Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Past And Future Of Supply Chain Collaboration: A Literature Synthesis And Call For Research, Peter M. Ralston, R. Glenn Richey, Scott J. Grawe

Peter Ralston

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide scholarly and practical benefits by detailing the past and suggesting a future research agenda for supply chain (SC) collaboration. A literature review is utilized to examine what has been investigated prior, and what remains to be analyzed, in order to assist today’s managers and researchers. The research expands the understanding of SC collaboration from a focal firm perspective while providing boundaries for future investigation and at the same time detailing the current state of collaboration to practitioners.

Design/methodology/approach The current research utilizes a systematic review of the literature to shape a …

Organizational Performance In Services, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast

Virginia Doellgast

The question of performance in service activities and occupations is important for several reasons. First, over two-thirds of employment in advanced economies is in service activities. Second, productivity growth in services is historically low, lagging far behind manufacturing, and as a result, wages in production-level service jobs remain low. In addition, labor costs in service activities are often over 50% of total costs, whereas in manufacturing they have fallen to less than 25% of costs. This raises the question of whether management practices that have improved performance in manufacturing, such as investment in the skills and training of the workforce, …

Linking Ethical Leadership To Employee Performance: The Roles Of Leader-Member Exchange, Self-Efficacy, And Organizational Identification, Fred O. Walumbwa, David M. Mayer, Peng Wang, Hui Wang, Kristina Workman, Amanda L. Christensen

Kristina Workman

This research investigated the link between ethical leadership and performance using data from the People’s Republic of China. Consistent with social exchange, social learning, and social identity theories, we examined leader–member exchange (LMX), self-efficacy, and organizational identification as mediators of the ethical leadership to performance relationship. Results from 72 supervisors and 201 immediate direct reports revealed that ethical leadership was positively and significantly related to employee performance as rated by their immediate supervisors and that this relationship was fully mediated by LMX, self-efficacy, and organizational identification, controlling for procedural fairness. We discuss implications of our findings for theory and practice.

Organizational Performance In Services, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast

Rosemary Batt

The question of performance in service activities and occupations is important for several reasons. First, over two-thirds of employment in advanced economies is in service activities. Second, productivity growth in services is historically low, lagging far behind manufacturing, and as a result, wages in production-level service jobs remain low. In addition, labor costs in service activities are often over 50% of total costs, whereas in manufacturing they have fallen to less than 25% of costs. This raises the question of whether management practices that have improved performance in manufacturing, such as investment in the skills and training of the workforce, …

Remote Work: Examining Current Trends And Organizational Practices, Bradford Bell

Bradford S Bell

[Excerpt] Although remote work offers a number of potential benefits, it is not without risks and challenges. Companies can find it difficult to build a culture that is accepting and supportive of remote work. It can also be difficult to track exactly who is working remotely, particularly when remote work is adopted more informally, and to measure the business impact of these initiatives. Remote workers can face a number of personal and professional challenges. For instance, they may struggle for exposure and access to professional opportunities and there is the risk that those working outside the office can become socially …

Collective Failure: The Emergence, Consequences, And Management Of Errors In Teams, Bradford S. Bell, Steve W. J. Kozlowski

Bradford S Bell

The goal of the current chapter is to examine the emergence, consequences, and management of errors in teams. We begin by discussing the origin and emergence of errors in teams. We argue that errors in teams can originate at both the individual and collective level and suggest this distinction is important because it has implications for how errors propagate within a team. We then consider the paradoxical effects of errors on team performance and team learning. This discussion highlights the importance of error management in teams so that errors can prompt learning while at the same time mitigating their negative …

Team Learning: A Theoretical Integration And Review, Bradford S. Bell, Steve W. J. Kozlowski, Sabrina Blawath

Bradford S Bell

With the increasing emphasis on work teams as the primary architecture of organizational structure, scholars have begun to focus attention on team learning, the processes that support it, and the important outcomes that depend on it. Although the literature addressing learning in teams is broad, it is also messy and fraught with conceptual confusion. This chapter presents a theoretical integration and review. The goal is to organize theory and research on team learning, identify actionable frameworks and findings, and emphasize promising targets for future research. We emphasize three theoretical foci in our examination of team learning, treating it as multilevel …

Mindfulness At Work: Antecedents And Consequences Of Employee Awareness And Absent-Mindedness, Jochen Reb, Jayanth Narayanan, Zhi Wei Ho

Jochen Reb

The present study examines antecedents and consequences of two aspects of mindfulness in a work setting: employee awareness and employee absent-mindedness. Using two samples, the study found these two aspects of mindfulness to be beneficially associated with employee well-being, as measured by emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and psychological need satisfaction, and with job performance, as measured by task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and deviance. These results suggest a potentially important role of mindfulness at the workplace. The study also found that organizational constraints and organizational support predicted employee mindfulness, pointing to the important role that the organizational environment may play …

