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Reiner, Gerald
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Reiner, Gerald
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- PublicationMétadonnées seulementIf you knew there was a 79% bankruptcy risk by expanding your operations capacity, would you still try?(2017-7-2)
; ; The research aims at evaluating the risk taken by a growing company when it expands its operations capacity. Previous research has shown that effective decision-making process is key and its facilitation is a major purpose in operations management. A multi-method model is developed to simulate a growth phase and respective decision-making processes. Its calibration is achieved through empirical data of a Swiss family-owned wood construction company; then a compare runs analysis is conducted. Results show that more than 80% of runs, interestingly, lead the company to bankruptcy, which helps managers and counsellors to evaluate growth risks adequately. - PublicationMétadonnées seulementSustainable business growth: exploring operations decision-making(2017-2-8)
; ; Purpose: The objective of this paper is to explore how operations decision-making may keep the growing firms within the boundaries of corporate and societal sustainability. Design/methodology/approach: We classify operations decisions during growth periods according to the three dimensions of the triple bottom line (economic, social and environmental). By means of a longitudinal case study of a family-owned wood construction firm that is in a process of intense growth, we identify, visually represent and analyse the complex sequences of selected managerial operations decisions. Findings: Our empirical data suggests that operations decisions made by managers during growth periods follow specific patterns. From our analysis, we derive various research propositions that investigate how a well-understood and therefore efficient and effective decision-making process can facilitate sustainable business growth. Research limitations/implications: Our findings offer opportunities for future studies to zoom in on specific parts of the decision-making process during growth periods. Moreover, given the exploratory nature of our study, future research should test hypotheses derived from our research propositions. Practical implications: This study investigates operations decision-making during growth, which is crucial for guiding companies through this complex transition phase. Originality/value: This conceptual and empirical analysis explores new theory and contributes to the vastly under-researched subject of sustainable business growth. - PublicationAccès libreSustainable Business Growth : How May Decision-Making Guide The Transition Journey ?During periods of intense growth, bankruptcy is an imminent threat to the success of companies. Continuous adaptation of internal capacity, processes and operations is a challenging task that not all companies achieve successfully. Many small or medium-sized enterprises (SME) disappear as fast as they grow and managers often feel frustrated about practical recommendations towards growth; this is mainly due to the significant number of decisions that managers have to make on a regular basis when the company grows. Finding a way to reduce the risk of bankruptcy during intense periods of growth is therefore a great need. Sustainable business growth is a company’s appropriate pace of growth that increases its economic, social and environmental capital—or at least one of these—without decreasing any capital stock. The objective of this research is to provide solutions to growing firms’ managers in order to guide the transition journey of their SMEs towards sustainable business growth. This research specifically investigates what type of decisions managers have to make during growth, what impact these decisions have on the growth trajectory of the firm and how the risk of bankruptcy can be measured during growth. The thesis is segmented in three research studies– each of them building upon the previous one. First, the author proposes a classification framework of the main types of decisions to be considered by growing firms; by conducting a case study with several embedded units of analysis, the author zooms into specific decisions and identifies three main patterns (a series of steps that have to be followed by the decision-maker) of decisions and represents them visually. Second, the author conducts a longitudinal case study in a Swiss family-owned SME wood construction company that has experienced a process of intense growth between 2010 and 2015; in total 492 decisions made during this period have been collected and analysed so as to investigate their impact on the growth trajectory of the company. Results show that growing SMEs can take advantage of their growth to improve their performance by being more efficient, by fully considering social aspects and by integrating stakeholders more comprehensively. Third, the author builds a multi-method simulation model with the objective to represent a company’s operations evolution during growth as well as the decision-making process inherent to business growth. The model combines two major techniques, namely system dynamics (SD) and agent-based (AB) modelling. Calibration allows fitting the model behaviour to reality based on the empirical longitudinal case study data, thus enhancing its validity. Simulation output indicates that only 21,10% of the runs launched allow the company to maintain solvency; growing firms go bankrupt in 79,90% of the cases. Sensitivity analyses help with identifying that the efficiency of the decision-making process highly influences the risk of bankruptcy; several key performance indicators (KPIs) also influence the growth trajectory such as the credit limit allowed by the bank, the rapidity at which clients pay their invoices and the proportion between temporary and permanent employees applied by the firm. An ideal combination of parameters’ values increases the probability to sustainable growth to 69% - compared to only 21% in the initial situation. Even if it seems as though luck is an important factor to experiencing sustainable growth, specific and tangible advice is provided to SME managers as well as to their financial partners, which can positively affect the growth trajectories of their firms. This thesis confirms that decisions made during growth periods have a strong impact on positively influencing the trajectory of growing SMEs and that this impact can be quantified. It allows measuring the probability of sustainable business growth and gives specific answers on how to increase it.
