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Profit margins are easily destroyed when companies focus on internal issues versus the external conditions that affect customers. Revenue comes from the outside, from customers buying products or services, not from implementing new technology, re‐engineering business processes or building great teams. Focusing on external forces increases the bottom line. In fact, by shifting to an external focus, companies can often increase profits from 5 to 10 percent.

This paper aims to explore the social entrepreneurs’ attention allocation and their resource action that lead to hybrid organization using the paradox theory. Paradox theory deepens understandings of the varied nature, dynamics and outcomes of entrepreneurial tensions. This study explores the systematic effects of internal and external attention on both economic and social performance.

First, theoretically, hypotheses linking different attention allocations to ambidextrous behavior and entrepreneurial performance were formulated. Subsequently, the empirical studies based on Chinese social entrepreneurship were conducted to test the hypotheses.

The study provides support to the hypotheses showing that external attention is linked to resource acquisition and social performance, while internal attention is linked to resource acquisition and strategic human resource management and thus these ambidextrous behaviors promote both social and economic performance. Furthermore, normal pressure moderates the relations between internal attention and strategic human resource management only.

The research measures entrepreneurs’ attention with questionnaire rather than psych test. Also, static data rather than longitudinal research is designed to test the hypotheses.

Deeper understanding of the attention of social entrepreneurs and resource action can help entrepreneurial outcomes and can potentially contribute to paradox and tension management by entrepreneurial practitioners in China.

Social entrepreneurs’ different attention allocation and related entrepreneurial ambidextrous behavior processes are linked to paradoxical thinking for the first time. The findings of this research can potentially enhance social entrepreneurship paradoxical thinking aimed at preventing mission drift.

Recent research illuminates the important contribution of organizational culture and market orientation to organizational effectiveness. In an attempt to increase the conceptual and empirical body of knowledge, explores the links between organizational culture, market orientation, and marketing effectiveness in the context of strategic marketing alliances. Analyzes responses to self‐administered questionnaires returned by 128 such organizations. The findings suggest that organizational culture significantly affects marketing effectiveness, although the individual dimensions of organizational culture have varying degrees of influence upon the dimensions of marketing effectiveness. Among mechanistic or non‐adaptive cultural dimensions, increased internal culture enhances an internal market effectiveness dimension, whereas increased external culture enhances an external market effectiveness dimension. This internal/external alignment is not found for the organic or adaptive cultural dimensions. This same internal/external alignment is found, however, when examining the relationship between market orientation and market effectiveness. Internal aspects of market orientation enhance an internal market effectiveness dimension, whereas increased external orientation enhances an external market effectiveness dimension. Discusses managerial implications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of accounting information in new product development (NPD) using Strong Structuration Theory. NPD is a complex social action involving a wide range of different actors and clusters of actors. Strong Structuration Theory allows the authors to take a broad view of this social system in order to develop a complete picture of the clusters of actors involved, to comprehensively examine the relevant structures, both internal and external, and to understand how these are formed, reformed or modified through the actions of agents.

A field study of the manufacturing division of a large group was conducted which explored how managers use accounting information during NPD. Examining how these managers draw upon their conjuncturally specific structures of signification, legitimation and domination, and how these are affected by their external structural conditions and their general dispositional frames of meaning, allowed the authors to develop an in-depth understanding of the managers’ behaviour during NPD.

These findings suggest that the managers’ use of accounting information is determined as much by the subjective nature of the managers themselves as it is by the objective characteristics of the structures with which they interact. By using Stones’ composite research strategy, which encourages the authors to conceive of internal structures as always looking outwards and external structures as always looking inwards, the findings help the authors to understand the “connecting tissue” between the different elements of the quadripartite of structuration which has been lacking in previous research in the area. This understanding of the connecting tissue between structures was facilitated by the micro-analysis of six managers within a given conjuncture. Using the concept of the agent-in-focus as a tool with which to switch lenses from manager to manager acknowledged the web-like interdependencies between different processes of structuration. This allowed an exploration of the relationships between the various agents and structures.

This study contributes to the understanding of Stones’ Strong Structuration Theory at both an ontological and methodological level by operationalising Stones’ model in a case study setting.

This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

The goal of this study was to empirically determine whether creative capital can be distinguished at the firm level and to determine what role external labour plays in enhancing firm-level creative capital.

This study was conducted using a qualitative design. Interviews were held with eight managers knowledgeable on HR implementation and the use of creativity within their firms.

Creative capital was identified on the organizational level. The use made and roles given to external labour, in the form of contract and project-based employees as well as consultants and specialists for core activities, are important aspects in enhancing firm-level creative capital. We also found support for the claim that the use of labour market intermediaries in involving external labour differs between organizations with low and high levels of creative capital. Further, the findings indicate that more use is made of external labour in highly creative capital organizations when they are operating in dynamic environments.

