An Investigation of the Environmental Turbulence Factors and their Sources in the Collaboration - Post-harvest Food Loss Relationship

Recent studies suggested that collaboration among upstream agricultural supply chain (ASC) partners will impact and possibly reduce postharvest food loss (PHFL) levels; a possible direct relationship between collaboration and PHFL was indicated. There have been many changes in the ASC’s environment related to globalization, changing consumer attitudes and concerns, changing markets, increased competition, new technologies, commodity price fluctuations, food safety and quality standards and regulations, Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform in EU. The aforementioned changes cause turbulence in ASC’s environment and possibly impact both collaboration level among upstream partners and PHFL levels. The Greek ASC environment is characterized as being highly turbulent due to the changes in EU’s ASC environment. Contingency theory (CT) is utilized to conceptualize the different environmental turbulence factors in the Greek ASC. This research aims to identify the relevant environmental turbulence factors in the Greek ASC that might moderate the collaboration-PHFL relationship in the Greek ASC

IT DYNAMIC CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF DATA GENESIS CAPABILITY

Dynamic Capabilities are often considered as the factor justifying the different degrees of success of organizations in turbulent environment. However Dynamic Capability development remains a difficult issue to research, with a paucity of work directly addressing this question, despite its importance. The explanation of the development of Dynamic Capabilities would give organizations the instruments to rationally improve their chance of success and to more likely sustain their competitive advantage. We contribute to the emerging literature on Information Technology (IT) Dynamic Capability development by proposing a research framework grounded in the three sources of Dynamic Capabilities: organizational processes, firm history and firm's assets. Our model takes into consideration also the moderating role played by environmental turbulence on Dynamic Capability development and on process performance. In this contribution we lay the theoretical and methodological groundwork and we foresee the test of the model using Data Genesis (DG) capability as the context. DG is the Dynamic Capability of (1) choosing IT to generate and capture data in digital form, (2) integrating the technology in the appropriate business processes, and (3) managing the digital data so produced.IT capability; Dynamic Capability; capability development; Data Genesis

The impact of information technology resources on SMEs' innovation performance

This work aims to develop a research framework to examine the impact of information technology resources on the innovation performance of Saudi small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs). SMEs innovation capability influences growth and technological progress (Bruque & Moyano, 2007). However, many developing countries exhibit moderate or even low innovation performance. For instance, Saudi Arabia is ranked 54th by the Global Innovation Index (GII 2011). Innovation systems studies focus on the alignment between the interactions of innovation actors with their constantly changing environment toward better innovation performance (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000). The dynamic capabilities of organisations have been highlighted as a crucial characteristic that helps to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage (Teece et al., 1997). The indirect impact IT resources on innovation performance represents an attractive research area (Benitez-Amado et al., 2010). Therefore, we argue that a closer look at Saudi SMEs information technology resources and their impact on the firm dynamic capabilities and innovation performance would make a significant contribution to existing knowledge. Areas such as the organisation strategies of developing countries, innovation management, dynamic capabilities, open innovation and strategic information systems are few examples of areas that might benefit from this work

An empirical investigation of Network-Oriented Behaviors in Business-to-Business Markets

This study is concerned with the extent to which network-oriented behaviors directly and/or indirectly affect firm performance. It argues that a firm's interaction behaviors in relation to an embedded network structure are key mechanisms that facilitate the development of important organizational capabilities in dealing with business partners. Such network-oriented behaviors, which are aimed at affecting the position of a company in the network, are consequently important drivers of firm performance, rather than the network structure alone. We develop a conceptual model that captures network-oriented behaviors as a driving force of firm performance in relation to three other key organizational behaviors, i.e., customer-oriented, competitor-oriented and relationship-oriented behaviors. We test the hypothesized model using a dataset of 354 responses collected via an on-line questionnaire from UK managers, whose organizations operate in business-to-business markets in either the manufacturing or services sectors. This study provides four key findings. First, a firm's networkoriented behaviors positively affect the development of customer-oriented and competitor-oriented behaviors. Secondly, they also foster relationship coordination with its important business partners within the network. Thirdly, the effective management of the firm's portfolio of relationships is found to mediate the positive impact of network-oriented behaviors on firm profitability. Lastly, closeness to end-users amplifies the positive effect of network-oriented behaviors on relationship portfolio effectiveness

