scholarly journals The Role of Firm Size and Knowledge Intensity in the Performance Effects of Collective Turnover

2019 ◽  
pp. 014920631988095
Author(s):  
Kim De Meulenaere ◽  
Sophie De Winne ◽  
Elise Marescaux ◽  
Stijn Vanormelingen

As employees are among firms’ most important resources and labor markets are facing serious labor shortages, firm-level collective turnover is one of the most important challenges facing organizations. Context-emergent turnover theory provides a theoretical framework for the performance implications of collective turnover and argues that context, and in particular, firm size, plays a crucial role in the collective turnover–performance relationship. Yet, the moderating role of firm size remains undertheorized, empirically understudied, and thus, unclear. Based on the resource-based view of the firm, we develop a theoretical framework for two competing perspectives (a negative and a positive one) on the role of firm size and put forward the firm’s knowledge intensity as a crucial additional moderator. The main premise is that whereas firm size determines what resources firms have to successfully cope with turnover, knowledge intensity determines the resources firms need to do so. We propose a three-way interaction, suggesting that firm size reinforces the harmful effect of turnover in highly knowledge-intensive firms and buffers it in firms with low levels of knowledge intensity. Using a unique multi-industry and longitudinal administrative data set of 6,913 Belgian firms (2012–2016), we find support for these assumptions. This study highlights the importance of the context in which firms have to deal with turnover, and it spurs researchers to go beyond studying turnover in narrow study contexts, to take into account the interplay among different but intertwined organizational contingencies, and to acknowledge both the quantitative (how many employees leave) and qualitative components (who leaves) of turnover.

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (9) ◽  
pp. 2414-2435
Author(s):  
Wenge Zhang ◽  
Jun Li ◽  
Yiyuan Mai

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between industry association membership and firm innovation in Chinese private ventures. A secondary objective is to investigate potential moderating effects of firm learning practices and founder characteristics on the above relationship, and to draw out implications for policymakers and practitioners. Design/methodology/approach The paper utilizes data from a sample of 567 Chinese entrepreneurial firms operating in 9 designated emerging industries. Hierarchical regression models were employed to analyze the effect of industry association membership on firm innovation, and the potential moderating effects. A 2SLS procedure was adopted to control for potential endogeneity issue. Supplemental analyses were conducted to ensure the robustness of the findings. Findings The paper provides empirical insights about how industry association membership, along with firm learning practice and founder leadership, affect firm innovation in Chinese private ventures in emerging industries. It suggests that industry association membership positively affects firm innovation. Further, there is a three-way interaction effect of industry association membership, learning practice and founder power on innovation. Research limitations/implications Due to the design of the data set, there are some limitations. First, the study only considered whether a firm belongs to an industry association, but not the nature of such membership (length, firm status in the association, etc.). Second, the cross-sectional design may limit the power of the study to make casual implications about the tested relationships. Practical implications The paper provides important practical implications for policymakers and entrepreneurs in China. In general, the results suggest that private ventures pursuing innovation in emerging industries can benefit from industry associations, and entrepreneurs shall actively engage in firm-level and personal-level learning. For policymakers, the study suggests that to foster innovation in an emerging industry, special attention shall be paid to building necessary institutional support to develop and to strengthen the role of industry association in the industry. Originality/value This paper fulfills an important gap in the literature in that it is one of the first, which investigates the role of the industry association in firm innovation, especially in a non-western context. This paper provides new insights into the role of industry association and firm innovation in an under-researched developing economy context.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0148558X2110594
Author(s):  
Fangfang Hou ◽  
Xinpeng Xu

This study investigates whether capital account liberalization, a leading characteristic of globalization, is associated with firms’ future innovation output. Employing a novel firm-level panel data set covering 41 countries over two decades, we show that capital account liberalization is significantly associated with higher corporate patenting activities, particularly for firms from innovation-intensive industries. Further analyses show that the effect is stronger among firms from economies in a better legal environment, signifying the important role of good institutional quality in facilitating the positive impact of liberalization. The effect is also stronger among firms with higher initial productivity, consistent with the “productivity” hypothesis, according to which bigger and more productive firms generate more innovation after liberalization. Our findings are robust to the use of various measurements, subsamples, and estimation models. This study provides global firm-level evidence of the real economic impact of financial globalization.


2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 144-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaos G. Panagopoulos ◽  
Adam A. Rapp ◽  
Jessica L. Ogilvie

Salespeople play a crucial role in their firms’ efforts to provide customer solutions. However, little research has examined how salesperson involvement in customer solutions can be conceptualized, whether it pays off, and what boundary conditions might heighten its performance effects. This study addresses these gaps and offers a conceptualization of salesperson solution involvement by focusing on the set of salesperson-related activities that enact the four relational processes inherent in customer solutions. The authors collect a unique data set that includes a wide range of firms, industries, and countries, as well as the perspectives of both salespeople and customers, across five studies. Results validate the stability of the conceptualization across contexts. They also reveal that salesperson solution involvement is systematically related to increases in both subjective and objective, time-lagged measures of sales performance. Finally, results show that the performance effects of salesperson solution involvement are amplified under higher levels of firm's product portfolio scope, sales unit cross-functional cooperation, and customer–supplier relationship tie strength. Surprisingly, customer adaptiveness is not found to moderate the performance effects of salesperson solution involvement.


