Do managerial ties in China always produce value? Competition,uncertainty, and domestic vs. foreign firms

While most advocate that foreign firms should utilize managerial ties to conduct business in China, recent literature cautions that such ties may offer only conditional value. This study examines three sources of heterogeneity that may condition the value of ties: firm ownership (foreign vs. domestic), competition, and structural uncertainty. Results from a survey of 280 firms in China indicate that though foreign and domestic firms utilize ties at a similar level, their performance gains from tie utilization differ. Managerial ties have a monotonic, positive effect on performance for domestic firms, whereas the effect is curvilinear (i.e., inverted U-shaped) for foreign firms. Therefore, compared with domestic firms, foreign firms have a competitive disadvantage from tie utilization. Furthermore, managerial ties are less effective for fostering performance when competition becomes more intense. However, ties lead to higher levels of firm performance when structural uncertainty increases. Overall, these results support the contingency view of managerial ties and caution companies about the unconditional use of ties as the market becomes more heterogeneous. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Coronavirus crisis in B2B settings: Crisis uniqueness and managerial implications based on social exchange theory

The current Coronavirus crisis is having disastrous effects for most B2B firms around the world. The decline in sales provokes intra-organizational and inter-organizational tension, requiring a new approach for managing firms' business operations. Particularly, the direct threat to human beings places the attention of managers on the individual. This study investigates the main differences between prior “traditional” financial-based crises and the practices that managers can adopt to navigate and survive the Coronavirus crisis from a social exchange theory (SET) view. The authors identify eight crisis-comparative dimensions to consider to successfully prevail: (1) formation, (2) focus, (3) temporality, (4) government jurisdiction, (5) preparedness, (6) normality, (7) business, and (8) operational deployment. In addition, the study results propose four intertwined areas to classify the managerial practices: (1) digital transformation, (2) decision-making processes, (3) leadership, and (4) emotions and stress.     

Marketing capabilities: Antecedents and implications for B2B SME performance

The study provides a new perspective on SME marketing strategies in the B2B context. Using a resource-based view of the firm, the study develops a structural model linking marketing capabilities and marketing performance. A study of 367 SME Australian firms reveals that two key marketing capabilities, namely branding and innovation, have major performance outcomes in the SME B2B context. This is the first SME study to evaluate concurrently the contribution of innovation and branding marketing capabilities, with innovation capability the strongest determinant of SME performance. The study also finds market orientation and management capability act as enabling mechanisms for building marketing capabilities. Disaggregation tests indicate that the same findings apply to three size categories denoting micro firms (less than 20 staff), small firms (20-99 staff) and medium-sized firms (100-499 staff).     

Mapping moral philosophies: strategic implications for multinational firms

Strategic managers appear increasingly under pressure from stakeholder concerns regarding social and ethical issues. Partially in response, the supply of ethical decision‐making models has grown rapidly. Business ethics scholars have broadened their scope to incorporate moral philosophies into their research endeavors. Despite these positive trends, the international focus of business ethics research has been slow to evolve. Yet, diverse moral philosophies, often most apparent across international borders, have important strategic implications for multinational firms. The ethical norms pursued by cross‐cultural alliance partners, distributors, suppliers, customers, financiers, and foreign government agencies can create public relations disasters, foster shareholder unrest, lead to consumer boycotts, and impact organizational outcomes. We seek to rectify the deficiency in international business ethics scholarship with two distinct contributions. First, we develop a new cross‐cultural, macro‐level model of societal ethics. Second, we map moral philosophies onto an established framework for assessing socioeconomic environments. These theoretical tools should assist managers of multinational organizations, international policy‐makers, and researchers to recognize and prepare for the ethical consequences of international strategic decisions. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Marketing capabilities and innovation-based strategies for environmental sustainability: An exploratory investigation of B2B firms

While emerging literature on sustainability shows that environmentally responsible strategies can contribute to competitive advantage and enhanced financial performance, little is known about specific marketing capabilities that lead to sustainable consumption behavior, and whether implementing such strategies leads to firm competitive advantage. Using the case method approach, this study explores marketing-related strategies and practices pertaining to sustainable consumption as reported by leading sustainable firms in the B2B context. We examine case studies of forty seven B2B firms and identify key marketing capabilities that tie to innovation-based sustainability strategies, sustainable consumption behavior and firm performance. We use our findings to develop a conceptual framework linking marketing capabilities to innovation strategies for firm sustainability, sustainable consumption behavior and firm competitive advantage, and put forward propositions for future research.     

New technology and changing organisational forms: implications for managerial control and skills

Changes in organisational forms are central to the way new technologies impact on the future of work and employment. Drawing on case–study evidence of a call centre and its client relations and a multinational IT firm and its partnership with a government department, this paper explores the implications for skill and managerial control.     

