Customer Satisfaction,Competition, and Firm Performance: An Empirical Investigation

We conduct two empirical studies to test two hypotheses: (1) rivals' customer satisfaction increases a firm's own customer satisfaction; and (2) rivals' customer satisfaction reduces a firm's sales. Study One uses a panel dataset of annual store‐level customer satisfaction data from a supermarket chain for the periods 1998–2001. Study Two considers a range of industries by using a panel dataset of brand‐level customer satisfaction ratings from the American Customer Satisfaction Index spanning the periods 1994–2003. Results from both studies provide support for our hypotheses. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

企业杠杆率、中长期信贷与企业绩效

信贷的期限结构对企业绩效具有重要影响,加强对非金融企业中长期信贷支持是提升企业绩效的重要手段。文章将企业杠杆率纳入中长期信贷与企业绩效关系的分析,研究表明:第一,当企业杠杆率处于中低区间时,中长期信贷能够显著提升企业绩效,当企业杠杆率过高时,中长期信贷对企业绩效的提升作用被削弱,但在中高杠杆率区间,对民营企业提供中长期信贷支持更能提升其绩效;第二,随着时间的推移,中长期信贷对企业绩效的提升作用不断走弱;第三,在一定杠杆率水平下,中长期信贷与企业绩效呈倒U型关系,且这一关系在中小企业、民营企业和高成长企业中更显著。     

股权结构、行业特征与公司绩效

本文以1995～2004年沪深两市全部上市公司为总样本,对股权结构与公司绩效关系分行业地进行了描述性统计和多元回归分析。结果表明,相对集中的股权结构有利于企业绩效,股权构成与公司绩效却无显著相关,无可靠证据表明国有股持股比率与企业绩效负相关。     

机构投资者持股、内部控制与企业业绩——基于国有企业与非国有企业的划分

本文以深沪主板上市公司2014-2016年数据为研究样本,从企业内部控制和机构投资者持股两个因素入手,利用中介变量的研究方法,将机构投资者持股、企业内部控制和企业业绩三者联系起来,对内部控制的中介作用进行了验证。文章最后引入股权性质,探究了二者在国有企业与非国有企业中发挥作用的差异性。研究表明:(1)机构投资者持股在提高企业业绩和内部控制水平方面发挥着积极的作用。(2)在机构投资者持股正向影响企业业绩的过程中,内部控制起到了部分中介的作用。(3)引入股权性质后,中介效应在非国有企业中的作用更加明显,即内部控制的中介效应在不同股权性质下显著性存在差异。     

Tournament Compensation Systems,Employee Heterogeneity,and Firm Performance

Tournament compensation systems are widely used in practice and have been extensively analyzed theoretically. However, one major problem has hardly been studied in a company context so far: Although it is theoretically well understood that tournament compensation systems are only effective when employees are homogeneous, it has rarely been analyzed what companies can do when they are confronted with employee heterogeneity. In our article, we derive hypotheses on the performance effects of tournament compensation systems in a context of employee heterogeneity based on tournament and expectancy theory. Using personnel records from incentive travel contests, we are able to show that performance is lower in a situation with employee heterogeneity, but that in heterogeneous tournaments, incentives may still work for a subgroup of employees whom we term the “threshold group.” In addition, we also show how companies manage to design the information disclosure systems necessary to install effective “handicapping” or “league‐building” systems in order to increase the effort‐performance expectancy.     

Perceptions of Strategic Priorities,Consensus and Firm Performance

This paper reports the results of a study into strategy content, consensus, and firm performance. It is argued that the content of consensus, i.e. what the agreement is about, is of importance, and that strategic priorities concerned with the extant strategy are constructs that are strategically relevant to the exploration of consensus--performance links. Whereas previous studies have used a statistical measure of consensus (summing standard deviations), in this study the managers' perceptions of strategic priorities have been plotted on two-dimensional graphs. We argue that in contrast to the use of means and standard deviations, by plotting the patterns of perceptions produced by a management group, more information is retained for subsequent interpretation and hence a richer picture of the extent and nature of shared perceptions within a management group can be developed. Using this approach, data from 32 strategic business units were analysed, revealing patterns of consensus and performance. The paper discusses the implications of these patterns, and suggests some avenues for further research.     

