Strategic restructuring

Never before has there been so much organizational restructuring, in spite of consistently mixed results. This article argues that the reason organizational restructuring so often fails to increase productivity and profit is that it is not guided by business strategy. While most managers agree that structure should follow strategy, few have a process for moving from strategy to restructuring at the business level where most restructuring occurs. A number of businesses, however, have based restructuring decisions on a clear and well-understood strategy. This article describes what is common to the processes these businesses have followed. Human resource managers, whose role and competence should include the alignment of change processes with business needs, have often abdicated responsibility for ensuring that restructuring efforts are strategic and are competently implemented. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Business strategy and firm efforts on environmental protection: Evidence from China

Although business strategy plays a fundamental role in firm operations, whether and how business strategy affects firms' environmental protection behaviors remain unclear. On the basis of a typical emerging market, we show that firms following prospector strategies take more environmental protection actions than do those following defender strategies. Our findings are robust to endogeneity checks and alternative measures of business strategy. We further find that prospectors engage in more environmental activities than do defenders when the degree of financial constraint or earning management is high. Our results are particularly pronounced in state‐owned enterprises, heavy‐polluting industries, and firms located in regions with strict environmental regulations. Overall, this study provides clear policy implications for regulators concerned with environmental protection.     

Modelling generalized firms’ restructuring using inverse DEA

The key consideration for firms’ restructuring is improving their operational efficiencies. Market conditions often offer opportunities or generate threats that can be handled by restructuring scenarios through consolidation, to create synergy, or through split, to create reverse synergy. A generalized restructuring refers to a move in a business market where a homogeneous set of firms, a set of pre-restructuring decision making units (DMUs), proceed with a restructuring to produce a new set of post-restructuring entities in the same market to realize efficiency targets. This paper aims to develop a novel inverse Data Envelopment Analysis based methodology, called GInvDEA (Generalized Inverse DEA), for modeling the generalized restructuring. Moreover, the paper suggests a linear programming model that allows determining the lowest performance levels, measured by efficiency that can be achieved through a given generalized restructuring. An application in banking operations illustrates the theory developed in the paper.     

The Governance of Corporate Responses to Climate Change: An International Comparison

In response to pressures from governments, investors, non‐governmental organizations and other stakeholders, many large corporations have adopted a variety of carbon and energy management practices, taken action to reduce their emissions and set targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Using the case of international retailers, this article examines whether, and under what conditions, non‐state actors might be capable of assuming the governance roles that have historically been played by national governments. This article concludes that external governance pressures can, if they are aligned, robust and of sufficient duration, have a significant influence on internal governance processes and on corporate strategies and actions. However, the specific actions that are taken by companies – in particular those that require significant capital investments – are constrained by the ‘business case’. That is, companies will generally only invest capital in situations when there is a clear financial case (i.e. where the benefits outweigh the costs, when the rate of return meets or exceeds company targets) for action. That is, the extent to which external governance pressures can force companies to take action, in particular challenging or transformative actions that go beyond the boundaries of the business case, is not at all clear. This is particularly the case if the business case weakens, or if the opportunities for incremental change are exhausted. In that context, the power of non‐state actors to force them to consider radical changes in their business processes and their use of energy therefore seems to be very limited. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Business Strategy and the Environment published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Ecological responsiveness and business performance: Four scenarios of compatibility and a multi-faceted strategies framework

This paper investigates the link between business actors' perceptions of the compatibility between ecological responsiveness and business performance and the level of corporate commitment to address ecological issues. The dichotomy between peripheral (or symbolic) actions and embedded (or substantive) actions traditionally assumed in business research arguably reflects a limited conceptualisation of the link between ecological responsiveness and business performance. It fails to exhaustively explain how companies create, maintain, or disrupt practices that affect the natural environment. Combining insights from a conceptual framework that encompasses four scenarios of compatibility (trade-off, ambidexterity, synergy, and symbiosis) and 50 interviews with 25 management consultants, the results show that perceptions of compatibility are associated with a valence of business responses towards either maturation strategies (accommodative, philanthropic, progressive, and consolidative) or minimalistic strategies (lackadaisical, compliance, opportunistic, and cosmetic). The findings bring greater nuance to key forms of corporate ecological responsiveness, and how business agents' interpretations play a key role in shaping a firm's activities in this domain.     

