Shamsud D. Chowdhury

Centralization as a design consideration for the management of call centers

A call center and its associated information technology (IT) provide an opportunity to redesign and improve service-delivery operations. Managers at all levels should understand the role of organizational design as call centers are established or expanded, in particular the relative centralization (distribution of authority) associated with delivering services to customers. This article argues that centralization moderates and influences the organizations efforts to improve customer service through the implementation of the call center and its IT. If managers fall to capitalize on the particular way that centralization moderates between IT and competitive strategy, the organization may not enjoy an important benefit of the call center, which is competitive advantage through increased efficiency and improved customer service. Based on survey responses from 68 call-center managers, the authors found that both centralization and decentralization are associated with call-center service operations. While the call center provides managers with the ability to influence decision-making (centralization), there are also opportunities for agents in the call center to exercise authority in managing the organizations communications with customers (decentralization). Implications for organizational practice are considered.

Institutional Activism Types and CEO Compensation: A Time-Series Analysis of Large Canadian Corporations †

Using data from the Toronto Stock Exchange 300 companies for a 7-year period, the authors examine the role that institutional activism types and three salient board monitoring mechanisms— CEO/board chair split, board composition, and compensation committee independence—play in influencing CEO contingent compensation in Canada. The authors find that the effect of institutional activism, especially proxy based, is stronger on contingent CEO compensation and that its effects span a longer time. As opposed to the interactions of cumulative proxy-based activism with any of the three monitoring mechanisms, the interactions of cumulative non-proxy-based activism with both CEO/board chair split and compensation committee independence appear to influence CEO contingent compensation. The studys implications are given.

Societal institutions and HRM practices: an analysis of four European multinational subsidiaries in Bangladesh

Using the ‘societal-effect’ approach, a variant of the institutional theory developed and tested in Europe, this study investigates the impact of societal institutions on human resource management (HRM) practices of European multinational subsidiaries in Bangladesh, which is now on the list of the Next-11 economies of the world. In-depth case studies of four European multinational subsidiaries revealed the presence of different degrees of influence – partly attributable to societal effect – on the human resource practices of these subsidiaries. Our study added a new dimension to the interface between the strong and weak institutions and how such interfacing accords both legitimacy and reverse legitimacy to MNC subsidiaries and their societal institutions respectively. Another interesting finding of the study is the emergence of political system as a societal institution and, hence, a determinant of HRM practices in these subsidiaries. The studys implications are given.

The Dominant perspective, instituitional ownership, and corporate efficiency: An empirical investigation

This study is an attempt to verify the mostly anecdotal or case‐based assertions regarding the imperviousness of Japanese management to the threats of large institutional stockholders. Using data drawn from 118 corporations in five industry sectors, and applying an econometric technique, we propose to verify the differences, if any, in the relationship of a set of eight firmlevel strategic attributes and corporate efficiency across two distinct institutional ownership settings: high versus low. The test results reveal a structural homogeneity across both settings, suggesting that Japanese managers are independent of pressures from institutional owners across high and low levels of ownership. The study’s academic and managerial implications are also given.