How do governmental wage subsidies enhance SME resilience in the COVID-19 pandemic?

PurposeCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had a tremendous negative effect on the economies around the world by infusing uncertainty into supply chains. In this paper, the authors address two important research questions (RQs): (1) did COVID-19 wage subsidies impact small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to become more flexible towards the SMEs' business customers and (2) can such flexibility be a source for greater resilience to the crisis? As a result, the authors investigate the relationship between governmental wage subsidies and SMEs' flexibility norms towards the SMEs' business customers (study 1). The authors further uncover when and how flexibility towards existing customers contributes to SME resilience (study 2).Design/methodology/approachThe authors frame the inquiry under the resource dependence theory (RDT) and behavioural additionality principle. The authors use survey methodology and test the assumptions in study 1 (n = 225) and study 2 (n = 95) on a sample of SMEs from various business-to-business (B2B) industries in Croatia.FindingsOverall, in study 1, the authors find that SMEs that receive governmental wage subsidies have greater flexibility norms. However, this relationship is significantly conditioned by SMEs' competitive profile. SMEs that strongly rely on innovation are more willing to behave flexibly when receiving subsidies, whereas SMEs driven by branding do not. Study 2 sheds light on when flexibility towards existing customers increases SME resilience. Findings show that flexibility norms are negatively related to resilience, but this relationship is becoming less negative amongst SMEs with lower financial dependence on the largest customer.Originality/valueThis study extends RDT in the area of firm-government relationships by showing that wage subsidies became a source of power for the Government and a source of dependency for SMEs. In such cases, the SMEs receiving those subsidies align with the governmental agenda and exhibit higher flexibility towards the SMEs' customers. Drawing arguments from behavioural additionality, the authors show that this effect varies due to SMEs' attention and organisational priorities resulting from different competitive profiles. Ultimately, the authors showcase that higher flexibility norms can contribute to resilience if the SME restructures its dependency by having a less-concentrated customer base.

Financial health of the Malaysian public universities: whither the way forward?

The purpose of the paper is to examine the financial health of selected public universities in Malaysia. The study assessed the performance of Malaysian research universities, on the primary reserve ratio, viability ratio, return on net asset ratio and net operating revenue ratio, as well as the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index for revenue diversification from 2010 to 2020. Results suggest poor financial health, high dependence on government funding and revenue volatility. Several universities recorded consecutive financial deficits in recent years. Third-stream revenues are low, and the universities are struggling to generate the 25% self-generated revenue target set by the government. This paper provides longitudinal empirical data on the financial health of public universities and has important implications for policymakers and university management in budget allocation and financial management decisions, particularly given the adverse financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Higher Education Policy & Management is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Investigating the link between board independence and dividend distributions in South Africa

Purpose: As shareholder-elected monitors, independent non-executive directors (INEDs) should ensure that managers do not retain earnings to promote their own interests. The relationship between board independence and dividend distributions was hence investigated for selected companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). The country offers a well-developed corporate governance framework to listed companies. Design/methodology/approach: Data on the considered companies' dividend payout ratios (DPRs), board independence and six control variables were obtained from Bloomberg for the period 2007-2021. The significance of the observed trends in these variables was considered by conducting analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Fisher's least significant difference (LSD) tests. The hypothesised relationship was assessed using a mixed-model regression. Findings/results: The results are in line with prior research showing that dividends are often omitted or reduced during and after crisis periods, that is, the global financial crisis (2008/2009) and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (2020/2021). A negative but statistically insignificant relationship was reported between DPR and board independence. Practical implications: Although board independence was not significantly related to dividend distributions for the sampled companies, INEDs still perform an important monitoring role. Shareholders are thus encouraged to play a more active role in the election of these directors. Originality/value: This study extends and refines previous research in South Africa and reveals new insights regarding board independence and dividend distributions during three King regimes and distribution-related regulatory changes. Copyright: © 2023. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

