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The purpose of this study was to identify and determine the best fit model of triple bottom line (TBL) performance. Particularly, it delved into the interrelationships among variables which include sustainable management practices, strategic orientation and organizational culture on TBL performance. This study employed descriptive-correlation technique using Structural Equation Modeling. Data were sourced by administering survey questionnaires to 400 individuals performing key functions among large manufacturing companies operating in Region XII, Philippines. Results displayed that sustainable management practices, strategic orientation and organizational culture positively and significantly correlated with TBL performance. Structural Model 4, which depicted the direct causal relationships of sustainable management practices and organizational culture to TBL performance of large manufacturing companies, satisfied all the indices used and was found to be the best fit model. Finally, this study adds value to a growing body of literature viewing TBL through the lens of corporate sustainability.

This chapter investigates how small- and medium-sized enterprises and large firms decide the sourcing strategies to explore and exploit. This study adopts a qualitative methodology and reports on the insights derived from interviews with 35 companies and 2 experts. A series of propositions are derived, and these propositions are used to propose a height–distance view of exploration and exploitation. The implications for theory and managerial practice are presented in the concluding remarks.

Market orientation is often mentioned as a key factor for the success of domestic and international activities, but our knowledge about differences in degrees of market orientation remains limited for firms that have varying degrees of international activities. In particular, the literature is very sparse with regard to studies of newly established firms. Our study empirically explores this gap examining how different types of new ventures adopt two strategic components of market orientation – customer orientation and competitor orientation. Our empirical evidence is based on responses from CEOs of 249 Danish manufacturing firms that are categorized into four groups, depending on their degree of international operations within the first three years. We demonstrate that the most internationally oriented firms seem to be the most market oriented in general. They are significantly more competitor-oriented than domestically oriented firms, but the results regarding customer orientation are more mixed. Interestingly, we find indications that the strategic emphasis on customer orientation may be higher for firms with domestic operations than for those with limited international operations. We discuss implications for research and managers.

The chapter is structured as follows: in the first part, we provide the framework for the analysis of the formation of the born global firm, whereas the entrepreneurial, strategic, and network-based factors are conceptually linked and leading toward a global champion. The analytical model proposes the analysis of strategic choices as defining factors at the level of entrepreneurial behavior, firm strategy, and network. The case study methodology is provided in the second part of the chapter. The third part provides the empirical linkages of entrepreneurial, strategy based, and network factors’ manifestations and underpinnings in R&D intensive entrepreneurial born global firms. These are followed by discussion and conclusions enclosing empirically grounded framework that explains the emergence of R&D intensive entrepreneurial-hidden champions from the perspective of entrepreneurial firm and network theories.

Global businesses base their sourcing operations and manufacturing decisions primarily on financial principles and metrics. What is often disregarded is the strategic value of domestic locations and contextual tacit knowledge. However, recent empirical work on knowledge flows shows that proximity is crucial. The risk of losing knowledge and important competencies developed through generations within companies and value chains needs to be considered when developing a global sourcing strategy. This chapter sheds light on how global shift-backs, through backshoring are seen to affect organizations that are located in a high-cost country. Based on interviews with managers and key personnel within a specific industry, we explore how companies preserve innovative capabilities when considering closing down (captive) offshore centers or when embarking on a backshoring strategy. The implications derived from the case offers valuable insights into how organizational capabilities could be restored when companies bring manufacturing back.

Increasing chances of firm survival requires enduring entrepreneurship or the ability to balance competing demands for exploration and exploitation. We developed how acquisitions can provide needed disruption to change a firm’s dominant orientation toward exploration or exploitation or enable a continued focus on a firm’s dominant orientation. The result is a new typology for acquisition integration associated with different pre- and post-acquisition characteristics. For example, a firm with an exploitation orientation faces different integration challenges in acquiring targets with an exploration or exploitation orientation. We also distinguished between human and task integration to enable more nuanced integration decisions that help to reconcile conflicting findings on acquisition integration decisions. Implications for management research and practice were discussed.

