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Strategy under uncertainty. Turning uncertainty threats into opportunities
No full textIn a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world, organisations face significant uncertainty when analysing markets, selecting strategies, and developing an enduring competitive advantage. In fact, while 73% of CEOs in a global survey identified macro uncertainty as a major challenge, only 12% reported having the necessary capabilities to respond effectively. This means that uncertainty is often regarded only as a threat. However, our research and work within the Vlerick Strategy in Action Platform (SIAP) show that uncertainty also brings new opportunities to those willing and able to shape and seize them. The question for leaders is: How can we make our organisation win today while also being prepared for an uncertain future? To answer this question, organisations must understand uncertainty by identifying its sources and impact on the organisation. They should develop insights to inform strategic decision-making and use these to devise no-regret moves to be proactive to seize new opportunities without taking undue risks. And finally recognise that addressing uncertainty is not a one-time undertaking but it requires a continuous cycle of monitoring, learning, and adjustment.
Same owner, different impact: How responses to performance feedback differ across a private equity investor's portfolio firms
No full textAbstract Research Summary Private equity (PE) investors invest in a portfolio of firms, setting new, ambitious performance aspirations and providing monitoring and value‐adding services to help management attain these aspirations. Integrating a behavioral theory of the firm and corporate governance perspective, this study investigates how portfolio firms respond to performance feedback, considering heterogeneity in PE investors' incentives and influence toward a given portfolio firm's strategic actions. Using unique data from a PE investor including direct aspirations measures, we find that (1) portfolio firms' performance relative to aspirations, and (2) the PE investor's relative investment amounts and experience of PE‐appointed board members, interact to affect the distinct growth strategies (i.e., internal capital investments or external acquisitions) its portfolio firms pursue. Managerial Summary A PE investor may guide its portfolio firms differently. Incentives to intervene should be larger in case of larger investments, and influence should be more extensive in case of more senior PE board representatives. In this study, we examine how a PE investor's varying incentives and influence affect how PE‐backed firms strategically react to underperformance and overperformance. We find that a PE investor pushes for capital investments but deters acquisitions as performance shortfalls increase in a portfolio firm, when they have made larger investments and appointed more senior board members. In case of overperformance, a PE investor pushes toward acquisitions (and against capital investments) when they have invested more. Surprisingly, the opposite holds in case of more senior board members.
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The Importance of Corporate Reputation for Sustainable Supply Chains: A Systematic Literature Review, Bibliometric Mapping, and Research Agenda
No full textCorporate Reputation (CR) is essential to value generation and is co-created between a company and its stakeholders, including supply chain actors. Consequently, CR is a critical and valuable resource that should be managed carefully along supply chains. However, the current CR literature is fragmented, and a general definition of CR is elusive. Besides, the academic CR debate largely lacks a supply chain perspective. This is not surprising, as it is very difficult to collect reliable data along supply chains. When supply chains span the globe, data collection is especially challenging, as the chain consists of multiple suppliers and subcontractors, positioned at different tier levels. Recognizing this, the paper examines firstly the current state of CR research through a systematic literature review from a business perspective. The review is combined with a bibliometric mapping approach to show the most influential research clusters, representative of CR research streams and their contributors. This process highlights that the connection between CR and supply chain issues represents a major research gap. Consequently, this paper introduces a research agenda connecting these the two traditionally separated research fields
Understanding social sustainability indicators: A systematic literature review towards developing a framework for staging future mega sport events
No full textUsing the systematic literature review, based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method, we analyzed 40 peer reviewed articles between 2018 and 2023 retrieved from two established academic databases: EBSCO (Business Source Ultimate) and Web of Science. To validate the findings of the literature review, we did a document analysis, using Nvivo 14, of the Candidature Files of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024. Through this technique, we could systematically review and interpret the information embedded in the Candidature Files (Kutsyuruba, 2023). The goal was to extract meaningful data and understand the perspectives of the Paris 2024 organizers on Social Sustainability, building on the insights gained from our literature review, verifying or falsifying the literature outcomes, and to advance theory building of the Social Sustainability concept. Results and Findings: Many authors recognize that Social Sustainability is a nascent research area (Kordi, Belayutham, & Che Ibrahim, 2021; Thomson, Kennelly, & Toohey, 2020). The result of this systematic literature review, independent of any specific industry or context, was to gain an understanding of the existing research and latest debates relevant to the topic. Transdisciplinary research can address gaps in social legacy studies by uniting the views and understandings of diverse scholars and practitioners. Our first observation is that the majority of articles lack references to any particular theoretical model. This finding is concerning as theory is crucial for validating management research. Only 9 articles (out of 40) adopt a theoretical foundation, the stakeholder theory being the most popular one. This may not be surprising, giving that understanding stakeholders is fundamental analyzing the relationship between a ‘valued object’ and it ‘perceived outcomes’ (Girginov & Preuss, 2021). A second result from this literature review is the development of aninitial set of indicators to describe Social Sustainability independently of any specific context. The outcome is a list of 25 indicators, either tangible or intangible, which can be grouped in seven themes, represented in the table below. Expanding upon these preliminary findings, we sought to validate these outcomes using a document analysis approach of the Candidature Files of the 2024
Olympic Games. A first observation is that most indicators from the theoretical framework were referenced in these Files, suggesting that the framework has a solid foundation. On the other hand, real detailed actions or measurable Key Performance Indicators were often noticeably absent. Additionally, we identified new indicators associated with sports legacy. In line with our literature review, minimal attention has been given to stakeholders other than athletes and the media
Developing a universal VCM Mechamism: Lessons from the EU ETS and Global case studies. Prioritizing insetting over offsetting