Ambidexterity in Indonesian SMEs: A systematic review and synthesis for future research

The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused problems for Indonesian SMEs, in terms of supply chain and changes in their markets' demand. SMEs cannot survive only by exploiting their existing businesses, but also by trying to explore new opportunities and ways of doing business. SMEs will have better performance if they can balance exploration and exploitation, hereinafter referred to as ambidexterity. Demand for ambidexterity is difficult because SMEs usually have limited resources and capabilities. Based on the literature review, the resource-based view (RBV) is the most frequently used perspective to discuss ambidexterity. This shows that the SMEs only focus on their internal resources so they experience a lack of resources. Based on this gap, the resource dependence theory (RDT) and social network theory are integrated with the RBV to broaden the discussion of ambidexterity in SMEs, to solve their resource-related problems. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

A Mixed-Method Approach to Determine the Successful Factors Affecting the Criticality Level of Intermediate and Final Products on National Basis: A Case Study from Saudi Arabia

COVID-19, Brexit, war, and some other similar cases will leave/have left us with a lesson that has had an impact on the supply chains of almost all product types. Countries have now recognized that some products cannot be sustained in a situation of uncertainty. This research covers the gap in understanding and identifying the successful factors affecting the criticality level of supply required of intermediate and final products (IFP) at the national level. It investigates the relationship between two factors: the casual factor supply risk (independent factor);and the impacted (dependent factors) political, economic, sociocultural, and technological (PEST) factors in terms of identifying critical products using the principle of Resource Dependency Theory (RDT). A literature review was conducted, followed by a mixed-method approach. Semi-structured interviews with 23 Saudi experts were carried out initially;then, a questionnaire was shared with 152 Saudi experts in different sectors. The qualitative study identified 30 key measurement variables for both factors, in which 19 variables were confirmed using the factor analysis (FA) technique. © 2023 by the authors.

Chrysalis of crisis: Covid-19 as a catalyst for awakening power and justice in a luxury fashion supply chain

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how supply chain actors in an Italian cashmere supply chain reacted to dependence and power use during the Covid-19 crisis and how this affected their perceptions of justice. Design/methodology/approach: The research took a case study approach exploring issues of dependence, power and justice in a multi-tier luxury cashmere supply chain. Findings: The authors found two types of dependence: Craftmanship-induced buyer dependence and Market-position-induced supplier dependence. The authors also identified four key archetypes emerging from the dynamics of dependence, power and justice during Covid-19. In the repressive archetype, buying firms perceive their suppliers as dependent and use mediated power through coercive tactics, leading the suppliers to perceive interactional, procedural and distributive injustice and use reciprocal coercive tactics against the buying firms in the form of coopetition. In the restrictive archetype, buying firms that are aware of their dependence on their suppliers use mediated power through contracts, with suppliers perceiving distributive injustice and developing ways to circumvent the brands. In the relational archetype, the awareness of craftmanship-induced buyer dependence leads buying firms to use non-mediated power through collaboration, but suppliers still do not perceive distributive justice, as there is no business security or future orders. In the resilient archetype, buying firms are aware of their own craftmanship-induced dependence and combine mediated and non-mediated power by giving the suppliers sustainable orders, which leads suppliers to perceive each justice type positively. Originality/value: This paper shows how the actors in a specific supply chain react to and cope with one of the worst health crises in living memory, thereby providing advice for supply chain management in future crises. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The role of supply chain alignment in coping with resource dependency in blockchain adoption: empirical evidence from China