2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 1375-1425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasco M. Carvalho ◽  
Basile Grassi

Do large firm dynamics drive the business cycle? We answer this question by developing a quantitative theory of aggregate fluctuations caused by firm-level disturbances alone. We show that a standard heterogeneous firm dynamics setup already contains in it a theory of the business cycle, without appealing to aggregate shocks. We offer an analytical characterization of the law of motion of the aggregate state in this class of models, the firm size distribution, and show that aggregate output and productivity dynamics display: (i ) persistence, (ii ) volatility, and (iii ) time-varying second moments. We explore the key role of moments of the firm size distribution, and, in particular, the role of large firm dynamics, in shaping aggregate fluctuations, theoretically, quantitatively, and in the data. (JEL D21, D22, D24, E32, L11)


Author(s):  
Reem Hamdan ◽  
Allam Hamdan ◽  
Bahaaeddin Alareeni ◽  
Osama F. Atayah ◽  
Layla Faisal Alhalwachi

Purpose This study aims to investigate the moderation role of the percentage of women in the country labour force in the relationship between firm-level governance factors (board size, institutional ownership, ownership concentration, board independence, performance, firm size, firm’s risk and sector) and women on boards (WOBs) in publicly listed firms in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Design/methodology/approach The study relied on a sample of 436 publicly listed firms in 2018 in six GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates). Findings The study concluded that the percentage of women in the country’s labour force has a moderation role in the relationship between board size and WOB, as well as firm market performance and WOBs. However, ownership concentration, firm size, firm risk and firm sector do not affect the percentage of WOB; consequently, the percentage of women in the country’s labour force did not have a moderation role in the relationship between these variables and the percentage of WOBs. Originality/value The study incorporates an institutional level variable which is the percentage of women in the country’s labour force in a firm-level relationship mostly understood by agency theory.


2013 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leticia Arroyo Abad

Using a new data set, this article presents new evidence on inequality in Latin America for the nineteenth century and studies the effects of factor endowments and trade on inequality. Recent research has highlighted the link between the colonial origins of inequality and its persistence in Latin America. We find that inequality varied substantially throughout the century and across the region. We identify the impact of changing factor endowments and trade on inequality using a simple theoretical framework. This work suggests that the role of initial colonial origins has been overemphasized as important changes took place during postcolonial times.


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 414-446
Author(s):  
Pavel Chakraborty

AbstractExploiting a natural experiment involving the imposition of a technical regulation by Germany on Indian leather and textile industries in 1994, a firm-level data set is used to study the trade, adaptation and discontinuity effects and how they vary by firm size. It is found that: (a) regulation significantly increases the export revenues of a firm through use of new technology and high-quality imported raw materials – indicating a possible signalling effect; (b) this gain is concentrated only on the upper half of the firm size distribution, i.e., in the 3rd and 4th quartiles; (c) use of imported raw materials significantly explains low exit probabilities of a firm; and (d) there is evidence of a sorting effect – regulation significantly affecting the operation of small firms.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 2225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myeong-Ju Lee ◽  
Dong-Hyun Lee

The purpose of this paper is to examine the black box by which high performance work systems (HPWSs) affect employee’s attitude. It attempts to show the mediating effect of human resource (HR) competency in the HPWSs-job attitude link, and the moderating effect of organization culture. More specifically, we propose that HPWSs have a positive effect on the both job satisfaction and HR competency, and that HR competency mediates the relationship between HPWSs and job satisfaction. Further, we propose that adhocracy culture in organization strengthens such relationships between HPWSs and HR competency as well as between HPWSs and job satisfaction. We use a nationally representative data set from Korea (firm-level samples: 215 firms, employee-level samples: 5577 employees) for testing the hypotheses. Results indicated support for the hypothesized that positive association between HPWSs and HR competency and between HPWSs and job satisfaction. HR competency has a partial mediating effect in the HPWS-job attitude link. The results were supportive of organization culture of the impact of HPWSs on HR competency and job satisfaction. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are discussed. 


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernd Brandl

PurposeThis paper addresses the puzzle of why the same workplace employment relations regimes can lead to different performances and why different regimes can produce the same performance. It is argued that the incidence of mutual, and not necessarily unilateral, trust between the employee representation and the management accounts for these differences, as mutual trust fosters information sharing and helps to strike deals that are mutually beneficial. Against the background that the institutional and organizational characteristics of some workplace employment relations regimes also constitutes information sharing and joint decision making, the author further argues that mutual trust is a functional equivalent.Design/methodology/approachMethodologically, the article is international and cross-country comparative in nature and conducted on the basis of a unique, large and transnational comparable data set of the employment relationship at firm level in eleven countries.FindingsOur results show that strong mutual trust is associated with significantly higher incidences of increases in firm profitability, regardless of the workplace employment relations regime in which the firms are embedded.Practical implicationsThe results clearly indicate that trust between the employee representation and the management works as a functional equivalent to performance enhancing employment relations regimes. Therefore, some policy recommendations and imposed institutional reforms of employment relations regimes by the IMF and the European Central Bank in some countries are sub-optimal and might not have been necessary. Trust building initiatives between the employee representation and the management are therefore an alternative, which is less conflictual and could have the same effect on the performance of firms.Originality/valuePrevious analyses on differences in the performance effects of workplace employment relations regime concentrated almost exclusively on institutional factors. Factors that account for differences in the functioning of regimes such as in particular the role of trust were not considered before. Against this background, the originality of this analysis is that it clearly shows that it is not sufficient to consider only the institutional and organizational structure of regimes, but it is essential for a better understanding of the effects of the employment relationship to consider factors which account for the functioning of the regimes such as, in particular, trust.


2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaolan Fu ◽  
Yundan Gong

Technological spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) have been regarded as a major source of technical progress and productivity growth. This paper explores the role of international and intranational technological spillovers from FDI in technical change, efficiency improvement, and total factor productivity growth in Chinese manufacturing firms using a recent Chinese manufacturing firm-level panel data set over the 2001–05 period. International industry-specific research and development (R&D) stock is linked to the Chinese firm-level data, international R&D spillovers from FDI and intranational technological spillovers of R&D activities by foreign invested firms in China are examined as well. Policy implications are discussed.


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