Guanxi, government and Corporate reputation in China: Lessons for international companies

The purpose of this paper is to explore corporate reputation in the transitional Chinese context, and to examine the impact of guanxi on reputation management. China remains a hierarchical guanxi-based society despite the rapid transition to a market-led economy. The decentralised business environment today is more complicated than that in the pre-reform era. As reputation is relationship based, guanxi is an important form of reputation capital. Corporate reputation in China is all about managing relationships with key stakeholders, the most important being the government. Government at the top level is crucial for reputation-building and deal-making. Given the idiosyncratic market conditions and differences in culture, MNCs have to adopt a localisation strategy in corporate communications, showing due respect for the local culture

Realising Potential: Disability Confidence Builds Better Business

[Excerpt] ‘Realising potential’ sets out the latest thinking on how disabled people contribute to business success and how business, in the UK and globally, benefits from disability confidence. It provides the information senior business decision makers need to manage and profit from the disability dimension to key business trends: including an aging population, increasingly individualised customer relations, changing working patterns and enabling technology. Business must address the disability component of these trends and develop disability confidence if it is to compete in an increasingly complex environment and create value from difference. ‘Realising potential’ highlights the strategic, commercial, legal, societal, ethical, and professional benefits of getting it right on disability – the six building blocks of any business case for disability confidence

VALUE AND VALUES - WHAT MOTIVATES CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP IN SOUTH AFRICA?

The expectation that business has a responsibility to the immediate communities in which they operate and to national development imperatives has become entrenched in society. Globally, businesses have responded by embracing the discourse and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR), albeit at different levels. Such responses have been shaped by local business cultures and the national economic and political contexts.The discourse on CSR or corporate social investment (CSI) has ascended to global prominence, and there are numerous definitions of what it consists of. However, emerging and common themes point towards legislative compliance, meeting stakeholder expectations and contributing to the upliftment of the broader society while increasing and sustaining business profitability

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

The potential link between corporate innovations and corporate competitiveness:Evidence from IT firms in the UK

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough empirical investigation of the potential link between corporate innovations and corporate competitiveness in the context of the UK IT industry. Design/methodology/approach: This research uses a panel of 216 UK IT firms for the period from 2000 to 2016. The sample data for this study were extracted from the Worldscope, extracted from the Datastream database from Thomson Reuters. For the analysis of the data, the generalised method of moments model is applied. Findings: The results of this study provide empirical evidence that there exists a strong, positive link between corporate innovations and corporate competitiveness. Such evidence further reinforces the common view in the current literature of strategic management that because of the nature of their business, firms in the IT industry need to enhance their innovative capacities on a continual basis because of their critical role on these firms’ success and survival. Also, it is found that when the proxies for corporate innovations are lagged by two periods, their impact on corporate competitiveness becomes relatively more significant. However, when they are further lagged, i.e. by three periods, such an impact turns out to be relatively less pronounced. Research limitations/implications: The data gathered for this paper was restricted to IT-oriented firms in the UK. Using a secondary database (Datastream), the paper considered the period of 2000-2016. Originality/value: The research makes a significant contribution to the current debate on the relationship between information technology, innovation and performance, referred to in the literature as the productivity paradox, by studying the problem in the IT industry. It supports organisations from the sector in their efforts to deal with the dynamic nature of technological innovations and of the context where they operate. Methodologically, the way the study has measured the concepts of innovation and performance and the lessons learned from their analysis has also brought value to the research

Social Enterprise Businesses: A Strategy for Creating Good Jobs for People with Disabilities

Over the past 10 years, there has been a tremendous growth in entities known as social enterprise businesses. This approach has been particularly promising in creating new opportunities for individuals with disabilities in emerging and growth industries. Over the past five years, the Kessler Foundation's "Transition to Work" grants program has invested $18 million toward the goal of creating job opportunities for people with disabilities. This investment has included support for several social enterprise businesses in New Jersey, stemming from the Foundation's believe that these businesses have potential for increasing employment of people with disabilities

Multiplatform Public Service Broadcasting: The Economic and Cultural Role of UK Digital and TV Independents

In this report, produced as part of a two-year Arts & Humanities Research Council project (AH-H0185622-2) on ‘multiplatform public service broadcasting’, focusing on factual/specialist factual as a case study, we detail the role independent production companies play in PSB. We set out how PSB informs the production cultures of independent companies, the tensions that are experienced between profit and public service and the impact multiplatform commissioning and production practices have had on the sector