The questions we ask: Opportunities and challenges for using big data analytics to strategically manage human capital resources

Big data analytics have transformed research in many fields, including the business areas of marketing, accounting and finance, and supply chain management. Yet, the discussion surrounding big data analytics in human resource management has primarily focused on job candidate screenings. In this article, we consider how significant strategic human capital questions can be addressed with big data analytics, enabling HR to enhance overall firm performance. We also examine how new data sources that help assess workforce performance in real time can assist in the identification and development of the knowledge stars that contribute to firm performance disproportionately as well as help reinforce firm capabilities. But in order for big data analytics to be successful in the HR field, regulatory and ethical challenges must also be addressed; these include privacy concerns and, in Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We conclude by discussing how big data analytics can facilitate strategic change within HR and the organization as a whole.     

Introducing Western-style HRM practices to China: Shopfloor perceptions in a British multinational

The management of host country employees is often portrayed as a particularly fraught dimension for multinational firms. The problems involved are considered exponentially greater when there are substantial institutional differences and “cultural distance” between the host country and a multinational firm's parent country, as is assumed to be the case for Western firms operating in mainland China. Based upon detailed case study research conducted at a UK-invested firm in China between 1999 and 2003 and a comparative study of a Chinese state-owned firm, this paper explores the veracity of such assumptions. The findings indicate that Western human resource management (HRM) practices can be transplanted successfully and questions the degree to which foreign-invested enterprises (FIE) need to adopt “the Chinese way of doing things”. Indeed, such practices can be innovative in the Chinese context and provide a competitive source of differentiation for multinationals as employees.     

Is it ‘you’ or ‘your workplace’? Predictors of job‐related training in the Anglo‐American world

This paper examines the determinants of job‐related training and workplace voice. Using data from a unique 2016 cross‐national survey of Australian, British, Canadian and American employees, the paper contrasts two classic formulations in the literature; (1) the neoclassical/human capital approach which predicts that individual characteristics (such as age and education) which increase the efficiency of learning, will have the largest impact on the allocation of training (i.e. younger and more educated employees will be afforded training) and (2) the traditional institutional approach which favors the structural characteristics present at the industry and firm level, the nature of the job itself and the strategic choices of firms as the major predictors of job‐related training. We find that age – a key factor in the human capital model – plays a significant role in the allocation of training but that education (in keeping with recent evidence) does not. In sum the human capital model provides, at best, only a partial explanation for the differences in training observed across individuals. In contrast, variables invoked by the institutional literature (i.e. occupation level; industry; ownership type; and market structure) are highly significant and account for a much greater proportion of the variance in training observed across workers. Other institutional factors such as the presence of a union and a human resource department were strong positive predictors of job‐related training. But most important were product‐market strategy and employee voice. Respondents working in firms utilizing a ‘high road/high quality’ product/service strategy and with a workplace consultative committee were significantly more likely to receive training than similar workers employed in observably similar firms. This last finding supports the industrial relations view of voice as an important channel by which training is optimally delivered inside the firm.     

Corporate Social Responsibility That “Pays”: A Strategic Approach to CSR for SMEs

This study adopts a strategic approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR), puts forward a model of CSR activities that enhance small and medium enterprises (SMEs) growth, and argues that by aligning CSR activities with the competitive strategy of the firm, SMEs enhance firm growth. We test this model using multinomial logistic analysis and data from a survey with 211 U.K.‐based SMEs. We find that CSR activities related to the community enhance firm growth for all SMEs, but especially for firms adopting a cost leadership strategy, and that CSR activities related to the workforce are crucial to avoid sales decline, especially for SMEs adopting a differentiation or a quality‐driven strategy. We also find that environment‐related CSR activities are not beneficial for SMEs' growth and that human rights–related CSR activities slow growth for firms adopting a differentiation or a quality‐driven strategy. Finally, we put forward managerial and policy recommendations.     

How Do Franchise Ownership Structure and Strategic Investment Emphasis Influence Stock Returns and Risks?

Franchisors seek to maximize firm value by managing investments both in tangible and intangible assets and in the mix of company and franchised outlets, yet little is known about how investors respond to shifts in these strategic decisions. Our goal is to assess the impact of these decisions on shareholder value within franchise systems through panel-data models. Specifically, we provide evidence on how investors in publicly traded franchises evaluate both the ownership structure and the strategic investment emphasis between intangible assets (e.g., brand) and tangible assets (e.g., plant and property). We find that an increase in the proportion of franchised units is negatively associated both with stock returns and idiosyncratic risk. In contrast, an increase in the emphasis on strategic investments in intangible assets is positively associated both with stock returns and idiosyncratic risk. Moreover, strategic investment emphasis moderates the strength of the effect of franchise ownership structure when firms franchise internationally. Overall, this research provides a novel empirical examination of franchising economics and has managerial implications for franchised channel structure.     