Creating superior customer value for B2B firms through supplier firm capabilities

In a dynamic global business-to-business (B2B) environment, innovation and marketing appear crucial to providing supplier firms' positional advantage through the ability to create value for customers. Our examination is grounded in seeking to address the research question: To what extent is the creation of superior performance, relationship, and co-creation value driven by market orientation, product innovation and marketing capabilities in B2B firms? The results of a survey of 155 large B2B firms show product innovation capability and marketing capability partially mediates the relationship between a firms' market orientation and its ability to create value (performance and co-creation), except for the role of marketing capability which we found acted as a full mediator of the relationship between market orientation and relationship value.     

Green supply chain practices and environmental performance in Brazil: Survey,case studies,and implications for B2B

This article examines whether or not customers cooperate in organisations' environmental performance, in what circumstances it happens; and how customers can collaborate with organisations in order to they improve their environmental performance. This research uses both the Ecological Modernisation (EM) and the Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) to analyse the effects of external Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) practices, namely, ‘Cooperation with Customers’ (CC) and ‘Green Purchasing’ (GP) on the Environmental Performance (EP) of organisations. A multi-method research is used, combining a survey and multiple-case studies of Brazilian organisations. The main results and contributions of this research include: (a) the Brazilian setting, in the context of EM, provides incentives for adopting GSCM practices, especially CC practices; (b) Brazilian organisations depend more on customers than on suppliers to improve EP; and (c) an original matrix for a better understanding of the roles of suppliers and customers to achieve a better EP through a GSCM approach is proposed. This paper provides an extension to EM and RDT theories applied to green operations management by showing that external GSCM can improve EP and such process depends more on CC than GP. Implications for B2B are highlighted.     

Corporate spinoffs and analysts' coverage decisions: The implications for diversified firms

Research summary: This paper investigates how spinoffs improve the quality of analysts' research about diversified firms, theorizing that these deals may induce analysts to revisit their earlier coverage decisions. The gains resulting from these shifts are expected to be more pronounced when a firm undertakes a legacy (rather than a non‐legacy) spinoff, which removes the business that may be constraining analysts' coverage decisions in the first place. Consistent with this argument, firms that undertake legacy spinoffs experience greater improvements in the composition and quality of their analyst coverage than their non‐legacy counterparts, and in their overall forecast accuracy and stock market performance. Taken together, these findings shed light on the relationships among the scope decisions, analyst coverage, and valuations of diversified firms. Managerial summary: Existing research has established that when companies undertake spinoffs, analysts produce more accurate forecasts about the divesting firms than they did prior to those deals, and the stock market performance of those firms also improves relative to pre‐spinoff levels. This paper explores the effects of legacy spinoffs (the spinoff of a firm's original or “legacy” business) for forecast accuracy and stock market performance. Firms that undertake legacy spinoffs are found to enjoy greater improvements in forecast accuracy and stock market performance than their non‐legacy counterparts. These findings are driven by the fact that legacy spinoffs induce analysts to revisit their existing coverage decisions to a greater extent than non‐legacy spinoffs, contributing significantly to the economic benefits of these deals for shareholders. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Value as capital-in-use: Unpacking the temporal impacts and managerial implications for organisational value

Value is a widely researched and much debated topic, but one still characterised by conceptual deficiencies. While multiple competing value perspectives exists in the current literature, they provide limited insights in terms of temporal impacts and implications for organisational value creation. To address this gap, this conceptual article develops the notion of value as capital-in-use, which complements extant value literature by providing a capital-oriented perspective and conceptualisation of the nature, characteristics, and dimensions of value. We develop the concept by reviewing four categories of capital (physical, financial, knowledge, and social), and unpacking their dimensions in terms of locus, latency, temporality and convertibility, to distinguish the implications they each hold as potential sources of organisational value. Variations in the properties of the four categories of capital have management implications that are typically poorly recognised, especially in terms of costs and risk associated with latent or perishable capital. This paper contributes to current value theory by establishing its relationship to capital, and extending coverage of the temporal dimension of value.     

Risk management, project success, and technological uncertainty

In times of increased competition and globalization, project success becomes even more critical to business performance, and yet many projects still suffer delays, overruns, and even failure. Ironically, however, risk management tools and techniques, which have been developed to improve project success, are used too little, and many still wonder how helpful they are. In this paper we present the results of an empirical study devoted to this question. Based on data collected on over 100 projects performed in Israel in a variety of industries, we examine the extent of usage of some risk management practices, such as risk identification, probabilistic risk analysis, planning for uncertainty and trade-off analysis, the difference in application across different types of projects, and their impact on various project success dimensions. Our findings suggest that risk management practices are still not widely used. Only a limited number of projects in our study have used any kind of risk management practices and many have only used some, but not all the available tools. When used, risk management practices seem to be working, and appear to be related to project success. We also found that risk management practices were more applicable to higher risk projects. The impact of risk management is mainly on better meeting time and budget goals and less on product performance and specification. In this case, we also found some differences according levels of technological uncertainty. Our conclusion is that risk management is still at its infancy and that at this time, more awareness to the application, training, tool development, and research on risk management is needed.     

