Middle-sized Firms Research Articles

How enterprise information systems strategies-enabled strategy-making influences organizational agility: mediated role of IT-enabled dynamic capabilities in two BRICS countries study

Purpose The study aims to investigate how enterprise information systems strategies-enabled strategy-making (ISS-SM) influences organizational agility (OA) via the mediated role of IT-enabled dynamic capabilities (ITDC) under environmental dynamism (ED). The study also investigates natural country moderation associated with the business context of the countries where the respondents are located might influence these relationships.Design/methodology/approach The study aims to investigate how enterprise ISS-SM influences OA via the mediated role of ITDC under ED. The study also investigates natural country moderation associated with the business context of the countries where the respondents are located that might influence these relationships.Findings The results demonstrate that ISS-SM influences ITDC to gain OA independent of the ED level. Indian and Brazilian firms show no different effects in the relationship of the research model. However, post hoc analysis revealed that strong ISS-SM on OA is fully mediated by ITDC under higher ED with a substantial coefficient of determination, more prominent for Indian firms characterized by young-age and middle-size firms, agribusiness and government sectors.Research limitations/implications The fundamental to enabling practice and praxis of the strategy-as-practice approach to OA gains mediated through ITDC in different business context conditions.Originality/value The research contributes to extending the literature on the enterprise information systems strategy and information technologies capabilities.

Firm responses to a more generous insurance against high sick pay costs

This paper investigates how firms respond to a more generous insurance against high sick pay costs. We exploit a reform that introduced different thresholds for insurance reimbursement depending on firm size. By comparing employees in smaller firms with employees in large firms over time, we evaluate the effects of the reform. We find evidence of an increase in absence in middle-sized firms (an average 42 employees) but not in smaller firms. Our results suggest that this discrepancy may be due to the higher production costs associated with absences in smaller firms. The estimated positive effect in middle-sized firms is driven by new hires. These employees are not selected differently, but the probability of separation the following year is lower if they have reported sick. This suggests that the generosity of the insurance affected the probability of separation related to revealed absence.

Impact of Climate Policies on Occupations in the United States

Climate policies benefit the environment, but they can also incur costs in the economy. This paper examines two climate policies, which are carbon tax and cap and trade, and focuses on the impact of carbon tax and cap and trade on occupations in the United States, since different states in the U.S. implement different climate policies. The study finds that carbon tax and cap and trade benefit green occupations, skilled occupations, and large-sized firms and damage non-green occupations, unskilled occupations, and small and middle-sized firms. By analyzing and comparing the employment rate of occupations in each category, this study determines that climate policies stifle occupations, but not all types of occupations, and when certain premises are met, carbon tax creates occupations. This research paper contributes to the literature by exploring the costs of carbon tax and cap and trade and helps the public to respond to environmental issues more effectively.

Relational Capabilities into Small- and Middle-Sized Firms: a Mind-Blowing Strategic Asset

Relational Capabilities into Small- and Middle-Sized Firms: a Mind-Blowing Strategic Asset

High-Growth Middle-Sized Firms’ Performance During the Pandemic (Russian Case)

The COVID-19 pandemic is a substantial challenge for national economies. The survivability and better performance of some companies can serve as lessons for others, and those who learn the said lessons faster will take the lead in the post-COVID world. One of the national economic development drivers is high-growth firms (HGFs), also known as gazelles. High-growth middle-sized firms (HGMFs) have a notable impact on the national economy as significant employers, producers, and tax-payers. This paper aims to find the peculiarities in the reactions of HGMFs to the COVID-19 pandemic based on Russian firms’ data. This research uses the official statistics of middle-sized Russian firms (7944 firms, 238 gazelles). Gazelles are identified based on 2016–2019 data and then compared with normal medium-sized firms (NMFs) using 2020 data. In total, 14 hypotheses are formulated and tested, with those hypotheses focused on five aspects of firms’ performance: the ability to grow, profitability, efficiency, solvency, and employability. The research utilizes a one-way ANOVA test and Z-test for proportions for different types of hypotheses. Hypotheses testing shows that HGFs demonstrate better ability to grow, better efficiency, better solvency, and better employability than normal firms. However, they cannot maintain their higher profitability in 2020, despite higher net income values in comparison with other companies. The research confirms that HGMFs have unique capabilities to overcome these kinds of crises, and that such capabilities can be scaled to other business entities to increase their survivability in times of future crises. The research can be extended to small firms, 2021-year data analysis, and comparative cross-industry or cross-country analysis.

