The significance of Marx's value for strategy theory: competitive advantage and the issue of tautology within the resource-based view of the firm

Marxian thinking following the TSSI (Temporal Single System Interpretation) of Marx is applied to refute the allegation of a tautology in the resource-based view of the firm--paired with providing an explanation of how and why resources create value--, where resources are synonymous with Marx's categories of constant and variable capital. Refuting the allegation naturally leads to the holy grail of resource-based thinking, i.e. the question of what, conceptually, constitutes a firm's competitive advantage within the industry context. The article achieves its objectives by tying the resource-based view into Marx's theory value.

Board attributes that increase firm risk - evidence from the UK

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to identify the board attributes that significantly increase firm risk. The study aims to find if board size, percentage of non-executive directors, women on the board, a powerful CEO, equity ownership amongst executive board directors and institutional investor ownership, are associated with firm risk. This is the first study that examines which board attributes increase firm risk using a UK based sample. Design/methodology/approach – This empirical study collected secondary data from Bloomberg and Morningstar databases. The data sample is an unbalanced panel of 260 companies’ secondary data on FTSE 350 index in the UK, from 2005 to 2010. The data was statistically analysed using STATA. Findings – The study establishes the board attributes that were significantly related to firm risk. The results show that a board which can increase firm risk is one that is small in size,has high equity ownership amongst executive board directors and has high institutional investor ownership. Research limitations/implications – The governance culture and regulatory system in the UK is different from other countries. Since the data is a UK based sample, the results can lack generalisability. Practical implications – The results are useful for investors who invest in large firms, to have the knowledge about the board attributes that can increase firm risk. Regulators can also use the results to strengthen regulatory guidelines. Originality/value – This study fills the gap in knowledge in UK governance literature on the board attributes that can increase firm risk.

Revisiting the relationship between marketing capabilities and firm performance: The moderating role of market orientation, marketing strategy and organisational power

This paper extends original insights of resource-advantage theory (Hunt & Morgan, 1995) to a specific analysis of the moderators of the capabilities-performance relationship such as market orientation, marketing strategy and organizational power. Using established measures and a representative sample of UK firms drawn from Verhoef and Leeflang’s data (2009), our study tests new hypotheses to explain how different types of marketing capabilities contribute to firm performance. The application of resource-advantage theory advances theorising on both marketing and organisational antecedents of firm performance and the causal mechanisms by which competitive advantage is generated.

To what extent has research conducted by the GaWC Research Network aided our understanding of large EU law firm geography?

This thesis explores whether a specific group of large EU law firms exhibited multiple common behaviours regarding their EU geographies between 1998 and 2009. These potentially common behaviours included their preferences for trading in certain EU locations, their usage of law firm alliances, and the specific reasons why they opened or closed EU branch offices. If my hypothesis is confirmed, this may indicate that certain aspects of large law firm geography are predictable – a finding potentially of interest to various stakeholders globally, including legal regulators, academics and law firms. In testing my hypothesis, I have drawn on research conducted by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network to assist me. Between 1999 and 2010, the GaWC published seven research papers exploring the geographies of large US and UK law firms. Several of the GaWC’s observations arising from these studies were evidence-based; others were speculative – including a novel approach for explaining legal practice branch office change, not adopted in research conducted previously or subsequently. By distilling the GaWC’s key observations these papers into a series of “sub-hypotheses”, I been able to test whether the geographical behaviours of my novel cohort of large EU law firms reflect those suggested by the GaWC. The more the GaWC’s suggested behaviours are observed among my cohort, the more my hypothesis will be supported. In conducting this exercise, I will additionally evaluate the extent to which the GaWC’s research has aided our understanding of large EU law firm geography. Ultimately, my findings broadly support most of the GaWC’s observations, notwithstanding our cohort differences and the speculative nature of several of the GaWC’s propositions. My investigation has also allowed me to refine several of the GaWC’s observations regarding commonly-observable large law firm geographical behaviours, while also addressing a key omission from the group’s research output.