Strategic Planning and Firm Performance: A Comparison across Countries and Sectors

The level of uncertainty and pace of change in business environments is posing challenges for firms. The developed economies have transformed from the industrial era to the knowledge and service era, while emerging economies thrive with industrial growth. This poses the question of what the key drivers of corporate success are and how far they are different from the old earnings logic. We will focus on one special value-creating resource or capability, namely strategic planning. We empirically examine the performance consequences of strategic planning to determine in what contexts it pays off particularly well. We use data from a large-scale survey of about 2,500 organisations from developed and emerging countries. The survey responses represent a variety of industries from manufacturing to services. The analysis is based on general linear models, and the findings show significant performance differences across countries, industries, and firm size - with strategic planning explaining performance much better than any contextual characteristics

Entrepreneurial orientation in firms with a social mission - a mixed-methods approach

This study explores entrepreneurial orientation (EO) in Finnish social enterprises in a social context using a mixed-methods approach. As a result, we propose that the generic dimensions of EO apply in a social context with minor refinements but suggest an additional dimension of persistence. The social enterprises take substantial financial risks although carefully avoid anything that may jeopardise the firms’ social impact. They exhibit highly innovative behaviour when developing new ways to serve the social purpose as well as when finding new ways to generate income. Furthermore, these enterprises exhibit remarkable persistence in adhering to a course of action despite their experienced difficulties

Higher Education of Digitalized Accounting Benefits from Networked Cooperative Learning and Working Life Collaboration

Cooperative learning is a structured way of small group working. The key elements are positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction, social skills and group processing. In this study, we create a new approach of networked cooperative learning, and examine how it contributes to the learning of digitalized accounting in real-life problem-solving cases. The interaction between digitalized accounting and cooperative learning has not been studied before. The data consist of qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data were gathered from group work, where accounting firms, their customers and students as well as teachers from two educational institutes worked together to find solutions to practical situations digitalized accounting may cause. The quantitative data were collected through a feedback survey with 51 respondents and studied in four groups. The research provides a descriptive content analysis. Our results indicate that networked cooperative learning is an appropriate method for working life collaboration in the context of digitalized accounting. We argue that cooperative learning is helpful in grasping difficult tasks without an exact goal at the beginning. We identified the well-known five key elements of cooperative learning and found two enhancing elements. Learning motivation and usefulness as well as the heterogeneity of the group have a positive impact on learning.peerReviewe