Prioritization of financial performance determinants in Indian SMEs

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-190
Author(s):  
Vishal Vyas ◽  
Priyanka Jain

Purpose This study aims to quantify and prioritize the financial performance (FP) determinants in Indian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach Analytic hierarchy process, a multi-criteria decision-making tool, was used. Experts were allowed to express the opinion regarding the relative importance of each factor and sub-factors by making pairwise comparisons through a structured questionnaire based on a nine-point scale. Findings Market orientation (0.4529) was perceived as the most important FP determinant followed by the entrepreneurial orientation (0.3382) and corporate social responsibility (0.2089) in SMEs. Research limitations/implications This study can be considered as a pilot study because it is confined to Indian SMEs. Future research studies can incorporate the opinion or insights of other stakeholders and may target the SMEs situated in different geographical areas. Practical implications The inferences drawn in this study would clarify the conceptual and contextual applicability of competitive strategies in SMEs. Indeed, proposed hierarchy and developed framework would guide the SMEs in strategic planning. Moreover, it would help in repositioning and alignment of core strategies duly with business objectives. Originality/value The study represents the foremost step and a unique effort in the area of development of hypothetical model (a hierarchal model) with the framework considered to prioritize the FP determinants in SMEs.

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sigmund Wagner-Tsukamoto

PurposeRevisiting Carroll’s classic corporate social responsibility (CSR) pyramid framework, this paper aims to evolve a novel synthesis of ethics and economics. This yielded an “integrative CSR economics”.Design/methodology/approachThis theory paper examined how to conceptually set up CSR theory, argue its ethical nature and establish its practical, social and empirical relevance. Economic analysis reached out from contemporary institutional economics to Smith’s classic studies.FindingsThe paper reconstructed all of Carroll’s four dimensions of CSR – economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities – through economics. The paper discounted a core assumption of much CSR research that economic approach to CSR, including the instrumental, strategic “business case” approach to CSR, were unethical and lacked any foundations in ethics theory. Integrative CSR economics reframes research on viability and capability requirements for CSR practice; redirecting empirical research on links between CSP (corporate social performance) and CFP (corporate financial performance).Research limitations/implicationsThe paper focused on Carroll as the leading champion of CSR research. Future research needs to align other writers with integrative CSR economics. Friedman or Freeman, or the historic contributions of Dodd, Mayo, Bowen or Drucker, are especially interesting.Practical implicationsThe paper set out how integrative CSR economics satisfies the “business case” approach to CSR and develops practical implications along: a systemic dimension of the market economy; a legal-constitutional dimension; and the dimension of market exchanges.Social implicationsIntegrative CSR economics creates ethical benefits for society along: a systemic dimension of the market (mutual gains); a legal-constitutional dimension (law-following); and the dimension of market exchange (ethical capital creation). Social benefits are not only aspired to but also are achievable as a business case approach to CSR is followed.Originality/valueThe paper’s main contribution is a new synthesis of economics and ethics that yields an “integrative CSR economics”.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Faisal Talib ◽  
Saheim K Josaiman ◽  
Mohd. Nishat Faisal

PurposeTypically, adoption of sustainability in organizations are often done in an unstructured way without the consideration of other partners in the supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a coherent plan to improve sustainability in the supply chains utilizing ISO standards for environment and social responsibility.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on literature on ISO14000 and ISO26000 to derive a set of variables applicable to supply chains, which are then prioritized for real organizations utilizing analytic hierarchy process.FindingsThe findings highlight that not all the variables of environmental, social and economic responsibility are equally important. Besides, the work reported in this paper justifies the application of multi-criteria decision-making (AHP) to prioritize elements of sustainability in context supply chains. The suggested method is illustrated using inputs from large manufacturing companies in Qatar.Practical implicationsISO14000 and ISO26000 are well known standards; however, there was no effort to integrate these standards to improve sustainability in supply chains. The suggested methodology provides invaluable help to the managers to implement sustainability in a coherent manner across the supply chain.Originality/valueThe research contributes to the extant literature by proposing a new methodology based on the integration of three-approaches: Analytic Hierarchy Process, ISO14000 and ISO26000 systems.