Complementarity versus substitutability of dynamic and operational capabilities in B2B firms: A configurational approach

Despite extensive research into dynamic and operational capabilities, understanding of their interplay is still scant. Both complementary and substitutive roles have been proposed in prior conceptual studies, but only limited systematic empirical investigations into the mutual interdependence of these capabilities have been conducted. Drawing on a sample of 219 Hungarian B2B firms, this study incorporates prior literature on dynamic and operational capabilities and employs a set-theoretical approach to examine whether the capabilities complement or substitute each other in producing high levels of business performance. While evidence for both types of interdependency is provided, the findings generally support the view that dynamic and operational capabilities are complementary rather than substitutive. The two types of capabilities also explain business performance better jointly than in isolation. Several effective capability configurations, associated with high business performance, are identified. The findings paint a detailed picture of the complex interplay between dynamic and operational capabilities, thereby contributing to academic and managerial audiences alike.     

Classifying relationships across cultures as successful and problematic: Theoretical perspectives and managerial implications

There is increasing interest in the theoretical and practical challenges that managers face in having to deal with the multiple dualities inherent in managing a portfolio of different business relationships. A number of relationship portfolio models have been developed which use a wide range of criteria for categorizing relationships. The research reported here takes a different approach by identifying the key process and/or outcome elements which managers use to distinguish between successful and problematic relationships, and also offering a comparison of the managers' perceptions across three different countries. The aim is to contribute to the development of more robust management thinking and action. Managers in the United Kingdom (UK), France and Finland were found to think about relationships in terms of both process and outcome variables. Whilst the outcome variables used to discriminate between successful and problematic relationships vary slightly across countries, it was found that they all used the process variables of trust and problem resolution.     

Interactive strategy formation: Organizational and entrepreneurial factors related to effective customer information systems practices in B2B firms

Interactive marketing requires that a firm learn about its customers and remember what the customer has said to personalize communications and customize product offerings to those customers. This type of marketing requires that customer information be actively managed because information from and about the customer is the core of marketing decision-making. In-depth interviews with 17 managers in five firms identified specific organizational and entrepreneurial factors pertinent to the strategic management of customer information. The research suggests that interactive marketing require a company that can itself be interactive with its internal and external environment to create strategies that can succeed in a changing environment.One exemplary company was compared to four others to uncover organizational issues and processes leading to effective management of customer information. Using the Resource-Based View and the importance of the effective management of intangible assets as its starting point, this research illuminated the processes involved with collecting and disseminating information and highlighted the firms' struggle with issues of inter-functional conflict. Perhaps most importantly, from a strategy-formation point of view, customer-centric strategies related to customer information management were found to be developed interactively, as a dialogue between middle and upper management, using customer data and competitive trends.     

Strategy formulation processes: Differences in perceptions of strength and weaknesses indicators and environmental uncertainty by managerial level

Some literature suggests that managers' perceptions of strengths and weaknesses indicators vary by management level. Differences likely result because of individuals' cognitive schemes, which include their cognitive biases. In turn, systematic errors may occur in managerial decisions. Results from the research reported herein support the notion that managers' perceptions of the indicators of a firm's strengths and weaknesses, and of environmental uncertainty, vary by managerial level. Differences in these perceptions were discovered to be more significant within each firm. Implications of these results are examined, including the impact on the deployment of firms' strategy formulation processes.     

A note on the relationship between managerial change values,innovative intentions and innovative technology outcomes in food sector firms

In this study three, two-part propositions were developed based on a general model of how organizational variables moderate the influence of individual change values on innovative intentions and how these same organizational factors moderate the impact of individual innovative intentions on organizational innovative outcomes. A total of 66 respondents, mostly top managers in food processing and food equipment and packaging firms, returned questionnaires. Results indicated that the absence of technical specialist concentration significantly (p <.05) increased the correlation between managerial change values and innovative intentions. Organization size and diversification into nonfood markets did not significantly moderate the correlation between managerial change values and innovative intentions although results were in the predicted direction. Managerial innovative intentions were significantly (p <.05) more likely to be correlated with the rate of new products introduction, and the rate of adoption of incremental process innovation when technical specialists were concentrated. Managerial innovative intentions were significantly (p <.05) more likely to be correlated with the rate of new production introduction and the adoption of radical (new to the industry) process innovation in firms that had diversified into nonfood markets. Critical incident accounts by respondents of creative or innovative episodes in their organizations are strongly correlated with indicators of slack resources for innovation, and the skills managers develop to identify and back innovators in their firms are discussed.