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This paper provides a structural model to value startup companies and determine the optimal level of research and development (R&D) spending by these companies.

This paper describes a new variant of float-the-money options, which can act as a financial instrument for financing R&D expenses for a specific time horizon or development stage, allowing the investor to share in the startup's value appreciation over that duration. Another innovation of this paper is that it develops a structural model for evaluating optimal level of R&D spending over a given time horizon. The paper deploys the Gompertz-Cox model for the R&D project outcomes, which facilitates investigation of how increased level of R&D input can enhance the company's value growth.

The author first introduces a time-varying drift term into standard Black-Scholes model to account for the varying growth rates of the startup at different stages, and the author interprets venture capital's investment in the startup as a “float-the-money” option. The author then incorporates the probabilities of startup failures at multiple stages into their financial valuation. The author gets a closed-form pricing formula for the contingent option of value appreciation. Finally, the author utilizes Cox proportional hazards model to analyze the optimal level of R&D input that maximizes the return on investment.

The integrated contingent claims model links the change in the financial valuation of startups with the incremental R&D spending. The Gompertz-Cox contingency model for R&D success rate is used to quantify the optimal level of R&D input. This model assumption may be simplistic, but nevertheless illustrative.

Once supplemented with actual transaction data, the model can serve as a reference benchmark valuation of new project deals and previously invested projects seeking exit.

The integrated structural model can potentially have much wider applications beyond valuation of startup companies. For instance, in valuing a company's risk management, the level of R&D spending in the model can be replaced by the company's budget for risk management. As another promising application, in evaluating a country's economic growth rate in the face of rising climate risks, the level of R&D spending in this paper can be replaced by a country's investment in addressing climate risks.

This paper is the first to develop an integrated valuation model for startups by combining the real-world R&D project contingencies with risk-neutral valuation of the potential payoffs.

This paper investigates to what extent public sector entities (PSEs) in developing countries (DCs) are compliant with IPSAS and examines the impact of the socioeconomic and politico-administrative environment on this compliance during the period 2015–2018.

This research develops a self-constructed checklist consisting of 116 disclosure items from five accrual-based IPSAS (IPSASs, 1, 2, 3, 14 and 24) and applies panel regressions for a sample of 500 entity-year observations of 125 PSEs.

The study results show a high level of disparity in the degree of compliance with IPSAS amongst DCs' governments, with an overall average level of 61%. They reveal that compliance with IPSAS is positively influenced by the level of citizen wealth, government political culture (degree of government openness) and the quality of public administration, whereas jurisdiction size, government financial condition and political competition are non-significant factors.

This research provides researchers and practitioners with a comprehensive framework for understanding the extent of New Public Management reforms in DCs with a focus on International Public Sector Accounting Standards implementation. It might assist policymakers in their accounting strategies and might be a signal for DCs with low compliance to tap lessons from governments with successful experience of IPSAS adoption.

Focusing on DCs' context, this paper brings new insights into the analysis of socioeconomic and politico-administrative incentives for government compliance with IPSAS. It is the first to investigate the impact of citizen wealth and political competition on IPSAS disclosures.

After completion of this case study, students should be able to reflect on the concept of creating shared value and then determine whether Shesha Geza can be referred to as a shared value company and, if so, what level of shared value it demonstrates. They will be able to subjectively and objectively understand the possible meaning of when a social enterprise embarks on a strategy to scale the organisation; clarity of construct will enable managers to better plan and successfully implement scalability goals. They will also be able to recognise, once scalability goals are better understood and planned, that there are a multitude of intra-organisational levers and drivers that may contribute to the organisation’s ability to scale its operations, which are related to specific internal organisational capabilities of social enterprise companies. In addition, there are situational factors that may affect the business either positively or negatively in relation to the scalability success of which a social entrepreneur should be aware.

In April 2021, Dean Boniface and his brother, Roger, had just signed off a new informational video for their Shesha Geza innovation, a low-cost hand-washing station designed for use at commuter hubs and high-traffic areas across the African continent. The unit used diluted chlorine instead of alcohol-based sanitisers to ensure a more expedient and sustainable solution, one better suited to Africa’s logistical challenges. Boniface, the co-founder of Vue Architects, had conceptualised the idea of the hand-washing hub during South African Government’s enforced COVID-19 lockdown from 27 March 2020 to 1 May 2020. Shesha Geza’s speed to market was a key contributor to its successful response in solving a critical social need. Throughout 2020, Boniface and his team built successful partnerships and secured an impressive order pipeline within a short span. Export opportunities across Africa, installations and maintenance of a sizable number of units across South Africa and the development of a behavioural change programme aimed at hygiene in schools kept the momentum going in the business. However, a year into the business and the future sustainability of a crisis–response enterprise and the ability of a shared value enterprise to scale were playing on Boniface’s mind. He was worried about the future of the small resource-constrained business. Holding onto the mental map of everything the team had learned over the past year, Boniface was confident about one thing: “All the programmes we build around Shesha Geza are value-adds to our current business. Hand hygiene will not diminish after COVID-19; it will continue to be an important social issue across the African continent.”

