Search results

This paper aims to study the impact of human resource heterogeneity on firms’ cash-holding policies.

The authors construct a proxy for human resource heterogeneity using the dissimilarity in employees’ skill structure between the firm and its peers in the same industry.

The authors report evidence that firms with heterogeneous human resources hold more cash than other firms. This effect is more pronounced in labor-intensive firms and firms more susceptible to hold-up by employees, i.e. firms located in regions with more labor disputes and firms surrounded by more external employment opportunities. In addition, the authors demonstrate that high cash holdings triggered by human resource heterogeneity reduce the scale and efficiency of firms’ capital investment.

This study highlights the role of human resource heterogeneity in determining firms’ cash policies. This paper adds to the understanding of labor adjustment costs within the firm and provides insights into firms’ cash-holding decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the implications of board human capital heterogeneity for company innovation by focusing on the educational and the functional background of directors. Moreover, it examines the moderating effect of the CEO expertise-overlap within the innovation domain on the relationship between board human capital heterogeneity and firm innovation.

The hypotheses are tested through a set of ordinary least squares regressions on a unique dataset of 149 Italian high-tech companies observed between 2012 and 2015.

Findings show that the educational and the functional background heterogeneity of directors increase both the innovation input and output. However, results highlight that these relationships are negatively moderated by the CEO expertise-overlap within the innovation domain.

The paper emphasizes the importance of appointing directors with different and specific educational and functional backgrounds to foster the company innovation.

The paper fills a gap in the literature as it has devoted limited attention to the performance implications of board human capital heterogeneity in the high-tech industry where knowledge and skills are the primary sources of value. Moreover, the paper integrates the research on the CEO-board interface by shedding light on how the CEO expertise within the innovation domain affects the contribution of heterogeneous boards to company innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to review the empirical literature on the relationship between the characteristics of the top management teams (TMTs) and the performance of entrepreneurial firms.

A literature review was carried out on 33 empirical studies related to TMTs and performance through analyzing and summarizing the quantitative studies conducted in this area.

The results of the literature review show that the relationship between TMTs (demographics and heterogeneity) and the performance of entrepreneurial firms is not straightforward and further investigation is still needed in this area.

The author maps the theoretical and empirical research of TMT demographics and heterogeneity in relation to firms’ performance and possible moderators and mediators, which govern the relationship between TMT composition and firms’ performance.

The author presents a detailed future research agenda for the purpose of advancing the theoretical and empirical knowledge on TMT-performance links. The review provides a comprehensive picture of TMT-firms’ performance literature and what should be done to enrich the literature.

This study aims to elucidate the quantitative and qualitative differences in employment development between German districts. Building on ideas from competitive development and resource-based theory, the paper particularly seeks to explain enduring East-West differences between rural regions by two different forms of competitive advantage: cost leadership and quality differentiation.

This study follows a two-step empirical approach: First, an extended shift-share regression is conducted to analyze employment development in Western and Eastern German districts between 2007 and 2016. Second, the competitive share effect and other individual terms of the shift-share model are further examined in additional regressions using regional economic characteristics as exogenous variables.

The findings suggest that the above-average employment growth of the rural districts in the West is owed to the successful exploitation of experience in manufacturing that has been gathered by firms in the past 100 years or so. While their strategy is largely based on advanced and specialized resources and an innovation-driven differentiation strategy, the relatively weak employment development of Eastern rural districts might be explained by a lack of comparable long-term experiences and the related need to focus on the exploitation of basic and general resources and, accordingly, on the efficiency-based strategy of cost leadership.

This study offers an in-depth empirical analysis of how the competitive share effect, i.e. region-specific resources beyond industry structure, contributes to regional employment development. The analysis reveals that quantitative differences in rural employment development are closely related to qualitatively different levels of input factors and different regimes of competitiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relevant literature to gain deeper insights into understanding what directions of research are needed with reference to entrepreneurial orientation and competitive aggressiveness in the oil and gas sector of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

This paper is a conceptual evaluation of literature.

The extant body of research on both entrepreneurial orientation and competitive aggressiveness is based on quantitative studies without previous systematic, exhaustive and comprehensive grounded theory-based theorizing processes rooted in qualitative approaches. This accounts for inconsistencies and controversies of findings reported in the field.

The grounded theory-based approach advocated by this paper is likely to generate a more precise estimation of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, competitive aggressiveness and firm performance. Consequently, an accurate understanding of the interplay between these factors can empower managers to make finely-tuned strategic decisions, achieve sustainable competitive advantage and optimally adapt to dynamic and unforeseen environments.

The paper reports on important limitations of the existing literature indicating that current findings may be an artifact of studying a small number of industries.

This study aims to develop a competitive dynamics model of container shipping liners, one which examines how inter-firm network embeddedness would affect inter-firm rivalry such as the likelihood of a competitive action of a focal firm and the likelihood of its rivals’ response and how the inter-firm rivalry then has an influence on the market share of the focal firm. Structural and relational network embeddedness between a focal firm and its competitors would be investigated as drivers of the likelihood of the competitive action and response. The theoretical framework on the relationship between network embeddedness, inter-firm rivalry and market share in the liner shipping industry will be developed and relevant propositions are then suggested in relation to the model. This attempt may provide meaningful insights for managers and academic researchers into the key factors which affect the inter-firm rivalry between shipping liners and may also detail the impact of inter-firm rivalry on the focal firm’s market share. This research would therefore contribute to the development of the competitive strategy of container shipping companies so as to help them strategically manage their rivals’ competitive behaviors and maximize their market share.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual model of business development that provides operational ways to increase the competitive presence of more micro and small ventures (both actual and new) in enlarged markets, including international ones.

The paper develops a conceptual model starting from the identification of the most usual constraints limiting the SMEs and entrepreneurship development and success. After this stage, the model was built with the help of selected concepts, which represent a theoretical framework of support.

Regarding the universe of SME and entrepreneurship, the authors usually find some weaknesses: markets mainly local/regional, absence of growth, cooperative networks and/or international operations, because of several usual constraints: limited competences and resources, absence of critical mass on buying/selling and difficulty to cooperate. These shortcomings represent an economic waste when there are competitive offers and/or endogenous resources.

The model will be applied in a Portuguese county, in this way the authors expect to make an empirical research in the near future.

The model surpasses the, usual, limited skills of people and organisations betting in their competitive specialisation, with the assumptions that few people can be successful entrepreneurs/managers, but quite everyone can perform something competitively. The organisation/structure – Local Development Platform (LDP) – has the responsibility to assure the competitiveness of value chains built over networks of these agents. Additionally, the LDP should provide collective resources to lower the investments and operational needs of the agents involved, provide the added value services necessary for offers and agents’ competitiveness, achieve critical mass on buying and selling and enlarge/open new markets. These resources are organised in up to five specialised platforms, to service a strategy structured along five axes of development.

With this model, it is possible to increase the levels of employment and welfare.

A practical/operational integrated model able to be applied in different contexts will help private and public agents to define and implement strategies of development to enable the growth and success of SMEs and entrepreneurial initiatives in the international markets context.