Commitment Strategies for Sustainability: How Business Firms Can Transform Trade‐Offs Into Win–Win Outcomes

This paper addresses a fundamental problem in corporate sustainability: How can corporations transform trade‐offs through win–win‐oriented governance strategies aimed at creating value? Drawing on new strands of research in business ethics, we employ an ‘ordonomic’ perspective and proceed in four steps. First, we sketch how sustainability semantics has evolved historically from a societal searchlight to a heuristics for business practice. Second, we discuss how business firms can make strategic use of moral commitments as governance contributions by deploying individual or collective self‐commitments as well as commitment services in their stakeholder relations. Third, we combine these four governance strategies with the three ESG (‘ecological, social and governance’) criteria of sustainability. We derive and illustrate with real‐life examples a 12‐box matrix as a tool for the strategic management of corporate sustainability. Fourth, we discuss the specific contribution of our ordonomic approach to the literature. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Electronic data interchange: a strategic approach

The potential of EDI is virtually unlimited, but the success of any EDI initiative hinges on its ability to directly support strategies that achieve your institution's business objectives. At its most fundamental level, EDI technology automates current business practices, speeding up the exchange of business information. This application of EDI most often is found in a hospital's material management department. But EDI integrated internally within a hospital and externally with suppliers and vendors has the potential to go beyond simple automation and to transform processes. This is where the full value of EDI can be realized. No matter which level of EDI participation hospital management decides is appropriate to fulfill its business objectives and strategies, EDI will affect the entire institution's exchange of information with its internal and external audiences. The question management must answer is: Will the hospital's EDI strategy be offensive and managed, or defensive and reactive? Today's environment leaves no room for a "no-strategy" EDI option. The options are either to proactively shape EDI, or reactively play catch-up. EDI can work for you. Adequately developing an EDI game plan in support of your business objectives and calling on your suppliers and other trading partners to work with you will ensure EDI is an asset to your facility.     

The Role of Corporate Sustainability in a Low‐Cost Business Model – A Case Study in the Scandinavian Fashion Industry

This multi‐level case study illustrates how corporate sustainability contributes to the low‐cost business model of a Scandinavian fashion company. Contrary to parts of the extant literature, we do not find that corporate sustainability directly adds measurable value (e.g. a better brand image); neither does it exert coercive control over critical supplier relationships. However, corporate sustainability minimizes the downside risk of the business model. It does so by (1) creating implicit contracts that reach beyond traditional ‘shareholder value’, (2) transferring risk to suppliers and (3) improving leadership by motivating management and employees, and by directing their attention to critical issues. For companies, we offer the insight that corporate sustainability is a necessary complement to shareholder value, even if the relationship is not obvious at first sight. We also suggest that concerted actions of companies or a positive connotation of certification create effective control over suppliers. As to public policy, we conclude that regulators could introduce mandatory disclosure of suppliers to facilitate controls through stakeholders, or alternatively an industry‐wide comply‐or‐explain code of conduct. We also address how regulators can take direct actions against countries with unsustainable labor policies. Last, we suggest future research topics, e.g. expanding the notion of a business model by interpreting ‘adding value’ as prevention of losses. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

成长期企业重组战略的抉择——特变电工

本案例主要对特变电工股份有限公司的重组战略进行案例研究，通过对其快速发展中关键的几次重组中，重组方式和对象的选择决策，重组过程中的风险监控、以及重组后的整合和管理过程进行分析，发掘重组战略中对特变电工股份有限公司财务绩效和竞争力提高产生显著影响的关键因素，探索企业在成长期如何把握自身优势和发展机遇，充分利用优质资源实施...     

