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This study examines the diffusion process of corporate sustainability (CS) in the global automotive industry. It discusses the different roles played by the automakers, as the industry’s focal firms, in diffusing CS strategies throughout their respective supply networks. Studies have explained this phenomenon as being the result of the higher levels of stakeholder exposure faced by focal firms, which generate higher levels of supplier sustainability risk. In this context, the authors examine the effects of three network-related firm characteristics – resource dominance, resource substitutability, and network centrality – in determining the effectiveness of a firm in diffusing CS in its network. For that purpose, we present a theoretical framework from which we derive a set of hypotheses and test them on a sample of the global automotive supply network containing 10,726 firms linked by 45,044 inter-firm relationships. The results lend significant support to the argument that these network-related firm attributes are crucial mechanisms to the process of diffusion of CS strategies in a supply network, thus contributing to extant literatures in strategic management, international business, and sustainable supply chain management.

This chapter explores how power obtained from societal hierarchies of gender, race, and economic status is covertly used by individuals within relationships, further maintaining systems of stratification. The case of marriage is used to examine how social stratification translates into and is reinforced within even the most intimate relationships in terms of control over decision making. Analysis of in-depth interviews with black and white wives in same-race and interracial marriages illustrates how economic inequality affects who makes what decisions within marriage and how race affects what decisions are made. In the midst of income and racial inequality, socialized gender roles dictate which spouse controls certain arenas versus others. Gender norms operate covertly to affect decision making dynamics through mechanisms of availability, areas of knowledge, and preference.

Purpose – The current literature of housework division consistently finds positive consequences of an equitable division of housework (particularly for working women). This study looks to more fully explore the characteristics that predict an egalitarian division of housework.

Methodology – This study integrates three theoretical perspectives – relative resource theory, life course theory, and gender studies – and uses data from a nationally representative data set to investigate couples who divide household labor more evenly and compares them to more traditional couples where the woman performs most of the housework using multivariate and logistic regression.

Findings – This study finds that the more resources a spouse possesses, the more likely that spouse is to engage in housework equitably. From a life course perspective, findings show that the longer a woman waits to marry, the more likely she is to have an egalitarian marriage; and length of marriage is a positive predictor of an inegalitarian marriage. Stronger than any other factor in predicting an egalitarian relationship are men's and women's progressive gender ideologies.

Originality of paper – Past research on the division of housework has focused on how chores are sex-typed and divided between men and women, but little investigation has focused on those couples who practice a more egalitarian housework division. This study uniquely finds a clear and irrefutable link between progressive ideologies and egalitarianism, as well as a link between conservative ideologies and “inegalitarianism.”

Prior research on international diversification has focused primarily on multinational enterprises (MNEs) from developed economies, such as the U.S. and other developed nations. As an increasing number of MNEs are now located in emerging economies, new theoretical frameworks are needed to better understand the motivations of these MNEs to diversify internationally. This paper contributes to the theory development of MNEs by examining the characteristics of international diversification by business groups from emerging economies. Using the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and organizational learning theory, we suggest that the international diversification motives of business groups from emerging economies vary by host country context. Business groups from emerging economies are more likely to enter developed economies (rather than other emerging economies) when their primary aim is exploring new resources and capabilities, and more likely to enter other emerging economies (rather than developed economies) when their primary aim is to exploit existing group resources and capabilities. We also suggest that these motives influence business-group performance. We identify two important moderators of these relationships: product diversification and social capital. Because of the importance of the business-group organizational form in emerging economies, understanding business-group international diversification may lead to improved MNE theory.

In this study we examine how resource-constrained organizations can maneuver for competitive advantage in highly institutionalized fields. Unlike studies of institutional entrepreneurship, we investigate competitive maneuvering by an organization that is unable to alter either the regulative or normative institutions that characterize its field. Using the “Moneyball” phenomenon and recent changes in Major League Baseball as the basis for an intensive case study of entrepreneurial actions taken by the Oakland A’s, we found that the A’s were able to maneuver for advantage by using bricolage and refusing to enact baseball’s cognitive institutions, and that they continued succeeding despite ongoing resource constraints and rapid copying of their actions by other teams. These results contribute to our understanding of competitive maneuvering and change in institutionalized fields. Our findings expand the positioning of bricolage beyond its prior characterization as a tool used primarily by peripheral organizations in less institutionalized fields; our study suggests that bricolage may aid resource constrained participants (including the majority of entrepreneurial firms) to survive in a wider range of circumstances than previously believed.

Firms pursue a number of redeployment strategies in order to achieve growth and create value for their stakeholders. While the majority of previous research focuses on how firms create synergic value by sharing resources across multiple business units, we lack a systematic analysis of the determinants of different redeployment strategies. In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework that allows us to systematically investigate how intrinsic resource characteristics affect resource redeployment strategies. Our framework identifies four critical characteristics of resources, that is, fungibility, scale-free nature, decomposability, and tradability. We develop a number of predictions that provide guidance for researchers to identify the optimal resource redeployment strategy appropriate for resources with a certain set of characteristics.

Technology is often defined as a valuable firm resource particularly relative to marketing functions in the organization (Barua, Kriebel, & Mukhopadhyay, 1995; Bharadwaj, 2000; Christensen, Johnson, & Rigby, 2002). When resources are customized to match a marketing strategy, they become firm specific, and thus central to firm performance. Marketing employees also may be defined as an essential resource, in the context of key marketing activities that need to be accomplished (Barney, 1986, 2001; Coff, 2002; Dess & Picken, 1999). Because both employees and technology play key roles, we ground this study in the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (Barney, 1991, 2001; Peteraf, 1993; Wernerfelt, 1984).

Purpose – In this chapter, we expand the definition of disaster through combining the tenets of disaster studies with the literature on risks and consequences of war and conflict-related displacement and dislocation, with a focus on the challenges that drug misuse and changing drug markets present in these contexts. We conclude with policy recommendations for successful community rebuilding with relation to drugs and drug markets following various forms of disaster, gleaned from the combination of these areas of inquiry.

Design/methodology/approach – We discuss the concepts of risk, social vulnerability, and consequences as related to traditional conceptualizations of disaster, and highlight how they can also be applied to the study of veterans returning from war. We focus the on the similarities related to drugs and drug markets.

Findings – Overall, the similar vulnerabilities, potential for trauma, and drug-related consequences experienced by both disaster survivors and veterans suggest that the experience of war and return from such an event could be considered a disaster and analyzed as such.

Originality/value of power – Few scholars have examined how to expand the definition of a disaster and what is examined in the field of disaster studies. This chapter does this by examining how war could be analyzed as a disaster. It demonstrates the parallels between war and traditional disaster.

This research investigates and finds support for the hypothesis that the demand for human resource managers is largely derived from the relative demand for professional, managerial, and technical employees with high levels of occupationally specific human capital. Strong demand for these employees significantly increases both employment and earnings of human resource managers, reflecting the growing importance of occupational specific capital to firm performance and the practice of human resources. Using data from the Occupational Employment Statistics and the Current Population Survey March Supplement the research analysis finds that the employment of approximately 11% of the labor force is strongly associated with greater employment and higher compensation of human resource managers, and the employment of another 9% of the labor force is more weakly associated with the employment of human resource management (HRM). However, the employment of approximately 40% of the labor force is associated with the relative decrease in employment and compensation of HRM.