Christina O’Connor and Stephen Kelly
This paper aims to critique a facilitated knowledge management (KM) process that utilises filtered big data and, specifically, the process effectiveness in overcoming barriers to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to critique a facilitated knowledge management (KM) process that utilises filtered big data and, specifically, the process effectiveness in overcoming barriers to small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) use of big data, the processes enablement of SME engagement with and use of big data and the process effect on SME competitiveness within an agri-food sector.
Design/methodology/approach
From 300 participant firms, SME owner-managers representing seven longitudinal case studies were contacted by the facilitator at least once-monthly over six months.
Findings
Results indicate that explicit and tacit knowledge can be enhanced when SMEs have access to a facilitated programme that analyses, packages and explains big data consumer analytics captured by a large pillar firm in a food network. Additionally, big data and knowledge are mutually exclusive unless effective KM processes are implemented. Several barriers to knowledge acquisition and application stem from SME resource limitations, strategic orientation and asymmetrical power relationships within a network.
Research limitations/implications
By using Dunnhumby data, this study captured the impact of only one form of big data, consumer analytics. However, this is a significant data set for SME agri-food businesses. Additionally, although the SMEs were based in only one UK region, Northern Ireland, there is wide scope for future research across multiple UK regions with the same Dunnhumby data set.
Originality/value
The study demonstrates the potential relevance of big data to SMEs’ activities and developments, explicitly identifying that realising this potential requires the data to be filtered and presented as market-relevant information that engages SMEs, recognises relationship dynamics and supports learning through feedback and two-way dialogue. This is the first study that empirically analyses filtered big data and SME competitiveness. The examination of relationship dynamics also overcomes existing literature limitations where SMEs’ constraints are seen as the prime factor restricting knowledge transfer.
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Donna Marshall, Jakob Rehme, Aideen O'Dochartaigh, Stephen Kelly, Roshan Boojihawon and Daniel Chicksand
This article explores how companies in multiple controversial industries report their controversial issues. For the first time, the authors use a new conceptualization of…
Abstract
Purpose
This article explores how companies in multiple controversial industries report their controversial issues. For the first time, the authors use a new conceptualization of controversial industries, focused on harm and solutions, to investigate the reports of 28 companies in seven controversial industries: Agricultural Chemicals, Alcohol, Armaments, Coal, Gambling, Oil and Tobacco.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors thematically analyzed company reports to determine if companies in controversial industries discuss their controversial issues in their reporting, if and how they communicate the harm caused by their products or services, and what solutions they provide.
Findings
From this study data the authors introduce a new legitimacy reporting method in the controversial industries literature: the solutions companies offer for the harm caused by their products and services. The authors find three solution reporting methods: no solution, misleading solution and less-harmful solution. The authors also develop a new typology of reporting strategies used by companies in controversial industries based on how they report their key controversial issue and the harm caused by their products or services, and the solutions they offer. The authors identify seven reporting strategies: Ignore, Deny, Decoy, Dazzle, Distort, Deflect and Adapt.
Research limitations/implications
Further research can test the typology and identify strategies used by companies in different institutional or regulatory settings, across different controversial industries or in larger populations.
Practical implications
Investors, consumers, managers, activists and other stakeholders of controversial companies can use this typology to identify the strategies that companies use to report controversial issues. They can assess if reports admit to the controversial issue and the harm caused by a company's products and services and if they provide solutions to that harm.
Originality/value
This paper develops a new typology of reporting strategies by companies in controversial industries and adds to the theory and discourse on social and environmental reporting (SER) as well as the literature on controversial industries.
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Jennifer L. Harrison and Stephen J. Kelly
The purpose of this paper is to test the null hypothesis that there is no significant association between perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU) and a three component…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test the null hypothesis that there is no significant association between perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU) and a three component conceptualisation of commitment.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from owner/managers of community pharmacy businesses in New South Wales, Australia, with 268 responses analysed by confirmatory factor analysis to test a measurement model for each construct and a structural model to test the paper's hypothesis.
Findings
The hypothesis was partially supported with results indicating that greater PEU is associated with lower instrumental and normative commitment. The association with affective commitment was more complex. No direct association with PEU was evident, however a standardised indirect effect was identified.
Research limitations/implications
The primary theoretical implications are that commitment in business‐to‐business channels is evidently affected by PEU, suggesting in part that PEU is likely to have a moderating effect on previously identified antecedents of commitment – including power, idiosyncratic investments, interdependence, trust, and conflict. For practitioners, the implications include the complication that PEU is a relative concept felt by various agents in a market to varying extents. As such, a supplier may benefit by maintaining a watching brief on PEU within a given channel and consider altering the channel strategy to either manage PEU and/or maintain commitment.
Originality/value
The findings provide original evidence that PEU is an antecedent of commitment with no other studies examining this relationship identified. The value lays both in the theoretical and practical implications highlighted in the paper.
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Steven J. French, Stephen J. Kelly and Jennifer L. Harrison
Using a sample of small, regional professional service firms, this paper investigates relationships between firm performance and aspects of strategic planning. Constructs…
Abstract
Using a sample of small, regional professional service firms, this paper investigates relationships between firm performance and aspects of strategic planning. Constructs measuring vision, mission, latent abilities, competitor orientation and market orientation are identified using exploratory factor analysis and respondents categorised as non‐planners, informal planners, formal planners and sophisticated planners. Multiple performance measures were used to assess the relationship between these factors and categories and firm performance. While no significant relationship between the performance measures and factors is identified, a significant relationship between net profit and informal planning emerges. These mixed results bring into question the value of the classical strategic planning process as a means of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage in the market analysed.