Applying asset-based community development as a strategy for CSR: a Canadian perspective on a win–win for stakeholders and SMEs

In the December 2006 edition of Harvard Business Review , Michael Porter and Mark Kramer argue that by approaching corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on corporate priorities, strengths and abilities, firms can develop socially and fiscally responsible solutions to current CSR issues, which will provide operational and competitive advantages. We agree that an effective approach to CSR includes a mapping of strategy, risk and opportunity. However, we also caution that the identification of these to the exclusion of societal input may not be to the corporation's advantage. Instead, an investment in both strategic analysis and social capital can pay off from a social and an organizational standpoint. Compared with their larger counterparts, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) frequently have stronger relationships with their internal and external stakeholders that foster the development of social capital. As such, we believe that the sector offers a unique opportunity to identify additional models and frameworks in order to approach a strategic CSR model as espoused by Porter and Kramer. This paper explores a case study of one Canadian SME that uses a community development framework called Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) for its CSR programming. Because ABCD relies heavily on the development and maintenance of social capital and can be utilized to attain set objectives, we propose that it provides a supplementary framework through which the arguments of Porter and Kramer can be expanded. In applying the ABCD framework for CSR, we can begin to establish a programme that supports strategy, integrates employees and stakeholders towards a common vision, and creates unique and sustainable alternatives towards the resolution of social and corporate goals.     

Strategy in motion: Using motion pictures to illustrate strategic management concepts

A company is more likely to enjoy excellent organizational performance if its employees understand the importance of strategic management and are actively engaged in helping the company pursue its strategies. Many employees view strategy as disconnected from their jobs, however, and getting them to embrace strategy can be challenging. Using a series of vivid examples, we describe how motion pictures can bring strategic management concepts to life for employees. By making strategic management concepts more relevant and less abstract, movies can lead employees to enjoy thinking about and discussing strategy.     

Rogues and Deviants: a game-theoretic perspective on opportunism in strategic alliances

ABSTRACT

This research examines how relational factors, such as monitoring, relative alliance identity (RAI), and trust, influence opportunism and, consequently, alliance performance. The authors suggest that the strategic alliances literature would benefit from recognising that opportunism does not always originate from the firm (rogue opportunism), but can also originate from individual employees (deviant opportunism). Hypotheses are tested in a multi-method approach within a business simulation and a cross-sectional sample of alliance executives. The results demonstrate a U-shaped relationship between trust and opportunism; however, monitoring moderates the relationship such that at high levels of trust, opportunism is practically non-existent. Further, results indicate that employees’ identification with the alliance impedes opportunism. Additionally, both types of opportunistic behaviours negatively impact the performance of partner firms and alliances.     

Training strategic thinking: Experimental evidence

Strategic behavior is crucial for strong firm performance, especially in competitive environments. Thus, designing a good strategy is a key issue for firms. Designing a strategy requires a combination of strategic thinking—which involves analyzing a firm's strategic environment, defining a vision of its future, and devising new ideas to out-think competitors – and strategic planning – which implies using these ideas to formulate a business plan. Although many firms excel at strategic planning, few devote enough resources to strategic thinking, which results in strategic insanity (i.e., firms repeatedly applying the same strategies with the expectation of different outcomes). To foster a strategic environment within a firm, firm managers and other workers must show willingness for active involvement in a firm's strategic decisions. Nevertheless, not everybody has the skills to do so, as many firms lack work force training programs. This study shows, experimentally, how training affects firms' strategic behavior. The starting point is two groups of individuals with initially equal qualifications who play in a sequential game whose rules hinder the calculation of equilibria. The members of only one of the groups previously receive a treatment entailing a process of training and learning that aims at fostering strategic thinking. The results point to a significant increase in the number of strategic decisions in the treatment group in sharp contrast to the control group, confirming the initial hypothesis (i.e., the positive impact of training).     

