposed theory, a sustainable value proposition has been found to have a positive impact on a firm's market-based financial performance (namely, Tobin's Q). Yet, this impact turns out to be highly context-dependent. In particular, the findings reveal that a firm's R&D capabilities improve the positive effect of a sustainable value proposition on a firm's financial performance. At the same time, the marketing communication capabilities and sustainable practices regarding employee relations reduce the sustainable value proposition's financial performance effect, arguably due to the costs associated with marketing and the loss in employee interest during the process of adopting the sustainable business model elements.     

Sustainability and Business in a Complex World

Sustainability is a topic of growing importance today in all aspects of organizational life. Businesses and managers are increasingly considering ways to incorporate a balance among economic, ecological, social, and cultural value creation into their business models. At the same time, the world is becoming exponentially more complex. Indeed, complexity theory and thinking are now apparent in academic and practice accounts of sustainability in business, as scholars and practitioners recognize the limitations of traditional reductionist approaches to systemic problems. To date, however, a more theoretical framing of sustainability lags behind accumulating practical evidence. The purpose of this article is to address this gap by developing a complexity‐based framework for understanding and managing sustainability in complex adaptive systems. We aim for simplicity, wholeness, and practicality in our approach, taking a qualitative rather than quantitative perspective on complex systems. Using several contemporary case examples, the article describes the important qualities of complex systems and develops them into a working framework that integrates principles and parameters of sustainability. In doing so, we create an approach to sustainability issues and dilemmas called “sustainability thinking.” The article concludes with more generalized sustainability action strategies for managers and recommendations for future researchers.     

BUSINESS STRATEGY,MANUFACTURING FLEXIBILITY,AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE RELATIONSHIPS: A PATH ANALYSIS APPROACH

It has been argued in the literature that business strategy and manufacturing flexibility independently affect the performance of an organization. However, no empirical examination of the interrelationship among these three constructs has been performed. In this paper, based on a field study of 269 firms in the manufacturing industry, the identified constructs have been used to test a theoretical model using path analysis techniques. Our results indicate that business strategy contributes both directly and indirectly to organizational performance. The findings provide evidence of direct effects of (i) business strategy on manufacturing flexibility and (ii) manufacturing flexibility on organizational performance.     

Exploring the Important Role of Organizational Factors in IT Business Value: Taking a Contingency Perspective on the Resource‐Based View

Despite the importance to researchers and practitioners of how information technology (IT) contributes to organizational performance, there is an ongoing debate about the extent of IT business value (ITBV) and how to measure ITBV. Recently, a number of researchers have applied resource‐based view (RBV) and contingency theory to investigating ITBV, with mixed results. Researchers have started to recognize that ITBV is closely associated with the synergies created from IT and a variety of complementary organizational factors, which might be an alternative way to explain these mixed results. Through a review of the literature, this paper assesses the current level of knowledge in ITBV research. It identifies that significant progress has been made in the research domain, but that in‐depth inquiry into ITBV is still needed. Based on RBV and contingency theory, a research framework has been developed. The framework suggests that firms might be able to gain significant performance improvements if IT resources are in alignment with additional organizational factors (i.e. organizational strategy, organizational process, organizational culture, organizational structure). The authors believe that this framework will be valuable in assisting researchers and practitioners in understanding the complex ITBV process.     

Assigning migrants to customer contact jobs: a context-specific exploration of the business case for diversity

Ethnic diversity of both their labor forces and customer bases presents a challenge for companies and fuels debate on the business case for diversity: the view that diversity positively impacts firm performance. This study enriches the business case debate by focusing on a particular organizational activity, customer contact. It combines theory from strategic human resource management (SHRM), research on diversity, and research on marketing to analyze what drives companies to assign migrants to customer contact jobs and which performance impacts ensue. We test our hypotheses in data from 338 German business companies. Companies that recognize the value in ethnic diversity and seek to respond to customer diversity are especially likely to assign migrants to customer contact jobs. The analyses reveal a positive impact of migrants in customer contact jobs on company profitability. This impact is enhanced by a broad range of equality and diversity practices and a supportive works council. These moderators have stronger effects than two other moderators related to business strategy: the market served by a company, and its competitive strategy. The paper contributes to SHRM research in general and diversity research in particular through its original examination associating the business case for ethnic diversity with the role of equality and diversity practices and institutions. The study findings can help managers to decide whether to leverage staff ethnic diversity and show that collaboration between HR management and marketing functions is useful to achieve a strategic fit among practices.     

