Technological variables and absorptive capacity's influence on performance through corporate entrepreneurship

Technology and corporate entrepreneurship constitute an important source of competitive advantage for organizations, as they enable the development and exploitation of new opportunities. This study proposes a model to analyze the effects of top management support for technology on the promotion of technological skills, absorptive capacity, and technological distinctive competencies. The research also considers the impact of technological skills and absorptive capacity on the development of technological distinctive competencies, analyzing the influence of these variables on organizational performance through corporate entrepreneurship. The study tests these relationships empirically using 160 European technology firms. The paper ends with discussion of the findings and provides several theoretical and practical implications for future research.     

Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung auf den öffentlichen Sektor — ein erster Überblick

Digitalisation is associated with manifold challenges for the public sector. There have been relatively few scientific studies to address these challenges, particularly regarding potential effects on public expenditures. It is obvious, however, that digital change implies opportunities as well as threats for public revenues and expenditures. Fiscal and regulatory policies are confronted with significant challenges, which require supranationally coordinated policy initiatives in addition to national measures. In-depth theoretical and empirical analyses is required to examine digital technology’s sizeable potential impact on public finances.     

Nanotechnology and Ethics: The Role of Regulation Versus Self-Commitment in Shaping Researchers’ Behavior

The governance of nanotechnology seeks to limit its risks, without constraining opportunities. The literature on the effectiveness of approaches to governance has neglected approaches that impact directly on the behavior of a researcher. We analyze the effectiveness of legal regulations versus regulation via self-commitment. Then, we refine this model by analyzing competition and autonomy as key contingency factors. In the first step, qualitative interviews with nanotechnology researchers are conducted to reflect this model. In the second step, its empirical relevance is tested using a survey of 90 nanotech researchers. The results indicate that legal regulations, as well as self-commitment to an informal CoC reduce the scope of behavior. Finally, that competition and autonomy affect the relative strength of these governance factors.     

The Methods Used to Implement an Ethical Code of Conduct and Employee Attitudes

Media reporting of recent business scandals, ranging from systemic accounting fraud to individual executive greed, has shed new light on the urgent need for organizational ethics in corporate America. The essay argues that organizational ethics can foster virtuous organizations by developing their sense of stewardship and integrity. This approach can inspire the ethical decision-making processes and standards of conduct for personnel throughout the organization. Another crucial role for organizational ethics is to regain lost trust and to recover the confidence of our communities, whether we are discussing the business community or the health care community. Corporate America and organizations in health care need to win back the respect of skeptical customers, disheartened patients, and distrusting communities. But this task can be accomplished properly only when organizations and their business practices have a renewed commitment to ethics. The essay discusses how organizational ethics can permeate the entire organization in order to instill trust and confidence among its constituencies. Although the focus of the essay is upon the role of organizational ethics in health care, the argument also applies to the renewal of business practices in corporations across the nation.     

Artificial Intelligence and Marketing: Pitfalls and Opportunities

This article discusses the pitfalls and opportunities of AI in marketing through the lenses of knowledge creation and knowledge transfer. First, we discuss the notion of “higher-order learning” that distinguishes AI applications from traditional modeling approaches, and while focusing on recent advances in deep neural networks, we cover its underlying methodologies (multilayer perceptron, convolutional, and recurrent neural networks) and learning paradigms (supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning). Second, we discuss the technological pitfalls and dangers marketing managers need to be aware of when implementing AI in their organizations, including the concepts of badly defined objective functions, unsafe or unrealistic learning environments, biased AI, explainable AI, and controllable AI. Third, AI will have a deep impact on predictive tasks that can be automated and require little explainability, we predict that AI will fall short of its promises in many marketing domains if we do not solve the challenges of tacit knowledge transfer between AI models and marketing organizations.     

Who Benefits from Workers with General Skills? Countervailing Incentives in Labour Contracts

In a principal–agent model with adverse selection and moral hazard the impact of the agent's transferable human capital on incentives is analysed. It is shown that under asymmetric information the employer (principal) prefers a worker (agent) with general skills to a similarly productive worker with firm‐specific skills although the reservation utility of a worker with general (i.e. marketable) skills is higher. The principal's information costs are lower when workers have general skills than in the case where workers possess only firm‐specific human capital because of countervailing incentives. The optimal contract for workers with general skills differs from the standard screening contract in that it involves pooling.     

