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Full-Text Articles in Business

Nokia Siemens Networks: Just Doing Business – Or Supporting An Oppressive Regime?, Judith Schrempf-Stirling Sep 2011

Nokia Siemens Networks: Just Doing Business – Or Supporting An Oppressive Regime?, Judith Schrempf-Stirling

Management Faculty Publications

This case study examines the relevance of taking social and political factors into consideration when a corporation is making a key business decision. In September 2009, Simon Beresford-Wylie, the outgoing CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), was reviewing the company’s achievements — while acknowledging the latest public criticism regarding NSN’s business relationship with the Iranian government. In the summer of 2009, NSN was accused of complicity in human rights violations linked to Iran’s presidential election. The company sold network infrastructure and software solutions to the Iranian government, which then used this technology to observe, block, and control domestic communications. Should …


Identifying Resources For Going Global, Stephen Tallman May 2011

Identifying Resources For Going Global, Stephen Tallman

Management Faculty Publications

Business firms have been described as bundles of resources and capabilities (or assets and skills, or a variety of other terms indicating a combination of hard, or at least clearly identifiable, components and soft, or at least somewhat undefined, abilities and processes), bound together by ownership, contracts, common management, organizational culture, identity, and a variety of other processes. This chapter focuses on resources and capabilities, and considers how such component parts can enhance or discourage globalization, and how the firm's stock of resources and capabilities is altered by processes of globalization.


The Strategic Assembly Of Global Firms: A Micro-Structural Analysis Of Local Learning And Global Adaptation, Mitchell P. Koza, Stephen Tallman, Aylin Ataay May 2011

The Strategic Assembly Of Global Firms: A Micro-Structural Analysis Of Local Learning And Global Adaptation, Mitchell P. Koza, Stephen Tallman, Aylin Ataay

Management Faculty Publications

Strategic Assembly - the comprehensive and coordinated use of internal development, mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and alliances - is a novel approach to the construction and management of global firms. This paper describes the role and characteristics of strategic assembly in the construction and management of the Global Multi-Business Firm, an emerging form of global organization. We present a study of Group Renault and its relationship with two key players in the lucrative and emerging market for autos in Turkey, emphasizing the coevolutionary processes through which local players enter and dominate a local market and the global parent, utilizing local …


Knowledge Accumulation And Dissemination In Mnes: A Practice-Based Framework, Stephen Tallman, Aya S. Chacar Mar 2011

Knowledge Accumulation And Dissemination In Mnes: A Practice-Based Framework, Stephen Tallman, Aya S. Chacar

Management Faculty Publications

Much has been written on the importance of knowledge accumulation and transfer within the network firm but two questions remain. First, what are the specifics of this process, particularly for high tacit content knowledge? Second, how can firms create a sustainable competitive advantage from knowledge acquired from outside the firm? We address the first question by proposing that the mechanisms of external knowledge capture and internal knowledge transfer can best be understood and studied not at the level of networked subsidiary firms, but at the micro-organizational level of Communities of Practice (CoPs). We then offer a model of the dynamics …


Le Développement Durable Comme Mode De Prévention Des Risques Energétiques : Une Approche Par Les Capacités D’Absorption. Le Cas De La Voiture Electrique Chez Renault, Sylvaine Castellano, Adnane Maâlaoui, Judith Schrempf-Stirling Mar 2011

Le Développement Durable Comme Mode De Prévention Des Risques Energétiques : Une Approche Par Les Capacités D’Absorption. Le Cas De La Voiture Electrique Chez Renault, Sylvaine Castellano, Adnane Maâlaoui, Judith Schrempf-Stirling

Management Faculty Publications

Sustainability — a way to prevent energy-related risks — is the buzzword of the last decade. This trend demands radical rethinking on how society lives, consumes and produces. Herein, we focus on electric cars, which is the result of sustainable processes and initiatives in the car industry. The case of Renault illustrates how the firm based its sustainable strategy on its absorptive capacities.