This case is intended for discussion in post-graduate-level courses such as an MBA and in postgraduate courses focused on business model innovation or on creating shared value. This case is suitable for use in the environment of business courses in relation to environmental situational factors that may affect the ability to scale social enterprises or strategic implementation courses, considering the still pervasive challenge of scaling increasingly important social impact enterprises.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

In literature, it is recognized that there is no universal set of critical success factors (CSFs) applicable to all projects. The goal of this research is to validate a theoretical model which considers that CSFs’ influence on project success (PS) is configurational, that CSFs combine to influence PS.

The authors proposed a theoretical framework which operationalizes CSFs considering contingency and institutional theories' terms, as external contingencies, organizational resources and project strategies, which influence PS. The framework is validated through a qualitative approach on 18 social projects implemented by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Based on the conducted semistructured interviews with NGO managers or project managers, 91 instances when CSFs combine to influence PS were identified.

The dominant path reveals the combination of CSFs in terms of strategies adopted to face contingencies (70 instances), another as resources which moderate managers' strategies (14 instances), and in seven instances positive contingencies and resources combine and influence the PS. The results reveal that CSFs combine in reactive and dynamic ways to influence PS.

The research contributes to the vast literature on projects' success by adopting a different perspective. Configurational theory explains project management and projects' complexity better than the traditional approaches, which have a rather correlational perspective.

As the tourism industry emerges from full or partial closure caused by the COVID-19 crisis, it is imperative to understand the internal conditions that assisted organizations to maintain positive employee attitudes despite the adverse effects of unpopular cost–retrenchment strategies. Therefore, this study aims to understand the impacts of transformational leadership (TFL), human resource management (HRM) crisis cost–retrenchment and ethical climate (EC) on employee job outcomes affected by COVID-19 pandemic.

Mid-level managers of service organizations from a travel destination heavily reliant on the tourism participated in an online self-administered survey one month after the state eased its COVID-19 travel restrictions. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) examined how TFL and EC influenced cost–retrenchment crisis–management HRM, satisfaction and trust in the organization, followed by PLS multi-group analysis (PLS-MGA) to understand differences between hospitality and non-hospitality employees.

Results revealed an overall positive effect of TFL that diminished the negative affect of HRM cost-retrenchment on employee satisfaction. PLS-MGA showed a significant positive role of other-focused EC on employee outcomes, especially for hospitality organizations, whereas self-focused EC had a negative impact for non-hospitality firms.

This study contributes to contingency theory of leadership by demonstrating that TFL in combination with EC mitigates or overpowers the negative effects of cost–retrenchment crisis management strategies on employees. The study advances knowledge of self-focused and other-focused moral reasoning climate impacts under COVID-19 conditions for hospitality organizations. The industry comparison results highlight the important positive characteristics of hospitality crisis management.

Grounded in contingency theory and strategic fit theory, the goal for this research was to determine if managers differentiate in terms of the degree of partnership when allocating resources for planning, joint operating controls, communication and other management components to relationships and if this differentiation is based on the Partnership Model (Lambert et al., 1996).

In total, 381 managers representing 31 relationships participated in one-and-a-half-day partnership meetings, and the authors analyzed how the management components were implemented in each relationship compared to the recommendations in the Partnership Model.

Managers did not differentiate types of partnerships which led to over-resourcing relationships with low potential and under-resourcing those with the highest potential for creating value. The principles of contingency theory and strategic fit were not used for managing relationships.

Contingency theory combined with the relationship view suggests that management components should not be implemented at the same level for all relationships, but in the 31 relationships studied different partnership types were not managed based on their potential.

The research reinforces the need for a formal structure like the Partnership Model to establish joint goals for a relationship and guide management in implementation.

Effective supply chain management depends on the ability of managers to differentiate among partnership types and fit relational mechanisms that are appropriate. However, researchers tend to generalize their findings to all partnerships regardless of potential. The authors found support for the Partnership Model published in IJLM in 1996 as a method to resource different types of partnerships following the contingency perspective and strategic fit theory.