Given out sample limitations, future research should develop a study design that allows our findings to be generalized to a larger population, including a focus on specific distinguishing departments within organizations.

Organizations can enhance their innovation performance through using firm-level creative capital, using external labour to acquire and retain the KSAOs needed.

The study is highly original and adds value to existing theory as it is the first to explore the relationship between external labour and firm-level creative capital.

This exploratory paper investigates internal service from a service management perspective. The objectives were to identify the main internal barriers that are preventing improvements to external service within business‐to‐business (B2B) organisations, to explore the bi‐directionality of internal services provided between internal functions, to assess the quality of internal services provided between functions and develop a means of testing staff and managers for their level of internal versus external focus.

A qualitative study was conducted involving structured interviews in two European countries with 20 staffs and managers from a large international express package delivery firm.

Five findings emerged. First, six main internal barriers to improving external quality were identified. Second, the study found that the barriers in B2B organisations were the same as those in business‐to‐consumer (B2C) organisations. Third, it suggested that internal service, unlike external B2C service, is bi‐directional. Fourth, it demonstrated a perception gap in internal service provision suggesting some degree of arrogance or delusion. Fifth, it demonstrated that the managers and staff viewed their service from an organisational, inside‐out, perspective, despite articulating a desire to provide excellent service to their business customers.

The key limitations were that only one organisation was studied and 20 interviews conducted. The paper provides support for the total quality management approach and suggests that a dual approach combining a service, customer, perspective with an operations, efficiency, perspective might be useful in generating deeper insights to better understand and bring about improvements to the quality of services delivered.

From a practitioner perspective, the findings suggest that managers and supervisors need to develop a better understanding of the performance of internal services.

The paper contributes to the knowledge of internal service, particularly in B2B services.

In addition to their internal resources, companies in most industries rely upon external strategic resources to maintain and improve their performance. External strategic resources have a similar effect on competitiveness but are located in the company’s networks or even in unrelated industries. Some companies underuse these resources, while other companies focus too strongly on accessing external resources in their own industry, which results in hyper-competition. This paper aims to explain how different industries use external resources and describes the criteria for a balanced approach which leads to knowledge transfer, diversity and supports the development of new business.

Examples and evidence from four different industries are used to identify the different approaches for accessing external strategic resources.

Valuable external strategic resources are non-transferable, located in a complementary product organisation, knowledge-oriented, located in a different country, preferably not part of the organisation’s primary external focus (e.g. supply chain), able to introduce diversity and innovation and are compatible with network behaviours.

External strategic resources are frequently found within the organisation’s supply chain, however, use of these resources should be balanced by external resources from non-related industries to increase diversity and reduce the likelihood of hyper-competition.

This paper explains why external strategic resources are valuable, identifies the different approaches to accessing them, describes the benefits and drawbacks associated with each approach and provides the key criteria for identifying a valuable external strategic resource.

This paper aims to investigate German bank-affiliated venture capitalists’ investment practices and the emergence of their investment logics. Most studies focus on the investment behaviour of independent venture capitalists and little is known about dependent venture capitalists’ investment behaviour. The present study contributes to filling this gap in entrepreneurial finance literature.

The paper uses an exploratory qualitative research approach based on 27 semi-structured interviews with the top management of German bank-affiliated venture capitalists and industry experts to develop a conceptual model that explains the investment logics of bank-affiliated venture capitalists. A large amount of archival data has also been collected and used for the analysis.

The results indicate that bank-affiliated venture capitalists either follow an autonomous, contingent or hybrid investment logic. A bank-affiliated venture capitalist’s isomorphic focus – whether they feel isomorphic to the external venture capital environment or the internal parent bank’s environment – explains the emergence of multiple investment logics.

The paper encourages banks to get a better understanding of how the venture capital industry works and what they need to do to compete again independent venture capitalists. Banks and their affiliated venture capital units can improve their deal flows by recognising that they need to get accepted as an on-par investor in the venture capital environment.

The current study is the first of its kind investigating multiple investment logics by focussing on the link between different isomorphic habits and the specific context of bank-affiliated venture capitalists.

This study examines factors that influence organizations’ choices of an internal human capital development strategy and an external human capital acquisition strategy. The human resource architecture indicates that organizations will use different human capital acquisition strategies. Following the resource-based view, human capital theory and the human resource architecture, we examine factors that impact the choices of different human capital acquisition strategies.

We examine these important human capital decisions in the context of Major League Soccer. Data to test the hypotheses were collected from a variety of publicly available sources. We tested the hypotheses with regression analyses.

We find that while organizations employ both internal and external human capital strategies, organizations may have one dominant human capital strategy and the other strategy may be used to supplement the human capital needs of organizations. Additionally, our results indicate that organizations with an older workforce tend to use an internal human capital development strategy, while higher performing organizations are less likely to use an internal human capital development strategy.

This study makes contributions by examining the choices between internal and external human capital strategies and factors that influence the choice of an internal or external human capital strategy.