Strategic fit: Key to growing enterprise value through organizational capital

Organizational capital is an intangible asset that is a continuous creator of value through generating above-normal revenue growth, innovation, operational excellence, and stakeholder relationships. The elusive nature of organizational capital stems from competing perspectives on how it can be defined and managed. This article presents a comprehensive model for understanding the critical process, components, and necessary linkages that result in increased enterprise value through the creation of organizational capital. Attention is given to the factors that influence organizational capital (fit among leadership, strategy, and organization design), its influence on human capital, and, ultimately, the impact on operational excellence, stakeholder capital, and the essential levels of innovation that drive capital efficient growth. Guidance is provided for the CEO, CFO, and CHRO wishing to harness the power of organizational capital and increase both current and future value of the firm.     

Roadmapping: (Missed) opportunities to overcome strategic challenges

Firms face various critical challenges when pursuing a coherent course of action that seeks to create value for the long term. They are required to balance myopic and hyperopic behavior. They must ensure coordination, adopt a holistic view of various functional perspectives, and foster commitment among key decision makers. They need to develop a credible and compelling line of reasoning that employees understand and can act on. Adopting the perspective of roadmapping as a strategy tool, this article advances the argument that roadmapping is especially suitable in helping firms to surmount these three critical strategic challenges. This article distills three core features of the roadmap: graphical representation, multi-disciplinary integration, and scaling. It then reviews the three critical strategic challenges and shows how roadmapping can help to overcome each of these. Following this explanation, the article describes ten key principles for effective strategic roadmapping that support firms in obtaining the strategic benefits promised. The article concludes with additional insights for practice with the intent of encouraging further exploitation of roadmapping’s potential.     

Founder centrality effects on the Mexican family firm’s top management group: firm culture,strategic vision and goals,and firm performance

Using social networks, we examined the founder’s influence on key strategic behaviors in Mexican family business. First, we drew on a sample of 42 Mexican family businesses and 201 managers to show how founder centrality affects the top management group (TMG) members’ cohesiveness. TMG members’ cohesiveness was examined in terms of the firm’s culture, its strategic vision, and strategic goals. Second, we examined how founder centrality and top management member group cohesiveness are related to performance in terms of financial, social and family-oriented objectives. Significant relationships were found between a founder’s centrality and the TMGs strategic behavior. Further, significant results connect different aspects of the founder’s centrality and the TMGs strategic behavior to financial, social and family-oriented objectives.     

Managing multiple forms of strategic training fit through the Balanced Scorecard

Although the literature recognizes training as an essential driver of organizational effectiveness, little is still known about how to explicitly focus and align training to organizational strategic priorities. This note proposes a model that bridges the strategic human resource management (SHRM) literature and the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) literature – which is one of the most widely recognized strategic performance evaluation approaches intended to foster organizational alignment by translating the firm's strategy into a multidimensional set of financial and non‐financial measures. After having briefly discussed the main differences between the return on investment (ROI) model, which represents one of the major attempt to make training strategic within the existing evaluation research, and the BSC model applied to training management, this note highlights multiple forms of strategic training fit and suggests how to manage training through various scenarios of BSC development. Specifically, the note illustrates four forms of strategic fit – the vertical fit, the horizontal inter‐functional fit, the horizontal intra‐functional fit and the human capital readiness – and discusses their pursuit in terms of six scenarios of training management through the BSC. The note expands some exploratory empirical evidence on the feasibility and usefulness of training scorecards (i.e. the application of the BSC to training) in order to develop some theoretical insights and practical guidance on how they can be leveraged to foster the strategic alignment of training.     

Human and financial capital as determinants of biopharmaceutical IPO de-listings

The present study combines human capital theory with work on IPOs related to sources of financial capital of recent, publicly traded biopharmaceutical firms and relates this to the de-listing of these firms. The study follows the generally accepted view that more or better quality human capital is a positive factor in individual and firm performance to develop the hypotheses, positing a negative relationship between these factors and IPO de-listing. The results show that to a limited extent firms having CEOs with more or better human capital and strategic alliance partners are associated with biopharmaceutical IPOs’ de-listing. The study further finds that de-listing in this industry is due primarily to acquisitions (and not financial distress) and that the findings differ based upon whether examining financial distress or acquisition de-listings. The study draws upon the IPO motivation literature to help explain the results.     

R&D spending,strategic position and firm performance

Based on R&D investment data from Chinese listed manufacturing firms, this paper examines the effect of R&D spending on firms’ future performance conditional on their strategic positions. We find that firms pursing a product differentiation strategy have more R&D spending than those with a cost leadership strategy. In addition, we document a positive effect of R&D spending on firms’ future performance if they adopt a product differentiation strategy. Meanwhile, for the firms that adopt a cost leadership strategy, the relationship between R&D spending and firm performance resembles an inversed U-shape. Furthermore, we find this inversed U-shape relationship only exists for non-state-owned firms. Overall, this paper provides guidance and useful suggestions on the efficient allocation of R&D resources for Chinese manufacturing firms.     