Appraising Performance In Public Sector Organisations: Critical Discourse Perspectives, Christa Wood

Christa Wood

This paper examines the performance appraisal system that has been implemented in some public service organisations in line with the changes to a more commercialized structure. In an effort to change the behaviours and attitudes of public servants, performance appraisal systems have incorporated the new values and desired behaviours. Although a myriad of studies exist in regards to the new public management and on the topic of performance appraisal systems, there are few critical management studies of the implementation and operation of performance appraisal in the public sector. To date, most critical studies of performance appraisal have concentrated on the …

Reply To "Response: Board Composition And Firm Performance: Evidence From Bangladesh - A Sceptical View", Afzalur Rashid, Anura De Zoysa, Sudhir Lodh, Kathleen Rudkin

Kathy Rudkin

This paper replies to Chowdhury’s (2010) response to the paper "Board Composition and Firm Performance: Evidence from Bangladesh" (2010). It challenges the strength of the criticisms, arguing that the factors discussed in Chowdhury (2010) do not necessarily impair the outcome of the research. The authors elucidate issues raised, and in so doing, reproduce the results incorporating the commentator’s suggestions

Factors Affecting The Export Participation And Performance Of Thai Manufacturing Small And Medium Sized Enterprises (Smes), Yot Amornkitvikai, Charles Harvie, Teerawat Charoenrat

Charles Harvie

This paper employed the 2007 Thai Industrial Census to empirically examine the effects of firm-specific and industry factors on a firm’s decision to export and the export performance of 65,111 Thai manufacturing SMEs which are classified into eight submanufacturing groups. Six econometric models are indentified to capture linear and nonlinear effects of firm-specific factors as well as to analyze each industry effect for Thai manufacturing SMEs. Four limited dependent variable models (i.e., the probit model, the logit model, the linear probability model, and the Tobit model) are used to study the factors affecting a firm’s export decision and its export …

Executive Compensation, Board Characteristics And Firm Performance In China: The Impact Of Compensation Committee, Yuqing Zhu, Gary G. Tian, Shiguang Ma

Louise Zhu

The independent directors of a board can impact CEO payperformancemore effectively if a compensation committeeprovides information and assist them in designing relevantexecutive pay schemes. On the basis of this idea, we developed andtested the hypotheses that Chinese firms with a compensationcommittee have a closer CEO pay link with performance when alarger proportion of independent directors serves on the board. Wefocused primarily on the effect of a compensation committee onCEO pay-performance relation as a consequence of its help for theboard and found that board independence produces a strongerrelationship between executive compensation and firmperformance in Chinese listed firms. This association is more …

The Development Of An Industry Specific Performance Measurement Model For Service Organisations Within The Small Business Sector, Vicki Baard, Edmund W. Watts

Ted Watts

The role of small business, as part of the value adding chain in any economy, should never be understated. In Australia small business represents 96% of all private sector business, accounts for 47% of all private sector employment and the majority fail within three to five years of establishment. Despite this contribution the small business sector, and in particular the service sector component, appear to be underrepresented in the development of specific performance measurement models, which, within the academic and professional literature appear to focus on their larger firm counterparts. Given the unique position of small business service organisations the …

The Performance Wheel And The Small Business Pyramid: The Next Generation Of Performance Scorecards, Carol J. Mcnair, Edmund W. Watts

Ted Watts

A common shortcoming with respect to performance scorecards within today's businessenvironment is the misconception that one size fits all. This paper considers the historicaldevelopment, as well as the increasing variety and poorly integrated status of one of business management's most important tools - the performance scorecard.This paper traces the development of performance management systems from itshistorical inception to the present examining ways that some approaches do not addressthe specific decision making needs of many enterprises. Performance scorecards aregenerally developed with a specific type of enterprise in mind, but few have integratedthe different emphases of the different approaches.With the focus on …

Merit Pay For School Superintendents?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy A. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Given the important role that school district administrators play in the educational process, one might expect their 'performance" to be of fundamental importance in determining both how much students learn and the cost of public education to taxpayers. Yet, while public debate has considered the issue of merit pay plans for teachers, virtually no attention has been directed to the methods by which school administrators are compensated. This paper provides evidence on whether school superintendents are explicitly or implicitly rewarded for their "performance" by higher compensation and/or greater opportunities for mobility. We analyze panel data from over 700 school districts …

Macroeconomic Determinants Of Corporate Performance And Failure: Evidence From An Emerging Market The Case Of Jordan, Rami Zeitun, Gary Tian, Steve Keen

