The role of corporate culture in the process of strategic human resource management: Evidence from Chinese enterprises

Extant research on strategic human resource management (SHRM) has primarily focused on the content of SHRM (best practices, bundles of practices, etc.) and its effect on firm performance. Little research has examined the SHRM process so as to better understand how SHRM is adopted and implemented and what impact it has on organizational processes and outcomes. This article examines the role of corporate culture in the SHRM adoption and implementation process. Empirical results from a sample of 223 Chinese enterprises indicate that corporate culture has an impact on the adoption of SHRM, and that different types of culture affect the SHRM process differently. Specifically, group and developmental cultures have positive effects on the adoption of SHRM, but the effect of hierarchical culture is not significant. Developmental culture is also found to have a direct effect on firm performance. This study offers significant implications for HRM in China and other dynamic and emerging economies. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Decision-Making Process of Internal Whistleblowing Behavior in China: Empirical Evidence and Implications

In response to the lack of empirical studies examining the internal disclosure behavior in the Chinese context, this study tested a whistleblowing-decision-making process among employees in the Chinese banking industry. For would-be whistleblowers, positive affect and organizational ethical culture were hypothesized to enhance the expected efficacy of their whistleblowing intention, by providing collective norms concerning legitimate, management-sanctioned behavior. Questionnaire surveys were collected from 364 employees in 10 banks in the Hangzhou City, China. By and large, the findings supported the hypotheses. Issues of whistleblowing in the Chinese context and implications were discussed.     

Performance differences in property-type diversified versus specialized real estate investment trusts (REITs)

Evidence from the corporate finance literature indicates that diversified firms trade at a discount to otherwise comparable specialized firms. However, very little research has addressed whether a similar diversification discount might exist in equity REITs that diversify across property types relative to those specializing in one property type. Using a sample of 75 equity REITs, the existence of a property-type diversification discount is tested using standard Jensen's Alpha, Treynor Index, and Sharpe Ratio performance ranking methodologies over four commonly employed market proxies. Several variations of these standard tests are also utilized as robustness checks.     

Chief executive scanning emphases,environmental dynamism,and manufacturing firm performance

Chief executives must allocate their scarce time for scanning efforts among relevant domains of their firms' external environment and their firms' internal circumstances. We argue that high‐performing CEOs vary their relative scanning emphases on different domains according to the level of dynamism they perceive in their external environments. The concepts of dominant logic and sector importance were used to develop predictions about which external domains and which internal domains should receive relatively more or less scanning emphasis in external environments that, overall, are more dynamic or more stable. A field survey of 105 single‐business manufacturing firms evaluated CEOs' scanning emphases and firm performance. Results indicated that, for dynamic external environments, relatively more CEO attention to the task sectors of the external environment and to innovation‐related internal functions was associated with high performance. In stable external environments, however, simultaneously increased scanning of the general sectors in the external environment and efficiency‐related internal functions produced higher performance. These relationships were strongest between relative scanning emphases among domains and sales growth. We discuss the implications of these results for researchers and practitioners. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Status of Social Security and Its Role in Retirement Planning: A Professional Advisor's Perspective

Currently, one of the more salient retirement debates surrounds the future insolvency of the Social Security retirement system. In spite of the important role that financial planning professionals play in the retirement and private-savings decisions that individuals make, no research has focused on assessing the opinions of this group. This study uses a survey approach to assess the opinions of financial planning professionals regarding the problems faced by the Social Security retirement system, the solutions that have been proposed thus far, and the use of Social Security benefits in the financial planning process.     

Value propositions in future pharmaceutical benefits

Within this decade, benefit managers will see radically new diagnostics and drugs that will call for changes in drug benefit planning. This article provides insight into various value propositions that must be taken into account in a drug benefit plan, along with considerations integral to those propositions; some key trends; and the new drug pipeline. Benefit managers must remain aware of the drug pipeline and benefit trends and utilize the insight of peers or other experts in strategic benefit planning.     

Market-Channel Choices of Indonesian Potato Farmers: A Best–Worst Scaling Experiment

We present an empirical analysis of how buyer (and trader) attributes influence decisions of market participation and channel choice among smallholder potato farmers in West Java, Indonesia. We use a best–worst scaling experiment to evaluate the determinants of these decisions and gauge the influence of buyer attributes. Our latent-class cluster analysis reveals that producers have heterogeneous preferences for buyer attributes, which address classic smallholder constraints such as access to inputs, credit, and information. This heterogeneity can be somewhat explained by household characteristics and assets. The broad mass of our sample sought buyers whose attributes imply lower market risk for farmers. Yet roughly a quarter of our sample, a portion that included farmers with large, specialised farms, sought buyers who could provide inputs such as high-quality seeds.