A Risk-Return Paradox: Risk, Performance-Based Pay and Performance

[Excerpt] In recent years, strategy researchers have examined the relationship between business risk and performance. The logic underlying this relationship is that organizations facing greater business risk seek to offset it with the prospect of higher financial returns. The research typically involves various financial measures of organization performance regressed on measures of risk. Surprisingly, the findings are contradictory. While some studies report evidence supporting a positive relationship between the risk organizations face and their performance (Aaker & Jacobson, 1987; Fiegenbaum & Thomas, 1988), others reported an inverse relationship (Bowman, 1982, 1984). These different results called into question the basic premise about the form of the risk-return relationship and left a void in understanding why organization decision makers might pursue more risky strategies. Advancing this line of inquiry, Miller and Bromiley (1990) noted that business risk, like financial performance, is multi-dimensional. Several dimensions of business risk emerged from their work including income stream and strategic or financial risk. They suggested that differences reported in the risk-return relationship resulted from different operationalizations of business risk

A Conceptual Framework for B2B Electronic Contracting

Electronic contracting aims at improving existing business relationship paradigms and at enabling new forms of contractual relationships. To successfully realize these objectives, an integral understanding of the contracting field must be established. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for business-to-business contracting support. The framework provides a complete view over the contracting field. It allows positioning research efforts in the domain, analysing them, placing their goals into perspective, and overseeing future research topics and issues. It is the basis for drawing conclusions about basic requirements to contracting systems

Using a priori algorithm for supporting e-commerce system

The Internet technology has brought about a significant impact in doing business. It promotes the new way of doing business by enabling new system such as electronic commerce (e-commerce) to the worldwide users. Currently, the e-commerce system does not only provide electronic transactions like online payment, electronic cart shopping and ordering, and online tracking, but it must also be able to support a good relationship with their customers by providing a creative way in its business operations. It is because of many organizations having to maintain their customers by serving a good customer satisfaction. Lack understanding of the customers will cause an organization loss their customers and then would loss the company profit. This paper demonstrates the development of e-commerce system by focusing on the use of a Priori algorithm as supported feature in our e-commerce system. The feature is included to increase a good customer relationship management for the proposed system. It is hoped the proposed prototype would illustrate some practical ideas on how much advantages can be benefited from the e-commerce system and customer relationship management

Research-in-Progress: Understanding the Relationship between IT-Business Strategic Alignment and Firm Performance

The relationship between IT-business strategic alignment (hereafter referred to as alignment) and firm performance has been a topic of great concern to strategy researchers for decades. However, we found no research to date that has considered a complete model considering all the links between 6 unique types of alignment and 3 unique types of firm performance. The failure to consider a single, omnibus test of this model has resulted in conflicting findings and, consequently, an “alignment paradox” where some research finds a positive relationship between alignment and firm performance and other research finds a negative relationship. This research-in-progress seeks to theorize these relationships for future empirical testing

Spas, steamships and sardines : Edwardian package tourism and the marketing of Galician regionalism

From 1901 until the First World War, alongside its principal business of shipping rubber and leather to and from the USA and Northern Brazil, Liverpool's Booth Steamship Company (familiarly known as the ‘Booth Line’) ran a portfolio of highly successful holiday tours to Madeira, Portugal and Galicia. Although this side of the company's business has long been forgotten by business and maritime historians, this paper argues that the company's leisure tours were an important contribution to the early history of British tourism in Spain. In addition, it argues that we should not underestimate the significance of this project for our understanding of Galicia's own history, and in particular for expanding our understanding of the Galician regionalist movement and its relationship with the wider world

Examining client perceptions of partnership quality and its dimensions in an IT outsourcing relationship

