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The purpose of this paper is to show the applicability of data envelopment analysis (DEA) in arriving at an unbiased account of relative performance in a set of companies, using the pharmaceutical industry as an example.

A DEA‐based income efficiency measure of business performance for the pharmaceutical industry is computed. The pharmaceutical industry, which includes many multinational corporations with complex governance problems, and the strategies that allowed firm efficiency rankings to change over time, over ten recent years, are analyzed.

The analyses indicate that the inclines and declines in DEA efficiency rankings are related to the strategic choices made by the upper management.

The paper attempted to trace firm behavior post hoc to validate the DEA rankings. All relevant firm behavior may not have been captured; the paper only attempted to capture behavior reported in the respectable business press, which may introduce a bias.

The approach may be ideal to evaluate strategic managers (CEOs, general managers, and presidents) by board of directors, since it relates multiple performance indices to a meta‐measure of performance. Another group of beneficiaries include sector financial analysts. The approach adds a new dimension to sector analysis, to compare specific industries and identify the relative rankings of firms on multiple performance indices.

The paper demonstrates the usefulness of DEA in performance governance measurement by applying it to the pharmaceuticals industry.

The scandals associated with breaches in business ethics has had a negative impact on companies and governments. Numerous scandals have brought to the forefront the influence of power and profit as they relate to how business is conducted. This behavior in corporations could impact technological advancements. The advancements being recognized in quantum computing will have a profound impact on how business is conducted and business communications. The primary areas of concern are the teleportation of information and teleportation of matter. Given the abundance of ethical breaches within corporations and governments around the globe, it is necessary for business ethics to be revised as it relates to enforcement and accountability. The wealth possessed by companies and their immunity from portions of the law has placed business ethics at a crisis level. Quantum teleportation has the potential to resolve some of these issues, however, the scientific community must participate by building in safeguards such as cryptography that prevents third party access to information.

In February 2010, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an interpretive release clarifying the information that registrants should disclose about climate change in their annual filings. Based on the industries the European Union targeted for its cap-and-trade carbon trading mechanism, this study investigates climate change disclosures for Fortune 500 firms operating in these same sectors. Using an equal-weighting scheme for content analysis of Form 10-Ks from 136 firms, we completed a comparative analysis on the extensiveness of climate change disclosures for the pre- and post-periods surrounding the SEC pronouncement. We observed a statistically significant increase in the disclosure of information related to climate change in 2010 compared to 2008, but no similar effect when comparing 2010–2009 reporting. There was a significant disclosure increase in 2009 compared to 2008. We conclude – based on a hypothesized anticipation of the SEC actually mandating climate change information in filings – that firms augmented their disclosures during 2009 in advance of the official guidance being published. This is a rather significant outcome given the historical lack of environmental disclosure subsequent to previous SEC mandates.

In part-I of this review series, research from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka was reviewed. The purpose of this paper which is part-II of the series, is to review management research from India and Pakistan over a 25-year period from 1990 to 2014.

A systematic review approach was adopted for this research. As a quality standard for inclusion, articles were restricted to journals rated A*, A, or B by the Australian Business Deans Council in 2013 and either Q1 or Q2 in the Scopus/Imago classification system. The divisions and interest groups of the Academy of Management were used as framework to organize the search results.

A total of 1,039 articles related to India (n = 930) and Pakistan (n = 112) emerged from the search process, with three articles being related to both countries. The research was published in 163 different journals that met the quality criteria. The period under review coincides with the advent of economic liberalization in India and this emerged as a major theme in the India-related research. Other context-specific insights for these two countries are also derived from an ecological and institutional theory perspective.

This research represents the first comprehensive and systematic review of management research in India and Pakistan. As in part-I, the unique review approach allows for strict adherence to a predetermined quality standard while including a wide variety of journals and research traditions.

In this study, nine managers of a Dutch multinational engineering company were interviewed on the success and failure factors of post‐acquisition processes they were involved in over the past five years. When referring to their experiences, the managers mainly spoke about failures and how to avoid these in future. The focus of this study was on the cognitive map structure of the perspectives of managers as disclosed by the interview data. Three different collective maps were found, representing “the Strategists”, strategic business unit‐presidents, and human resource (HR)‐managers. The maps show differences in perspectives on four central themes: control versus cooperation; how to handle the culture of the acquired firm; trust versus distrust; and speed versus carefulness. If the maps are compared with literature on management acquisition processes, the HR‐managers' map shows richer insights into how to manage human factors in acquisition processes than the other two. Instead of exploiting these valuable insights, the differences in perspectives fostered distrust between the two management levels, which constrained mutual learning.

The purpose of this study is to document the experience and impact of implementing lean thinking (LT) in an Indian healthcare institution.

A detailed review of literature documenting the experience of implementing LT in healthcare institutions is carried out. Review revealed that there is a dearth of documentation on implementation of LT in Indian healthcare institutions. To address this gap, the experience of implementing LT in an Indian case hospital is documented by adopting a single case study research methodology.

