Co-creation on a global scale: How customers impact firms’ internationalization strategies

The importance of customers in international strategy has largely been neglected or relegated to the simple and rather passive role of a buyer. In this article, we suggest a different approach and identify the potential impact of co-creation activities. We provide several examples of how customers are more actively involved in global value creation and thereby impact firms’ international posture.     

Factors affecting family firms’ communication behaviour: a cross-cultural study

This study explores heterogeneity in family firms’ communication behaviour across cultures. The authors propose that variations in the background of family firms, including culture, industry, public or private status, and age, influence their propensity to reference their family identity on their corporate web communications. Websites have become an increasingly important medium of marketing communications in today’s interconnected world. Yet, limited research has been done to understand firms’ web communication behaviour. Based on a study of 432 family firms from 41 countries across the world, this research empirically demonstrates that family firms which are from collectivist cultures and publicly traded are significantly less likely to reference their family identity in online marketing communications compared to their counterparts. In addition, the research shows that there is an inverted-U curvilinear relationship between a family firm’s age and the likelihood of referencing their family background. Contributions and implications of the research and findings are discussed.     

Geography,knowledge spillovers and small firms’ exports: an empirical examination for The Netherlands

This study examines the impact of external and internal scale economies on the decision to start exporting and the level of exports of innovating firms. Based on new trade theory, increasing returns to scale—both internal and external scale economies—are considered an important source of comparative and competitive advantage. The empirical analysis of (small) innovating firms in The Netherlands leads to two main findings. First, firms that are located in technical Marshallian clusters seem less inclined to become exporters. Availability of technical knowledge alone does not help to reduce entry costs that come with the decision to export and/or marketing and sales costs in order to achieve a higher export performance. Second, firms that experience difficulties in appropriating innovation rents due to labour poaching also seem to be less inclined to become exporters. The explanation for this second finding is the importance of outgoing knowledge spillovers, which is particularly relevant for small, product innovating firms. This reduces their probability to export. However, if firms export, the knowledge leaking argument is not valid for the export performance of the firm.     

Constructing a conceptual model of purchase behaviour of village shopkeepers – a study of small rural retailers in Eastern India

Small rural retailers play a pivotal role in the success of marketing efforts of FMCG companies in developing markets. This is owing to the influence of small retailers, alternatively termed as unorganized retailers, on rural consumers. The present study attempts to develop an inventory of items that may predict purchase behaviour. Owing to the unavailability of a suitable instrument in extant literature, a survey of rural marketing practitioners has been conducted to develop relevant statements for questionnaire. The unobservable constructs and the relationships between the constructs are brought out through a study in the eastern region of India. The following constructs have been found to impact the purchase preferences of rural unorganized retailers: quality of supply and delivery, margins and profit, product demand, credit, brand reputation, social and personal recognition, sales force behaviour, seasonality and festivity, and company reputation. A marketer should understand the factors influencing purchase behaviour while targeting rural retailers in developing markets.     

Global competitiveness,consumer choice and ‘country of origin’ effect: an exploratory East–West study

As protectionist sentiments rise in many countries in light of the 2008–2009 financial crisis, it is more important than ever to understand the potential role of homophily on the country of origin (COO) effect in consumer purchases and how it can impact trade and investment. This study examines these attitudes using a sample of 139 university students from different ethnic backgrounds in Vancouver (Canada), one of the most culturally diverse cities in North America. The results confirm the importance of ethnicity in affecting attitudes toward different countries, including the impact of political/cultural ties and current/historical events on their formation. Variations among different ethnic groups were found, however.     

An exploratory study of determinants for restaurant servers’ actual tip earnings: Individual characteristics and work conditions

This exploratory study investigates two different types of determinants for servers’ actual tip earnings (individual characteristics versus work conditions) using readily available organizational data. Unlike previous studies that measured servers’ tips by asking subjects (servers or customers) to report tip amounts, we measure the actual tip earnings of each server extracted from the point of sale system. The results show that work conditions (daily work hours, weekend work hours, and immediate supervisors’ characteristics) have stronger relationships with servers’ tip earnings than servers’ individual characteristics (gender, tenure, and job satisfaction). This study represents an initial attempt to use objective data to measure servers’ tip earnings and explore its potential relationship with work conditions compared to its relationships with individual characteristics which have been frequently examined in previous studies.     

