Опубликована Сен. 24, 2013

Robert Kaplan and David Norton emphasize that the four perspectives of their standard balanced scorecard (BSC) need to be adapted to the organizational context. Yet, we lack a coherent body of knowledge on these adaptations. 20 years after the implementation of the BSC, a literature review is warranted to investigate if and how the original BSC has been modified in practice. The authors conduct a systematic literature review of leading academic journals from 1992 to 2012 to identify and analyze the extant empirical evidence on the BSC. The authors find 117 empirical studies on the BSC, of which 27 deal …

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Опубликована Дек. 1, 2013

Management fashion theory is a growing research area in management studies. The focus of this management fashion literature is to understand why some management concepts spread quickly and widely, while others do not. However, doing research on fashionable management concepts is a difficult task, and many commentators have pointed out the limitations of the research methods used in extant research. A consequence of these difficulties is that the theory has many understudied areas and ‘blind spots’. This paper aims at providing a review of the research methods typically used in management fashion research, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of …

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Опубликована Сен. 18, 2014

Since its introduction more than 20 years ago the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has garnered the interest of both academics and practitioners. In the ‘official’ practitioner-oriented literature the BSC’s main proponents Kaplan and Norton have touted the concept’s potential performance enhancing effects. Academics have been more skeptical, and have not found a clear-cut relationship between the use of the BSC and organizational performance. It appears that some uses of the BSC may increase performance, while other types of BSC use might decrease it. Still, research has shown that the concept is widely used in practice, more than 20 years after its …

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Опубликована Окт. 21, 2014

This study examines the effect that age and business size have on business performance. A structured research instrument was used to collect data from 500 SMEs in retail industry through interviewer administrated and selfadministrated survey and 93% of questionnaires were returned. The results show that there is no statistical significant difference between the means of business size and business performance. There is no significant difference between the age categories; under one year and 20 years and more and business performance. Age is no longer a significant factor in a company’s performance after twenty years. Life cycle approach of the company …

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Опубликована Окт. 19, 2014

The present study highlights the importance of alignment between a business model (BM) and business processes. The authors employ a case study method and analyze a young company focused on R&D in high technology. In order to explicate the observations, the researchers invoke the newly developed ‘VIP framework’ (Solaimani and Bouwman, 2012). The research reveals that the business processes (BP) carried out in the company must fit the stated business model. The case study demonstrates how some of the processes are not optimal and efficient, and that the two main requirements for achieving a higher level coherence and consistency between …

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Опубликована Дек. 15, 2014

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between organizational culture and work engagement. Work engagement is shown to be powerfully linked to a range of business success outcomes. Although a large number of studies investigate the link between employees’ work engagement and organizational variables, there remains a dearth of scientific research on organizational culture and its impact on work engagement. A quantitative research design is undertaken in a South African ICT company. A total of 455 employees complete the South African Culture Instrument and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. Correlation analysis shows that all the dimensions of …

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Опубликована Дек. 15, 2014

It has been widely advocated that SMEs create most of the jobs in an economy. However, studies from both the developed and developing world have shown that only a small amount of SMEs create most of the jobs in an economy. These set of SMEs have been termed high quality firms that grow and create the much needed jobs. While studies from the developed world have identified a number of factors that depict the quality of a firm, there is however, little empirical evidence from the developing world on firm quality. This study has as main objective to determine the …

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Опубликована Март 11, 2015

The authors study the effect on performance of family endowment on the business from the perspective of socioemotional wealth (SEW), i.e. the stock of affect-related value which the family attaches to the business. The researchers analyze the impact of ownership and board characteristics on profitability, taking into account the possible moderating factors of the family generational stage, firm size, qualified presence of non-family shareholders and firm risk. The authors analyze 2,884 medium-large Italian private firms comparing 1,944 family and 940 non-family firms using correlation and pooling GLS regressions during 2001-2010. It is shown that in the first generational stage family …

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Опубликована Март 11, 2015

Business failure may be the result of either voluntaristic (internal) firm actions/decisions, deterministic environmental (external) events or both given causes (integrative approach). This study examines the prevalence of these causes of business failure. Results indicate that the largest proportion of firm failures is explained by the integrative approach, although two other perspectives hold a prominent role also. Moreover, internal causes of failure are more frequent than external. The findings based on multinomial logistic regression revealed that the causes of failure also vary with the size and age of firms. The implications of the results for research and practice are discussed

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Опубликована Апрель 10, 2015

This paper investigates how action-based entrepreneurship training influences entrepreneurial knowledge and personal attitudes, which in turn reportedly develop individuals’ entrepreneurship intentions. A cohort of students who had undergone social entrepreneurship training under the auspices of Enactus South Africa was studied to determine the relationship between these three key variables associated with entrepreneurship tendencies. The study, in particular, addresses the question of whether practical entrepreneurship training bears any consequences on developing students’ personal attitudes, entrepreneurship knowledge, and entrepreneurship intentions. Stratified sampling techniques were utilized to collect data from 355 Enactus South Africa students from the constituent 27 colleges and universities that …

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