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This paper aims to explore the significance of resource sharing in business to capture new market opportunities and securing competitive advantages. Firms enter strategic alliances (SAs), especially for designing new products and to overcome challenges in today’s fast changing environment. Research projects have dealt with the creation of SAs, however without concrete referencing the impact on selected supply chain resources. Furthermore, academia rather focused on elaborating the advantages and disadvantages of SAs and how this affects structural changes in the organization than examining the effects on supply chain complexity and performance.

The authors collected and triangulated a multi-industry data set containing primary data coming from more than 200 experts in the field of supply chain management along and secondary data coming from Refinitiv’s joint ventures (JVs) and SA database and IR solutions’ database for annual reports. The data is evaluated in three empirical settings using binomial testing and structural equation modeling.

The results show that nonequity SAs and JVs have varying degrees of impact on supply chain resources due to differences in the scope of the partnership. This has a negative impact on the complexity of the supply chain, with the creation of a JV leading to greater complexity than the creation of a nonequity SA. Furthermore, the findings prove that complexity negatively impacts overall supply chain performance. In addition, this study elaborates that increased management capabilities are needed to exploit the potentials of SAs and sheds light on hurdles that must be overcome within the supply network when forming a partnership. Finally, the authors give practical implications on how organizations can cope with increasing complexity to lower the risk of poor supply chain performance.

This study investigates occurring challenges when establishing nonequity SAs or JVs and how this affects their supply chain by examining supply networks in terms of complexity and performance.

The purpose of this study was to assess the readiness of construction companies in Ghana to partner with foreign companies in international construction joint ventures (ICJVs).

Using the Verify End-User e-Readiness using a Diagnostic Tool (VERDICT) model, a survey with 31 construction companies was conducted to assess their readiness through four pre-defined elements of readiness.

The results indicated the readiness of construction companies to collaborate with potential foreign partners in ICJVs. Notwithstanding, certain areas such as management commitment to change, employee buy-in, process flexibility and technology infrastructure need improvement in some firms to achieve readiness. Government has a role in ensuring the readiness of domestic firms for the international market.

This study applies the VERDICT model, a tool originally designed to assess construction organizations’ readiness for e-commerce, to assess the readiness of Ghanaian construction companies for ICJVs.

This paper aims to study whether international niche market leaders (INMLs) gained their leading position as early mover or diligent follower, and assess whether they leveraged hard or soft forms of technological, supply pre-emption and customer lock-in advantage mechanisms.

Empirical material stems from qualitative and quantitative data on a sample of 20 niche companies from the Basque Country (Spain) that operate in business to business markets.

The sample predominantly followed an early entrant strategy and applied soft measures to reach niche market leadership.

Findings imply that early entering fosters conquering leadership in niche markets, that pioneer advantage is easier to sustain in niches than in mainstream markets, and that soft measures are more effective in niche markets than in larger markets. A limitation to our findings is that they follow from explorative research on a sample of firms from a reduced geographic setting.

Hidden champions and INMLs can be important sources of technological progress and economic value for the localities that host them. Therefore, despite their traditional low profile and the fact that they are not always the largest firms around, policymakers may want to pay more attention to this type of companies.

Tot he best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to research entry timing and its outcome for market leadership with regard to niche players or hidden champions-type of firms. It introduces an original taxonomy to operationalize and distinguish between hard and soft measures to leverage advantage mechanisms related to market entry timing.

This study aims to investigate whether and why multinational corporations (MNCs) seek to reduce institutional costs of foreign direct investments (FDIs) by aligning with transnational political frameworks.

This study uses the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to test whether MNCs’ subsidiaries in China increase FDI into BRI-affiliated countries after the BRI’s launch. This study compares FDIs by Chinese subsidiaries of foreign MNCs in the year before and two years after the BRI’s announcement. Hypotheses are tested for two explanations of why foreign MNCs seek to exploit the BRI.

Investments into BRI-affiliated countries increased after the announcement of the BRI, and this increase is positively moderated by institutional distance between the MNC home country and the BRI-affiliated target country. This shows that the greater the institutional costs of investing in a BRI-affiliated country, the more responsive the MNCs’ Chinese subsidiary will be to the BRI.

This study demonstrates that MNCs respond to transnational political frameworks. This study only studies the immediate response because the BRI is an infrastructure project. Better infrastructure will, over time, lead to more investments; however, the immediate response is due not to infrastructure but political structure.

The results show how MNCs use transnational political frameworks. The idea that MNCs can channel FDI through existing subsidiaries for this purpose has not previously been discussed in the literature.

Even the greatest developed countries have capitulated to the destructions imposed on the global supply systems, as the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed. The purpose of this study is to explore human resource sourcing strategies for managing supply chain performance during the COVID-19 outbreak. There are six human resource sourcing strategies such as outsourcing, near sourcing, integration, the requirement of suppliers, joint ventures and virtual enterprise that are considered to measure supply chain performance.

Based on collecting data from the potential respondents of Indian manufacturing companies, the elevation of human resource sourcing strategies to supply chain performance is measured considering the multiple regression analysis techniques.

The results of the study revealed that four of the six hypotheses have a significant and positive relationship with supply chain performance during the COVID-19 outbreak while two hypotheses are partially supported that lent good support to this study.

In this critical situation, this study will enable managers and practitioners to support the business in giving customers the best services on time.

The novelty of this study is to identify the key human resource sourcing strategies by using multiple regression analysis methods, considering the case of Indian manufacturing companies to measure their supply chain performance during the COVID-19 outbreak era.