Costs, Institutional Mobility Barriers, and Market Structure: Advertising Agencies as Multiproduct Firms

What accounts for the diversity and limited concentration that has long characterized the organization of the advertising agency industry? This question is addressed by treating an advertising agency as a multiproduct firm. The firm's product line or service mix is defined in terms of the set of different media categories where an agency places the advertising messages that it creates on behalf of its clients. Evidence is presented indicating that the structure of demand and costs in the advertising agency industry conforms to the conditions that MacDonald and Slivinski showed were required for an industry to sustain an equilibrium with diversified firms. Building on this framework, we formulate a set of three hypotheses relating to the realization of product-specific scale and scope economies. The first two hypotheses posit that given low fixed costs and minimal entry barriers, both media-specific scale and scope economies are available and can be exploited by relatively small-size agencies. The third hypothesis suggests that large agencies may experience diseconomies of scope as a consequence of excessive diversification induced by two pervasive industry institutional phenomena: (1) “bundling” of agency services to match client demand for a mix of media advertising, and (2) “conflict policy,” which prohibits an agency from serving competing accounts and operates as a mobility constraint. Utilizing a multiproduct cost function, we estimate media-specific scale and scope economies for a cross section of 401 U.S. agencies in 1987. The results obtained support the set of three hypotheses outlined above. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the restructuring currently underway in this industry.     

Assessing Mobility Barriers In Dynamic Strategic Groups Analysis

The Mobility Barriers Paradigm (Caves and Porter, 1977) has strongly influenced research in strategic management, particularly in the areas of competitive analysis and strategic groups. In this article we develop a procedure called MOBIUS, based on ‘match ratios’(MRs), in order to identify those competitive variables which act as mobility barriers in a particular industry. We also attempt to classify mobility barriers in terms of the degree of observed mobility around key strategic variables and the extent to which change is desired on these variables. the MOBIUS procedure is illustrated briefly in the context of the pharmaceutical industry.     

Motives and Modes of FDI,Firm Characteristics and Performance

Abstract

In this exploratory study, die autfiors attempt to determine and interpret die interdependencies between die motives and modes of setting up subsidiaries by foreign investors in Poland, and the main characteristics and performance of these subsidiaries. Two modes of setting up a subsidiary are examined: green-field and acquisition. The audiors use data collected from seven foreign subsidiaries operating in Poland and apply within-case and cross-case analytical approach to identify and interpret relationships between die variables under consideration. The results of the study lead to a formulation of eight hypotheses requiring further testing and research.     

Diversity,Social Goods Provision,and Performance in the Firm

Economists have studied the effect of diversity on the provision of social goods and the stock of social capital. In parallel, management scholars have studied the effect of diversity in the workplace on firm performance. We integrate these two growing literatures and explore these questions with a unique dataset. A firm provided eight years of individual‐level employee survey data, which include measures of the stock of social capital, plus office‐level measures of diversity and performance. We find some evidence that more gender‐homogeneous offices enjoy higher levels of social goods provision but those offices do not perform any better and may actually perform worse.     

Multinational Firm Knowledge,Use of Expatriates,and Foreign Subsidiary Performance

The impact of knowledge transfer on foreign subsidiary performance has been a major focus of research on knowledge management in multinational enterprises (MNEs). By integrating the knowledge‐based view and the expatriation literature, this study examines the relationship between a multinational firm's knowledge (i.e. marketing and technological knowledge), its use of expatriates, and the performance of its foreign subsidiaries. We conceptualize that expatriates play a contingent role in facilitating the transfer and redeployment of a parent firm's knowledge to its subsidiary, depending on the location specificity of the organizational knowledge being transferred and the time of transfer. Our analysis of 1660 foreign subsidiaries of Japanese firms over a 15‐year period indicates that the number of expatriates relative to the total number of subsidiary employees (1) strengthened the effect of a parent firm's technological knowledge (with low location specificity) on subsidiary performance in the short term, but (2) weakened the impact of the parent firm's marketing knowledge (with high location specificity) on subsidiary performance in the long term. We also found that the expatriates' influence on knowledge transfer eventually disappeared. The implications for knowledge transfer research and the expatriate management literature are discussed.     