International competitiveness and trade promotion policy from a network perspective

The international competitiveness of firms and trade promotion policy are analyzed from a network perspective that emphasizes the role and importance of interfirm relations and networks spanning industry and international boundaries. First, we identify two types of producer networks involved in the overall value production system, that is, primary and ancillary producer nets. Second, we classify networks in terms of two factors that impact on their potential international competitiveness, that is, the location of networks in local or foreign markets and the presence of internationally competitive firms. This leads to the identification of different types of network situations that provide opportunities as well as threats to the international performance of firms operating in those networks and call for different types of trade promotion policies. We discuss the key features of each situation and management and trade promotion policy implications arising.     

The generation of organizational commitment in a cross-cultural context

This contribution explores the cross-cultural variations in the generation of organizational commitment. Participants were Chinese and Western employees of organizations operating in Hong Kong. Both groups believed that effort should be rewarded. However, Chinese and Western participants were committed to different constituencies within the organization. Westerners viewed interpersonal relationships as a means to the end, with the organization being the object of commitment. Chinese committed to interpersonal networks and saw these relationships as the primary organization-member engagement. Chinese and Westerners defined the organization differently and this influenced the way they generated their attachment to the firm.     

Will the new competitive landscape cause your firm's decline? It depends on your mindset

A view of the new competitive landscape shows globalization, rapid technological change, and hypercompetition as conduits leading to either organizational decline or organizational growth. In this article we explain how managers can use four mindsets to convert potential threats posed by these environmental challenges into pathways of prosperity, instead of pathways of decline. A global mindset, or the ability to view the world using a broad perspective, converts globalization threats into growth opportunities by thinking beyond geographic boundaries, valuing integration across borders, and appreciating regional and cultural diversity. An innovation mindset, meaning a mental framework that fosters development and implementation of new ideas, transforms rapid technological change threats into opportunities by valuing constant generation of new ideas and business models, realizing sources of new ideas, and stressing next practices rather than best practices. A virtual mindset, or the ability of managers to hand over their firms’ activities to external providers, turns hypercompetition into prospects for growth by facilitating flexibility and responsiveness. Finally, a collaboration mindset, meaning a willingness to engage in business partnerships, converts all three challenges into opportunities by allowing firms to form successful partnerships that can lead to synergy by combining business complementarities.     

Learning Networks as an Aid to Developing Strategic Capability among Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Case Study from the Irish Polymer Industry

Strategic decision making within small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is a necessary element for business growth. SMEs must adapt and become more efficient and dynamic within current business paths and in finding new paths. Traditional philosophies are not focused on delivering new capabilities or developing new business paths. Learning networks are cooperative associations of partner firms that share knowledge, physical resources, and expertise to improve current performance and to advance new business paths. Ireland has emerged as a significant net contributor of plastics to the global medical device, telecommunications, and ophthalmic sectors. The role of the first polymer network as a catalyst for both new business development and increased technological enhancement is advanced in this study of Mould-Tech, an Irish polymer manufacturing firm. Adaptation of dynamic learning networks as expounded in this study present participant firms with new opportunities both to learn and earn—that is, to enhance and acquire new capabilities and to grow their businesses.     

Innovation and entrepreneurship as strategies for success among Cuban-based firms in the late years of the transatlantic slave trade

This article examines how Cuban-based firms and entrepreneurs circumvented ever- increasing risks in the illegal slave trade. The article sheds light to this question by analyzing new qualitative information of 65 Cuban-based firms against the Slavevoyages database. Our findings indicate that Cuban-based firms were entrepreneurial as they exploited the opportunities arising from the volatility of the slave trade by: (a) internalizing networks of agents which allowed the rapid diffusion of information, (b) diversifying trading goods and expanding the number of partnerships to reduce transaction costs and risk, and (c) adopting technological innovations that modified the design and use of vessels.     

What is necessary for corporate moral excellence?

