Search results

The purpose of this paper is to analyze, from a dynamic capabilities perspective, the role of big data analytics in supporting firms' innovation processes.

Relevant literature is reviewed and critically assessed. An interpretive methodology is used to analyze empirical data from interviews of big data analytics experts at firms within digitally related sectors.

This study shows how firms leverage big data to gain “richer” and “deeper” data at the inter-sections between the digital and physical worlds. The authors provide evidence for the importance of counterintuitive strategies aimed at developing innovative products, services or solutions with characteristics that may initially diverge, even significantly, from established customer/user needs.

The authors’ findings offer insights to help practitioners manage innovation processes in the physical world while taking investments in big data analytics into account.

The authors provide insights into the evolution of scholarly research on innovation directed toward opportunities to create a competitive advantage by offering new products, services or solutions diverging, even significantly, from established customer demand.

The field of broad-based employee ownership within corporations is a specific application of the foundational topic of property ownership. It is situated at the intersection of a broad range of scholarly disciplines including economics, law, finance and management. Each discipline contributes vocabulary and distinctions describing this field. That broad spectrum of disciplinary inquiry is a strength but it also lends a “ships passing in the night” quality to discussions of employee ownership. This paper attempts to unravel the narrative diversity surrounding this topic. Four meanings of ownership are introduced. Those meanings are in turn embedded within two abstract models of the corporation; the corporation as property and the corporation as social institution.

There is no experimental design The paper presents a conceptual overview and introduces a taxonomy of four meanings and two models of ownership.

Four meanings of ownership are introduced. The meanings are ownership as compensation, investment, retirement and membership. Those meanings are in turn embedded within two abstract models of the corporation; the corporation as property and the corporation as social institution.

No hypotheses are advanced. This is not a research paper. A conceptual overview that makes use of taxonomy of meanings and models is introduced to help clarify confusions abundant in the field of employee ownership. Readers may differ with the categories of meanings and models introduced in this conceptual overview.

The ambition of the paper is to describe the various meanings and models of employee ownership presently in use in both academic and applied settings. It is not necessary or desirable to assert the primacy of a single meaning or model in order to achieve progress. The analysis provided here surfaces a range of assumptions about ownership that have heretofore been implicit in both scholarship and in practice. Making those assumptions explicit should prove useful to both scholars and practitioners of employee ownership.

The concept of employee ownership enjoys a relatively broad appeal with the public. Among the academic disciplines that have trained their lights upon it, a more mixed reception prevails. Much of the academic and policy controversy derives from confusion about the nature and structure of employee ownership. This paper attempts to address that confusion by presenting a taxonomy of meanings and models that may prove useful for future research.

This study is one of the first efforts to comprehinsively map the various meanings and models of broad-based employee ownership.

The study empirically investigates whether the board of directors' expertise in the focal firm's industry has implications for innovation input. Additionally, it explores how this relationship is shaped by the CEO's educational level and background in the technology area.

The article tests the hypothesized relationships through the Arellano–Bond generalized method of moment estimators, proxying innovation input by R&D to total sales. Moreover, it analyses a sample of privately-held Italian medium and large high-tech companies observed over four years by relying on a unique hand-collected dataset.

The research documents an inverted U-shaped relationship between board industry expertise and innovation input and shows that such curvilinear effect is moderated by the CEO's educational level and technology background. Specifically, while the curvilinear slope is less steep for highly educated CEO, it becomes steeper in the presence of technology trained CEO.

The paper recommends how to shape the board human capital as a meaningful driver of board effectiveness and innovation. Additionally, it calls the managerial attention towards the interaction and the interplay between board industry expertise and CEO education as able to influence the above-mentioned outcome.

While previous studies have focused on the linear and positive effect of board industry expertise on innovation, this research advances current knowledge in innovation management literature by testing the presence of a curvilinear relationship. Moreover, by exploring the moderating effect of CEO education, the paper provides a comprehensive picture on the interplay among board industry expertise, CEO educational training and innovation input.

This paper aims to present a new trend in management research: the Insider Econometrics approach.

The authors argue that the use of internal organizational data not available in public sources can benefit both researchers interested in advancing theories and practitioners interested to improve the decision-making toward more solid and evidence-based grounds.

The authors demonstrate the subjects involved in Insider Econometrics realm and provide a framework to guide management scholars to successfully engage in research involving strong partnerships between academia and real world organizations.

This paper introduces a guide to Insider Econometric research to management scholars.

Companies around the globe increasingly receive immense shareholder scrutiny due to perceivably excessive executive director remuneration. The debate in South Africa intensifies due to severe pay inequality. The authors thus accounted for the perspectives of asset managers and listed financial services companies in South Africa pertaining to the impact of voting and engagement on director pay policies and practices.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with selected asset managers, chief executive officers, chief financial officers and remuneration committee members of listed financial services companies to gauge their views on the impact of shareholder activism endeavours on remuneration governance. The qualitative data was analysed by conducting thematic analysis.

