Search results

This study aims to present two new contingent frameworks that hypothesize the moderation role of managerial ties (MTs) in the international competitive strategy-export financial and strategic performance framework. The purposes of this study are to explore whether a common standardized or individual customized conceptualization consisting of MTs, international competitive strategy and performance can be used to achieve export financial and strategic performance; to offer contingent factors for the current international competitive strategy-export performance framework; and to generalize the roles of MTs in the developed vis-à-vis developing region.

This study uses the experience of 114 exporting firms operating in the European Union region to test its theoretical frameworks. MTs include both business and political ties.

Business and political ties have completely different moderation effects on the relation between international differentiation/low-cost strategy and export financial/strategic performance. Business ties have a positive influence on the international differentiation strategy-export strategic performance and international low-cost strategy-export financial performance dyads, but a negative effect in the international low-cost strategy-export strategic performance framework. In contrast, political ties are revealed to have a negative effect on the international differentiation/low-cost strategy-export financial performance framework.

This research advances extant international competitive strategy-export performance literature by revealing the bright and dark sides of business ties and the down side of political ties in the framework. Performance should be investigated in terms of financial and strategic performance. The moderation effect of business ties is more complex than that reported in the developing region; thus, a cross-regional generalization on these ties’ effects is more difficult to establish. In contrast, the dark side effect of political ties is consistent across developed and developing regions; a cross-regional generalization on these ties is more viable. Collectively, the results show that a standardized process for achieving both export financial and export strategic performances is not feasible, while a customized process for each export performance is needed.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Organizations coming from developing nations to developed markets need to consider managerial ties in order to gain advantage from contingency performance strategies.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This paper aims to reconsider “the crisis” in terms of a failure in dominant economic thinking and to discuss the repercussions for corporate governance.

The paper provides a rational narrative deconstruction of the crisis.

The paper suggests a new agenda for collaborative research and activism in the direction of more effective governance.

The paper concludes with a radical agenda for a new way of thinking.

The study this chapter reports focuses on how network theory contributes to the understanding of the internationalization process of SMEs and measures the effect of network capability on performance in international trade and has three research objectives.

The first objective of the study relates to providing new insights into the international market development activities through the application of a network perspective. The chapter reviews the international business literature to ascertain the development of thought, the research gaps, and the shortcomings. This review shows that the network perspective is a useful and popular theoretical domain that researchers can use to understand international activities, particularly of small, high technology, resource-constrained firms.

The second research objective is to gain a deeper understanding of network capability. This chapter presents a model for the impact of network capability on international performance by building on the emerging literature on the dynamic capabilities view of the firm. The model conceptualizes network capability in terms of network characteristics, network operation, and network resources. Network characteristics comprise strong and weak ties (operationalized as foreign-market entry modes), relational capability, and the level of trust between partners. Network operation focuses on network initiation, network coordination, and network learning capabilities. Network resources comprise network human-capital resources, synergy-sensitive resources (resource combinations within the network), and information sharing within the network.

The third research objective is to determine the impact of networking capability on the international performance of SMEs. The study analyzes 11 hypotheses through structural equations modeling using LISREL. The hypotheses relate to strong and weak ties, the relative strength of strong ties over weak ties, and each of the eight remaining constructs of networking capability in the study. The research conducts a cross-sectional study by using a sample of SMEs drawn from the telecommunications industry in Ireland.

The study supports the hypothesis that strong ties are more influential on international performance than weak ties. Similarly, network coordination and human-capital resources have a positive and significant association with international performance. Strong ties, weak ties, trust, network initiation, synergy-sensitive resources, relational capability, network learning, and information sharing do not have a significant association with international performance. The results of this study are strong (R2=0.63 for performance as the outcome) and provide a number of interesting insights into the relations between collaboration or networking capability and performance.

This study provides managers and policy makers with an improved understanding of the contingent effects of networks to highlight situations where networks might have limited, zero, or even negative effects on business outcomes. The study cautions against the tendency to interpret networks as universally beneficial to business development and performance outcomes.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Transnational entrepreneurship can be considered a new stream of research where migrant entrepreneurship and international business research fields intersect. The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical framework to address the following research question: How do transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) develop their competitive advantage to succeed in a global market?

Based on the strategic entrepreneurship approach and dynamic capability perspective, this paper suggests a theoretical framework to extend the understanding on how TEs may develop their competitive advantage to succeed in a global market.

The suggested theoretical framework exhibits how the social ties of TEs affects their firm performance through the mediating effect of a bundle of two organizational processes (opportunity sensing and opportunity seizing) and the moderating effect of institutional distance between countries of origin and residence.

TEs should not solely focus on their ethnic social ties. That is why this paper suggests that ethnic ties in the country of origin and the country of residence (COR) may lead to higher firm performance only if systematically used alongside nonethnic ties in the COR. Furthermore, it is crucial for TEs to understand the importance of dynamic capabilities in developing and sustaining their competitive advantage.

