How personal and organizational drivers impact on SME international performance: The mediating role of organizational innovation

This article develops and tests a conceptual model to identify the impact of internal drivers (personal and organizational) on the international performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm and its capability extensions, it is argued that the effect of drivers is mediated by organizational innovation. To test the proposed theoretical model, we collected data from 120 exporting SMEs in Portugal. Results show that the indirect mediating effect of innovation is particularly relevant with regard to the organizational driver-performance link. Insights contribute to research on the importance of innovation for capability and resource deployment during internationalization.     

Why is my sales force automation system failing?

Sales force automation (SFA) is the use of software to automate sales tasks, including sales activities, order processing, customer management, sales forecasting and analysis, sales force management, and information sharing. An SFA system is often part of an enterprise-wide information system that connects and integrates sales activities with the organization's other operations. Therefore, SFA software is not only a tool critical to the success of today's sales force, but is also vital to the entire organization. SFA has the potential to empower companies to more efficiently manage their sales force and sales processes, to automate and standardize sales activities, and to connect the sales force with the rest of the organization. The value of these potential benefits in terms of lower costs or increased revenues has encouraged businesses to adopt SFA. Once adopted, however, SFA systems often fail to deliver anticipated benefits. The leading cause of SFA failures has been revealed as low user acceptance, which can be attributed to such factors as the disruption of established sales routines, sales force perception of the system as a micromanagement tool, differences in sales force and managerial expectations for the system, and lack of managerial support for the system as perceived by the sales force. Given these circumstances, managers who are aware of the major issues surrounding user acceptance of SFA will be more successful in implementing such systems. This article explores the utilization of SFA, the benefits derived from these systems, and user acceptance issues. Herein, we offer suggestions that will help organizations succeed in adopting SFA systems.     

Dollars and sense: The implications of CEO compensation for organizational performance

Crafting a compensation package for an organization's chief executive officer (CEO) that will help the firm maximize its performance is a vexing challenge for a board of directors. Management theory offers boards several practical hints. A board can put its CEO and the firm in the best position to be successful by (1) creating strong incentives for the CEO to act in the firm's best interest at all times; (2) benchmarking a CEO's performance and compensation relative to that of very high performing CEOs in the industry; (3) diagnosing and responding to CEOs’ feelings about equity relative to their peers; (4) paying a CEO with uniquely valuable knowledge, skills, and ability at the top of the market; (5) offering retention incentives if a proven performer with unique skills is leading a company; (6) resisting the temptation to simply mimic the compensation packages that work for leading firms; and (7) considering candidates’ social ties when recruiting a new CEO.     

Marketing management,its environment,and information processing: a problem of organizational design

The marketing literature has overlooked the problem of designing optimal organizational structures for marketing management. The study of this problem is crucial and pressing. Some relationships are proposed between the information generated by the market environment and the ability of the organization of a marketing department to process this information. Insights and opportunities for future conceptual and empirical work are provided.     

Organizational memory influences new product success

Prior research on the impact of organizational memory on new product success has divergent perspectives. Such inconsistency has accrued mainly from not considering memory's multifaceted aspects, which interact with specific project characteristics. This paper tries to sort out this paradox by proposing that project innovativeness moderates the relationship among variables of organizational memory and new product success. An empirical study of 169 NPD projects of Korean manufacturing firms finds that memory sharing and the use of external information and formal procedures enhance new product success, whereas organizational memory has no effect. Project innovativeness is found to moderate memory's effect, despite some tradeoffs. As innovativeness increases, the effect of organizational memory and use of external information become stronger whereas the effect of memory sharing and use of formal procedures weaken. This suggests that firms must activate organizational memory more carefully according to project characteristics and the memory level to maximize its positive effects.     

集聚、组织创新与外包模式——我国现代服务业发展的理论视角

改革开放以来,我国服务业特别是现代服务业发展积累了宝贵的经验,其中,利用城市化和商品市场发展服务业是具有中国特色的发展路径。本文分析了产业集聚在我国城市化进程中的演进,揭示了我国城市化进程中产业集聚的双重表现,即制造业逐渐撤离城市中心区向工业园区集聚,服务业特别是现代服务业不断向城市中心区集中。作为我国流通体制改革中制度变迁和组织创新的新鲜事物,商品市场是现代服务业发育和生长的摇篮,通过改造提升商品市场来促进现代服务业发展是又一发展路径。当前我国经济中已经存在生产与服务外包、专业分工以及供应链管理的萌芽事物和现象,本文分析了使之发育成长的机理以及所需要的体制和政策环境,指出这是未来我国现代服务业发展的新路径。     

Mentoring in supervisor-subordinate dyads: Antecedents, consequences, and test of a mediation model of mentorship

We develop a framework to look at mentoring as a consequence of employees' values and beliefs, as well as to explore its role in determining the employees' attitudes towards their organizations. Based on social exchange theory, we hypothesize that employees' levels of individualism, collectivism, and trust in supervisor influence the level of supervisory mentoring received. Moreover, mentoring influences employees' affective commitment and intention to quit, as well as mediates the relationships between the proposed antecedents and outcomes. Using structural equation modeling to examine these relationships, we find that within supervisor-subordinate dyads, subordinates report more mentoring when they have collectivist personal values and trust their supervisor. Additionally, more mentoring is positively related to subordinates' affective commitment towards the organizations and negatively related to their intention to quit. We also find that mentoring mediate the relationship between both collectivism values and trust in supervisors and both organizational commitment and intention to quit.