2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Ma ◽  
Zhibin Lin ◽  
Chi Keung Lau

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a better understanding of how Sino-Japanese joint ventures implemented the three Japanese improvement methods, i.e. Kaizen, Kaikaku and Kaizen Blitz. The specific objectives of this study are to identify the key enablers for the three improvement methods; and to identify the most selected improvement method. Design/methodology/approach This study employs a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process to pairwise-compare the three improvement methods. Data are collected from 28 industry experts from Sino-Japanese joint ventures. The study then adopts extent analysis approach for pairwise comparisons and extent analysis to obtain synthetic extent values for priority weights. Findings The results of the study indicate that personnel (humanware) factor enablers are the most important factor for Kaizen, whilst software factor enablers (essential rules, policies and institutional arrangements) weight second and hardware factor enablers (physical, measurable hard facts or resources) weight last. The study also reviews that Kaizen is the most selected improvement method among the three. Research limitations/implications The sample of this study is limited to Sino-Japanese ventures in Guangzhou, China. This study only identifies the key improvement enablers based on interviews with shop floor managers and improvement experts. Practical implications Practical implications are threefold: the improvement implementations should be based on factors such as regular training, incentives for motivations and shop floor management; improvement methods are transferable and standard operations may only have small effects on collecting improvement ideas; and Kaizen is the appropriate method to support long-term and process-oriented improvements. Originality/value This study is the first to specifically pairwise-compare the three Japanese improvement methods and to identify priorities of their key enablers in Sino-Japanese joint ventures.


2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-204
Author(s):  
Alvaro Luiz Neuenfeldt Júnior ◽  
Julio Cezar Mairesse Siluk ◽  
Marlon Soliman ◽  
Elpídio Oscar Benitez Nara ◽  
Liane Mahlmann Kipper

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the level of importance existing among the indicators that were previously defined for a Performance Measurement Systems (PMS) and are relative to franchises in Brazil, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology, together with a series of tests, which are responsible by verifying the degree of reliability, robustness and stability of the parameters used and the results obtained. As a result, the author suggests that the diagnosing of the five delimited indicators have different relevance assigned to them. Design/methodology/approach – This paper reviews extant literatures in Franchise, PMS, Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), in specific the theory about AHP. Findings – The authors found that it was possible justified, for both the relative and the evaluative method, that the I3 was the main point of the system and, as a consequence, be considered as priority when talking about sectorial development of franchises in Brazil. As for the other indicators, even being located in a level lower than I3, they must be taken into contemplation in these measurements, however, with a relatively inferior importance degree. Practical implications – It was possible to better comprehend which economics and non-economic factors selected have a more predominance in the Brazilian franchise context, according to characteristics of the companies present. Originality/value – The absence of scientific papers that describe the relevance level of the main factors that influence in the Brazilian franchise system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 2376-2393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gopalkrishnan R. Iyer ◽  
Lee Jarvis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues in the context of the hospitality industry and offer some avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews several domains of CSR and takes stock of some exemplar research from hospitality management pertaining to each domain. Particular note is taken of research that explores CSR issues outside the Western world. Several unanswered questions are then noted along with suggestions for future research. Findings Based on prior literature, four CSR domains were identified as instrumental, social/legal/political, ethical and environmental. CSR issues in hospitality research have predominantly focused on the instrumental domain while there is scant research on other domains. CSR adoption in the multinational context was identified as due from stakeholder pressures, competitive environment and cultural environment. Research limitations/implications The paper identifies some unanswered questions in transnational operations of hospitality firms and suggests avenues for future research. Practical implications The paper recommends that due attention must be given to contextual issues in the conceptualization, focus and practice of CSR by multinational hospitality firms. Originality/value The paper offers a review of hospitality research on various CSR domains. It offers some unanswered research questions that may spur future research, discussion and debates among academics, students and executives.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Chang ◽  
Bendegul Okumus ◽  
Chih-Hung Wang ◽  
Chien-Yin Chiu

