IJBS Abstracts Volume 15 Number 1 - June 2007
A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms
Dr Xueli Huang Dr Scott Gardner
Despite the fact that China has emerged as a driving force of the world economy over the last decade, little research has been undertaken into how Chinese firms strategically manage their businesses. This paper develops a theoretical framework of strategic management in the Chinese firms through reviewing and synthesising five strategic perspectives that are relevant to the Chinese context: the Industry Structure View (ISV), Resources-Based View (RBV), Institutional View (IV), Relational View (RV), and Stakeholder View (SHV). We elaborate the relevance of the SHV in the Chinese context and its relationships with other strategic perspectives. Finally, we offer several managerial and research implications based on the theoretical framework developed.
Key Words: strategic management, Chinese firms, stakeholder perspective
The culture of Australian organizations and its relation with strategy
Kevin Baird Graeme Harrison Robert Reeve
This study uses the Organizational Culture Profile of O’Reilly et al. (1991), as adapted by Windsor and Ashkanasy (1996), to describe the culture of Australian organizations, as perceived by financial controllers. The study also examines the relation between organizational culture and strategy, and whether culture varies between service and manufacturing industries. Our results generally corroborate Sarros et al. (2002), with outcome orientation and respect for people perceived as the most prominent characteristics of Australian organizations’ culture, and innovation the least prominent. The consistency of results using a different managerial sample and a different measure of culture to Sarros et al. (2002) suggests robustness of the descriptions of Australian organizations’ culture. Our results support the importance of aligning organizational culture with strategy. We find no differences in the culture of service and manufacturing industries.
Key Words: Organizational culture, Strategy, Service industries, Manufacturing industries.
Relationship value of firms in alliance capitalism and implications for FDI
Teck-Yong Eng
An important operational aspect of international business is the coordination of widely dispersed resources of their networks of relationships with partners. Such interdependencies affect their ability to compete and/or create economic wealth. In order to examine the significance of network relationships in alliance capitalism and foreign direct investment (FDI), a network perspective as governance structure is used to examine the effects of resource interdependencies on relationship value. The article provides insights into alliance capitalism of interfirm relations for understanding implications for relationship value and increasing FDI between firms in industrial clusters of small and medium sized firms. On the basis that flows of local and foreign investment could be from internal or external partners particularly for transnational corporations, research hypotheses are developed and examined in the context of clusters of high technology firms. The results show that resource interdependencies of network relationships support the resource base of a firm and enhance its competencies. There is evidence that the variety of firms and their network resources have a positive effect on alliance capitalism in terms of cost efficiency of asset complementarity and network capabilities. The article considers the implications of focal and network relationships for locational decisions of firms and for public policy and investment promotion.
Key Words: Network relationships, alliance capitalism, relationship value.
Investigation of a Lead-lag Relationship between Spot and Futures Indices of the Hang Seng Stock Average
Gulasekaran Rajaguru and Sanja Samirana Pattnayak
This study examines the lead-lag relationships between the spot index and futures index of the Hang Seng Stock Average. Using the daily data we compare the forecast performance of Fractionally Integrated Error Correction Model against the possible alternative models. The alternative models include autoregressive integrated moving average, the vector autoregressive model and the vector error correction model. The best forecasting performance is obtained from error correction and fractional cointegrated models for the short and long forecasting horizon respectively.Key Words: Fractional cointegration, ECM, VAR, Hang Seng index
JEL Classification: C22, C32, C45
Singapore Banking Efficiency and its Relation to Stock Returns: A DEA Window Analysis Approach
Fadzlan Sufian Muhd-Zulkhibri Abdul Majid
This paper utilises the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) window analysis method to investigate the long-term trend in efficiency change of Singapore commercial banks during the period of 1993-2003. We found that listed Singapore commercial banks have exhibits an average overall efficiency of 95.4% thus suggesting input waste of 4.6%. Our results suggest that the small Singapore commercial banks have outperformed their large and very large counterparts. We further established statistical relationship between cost efficiency and share price performance by employing panel regression analysis. The evidence seems to indicate that the changes in stock prices tend to reflect cost efficiency albeit with small degree of reaction. This suggests that stock of cost efficient banks to some extend outperform cost inefficient banks.
Key Words: Banks efficiency, DEA, Window Analysis, Singapore
JEL Classification: G21
The development of regional marketing - have marketers been myopic?
John D. Nicholson and Philip J. Kitchen
Taking research by Warren J. Keegan as founding inspiration, this paper argues that regional market orientation is seen by marketers as antonymic to an international market orientation. Then, in using the identified relationship between globalisation and new regionalism as foundation, we propose that local orientation should today be seen as contiguous to and thus complimentary with international market orientation. We further propose that the current focus on opportunities for competitive enhancement offered at the regional level may demonstrate a significant form of myopia in current UK marketing thinking and practice.Key Words: Regional marketing, marketing myopia, relationship marketing, international marketing, untraded-interdependency, marketing planning
Managerial incentives and the treatment of pre-production expenditure in the mining industry
Ash Mohebbi *, Ann Tarca + and David Woodliff #
This study investigates the extent of capitalization of pre-production expenditure for the 2003 financial year by 152 mining sector firms listed in Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Level of capitalization was associated with higher leverage, lower profitability and reporting a negative earnings figure if pre-production expenditure was written off instead of capitalized. Similar to firms in the oil and gas industry, explorer firms were more likely to capitalize pre-production expenditure than producer firms. Although policy choice is relatively transparent, it appears that managers of producer firms are responding to incentives to present a more favorable view of their financial position and performance.
Key Words: Accounting policy choice; managerial incentives; accounting for mining sector firms; accounting harmonization and standard setting.
* Ash Mohebbi is at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Melbourne.
+ Contact author: Dr Ann Tarca, Accounting and Finance, Business School, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Hwy, Crawley, WA 6009. Telephone: +61 6488 3868 Fax: +61 6488 1047 Email: Ann.Tarca@uwa.edu.au
# David Woodliff is Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia.
The authors wish to thank two anonymous referees, Philip Brown, Robert Durand, H. Y. Izan, Graham Peirson, Iain Watson, Anne Wyatt and seminar participants at the 2005 AFAANZ conference, Melbourne and at the Universities of Adelaide, Southern Queensland and Western Australia for their helpful comments.