Stretch Goals,Factual/Counterfactual Reflection Strategies,and Firm Performance

Popular business press and academic publications have advocated for stretch goals, particularly to enhance firm performance. The general assumption is that stretch goals can create a more challenging task environment that upsets complacency, inspires motivation, encourages outside-the-box thinking, stimulates search and innovation, and guides efforts and persistence. Surprisingly few systematic empirical studies have been conducted to support stretch goal deployment, such as when and how to use them. This study introduces two reflection strategies – counterfactual reflection (managers confront performance feedback and create possible alternatives) and factual reflection (managers analyse their own decisions and explain performance feedback) – and uses two experimental laboratory studies to test how different reflection strategies contribute to the stretch goal-performance relationship. The results indicated that using stretch goals does not affect firm performance, although theoretically, using stretch goals can create a more challenging task environment and enhance performance. Rather, it is the combination of the type of goal and reflection strategy that affects performance. I suspect that under stretch goals, managers may be unable to implement new ideas as expected, leading to growing performance gaps and perceived continuous failures over time. Consequently, their motivation to search for alternative solutions declines, and they may fall into a spiral of self-constrained thinking. The results demonstrate that under stretch goals, managers use factual reflection strategies to deliberately reflect on performance feedback to achieve higher performance. In contrast, managers who are assigned moderate goals perform better if they use a counterfactual reflection strategy. I suggest that by using a different reflection strategy, managers can further improve performance by encouraging directed search behaviour and avoiding self-constrained thinking spirals. My study provides a richer theoretical and empirical appreciation of the effect of reflection strategy depending on the task environment and goal-setting.     

Neighbourhood Spatial Order,the Local Economy and Firm Mobility in Urban Areas of the Netherlands

Urban residential neighbourhoods in the Netherlands increasingly function as incubation zones for small‐scale businesses. Despite this development, little is known about whether and how the local production environment in these neighbourhoods shapes firm mobility behaviour. This article studies how two aspects of the local production environment — the built neighbourhood environment and zoning regulations — affect firm mobility of small‐scale businesses in urban residential neighbourhoods. To achieve this aim, we contrast two sets of urban neighbourhoods, pre‐ and post‐second world war neighbourhoods with a comparable low socio‐economic profile, but with distinct built environments and zoning regulations. We combine quantitative and qualitative methods to analyse available trade register data from the Dutch regional Chambers of Commerce, study neighbourhood zoning regulations, and conduct focus‐group and individual interviews with neighbourhood experts and entrepreneurs. The local built environment and its regulations appear to have a small but significant effect on the firm mobility behaviour of entrepreneurs in the neighbourhoods studied. Relocation intentions are higher among entrepreneurs in post‐war than in pre‐war neighbourhoods, which may (in part) be attributed to less favourable local institutional settings for businesses, but actual firm mobility does not differ between these neighbourhoods.     

高绩效工作系统与企业绩效:员工齐心协力的中介作用和行业竞争的调节作用

本研究通过对中国67家企业的运营高管、人力资源经理和916名下属员工的调研,形成了配对数据,并通过回归分析发现(1)高绩效工作系统与企业绩效有显著的正向关系;(2)企业层面的员工齐心协力程度中介高绩效工作系统与企业绩效的正向影响;(3)行业竞争程度调节高绩效工作系统与企业绩效的正向影响,即与低程度的行业竞争环境相比,在高程度的行业竞争环境下,高绩效工作系统与企业绩效的正向作用更强.本研究最后探讨了这些研究结果的理论意义以及实践启示.     

