Current Issue : January - March Volume : 2014 Issue Number : 1 Articles : 5 Articles
The aim of this article is to describe patterns of innovative behaviors among small firms in\r\nMalaysia. The significant of this study lies in its attempt to differentiate innovation practices by\r\nsmall firms from the general innovation prescriptions which dominated by large firms. The\r\nunderlying theoretical arguments for this study are based on Greiner Growth Model and\r\nReadiness Theory. Greiner model explains the role of innovation as a source of competitive\r\nadvantage that support small firms� growth, while Readiness Theory and slack resources\r\nconcept explain about concentration of innovation types in small firms. This study employs\r\ncase-study which involved in-depth structured interviews with eight small firms� owners. The\r\nrespondents are classified into two groups based on its� owner social background. The first\r\ngroup consists of small firms owned by the ordinary social background owners and the second\r\ngroup consists of small firms owned by poor owners selected from a special economic\r\nempowerment program conducted by a government agency. The findings indicate that most\r\nsmall firms performed the administrative, incremental and product innovations. The\r\nadministrative innovation is applied as perseverance reactions to market turbulent and\r\ndynamic. Nevertheless, small firms which are owned by poor owners have yet to adopt\r\nextensive innovative behavior due to their tight financial constraint. The originality of this\r\nstudy lies in its approach as well as the simultaneous emphasis on owners� demographic\r\ncharacteristic effect, namely the social background, on innovative practices among particular\r\nsmall firms...
This study explores the earnings management practices of small-sized Italian companies. Adopting the\r\nearnings distribution approach, it finds that these companies are likely to manage their earnings to\r\nachieve two earnings level targets. On the one hand, they manage their earnings to report slightly\r\npositive earnings. Those with negative earnings manage them upward to be above the zero threshold.\r\nThose with positive earnings manage them downward to bring them close to zero. On the other hand,\r\nthey manage their earnings to minimize earnings changes. The main implication of the findings of this\r\nstudy is that the small-sized Italian companies� earnings are not unconditionally informative regarding\r\ntheir performance. In other words, they are of poor quality. As a result, they should be interpreted with\r\ncaution by those who use financial statement information. This study mainly enriches the literature on\r\nearnings management in two ways. Firstly, it provides evidence on small-sized companies� earnings\r\nmanagement practices which are very little explored in literature. Secondly, it provides additional\r\nevidence on the earnings management practices undertaken in the Italian setting, and so in countries\r\nwhich are characterized by a code law system and a close alignment between accounting and tax\r\nsystems....
The growing importance of Information System (IS) to support business operation demands for\r\nadequate IS planning. Good IS planning enables organizations to closely align the IS and\r\nstrategic business objectives. Such alignment ultimately ensures organizations to gain\r\ncompetitive advantages from IS-related investment. Despite extensive works to understand\r\nSISP practices in large organizations, works are still limited in the context of Small and Medium\r\nEnterprise (SMEs). This issue is worth further investigation in view of the increasing\r\nimportance of IS to support many facets of the SMEs operation. More importantly, due to\r\ninherent resource constraints among SMEs to invest in IS, top management commitment as\r\nwell as user participation in IS planning activities are getting more crucial. This study, therefore\r\nproposes a framework to assess the effect of top management commitment and user\r\nparticipation on SISP success. The findings are of relevance for firm�s top management in\r\nensuring SISP success....
At the firm level, intense competition under the global economic framework requires small and\r\nmedium enterprises to reconsider their competitive position vis-� -vis their rivals, amongst others,\r\nthrough innovation. This justifies why innovation, in the last two decades, becomes a centre stage\r\nin small business literature, reports and government policy. Little attention, however, has been\r\ngiven to the possible impact of various dimensions of innovation on firm performance. Enriching\r\nthe literature, this paper evaluates the impact of various innovation dimensions on the\r\nperformance of SMEs. A total of 284 samples were collected from SMEs in the food and beverage,\r\ntextiles and clothing and wood-based sub-industries throughout Malaysia. The data were analysed\r\nusing a hierarchical regression analysis. The findings confirmed the hypotheses that product\r\ninnovation and process innovation influenced firm performance significantly, where the impact of\r\nthe former was stronger than the latter. Besides consolidating the existing theory on the\r\nimportance of innovation for explaining a variation in firm performance, the findings also inform\r\nSMEs and policy makers that innovation is a critical factor in todayâ��s entrepreneurial activities.\r\nFurther studies should look into how SMEs could calculate cost-benefit ratio of innovation and how\r\nthey could opt for internal or external sources of innovation before actual innovation is undertaken....
Some mergers are so complex that antitrust authorities and courts are probably very\r\ntempted to decide by flipping a coin. In this paper I try to reconcile the economic approach\r\nto the evaluation of mergers with the one employed in other sciences to study the\r\ncompetitive interaction among different powers. By demonstrating the existence of a very\r\nstrong and hidden link between the Antitrust Logit Model (ALM) and the competition\r\nmodels based on differential equations, I claim that scholars of different fields have studied\r\nthe two sides of the same coin. I suggest that some help to Antitrust authorities could come\r\nfrom the tools used in natural sciences by turning this coin, instead of flipping it....
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