Infused with news value: Management,managerial knowledge and the institutionalization of business news

This article explores the development and institutionalization of business news, and its implications for management. Business news is often seen either as a sign of media commercialization or as a target for corporate communication strategies. In contrast to this, business news is explored in the present article as a particular type of knowledge that has emerged and become institutionalized in recent decades. The empirical analysis first describes the institutional development of business news in Denmark and then examines changes in business news texts from the 1960s to the present, not just as a particular type of business-oriented media content but ultimately as a form of managerial knowledge characterized by being simultaneously autonomous, negotiated and boundary-spanning.     

Being ‘Green and Competitive’: The Impact of Environmental Actions and Collaborations on Firm Performance

In this paper, we seek to enhance the understanding of the link between environmental management and firm performance, so contributing to the debate of being “green and competitive”. Relying on the resource‐based view, we study the effect of different environmental management capabilities on a firm's market and image performance. In particular, we analyze the capabilities to implement product and process‐related environmental actions with different types of environmental focus (materials, energy, pollution) and the capabilities to develop environmental collaborations with different types of actors (both business actors and non‐business actors). To this aim we conducted a survey on 122 Italian companies. Results show that market performance and image performance have partially different antecedents. Specifically, a firm's market performance is positively affected by the capabilities to implement environmental actions with a focus on energy and pollution and to develop environmental collaborations both with business and with non‐business actors. On the other hand, a firm's image performance is positively affected by the capabilities to implement environmental actions with a focus on materials and to develop environmental collaborations with non‐business actors. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Inward investment and endogenous development. The convergence of the strategies of large firms and territories?

Inward investment is often understood as an inadequate instrument for self-sustained growth and as being responsible for the insufficient development of peripheral areas. Globalization and increasing competition within the markets, however, changed the firms' and regions' adjustment environment, and led to the convergence of spatial strategies of the large innovative firms and the development strategies of regional and local governments. This process contributes toward the integration of the external firms within local productive systems and, therefore, large innovative firms can play a relevant role in endogenous development processes. Although the convergence of strategies is not a phenomenon that can be generalized for all types of firms and territories, a new line of action opens up that permits improved productive restructuring and economic development, even in less favoured and peripheral regions.     

Contesting Sustainability: ‘SMART Growth’ and the Redevelopment of Austin's Eastside

The compatibility between an agenda for sustainable urban development and the neoliberal economic restructuring of urban space has been observed within cities in developed countries across the globe. From providing economic support to local ‘green’ industries to creating bike lanes, municipalities develop sustainability strategies that are designed to boost their competitive advantage. Moreover, municipalities are responding to demands from popular social movements and national governments that seek to reconfigure societal relationships with the natural environment in cities. Cities are increasingly understood not as part of the ecological crisis but as part of the solution, or as places where alternative patterns of sustainable consumption and new socially and ecologically responsible industries can be developed. Over the last decade in Austin, environmental sustainability has become an uncontested paradigm that has progressively shaped the city's urban space and policy. Two competing conceptualizations of the environment, so‐called ‘environmental’ and ‘just’ sustainability groups, are explored in this article. I demonstrate how the notion of environmental sustainability has been selectively incorporated into the hegemonic vision of Austin's strategic growth plan. I argue that the dominance of this conceptualization is best understood by asking what counts as the ‘environment’ for environmentalists, and understanding the unstated assumptions about the environment shared by the business community and environmentalists.     

Sustainability in the Transport and Logistics Sector: Lacking Environmental Measures

Sustainability as part of the development of companies' business strategies is gaining in importance. Due to its impact on the environment, this is particularly essential for companies of the transport and logistics sector. This paper explores several factors that influence the environmental behaviour of transport and logistics companies in Austria. It discusses the importance of the economic impact on environmental management decision in detail and analyses the sector's specific characteristics in terms of environmental behavior. A case‐based approach involving multiple field studies with face‐to‐face expert interviews and secondary data analysis was used to evaluate environmental performance and specific practices. Using selected cases, we will demonstrate how environmental measures contribute to overall business performance and draw general conclusions regarding the transport and logistics sector. Furthermore, suggestions are given as to how the government can further support transport and logistics companies in this regard. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Environmental Policies and Firm Value

