Use of partial least squares (PLS) in strategic management research: a review of four recent studies

Advances in causal modeling techniques have made it possible for researchers to simultaneously examine theory and measures. However, researchers must use these new techniques appropriately. In addition to dealing with the methodological concerns associated with more traditional methods of analysis, researchers using causal modeling approaches must understand their underlying assumptions and limitations. Most researchers are well equipped with a basic understanding of LISREL‐type models. In contrast, current familiarity with PLS in the strategic management area is low. The current paper reviews four recent studies in the strategic management area which use PLS. The review notes that the technique has been applied inconsistently, and at times inappropriately, and suggests standards for evaluating future PLS applications. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A critical review of recent organizational buying research

The purposes of this article are to examine the major contributions toward understanding industrial buying behavior and to suggest possible areas for future research. Many of the more recent studies have attempted to apply research findings in communications theory, consumer behavior, quantitative methods, and managerial decision theory in defining the decision process which constitutes industrial buying behavior. These research efforts have not been thoroughly evaluated.     

Business and management in China: A review of empirical research in leading international journals

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - China’s growing economic importance has led to a significant increase in the volume of empirical research about business and management in this country...     

The Indian broadband plan: A review and implications for theory

Given the benefits of ubiquitous broadband deployment and availability that include economic growth, participation in the Internet economy and increased competitiveness, several countries have launched major national initiatives to accelerate broadband deployment including supporting such initiatives often as a part of their fiscal stimulus plans. These include Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Sweden, UK and USA and the European Union as a whole.     

A current research information system for the management of agricultural research

Abstract
A generalized current research information and costing system for management of an agricultural research programme is described by reference to the Agricultural Research Current Information System (ARCIS) of the Agricultural and Food Research Council of the United Kingdom.     

Analysis of agricultural research investment priorities for sustainable poverty reduction in Southeast Asia

Underinvestment in agricultural research remains rife across Southeast Asia, despite the remaining importance of the subregion’s agricultural sector and ample evidence of agricultural technology impact to date. To help identify specific areas where additional investment is most needed, this study compares the impact potential for the poor of alternative agricultural research foci, taking changes in production patterns, consumption patterns and environmental sustainability into account. New spatial data on the distribution of poverty and the expenditure patterns of households below international poverty lines are used to offer more detailed assessment of the poverty relevance of alternative foci than possible previously. Patterns of impact potential are evaluated against evidence of impact to date to discern probabilities of success in achieving potential impacts. Impact patterns discerned are contrasted with current relative funding allocations across research areas in the subregion by National Agricultural Research Systems (NARSs) and International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) to identify key funding gaps.     

The two dimensions of policy impacts on economic cohesion: Concept and illustration for the CAP

Given the growing importance of cohesion policy within the European Union (EU) during the last two decades, public and scientific interest in the role of EU policies for regional disparities has risen continuously. Recent empirical studies on the impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on economic cohesion have been strikingly diverse in their principal findings. Whereas some studies suggest positive overall effects on economic cohesion, others stress exactly the opposite. One major reason for the ambiguous results is that a single agreed-upon measure of economic cohesion is lacking. We propose a concept that distinguishes between two dimensions of policy impacts on economic cohesion: (i) the redistributive impact at a defined period of time and (ii) the change of the redistributive impact over time. The first dimension addresses the question whether a policy makes the distribution of a target variable, e.g., income, more equal or unequal at one point of time. The second dimension covers the impact of the policy on the disparity of the same variable over time, i.e., the impact on convergence. An empirical illustration of the concept for 13 NUTS 1 regions in Germany over the period 1991–2009 reveals that the two policy impacts of the CAP are partly contradictory for the two dimensions. It is shown that the CAP fosters economic cohesion by reducing regional disparities in each individual year. With regard to redistributive impacts over time, we find that CAP transfers leave income convergence largely unaffected for society as a whole. Within the agricultural sector, it leads to a convergence of receipts per farm whereas it induces a divergence of farm receipts per hectare.     

