1,721,089 research outputs found

    Overcoming the liability of smallness by recruiting through networks in China: a guanxi-based social capital perspective

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    We investigate the role of guanxi in Chinese entrepreneurial firms’ recruitment practices in attempting to overcome the liability of smallness. Combining insights from the social capital and guanxi literature, we theorize the guanxi-based social capital perspective and use it to analysis 96 in-depth interviews with multiple members (entrepreneurs, senior managers, and factory workers) from 15 die-casting entrepreneurial firms in Guangdong province, China. We find that the use of guanxi in recruitment practice can overcome the liability of smallness because it makes the hiring process more convenient, improves firms’ attractiveness to jobseekers, and enhances the person-organizational fit between new hires and firms. We discuss how Chinese entrepreneurs and their senior managers use guanxi strategically to achieve these advantages. On the other hand, our findings suggest that jobseekers can also use guanxi to increase their options, improve their bargaining power, and distract firms’ attention away from hiring the most appropriate candidate for the job in order to undermine the effectiveness of Chinese entrepreneurial firms’ recruitment procedures. We explore the implications of these findings for academic research and managerial practice

    Environmental strategy and competitive advantage: the role of small- and medium-sized enterprises' dynamic capabilities

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    Drawing on the resource-based theory and institutional theory, we develop a framework to explain the processes by which the environmental strategy of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) contributes to their competitive advantage. We test our assumption using data collected from 214 UK-based SMEs in the technology sector. We find that the effects of environmental strategy can lead to the development of their marketing competence, as well as research and development (R&D) competence, which ultimately contributes to superior financial performance. We also find that a reciprocal causal relationship exists between SMEs’ marketing and R&D competences. Combined, we reveal that the presence of a serial multiple mediation relationship between SMEs’ environmental strategy and financial performance mediates through marketing competence and then R&D competence, or vice versa. Our study offers important academic and managerial implications, and also points out future research direction

    An integrated model of cause-related marketing strategy development

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    Researchers in the fields of marketing and corporate social responsibility have suggested that cause-related marketing (CRM) can provide firms with opportunities for managing their community relationships and for enhancing their marketing, financial, social, and environmental performance. In this article, we offer a conceptual framework that helps to broaden the understanding of how firms develop CRM strategy. We identify three key CRM strategy development components: motivational factors, strategy design, and campaign tactics. The conceptual framework is constructed based on these three components to explore how the key CRM drivers influence the CRM implementation plan, which subsequently leads to the development of different campaign styles. We also propose that firms’ emphasis on value delivery systems in the process of CRM strategy development plays an important role in influencing the direction in which they wish to assemble their CRM campaign

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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