PurposeThe deployment of blockchain technology (BT) throughout the supply chain is usually led by large firms that dominate the supply chain. Leading firms can encourage other resource-constrained partners to get on board by providing technical and financial support. However, due to the uncertain consequences of relying on leading firms, these partners may still be reluctant to adopt BT. Drawing on resource dependence theory, this study aims to investigate whether and when supply chain alignment can be used as a dependency coping strategy to increase the willingness of resource-constrained partners to adopt BT. Moreover, it aims to examine the motivators for supply chain alignment.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted a survey research design and collected data from 364 small and medium-sized enterprises in China.FindingsSupply chain alignment positively affects BT adoption. The effect of supply chain alignment on BT adoption is contingent on guanxi (a Chinese cultural tradition of interpersonal connections that facilitate a mutual exchange of favors). Relative advantage, technology complexity, organizational readiness and cost are motivators for supply chain alignment. Supply chain alignment mediates the effect of cost, technology complexity and relative advantage on BT adoption.Originality/valueThis research addresses the problem of resource dependency in the context of BT adoption which has been overlooked by previous research. Moreover, this paper enriches the BT literature by identifying supply chain alignment as an important channel for technology–organization–environment factors to influence BT adoption.

Towards increasing synergistic effects of resilience strategies in supply chain network design

The recent COVID-19 pandemic showed that supply chain resilience is essential for continuity of many businesses, especially retail chains. However, there are still some challenges that have received little attention in the resilient supply chain network design (RSCND) literature. While numerous resilience strategies have been proposed to make supply chain networks resilient against disruptions, very few papers have discussed why and how those resilience strategies are selected out of many potential candidates given various sources of disruption, i.e., natural, man-made, and pandemic-oriented disruptions. The aim of this paper is to propose a multi-methodological approach, based on resource dependence theory and two-stage stochastic programming, for choosing the right resilience strategies in a RSCND problem considering their positive and negative synergistic effects under resource constraints. These interactions among resilience strategies can be referred to as supply chain dynamics. We then present a novel approach for determining the most suitable combination of candidate strategies with respect to these synergistic effects. The criticality of nodes and the susceptibility of the network in different echelons are also examined via simulating the disruptive risks in hidden and unexpected places. We provide a case study from the retail industry that illustrates the potentially significant impacts of network disruptions. Via extensive stress-testing, we show the benefits of applying multiple resilience capabilities simultaneously. Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering synergistic effects among resilience strategies under budget limitations for supply chain resilience. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Strategic Cultural Center Management: by Tomas Järvinen. New York, London, Routledge, 2021, 170 pp., $160 ISBN: 978-0367510244

As Järvinen points out, an organization's failure to identify their business model does not indicate that the organization does not have a business model, but rather that they have failed to articulate or capitalize on it (51), which can leave them vulnerable. Wendi Hassan I Cache Valley Center for the Arts, Logan, UT, USA i References 1 Järvinen, Tomas. Centralized funding and high regulation in public organizations lead to less responsive, more homogenous operations, while diverse but scarce funding and reduced regulation in private organizations lead to more flexible but leaner operations. [Extracted from the article]

Improving resilience of the healthcare supply chain in a pandemic: Evidence from Europe during the COVID-19 crisis

The severe scarcity of critical medical supplies caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to considerable pro-curement challenges in the healthcare supply chain (HCSC). As ensuring the availability of such supplies during disruptions is critical, the debate on how to increase supply chain resilience in healthcare has gained new mo-mentum. We present empirical evidence from a multi-tier case study spanning nine European medical supplies manufacturers and hospital groups. Based on the resource dependence theory, we investigated procurement -related strategies to improve medical supplies availability. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 39 procurement and supply chain management experts and derived seven propositions on buffering and bridging approaches for managing evolving resource dependencies and thereby strengthening supply chain resilience in a pandemic. Overall, we confirm the resource dependence theory's applicability for explaining companies' miti-gation measures in a pandemic disruption. We find that bridging measures within the healthcare supply base, such as offering procurement support for suppliers or leveraging long-term buyer-supplier relationships, are more effective for securing medical supplies than buffering measures. Complementing bridging with buffering, such as extended upstream procurement or resource sharing among hospitals, can lead to superior risk mitigation as capacities of the present supplier base may not suffice. Furthermore, we extend the resource dependence theory by showing that the severity of disruptions caused by a pandemic triggers new forms of buffering external to the HCSC. Both traditional and new buffering measures establish novel flows of medical supplies in the HCSC that can enable higher supply security in a pandemic.

