Family-controlled companies are associated with tradition and continuity, but that doesn’t mean they’re ‘behind the curve’. A recent study suggests that when it comes to sustainable performance, they can beat other companies hands down. The study compared 149 large listed family businesses with similar non-family companies in seven countries — the US, Canada, France, Spain, […]
Read More… from Surviving a Recession: Seven Lessons from Family Businesses
Buying companies in other countries poses significant challenges, requiring close co-ordination and careful integration and creating what’s been referred to in management literature as the ‘liability of foreignness’. But the costs and complications can be matched by the opportunities. The literature also makes clear the potential to access a new managerial and technical ‘ecosystem’ — […]
Read More… from Foreign Acquisitions: The Path to Better Productivity at Home?
Technology acceptance research tells us that user evaluations (i.e. beliefs, perceptions and attitudes) strongly influence rates of adoption and diffusion. The problem for companies that develop and sell new technologies — and for those that would benefit from using and buying them — is that user evaluations aren’t always accurate or fair. As many studies […]
Read More… from Decision Support Systems: Under-rated and Under-used?
How would you describe the impact of your organization’s reputation on overall business performance? Trust may play a big part in building that reputation, but how closely are trust and reputation linked to better earnings? To what degree does your corporate reputation drive the behaviours (recommending, purchasing, investing etc) of your firm’s main stakeholder groups? […]
Corporate social responsibility and sustainable development are increasingly linked to competitive advantage and innovation. Harvard’s Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer have, in recent years, ‘reframed’ CSR as ‘shared value’, pointing to the business opportunities in ‘unmet social needs’. Meanwhile, the external pressures for responsible business — from governments and regulators and from shareholders […]
Read More… from How Well Is CSR Embedded in Business Strategy?
Change forms a huge part of our world today, whether we like it or not. The pace of technological progress is phenomenal, while the growth of emerging markets is one of the most striking forces of change. Not only are we seeing more international competitors in a range of sectors (emerging market companies currently comprise […]
Read More… from Emerging Market Strategy: Creating Order out of Chaos
Companies that regularly evaluate the performance of business units, acquire and divest assets, and adjust resource allocations based on each division’s relative market opportunities have a significant edge over those that do not; according to Stephan Hall, Dan Lovallo and Reiner Musters, they will be worth an average of 40% more after 15 years. In […]
Read More… from Reallocating Resources to Realize Strategic Goals
The speed at which strategic decision-making takes place in an organization has been identified by many researchers as a critical factor for performance. Competitive business environments, shortened life cycles and increasingly global markets have only enhanced the importance of decision-speed. In many organizations, however, decision-making at lower levels, such as in strategic business units (SBUs), […]
Read More… from HQ Controls and the Speed of Strategic Decision-Making
Entrepreneurs sometimes have several offers from venture capitalists ‘on the table’ and will often spend a significant amount of time evaluating potential financiers, but the factors that influence their ‘willingness to partner’ are under-researched. The majority of studies concentrate on the things that might make a new venture a ‘good bet’ for the investor; only […]
Read More… from Choosing a Venture Capitalist: The Ethical Dimension
Strategic renewal is not an easy process to begin, fund, or lead, because it entails making changes before disruption occurs. The problem for many businesses, stretched as they are by myriad pressures and mounting costs, is they don’t want to go ‘looking for trouble’. Yet recent research suggests that is exactly what they need to […]
Read More… from Rapid Response Teams: Strategic Renewal for Organizations
