Health nonprofits online: the use of frames and stewardship strategies to increase stakeholder involvement

• This study examines connections between the conceptual frameworks of compassion fatigue (burnout toward social issues) and related stewardship strategies that are used as a form of best practices to address the issue of compassion fatigue. A content analysis of 117 health nonprofit websites (457 web pages) investigates how nonprofit health organization websites are framing their communication to various stakeholders and how the strategies of stewardship are employed online. Findings indicate that although health nonprofits are using positive frames and multiple stewardship strategies, more could be done by nonprofit marketing practitioners to facilitate positive, long-term relationships with stakeholders in an environment of increased communication and compassion fatigue.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mechanisms that efficiently verify the optimality of a proposed action

The best known achievement of the literature on resource-allocating mechanisms and their message spaces is the first rigorous proof of the competitive mechanism's informational efficiency. In an exchange economy withN persons andK+1 commodities (including a numeraire), that mechanism announcesK prices as well as aK-compenent trade vector for each ofN−1 persons, making a total ofNK message variables. Trial messages are successively announced and after each announcement each personprivately determines, usingprivate information, whether she finds the proposed trades acceptable at the announced prices. When a message is reached with which all are content, then the trades specified in that message take place, and they satisfy Pareto optimality and individual rationality. The literature shows that no (suitably regular) mechanism can achieve the same thing with fewer thanNK message variables. In the classic proof, all the candidate mechanisms have the privacy property, and the proof uses that property in a crucial way. ‘Non-private’ mechanisms are, however, well-defined. We present a proof that forN>K,NK remains a lower bound even when we permit ‘non-private’ mechanisms. Our new proof does not use privacy at all. But in a non-private mechanism, minimality of the number of message variables can hardly be defended as the hallmark of informational efficiency, since a non-private mechanism requires some persons to know something about the private information of othersin addition to the information contained in the messages. The new proof of the lower boundNK invites a new interpretation of the competitive mechanism's informational efficiency. We provide a new concept of efficiency which the competitive mechanism exhibits and which does rest on privacy even whenN>K. To do so, we first define a class ofprojection mechanisms, wherein some of the message variables are proposed values of the action to be taken, and the rest are auxiliary variables. The competitive mechanism has the projection property, with a trade vector as its action and prices as the auxiliary variables. A projection mechanism proposes an action; for each proposal, the agents then use the auxiliary variables, together with their private information, to verify that the proposed action meets the mechanism's goal (Pareto optimality and individual rationality for the competitive mechanism) if, indeed, it does meet that goal. For a given goal, we seek projection mechanisms for which theverification effort (suitably measured) is not greater than that of any other projection mechanism that achieves the goal. We show the competitive mechanism to be verification-minimal within the class of private projection mechanisms that achieve Pareto optimality and individual rationality; that proofdoes use the privacy of the candidate mechanisms. We also show, under certain conditions, that a verification-minimal projection mechanism achieving a given goal has smallest ‘total communication effort’ (which is locally equivalent to the classic ‘message-space size’) among all private mechanisms that achieve the goal, whether or not they have the projection property.     

Emerging issues and challenges in global staffing: a North American perspective

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) recognize that human resources play an important role in gaining a competitive advantage in today's highly competitive global business environment. While all aspects of managing human resources are important, staffing, continues to be an essential IHRM activity that helps MNEs in their need for coordination and control across widely dispersed units. As such, researchers and practitioners alike are interested in addressing the key issues and challenges in staffing the several types of employees that comprise the global or multinational workforce. We focus on three issues that have emerged in recent years regarding how MNEs staff their multinational workforce including: 1) managing different types of employee groups; 2) selection and management of employees posted to international assignments; and, 3) receptivity to international careers among early career individuals. We review these and then describe an empirical study conducted on the third issue.     

The Bribery Paradox in Transition Economies and the Enactment of ‘New Normal’ Business Environments

We develop a novel, sense-making perspective on corruption in transition economies. Prior research has focused on understanding why some entrepreneurs are more likely to pay bribes than others. It typically assumes that paying bribes will lead to an intended – albeit unfair – competitive advantage. We challenge this assumption and uncover a bribery paradox: drawing upon sense-making logic, we argue that beyond gaining an immediate benefit from bribing, entrepreneurs who frequently pay bribes may in the longer run be enacting a ‘new normal’ business environment perceived as high in obstacles, especially in transition countries. As sense making is grounded in identity construction and one’s social context, we argue that owners of family firms will be especially vulnerable to the dangers of perceiving greater obstacles over time and enacting an obstacle-ridden ‘new normal’ business environment. We find empirical support for our framework on a sample of 310 privately held small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from 22 transition economies.     