Oil Prices and Firm Returns in an Emerging Market

This study examines the oil price effect on Turkish stock market as an emerging country on firm level data. After controlling short term interest rate, nominal exchange rate and crude oil price, we find that firms behave differently to a change in oil prices. The findings include these: i) variations in oil prices do not significantly affect Turkish firm returns. Out of 153, only 38 firms are affected significantly by oil price after controlling exchange rate and interest rate; ii) oil prices influence stock returns of Turkish firms, suggesting that under reaction and gradual information diffusion hypotheses may hold. iii) small and middle-sized firms are more affected negatively from oil price changes, where large-sized firms affected more positively. The empirical findings of this study have potential implications and offer significant insights for both practitioners and policy makers.

The ADR Market and the Effects of ADR Issue on the Underlying Security; a Survey

The present paper exposes the definition and main characteristics of American depository receipts (ADR) and their market. The research discusses the theoretical and practical explanations of the ADR demand by us investors. It also considers, in theoretical terms, the reasons why an international issue would imply changes in the return and variance of the underlying security of ADRS, and comments on the evidence related t to such an issue. The main conclusion of this paper is addresed to the impact on the underlying security following the international listing by middle-sized firms from semi-integrated capital markets.

Financial shocks, firm credit and the Great Recession

The creation and destruction margins of employment (job flows) can be used to measure the employment effects of disruptions to firm credit. Using a firm dynamics model, we establish that a tightening of credit to firms reduces employment primarily by reducing gross job creation, exhibiting stronger effects at new, young, and middle-sized firms. The firm credit channel accounts for, at most, 18%, of the decline in US employment in the Great Recession. Using MSA-level job flows data, we show that the job flows response to identified credit shocks is consistent with our model’s predictions.

Strategy Execution: One Size Does Not Fit All: Evidence from Italian Middle Market

Despite several studies highlighting the gap between strategy formulation and strategy implementation, strategy execution continues to be considered one of the greatest challenges in strategic management. Beginning from this premise, the present study explores how the gap between strategy formulation and implementation is perceived by middle-sized Italian companies. The basic idea of this study is to verify whether the difficulties that are widely reported in the strategic literature and empirical research of translating strategy into practice also arise in the context of Italian firms, and to examine which are the greatest barriers to successful strategy implementation. To address the research aims, we conduct a survey analysis of 544 middle-sized firms located in Northeast Italy. The findings of the analysis highlight how the main sources of the gap between strategy formulation and execution can be traced to two main factors: the processes through which the implementation step is conducted and the competences and skills necessary to effectively achieve the execution results.
 
 This paper contributes to the existing literature by conducting empirical research on the relevance of strategy execution in the Italian context. The study also has practical implications through its demonstration of the importance of some managerial tools that are highly useful in effective strategy execution.

Determinants of Debt Structure in Ace Market Busr Malaysia: A Panel Data Analysis

This study was conducted with the aim to examine the relevance of different financing theories namely Agency Theory, Trade-Off Theory and Pecking Order Theory to explain capital structure choices among firms in “Access, Certainty, Efficiency” (ACE) Market of Bursa Malaysia. The ACE Market is the financing source for the high-growth and technology requirements of middle-sized firms. The literature on debt policy decision making in the ACE market have been scant, leading the scholars to realize the necessity of performing more studies in this field. To further explain this issue, this study performed a quantitative analysis on a panel data sample of 60 ACE firms from 2005 to 2016. Three proxies for leverage namely total, long-term and short-term debts were examined based on the total assets and equity in six regression models. From seven variables examined in this study, findings indicated a significant relationship between warrant and debt in all models. In addition, liquidity, firm size, profitability and leverage showed significant relationship in all the models except for long-term debt. However, reputation, non-debt tax shield and interest tax shield were seen significant in some models. Trade-off Theory and Pecking Order Theory can jointly clarify determinants of firms’ capital structure in the ACE Market.

