The Intervening Effect of Corporate Strategy on the Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Enterprise Risk Management Adoption by Commercial State Corporations in Kenya

In today’s dynamic and competitive business environment, organizations are adopting the enterprise risk management framework to address the inadequacies in risk management in entities. Operating in today’s dynamic and competitive business environment organizations are faced with ever evolving risks as they implement their strategic objectives in order to create value. This study examined the intervening effect of corporate strategy on the relationship between transformational leadership and enterprise risk management adoption. This research adopted a positivist research philosophy and cross-sectional survey design approach. The target population comprised all the Commercial State Corporations in Kenya listed in the register of State Corporations Advisory Committee (SCAC) as at January 2021. The unit of analysis was the 52 Commercial State Corporations and unit of observation was top management of each entity. The study used primary data which was collected through structured questionnaires. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 22) was used in regression modeling for prediction and causal inferences between study variables. The study findings indicated a partial mediation effect on the mediating role of corporate strategy on the relationship between transformational leadership and ERM adoption. The objective was achieved. The study recommends that the commercial state corporations should anchor the ERM adoption activities and other management programmes in the corporate strategic plan for effective execution. In addition, the corporate strategic plan should be cascaded to stakeholders to enhance ownership and design policy to ensure the implementation of the corporate strategic plan is effectively monitored. Keywords: Corporate Strategy, Transformational Leadership, Enterprise Risk Management & Commercial State Corporations

Information Economics

Information economics can be best described as a shift in the traditional neoclassical assumption of perfect information. Neoclassical economics assumes that all actors have access to perfect information and are rational in their behavior. Over the years, as scholars have realized that the assumptions of neoclassical economics are not an accurate reflection of the real world, other research streams have developed that relax these assumptions. Information economics is one such stream, arguing that actors or parties have differential access to information, which raises the concern of adverse selection and moral hazard when the actors or parties participate in a transaction. Adverse selection occurs when one party has more information about the product or service than the other party and it leads to a less profitable or riskier transaction for the uninformed party. Alternatively, moral hazard occurs after the transaction, where one party has an incentive to engage in risky behavior when the other party bears the cost of failure. Information economics offers insights to both these concerns and offers solutions in the form of signaling and protection mechanisms. Signaling theory, a component of information economics, addresses how one party can credibly convey information to its potential exchange partners to facilitate transactions. The concepts of information asymmetry and signaling have been widely used in economics and business research to understand concepts ranging from game theoretic models of investments to principal–agent relationships to adverse selection problems in transactions. Information economics offers strong foundations for research within management as it helps understand several phenomena related to organizational transactions. For instance, corporate strategy scholars have utilized the predictions stemming from information economics in acquisition research to study target search, selection, signaling behavior, acquisition contracting, premiums, and governance. Information economics also has broad potential to affect firms’ organizational governance and entry mode choices. The following paragraphs will discuss how this theory has been developed and provide a few applications of information economics in strategy and management research.

Corporate Diversification and Risk: Portfolio Effects and Resource Redeployability

By analogy with portfolio diversification by stock market investors, managers and researchers have often expected that firms that spread operations across product or geographic markets reduce risk. However, numerous exploratory studies in corporate strategy and in international business have not been able to robustly confirm this expectation. This study develops a formal model to scrutinize implications of corporate diversification for corporate risk. The model incorporates the key distinction of corporate diversification, economies of scope, that qualifies the analogy between corporate and portfolio diversification. The presence of a particular type of economies of scope, resource redeployability, not only inherently increases risk but it can also raise risk over the level in undiversified firms. The model uses determinants of resource redeployability from previous research to derive conditions with which corporate diversification enhances risk. The developed elaborate operationalization of corporate risk should facilitate future research and help corporate managers.

Trends and Patterns in Turnaround Strategies

The paper aims to examine the publications on turnaround strategies and identify scientific gaps. Hence, bibliographic couplings of countries, institutions, journals, publications, authors, and co-occurrences of the author keywords were analyzed. Bibliographic methods were employed to examine and visualize the characteristics of the publications with the aid of VOSViewer software. Using 174 articles from the Scopus database, the results revealed that corporate distress, turnaround, organizational decline, turnaround strategies, corporate strategy, financial distress, retrenchment, turnaround strategy, and turnarounds were among the most studied key concepts in this area, The “Journal of Strategy and Management” and “European Management Journal” were the top journals. United States, United Kingdom, and India were the most influential countries. The Fort Hays University and McMurry University were top research institutions. Notably, Huang, Y., Reddy, K.S., and Xie, E. were the most influential authors in this research area. These results will help academicians and practitioners.