Analyses of non-fatal accidents in an opencast mine by logistic regression model – a case study

Accidents cause major damage for both workers and enterprises in the mining industry. To reduce the number of occupational accidents, these incidents should be properly registered and carefully analysed. This study efficiently examines the Aegean Lignite Enterprise (ELI) of Turkish Coal Enterprises (TKI) in Soma between 2006 and 2011, and opencast coal mine occupational accident records were used for statistical analyses. A total of 231 occupational accidents were analysed for this study. The accident records were categorized into seven groups: area, reason, occupation, part of body, age, shift hour and lost days. The SPSS package program was used in this study for logistic regression analyses, which predicted the probability of accidents resulting in greater or less than 3 lost workdays for non-fatal injuries. Social facilities-area of surface installations, workshops and opencast mining areas are the areas with the highest probability for accidents with greater than 3 lost workdays for non-fatal injuries, while the reasons with the highest probability for these types of accidents are transporting and manual handling. Additionally, the model was tested for such reported accidents that occurred in 2012 for the ELI in Soma and estimated the probability of exposure to accidents with lost workdays correctly by 70%.     

Corporate fraud as a negative signal: Implications for firms’ innovation performance

Based on signaling theory, we explore the impact of corporate fraud on firms’ innovation performance. First, we propose that corporate fraud harms firms’ innovation performance. This is because, as a negative signal, fraud makes it difficult for firms to obtain the policy, funding, and human resources needed for outstanding innovation performance. We further argue that the institutional aspects of the signaling environment (e.g., industrial competition, regional institutional development, and social trust) will influence core stakeholders’ reception and interpretation of fraud signals. These factors, in turn, moderate the signaling effect of corporate fraud on firms’ innovation performance. Our views are supported by empirical and robustness tests using Chinese A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2019.     

Dismissal protection and small firms’ hirings: evidence from a policy reform

Small firms are important drivers of employment creation and innovation. Dismissal protection raises firms’ adjustment costs and thus reduces worker flows. In many countries, small firms are exempted from dismissal protection regulations in order to increase their flexibility. This paper exploits a shift in the firm-size threshold of the German dismissal protection law in 2004 to analyze the causal effects of relaxed dismissal protection on the hiring behavior of small firms. Using difference-in-differences techniques, we find positive effects on hirings. Placebo treatment tests based on pre-treatment periods and a fake treatment group confirm the validity of our empirical strategy.     

Organizational climate for innovation and creativity – a study in Swedish retail organizations

ABSTRACT

Innovation in retailing is under-investigated in academia and yet a highly relevant concern given the current changes in the retail landscape. Although retailing is often characterized by a dynamic and highly competitive environment, retail organizations are not often considered as ‘innovative,’ at least when compared with manufacturing industries, or when using existing innovation frameworks in academic literature. There are many aspects of innovation discussed in literature and a need to consider different ways of looking into retail’s innovativeness. Among them, the importance of organizational climate on influencing creativity and innovation may help explain how to enable innovation in service organizations, such as retailers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the climate for innovation and creativity and examine how retail organizations perceive it. We applied a mixed-methods approach using an established organizational climate survey and semi-structured, one-on-one interviews regarding the innovation climate and other aspects of innovation management in the companies. The study shows that despite retail organizations still struggling to incorporate innovation on a strategic level and move beyond incremental developments in their operations, retailers score positively on being innovative regarding certain dimensions of the organizational climate survey. This indicates that retailers (especially conventional ones) could benefit from challenging current practices and moving towards becoming more active and strategic innovators since their organizational climate to a certain extent allows for it. Respondents within the organizations also express a need for better innovation support, whether it is through established structures and processes or an improvement in the current conditions of the organizational climate. How retailers could enable themselves to become more active innovators – based on what we know that retailers look more towards entrepreneurship and continuous development as a driving force rather than formalized innovation practices per se – is a potential avenue for further research.     

New firms and labor market entrants: Is there a wage penalty for employment in new firms?

