Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of customer-focus on small medium enterprise (SME) performance from the perspective of a resource-based view (RBV).

This research study implemented a survey strategy to gather data from 255 respondents on the registered list of Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA) in the eastern region of Ghana. Scales used to gather data were operationalized from previous research studies. A structural equation modeling (SEM) path analysis was used to estimate the impact of customer-focus on the performance of SMEs.

The outcomes of this study indicate that customer-focus has a significant positive impact on SME performance, hence backing the current demand for investigating the distinct influence of customer-focus on SME performance. The results show that customer-focus has a positive and significant relationship with financial performance, customer performance, internal business process performance and learning and growth performance, thus supporting the literature on the positive impact of customer-focus on SME performance. Therefore, customer-focus determinants used in this study, including co-creation, networking ties, customer insight and artificial intelligence marketing (AIM), are critical to the optimization of SME performance.

Notwithstanding the importance of this research study mentioned earlier, the study has limitations. Notably, the sample size of this study can be increased to capture SME respondents in other geographical zones that were not included in this study. Future research studies may address how business environment conditions moderate the relationship between customer focus and performance, and also the cause-effect of the relationship between customer focus and business environment conditions on SME performance.

The practical implications consist of two main items. First, this study empowers SME owners and managers to develop a customer focus technique as a central strategic goal in their quest for SME performance optimization. Second, SME owners and managers should progressively exploit the four determinants of customer focus which include co-creation, networking ties, customer insight and (AIM in order to accrue important resources for effective utilization of their customer focus competences as a way to enhance their performance.

This study is targeted at the sound development of SMEs to bring about poverty alleviation and employment. Poverty, unemployment and poor living standards are recognized as vital social challenges in most emerging economies. The establishment of customer focus as an important strategic capability provides opportunities for SME survival, profitability and growth.

Generally, the findings of this research study provide a strong backing to RBV perspective and the proposition that customer-focus and its determinants (i.e. co-creation, networking ties, customer insight and AIM) should be acknowledged as a vital strategic resource for optimizing the performance of SMEs. This research study also provides new knowledge contribution to the present body of knowledge on customer-focus orientation and management literature, particularly in the context of an emerging economy.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the effect of marketing modification on business performance from the perspective of marketing capabilities theory.

This study employed a survey method to collect data from 225 food processing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA) registered list in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The effect of marketing modification on the performance of SMEs in the food processing industry was evaluated using a structural equation modeling (SEM) – path analysis.

According to the study’s findings, marketing modification has a positive and significant impact on the financial performance (FP), customer performance (CP), internal business process performance (IBPP) and learning and growth performance (LGP) of Ghanaian SMEs engaged in food processing. The results of this study also demonstrated the importance of marketing modification determinants, such as marketing resources (MR), cross-functional and interenterprise collaboration (CFIEC), architectural marketing capability (AMC) and marketing strategy decision implementation (MSDI), in achieving food processing SME performance in Ghana.

This current research has its limitation, even though its importance has been mentioned earlier. First, the study can be improved by expanding the sample size through the inclusion of other SMEs from other industries since it is industry specific (i.e. food processing SME). Second, this current study was conducted in Ghana. To compare results, the current study may be replicated in other emerging countries. Third, future research studies may consider how business environmental factors such as technological change (e.g. use of artificial intelligence and machine learning) moderate the relationship between marketing modification and SME performance.

The outcomes of this research study are anticipated to give profitable implications to both academicians and practitioners. For the academic aspect, this study provides an important contribution to marketing modification and performance literature by examining the impact of innovative marketing on the performance of food processing SMEs in Ghana. For practitioners, this study indicates that food processing SME owners/managers must focus on marketing modification to develop their performance. The increase in marketing modification application through marketing capabilities such as MR and CFIEC will enable owners/managers to achieve performance targets.

The application of marketing modification among food processing SMEs in Ghana will contribute greatly to their profitability, survival and growth. The growth and survival of food processing SMEs (not limited to food processing SMEs) in Ghana will help in the control of unemployment, which is a major social issue in Ghana.

The study’s findings provide solid support for the marketing capabilities theory. This study also supports the notion that food processing SMEs should perceive marketing modification and its determinants (i.e. MR, CFIEC, AMC and MSDI) as a critical strategic capacity to enhance their performance (i.e. FP, CF, IBPP and LGP). In terms of contribution, this study adds to the body of knowledge already available on marketing modification and business performance, particularly in the setting of an emerging economy.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the causal relationship between Lean practices and team performance. Specifically, the authors tried to demonstrate which practices act as enablers of continuous improvement and waste elimination and what is their impact on team performance.

A survey was carried out in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Southern Brazil. The authors obtained a sample of 785 respondents. The data analysis procedures involved confirmatory factor analysis and structural equations modeling.

The results of the research provided support for the positive influence of continuous improvement on waste elimination and of these two practices on team performance. In addition, empirical support was obtained for the effect of leadership support, employee involvement and internal process customers on continuous improvement.