Building responses to sustainable development challenges: A multistakeholder collaboration framework and application to climate change

The affirmation of open innovation and collaborative systems is enabling unprecedented opportunities to create business value while facilitating multistakeholder conversation on sustainability issues. In particular, platform‐based models are emerging as organization archetypes able to facilitate cooperative dynamics among industrial actors, policy makers, academicians, scientists, and citizens. In this article, we use interdisciplinary business management and collaborative innovation literature to build the conceptual framework of a multisided platform as a collaboration environment gathering actors willing to define responses to sustainable development challenges. We present five dimensions or “genes,” that is, the focus and strategic intent or orientation of the platform (what), the participating sides, actors and groups (who), the actions, flows and coordination mechanisms (how), and the value drivers, benefits and externalities (why), and the rules regulating the affiliation and interaction processes (governance). We also present and discuss 30 subtopics or management items that are associated with the five dimensions defined. We then apply the conceptual model to analyze a case in the climate change endeavor and to show how competitive and cooperative dynamics can be virtuously integrated to provide individual‐ and company‐driven responses to a timely socioenvironmental issue. The article provides a new perspective on collaboration to enhance social development, and it offers theoretical and practitioner insights for a broad interdisciplinary audience including scholars, practitioners, business, and platform managers.     

Globalfocusing: From Domestic Conglomerates to Global Specialists*

abstract Globalization is changing the competitive terrain on which companies develop their corporate strategy. On the global stage, key competitive advantages are gained through internationally fungible resources. Consequently, diversified conglomerates are converting to global specialists in narrower niche markets and competing with a small number of multinational enterprises operating worldwide. Their internationalization and their reduction of product diversification are opposite sides of the same coin: globalfocusing. I extend Penrosian resource‐based theory to analyse this change process, notably by distinguishing country and industry specificity of firms' core competences, and by integrating divestment as part of firm growth processes. Globalfocusing is driven by shifts in the relative importance of country‐specific and industry‐specific resources and capabilities due to changes in the internal and external environment, notably the globalization of markets and supply chains. The argument is developed using case studies of restructuring of two Danish manufacturing enterprises. On this basis, I analyse the forces driving globalfocusing processes and suggest propositions for empirical testing.     

Localization of staff in a hostile context: an exploratory investigation in Afghanistan

Abstract

Hostile environments pose a distinct threat to international organizations and their staff and yet they are under researched within the literature on IHRM. Localization of staff may present a means to manage some of the risks and also to provide the resources needed to achieve competitive advantage. Drawing on the resource-based view and institutional theory, we explored resource- and capability-based and institutional influences in relation to the decision of whether to localize professional staff in a hostile environment (Afghanistan). Using in-depth semi-structured interviews with representatives from four organizations in Afghanistan, our investigation identified new influences on localization at the societal and organizational level. These include ongoing security issues as well as influences on localization such as corruption, impartiality and the need for outside experiences as well as perspectives not identified in previous work. In addition, we emphasize the importance of both picking appropriate valuable local human resources and using appropriate internal capabilities to develop and deploy them in such a way to build firm-specific assets which are also rare, inimitable and non-substitutable, thus leading to sustainable competitive advantage.     

Industry,management capabilities and firms' competitiveness: An empirical contribution

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge of strategic factors that explain the competitive position reached by firms in their activity sector. We have used a survey carried out in 1999 on 287 executives that belong to the service sector in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. We have analysed the differential factors that distinguish the strategic performance of competitive vis‐à‐vis non‐competitive firms, by jointly assessing the variables representative of the sector (five competitive forces defined by Porter) and variables of an internal feature. Finally, we have moved the level of analysis from the industry to the firm; specifically, we have focused on managerial capabilities due to the significant role played by managers in the strategic decision‐making process. The use of cluster analysis to classify firms depending on their degree of competitiveness and the application of the See5 induction algorithm of rules and decision trees to determine the differential factors that distinguish competitive from non‐competitive firms, provide a methodological framework for the most significant contributions of this work. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Product Market Competition,Skill Shortages and Productivity: Evidence from Canadian Manufacturing Firms

In this paper, we estimate the impacts of product market competition and skill shortages on the productivity level performance of Canadian manufacturing firms. We use firms perceptions of their competitive environment from the Statistics Canada 1999 Survey of Innovation to measure product market competition and skill shortages. We argue in the paper that such perceptions are important for productivity level performance. After controlling for other factors, we find that product market competition has a positive impact on the performance of medium-sized and large-sized firms, and that skill shortages have a negative impact on the performance of small-sized and medium-sized firms.Jel Classification: L0, O0     

Uncovering competitive and institutional drivers of HRM practices in multinational corporations

