Gender Roles and Organizational HR Practices: The Case of Women's Careers in Accountancy and Consultancy Firms in China

The Chinese finance industry has experienced significant expansion both within the state sector and into the private sector. Professional consultancy firms have also emerged as a result of the rising interest in the outsourcing of accounting and management services. However, the study of women's careers in the accountancy profession in contemporary China remains largely an uncharted territory. Drawing on data from 69 interviews with auditors in five firms, this article investigates the nature of work of external auditors in China and how women auditors view their work‐life choices and constraints. We explore the likely differences between male and female auditors in their career aspirations and the extent to which these self‐perceived differences are informed by social conventions of gender role, organizational practices, and personal preferences. The study has strong implications for human resource management in professional service firms in China, with particular reference to job design, work organization, career support, and work‐life balance initiatives. The study contributes to the debate on gender, employment, and career development in the accountancy profession in different parts of the world. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The complexity of managing human resources in Peru

This article describes how the politics of human resources have changed in Peru, and how this change played an important role in the reforms that occurred throughout the 1990s. Throughout the article, we examine how the size and the type of organization influence the generation of human resource management. For example, some medium-sized businesses have successfully integrated their human resource management with its central competencies, experiencing positive economic and financial business results. Other companies chose to circumvent human resource management issues by outsourcing or using contract workers, relegating the role of human resources to a peripheral role. Transnational organizations bring many methods and selection processes, promotions, evaluations, training and salary determination. The article ends with a comparative analysis between the formal and informal sector of the national economy with respect to human resources practices.     

External and internal labour flexibility in Spain: a substitute or complementary effect on firm performance?

The contingent perspective in strategic human resource management maintains that it is necessary to observe the interaction between human resource practices by encouraging external and internal labour flexibility. An issue still to be resolved is whether this fit leads to a complementary or substitute effect on firm performance. In order to contribute to this debate, we examine how the relationship between external labour flexibility and firm performance is moderated by the degree of internal labour flexibility. To do this, we use the Survey on Business Strategies of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade on a sample of 1,403 Spanish industrial firms. The results show the existence of a substitute effect between the two types of labour flexibility. Using them simultaneously does not lead to greater benefits for firms.     

Transferring management practices to China: a Bourdieusian critique of ethnocentricity

This paper provides a critique of the emergent theories of human resource management in China with a view to generating new theoretical insights with particular reference to Pierre Bourdieu's social theory. It reassesses the relevance of the orthodox critique of ethnocentricity and the coherence of approaches embedded in Chinese culture. With reference to six case studies of the largest retail firms, we identify two key challenges: the reliance on headquarter human resource practices that reflect an ethnocentric ethos, i.e. country-of-origin bias, and the failure to empower local managers and the problems this creates for managers expected to implement ethnocentric practices. We examine how Bourdieu's social theory sheds light on the processes by which these firms realise their strategic objectives through the complicity of local managers whose scope for resistance is constrained by the use of normative control and in part through attractive remuneration and career prospects that generate Bourdieusian capital for these managers. We conclude with some suggestions for further research.     

Strategic and environmental determinants of HRM innovations in post-socialist Poland

In the last two decades, research in human resource management has increasingly focused on the strategic linkage between the activities of the human resource function and the business goals of enterprises. Most of the theoretical and empirical work in this area has focused on the US context. This paper extends this research to a non-US business environment. Specifically, we examine data from 303 state-owned, domestic private and foreign-owned Polish firms to test how strategic and environmental variables are related to the adoption of human resource innovations. This analysis suggests that business strategies, local labour markets and the presence of foreign competition are related to the complexity and extensiveness of firm-level human resource practices.     

Outsourcing customer support: The role of provider customer focus

An increasing number of firms are outsourcing customer support to external service providers. This creates a triadic setting in which an outsourcing provider serves end customers on behalf of its clients. While outsourcing presents an opportunity to serve customers, service providers differ in their motivation and ability to fulfill customer needs. Prior research suggests that firms with a strong customer focus have an intrinsic motivation to address customer needs. We suggest that in an outsourcing context, this intrinsic motivation does not suffice. Using a Motivation–Opportunity–Ability framework, we posit that the effect of a provider's customer focus will be moderated by a set of relational, firm, and customer characteristics that affect its ability to serve end customers. We test our conceptualization among 171 outsourcing clients from the Netherlands and then validate these results among 135 Indian outsourcing providers. The findings reveal that customer-focused providers achieve higher levels of customer need fulfillment but this effect is contingent on their ability to serve end customers. In particular, customer-focused providers more effectively fulfill customer needs when clients and providers share close relational ties, when clients also have a high level of customer focus, and when end customer needs exhibit a low degree of turbulence. In addition, we find that, in turbulent markets, equipment-related services offer greater opportunity for effective customer need fulfillment than other outsourced services.     