We need to talk about strategy: How to conduct effective strategic dialogue

As researchers and consultants, we have spent the last few years helping a dozen major public and private organizations understand what went wrong with their strategic planning. We discovered that executives have a hard time with strategy because they are at a loss when the time comes to engage in strategic dialogue. Either their teams debate the organization’s values and goals when such issues should be settled, or they waste time on the details of specific projects that have yet to receive the green light. But whether the conversation is too broad or too narrow, strategy stays out of view. Drawing on recent developments in strategy-as-practice and decision-making literature, we propose a model that executives can follow to take control of strategy meetings and keep their teams on track. We ask them to focus on the right decision purpose, adjust the meeting’s communication style, and cast the right leader for the job. When these three simple rules are followed, the pillars of successful dialogue are aligned, and executives can finally talk about what matters most to them: strategy.     

We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem

Consumers are adopting increasingly active roles in co-creating marketing content with companies and their respective brands. In turn, companies and organizations are looking to online social marketing programs and campaigns in an effort to reach consumers where they ‘live’ online. However, the challenge facing many companies is that although they recognize the need to be active in social media, they do not truly understand how to do it effectively, what performance indicators they should be measuring, and how they should measure them. Further, as companies develop social media strategies, platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are too often treated as stand-alone elements rather than part of an integrated system. This article offers a systematic way of understanding and conceptualizing online social media, as an ecosystem of related elements involving both digital and traditional media. We highlight a best-practice case study of an organization's successful efforts to leverage social media in reaching an important audience of young consumers. Then, we conclude with several insights and lessons related to the strategic integration of social media into a firm's marketing communications strategy.     

Strategic entry or strategic exit? International presence by emerging economy enterprises

By proposing an integrated strategic choice framework, we theorize the distinctive dynamics of international expansion by emerging economy enterprises. Specifically, we explicate how these firms build international presence based on combined strategic entry (i.e., prompted by internal capabilities such as innovation and diversification) and strategic exit (i.e., pushed out by external handicaps at home such as institutional obstacles and market competition). Further, a firm’s cooperative ties with foreign multinationals in the former’s home country fortify the strategic entry intent, while ties with home government institutions weaken the strategic exit intent. We also demonstrate that building international presence helps bolster firm performance, highlighting the economic catch-up consequence of international expansion. Analyses of a two-year imbalanced panel data of 2136 firms statistically support our hypotheses.     

Opportunity‐Based Strategic Orientation,Knowledge Acquisition,and Entrepreneurial Alertness: The Perspective of the Global Sourcing Suppliers in China

Taking the perspective of global sourcing suppliers in China, this paper investigates how the supplier firms acquire market and technical knowledge from the outsourcing partnerships differently based on their strategic orientations regarding the exploitation of opportunities versus resources. We find that suppliers whose strategy formulation is driven by the aggressive pursuit of valuable opportunities tend to be able to learn more from the outsourcing partners. Our results also show that market and technical knowledge acquisition of the supplier firms has a positive effect on employees’ alertness to opportunities. In addition, organizational innovativeness plays an important role in determining how effectively knowledge can be utilized by employees to identify novel opportunities.     

The three faces of China: Strategic alliance partner selection in three ethnic Chinese economies

It is generally understood that firm strategy is linked to both internal firm resources and external, competitive industry forces. More recently, studies have suggested that firm strategy is also influenced by the formal and informal institutions of the institutional environment. Culture and commercial conventions represent important informal institutions – the norms and values shared by a group of individuals – whereas more formal institutions include the regulatory, economic, and political forces in the environment. We explore the effects of formal and informal institutions on strategic alliance partner preferences in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Although the three share a broad lineage, their institutional development differs in some respects. Utilizing a policy capturing study, we explore alliance preferences of senior managers from each of the three economies to demonstrate how similarities and differences in the institutional environment can produce variation in alliance partner preferences. This paper contributes empirically by comparing alliance partner preferences in three different ethnic Chinese communities in East Asia. We add to the nascent but growing literature on institutions and strategy, with practical implications for understanding alliance partner preferences of managers in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which represent major centers of strategic alliance activity.