Supply chain agility as an acclimatisation process to environmental uncertainty and organisational vulnerabilities: insights from British SMEs

Abstract

Even though supply chain agility (SCA) has been considered an essential concept in supply chain management (SCM) research, the way it is experienced and manifested, especially by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has received much less attention. Our purpose is to focus on SME organisational vulnerabilities in the context of increased environmental uncertainty, and explore how SCA is developed and applied by SMEs amid their vulnerabilities. By relying on insights from comparative case studies of three British SMEs, we examine SME SCA as an acclimatisation process and delve into SMEs’ experiences of facing environmental uncertainty while developing and applying SCA. Our findings highlight that organisational attitudes underlie how SMEs perceive environmental uncertainty, tackle organisational vulnerabilities and develop SCA as an acclimatisation process. Our findings also reveal that resource constraints, supply chain relationships, interorganisational power dynamics, and access to information play important roles in developing SCA.     

关注利益相关者与实现民营外贸企业成功转型的关系研究

入世后,我国民营外贸企业得到了迅猛的发展,目前已基本完成了"量"的积累,进入了全面转型和提升"质"的阶段。民营外贸企业要突破当前的发展困境,必须关注企业的内外部利益相关者,只有得到他们的充分理解与大力支持,才能成功实现企业的转型。     

Did small and medium enterprises maintain better jobs during the early years of the recession? Job quality multidimensional evidence from Spain

While the literature has indeed confirmed a general tendency linking small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to a dynamic of greater job creation, there is little available evidence on what has happened to job quality since the financial crisis. Through a representative sample of 5311 employees in 2008 (first year of job destruction) and 4925 employees in 2010 (last year for which data were available), and using a two-stage structural equation model, this article empirically analyses the multidimensional determinants of job quality, by enterprise-size class, in Spain. The research has revealed three main results. First, job quality in Spain improved in all enterprises, regardless of their size, during the early years of the recession. Second, the greatest improvements were found in SMEs. Although job quality was already better in SMEs than in large enterprises in 2008, the differences between them subsequently widened. Third, this accelerated divergence was explained by the following dimensions: working conditions, work intensity, health and safety at work, and work–life balance. These dimensions were much more positive in SMEs. Employment-related public policy should therefore focus more specifically on SMEs. There are two reasons for this. First, despite the recession, SMEs have shown themselves to be key factors in the explanation of job quality. Second, by making changes to their value generation model, they could continue to drive the creation of better quality jobs.     

Optimal cut-off for rare events and unbalanced misclassification costs

This paper develops a method for handling two-class classification problems with highly unbalanced class sizes and misclassification costs. When the class sizes are highly unbalanced and the minority class represents a rare event, conventional classification methods tend to strongly favour the majority class, resulting in very low detection of the minority class. A method is proposed to determine the optimal cut-off for asymmetric misclassification costs and for unbalanced class sizes. Monte Carlo simulations show that this proposal performs better than the method based on the notion of classification accuracy. Finally, the proposed method is applied to empirical data on Italian small and medium enterprises to classify them into default and non-default groups.     

农业产业化龙头企业可持续发展战略研究——基于郑州市农业龙头企业发展的分析

农业产业化龙头企业发展到现在,迫切需要建立起自己的发展战略体系,以指导企业未来的经营与发展,使企业更好地适应越来越严峻的竞争形势。通过对郑州市农业龙头企业可持续发展问题的分析,提出我国农业产业化龙头企业可持续发展的战略。     

苏北民营企业发展竞争力研究

企业的竞争力是企业生存与发展的基础，面对国内外日益激烈的市场竞争，要想在竞争中立于不败之地，民营企业就必须注重提升企业竞争力。在比较苏南、苏北民营企业竞争力的基础上，从产权结构与治理结构、创新能力、人才资源、市场结构、运营成本等方面分析了苏北民营企业竞争力的制约因素，提出了提升苏北民营企业竞争力的对策。     

中国企业海外并购行为研究

基于企业并购的一般理论和中国企业海外并购的特点,提出了中国企业积极从事海外并购的 四个主要动因,并通过对中国企业海外并购行为进行SWOT分析,指出了并购中存在的问题及 成功进行并购的战略措施。     

近代荣家企业融资方式初探

我国民营企业的发展在当前面临着许多难题,其中融资便是最难的问题之一。众所周知,近代民营企业发展缓慢的重要原因之一也是资本短缺,因此,对荣家企业融资方式作初步的探讨,一定会对我们今天的民营企业的融资问题有所借鉴和启示。     

心理契约与科技型小企业员工的激励分析

心理契约实质上是行为主体的自我激励机制。科技型小企业员工的激励要从建立和维护心理契约入手,建立基于能力和绩效的薪酬制度,对核心员工实施分享计划和奖金期权制,塑造以人为本的企业文化,提升员工的参与感和成就感,建立符合员工价值观且具有挑战性的企业愿景。     

To what extent is social security spending associated with enhanced firm-level performance? A case study of SMEs in Indonesia

Although the relationship between social protection and enterprise performance is much debated in the literature, evidence is particularly limited in the case of small and medium-sized enterprises in developing economies. Using census data from 2010 to 2014, this article examines how the provision of social security influenced business performance in Indonesia. The author finds that increased social security spending of 10 per cent is associated with a per-worker revenue gain of up to 2 per cent. Moreover, profits are not found to decrease with increased social protection coverage, suggesting that increasing worker benefits may be a worthwhile business investment.