Developing Product Liability Index for Korean Manufacturing Companies

Purpose: PL (product liability) response system is an enterprise-wide system that prevents company’s financial loss due to PL-related accidents. This study aims at developing an evaluation system for objectively assessing the extent to which companies carry out systematic and organized activities for product liability, including product safety activities, preventive actions, and protective measures.Methodology/Approach: We used the Delphi and analytical hierarchy process methods to develop an evaluation system with product liability experts to present the relative importance of response strategy based on selected evaluation criteria. And then, we carried out systematic and organized PL activities of each industry, scale, and growth stage of the Korean manufacturing companies through PLI.Findings: In terms of the scale of the manufacturer, Large-sized firms has the highest PLI of 92.32. Also, middle- to large sized firms and middle-sized firms have the highest PLI of 90.63 and 77.35, respectively. And then In terms of the importance of all manufacturers, Awareness was identified as the most important component influencing corporate management activities, with the highest PLI of 78.59.Research Limitation/implication: This study is limited due to the small sample size and the number of examples.Originality/Value of paper: Our paper will enable consumers to determine a manufacturer’s response to product liability, and the subsequent positive effects, such as the increase of quality in consumption life.

Evaluations of Construction Project Participants’ Attitudes toward Quality Management in Turkey

In recent years, quality management became an important topic for the construction industry. This topic attracted the attention of many researchers and numerous researches were conducted in the literature. Although, quality management is common among institutionalized construction firms, small and middle-sized firms neglect it. Construction projects contain many project specific risks due to their complicated nature. Institutionalized construction firms with a quality management department and policy, minimizes wastes by effective material usage and productivity increasing. Therefore, they can prevent or bring under control time and cost dependent risks. On the other hand, lack of quality management policy or limited participation of project participants to quality management process will both negatively affect the management of the project and competitiveness of the firms. This will also decrease the survival potential of construction firms within the industry. In this study, it was aimed to determine the attitudes of construction project participants towards quality management. For this purpose, a questionnaire was administered to 120 participants of construction projects in Turkey. The results revealed that, although most of the participants have a positive attitude towards quality management, they are not able to evaluate it in a proper way.

Innovation's Impact on SMES' Financial Performance through Voluntary Disclosed Information

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of innovation on Small and Middle-sized Enterprises’ performance in comparison with the effect of the industrial activity of the company. The economical measuring of performance was made by Cash Flow over Total Asset. As independent variables we used two indicators based on the information voluntarily disclosed by the companies, one to measure innovation and the other to catalogue the activity differently than the industrial classifications. The sample included a total of 920 companies from the Spanish automobile components industry (81% SMEs and 19% large companies). The results show that 2008 crisis is the factor with the greatest impact on the results; the companies that innovate the least experience a lower cash flow on assets, companies with a medium level of innovation, mainly Middle-Sized firms, have best results; moreover, the efficiency of innovation is reduced beyond a threshold that marks the boundary between the Structure–Conduct–Performance paradigm and the Resource–Based Approach.

Effects Of Interaction Between Erp And Advanced Managerial Accounting Techniques On Firm Performance: Evidence From Turkey

Almost all large and middle-sized firms worldwide have adopted enterprise planning (ERP) systems and advanced managerial accounting techniques (AMAT). However, there are virtually no studies on the interaction between ERP and AMAT and the effects of this interaction on firm performance. In this study, the effects of interaction between ERP and AMAT on firm performance are examined via an empirical analysis based on data from 125 manufacturing firms selected from among the top 500 in Turkey in 2015. The results support the hypothesis that high interaction between ERP and AMAT is associated with high financial and non-financial performance.

The Corporate Tax Burden in Ethiopia: Evidence from Anonymised Tax Returns

This paper computes and analyses the tax burden on Ethiopian corporations, measured by the average effective tax rate (ETR) on their profit. Our strongest result regards the relation between tax burdens and firm size. We find a statistically significant U-shaped relation between ETR and size. While small firms face the highest tax burden, the largest firms still pay more than middle-sized firms. It is this latter group that benefits from lower tax burdens.These results suggest that both small and large firms face constraints in minimising their taxes, but these constraints are fundamentally different. While small firms do not have the capacity and resources to fully exploit the tax system, large firms are highly visible and under greater scrutiny by the tax authority. This speculative interpretation is supported by the available data on firms’ deductions. We also find that exporting firms, firms that pay their taxes in regional offices as opposed to Addis Ababa, and firms with higher leverage have lower tax burdens.

