Turnaround leadership core tensions during the company turnaround process

How leaders turn around declining performance is a significant issue for companies, their employees, their customers, their shareholders and, more generally, society. Leadership influence during times of change is well recognised in the literature; however, leadership during a turnaround is more complex and less understood. In-depth examinations of the role and activities of turnaround leaders have received insufficient attention in the literature to date. Specifically, studies have not investigated, in-depth, the tensions that leaders face during a turnaround process. To begin addressing this gap in the literature, we utilise case studies of four companies to examine the core tensions leaders experience, when they occur during the turnaround process and how they are managed. We frame our focus on leadership tensions in three prominent domains in the literature, leadership change, leadership assertiveness and strategic orientation. Our findings identify and detail the management of six core tensions that leaders experience across a five-stage turnaround process model. We conclude that effective turnaround leadership is less about particular skill sets or ‘types’ of leaders for different stages of the recovery process, and more about their ability to purposefully navigate and balance apparently conflicting activities within these tensions. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice.     

复杂理论在集群领域的研究——基于东莞PC集群的初步探讨

如何将复杂理论运用于集群研究是目前组织管理研究的一个前沿问题,本文对此以东莞PC集群为例进行了探索。文章首先将集群视为一个复杂适应性系统,然后从环境设计、正反馈、边界约束以及不确定性结果四个角度详细分析了其自组织过程的不同机理,提出集群内各组织相互作用、共同演进是集群形成和发展的根本动因,强调单个因素的有限作用。文章最后还指出了该研究对集群管理方面的启示和进一步研究的方向。     

Implementation of manufacturing strategy: A select study of Indian process companies

This paper presents findings of an extensive survey of Indian process companies. Based on the survey, three companies have been selected for detailed case studies. Their experiences in the manufacturing strategy process are analysed. Although the companies represented diversity in terms of product type, sales volume, longevity and geographic location, they shared several commonalities including use of advanced manufacturing technologies. The process of strategy formulation varied among the companies in terms of participants, complexity and degree of formalization. Competitive priorities, order winners and critical success factors are identified for these companies. Based on strategic manufacturing issues, manufacturing competence index for the companies has been worked out.     

Total quality control: Lessons European executives can learn from Japanese companies

This paper reports the finding of a Mission to Japan by 18 executives to study the total quality control activities of 8 companies from diverse industries. A number of the companies can be classified as world class. In the companies studied the dedication, vision and planning for total quality control, development of policy and setting of improvement objectives at each level in the organisation structure, and attention to detail in the production preparation stage is without equal in the majority of Western organisations. It is also pointed out that the housekeeping of Japanese companies is first class and all the companies studied said their greatest assets are employees.     

An exploratory study of manufacturing strategy practices of machinery manufacturing companies in India

This paper presents findings of a survey on manufacturing strategy practices adopted by the Indian machinery manufacturing companies (IMMC). Based on the survey, three companies have been selected for detailed case studies. Their experiences in the manufacturing strategy process are analyzed. Although the companies represented diversity in terms of product type, sales volume, and geographic location, they share several commonalties including use of advanced manufacturing technologies and use of several improvement techniques. The process of strategy formulation varied among the companies in terms of participants, complexity and degree of formalization. Competitive priorities, order winners and critical success factors are also identified for these companies. Based on strategic manufacturing issues, manufacturing competence index and business performance index for the companies has been worked out.     

Production planning and control for remanufacturing: exploring characteristics and difficulties with case studies

Production planning and control for remanufacturing is a major managerial challenge in the operations management. Researches demonstrate the need for decision-making methods in this context, which has generated theoretical and quantitative studies. However, this area still lacks empirical studies dealing with the practical, day-to-day difficulties of remanufacturers. The purpose of this paper is to link the literature and practice in a systematic in such a way that it is possible to show the similarities and differences between theoretically listed needs and real cases, thereby extending the results of previous research. For this purpose, four case studies are considered. The cases involve original equipment manufacturers (OEM) of automotive parts that have remanufacturing operations. The results indicate that these companies have difficulties that have not been addressed to date in the literature related to the uncertainties inherent in remanufacturing. In addition, we find that these companies use simplified decision-making approaches.     

Defining the scope of service operations management: an investigation on the factors that affect the span of responsibility of the operations department in service companies

This article deals with the definition of the scope of operations management (OM) in service companies. Operations, in service companies, are often dispersed throughout the organisation and so it is difficult to understand where OM tools and practices can be applied and who should be in charge of their implementation. Starting from the assumption that the actual scope of service operations is influenced by the degree of variety of the offering and of variability of the delivery process, this article analyses three case studies in an attempt to understand whether and why operations, in these companies, include different activities. This article argues that three factors affect the perceived scope of OM, namely: the dominant culture; the existence of industry-specific regulations and the endowment of facilities.     