Input,Output, and Environmental Management Productivity: Effects on Firm Performance

Firms invest considerable resources to control any of their operations that may have environmental impacts in an attempt to reduce such impacts but also generate economic value. Various studies of the basic creation or destruction of monetary value through environmental performance offer contradictory evidence. Therefore, the present study proposes a new definition of environmental management as the transformation of inputs (resources assigned) into outputs (valuable results). Both inputs and outputs should be taken into account to explain financial outcomes; further consideration should also include a third aspect, namely, ‘environmental management productivity’, which describes the relationship between the outputs and inputs of environmental management. Empirical analyses of Spanish firms with a certified environmental management system subject to the European Union's CO₂ emissions trading system provide evidence that all three aspects must be considered in combination to achieve a more comprehensive view of the impact of environmental management on financial performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

产品市场竞争、代理成本与企业绩效

本文基于2010—2016年944家A股上市公司财务数据,运用面板固定效应模型实证研究了产品市场竞争、代理成本与企业经营绩效之间的关系。研究表明:(1)代理成本能够显著的降低企业的经营绩效,且代理成本对国有企业经营绩效的负向作用要显著大于非国有企业;产品市场竞争、股权集中度和股权制衡度能够显著降低企业代理成本,相对于国有企业,产品市场竞争对代理成本的负向作用在非国有企业中更为显著;(2)对于国有企业,产品市场竞争能够直接促进企业经营绩效的提高,而对代理成本与经营绩效的影响并不存在显著的调节作用;对于非国有企业,产品市场竞争并不能直接显著的提高企业绩效,而是通过调节作用显著的抑制代理成本对企业绩效的负面作用。     

Green Innovation,Managerial Concern and Firm Performance: An Empirical Study

Extant literature, while often suggesting a positive link between green innovation and firm performance, is inconclusive. Moreover, the possibly moderating role of management has not been sufficiently considered. Using a unique dataset sampling 188 manufacturing firms in China, we examine how managerial concern (for green issues) moderates the relationship between green innovation and firm performance. We find that green process innovation and green product innovation both significantly (positively) predict firm performance, when not considering managerial concern for the environment. Once managerial concern is included, we observe that it compounds the positive effect of green process innovation on firm performance – but not product innovation, which no longer explains significant unique variance in firm performance. The findings hold various implications for future research and business policy. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Strategic Staffing and Small‐Firm Performance

Although staffing can be a critical determinant of whether small businesses succeed or fail, there has been less research in this area than might be expected, given the large numbers of such firms. While there has been some research on specific recruiting and selection practices, there has been little attention to the strategic aspects of staffing. We investigated relationships between strategic approaches to staffing and small‐firm performance using lagged survey data from 139 founders and owners of small firms. Results indicate that recruiting approaches imitating the practices (processes) of larger businesses are positively related to a perceptual measure of firm performance. Selection approaches stressing a growth orientation are also positively related to firm performance. Finally, founders’ and owners’ perceptions of the strategic importance of human resources moderate the relationship of firm performance with imitative recruiting practices as well as with growth‐oriented selection practices. An important contribution of this article is that contextual knowledge facilitates our understanding of the performance implications of staffing practices in small firms. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Ownership Concentration,Institutional Development and Firm Performance in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper analyzes the relationship of ownership concentration and firm performance in the context of different institutional environments in 28 Central and Eastern European transition economies. We focus on private, non‐listed firms that have been largely neglected by the extant literature. Using the BEEPS data for the period from 2002 to 2009 we find an inverted u‐shaped relation of ownership concentration and firm performance for those firms that operate in non‐EU‐member countries as well as those firms that are situated in less developed institutional systems. We interpret these findings as evidence for a classic agency problem in the lower part of the ownership concentration distribution that is dominated by a ‘private benefits of control’ problem with rising ownership concentration. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.