Search results

The global environments that surround contemporary business activities are uncertain, fast-changing, and frequently exposed to abrupt unexpected events with the potential to inflict extreme impacts where the ability to respond and adapt the organization effectively becomes a primary strategic concern. However, various firms that operate across diverse industry contexts approach this adaptive challenge in distinct ways that lead to quite diverse outcomes with many negative performers and some high performers with positive risk features. The heterogeneous approaches appear to consistently form extreme left-tailed performance distributions with inverse risk-return features but we are not really able to explain why and how these regularly observed phenomena come about. Hence, we want to study these organizational artifacts by collecting an extensive updated dataset to test the proposed relationships, explore alternative explanations, and learn from the extreme exemplars often referred to as outliers. There are extensive literatures in (strategic) management and finance that have dealt with the distribution of firm returns from slightly different angles but with some emerging commonalities that can inspire further analyses of the performance data. As a precursor for this, we discuss the odds of effective strategic adaptation in complex dynamic environments and introduce resilience as a proper outcome when simple solutions are scarce, and consider conditions that may facilitate these aims. The premises for the ensuing analyses are laid out and the main contents of the following chapters are presented.

Purpose – Marketers are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the financial return associated with marketing expenditures. Concurrently, more attempts at measuring return on investment from marketing as well as achieving other long-term goals such as building brand equity and increasing shareholder value have been made. As a result of this emphasis, the degree to which advertising budgets are spent efficiently and the impact of these expenditures on the bottom line are an important topic to study.

Methodology/approach – This study applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to a group of large firms to assess the degree to which companies spend advertising dollars efficiently and to examine the impact of advertising efficiency on investor behavior and, ultimately, stock prices.

Findings – The analysis reveals that firms that advertise more efficiently are rewarded by investors by positive stock returns.

Research limitations/implications (if applicable) – The study is limited to large enterprises with strong brands within a time frame of only four years.

Practical implications (if applicable) – The results imply that it is advisable for marketing managers not to limit their focus to increasing market-based assets at any cost. The efficiency of their efforts can send a positive signal to investors and contribute to shareholder value enhancement.

Originality/value of the chapter – The chapter finds investors to pay attention not only to the effectiveness of advertising activities but also to their efficiency. The study also demonstrates how DEA and stock return response modeling can be combined to investigate the link between advertising efficiency and investor behavior.

The environmental exposures to humankind have increased in number and intensity over past decades introducing the possibility of extreme incidents with irreversible impacts on business and society. The global integration of business and cross-border financial flows supported by digital technology increase the complexity and uncertainty of the business environment. In this context, the behaviors of individual players are interdependent with potentially nonlinear and unpredictable outcomes ascribed to complex wicked problems. As a consequence, organizational decision-makers may pursue false objectives from misinformed causation where stringent score-card controls will exacerbate the problems. The resolution to wicked problems requires cross-functional and collective interactions supported by a collaborative corporate mindset. The conventional control-based management practices fall short in dealing with disruptive developments where value-based stakeholder collaboration can provide resilient responses to unexpected abrupt events.

Purpose — This paper explores the field of ethical conflicts of human resource (HR) managers in Slovenian organizations: unfair payments, extreme differences in rewards, not respecting employees’ rights, discrimination; using over excessive disciplinary power, not paying social contributions, and engaging in manipulations, among others. The main attention is paid to the implementation of employees’ rights and the factors that affect the process of the implementation of employees’ rights.Design/methodology/approach — We applied an ABC (antecedents — behavior — consequences) analysis of ethical organizational behavior. The survey encompasses 73 HR managers of Slovenian companies.Findings — HR managers perceive their role in an organization as being caught in a specific position in relation to senior management and employees. The study shows that in organizations where the “soft” and “combined” model of human resource management (HRM) is developed, the implementation of employees’ rights is more strongly realized.Research limitations — The sample size is one of the chapter’s limitations. The other is the use of quantitative statistical approach without applying other methods. In the future it should be accompanied with qualitative techniques by which dishonesty would be more directly linked to the violation of employees’ rights.Practical implications — Professional education can (1) form a solid system of professional values that can help to prioritize expectations and demands in the work place and (2) equip HR managers with competencies to solve ethical issues and to engage in ethical behavior.Social implications/value — The results show that first of all, HR managers are responsible in their role (responsibility of the role in developing the model of HRM which facilitates the implementation of employees’ rights) and only secondly, comes the responsibility of HR managers in an active sense of responsibility (responsibility as a virtue).

The agribusiness co-operative sector in Canada has been affected by ongoing changes in economic, political, and social policies. Increased competition from local investor-owned firms and multinational companies, deregulation and globalization of trade and increased concentration of suppliers and purchasers have put tremendous competitive pressure on agribusiness marketing co-operatives. The enhanced level of competitive rivalry may force co-operatives into lowering costs and prices. Improvement in cost or operating efficiency of agribusiness marketing co-operatives may be crucial as changes in regulation, technology, and other market developments bring into question the long-term viability of co-operative businesses. Therefore, information as to the efficiency with which agribusiness co-operative firms operate would be useful.

We analyze corporate governance mechanisms in Canadian and US firms. We show that despite similarities in governance practices in both countries, there are differences in the efficacy of these mechanisms. In particular, the performance of Canadian firms is less sensitive to ownership structure than that of US firms. Differences are also found in the performance implications of incentive pay. Our study suggests that country-specific governance trends persist among Canadian firms cross-listed in the United States. These findings may explain why Canadian firms which are cross-listed in the United States continue to trade at a discount compared to their US counterparts.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Purpose – This chapter explores the basic characteristics of stochastic frontier estimation, discusses advantages of the method that make it conducive to research in international marketing, and provides an application to demonstrate its use. Potential applications in international marketing research are also discussed.

Methodology – Stochastic Frontier Estimation.

Findings – Stochastic frontier estimation models, prevalent in other fields, are very limited in the international marketing literature. Many potential opportunities exist for its use in the context of international marketing.

Originality/value of paper – The intent of this chapter is to show that stochastic frontier estimation is a potentially valuable tool for international marketing research. We show this by demonstrating the use of the tool and by providing examples of potential research studies.