Explicating the market dimension in the study of digital innovation: a management framework for digital innovation

Digital innovation is gaining momentum among academics and business practitioners. Featuring increasingly cross-industry and multi-actor innovation processes, digital innovation reveals the inherent technology bias in the dominant perspectives on innovation. This study aims to transfer the focus from technology-centred ideas of digital innovation to a more balanced concept in which digital innovation is conceptualised as a combination of multiple needs and solutions linked to various actors and their behaviours. The study builds on a longitudinal case study. The article contributes by providing a partial response to the explicit calls for strategic frameworks that capture the process of digital innovation. Furthermore, the article explicates the market dimension of digital innovation and extends the analysis of the market dimension from a limited view of customer information and user knowledge to further include needs, actions, and behaviours of market actors directly or indirectly using, complementing, or substituting the digital innovation and innovation process.     

Public subsidies and new ventures’ use of bank loans

Access to financial resources is crucial for young firms to strive. To foster innovation and growth in these firms, governments address financing constraints by initiating public support programs. For such financial support to be effective, it is, however, important that firms are able to augment publicly provided resources with additional means. This study examines the relationship between new ventures’ subsidy receipt and long-term bank loans. Studying new ventures founded between 2005 and 2009 in Germany, we test whether the subsidy itself facilitates use to bank financing. Applying econometric techniques that account for the endogenous nature of a subsidy receipt, we find that subsidized young firms are more likely to use bank loans and to have obtained a larger share of their financing mix from banks. We further show that this effect is stronger in highly information-opaque sectors. These results suggest that the effect may be attributed to an information value carried by the grant that is relevant to banks’ loan assessment procedures, especially when new venture value is difficult to judge.     

Gender wage penalty in parenthood: A comparative study of South Korea and Japan

Both South Korea and Japan attach significant importance to women′s marriage and their role in the family. Based on this fact, the present study analyzed gender wage penalty in parenthood in both the countries and compared the size and characteristics. We used conditional quantile regression models with counterfactual decomposition, and panel data from South Korea and Japan for 2007–2014. Results suggest that the gender wage penalty in parenthood of Japan was greater than in South Korea, indicating that discrimination against mother-workers in Japan is more serious than in South Korea. Analysis by wage distribution showed that the gender wage penalty in parenthood was high in the low-wage group in South Korea, whereas it was high for the high-wage group in Japan. This finding indicates that South Korea needs to give fair treatment to the low-wage group and mother-workers of small and medium enterprises, while Japan needs to alleviate discrimination against high-wage mother-workers.     

Analyzing the Essence of Stakeholder Relationships: What do we Need in Addition to Power,Legitimacy, and Urgency?

This article contributes to the body of stakeholder literature by providing an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of stakeholder relationships as a part of change in value creation. The article presents an argument that the stakeholder salience model as a tool for analyzing stakeholder relationships is not sufficient for understanding business value creation. In the recent stakeholder literature, understanding business value creation has become an important theme. Through an analysis of an empirical case, the article shows how the three stakeholder relationship attributes, legitimacy, power and urgency help to reveal the definitive stakeholders and to capture dynamics of stakeholder relations. However, in the case of strategic change, where the value creation of a firm is in transition, a more profound understanding of stakeholder relationships is needed. As a result of our empirical analysis, six characteristics of stakeholder relationships were identified. To conclude, the question of who and what really counts should be replaced by the question of how value is created in stakeholder relationships.     

How CSR Leads to Corporate Brand Equity: Mediating Mechanisms of Corporate Brand Credibility and Reputation

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships among corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate brand credibility, corporate brand equity, and corporate reputation. Structural equation modeling analysis provided support for the hypotheses from a sample of 867 consumers in South Korea. The results showed that CSR has a direct positive effect on corporate brand credibility and corporate reputation. In addition, the results indicate that corporate brand credibility mediates the relationship between CSR and corporate reputation. Moreover, corporate brand credibility mediates the relationship between CSR and corporate reputation. Finally, the relationship between CSR and corporate brand equity is sequentially and fully mediated by corporate brand credibility and corporate reputation. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results and limitations are discussed, and future research directions are suggested.     

Business students’ attitudes toward unethical behavior: A multi-country comparison

Business students are confronted early in their academic careers with examples of questionable acts and practices related to individual and corporate integrity. The current study identifies four segments of students with respect to their attitudes toward unethical behavior and is one of the first known attempts to understand country corruption and its impact on students of business. Findings from a worldwide survey of over 6,000 business students suggest that corruption does breed corruption and that business students in more corrupt countries have a greater likelihood than their counterparts in less corrupt countries to equate legal and ethical. It appears that business students in more corrupt countries expect to use the law as their ethical gauge in business decisions.

EVOLVING A THEORY OF PERFORMANCE‐BASED LOGISTICS USING INSIGHTS FROM SERVICE DOMINANT LOGIC

Performance‐based logistics (PBL) represents a strategy for sustaining complex systems following production. Despite several implementations, limited understanding exists regarding PBL and its implications. Research using grounded theory emerged a theoretical framework for PBL. Service dominant logic (SDL) is introduced as a theoretical lens for interpreting the results and understanding how trading partners achieve performance‐based outcomes.