- PublicationMétadonnées seulementHow to model the impact of operations management decisions on business sustainability during a growth(2016-6-19)
; ; The research aims at exploring how decisions made by managers of growing firms influence the growth trajectory of their firms and guide them towards sustainable business growth. Based on empirical data of a Swiss family-owned wood construction company, a multi-method model is developed to simulate a growth phase and decision-making process. The expected results suggest that the speed at which decisions are made as well as the diversity of decisions considered influence positively the sustainable growth trajectory. The use of simulation-modelling sheds new light on the study of the dynamic concept of growth in operations management and guide business practice. - PublicationAccès libreThree essays on organizational learning in regard to the development of corporate social responsibility(2016)
; Au cours de ces quelques décennies, les entreprises ont été amenées à respecter et à répondre aux préoccupations environnementales et sociétales de nombreuses parties prenantes. Dans ce contexte, la responsabilité sociétale des entreprises (RSE) est devenue un concept de management incontournable que les entreprises ont dû développer et intégrer dans leurs opérations et stratégies. Toutefois, le développement et la mise en œuvre de la RSE dans les opérations des entreprises restent difficiles, car celle-ci demande de repenser leur différents processus et stratégies, et par conséquent de revoir leur cœur de métier. Pour parvenir à ce niveau de changement, un apprentissage substantiel en termes de RSE est inévitable.
Le rôle crucial de l’apprentissage organisationnel dans le développement et la mise en œuvre des actions et politiques liées à la RSE a fait l’objet d’un grand nombre de recherches académiques. Toutefois, ces études étaient souvent fragmentaires et incomplètes. Par conséquent, un important travail de recherche devrait être encore mené afin de donner une vision complète des liens entre l’apprentissage organisationnel et le développement de la RSE.
Cette thèse de doctorat a pour objectif de répondre à ce défi et d’offrir une vision approfondie des processus d’apprentissage organisationnel qui contribuent au développement de la RSE et soutiennent sa mise en œuvre. De plus, elle offre un aperçu de la manière de développer des partenariats intersectoriels (cross-sector social partnership) efficaces permettant aux entreprises de mieux apprendre à développer la RSE. Plus particulièrement, elle cherche à répondre à trois questions de recherche: (1) Comment l’apprentissage organisationnel et ses processus contribuent-ils à favoriser le développement de la RSE? (2) Comment l’entreprise et ses membres expérimentent et s’engagent dans les processus liés à l’apprentissage qui soutiennent la mise en œuvre de la RSE? Comment les entreprises peuvent-elles maximiser leur potentiel d’aptitude au partenariat pour mener avec succès le développement de la RSE en leur sein?
Cette thèse comprend trois essais et chacun est développé de manière à répondre à une des questions de recherche mentionnées ci-dessus. Par ailleurs, chaque essai a été conçu comme un rapport distinct pouvant se lire indépendamment des deux autres.
Dans le premier essai, je revois de manière critique la littérature existante pour conceptualiser la façon dont la recherche à ce jour a abordé le développement de la RSE en matière d’apprentissage organisationnel. Je fournis ainsi un cadre conceptuel pour caractériser le rôle de l’apprentissage organisationnel dans le développement de la RSE, qui est conçu autour de quatre processus d’apprentissage organisationnel et de trois relations d’apprentissage RSE. En ce qui concerne les relations, nous observons que l’apprentissage peut se produire exclusivement au sein de l’entreprise (c.-à-d. sans les autres) mais aussi par des autres, et avec les autres. Les quatre processus d’apprentissage organisationnel comprennent l’acquisition de la connaissance, sa distribution, son interprétation et son maintien dans la mémoire de l’entreprise. La revue de littérature aide à structurer la littérature à l’intersection de l’apprentissage organisationnel et de la RSE. Des pistes de recherches futures destinées à approfondir notre compréhension des enjeux et processus en lien avec l’apprentissage au sein de la RSE sont proposées.
