Moderating effect of corporate parenting roles on the relationship between product diversification strategies and corporate performance of listed companies on Bursa Malaysia

Past research examining effect of product diversification strategy on corporate performance has produced inconclusive results. Equal ambiguity resides in the relative superiority and effects of related diversification strategy versus unrelated diversification strategy on corporate performance. Amidst, corporate parenting has been considered as a crucial issue related to diversification strategies. Primarily, this study attempted to reconcile paradox concerning diversification strategies – performance relationship by focusing on the moderating effect of corporate parenting roles on the relationship. Additionally, the study used multiple performance measures to enrich the investigation. Keeping in view the important role of Malaysian corporate sector in country’s growth and development, and proliferation of diversified companies in Malaysia, this study was conducted on Public Listed Companies (PLCs) listed on Bursa Malaysia’s Main Market. Secondary data was obtained mainly from companies’ annual reports, while primary data was collected through questionnaires sent to top managers of PLCs. This study utilised sample of 123 PLCs, and employed various statistical methods to draw conclusions using SPSS. The study reveals that product diversification strategy in total, does not affect corporate performance. Related diversification strategy positively affects Tobin’s q and price to book value, and unrelated diversification strategy negatively affects return on assets and price to book value. Synergy manager positively moderates relationship between related diversification strategy and Tobin’s q, and price to book value. Parental developer positively moderates relationship between related diversification strategy and all financial measures of corporate performance. Portfolio manager positively moderates relationship between unrelated diversification strategy and return on assets, and return on equity. Related diversifiers seem to outperform unrelated diversifiers on Tobin’s q and price to book value. Parental developers perform well against synergy managers on return on assets and return on equity. The findings contribute to relevant theories and recommend managers to adopt suitable corporate parenting roles while pursuing diversification strategies

Asset Growth and Profitability of PLCs in SAARC Economies

Purpose: Past research concerning companies' asset growth and profitability comparisons within and across SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) economies is extremely limited and the purpose of this research is to fill that gap. Design/methodology/approach: This research accessed data (2009 to 2013) from Thomson Reuters Data stream, drawn comparisons for years 2009-13, and used Tukey's HSD test for analyses. Findings: Findings reveal that profitability of Pakistani, Indian, and Bangladeshi companies was overall better in 2010 and 2011 pointing towards these countries' successful exit from crisis. These years marked higher asset growth as well among Indian, Bangladeshi, and Sri Lankan companies. Importantly, countries' cross comparisons reveal that profitability of Bangladeshi companies was better than others in all years, however, Sri Lankan companies also had higher profitability than Indian ones during 2011-13 and had higher asset growth compared to Pakistani companies in 2012 and 2013. Overall, Pakistani companies had lowest asset growth. Implications/Originality/Value: The study updates information concerning SAARC economies’ corporate and business world and demonstrates that asset growth and profitability trends could be inspired from international events and an economy's condition. Future studies could be industry specific; include other SAARC countries using a different criterion; and use different ratios for analysis

Should PLCs diversify into related or unrelated industries? Evidence from Malaysia

The primary issue in diversification strategy is concerning its type.A large body of research on the relative effect of related versus unrelated diversification still remains inconclusive. Scholars have been studying this topic through different research designs and in different contexts, although a greater part of the research was conducted in western economies.Importantly, certain scholars have asserted that powerful conclusions could be produced if product diversification is measured using powerful techniques and performance is assessed through combination of objective and subjective measures. This research builds up on that suggestion and revisits the subject using a sample of Malaysian PLCs as Malaysia has always been characterised by proliferation of diversified companies. This is also imperative keeping in view the challenges confronted by Malaysian economy in recent years and the significant repercussions of selecting type of diversification by Malaysian corporate sector.This study was conducted for multi-business PLCs listed on Main Market of Bursa Malaysia.T-tests based on 123 diversified PLCs revealed that related diversifiers outperformed unrelated diversifiers on Tobin’s q and price/book value. The study carries significant theoretical implications along with practical implications for Malaysian corporate sector and other PLCs facing similar business scenarios as in Malaysia

How Does Stakeholders Pressure Affect Organization Performance and Employee Wellbeing? Study of Multiple Mediating Roles

