Search results

Job markets in the transport and logistics industry are characterized by a scarcity of well-educated junior talent. Employer attractiveness is becoming more important in order to win the most talented junior staff. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how corporate social performance (CSP) profiles of logistics companies influence their attractiveness for job seekers.

In a computerized laboratory experiment, the authors provided 95 students in their final year with job offer data that include general and CSP information about the company, and the job seeker’s potential salary. The authors manipulated how the CSP information was presented and monitored the information accessed during job seekers’ decision-making processes. The authors investigated how information presentation affected choices.

The vast majority of talent acquires CSP information in the pre-decision phase of the judgment, compares this information across companies, and trades off this information with the conditions of employment. The authors find that the ease of comparability of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information, expressed by meaningful indicators of CSP, increased preference for high CSP.

The study enriches existing studies of voluntary disclosure, which argue that voluntary disclosing sustainability-related information can be a tool of impression management.

Companies with a compelling CSP should push for a broadly accepted methodology to benchmark CSP within industry-specific sectors, such as logistics services.

Potential employees demand that companies should consider their social impact on individuals and society as a whole. To remain attractive for employees companies in transport and logistics industry have to cope with a broader scope of expectations.

The authors provide the first analysis on the relevance of CSP information for employer attractiveness in the transport and logistics industry. This research provides insights into the relevance of CSP criteria, information provision, and comparability processes from the perspective of young job seekers.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how Deutsche Post DHL's HR shared service center organization enhanced its KPI system (scorecard) by moving it towards a more operational, detailed and process‐oriented measurement level.

The paper describes a one‐year project aimed at obtaining transparency over payroll processes and costs from a global perspective by focusing on three areas – KPIs, benchmarks and a resource allocation exercise.

Transparency and comparability of payroll processes can be significantly enhanced using a few parameters to assess cost‐efficiency and therefore allowing for a better discussion of improvement potential.

Transparency over payroll processes and respective costs significantly increased. Different levels of cost savings could be calculated by using internal and external benchmark data. The results enabled more in‐depth discussions with payroll, as well as general managers, and identified objectives to facilitate further improvement.

The paper reveals how HR can strengthen its business partner role by effectively using instruments such as benchmarks and KPIs.

We build on the resource-based view and extend entry mode research by focusing on firms’ intention to transfer different resources from the parent firm to its overseas subsidiary. In line with our hypotheses, we find that parent firms that plan to transfer high levels of intangible resources to their foreign subsidiaries tend to choose wholly owned subsidiaries, while firms that intend to transfer high levels of tangible resources tend to choose international joint ventures. Moreover, we find that these relationships are moderated by institutional distance. We test our hypotheses using unique primary data from a sample of 128 foreign subsidiaries in the People’s Republic of China. Our results have important theoretical implications for international business strategy research as they develop further existing entry-mode theories.

This paper delves into the mechanism of the contingency framework for foreign entry mode decisions and identifies two essential tasks that jointly determine the outcome of the entry mode decision. It then recognizes a critical weakness in previous research pertaining to the comparison of entry modes along a key decision criterion, the degree of control. Existing studies generally treat equity involvement as the only source of entrant control, while largely ignoring non‐equity sources of control (i.e., bargaining power and trust). Non‐equity sources of control, when underutilized, amount to missed opportunities, increased resource commitments, and heightened risk exposures in foreign markets. Drawing from a pluralism perspective in transaction and relationship governance, the author presents a more integrative method for the ranking of entry modes along the degree of control. The central message is that companies entering foreign markets should make an earnest effort to identify trust and bargaining power situations and fully utilize their control potential in making entry mode decisions.

This chapter will discuss the extent to which existing models on expatriate functions within the international business literature, still effectively capture the roles currently performed by expatriate managers. It analyse the Edstrom and Galbraith (1977) typology and present a conceptual framework on the roles currently performed by expatriate managers within MNCs. To do this, it will draw inspiration from the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Peng, M. W. (2001). The resource-based view and international business. Journal of Management, 27, 803–829. Wernerfelt, 1984), and the organisation capability view (Grant, 1996). Following several propositions about managers’ key functions within MNCs, challenges of creating an all-encompassing framework on expatriate functions, and suggestions for future research and theoretical development will be identified.

This chapter will present a conceptual framework on expatriate functions.

Four decades since Edstrom and Galbraith’s seminal work, international developments have continued to impress upon the way MNCs organise and manage their worldwide activities. Yet, as the business environment progresses, theoretical models examining how international development impact the functions undertaken by expatriate managers within MNCs individuals are still relatively scarce. Hence, this chapter aims to contribute to the theoretical advancement in the area of expatriate functions by highlighting possible changes and expansion of expatriate managers within the current global business context.

A long-time ethical issue in financial accounting is earnings management. Two popular ways that earnings are managed include use of accruals (Kothari et al., 2016) and real activities management (RM). This study examines the association between RM and short selling and an association between short sellers and RM behavior related to earnings management. Instead of using accruals, RM is accomplished by timing investment or financing decisions and thereby alter reported earnings. Our results show that short sellers avoid targeting firms with a high level of RM, but this only holds for those firms that just meet analysts’ forecasts. This result suggests that short sellers interpret RM as a signal used by companies to convey their “good news” and confidence in their future performance. On the other hand, the authors document that heavily shorted firms engage in a lower amount of RM, which is consistent with the notion that short selling plays an external disciplinary role in constraining firms’ RM behavior for earnings management. This chapter would be of interest to anyone concerned with earnings management, such as financial market analysts, investors, academic researchers, and, in particular, regulators, who are involved in setting rules on short selling.

In management accounting research, the capabilities of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) have only partially been utilized. These yet unexploited capabilities of PLS-SEM are a useful tool in the often explorative state of research in management accounting. After reviewing eleven top-ranked management accounting journals through the end of 2013, 37 articles in which PLS-SEM is used are identified. These articles are analysed based on multiple relevant criteria to determine the progress in this research area, including the reasons for using PLS-SEM, the characteristics of the data and the models, and model evaluation and reporting. A special focus is placed on the degree of importance of these analysed criteria for the future development of management accounting research. To ensure continued theoretical development in management accounting, this article also offers recommendations to avoid common pitfalls and provides guidance for the advanced use of PLS-SEM in management accounting research.