This paper reports on an empirical study of the multidimensionality of partnership quality in IT outsourcing arrangements and the relationships between these dimensions of partnership quality. A two-phase national survey was conducted to collect empirical data to confirm the dimensions of partnership quality in an IT outsourcing arrangement from the client organisation perspective and to identify the significant relationships between these dimensions using a second generation multivariate analysis technique—partial least squares (PLS). The findings from results of the data analyses show that inter-organisational trust, shared business understanding and to a lesser extent, functional and dysfunctional conflict between the client organisation and the outsourcing vendor in an IT outsourcing relationship are the key determinants of partnership quality. The key outcome variable for high partnership quality between the client organisation and the outsourcing vendor in an IT outsourcing relationship is mutual beneficial sharing of risks and benefits. Commitment in an IT outsourcing relationship is confirmed as a multidimensional construct of behaviour commitment and temporal/continuance commitment and was found to be influenced by the other dimensions of partnership quality. The key findings of this study provide support for the notion that trust and shared business understanding are key drivers in the IT outsourcing partnership style relationship ensuring that the sharing of risks and benefits are realised and conflict is minimised leading to a high quality and ultimately successful partnership between the client organisation and the outsourcing vendor. Furthermore our findings indicate that behavioural commitment to the contractual obligations of an IT outsourcing relationship sustains an ongoing temporal commitment to the partnership between the client organisation and the outsourcing vendor

Exploring the direction on the environmental and business performance relationship at the firm level. Lessons from a literature review

The interest of scientists and companies in understanding the business implications of environmental investment is timely; however, a dilemma remains at the firm level: is the environment a “strategic competitive factor”, as in the “Porter point of view”, or is it a “luxury good”, as in the “Wagner point of view”? Our research contributes to this debate through a review of the papers published in scientific journals between 2000 and 2015 that discussed the direction of the relationship between the environmental and business performances of enterprises. The objectives of the research are: (a) to verify if there is an agreement in the scientific literature of the last 15 years about the “Porter–Wagner dilemma” when focusing at the firm level; (b) to underline the prevalent cause and effect directions of the relationship between environmental and business performance; and (c) to investigate the reasons for any disagreements in this topic among the scientists. The results show that the main agreement regards the positive bi-directional relationship, as a virtuous cyclic approach with mutual effects between business and environmental performance; nevertheless, more complex hypotheses emerge, such as nonlinear and/or conditional relationship, that need to be further explored. On the other hand, the Porter–Wagner dilemma remains, and the main reason for the non-agreement among scientists can be due to the several non-homogeneous variables considered in the analyses. Thereafter, as lesson for scientists, the priority is to share univocal methods to measure firms’ environmental and business performances

The Relationships in Marketing: Contribution of a Historical Perspective

This paper presents an historical analysis of relationship marketing. We discuss the roots and the directions of relationship marketing that are considered relevant: their origins, the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing group (IMP) approach to business relationships, the Nordic approach to services relationships and, the managerial and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approach of relationship marketing. The paper highlights that the boundaries of relationship marketing as defined in contemporary literature have been permeable and elastic. Relationship marketing consists of a fragmented collection of different approaches, partly independent partly overlapping, inspired by different theories, with a multitude of aggregation levels and several units of analysis. We clarify the scope of this domain and we present a number of critical issues that remain unresolved. Is the concept of relationship marketing ubiquitous and can it be applied to every context? Are relationships alike whatever the market considered? Do they describe the same phenomena or are they different phenomena resulting from different contexts? We present a historical analysis of relationships marketing that could contribute to a better understanding of what relationships are in marketing.relationships, business-to-business relationships, relationship marketing, CRM

CRM In Gaming: It\u27s No Crapshoot!

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, though slightly more than a decade old, has become the management craze of the 21st century. Yet, managerial understanding of what CRM is, what it does, how to implement it, and the grounds for success or failure in CRM implementation, seem far from crystallized. This paper looks at why so many CRM endeavors fail, and proceeds to discuss issues critical to CRM\u27s success. CRM projects in casinos will have a higher chance of success if CRM is viewed as a business philosophy and becomes a part of the corporate culture. Appropriate customer strategy, organizational transformation, and due attention to issues such as business processes, organizational collaboration, training, and data integration will enhance the success rates of CRM ventures

Business Method Patents, Innovation, and Policy

The trickle of business method patents issued by the United States Patent Office became a flood after the State Street Bank decision in 1998. Many scholars, both legal and economic, have critiqued both the quality of these patents and the decision itself. This paper discusses the likely impact of these patents on innovation. It first reviews the facts about business method and internet patents briefly and then explores what economists know about the relationship between the patent system and innovation. It concludes by finding some consensus in the literature about the problems associated with this particular expansion of patentable subject matter, highlighting remaining areas of disagreement, and suggesting where there are major gaps in our understanding of the impact of these patents.