Transitioning and co-evolving to upgrade value offerings: A competence-based marketing view

This article shows how subcontractors in the steel and metalworking industry can effectively upgrade their customer value offerings. The study intends to identify internal and external drivers for successful transitions. It builds on the IMP's (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group) research tradition by looking into value creation and competence-based marketing within business networks. Using qualitative methods, the research identifies ‘ideal’ value-added market positions and relates these to specific competence configurations. It also reveals the need to manage co-evolution with other network partners in order to make a successful transition from basic to value-added offerings. The paper contributes to business marketing science by looking explicitly into the mechanisms of internal alignment when upgrading value offerings (a pre-condition often overlooked in extant literature) and by extending the concept of co-evolution.     

Why has Irish Social Partnership Survived?

The present system of social partnership in Ireland is in its twentieth year. A range of explanations have been put forward to explain why social partnership has been so durable even though it does not possess the institutional endowments often considered necessary to sustain tripartite industrial relations arrangements. Although these accounts are considered to have merits, this article suggests that they also suffer from a range of weaknesses. The article suggests that the longevity of the social partnership regime is a result of it being part of an unorthodox system of institutional complementarities that triggered a spectacular period of economic and employment growth.     

The relationship between corporate social responsibility and shareholder value: an empirical test of the risk management hypothesis

Do shareholders gain when managers disperse corporate resources through activities classified as corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Strategy scholars have recently developed a theoretical model that links such activities to shareholder value when a firm suffers a negative event; we test key portions of this theory of the ‘insurance‐like’ property of CSR activity. We posit that such activity leads to positive attributions from stakeholders, who then temper their negative judgments and sanctions toward firms because of this goodwill. We extend the risk management model by theorizing that some types of CSR activities will be more likely to create goodwill and offer insurance‐like protection than other types. We delineate several firm and event specific characteristics that we expect to influence the link between CSR activities and an insurance effect. We then test our model using an event study of 178 negative legal/regulatory actions against firms throughout the 11 years from 1993–2003. We find that participation in institutional CSR activities—those aimed at a firm's secondary stakeholders or society at large—provides an ‘insurance‐like’ benefit, while participation in technical CSRs—those activities targeting a firm's trading partners—yields no such benefits. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for future theorizing and research into the economic value of CSR engagement. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Marketing Resources in Radical Innovation Activity: Antecedents and Payoffs

While radical product innovations represent significant engines of firm growth, questions remain over whether marketing helps or hurts (1) a firm's radical product innovation activity and (2) its rewards from radical product innovation activity. By attaching an attention‐based view of the firm to a market‐based assets view of marketing, this paper examines the role of three marketing resources—market knowledge, reputation, and relational resources—on radical innovation activity. Our conceptual framework posits differentiated effects among marketing resources as antecedents of radical innovation activity and as moderators of its impact on firms' financial performance. Using a survey of a broad set of high‐tech business‐to‐business (B2B) firms to test hypotheses, it is found that firms with strong relational resources enjoy a higher propensity for, and stronger financial rewards from, radical innovation activity. Reputational resources come with a trade‐off as they hurt the incidence of radical innovation but enhance its financial rewards. However, market knowledge resources appear to hurt both radical innovation activity and its financial rewards. Our results point to the multifaceted role of marketing in radical innovation activity, which is unlikely to come with a single benefit or liability as prior work often posits. Rather, our research heightens the alertness of managers to assess their firms' marketing strength as a bundle of stocks of several marketing resources. Managers must understand the distinct benefits and drawbacks of each resource in developing and launching radical innovations. Our research underscores the differentiated value of marketing in radical innovation activity in B2B high‐tech contrary to the entrenched idea of a limited or even stifling role of marketing in this context.     

Job Anxiety,Work‐Related Psychological Illness and Workplace Performance

This article uses matched employee–employer data from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey to examine the relationship between employee psychological health and workplace performance in 2004 and 2011. Using two measures of work‐related psychological health — namely employee‐reported job anxiety and manager‐reported workforce stress, depression and anxiety — we find a positive relationship between psychological ill‐health and absence, but not quits. The association between psychological ill‐health and labour productivity is less clear, with estimates sensitive to sector, time period and the measure of psychological health. The 2004–2011 panel is further used to explore the extent to which change in psychological health is related to change in performance.     

Spurious Rejections by Perron Tests in the Presence of a Break

In this paper, we concentrate on the case of an exogeneously chosen break date, but entertain the possibility that an incorrect choice is made. In fact, the Perron test statistics considered are invariant to any break in the generating process at the assumed break date. Our results therefore apply equally to the case of a generating process with two breaks, only one of which is specifically accounted for in the analysis. As in Leybourne et al . (1998), we find that a neglected relatively early break can lead to spurious rejections of the unit root null hypothesis. Moreover, for all but one of the tests analyzed, spurious rejections now also arise if a true break occurs relatively soon after the assumed break date.     

Rules,rogues, and risk assessors: Academic responses to Enron and other accounting scandals

Abstract

The recent accounting scandals in the USA and the resulting regulation of the US profession via the Sarbanes–Oxley Act have led to the resurrection of an old debate: principles vs. rules. We argue that such a debate is jejune and serves as little more than a diversion from discussing more substantive issues raised by events like Enron and Andersen. Accounting is not confronted by a choice of principles to the exclusion of rules or vice versa. Principles underlie any set of rules, and any implementation of principles will inevitably involve adopting some rules. We take issue with various analyses of the accounting scandals that rely too exclusively on the principles of neo-classical economics. We conclude by identifying four major obstacles impeding meaningful academic and educational treatment of the maladies of which Enron is merely a symptom.     

Claims,Concerns and Interests In British Credit Union Development

The British credit union movement has grown rapidly over the past decade, albeit from a low base relative to other nations. That growth has been led by a natlonal credlt union pollcy network. Thls article provides a detailed appraisal of the structure of that network, the motivations of its members and the relations between them.

This study highlights the existence of contradictions in the ‘policy space’ occupied by this network that have obscured the public interest In credit union development to date. These contradictions need to be resolved if the performance of the system as a whole is to be improved and public policy goals are to be met Increasing visibtlity ensuing from repeated endorsement of credit unions by the Labour government is bringing added pressures to bear on that network. New actors may be expected to enter the credit union polltlcal market as a result The irnpacts of entry, both positive and negative, are evaluated in terms of the coheslon and effectiveness of ihe credit union policy network.     

Leadership for Collaboration

Abstract

‘Leadership’ and ‘collaboration’ are integral to twenty-first century governance and management but, despite a growing literature, understanding about leadership for collaboration is hampered by a lack of specificity and nuance in theory and empirical research. This article responds to these limitations by working within an interpretive framework and employing Q-method to uncover different interpretations of leadership for collaboration operant among public managers in Wales. The article uses the concept of situated agency to explain why public managers offer diverse interpretations of leadership for collaboration despite working within the same governance framework, and to identify challenges to public managers in determining appropriate leadership for collaboration.