Employee satisfaction and high performance is every organization’s goal. When seen through the lens of stakeholder theory, these goals could be achieved by CSR practices through certain ways. Stakeholder theory affords an initial point to assimilate stakeholder pressure and corporate social responsibility practices. This research studies the effect of pressure from stakeholders over organization performance and wellbeing of employees by including the mediating effect of CSR oriented culture, CSR practices, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, and organizational trust in Pakistan’s banking sector. The study employs quantitative and cross sectional research design. A sample of 180 banks was studied through employing SmartPLS3.0 software using mediation analyses.The findings reveal that CSR oriented culture mediates between stakeholder pressure and CSR practices; CSR practices affect organization performance through organization citizenship behavior. Further, trust is a partial mediator among CSR practices and wellbeing of employees. Serial mediators play their role between stakeholder pressure and organization performance, and also play a role between stakeholder pressure and employee wellbeing. Implications/Originality/Value: The findings suggest Pakistani banks to acknowledge pressure from all stakeholders, and concentrate on CSR practices for their bank performance and staff wellbeing

The impact of immediate breast reconstruction on the time to delivery of adjuvant therapy: the iBRA-2 study

Background: Immediate breast reconstruction (IBR) is routinely offered to improve quality-of-life for women requiring mastectomy, but there are concerns that more complex surgery may delay adjuvant oncological treatments and compromise long-term outcomes. High-quality evidence is lacking. The iBRA-2 study aimed to investigate the impact of IBR on time to adjuvant therapy. Methods: Consecutive women undergoing mastectomy ± IBR for breast cancer July–December, 2016 were included. Patient demographics, operative, oncological and complication data were collected. Time from last definitive cancer surgery to first adjuvant treatment for patients undergoing mastectomy ± IBR were compared and risk factors associated with delays explored. Results: A total of 2540 patients were recruited from 76 centres; 1008 (39.7%) underwent IBR (implant-only [n = 675, 26.6%]; pedicled flaps [n = 105,4.1%] and free-flaps [n = 228, 8.9%]). Complications requiring re-admission or re-operation were significantly more common in patients undergoing IBR than those receiving mastectomy. Adjuvant chemotherapy or radiotherapy was required by 1235 (48.6%) patients. No clinically significant differences were seen in time to adjuvant therapy between patient groups but major complications irrespective of surgery received were significantly associated with treatment delays. Conclusions: IBR does not result in clinically significant delays to adjuvant therapy, but post-operative complications are associated with treatment delays. Strategies to minimise complications, including careful patient selection, are required to improve outcomes for patients

Innovation as a mediator between Innovative Culture, Transformational Leadership, Knowledge Management, Learning Orientation, and Performance

It is believed that for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), innovation is most important to deliver performance. Literature indicates that the most significant antecedents of innovation are learning orientation, transformational leadership, knowledge management, and innovative culture. Further, a research gap exists regarding the mediating effect of innovation for the relationships among these antecedents and SMEs performance in the Pakistan context. The scope of research is limited to SMEs and is novel and significant in this regard that it examines the mediatory role of innovation for the relationships between learning orientation, transformation leadership, knowledge management, innovative culture, and performance for Pakistani SMEs. This research employed quantitative research design and collected primary data from 150 SMEs (including retailers, hotels, restaurants, and boutiques) of Southern Punjab region. Area sampling technique was used wherein areas were selected randomly. Respondents were top managers/owners of SMEs. This research concludes that innovation does play a mediatory role. It contributes and strengthens transformational leadership theory, resource-based theory, theory of the growth of firms, and dynamic capabilities perspective. The study also contributes by providing practical implications and suggestions to the policy makers and managers of SMEs. It suggests that managers must develop an innovative culture to promote innovation and attain high performance. Further, effective knowledge management guarantees innovation and superior performance of the organization. Regarding, learning orientation, it suggests that information must be obtained from and communicated to all the employees for fostering innovation and high performance. Finally, the transformational leadership style must be used by leaders for enhancing the creativity of employees and improving SME performance

Exploring the Nexus between Empowering Leadership and Work Engagement through Employee Resilience during Times of Covid 19