Gary Tian

This study investigates the impact of aggregate economic risk on a company’s performance and failure in a panel estimation using 167 Jordanian companies during 1989-2003. Our finding shows that unanticipated changes in interest rate negatively and significantly affect firms’ performance measured by ROA, which suggests that an interest rate rise increases the cost of borrowing and then further negatively affects a firm’s profit. We also found that both the production manufacturing index and Islamic credit facilities positively and significantly affect a firm’s performance. The positive and significant impact of Islamic credit facilities reflects the importance and the significance of the …

Disproportional Ownership Structure And Pay-Performance Relationship: Evidence From China's Listed Firms, Jerry Cao, Xiaofei Pan, Gary G. Tian

Xiaofei Pan

This paper examines the impact of disproportional ownership structure on the pay-performance relationship in China’s listed firms. We find that the cash flow rights of the ultimate controlling shareholder have a positive effect on this relationship while a divergence between the control rights and cash flow rights has a significantly negative effect. By dividing our sample into state owned enterprises (SOE), state assets management bureaus (SAMB), and privately controlled firms, we find that cash flow rights in SOE controlled firms have a significant impact on accounting based pay performance and cash flow rights in privately controlled firms also affect the …

An Assessment Of The Research Performance Of Commerce Faculties In Australia, Abbas Valadkhani, Simon Ville

Simon Ville

There is a growing policy focus in Australian higher education on quantitative research performance assessment. However, most of the analysis has addressed aggregate performance at the institutional level, an approach inconsistent with recent policy emphasis on diversity among universities, and one that ignores performance variations across disciplines. We use cluster analysis to classify one of the ten broad fields of education, that is, management and commerce. Using averaged and available data for 2000-2004 on various research measures, partial rankings are provided. Factor analysis is utilised to generate full-multidimensional rankings within the resulting clusters. Our results show that low total research …

Effects Of The Entrepreneurial And Managerial Orientations Of Owner-Managers On Company Performance: An Empirical Test In Sri Lanka, Anura De Zoysa, Palli Mulla K A Chandrakumara, Athula Manawaduge

Anil Chandrakumara

In this paper we have made strong distinction between managerial and entrepreneurial orientations of leadership and argued that these orientations should have different effects on the performance of companies. Data were collected from a sample of 204 owner-managers of Sri Lankan companies by administering a mailed paper questionnaire. Company performance was measured by the ratings of sales performance on the part of managers concerned. Correlation and regression analysis were then performed in the impact analysis. Our findings indicate that the leadership orientation of owner-managers of small firms is more entrepreneurial than managerial. Also, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) correlated more significantly with …

Capital Structure And Firm Performance In Emerging Economies: An Empirical Analysis Of Sri Lankan Firms, Anura De Zoysa, Muhammad Chowdhury, Palli Mulla K A Chandrakumara, Athula Manawaduge

Anil Chandrakumara

This paper offers an empirical analysis of the impact of capital structure on firm performance in thecontext of an emerging market¿Sri Lanka. The study applies both pooled and panel data regressionmodels for a sample of 155 Sri Lankan-listed firms. The results demonstrate that most of the SriLankan firms finance their operations with short-term debt capital as against the long-term debtcapital and provide strong evidence that the firm performance is negatively affected by the use of debtcapital. The study also finds a significant negative relationship between tangibility and performanceindicating inefficient utilization of non-current assets. The negative performance implicationsassociated with over-utilization of …

Leadership Styles And Company Performance: The Experience Of Owner-Managers Of Smes, Palli Mulla K A Chandrakumara, Anura De Zoysa, Athula S. Manawaduge

Anil Chandrakumara

Leadership styles of owner-managers were explored in the context of a developingcountry in South Asia with a view to examining their impact on financial performanceof SMEs. It was justified that the study has both theoretical and contextualsignificance. Data were collected from 204 companies in Sri Lanka by adopting mixedmethodologies that consisted of both qualitative and qualitative approaches.Descriptive statistics and correlation coefficient were used in the analysis. The findingsrevealed that the existence of three main leadership styles in the sample, namely;entrepreneurial, managerial, and mix of both entrepreneurial and managerialleaderships. The analysis indicated that 60 percent of firms had increased financialperformance, while …

Performance Audit: A Case Of Indian R&D Unit, Parulian Silaen, Shyam S. Bhati

Parulian Silaen

The purpose of this paper is to study the outcome of performance audit of anIndian research and development organisation, NIB and explore the utility of performanceaudit tools in determining the causes which lead to the failure of this particular organisation.A set of control tools developed by Silaen and Williams (2009) for the study of Research andDevelopment organisation are applied in this case. The elements of the tools developed bySilaen and Williams (2009) consist of dimensions and value of representation. Fourdimensions of control tools are given as directional, bureaucratic, scientific and financial.Three values of representation are given as external, internal and …