Realizing Benefits from Enterprise Resource Planning: Does Strategic Focus Matter?

A key driver of the recent wave of enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations was the assumption that the integration of business information would provide firms with a competitive advantage, yet concrete business benefits have been uneven across adopting firms. A possible explanation is that although the resource‐based view holds that competitive advantage is derived from inimitable resources, ERP software has become a commodity. Socio‐technical theory suggests that internal organizational resources based on a foundation of ERP technology may be the true drivers of ERP benefits. A firm's strategic configuration is posited to influence the portfolio of organizational competencies available to leverage the benefits of integrated business information, and a number of hypotheses are developed based on the notion that firms with different strategic objectives will realize different operational benefits from the adoption of ERP systems. Survey data from North American manufacturing firms that have implemented ERP systems demonstrate that ERP adopters seeking operational performance improvements are likely to realize these benefits. On the other hand, those seeking external market and supply chain performance improvements must first establish a foundation of internal operational performance improvements before customer satisfaction and supply chain benefits can be realized.     

企业集团的理论综述与探讨

本文回顾了在企业集团研究中占主导地位的三种理论框架,即经济学(以制度经济学和资源理论为主)、社会学和政治学理论。这些理论从外部市场失效或者市场机制不完全、集团以内部市场替代外部市场并以较低的交易费用使成员企业获得产品或者要素资源、社会关系、传统以及社会规范对组织行为和结构的影响、国家和政府与企业集团的关系,以及双方之间的相互影响等角度出发,对企业集团的起因、角色和组织形式做出解释。在上述三种理论的指导下,相应的实证研究检验了企业集团内部市场的作用、资源分配体制、连锁董事以及政府政策对集团多元化战略和组织结构的影响,并取得了初步成果,本文也对今后企业集团研究的方向提出了建议。     

EXPLORING LINKAGES BETWEEN MANUFACTURING STRATEGY,BUSINESS STRATEGY,AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY

In recent years there has been an increased emphasis on the development of manufacturing and business strategies. In spite of that high level of emphasis, limited empirical research has been published on the linkage between manufacturing strategy, business strategy, and organizational performance. Our study examines that linkage. Our main contribution lies in (i) building constructs for some important elements of manufacturing strategy and business strategy and (ii) testing the impact of linkage between manufacturing strategy and business strategy on organizational performance. The study is based on 175 responses from senior executives in manufacturing organizations.     

Announcement

This article offers a case study of a strategic HRD initiative to enhance organizational performance. Based at a corporation in India, the initiative involved an action research component to understand factors hindering current performance and HRD interventions aligned to business strategy to address the identified factors. The case study illustrates the potentials for taking a strategic approach to improving performance through HRD.     

Does Management Development Add Value?

While the act of faith approach to management development assumes that training and development will improve performance, and that attention to the people factor will give organizations a competitive advantage, there has been little systematic study of the business benefits of management development. The extent to which competence-based management development made identifiable improvements to individual, organizational and business performance was examined in sixteen organizations using an in-depth embedded case-study protocol developed following the preparatory work of an expert group convened by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). Interviews were conducted with senior strategic managers, line managers and members of management work teams, and triangulation was sought with documentary evidence. Case reports were validated with the organizations, then evaluated and ranked by an independent consultancy not involved in the fieldwork. The results provide support for attributing business benefits to management development, particularly in relation to individual and business performance. The performance improvements were found to be most significant where management development is linked with organizational strategy and where Human Resource Development (HRD) systems and processes adopt the management standards developed by Management Charter Initiative (MCI).     

Human resource development (HRD) resilience: a new ‘success element’ of organizational resilience?

ABSTRACT

Endlessly changing business and economic landscapes urge organizations to become resilient to ensure business survival and growth. Yet, in many cases, business world is becoming turbulent faster than organizations are becoming resilient. Relevant research indicates the ways through which organizations could respond to unforeseen events, mainly through suggesting that individual and group resilience could lead to an organizational one. However, research is nascent on how particularly human resource development (HRD) resilience could be built, and thus to contribute to organizational resilience as well. Within today’s business uncertainty and complexity, HRD resilience comes in line with the developmental strategies of organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this perspective article is to set the foundations of the term (HRD resilience) in order to initiate a dialogue around its ability to make a substantial contribution to organizational practice, and thus to be seen as a new ‘success element’ of organizational resilience.     