At the beginning of this essay I sketch a solution to the question of how we can predicate moral properties, such as moral excellence, to the corporation. This solution suggests that there are at least two necessary criteria for corporate moral excellence: (1) a moral corporate culture and (2) the moral autonomy of the individual within the corporate culture. I put forward guidelines for the development of both and argue for their necessary interdependence. W. Michael Hoffman is Director of the Center for Business Ethics and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S.A. His most important publications are Business Ethics: Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality (McGraw-Hill, 1984), Proceedings of five national conferences in Business Ethics, Kant's Theory of Freedom and articles in various professional periodicals and anthologies.     

The future of marketing

The main thesis of this article is that several long-term trends are reshaping marketing and forcing marketing managers to change radically to keep up. These long-term trends are technological, socioeconomic and geopolitical. Advances in technology, in particular, are having a profound impact on marketing, resulting in the deepening of customer relationships and the continuous expansion of the service economy. Artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet, and the expansion of networks are creating a revolution in marketing that makes the 1960s-style 4 Ps increasingly obsolete. Compounding the problem for marketers are the socioeconomic factors of diversity and inclusion, as well as major geopolitical threats. I explore the nature of change, extrapolate marketing practice into the future, and examine the implications for marketing managers, marketing education and academic research in marketing.     

The Amplifying and Buffering Effects of Virtuousness in Downsized Organizations

Virtuousness refers to the pursuit of the highest aspirations in the human condition. It is characterized by human impact, moral goodness, and unconditional societal betterment. Several writers have recently argued that corporations, in addition to being concerned with ethics, should also emphasize an ethos of virtuousness in corporate action. Virtuousness emphasizes actions that go beyond the “do no harm” assumption embedded in most ethical codes of conduct. Instead, it emphasizes the highest and best of the human condition. This research empirically examines the buffering and amplifying effects of virtuousness in organizations. The study hypothesizes that virtuousness has a positive effect on organizations because amplifying dynamics make subsequent virtuous action more likely, and buffering dynamics reduce the harmful effects of downsizing. The study reveals that two types of virtuousness – tonic and phasic – are associated with these effects.     

Focusing Service Management Efforts: A Model for Non profit Organizations

ABSTRACT

In recent years, many nonprofit organizations have experienced significant cut-backs in support from traditional sources while demand for their services has continued to increase. Many of these organizations have attempted to bridge this growing chasm by increasing their fund raising efforts. While not without value, these activities alone will not resolve the dilemma faced by many of these organizations. The authors present a 12-step model to assist managers in nonprofit organizations in determining how to reallocate scarce human and financial resources from non-crucial to truly critical service offerings and in so doing, better meet the needs of their critical constituencies.     

Ontological Security, Existential Anxiety and Workplace Privacy

The relationship of workers to management has traditionally been one of control. However, the introduction of increasingly sophisticated technology as a means of supervision in the modern workplace has dramatically altered the contours of this relationship, giving workers much less privacy and making workers much more visible than previously possible. The purpose of this paper is to examine the current state of technological control of workers and how it has altered the relationship of worker to organization, through the impact upon self as perceived by the worker.     

Rethinking corporate governance in the digital economy: The role of stewardship

Digital technologies are increasingly changing the nature of competition and generating externalities that impact society. On the one hand, digitalization allows organizations to create substantial economic value in shorter periods of time through improved economies of scale, scope, and learning, resulting is increasing returns on capital and competitive concentration. On the other hand, ensuing societal concerns with inequities, regulatory lapses, and lack of transparency and truthfulness represent significant challenges for effective corporate governance. This article addresses the consequences to stakeholders that emerge from the digital economy, discussing how traditional governance mechanisms are ill-equipped to subvert negative externalities. We offer a stewardship-based model of corporate governance as a solution to the pressing problems plaguing consumers, employees, and other salient stakeholders of digital business excesses, with an emphasis on truthful disclosures, enhanced transparency, improvements in equitable allocation of organizational resources, and heightened trust relationships. The focus is on the positive role that organizational leaders can play as exemplars of virtuous stewardship in a highly networked society. The article redefines a modern view of stewardship in a digital economy and applies its principles to the four Ts of virtuous stewardship, a practical corporate governance model that encompasses truthfulness, transparency, trust, and technological equity.     