This study aims to investigate contextual factors affecting the deployment of strategy-driven manufacturing accounting techniques (SMAT), as well as the impact of SMAT usage on organisational competitiveness. Seven major SMAT were investigated, namely, benchmarking, integrated performance measurement, environmental management accounting, strategic costing, strategic pricing, strategic investment and life cycle costing.

By using multi-informant strategy, structured questionnaire was used to gather survey data from 129 senior accounting, finance and production personnel of publicly quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Data was analysed using structural equation modelling and propensity score matching.

Result shows that the usage rate of the SMAT is generally moderate. Market orientation and deliberate strategy formulation are notable determinants of SMAT usage. The inability of competition intensity and perceived environmental uncertainty to notably affect SMAT usage suggests that external environmental pressure to use SMAT is weak.

Although the impact of SMAT usage on organisational competitiveness is positive and statistically significant, it is conceivable that the impact of SMAT could have been more assuming SMAT recorded extensive usage. Thus, the lack of competitiveness of manufacturing companies in Nigeria may not be unconnected to the superficial usage of SMAT.

The study contributes to knowledge in three ways. First, it extends studies on the contingency theory that contextual factors influence the adoption of management accounting innovations. Second, it exposes the contextual factors affecting the adoption of SMAT in a developing country. Third, it provides evidence on the value relevance of management accounting innovation in enhancing organisational competitiveness.

This study aims to conceptualize the dimensions of resilient leadership and develop the resilient leadership scale (RLS) through three studies.

In Study 1, based on interviews with 77 leaders and 8 junior employees, a seven-factor resilient leadership model was constructed. In Study 2, exploratory factor analysis (n = 237) was conducted to refine the initial items. In Study 3, confirmatory factor analysis (n = 610) was performed to validate the dimensional structure identified in Study 2, and different types of validity of the RLS were assessed.

The validated RLS composed of seven dimensions: contingency planning, improvisation, adaptive instructing, contingency control, emergency care, adjustment recovery and mutual growth. The scale showed desirable measurement qualities in terms of reliability and validity. Resilient leadership and its dimensions significantly impact employee turnover intentions and employee resilience.

This research contributes to the literature on the resilience of hospitality and tourism enterprises and enriches the research scope and theoretical framework of resilient leadership.

This research revealed the resilient leadership responses to crisis in hospitality and tourism enterprises with practical implications for tourism enterprise leaders to deal with major crisis.

Although the use of management control systems (MCS) in crisis management has received extensive attention, limited knowledge exists regarding the benefits of the broad scope, timeliness, integration and aggregation dimensions. This study aims at examining the performance implications of the context-structure combinations of pandemic management strategy (PMS), MCS use and pandemic-induced uncertainty of public health institutions (PHIs) in Ghana.

Data were collected using online survey questionnaire where 246 public health managers qualified for the study. Data were analyzed using covariance-based structural equations modeling (version 23).

PMS was found to have a significant and positive impact on three (broad scope, timeliness and aggregation) of the four dimensions. The integrated dimension was statistically insignificant. In addition, the three dimensions had a significant impact on top managers’ satisfaction with MCS use, which in turn impact on cost containment and quality of care. Finally, COVID-19 uncertainty moderated the relationship between MCS use and operational performance.

The three dimensions of broad scope, timeliness and aggregation are critical for PHIs when it comes to crisis management. Moreover, the presence of pandemics strengthens the relationship between top manager use of MCS and performance in health care. More sophisticated MCS information is required when managing pandemic-related crisis by PHIs.

This study presents a theoretical framework that integrates PMS, MCS use and performance of public health care from a contingency perspective. It extends the benefits of contingency theory to include the three dimensions of MCS with respect to crisis management.

This study aims to investigate the impact of organizational external environmental factors on strategic management accounting (SMA) usage in an emerging economy.

The study collected data from 79 public limited companies listed with the Dhaka Stock Exchange (Bangladesh) through a questionnaire survey. Multiple regression analysis is employed to test the impact of external environmental variables such as perceived environmental uncertainty and intensity of competition on SMA usage.

The study finds a significant positive impact of environmental uncertainty (fluctuation in the external environmental factors) and intensity of competition (domination by few companies) on SMA usage. However, the direction and magnitude of this impact vary considerably for specific groups of SMA practices such as costing, competitor accounting, customer accounting and planning and performance measurement techniques.

This study shows the impact of several facets of environmental uncertainty (i.e. unpredictability, fluctuation, ambiguity, lack of information and uncertainty of the outcome of decision) and intensity of competition (i.e. stressfulness and domination) in the empirical-based SMA research.