Exporting and Environmental Performance: A Firm‐level Productivity Analysis

The objective of this paper is to study empirically the relationship between export orientation and firms’ environmental performance from different perspectives of trade theory. On the one hand, productivity heterogeneity is analysed within the new trade‐theoretical framework. The approach followed is to determine firm‐level productivity components, including an environmental productivity indicator (as a performance measure) and taking as reference the Spanish food industry. On the other hand, from the traditional comparative advantage perspective, this study also develops an export performance model to evaluate the effect of technology, environmental variables and factor endowment on exporting. The results show greater environmental productivity and corporate efficiency for export‐oriented firms. Our findings also determine the positive effect on firms’ export intensity of environmental performance as a factor of specialisation and technology proficiency.     

When culture meets digital platforms: value creation and stakeholders’ alignment in big data use

Research on big data has highlighted that a crucial element to create value from data is the capability of aligning different stakeholders’ interests. However, it has not yet been investigated empirically how this process of alignment can be realized. We conduct a multiple case study on the two leading platforms involved in the online dissemination of cultural heritage – Europeana and Google Arts & Culture. Our findings reveal that a platform overtakes a rival one when it turns on multiple drivers of value creation in such a way that the drivers contribute to realigning the interests expressed by the stakeholders whose strategic objectives and beliefs were formerly divergent – or simply unrelated – to each other. This capability of realigning different stakeholders’ interests is independent of the level of industry-specific knowledge that the platform orchestrator has. The dynamics we document imply that Google has assumed a system integration role in the cultural ecosystem. This generates new trade-offs for museums in the way they generate value for the tourism industry. The paper enriches our understanding of what strategies digital platforms adopt to create value in big data contexts and provides a base to continue the investigation on other ecosystems driven by big data.     

Cooperation support through the use of group decision systems

This article considers the development of the group decision support system (GDSS) field both from organizational and technological perspectives. The growing importance of teamwork, lateral coordination, and activities integration inside modern business organizations is emphasized. Technological and knowledge specialization, quick transformation of business environments, reduction of response time, and so on, are some of the reasons that can explain the renewed relevance of teamwork. Also, the development of information technology (IT) is analyzed in relation to the role it is assuming in supporting group activities. Research in the GDSS field is then introduced. A proposal concerning the identification of three different phases in GDSS studies is developed, ranging from decision rooms to distributed systems. Each phase shows distinctive research topics and application fields, together with different organizational goals. Results of these developments are the growth of potential application areas of GDSS tools. These theoretical considerations, together with empirical experiences coming from the study of a real manufacturing environment (an IBM plant where group cooperation plays a fundamental role for production efficiency), constitute the basis for a research GDSS prototype (GROUPS). Prototype features are designed to support executives in facing production‐planning problems through an improvement in communications and in knowledge representation.     

The rise and fall of WebTrust

While prior research mainly focused on the impact of third-party-certified web assurance seals on consumers' perceptions and purchasing behaviors, little research has been conducted on the managerial decision-making process about the selection, implementation, and the abandonment of such seals. Of particular interest here is the WebTrust seal, jointly developed by the AICPA and the CICA. We take a qualitative case study approach to understand the motivations and rationale of a large North American telecommunications firm's management behind the decisions about the selection, implementation, and abandonment of its WebTrust seal. Our case firm was one of the first to obtain the seal on its online shopping website. Semi-structured interview results suggest that the implementation and the subsequent abandonment of WebTrust may be explained by several theoretical frameworks — the managerial accounting perspective, organizational slack theory, innovation theory, and institutional theory. First, the case firm's leader attitude in innovation, its extra resources available, coupled with the endorsement of the accounting profession led to the implementation of WebTrust. Second, when the benefits of WebTrust versus its costs were questioned and other companies increasingly abandoned the seal, our case firm decided to follow this trend.     

Business and Social Reputation: Exploring the Concept and Main Dimensions of Corporate Reputation

Different theoretical approaches highlight the growing relevance of corporate reputation as strategic factor. Among these approaches the arguments of the Resource-Based View are special worthwhile (Grant, 1991, California Management Review 33(3), 114–135; Barney, 1999, Sloan Management Review Spring, 137–145). Nevertheless, this topic poses several methodological problems (Barney et al., 2001), as the unavailability to identify and measure this organizational factor, that is “socially complex” and intangible in its nature. In this work, using the findings of our empirical research on Spanish biotechnology firms, we carry out an identification and measurement of corporate reputation, highlighting its two key components: “business reputation” and “social reputation”. Dr. Gregorio Martín de Castro is Assistant Professor at the Business Administration Department in Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). He has several years of research experience at CIC Spanish Knowledge Society Research Centre, he holds an Expert Diploma in Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management from INSEAD (France), and he was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University during 2004–2005. He is author and co-author of several papers concerning Resource-Based View, Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management. Dr. José Emilio Navas López is Professor and Head of the Business Administration Department in Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). He is author and co-author of several books and papers concerning Technology Management, Strategy and Knowledge Management. He has held the first Knowledge Management Chair in Spain at I.U. Euroforum Escorial. Dr. Pedro López Sáez is Assistant Professor at the Business Administration Department in Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) and he was a Research Fellow at Harvard University during 2004–2005. He has several years of research experience at CIC Spanish Knowledge Society Research Centre and he is author and co-author of several papers concerning Resource-Based View, Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management.     

