This study integrates research from strategy, economics, and applied psychology to examine how organizations may leverage their human resources to enhance firm performance and competitive advantage. Staffing and training are key human resource management practices used to achieve firm performance through acquiring and developing human capital resources. However, little research has examined whe...

The strategy literature has long debated the relative contribution of firm versus industry related factors as the drivers of firm profitability. The industrial organization perspective on this issue suggests that the structure of an industry is a key determinant of profitability (e.g., Porter, 1979). On the other hand, the resource-based view of the firm posits that strategic advantages conferr...

The theoretical literature concerning supply chain intermediation is surveyed to develop a framework of five intermediary states. Data collected on 134 electronic intermediaries are employed to explore correlations between intermediation states, growth strategies and firm profitability, in a sample representing both service based and commodity based intermediaries. The study finds a positive re...

This article investigates the relationship between firm specific factors and macroeconomics on profitability in Taiwanese property-liability insurance industry using the panel data over the1999 through 2009 time period. Using operating ratio and return on assets (ROA) for the two kinds of profitability indicators to measure insurers’ profitability. The results show that underwriting risk, reins...

A recent study shows that industry-specific analysis has no incremental advantage over economy-wide analysis in forecasting firm profitability. This result seems puzzling because some earlier studies have documented the importance of industry effects in explaining firm profitability. We reconcile the apparent inconsistency by showing that industry effects on profitability forecasting exist at t...

Despite prolific research on IT business value, this stream of research still encounters considerable limitations such as inconsistent findings of the direct link between IT and firm profitability and the demonstration of the indirect relationship between IT and specific aspects of firm value without explicitly considering network environments. To overcome the limitations caused by utilizing th...

This paper investigates the relationship between aspects of quality and long run profitability and growth of a firm. The paper first determines whether a stable relationship among price, aspects of quality, and the sales rate exists, by examining the equilibrium properties of a dynamic model. Then, we use the derived equilibrium expressions to develop insights into the strategic nature of “qual...

In this paper we study the significance of dividend initiations in the context of firm performance, risk, and shareholder returns. Our evidence contradicts the principal implication of the signaling hypothesis that increase in dividend rate is positively related to future firm prosperity. We observe that firms report improving profitability, cash flow and other performance measures leading up t...

This study explores the under-researched relationship between corporate governance and firm performance in tourism companies. We employ instrumental variable modelling using 2SLS for publicly listed firms in five countries in the Middle East. Board independence is found to be positively related to firm performance and stock performance, suggesting that having independent directors among board m...