Leveraging Big Data Analytics to Improve Quality of Care in Healthcare Organizations: A Configurational Perspective

Big data analytics (BDA) is beneficial for organizations, yet implementing BDA to leverage profitability is fundamental challenge confronting practitioners. Although prior research has explored the impact that BDA has on business growth, there is a lack of research that explains the full complexity of BDA implementations. Examination of how and under what conditions BDA achieves organizational performance from a holistic perspective is absent from the existing literature. Extending the theoretical perspective from the traditional views (e.g. resource‐based theory) to configuration theory, the authors have developed a conceptual model of BDA success that aims to investigate how BDA capabilities interact with complementary organizational resources and organizational capabilities in multiple configuration solutions leading to higher quality of care in healthcare organizations. To test this model, the authors use fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis to analyse multi‐source data acquired from a survey and databases maintained by the Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The findings suggest that BDA, when given alone, is not sufficient in achieving the outcome, but is a synergy effect in which BDA capabilities and analytical personnel's skills together with organizational resources and capabilities as supportive role can improve average excess readmission rates and patient satisfaction in healthcare organizations.     

Real Options in Management and Organizational Strategy: A Review of Decision‐making and Performance Implications

This paper contributes to the debate on the role of real options theory in business strategy and organizational decision‐making. It analyses and critiques the decision‐making and performance implications of real options within the management theories of the (multinational) firm, reviews and categorizes the organizational, strategic and operational facets of real options management in large business settings. It also presents the views of scholars and practitioners regarding the incorporation and validity of real options in strategy, international management and business processes 1 . The focus is particularly on the decision‐making and performance attributes of the real options logic concerning strategic investments, governance modes and multinational operations management. These attributes are examined from both strategic and operating perspectives of decision‐making in organizations, also with an overview of the empirical evidence on real options decision‐making and performance.     

A dynamic business modelling approach to design and experiment new business venture strategies

Business Modelling has evolved as a key activity to reflect new business venture strategy by framing the way a firm will operate and how it will function in achieving its goals (e.g., profitability, growth, innovation, social impact). However, scholars and practitioners have criticized the adoption of a too static perspective in the design and use of conventional Business Model representations. Such a static perspective prevents nascent entrepreneurs experimenting with their Business Models and, as a result, identifying the most effective strategies, especially in terms of business sustainability and profitability. In this paper, we argue that combining conventional Business Model schemas with System Dynamics modelling results in a strategy design tool that may overcome several limitations related to a static view of Business Model representation. Mapping the different key elements underlying value creation processes into a system of causal interdependencies – through the use of simulation – allows strategy analysts and entrepreneurs to experiment and learn how the business reacts to strategic and organizational changes in terms of performance, innovation and value creation. As such, Dynamic Business Models provide useful insights to strategy formulation and business venturing by capturing how critical Business Model elements interact to produce enduring competitive advantages over time.     

Ethics and human resource management and development in a global context: case study of an Indian multinational

A firm's orientation to ethics is influenced largely by its national and organizational culture. Research shows that a growing number of Indian firms place a distinct emphasis on long-term orientation to business strategy with a social mission, underpinned by firm commitment to core organizational values, employee development and welfare. Through a case study of a large Indian multinational conglomerate, this article provides preliminary evidence of how some emerging economy firms are successfully mixing and matching indigenous business and people management strategies with the Western emphasis on meritocracy and professionalism to compete in the contemporary global economy. It further shows how the human resource development (HRD) discipline can play a pro-active role in embedding ethics and values throughout the organizational and HR architecture. The HRD professionals in the case study firm also face several structural and cultural challenges in discharging their ethics-driven HR mandate, such as management's ethnocentric attitude to global staffing and clash of work cultures.     

Essential Micro‐foundations for Contemporary Business Operations: Top Management Tangible Competencies,Relationship‐based Business Networks and Environmental Sustainability

Although various studies have emphasized linkages between firm competencies, networks and sustainability at organizational level, the links between top management tangible competencies (TMTCs) (e.g. contemporary relevant quantitative‐focused education such as big data analytics and data‐driven applications linked with the internet of things, relevant experience and analytical business applications), relationship‐based business networks (RBNs) and environmental sustainability have not been well established at micro‐level, and there is a literature gap in terms of investigating these relationships. This study examines these links based on the unique data collected from 175 top management representatives (chief executive officers and managing directors) working in food import and export firms headquartered in the UK and New Zealand. Our results from structural equation modelling indicate that TMTCs are the key determinants for building RBNs, mediating the correlation between TMTCs and environmental sustainability. Directly, the competencies also play a vital role towards environmental practices. The findings further depict that relationship‐oriented firms perform better compared to those which focus less on such networks. Consequently, our findings provide a deeper understanding of the micro‐foundations of environmental sustainability based on TMTCs rooted in the resource‐based view and RBNs entrenched in social network theory. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings, and we provide suggestions for future research.     

