Thomas J. Douglas

Total Quality Management Implementation and Competitive Advantage: The Role of Structural Control and Exploration

The authors explored the relationship between the degree to which total quality management (TQM) practices were adopted within organizations and the corresponding competitive advantages achieved. T...

Performance Implications of Incorporating Natural Environmental Issues into the Strategic Planning Process: An Empirical Assessment†

This paper explores the ability of firms to integrate a critical strategic issue, the natural environment, into the strategic planning process within the natural resource-based perspective. Using survey data collected from a wide variety of firms and industries based in the United States, we empirically examined the antecedents and effects of integrating the natural environment into the formal planning process. These data were analysed using structural equation modelling with the LISREL technique. Overall, our data provided strong support for the hypothesized relationships. Specifically, we found that the level of integration of environmental management concerns in the strategic planning process was positively related to financial and environmental performance. Furthermore, we found that the greater the functional coverage and the more resources provided to environmental issues, the greater the integration of environmental issues in the planning process. These results suggest that concern for environmental issues may yield competitive advantages in the marketplace as the natural resource-based perspective suggests

Evaluating the Deming Management Model of Total Quality in Services

This article uses the Deming management model developed by Anderson et al. (1994b) as an initial template to analyze total quality in services. While the literatures addressing quality management have developed separately for products and services, the founders of total quality portrayed this management philosophy as universally oriented. Our study first replicates two earlier studies that tested the Deming management model in manufacturing industries. Using hospitals as our unit of analysis, we realized findings similar to the earlier manufacturing studies. Next, we used contributions from the MBNQA literature to test an enhanced model. Our subsequent findings support the MBNQA concept that “leadership drives the system that creates results” and provides evidence of the ubiquitous importance of leadership for ensuring the success of a quality improvement program. Finally, an anomaly of this study and those published earlier is the inability to find support for the relationship between continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. Integrating the substantial work in the service quality literature focused on customer satisfaction measurement is recommended to future researchers to help resolve this issue and further enhance the model.

Institutional Antecedents of Corporate Governance Legitimacy

The authors studied panel data for corporate governance ratings in 50 countries between 1997 and 2005 to understand what the country-level predictors of corporate governance legitimacy might be. Using neo-institutional theory, they found that all three pillars of institutionalization influenced perceptions of corporate governance at the national level—specifically, (a) the greater the extent of law and order, (b) the more the culture emphasized global competitiveness, and (c) the less the prevalence of corruption, the higher the corporate governance legitimacy within a nation. This study refines and extends the comparative corporate governance literature, as well as the neo-institutional perspective.

Developing Corporate Governance Research Through Qualitative Methods: A Review of Previous Studies

Manuscript Type. Review. Research Question/Issue. The article is concerned with the prevalence, character, and development of qualitative research within the field of corporate governance. The paper provides an overview of published qualitative research in the field of corporate governance based on a structured literature search of papers published in scholarly peer‐reviewed journals between 1986 and 2011. Research Findings/Insights. A fine‐grained search based on key words resulted in a sample of 78 qualitative corporate governance studies. A review and content analysis of these studies show that qualitative studies in governance have grown in number since the 1990s, but remain a small fraction of the published work on corporate governance. Studies are mostly developed by UK and European scholars, published in European journals and tend to explore boards of directors more than other governance related actors and mechanisms. These studies utilize a range of disciplines, predominantly management, adopting a wide range of methods, the most prevalent being that of the interview, often in combination with other methods to get a better account of the empirical phenomenon. Theoretical/Academic Implications. The search reveals an eclectic range of theories, spanning several disciplines, which is serving to generate, elaborate, and refine theorizing about corporate governance and the associated meanings, mechanisms, processes and relationships. There is much scope and need for more qualitative studies of significant rigor and relevance which explore the array of interactions and processes involved in corporate governance, across different levels of analysis and contexts. Practitioner/Policy Implications. After over two decades of research and reform of corporate governance, problems of practice remain, and corporate governance prescription via codes and other forms of regulation is increasing in search of better governance. Qualitative research can assist policy‐makers and practitioners to develop more efficient governance mechanisms, by shedding light on the efficacy of policy prescription. Qualitative research provides a basis for rethinking and challenging some of the dominant assumptions and meanings about how governance actors and institutions actually function.

Organizational change capacity: the systematic development of a scale

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to systematically develop a reliable and valid construct that can facilitate and enhance the organizational change process by following Hinkins suggestions for construct development. The “Organizational Capacity for Change” (OCC) construct provides a multi‐dimensional assessment tool to diagnose and guide organizational change.Design/methodology/approach – In the first empirical study, the paper provides details on the creation and refinement of the OCC instrument by reviewing the results of nearly 3,600 respondents in 161 organizational units in a wide variety of industries from 1999 to 2005. In the second empirical study, it tests the OCC instrument in a single industry to determine the validity of the measures.Findings – The result is a reliable and valid multi‐dimensional, 32‐item instrument which describes a new construct in the organizational sciences that can be used by executives to prepare for and enhance their organizational change process, or for scholars...

Stepping Towards Sustainable Business: An Evaluation of Waste Minimization Practices in US Manufacturing

Central to the movement of organizations toward environmental sustainability is the financial viability and environmental effectiveness of the techniques for improving environmental performance. While waste-minimization practices (WMPs) have been touted as a key element in moving manufacturing organizations toward sustainability, we know little about their utilization and effectiveness across a range of industrial and organizational contexts. Using waste-minimization data collected as part of the Toxics Release Inventory, we studied 250 manufacturing firms to provide empirical evidence to enable plant managers to prioritize waste-minimization options. We found clear evidence of a corporate double bonus WMPs can provide through pollution reduction and enhanced operational efficiency relative to traditional end-of-pipe solutions. In the array of ecologically sustainable business practices, it appears that WMPs provide immediate environmental and operational benefits and build momentum for further steps toward environmentally sustainable economic development.

Are Past Normative Behaviors Predictive of Future Behavioral Intentions

We acknowledge the limitations in measures of moral reasoning and pursue an alternative technique by investigating past behaviors as they relate to present behavioral intentions. Our purpose is to evaluate the merits of patterned normative behavior for predicting present and future, morally relevant outcomes. Participants (N = 177) completed a policy capturing experimental design responding to questions that orthogonally varied the situational nature of the decision context. Results indicate that past normative behaviors are significantly and directly related to ethical behavioral intentions. Moreover, they moderate the relationships between situational factors and intended outcomes as well as moral reasoning and intended outcomes.

To What Degree Can Potable Water Foster International Economic Development and Sustainability? What Role Does Health Play?

Governments, international organizations, and practitioners have long proclaimed that investments in potable water supply and sanitation and improvements in public health lead to economic development in the developing world. Unfortunately, scholars have not been able to quantify these relationships for a plethora of reasons. This study found significant, positive relationships between investments in integrated projects of potable water supply combined with sanitation and public health and economic development. The study also moderately supported the hypothesis that the relationship between investments in such projects and economic development is stronger in the presence of better health. The article concludes with hopes that the strength of the findings could encourage greater international investment to promote rural sustainability. In particular, the findings buoy calls for supporting indigenous organizations based in rural areas with integrated methodologies that encourage consciousness-level raising in addition to addressing the pressing needs of potable water and basic sanitation.