The Synergy of Business Theory and Practice

This chapter philosophically identifies a widening of the gap between theory and practice across the spectrum of business research, and highlights the imperative of scholarly works to bridge this gap in a temporally ‘synchronous’ fashion, as opposed to the more ‘cyclical’ one diachronically adopted. The chapter is positioned against an incessantly shape-shifting global business environment, in which mainstream, time-honoured strategies are becoming increasingly irrelevant and incapable of dealing with new realities. It proposes that, while scholars and practitioners appear fully aware of these changes and are decisively geared towards successfully, albeit erratically, adapting to these, they also appear to have missed a critical factor of success underlying this process: namely, the rate of change of the business world measured against the rate of interrelationship between theory and practice. The authors specifically pose that the lack of congruence and the temporal relation of theory and practice in business, which constitute a diachronic inherent weakness of the field, are quietly and elusively becoming the Achilles’ heel of contemporary scholarly business research and, by extension, of business in general. They thus suggest a composed and equalised approach to theorisation of practice and, reversely, a practicability of theory that signifies a potential new approach to scientific works.

The idea of sharing services is not really a new one; much more it represents the status quo of organisational development. A vast number of large companies worldwide have benefited from the use of shared services in the last decades. Due to its success, this approach is also gaining increasing attention by medium-sized companies, which steadily start to implement shared service centres (SSCs). Because there is not much empirical on this topic, this chapter aims to shed light on the design, the implementation and the controlling instruments of an SSC in accounting departments of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Our work highlights the means and ends of practical application of prevailing theories on the subject. The nucleus of this work is derived from qualitative data obtained from several semi-structured interviews, which were conducted with eight experts from different companies and two business consultants. We hereby emphasised on the practical application of scholarly research in different aspects such as organisational concepts, generic processes and economic feasibility studies.

This chapter aims to address the characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses of Palestinian formal and informal small businesses, thus linking the theoretical to the practical perspective of these business categories in addition to prescribing the needed policies to foster these businesses. It combines a literature review with a mixed-methods study. A sample of 300 formal and informal small businesses was surveyed; in-depth interviews with representatives from government, private sector, banks, and microfinance institutions were conducted. The results describe a mixed profile of theoretical and ad-hoc practical behaviors, both in terms of strengths and weaknesses and in relation to aspects such as employment, income generation, labor skills, technology affordability, gender, information, market and finance accessibility, expertise, and infrastructure.

The aim of this empirical research is to identify whether the investment of organisations in training and development (T&D) practices affects the retention of professional accountants in Cyprus by their current employers. The results show that the congruence between employee interests and training programmes and the level of investment in T&D are the two major elements of T&D that have a significant positive impact on employee retention. Congruence between employee interests and training programmes in comparison with the level of investment in T&D affects employee retention more. However, both elements are significantly important. This study provides guidelines to practitioners in order to develop and implement their HR and T&D strategy that will assist them to achieve the desired sustainable competitive advantage.

The role of people identity in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) performance is investigated through an interdisciplinary and multi-level approach. Identity and the relationships among human resource variables, such as the behavior of top managers and employees from both companies in M&A, are explored to explain the inconsistencies of findings about M&A performance. It is proposed that identity has direct, and moderate, effects on both sides, especially on acquired managers’ attitudes and behaviors, thereby influencing post-merger integration success. The paper presents a theoretical framework and related propositions that help to foster future research directions and advance practical implications of this scholarly research for practitioners.

Based on the case study approach, this chapter precises the structural foundation of the Gambian energy sector to understand how the sector has become a key contributor of the Gambian economy. However, the sector encounters significant socio-economic challenges, the Gambian government’s revitalization policy has appeared instrumental to encounter the challenges. Following the recent trade and service liberalization policy, the energy sector, which has been very narrow for many years, in terms of its governance structure and contribution to the economy, is now moving positively forward with continuous investment opportunities. Private sector investment and further energy market development positively impact on the growth of the sector to help reducing the challenges of insecurity and unemployment in Gambia. The theoretical implications of this revitalization policy are discussed.

