Preferential employment policies and firm performance: Evidence from Indian public sector enterprises

This article examines the impact of job reservations on the performance of public sector enterprises (PSEs) in India. Drawing on data for all central government-owned manufacturing PSEs from 2014 to 2017 and employing instrumental variable techniques, the authors test the hypothesis that reservations benefit firm performance if implemented across all levels of the employment hierarchy. While the findings validate this hypothesis, they also indicate that the reserved categories are disproportionately represented in the lower end of the organizational hierarchy. This imbalance is primarily driven by systematic limitations in vacancy notifications and discriminatory practices within organizations.     

Social security and firm performance: The case of Vietnamese SMEs

This article investigates how social security provision – a key determinant of formality – impacts on small and medium‐sized firm performance in Viet Nam. Based on enterprise census data covering all registered firms from 2006 to 2011, the authors find that firms which increase their social security coverage by 10 per cent experience a revenue gain of 1.4–2.0 per cent per worker and a profit gain of up to 1.8 per cent, depending on the survival time of the firm. However, given the time lag between “investment” (in social security contributions) and returns (enhanced firm performance), specific policy measures such as initial social insurance subsidies for small firms could increase participation in mandatory schemes.     

The Brazilian organic food sector: Prospects and constraints of facilitating the inclusion of smallholders

The Brazilian organic food sector has experienced important growth during the last two decades. Brazilian smallholders, however, are facing huge challenges to enter and benefit from this growth in a sustainable way. Combining the lens of New Institutional Economics and socio-anthropology, we analyze six experiences of Brazilian smallholders who converted to organics in the 1990s’. Three different food systems are featured in this analysis: an alternative food system, which is strongly interwoven with the Brazilian Agro-ecological movement and two commercial food procurement systems oriented towards domestic and an export markets driven mainly by supermarket chains. The analytical focus was on 1) the governance of these food systems, 2) the constraints farmers are facing within these food systems and, 3) the benefits that they can expect from market inclusion. We highlighted the roles that NGOs, Faith-based organizations and public-related agencies play in supporting the inclusion of smallholders into all three food systems. We confirmed the arguments in support of pursuing the agro-ecological development based model in Brazil, but underlined that there is a critical lack of support for farmers included in the commercial market-oriented food systems. Such a lack is even more critical as the food systems driven by expanding supermarket chains are characterized by strong asymmetric power relations at the expense of smallholders. Considering the reluctance of NGOs and Faith-based organizations to support these farmers, we call for efforts to be made to provide a policy framework to enable public-related entities to secure sustainable inclusion into these systems and exit strategies for those experiencing exclusion from these highly competitive food systems.     

Strategy and structure in the human firm: Beyond hierarchy,toward flexibility and integration

In response to global competition and a rapidly changing business environment, corporate strategies and structures are becoming more flexible and integrated. This article develops a model of the flexible, integrated firm, a model that focuses on corporate strategy and organizational structure. The flexible-integrated (FI) firm's mode of operation represents tendencies present in high performance, global companies, particularly as these companies have been understood by leading managerial thinkers. The FI-Firm's operations are contrasted with the hierarchical (H) firm. The H-Firm incorporates strategy and structure in a very different way, which reflects the dominant operating mode of the large Western corporation during much of the second half of the twentieth century. Given the nature of today's competition, there are many reasons for believing that the FI-Firm is not only more flexible but also more efficient than the H-Firm.     

The Sociology of Innovation: Organizational,Environmental, and Relative Perspectives

Innovation is risky. New products and firms are subject to high failure rates. To minimize the risk associated with innovation, most scholars agree that firms should engage simultaneously in two types of activities: exploring new alternatives and exploiting existing competencies. Firms that simultaneously engage in explorative and exploitative activities are called ambidextrous organizations. Research on ambidextrous organizations, however, inadequately considers the importance of the environment in which organizations operate for innovation success. The sociological view of innovation fills this gap by emphasizing the importance of social context for explaining innovative outcomes. The sociology of innovation highlights, first, the structural arrangements – characteristics of social networks, organizations, and institutions – that influence innovation and, second, the relative nature of innovation – whether an object is considered novel depends on one's vantage point. Drawing on the relative view of innovation, I develop a typology that outlines several paths to innovation with respect to two vantage points: the organization and the environment. I argue that minimizing the risks associated with innovation is most likely to occur when firms follow the path of innovation that consists of generating novel solutions that simultaneously exploit knowledge and resources that are both available to the firm and in the firm's environment.     

Organizational Types and Organizational Innovation: Downsizing Among Industrial,Financial, and Utility Firms

Sociological Forum - Given the importance of innovation to organizations and to society-at-large, scholars have asked: Why do organizations innovate? Institutionalists argue that the causes of...     