Purpose: Online learning system was adopted by private schools across Pakistan to lessen students’ learning losses during the pandemic. It entailed the reliance on work from home model for their   teaching staff. The success of these institutions must have been driven by a leadership style espoused by them which helped to keep their employees engaged. Thus, drawing on the job demand resource principle, conservation of resource principle, and broaden and build theory, this could be argued that empowering leadership may have engendered employee resilience which ultimately kept intact the work engagement of employees. Moreover, moderating impact of psychological empowerment has been studied to determine extent to which it might influence the employee resilience nurtured by empowering leadership.  Design/Methodology/Approach: Respondents for this study were faculty members of the private schools affiliated with the Multan board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Pakistan. Probability sampling was employed to select the schools and the faculty members of those schools were given questionnaires. The total responses obtained were 210. Structural equation modeling involving moderated mediation techniques was utilized to conduct analyses. Findings: The study concluded that employee resilience mediated the association among empowering leadership and work engagement. However, the moderating effect was not proved. Implications/Originality/Value: The study pays an original contribution to research by linking empowering leadership with employee resilience and work engagement for the faculty members during the time of Covid-19 Pandemic. It suggests schools’ management to focus upon and reinforce empowering leadership for better work engagement of teachers. This would probably help them to retain students and sustain their performance

Engaged Versus Workaholic Employees Job Crafting Behavior: The Moderating Role of Perceived Organization Support

Purpose: Making jobs challenging and interesting is becoming a new trend in organizations and is related to job crafting behavior. Employees with different sort of wellbeing predict diverse crafting behaviors. This study is about making comparisons between the two states of wellbeing that can be differentiated on theoretical backgrounds: work engagement and work holism. Specifically, both well beings may differently predict job crafting behavior Design/Methodology/Approach: This study was quantitative in nature and applied on a sample of 285 faculty members working in higher education institutions in Pakistan. Further, the moderating effect of perceived organizational support was tested by using the SEM-AMOS. Findings: The findings revealed that engaged employees always craft their jobs even if they don’t perceive considerable support from their organizations. But the employees who are workaholic, do not usually craft their jobs, but adopt job crafting behavior when they perceive an organizational support. Implications/Originality/Value: This study points towards an important theoretical connection between employee wellbeing and job crafting behavior. It concludes that employee wellbeing is essential for job crafting and, specifically, for workaholic employees, perceived organizational support is also important

The Mediating role of Effective Communication between Organization Strategy, Structure, Culture and Organization Performance

Effective communication plays very important role to accomplish organizational goals and objectives. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of organizational culture, structure, and innovation strategy on the performance of hotels through taking effective organizational communication as a mediator. Quantitative research design was used to accomplish this purpose. Data were collected using survey method through previously developed/tested questionnaires. The data were collected at organizational level and one response from each hotel was collected from top level managers. More than 340 questionnaires were delivered to respondents and 255 questionnaires were returned. Data analyses were conducted using SEM-AMOS. The findings indicate that organizational culture, structure, and strategy all had significant and positive impact on organization performance as measured through balance scorecard. Additionally effective communication served as a partial mediator between all organizational factors and performance. The findings suggest hotels’ management to focus on innovation strategy and rely on organic structure to improve communication and boost up performance. Additionally, they must have a customer focused culture and an employee focused culture that supports job variety and job satisfaction among staff members. Through those ways, effective communication would develop that would help improve hotel performance.  &nbsp

Four decades of academic research on product diversification-performance relationship: analysis and foresight

This paper presents a critical review of past research on the relationship of product diversification to performance and suggests avenues for future research. Several perspectives provide rationalization for pursuing product diversification strategy but academic research on the relationship produced inconsistent findings. Likewise, supremacy of related diversification against unrelated diversification also remains an unsolved mystery. The deployment of different product diversification measurement techniques, performance ratios, and application of multiple research designs contributed to the body of knowledge but also added to inconsistencies on the topic. Admitting the complexity of this topic, some researchers adopted contingency perspective of the relationship and contributed to this research area by studying the relationship of product diversification to performance through use of moderators. Future researchers need to test certain other crucial moderators in the context of this relationship along with ensuring careful selection of diversification measurement techniques and performance indicators