In this paper, we explore the role of new firms as an entry point to the labor market. Because the vast majority of new firms are short-lived, it is a risky decision to accept employment in a new venture. It can be argued that individuals with little (or no) labor market experience are more willing to accept the high risks associated with employment in new firms. Hence, new firms may work as an entry point to the labor market. Nevertheless, some research concludes that one disadvantage of employment in a new firm is that new firms pay less (Shane in Small Bus Econ 33:141–149, 2009). However, this empirical conclusion is primarily based on literature on the wage penalty of small firms. In this paper, we study whether the wage penalty of employment in a new firm persists if we focus solely on labor market entrants. In the empirical analysis, we employ an employer-employee matched dataset that covers the Swedish population during the period from 1998 to 2008. We use the propensity score matching method to study the wage differences between labor market entrants employed in new and incumbent firms. We find an average wage penalty of 2.9 % for labor market entrants employed in new firms over the studied period.     

The ‘double matrix’ business process model and a framework model for analysis and design of logistic systems

Based on a contigency-inspired framework model for approaching the relations between product, internal cooperation and inter-organizational relations, the paper describes the development of a new organizational and process structure in the case company. A project that originally was seen as a clarification of aspects regarding supplier relations also became a major organizational development project. The paper applies an idea of ‘tripartitioning’ of the business processes to approach the product development process for industrial projects, and it draws attention to some important differences between this process and traditional development processes.     

The internationalization process model: A proposed view of firms’ regular incremental and irregular non-incremental behaviour

Commitment in the internationalization process model (IP-model) is challenged by the search for knowledge through experience and interactions. Critics opposing this logic even forced the founder of the model to call for the need for integration of other elements in order to understand irregular behaviour like rapid internationalization, loss of commitment and market exit. Aligned with this call, the paper raises the question of how the IP-model can be applied to analyse both regular/incremental and irregular/non-incremental behaviour of the firms. To reach an answer, the paper proposes a theoretical view by adding expectation and unknown uncertainty to the IP-model and examines this in a case study. The contribution is a further development of the IP-model by merging these two concepts that provide tools for understanding irregular behaviour. The paper analyses a Swedish firm's internationalization in different foreign markets for the period of 1995–2009. Conclusions support the understanding of how the model can describe regular incremental and irregular non-incremental commitment behaviour.     

Innovation as a determinant of suppliers’ roles and performances: an empirical study in the food machinery industry

The basic premise of this study is that suppliers, in order to compete successfully in the marketplace, have to develop certain innovative capabilities that, in turn, depend on the type of relationship that is established with customers (in other words, the strategic role assumed by the supplier in the supply chain). Based on a study of 198 suppliers operating in the food packaging machinery industry, structural equation modelling has revealed that customers actually assign suppliers different roles and give them varying levels of responsibility in the product development and manufacturing stages. These roles are correlated to the supplier's distinctive innovation capabilities. Clustering analysis is used to divide the suppliers into homogeneous groups. Innovative capabilities are not only associated with traditional competencies in R&D and product/process innovation but also in supportive capabilities in the form of absorptive capacity, technological scanning, innovation-oriented culture, skills and know-how of individuals and managerial practices. The impact of different innovative capabilities (both technological and managerial) on critical performance factors such as price, quality, time and flexibility is measured for each type of supplier in turn. The research findings lend support to the hypothesis that the level of investment in technology and the acquisition of specific managerial capabilities are, to a large extent, a determinant of supplier–customer interdependence.     

Low involvement,low price and low quality image renegotiated – a case study of staple food package design

The food sector is identified as one of the fastest growing industries introducing package innovations and new package designs. This article is based on a packaging development project of a food company producing eggs. The case presents the company's first-time engagement with package development. The materials generated during development project serve as a starting point for an interpretive single case study. The units of analysis are three perspectives identified by the various research as essential for the packaging development project. These are the food company's, an outsourced branding and packaging consultants' and that of the consumers'. This study is motivated by how the package attributes are perceived as meaningful in the particular context and by how the package attributes are created when a low involvement primary food product package is developed. The exposition of case study findings is organised according to a theory-led literature review outlining the essential package attributes and a project-led case describing how these attributes were created during the project. The results show signs of substantial qualitative differences in contribution of the participants as well as the quality of information they provided for the package development. Moreover, findings on packaging development indicate that the practical interplay between company, external consultancy and information generated by the consumer research provide together a backed up and sharper view on packaging development decisions made during the project.     

