The dynamic adjustment of environment, strategy, structure, and resources on firm performance

Under the uncertainty of external environment, how do the firms exploit resources, adjust organizational structures, and adopted proper strategies to gain the better performance is an important issue. Many theories have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. Structure-conduct-performance model suggest that industry structure influences the firm behavior and determines the performance of individual firms and of the industry as a whole. Strategy-structure-performance model suggest that strategy must dictate organizational structure, which in turn influences performance. The environmental perspective considers external environments. Resource-Based View suggests that management must focus on the values of resources to generate sustained competitive advantages and to improve performance. Dynamic adjustment among environment, strategy, structure, and resources can become primary causes of the firm performance. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the gaps between different theories and to complement the existing theories. This paper confirmed the measurement of the constructs first and competing models were used to examine dynamic adjustment among constructs and the relationships to firm performance. The results demonstrated that most of the relationships among constructs were supported and support the dynamic adjustment of the constructs. When facing uncertain environments, firms tend to use competition strategies as well as cooperation strategies; firms tend to formalize organizational structures and to amass resources. Firms which conduct cooperation strategies and possess more resources will attain better performance levels than those that do not. As to the theoretical models, the structure-conduct-performance model and the environmental perspective were supported. Practitioners should recognize the importance of the industrial and environmental factors.     

The HR competency requirements for strategic and functional HR practitioners

HR competency research has predominantly focused on identifying generic HR competencies for HR practitioners using a universalist approach. This approach has led to the distinction between strategic and functional HR competencies, and a belief that the former is superior to the latter for successful performance in the HR domain. However, little attention has been paid to the interrelationships between strategic and functional HR competency dimensions, and their perceived relevance to strategic and functional HR roles. Drawing on a situationalist perspective and using a mixed-method approach, seven HR competency concepts are identified and examined for their perceived relative importance to strategic and functional HR roles. The findings indicate that Business Awareness competencies are important differentiators between strategic and functional HR roles, whereas Leadership and Relationship Building and Self-Belief and Social Factors are generic to all HR practitioners. The findings also indicate that there is a wider range of HR attributes required for HR job success than those espoused in the HR literature. Theoretical implications and recommendations on selection and development programmes for HR practitioners are also discussed.     

Community rating and the market for private non-group health insurance

Prior research on adverse selection in health insurance markets has found only mixed evidence for adverse selection in group settings. We examine the impact of state community rating regulations enacted in the 1990s, which greatly limited insurers' ability to risk rate premiums, to determine if adverse selection is more evident in non-group insurance markets. Using data from large, national surveys we find evidence of a shift to a less healthy pool of non-group enrollees as a consequence of community rating. Community rating made healthy people 20 to 60% less likely to be insured by non-group health insurance; in addition, we found evidence that young and healthy people were 20 to 30% more likely to be uninsured as a result of community rating. We also find evidence that individuals in poor health were 35 to 50% more likely to be insured in the non-group market, but only limited evidence suggesting that persons in poor health were less likely to be uninsured. Our results are further supported by findings suggesting that non-group enrollees were sicker as a result of the community rating laws. Lastly, we find evidence suggesting that HMO penetration in the non-group market increased disproportionately in states that implemented community rating relative to states that did not.     

Risk assessment and profit sharing in business networks

Nowadays network is the preferred governance form to conduct economic transactions. Network solution allows to reach flexibility maintaining cost and quality level. Since network concept refers to a great variety of organizational hybrids it is possible to choose the one that fits better market requirements. The new trends in inter-organization relationships push towards network solutions: companies are interested in relationships with partners and customers to overcome resource dependence, to enter too risky market or simply differentiate their business portfolio. The proposed research focuses on the network concept aiming at highlighting threats and opportunities to investigate the double nature of the risk concept. Network structures offer flexibility and higher profit as a consequence and business risk sharing opportunity.These two aspects (profit and risk) are strictly related and have to be considered together to depict a complete scenario; this implies that risk assessment and management in network environment cannot neglect profit sharing or, in other words, that profit sharing mechanisms should use risk as driver. In this context our research proposes a methodology to measure risk taking into account network peculiarities; risk estimation is a basic step to evaluate the opportunity cost of capital needed to compute the network Net Present Value (NPV) that is assumed as base in the profit sharing process. The profit sharing process has been tackled using the Shapley value approach that is inspired to the fairness principle while the opportunity cost of capital is assessed using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM).     