Most of the asset managers and financial services representatives preferred proactive, private engagement on pay concerns, given the impact thereof on voting outcomes, and ultimately director remuneration practices and policies. Independent remuneration committees have a prominent role in facilitating engagements with investors to ensure fair remuneration.

The consequences should be clearer if organisations receive substantial votes against their pay policies and implementation reports. South African regulators can consider the “two-strikes” rule to ensure that action is taken in response to shareholder voting on director remuneration matters.

Representatives of asset managers and listed financial services investee companies offered valuable insights on remuneration governance deliberations in an emerging market. This in-depth analysis highlights the importance of proactive engagement to ensure that corporate leaders are paid fairly.

Transaction cost economics sees a broad spectrum of governance structures spanned by two types of economic adaptation: autonomous and cooperative. Stakeholder theorists have drawn much inspiration from transaction cost economics but have not paid explicit attention to the centrality of the idea of adaptation in this literature. This study aims to address this gap.

The authors develop a novel conceptual framework applying the distinction between the two types of economic adaptation to stakeholder theory.

The authors argue that the idea of cooperative adaptation is particularly useful for describing the firm’s collaboration with primary stakeholders in the joint value creation process. In contrast, autonomous adaptation is more relevant for firms interacting with secondary stakeholders who are not directly engaged in joint value creation and may not have formal contractual relationships with the firm. Accordingly, cooperative adaptation can be seen as vital for resolving team production problems affecting joint value creation, whereas autonomous adaptation addresses how the firm maintains legitimacy within the larger stakeholder environment.

Similar to its significance for transaction cost economics, the distinction between the two types of adaptation equips stakeholder theory with a new systematic understanding of a potentially broad spectrum of firm–stakeholder collaboration forms.

Knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial firms (KIE) strongly rely on scientific and strategic research and development (R&D) capabilities to achieve higher performance levels. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to disentangle the effects of scientific capabilities and strategic R&D on KIE performance; and how the constituent elements of these dimensions can be configured to generate conditions for high performance.

The authors’ empirical setting involves companies that submitted projects to the Innovative Research in Small Businesses (PIPE) program in Brazil. The authors then run partial least square structural equation modeling to verify how scientific and strategic R&D capabilities influence the performance construct. Second, the authors apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to identify configurations that are equifinal in terms of generating superior performance.

Findings indicate a strong association between scientific capabilities and KIE performance. The configurational approach outlines the existence of multiple paths to success, but human capital stands as a core condition throughout estimations.

The authors’ assessment has implications for how KIE firms are managed according to their organizational profiles and trajectories. Also, it advances the authors’ comprehension on how entrepreneurship policies can better target these distinct profiles.

The authors’ analysis provides new evidence on the inherent complexity behind the generation of high performance in KIE when addressing their portfolios of knowledge-related capabilities. More than that, the authors were able to identify the existence of heterogeneous profiles that can equally lead to higher levels of performance.

The paper aims to investigate the difference in total factor productivity (TFP) among those firms with and without outsourcing in a developing country like Vietnam. Also, it explores the effect of outsourcing activities on total factor productivity with a specified concentration on the Vietnamese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The panel data set of SMEs used in this study was originated from biannual surveys conducted under the collaboration between educational organizations and government agencies: Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), Department of Economics – the University of Copenhagen, the Institution of Labor Studies and Social Affairs (ILSSA) in the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA). In this study, the model is developed based on the production function in accordance with the model of Girma and Görg (2004). The firms’ TFP is the difference between the actual and the predicted output as with the approach by Levinsohn and Petrin (2003).

This study finds out that firms with outsourcing have higher total factor productivity than those without outsourcing activities. In addition, the more firms spend on outsourcing, the higher total factor productivity they can gain. Outsourcing to SMEs in a developing country can significantly increase its TFP by means of either maintaining core competencies or searching external resources in conducting some internal activities.

Although outsourcing has been widely applied by large firms, the research studying its impact on productivity at firm level is limited. Especially, this study can shed light on the impact for the case of SMEs in a developing economy.

The United Nations' Principles of Responsible Management Education initiative aspires to transform the relationship between business and society by ensuring that the next generation of business leaders are shaped by management education that conceptualises businesses as generators of sustainable value. Simplistic economic models overemphasize the role of narrow profit maximization on the part of firms in generating broader economic wellbeing. More nuanced views of the relationships between firms and the societies in which they operate, such as those that allow for market power in product and labour markets, for the presence of externalities in the production of goods and services, for a role of the state in the provision of public goods, and for the existence of market failures more generally, offer profoundly different advice to aspiring practitioners of responsible management. This article proposes an introductory economics curriculum for management students that gives due emphasis to these more nuanced perspectives and thus equips aspiring business leaders with the skills they will need to build profitable enterprises that also fulfil the objective of generating sustainable value as envisioned by the Principles of Responsible Management Education.