Asian contexts and the search for general theory in management research: A rejoinder

“Asian Management Research Needs More Self-confidence” (Meyer, 2006) generated a surprisingly extended and diverse set of responses from Asia and beyond. In this rejoinder, I draw together a few lines of arguments that have emerged in that debate with the aim of moving the debate—and thus Asian management research agendas—forward. In particular, I argue that context is a crucial variable to explain management behavior, yet for practical reasons, it has been neglected in research published in top journals. Thus, I challenge management scholars in Asia and beyond to devise new research strategies to enhance our understanding of the contextual boundaries of our knowledge.

Are less-favored environments over-invested? The case of rice research in India

Allocation of research resources between favorable and unfavorable rice-growing environments is analyzed in this paper using the case of India. The resource allocation in rice research for all ecosystems of India is approximated by the full-time equivalent (FTE) of scientist time spent in research. This was estimated through a survey of all major public research organizations involved in rice research. The FTEs were adjusted for any cost differences per scientist time across the rice growing environments. Unadjusted FTEs indicated a high congruence in resource allocation while adjusted FTEs showed slight under investment in rainfed environment. The use of equity weights amplified the extent of under investment in rainfed environments. It is concluded that, in the case of rice research, rainfed environments in India remain under-invested moderately. Options for addressing this imbalance and the overall implications for resource allocation are discussed.     

The US fashion industry: A supply chain review

The fashion industry has short product life cycles, tremendous product variety, volatile and unpredictable demand, and long and inflexible supply processes. These characteristics, a complex supply chain and wide availability of data make the industry a suitable avenue for efficient supply chain management practices. The industry has also been in a transition over the last 20 years: significant consolidation in retail, majority of apparel manufacturing operations moving overseas and, more recently, increasing use of electronic commerce in retail and wholesale trade. This paper aims to review the current state of operations and recent trends across the fashion supply chain in the US. We use industry-wide data, articles from business journals, industry reviews and extensive interviews with an apparel manufacturer in California, and a major US department store chain to describe the current operational practices and how the industry is restructuring itself during the transition, focusing at the apparel manufacture and retail segments of the supply chain.     

A Citation Analysis of Management and Organization Research in the Chinese Context: 1984–1999

Since modern China was closed to the outside world until 1979, research on management issues within organizations operating in the Chinese context is a relatively recent phenomenon. In this study, we analyzed this body of research by performing a citation analysis on 226 research articles on this topic published in 20 leading English language academic journals over the past 16 years (1984–1999). The citation impact analysis identified the 52 most cited articles and the academic journals as well as the most influential authors on this research. We examined the issues or topics in these 52 influential articles and suggest some directions for future research.     

The relationship between supplier management and firm's operational performance: A multi-dimensional perspective

This paper presents an empirical study on the multidimensional relationships between supplier management practices and firm operational performance. Specifically, we focus on three supplier management practices, namely strategic long-term relationship, supplier assessment, and logistics integration, and test their effects on four operations performance measures, namely quality, delivery, flexibility, and cost. We use data collected from 232 manufacturing firms in Australia to conduct the study. Ten hypotheses were tested simultaneously using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique. The results show that different supplier management practices have different unique effects on different operations performance measures. Supplier assessment has a positive relationship with quality performance. Both strategic long-term relationship and logistics integration have positive relationships with delivery, flexibility, and cost performance. From a theoretical perspective, this study demonstrates the relative contributions of different kinds of resources (i.e., supplier management practices in our case) to different performance measures. Our research findings provide practical insights for managers to understand the effectiveness, as well as the limitations, of different supplier management practices in enhancing different operations performance measures of firms.     