Le corpus des modèles existants du point de vue des praticiens sur le développement de la RSE omet en partie d’aborder la manière dont les entreprises apprennent à développer la RSE ainsi que de fournir une compréhension du rôle central des processus d’apprentissage dans la construction des initiatives et politiques liées à la RSE. Dans ce second essai, en examinant le développement de la RSE dans quatre multinationales actives dans l’industrie pharmaceutique et chimique, un modèle plus complet est présenté. Extrapolant les données récoltées durant des entretiens approfondis, l’objectif de ce modèle est de rendre compte de la manière dont les entreprises apprennent à développer la RSE et à l’incorporer au sein de leurs stratégies et de leurs activités. Tout d’abord, un ensemble relié de quatre processus de mise en œuvre de la RSE est identifié grâce aux entretiens: « RSE intellection », « RSE edification », « RSE effectuation » et « RSE exploration ». Ce résultat fournit ensuite la base sur lequel un modèle bidimensionnel conceptualisant un cycle d’apprentissage continu pour la mise en œuvre de la RSE est construit. Le modèle bidimensionnel comprend les quatre dimensions susmentionnées qui s’engrènent avec quatre processus entremêlés d’apprentissage: expérimenter activement la RSE (actively experiencing CSR), observer de façon réfléchie (reflectively observing CSR), obtenir de nouvelles connaissances en matière de RSE (gaining new CSR knowledge), et organiser la connaissance existante en matière de RSE (organizing extant CSR knowledge) – complété par une cinquième dimension d’apprentissage transversale, le stockage de la connaissance en matière de RSE (storing CSR knowledge). En résumé, cette étude établit empiriquement la façon dont la mise en œuvre de la RSE et les processus d’apprentissage organisationnel s’imbriquent et conceptualise cette interconnexion à travers un modèle.
Selon beaucoup de spécialistes, les entreprises et leurs membres peuvent développer de manière plus efficace leur RSE en s’engageant activement dans des partenariats intersectoriels avec des parties prenantes. Néanmoins, des études empiriques ont trouvé que les partenariats intersectoriels, en particulier dans le contexte de partenariats entre une organisation à but lucratif et une autre à but non lucratif atteignent seulement des résultats minimaux. Les chercheurs ont lutté pour comprendre les défis entravant leur développement efficace avec un succès mitigé. Par conséquent, dans mon dernier essai, j’introduis un concept tiré des sciences politiques, connu comme étant la notion d’altérité existentielle (existential otherness). Je propose qu’un sentiment d’altérité existentielle peut envahir les partenariats intersectoriels. En d’autres termes, les partenariats sont minés par un sentiment de malaise au point qu’on ne trouve rien de familier dans l’autre personne, que dans son essence, l’autre est un étranger et devrait le rester car d’un point de vue fondamental, les parties ne possèdent rien de significatif en commun. Un tel sentiment désagréable pourrait expliquer – outre les défis identifiés précédemment – pourquoi la collaboration vacille et la difficulté de construire des partenariats intersectoriels réussis. Ensuite, nous avançons et argumentons que pour que les partenaires surmontent ce sentiment d’altérité, une importance particulière devrait être donnée aux interactions informelles (casual interactions, par ex. jouer au poker, au tennis ou encore faire des grillades ensemble), le but étant de construire des liens sociaux solides sans parler des affaires. Les interactions informelles peuvent être cruciales pour vaincre le sens d’altérité, favorisant ainsi les partenariats intersectoriels et renforçant ainsi à leur tour l’apprentissage et le développement de la RSE pour l’entreprise., Over the last few decades, companies have been increasingly expected to respect and respond to a variety of stakeholder concerns regarding environmental and social issues. In this context, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an indispensable management concept that companies have had to develop and integrate into their operations and strategies. Nevertheless, the development and implementation of CSR within the operations of firms remains difficult as CSR requires firms to rethink their varied processes, strategies, and indeed even their core business. To achieve this level of change, substantial CSR-related learning is inescapable.