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Milja Niinihuhta, Anja Terkamo-Moisio, Tarja Kvist and Arja Häggman-Laitila
This study aims to describe nurse leaders’ experiences of work-related well-being and its association with background variables, working conditions, work engagement, sense of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to describe nurse leaders’ experiences of work-related well-being and its association with background variables, working conditions, work engagement, sense of coherence and burnout.
Design/methodology/approach
An electronic survey design was used. Data was collected between December 2015 and May 2016 with an instrument that included demographic questions and four internationally validated scales: the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, QPS Nordic 34+, the shortened Sense of Coherence scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Data was analysed using statistical methods.
Findings
A total of 155 nurse leaders completed the questionnaire, giving a 44% response rate. Most of them worked as nurse managers (89%). Participants’ work-related well-being scores ranged from 8 to 10. Statistically significant relationships were found between participants’ work-related well-being and their leadership skills, current position, sense of coherence and levels of burnout. In addition, there were statistically significant relationships between work-related well-being and all dimensions of working conditions.
Originality/value
This study underlines the fact that work-related well-being should not be evaluated based on a single factor. The participants’ perceived work-related well-being was high, although almost half of them reported always or often experiencing stress. The results suggest that nurse leaders may have resources such as good leadership and problem-solving skills, supportive working conditions and a high sense of coherence that prevent the experienced stress from adversely affecting their work-related well-being.
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How do transnational social movements organize? Specifically, this paper asks how an organized community can lead a nationalist movement from outside the nation. Applying the…
Abstract
How do transnational social movements organize? Specifically, this paper asks how an organized community can lead a nationalist movement from outside the nation. Applying the analytic perspective of Strategic Action Fields, this study identifies multiple attributes of transnational organizing through which expatriate communities may go beyond extra-national supporting roles to actually create and direct a national campaign. Reexamining the rise and fall of the Fenian Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century, which attempted to organize a transnational revolutionary movement for Ireland’s independence from Great Britain, reveals the strengths and limitations of nationalist organizing through the construction of a Transnational Strategic Action Field (TSAF). Deterritorialized organizing allows challenger organizations to propagate an activist agenda and to dominate the nationalist discourse among co-nationals while raising new challenges concerning coordination, control, and relative position among multiple centers of action across national borders. Within the challenger field, “incumbent challengers” vie for dominance in agenda setting with other “challenger” challengers.
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Ayodeji E. Oke, Seyi S. Stephen and Clinton O. Aigbavboa
Abdulkader Zairbani and Senthil Kumar Jaya Prakash
The purpose of this paper is to provide an organizing lens for viewing the distinct contributions to knowledge production from those research communities addressing the impact of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an organizing lens for viewing the distinct contributions to knowledge production from those research communities addressing the impact of competitive strategy on company performance in general, and the influence of cost leadership and differentiation strategy on organizational performance in detail.
Design/methodology/approach
The research methodology was based on the PRISMA review, and thematic analysis based on an iterative process of open coding was analyzed and then the sample was analyzed by illustrating the research title, objectives, method, data analysis, sample size, variables and country.
Findings
The main factor that influenced the competitive strategy is strategic growth; strategic growth has a significant influence on competitive strategy. Furthermore, competitive strategy will boost firm network, performance measurement and organization behavior. In the same way, the internal goal factor will enhance organizational effectiveness. Also, a differentiation strategy will support management practice factors, strategic positions, product price, product characteristics and company performance.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature by identifying a framework of competitive strategy factors, company performance factors, cost leadership strategy factors, differentiation strategy factors and competitive strategy with global market factors. This study provides a complete picture and description of the resulting body knowledge in competitive strategy and organizational performance.
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Stephen Michael Croucher, Stephanie Kelly, Chen Hui, Kenneth J. Rocker, Joanna Cullinane, Dini Homsey, George Guoyu Ding, Thao Nguyen, Kirsty Jane Anderson, Malcolm Green, Doug Ashwell, Malcolm Wright and Nitha Palakshappa
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore how working remotely might impact the superior–subordinate relationship. Specifically, this study examines how…
Abstract
Purpose
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore how working remotely might impact the superior–subordinate relationship. Specifically, this study examines how immediacy explains articulated dissent, considers how an individual’s attitudes toward online communication predicts immediacy and articulated dissent and compares these relationships in England, Australia and the USA.
Design/methodology/approach
Three nations were examined: Australia, England and the USA (n = 1,776). Surveys included demographic questions and the following measures: organizational dissent scale, perceived immediacy measure, computer-mediated immediate behaviors measure and measure of online communication attitude.
Findings
The results reveal supervisors’ computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy both positively predict dissent. Some aspects of online communication attitudes positively predict computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy. In addition, attitudes toward online communication positively predict dissent. National culture influences some of these relationships; in each case the effects were substantively larger for the USA when compared to the other nations.
Originality/value
This study is the first to cross-culturally analyze dissent and immediacy. In addition, this study considers the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic influences the superior–subordinate relationship.