No full textUnderstanding social sustainability indicators: A systematic literature review towards developing a framework for staging future mega sport events
No full textUsing the systematic literature review, based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method, we analyzed 40 peer reviewed articles between 2018 and 2023 retrieved from two established academic databases: EBSCO (Business Source Ultimate) and Web of Science. To validate the findings of the literature review, we did a document analysis, using Nvivo 14, of the Candidature Files of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024. Through this technique, we could systematically review and interpret the information embedded in the Candidature Files (Kutsyuruba, 2023). The goal was to extract meaningful data and understand the perspectives of the Paris 2024 organizers on Social Sustainability, building on the insights gained from our literature review, verifying or falsifying the literature outcomes, and to advance theory building of the Social Sustainability concept. Results and Findings: Many authors recognize that Social Sustainability is a nascent research area (Kordi, Belayutham, & Che Ibrahim, 2021; Thomson, Kennelly, & Toohey, 2020). The result of this systematic literature review, independent of any specific industry or context, was to gain an understanding of the existing research and latest debates relevant to the topic. Transdisciplinary research can address gaps in social legacy studies by uniting the views and understandings of diverse scholars and practitioners. Our first observation is that the majority of articles lack references to any particular theoretical model. This finding is concerning as theory is crucial for validating management research. Only 9 articles (out of 40) adopt a theoretical foundation, the stakeholder theory being the most popular one. This may not be surprising, giving that understanding stakeholders is fundamental analyzing the relationship between a ‘valued object’ and it ‘perceived outcomes’ (Girginov & Preuss, 2021). A second result from this literature review is the development of aninitial set of indicators to describe Social Sustainability independently of any specific context. The outcome is a list of 25 indicators, either tangible or intangible, which can be grouped in seven themes, represented in the table below. Expanding upon these preliminary findings, we sought to validate these outcomes using a document analysis approach of the Candidature Files of the 2024
Olympic Games. A first observation is that most indicators from the theoretical framework were referenced in these Files, suggesting that the framework has a solid foundation. On the other hand, real detailed actions or measurable Key Performance Indicators were often noticeably absent. Additionally, we identified new indicators associated with sports legacy. In line with our literature review, minimal attention has been given to stakeholders other than athletes and the media
An Inclusive Civil Society Dialogue for Successful Implementation of the EU HTA Regulation: Call to Action to Ensure Appropriate Involvement of Stakeholders and Collaborators
No full textOBJECTIVES: Stakeholder involvement has long been considered a success factor for a joint European health technology assessment (HTA) process, and its relevance is now anchored in the EU HTA Regulation's (EU HTAR) legislative wording. Therefore, we aimed to explore the roles, challenges, and most important activities to increase the level of involvement per stakeholder group.
METHODS: At the 2022 Fall Convention of the European Access Academy (EAA), working groups addressed the involvement of patients, clinicians, regulators, health technology developers (HTD), and national HTA bodies and payers within the EU HTA process. Each working group revisited the pre-convention survey results, determined key role characteristics for each stakeholder, and agreed on the most important activities to fulfill the role profile. Finally, the activities suggested per group were prioritized by plenary group.
RESULTS: The prioritized actions for patients included training and capacity building, the establishment of a patient involvement committee, and the establishment of a patient unit at the EC secretariat. For clinicians, it included alignment on evidence assessment from a clinical vs. HTA point of view, capacity building, and standardization of processes. The most important actions for regulators are to develop joint regulatory-HTA guidance documents, align processes and interfaces under the regulation, and share discussions on post-licensing evidence generation. HTDs prioritized scientific advice capacity and the review of the scoping process, and further development of the scope of the assessment report fact checks. The top three actions for national HTA bodies and payers included clarification on the early HTD dialogue process, political support and commitment, and clarification on financial support.
CONCLUSIONS: Addressing the activities identified as the most important for stakeholders/collaborators in the EU HTA process (e.g., in the implementation of the EU HTA Stakeholder Network and of the guidance documents developed by the EUnetHTA 21 consortium) will be key to starting an "inclusive civil society dialogue", as suggested by the European Commission's Pharmaceutical Strategy.(Novartis (Switzerland), AstraZeneca (United Kingdom), Pfizer (United States), Roche (Switzerland)
Vice-chancellor narcissism and university performance
No full textWe empirically study the relationship between VC narcissism and university performance.
We use the quasi-natural experiment of VC changes and employ a difference-in-differences approach.
We show that the appointment of a highly narcissistic VC leads to a deterioration in research and teaching performance.
We demonstrate that excessive financial risk taking and empire-building strategies are two mediating mechanisms.
Our findings have practical implications for leadership recruitment and the monitoring of leadership practices in HE.Universities hold a prominent role in knowledge creation through research and education. In this study, we examine the effects of VC narcissism on university performance. We measure VC narcissism based on the size of the signature, in line with a methodological approach which has been widely used in the recent literature and repeatedly validated in laboratory experiments. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment of VC changes and employ a Difference-in-Difference research design, which alleviates concerns related to endogeneity and identification bias. We show that the appointment of a highly narcissistic VC leads to an overall deterioration in research and teaching performance and concomitantly league table performance. We further identify excessive financial risk taking and empire-building as possible mechanisms explaining the main results and provide evidence on the moderating role of university governance. Our findings are consistent with the view that narcissism is one of the most prominent traits of destructive leadership; they also have practical implications for leadership recruitment and the monitoring of leadership practices in the higher education sector. The results of this study extend prior research in several ways. Extant literature on executive leadership and narcissism yields inconclusive findings; this literature has mainly focused on for-profit organisations and has not considered universities. In addition, prior research in higher education on the determinants of university performance has not yet examined the role of leadership personality traits