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The linkage between diversification and performance has puzzled scholars for decades. A vast amount of empirical studies, together with the help of meta-analyses condensing diverse results, established a widely shared understanding that related diversification leads to superior firm performance. The main rationale for this finding is that relatedness within a company’s portfolio of businesses allows the company to achieve synergies by sharing or transferring resources. Although the predominant importance of related diversification seems generally accepted, scholars raise severe concerns about our ability to precisely define and measure relatedness. In most studies, traditional measures of diversification such as the Berry index are used, which assess relatedness from a product/market perspective. However, these measures face strong criticisms for their low degree of content validity. So if we doubt our understanding of relatedness, how can we agree on the performance effect of related diversification? To reassure our understanding of the diversification-performance linkage, this study critically reflects upon the underlying phenomenon of relatedness. By compiling and evaluating the different perspectives of relatedness with their heterogeneous conceptualizations and measures, this study supports the view that the multi-facetted nature of relatedness can only be captured inadequately so far. Moreover, most prior work mainly focuses on synergy potential rather than on the realization of synergies, thereby neglecting a mechanism that may have an important bearing on the performance effects of diversification.

This study aims to address the efficacy debate by exploring the nature of how prior team level performance affects future performance. That is, the purpose of this study is to understand whether or not the boost of efficacy associated with success leads to overconfidence that harms performance or to motivation that enhances performance.

This study used a quantitative approach to test competing hypotheses derived from both social cognitive theory and control theory. Specifically, the study made use of archival National Football League data, containing 5,120 longitudinal team level observations. This paper uses multi-level modeling to analyze how prior team level performance affected future performance episodes.

The findings of this study suggest that prior success leads to overconfidence which ultimately harms future team performance. Therefore, the findings support control theory in favor of the social cognitive theory. However, this study finds that the detrimental effects of overconfidence could be offset by monitoring and work breaks.

Due to the nature of the archival data source, it was not possible to directly measure efficacy. Thus, efficacy is inferred based on past performance outcomes.

This study suggests that it is important for managers and team leaders to pay careful attention to their team after successful performances. Specifically, team leaders may want to monitor their members or give them a break after successful performance episodes to avoid the negative effects of overconfidence.

This paper provides a direct test of the efficacy debate at the team level.

Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical breaches continue to permeate corporate life, suggesting that there is something missing from how we conceptualize and institutionalize organizational ethics. The current effort seeks to fill this void in two ways. First, we introduce an extended ethical framework premised on sensemaking in organizations. Within this framework, we suggest that multiple individual, organizational, and societal factors may differentially influence the ethical sensemaking process. Second, we contend that human resource management plays a central role in sustaining workplace ethics and explore the strategies through which human resource personnel can work to foster an ethical culture and spearhead ethics initiatives. Future research directions applicable to scholars in both the ethics and human resources domains are provided.

Taking an innovative approach, the aim of this paper is to apply the stakeholder view concept to the hotel industry in China, and identify two antecedents of the stakeholder relationship, namely, trust and commitment. The paper then seeks to examine the impacts of these two antecedents on the management practices of the two key stakeholders (the hotel owner and the customer) and to assess the effects of these practices on organizational performance.

An empirical survey using questionnaires was conducted on a sample of 228 three‐ to five‐star hotels in China. The results from confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were both satisfactory, providing a basis for discussion.

Three main results emerged. First, in model A, the key stakeholder is the hotel investor: both antecedent constructs, trust and commitment, were positively influenced by the organization's stakeholder management practices. However, in model B, the key stakeholder is the customer; trust was the only construct affected by stakeholder management practices. The second major result was that in both models, stakeholder management practices had positive and significant influences on financial performance and customer satisfaction. Finally, the results revealed that customer satisfaction positively affected financial performance.

The proposed framework and its results provide vital insights for industry practitioners and academics in the field of stakeholder management, where an alternative competitive strategy for an organization's wealth creation is acknowledged.

There are different types of non-profit organisations (NPOs) characterised by the different extents of their volunteer management practices. In addition, the use of volunteer work measurement tools is infrequent among these organisations, especially in contexts where NPOs face no obligations or standard practices in this area, such as in Italy. The literature has stated that volunteer programmes and activities are effective if a NPO is highly structured and employs good volunteer management practices and that the measurement of volunteer work may increase the effectiveness of such programmes; this is frequent, for instance, in US NPOs. However, what would occur if a NPO introduces the measurement of volunteer work in a context where volunteer management is not highly structured, such as in Italy?

To study this topic, we adopt the quasi-experimental approach to examine six Italian voluntary organisations (VOs) based in Abruzzo. The treatment consists of the gradual introduction of volunteer work measurement tools to the managers and volunteers who work for the selected organisations, as well as the observation of the early impact of this treatment on the effectiveness of volunteer programmes and activities. This paper aims to discuss the issue of the implementation of measurement tools for effectively managing volunteer services in two different contexts: Italian and US NPOs.

Our findings have practical implications, especially with regard to the management of relatively unstructured volunteer organisations that would like to introduce new tools of measurement but do not have the necessary skills to do so. We also wish to show in this work how some organisations are implementing these tools and highlight the initial effects produced by this implementation process.