Current international human resource management (IHRM) literature focusing on multinational corporations (MNCs) presents evidence of both similarities and differences in the HR practices adopted in different global locations. However, the drivers behind this duality require more detailed investigation. This article focuses on exploring why MNCs position themselves within global markets as they do, exploring how extant theory can help explain the drivers behind both global and national HR practices. Based on a worldwide sample of in‐depth interview‐based case studies of well‐known MNCs, we explore the ways in which different firms react to both institutional and competitive pressures in selecting their approach to HRM. The findings uncover a differentiation between external global competitive isomorphic pressures, external national institutional isomorphic pressures, and internal processes of strategic choice and competitive differentiation. It is suggested that MNCs face all three drivers of HRM simultaneously, leading to different patterns of practice adoption, adaptation and innovation.     

Who Appoints Them,What Do They Do? Evidence on Outside Directors from Japan

Although reformers often claim Japanese firms appoint inefficiently few outside directors, the logic of market competition suggests otherwise. Given the competitive product, service, and capital markets in Japan, the firms that survive should disproportionately be firms that tend to appoint boards approaching their firm‐specifically optimal structure. The resulting debate thus suggests a test: do firms with more outsiders do better? If Japanese firms do maintain suboptimal numbers of outsiders, then those with more outsiders should outperform those with fewer; if market constraints instead drive them toward their firm‐specific optimum, then firm characteristics may determine board structure, but firm performance should show no observable relation to that structure. We explore the issue with data on the 1000 largest exchange‐listed Japanese firms from 1986 to 1994. We first ask which firms tend to appoint which outsiders to their boards. We find the appointments decidedly nonrandom. Firms appoint directors from the banking industry when they borrow heavily, when they have fewer mortgageable assets, or when they are themselves in the service and finance industry. They appoint retired government bureaucrats when they are in construction and sell a large fraction of their output to government agencies, and they appoint other retired business executives when they have a dominant parent corporation or when they are in the construction industry and sell heavily to the private sector. Coupling OLS regressions with two‐stage estimates on a subset of the data, we then ask whether the firms with more outside directors outperform those with fewer, and find that they do not. Instead, the regressions suggest—exactly as the logic of market competition predicts—that firms choose boards appropriate to them.     

Real Asset Valuation under Imperfect Competition: Can We Forget About Market Fundamentals?

Real assets are usually valued by computing the stream of profits they can bring to a price‐taking firm in a liquid market. This method ignores market fundamentals by assuming that all the relevant information is included in the spot price. Our article analyses the bias resulting from such an approach when the market is imperfectly competitive. We propose a stylised two‐period model of the natural gas market with no uncertainty, focusing on strategic interactions between two types of oligopolistic players—pure traders and suppliers with downstream customers—who have access to storage. We show that the true value of storage capacity is not the same for traders and for suppliers. Comparing the latter value with the traditional price‐taking valuation reveals a systematic bias that tends to induce underinvestment.     

Building relations between educational establishments and local business

Schools, colleges and universities are rapidly realising that, by building better relations with local business, they are in a particularly advantageous position when competing with other charitable bodies. By the very nature of their existence, they possess facilities that can be utilised as bargaining tools in the constant competitive search for sponsorship deals. This paper describes the experience of one independent school which has been successful in obtaining funding from local businesses both from philanthropic and sponsorship sources. It suggests that educational establishments have a distinct advantage over other charitable organisations in their negotiating ability as they have at their ‘fingertips’ the sort of facility that businesses require for both their recreational and their academic needs.     

When Necessity Becomes a Virtue: The Effect of Product Market Competition on Corporate Social Responsibility

We test whether Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is driven by strategic considerations by empirically studying the link between competition and firms' social performance. We find that firms in more competitive industries have better social ratings. In particular, we show that (i) different market concentration proxies are negatively related to widely used CSR measures; (ii) that an increase in competition due to higher import penetration leads to superior CSR performance; (iii) that firms in more competitive environments have a superior environmental performance, measured by firm pollution levels; and (iv) that more product competition is associated to a larger within‐industry CSR variance. We interpret these results as evidence that CSR is strategically chosen.     

