According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

Testing Trade-Off and Pecking Order Predictions about Dividends and Debt

Principles of Corporate Finance - 4/E

Forecasting Bankruptcy More Accurately: A Simple Hazard Model

Welfare and well-being have traditionally been gauged by using income and employment statistics, life expectancy, and other objective measures. The Economics of Happiness, which is based on people’s reports of how their lives are going, provides a complementary yet radically different approach to studying human well-being. Typically, subjective well-being measures include positive and negative feelings (e.g., momentary experiences of happiness or stress), life evaluations (e.g., life satisfaction), and feelings of having a life purpose. Both businesses and policymakers now increasingly make decisions and craft policies based on such measures. This chapter provides an overview of the Happiness Economics approach and outlines the promises and pitfalls of subjective well-being measures.

The Economics of Happiness

Big data analytics (BDA) guarantees that data may be analysed and categorised into useful information for businesses and transformed into big data related-knowledge and efficient decision-making processes, thereby improving performance. However, the management of the knowledge generated from the BDA as well as its integration and combination with firm knowledge have scarcely been investigated, despite an emergent need of a structured and integrated approach. The paper aims to discuss these issues.,Through an empirical analysis based on structural equation modelling with data collected from 88 Italian SMEs, the authors tested if BDA capabilities have a positive impact on firm performances, as well as the mediator effect of knowledge management (KM) on this relationship.,The findings of this paper show that firms that developed more BDA capabilities than others, both technological and managerial, increased their performances and that KM orientation plays a significant role in amplifying the effect of BDA capabilities.,BDA has the potential to change the way firms compete through better understanding, processing, and exploiting of huge amounts of data coming from different internal and external sources and processes. Some managerial and theoretical implications are proposed and discussed in light of the emergence of this new phenomenon.

Big data analytics capabilities and knowledge management: impact on firm performance

Does age matter? The impact of SMEs age on the relationship between knowledge sourcing strategy and internationalization

Although Business Process Management (BPM) is a critical issue and small- and medium-sized family firms (SMFFs) frequently adopt process organization, very little literature focuses on the processes by which family firms remain distinctive (Chrisman et al., 2016) or on their approach to BPM. The current research aims to fill this gap by analyzing dynamic companies’ attitudes to process-driven ability that concern exploitative as well as explorative processes. The purpose of this paper is to identify which kinds of dimensions may build an ambidextrous state in BPM in SMFFs, also favored by entrepreneurial IT capabilities and influenced by a stable but changeable context.,The authors referred to vom Brocke et al.’s (2014) study as it allows a focus on BPM research in the context of SMFFs. Then, the authors adapted the framework to the context of SMFFs. In addition, an empirical analysis has been made for applying the framework’s principles on effective BPM requirements to SMFFs. In the research, the authors applied grounded theory, according to which observation and theorization are linked by circularity, as they represent moments being managed simultaneously. The theorization emerged in different moments of the empirical surveys, influencing the next data gathering and the data gathering was the object of a de-structured matching and analysis process.,Specific cultural and cognitive aspects, values and abilities affect the company behavior of SMFFs in terms of BPM, and this is influenced by the connection between the family and the business. Therefore, it confirms that the family is a missing variable in organizational research (Dyer, 2006) also in BPM. A good BPM permits the definition of business abilities of running the current processes, along with of acclimatizing the company to a changeable context. In regard to the exploitative and explorative strengths typical of organizational ambidexterity, the research favors, respectively, transactional excellence with a focus on net cost reduction and transformational excellence based on net revenue generation. This approach requires consideration of the difference between external and internal contingencies as well as of the different processes to manage. However, despite IT-based BPM tools and the new era of IT-based process thinking, technology appropriation is only one of our dimensions, and each dimension plays a role in good BPM behavior; only a combination of dimensions favors effective and flexible BPM.,The research contributes to the literature on BPM through theoretical implications, in particular two main implications. First, the research emphasizes the impact of familiness on good BPM practice. Family appears to be a missing variable in organizational research on BPM, even though familiness affects process specificity and mechanisms. Second, the research is based on certain category dimensions that characterize management models common in the literature, allowing the application of BPM in FFs by taking advantage of their confidence and adaptability. Limitations are related to different points of view on the model’s scope and design, the recipient and the research method.,The research has two main practical implications, representing managerial potential, that improve the significance and originality of the research in internal and external contexts. In the internal context, this permits a new BPM mind-set.,The research is original for the following two reasons. First, when FF complexity grows and/or new organizational issues emerge, FFs are faced with two challenges: an increased number of complex processes to handle, along with a lack of IT-based BPM for organizational ambidexterity. In such a context, this research can suggest a solution. Second, the research is based on dimensions that have been widely characterized in general management models. For this reason, FFs may already be familiar with these dimensions. In addition, the model strongly valorizes the familiness impact on BPM development and takes into consideration the context awareness of the company.

Business Process Management (BPM): How complementary BPM capabilities can build an ambidextrous state in business process activities of family firms

This study aims to extend the knowledge in the domain of intellectual capital and entrepreneurship by investigating whether happiness may have a positive influence on entrepreneurial initiative and intellectual property or not.,The used large-scale dataset for 2018 is drawn from the Eurostat. It includes information on individual happiness, sustainability, start-ups, creativity, intellectual property and quality of life, grouped by European countries. Hypotheses are tested through using the linear regression method.,The findings confirm that happiness, along with creativity, fosters both entrepreneurial initiative and intellectual property.,Future studies should test the model by extending the analysis to different world regions and by considering further variables, such as country culture.,The study suggests that policy makers have to focus on improving life conditions and sustainability as a means to foster local economies and communities.,This cutting-edge study is unique in its genus, because the prior literature never focused on these topics jointly. At an academic level, it ties happiness to creativity and to “the entrepreneurial spirit”, thus opening up to a new and vast domain of researches.

Alberto Mazzoleni

Papers

Big data analytics capabilities and knowledge management: impact on firm performance

Does age matter? The impact of SMEs age on the relationship between knowledge sourcing strategy and internationalization

Business Process Management (BPM): How complementary BPM capabilities can build an ambidextrous state in business process activities of family firms

Happiness as a driver of entrepreneurial initiative and innovation capital

Over the mask of innovation management in the world of Big Data