Fostering Innovation Through Humble Leadership and Humble Organizational Culture

Companies understand they need to innovate to stay competitive, but innovation is not as simple as thinking of a great idea and then implementing it. Successful innovation requires supportive actions from leaders and the firm especially when the innovation is complex. In order to foster complex technological innovations, such as robotic process automation (“RPA”), we propose that firms benefit from having (1) humble leadership actions and (2) a humble organizational culture. We share what we learned about our propositions after reviewing the Finance Controllership division within a major multinational technology organization that develops hardware and other computer-related support items.

Millennials’ Strategic Decision Making Through the Lens of Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Management

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the touchstone for millennials when looking at the means for making their world a better place. Higher education’s focus on CSR has allowed millennials to focus their decision-making using a CSR/stakeholder approach to financial management decisions. Millennials’ support for a CSR/stakeholder approach has grown as they have been completing college. The CSR/stakeholder approach has increased partly due to social awareness created by curricula that highlights areas of social and environmental inequality. This CSR/stakeholder approach has recently emerged as a bona fide strategic management option globally. This paper extends CSR research by evaluating millennial financial decisions and the resulting competitive company performance in a widely used business simulation. Proactive university equality initiatives, resulting in curriculum changes, reinforce millennials’ ethos of social and environmental sustainability. As millennials will soon take the reins of industry, the results of their ethos will significantly influence society.

Breaking the Paradigm of Sensing, Seizing, and Transforming - Evidence from Axel Springer

Dynamic capabilities have typically been conceptualized as sensing, seizing, and transforming. This article explores the interplay of these procedural dimensions employing a longitudinal case study of Axel Springer, a leading media corporation that has exercised dynamic capabilities to convert from a print publisher to an internet company. Insightful evidence is produced from interviews with current and former top managers. The case study shows iterations, overlaps, and interconnections between sensing, seizing, and transforming. Sensing-by-seizing is introduced as a dynamic capability to seize concrete opportunities while concurrently sensing them. A conceptual model furnishes implications and recommendations for managerial decision-making.

Special Issue on e-Commerce and e-Marketing Strategies

Introduction to the Special Issue by Guest Editors

Vulnerability To Poverty: A Survey

There has been no consensus over the concept and measurement ofvulnerability to poverty (VP). Many scholars bring in different perspectives todiscuss various conceptual and measurement issues. This paper summarizes theavailable economic literature on the definitions and measurements of VP. Despitea lack of agreement, the concept of VP essentially captures the dynamic aspects ofpoverty, which are extremely important for formulating appropriate and effectivepoverty alleviation policies. This paper discusses the three basic approaches formeasuring VP. Further, the data-related issues are also discussed. Then the paperreviews previous studies on the vulnerability estimation for different countries andhighlights the relative importance of various shocks in determining vulnerability.Finally, the paper ends by raising a number of policy-related issues.

A Simple Export Country-Market Screening Technique for Small Us Businesses: A Packaged Good Illustration

US small businesses are in need of processes and techniques that help them alleviate the difficult experience of choosing foreign markets. Using a generic screening process, this paper explains the stages, the screening criteria, and the ranking techniques for selecting country-markets. The paper illustrates the application of Shift-Share Analysis (SSA) as a simple technique to rank country-market potentials. Results from an analysis of a packaged good show that SSA is an adequate ranking technique to identify preliminary country prospects. Implications for small businesses and future research are given.