It is not easy to motivate subsidiaries of multinational companies to create competence that can be useful to other subsidiaries, and for good reason. Developing competence, including know-how and technological expertise for example, takes time and money. Subsidiaries are responsible for maintaining their own bottom lines, so why should they worry about other subsidiaries? Parent […]
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For the past 20 years, like a herd of stampeding buffaloes, companies have been moving en masse their manufacturing to low-labour-cost countries. Despite the occasional bad publicity as working conditions in some of these countries become known, the tidal wave of offshoring seems to make financial sense: companies save money on wages, which are reflected […]
Read More… from Outsourcing Vs Reshoring: The Case for Local Manufacture
A flinch is defined as any show of shock, disgust or disbelief in response to a first offer. Do flinches work for negotiators, or are they counterproductive, and end up damaging the negotiation? Past research has shown that making a first offer can put you at an advantage over your counterpart. Which is more effective: […]
Read More… from How to Use Disbelief and Strategic ‘Flinches’ in Negotiations
Supply chain management has become increasingly sophisticated over recent decades with improved financial performance as a result. Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing; sole-source suppliers; outsourcing to low-cost locations; common parts; and centralized inventories – these among other measures have helped leaders run supply chains more efficiently and guard against recurring risks such as changes in demand, supply […]
Read More… from Is Your Supply Chain Prepared for the Unexpected?
Progressive corporate leaders have been at the forefront of many societal changes, and climate change is no different. While different surveys show between 62% and 76% of the general public believes that humans are a factor in global warming, 85% of business leaders agree with the overwhelming consensus of climatologists and scientists on climate change […]
Read More… from Strategies Companies Are Using to Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change
The past 10 or so years have seen a significant rise in the incidence of product recalls. Multiple sectors and product categories, ranging from toys to automobiles and food to pharmaceuticals, have been involved — and, in some cases, the business and human costs have been immense. (Faults in Toyota cars in 2009 and 2010 […]
Read More… from Reasons for Product Recalls: Safety on the Line
Scholars have identified different approaches to the management of uncertainty in the entrepreneurial process. The ‘classic’ model is ‘focused commitment’. The argument in this stream of research is that making commitments early may secure future opportunities and discourage rivals from investing, accelerate learning and enable economies of scale, and provide ‘first mover’ advantage. Put very […]
Read More… from Flexibility Vs Commitment in the Entrepreneurial Process
Does bad weather reduce productivity within factories and other workplaces? This is the question that the latest research from Marcelo Olivares of the Columbia Business School and Gérard Cachon and Santiago Gallino of Wharton addresses. The researchers used inventories and productivity statistics covering 10 years for 64 US automobile assembly plants, and matched them to […]
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Scenario planning (SP) and early warning scanning (EWS) are considered important to ‘managerial cognition’. They help leaders understand how the future might unfold and they alert top management to new developments and ‘issues’ – typically conceived as opportunities and threats. They help leaders understand how to reconfigure resources to match or create market change – […]
Read More… from Scenarios Planning + Early Warning Scanning = Strategic Advantage
Sooner or later, any engineer working on new technology or infrastructure will hear a familiar question from investors: Does it scale up? There are few axioms in business as simple and historically accepted as the idea that ‘big is better.’ Large-scale industrial agriculture is better — more efficient, more effective, cheaper — than the family […]
Read More… from Why Scaling Up Is No Longer the Only Strategy