人力资源管理系统影响企业绩效的复杂性机理——基于高新技术企业的实证研究

破解人力资源管理系统影响企业绩效的机理是战略人力资源管理研究领域的核心问题。基于164家高新技术企业的调查数据,采用层级回归模型检验了人力资源管理系统与企业绩效间的复杂性机理。结果显示,人力资源管理系统对企业绩效的正向直接效应显著,影响二者关系的外生变量是创新战略非高管价值观;人力资本在二者关系间的中介效应不显著,但以组织氛围为控制变量时中介效应有了显著提高;"组织氛围调节下的人力资本中介作用模型"很好地刻画人力资本发挥中介效应的机理。研究结果强化了我们对人力资源管理系统与企业绩效关系机理的认知,同时为高新技术企业管理者在实践中管理员工提供了有益启示。     

Human resource management and performance

The study of human resource management (HRM) has been invigorated by the promise that there is a best-practice, high-involvement management (HIM) that can guarantee superior organizational performance. None the less, there remain concerns that contingency theory still rules, that is, that the fit between the human resource systems and their context, and particularly the organization's business strategy, is all important and, thus, that HIM will only outperform other systems in certain circumstances. In the 1990s, there has been a spate of research that has sought to test whether HIM is indeed universally relevant. This paper reviews these studies. The paper first introduces the conceptual dimensions of the debate concerning HRM and performance. This shows that the issues go beyond a simple competition between universalism and contingency theory. There are more complicated hypotheses linking human resource practices beneath the surface of the recent literature. The second part of the paper overviews the studies in the light of these hypotheses, revealing that they present an uneven picture. Firstly, there are conceptual differences underlying the studies and, secondly, the results vary between them, and the effects of HIM vary between performance measures even in particular studies. Though a fair number of the studies claim to support universalism, their claims are not always unequivocally supported by their research evidence, and it is premature to conclude in its favour. If anything, there is more support for the 'lean production' argument that stresses the interaction effect between HIM and total quality management on performance.     

Beyond the purely commercial business model: Organizational value logics and the heterogeneity of sustainability business models

The business model has been conceived as a commercial logic of value proposition, creation, exchange and capture. However, its underlying conceptual structure of an organizational value logic holds promise also for application beyond a purely commercial context, for partially commercial and even noncommercial organizations. This paper unlocks this potential by conceptualizing homogeneous and heterogeneous organizational value logics shaped by a variety of institutional logics. Homogeneous value logics are dominantly shaped by individual institutional logics, such as the value logic of businesses shaped by an institutional logic of the commercial market, or that of a churches shaped by an institutional logic of religion. Heterogeneous value logics, however, are co-shaped by two or more institutional logics. The application of these concepts is exemplified in the context of sustainability business models, which are built on a heterogeneous value logic that combines elements from commercial, sustainability, welfare and government logics. The paper contributes to the business model discussion by extending it to partially commercial and noncommercial organizations; by creating a conceptual space between value logics and institutional logics; and by proposing the meta-logic of value proposition, creation, exchange and capture, a novel analytical tool for the study of organizations shaped by plural institutional logics.     

Sustainable planning strategies in supply chain systems: proposal and applications with a real case study in fashion

Abstract

Pollution generated by the fashion industry drives people to pay attention to fashion companies’ sustainability practice. This increase in attention has induced vast literature studying the related area. Since the fashion apparel supply chain is complicated which involves a lot of interrelated steps and decisions, how fashion companies can identify the demand in sustainable fashion and make the right decision in resource allocation throughout the supply chain becomes a critical issue. As a result, this paper examines how a fashion company can develop a successful sustainable planning strategy throughout the sustainable fashion supply chain. The sustainability attributes and the sustainable planning strategy mechanism are also discussed. Based on the institutional theory and resource-based theory, we first analyse the external pressure and internal motivations for companies to adopt a sustainable planning strategy in the fashion supply chain. We then identify the core stakeholders related to the sustainable planning strategy and propose how the decision-making theory can help develop the sustainable supply chain management mechanism. Next, we establish a sustainable planning strategy framework. Finally, via a case study with public data on the fashion giant brand Nike, we explore the application of our proposed sustainable planning strategy framework. The finding suggests that the strategic planning of fashion companies on sustainability can improve the performance of the stakeholders throughout the whole sustainable fashion supply chain.