Leveraging STARA competencies and green creativity to boost green organisational innovative evidence: A praxis for sustainable development

Radical technological advancements and the relentless progression of climate change compel organisations to ensure their workforce consistently exercise their creativity toward innovative green initiatives. These endeavours are essential to achieve the United Nations' (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs). To do so, organisations require competencies fundamental to smart technologies, artificial intelligence, robotics and algorithms (STARA). STARA competencies are relevant for leaders to bolster green organisational innovative evidence (GOIE). GOIE can help to attract potential investors keen on advancing the UN's SDG agenda on environmental sustainability. However, eclipsed by a volatile environment, and despite the green innovation potential of several manufacturing organisations, investors are reluctant to invest and commit funds without evidence of green innovation. We therefore, investigate how leader STARA competence (LSC), green creativity components (task motivation, creativity skills and expertise) and environmental dynamism can aid organisations to boost their GOIE. Our key findings are as follows: (a) though green task motivation shows a stronger association with green creativity skills, LSC has a large influence on green creativity skills; (b) green creativity skills exert a strong influence on GOIE while also playing a competitive and complimentary mediating role in our model and (c) environmental dynamism is negatively associated with green creativity skills and GOIE. Furthermore, to validate indirect (v) effects size in mediation analysis, we propose a new and more approachable benchmark for v effect size estimations. Organisational and environmental policy implications are discussed.     

Application of collective knowledge diffusion in a social network environment

ABSTRACT

We present a group dynamics model that shows knowledge integration as a process occurring over time. As each individual in the group contact others, his own knowledge changes, and over time the collective knowledge is obtained. This allows modeling knowledge diffusion in a social network and while the models presented in this paper are not competitive in that area, they approach the problem from previously unconsidered direction. We test the behavior of the model in a multi-agent simulation and we test a simple advertisement campaign in a social network. We provide discussion of elements needed for making model more competitive.     

Identifying personality traits to enhance trust between organisations: an experimental approach

We investigate an experimental representatives' trust game which resembles trust relationships between representatives of organisations. Personality traits of subjects are elicited by a personality questionnaire (Cattell's 16 PF‐R) which is well established in personnel psychology. For the first time, personality traits are linked to actually observed behaviour in a trust game. Detailed personality profiles are derived and it is shown that they differ significantly between behavioural types. Individuals with low scores in anxiety turn out to be particularly qualified for enhancing trust between organisations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient Consumer Altruism and Fair Trade Products

Consumers have shown a willingness to pay a premium for products labeled as “FT” and a preference for retailers that are seen to be more generous to their suppliers/employees. A FT product is essentially a bundle of a base product and a donation to the supplier (e.g., a coffee farmer). An altruistic rational consumer will only choose this bundle if doing so is less expensive than buying the base product and making a direct donation. For FT to be sustainable either in a competitive equilibrium or in a monopolistic environment this bundling must yield an efficiency. This efficiency is generated in the following context. A supplier’s investment reduces the retailer’s cost or boosts the final product’s quality, but this investment is not immediately observable and cannot be enforced, hence there exists a moral hazard problem. In this environment, the altruism of the consumer can facilitate a more efficient contract: by paying the supplier more the retailer can both extract more consumer surplus and increase the level of contracted investment, while preserving the supplier’s incentive compatibility constraint. We assess our model in the context of the coffee industry.     

A numerical study of tournament structure and seeding policy for the soccer World Cup Finals

Tournament outcome uncertainty depends on: the design of the tournament; and the relative strengths of the competitors – the competitive balance. A tournament design comprises the arrangement of the individual matches, which we call the tournament structure, the seeding policy and the progression rules. In this paper, we investigate the effect of seeding policy for various tournament structures, while taking account of competitive balance. Our methodology uses tournament outcome uncertainty to consider the effect of seeding policy and other design changes. The tournament outcome uncertainty is measured using the tournament outcome characteristic which is the probability P_q,R that a team in the top 100q pre‐tournament rank percentile progresses forward from round R, for all q and R. We use Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the values of this metric. We find that, in general, seeding favours stronger competitors, but that the degree of favouritism varies with the type of seeding. Reseeding after each round favours the strong to the greatest extent. The ideas in the paper are illustrated using the soccer World Cup Finals tournament.     

Claiming the corner office: Female CEO careers and implications for leadership development

Drawing on evidence from a unique data set of in‐depth qualitative interviews with 12 female CEOs (and 139 male CEOs) of global corporations, we explore what enables some women to become CEOs. By drawing on our data from male and female CEOs, we set the scene by comparing the advice they would give to young women as they start their careers. We then focus the rest of our article on the experiences and career trajectory of the 12 female CEOs. We make three theoretical contributions: We identify, at the individual level, how women can take active ownership of their careers as part of a self‐acceptance process; how they can embrace gynandrous leadership as part of a self‐development process where both feminine and masculine leadership behaviors are embraced, with the feminine being dominant to help move beyond gender stereotypes, and finally, how they translate leadership—rather than combine—gender‐based behaviors as part of a self‐management process to develop their unique leadership style. For each of these theoretical contributions at the individual level, we also provide two practical recommendations for HR practice and policy, one relating to the intraorganizational context and the second having institutional‐level implications. We conclude by discussing implications for future research.