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Strategic literature has focused on how economies of scale in a firm offering outsourcing may generate incentives for clients to increase the outsourced services, but there has been limited research on how the clients’ features may influence the scope of services that they hire with an outsourcing provider. This study analyzes whether a client’s efficiency motivates it to increase ties with a specific provider of knowledge-intensive services in the context of business process outsourcing (BPO). We further explore whether industry conditions moderate the relationship.

A research framework is developed consisting of three main hypotheses. We combine industry data and proprietary and financial data from a longitudinal sample of 107 client firms of a multinational outsourcing service provider to test our hypotheses.

We find that more efficient firms hire more services from an outsourcing provider and that the munificence of the client firm’s industry positively moderates this relationship. Our results suggest that efficient clients can better keep transaction costs under control when accessing, assimilating, and exploiting the knowledge embedded in an expanded set of services provided by an outsourcing supplier.

This study extends the absorptive capacity perspective by showing that a client’s efficiency reinforces its opportunities to absorb knowledge-intensive services from a supplier when expanding the range of operations in the context of BPO.

This paper aims to review the main literature on the relationship between the natural environment and management in hospitality and tourism firms and uses strategic lenses to propose a general framework of previous works and a map for future research.

A detailed collection of the most relevant literature on organizations and the natural environment in general is used, along with a specific compilation of the analysis in hospitality and tourism firms. The analytical comparison between the general studies and tourism literature provides opportunities for the discussion of research gaps.

The growing volume of research on environmental management in the hospitality and tourism firms suggests increasing interest in the topic in the past decade. However, our analysis uses a strategic framework to identify multiple relevant topics that are due for exploration. The generation of more robust theoretical and empirical contributions should also be prioritized in the future.

The findings provide insight into the growing importance of environmental issues in multiple areas of hospitality and tourism firms, including corporate strategy (new green business and implications of the environmental issues on the attractiveness of traditional tourism activities), competitive business strategy (differentiation and reduction of costs through environmental management), functional strategy (eco-labels, certifications and environmental management systems), green marketing, responsible supply chain and training.

While previous literature has emphasized the macro analysis of environmental challenges in the industry, this paper is one of the first to provide an analytical review of the literature on the natural environment and management of hospitality and tourism firms and will be particularly useful to better understand the organizational challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how, within a team, the value of their best member depends critically on the performance of the rest. Analysis of the interdependent team members complements the traditional focus of resource‐based‐view analyses of isolated resources.

The authors used data from 584 National Basketball Association teams (30 teams collected over 21 seasons).

The authors find a positive relationship between best member performance and team performance that increases as the rest of the team members’ performance improves.

Having team members with a high individual performance does not imply that the team will have a competitive advantage over the rest. To gain this advantage, it is also necessary that the rest of the team members also show a high individual performance.

These results contribute to the team literature increasing our knowledge about the effect of complementary resources on gaining competitive advantage. Additionally, sports teams offer the possibility of using objective data to assess team members’ individual value within a team.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on job‐related skill heterogeneity and action team performance by considering that team members may differ in the levels of their job‐related skill, as well as in the way their job‐related skill is spread over the different dimensions of the task.

Data were used from 30 National Basketball Association (NBA) teams collected over 21 seasons (1986/1987 through 2006/2007). The total number of team‐seasons analyzed was 584.

A positive relationship was found between job‐skill level heterogeneity and action team performance that declines as average job‐skill level in the team grows. Furthermore, action teams showed poorer performance when their members with a low job‐related skill level have a high specialization.

From the practical perspective, it is of special interest to an action team manager to know that job‐related skill heterogeneity has a positive influence on team performance – mainly when the average job‐related skill level in the team is low – and that highly specialized members may have a negative influence on action team performance.

The results contribute to the team literature by focusing on action teams. This kind of team has not received attention despite their increasing importance within organizations. Additionally, using sports teams as a sample offers the possibility of gathering a large amount of objective job‐related skill data as well as the possibility of testing hypotheses in a relatively controlled environment, but with real actions instead of experimental actions.