A model for outsourcing and governing of maintenance within the process industry

Many industrial firms motivate structural changes by an increased focus on core activities and reduced ownership of non-core activities. However, classifying maintenance activities as either core or non-core can be difficult, since maintenance is a support function strongly linked to the production core within a manufacturing firm. Based on a multiple case study that included four buying firms and four suppliers within the process industry, this paper investigates how the relative capabilities of the firms affect the governance decision about maintenance outsourcing. A conceptual framework built on a distinction between core-close and core-distant maintenance and between different maintenance capabilities is presented. The subsequent empirical analysis illustrates how the developed framework can be used for both analyzing and guiding firms’ decisions about outsourcing and governance regarding maintenance.     

The Resource Dependence Role of Corporate Directors: Strategic Adaptation of Board Composition in Response to Environmental Change

Most research on corporate directors has focused on two roles: agency and resource dependence. While these two roles are theoretically and practically distinct, previous research has used the same classification scheme for measuring board composition regardless of role examined. Our paper examines the resource dependence role of directors and posits that the widely used insider/outsider categorizations do not adequately capture this role of directors. A taxonomy of directors is presented specifically for studying the resource dependence role. We then apply the taxonomy to a sample of US airline firms undergoing deregulation, and examine how board composition changes parallel the changing resource dependence needs of the firms. We conclude that the board's function as a link to the external environment is an important one, and that firms respond to significant changes in their external environment by altering board composition.     

Shareholder value implications of service failures in triads: The case of customer information security breaches

The rise in front-end service outsourcing in recent years, despite its advantages, has also exposed buyer firms to unique challenges. One of the most salient risks for buyer firms in service triads is service failure due to the service provider. Indeed such service failures may be more costly for firms due to the greater relational and operational costs that may arise from the presence of the third-party provider. Yet, neither the services literature nor extant operations literature on service triads has paid much attention to the financial consequences to the buyer firm – i.e., service risks – of such service failures in triads. To fill this gap, we investigate the financial penalty of service failures due to the service provider using the event study methodology and a sample of 146 customer information security breaches as our empirical context. Analysis of the abnormal returns reveals that service failures due to the front-end service provider lead to greater shareholder losses than such failures due to the buyer firm. This provides important new insight into the financial risks arising from outsourcing front-end services. Further, we investigate the ability of the buyer firm's employee and financial resources to temper these shareholder losses. We find that buyer firm employee productivity can moderate the greater financial penalty associated with such triadic service failures but that buyer firm leverage tends to not have such a mitigating effect. This provides new guidance for theory and practice regarding how buyer firms can position themselves to buffer the financial risks arising from service failures due to front-end service providers.     

Outsourcing HR as a competitive strategy? A literature review and an assessment of implications

HR outsourcing as an organizational strategy has increased substantially over the last decade. However, this trend has attracted little academic attention regarding how outsourcing decisions are made, the manner in which these decisions are implemented, how outsourcing effectiveness is measured, and its impact on organizational performance. In this article, we provide a critical review of the reasons for, the processes involved in, and the perceived effectiveness of HR outsourcing.We investigate the implications of HR outsourcing for the role of the HR function and for the various groups of people affected by this strategy. We argue that organizations should apply both the resource‐based view and institutional theory when making outsourcing decisions. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Non-founder human capital and the long-run growth and survival of high-tech ventures

This paper considers the impact of non-founder human capital on high-tech firms' long-run growth and survival. Drawing upon threshold theory, we explore how lack of access to complementary skills at different points in the life course impacts founders' thresholds for exit. We examine these factors using a unique longitudinal dataset tracking the performance and survival of a sample of UK high-tech firms over thirteen years as the firms move from youth into maturity. We find that firms that survive but do not grow are characterized by difficulty in accessing complementary managerial skills in youth, while firms that grow but subsequently exit are characterized by shortfalls of specialized complementary skills during adolescence. Firms that grow and survive do not report skills shortfalls. We discuss the implications of these resource constraints for entrepreneurs’ decisions to persist or exit through the life course.     

IT Outsourcing—A Source of Innovation? Microeconometric Evidence for Germany

Does IT outsourcing really influence firms' process innovativeness? We investigate this question with a distinguished view on manufacturing and service sectors. Previous studies suggest firms sourcing out IT services to external service providers are generally more process innovative. Based on a firm‐level data set comprising 1452 firms from the German manufacturing and services sectors, the econometric analysis confirms a positive and significant relationship between IT outsourcing and process innovation activity on an aggregate level. As proposed by our framework of differences between manufacturing and service firms, a more detailed analysis reveals that this positive relationship only holds for services firms. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

中国服务外包业现状、问题与对策：基于中国与ORN数据的比较分析

离岸服务外包产业发展的好坏在当前我国实现经济转型深化改革开放的关键阶段有重要的战略意义。但未来整个行业的发展则依赖于服务外包企业在竞争日益加剧的全球离岸服务外包市场中竞争优势的建立和强化。本研究通过交大一杜克中关全球外包联合研究中心平台,就中国服务外包企业和国际服务外包企业的竞争力、业务状况及未来发展预期和增长与创新战略意愿等进行了调查研究。对比分析发现,中国服务外包企业存在整体规模偏小、服务外包经验不足、业务标准化程度不高、成本优势不显著等问题。我们分析了问题产生的原因及后果,并从企业和政府的角度提出了有关的对策建议。     

