LINKING COMPETITIVE STRATEGY AND MANUFACTURING PROCESS TECHNOLOGY

This paper presents an empirically grounded study of the linkages between competitive strategy and manufacturing technology for 20 small manufacturers. It identifies the nature of strategy-technology linkages, the process by which the two align, the market and customer forces driving this alignment, and the consequences of failing to adopt appropriate new technologies. the paper proposes five propositions which are developed into a dynamic strategy-technology linkage model.     

High productivity before or after exports? An empirical analysis of Korean manufacturing firms

This study investigates whether exporting is a cause or an effect of high productivity of firms’ in the Korean manufacturing industries. For this purpose, a panel database is assembled with 1335 firms from eight Korean manufacturing industries during 1997–2003. Evidence that high productivity causes exporting, referred to as self-selection, is found in three out of eight industries. However, we do not find support for the hypothesis that high productivity is affected by exporting, except in one industry. Sunk-cost or previous-export-experience effect on the current export status is statistically significant and robust across industries unlike that of firms’ productivity and size.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Perceived Importance of Ethics in Marketing Situations: A Study of Thai Businesspeople

Building on an existing framework concerning ethical intention, this research explores how Thai business people perceive the importance of ethics in various scenarios. This study investigates the relative influences of personal characteristics and the organizational environment underlying the Thai business people’s ethical perception. Corporate ethical values and idealism are shown to positively influence a Thai manager’s perceptions about the importance of ethics. While their ability to perceive the existence of an ethical problem is negatively influenced by relativism, it is positively impacted by their existing perceptions about the importance of ethics. Results also suggest positive relationships between perceived importance of ethics and perceived ethical problems with ethical intention. These results extend research in understanding the relationship between the antecedents and consequences of perceived importance of ethics within an economically growing non-Western culture.     

Agricultural competitiveness: The case of the United States and major EU countries

Growth in the agricultural GDP of four major European countries is compared with US agricultural growth for the period 1974–1993. The agricultural sector's relative prices are taken into account along with economy-wide factor market adjustments. For Denmark, France, Germany and the UK, the effects of declining real prices and changes in input levels on growth in agricultural GDP are relatively small. Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth appears to be the major contributor to European agricultural GDP growth. In comparison, TFP is the major source of growth in US agricultural GDP, but its rate of growth is lower than the European countries. In contrast, the declining real prices for US agriculture had a relatively large effect on its GDP. However, in recent years, the effects of declining real prices and declining rates of growth in TFP on European agriculture are relatively large. In the longer-run, the relative competitiveness of US agriculture is largely dependent on its ability to sustain and increase growth in TFP.     

Antecedents of intention to use chatbots in service encounters: A meta-analytic review

The trend of using artificial intelligence based chatbots for service encounters has seen a significant spike in recent times. Many studies have attempted to explain the adoption of the technology for various service applications; this study synthesizes the literature through a meta-analysis, for which data from 70 independent studies, with a combined sample size of 20,026 was considered, to understand the influencers of the attitude and intention to use chatbots for service encounters. In addition, this study also sought to understand the moderating role of the culture, the technological characteristics captured through the variables transactional/non-transactional, and informative/entertaining of the hypothesized relationships. Meta structural equation modelling (meta-analytic SEM) was used to analyse the data. The results indicate playfulness, attitude, usefulness, facilitating condition and social influence of the chatbots are the key factors in influencing user adoption. Further, technological characteristics and culture were found to significantly moderate certain relationships in the model. Practical and theoretical implications have also been discussed.