Managerial engagement with scenario planning: A conceptual consumption approach

Scenario development is widely used to reduce uncertainty while making decisions in high velocity environments. Despite this fact, managerial fixation on short term performance objectives, their penchant fear of the unpredictable future and their sheer inability to face the alternative futures generated in the scenario planning exercises has led to little value capture from this activity. The paper analyzes the factors that determine the willingness of decision-makers, to be actively involved in scenario planning. The authors suggest that effective incentives to promote the interest in this activity and its impact can be found, if we consider the decision-makers, as 'consumers' of certain ideas, concepts, expectations, and competencies. In particular, the paper hypothesizes and validates the assumptions that the selection of appropriate targets for scenario planning, commitment to achieving them, expectations of positive outcomes, increasing the frequency of scenario planning exercises are more likely to be expressed in the growing interest of managers and stakeholders to develop scenarios. The presented results are tested on the most common - intuitive logic approach to scenario planning. The authors expect future research to go further to empirically test the proposed hypotheses, and if possible, ascertain whether similar hypotheses could be generated in the context of other tried and tested scenario planning methodologies such as the probabilistic modified trends, competitive intelligence and cross impact analysis

Service nepotism in cosmopolitan transient social spaces

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. This article examines service nepotism, the practice of bestowing gifts or benefits on customers by frontline service staff based on a perceived shared socio-collective identity. Adopting a micro-sociological approach, it explores the practice as played out in multi-cultural transient service encounters. Given the dearth of existing research and low visibility of service nepotism operating ‘under the radar’, the article assumes an exploratory qualitative research approach to capture it through ‘microstoria’: the sharing of stories by marginal actors, as recounted by West African migrants working in the UK. These stories reveal similarity-to-self cueing, non-verbal communication and the availability of discretionary authority as three salient logics in play. In a highly differentiated multi-ethnic society, service nepotism challenges a very specific customer-oriented bureaucratic ethos that demands impartiality. It also provides contexts for relatively powerless employees to rebalance their relationship with their organizations, thereby addressing a more pressing dysfunction within the market and society more generally

Service nepotism in the multi-ethnic marketplace: Mentalities and motivations

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the multi-ethnic marketplace as the site of the emergence of service nepotism: the practice where employees bestow relational benefits and/or gifts on customers on the basis that they share a perceived common socio-collective identity. The authors draw on the contemporary turn to practice in social theory to explore why ethnic employees may engage in service nepotism even when they are aware that it contravenes organizational policy.Design/methodology/approach– Given the paucity of empirical research which investigates the multi-ethnic marketplace as a locus for the emergence of service nepotism, the authors adopted an exploratory qualitative research approach to advance insight into service nepotism. The study benefits from its empirical focus on West African migrants in the UK who represent a distinct minority group living in urban areas of the developed world. Data for the study were collected over a six-month period, utilizing semi-structured interviews as the primary method of data collection.Findings– The research highlights the occurrence and complexities of service nepotism in the multi-ethnic marketplace, and identifies four distinct activities (marginal revolution, reciprocal altruism, pandering for recognition, and horizontal comradeship), that motivate ethnic employees to engage in service nepotism, despite their awareness that this conflicts with organizational policy.Research limitations/implications– By virtue of the chosen theoretical lens, the authors were unable to demonstrate how service nepotism could be observed outside spoken language. Also, care should be taken in generalizing the findings from this study given the particularities of the sub-group involved. For example, since the study is based on a small sample of first generation migrants, the findings may not hold true for their offspring, whose socialization and marketplace experiences may be qualitatively different from those of their parents.Practical implications– Service nepotism challenges fundamental western egalitarian ideals in the multi-ethnic marketplace. Organizations may wish to develop strategies to placate observers’ concerns of creeping favouritism in a supposedly equitable marketplace. The research could also serve as a starting point for managers objectively to assess the likely impact of service nepotism on the organizing value systems and competitiveness. In particular, the authors suggest that international marketing managers would do well to look beneath the surface to see what is really going on in international marketplaces, since ostensible experiences of marketplace consumption may not always reflect underlying reality.Originality/value– By using service nepotism as an analytical category to explore the marketplace experiences of ethnic service employees living and working in industrialized societies, the research shows that the practice of service nepotism, whilst taken for granted, can have far-reaching impact on individuals, observers, and service organizations in an increasingly highly differentiated multi-ethnic society

