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The purpose of this paper is to test the transfer of good practices under the effect of various aspects of personal networks. Whereas, the majority of former work considers a direct effect of networks on knowledge transfer, the authors examined two intermediate mechanisms: the access to strategic resources and the individual's absorptive capacity.

A quantitative study was used to collect data, via a face‐to‐face questionnaire with key individuals in small and medium entreprises members of consortia in Tunisia. Data were analysed with a structural equations approach, based on partial least squared‐path modelling techniques.

Results emphasize the impact of network size, strength of ties and absorptive capacity on the strategic resource access and the impact of indirect ties, strength and range of ties on the absorptive capacity. Moreover, while absorptive capacity positively impacts good practice transfer, no support was found to the effect of resource access.

The main limitation of this study concerns the measuring of good practice transfer, since in literature there are often imprecise proxies. Also, while the authors have investigated the global impact of strategic resources, future research needs to treat them separately. Finally, a longitudinal study allows better capture of the evolution of the phenomenon studied.

Top management and directors at a consortium level need to pay careful attention to the social context within which knowledge transfer efforts occur. Resources exchanged and the absorptive capacity developed through social interactions must be designed to increase knowledge flows between firms.

The paper links two bodies of research often studied separately in inter‐organizational research: literature on social networks and that on inter‐organizational learning. It is hoped that the paper contributes to a cross‐fertilization of the two fields.

Many manufacturing firms (e.g. Apple and Nike) now outsource some or all of their manufacturing activities to independent suppliers rather than continuing to undertake them in-house. Clearly these firms perceive this externalisation of production to be a performance-enhancing strategy, but what are the performance consequences in practice? In this chapter, we review and critique the extant academic literature on the performance consequences of manufacturing outsourcing, and note that the empirical findings have yielded mixed results. We argue that outsourcing has potential impacts upon a number of ‘performance’ outcomes, including inter alia financial performance, productivity/efficiency, sales/market share, costs of production, business performance and innovation. We further argue that many of the empirical studies have flawed designs, and make a series of methodological recommendations to guide future empirical work.

The aim of this paper is to go beyond the “What to outsource” and “To Outsource or Not” debate. Recognizing outsourcing as a fast growing reality that firms have to depend upon, the paper concerns itself with optimal management of outsourcing arrangements through the practice of “outsourcing capability”. It argues that outsourcing failure can be mitigated if organizations see outsourcing as an “ongoing activity” to be managed as opposed to treating it as a one-time opportunistic “act”.

Based on the review of existing literature and drawing upon recent instances of outsourcing successes and failures, the paper develops a conceptual framework which divides various organizational processes into four different classes. It delineates the varied aspects of “outsourcing capability” that a firm would need to use to manage these varied class of processes as and when they are outsourced.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to managing outsourced processes. Different processes require emphasis on different aspect of outsourcing capability if outsourcing is to deliver the envisaged benefits.

The traditional focus in outsourcing literature has been on the core/non-core process with the recommendation to keep core processes in-house and outsource the non-core processes. This distinction can be transitory and hence detrimental in the era of hyper-competition. I argue that firms should instead focus on developing and refining aspects of “outsourcing capability” relevant to the varied class of processes that they wish/need to outsource.

The purpose of this study is to investigate factors that influence the application of governance mechanism in family small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia.

This study used multiple regression analysis to examine the hypothesis. For data collection, questionnaires were distributed to 337 owners and managers of SMEs around 7 districts in Java Island in Indonesia.

The result indicates that uncertainty influences the application of formal governance in family SMEs in Indonesia. Meanwhile, asset specificity has impact on both formal and relational governance in the context of firms. Financial and non-financial objectives did not impact both formal and relational governance.

Though this research was carried out in a particular cultural context, this study was not specifically designed to examine the interaction between cultural variables and family corporate governance variables. In the future, there is need for a study that examines how culture can influence the practice of formal and relational governance in family business.

The study will give guidance to owners or managers of family business in terms of governance mechanism when uncertainty increases. This evidence suggests that family firms need to adopt formal governance within family firms when uncertainty exists.

The research finding indicated that uncertainty influenced the application of formal governance in family SMEs in Indonesia. This research finding suggests that family firms need to adopt formal governance when uncertainty exists. The adoption of formal governance, however, may implicate to some others organizational areas in family firms such as leadership, recruitment and selection and corporate culture.

This study is one of the few on family SMEs, which applied the transaction cost theory. Most of the studies use agency theory for investigating governance mechanism in the family business. This study is one of the few on family SMEs, which applied the transaction cost. This study provides an explanation about a factor that influences a family firm to choose formal and relational governance within the firm.

Although there is a growing body of literature on human resource (HR) outsourcing, there are still unresolved issues regarding the level of outsourcing HR activities initiated in firms having different strategies and structures. This is relevant to examine because firms with different orientations (strategy and structure) cannot do HR outsourcing at the same level. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A theoretical framework is developed and empirically validated using survey data from 184 manufacturing firms in India. The analysis involved testing a number of hypotheses through statistical techniques using the confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that firms having prospector orientation are more likely to outsource non-core HR activities as compared to firms having analyzer and defender orientation strategies, in that order. However, in comparison to non-core HR activities, core HR activities are less likely to be outsourced by firms with different strategic orientations (prospector, analyser, and defender).

This research study underscores the linkage between HR outsourcing and strategy and structure of a firm by developing a theoretical framework.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of sovereign entrepreneurship, which is a special kind of political entrepreneurship.

This paper uses qualitative methods/historical survey.

Sovereignty is rooted in self-enforced exchange of political property rights. Sovereign entrepreneurship is the creative employment of political property rights to advance a plan.

Because a polity’s constitution is determined by its distribution of political property rights, sovereign entrepreneurship and constitutional change are necessarily linked. The author illustrated how sovereign entrepreneurship can be applied by using it to explain the rise of modern states.

In addition to studying instances of sovereign entrepreneurship in distant history, scholars can apply it to recent history. Sovereign entrepreneurship can be especially helpful as a tool for doing analytic narratives of low-n cases of political-economic development, especially when those polities attract interests for being “development miracles.”

This paper uses treats sovereignty as a political property right.