Modelling the resilience of start-ups during COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeResilience, the ability of start-ups to deal with anticipated instabilities and probable disruptions, is becoming an important success element during coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). To survive in this pandemic situation, resilience is an important concept for start-ups. The present paper aims to “identify”, “analyse” and “categorize” the resilience factors for start-ups during the Covid-19 pandemic using total interpretive structural modelling (TISM).Design/methodology/approachThe resilience elements of start-ups during Covid-19 were identified and shortlisted during the first phase, which included literature analysis and extensive interaction with experts. TISM was used in the second phase to investigate or to determine how the factors interplayed between the resilience factors of start-ups during Covid-19. The Matrice d'impacts Croises Multiplication Appliquee a un Classment (MICMAC) method is used to rank and categorize the factors. Closed-ended questionnaire with the scheduled interview was conducted to collect the data.FindingsThe first part of the study found ten resilience elements in total. The TISM digraph was constructed in the second step to show why one resilience component led to another. The MICMAC analysis divided these factors into four groups: autonomous, linkage, dependent and independent. These groups represented resilience variables based on their driving and dependent power, which assist executives and managers in proactively addressing them while using the TISM digraph as a guide.Research limitations/implicationsDuring the Covid-19 epidemic, this study focused primarily on resilience characteristics for Indian start-ups.Practical implicationsThis study will help key stakeholders and scholars to better understand the elements that contribute to start-up's resilience.Originality/valueThe TISM method for start-up's resilience is suggested in this paper, which is a novel attempt in the field of resilience in this industry.

The Role of Vendor Legitimacy in IT Outsourcing Performance: Theory and Evidence

Information technology outsourcing (ITO) relationships today are facing increasingly turbulent environments. This research examines ITO performance by focusing on client firms’ perceived legitimacy of vendors, termed “vendor legitimacy,” consisting of pragmatic, cognitive, and moral dimensions. Based on our surveys with executives and managers at 200 ITO client firms, the study’s findings present the imperative to actively manage vendor legitimacy for achieving and sustaining ITO performance. Specifically, at the strategic level, clients’ perception of vendors as mutually aligned, long-term-oriented, tightly integrated partners is critical. At the operational level, clients should collaborate with vendors to design and establish interorganizational routines that undergird vendor legitimacy. At the managerial level, clients’ relational governance plays a pivotal role in attaining procedural justice, ethical standards, and fairness in the interorganizational collaboration. In sum, our study suggests that creating a dedicated corporate function or unit for continually overseeing and assessing a portfolio of vendors and swiftly identifying and responding to potential issues and crises related to vendor legitimacy would be a worthwhile investment.

Sustainability in the new remote and hybrid worlds of work

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings This research paper concentrates on understanding the relationship between sustainability performance, new approaches to work (NAW), workspace usage patterns, and physical workspace reduction practices by companies and their employees. It was found from the surveys of executives and managers at Indian IT companies that NAW does lower the use of workspaces, thereby boosting a company's sustainability performance. This finding is a confident signal to executives and managers that remote working is very much here to stay, meaning they can build a full people infrastructure around this paradigm shift that's already implanted itself in the worldwide employment psyche. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Barriers in Digital Transformation

In recent years, companies in almost all the industries have been exploring new ways to use digital technologies to generate value from digital investments. However, many companies are struggling to realize the digital transformation due to various existing barriers. They face many obstacles in the development and implementation of new digital processes. In cases where the companies fail to reflect upon these barriers, digital transformation processes carry the risk of not being realized successfully. Therefore, this study has looked to identify the barriers in digital transformation, in a company in the IT sector in Sweden. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with the team members involved in digital transformation and from the company's documents, and then thematically analyzed. The findings of this research study are that there are 28 barriers in digital transformation from which 15 are new barriers that could support executives and managers who are planning a digital transformation in their organizations.

Organizational resilience, job satisfaction and business performance

PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the effects of organizational resilience on job satisfaction and business performance in companies that have undergone corporate reorganizations.Design/methodology/approachA survey was carried out on a sample of 102 executives and managers from Brazilian companies that underwent corporate reorganization. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results indicate that organizational resilience influences business performance (in the dimensions of economy-financial, customers and processes/learning) and job satisfaction (in the dimensions of financial and personal benefits). However, the relations between job satisfaction and business performance were partial, indicating that satisfaction can affect performance through other variables.Research limitations/implicationsThe main study implication lies on the empirical immersion regarding the effects of active organizational resilience on multi-faceted business performance, to the detriment of only the financial view and on job satisfaction.Practical implicationsThe distinct effects of resilience on business performance and job satisfaction provide managers with insight into how to allocate resources, in order to benefit the interests of both employer and employee.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to provide empirical evidence of the effects of active organizational resilience on multi-dimensional business performance. The results provide new insights into this relationship and may clarify divergent results found in the literature. It also provides evidence of the effects of active organizational resilience on job satisfaction in companies that have undergone corporate reorganizations, events that are supposed to require resilient skills.

