The quality and effectiveness of marketing strategy: Effects of functional and dysfunctional conflict in intraorganizational relationships

By examining only dysfunctional conflict and ignoring functional conflict, empirical research in marketing has presented only part of the story. This research offers the first systematic look at the antecedents and consequences of both functionaland dysfunctional conflict in intraorganiational relationships. The authors develop and empirically test a causal model for key organizational antecedents of new product strategy quality and market performance. They find that dysfunctional conflict in the decision-making process has deleterious consequences for quality of strategy and market performance, whereas functional conflict improves both quality of strategy and performance. Specifically, organizational design characteristics such as formalization, interdepartmental interconnectedness, low communication barriers, and team spirit improve new product performance by enhancing functional conflict, whereas centralization and high communication barriers lower new product performance by increasing dysfunctional conflict. A post hoc test for common method bias or variance suggests that bias or variance alone cannot explain these findings. His general research interests focus on strategic issues relating to internal relationships, market learning, and organizational context of marketing strategy. His research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Advertising, andJournal of Services Marketing, among others. His general research interests focus on strategic issues relating to relationship marketing, firm performance, sustainable competitive advantage, timing of market entry, and information technology. His past research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Services Marketing, andMarketing Education Review, among others. His research interests are in the areas of marketing research methods, structural equations modeling, cellular automata theories and methods, and Taoist methodologies for marketing strategy. His research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, andJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, among others.     

Choice of Diversification Strategies in an Emerging Market: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing Industries

The study seeks to measure the strategic choice of industries over different dynamic phases in the Indian economic environment. The total sample of 536 companies has been divided into 14 industries as per Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes. The paper also categorizes companies as per the cyclical changes in the economy, that is, growth, cyclical, and defensive industries. Evidence suggests that choice of diversification is industry specific and concurrently affected by the environmental conditions prevailing in the emerging economy. Food and beverages, plastic/rubber, and electrical equipment industries follow higher categories of diversification than other industries.     

EMNEs venturing into advanced economies: Findings from comparative cases of two Indian MNEs

Indian firms are challenged by the latecomer disadvantages faced by emerging‐market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) in general. These challenges notwithstanding, Indian firms are doing cross‐border acquisitions (CBAs) in developed regions. Analyzing firm‐level secondary data of two Indian MNEs—namely, Motherson Sumi Systems Limited and Rain Industries Limited—that show significant developed region–based revenues and assets, we link extant and emerging theoretical perspectives on EMNEs’ internationalization with the observed firm motives and behaviors of our case firms. We propose a framework of multiple contextual settings to understand the context‐driven internationalization of the case firms. Finally, our article offers a set of propositions emphasizing firm‐level entrepreneurial orientation and international orientation, when EMNEs internationalize via CBAs in developed regions. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Structural characteristics of firms and industries and black and white wage inequality in the U.S. economy: 1988

The effects of firm and job characteristics on the wages of blacks and whites are analyzed using data from the 1988 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth [Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1997]. This study focuses on 2,370 full-time private sector employees. The results show that, first, blacks are disproportionately employed in large establishments despite their lower cognitive achievements. Second, blacks do not enjoy significant wage premiums associated with supervisory positions. Third, although the wage gap between blacks and whites is reduced considerably, controlling for education and cognitive skills, the gap increases significantly when structural attributes are included in the wage regressions despite the large wage premiums associated with employment in large establishments.     

Can Mobile Money Help Firms Mitigate the Problem of Access to Finance in Eastern sub-Saharan Africa?

ABSTRACT

Mobile money is a mobile-phone-based financial tool that can transfer money safely and quickly across a wide geographical area. Mobile money has transformed the way businesses in Eastern sub-Saharan Africa operate. Nowadays, banks team up with mobile-money-service providers and pay interest on deposits and grant loans based on financial transactions in mobile-money accounts. In this paper, these recent developments are investigated in order to determine whether the adoption of mobile money by firms can actually help them mitigate the vexing problem of access to finance. To answer this question, the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys Program data set for the year 2013 is used, thus making the study applicable to the present time. The results obtained, after controlling for a large number of firm-level characteristics and using a newly introduced measure to identify access-to-finance status of the firms, indicate that firms which use mobile money are more likely to obtain loans or lines of credit. Further analysis shows that the firms that use mobile money are more productive than other firms in the region.     

Multi‐state Stochastic Processes: A Statistical Flowgraph Perspective

Two‐state models (working/failed or alive/dead) are widely used in reliability and survival analysis. In contrast, multi‐state stochastic processes provide a richer framework for modeling and analyzing the progression of a process from an initial to a terminal state, allowing incorporation of more details of the process mechanism. We review multi‐state models, focusing on time‐homogeneous semi‐Markov processes (SMPs), and then describe the statistical flowgraph framework, which comprises analysis methods and algorithms for computing quantities of interest such as the distribution of first passage times to a terminal state. These algorithms algebraically combine integral transforms of the waiting time distributions in each state and invert them to get the required results. The estimated transforms may be based on parametric distributions or on empirical distributions of sample transition data, which may be censored. The methods are illustrated with several applications.     

Factors influencing the adjustment of women on global assignments

This study tests a four-factor model proposed by Caligiuri and Cascio (in press) for predicting the cross-cultural adjustment of female expatriates. The four factors tested in this paper were family support, personality characteristics, organizational support and host nationals' attitudes towards female expatriates. Structured phone interviews with thirty-eight American female expatriates from US-based companies were conducted. The responses were content analysed and regression was conducted. The results suggest company and family support are significantly related to cross-cultural adjustment. Thus, suggestions are given for future research on female expatriates using the theoretical model of social support. Practical recommendations for how to maximize the likelihood of success for women on global assignments are also given.     

Getting bank financing: A study of Vietnamese private firms

Private firms in transition economies are operating in an extremely uncertain environment, with underdeveloped market institutions, poorly defined property rights, and absence of reliable business data. This raises a very basic question of how owners of these firms persuade bankers to make much needed loans. This study employs an institutional perspective and argues that firms' legitimacy positively influences their accessibility to bank financing. Specifically, this study develops a model that links networking, professional management practices, and growth stage with bank financing and tests that model using a sample of Vietnamese private firms. The results support the hypotheses that growth stage and networking greatly influence firms' accessibility to bank financing, and that the impact of networking on financing is contingent on the growth stage.