Talent management in the “new normal”—Case study of Indian IT services multinationals in China

Emerging market multinational corporations (MNCs) are coming under increasing scrutiny for their international performance. While the success of Indian IT multinationals in the West has been extensively researched and reported, there is a lack of research on their relative failure in China. The rise of economic nationalism and the COVID-19 pandemic pose challenges for the mobility of professionals and the global talent management (GTM) strategy of MNCs. Through in-depth interviews with senior managers from four well-known Indian IT services multinationals, this article presents an evidence-based critique of the design and implementation of their GTM strategy both inside and outside China. It focuses specifically on the quality of the IT talent pool in China, control and coordination issues, and the challenges of workforce localization.     

Strategy implementation for the 2030 agenda: Insights from Brazilian companies

While firms' engagement with Corporate Social Responsibility has been associated with positive performance impacts, little is known about the incorporation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda into business practices. Precisely, although the literature suggests that firms are pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there are limited insights on their strategy to implement them in the context of developing countries. To address this gap, we conducted a comprehensive large-scale investigation of 2030 Agenda adoption by Brazilian companies. Accordingly, the analysis of our multicase study reveals (1) variations on the business opportunities brought by the SDGs depending on the firm position in the value chain, (2) which SDGs and target stakeholders are addressed through corporate policies and practices, (3) the different ways firms embrace the SDGs to pursue ambidexterity. Our findings clarify how firms in the developing countries interpret the institutional pressures and assemble their internal resources to respond to the SDGs challenges. Boundary conditions and policy implications are further discussed.     

The net product in the Formule du Tableau Economique: Lessons from a formalism

Portuguese Economic Journal - It is well known since Phillips (1955) that the Formule du Tableau Economique can be translated into an input–output table. Phillips's translation is however...     

Kant and Lindahl*

In 1896 and 1919, respectively, Wicksell and Lindahl analyzed the public provision of public goods through parliamentary negotiation. Later, Roemer applied Kant's 1785 imperatives to the private provision of public goods by voluntary contributions. Our focal equilibrium notions are the balanced linear cost-share equilibrium for the Wicksell–Lindahl approach and the multiplicative Kantian equilibrium in the Kant–Roemer modeling. These turn out to be fundamentally equivalent, being defined by the same individual optimization problem. These notions fit well with the idea that technology is publicly owned, but we also extend them to cover private-ownership economies with exogenously given profit shares. We show that the equivalence between the Wicksell–Lindahl and Kant–Roemer notions carries over to them.     

Business (un)usual: Critical skills for the next normal

The impact of COVID-19 on global human resource (HR) management has been swift, dramatic and has fundamentally changed HR processes. The prompt online migration of business has altered the skills required by employees to succeed in the workplace of the future. This research examines the hard and soft skill gaps that exist in the digital marketing and advertising industry. Through the use of two data collection points in 2019 and 2020, the research identified a renewed importance being placed on soft skills in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Soft skills and the development thereof have become a key focal area of training for new employees as a result of remote working. The identified hard skill gaps are indicative of the future growth areas of the industry, focusing on data analytics, marketing automation and user experience. Future research should consider an expansion to other industry-specific skills and contrast country-level skill gaps.     

The entanglement of time and cost deviations in public projects

There is growing concern regarding cost and time overruns in public projects. However, despite the extensive literature on the subject, there is relatively little research on the impact of time overruns on cost overruns. This study assesses whether larger time deviations can lead to larger cost deviations. Our hypothesis is that a project with a time overrun is more likely to also have a cost overrun. The authors used a sample of 208 projects in Portugal, with data collected from the Portuguese Court of Auditors. Using the data, a number of econometric models were developed: Ordinary Least Squares, Generalized Linear Model, Tobit, and Probit. The instrumented variables and structural equation modelling techniques were applied to address potential endogeneity in the data. The analysis was controlled for factors such as political, governance, economic, and project variables. The results suggest that larger time deviations are associated with larger cost deviations. The inference is that projects that take longer to complete also tend to suffer from cost overruns.