Towards Increasing Synergistic Effects of Resilience Strategies in Supply Chain Network Design

The recent Covid-19 pandemic showed that supply chain resilience is essential for continuity of many businesses, especially retail chains. However, there are still some challenges that have received little attention in the resilient supply chain network design (RSCND) literature. While numerous resilience strategies have been proposed to make supply chain networks resilient against disruptions, very few papers have discussed why and how those resilience strategies are selected out of many potential candidates given various sources of disruption, i.e., natural, man-made, and pandemic-oriented disruptions. The aim of this paper is to propose a multi-methodological approach, based on resource dependence theory and two-stage stochastic programming, for choosing the right resilience strategies in a RSCND problem considering their positive and negative synergistic effects under resource constraints. These interactions among resilience strategies can be referred to as supply chain dynamics. We then present a novel approach for determining the most suitable combination of candidate strategies with respect to these synergistic effects. The criticality of nodes and the susceptibility of the network in different echelons are also examined via simulating the disruptive risks in hidden and unexpected places. We provide a case study from the retail industry that illustrates the potentially significant impacts of network disruptions. Via extensive stress-testing, we show the benefits of applying multiple resilience capabilities simultaneously. Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering synergistic effects among resilience strategies under budget limitations for supply chain resilience.

“At One Point We Had No Funding for Paper”: How Grants and the Covid Crises Have Shaped Service Provision in Child Advocacy Centers

The confluence of the two major challenges has combined to create special challenges for rural nonprofits serving victims of crime: the fluctuation of federal funding, and the Covid-19 pandemic. We discuss the challenges faced by Child Advocacy Centers in northwestern South Carolina in the context of these shifting challenges. From qualitative interviews conducted at 14 centers in this primarily rural region, we explain the challenges they face and the potential effects on the communities they serve interpreted through the lens of Resource Dependence Theory, which predicts that organizations reduce uncertainty of funding through increasing their partnership bonds with cooperative entities. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Increasing global supply chains' resilience after the COVID-19 pandemic: Empirical results from a Delphi study.

COVID-19 has revealed global supply chains' vulnerability and sparked debate about increasing supply chain resilience (SCRES). Previous SCRES research has primarily focused on near-term responses to large-scale disruptions, neglecting long-term resilience approaches. We address this research gap by presenting empirical evidence from a Delphi study. Based on the resource dependence theory, we developed 10 projections for 2025 on promising supply chain adaptations, which were assessed by 94 international supply chain experts from academia and industry. The results reveal that companies prioritize bridging over buffering approaches as long-term responses for increasing SCRES. Promising measures include increasing risk criteria importance in supplier selection, supply chain collaboration, and supply chain mapping. In contrast, experts ascribe less priority to safety stocks and coopetition. Moreover, we present a stakeholder analysis confirming one of the resource dependence theory's central propositions for the future of global supply chains: companies differently affected by externalities will choose different countermeasures.

Balancing finances, politics, and public health: international student enrollment and reopening plans at US higher education institutions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Drawing from resource dependence theory, this study explores the extent to which international student enrollment related to institutional decisions to shift to in-person instructional strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus our study particularly on July 2020, a time during which tensions around international students' legal status in the US were especially high. Our results suggest that leaders at private not-for-profit institutions were significantly more likely to shift instructional strategies to include more in-person instruction, thus allowing more international students to enroll but also placing at risk the health of individuals on their campuses and in their local communities. A similar result was not found for public institutions. These results speak to the extent to which private institutions in the US have become financially dependent on international students' tuition and have clear implications for the financial futures of US higher education institutions. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10734-021-00768-7.