Reflects on the past decade of change in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Notes the varying degrees of successful reform and aid/technical assistance for…
Abstract
Reflects on the past decade of change in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Notes the varying degrees of successful reform and aid/technical assistance for the region provided by international organizations. Examines efforts to provide technical assistance through the application of best practice to local governments. Develops a case study, using Hungary as a setting, of a local government deputy mayor and simulates a technical assistance best practice transfer. Describes also an alternative home‐grown best practice project at the local level. Lessons learned from these projects show that historical and contextual conditions have a very large impact on capacity building efforts in countries of transition; political values have to be developed and an organizational infrastructure to express them is essential. Ultimately, the knowledge and skills of senior managers must be cultivated, to assist them in nurturing the social capital needed for them to govern effectively.
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Sasu Tuominen, Helen Reijonen, Gábor Nagy, Andrea Buratti and Tommi Laukkanen
The motivation for this study comes from decision making related to strategic marketing orientations in international markets. The authors examine if customer orientation and…
Abstract
Purpose
The motivation for this study comes from decision making related to strategic marketing orientations in international markets. The authors examine if customer orientation and customer relationship orientation perform as two distinct constructs in driving firm innovativeness, and how together they support business growth among export firms. This study aims to suggest a customer-centric strategy for export firms that drive innovativeness and growth.
Design/methodology/approach
An international corporation specialized in company information services provided a list of the contact information of Italian companies. The authors sent an email request to respond to an online survey and received 416 effective responses from firms operating in export markets. The authors propose and empirically test a model in which customer orientation, customer relationship orientation and innovativeness predict business growth. This model controls for the effects of firm size, industry and customer type (B2B vs. B2C).
Findings
The study findings suggest that customer orientation and customer relationship orientation are two distinct strategic orientations driving innovativeness. However, they do not directly affect business growth. Instead, they require the innovativeness of an exporter to materialize as business growth.
Practical implications
The results of the study recommend business strategies focusing not only on customer needs and satisfaction but also on retaining current customers and building customer relationships in international markets. Firms can learn from international customers and develop effective customer-centric strategies to spread the acquired information into the internal decision-making as it contributes to firm innovativeness and business growth in international markets.
Originality/value
This study is one of the pioneering studies combining customer orientation and customer relationship orientation, showing their theoretical and empirical divergence. This study is also among the first which tests how the two strategic orientations together with innovativeness promote business growth among export firms. The authors add understanding of the synergistic effects both of using customer information and developing deeper relationships on firm innovativeness and performance among exporters.
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Arch G. Woodside, Gábor Nagy and Carol M. Megehee
This chapter elaborates on the usefulness of embracing complexity theory, modeling outcomes rather than directionality, and modeling complex rather than simple outcomes in…
Abstract
This chapter elaborates on the usefulness of embracing complexity theory, modeling outcomes rather than directionality, and modeling complex rather than simple outcomes in strategic management. Complexity theory includes the tenet that most antecedent conditions are neither sufficient nor necessary for the occurrence of a specific outcome. Identifying a firm by individual antecedents (i.e., noninnovative vs. highly innovative, small vs. large size in sales or number of employees, or serving local vs. international markets) provides shallow information in modeling specific outcomes (e.g., high sales growth or high profitability) – even if directional analyses (e.g., regression analysis, including structural equation modeling) indicate that the independent (main) effects of the individual antecedents relate to outcomes directionally – because firm (case) anomalies almost always occur to main effects. Examples: a number of highly innovative firms have low sales while others have high sales and a number of noninnovative firms have low sales while others have high sales. Breaking-away from the current dominant logic of directionality testing – null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) – to embrace somewhat precise outcome testing (SPOT) is necessary for extracting highly useful information about the causes of anomalies – associations opposite to expected and “statistically significant” main effects. The study of anomalies extends to identifying the occurrences of four-corner strategy outcomes: firms doing well in favorable circumstances, firms doing badly in favorable circumstances, firms doing well in unfavorable circumstances, and firms doing badly in unfavorable circumstances. Models of four-corner strategy outcomes advance strategic management beyond the current dominant logic of directional modeling of single outcomes.
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Gábor Nagy, Carol M. Megehee and Arch G. Woodside
Firm’s operating contexts and asymmetric perspectives of success versus failure outcomes are two essential features typically absent in research on firms’ implemented strategies…
Abstract
Firm’s operating contexts and asymmetric perspectives of success versus failure outcomes are two essential features typically absent in research on firms’ implemented strategies. The study here describes and provides examples of formal case-based models (i.e., constructing algorithms) of firms implemented strategies within several of 81 potential context (task environments) configurations – large vs small, service vs production orientation, low vs high competitive intensity, low vs high technological turbulence, and ambiguous settings for each. The study applies the tenets of complexity theory (e.g., equifinality, causal asymmetry, and single causal insufficiency). The study proposes a meso-theory and empirical testing position for solving “the crucial problem in strategic management” (Powell, Lovallo, & Fox, 2011, p. 1370) – firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. A workable solution is to identify/describe implemented executive capability strategies that identify firms in alternative specific task environments which are consistently accurate in predicting success (or failure) of all firms for specific implemented capabilities/context configuration. The study shows how researchers can perform “statistical sameness testing” and avoid the telling weaknesses and “corrupt practices” of symmetric tests such as multiple regression analysis (Hubbard, 2015) including null hypothesis significance testing. The study includes testing the research issues using survey responses of 405 CEO and chief marketing officers in 405 Hungarian firms. The study describes algorithms indicating success cases (firms) as well as failure cases via deductive, inductive, and abductive fuzzy-set logic of capabilities in context solutions.
