Abstract

     The efficient use of an organisation’s valuable human resources is crucial to its success. Organizations are embracing HRIS more and more to ensure the efficient utilization of their human resources (a relatively new technology in HRM). However, enterprises, especially manufacturing firms, are lagging in reaping the benefits of modern technology due to a slew of challenges. To close the stated gaps, the current study investigated the role of human resource information system on employees’ behavioural outcomes in selected manufacturing firms in Nigeria. The diffusion of innovation theory was used to explain the inevitability of new technology in HRM. The target population comprised managers and supervisors of Nigeria’s selected Fast Moving Consumer Goods firms (FMCGs). Specifically, the purposive sampling technique was adopted to select the participants for this study. Copies of the questionnaire was used to collect data from a diverse cross-section of the managers and supervisors. The information collected was analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings revealed that manpower planning information, performance appraisal information and succession planning information are predictors of employees’ behavioural outcomes. It was concluded that management apprehension, employee privacy concerns, internal organisational opposition, and conversion costs are the most significant barriers to effective HRIS implementation. Finally, several quantifiable approaches to improve new technology in HRM were proffered.

Introduction

     Organizations nowadays are under pressure to reduce operational costs while also responding to client demands. It is more intense for the manufacturing sector across the globe. The usage of human resource information system (HRIS) positively impacts the company since it reduces expenses, improves communication, and shortens the time it takes to complete HR-related tasks [[1],[2]]. Despite the undeniable benefits of modern technology, most manufacturing firms, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, cannot profit from it fully. In 2012, the Institute of Management and Administration performed a poll, in the survey, respondents identified a lack of employees, a lack of budget, difficulty with time management, the need to collaborate with other departments, and a lack of information technology assistance as challenges in administering HRIS [[3]], because these are general barriers to any information system, a list of more specific barriers may arise throughout the implementation and management of HRIS. Some of these roadblocks are related to ambiguity in identifying the key people responsible for basic HRIS design, the difficulty in formulating HR policies under multiple national laws, the risk of losing personal data stored in HRIS, and the difficulty in measuring the behavioural dispositions of manufacturing employees [[4]].

Conclusion and recommendations

     With the undeniable advantages of HRIS, businesses should choose to assure successful implementation by understanding the difficult and disruptive difficulties. The findings of this study may be useful to HR executives in identifying obstacles that obstruct the efficient implementation of this technology in HRM activities. Top management support is the most important aspect of the overall success of an HRIS plan. Before addressing enhanced capabilities, an effective HRIS approach should be progressive and include the development of a stable core capability. Strategic enablement and future-facing activities such as planning and predictive analytics will be based on a solid foundation and plan. To achieve the organisational intended outcome, manufacturing firms should be prepared to work through various barriers and challenges during the HRIS deployment. Based on the findings, it was recommended that:

     Firstly, a suitable amount of time should be allocated for managers and employees to learn how to use the new system, and they should be involved as much as possible in the system’s implementation and modification, so as they have better understanding of the system’s interface. Secondly, managing change is not the same as training; nonetheless, it can be discussed at HRIS training meetings. After training, additional assistance should be given to help employees adjust to utilizing the new system on a regular basis. Managers should make it clear how and when employees can contact them with questions about the new changes, for as by email or during designated office hours. Finally, the management of the Nigerian manufacturing firms should also motivate their staff while implementing technologically friendly HRM practices in order to drive positive behavioural tendencies.

This study examines the relationship between strategic choices and the use of strategic management accounting (SMA) techniques in large manufacturing companies and investigates whether external factors such as environmental uncertainty and competitive forces afect the SMA system. The survey results show that SMA usage does not depend on strategy type and only marginally depends on geographic orientation. These fndings have been integrated using qualitative data collected in seven large companies through interviews. Although signifcant progress has been made over the last two decades in describing SMA practices in Europe, the contribution of this study to the accounting (SMA) literature involves both the research content and design. Having identifed gaps in previous SMA research, we design a study focused on large manufacturing frms that considers diferent hypotheses and adopts a mixed method approach.