Financial planning issues concerning funding, pricing and organization of corporate R&D activity: A case study

This paper is a case study of financial planning issues concerning funding, pricing, and the organization of corporate research and development (R&D) activity faced by American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) after the break up of the Bell System. The paper concludes that from the standpoint of financial planning, and in the context of firms similar to AT&T, a variant of the predivestiture model, rather than a profit centre model or a market model, appears to be the most efficient way of funding, pricing and organizing corporate R&D activity.     

Antecedents and consequences of commitment in marketing research services: The client's perspective

Commitment is one of the most frequently studied variables in business-to-business relationships and several researchers propose it is the main antecedent of customer loyalty. However, while marketing relationships researchers agree on the importance of the construct, differences remain in its conceptualization and operationalization. This study examines commitment from the customer's perspective, consisting of three components: calculative, affective and normative. Relationships were tested between the three dimensions of commitment and social bonds, trust and satisfaction in the context of professional business services providers and their clients. The results of the model that was tested in Central and Eastern European companies show that affective commitment is the only one of the three components that significantly influences customer loyalty. Trust and social bonds have no significant relation either to normative or to calculative commitment while a relation of overall satisfaction with normative and calculative commitment is negative. The theoretical and managerial implications for the model to assist in the development of appropriate strategies to achieve affective commitment and loyalty in business relationships are discussed.     

The dialectics of competency acquisition: pollution prevention in electric generation

Strategy researchers now recognize that distinctive competencies are critically important for sustained competitive advantage. The processes by which such competencies are acquired, however, has only started to be examined. Connections between macro-industrial system level properties and micro-developments in proprietary technology at the firm level need to be made. This paper argues that system-wide properties, such as long-standing elementary and opposing logics in societal forces like governments and markets, and micro-developments, such as the firm's capacity to search for talent, technology, and ideas and to harmonize what it learns internally, can contribute in significant ways to the creation and acquisition of new competencies. Based on the case of pollution prevention in electric generation, it shows how the system-wide properties channel and direct the paths that the acquisition of new competencies take and how they interact with micro-developments at the firm level. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The social agenda of education for sustainable development within design & technology: the case of the Sustainable Design Award

The paper explores the adoption of the social dimensions of sustainability in technological design tasks. It uses a lens which contrasts education for sustainability as ‘a frame of mind’ with an attempt to bridge a ‘value-action gap’. This lens is used to analyse the effectiveness of the Sustainable Design Award, an intervention in post-16 technology education in three countries to encourage students and teachers to strengthen design for sustainability in their work. In each country, the intervention project provided varying combinations of teacher professional development, provision of learning resources, in school student support, lobbying of key curriculum policy makers and a student Award. Three types of teacher are identified by reference to their motivation for introducing sustainability into their teaching of design. These teacher types are linked to a hierarchy of teachers’ understanding of the social dimension of sustainability. The consequences for continuous professional development are examined. The findings are then used to critique the value of the lens.     

The Determinants of R & D Expenditures: A Study of the Canadian Biotechnology Industry

The relative importance of a multitude of factors forthe allocation of expenses towards R & D are assessedin an empirical study of the Canadian biotechnologyindustry. The results show that patent protection andstrategic alliances facilitate R & D spending. Theresults also show that early-stage firms spend agreater proportion of the expenditures on R & D, whilefirms engaged in R & D in platform technologies andfirms with high debt-equity ratios spend a lowerproportion of their expenditures on R & D. Demand pulland competition variables are insignificant factors. Finally, counter to our expectations, R & Dexpenditures are more intensive among firms engaged inR & D in areas in which consumer controversies are morepronounced.     

The impacts of marketing and operations capabilities on financial performance in the UK retail sector: A resource-based perspective

Drawing upon the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, this study investigates the relationships among marketing capability, operations capability, and financial performance. Using archival data of 186 retail firms in the UK, we find that that marketing capability has a significant impact on operations capability, and that operations capability is significantly and positively related to retail efficiency. The results also suggest that operations capability fully mediates the relationship between marketing capability and financial performance. The findings of this study provide practical insights for practicing managers to consider when developing functional capabilities in order to achieve superior financial performance.