Many organizations are currently becoming more environmentally friendly. Eco‐efficiency maximizes the effectiveness of a business operation while reducing its impact on the environment; with the necessary skills, organizations can create more value while using less input. Prior empirical studies have suggested that firms engaging in eco‐efficient activities are better valued than those without such activities. Therefore, this will enhance business efficiency and excellence. This study investigates the link between eco‐efficiency, as environmental policy, and firm value in the United Kingdom (UK) for the period 1999 to 2008. We generate new insights into environmental–financial performance by using different definitions of the term ‘eco‐efficiency’. In the UK context our results support that eco‐efficient firms have higher market values than those lacking environmental strategies. Hence, we recommend that firms become involved in environmental polices since the adoption of these polices will have a positive impact on firm value. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Don’t kill the messenger! Whistle-blowing in America — A review with recommendations

Whistle-blowing in America business and industry has increased as interest in ethical business behavior and the cost of unethical behavior have grown. Whistle-blowing plays the important role of helping to fill the gaps in the regulatory system that is designed to check the abuse of organizational power. However, the practice of whistle-blowing is controversial and whistle-blowers often pay a high price for their actions. Firms can engage in a number of actions to encourage whistle-blowing. Creating a climate that encourages employees to report organizational wrong doing and that protects the whistle-blower is critical. To create such a climate the organization must build trust and cooperation by educating employees in the benefits of ethical and legal behavior.     

Saving Private Business Enterprises

This article develops an argument from a heterodox microeconomic perspective that the business enterprise and the state have to control market institutions in order to protect the vested interests of the ruling class. Market governance by the business enterprise and market regulation by the state are in this regard purposeful and necessary actions to save private business enterprises vis‐à‐vis fundamental instability inherent in the capitalist system.     

Conceptualizing businesses as social actors: A framework for understanding sustainability actions in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises

Small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can play a crucial role in advancing environmental and social well‐being. Yet various—often conflicting—explanations have been offered to clarify why SMEs pursue sustainability. Some arguments foreground possibilities of profit maximization, whereas others emphasize individual values and convictions. Research supporting such contradicting explanations is often biased towards large enterprises or small, innovative frontrunners. In this article, we examine the underlying drivers of social and environmental interventions of SMEs by exploring empirical data from a survey of over 1,600 Canadian SMEs and complementary in‐depth interviews. We argue that sustainability actions of SMEs can be understood by viewing these firms as social actors—organizations that are shaped by individual values, internal and external interpersonal relationships, and are embedded in a social environment. This conceptualization directs attention to the full range of factors that shape sustainability engagement of SMEs and highlights frequently overlooked forms of sustainability‐oriented actions.     

The greening dutchman: Philips' process of green flagging to drive sustainable innovations

Sustainability innovation research often focuses on the interrelation and the interaction of influencing factors and actors while neglecting the importance of firm internal initiatives. Based on a longitudinal case study of the Dutch company Royal Philips Electronics, we develop the concept of ‘green flagging’ as a groundbreaking corporate sustainability innovation strategy. This paper describes how Philips uses this approach in its Green Flagship Program (GFP). Philips' GFP is particularly interesting since it sets specific targets across all its business units, thus driving the integration of sustainability innovation into its core business. This study suggests that the impact of sustainability innovations can be improved by focusing on sustainability as an explicit goal as well as processes and projects instead of merely concentrating on content and structure. We discuss the possibilities and limitations of these findings for theory and research on sustainability innovation strategies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Short‐Term Expectations in Listed Firms: The Effects Of Different Owner Types

We report empirical evidence in line with the disciplining role of different institutional and other owner types in reducing managerial myopia. Using data from a large Nordic survey, we find that companies, to a reasonably high degree, feel that external pressure for a good result in the short‐term generates conflict with the company's long‐term goals. We test for the effect of different ownership types and find that especially in firms with a large and non‐transitory activist or fund as an owner, the perceived pressure for short‐term actions is reduced. In addition, we observe a negative association between firm profitability and short‐term pressure, and we find that younger managers feel significantly more pressure. Firms subject to greater pressure engage in more actions to accommodate that pressure. Again, the impact of a large activist owner is especially beneficial because such firms significantly less often undertake actions that have the potential to destroy value, such as deprioritizing their long‐term investments or R&D.