Accounting, New Public Management And American Politics: Theoretical Insights Into The National Performance Review, Ann Watkins, Cecil Arrington

Ed Arrington

Borrowing from the work of political theorists Sheldon Wolin and William Connolly, this essay seeks to provide additional rationalization for the expansion of accounting within domains like the public sector. We suggest that such an expansion is intimately linked to social and cultural transitions which have led political theorists to not only question modern political theory but to also recognize the political significance of practices like accounting to political theory. We contend that these same transitions also make possible expansions of accounting through NewPublicManagement (NPM) initiatives like the U.S.'s NationalPerformanceReview (NPR). Seen in this way, accounting theory begins to move …

Race Matters: Whether We Know It, Or Like It, Or Not: Implicit Racial Attitudes And Their Effect On Accounting-Based, Balanced Scorecard Performance Evaluations, David R. Upton, Cecil E. Arrington

Ed Arrington

One of the dominant themes in critical accounting theory over the past two decades has to do with the relation between the construction of human identities and accounting discourse and practices. Though with strong antecedents in Marxist –inspired critique of ideology, genealogical studies (e.g., Miller & O’Leary, 19XX), deconstructive studies (e.g., Shearer & Arrington, 19XX), and critical-rational studies (e.g., Power & Laughlin, 19XX) are examples of different theoretical and methodological ways to probe the constructive force of accounting over human identity and subjectivity. This paper offers a fourth approach grounded in social-cognitive concerns with ways in which implicit attitudes, or …

Are School Superintendents Rewarded For “Performance”?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy Ann Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This chapter presents analyses of the compensation and mobility of school superintendents in New York State during the 1978-79 to 1982-83 period. The focus is on school superintendents because they are the chief operating officers of school districts, their salaries are determined through individual "negotiations" with school boards, and their salary data were made available to us. In contrast, school principals' salary data were not available to us. Especially in large districts, principals tend to be members of a union and their salary increases negotiated collectively, which limits the likelihood of observing individual principals' salaries being related to measures …

Executive Compensation, Board Characteristics And Firm Performance In China: The Impact Of Compensation Committee, Yuqing Zhu, Gary G. Tian, Shiguang Ma

Shiguang Ma

The independent directors of a board can impact CEO payperformancemore effectively if a compensation committeeprovides information and assist them in designing relevantexecutive pay schemes. On the basis of this idea, we developed andtested the hypotheses that Chinese firms with a compensationcommittee have a closer CEO pay link with performance when alarger proportion of independent directors serves on the board. Wefocused primarily on the effect of a compensation committee onCEO pay-performance relation as a consequence of its help for theboard and found that board independence produces a strongerrelationship between executive compensation and firmperformance in Chinese listed firms. This association is more …

Executive Compensation In Municipalities, Gerald S. Goldstein, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In this paper we are concerned with the salaries of three important municipal officials; city-managers, police chiefs, and fire chiefs. We present a model that relates the salaries of these officials to a set of explanatory variables, the most important being measures associated with job performance. Two of these measures of performance are developed in the study. Further, the influence of the city-manager form of government on the incentive structure facing police chiefs and fire chiefs, and the interdependence betwen the salaries of police chiefs and fire chiefs is investigated. The model is tested using cross-section data for 1967.

Do Tournaments Have Incentive Effects?, Ronald Ehrenberg, Michael Bognanno

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Much attention has been devoted to studying models of tournaments or situations in which an individual's payment depends only on his or her output or rank relative to that of other competitors. Academic interest derives from the fact that under certain sets of assumptions, tournaments have desirable normative properties because of the incentive structures they provide. Our paper uses nonexperimental data to test whether tournaments actually elicit effort responses. We focus on professional golf tournaments because information on the incentive structure (prize distribution) and measures of individual output (players' scores) are both available. We find strong support for the proposition …

Officer Performance And Compensation In Local Building Trades Unions, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This paper presents estimates of the relationship between the performance and compensation of local building trades union leaders. A growing literature has revived the common-sense notion that organizations should structure the compensation of both their employees and their executives so as to encourage them to take actions consistent with the goals of the organizations. One way to minimize the probability that executives will take actions contrary to the organization's goals is to tie their compensation to measures of their organization's performance.

The Incentive Effects Of Tournaments Revisited: Evidence From The European Pga Tour, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael L. Bognanno

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This analysis of data from the 1987 European Men's Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour strongly supports the hypothesis that the level and structure of prizes in PGA tournaments influence players' performance. Specifically, players' performance appears to vary positively with both the total money prizes awarded in a tournament and the marginal return to effort in the final round of play (a value that varies among players largely depending on how the prize money is allocated among finishers of different ranks). The authors suggest that these results, together with the similar results of their earlier study of the 1984 U.S. Men's …