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The purpose of this paper is to integrate the upper echelon theory with signaling theory and examine the impact of top management team (TMT) on the initial public offering (IPO) performance of Chinese firms in the USA.

This study used Security Data Corporation (SDC) that is a central database for foreign IPOs in the USA. The authors identified 142 Chinese firms that issued stocks on the US markets between 2003 and 2014. This study used firm’s final prospectuses to collect data manually.

This study finds that the TMT characteristics such as functional heterogeneity and international exposure convey the positive signal of firm’s legitimacy to the US investors and increase the IPO performance.

This study extends the upper echelon perspective that has previously overlooked the signaling value of TMT characteristics in the foreign IPO studies. The top management plays an important role to the firm’s successful foreign market listing. Since China joined the WTO in 2001, a large number of Chinese firms have started IPOs in the USA, but there is a dearth of research on these firms. This study aims to contribute to the study of international business and management and describes that the TMT functional heterogeneity and international exposure have a significant role in the success of Chinese foreign IPOs.

The traditional cost accounting‐based business performance measures used today fail to provide adequate support to allow the use of modern management techniques and development of optimum business and functional strategies. Although these traditional techniques have a certain value they must be supported by alternative non‐financial performance measures which promote organizational integration by ensuring that all strategic and operational activities are streamlined towards common objectives. Describes, with case studies, a methodology which leads to development of an integrated set of performance measures on which measurable business and functional strategies may be developed. The methodology described has been proven through a number of industrial consultancy assignments and results in considerable benefits.

Identifies the need for a formal mechanism aiming to integrate operational decisions both horizontally, between different functional areas, and vertically, within the manufacturing function. Outlines some of the desired characteristics of a potential method to fulfil the aforementioned need and proposes that the integration should be done under the domain of the production planning process. Partial results of a running field research on the theme among manufacturing companies in Brazil are presented and discussed.

There have been many approaches to answering the question, “What is management?” This article outlines a further, strategic‐operational approach. The discussion is intended to contribute to the development of a theory of management which managers can use to analyse and improve their individual performance and the performance of their organisations.

A Just‐in‐Time system crosses functional lines and therefore requires support throughout the organisation. A survey of one‐hundred firms actively pursuing JIT implementation found relatively high commitment from top and middle level management. Lack of functional support, especially from engineering, finance, and marketing has been reported as barriers in JIT implementation. The non‐commitment of functional groups has been related to their failure to understand JIT. This study found the size of the firm, the type of productive system, and the type of business did not exhibit strong influence over management and functional group commitment levels for JIT implementation.

This paper examines how the management control practices of organization members enable the alignment of product development projects with potentially conflicting corporate strategies during the product development process.

Using an ethnomethodology informed research approach, we carry out a case study of an innovative New Zealand food company. Case study data included an internal company document, interviews with organization members, and an external market analysis document.

Our case study company had both sales growth and profit growth corporate strategies which have been argued to cause tensions. We found that four management control practices enabled the alignment of product development projects to these strategies. The first management control practice was having the NPD and marketing functions responsible for different corporate strategies. Other management control practices included the involvement of organization members from across multiple functions, the activities they carried out, and the measures used to evaluate project performance during the product development process.

These findings add new insights to the management accounting literature by showing how a combination of management control practices can be used by organization members to align projects with potentially conflicting corporate strategies during the product development process.

While the alignment of product development projects to corporate strategy is not easy this study shows how it can be enabled through a number of management control practices.

We contribute to the management accounting research in this area by extending our understanding of the management control practices used during the product development process.

Many factors in today's competitive and global business environment contribute to an organization's financial success. A business enterprise's management must adopt a strategy that fully exploits information technology's power as a key element in order to optimize the organization's competitiveness. Recent spectacular technological advances and breakthroughs have made the effective use of modern information technology a critical, competitive business weapon.

As the number of organizations that have implemented enterprise resourceplanning (ERP) systems unsuccessfully increase, it is necessary to establish the impediments in ERP implementations and the extent to which these impact the success of ERP projects. This study aims to identify the critical impediments that large organizations face in the implementation of ERP systems, and the impact of these impediments on overall success of ERP projects by a survey of Fortune 500 organizations.

A survey was prepared based on 47 impediments identified from previous ERP implementation studies.

This study finds that most of critical impediments are from functional coordination problems related to inadequate support from functional units and coordination among functional units, the project management related to business process change, and change management related to resistance of users. In this study, impediments are categorized based on project phases, and differences in the impediments the organizations faced between less successful and more successful organizations are found.

This research provides significant implications for industry managers engaged in large‐scale enterprise system implementations. Our survey results suggest that understanding new requirements for ERP implementation such as functional coordination is more critical issues than understanding technical features of ERP system.

This paper aims to examine the presence of an executive with customer experience (ECE) in a supplier firm’s top management team (TMT). The role of ECE presence remains understudied in the marketing literature. This study attempts to examine the relationship between ECE presence and firm performance.

This paper draws on the resource-based view of the firm and adopts a panel firm fixed effects estimator to test the proposed hypotheses. The empirical analysis uses a sample of 1,974 firm-year observations with 489 unique supplier firms. Selection-induced endogeneity is mitigated through the Heckman procedure.

ECE presence improves firm performance. Additionally, firms benefit less from ECE presence if a board member with customer experience (BCE) is also present, if a chief executive officer commands a higher pay slice (compared to other executives), and if a TMT is more functionally diversified. However, ECE presence is particularly beneficial if the overall economy is in contraction. Comparing the functional positions held by ECEs reveals that ECE in the marketing function (as a chief marketing officer) offers the largest benefit to an average supplier firm. ECE presence is also associated with other firm outcomes (e.g. bankruptcy odds, innovation and customer orientation).

This study makes four contributions to the literature. First, this research contributes to existing studies that investigate marketing expertise in the upper corporate pyramid. Second, the study contributes to the burgeoning body of work across business disciplines that attempt to understand the impact of CxOs on firm performance. Third, the study contributes to the vast literature on customer orientation indirectly. Finally, this paper contributes to the broader literature studying the influence of board and TMT characteristics.

The findings are of particular importance to business-to-business firms. This paper shows that suppliers can benefit significantly from managers with customer experience. Four contingency factors moderate the relationship between ECE presence and firm performance. Among the various functional positions held by an ECE, the findings suggest that hiring an ECE for the marketing functional area is the most beneficial. ECE stands out as a better option for a company than BCE to improve firm performance. ECE presence is also associated with bankruptcy odds, innovation and customer orientation.

This paper provides the first empirical evidence regarding how ECE affects firm performance and also extends prior research on the value of human capital in TMT.

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.