Purpose This study aims to investigate how the “cooking holiday” concept can be used by tourism authorities and practitioners and, to that end, proposes a hierarchical framework for improving culinary tourism. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted the Delphi method to filter and verify the criteria, thereby constructing a hierarchical framework of cooking holidays in Taiwan. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was also applied to calculate the relative weight of each attribute and criterion, thus identifying their degrees of importance. Findings Four attributes (“local food,” “food trail,” “cooking experience” and “environment and atmosphere”) and 22 criteria were identified to comprise a cooking holiday experience framework. Research findings reveal “cooking experience” as the most crucial of the four attributes identified. Of the more numerous criteria, “ingredients with integrity,” “local features” and “diverse curriculum” were identified as the three most important. Research limitations/implications The hierarchical framework of cooking holiday experiences can be used by tourism authorities and practitioners to enhance experiential quality for tourists and promote culinary tourism in Taiwan. According to the research findings, cooking class participants can concentrate on the “cooking experience” while emphasizing “ingredients with integrity,” “local features” and “diverse curricula” in the context of cooking holidays. Originality/value This study offers valuable insights and suggests directions for future research on culinary tourism. This study also offers a framework for developing cooking holidays.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 106-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingming Feng ◽  
Xiaodan Wang ◽  
Jerry Glenn Kreuze

Purpose Despite the intensive research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm financial performance, little is known about how the linkage between CSR and firm financial performance is heterogeneous across industries and how the performance implications are differentiated among specific categories of CSR activities. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the association between a firm’s engagement in CSR and firm financial performance is heterogeneous across industries and CSR categories. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of 17,083 firm-year observations representing 1,877 firms from the largest 3,000 US companies during years 1991 and 2011, the authors compare the association between CSR and firm financial performance across ten industry sectors defined by Global Industry Classification Standard and across the four CSR categories classified by Mandl and Dorr (2007). Findings The authors find that the association between the overall CSR activities and firm performance is heterogeneous across industries. CSR has significant positive implications for firms from most, but not all, industries. Comparing the performance implication of CSR practices targeting different stakeholder groups, the empirical results indicate that different types of CSR have different influences on financial performance of firms from different industry sectors. Research limitations/implications This study provides new angles for managers in maximizing firm performance through CSR activities and suggests an important and interesting direction for researchers who engage in CSR research. Due to its heterogeneous nature, the CSR-performance relationship needs to be examined more specifically – across industries and different CSR categories. Findings from studies incorporating both company industrial sector and CSR categories would provide more meaningful and practical implications for managers. Practical implications This study provides important managerial implications. First, to maximize firm performance through CSR activities, managers must interpret the linkage between CSR and firm financial performance from the perspective of a specific industrial sector and acknowledge the importance of CSR practices across different CSR categories. Second, the findings suggest that CSR practices aiming at different stakeholder groups generate different financial returns in different industries. Firms engage in CSR to satisfy different stakeholder groups. When budgets are tight, managers may give higher priority to the CSR practices that have stronger effects on firm financial performance. Originality/value This study advances our understanding of the CSR-financial performance relationship by exploring its heterogeneous nature across industry sectors and across specific categories. To obtain the biggest gain from CSR spending, managers must have a good understanding how a specific CSR category can contribute to the financial performance of their particular company in their particular industry.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 749-763 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliyu Baba Usman ◽  
Noor Afza Binti Amran

