Documents business strategy 248 results

"What can donation strategies tell us about corporate political preferences, as seen from the perspective of power resource and varieties of capitalism theories? This article tests six hypotheses within an Olsonian framework for corporate donations to political parties with new data from the 100 largest German firms between 1984 and 2005. The findings reveal that only a minority of firms donate, and donation amounts are surprisingly small given the financial assets of these companies, which suggests the presence of a collective action dilemma with small selective and arguably larger collective benefits. Management ties between firms are an important way of making firms overcome the collective action dilemma. Firms distribute their donations if any – mainly on the right side of the political spectrum, particularly if the firms are personally interwoven with other large companies or if they are family owned. However, some firms, particularly those belonging to the automobile sector, donate across the political spectrum."

"Based on the related literature in economics, organizational sociology and the sociology of finance, this article constructs a novel conceptual explanation for corporate short-termism, that is, the tendency of corporate managers to sacrifice long-term investments to improve short-term earnings (STEs). We theorize about how such corporate short-termism emerges, at least partly, from systemic, self-reinforcing processes across various communities of actors including investors, the media and managers themselves. In doing so, we refute the common notion that corporate short-termism is caused by an inherent preference of investors or other actors to focus on STEs. Consequently, the systemic perspective offered by this article questions some conventional assumptions about the roots of corporate short-termism and emphasizes the influence of coordination mechanisms and behavioural biases in giving rise to self-reinforcing loops."

"Why have relatively poor and underdeveloped countries been able to spawn so many global firms in the last two decades? Are emerging market multinationals (EMNCs) really different from successful multinationals from developed economies? This book tackles these and other fundamental theoretical questions about EMNCs. A distinguished group of researchers assesses the unique strategies and behavior of successful EMNCs, from the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei to the Indian conglomerate Tata, to the South African beverages firm SABMiller. They address a range of topics, such as the drivers of internationalization by EMNCs; their distinctive process capabilities; how they catch up with established rivals on technology; how state ownership or business-group affiliation affects their behavior; and why they sometimes relocate their headquarters to advanced economies. This book will appeal to scholars and graduate students in global strategy and international business, as well as consultants of multinational companies, looking for state-of-the-art analysis of EMNCs. "

"Institutional systems exert important influences on firms' development of innovative capabilities. This article examines studies of firms' innovative competencies within the comparative capitalisms (CC) literature. This research provides theoretically sophisticated assessments of firms' innovative capabilities in different countries. It takes into consideration a range of institutional areas, such as corporate governance and labour market regimes. However, CC studies differ significantly along three key analytical dimensions. First, some studies focus more extensively on firms and firms' objectives than others. Second, research examines institutions at the macro, meso and micro levels to varying degrees. Finally, studies adopt different assumptions on the variability and dynamism of a firm's institutional setting; such variability can include the importance of foreign institutional resources to firms' innovative capabilities. Future CC research should pay greater attention to theorizing firms' innovation-related requirements and detailing their specific institutional settings, including their access to domestic and foreign institutional resources. Concepts and insights from the wider innovation and international business literatures can help achieve these objectives. By drawing on these related fields, CC studies of innovative capabilities will be able to assess in theoretically robust ways the challenges that internationalization and what this article calls ‘institutional outsourcing' pose for analysts and firms."

"A variety of innovative institutional forms have emerged within the context of voluntary attempts to address pressing social and environmental issues. Among such institutions, the prevailing wisdom is that those characterized as encompassing multi-stakeholder governance are generally seen as having greater legitimacy than other forms of voluntary action, and such institutions have proliferated as a result. At the same time, business-driven programmes that exclude societal stakeholder groups are believed to be increasingly emerging as competitors to multi-stakeholder-governed programmes. This paper explores the relationship between these two trends and, in particular, highlights the potential for competition between multi-stakeholder and business-driven programmes to lead to a diverse range of outcomes which are shaped by legitimation politics. This perspective emphasizes the open-ended and contingent nature of voluntary programme interactions and the importance of strategy and choice of voluntary programmes and their participants in shaping the institutional design of programmes. Drawing upon a review of prior research and an in-depth case study of business-driven voluntary programmes within the European multi-product retail industry, the study shows that one key implication of legitimation politicking is a divergence between the surface appearance of the governance of programmes and the programmes' actual institutional design."

"De nombreuses entreprises et administrations s'efforcent de placer le client ou l'usager au centre de leur fonctionnement et tendent vers une organisation « orientée client ». Dans ce cadre, elles portent un intérêt particulier aux relations de service qu'elles placent au centre de leurs stratégies de développement, comme c'est le cas des deux entreprises de service étudiées : une entreprise de transport collectif et une société privée d'assurances. Cette nouvelle orientation se traduit par une modification des situations de travail, exigeant des salariés de nouvelles compétences et attitudes. L'article approfondit les conséquences de ces projets d'orientation client sur les métiers et le travail des agents en contact direct avec les clients et souligne les limites de la polyvalence et de la réactivité qui en sont attendues."

"In this paper we examine the sourcing strategies of clothing firms in the developed economies of the UK and Germany in the context of their national institutional framework. We argue that, as a result of their embeddedness in divergent national structures, these firms pursue different sourcing strategies and make different locational choices. We place particular emphasis on the different mix of arms' length and relational contracting that firms develop, and on the divergent degree of control over the manufacturing process and the product that they retain. We suggest that the construction of global production networks and control over supplier firms is mediated by co-ordinating firms' product strategy and the degree of dependence on national retailers this engenders. UK and German firms and their networks differ not only from each other but also from the US case which is often taken as representative of the industry."

"Objective:Human resources and health issues are crucial in terms of corporate competitiveness. However, systematic, continuous and strategically aligned occupational safety and health (OSH) management is scarcely applied in companies. One major reason for this could be the lack of generally accepted and standardised OSH control methods. Our objective was thus to conceptualize a method by which qualitative factors such as human resources and OSH aspects contribute to the performance or value-added layer of an organization.Methods: We developed a business case based on the well-known and accepted Balanced Scorecard approach, which we adapted and applied to the management of OSH issues. The concept was implemented in the course of a comprehensive case study at a German automobile manufacturer. We gathered health as well as finance data in order to test which health-related indicators had an impact on financial performance. The demonstration of, and reporting on, how the promotion of workplace health contributes strategically to the organization is crucial for both health and human resource managers.Results: Based on multivariate regression analyses, our main finding was that the Balanced Scorecard approach is an adequate means to control OSH issues in terms of strategic health management. Our analyses demonstrated that health-related interventions contribute significantly to performance aspects such as quality, productivity, absenteeism, and cost reduction. Therefore, the financial impact of health-related aspects / interventions could be demonstrated by means of the OSH scorecard.Conclusions:The availability and quality of health data within the context of overall corporate performance data needs to be improved in order to bridge OSH-related and performance issues of an organization."