Single Or Multiple Competitive Strategies For Small Businesses?

This research focuses upon the association between external environments, planning, and the development of competitive strategy in small business firms. The population ecology model l of organizations and their environments emphasizes that only some organizations, e.g., those with the right characteristics, will be selected for survival. While management is not impotent, this model clearly emphasizes ways in which external environments directly influence the fate of organizations (Aldrich, 1979)

Developing a Core List of Journals in an Interdisciplinary Area: Implications for Academic Faculty and Librarians Demonstrated in the Business Literature

Faculty who publish in interdisciplinary areas may be faced with the challenge of justifying research published in journals that are not considered important by their home department. This paper uses corporate governance (an academic area in business) as an example of an interdisciplinary research area. A core list of journals is developed using citations from Corporate Governance: An International Review that demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of corporate governance research. This core list can be used by both corporate governance academics and business librarians to help justify faculty publishing decisions. The process devised for developing a core list is applicable to other interdisciplinary areas. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of departmental journal lists and provides suggestions for both faculty and librarians

Investigating The Dimensions Of Social Responsibility And The Consequences For Corporate Financial Performance

Corporate social responsibility as an area of scientific inquiry has received little attention in the popular and academic press during the last decade. Efforts to investigate social responsibility and its relationship to corporate performance have been frustrated by a lack of adequate operationalizations and measures of social responsibility. Regardless of the reasons for this inattention to the is- sues of corporate responsibility, the tide appears to be turning. Recently, TIAA-CREF, the largest institutional trader in the country, initiated an optional fund which invests exclusively in firms that are deemed socially responsible. Such actions suggest that corporations will increasingly be held accountable for activity of concern to multiple stakeholder groups. As a result there will likely be a renewed interest in identifying the dimensions and consequences of corporate social responsibilities

Understanding Cheating: From the University Classroom to the Workplace

Cheating is defined as taking information, credit, or reward that one neither deserves nor did the work to achieve. Cheating behavior is often seen as a driver behind many of our current economic problems and the temptation to cheat has been associated with our downward slide in business practice for the past two decades. For example, the current housing crisis has been explained in part as banks cheating in terms of qualifying people for loans. Additionally, current headlines focus on legislators and Wall Street analysts who cheat investors by unfairly taking advantage of inside information not publicly available to others in the market. Cheating defeats fairness of competition and undermines the basis of business integrity. Writers in the business press are expressing concern over the widespread levels of ‘cheating’ among business executives. Enron, HealthSouth, and Tyco, all cheated shareholders in order to pad the pockets of their corporate executives. Some of the smartest and best business minds have fallen subject to the temptation to cheat and the result has been some of the most wideranging financial regulation in our history. The Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts were enacted in reaction to the perceived prevalence of cheating by business managers. The controversial new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is yet another attempt to address this problem. Classroom teachers are also experiencing a growing concern over what seems to be ever increasing levels of cheating among students. Students cheat for a variety of reasons including a felt pressure to maintain good grades and because they perceive many opportunities to cheat but few real penalties for getting caught. Instructor behavior may unwittingly exacerbate the problem by giving unclear or arbitrary assignments that create a climate for cheating when students view the benefits of figuring out and completing the assignment honestly to be minimal at best. The problem of classroom cheating is that students are likely to carry the behaviors they learn in the classroom into the workplace. It is this prospect that leads us to examine the nature of classroom cheating as a precursor to what might happen in actual business settings. It is likely that many of us have cheated at something or in some way, however unimportant, in our lives. We may have taken advantage of unsuspecting others in sports or play and the amount of harm done is probably very little and accepted as part of the interaction. But when the stakes get higher and include academic or business integrity and the validity of a grade or financial statement are at stake, then cheating has significant potential consequences, and needs to be both understood and managed

Board of Director Diversity and Firm Financial Performance

This study examines the relationship between demographic diversity on boards of directors with firm financial performance. This relationship is examined using 1993 and 1998 financial performance data (return on asset and investment) and the percentage of women and minorities on boards of directors for 127 large US companies. Correlation and regression analyses indicate board diversity is positively associated with these financial indicators of firm performance. Implications for both strategic human resource management and future research are discussed

Agency Directors And Network Centrality: An Examination Of Resource Dependencies

A basic tenet of resource dependence theory is organizations must obtain resources from their environments in order to survive (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). Ac- cording to the theory, there are several strategic factors that affect how organizations manage inter- organizational resource exchanges. These strategic factors include (1) interlocking of board of director members, (2) joint programs or joint ventures, (3) organization size, and (4) top administrator contacts with other organizations (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978: 143-69). Organizations engage in these activities to reduce uncertainty and to develop favorable linkages in interorganizational network