Incentives and the Efficiency of Public Sector-outsourcing Contracts

Abstract.  Outsourcing the provision of traditionally publicly provided services has become commonplace in most industrialized nations. Despite its prevalence, there still is no consensus in the academic literature on the magnitude (and determinants) of expected cost savings to the government, nor the sources of those savings. This article considers the arguments for (and against) outsourcing and then examines the empirical evidence pertaining to whether any observed savings occur and whether they persist over time. In addition, we examine the existing evidence for the 'redistribution hypothesis' and the 'quality-shading hypothesis', which critics have used to argue that outsourcing lowers government expenditure by lowering wages and conditions and/or lower quality services. Finally, we consider the impact of contract design on outsourcing outcomes. While the power of incentives is a strong theme in economics, recent work has suggested that high-powered incentives may be suboptimal for many public sector services, because they may crowd out intrinsic motivation, particularly in instances where agents are highly motivated. We discuss the implications of this insight for the efficiency of public sector outsourcing.     

The relationship between high performance work systems and employee proactive behaviour: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation as mediating mechanisms

Drawing on the contextual perspective, this study provides novel empirical evidence on how the organisational context (specifically, the firm's human resource strategy) has an effect on employee proactivity. We use matched data from managers and employees in 102 Spanish professional service firms to examine how high performance work systems contribute to enhance employee proactive behaviours through two motivational variables: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation. Results of a multilevel study demonstrate that role breadth self‐efficacy mediates between HPWS and employee proactivity, but flexible role orientation does not mediate this relationship.     

Intellectual Capital Profiles: An Examination of Investments and Returns*

ABSTRACT Using data collected from executives in 208 organizations, this study takes a configurational approach to examine how human, social, and organizational capital coexist to form distinct intellectual capital profiles across organizations. We then examine how investments in human resource management (HRM), information technology (IT), and research and development (R&D) differ across these intellectual capital profiles and investigate differences in financial returns and Tobin's q between the profiles. Results indicate that a relatively small group of superior performing organizations exhibit high levels of human, social, and organizational capital. Most firms, however, tend to focus primarily on only one form of intellectual capital, and a small group of underperforming organizations have very low levels of all three types of intellectual capital. At a general level, HRM and IT investments appear to influence intellectual capital development more than R&D investments. More specifically, HRM investments tend to be higher in firms with profiles high in human and social capital, while IT investments are stronger in firms with profiles high in social capital. Further, HRM, IT, and R&D investments are all very high in the group of superior performing organizations that have high levels of human, social, and organizational capital.     

HRM configurations in Korean venture firms: resource availability,institutional force and strategic choice perspectives

To examine various human resource management (HRM) configurations and their explanatory variables, we generated several hypotheses and tested them with data collected from Korean venture firms. For these purposes, we first suggested two ideal types of HRM configuration: a control-based human resource system (CBHRS) and a high-performing human resource system (HPHRS). Depending on contextual variables, firms are expected to make a choice between the two or among their variants. To generate hypotheses, we employed three theoretical perspectives: resource availability, institutional force, and strategic choice. To test the hypotheses, we collected data from 464 venture firms in Korea. From the data, we derived five different HRM configurations: Cost-minimizing type; Paternalistic type; Inducement type; Investment type; and Transitional type. Both the Cost-minimizing type and the Paternalistic type are classified as part of the CBHRS, the Inducement type and the Investment type are considered to be part of the HPHRS, and the Transitional type is taken to be mixed. We found that all three theoretical perspectives partly explained the selection of HRM configurations. Some related issues are raised and discussed in the final section.     

Resource Configuration in Family Firms: Linking Resources, Strategic Planning and Technological Opportunities to Performance

abstract    We apply the resource-based view of the firm to the study of family firms by investigating how a family specific resource (reciprocal altruism) and a firm specific resource (innovative capacity) contribute to family firm performance. We then examine how the impact of these resources is moderated by strategic planning and technological opportunities. Our findings suggest that family firms can benefit from emphasizing the positive aspects of kinship and from developing innovative capacities. As such, we demonstrate that not only do firm specific resources contribute to family firm performance, but also that family relationships can be a source of competitive advantage for a family firm. In addition, we found a heightened importance of reciprocal altruism in environments rich in technological opportunities, and that strategic planning is more important for those family firms that lack innovative capacities.     

Offshore outsourcing of professional services: A transaction cost economics perspective

This research utilizes the framework of transaction cost economics (TCE) to develop an understanding of how firms manage the costs and risks of offshore outsourcing of professional services. This research examines the perspectives of eight organizations through interviews with 10 high-ranking supply management executives. The paper first explores the rationale for offshore outsourcing among the organizations studied. Using the tenants of TCE, this paper postulates that fixed costs of establishing the relationship dominate the variable costs of day-to-day transactions, and that organizations will not offshore outsource areas where there is high perceived degree of unmanageable risk. The paper expands on themes provided by TCE and offers some lessons learned, and guidelines for managing and controlling offshore outsourced services relationships.