gone but not lost the different performance impacts of employee mobility between cooperators versus competitors this article extends research on the relationship between employee mobility and firm performance by exploring how mobility between competitors and mobility between potential cooperators are differe

what are the consequences of initiative taking in multinational subsidiaries the phenomenon of subsidiary initiative has received increasing attention in recent years but the consequences of initiatives and the associated dynamics of headquarters subsidiary relationships have received much less research attention building on resource dependence theory and self determination theory we argue that two basic goals subsidiary managers pursue are to achieve autonomy vis a vis corporate headquarters and influence over other units we investigate how a subsidiary s past initiatives contribute to its bargaining power and how headquarters response through granting attention or monitoring affects the realization of the subsidiary s goals using structural equation modeling our hypotheses are tested by drawing on a sample of 257 subsidiaries located in three different countries australia canada and the united kingdom our results show that subsidiaries are not able to increase their influence through initiatives unless they get headquarters attention we also find that subsidiary initiatives have a direct effect on subsidiary autonomy but the caveat is that initiatives also evoke headquarters monitoring which in turn decreases the subsidiary s autonomy in addition to providing insights into how subsidiaries can achieve their goals the paper also sheds light on the critical role headquarters plays in leveraging initiatives and the influence of individual subsidiaries in the multinational enterprise

language friction and partner selection in cross border r d alliance formation how does language friction affect alliance formation language friction is a form of cultural friction arising from structural differences in the respective languages used by potential partners to reason and solve problems together a little language friction may prompt partners to rethink solutions thereby enhancing collaboration but excessive friction may impede collaboration we develop a language friction index lfi to quantify relative differences in linguistic structure for any language pair utilizing a unique data set of semiconductor design activities 1988 2001 our empirical analysis finds an inverted u shaped relationship between partners lfi and the likelihood of cross border research and development rd 2 the effects of language friction are economically significant and strategically consequential 3 certain aspects of language friction occur independent of language proficiency and persist despite the use of lingua franca to reduce language barriers 4 linguistic diversity is an indirect marker of cognitive diversity which is useful in boosting creativity especially in first time collaborations 5 beyond r d alliances language friction may also influence other types of strategic interactions and organizational processes

an economic approach to influence activities in organizations members of organizations spend considerable time effort and ingenuity attempting to influence decision makers such influence activities may bring benefits to the organization but they also involve real costs this essay offers an economic rationale for such influence activity as representing rational self interested behavior in the presence of informational asymmetries and an analysis of how the design of the organization s structure and policies should respond to the incentives for attempting influence it is posited that information valuable for the organization s decision making is directly available only to members of the organization who have some personal stake in the decisions these individuals may then have an incentive to try to manipulate the information they develop and provide in order to influence the resulting decisions to their benefits this can be costly both in degrading the quality of decision making and in diverting the attention and effort of the organization s members from more productive activities the organization has three different methods it can employ to discourage excessive influence activities and to encourage more directly productive uses of time and effort it can limit access to decision makers and participation in decision making it can alter its decision making criteria to favor those performing well in productive activities and it can provide direct financial incentives to encourage the desired allocation of effort it is shown that an efficiently designed organization will use such financial incentives only as a last resort instead it will always first alter its decision participation policies and decisionmaking criteria

an agency theory of the division of managerial labor should responsibility for strategic planning and execution be assigned to the same manager should a firm have a chief operating officer with responsibilities distinct from those of the chief executive officer how does the division of labor affect managerial opportunism this paper uses a formal agency theoretic model to address these questions and present a new theory of the division of managerial labor building on penrose s typology penrose e 2009 the theory of the growth of the firm 4th ed blackwell oxford uk the theory identifies when to assign i entrepreneurial services which relate to strategic planning and the acquisition of resources and ii managerial services which relate to execution to the same generalist manager rather than to different specialists the analysis reveals the critical importance of separability i e whether a supervisor can separately observe the outcomes of entrepreneurial and managerial services if managers and their supervisor have symmetric information about separability hiring a generalist dominates because managerial services which are easier to assess reduce the scope for opportunism associated with entrepreneurial services which are harder to assess conversely if managers have better information regarding separability and the probability of separability is low hiring specialists dominates because hiring a generalist allows the potential for opportunism associated with entrepreneurial services to contaminate the provision of managerial services even so the benefits of hiring a generalist may be restored if the services are sequenced appropriately an implication of such sequencing is that a firm will grow in fits and starts giving rise to a penrose effect even if labor market frictions do not impede the assimilation of new managers

the structural determinants of union bargaining power this paper investigates the structural determinants of variation in union power across manufacturing industries using a pooled sample of unionized establishments from the expenditure on employee compensation surveys of 1968 72 the author estimates wage equations augmented with measures of product market structure bargaining structure and the size distribution of unions the results suggest that union wage gains are greatest where discretionary pricing power enhances employers ability to pay and where unions achieve high coverage practice centralized bargaining and avoid union fragmentation on the other hand centralized bargaining provides no advantage in competitive industries