Purpose – We analyze the influence of the internationalization process of small and medium-sized enterprises on the adoption of a proactive environmental strategy.

Design/methodology – Using direct interviews with the CEOs of 106 Spanish export firms from the food industry, we tested our research question through ordinary least squares regression analysis.

Findings – We find that a high degree of environmental international diversification leads these firms to take advantage of different environmental competitive advantages from the different locations where they operate, and consequently integrate environmental proactive practices and programs within their organizational strategy.

Research implications/limitations – The result obtained in this work contributes to better understanding of the importance of firms’ internationalization process in the generation of valuable environmental knowledge abroad. The chapter also discusses implications for managers, scholars, and policy makers. Future analysis should include longitudinal data of export firms based in other countries.

Originality/value of chapter – We pay special attention to the environmental management undertaken by small- and medium-sized export enterprises. Specifically, we study the environmental institutional profile of the different regions where these firms operate.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the different international environmental strategies that multinational enterprises (MNEs) can adopt.

This study updates the traditional country‐specific advantages/firm‐specific advantages (FSA/CSA) framework. In order to do so, the concepts of environmental institutional distance between countries and MNEs' availability of slack resources are used.

First, a low environmental institutional distance between headquarters' and subsidiaries' countries contributes to creating environmental standards within the company. Second, MNEs with high availability of slack resources are willing to standardize their environmental practices. However, those MNEs that have a high availability of slack resources but have units based in high‐distance countries prefer to generate valuable and advanced environmental management practices only in specific countries. Finally, those MNEs with a low level of slack resources and with units based in low‐distance countries only comply with national environmental institutional requirements, becoming isomorphic with other local firms.

Although previous findings suggest that MNEs are increasingly standardizing their environmental practices, this generalization can be applied to those MNEs with units based in low‐distance countries that have a high availability of slack resources, which lead them to create valuable non‐location‐bound, green, firm‐specific advantages (FSAs).

This paper sheds light on the way in which MNEs' activities affect the natural environment. Since MNEs are key actors in terms of economic and environmental development, they can promote social and environmental values in society, and at the same time encourage other organizations and institutions to adopt a socially responsible attitude.

The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how different dimensions of the institutional environment of a region may influence the level of corporate entrepreneurship of firms.

The paper develops the relationship between the institutional environment, differentiated in regulatory, cognitive and normative dimensions, and entrepreneurship in existing firms, corporate entrepreneurship, via a questionnaire study covering 150 firms in Spain.

The relation between institutional environment and corporate entrepreneurship can be distinct. The results show that both the normative and cognitive dimension of the institutional environment influence an organisation's entrepreneurial orientation. They also show that regulatory dimension influences what type of corporate entrepreneurial activity is carried out.

Literature about institutional theory and entrepreneurship has been both descriptive and fragmented. This paper complements the increasing interest in the analysis of the influence of institutional frameworks on corporate entrepreneurship and answers recent calls in the literature to complete previous analyses in an empirical way that supports previous works.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether and how financial performance feedback influences green innovation performance by drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF) and relying on motivation-based logic.

A total of 17,558 firm-year observations from 3,062 publicly traded firms in China are used as the research sample.

The results reveal that low-performing firms are less likely to conduct green innovation activities because managers burden pressure to meet short-term targets. This study further finds that these relations are moderated by institutional ownership.

This study contributes to the BTOF literature by linking performance feedback to green innovation activities. This study applies a motivation-based logic to relate performance below and above aspirations to green innovation activities. This study introduces institutional ownership as a boundary condition.

The creation of sustainable value has become a key driver of competitive advantage for many companies. The field of organization development and change can assist these companies because it provides the theories, research, models, and tools they need to embed sustainability into their core business practices. In this chapter, we provide a brief history of sustainable value, demonstrate how and why it is an important source of competitive advantage, and describe five core capabilities companies need to embed sustainability throughout their organizations. We use case examples to illustrate these ideas and conclude with implications for research and practice.