Organizations in a Non-Linear, Unpredictable World

Globalisation, new information technology, universal networking, the nonlinearity of things, and environmental turbulence have changed strategies of managing and succeeding. This paper examines nonlinear phenomena and their practical consequences especially from an organizational perspective by using three concepts: Malcolm Gladwell’s tipping point, Ilya Prigogine’s self-organization, and Algirdas Greimas’s semiotic square. Tipping points occur at all system levels, e.g. such as determining for instance how fashion trends catch on, how health campaigns succeed, and how new ideas spread like wildfire. Self-organization refers to the kind of consciousness, action and intelligence that is manifested in the community’s rather than the individual’s actions, such as swarm intelligence in the animal world. Insight into the dynamics of change is supplemented by the semiotic square, which sheds light on how organizations can succeed. They must have buffers, a surplus of resources to which they can resort whenever something unexpected happens, and they must be attuned to change and have access to tools that promote open, confidence-building communication.Peer reviewe

Vital Approach to Transition: Slovene Multiple Case Study

This paper uses a multiple case study to suggest the effectiveness in application of an integrated model for the design of sustainable change strategies in high velocity environments and organizations. The model integrates awareness of current organizational cultural characteristics with leadership intent and strategy formation. The cultural analysis provides a lens through which diverse organizational values are exposed and stakeholders can assess organizational alignment with the external environment, organizational mission and future vision. Using the inherent differentiation of values as creative tensions, strategies are formulated for purposeful change to improve alignment. Leadership inquiry is used to suggest an alignment of personal intent with the strategic initiatives to project sustainable change. This Values, Inquiry, and Tensions Alignment for Leadership model (VITAL) is applied as an intervention sequence which provides information, direction, and motivation for sustainable change in transition organizations and environments.

NPD-Process and Planning in Japanese engineering companies: Findings from an interview research

In this paper we report on the results of an interview research about new product development (NPD) processes and planning in 15 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We asked the companies to describe one successful and one less successful project. All in all, we collected data for 29 projects, 15 of which were successful. We explore how these companies structure their NPD processes and conduct their planning activities in order to strike a balance between the needs for efficiency and flexibility, which often carry opposing implications for organizing and managing new product development projects. While the majority of the companies in our sample build their NPD efforts on a similar process model, we find them to employ diverse procedures to achieve their aims. In the companies we interviewed, there is a strong inclination towards planning R&D activities. New product development projects are based on well-defined procedures and written documents, which represent a standard approach to the companies' ; R&D efforts. However, not all aspects are planned in equal depth and later phases of NPD projects, such as the implementation of the product concept into production, which exhibit lower uncertainty, are planned in much more detail. The need for flexibility in planning is highlighted by our finding that the less successful projects failed to anticipate changes - especially within the environment - and therefore were often carried out according to outdated plans and information. Our results suggest that the quality of the initial project plan with regard to the information it is based upon is closely linked to success. Despite the environmental turbulence, there seem to be no pronounced differences between successful and less successful projects concerning changes of the plan throughout the course of the project. Consequently, our interview partners consider the project managers of the unsuccessful projects to be less skilled in marketing and management than their successful counterparts. --New product development,Japanese firms,planning,success innovation,project management

The development of a strategic control framework and its relationship with management accounting

Management accounting systems have been criticised for being excessively focused on shortterm performance. As a result long-term strategic direction and goals may have been neglected. To help overcome this problem it has been suggested that organisations should adopt strategic management accounting techniques and management control systems which are orientated towards the achievement of strategic goals. This paper argues that integration with strategic control would significantly enhance the relevance of management accounting systems. In developing such an approach this paper first integrates the salient features of the extant strategic control models in a framework that recognises the needs of the current business environment. And second, it examines how strategic control could be used as the basis for developing management accounting systems that have a stronger strategic focus

A rush of blood to the head: Temporal dimensions of retrenchment, environment and turnaround performance

In this work we test the general assumption in the turnaround literature that time is critical for firm survival, especially during the retrenchment stage.We study three time dimensions of change at this stage: timing, speed and rhythm. Drawing on the downward spiral and threat-rigidity perspectives, we posit that the positive impact these time dimensions have on turnaround performance is highly contingent on two types of environment. Our findings, based on a sample of 263 declining US firms over a 26-year period (1983e2009), demonstrate that an early timing of retrenchment has a positive impact on performance when the environment is munificent. On the contrary, an early timing has a negative impact when the environment is dynamic. We also note that a fast pace of retrenchment positively impacts firm performance in dynamic environments. Finally, we find that declining firms display better performances when following an irregular rhythm of retrenchment, both in highly munificent and highly dynamic environments. Our results indicate that, in general, declining firm performance improves with time-aggressive retrenchment actions in both types of environment. We discuss the contribution of our research to the turnaround literature, and the downward spiral and threat-rigidity perspective