Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present an interview by Strategy & Leadership with Professor Vijay Govindarajan, one of the world's foremost experts on innovation execution and the co‐author of The Other Side of Innovation (2010), which discusses innovating for emerging markets, building the right innovation team, innovation planning as learning, and his newest concept, emotional infrastructure.

Govindarajan explains how companies use the “forget‐borrow‐learn” framework to drive innovation execution. They “forget” the core business success formula, “borrow” key assets from core business, and “learn” to resolve unknowns.

The paper finds that to manage innovation a special plan should be created to guide disciplined experiments for quicker learning. Quicker learning leads to better decisions, and better decisions lead to better results. A special innovation initiative team should also be created: a partnership between a dedicated team (using a mix of insiders and outsiders, with new job descriptions) and shared staff, who support the project while sustaining its performance engine responsibilities.

Do not “isolate” new businesses or “spin them off.” This forfeits the advantage of using existing assets, such as brands, manufacturing facilities, relationships with customers, areas of technical expertise and much more.

Today reverse innovation, taking unique business models from poor countries to rich ones, is a winning formula. But new organizational systems are required so that full business capabilities for reverse innovation in emerging markets – including product development, manufacturing, and marketing – are possible.

This paper focuses on the need to revise the conceptualisation and measurement of evaluative style in future Reliance on Accounting Performance Measures (RAPM) research. Based on a review of the existing literature, we identify a number of issues in the conceptualisation and measurement of evaluative style and conclude that none of the existing measures is ideal for use in future research. We see two general dimensions of evaluative style that need specific attention in future research. The first dimension addresses the evaluative focus of the superior (e.g. budgets, other quantitative targets, short or long‐term targets, etc.). The second dimension addresses the superior’s way of handling the evaluation process (e.g. rigid or flexible, fixing blame, using it as a learning opportunity, etc.). Building on these two dimensions, there i a need for studies that assess how specific performance measures are used in different way within a particular organisational context, enabling a distinction between the design and the use of control tools. These conclusions suggest a need for qualitative indepth field studies within single organisations rather than quantitative survey research across organisations in future research on evaluative style and its behavioural consequences.

Within the literature of global mindset there has been much discussion of antecedents. Few attempts have been made, however, to analyze the outcomes of a global mindset. Our chapter undertakes a thematic analysis of global mindset antecedents and outcomes in the 1994–2013 literature. Adopting an inductive approach and borrowing methods from international business and managerial cognition studies, we map, assess, and categorize 42 empirical and 10 theoretical studies thematically. We focus on the antecedents and outcomes at individual, group, and organizational levels. We conceptualize corporate global mindset as a multidimensional construct that incorporates global mindset at the individual level and is dependent on a robust communications infrastructure strategy for its cultivation throughout the organization. Our study categorizes antecedents and outcomes by level and identifies the gaps in global mindset outcomes and firm performance for future researchers to address.

The current study aims to advance the understanding of the role of performance measurement systems (PMS) in the improvement of companies’ performance, as well to contribute to the limited knowledge of this issue in transition economies. In order to do so, performance effects of PMS are examined, testing both dominant approaches: the performance measurement diversity view and performance measurement alignment view.

A survey using questionnaire was conducted on a sample of large- and medium-sized manufacturing companies in Serbia.

The results of the research support the performance measurement diversity view, as we found evidence that a broader scope PMS is positively associated with performance. However, we also found partial support for the influence of the strategy–PMS alignment on performance.

This study investigates the complex mechanism of PMS effect on performance in a particular context – the transition economy. Moreover, this study represents a pioneering attempt to evaluate the state of performance measurement practice in Serbia and is one of the rare studies of this type on transition economies.

This article develops a new conceptual model of knowledge flows within international service firms. Our model takes explicit account of the critical role of relationships and the individual as being central to the process of knowledge transfer for service firms. The model is then validated with data collected from five international service firms using critical event analysis techniques. The findings reinforce our contention that the individual plays a critical role in the process of knowledge transfer and that relationships form an integral part of this process. The implications of this finding are also discussed.