Stakeholders, Entrepreneurial Rent And Bounded Self-Interest, Douglas A. Bosse, Jeffrey S. Harrison Jan 2011

Stakeholders, Entrepreneurial Rent And Bounded Self-Interest, Douglas A. Bosse, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Management Faculty Publications

This paper examines how the change from an assumption of pure self-interest to an assumption of bounded self-interest alters basic propositions regarding the way entrepreneurs select, negotiate with and manage relationships with their initial set of stakeholders. Although a purely economic approach would focus on material cost as the sole consideration when conducting these activities, we argue that non-material factors such as reciprocity and fairness are potent forces during the initial resource acquisition process. We explain that non-material considerations are accounted for in negotiations with stakeholders and positive reciprocity is encouraged through openly sharing information with stakeholders about the value …


Stakeholder Theory In Strategic Management: A Retrospective, Jeffrey S. Harrison Jan 2011

Stakeholder Theory In Strategic Management: A Retrospective, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Management Faculty Publications

This chapter will provide a description of the personal journey of the author who, as a newly graduated Ph.D. in strategic management in 1985, embraced stakeholder theory. Perhaps one of the interesting aspects of this narrative is that the field of strategic management itself was in its infancy at the time of my graduation. So I have “grown up” in the strategy field while simultaneously observing and to some extent participating in the development of what we now call stakeholder theory. Over the past two and a half decades I have frequently found myself frustrated by my strategy colleagues’ lack …


Stakeholder Orientation, Managerial Discretion And Nexus Rents, Robert A. Phillips, Shawn L. Berman, Heather Elms, Mechael E. Johnson-Cramer Jan 2011

Stakeholder Orientation, Managerial Discretion And Nexus Rents, Robert A. Phillips, Shawn L. Berman, Heather Elms, Mechael E. Johnson-Cramer

Management Faculty Publications

A firm's orientation toward its stakeholders determines how it will use the discretion accorded to it by external and internal circumstances. The interaction between these two factors affects a firm's ability to create value in the short term and influences the level of discretion available to the firm in the long term. We argue that the interplay of discretion and orientation create a vicious (or virtuous) cycle, in which the firm either creates or destroys goodwill with stakeholders, thereby making it more or less likely that stakeholders will grant discretion in the future. This argument suggests an account of stakeholder …


Offshoring, Outsourcing, And Strategy In The Global Firm, Stephen Tallman Jan 2011

Offshoring, Outsourcing, And Strategy In The Global Firm, Stephen Tallman

Management Faculty Publications

Offshore outsourcing of many of the activities of the firm has become a major issue of concern in welfare economics, politics, business management, and international business scholarship. From both practical and scholarly perspectives, though, we must recognize that this is not a new phenomenon, and that neither outsourcing nor offshoring is necessarily the problem that has been represented in the popular and scholarly press (Contractor et al., 2010: Engardio, 2006). The production of goods in locations other than those in which they are sold has been an established strategy of multinational firms for decades--as has the subset of situations in …


Organizational Learning And Capabilities For Onshore And Offshore Business Process Outsourcing, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Sunil Mithas, M. S. Krishnan Jan 2011

Organizational Learning And Capabilities For Onshore And Offshore Business Process Outsourcing, Jonathan W. Whitaker, Sunil Mithas, M. S. Krishnan

Management Faculty Publications

This paper identifies and analyzes firm-level characteristics that facilitate onshore and offshore business process outsourcing (BPO). We use organizational learning and capabilities to develop a conceptual model. We test the conceptual model with archival data on a broad cross section of U. S. firms. Our empirical findings indicate that firms with experience in onshore information technology (IT) outsourcing and capabilities related to IT coordination applications and process codification are more likely to engage in BPO, and firms with experience in internationalization are more likely to engage in offshore BPO. We also find that IT coordination applications have a greater impact …


A Tale Of Passion: Linking Job Passion And Cognitive Engagement To Employee Work Performance, Violet Ho, Sze-Sze Wong, Chay Hoon Lee Jan 2011

A Tale Of Passion: Linking Job Passion And Cognitive Engagement To Employee Work Performance, Violet Ho, Sze-Sze Wong, Chay Hoon Lee

Management Faculty Publications

We propose a model of job passion that links two types of passion, harmonious and obsessive passion, to employees’ work performance, via the mediating mechanism of cognitive engagement (comprising attention and absorption). Results from a survey conducted with 509 employees from an insurance firm indicate that employees with harmonious passion performed better at work, and that this relationship was mediated primarily by cognitive absorption, that is, the intensity of focus and immersion experienced by the employees when working. However, even though obsessive passion was negatively related to cognitive attention (i.e., the amount of cognitive resources spent thinking about work), it …