Introduction

This study examines the relationship between strategic choices and the use of strategic management accounting (SMA) techniques in large manufacturing companies and investigates whether external factors such as environmental uncertainty and competitive forces afect the SMA system. It provides feld-based evidence by employing a mixed-method approach that combines survey and exploratory interviews of a subset of respondents in corporate fnancial and accounting departments. To respond to the challenges of global competition, companies express strategic purposes and identify their strategy. The complexity of business strategy presents challenges for managers tasked with evaluating strategic activities, which is crucial to defning competitive scope and competitive advantage. Many scholars argue that conventional (or traditional) management accounting (MA) does not provide enough information to support strategic decisions (Lord 2007). Whereas strategic processes consider plans and the possible actions of competitors, management accounting supports strategic decisions by providing managers with internal fnancial and non-fnancial information and with fnancial and non-fnancial information on the environment and on a frm’s competitors. As suggested by Johnson et al. (2014: 445), “Structure is a key ingredient of organising for success. But structures can only work if they are supported by formal and informal organizational systems”. SMA, as a type of organizational system, provides information that aids strategic decision-making processes. The focus of a strategic perspective on management accounting (SMA) is to align accounting and strategy. In contrast with traditional MA, SMA techniques embody an outward-looking and forward-looking orientation. They tend to comprise multiple periods and are proactive in all stages of strategic decisions (see Wilson 1995). The motivation for the present research is to provide a broad assessment of the current usage of SMA techniques to support strategic choices, such as strategy type and geographic orientation, through a survey. Through qualitative interviews, the study also aims to interpret corporate accountants’ perception of strategic costing and competitor accounting as primary SMA technique categories to support strategic choices in seven large companies.

This paper investigates the relationships between supply chain management (SCM) practices (i.e. strategic supplier partnership, customer relationship, information sharing, information quality, postponement, internal operations) and technological innovation (TI) in a R&D manufacturing setting in Malaysia, with guanxi being the intervening variable. A conceptual model was developed and tested using data collected from 197 Malaysian manufacturing firms for the study. Data set was examined and hypotheses were tested by employing Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) analysis. The results revealed that internal operations, postponement, strategic supplier partnership, and guanxi have positive and significant relationships with TI; while guanxi mediates the relationships between four SCM practices (i.e. strategic supplier partnership, information quality, postponement, and internal operations) with TI. Findings show that through proper implementation of SCM practices, firms are able to achieve better TI performance. These findings are useful for decision-makers when formulating SCM strategies and focusing on practices that will help them achieve greater TI. This paper also contributes to existing operations management research by empirically validating guanxi as the mediator between SCM practices and TI. From a developing nation perspective, this paper identifies the important relationships that exist between SCM, guanxi and TI. The findings will be of interest to both emerging and other developing nations.

INTRODUCTION

In today’s competitive business world, organizations strive to gain competitive advantage by improving their business processes. An integrated supply chain (SC) is a sound strategy to enhance the competitive position of a firm. Blackwell and Blackwell (1999) emphasised that supply chains compete against one another and at the same time promote environmental sustainability. Both academics and industrial practitioners have dedicated much attention to the development and improvement of supply chain management (SCM) for this reason. Ideally, the SCM philosophy embraces the functions of logistics, operations and materials management, marketing, purchasing, and information technology to generate an effective SC strategy that subsequently leads to an improvement of organizational performance (Devaraj et al., 2007), quality performance (Fynes et al., 2005), and competitive advantage (Li et al., 2006). The research conducted on SCM is also strongly related to the characteristics of the product, as Christopher and Towill (2000) conceived that to be effective, the strategies of SC must be well matched with the characteristics of the product, the surroundings and the competitive strategies of the company. In line with this, Bechtel and Jayaram (1997) pointed out that SCM issues must be considered for research concerning new product development (NPD) (i.e. product innovation). Qi et al. (2009) concluded that when strategies of SC are well matched with product characteristics, firms will have the ability to attain a better organizational performance. Despite the popularity and benefits of SCM on company performance, there exist only few articles that deal with SCM and technological innovation (TI), especially in Malaysia, the context of this study. To the best knowledge of the authors, there are no commonly accepted sub-elements of SCM, and the associations between each SCM dimension and TI have produced inconsistent results in previous research studies (Lau, 2011). Furthermore, limited empirical evidence has demonstrated how different SCM practices simultaneously affect TI (i.e. product and process), nor has past research paid attention to the mediating effect of guanxi between the different types of SCM practices with TI.