Data collection was carried out online, so we were not able to maintain full control of the research respondents. This research generates relevant insights for decision-makers in the HEI environment, especially concerning Lean practices and team performance. The effects analyzed are even more relevant given the pandemic context.

This study shows how some higher education Lean practices can positively affect continuous improvement and better team performance. The results raise important insights for decision-makers to offer better higher education public services, especially given the context and changes imposed by the pandemic situation.

This paper initiates the discussion about enablers of continuous improvement and waste elimination in HEI and demonstrates their impact on team performance.

This study aims to address the current gap in knowledge of indirect procurement performance management. It attempts to argue the need for a specific and tailored performance management approach for the indirect procurement function that incorporates a balanced approach, beyond financial measures.

The case study approach evaluated key performance indicators from a balanced scorecard (BSC) perspective in the development of a performance measurement system (PMS) for a Middle Eastern university’s indirect procurement division. It initially reviewed the literature to assess potential indicators for this context. It used vision and mission statement analysis alongside expert interviews to augment the literature. The candidate indicators were then evaluated and ranked by an expert panel through applying a four-round Delphi technique.

Twenty-nine procurement-specific indicators are suggested in a BSC framework. The five highest-ranked indicators were not in the financial perspective unlike other BSC studies in the broader field of supply chain management (SCM).

The study suggests a framework and indicators for a procurement PMS for practitioners to consider. It also highlights there is no one-size-fits-all and that organisations need to tailor PM to the organisation and divisional strategy and operational needs. This study aids the development of guidelines for executives and procurement management that wish to develop indicators and a PMS.

This study contributes to knowledge by partly addressing the under-researched field of indirect procurement PM. The literature suggested that various roles in SCM require specific PM indicators. This study puts forward a BSC framework with 29 indicators specifically for indirect procurement. Fourteen of these indicators were derived from non-literature sources. This study enhances knowledge and contributes to the limited debate and evidence on indirect procurement PM and the broader PM literature.

This study aims to determine the factors and dynamic systems behaviour of essential medicine stockout in public health-care supply chains. The authors examine the constraints and effects of mental models on medicine stockout to develop a dynamic theory of medicine availability towards saving patients’ lives.

This study uses a mixed-method approach. Starting with a survey method, followed by in-depth interviews with stakeholders within five health-care supply chains to determine the dynamic feedback leading to stockout and conclude by developing a network mental model for medicines availability.

The authors identified five constraints and developed five case mental models. The authors develop a dynamic theory of medicine availability across cases and identify feedback loops and variables leading to medicine availability.

The need to include mental models of stakeholders like manufacturers and distributors of medicines to understand the system completely. Group surveys are prone to power dynamics and bias from group thinking. This survey’s quantitative output could minimize the bias.

This study uniquely uses a mixed-method of survey method and in-depth interviews of experts to assess the essential medicine stockout in Nigeria. To improve medicine availability, the authors develop a dynamic network mental model to understand the system structure, feedback and behaviour driving stockouts. This research will benefit public policymakers and hospital managers in designing policies that reduce medicine stockout.

The paper tries to investigate the impact of applications of the resource-based view (RBV) theory in the management field to improve the firm’s profitability. Global firms are innovating and adopting new technology, paving the way to improve their performance.

We have adopted RBV in management practices such as marketing, strategy, finance, and human resources.

RBV has gained researchers' attention with the growing competitive world and new challenges to retaining customers and achieving their pre-defined targets. We attempt to identify the issues related to the usage of RBV in management.

Using RBV in management may help researchers create a competitive mindset and be prepared for uncertain challenges in the business world.

Based on the intellectual capital (IC) theory and the resource-based view (RBV), the paper seeks to elucidate the direct and indirect relationships between IC and competitive advantage in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Therewithal, besides examining the mediating role of innovation capabilities in the IC-competitiveness link, it scrutinizes the moderating effect of entrepreneurial orientation in causing IC to boost competitiveness in SMEs through flourishing innovation capabilities.

Data were collected from 206 participants working in SMEs operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the help of a structured questionnaire distributed through LinkedIn. Partial least square (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM) using SmartPLS 4.0 has been performed to calibrate the auxiliary and structural models.

Based on the empirical analysis, IC significantly and directly enhances the competitive advantages of SMEs. Additionally, innovative capability has been found to be a complementary partial mediating condition in enabling IC to foster competitiveness in SMEs. Furthermore, the moderated mediation analysis reveals that innovation capabilities strongly mediate the association between IC and competitiveness in SMEs, characterizing higher entrepreneurial orientation.

The study provides significant insights to academicians and practitioners seeking to comprehend or configure interactions among IC, innovation capabilities, and entrepreneurial orientation in maturing competitiveness among SMEs, especially in emerging economies. Furthermore, the study provides a valuable integrative perspective on SMEs’ competitiveness by involving three voguish constituents of contemporary scholarly discourse grounded into the leading underpinning theoretical perspectives, such as IC theory, RBV, and entrepreneurship theory.

The uniqueness of this model lies in its rich theory-laden conceptualization and explanation that could extend theoretical debate and managerial action to the next levels.