The dynamics of entrepreneurship: hysteresis, business cycles and government policy

This article estimates two unobserved components models to explore the macrodynamics of entrepreneurship in Spain and the USA. We ask whether entrepreneurship exhibits hysteresis, defined as a macrodynamic structure in which the cyclical component of entrepreneurship has persistent effects on the natural rate of entrepreneurship. We find evidence of hysteresis in Spain, but not the USA, while in Spain business cycle output variations significantly affect future rates of entrepreneurship. The article discusses implications of the findings for the design of entrepreneurship policies.     

Training evaluation in Italian corporate universities: a stakeholder‐based analysis

Corporate universities have emerged as a mechanism for providing companies with a wide variety of training and development activities. They are a recent but under‐researched phenomenon, and given their substantial budgets, it might be expected that they would wish to evaluate what they do. The authors explore the evaluation practices of six Italian corporate universities, paying particular attention to the means by which these practices are tailored to the needs of the various stakeholders. Stakeholder‐based evaluation provides the theoretical framework for the study. The literature suggests that much evaluation of training focuses on a single stakeholder, the shareholder, and that practice draws heavily on Kirkpatrick's hierarchical model. In the context of the corporate university, however, the authors find that multi‐stakeholder evaluation is used in practice. Moreover, various aspects of corporate university performance were evaluated, and data were supplied to stakeholders depending on the nature of their involvement. Stakeholder‐based evaluation is argued to be a useful framework where there are a number of stakeholders, but training evaluation models other than the hierarchical one are needed if all relevant training factors are to be evaluated. The implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Managing demand uncertainty through order overplanning

Most techniques for managing demand uncertainty require a certain degree of stability in the environment, since they are completely or partially based on the observation of historical data. When applied to a context characterized by irregular and sporadic demand these techniques show poor performances. In fact, in such a case uncertainty management calls for the gathering of information that directly anticipates future requirements. Although contexts with irregular and sporadic demand have received only minor attention in the past, they are currently gaining ever more importance and extending their occurrence. This paper illustrates and discusses a method, called order overplanning, specifically designed to cope with uncertainty in these environments. It consists of an articulate and coherent set of forecasting procedures, planning principles and slack control techniques. From a Master Production Scheduling (MPS) perspective, order overplanning is similar to hedging and option overplanning: gross requirements are larger than expected demand. The major difference is that order overplanning uses two distinct units in the MPS and forecasting procedures: while the MPS unit is an end item or a module, the forecasting unit is a customer order. This makes order overplanning able to exploit early information generated by each customer during its purchasing process, information that otherwise would be lost. This marked advantage comes to the detriment of an increased effort of integration between Sales and Manufacturing, especially for controlling the slack created to handle uncertainty.The paper first infers the principles and procedures of order overplanning by analysing the case study of an Italian telecommunications manufacturer. Then, it discusses the main advantages and disadvantages of this method, in order to identify the main factors affecting its performances and to determine the planning environments where it fits coherently.     

Foresight on biopharmaceuticals: Designing foresight methods for Spanish biopharmaceuticals

This paper has as its starting point the analysis of the systemic failures in the Spanish Biopharmaceutical Innovation System grounded in the study carried out by the same authors for the OECD between 2002 and 2004. Based on the evidence that one of the main failures is the lack of sufficient linkages between the different actors involved in the dynamic of the system, this paper proposes third-generation foresight as an instrument of science and innovation policy for resolving the problem of systemic failures. Foresight exercises could become an important instrument for reorienting policy, building new networks and linkages among the different actors, bringing new stakeholders into the strategic debate, exploring future opportunities for investment in science and innovation activities, etc. The objective of this paper is the design of a foresight exercise on biopharmaceuticals with the aim of solving, or at least reducing, the failures of this Spanish sectoral system of innovation and in consequence making it stronger.     

The Terms of Trade and the International Transfers of Productivity Gains

In international economic relations, when movements of labour are limited and fiscal redistributive policies non-existent, changes in the terms of trade (the ratio between the prices of exports and imports) are the main driving force for the international redistribution of incomes or of productivity gains. The concept of productivity flows linked to price changes can be extended from the interindustry framework to deal with international relations bringing some new insights into the terms of trade issues. The paper develops a conceptual framework for the computation of international flows of productivity gains, taking into consideration the role of exchange rates and the meaning of Purchasing Power Parities. It is completed by a set of computations on Swiss relations with the rest of the world.