The Vietnam War, the American War and the ‘Bridge Generation’

One April morning in the 1990s during my commute to work on a project teaching business concepts and practices to professors and managers at the National Economics University in Hanoi, I saw red

Organizational Culture, Performance, and Competitive Advantage: What Next?

For over 20 years, beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the topic of organizational culture has been a key area of interest for managers and scholars worldwide.1 Much of the literature has focused on defining the term “organizational culture,”2 and its relationship to an organization’s performance3 and competitive advantage.4 In particular, research has examined its importance, its links with other variables that may influence performance, and how managers can use corporate culture to create and build successful organizations. In this chapter, we present an overview of selected past research on organizational culture and how it is viewed as a contributor to performance and competitive advantage. We also identify selected areas where existing research has not been fully pursued, for example, how to sustain culture over time, and offer observations on promising directions for future research. Building upon these observations, we offer a simple framework that categorizes ways that organizational culture and performance or competitive advantage may be related and that may suggest new areas for research. In this discussion, we seek to contribute to management’s comprehension and awareness of organizational culture as a source of competitive advantage, while acknowledging that links between culture and advantage may sometimes appear to be loose

The Soft Stuff is the Hard Stuff: How Relationships and Communications Can Drive the Execution of Business Strategy

In this chapter, we take a somewhat contrarian approach and explore the value of “soft” skills—specifically, building strong relationships and communicating effectively—in driving the effective execution of strategy. We divided the chapter into five parts. First, we describe what happens with relationships and with communication that might contribute to the failure to execute business strategy. Next, we discuss why relationship and communication problems happen—including the power of organizational culture, competition among peers, the rise of cynicism, the isolation of executives, and the impact of organizational design. The third section focuses on what happens as a result of these problems. The fourth section covers the now what?—that is, recommendations for different groups on how to contribute to better execution of business strategy, including actions for leaders and individual contributors in large organizations and in start-ups, and for students and professors who teach them. Finally, we close the chapter describing the potential benefits of implementing the recommendations

Getting to the Real Story: What Vietnamese Business People Wish Foreigners Understood About Doing Business in Emerging and Transition Countries Like Vietnam – BEFORE They Start

Knowledge sharing typically examines organizational transfer of knowledge, often from headquarters to subsidiaries, from developed country sites to emerging country sites, or from host to local employees. Yes, recent research, such as Prahalad\u27s Bottom of the Pyramid, raises the question of reverse transfer of knowledge, or whether knowledge could and should be transferred from local sites to home country sites within an organization. As several emerging economies build their capabilities in knowledge, research and development, marketing, and the like, it only makes sense to consider what type of knowledge and how to transfer it in reverse or bi-directional manners. This reflection paper takes one step back in the process. Rather than focusing on what knowledge transfer may make sense within an organization, we consider, through a series of small case studies and experience, what types of knowledge are important for foreigners to know at the initial stages of engagement abroad as they consider whether to do business in an emerging country

Evidence of traffic-related pollutant control in soil-based Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS)

SUDS are being increasingly employed to control highway runoff and have the potential to protect groundwater and surface water quality by minimising the risks of both point and diffuse sources of pollution. While these systems are effective at retaining polluted solids by filtration and sedimentation processes, less is known of the detail of pollutant behaviour within SUDS structures. This paper reports on investigations carried out as part of a co-ordinated programme of controlled studies and field measurements at soft-engineered SUDS undertaken in the UK, observing the accumulation and behaviour of traffic-related heavy metals, oil and PAHs. The field data presented were collected from two extended detention basins serving the M74 motorway in the south-west of Scotland. Additional data were supplied from an experimental lysimeter soil core leaching study. Results show that basin design influences pollutant accumulation and behaviour in the basins. Management and/or control strategies are discussed for reducing the impact of traffic-related pollutants on the aqueous environment

Serendipity as a Strategic Advantage?

Who, over the age of 20, hasn\u27t experienced a serendipitous event: unexpected information that yields some unintended but potential value later on? Sitting next to a stranger on a plane who becomes a business partner? Stumbling onto an article in a journal or newspaper that helps tackle a nagging problem? Creating a new drug by accident

Resource Curse or Destructive Creation in Transition Turmoil

This paper explores the “resource curse” problem as a counter-example of creative performance and innovation by examining reliance on capital and physical resources, showing the gap between expectations and ex-post actual performance became clearer under conditions of economic turmoil. The analysis employs the method of logistic regressions with dichotomous response and predictor variables, on a count data sample containing 154 point derived from the transition economy of Vietnam. Performance of analysis has shown significant results. Several findings that have use for economic and business practice follow. First, in a transition period, a typical characteristic of successful firms was their reliance on either capital resources or physical asset endowments, whereas the innovation factor was not significant. Second, poor-performing enterprises exhibited evidence of over reliance on both capital and physical assets. Third, firms that relied on both types of resources tended to downplay creative performance. Fourth, reliance on capital/physical resources and adoption of “creative discipline/innovations” tend to be mutually exclusive. In fact, some evidence suggests that firms face more acute problem caused by the law of diminishing returns in troubled times. The Vietnamese corporate sector’s addiction to resources may contribute to economic deterioration, through a downward spiral of lower efficiency leading to consumption of more resources. The “innovation factor” has not been tapped as a source of economic growth. The absence of innovations and creativity has made the notion of “resource curse” become identical to “destructive creation” implemented by ex-ante resource-rich firms, and worsened the problem of resource misallocation in transition turmoil

Anatomy of the 3D Innovation Production with the Cobb-Douglas Specification

This paper focuses on verifying the relevance of two theoretical propositions and related empirical investigation about the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurship. It draws upon a creativity process that considers three “dimensions” or “disciplines” (3D) critical for creative organizations—within discipline expertise, out of discipline knowledge, and a disciplined creative process. The paper first explores the Cobb-Douglas production function as a relevant tool for modeling the 3D creative process. The next part discusses the 3D process as a production function, which is modeled following the well-known Cobb-Douglas specification. Last, the paper offers implications for future research on disciplined creativity/innovation as a method of improving organizations’ creative performance. The modeling shows that labor and investment can readily enter into the 3D creativity process as inputs. These two inputs are meaningful in explaining where innovation outputs come from and how they can be measured, with a reasonable theoretical decomposition. It is not true that the more capital investments in the creativity process, the better the level of innovation production, but firm’s human resource management and expenditures should pay attention to optimal levels of capital and labor stocks, in a combination that helps reach highest possible innovation output

Medium-term performance and maintenance of SUDS:a case-study of Hopwood Park Motorway Service Area, UK

One of the main barriers to implementing SUDS is concern about performance and maintenance costs since there are few well-documented case-studies. This paper summarizes studies conducted between 2000 and 2008 of the performance and maintenance of four SUDS management trains constructed in 1999 at the Hopwood Park Motorway Service Area, central England. Assessments were made of the wildlife value and sedimentation in the SUDS ponds, the hydraulic performance of the coach park management train, water quality in all management trains, and soil/sediment composition in the grass filter strip, interceptor and ponds. Maintenance procedures and costs were also reviewed. Results demonstrate the benefits of a management train approach over individual SUDS units for flow attenuation, water treatment, spillage containment and maintenance. Peak flows, pond sediment depth and contaminant concentrations in sediment and water decreased through the coach park management train. Of the 2007 annual landscape budget of £15,000 for the whole site, the maintenance costs for SUDS only accounted for £2,500 compared to £4,000 for conventional drainage structures. Furthermore, since sediment has been attenuated in the management trains, the cost of sediment removal after the recommended period of three years was only £554 and, if the design is not compromised, less frequent removal will be required in future