What is the research question? Mention the factors that are considered in judging the speed of response.

The research is ‘How and where will an MNE respond to a rivals attack.

The factors that are considered in judging the speed of response is influenced by resource-related factors and market-related factors.

For resource-related factors they have distance, government constraints, and subsidiary control and for market-related factors initiating country importance, response occurrence in the country of attack, and multimarket contact.

2) Why is the speed of firm response important? (p. 2007)

Response speed is important, because it has vital implications for firm performance and competitive advantage. Researchers have shown that slow-responding rivals often experience market share losses or missed profit opportunities

3) What is the basic conclusion? (p. 679)

One of the possible conclusions can be that the companies’ competition is the main driver of the progress in the market, and the response speed is one of the indicators which shows how fast companies may react on the market changes and the other external and internal stimulus. In both cases, the response speed shapes the market competition. The higher companies have the respond rate – the better. Because the more companies compete against each other, the better quality service or goods they may provide.

Stakeholder-firm power difference, stakeholders’ CSR orientation, and SMEs’ Environmental Performance in China

Group 2

1) What does the term ‘stakeholder-firm power difference’ mean? (p. 436)

“Stakeholder-firm power difference” is the net difference between a stakeholder’s power over the firm anf firm’s countering power to this stakeholder. It affects the environmental performance of the firm. In the case, it determines the extent to which the stakeholder is able to pressure firm to engage in environmental activities.

2) What is the research question? What is the hypothesis? (p. 436)

In this paper, authors examined 144 Chinese SMEs to analyze the stakeholder-firm power differences with SMEs under the current institutional environments.

Hypothesis:

(1) Stakeholder-firm power difference leads to better environmental performance of Chinese SMEs.

(2) Positive relation between stakeholder and firm is stronger when CSR orientation is high.

3) What are the findings? (p. 449)

1: SMEs do posses countering power to stakeholders, at least in the current institutional context in china 2: as a result, it is important to consider the net power difference between stakeholders and SMEs when examining SMEs environmental performance 3: in accordance with propositions in previous studies, external stakeholders generally prefer firms committed to environmental protection , but the degree to which stakeholders hold firms CSR engagement as important varies among different Chinese stakeholders groups and 4: stakeholders CSR orientation moderates the relationship between stakeholder-firm power difference and SMEs environmental performance.

Also, the CSR orientation of governments and the media had a more significant impact on the power–environmental performance relationship than the CSR orientation of customers and competitors. Such results may be due to the tight state control of information flow and the media in the current institutional environment in China.

More specifically, at the current stage of economic development in China, governments appear an essential and exclusive stakeholder for SMEs and can effectively pressure SMEs to adopt environmental protection procedures.

Beyond the findings relevant to the effects of stakeholder-firm power difference on SMEs environmental performance, our results also indicate stakeholders CSR orientation varies greatly. Governments and the media have a higher level of CSR orientation than customers and competitors. When the governments CSR orientation is perceived as strong, a SME feels more pressure from the governments net power to improve environmental performance. However, when the media’s CSR orientation is perceived to be high, the negative effect of the media-firm power difference on the SME’s environmental performance is reinforced, further suggesting the eroded credibility of the media in china. The positive but insignificant moderating effects of customers and competitors CSR orientation suggest that customers and competitors CSR orientations are not strong enough to impact the relationship between power difference and SMEs environmental performance.

4) What do the authors mean by the term ‘stakeholder’? (p. 438)

They defined stakeholder as any group or individual who can affect or are affected by the achievements of the firm’s objectives. They focused on 4 types of stakeholders, since the case is about Chinese firms. First one is Chinese governments who control the licenses, land, and other resources. Second is competitors who can jointly form the industry norms that can change the firm’s managerial and operating processes. Third, customers who determine the revenue flow to the firm. Fourth, the media that potentially establish or even can ruin the firm’s reputation. Why they choose these stakeholders? Because a large research identified that these are the most influential ones in driving organizations’ environmental performance. And their influence on Chinese firms’ environmental performance is unknown.

5) What is ‘power theory’? (p. 438)

They defined power as the structurally determined potential for obtaining favored payoffs in relations where interests are opposed. A resource is essentially anything that is perceived as valuable, while dependence is a state in which one actor relies on the actions of another actor to achieve the particular outcomes. So according to Freeman’s stakeholder framework, the firm is the hub of the wheel, and the stakeholders are at level of around that wheel. This shows with the resource and the dependence perspective, the power of a firm stems from the dependence of the firm on the stakeholder to obtain resources that the firm need to survive.

6) What does the term ‘environmental performance’ mean and what are the two streams in environmental studies? (p. 439)

How Can Organizations be Competitive but Dare to Care?

Group 1

1) What is Ahlstrom (2010)’s position and what are the weaknesses in this position according to the author? (pp. 25-26)

Ahlstrom argues that if organizations provide a good working environment, employees will generate innovations that can lead to growth. Economic growth leads to wealth creation, which presumably spreads benefits throughout society, thereby leading to improved welfare for all. Yet there is an important limiting assumption to this argument. Ahlstrom implicitly assumes that the sole economic environment in which a firm is enmeshed is the one related to its internal organization. This assumption, that organizations are tasked only with providing jobs for their employees, has its roots in classic works in management.

B. Ahlstrom’s, is missing two important points. It ignores the external environmental forces on an organization and it ignores the fact that organizations are social entities, populated by real communities of people. As such, an economics-based view on markets and organizations is an incomplete and undersocialized one (Granovetter, 1985). More specifically, Ahlstrom’s argument ignores the fundamental fact that wealth creation does not equate to equitable wealth distribution. Economic growth can lead to wealth creation, but informal and formal norms in a society dictate how that wealth is distributed. Ahlstrom’s argument misses the point that wealth distribution from organizations to society is a function of bargaining between stakeholders, and it is related to the incentives and stresses placed on an organization by the structure of the industry in which it operates.

In addition, Ahlstrom’s argument ignores the fact that organizations are a dominant social institution enmeshed in broad industry and institutional environments. Beyond providing economic opportunities for their employees and contributing to the general welfare of society through wealth creation, organizations are also social entities and, some might argue, among the dominant institutions in many countries worldwide

2) What is the author’s contention? (p. 26)

3) What does the author mean by the statement :

‘the point should be clear that organizations are much more than transactional entities. An organization is a social entity that can provide value beyond the nexus of contracts that constitute the explicit, legal relationship between the corporate entity and the individual.’ (p. 27)

4) What is the conclusion of the author? (p. 34)

National governments, and the policy makers embedded therein, have and will continue to have the central authority to shape and define the formal and informal norms of business practices in a given institutional environment. With globalization, however, there is an increased need for organizations to become more active as agents of positive change in the business environments in which they operate. It is time for organizational leaders to recognize the gravity of their position as the heads of one of the dominant institutions in today’s world. True, it is challenging enough to manage the internal operations of an organization well, but the responsibilities of an organization’s leaders extend to shaping the business environments in which they operate. An organization’s leaders need to be attuned to the development of caring initiatives within their own organizations, but more important, they need to be active agents to counter the industrial and regulatory forces that make such caring potentially foolhardy when faced with the constraints imposed by global competition.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 910