Haozhe Chen, Kenneth Anselmi, Mauro Falasca and Yu Tian
The field of returns management has become an important supply chain management topic. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptualization of returns management…
Abstract
Purpose
The field of returns management has become an important supply chain management topic. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptualization of returns management orientation (RMO), a topic that has been largely ignored by the academic community.
Design/methodology/approach
A series of interviews with experts and a review of the literature were used to develop the construct. Empirical survey data were used to validate the proposed RMO measurement scale.
Findings
Statistical results support the validity and reliability of the new RMO construct. Different analyses show that the proposed conceptualization satisfies the criteria of the tests for unidimensionality, construct validity, internal consistency reliability, and nomological validity. Furthermore, the results of this study confirm the positive relationship between a firm’s RMO and returns management performance.
Research limitations/implications
The present study provides a starting-point for further empirical research on returns management from a behavioral perspective.
Practical implications
RMO has a significant impact on returns management performance. The proposed RMO measurement scale provides a useful tool for companies to evaluate their management’s emphasis or recognition of the returns management function.
Originality/value
While the field of returns management has gained increased attention from both academics and practitioners, empirical research efforts on this topic are still limited. In order to address this issue, this study takes a behavioral perspective and follows a well-established approach to operationalize the construct of RMO.
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Susan K. DelVecchio, Dawn R. Deeter‐Schmelz and Kenneth Anselmi
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of salespersons' attributions about managerial e‐monitoring on salespersons' customer orientation.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of salespersons' attributions about managerial e‐monitoring on salespersons' customer orientation.
Design/methodology/approach
Hierarchical linear modeling was used to test the six study hypotheses. A main effects model was used to test the first two hypotheses, with a comparison of regression models used to identify pure modifiers.
Findings
The results of this study found informing attributions enhance customer orientation. This effect, however, can be weakened under highly bureaucratic organizational cultures. Similarly, the ability of controlling attributions to hamper customer orientation is less pronounced in cultures described as more bureaucratic.
Research limitations/implications
Building on self‐determination theory (SDT), the authors' study provides an explicit test of e‐monitoring and examines the nature and effects of information and controlling attributions. Given a low variance extracted value attained for bureaucratic culture, future research investigating the underlying dimensions of bureaucratic cultures is warranted. Likewise, more tests of the cognitive mechanisms behind salespersons' attributions are needed to further extend SDT.
Practical implications
Managers seeking to improve customer orientation through the use of e‐monitoring might be best served by encouraging a salesperson's informing attributions. This might be accomplished by clearly communicating the purposes of the e‐monitoring to members of the salesforce.
Originality/value
By investigating the positive and negative effects of e‐monitoring on salesperson customer orientation, this study offers concrete implications for researchers and practitioners on a topic that previously has been examined in the literature only via speculative post hoc analysis.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature of CSR before and in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008. The aim of the research question is to map out the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature of CSR before and in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008. The aim of the research question is to map out the consequences upon CSR derived from the crisis and to derive new principles of future CSR models to come consistent with the consequences of the financial crisis, and to suggest new research as well as policy-making possibilities to highlight the importance and necessary survival of CSR as an instrument for sustainable and financial progress.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a literature review of CSR prior to and after the financial crisis 2008, with an emphasis on academic papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
Findings
The findings of the paper reveal that post-crisis CSR-models do not articulate anything that has not been mentioned before; however, they do strengthen former values of CSR, but still lack an overall formula of how the financial sector can adopt CSR in the core of their businesses, and transparently display their products, and the risk adhering to them. The paper proposes a new Four-“E”-Principle that may guide new CSR-models to accomplish this deficit. See under “Originality”.
Practical implications
The paper calls for a discussion on ways in which governments and businesses can enhance social responsibility, though balancing the requirements of more engagement from businesses, as well as public sector companies in CSR. This paper suggests some instrumental mechanisms of how governments can engage, not only multinational companies, but also smaller companies, and other kinds of organizations acting on the market, to make them engage more in CSR.
Originality/value
The paper proposes a new Four-“E”-Principle to guide the development of new CSR-models based upon the core of Schwartz and Carroll's “Three-domain CSR-model”, which the Principle extends and revises to: Economy, L/Egal, Environment, and Ethics. This Principle disentangles the dialectic relationship between economic and social responsibility; takes financial products into consideration; refines the definitions of good stakeholder engagement without the illusions of corporate “Potemkinity”; and considers the benefit of replacing the semiotic meaning of the “C” in CSR from “corporate” to “capitalism's social responsibility” in order to extend the concept towards a broader range of market agents.
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The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the question of whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be used as a link of trust between business and society, and which…
Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the question of whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be used as a link of trust between business and society, and which role CSR plays in recovering distrust in businesses. It uses a mixed methods study of processes of moving businesses within the Danish water sector from a general trust-breakdown to trust recovery from 2003 to 2013.
Trust recovery is found to depend on stakeholders’ mutual engagement with each other and their willingness to share knowledge and learn from each other’s professional and institutional cultures and languages. An alignment of vocabularies of motives between regulation and voluntary CSR is found to be useful for building trust between conflicting parties. Furthermore the findings shows that the more stakeholders’ languages, motives and logics can coexist, the more trust can be recovered.
The research is limited by a study of one business sector in one country and the findings have implications greater than the local contexts of which it is researched, because it is usable in other sectors that suffer from severe trust-breakdowns such as government systems in both the public and private sectors.
This chapter suggests a theoretical extension of Bogenschneider and Corbett’s (2010) Community Dissonance Theory to embrace multiple stakeholders each having their own complex and unique culture and communication modus based on their institutional, professional or individual comprehensive language universes. This includes knowledge-sharing and educative diffusion of the stakeholders’ language universes’ vocabularies including its important nouns, verbs, terminologies, semantics, taxonomies and axioms as well as the stakeholders’ motives and logics implemented into these universes.
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Richard Conde, Victor Prybutok and Kenneth Thompson
For the past several decades, the sales control literature has focused on the outside sales context. This study aims to extend sales control research by examining formal and…
Abstract
Purpose
For the past several decades, the sales control literature has focused on the outside sales context. This study aims to extend sales control research by examining formal and informal sales controls, embodied by cultural controls, used by sales managers in an inside sales context, where the sales agent’s performance focus extends beyond sales outcomes to include the influence of operational phone outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on 232 B2C and B2B inside sales agent survey responses, this study presents evidence that in an inside sales department, this study focuses on the congruent effect of formal sales and cultural sales controls on inside sales agent overall performance.
Findings
Based on 232 B2C and B2B inside sales agent survey responses, this study presents evidence that in an inside sales department, the operational focus of sales activities and resultant operational performance mediates the relationship between sales controls and inside sales agent sales performance, whereas cultural controls centered on maximizing inside sales autonomous motivation positively moderates the effect of operational outcomes on an inside sales agent’s sales performance.
Practical implications
By focusing on the tenants of an inside sales agent’s overall performance, this research provides practitioners a holistic view of the inherent conflict inside sales managers must balance between the impact of formal sales controls and the benefits of cultural controls.
Originality/value
By being the only study to examine sales controls in an inside sales context, with a broad definition of overall performance to include both sales and operational phone outcomes, this study extends sales control research to a new sales context. The need to jointly focus on operational results, as well as sales outcomes, illustrate the importance of cultural controls compared to other sales processes and outcome controls