Green Human Resources and Sustainable Business Solutions

This chapter discusses green human resources (HR) and its impact on sustainable business solutions. It embraces work area research and writing audit way to discover the connection between green HR and sustainable business performance. This chapter examines the influence of human resources (HR) as a fundamental capacity in an organisation. The role of HR in the organisation has moved beyond focusing on realising organisational objective but into the integration of corporate strategy with environmental sustainability through environmentally friendly practice. The study explores instrumental theory, which focuses on both shareholder and stakeholders' interests of an organisation. Therefore, organisations need to align its operational objectives with environmental sustainability objectives through effective green HR practices to achieve sustainable business solutions.

Sustainable Development Goals

Safaricom Limited is a telecommunications company, the largest mobile operator in Kenya, serving over 20 million customers and occupying two-thirds of the market share in the industry. The company strives to push the boundaries of conventional ways of doing business by focusing on value creation to the society, economy, and environment of Kenya by incorporating the top-down, bottom-up approach to integrate the SDGs into its corporate strategy and its corporate social responsibility projects. The mission of the company is transforming lives, and this is evident from its operations and investing resources in sustainable projects.

THE DECADES OF RESEARCH ON SCM AND ITS ADVANCEMENTS: COMPREHENSIVE FRAMEWORK

Supply Chain Management (SCM), a corporate strategy approach to materials and distribution management, has been evolving over the last decades from traditional marketing and production functions. The purpose of the study is to explore the bibliometric data of Supply Chain Management and its advancements. Besides, it describes from the origins of traditional SCM to the progress of modern SCM 4.0, with reference to the benefits, function, importance and limitations of all five branches of SCM. The methodology includes a detailed and systematic review of scientific articles published in Scopus indexed journals. The data were obtained from the Scopus database between 1990 and 2021 in order to achieve the study’s desired outcome. Boolean operators and filtering were applied to obtain relevant data. In addition, VOSviewer software is used to visually classify and analyse bibliometric data distribution and network using cluster maps. The study’s findings were divided into three main categories: publication period, coauthorship and citations, with the results demonstrating the diverse needs of SCM in the globalised digital era. Further, the results emphasise that SCM and its advancements have unique merits around the world, but Sustainable SCM and SCM 4.0 remain the most popular as they play a vital role in changing environmental concerns. In addition, the findings reveal that the visualization networks of each category exhibit the strengths and connections of publications. These visualization networks, followed by their analysis, explain the new insight to the present research. This research also paves the way for future research into the evolving trends of SCM in today’s technologically advanced world.

An exploration of organizational readiness factors for Quality 4.0: an intercontinental study and future research directions

Purpose Quality 4.0 incorporates the role of automation and digitization and provides competitive advantage for organizations by enhancing customer experience and increase profitability. The purpose of this study is to critically examine the organizational readiness factors for the successful implementation of Quality 4.0 implementation and assess their importance.Design/methodology/approach This study applies a quantitative research methodology to examine readiness factors of Quality 4.0 in organizations by 147 senior management professionals in various organizations including manufacturing and service companies in America, Asia and Europe participated through an online survey.FindingsThe readiness factors for Quality 4.0 were critically ranked amongst manufacturing and service organizations by senior management professionals from three continents. Five significant reasons for non-adoption of Quality 4.0 were lack of resources, inability to link Quality 4.0 with the corporate strategy and objectives, lack of understanding of benefits, high initial investment and the current quality management strategy and methods are already delivering good results hence unsure of the need for Quality 4.0. The handling of big data in quality management was the most important factor for adopting Quality 4.0, irrespective of the size and nature of the organization. More accuracy and less errors and improved decision-making the factors of adopting Quality 4.0 in service sector were not significant for manufacturing sector. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) reported that costs and time savings over the long run were not so significant.Practical implications This study is focussed on the significance of pros and cons of adopting Quality 4.0 in organizations. Senior managers in both large and SMEs can benefit immensely from understanding before investing heavily towards implementing Quality 4.0. The importance of identified organizational readiness factors for the successful adoption of Quality 4.0 can be used as indicators to understand how ready an organization is to implement Quality 4.0. The top three readiness factors for the successful adoption of Quality 4.0 were identified as: top management commitment, leadership and organizational culture. Improved understanding of the readiness factors can be highly beneficial to senior quality professionals in both manufacturing and service companies in the journey towards successful implementation of Quality 4.0.Originality/value This is the first empirical study on assessing Quality 4.0 readiness factors at an intercontinental level and therefore serves as a foundation for many future studies. The study provides a theoretical foundation for the Quality 4.0 in terms of organizational readiness for successful adoption and overcoming implementation challenges. During the planning, implementation and progress review of Quality 4.0, review the readiness factors while planning and resourcing a Quality 4.0 implementation strategy to ensure effective performance.