The crucial role of organizational learning (OL) in the development and implementation of CSR-related actions and policies has been the subject of numerous academic studies, notwithstanding those studies were often fragmentary and incomplete. Thus, much work still needs to be done to form a more complete picture of how OL and CSR development are related.
This dissertation aims to respond to this challenge and offers insight into the processes of organization learning that contribute to CSR development and support CSR implementation. In addition, it offers insight into how to develop effective cross-sector social partnerships that can better enable companies learn how to develop CSR. Specifically, it seeks to answer three research questions: (1) How does organizational learning and its processes contribute to fostering CSR development? (2) How do companies and their members experience and engage in learning-related processes that support CSR implementation? (3) How can organizations maximize their partnership-fit potential to successfully unfold CSR development within their organizations?
This dissertation contains three essays with each essay developed to answer one of the above mentioned research questions. Furthermore, each essay has been designed as a standalone composition that can be read independently of the other two. In the first essay, I critically review existing literature to conceptualize how research to date has approached CSR development in terms of OL. I provide a framework for characterizing the role of OL in CSR development that is configured around four OL processes and three CSR learning relationships. In regard to relationships, we observe that learning can occur exclusively within the organization (i.e., without others), but also from others, and with others. The four OL processes include the acquisition of knowledge, its distribution, its interpretation and its retention within the memory of the firm. The literature review helps to structure the literature at the intersection of organizational learning and CSR. Avenues for future research aimed at furthering our understanding of key learning-related issues and processes at play in CSR development are provided.
The existing body of practitioner-oriented models on CSR development still partly fails to address the way companies actually learn to develop CSR and provide understanding of the central role of learning processes in the building of CSR-related policies and initiatives. In the second essay, then, by investigating CSR development in four multinational companies active in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, a more comprehensive model is proposed.
Generalizing from data garnered during lengthy interviews, the model’s purpose is to give an account of the way organizations are learning to develop CSR and assimilate it into their strategies and operations. First, a connected set of four processes of CSR implementation are identified from the subject interviews: CSR intellection, CSR edification, CSR effectuation, and CSR exploration. This finding then provides the basis on which a bi-dimensional model conceptualizing a continuous learning cycle for CSR implementation is built. The bi- dimensional model encompasses the above four dimensions meshed with four interlocked learning-related processes--actively experiencing CSR, reflectively observing CSR, gaining new CSR knowledge, and organizing extant CSR knowledge--complemented with a fifth transversal learning dimension, storing CSR knowledge. In sum, this study empirically establishes how CSR implementation with OL processes interlock, and conceptualizes this interconnection through a model.
According to many scholars, organizations and their members can more effectively develop CSR when actively engaged in cross-sector partnerships with stakeholders. However, empirical investigations have found that some cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs), particularly for-profit/non-profit partnerships, typically attain only minimum outcomes. Scholars have struggled to understand the challenges impeding their effective development with limited success. Therefore, in my final essay I introduce from political science a concept known as “existential otherness”. I propose that a sense of existential otherness may pervade CSSPs. In other words, the partnership is subverted by an uncomfortable sense that one can find nothing familiar in the other person, that at their essence the other is a stranger and must remain so, because at some fundamental level one holds nothing of significance in common with them. Such a disagreeable feeling would explain--in addition to already identified challenges—why collaboration falters and successful CSSPs are so difficult to build. We then argue that for partners to overcome the sense of otherness, emphasis should be given to casual interactions (e.g., playing poker, playing tennis, or barbecuing together) with the aim being to build strong social ties without talking about business. Casual interactions, therefore, may be pivotal to overcoming the sense of otherness, thus promoting CSSPs, and in turn enhancing CSR learning and development for organizations. - PublicationMétadonnées seulementWhat is the impact of operations management on sustainable business growth?(2015-6-30)
; ; The research aims at exploring how decisions made by managers of growing firms influence the growth trajectory of their firms and guide them towards sustainable business growth. For this end, during five consecutive years, we analyze all decisions made by a high-growth firm by means of a longitudinal case study of a Swiss family-owned wood construction company. We observe that firms can take advantage of their growth periods to improve their efficiency and responsibility towards stakeholders. The empirical analysis and theory development pave novel ways for research and business practice towards sustainable business growth. - PublicationAccès libreService level improvement through lead time reduction and inventory optimization(2015)
Logistic service level represents increasingly today, in very competitive markets and in the presence of very demanding customers, a crucial element for differentiation and a source of competitive advantage in many different businesses. There are different facets of logistics service level, defined as a bundle of different attributes. This thesis has focused on two of them: speed and inventory availability.