The interest in the prediction of frms’ bankruptcy is increasing in the recent recession period 2008–2012, when, in Italy, the number of distressed manufacturing frms increased sharply. The most popular model applied by bankruptcy researchers is the logit model (logistic regression model). In the present paper we extend this classical model in two diferent ways, to take into account the spatial efects that can highly afect bankruptcy probability. We propose to apply the spatial Autologistic model and the Logit Regression Tree, with the aim to fnd evidence of spatial dependence and spatial heterogeneity in bankruptcy probability, of the manufacturing frms of Prato and Florence (Italy). Our application shows that spatial contagion efects are an important issue when modelling bankruptcy probability. Moreover, the application of the regression tree analysis shows the presence of three diferent clusters, with heterogeneous behaviours.

Introduction

The interest of empirical literature on the frm’s performance in terms of survival or exit from the market has recently increased, due to the worldwide negative efect of the recent recession on frms’ crises. In Italy, where the enterprise system is characterized by family running small-sized frms, the economic crisis of 2008 signifcantly worsened the fnancial situation of the frms (Ferretti et al. 2016), and the number of distressed manufacturing frms increased sharply during this period. Financial structure, like leverage, plays a key role in the solvency of frms and during the crises it is deteriorated, together with the accumulation of the trade debt of the Italian frms. Bonaccorsi di Patti et al. (2015) and Fort et al. (2013) are few references on this topic. Early attempts to predict corporate failure in a univariate context used the ratio analysis (Beaver 1966), which was later extended by Altman (1968) to the multivariate case. More recently, the most popular model applied by bankruptcy researchers is the logit model (logistic regression model). Since in this case the outcomes are between two discrete alternatives, fail and non-fail, bankruptcy classifcation is an appropriate application for a binary choice model and logit model is commonly used in such qualitative response studies. For a review on the models applied in the bankruptcy analysis, see Gissel et al. (2007). In the time domain, an alternative way to model bankruptcy is the use of duration models, that allow to estimate the length of the time until failure (Manjon-Antolin and Arauzo-Carod 2008). The survival of frms depends on several factors, that can be distinguished between internal factors (i.e. frm-specifc) and external factors. The latter are related to the environment in which the frm operates and can be summarised in industry, spatial and business-cycle factors. Empirical analysis in diferent nations [see, e.g., Giovannetti et al. (2011) and Mariani et al. (2013) for Italy, Bernard and Jensen (2007) for the US, Box (2008) for Sweden, Bellone et al. (2006) for France, Disney et al. (2003) for the UK] has produced interesting fndings, not always with according results that may bring to stylized facts. The role of frmsspecifc factors in determining frm failure, like age and size, is central in theoretical frm-survival models, however empirical evidence is not unanimous. Although Esteve-Pérez et al. (2004), Fackler et al. (2013) and Strotmann (2007) show that small frms exhibit a shorter life expectation, Varum and Rocha (2012) assert conversely that smaller enterprises may be more fexible in adjusting to downturns, being more able to exploit market niches and activities characterized by agglomeration economies, and being less reliant on formal credits compared with larger frms (Tan and See 2004). Moreover, Agarwal and Gort (2002) found that the age efect has an inverted-U shape (Esteve-Pérez and Mañez-Castillejo 2008) and size-age infuences may also difer across industries (Giovannetti et al. 2011; Lopez-Garcia et al. 2007): large frms that operate in high-tech sectors have higher probability of survival than small frms in traditional sectors.

1- Introduction

2- Related literature

3- Data and methods

4- Results and discussions

5- Robustness testing and further analysis

6- Conclusions

References

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how managers of African firms, operating in environments characterised by less developed capital markets and weak institutional structures, make use of their internally generated cash flows.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors use a panel data methodology which regresses a particular use of cash flow (e.g. capital expenditure) on the internally generated operating cash flow of a firm and a set of control variables. The estimation of the regression model is done by ordinary least squares regressions. For robustness, the authors also estimate the models using system generalised method of moments to control for endogeneity and measurement error problems.