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the nature and trend of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in Nigeria. The second objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between the dimensions of CSR disclosures and corporate financial performance (CFP) among Nigerian listed companies. Design/methodology/approach – To carry out this research, content analysis was conducted to extract CSR and financial data from annual reports of 68 companies listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange. Financial data were cross-referenced with the NSE Factbook. CSR indexes and financial performance measures were computed for estimation of the regression analysis equation. The percentages were used to describe the nature and trend of CSR practice in Nigeria. This was followed by the hierarchical multiple regression analysis to examine the relationship between CSR and CFP. Findings – The results of the descriptive statistics show that the listed companies used CSR initiatives to communicate social performance to their stakeholders. From the regression analysis, community involvement disclosure, products and customer disclosures and human resource disclosures were found to enhance CFP. The results also reveal a negative relationship between environmental disclosure and CFP, which indicates that disclosure of environmental impact information could be value destroying in Nigeria. Research limitations/implications – The major limitation of this paper is the sample size. Also, failure of corporations to disclose CSR in the annual reports will have a material effect on these findings. Practical implications – The findings of this paper have practical implications on the management of Nigerian companies to re-think and re-strategize their CSR policies that incorporate social and economic performance to improve their CFP. Social implications – This paper has implication on stakeholders in validating the corporate citizenship of corporations based on the level of commitment and participation in CSR initiatives. Also, findings of this paper will alert the enforcement agencies on the status of CSR practices in Nigeria. Government in collaboration with private and public agencies should consider the needs for CSR framework and database to guide social and environmental reporting in the country. Originality/value – The paper has examined the relationship between CSR and CFP based on CSR dimensional approach. Aspect of human resource and products/customers CSR has been neglected in the context of Nigerian CSR research. This paper makes valuable contribution by offering new and fresh insight on these dimensions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 786-802 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristijan Krkač

Purpose The supposedly radical development of artificial intelligence (AI) has raised questions regarding the moral responsibility of it. In the sphere of business, they are translated into questions about AI and business ethics (BE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The purpos of this study is to conceptually reformulate these questions from the point of view of two possible aspect-changes, namely, starting from corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) and starting not from AIs incapability for responsibility but from its ability to imitate human CSR without performing typical human CSI. Design/methodology/approach The author draws upon the literature and his previous works on the relationship between AI and human CSI. This comparison aims to remodel the understanding of human CSI and AIs inability to be CSI. The conceptual remodelling is offered by taking a negative view on the relation. If AI can be made not to perform human-like CSI, then AI is at least less CSI than humans. For this task, it is necessary to remodel human and AI CSR, but AI does not have to be CSR. It is sufficient that it can be less CSI than humans to be more CSR. Findings The previously suggested remodelling of basic concepts in question leads to the conclusion that it is not impossible for AI to act or operate more CSI then humans simply by not making typical human CSIs. Strictly speaking, AI is not CSR because it cannot be responsible as humans can. If it can perform actions with a significantly lesser amount of CSI in comparison to humans, it is certainly less CSI. Research limitations/implications This paper is only a conceptual remodelling and a suggestion of a research hypothesis. As such, it implies particular morality, ethics and the concepts of CSI and AI. Practical implications How this remodelling could be done in practice is an issue of future research. Originality/value The author delivers the paper on comparison between human and AI CSI which is not much discussed in literature.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Herold ◽  
Timo Dietrich ◽  
Tim Breitbarth

PurposeThis study aims to identify and deconstruct bullshit in banks' corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication to advance the management rhetoric research space, which has been characterised by an indifference to truth and meaning.Design/methodology/approachWe provide a typology of bullshit phenomena overview in the banking sector and follow the McCarthy et al.'s (2020) C.R.A.P. framework from to showcase how bullshit can be comprehended, recognised, acted against and prevented.FindingsThis paper puts a spotlight on written and spoken language to detect bullshit in banks' CSR statements. It provides actionable insights into how stakeholders can act against and prevent bullshit statements from occurring in the future.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research is warranted to assess the use of still imagery, events and video materials in corporate communications and non-financial reporting. Further rigorous assessment of actual CSR initiatives must be undertaken to assess claimed contributions.Practical implicationsMonitoring mechanisms and independent assurance statements prepared by authorised third parties may strengthen the motivation and ethicality of CSR activities.Originality/valueThis viewpoint is the first to follow the C.R.A.P framework and critically assess indifferences towards truth in banks' CSR communications.


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