Given the nature of the research objectives developed, an exploratory case study research methodology has been chosen to gain an in-depth understanding of a phenomenon: drivers and obstacles of service level improvement. First, lead time reduction has been investigated through make-to-order cases. The focus has been, first, on manufacturing lead time, analysed through a single in-depth case study, and then has moved to order-to-delivery lead time, studied through a multiple case study research. Second, inventory availability has been investigated through multiple make-to-stock cases.
The first output, a theoretical contribution, of this thesis consists of a conceptual foundation for theory development concerning logistics service level improvement. Three frameworks, focused respectively on manufacturing and order-to-delivery lead time reduction and inventory availability improvement, have been developed combining the knowledge emerged from the literature, the case studies and the observations and the experience of the researcher.
The second finding, a practical contribution, is that, although lead time reduction is increasingly today a key driver for competitive advantage or even for survival in many different businesses, there is still substantial room for improvement and, more dangerously, managers are often unaware of this opportunity. In addition, this research highlights that the main obstacles of lead time reduction seem to be more related to other management areas, such as people behaviour, organisation and accounting, than to technical operations management issues. As far as inventory availability is concerned, the main practical finding is that managers should not only focus on inventory management, but also to other related processes such as warehouse management and forecasting and that there are different ways, not a single recipe, to reach logistic service level excellence. - PublicationAccès libreInvesting in disaster management capabilities versus pre-positioning inventory: A new approach to disaster preparedness(2014-11-11)
; ; Disaster preparedness has been recognized as a central element in reducing the impact of disasters worldwide. The usual methods of preparedness, such as pre-positioning relief inventory in countries prone to disasters, are problematic because they require high investment in various locations, due to the uncertainty about the timing and location of the next disaster. Investing in disaster management capabilities, such as training staff, pre-negotiating customs agreements with countries prone to disasters, or harmonizing import procedures with local customs clearance procedures, has been recognized as a way to overcome this constraint. By means of system dynamics modeling, we model the delivery process of ready-to-use therapeutic food items during the immediate response phase of a disaster, and we analyze the performance of different preparedness scenarios. We find that pre-positioning inventory produces positive results for the beneficiaries, but at extremely high costs. Investing in disaster management capabilities is an interesting alternative, as it allows lead time reductions of up to 67% (18 days) compared to a scenario without preparedness, at significantly lower costs than pre-positioning inventory. We find that the best performance can be achieved when combining both preparedness strategies, allocating part of the available funding to disaster management capabilities and part to pre-positioning inventory. We analyze 2828 such combined scenarios to identify the best mix of preparedness strategies for different levels of available funding. On the basis of our findings, we provide recommendations for relief organizations on how to allocate their preparedness budget. - PublicationMétadonnées seulementSustainable business growth in SMEs: How may decision-making guide the transition journey?(2014-6-23)
; ; ; The research aims at (1) exploring new theory at the interface of business growth and sustainable development while (2) providing managerial implications for growing firms. For this end, we propose typologies of decisions to be considered by growing firms; by means of a longitudinal case study of a Swiss family-owned SME wood construction company (that is in a process of intense growth), we identify, visually represent and analyze the sequences of selected managerial decisions. The empirical analysis and theory development pave novel ways for research and companies towards sustainable business growth.