On the consequences of scarcity mindset:How 'having too little' means so much for ethnic venture failure

Drawing on the psychological concept of scarcity mindset as a lens, we explore UK-based ethnic entrepreneurs' accounts of their behaviors and choices to theorize ethnic business venture failure. Our findings suggest the constraints of 'having too little' entrepreneurial resources can induce three organizing tensions in organizing, community embeddedness, spatial and segment spawning, and dispositional optimism––which may operate in combination or serially to precipitate ethnic venture failure. Our findings contribute to research on conflicting demands in entrepreneurship by showing how resource constraints, sometimes played out in the form of enduring inequalities within markets and society-at-large stymies the conversion of contradictory yet mutually constituting demands in organizing into potentially productive outcomes

Relational interdependencies and the intra-EU mobility of African European Citizens

How can we better understand the puzzle of low-skilled migrants who have acquired citizenship in a European Union country, often with generous social security provision, choosing to relocate to the United Kingdom? Drawing on Elias’s figurational theory as a lens, we explore how relational interdependencies foster the mobility of low-skilled African European Citizens from European Union states to the United Kingdom. We found that African European Citizens rely on ‘piblings networks’, loose affiliations of putative relatives, to compensate for deficits in their situated social capital, facilitating relocation. The temporary stability afforded by impermanent bonds and transient associations, in constant flux in migrant communities, does not preclude integration but paradoxically promotes it by enabling an ease of connection and disconnection. Our study elucidates how these relational networks offer African European Citizens opportunities to achieve labour market integration, exercise self-efficacy, and realize desired futures; anchoring individuals in existing communities even when they are perpetually transforming

Cloud resource adaptation:A resource based perspective on value creation for corporate growth

Instantaneous access to firms' resources, any-time, any-where dominates contemporary discourse on business systems transformations. The advent of utility computing through cloud based resource development has therefore altered both the perception of IT resources and the expectations of their use in practice. Drawing on the resource based view as a theoretical lens; we examine the nature of unique capacity development in adapting cloud based technologies for corporate growth. Focusing on the experiences of two multinational firms that have recently implemented strategies aimed at integrating and leveraging value from cloud computing, we argue that while cloud computing may improve organizing at systems and operations levels, the development of unique competencies of skills and knowledge acquired through the implementation of cloud is what is likely to lead to the creation and capture of value relevant for competitiveness. Our case evidence suggests that as information management infrastructure gets altered, the cost savings and efficiency gains that result, may lead to sustained corporate growth and stronger external networks. We conclude with some implications for the theory and practice of value creation for corporate growth

Effect of Liquidity and Capital on Risk-Adjusted Efficiency of Banks in Emerging Economies: Evidence From Ghana

The performance of the banking industry plays a crucial role in achieving sound and accelerated economic growth. This study aims to estimate the risk-adjusted cost and profit efficiencies of banks in Ghana, to assess the effect of liquidity and capital on the estimated risk-adjusted efficiencies. The study employs the parametric (SFA) frontier over the period 2009 – 2018. The results reveal that increase in bank liquidity results in an increase in both risk-adjusted cost efficiency and risk-adjusted profit efficiency. High levels of bank capital are also associated with increases in both risk-adjusted cost efficiency and risk-adjusted profit efficiency

Relational interdependencies and the intra-EU mobility of African European Citizens

How can we better understand the puzzle of low-skilled migrants who have acquired citizenship in a European Union country, often with generous social security provision, choosing to relocate to the United Kingdom? Drawing on Elias’s figurational theory as a lens, we explore how relational interdependencies foster the mobility of low-skilled African European Citizens from European Union states to the United Kingdom. We found that African European Citizens rely on ‘piblings networks’, loose affiliations of putative relatives, to compensate for deficits in their situated social capital, facilitating relocation. The temporary stability afforded by impermanent bonds and transient associations, in constant flux in migrant communities, does not preclude integration but paradoxically promotes it by enabling an ease of connection and disconnection. Our study elucidates how these relational networks offer African European Citizens opportunities to achieve labour market integration, exercise self-efficacy, and realize desired futures; anchoring individuals in existing communities even when they are perpetually transforming.</p