Findings: The authors find that managers of African firms hold most of their internally generated cash flows, and when they decide to spend, they allocate a higher proportion towards dividend payments; followed by debt adjustments; then to investments; and lastly, to equity repurchases.

Introduction

The efficient allocation of internally generated cash flows (cash flows, henceforth) is one of the vital roles of corporate managers, especially when firms are likely to face external financing constraints. Managers can choose to spend corporate cash flows on new investments, pay dividends, reduce or increase existing debt or equity stocks, or buffer cash reserves to hedge against future capital shortfalls (Chang et al., 2014). Since there are benefits and costs associated with each of the cash flow uses, allocations of cash flows have implications on the viability of firms, especially those operating in underdeveloped African capital markets. Most African economies are characterised by limited access of firms to external capital and weak institutional infrastructure (e.g. legal systems, political/corporate governance structures, etc.) (see Misati and Nyamongo, 2011; Gwatidzo and Ojah, 2014). Moreover, economic uncertainty regarding the frequent policy changes and reversals coupled with political instability in most African countries imply greater operational/ business risk, which may translate into weaker future operating profits/cash flow (Collier and Gunning, 1999) and further worsen the financing problems faced by African firms.

In the present global scenario, manufacturing organizations are mainly facing challenges from two directions. First, advanced manufacturing philosophies are emerging, which the existing methods are becoming obsolete (Jasti & Kodali, 2015). Secondly consumer thinking is changing and loyalty goes beyond a rational decision for superior perceived price-performance ratio. The customers have become more demanding for innovative products and services within a very short period of time and at less price (Tersine & Wacker, 2000; Lau, Jiang, Chan, & Ip, 2002; Ho, Lau, Lee, & Ip, 2005). Essentially to cope up with such challenges, the core idea behind strategy formulation by manufacturing firms nowadays, is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Hence, manufacturing firms operating in such rapidly changing and highly competitive market, for the past two decades have embraced the principles of lean thinking (Fullerton, Kennedy, & Widener, 2014). The word “lean” refers to lean manufacturing or lean production as it uses less of everything, compared to mass production (Wahab, Mukhtar, & Sulaiman, 2013). It only uses half of the human effort in the factory, half of the manufacturing space, half of investments in tools and half of the engineering to develop a new product in half of the time (Liker, 1998; Womack, Jones, & Ross, 1990). Also, it requires keeping far less than half the inventory on site, results in fewer defects, and produces a greater and ever growing quality of products (Womack, Jones, & Ross, 1990). Lean strategy is a management approach to manufacturing that strives to make organizations more competitive in the market by increasing efficiency and decreasing costs through elimination of non-value added steps (Garza-Reyes, Oriafige, Soriano-Meier, Forrester, & Harmanto, 2012). Lean manufacturing practices enhance manufacturing productivity by reducing setup times and work in process inventory, improving throughput times, and thus improving market performance (Tu, Vonderembse, Ragu-Nathan, & Sharkey, 2006). Various methods and tools that aim to improve performance of organizations are comprised under the lean strategy’s umbrella (Bhasin, 2012). The expression of “continuous improvement” is quite popular in lean manufacturing and the concept is associated mainly with total quality management, total productive maintenance, Just-in-time, six sigma, pull flow, low set up, controlled processes, human resource management and other approaches (McKone, Schroeder, & Cua, 1999).