This study aims to critically evaluate resource dependence theory’s (RDT) assumptions and explanations about dependence and the dependent firm’s strategic options. The authors argue that RDT’s perception of dependence is problematic because it evaluates dependence as a purely negative situation in which all firms, by definition, seek to develop strategies to change the power structure of such relationships. On the contrary, the authors argue that there are situations in which dependent firms are in agreement with dependence and, therefore, develop strategies that do not aim to change the balance of power in the relationship, but rather to strengthen their position within the relationship.

The research is designed as a theoretical discussion. The authors critically evaluate and discuss current understanding and assumptions about RDT’s dependence explanations. Drawing on insights from the strategic management literature, the authors offer a new perspective on the problematic areas in the dependence explanations of the RDT.

Drawing on insights from the strategic management literature, the authors argue that dependent firms enjoy certain advantages due to the dependence relationship to gain sustainable competitive advantages over their rivals and potential competitors. These advantages include factors such as increasing growth potential, developing capabilities and competencies, building relationships of trust with powerful firms and leveraging their reputations and references that contribute to the sustainable strategic advantages of dependent firms. The authors believe that this study has the potential to spur new research that further challenges the assumptions of the RDT and empirically tests its propositions.

The authors propose a research framework on dependence as a strategic option that has the possibility of expanding RDT’s current dependence explanation.

This study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.

The authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.

The results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.

This study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to understand the calculation of cost of individual sources of funds and cost of capital, examine various tools such as economic value added and cash value added analyses which help determining whether a company has added value to its shareholders or not and explore the application of Benford’s law and the Beneish M-score in detecting manipulation of numbers in financial statements.

Nimmy Jacob, a newly recruited research analyst with an equity research firm, was entrusted with tracking the “auto ancillary industry”, specifically “Minda Corporation Ltd” (MIL). MIL was a leading diversified auto components manufacturing companies in India. The company’s share price meteorically rose during February 2021–2022 (Figure 1). The company’s turnover over the past few years had grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 15% during the three preceding years. The company had in the recent past bought a 15% stake in another competitor, Pricol Ltd, for a consideration of INR 400 crores and previously had used joint ventures and acquisitions to scale up its operations. Jacob, apart from the conventional financial analysis, had to ascertain whether all the strategic decisions were adding value to the shareholders’ investments by exploring the various tools available for the same and also calculate the minimum expected rate of return for MIL. Jacob was apprehensive about the financial statements, although the numbers for the company were good. Jacob was skeptical about a high-growth company having the incentive to manipulate its earnings. Manipulations could be in the form of abnormal increase in accruals, inconsistency in expenses and high days of receivables. Therefore, Jacobs used certain analytics/statistical tools to detect any manipulation of numbers in the financial statements of the company and to ascertain apt findings about the company.

This case study is intended for discussion in corporate finance, financial reporting and analysis and financial analytics at Master of Business Administration/undergraduate level.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS1: Accounting and finance

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to present a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review of industry convergence and value innovation to understand the current research status; second, to provide a coherent theoretical research framework for future research.

This study adopts a two-step analysis approach by combining bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review to explore the research topic of industry convergence and value innovation. Besides, two bibliometric tools, HistCite and VOSviewer, were applied to this study.

This study found that Stefanie Bröring and Fredrik Hacklin are the top two most influential authors among all authors in the sample publications. Technological Forecasting and Social Change is one of the top-ranking journal that often publishes this topic of articles. Germany and the University of Munster are the most influential country and institutions, respectively. Besides, five core research themes were identified based on keywords co-occurrence map, theoretical lenses, factors promoting industry convergence, indicators of industry convergence, the impact of industry convergence and emerging research directions. Based on the above analysis, this paper constructed a theoretical research framework of industry convergence and value innovation.

This paper only draw data from one database – Web of Science – which cannot provide broad coverage of the research topic. Besides, the bibliometric method of this paper is based on high local citation score and high-frequency words, articles in the skirting subjects’ area may not be analyzed.

With the rapid development of technology, such as nanotechnology, radio - frequency identification (RFID), etc., the iterative upgrading of products also comes. As a result, the boundary between industries is gradually blurred, and the phenomenon of industry convergence appears. Therefore, managerial decision-makers are facing challenges of how to respond to the convergence phenomena. From the firm level, firms are facing the problem of value innovation of the existing product, new product development and core competence improvement. Industries are facing the problem of transformation and upgrading. This paper provides certain theoretical insights for both firms and industries to guide the practice accordingly.

This paper is the first to use a bibliometric method to examine the topic of industry convergence and value innovation. In addition, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of this topic and provides a comprehensive theoretical research framework for future study.

Organizational research on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is at times siloed; the experience of one minoritized or underrepresented group is treated as completely separate and different from the experience of another group and thus research separately. For example, there are terms that are studied only in the context of one group, and a different term is used to study a very similar (or identical) concept among a different group. Indeed, there are many unique experiences that specific minority groups encounter at work. Because of this end, minority groups should not be fully categorized together, and their individual should not be erased. However, there are shared experiences that many or all minorities experience at work, whether they are a gender minority, racial minority, or a member of any other minoritized group. Recognizing these shared experiences can help scholars develop a deeper understanding of what it's like to be minoritized or underrepresented at work, and therefore help to better serve these communities. To this end, our chapter highlights three such shared but unique minority experiences: three experiences that are common across all minority groups but operationalize slightly differently in different populations. The first experience we discuss is discrimination, as all minorities typically experience some form of negative differential treatment at work. The second experience we discuss is identity management, as many minorities need to actively think about how they present their minority identity to others (regardless of if their identity is “concealable” or not). Finally, we discuss strength through adversity, as many minorities argue that their minority identity is a source of strength and an area that benefits them at work. We conclude the chapter with a call toward intraminority solidarity, suggesting that recognizing shared experiences and working together can help build better workplaces for all minority employees.