Huckstering in the Classroom: Limits to Corporate Social Responsibility

The familiar issue of corporate social responsibility takes on a new topic. Added to the list of concerns from affirmative action and environmental integrity is their growing contributions to education. At first glance, the efforts may appear to be ordinary gestures of communal good will in terms of providing computers, sponsoring book covers, and interactive materials provided by Scholastic Magazine. A closer view reveals a targeted market of student life who are vulnerable to commercials placed in these formats. Among the most effective corporate intervention is Channel One News. It offers a newsworthy show but with mandatory commercial viewing. This increasing trend of corporations intervening to assist schools that need more money and/or equipment is disingenuous.In this essay, I present the background of this commercialization of education and demonstrate the violations against student autonomy and integrity. Although there may be utilitarian merits to some interventions, I argue that these infringe upon the moral value of personhood. Advertising in schools in its current practice is immoral on deontological grounds.I construct a framework for a resolution between corporations and education through a Covenant. This Covenant will provide the moral duty that corporations have to the autonomy of the student-learner. The agreement will sanction some assistance to schools but not without the consent of local educational constituents and principles of the Covenant.     

Management of human resources and productivity

A model for effective management of human resources for organizational effectiveness is proposed. Several elements of this model are evaluated in the light of the failure of personnel and industrial relations policies of organizations in Canada. Suggestions are put forward to improve worker performance and job satisfaction as well as organizational growth and survival.     

Industry environments and new venture formations in U.S. manufacturing: A conceptual and empirical analysis of demand determinants

Through integration of theoretical perspectives from Austrian economics, industrial organization economics, and organizational theory, this study builds and examines empirically a model of the demand determinants of new venture formations in manufacturing industries. Austrian economics and other writings on market disequilibrium imply that the dynamics of industries create market opportunities that are available to economic actors. The greater the changes occurring in an industry, the greater the opportunities created, and the further the market is moved from an equilibrium state. Entrepreneurship is viewed as the process of seizing opportunities through combinations of productive inputs. The more available market opportunities in an industry, the greater is the potential for entrepreneurial activity and, more specifically, new venture formations. Entry barriers constrain the formation of new ventures by prohibiting new ventures from taking advantage of available emerging opportunities. The inertial properties of existing firms constrain their ability to move toward these opportunities and thereby increase the potential for new ventures to exploit these market opportunities.The empirical analysis utilizes the Small Business Administration's U.S. Establishment and Enterprise Microdata file to test the model on a large sample of U.S. manufacturing industries. Results indicate that dynamic industries have greater new venture formations. More specifically, new venture formations are associated with industry growth, the dynamism of industry niches, and technological development. Moreover, entry barriers were found to strongly constrain rates of new venture formations. Industry capital requirements, concentration, and excess capacity were all related negatively to the formation of new ventures. The hypothesized positive relationship between industry-level measures of organizational inertia and new venture formations was also borne out in the empirical analysis. New venture formations were related positively to the extent of vertical integration in an industry as well as to the failure of incumbent firms to invest in new capital.Overall, the independent variables explained more than 50% of the variance in rates of new venture formations in manufacturing industries. The results support an Austrian perspective on entrepreneurship and imply that demand factors and industry structural variables are important determinants of new venture creations.The results imply that dynamic industries should spawn new ventures, and industries with high sales growth, changing consumer preferences, and rapid technological change should exhibit high rates of venture formations. For potential entrepreneurs, the model presented herein might be a useful guide to focus their venture activities. Entrepreneurs who can spot the fundamental sources of market change can exploit their knowledge for economic gain. Yet, there are a number of difficulties in suggesting that the model presented herein could be directly applied by entrepreneurs. First, it is always easier to estimate the dynamics of an industry post hoc than it is ex ante. For example, whereas it is simple to catalogue the technological change that occurred in an industry over time, it is another matter to predict the nature of future technological developments. Second, entrepreneurial opportunity can persist only if other potential economic actors do not know of the presence of the opportunity or cannot act upon it. Any model that gains acceptance as a means of predicting the presence of opportunities would, through its widespread usage, neutralize those opportunities for economic profit. Nonetheless, entrepreneurs who have that unique capability to spot industry dynamics and associated profit opportunities where others do not will gain from that ability.