‘Reverse internationalization’ in Chinese firms: a study of how global startup OEMs seek to compete domestically

This research investigates whether the global startup original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in China could employ their knowledge-acquisition capability developed via internationalization to compete domestically (i.e. reverse internationalization), facing the recession in developed markets. Results examine that knowledge-acquisition capability can help these firms compete in ‘reverse internationalization’, while the conduct of own brand strategy partially mediates the positive relationship between their capability and domestic performance. We contribute to the literature by identifying the unique ‘Chinese global startup OEMs’, recognizing knowledge-acquisition capability as a high-order dynamic capability for such firms, and introducing a novel entrepreneurial phenomenon we call ‘reverse internationalization’.     

Dimensions of service quality and satisfaction in healthcare: a patient’s satisfaction index

The assessment of patients’ satisfaction levels, and the knowledge of what factors influence satisfaction are very important for healthcare managers as it influences healthcare results and healthcare institutions financial results. The objective of this research is to analyse patients’ satisfaction levels in a set of four Portuguese primary Healthcare Centres, through the estimation of a satisfaction index, which simultaneously explains which dimensions of healthcare quality influence that satisfaction the most. For that, a conceptual model of patients’ satisfaction in primary healthcare was tested using data from a sample of 414 patients. Partial Least Squares path modelling (PLS) was the technique chosen to evaluate the proposed model. The results show that patients’ satisfaction is 60.887 in a scale from 1 to 100, revealing only a medium level of satisfaction. It is also possible to conclude that the most important positive effects on satisfaction are the ones linked to the patient/doctor relationship, the quality of facilities and the interaction with administrative staff, by this order.     

How and why auditors’ social exchange relationships influence their attitudes and behaviors: Implications for audit quality

External auditors regularly interact with various parties at work, such as their accounting firms, engagement team members, and clients. These interactions can help shape the nature of auditors’ social exchange relationships with these entities, which in turn may influence their behavior toward these targets. This installment of Accounting Matters draws from recently published research by Herda and colleagues to (1) explain how constructive auditor-target connections can develop and lead to beneficial outcomes like reduced auditor burnout and turnover intentions, as well as more citizenship behavior, and (2) discuss how these upshots might ultimately affect audit quality. This topic is important because audit quality translates into improved financial reporting, which helps stakeholders who rely on audited financial statements to make informed business decisions. Specifically, we underscore the key role auditors’ perceptions of fair treatment from a relationship partner play in fostering a strong psychological bond with the target via perceived support. We further consider how auditors’ consequent commitment to the target can result in favorable organizational outcomes, including enhanced audit and financial reporting quality. We also discuss practical implications for accounting firms.     

Persistence of innovation and firm’s growth: evidence from a panel of SME and large Spanish manufacturing firms

This paper estimates the effect of persistence of innovation on employment in Spanish manufacturing firms during the period 1990–2008. Using GMM-system estimations, we study the importance of persistence of product and process innovation on employment growth according to the size of the firms. The results support that process innovation shows a positive effect on employment, especially for SMEs, while the effect of product innovation is not significant. The study also distinguishes that this effect appears in the contemporaneous year but it increases with the number of lags. This result confirms that compensation effects of process innovation may appear with a certain delay justifying the importance for SMEs of being persistent in innovation strategies to make them compatible with employment growth.     

An exploratory study of examining students’ expectations of training in a laboratory class: Factor analysis of affective heuristic features

When developing effective training programs, it is important to know students’ expectations of laboratory classes. The authors collected 170 surveys from students in one laboratory class to investigate the underlying dimensions of their expectations of training. Factor analysis identified the following six dimensions of students’ expectations: climate, courtesy, credibility, entertainment, relevance, and structure. These dimensions of training expectations were used to cluster students into two groups: serious and enthusiastic. Thereafter, these two clusters were compared using chi-square tests to determine whether there were statistical differences among them. The findings suggest instructors should consider students expectations to improve students’ learning from laboratory classes.