The purpose of this study is to deal with the performance consequences of business units that adopt varying knowledge roles within the internal multi-business network. Multi-business firms are distributed knowledge systems in which business units are extensively involved in internal knowledge transfer processes. Business units play different roles within their respective corporate knowledge networks as knowledge providers, knowledge receivers, both or neither.

Survey data from a sample of 225 business divisions were analyzed using a multivariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

Results indicate that divisions which occupy knowledge roles that reveal the possession of unique knowledge (knowledge signaling) or guarantee the accumulation of new knowledge (knowledge learning) outperform those divisions that have access to spilled knowledge (knowledge depreciation) or have no access to any kind of knowledge (knowledge insulation).

Four knowledge roles are distinguished according to the extent to which a business division provides the rest of the corporation with knowledge or receives knowledge from the rest of the corporation, thus exploring the issue of internal knowledge transfer from an integrated perspective that takes the directionality of knowledge flows and the position within the knowledge network into account.

This study contributes to existent research on knowledge transfer and performance outcomes by demonstrating the usefulness of the knowledge role as an integrating concept within this literature. It also extends the four-role framework to the prescriptive domain and tests its normative implications in an intensive internal knowledge transfer setting which has to date gone relatively unnoticed, as is that of multi-business firms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether business strategy influences strategic management accounting (SMA) usage. Business strategy has been operationalized through strategic pattern, mission and positioning.

The paper is based on an internet questionnaire survey of Italian companies. Multiple regression analysis is used to test the impact of strategic variables (pattern, mission and positioning) on SMA usage. Company size is included as control variable.

Several SMA techniques appear to be used in Italian companies as they are in other countries investigated in different studies. Customer accounting, competitive position monitoring, competitor performance appraisal based on published financial statement and quality costing represent the most widely used SMA techniques in the Italian sample. From the regression analysis, both defender‐ and cost leader‐type of strategy are found to be more willing to use SMA techniques addressing cost information.

The issue, common in contingent research, of business strategy definition and operationalization constitutes the main limitation of the paper; in an attempt to restrict its effect, it uses three strategic typologies (pattern, mission and positioning) and employs a measurement method used in previous studies. A second issue concerns the definition of SMA techniques. There is no concurred list of SMA techniques in the literature and further discussion is expected in the future.

First, empirical evidence is provided to a field (SMA) where empirical research is needed in order to be comparable with traditional management accounting techniques. Second, for the first time in SMA studies, a framework is employed that considers all of the three main strategic variables (pattern, mission and positioning) used in management accounting literature. As a result, the loose coupling between SMA techniques and business strategy typologies indicates (with the possible exception of cost‐related SMA techniques) that the same SMA technique can support different strategic approaches of the company.

This study explores whether the implementation of Management Control Systems (MCS) by the Greek shipping companies influences the adoption of their performance measurement systems and the implication of this choice on organizational performance. The study uses data collected from semi-structured interviews and a survey instrument addressed to shipping companies located in Greece. The paper finds evidence that MCS are defined in terms of the informational purposes these MCS fulfill. Analysis of responses to the questionnaire results that the choice of MCS is contingent upon the strategy pursued by the shipping companies. In addition, evidence suggests that shipping companies with an optimal fit between their strategy and their MCS experience superior performance and higher perceived usefulness of MCS. Moreover, it is concluded that Greek shipping companies adopt subjective performance measures irrespective of the MCS they implement and that this choice leads to enhanced perceived performance.

The purpose of this paper to analyze the effect of Soret with heat and mass transfer on an unsteady two-dimensional Magnetohydrodynamics flow through a porous medium under the influence of the uniform transverse magnetic field in a rotating parallel plate is considered.

A mathematical model was developed using the slip conditions under unsteady state situations. Analytical expressions for the velocity, temperature and concentration profiles, wall shear stress, rates of heat and mass transfer and volumetric flow rate were obtained and computationally discussed with respect to the non-dimensional parameters. Further, the velocity reduces with increasing Hartmann number M and increases with Grashof number Gr and permeability parameter K.

It is observed that temperature reduces with an increase in Prandtl number Pr and ω. It is noted that the thermal radiation increases with increase in Soret number Sr, Schmidt number Sc, Prandtl number pr and ω.

Concentration decreases with an increase in radiation parameter R and chemical reaction parameter Kc.