Organizational Visibility,Stakeholder Environmental Pressure and Corporate Environmental Responsiveness in China

This article investigates the relationship between organizational visibility and corporate environmental responsiveness in China. It also examines whether this relationship is mediated by stakeholder pressure, and whether the strength of the relationships among organizational visibility, stakeholder pressures and corporate environmental responsiveness is moderated by the type of enterprise ownership. Based on the responses from a survey involving 131 enterprises, this study suggests a potentially positive and significant correlation between organizational visibility and corporate environmental responsiveness in China. However, the study reveals surprisingly that stakeholder pressure for environmental improvements does not seem to account for the above correlation. Organizational visibility is found to be negatively associated with stakeholder pressure in the case of Chinese‐owned enterprises, and stakeholder pressure has no significant associations with corporate environmental responsiveness. In addition, the moderating effect of enterprise ownership is strongly evidenced, which provides important policy implications for developing effective mechanisms to stimulate environmental management practices. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Sustainable leadership: power of influence in MNCS in Malaysia

Building upon social exchange theory which explains how power is gained and lost in the process of influence between an agent and the target, this article hypothesized the impact of supervisors’ and subordinates’ power bases on the usage of influence tactics by the supervisors. Bases of power of supervisors, subordinates and influence tactics were conceptualized as seven-, seven- and nine-dimensional constructs, respectively. Three hundred and eighty-five pairs of Malaysian managers and executives working in large multinational companies participated. Currently, the manufacturing sector is considered as one of the cornerstone of Malaysia’s economic diversification strategy. The findings suggested that supervisors apply various influence tactics on their subordinates.     

A firm level perspective on migration: the role of extra-EU workers in Italian manufacturing

A production-theory approach to migration is adopted in this paper to address the role of migrant workers from extra-EU countries in Italian manufacturing firms. The adoption of flexible functional forms to model firm-level technology lets us directly derive different measures of elasticity from the coefficients of the estimated production and cost functions. The use of foreign labour is shown to affect the industry composition in favour of low skill intensive sectors and the estimated cross demand elasticities confirm the complementarity between migrant and native workers found in previous studies. However, the two labour inputs prove to be substitutes in terms of the Morishima elasticity of substitution: in general, firms tend to increase the foreign labour intensity of production in response to a decline in migrants’ wage, while the migrant to domestic labour ratio responds to changes in the domestic workers’ wage only for firms in low skill intensive sectors.     

OHSAS 18001 certification and operating performance: The role of complexity and coupling

Today, manufacturing firms encounter pressure from multiple stakeholders to manage occupational health and safety issues properly, systematically and transparently. While manufacturing firms commonly use internally developed Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, there is growing pressure to adopt externally certified system such as OHSAS 18001. However, there are conflicting views and little empirical evidence that examines the linkage between OHSAS 18001 certification and operating performance. Hence, this paper examines the impact of OHSAS 18001 on operational performance through three theoretical lenses: Institutional Theory, Normal Accident Theory, and High Reliability Theory. We also investigate how complexity and coupling moderate the relationship between OHSAS 18001 and operational performance. Based on a sample of 211 U.S. listed manufacturing firms with OHSAS 18001 certification, we find that certification leads to significant increases in abnormal performance on safety, sales growth, labor productivity, and profitability and that these benefits increase as complexity and coupling increase.     

Regulation FD and analysts’ vs. investors’ weightings of the cash components of earnings

This paper investigates whether investors’ bias in processing the information contained in the cash components of annual earnings has been reduced, and whether the difference in bias between financial analysts and investors has decreased subsequent to Regulation Fair Disclosure (hereafter, Reg FD). We compare analysts’ and investors’ weightings of the three cash flow components of earnings, defined by Dechow, Richardson, and Sloan (2008), from 1985 to 2008, using historical weightings as benchmarks. Our results show that, in the post Reg FD period, the magnitude of investors’ (analysts’) mis-weightings has decreased (increased), and the differences between analysts’ and investors’ mis-weightings have become smaller. Overall, these results suggest that financial analysts’ information advantages over investors declined after Reg FD took effect, and that investors consequently are less biased in assessing the persistence of the cash flow components of earnings following the implementation of Reg FD.     

Weighted and quadratic models of choice under uncertainty

This paper extends the weighted and quadratic utility models of choice under risk to the context of choice under uncertainty. An important characteristic of the models is that they admit ‘dynamically consistent’ updating rules.