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The purpose of this paper is to describe the need to go beyond relationship management to embrace the techniques of value management with details on why and how CRE managers should pursue this as a professional goal.

This article discusses the experiences of the author working across multiple global corporate accounts. The article advances the discussion on how to strategically align and advance the performance of CRE departments to support business change for corporate competitive advantage.

As CRE managers strive to elevate their strategic relevance to the organization, they are challenged to go beyond relationship management. They are challenged to become value managers, capable of implementing corporate strategy anywhere and with anyone in the organization.

Further research is warranted into the perspectives of senior management on the contribution of CRE to the business planning process. CRE managers are often viewed as functional experts and may be overlooked as candidates for involvement in corporate management development programs.

CRE managers, in charge of business alignment, must turn a professional corner by focusing more on driving corporate value. A career choice is required to invest in the business and financial acumen needed to sit credibly at the planning table with senior management. The career path of the in‐house CRE manager is one of a general business manager, referred to in this article as a “value manager”.

CRE managers are challenged to adopt the behavior, attitude and skill set of general business managers to arrive at solutions to business challenges. These challenges are cross‐functional in nature and often do not start nor end with real estate or, by extension, facilities. Thus, the role of relationship manager needs to evolve into a value manager, who possesses the skills of business planning, business case development, and cross‐functional project management.

The issue dealt with in this chapter is the role of management in developing and maintaining business relationships among companies. Interdependent business network structures result from interactions in dyads between single actors and interactions among all involved actors collectively. Managers as ‘architects and constructors’ of business relationships, involved directly in developing the relationships between customers and suppliers, are mostly middle-management positions rather than top management. Purchasing managers, sales managers and technical managers are fundamental for the development of business relationships as they create value in business relationships. Relationships between companies cannot be developed unilaterally; they have to be developed jointly. Since value creation requires involvement of others, motivating other actors and mediating are fundamental in developing relationships and creating value. The effective development of business relationships of value hinges on the capability and skills of management to work with and through others, to relate to others and to cope with interdependencies that arise in relationships. However, the capability of a company to interact and create value in business relationships is not simply a sum of individual managerial skills; it is an issue of organising the interfaces in relationships to other business.

This chapter describes the change efforts and action research projects at a Dutch multinational which, over a period of 25 years, produced in one of its businesses a zigzag path toward collaborative leadership dynamics at the horizontal and vertical interfaces. The chapter also identifies the learning mechanisms that helped achieve this transformation. Changing the patterns at the vertical interfaces proved to be a most tricky, complex, and confusing operation. The data show that organizations need hierarchical interfaces between levels, but are hindered by the hierarchical leadership dynamics at these interfaces. The data furthermore show that competitive performance requires more than redesigning horizontal interfaces. A business can only respond with speed and flexibility to threats and opportunities in the external environment when the leadership dynamics at agility-critical vertical interfaces are also changed.

The purpose of this chapter is to further flesh out the small business strategy insight presented in the previous chapter through focus on the finer micro detail of what is actually done and by who in small business strategic management practice. The authors build forward their previous chapter response to deficiencies of understanding within the strategy and small business literatures, through provision of rich, thick description of best small business strategic management process and practice. And shine a brighter light into what has to date been a ‘black box’ of haze with regard to the fine detail and minutia of managerial, organisational and work activities that make up strategy process and content.

As in the previous chapter, the research approach is underpinned and informed by personal construct theory which gives emphasis to the highly complex nature of the task of small business strategic control and highlights the need for a creative and innovative research methodology to facilitate close and detailed investigation of the phenomenon.

This chapter is of significant practical relevance: offering guiding lenses and informing frameworks with regard to best small business strategic management process – and making explicit the micro-level actions, activities and behaviours which make up that process. These guiding frames are already being used to support growth-seeking owner managers in the UK and Africa. The knowledge base embraces original, valuing-adding work which addresses a major void in the current strategic management and small business literatures and is currently being utilised to help address unemployment and facilitate poverty reduction in Africa and underpin entrepreneurship development worldwide.

This research explores perceptions of knowledge management processes held by managers and employees in a service industry. To date, empirical research on knowledge management in the service industry is sparse. This research seeks to examine absorptive capacity and its four capabilities of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation and their impact on effective knowledge management. All of these capabilities are strategies that enable external knowledge to be recognized, imported and integrated into, and further developed within the organization effectively. The research tests the relationships between absorptive capacity and effective knowledge management through analysis of quantitative data (n = 549) drawn from managers and employees in 35 residential aged care organizations in Western Australia. Responses were analysed using Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modelling. Additional analysis was conducted to assess if the job role (of manager or employee) and three industry context variables of profit motive, size of business and length of time the organization has been in business, impacted on the hypothesized relationships.

Structural model analysis examines the relationships between variables as hypothesized in the research framework. Analysis found that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities correlated significantly with effective knowledge management, with absorptive capacity explaining 56% of the total variability for effective knowledge management. Findings from this research also show that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities provide a useful framework for examining knowledge management in the service industry. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the perceptions held between managers and employees, nor between respondents in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Furthermore, the size of the organization and length of time the organization has been in business did not impact on absorptive capacity, the four capabilities and effective knowledge management.

The research considers implications for business in light of these findings. The role of managers in providing leadership across the knowledge management process was confirmed, as well as the importance of guiding routines and knowledge sharing throughout the organization. Further, the results indicate that within the participating organizations there are discernible differences in the way that some organizations manage their knowledge, compared to others. To achieve effective knowledge management, managers need to provide a supportive workplace culture, facilitate strong employee relationships, encourage employees to seek out new knowledge, continually engage in two-way communication with employees and provide up-to-date policies and procedures that guide employees in doing their work. The implementation of knowledge management strategies has also been shown in this research to enhance the delivery and quality of residential aged care.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of corporate support programs on managers' environmental and social innovation behaviors. To offer a more comprehensive understanding of these relationships, the moderating role of technological reflectiveness and business moral values is also accounted for.