This study is innovative, particularly for contexts in which there are no obligations and customs with regard to the measurement of volunteer work.

Defaults in corporations, financial institutions and semipublic organizations have resulted in (corporate) governance Codes and Law provisions that aim to improve governance, risk management and policy making by executive and non-executive directors of involved boards in The Netherlands and across the globe. The aim of this chapter is to discuss how semipublic organizations deal with public interest and the contribution of multiple stakeholder team production theory (MSTP) to effectively deal with the issue of how to include interests of different stakeholders and the general public interest in the governance of and policy making by boards of semipublic organizations. This includes the identification, raising awareness and analysis of various interests and their implications.

The authors use a literature review and their own experience.

Based on our literature review and experience converging in a case study design, we hold that a semipublic organization’s exposure to public interests and how it deals with that will remain a critical issue.

We develop a research approach for dealing with stakeholders’ and the public interest and conclude that a governance perspective grounded in team production theory allows for a much better focused incorporation of possibly conflicting stakeholder interests, including public stakeholder interests and stakeholder commitment and cooperation than the dominant control perspective that is currently prevailing.

We contribute to the literature by arguing that the combined MSTP approach offers a pre-eminent approach to influence and shape board behaviour, an increased awareness of interests of different stakeholders coalescing in the public interest and an alternative, complementary view on decision-making by boards viewed as a team.

This chapter guides the reader to an understanding of social responsibility in educational settings, namely on school/university social responsibility (USR). The phenomenon of social responsibility in these settings is nuanced when encountering stakeholders, either external or internal. This chapter conceptualizes school/USR and describes related stakeholders and their management strategies. In addition to this, the chapter discusses eight transition lines of stakeholders developed on the expectations of stakeholders, the degree and the format of engagement and impacts on society and institutions: pupil–student; teachers-academics; parents; alumni; future employers; business sector; funding providers; and society at large. It concludes that a managerial pattern while implementing social responsibility by involving stakeholders differs by educational setting. This is to say that school social responsibility is rather carried out through process, whereas USR concerns both process and outputs. This distinction results in introducing the definition of school/USR as a commitment toward performance based on ethical and other conventional principles that are respectively substantiated in the mission, values and related activities in the interplay with all possible stakeholders in order to create social value foremost.

Further understanding of how stakeholder marketing explains firm performance through greater customer satisfaction, innovation, and reputation of a firm.

Grounded in stakeholder theory, the study provides a conceptualization of stakeholder orientation based on cultural values that is distinctive from stakeholder responsiveness and examines the relationship of stakeholder responsiveness to firm performance. The study determines the mediating role of marketing outcomes on the impact of stakeholder responsiveness on firm performance. Multiple regression analysis tests hypotheses using a data set consisting of qualitative data obtained from corporate documents and quantitative data from respected secondary sources.

Our findings provide support for stakeholder marketing creating a strong relationship to organizational outcomes. There exists a positive relationship between stakeholder responsiveness and firm performance through customer satisfaction, innovation, and reputation.

Our definition implies that stakeholder responsiveness is acting in the best interests of the stakeholder as a responsible business. This study shows that stakeholder marketing may not always represent socially responsible marketing. Further research could explore how and why firms may not respond ethically and responsibly to stakeholders.

We further the discussion whether stakeholder marketing equates to sustainability. Marketers can build on expertise of managing customer relationship and generating customer value to develop a stakeholder marketing approach that addresses the economic, social, and environmental concerns of multiple stakeholders.

We further the discussion whether stakeholder marketing equates to sustainability. Marketers can build on expertise of managing customer relationship and generating customer value to develop a stakeholder marketing approach that addresses the economic, social, and environmental concerns of multiple stakeholders.

This chapter highlights a study showing that knowledge sharing and envisioning processes can have positive effects on human and social capital growth within a network. The chapter begins by arguing that a responsible development perspective can be more proactive approach than a sustainability perspective. Some actors (non-profit, public, and private) have achieved responsible development goals by integrating values, purposes, and visions. More specifically, we conducted a study testing a methodology that can guide a process of building a strategic vision within a network with the goal of improving their responsible development orientation. The chosen methodology is “Participatory Action Research.” The implementation of the envisioning process was studied via quantitative/qualitative research tools. The methodology was tested in an official cross-country project funded by the European Commission. The project was selected as a best practice by the same European Union Commission. The study highlights the importance of envisioning processes in building social and human capital at the inter-organizational level and, in particular, in highly complex sectors such as those oriented toward improving social responsibility. In fact, work on the envisioning process itself represents an essential instrument for developing strategic objectives to be shared among actors within networks that intend to promote responsible development and improve their human and social capital. This bottom-up process of envisioning can also facilitate cultural interaction among community members, even in a cross-country context. This relevant “learning-by-interacting” experience can create a growth process for the human and social capital of entire communities. The creation of social capital also promotes the development of shared knowledge and advances, leading to the general understanding of common core objectives and appropriate ways of acting within the social system. The chapter ends with recommendations for future research.