hiring molecules not atoms comobility and wages what role do social connections play in the labor market a vast influential literature has detailed the ways in which ties facilitate the flow of information about job opportunities to workers as well as endorsements or referrals of workers to firms we propose that this role is not constrained to an informational one alone rather relationships between workers can enable a collective job matching process that facilitates the transfer of shared human capital from one organization to another yet comobility has been studied only occasionally and among elite workers in particular industries this study delivers both fieldwork as well as large sample analysis among all nongovernmental workers in denmark finding a 5 5 wage premium for those who move jointly instead of independently both in the full sample as well as when applying strict matching or fixed effects for workers or firms co movers whose skills are related but not identical capture a higher premium and the wage gains associated with comob

an architectural framework for global talent management a unique characteristic of the multinational corporation is that it comprises a geographically dispersed and culturally differentiated workforce that embodies both firm specific and location specific human capital this article takes an architectural approach to describe how different types of human capital develop from the individual level to the unit level and then to the firm level in order to build a talent portfolio for the multinational corporation depending on the company s strategy multidomestic meganational transnational different configurations of the talent portfolio tend to be emphasized and integrated to achieve competitive advantage implications for theory and practice are discussed and a research agenda is introduced

when competitive advantage doesn t lead to performance the resource based view and stakeholder bargaining power what if rent from a competitive advantage is appropriated so it cannot be observed in performance measures the resourcebased view was not formulated to examine who will get the rent yet this essay argues that the factors leading to a resource based advantage also predict who will appropriate rent knowledge based assets are promising because firm specificity social complexity and causal ambiguity make them hard to imit ate however the roles of internal stakeholders may grant them a great deal of bargaining power especially relative to investors this essay integrates the resource based view with the bargaining power literature by defining the firm as a nexus of contracts this new lens can help to explain when rent will be generated and simultaneously who will appropriate it in doing so it provides a more robust theory of firm performance than the resource based view alone it is also suggested that this lens might be useful for examining other theories of firm performance

following doctors orders organizational change as a response to human capital bargaining power organizational change is facilitated by both internal and external factors yet little is known about how they might be linked through a case study of one hospital s change from a nonprofit to a nonprofit for profit organizational structure we find that human capital bargaining power is a key mechanism that integrates internal and external drivers of change however a paradox surfaces whereby the strength of the bargaining power can force structural changes that may be counterproductive our results show that human capital bargaining power is a double edged sword shifting the governance structure to benefit those with power by providing additional rents but creating challenges for the ongoing management and retention of such valuable human capital our findings have implications for the long term survival of talent intensive organizations where human capital bargaining power is strong

the content of freedom in resources the open source model today we are facing the rising of new needs for the firms especially for the small ones they find themselves acting in a context characterized by the great content of information technology this paper wants to analyse some aspects tied to the use of some particular kinds of resources such as knowledge and organizational culture it s necessary especially in the new economy to add another attribute to the four set by barney as elements able to make the resources sustainable competitive advantage sources in 1991 this attribute is freedom essentially as freedom of reaching and using resources this attribute more than coming along with the four already set can be considered in many cases as a pre condition to the other ones in existence

are family firms good employers family firms employ about 60 percent of the global workforce while it is widely assumed that they are good employers data about their conduct is mixed in this study we extend stewardship and agency theories to test competing propositions about the impact of family on employment practices using data from 14 961 private belgian firms over a 19 year period higher investments lower dividend payout and higher risk tolerance indicate that family firms are better financial stewards of their companies than nonfamily firms however family firms are worse organizational stewards than nonfamily firms they offer lower compensation invest less in employee training and exhibit higher voluntary turnover and lower labor productivity further and contrary to earlier research we find that financial practices in private family firms do not change over time and that the deleterious influence of family on employment practices rises with both firm age and with heightened family involvement together our findings suggest that a more nuanced understanding of stewardship and agency theory is needed to understand the impact of family on the governance of private firms

the future of stakeholder management theory a temporal perspective we propose adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory and assess the implications thereof for firm level competitive advantage we argue that a firm s competitive advantage fundamentally depends on its capacity for stakeholder management related transformational adaptation over time our new temporal stakeholder management approach builds upon insights from both the resource based view rbv in strategic management and institutional theory stakeholder agendas and their relative salience to the firm evolve over time a phenomenon well understood in the literature and requiring what we call level 1 adaptation however the dominant direction of stakeholder pressures can also change namely from supporting resource heterogeneity at the firm level to fostering industry homogeneity and vice versa when dominant stakeholder pressures shift from supporting heterogeneity towards stimulating homogeneity in industry the firm must engage in level 2 or transformational adaptation stakeholders typically provide valuable resources to the firm in an early stage without these resources which foster heterogeneity in line with rbv thinking the firm would not exist at a later stage stakeholders also contribute to inter firm homogeneity via isomorphism pressures in line with institutional theory thinking adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory has far reaching implications for this theory s practical relevance to senior level management in business