Production planning in practice

The changes and pressures facing the manufacturing and engineering industries today are increasing the importance of effective aggregate manpower and production planning. Several different theoretical optimisation models to tackle this problem have been described in detail in the literature but there have been few applications of them in practice.The reasons for this are many but include: the difficulty in expressing managements' conflicting and mixed objectives in an objective function; the necessity to oversimplify real life systems to enable these methods to be used; the simplistic approach to manpower planning used in these models; the difficulty in gaining managements' acceptance and finally the fact that what management actually wants is a tool to assist them in planning and decision making.What is being used by many managements is a case-study deterministic simulation model. Many companies are adopting this type of model for all types of planning and twelve out of twenty-seven companies visited in a research project described in this paper were using this type of model for aggregate manpower and production planning. It is proving to be an effective management tool and is being readily accepted principally because modern specialised financial modelling languages are enabling these models to be built, understood and used by non-specialist managers.     

Exploiting Technological Indicators for Effective Technology Merger and Acquisition (M&A) Predictions

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) play increasingly important roles for contemporary business, especially in high‐tech industries that conduct M&As to pursue complementarity from other companies and thereby preserve or extend their competitive advantages. The appropriate selection (prediction) of M&A targets for a given bidder company constitutes a critical first step for an effective technology M&A activity. Yet existing studies only employ financial and managerial indicators when constructing M&A prediction models, and select candidate target companies without considering the profile of the bidder company or its technological compatibility with candidate target companies. Such limitations greatly restrict the applicability of existing studies to supporting technology M&A predictions. To address these limitations, we propose a technology M&A prediction technique that encompasses technological indicators as independent variables and accounts for the technological profiles of both bidder and candidate target companies. Forty‐three technological indicators are derived from patent documents and an ensemble learning method is developed for our proposed technology M&A prediction technique. Our evaluation results, on the basis of the M&A cases between January 1997 and May 2008 that involve companies in Japan and Taiwan, confirm the viability and applicability of the proposed technology M&A prediction technique. In addition, our evaluation also suggests that the incorporation of the technological profiles and compatibility of both bidder and candidate target companies as predictors significantly improves the effectiveness of relevant predictions.     

盈余管理对资本结构的影响--中国上市公司的实证分析

MM定理开创了研究现代企业融资行为和资本结构管理的先河,国外诸多学者研究表明,资产结构、公司规模、非债务税盾、成长能力、公司业绩、财务困境成本等因素影响资本结构的选择,但是上述研究都没有考虑上市公司盈余管理的影响,本文的创新之处在于研究上述影响因素的同时引入盈余管理作为资本结构的解释变量,选取中国上市公司作为样本进行实证分析,得出了中国上市公司盈余管理与资本结构负相关,资产结构与资本结构正相关,公司规模指数与资本结构正相关,非债务税盾与资本结构负相关,公司成长指数与资本结构正相关等结论.     

The new environment of European corporations: Strategic and corporate Europlanners society SCEPS

The aim of the ESCSP working group studies during 1976 was to help to analyse the environment in which companies have to make decisions.No attempt was made to undertake original studies, but rather, on the basis of documents gathered and discussion within the working groups, to discover the key elements of the trends in the changing environment.As a follow up the main objective of the 1977 programme will be to integrate the results of these studies into the strategic plan of the company and to focus on certain points which merit special attention.     

Where marketing planning fails

This article discusses the results of a recent study of marketing planning in U.K. manufacturing companies. A sample survey revealed some strengths in marketing planning, but also revealed many weaknesses. For example, only a small proportion of companies prepare a comprehensive marketing plan. These identified weaknesses suggest that, in many situations, marketing planning has failed and the author suggests where it has failed. After discussing the results in detail, the author summarizes the identified strengths and weaknesses and suggests several implications for managers who are responsible for marketing planning.     

我国上市公司盈余管理行为的实证分析

我国证券市场存在较为严重的盈余管理现象.针对该现象,本文从盈余管理动机出发,分析我国上市公司盈余管理的行为特征.本文采用管理后盈余分布法,研究了我国上市公司2001年至2003年净资产收益率(ROE)的分布特征,发现我国上市公司仍然存在很强的盈余管理动机,而且我国上市公司盈余管理的行为受到政府监管的影响.最后,本文在实证研究的基础上提出了治理盈余管理的几点建议.     

