Search results

Corporate controls are mechanisms that corporations use to ensure that the processes and/or outcomes of their business units meet corporate expectations. Challenges in measurement of corporate controls have led many researchers to operationalize them as part of the more ambiguous corporate effects construct, instead of addressing them separately. The purpose of this paper is to examine the significance of “fit” between corporate control mechanisms and business unit strategy in performance of business units.

The authors use ordinary least squares regression analysis on data collected between 2010 and 2012 from surveys from managers of 142 Iranian corporations and 1,822 of their subsidiaries. The authors also use financial and market data collected by an IDRO division and accessed through partnership in a joint project.

The authors found that while the fit between business unit strategy and corporate controls has a significant effect on business unit financial performance, it does not have a similar effect on market performance. The findings demonstrate that when business unit managers perceive that they are subject to a balance of strategic and financial controls with a slightly greater emphasis on strategic controls, then business units have higher financial and market performance, although the difference in financial performance is not significant.

The authors find that the misfit between corporate controls and business strategies in such cases could negatively affect the performance of the business unit. However, this research also contributes to a better understanding of the importance of strategic controls to the successful performance of business units. The findings show that while the fit between controls and strategy is most critical for achieving financial performance in business units that pursue product leadership, strategic controls play a more prominent role than financial controls in achieving higher financial or market share performance for all business units.

The findings of the propositions in this research would discourage corporations with tight financial control from engaging in acquisition of businesses considered to be product leaders in their relative product markets.

Past research focusing on the fit between corporate-level factors and business-level factors and their role on business performance are largely limited to conceptual work. The limited empirical studies completed in the past generally reduce control mechanisms to lack or absence of autonomy. This shortcoming has been mainly due to difficulties in measurement of control mechanisms. The empirical study overcomes these barriers and in doing so, reveals surprising findings related to the effectiveness of different control mechanisms.

Using resource dependency theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine what elements in the business environment may be associated with the formation and continuance of cartels.

The authors employ a unique data set of 148 cartel data points from the 1970s to 2008 which have at least one American company involved to quantitatively test causal relationships. The authors also interview key class action anti-trust attorneys for their views and opinions on the impact of these environmental factors on cartel formation and continuance.

The authors find statistically significant relationships between the pursuit and maintenance of industry profits and the dynamism in the industry, and illegal behavior as represented through price fixing by business cartels. The authors find that in the attorneys’ opinion, it is also the pursuit of individual corporate profits and munificence that are associated with these cartels.

This research furthers the understanding of organizational deviance which is critical given its impact on organizations, individuals, regulators, law enforcement, and the general public.

This research is a first step in considering cartel activity in a way that encompasses external influences in a new and innovative manner and as a tool to help researchers and practitioners better understand how organizational deviance, as manifested through illegal corporate activity, can be anticipated, identified, and prevented.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Corporations with multiple subsidiaries, or business units, have to balance individual controls with universal corporate controls. Managing each subsidiary to the collective benefit of the whole corporation requires careful management. 10; 10;

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of the present research is to introduce a combined framework that integrates innovative work behavior, product innovation process and customer knowledge management; then, to explore the mediating effect of customer knowledge management in the relationship between innovative work behavior and the product innovation process.

The basis for the present research is a cross-sectional design. Data collection from 154 employees occurred using the following structured questionnaires: Customer Knowledge Management (CKM), Innovative Work Behavior (IWB) and Product Innovation Process (PIP). Data processing used SPSS version 26.0, including the PROCESS (3.5) macro analysis.

The results show positive relationships between innovative work behavior and the product innovation process (r = 0.420, p < 0.01). Pearson's correlation shows a coefficient of 0.42, meaning that 42% of the variations in perceived product innovation are due to variations in innovative work behavior. The second condition of the mediation test involved testing the relationship between the independent variable (Innovative Work Behavior) and the mediating variable (Knowledge Management) and showed a significant relationship (r = 0.272, p < 0.01). The findings suggested that knowledge management that other determinants supported, such as collaboration in idea exploration, idea championing and encouragement of participation in idea implementation, significantly contributed to the product innovation process (r = 0.509, p < 0.01). The bootstrapping method confirmed that innovative work behavior supports product innovation through the mediation of customer knowledge management (z = 3.01, p = 0.002).

The cross-sectional design, along with the relatively low number of participants and the self-reporting nature of the questionnaires, represent the current study's main limitations. Developing the research model could integrate new variables, such as customer co-creation processes, performance-based compensation, employee citizenship activities and transformational leadership.

This research has both theoretical and practical implications. These emphasize the importance of further investigation into the factors influencing companies' innovation processes. They also provide managers with a means of finding a fit between the deployment of customer knowledge mechanisms and the achievement of innovative workplace behavior, to improve innovation process efficiency.

The current study broadens the empirical research area of customer knowledge management and its impact on both innovative work behavior and the product innovation process, particularly in knowledge-intensive market scenarios that require organizations to be innovative.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether cognitive factors mediate the relationship between parental knowledge/support and delinquency escalation.

Using data from early adolescent youth enrolled in the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) study, two analyses were performed. The first analysis cross-lagged parental knowledge and cognitive impulsivity as predictors of delinquency escalation and the second analysis cross-lagged parental support and moral neutralization as predictors of delinquency escalation.

In both analyses, the indirect effect of a change in parenting on delinquency escalation via a change in cognition attained significance, whereas the indirect effect of a change in cognition on delinquency escalation via a change in parenting did not. In neither case did the direct effect of parenting on delinquency achieve significance.

This study was limited, however, by exclusive reliance on self-report measures to assess all variables in this study and the use of explicit rather than implicit measures of cognitive impulsivity and moral neutralization.

The practical implications of these results are that they point to ways in which improved parenting can lead to crime deceleration; reduced cognitive impulsivity and moral neutralization can lead to crime deceleration.

These results imply that social variables like parental knowledge and support stimulate a change in cognition as part of the process by which delinquency escalates during early adolescence.

The unique contribution this study makes to the field is that it highlights the role antisocial cognition plays in mediating between social factors and delinquency as part of the crime acceleration process that often occurs in early adolescence.