Poder de mercado no varejo alimentar: uma análise usando os preços do estado de São Paulo

O setor varejista brasileiro tem apresentado expressivas transformações em sua organização estrutural desde a década de 1990. Se, por um lado, o mercado se mostra bastante concentrado, por outro, há evidências de uma crescente rivalidade entre as empresas. Esta pesquisa objetivou examinar o impacto da concentração de mercado sobre o uso de poder de mercado para produtos agrícolas específicos, por meio de análise de séries temporais dos preços do estado de São Paulo. Os resultados indicaram que o uso de poder de mercado difere de produto para produto, o que indica que os varejistas podem estar adotando estratégias de preços baseadas nas características da demanda dos produtos. A análise da assimetria mostrou que os varejistas tendem a retardar a transmissão de decréscimos de preços, transmitindo mais rapidamente os acréscimos. Os resultados sugerem também que o aumento da rivalidade na presente década tem dificultado o exercício de poder de mercado via preços. Em geral, os varejistas conseguiam repassar mais intensamente os acréscimos de preços no período anterior ao ano 2000, quando a taxa de turnover era menor e este processo se restringia às firmas médias e pequenas.

Macroeconomic uncertainty and corporate liquidity: the Indian case

Interest in the uncertainties prevailing at the macroeconomic level has always been well known in economic literature. This article analyses the effect of firm level and macroeconomic uncertainty on the decisions of Indian firms with regard to their optimal cash holdings. Using a dynamic panel data model, the study finds strong support for the hypothesis that Indian firms increase their cash holdings with an increase in either form of uncertainty. Also, results for the sub-samples show that middle-aged and middle-sized firms are most affected by variations in macroeconomic uncertainty.

Przedsiębiorstwo jako aktywny podmiot kształtujący przestrzeń

The analysis of occurrences on the level of lines, branches and divisions of the economy or the industry with respect to territorial units – which is referred to as the spatial structure – does not fully picture the complexity of present dependences occurring in the space. The object of my interest is the research of enterprises – organizations leading economic activity. The research stream of geography of enterprises (corporate geography), whose universally acknowledged precursor is Robert McNee, began to treat the enterprise as the active subject working in the space. The size and structure of an enterprise causes this space to be shaped, and not only limited to the used territory. Connections and interrelations of firms with the external environment: economic, technological, legal, political, cultural and natural, bear on the measurements and the spatial range of the enterprise. Determining the measures of an enterprise (the space shaped by it) and methods of their investigation are problems I have faced. In global economy, enterprises are surrounded by a wide circle of efficiently working firms, specialized, and realizing particular fragments of the created chain of value. Besides, value is not produced in a one-way chain, but within a number of multi-directional transactions between enterprises. Among them are basic activities (productive and commercial) connected with the physical creation of products (products and services), with their delivery, sale, and service, supporting the functioning of the enterprise infrastructure, supply, human resources and research and development works. Enterprises, in order to realize their own activities more efficiently, to a greater and greater degree are organized on the pattern of network organizations. Industrial networks are created both by large enterprises and small and middle-sized firms. The idea of networking was developed in spatial-economic research by Tadeusz Stryjakowski, in his works in industrial geography. For the present paper, the author defines the notion of a network enterprise, characterizes its features, presents the types and makes an attempt at determining the measurements of such enterprises and suggests methods of measurement.

Strategic marketing practice considerations in family business in nigeria

The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the literature by examining a medium-sized firm. Most modern economies are characterized by a significant group of middle-sized firms, still owner-managed, but with multimillion naira turnovers. Many of these remain family companies and constitute an important reservoir of business initiative. One such family business is the focus of this research. The results of the study suggest that neither the existing typologies of small firm approaches to marketing nor the formal models of marketing attributed to big companies necessarily characterize the marketing planning and management of family business in Nigeria.

Fit as based on the expected strategy: evidence from small and middle-sized firms

This article introduces a concept of fit based on expected strategy. Expected strategy is a strategy expected to emerge conditionally on organisational characteristics. Fit is defined as correspondence between expected and emerged strategies. It is illustrated by the Miles and Snow typology. Evidence is drawn from 106 Finnish firms. Twenty organisational variables are extracted by factor analysis. Expected strategy is drawn by multinomial logistic analysis. Difference between expected and emerged strategy types refers to lack of fit. Cases with largest differences are analysed to show how it affects performance. Evidence shows that lack of fit may play key role in success.