Lean practices adopted by the Indian case hospital are documented. Performance measures before and after implementation of lean practices in the case hospital are compared. Based on this experience, a framework for implementing LT is proposed for healthcare institutions.

The current study documents the experience of an Indian case hospital, which is only at its initial stages of LT implementation. Future studies can be undertaken to assess the long-term impact of implementing LT in a healthcare institution. Similarly, the proposed framework for implementing LT can be validated by using the same in different healthcare institutions.

Review of lean principles, practices and performance measures discussed in the literature on implementing LT in healthcare institutions can act as a ready reckoner for practitioners. Framework proposed based on the experience of the case hospital is expected to guide healthcare practitioners in their lean journey.

This study is unique, as it documents the experience of implementing LT in an Indian healthcare institution and proposes a framework for implementing LT for future validation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm’s reputation in terms of product and service quality, management performance and attractiveness as well as reputation on overall performance from a developing country’s environment.

The partial lest squares structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship between CSR and firm’s reputation as well as the overall organizational performance using a survey of informants from Ghana.

Using data from firms in Ghana, the study demonstrates that CSR initiative by firms will have a positive relationship with firm’s reputation in terms of product and service quality, management performance and attractiveness as well as overall performance. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that enhanced reputation by firms through social responsibility initiatives will lead to firms’ overall performance from the Ghanaian business environment.

The main limitation of this work is the source of the data originating from only executives from Ghana where managers are sometimes skeptical giving out such information; this might have some influence on the results. In addition, there could be potential endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity issues. It is therefore recommended that future studies should consider these issues to check as to whether the same results could be achieved. Specifically, results indicate that when organizations invest in CSR initiatives, they are likely to achieve product quality, improved management performance and an attractiveness as well as overall performance.

The research shows how CSR initiatives can enhance firm’s reputation and overall performance of a firm.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and builds on the literature in the area CSR and reputation from a developing country’s environment.

This paper aims to assess the existing situation of psychological empowerment to employees and explore the relationship between psychological empowerment and competitive advantages in service sector of Nepal.

The study followed descriptive cum exploratory research design. Data collected through structured questionnaire based on Menon’s three-component model and Wright’s four-component model used to measure psychological employment and competitive advantages from employees of banking and hospital sector.

Psychological empowerment of employees in service sector is significantly different between public and private organizations. Even though the factors that are extracted are quite different than of Western practices, psychological empowerment has positive and significant impact on the competitive advantages.

This study is mainly based on service sector of Nepal: Banking and Hospital.

This paper is useful to academicians and practitioners seeking to develop psychological empowerment to achieve competitive advantages in their organizations and help to add values in people management areas particularly in South Asian corporations.

This is perhaps the very first investigation of its kind in the Nepalese context.

Within a gated community, management of common property presents great challenges. Therefore, the diagnostic social ecological system (SES) framework proposed by Elinor Ostrom providing a holistic understanding of complex collective action problems in terms of management of commons is used to investigate key institutional-social-ecological factors influencing collective action in the context of gated communities.

In this paper, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was used to systematically screen and review the relevant literature from 2000 to 2022, where 28 papers were selected for further analysis.

The study systematically identifies and categorises a series of variables related to self-organizing management in the gated community, and consequently a SES-based gated community management framework is developed. Based on the conceptual framework, the paper discusses logical interrelationships of institutional-social-ecological factors and their impacts on collective action performance of gated communities.

Apart from requiring empirical validation, the conceptual SES-based gated community management framework is certainly subject to continuous improvement in terms of refinement and addition of other potential determinants of gated community collective action.

Not only the review paper provides updates on the latest gated-community collective action research, it also contributes theoretically by conceptualizing the SES framework and its institutional–social–ecological design principles in gated community management. Studying these factors should also be of practical significance because the findings ultimately offer policy insights and management strategies that help policy-makers, property developers and local communities to govern such neighbourhood common resources efficiently and sustainably.

Although brand equity (BE) is a widely accepted concept, its definition is still elusive, and researchers have not reached a consensus about which measures provide the best estimates of this complex and multi-faceted construct. Hence, the authors propose a BE chain that incorporates consumer-based BE (CBBE) and firm-based BE (FBBE) measurement approaches, advocating in favor of a holistic approach and encouraging theoretical and empirical studies that assess the BE chain.

The methodology entailed an extensive literature review on the subject. The authors included many different sources and the most accepted ones for measuring CBBE and FBBE.

The authors present 10 propositions to build the BE chain, encompassing the different approaches of BE and including its antecedents and consequences.

Conceptualizing BE is a complex problem given the different viewpoints describing several aspects of this intangible marketing asset. Thus, this study aims to foster discussions about such viewpoints and provide a framework to support the sedimentation of BE conceptualization.