Communication and marketing of services by religious organizations in India

Marketing communication is a vital strategic tool for religious organizations to achieve competitive differentiation. The study uses media richness theory with competitive response to develop hypotheses about the use of personal and non-personal channels by religious organizations. The study uses unique primary survey data on 568 Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Jain organizations spread over 7 states in India, collected between 2006 and 2008, to investigate the marketing communication strategy of religious organizations in response to their competitors' use of non-personal communication channels and provision of non-religious services. The findings suggest that if a competitor uses higher non-personal communication channels, then this evokes a retaliatory reaction with the incumbent, increasing their personal communication channels. Second, an incumbent who is more responsive to a competitor increasing their non-religious service provision will respond by increasing their non-personal communication channels and by decreasing their personal channels. The findings have implications for managers who need to select the richness of the media for their communications' strategy in the context of competitive response.     

The pursuit of HR outsourcing in an emerging economy: The effects of HRM strategy on HR labour costs

The study examines the relationships among six types of HRM strategies with three categories of outsourcing HR activities to reduce HR labour costs. The data were gathered from a survey questionnaire of 232 manufacturing organizations of which 113 organizations engaged with HR outsourcing. We found that no organization outsourced transformational HR functions and that organizations that espouse cost efficiency, commitment, and conventional HRM strategies tend to outsource traditional HR functions, whereas quality conscious and commitment HRM strategies tend to outsource transactional HR functions. Transactional and traditional HR functions show a significant relationship with a reduction in HR labour costs. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Correcting analytics maturity myopia

Companies face increasing pressure to compete in the practice of analytics and strive for analytics maturity to sustain their competitive advantage. A single-minded, narrow focus on gaining analytics maturity, however, leads to analytics maturity myopia. Based on our studies of analytical capabilities and numerous conversations with executives and managers, we offer a scorecard for organizations to identify the presence of analytics maturity myopia and propose a framework for organizations to correct this issue. The proposed framework partially explains the mixed and conflicting results regarding the relationship between analytics maturity and business value found in the literature. Specifically, we recommend that companies focus on three factors that are critical to realizing value from analytics initiatives: (1) a balanced view of value to different stakeholders, (2) a continuous expansion of the business ecosystem beyond current stakeholders to identify and pursue new opportunities, and (3) use of an emergent strategy to take advantage of unexpected opportunities and develop organizational agility.     

Domestic Credit and Export Diversification: Africa from a Global Perspective

ABSTRACT

As open economies, African countries need to diversify their exports for economic transformation, sustained growth, and development. Meanwhile, there has been increasing importance of development financing. Following the discussion of theoretical issues on the importance of domestic credit as a potential instrument for overcoming the liquidity constraint of developing countries, as in the case of Africa, this paper empirically explores the determinants of export diversification, with particular attention to domestic credit. The estimation is based on a five-year panel regression analysis for the 1962–2010 period involving 80 countries around the world, of which 62 are developing and 29 African countries, using as covariates variables traditionally viewed as affecting export diversification. System GMM estimates provide robust evidence supporting the importance of domestic credit for African countries, while its role in other countries seems rather marginal. In addition, human capital in the form of schooling, governance as measured by constraint on the chief executive of government, and being land-locked, all exert significant effects, as anticipated, on export diversification among African countries. However, except for governance, appropriately controlling for the interactive effect of domestic credit with ‘Africa’ yields generally insignificant impacts of these variables, together with domestic credit, on export diversification in non-African countries. These results point to the dominant role of domestic credit in Africa vis-à-vis other countries globally.     

The effects of partnership quality on business process outsourcing success in Malaysia: key users perspective

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to investigate the impact of partnership quality and other variables—business understanding, commitment, communication, relationship age and top management support—on outsourcing success. Data were gathered from a survey of nine banks, from which 105 respondents participated in this study. The results indicate that partnership quality may serve as a key predictor of outsourcing success. Partnership quality was found to be influenced positively by business understanding, commitment, communication and top management support. However, relationship age was found to be not significantly related to outsourcing success. The implications of these findings are further elaborated.     

Bank Lending Channel of Monetary Policy: Dynamic Panel Data Study of Malaysia

This paper aims to investigate the relevance of bank-lending channel (BLC) of monetary policy in a small-open economy, i.e. Malaysia by using disaggregated bank-level data. A dynamic panel data method namely generalized method of moments (GMM) procedure has been used in estimating the dynamic of banks' loan supply function. The empirical evidence revealed that the banks' loan supply is significantly and negatively influenced by monetary policy shocks, and therefore has supported the existence of BLC in Malaysia. Several bank-characteristics variables namely bank liquidity and bank capitalization (capital adequacy ratio) are also statistically significant in influencing the banks' loan supply.     

Cultural intelligence as a predictor of expatriate adjustment and performance in Malaysia

This research tests the linkage between cultural intelligence, expatriate adjustment to the host country's environment and expatriate performance while on international assignments. The investigation is carried out with data from 134 expatriates based in multinational corporations in Malaysia. The results highlight a direct influence of expatriates’ cultural intelligence on general, interaction and work adjustments. The improved adjustments consequently have positive effects on both the expatriates’ task and contextual performance. The research findings have implications for both international human resource management (IHRM) researchers and managers.     

Impact of employees’ perceived threat of market competition on unethical marketing and selling practices: Moral disengagement and ethical leadership

This study draws on the social cognitive theory to examine the effect of perceived market competition on employees’ unethical marketing and selling practices. The boundary conditions associated with this relationship were examined, and we posit that perceived market competition is related to unethical marketing and selling practices through the mediating mechanism of moral disengagement. We further propose that ethical leadership moderates the relationship between the perceived threat of market competition, moral disengagement, and tendency toward unethical marketing and selling practices. We tested our hypotheses with a sample of 387 employees working in the banking sector in Pakistan. Our results suggest that moral disengagement had a full mediation effect between the perceived threat of market competition and tendency of employees toward unethical marketing and selling practices. Moreover, ethical leadership moderated the relationship between moral disengagement and the tendency of employees toward unethical marketing practices. The research findings indicate that when field employees encounter threat perceptions due to market competition, they have a propensity toward engaging in unethical marketing and selling practices when they can activate moral disengagement. This study also found that ethical leadership negatively moderates the relationship of moral disengagement with employees’ tendency toward unethical marketing and selling practices.     

Parental control: A study of U.S. subsidiaries in Mexico

This study develops a framework that suggests that subsidiary characteristics, such as performance, purpose and manager nationality affect the extent of control and mechanisms of control (i.e., results, cultural and action controls) that their parent companies exercise over them. Hypotheses were tested using survey responses from 44 Mexican subsidiary—U.S. parent dyads. As expected, results suggest that parental perceptions of subsidiary performance are inversely related to the extent of control that parent companies exercise over these subsidiaries. It was also found that subsidiaries established for purposes relating to a knowledge seeking motivation tended to be subject to more cultural control, but no support was found for the hypothesized relationships between market purpose and results control, and resource purpose and action control. Finally, also as predicted, Mexican managers tended to be subject to greater action control by their U.S. parent than American managers.