Based on the strategic entrepreneurship approach, this paper suggests a social tie-based model of the dynamic capability to address the theoretical void in the transnational entrepreneurship literature. The linkage between social tie and performance which has been in a black box is examined in terms of how strong and weak social ties may affect different underlying processes of TEs’ dynamic capabilities differently. In contrast to the common conceptualization of institutional distance as a negative moderator in international business literature, institutional distance is theorized as a positive moderator in the suggested theoretical model of transnational entrepreneurship.

This study attempts to explore how a cultural and creative firm's competitive advantages can be maintained through the accumulation of intellectual capital and entrepreneurial orientation. Another goal of this study is to identify the different mechanisms of network ties to explore the interrelationships between organizational capital and competitive advantage in the context of Taiwan and China.

Study 1 and study 2 settings are applied, and 786 samples (i.e., 418 samples from Taiwan and 368 samples from China) are used to examine the proposed model.

Study 1 reveals that entrepreneurial orientation may influence the organization capital through human capital and social capital, which discloses the mutual relationships of intellectual capital. Further, the results of study 2 confirm the mediating role of intellectual capital that links the relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and competitive advantage. Specifically, this study also discovered that firms with more network or political ties (e.g. the Chinese samples) and business ties (e.g. the Taiwanese samples) tend to amplify the effects of organizational capital on competitive advantage.

According to our empirical results, cultural and creative managers should build a learning mechanism to encourage and develop entrepreneurial orientation and intellectual capital capacities and to provide means of understanding of customers' changing expectations. Hence, in enhancing entrepreneurial orientation and intellectual capital cultural and creative firms can develop a competitive advantage over competitors. Our findings also offer new insight to support further studies of the benefits of managerial ties for firms operating in Guanxi cultural settings in Chinese contexts.

Most previous studies on tourism strategies have disregarded the impacts and different roles of government (e.g. political ties) and business (e.g. business ties) forces on cultural and creative firms' competitive advantages, suggesting a need to address social network issues in response to dynamic tourism environments. Therefore, this study examines differences in network ties and the differences observed between China and Taiwan in the context of Chinese cultural and creative firms.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new integrated model that combines the concepts of network ties (e.g. political ties and business ties), the organization of internal critical attributes (such as social capital, human capital and innovation capability) and analyses of how those critical attributes influence organization performance and competitive advantage.

A structural equation model and three-way interactions in moderated multiple regressions was used to test the hypotheses on a sample of 621 cultural and creative industry (CCI) managers in Taiwan.

The results indicate that human capital mediates the relationship between social capital and innovation capability. Furthermore, innovation capability also plays a mediating role in connecting the relationships between human capital, competitive advantage and organizational performance. The findings indicate that business ties strengthen the relationship between social and human capital. The level of human capital is at its peak when social capital, business ties, and political ties considerably interact with one another.

The present study conceptualized the topic and systematized the questionnaire design and data collection, statistical analysis, and report writing. This study performs a systematic analysis to present the research but does not employ in-depth qualitative interviews to analyse the essential attributes of the different entrepreneurial styles. In-depth interviews enable the interviewees to completely depict their feelings, experiences, motivations, emotions and attitudes. Thus, this method can provide an in-depth analysis. Studies can be conducted to analyse the complexity of the processes involved.

This study determines and emphasizes that networking with various factors to create innovation is the key to enhancing competitive advantage and organizational performance. Innovation is a unique characteristic and a basic kinetic energy that affects various strategic organizational behaviours that positively influence competitive advantage and facilitate organizational performance. Hence, CCI firms need to consider market orientation and innovation in this highly competitive environment.

To the best of the knowledge, how CCI firms use networking sources to create competitive advantage and organizational performance, thereby promoting the development of the CCIs of Taiwan, has not been analysed in the tourism-related literature. Thus, the present study provides a significant contribution to the human capital literature, in which empirical research analyses the three-way interaction and demonstrates the empirical insights that may be used to study human capital. The findings reported in this study will encourage future researchers to employ multilevel human capital perspectives.

Drawing upon the resource-based view this study aims to examine the connections between formal and informal business relationships and resource-bridging and adaptive capabilities within the context of foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in Thailand. Based on prior literature emphasizing business network ties as sources of competitive advantage in emerging markets, this study extends the discourse by investigating the moderating effects of technological turbulence, power distance and assertiveness.

This study uses a quantitative research approach, using data obtained from a self-administered survey conducted among 168 foreign subsidiaries spanning diverse industries in Thailand. The data were analyzed by using multiple-group structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized relationships.

Cultivating different types of business ties enables foreign subsidiaries to improve different types of capabilities. While interpersonal relationships (i.e. informal businessties) enable them to develop their abilities to combine various resources (i.e. resource-bridging capability), rigid contractual-based relationships (i.e. formal businessties) help them to be more adaptive (i.e. adaptive capability). These relationships are also contingent upon the levels of technological turbulence, host-country power distance and host-country assertiveness.

This research builds upon prior research on network ties and capability building by delineating the specific nature of capabilities. Contradicting to the previous findings, demonstrating a negative relationship between formal business ties and capabilities, this study found that each type of business tie enables foreign subsidiaries to enhance different types of capabilities under different circumstances. Moreover, this study adopts a lens of host-country national culture rather than home-country culture in investigating the moderating effects of power distance and assertiveness.