The development of manufacturing enterprises depends on their level of competitiveness on world markets. That level is largely conditioned by the access to technology and the ability to introduce innovative solutions. The correct integration of technologies in the enterprise should, therefore, be a source of a sustainable competitive advantage [3, 11]. For this purpose, it is necessary both to understand the nature of technology as well as to determine the mechanisms shaping the process of technology management [5, 7, 13–15]. Technology is a component of general knowledge about the types of techniques, methods of their formation and implementation in practice. It leads to gaining knowledge (often hidden or forbidden) and skills related to solving specific technological problems. In the literature, there are many different definitions of technology relating to both its scientific significance and practical application. Cornwall defines technology as a resource of knowledge relating principally to the production of goods and services [1]. Rosenberg, in turn, talks about the understanding and implementation of previously acquired scientific knowledge about the types of techniques, methods and structures [9]. Dosi combines these two definitions and defines technology as a set of elements of practical and theoretical knowledge, skills of its application (know-how), methods, procedures and physical devices that use this knowledge [2]. The publications of Polish authors are dominated by definition of technology as knowledge about methods of manufacture of a given product. Łunarski, in his work, defines technology as „a directed process of producing the necessary products and services, implemented in a hierarchical production system with identified elements and their relationships, built for the realization of this process on the basis of the available theoretical and practical knowledge” [6]. The process approach to the subject is also presented by Santarek, who claims that technology is „a process consisting of many activities carried out in a strictly defined manner and sequence, resulting in the processing of input goods (raw materials, semi-finished products) into finished products having certain features and meeting customer needs” [10].

Implementing Lean into manufacturing within Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) within Saudi Arabia faces difficulties(Karim et al., 2011). Organizational Culture (OC) is one of the most important factors to focus on to facilitate the implementation of Lean within Saudi Arabian manufacturing (Karim and Arif‐Uz‐Zaman, 2013). Moreover, the culture of an organisation plays a vital role for managers facing the challenge to change that culture (Graham-jones and Muhareb, 2015). It is necessary to have a feasible Lean framework to assist SMEs to successfully implement Lean (Pingyu and Yu, 2010).in addition, the main challenge faced SMEs in KSA was changing OC and peoples’ mind-set (Alkhoraif, 2016; Albliwi et al., 2017; Alkhoraif and Mclaughlin, 2017). Studies have shown that many researchers are in agreement that an Organizational culture which does not support Lean is a large reason for the failure of successful Lean Implementation, (Munene, 1995; MacDuffie and Helper, 1997; Dixon, 1999; Brown, Willis and Prussia, 2000; Womack, J., & Jones, 2003; Schonberger, 2007). For the purpose of this paper SMEs refer to organisations with fewer than 250 employees where European Commission definition adopted, (European Commission ,2011) Saudi Arabian government as part of its vision from now to the year 2030, to improve and find quality solutions for SMEs. The objective of these manufacturing firms is to develop, be competitive and to increase its contributions of the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) from 20% to 60%, (Government, 2015). In addition, the intention is to increase the private sectors GDP contributions from 40% to 65% by raising the share of non-oil exports from 16% to 50% (ibid). It is important to clarify that the GDP of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was estimated at Saudi Riyal (SR) 608 billion in 2015 – 2016 ($ 162.133 billion) (Finance, 2015). The exploring and gauging will be designed for SMEs, but it will be built at a generic scale to suit other cases as well. The article should have as few size constraints as possible, and to create it there will be a need to discover as many inhibiting factors as possible. These inhibiting factors, and indeed those factors that encourage this behaviour can be graphically displayed and tabulated, allowing deeper analysis of each, to find its roots and, where necessary, remove it from the company culture (Hietschold et al.,2014) . In addition to that, many factors explain why this research was conceived:  The success of Lean implementation will not just be based on applications, tools and techniques, but also on the top managements’ involvement, leadership and Organizational culture (Jadhav , et al., 2014).  Culture is the key factor to making the changes for Lean implementation (Pakdil and Leonard, 2015).  Lack of research regarding the critical factor of Organizational culture related to Lean implementation (Pakdil and Leonard, 2015).  Lack of knowledge and difficulties in implementing Lean in the Middle Eastern and Gulf countries, but also and increasing concern of Lean implementation in SMEs, (Al-najem, 2014).

