Search results

Prior research on political strategies has predominantly analyzed singular political activities or drivers for firms to become politically active and, overall, only scarcely obtained insights on performance consequences of political strategizing. To further develop the realm of political strategy, this study analyzes the effects of two “generic” political strategies on firms’ (1) stakeholder network development and (2) performance. Specifically, we provide theoretical and empirical evidence whether the two political strategies add to or substitute each other in their effect on the corresponding outcome variable. We find that an information strategy significantly affects the stakeholder network development, whereas no influence of a financial incentive strategy could be detected. Moreover, we find that the stakeholder network drives firm performance and, more importantly, that the two political strategies substitute each other in their effect on firm performance. Thus, we provide initial insights on the efficiency of political strategies when firms opt to execute an information strategy and financial incentive strategy simultaneously. The results of our study have important implications for research as they put a new light on the efficiency of political strategies.

We aim at providing a more precise differentiation of external stakeholder pressures and their impact on multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries’ political strategies. Thus, we analyse whether external stakeholder pressures entail a more intense use of political strategies, and whether pressures from public stakeholders are more influencing compared to pressures from private stakeholders. We use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis to test our hypotheses with data from 157 subsidiaries in Brazil, Russia, Turkey, India, China and South Africa. We found that the higher external stakeholder pressures on the MNC subsidiary, the more intensely subsidiaries apply political strategies. Furthermore, both public and private stakeholder pressures affect political strategies in a positive way, but our results show no statistical significance for a difference in impact. The study differentiates the general concept of external stakeholder pressures into pressures from national public and national private stakeholders.

Purpose – By means of this case study, we aim to learn from failure and provide an explanatory approach why the promising prospects in a developing country could not be exploited and strategic actions failed.

Design/methodology/approach – Based on literature within the areas of uncertainty, entrepreneurial activity and political strategy, we provide an event-based case analysis and develop an explanatory model as to why the foreign direct investment (FDI) failed.

Findings – Results provide insights on the effectiveness of political strategies and point to the relevance of entrepreneurial overconfidence as a diminishing cognitive process leading to a misinterpretation of both internal and external conditions.

Originality/value – The exploratory study provides in-depth insights on a failed business and presents an explanatory approach for the business’ collapse.

Siavash Alimadadi is a PhD candidate at the Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University. His research focuses on the role of knowledge and trust in the internationalization process. His current research examines the impact of socio-political actors on MNCs in Turkey.

This paper aims to increase understanding of how the strength of the relationship between service failure-induced customer anger and revenge intentions might be influenced by attitudinal moderators that are both within and outside the realm of the service firm’s control. Drawing on past research, the authors hypothesize that customers’ perceptions of the corporate reputation and silent endurance constitute boundary conditions of the relationship between service failure-related customer anger and revenge intentions.

In line with past service failure research, the authors test the hypotheses using a scenario-based online experiment with 243 participants.

This research reaffirms the positive relationship between anger and revenge intentions and finds support for the hypothesized boundary conditions; customers with better corporate reputation perceptions and higher levels of silent endurance express weaker revenge intentions than those with poor corporate reputation perceptions and lower levels of silent endurance.

This research offers unique insights into how service organizations can buffer the detrimental effects of service failure-induced customer anger.

This article raises the question of how recent labour market developments affect the transition from school to work (i.e. labour market entry) and the successive employment career. The focus of interest are countries characterised by well‐established and wide‐spread vocational training systems, constituting strong institutionalised links between the educational and the employment systems (i.e. Austria, Germany and Switzerland). The arguments advanced show that the changing structure of work (i.e. the shifting nature of work, the decrease in the temporal validity of skills and the changing cultural significance of work) is likely to modify the well‐established interplay between the supply and demand sides in the labour markets of these countries, thus exerting considerable pressure on the stability and orderliness of employment trajectories. Against this background, the most critical issues of vocational training systems are described and reforms of these systems are discussed.