Scanning both the academic and popular business literature of the last 40 years puzzles the alert reader. The variety of prescriptions of how to be successful (effective, performing, etc.) 1 Organizational performance, organizational success and organizational effectiveness will be used interchangeably throughout this paper.1 in business is hardly comprehensible: “Being close to the customer,” Total Quality Management, corporate social responsibility, shareholder value maximization, efficient consumer response, management reward systems or employee involvement programs are but a few of the slogans introduced as means to increase organizational effectiveness. Management scholars have made little effort to integrate the various performance-enhancing strategies or to assess them in an orderly manner.

This study classifies organizational strategies by the importance each strategy attaches to different constituencies in the firm’s environment. A number of researchers divide an organization’s environment into various constituency groups and argue that these groups constitute – as providers and recipients of resources – the basis for organizational survival and well-being. Some theoretical schools argue for the foremost importance of responsiveness to certain constituencies while stakeholder theory calls for a – situation-contingent – balance in these responsiveness levels. Given that maximum responsiveness levels to different groups may be limited by an organization’s resource endowment or even counterbalanced, the need exists for a concurrent assessment of these competing claims by jointly evaluating the effect of the respective behaviors towards constituencies on performance. Thus, this study investigates the competing merits of implementing alternative business philosophies (e.g. balanced versus focused responsiveness to constituencies). Such a concurrent assessment provides a “critical test” of multiple, opposing theories rather than testing the merits of one theory (Carlsmith, Ellsworth & Aronson, 1976).

In the high tolerance level applied for this study (be among the top 80% of the industry) only a handful of organizations managed to sustain such a balanced strategy over the whole observation period. Continuously monitoring stakeholder demands and crafting suitable responsiveness strategies must therefore be a focus of successful business strategies. While such behavior may not be a sufficient explanation for organizational success, it certainly is a necessary one.

Several studies have proposed that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lack resources and experiential knowledge to internationalise to distant markets. The authors argue that SMEs can handle the lack of these tangible and intangible internal resources through external collaborations; they can achieve success in international markets by collaborating with business partners. The role of inter-firm marketing collaboration and its impact on internationalisation efforts has not been thoroughly studied, particularly in the context of SMEs. This study will thus advance our understanding of SMEs’ inter-firm marketing collaborations and how they influence performance in international markets. In this chapter, authors conceptually develop this line of arguments through an extensive literature review and develop some hypotheses and a framework that can be empirically tested. The authors believe this framework will serve as a starting point for further studies on this topic. Theoretically, we endeavour to contribute by showing that firms can enhance their level of international performance through inter-firm collaboration. The authors believe this type of study would have considerable theoretical as well as managerial implications in this important field of research.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to explore the orientations of consumer and company participants who participate in online crowd-sourced communities.

Methodology/Approach – Using a netnographic approach, we analysed the Nokia Design by Community (NDbC) crowd-sourced information contest, which was organised by Nokia in order to co-create a vision of the community's ‘dream’ Nokia device.

Findings – The findings reveal that community members' social orientations were dramatically different from the host organisation's narrow commercial focus, which led to unresolved tensions and as we posit, the ultimate failure of the initiative.

Research implications – The contemporary discourse on collaborative value co-creation potentially overemphasises the commercial objectives of organisations by failing to acknowledge the need for organisations to address the complex communal objectives and motivations of members of crowd-sourced communities.

Practical implications – Organisations need to acknowledge and address the complex and dynamic communal and commercial tensions that inherently emerge in online crowd-sourced communities. They need to adopt a tribal marketing approach and respectfully engage with community members if the diverse objectives of community members and the host organisations are to be satisfactorily met.

Originality/Value – Organisations and researchers need to recognise and acknowledge that crowdsourcing both begets communal conflict and fosters collaborative behaviour due to contested commercial and social orientations. While mindful of their commercial objectives, organisations will succeed in implementing online crowd-sourcing initiatives if they make a sincere effort to understand and respect the diversity, culture and social norms of the particular crowd-sourced online community concerned.