a survey of the literature on human capital intensive firms the aim of this paper is to provide an exhaustive survey of the academic research dedicated to the study of human capital intensive firms hcifs we use a bibliometric analysis based on the three widely used databases econlit science direct and wiley over the period 1992 2015 we are adapting a methodology developed in previous works to our specific object of study and we generate a bottom up clustering on keywords titles and abstracts our examination of the data sheds a light on five main clusters of works that respectively focus on 1 critical human resource management 2 intellectual capital assessment 3 funding risk and innovation 4 high skilled employees supporting economic development and 5 internal and external valuable social networks in a critical appraisal of our results we stress that the bibliometric analysis remains silent on how the different clusters are linked with each other based on our own appreciation of the hcifs literature we propose a further step in the identification of a central question linking up these clusters a transversal review of the five clusters reveals that hcifs appear as a network of specialized agents whose complementary human resources are decisive for the value creation process

is knowledge power knowledge flows subsidiary power and rent seeking within mncs in recent years as multinational corporation mnc subsidiaries have become more closely linked to international networks their knowledge intensity has risen and some of their r d has gained a more creative role simultaneously and often connectedly many subsidiaries have acquired considerable strategic independence in all aspects of their operations and therefore are able to exercise considerable intra firm bargaining power to influence the distribution of the firm s resources in this context we suggest that intra mnc knowledge flows are a key determinant of subsidiary bargaining power we argue that subsidiary managers can exploit such power to pursue their own ends such rent seeking behavior is implicit in much of the literature on managerialism but our analysis suggests that such behavior can now occur in headquarters subsidiary and subsidiary subsidiary relations thus subsidiary strategic independence designed to enhance the competitiveness of outputs market knowledge and inputs asset seeking and learning can be corroded when the pursuit of subsidiary objectives encourages rent seeking empirical analysis of a sample of high technology subsidiaries in the uk provides strong support for the theory we examine several avenues whereby the incentives of units within the mnc can be aligned

general human capital as a shared investment under asymmetric information the paper examines the firm s optimal wage and layoff policies in situations where only general training is provided and the firm providing training has an advantage in information over other firms the asymmetric information among firms creates adverse selection which seriously impairs the mobility of labour and consequently affects the firn s optimal policies general human capital is shown to have the same layoff and cost sharing implications as firm specific human capital furthermore the contracts prespecifying rigid wages are proven to be optimal le capital humain general en tant qu investissement conjoint quand l information est asyme trique ce m6moire examine les politiques optimales de salaires et de mises a pied d une firme quand seulement une formation generale est foumie et quand la firme qui donne la formation a un avantage informationnel sur les autres firmes l information asym6trique entre firmnes cree une selection adverse qui reduit serieusement la mobilite des travailleurs et en consequence affecte les politiques optimales de la firmne le capital humain a vocation generale a les meme implications que le capital humain a vocation specifique pour ce qui est des mises a pied et du partage des coufts de plus les contrats qui prespecifient des salaires rigides s averent optimaux

organizing rent generation and appropriation toward a theory of the entrepreneurial firm abstract why firms exist and how their boundaries should be drawn are central issues in several academic disciplines the field of entrepreneurship continues to struggle with a theory of the firm this paper suggests a theory of the entrepreneurial firm grounded in organizational economics and bounded by the rent generation and appropriation of entrepreneurial knowledge

balancing subsidiary influence in the federative mnc a business network view the contest for intra organisational power in the multinational corporation mnc has gradually become a prominent issue on the research agenda as long as 25 years ago hedlund 1980 investigated the strategic roles of subsidiaries in mncs and doz and prahalad 1981 raised the issue of how difficult it is for headquarters to remain in control of its subsidiaries and to influence their strategies over time since then several researchers have suggested that mncs can be considered to be dispersed structures of power in which the top management s authority does not necessarily result in hierarchical power being the ultimate control mechanism hedlund 1986 forsgren 1989 ghoshal and bartlett 1990 doz and prahalad 1993 ferner and edwards 1995 kristensen and zeitlin 2001 morgan and whitley 2003 birkinshaw and hood 1998 examined the evolution of capabilities at the subsidiary level and recognised that in most corporations there is an internal competition for charter that implies a process of change in subsidiary roles birkinshaw and hood 1998 782 case research has also indicated that changes in the charters of divisions or subsidiaries in mncs constitute a strong feature of horizontal or vertical competition in the corporate marketplace galunic and eisenhardt 1996 birkinshaw and fry 1998 the tension between the headquarters and overseas laboratories caused by the laboratories desire for autonomy and influence is an example of such a competition asaka wa 2001