A scenario-based experimental study to test the impact of corporate support programs on environmental and social innovation behaviors is also adopted. After running a pretest to verify the effectiveness of alternative scenarios through 100 respondents with managerial experience residing in the UK and EU countries, we collected data from a sample of 220 senior managers of firms from the Australian food and beverage industry for the main study. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Dunnett's test to investigate direct relationships and the PROCESS Model to test the moderating role of technological reflectiveness and business moral values were used.

The findings reveal time provision, budget provision and advice provision as salient forms of corporate support programs that positively impact managers' environmental and social innovation behaviors. It is found that technological reflectiveness positively moderates the link between time provision and managers' social innovation behavior and negatively moderates the link between advice provision and managers' social innovation behavior. Furthermore, it is found that business moral values positively moderate the relationships between time and budget provisions and managers' environmental innovation behavior and between budget and advice provisions and managers' social innovation behavior.

The authors contribute to innovation and operations management research by adopting a behavioral operations management perspective and empirically analyzing the influences of managers' technological reflectiveness and business moral values on the relationship between organizational corporate support programs and managers' environmental and social innovation behavior in the context of the food and beverage industry.

The purpose of this study is to achieve an integrated understanding of the relationship between the desire of business managers for growth and their behavior toward business growth, with regard to variables affecting this relationship, within the framework of the theory of planned behavior. The main motivation for conducting this study was the lack of studies about the effects of cognitive factors on the growth of SMEs in Iran. In addition, behavior, personality, and specific characteristics of entrepreneurs, which have a great impact on the decision-making process and development of growth strategies, have been less taken into account in previous studies.

The present paper reviews the existing literature on growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), theory of planned behavior as well as previous studies on business growth of SMEs within the framework of planned behavior theory. The conceptual model of the research was compiled from the models of two previous studies. The mixed approach is implemented and the statistical population of the research comprises of the managers of exporting manufacturing SMEs. In the qualitative section, data were analyzed using open codification technique and the partial least squares software package was utilized to conduct the quantitative data analysis.

The results indicate that the desire of managers for business growth has a direct and positive impact on their behavior toward business growth. This means that the higher the desire of managers for growth, the higher the level of business growth they would achieve because the raising level of desire leads to making a greater effort for achieving the goal. In this study, personality traits of managers, business environment features and business features were analyzed as the factors influencing the desire of managers for business growth.

This paper will be useful for entrepreneurs, policymakers and researchers given its results about the effects of the desire of managers for growth on the measures and outcomes of business growth. This study suggests that the business environment has an important influence on its growth, and that the environmental dynamism paves the way for the growth of SMEs.

Most studies on business growth have focused on economic and political aspects affecting the growth of enterprises, and few studies have dealt with psychological traits of managers. The present study attempted to fill this gap in the literature and add to the very limited number of studies conducted about the effects of psychological factors on business growth. This means that the higher the desire of managers for growth, the higher the level of business growth they would achieve. In other words, higher levels of business growth are indicative of the desire of managers for growth, which itself is influenced by personality traits, business environment features and business features.

Attempts to verify anecdotal and field evidence of an unfounded expatriate assignment selection bias against American females. Surveyed the perceptions of US, German and Mexican managers across six areas for assessing the business success viability of female American expatriates. Shows that American managers were less positive than their counterparts who knew the foreign marketplace better. States that the gender of the manager played a significant role in the US sample, where female managers gave amore favourable assessment.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the perspective of youth employees about owner manager businesses. The owner-manager business (a one-man business) is the most common in Lagos. Hence, an inquiry into their management style and how it impacts youth employees within the context of decent work is important to explore.

The study used the convenience sample technique to obtain data from 382 owner-managers and youth employees who work in owner-managed businesses across various sectors. They were administered a questionnaire with carefully structured questions, with an 81% return rate. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) technique was used to identify the prominent parameters, and the hypothesis tested and validated accordingly.

The study identified three prominent factors that youth consider when working for an owner-manager business, i.e. the workplace factor, geographical factors and employee benefit. Consequently, issues regarding sustainable employment, conducive working conditions, job security and pension are paramount in the youths' view. Many owner-managers do not respect labour laws, and job security is low in owner-managed businesses; hence, they experience high turnover as most youth work in one-man businesses to gain experience.

The owner-manager business is the most predominant in the country and yet is under-researched. Furthermore, the perception of youth employees regarding owner-manager businesses provides a better understanding of performance and expected satisfactory outcome required from youth employees and how they can be met through proper channelling of their energies to the right tasks.

Organizational studies of time tend to be done by academic researchers rather than practitioners. This chapter builds on academic research to provide a practitioner perspective by reviewing time situated in theory and constructing two phenotypes: timescapes of business and social time. These timescapes are defined by six dimensions, each with a social and business time parameter. Organizational business and social timescapes have different functions and applications. Timescapes, with their concomitant dimensions and sets of parameters, are used differently by senior managers, middle managers, and entry-level managers. Three multi-level approaches (self, dyadic, and social relationships), composition theory, and compilation theory confirm these three managerial timescape usages. After a review of the theoretical bases of the timescape constructs and a brief discussion of the grounded, anthropological, research methodology used in the study, this chapter applies timescape theory and models to an extended time case study of the Procter & Gamble Company that frames the company's timescape understanding and use from a practitioner's view.