This paper proposes the “fields and weapons of the competition model applied to business networks” – CAC-Redes (in Portuguese, Campos e Armas da Competição – Redes de negócio), an extension of the fields and weapons of the competition model (CAC) – to study the competition and competitiveness of companies operating in business networks in a competitive environment while integrating organizational competencies, interorganizational ties and company positioning to provide competitive advantage.

CAC-Redes is born from the cross-fertilization process of various theoretical perspectives, namely, industrial organization, traditional view of operational activities and resources, relational view, strategic alignment, transaction cost theory and social perspectives in networks, structured according to systems theory and under the mantle of competitive advantage theory. To discover the structure of existing models of competitiveness in networks, a bibliographic search was conducted in the Scopus database. Quali-quantitative empirical research was undertaken in companies from six different economic sectors through structured questionnaires and personal interviews to understand how companies competed and discover the determining factors of their competitive advantage.

Only seven models of competitiveness in network were found, and their structures and characteristics are quite different from those of CAC-Redes. Empirical research confirms all the hypotheses that support CAC-Redes, which, combined with those of CAC, indicate the CAC-Redes corroboration.

CAC-Redes does not apply to networks without intercompany competition, studies on network governance and corporate strategy formulation.

CAC-Redes is effective in studying complex competitiveness phenomena because it considers multiple influences; provides a process based on qualitative and quantitative variables that increase the probability of formulating successful competitive strategies; simplifies the differentiation of skills from core competencies and determines them; proposes a competitive advantage criterion to select suppliers; creates a unifying language to represent the different strategic specificities of companies, competitors, suppliers, customers and the company environment and provides a library containing 181 weapons (resources) and dozens of interorganizational ties that can be used in empirical studies with other methodologies.

CAC-Redes, due to its originality and peculiarities, theoretically contributes to theory of resources because it dispenses with the assumption, “unique resource, source of competitive advantage”; to relational view because it considers interorganizational relationships as a competence and treats it quali-quantitatively and to core competencies because if the strategy changes, different core competencies will be needed. Furthermore, it is an alternative to the dynamic capabilities perspective, and it transforms the five manufacturing performance objectives into nine for the entire company.

CAC-Redes is an original model because its structure and characteristics comparatively differ from those of existing models, and 14 singularities are detected.

Employee training and learning have transformed over the years. The movement from classroom training to the blended format represents the magnitude of this evolution. This has placed much attention on self-regulated learning. This study aimed to understand the individual and organizational mechanisms that sustain the formal learning process in organizations. It explored the goals the organizations and employees strive to achieve by investing in learning. Through this, the authors investigated how technology assistance makes learning more goal-oriented, despite the possibility of different goals for different stakeholders. They also examined how person-job fit can be achieved in employee training.

The study adopted a grounded theory-based inductive approach using a qualitative inquiry that used in-depth interviews of employees working in the Indian IT/ITES sector. This sector is knowledge-intensive and engages in constant skill development. A content analysis of the interview transcripts unraveled the most relevant themes from the participants' discussion.

Individual learners use dimensions of self-regulated learning to set and achieve goals such as better performance and career development. On the other hand, organizations use learning support mechanisms such as better access and flexibility to direct employee learning behavior to achieve organizational goals. Focusing on goal congruence leads to better achievement of results. Goal congruence also implies good person-organization fit.

This research established how aligning individual and organizational mechanisms can help achieve training goals that ultimately contribute to organizational performance. The study differentiated itself by investigating training goal setting and goal achievement at two levels – organizational and individual – using a qualitative approach. It also showed how goal congruence is vital in improving organizational performance and how technology-enabled training practices rely on self-regulated learning and help achieve goal congruence.

Over the past decade, researchers have witnessed an exponential growth in the number of publications on IR. This paper aims to understand the state of the art of the research field and to highlight the areas where further academic research is needed, guiding developments in theory, research, policy and practices.

The authors apply the dynamic literature review method called “Systematic Literature Network Analysis”, which combines systematic literature review and bibliographic network analysis. Furthermore, to overcome some of the limitations connected to the methodology, the authors integrate the literature with a manual content analysis of papers.

IR adoption and practices and their determinants represent the most analyzed aspects of literature. Over time, attention has been paid to more specific issues, such as the relationship between IR and other disclosure mechanisms, IR quality and its assurance, the critical analysis of the IR framework and principles and difficulties in IR adoption. Although the literature on IR can be considered to be in its mature stage, many aspects are still under-researched, so there is plenty of space for future research.

The authors propose the following main issues as subjects to be investigated in future studies: IR is not simply an evolution of sustainability reporting, but an innovative communication tool; the debate on who the recipients of value are (shareholders or stakeholders) and on what the definition of value adopted by IR is still remains an open issue; more attention should be given to the role of IR as a managerial tool, which could support strategy formation and communication, and influence internal processes of performance measurement and evaluation; what the future of IR will be in light of recent EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and new ISSB's standards is still an open question. From a methodological perspective, little is known about structured approaches in accounting studies. The authors confirm how methodologies, such as that of this paper, may be exploited as a tool to support dynamic analysis for setting the agendas for future studies in the accounting field.