employee treatment and contracting with bank lenders an instrumental approach for stakeholder management adopting an instrumental approach for stakeholder management we focus on two primary stakeholder groups employees and creditors to investigate the relationship between employee treatment and loan contracts with banks we find strong evidence that fair employee treatment reduces loan price and limits the use of financial covenants in addition we document that relationship bank lenders price both the levels and changes in the quality of employee treatment whereas first time bank lenders only care about the levels of fair employee treatment taking a contingency perspective we find that industry competition and firm asset intangibility moderate the relationship between good human resource management and bank loan costs the cost reduction effect of fair employee treatment is stronger for firms operating in a more competitive industry and having higher levels of intangible assets

a framework linking intangible resources and capabilities to sustainable competitive advantage this article is concerned with the role of intangible resources in business strategy in particular it is concerned with identifying the intangible sources of sustainable competitive advantage sustainable competitive advantage results from the possession of relevant capability differentials regulatory and positional capabilities are concerned with intangible assets functional and cultural capabilities are concerned with competencies a framework linking intangible resources to capabilities has been devised and is used as the basis of a new technique for identifying the relative contribution which the different intangible resources make to competitive advantage the results of the use of this technique in six case studies are reported

further evidence on the debate of oil gas price decoupling a long memory approach abstract the long run oil gas price relationship has been challenged more often in recent years as these two prices have shown evidence of decoupling from each other this paper proposes the use of a long memory approach and a rolling windows method to model the time varying oil gas price relationship in three markets namely the united states europe and japan the results extend existing research conclusions on the oil gas price relationship and answer the question of whether it is a temporary phenomenon or a permanent market change our findings indicate that the us oil gas relationship remains nonstationary at almost all windows and illustrate strong evidence of decoupling conversely the european and asian oil gas prices exhibit temporary decoupling over time although the overall relationship still favours the oil indexation hypothesis the us experience suggests that oil and gas do not share the same fundamentals and a pricing hub can better reflect the true value of natural gas policy makers in europe and asia should reinforce their efforts towards a market based pricing mechanism for gas

bargaining ability and competitive advantage empirical evidence from medical devices in markets where buyers and suppliers negotiate supplier costs buyer willingness to pay and competition determine only a range of potential prices leaving the final price dependent on other fac

a conceptualization of collective bargaining power although power relationships have a significant impact on outcomes in collective negotiation few theoretical treatments of the determinants of power in collective bargaining have been developed building on a general theory of bargaining power developed by bacharach and lawler the authors present a comprehensive model of power in collective bargaining they suggest that power stems from multiple legal economic social and structural sources that are controllable to varying degrees by union and management when combined with certain transformational factors such as commitment to the bargaining relationship and information available to the parties potential bargaining power is converted to the actual power that union and management negotiators bring to bear on a collective bargaining relationship practical applications and suggestions for further research are discussed

internal labor markets firm specific human capital and heterogeneity antecedents of employee idiosyncratic deal requests a field study of 615 managers in 11 korean manufacturing firms extends theory regarding labor contracting to the study of idiosyncratic deals i deals despite i deals potential to benefit both employees and employers economic theory asserts that employers attempt to reduce individual contracting by use of internal labor markets ilms this study identifies limits to that assertion by identifying conditions under which i deals are sought despite employee participation in ilms furthermore we develop and test theory reconciling the roles of ilms and firm specific human capital in employee requests for i deals employee reports of ilm practices are negatively related to i deal requests whereas firm specific human capital is positively related to these requests in addition we find an interaction between the two such that the suppressive effects of ilm reports on i deal requests hold largely for workers with low firm specific human capital individuals with high firm specific human capital tend to seek i deals despite reported ilm practices i deal requests also increase with group level heterogeneity in firm specific human capital in all our findings suggest that ilms function as economic theory asserts for workers with limited firm specific human capital but they are less able to reduce i deal requests among workers with higher firm specific human capital

stock markets in africa emerging lions or white elephants abstract the number of stock markets in african countries has doubled over the last 7 years although these markets remain small and illiquid they are growing rapidly and will become an increasingly important part of many african economies using examples taken from experience in other developing regions and africa s recent past this paper evaluates the common economic criticisms of stock markets and the political pitfalls involved in their operation it concludes that the positive economic effects of bourses on african economies are far larger than any negative effects and argues that the political costs can be mitigated while political benefits can also be gained it finishes by suggesting reforms that can be put in place to reap more benefits and further reduce costs from stock markets on the continent