Sustaining the Financial Value of Global CSR: Reconciling Corporate and Stakeholder Interests in a Less Regulated Environment

In this article we examine the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm value. This line of research is important since firms continue to invest in CSR even though past studies reveal a limited linkage between financial value and CSR. However, the business case for CSR or “doing good while making a profit,” appears to be advancing within the business ethics literature as a preferred conception of CSR. We conjecture that the greater unification and refinement of both profit maximization and stakeholder interests through corporate acts, not statements alone, will sustain the financial value of CSR in a less regulated global business environment. We study the triangle of what companies say, what companies do, and firm financial performance. We analyze Fortune 250 firms and find a positive association between what companies do based on KLD Research and Analytics, Inc. (KLD) ratings, and what companies state about ethics in their CSR statements. We then employ regression analysis and find that companies’ socially responsible acts are positively associated with overall firm value and financial performance. Yet we do not find a statistically significant association between what companies say regarding ethics in their CSR statements and their financial outcomes. These results suggest that firm value and financial performance is associated with what companies do and not what they say. Our results seem to be driven by multinational corporations (MNCs) and not by non‐MNCs. This is possibly because MNCs generally operate in a less regulated global business environment that often necessitates strong ethical corporate leadership to further stakeholder interests. Overall, these results help reconcile corporate and stakeholder objectives since evidence of a link between financial performance and doing good sustains global CSR.     

Fehlzeitengespräche — Instrument betrieblicher Gesundheitsförderung?

Talking about absenteeism from the job as an instrument of health promotion in companies? The author outlines the problems of the systematic use of talks about absenteeism from the job, that is talking with employees, when they return to the job, after their having been sick. Do these instruments promote occupational health? The author presents the results of an empirical qualitative evaluation of a health promotion project implemented in a service company. The main topics of the study ask whether employees accept the mentioned instrument and which expectations and fears they anticipate being confronted with its systematic use. The result of the study are discussed in detail and will be complemented by recommendations for the future development of the ongoing health promotion project.     

跨国公司逆向知识转移研究述评

知识在跨国公司内的转移是其建立竞争优势的关键,因而跨国公司知识转移一直是学者们研究的主题。经过了传统正向知识转移、水平知识转移2个热点后,近几年逆向知识转移开始成为学者的关注焦点。从多个视角系统地梳理了逆向知识转移研究的相关成果,指出了相关研究的发展脉络并探讨了未来的研究方向,以期为后续研究提供参考。     

The value of audit quality in public and private companies: evidence from Spain

This paper compares the value of audit quality, proxied by the selection of a big N auditor, to the external claimholders of private and public companies. Although the combination of a lower ownership concentration of public companies, the greater demand for financial information quality about these companies and their higher litigation risk can result in the expectation that audit quality should be more valuable for public than for private companies, the greater information asymmetry between the managers and the external stakeholders and the unavailability of alternative mechanisms for monitoring the managers can make external audit more valuable for the external claimholders of private companies. In this paper, we test these two competing views by analysing if banks and lenders take into account auditor selection in the formation of the cost of debt. Our results support the second view: we find that only private companies obtain a lower cost of debt when they are audited by a high-quality auditor. These results are robust to both endogeneity and unobserved firm-specific heterogeneity.     

Why ownership matters

The main argument of this article is that corporate planners have tended to concentrate on subjects such as control of business strategies, financial management and global economic assessment; they have paid too little attention to the ownership of corporate entities. Apart from the overwhelming economic and social arguments in favour of dispersed ownership, there is increasing evidence that companies which adopt a positive planning approach to the ownership of their business will derive wider benefits. Much more statistical and attitudinal evaluation is required; individual companies need to support the macro-work of academic research with detailed micro-studies at the company level. If these studies continue to support the basic argument, there are positive steps which each company will be able to take to support the cause of wider ownership.     

公司治理的监督机制与激励机制间的替代效应——基于中国上市公司EVA绩效的实证研究

利用沪深两市1 250家上市公司2004~2007年的数据,研究了公司治理的监督机制、激励机制与公司价值的关系,特别注重研究这两大机制存在替代作用及对经济增加值(EVA)的影响。研究结果表明,公司治理机制存在替代作用,可以通过两大治理机制的组合提高公司价值。     

Inter‐Firm R&D Networks: the Importance of Strategic Network Capabilities for High‐Tech Partnership Formation1

We examine the role of different network capabilities of companies that influence the formation of R&D partnerships in pharmaceutical biotechnology. Strategic network capabilities, specifically centrality‐based capabilities and the efficiency with which companies choose their partners, are found to facilitate the formation of new partnerships. Unlike general experience with partnering, these strategic network capabilities play a crucial role in enabling companies to continue to interact with other companies through partnerships in a complex network setting.