Supply chain management (SCM) has nowadays become a crucial strategy for firms to enhance their profitability and stay competitive (Li et al., 2006). Thus, SCM has been recognised as an important phenomenon that has generated extensive interest among managers and academic researchers. Thus, over the last decade, scholars have increased the degree of attention paid to SCM. This has resulted in a rich stream of research, mainly focussed on particular aspects of the field of SCM that include, among others, supplier selection (e.g. Igarashi et al., 2013; Inemek and Tuna, 2009), supplier involvement (e.g. Johnsen, 2011), supplier alliances (e.g. Kannan and Tan, 2004; Lee et al., 2009), supplier management (e.g. Reuter et al., 2010), upstream supply chain-related research (e.g. Oosterhuis et al., 2012; Finne and Holmström, 2013), manufacturer and retailers linkages (e.g. Li and Zhang, 2015), supply chain resilience (e.g. Carvalho et al., 2014), SCM practices (SCMPs) (e.g. Zimmermann and Foerstl, 2014; Li et al., 2005, 2006), sustainable and green supply chains (e.g. Choi et al., 2016; Kumar et al., 2015), etc. The wide and diverse stream of research conducted into different aspects of SCM may be explained by the interdisciplinary nature of this subject area. Therefore, SCM is considered as a multidisciplinary field that has been explored from many different perspectives (Papakiriakopoulos and Pramatari, 2010). Mainly, the concept of SCM has been considered from two alternative perspectives: purchasing and supply management. These perspectives emphasise purchasing and materials management as a basic strategic business process, rather than a narrow specialized supporting function (Narasimhan et al., 2008; Sandberg, 2007); transportation and logistics management, which focusses on integrated logistics systems (e.g. inventory management, vendor relationships, transportation, distribution, warehousing and delivery services) that lead to inventory reduction both within and across firms in the supply chain (Banomyong and Supatn, 2011; Cook et al., 2011).

This paper attempts to link industry and national contexts to the joint efect of product and international diversifcation on frm performance. Te research on how frm performance is afected by diversifying into new product and geographic markets has been an important topic of international business and strategy literature for more than 40 years (Bowen & Sleuwaegen, 2017; Castellani, Montresor, Schubert, & Vezzani, 2017). Product and international diversifcation are vital strategies in organisation expansion (Kistruck, Qureshi, & Beamish, 2013). Despite the fact that increasing number of frms have been engaging in the both diversifcation strategies, few papers study the interaction between the two diversifcation strategies and its performance implications. Most previous papers only focus on one type of diversifcation. Furthermore, those studies that do consider the joint efect of the two diversifcation strategies on frm performance (Geringer, Tallman, & Olsen, 2000; Hitt, Hoskisson, & Kim, 1997; Kistruck et al., 2013; Sambharya, 1995) identify either a complementary or a substitute efect between two diversifcation strategies. Tey generally ignore, however, the underlying factors that strengthen or weaken the joint efect. Product and international diversifcation have two opposing interactive efects, namely complementary and substitute efects, on frm performance. On the one hand, the complementary efect suggests that the sophisticated managerial capabilities developed in managing multiple product divisions can be easily leveraged in multiple geographic markets. On the other hand, the substitute efect contends that resource constraints would require the frm to choose between the two diversifcation strategies, suggesting a tradeof. Previous empirical papers provide mixed results regarding the interaction efect of two diversifcation strategies, including not signifcant, positive or negative efects (Geringer, Beamish, & DaCosta, 1989; Hitt et al., 1997; Sambharya, 1995). We contribute to this debate by examining the joint efect of two diversifcation strategies. More importantly, we further examine how industry and national contexts shape the relationship between the two diversifcation strategies and frm performance, particularly considering the technological capability of the home sector and the economic development of home country.