Bats in urban areas of Brazil: roosts,food resources and parasites in disturbed environments

Urbanization is a widespread intense land use that generally results in biodiversity decline. Among the taxa capable to adapt to urban landscapes, bats are particularly ubiquitous. Brazil has one of the world’s largest diversity of bat species and one of the highest urbanization rates of the world. Yet, few studies have synthesized the biology of bats in urban environments, especially in Brazil. To fill this gap, we systematically reviewed the published scientific literature on the bat fauna found in urban areas of Brazil. The knowledge of urban bats is still incipient and heterogeneously spatially distributed, mostly concentrated in the southeastern region of the country. The assembled list of 84 urban species, of which nineteen are new species records for urban areas (including one new family), represents 47% of the bat richness registered in the country. Thirty-one bat species (37%) were captured exclusively inside forest fragments. Moreover, we provide information on the resources used within the urban matrix by summarizing the roosting sites for 38 bat species, as well as 31 plants consumed by at least twelve bat species. Regarding parasitological aspects, we listed eleven zoonotic parasites hosted by 27 bat species and discussed their potential to become a public health threat. Likewise, we considered the different features linked to urbanization, including impacts on immunity, body condition and susceptibility to acquiring parasites, as possible bat conservation issues. Finally, we defined an agenda for bat studies in urban areas of Brazil.     

A note on pensions and firm performance: First evidence from german micro data

Using a large new data set we present results from the first econometric study of the effects of pensions on firm performance in Germany. We find evidence for positive effects on wages, reduction of labor turnover, training, and profits. We use data from the Hannover Firm Panel Study which was financially supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.     

The EAP Movement and Organizational Development:

No abstract available for this article.     

Beyond transaction markets,toward relationship marketing in the human firm: A socio-economic model

Relationship marketing involving a long-term, symbiotic, learning partnership between buyer and seller is an important new development that is dramatically different from transaction oriented marketing in which the aim of the seller is simply to close a specific sale. The socio-economic model developed in this paper explains the firm's choice of marketing orientation, i.e., where the firm will locate on the spectrum from transaction orientation to relationship marketing orientation. This choice is determined by 1) the economic incentives from markets it participates in, 2) the customer's orientation, 3) the internal organizational capabilities of the seller, 4) the “macro” societal influence, 5) the “micro” social influences of extra firm institutions and infrastructures, 6) special product related factors, and 7) the technological opportunities available to the seller. There is good reason to believe that businesses fail to invest sufficiently in their buyer-seller relationships. Therefore, society would gain if governments were to foster the development of relationship marketing.     

New venture creation in the farm sector - Critical resources and capabilities

New venture activities and diversification at farms seem to be perceived as inherently beneficial both to farmers and to rural development. However, the benefit of such efforts and the critical resources and capabilities leading to them seem not to be well understood yet. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore critical resources and capabilities for farm businesses engaged in entrepreneurial activities through on-farm diversification. The theoretical framework builds upon the resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic capability (DC) perspective which have emerged as significant research streams within entrepreneurship and strategic management literature. A longitudinal study of three Norwegian farms engaged in on-farm diversification was undertaken through farm visits and in-depth interviews. Analyses show that the farm setting, its traditional production, its relative location, buildings and landscape might all be important resources which add value and uniqueness to the final product that is not easily copied by others. However, in order to reconfigure their resource base and perform necessary changes these farm businesses also rely heavily on developing appropriate dynamic capabilities. The farm businesses appear active in learning and integration of external resources and knowledge, but seem to struggle on building appropriate networks and strategic alliances. Implications for policy makers and practitioners are discussed.     

Psychological Contracts and Organizational Identification: The Mediating Effect of Perceived Organizational Support

Understanding the processes through which employees incorporate the organization’s identity into their own identity is critical to building positive employer-employee relationships. We draw primarily on organizational support theory to advance the argument that psychological contract breach is negatively related to organizational identification and positively related to organizational disidentification because it makes employees believe that their organizations do not value their contributions or care about their well-being (reduces perceived organizational support). Results from two studies generally provide support for our hypotheses: in Study 1, perceived organizational support fully mediated the relationship between psychological contract breach and organizational identification. In Study 2, Time 2 perceived organizational support fully mediated the relationship between Time 1 relational psychological contract breach (e.g., promises related to training, development, job security) and organizational identification, but not the relationship between transactional psychological contract breach (e.g., promises related to pay and work hours) and organizational identification. Time 2 perceived organizational support partially mediated the relationship between relational psychological contract breach and organizational disidentification, but not the relationship between transactional psychological contract breach and organizational disidentification. We conclude that organizations should be concerned with this erosion of the positive employer-employee relationship (organizational identification) and fostering of a negative employer-employee relationship (disidentification).     

Understanding firm performance: The case of developing countries's firms that compete internationally in technologically advanced industries

Insights from industrial organization, Schumpeterian innovation, and economic development theories are used to try to explain firm behavior in cases of successful acquisition of advanced technological assets and international trade competitiveness by Asian and Latin-american countries at an intermediate level of industrial and technological development. The role of the state as innovator as well as the importance of alternative forms of organization emerge as the most salient findings.     

The future of public sector labor-management relations: Part II — The federal sector

Journal of Labor Research -