Sustainability and Customer Experience have been extensively developed independently in many countries by many researchers. Today, a new link is emerging between the two, yet it lacks a theoretical foundation. This chapter aims to highlight connections and gaps on which to build the new definition and framework of Sustainable Customer Experience (SCE). On the managerial side, this research is discovering that there are many initiatives applied by sustainable enterprises with the scope of stimulating an SCE. However, practitioners could understand that there are many other touch points where to improve their sustainable actions. To develop this chapter, we adopt a three-step research design: the first one is a structured literature review; the second is an analysis of 20 case studies; the third involves a customer-focused experiment.

The purpose of this research is to examine the synergy of business theory and practice by a comparative financial analysis of six leading Greek companies in the pharmaceutical industry, during 2000–2016. Analysis of financial ratios is conducted and its objectives are to present the historical evolution of the recent financial indices, to forecast the indicators’ values and finally to forecast the bankruptcy possibility. Findings show the negative impact of the prolonged and widespread economic crisis in several ratios, such as liquidity, performance, profitability and valuation. Forecasts of ratio values seem to be closely related to their historical values. Ultimately, the sustainability study and the bankruptcy assessment showed that the examined companies were classified, in the intermediate grey zone, which is located between the healthy and the bankrupt zone.

Following the inductive constructivist method, this industry review aims to analyse the contemporary trend in Internet marketing, in order to develop insights on future research and management direction for online marketing. The insights of this review will be useful for professionals to better align their different value-proposition perspectives and propositions, based on the diverse cross-functional management areas. Academics will be able to use these insights as a basis for future research and teaching. This general review on the contemporary trend in Internet marketing is the first of its kind to simultaneously offer insights on the future direction in online marketing as a field of (1) industry-based professional practice, and an area of pedagogical management as an academic knowledge stream for (2) teaching and (3) research.

The UN Global Compact (UNGC) is a global voluntary initiative that aims at supporting sustainable development by creating a system of companies and stakeholders for knowledge and experience transfer. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of Lithuanian and Italian academic institutions, which participate in the UNGC context. In the study, the authors carried out content analysis, statistical analysis and qualitative research methods to investigate 14 social responsibility reports of academic institutions submitted in the UNGC (7 institutions from Lithuania and 7 from Italia). The findings highlight Lithuanian and Italian academic institutions which have implemented the serious CSR process, albeit with some differences. Implementation of the social responsibility protocol can bridge theory and practice, and can provide valuable insights into partnerships thanks to synergies among public and private sectors as well as the community.

This chapter explores the challenges of an integrated Omni-channel retailing strategy in the ‘bricks and clicks’ retail cosmetics industry of Cyprus, and the impact of this strategy on the attitudinal perspective of customers’ loyalty. Through a qualitative exploratory approach, and specifically a single embedded case study, it was found that when a ‘brick and click’ retailer correctly establishes the Omni-channel retailing strategy, customers’ loyalty is positively influenced. Combining theory with empirical findings, this chapter additionally develops an Omni-channel retailing framework that demonstrates the challenges and current capabilities of the Omni-channel retailing strategy, which are working in a synchronized and integrated manner, resulting in the unification of the internal operating systems/departments, integrating all retailing channels, and communicating a consistent brand image.

This contribution aims to cover a literature gap as to conceptualizing the nexus between sustainable corporate policy and globalization phenomena challenges exemplified by migration. The work is designed as a conceptualized chapter derived from a synthesis of discussed concepts and a case study of migration based on documentary analysis. Based on a review on mainstream literature on a still scattered and ambiguous body of knowledge in the research stream of corporate and/or business diplomacy, the work suggests a synthesis of the two concepts with international curative marketing for sustainable corporate policy. The contribution suggests a distinction between business and corporate diplomacy complemented by multidisciplinary concepts derived from the curative international marketing paradigm and a distinction between legitimacy and reputation-orientated corporate mindset.

Engineering and construction (E&C) infrastructure projects are unique, complex and have historical trends of cost–time overruns and lapses in coping with the increasing challenges and opportunities. E&C projects neither have one single right way to organise nor resolve the challenges. Technology, though not always matured, is now more easily available. This chapter focuses on people issues and contributes a strategic project management leadership (SPML) framework with learning/experiencing facilities for leadership capacity development and integration across project management (PM) levels for transformational change. With organisational support, over time, the SPML is expected to advance innovative leadership capacities of the individuals, infrastructure PM, and the organisation to reduce cost–time overruns and to cope with the challenges and opportunities for sustainability.