Newly emerging technologies (e.g. digitization, internet of things, industrial internet) and changing customer needs are altering the business environment in business-to-business sectors. Customer requirements increasingly go beyond operational needs and extend to strategic needs for ensuring customer success. Product companies in the business-tobusiness sector respond to such changes in the business environment by shifting from products to services. This shift has been conceptualized in various ways, including servitization, transition from products to services, service infusion, (industrial) product-service-systems (PSS), functional sales, integrated product service offerings, service-led growth, and/or hybrid offerings (e.g. Baines et al., 2009; Kowalkowski et al., 2015; Oliva and Kallenberg, 2003; Mont, 2002; Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011). The capability-view of sustaining competitive advantages suggests that companies can enhance competitive advantages in a specific business environment by developing operational capabilities into core competencies (Winter, 2003). Additionally, dynamic capabilities such as sensing opportunities and threats, seizing to take advantage of the sensed opportunities and fending off threats, and reconfiguring for maintaining competitiveness by modifying operational capabilities, enable companies to respond to changes in the business environment (Teece, 2007). Companies sense both the opportunities and threats associated with pay-per-use (PPU) services. They recognize the opportunity that customers only have to pay for the use of a product without buying the product itself. Companies also acknowledge the threat that customers with a low level of product usage are attracted by PPU services (Cusumano et al., 2015; Guajardo et al., 2012), making it difficult to explore fully the financial opportunities. Companies seize the sensed opportunities and fend off these threats through adapting the revenue mechanism from product revenue to payment for product usage (Kindström et al., 2013). Companies also reconfigure operational capabilities by developing new data processing capabilities to gain a deeper understanding of product usage and by altering product design capabilities to optimize service delivery costs, as well as PPU revenue throughout the product lifecycle (Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011).

Risks can exist in virtually all firms and although the firms in question may be doing everything very well, risks are still evident (Ho et al., 2015). While risks, when they occur, can cause serious problems for firms/their supply chain (SC) (Ellis et al., 2010), sometimes they can actually create opportunities for companies ( Jüttner, 2005). Determining the degree of impact risks will have, is something any firm would like to know. Numerous studies have been carried out to quantify the potential degree of risks. Some researchers have examined the effect each risk has on different outputs (Zsidisin and Ellram, 2003; Kim and Chavas, 2003; Xu et al., 2010; Mitra et al., 2013; Huong Tran et al., 2016), meanwhile others aimed at a wider picture by covering various risks in the SC network (Ho et al., 2015; Wagner and Bode, 2008). Ho et al. (2015) argued that, as multiple risks occur concurrently, they are not independent of each other. In a grave situation, numerous risks occur simultaneously and if there are no appropriate contingency plans, they will engender devastating consequences for firms/their SC. For instance, on March 11, 2011, the Tōhoku earthquake in Miyako (Iwate Prefecture, Japan), which lasted approximately six minutes, and the powerful tsunami waves that followed caused a massive loss of lives and wealth. The economic cost has been estimated at US$235 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster in history. Thus, when considering the relationship between risks and outputs, it is imperative to investigate the impact different risks will have on various dimensions of output (Wagner and Bode, 2008). This, on the one hand, determines the “real” effect risks will have on outputs, while, on the other hand, and more importantly, this approach provides an extensive picture of the relationship between these two concepts. Naldi et al. (2007) stated that risk behaviors depend on the organizational context. Firms have different characteristics, for example manufacturers and service providers (Sengupta et al., 2006), and so the impact risks will have will also vary (Subramaniam et al., 2009; Moses and Savage, 1994). Lovelock and Gummesson (2004) identified the following four commonly-used ubiquitous differences between manufacturers and service providers. These are known as IHIP: (1) inseparability of production and consumption; (2) heterogeneity; (3) inventoriability; and (4) perishability.

این مطالعه به بررسی عوامل و موانع می‌پردازد که بر شیوه حسابداری مدیریت محیطی (که از این پس به عنوان به EMA شناخته می‌شوند) تاثیر می‌گذارند. نظریه سازمانی به کار گرفته شده و داده‌ها از طریق پرسشنامه گردآوری شدند. این مطالعه بر روی تشکیلات متوسط کوچک (که از این پس به عنوان SMEs شناخته می‌شوند) و به طور خاص، شرکت‌های تولیدی متوسط کوچک مالزی تمرکز نموده است. نتایج نشان می‌دهند که اغلب شرکت‌ها از تخصیص بودجه‌ای برای فعالیت‌های محیطی و اِعمال EMA فیزیکی برخوردارند. این مطالعه استدلال می‌کند که اجبار یک عامل غالب برای اِعمال EMA است و در نتیجه، موانع توسعه EMA باید توسط دولت مالزی و دیگر مقامات مرتفع گردند.