Can We Commit Future Managers to Honesty?

In a competitive business environment, dishonesty can pay. Self-interested executives and managers can have incentive to shade the truth for personal gain. In response, the business community has considered how to commit these executives and managers to a higher ethical standard. The MBA Oath and the Dutch Bankers Oath are examples of such a commitment device. The question we test herein is whether the oath can be used as an effective form of ethics management for future executives/managers—who for our experiment we recruited from a leading French business school—by actually improving their honesty. Using a classic Sender-Receiver strategic game experiment, we reinforce professional identity by pre-selecting the group to which Receivers belong. This allows us to determine whether taking the oath deters lying among future managers. Our results suggest “yes and no.” We observe that these future executives/managers who took a solemn honesty oath as a Sender were (a) significantly more likely to tell the truth when the lie was detrimental to the Receiver, but (b) were not more likely to tell the truth when the lie was mutually beneficial to both the Sender and Receiver. A joint product of our design is our ability to measure in-group bias in lying behavior in our population of subjects (comparing behavior of subjects in the same and different business schools). The experiment provides clear evidence of a lack of such bias.

Sales organizations on the path of digitalization – A reflection from Germany, Finland and Austria

Companies are either proactively driving the digital transformation or are forced to digitalize by markets and ecosystems. In order to identify the status about the digital transformation of sales in practice and to get deeper knowledge about treated areas in sales and challenges on the path of digitalization, in-depth interviews of sales executives and managers of more than 50 internationally operating companies in three countries Germany, Finland and Austria were conducted in this research. The results show that one major goal for companies is to accelerate digitizing processes as digitalization helps to work more efficiently. Access to systems is necessary, hence investments in digitalization are seen as sustainable and absolutely essential for to serve B2B customers today. Digital tools lead to adaptions in the sales process as with support sales processes and sales management. Accelerated also by the COVID-19 crisis, face-to-face customer visits have been reduced even more and online meetings have increased as the speed of response has become more and more important. Finally, the necessary skill set of a sales force has to be adapted, which has to be further researched in the future, having support of higher education institutions being the order of the day. Companies have realized that a good sales pitch does not necessarily need to be in person, due to new virtual technologies.

APPLICATION OF GAME-THEORETIC MODELING IN MODERN BUSINESS PROCESSES AND ECONOMICS

Executives and managers who use business intelligence tools can benefit by using the available information from a game theory perspective to develop a game that is appropriate for their organizations. The results can be much more useful than when the organization maintains the current state of affairs. No particular game theory strategy is perfect, because different situations or problems within an organization must be solved in different unique ways. The bottom line is that game theory can be used very effectively as a decisionmaking tool in political, psychological, economic, personal, or business settings. However, this should not be used as a substitute for common sense when making strategic decisions; it is simply a tool for critical thinking. Game theory only sheds light on why companies behave the way they do, and why they use specific strategies that are accessible through transparency.

Exploring Institutional Behavioural Elements Needed to Support Knowledge Management in Higher Education Partnerships

As market competitiveness in the higher education sector continues to grow, higher education executives and managers are exploring alternatives of maintaining and growing market share by forming partnerships with other higher education institutions. Collaborative initiatives amongst higher education institutions are driven by key stakeholders, higher education executives, managers, academics, and administrators, who are involved in a significant amount of knowledge exchange processes at institutional and departmental levels. Entering into a partnership and managing knowledge at intra-institutional levels becomes a very important, challenging, and complex task. This chapter argues that in order to develop effective higher education partnerships, executives and managers will need to channel their efforts and resources on four institutional, behavioural elements, which include institutional culture, trust, absorptive capacities and communication channels.

Exploring Air Namibia’s Operational Efficiency: The Interface Between Strategy and the Six Pillars of the Organisation

This study aimed to determine the interface between strategy and the six pillars, namely, structure, people, systems, processes, technology and innovation, in order to establish key factors contributing to the operational challenges being faced by Air Namibia. A qualitative study was conducted among a purposive sample of executives at Air Namibia using an exploratory design. The data was analysed using the thematic method. Exacerbated by the grounding of aircrafts due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Air Namibia’s strategy, resources, processes and systems contributed its operational inefficiency. The leadership of airlines in general and Air Namibia in particular, need to be fully cognizant of the importance of strategic planning and developing structures, systems and processes which will mitigate any micro and macro-economic disruptions on business operations. Since there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to crisis management, airline boards, executives and managers should consider their unique position and needs in strategizing how to survive and grow following a macro-economic.