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Gábor Nagy, Carol M. Megehee and Arch G. Woodside
The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why…
Abstract
The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.
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Thomas Thron, Gábor Nagy and Niaz Wassan
This paper sets out to investigate the impact of various supply chain advancements within a perishable goods environment.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper sets out to investigate the impact of various supply chain advancements within a perishable goods environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses discrete event simulation to evaluate diverse adjustments within the distribution framework of a food manufacturer and their major customers. Analysed aspects include level of safety inventory held, inventory issuing, replenishment and through‐put policies and increased demand transparency due to collaboration between manufacturer and various retailers. The importance and the impact of these factors are investigated using a wide variety of performance measures.
Findings
Several promising practice designs are generated and recommended for implementation to improve the experienced shortcomings. Engaging in collaborative replenishment is emphasized in particular even in cases of limited scope. The analysis further reveals the importance of advanced inventory dispatch policies.
Research limitations/implications
The research focused on the delivery framework of a particular manufacturer and the chosen products. Hence, research findings may differ and need to be modified before drawing conclusions for different products, companies or industries.
Originality/value
Evaluating the impact of various stages of collaboration within a perishable product supply chain environment has not been addressed much within prior SCM research. The analysis tackles a variety of issues that specifically arise within a perishable goods framework and aims to support practitioners by identifying possible pitfalls and areas of improvement.
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Tommi Laukkanen, Gábor Nagy, Saku Hirvonen, Helen Reijonen and Mika Pasanen
The present study sheds light on the role of strategic orientations (SOs) in explaining business growth. The purpose of this paper is to examine how different SOs, namely learning…
Abstract
Purpose
The present study sheds light on the role of strategic orientations (SOs) in explaining business growth. The purpose of this paper is to examine how different SOs, namely learning orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and brand orientation simultaneously affect business performance measured with brand performance, market performance and business growth in SME context and whether these effects vary across countries.
Design/methodology/approach
An extensive data set of 1,120 effective responses is collected from two European countries, namely Hungary, representing a post socialist rapidly growing market, and Finland with a stable, highly developed and competitive economy. A multigroup moderation analysis is conducted. Confirmatory factor analysis is used in testing measurement invariance, subsequently followed by structural equation modeling procedure used in testing research hypotheses developed on the basis of a literature review.
Findings
The results show that entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and brand orientation have a positive effect on business growth in SMEs in both Hungary and Finland through brand and market performance. With regard to learning orientation, a positive yet somewhat weak effect on growth is found only in the Hungarian sample. The moderation analysis reveals that country moderates several of the hypothesized paths from SOs to business performance.
Originality/value
Prior studies on SOs have mainly focussed on single orientations at any given time. However, researchers increasingly argue that many firms are better off if they build their strategies on multiple SOs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first empirical studies to address multiple (four) SOs in the same research model. Furthermore, little is known about if and how the performance effects of different SOs vary across countries.
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Thomas Thron, Gábor Nagy and Niaz Wassan
Most collaborative SCM research has focused on the ideal situation of a manufacturer engaging with all its downstream partners. In view of extensive entry costs, lack of trust or…
Abstract
Purpose
Most collaborative SCM research has focused on the ideal situation of a manufacturer engaging with all its downstream partners. In view of extensive entry costs, lack of trust or simply non‐suitability of electronic data processing systems this, however, provides only limited support to actual problems of many companies. The paper seeks to investigate various common supply chain performance measures to show what impact increasing adoption of collaborative replenishment between manufacturer and several major customers has on each market participant.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses discrete event simulation to evaluate various adjustments within the distribution frameworks of two food‐manufacturers and their major customers.
Findings
The analysis suggests that manufacturer and customers can substantially benefit from even a partial increase in demand visibility. This nevertheless can be costly since favouring some customers due to sharing a collaborative replenishment system, while others often seem to experience heavier delivery delays and declining service‐level.
Research limitations/implications
The research focused on the delivery framework of the two involved manufacturers and the chosen products. Hence, research findings may differ and need to be modified before drawing conclusions for different products, companies or industries.
Practical implications
The analysis aims to help practitioners to identify possible opportunities and threats within an expanding collaborative SC replenishment system.
Originality/value
Investigating heterogeneous delivery frameworks within an emerging collaboration system has not been addressed much within prior SCM research. It aims to help mainly small‐ or medium‐sized enterprises to reveal possible advantages and drawbacks within the process of emerging with a varying number of customers from a traditional predetermined reorder‐point into a collaborative VMI/CPFR system.
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Trust is a crucial element in business exchanges. Trust has been the subject of considerable research. Most prior studies are insensitive to context studies. However, the advent…
Abstract
Trust is a crucial element in business exchanges. Trust has been the subject of considerable research. Most prior studies are insensitive to context studies. However, the advent of the extended enterprise with the disintegration of production and innovation processes, the digitalization of interactions, and the increased competition in global markets, among other factors, fundamentally alter the contexts of buyer–supplier relationships. New enriched perspectives and adapted approaches of trust in B-to-B settings are necessary.
This volume addresses new issues showing evidence from advanced, emerging, and developing markets by applying different theoretical and methodological perspectives. The findings lead to identifying consistencies, richness, and distinctiveness of antecedents, processes, and consequences of trust in various B-to-B contexts. It provides suggestions for future research and new levers and guidance for managers to build successful business relationships.