Organizational capabilities and SME exports: the moderating role of external funding intentions and managerial capacity

Entry to export markets can stimulate business growth, yet remarkably few small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) pursue export strategies. Using data gathered from the UK Small Business Surveys and a theoretical framework that combines principles from the resource-based view of the firm with notions of ‘investment readiness’ and ‘managerial capacity’ , we examine the empirical relationships between new product development (NPD) and new market entry (NME) capabilities on UK SMEs export decisions. Amongst other things, we find that there are contexts in which SMEs should develop these capabilities concurrently and others in which they should develop them independently to minimise added managerial complexity. Our results also indicate that in the absence of strong managerial capacity, SMEs should prioritise NME over NPD capabilities. Our findings produce several interesting theoretical and practical implications for SME exports

How and When Socially Entrepreneurial Nonprofit Organizations Benefit From Adopting Social Alliance Management Routines to Manage Social Alliances?

Social alliance is defined as the collaboration between for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Building on the insights derived from the resource-based theory, we develop a conceptual framework to explain how socially entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations (SENPOs) can improve their social alliance performance by adopting strategic alliance management routines. We test our framework using the data collected from 203 UK-based SENPOs in the context of cause-related marketing campaign-derived social alliances. Our results confirm a positive relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. We also find that relational mechanisms, such as mutual trust, relational embeddedness, and relational commitment, mediate the relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. Moreover, our findings suggest that different types of social alliance motivation can influence the impact of social alliance management routines on different types of the relational mechanisms. In general, we demonstrate that SENPOs can benefit from adopting social alliance management routines and, in addition, highlight how and when the social alliance management routines–social alliance performance relationship might be shaped. Our study offers important academic and managerial implications, and points out future research directions

Green alliances and the role of taxation

We examine two alternative strategies that an environmental group can embark when interacting with a firm. The first one which is already discussed in the literature is when the group campaigns against the firm. The second one which has not been modelled in the literature is when the group collaborates with the firm (green alliance) to reduce the cost of the cleaner technology. We look at the case of both options being available for the group in a setting with an environmental tax. One of the main results of the paper argues that for higher taxation the conflict scenario is more likely to happen, implying that collaboration and a more stringent environmental policy are substitutes. This identifies a previously unexamined and possibly adverse effect of public policy on environmental quality because it weakens the impact of the pollution tax on emission intensity. We also characterise the optimal tax that maximises social welfare and find that under pure conflict –when conflict is the only option for the environmentalists– optimal tax is higher than when the group can choose to act against or join forces with the firm, indicating that a less stringent environmental policy is needed in the latter scenario

Corporate tax: what do stakeholders expect?

Motivated by the ongoing controversy surrounding corporate tax, this article presents a study that explores stakeholder expectations of corporate tax in the context of UK business. We conduct a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with representatives of community groups (NGOs/think tanks and special interest groups), as well as interviews with those representing business groups (business leaders and industry representatives). We then identify eight themes that together describe “what” companies need to do, “how” they need to do it, and “why” they need to do it, if they wish to appeal to a wide group of interested parties. We discuss our findings based on the corporate social responsibility literature and propose novel ways for community groups and business groups to connect on the topic of corporate tax, suggesting opportunities and themes for dialogue and potential steps to co-create solutions in a stakeholder society

The impact of corporate volunteering on CSR image: a consumer perspective

Received: 29 June 2013 / Accepted: 15 January 2014Abstract Corporate volunteering (CV) is known to be an effective employee engagement initiative. However, despite the prominence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in academia and practice, research is yet to investigate whether and how CV may influence consumer perceptions of CSR image and subsequent consumer behaviour. Data collected using an online survey in Australia show perceived familiarity with a company’s CV programme to positively impact CSR image and firm image, partially mediated by others-centred attributions. CSR image, in turn, strengthens affective and cognitive loyalty as well as word-of-mouth. Further analysis reveals the moderating effect of perceived leveraging of the corporate volunteering programme, customer status and the value individuals place on CSR. The paper concludes with theoretical and managerial implications, as well as an agenda for future research.Carolin Plewa, Jodie Conduit, Pascale G. Quester, Claire Johnso

The Transformation from Traditional Nonprofit Organizations to Social Enterprises: An Institutional Entrepreneurship Perspective

The development of commercial revenue streams allows traditional nonprofit organizations to increase financial certainty in response to the reduction of traditional funding sources and increased competition. In order to capture commercial revenue-generating opportunities, traditional nonprofit organizations need to deliberately transform themselves into social enterprises. Through the theoretical lens of institutional entrepreneurship, we explore the institutional work that supports this transformation by analyzing field interviews with 64 institutional entrepreneurs from UK-based social enterprises. We find that the route to incorporate commercial processes and convert traditional nonprofit organizations into social enterprises requires six distinct kinds of institutional work at three different domains; these are—“engaging commercial revenue strategies”, “creating a professionalized organizational form”, and “legitimating a socio-commercial business model”. In elaborating on social entrepreneurship research and practice, we offer a comprehensive framework delineating the key practices contributing to the transformation from traditional nonprofit organizations to social enterprises. This extends our understanding of the ex-ante strategy of incorporating commercial processes within social organizations. Furthermore, the identification of these practices also offers an important tool for scholars in this field to examine the connection (or disconnection) of each practice with different ethical concerns of social entrepreneurship in greater depth.British Academ

Is production and operations management a discipline? A citation/co-citation study

For the past 20 years, the field of production and operations management (POM) has tried to establish itself as a discipline distinct from operations research (OR), management science (MS) and industrial engineering (IE). Sceptics argue that POM has failed to develop its own body of literature, lacks a distinct intellectual structure and that there is little appreciation of what it stands for. In this paper we use bibliometric techniques (a factor analysis of co‐citations) to investigate the intellectual pillars of the POM literature and explore whether these are distinct from those commonly associated with its rival fields. We also use simple non‐parametric techniques to show that the research agenda of European POM scholars differs substantially from that of their North American counterparts, and argue that such transatlantic differences may have exacerbated the difficulties POM has experienced in developing as a respected academic discipline

Inventive Concentration: An Analysis of Fuel Cell Patents

Patterns of ‘inventive concentration’ in green technologies are measured and analysed using patent data on fuel cells — potentially one of the most important ‘green’ technologies. Six measures are described and tested: the coefficient of variation; the Herfindhal index; the 4-firm and 8-firm concentration ratios; the Lotka coefficient; and the Gini coefficient. Initially, the analysis focuses on US firms but becomes comparative to include Japan, Germany, UK, France, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, and Israel. This allows the level of agreement among the various measures to be assessed and the nations to be ranked in terms of the concentration of their fuel cell patent production. This sector is concentrated in all 12 nations with Canada (Sweden) exhibiting high (low) levels of concentration across all measures. These are discussed in the context of recently published international ratings of national innovative capacity along with directions for future research