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Using the resource-based view of the firm, this article examines how different resources are used by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in response to environmental uncertainty in an emerging market context. A survey was conducted involving 212 owners, CEOs, or managing directors of SMEs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to explore the drivers of firm growth strategies. Our empirical results show that higher environmental uncertainty, in terms of market and regulatory uncertainty, drives SMEs to pursue a more exploratory instead of an exploitative growth strategy. Our results also show that SMEs pursuing more of an exploratory growth strategy focus predominantly on intangible resources such as human capital and social capital while firms pursuing more of an exploitative growth strategy focus more on financial resources. The results from our study provide valuable insights for how managers can structure, bundle, and leverage different resources for developing their strategies based on their level of perceived environmental uncertainty. The policy implications from our study are that support for SMEs should be multi-faceted depending on the combination of uncertainty faced and type of strategy chosen by SMEs. JEL CLASSIFICATION: M10; M19; M13

We study the importance of uncertainty and public finance to the welfare ranking of three environmental policy instruments: pollution taxes, pollution permits and Kyoto-like numerical rules for emissions. The setup is the basic stochastic neoclassical growth model augmented with the assumptions that pollution occurs as a by-product of output produced and environmental quality is treated as a public good. To compare alternative policies, we compute welfare-maximizing values for the second-best policy instruments. We find that, in all cases studied, pollution permits are the worst policy choice, even when their revenues finance public abatement. When the main source of uncertainty is economic, the most efficient recipe is to levy pollution taxes and use the collected tax revenues to finance public abatement. However, when environmental uncertainty is the dominant source of extrinsic uncertainty, numerical rules, being combined with tax-financed public abatement, are better than pollution taxes.

Environmental scanning has become increasingly crucial for an organisation's existence and a matter of interest for scholars and professionals. This research presents an outline of the situation in the field of multidimensional environmental scanning, focusing on Slovenian micro, small and medium sized organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the paper aims to examine if top managers perceive the multidimensional (external) environment as uncertain and if there have been gender differences in multidimensional (external) environmental uncertainty perception during the COVID-19 pandemic. We researched the field of ecological, social, technological, economic, and political–legal environments. The nonparametric Mann–Whitney U test and descriptive statistics were used to test the research hypotheses. The results show that top managers are not aware enough of multidimensional environmental uncertainty. They do not perceive the ecological and social environment as unpredictable at all. Among the studied environments, they perceive the political–legal environment as most unpredictable. There are no statistically significant gender differences in perceptions of ecological, social, technological, economic, and political–legal environmental uncertainty. We suggest SME top managers pay more attention to environmental uncertainty and use environmental scanning methods to achieve more sustainable development.

We proposed an integrated model of service quality management by drawing on social capital theory. Participants were 588 employees in the banking sector in China. The results reveal that environmental uncertainty played a mediating role in the relationship between competitive intensity
and social capital development. We also found a positive relationship between environmental uncertainty and service quality management, as mediated by social capital. We further proposed several alternative models to examine the second-order factors of social capital and service quality management,
and to check the robustness of our findings. The original proposed model had the best fit for testing the hypotheses. Theoretical and managerial implications for service quality management are discussed.

PurposeThis study follows the tenets of the resource dependence theory (RDT) to investigate the effects of four dimensions of industry-level environmental uncertainty – munificence, dynamism, complexity and innovative intensity – on a shipper's cross-buying (i.e. outsourcing across multiple service categories) in logistics outsourcing arrangements.Design/methodology/approachNegative binomial regression was used to test the hypotheses with a sample of US manufacturers. Measures were developed through information acquired from a proprietary database of 3PL companies obtained through Armstrong and Associates, Inc. and publicly available industry measures from the US Manufacturing Census and Compustat.FindingsThe findings indicate that individual dimensions of environmental uncertainty exhibit distinct influences on shippers' cross-buying in their logistics outsourcing arrangements. Specifically, the growth and initial innovative intensity of shippers' industries lead to an increased number of logistics service categories outsourced to 3PLs, while industry dynamism and exceptionally high innovative intensity drive the opposite effect.Practical implicationsThese findings provide valuable guidance to 3PLs with respect to decisions related to the acquisition of specialized transportation, storage, information systems and personnel assets to serve specific industries. The findings highlight industry conditions that are more likely to lead shippers to outsource across a wider array of logistics service categories and, as a result, potentially yield higher customer retention and profit margins.Originality/valueWhile extant 3PL literature posits that shippers' individual strategic orientations and capabilities impact their outsourcing strategy, this study contributes to the literature by providing a theoretical-based empirical examination of the industry-level influencers of such behavior.

We study the importance of uncertainty and public finance to the welfare ranking of three environmental policy instruments: pollution taxes, pollution permits and Kyoto-like numerical rules for emissions. The setup is the basic stochastic neoclassical growth model augmented with the assumptions that pollution occurs as a by-product of output produced and environmental quality is treated as a public good. To compare alternative policies, we compute welfare-maximizing values for the second-best policy instruments. We find that, in all cases studied, pollution permits are the worst policy choice, even when their revenues finance public abatement. When the main source of uncertainty is economic, the most efficient recipe is to levy pollution taxes and use the collected tax revenues to finance public abatement. However, when environmental uncertainty is the dominant source of extrinsic uncertainty, numerical rules, being combined with tax-financed public abatement, are better than pollution taxes.

AbstractExpectancy theory has been tested in a variety of research settings with somewhat mixed results. One possible explanation for the sometimes low predictive ability of the model is the presence of environmental uncertainty. It was hypothesized that the greater the perceived environmental uncertainty, the greater the uncertainty regarding expectancy estimates. Hence, the predicted relationship between the level of motivation and job performance was expected to vary with the level of perceived uncertainty. Empirical results are presented supporting the hypothesis.

The resource dependence theory and the resource-based view have been put forward in order to explain inter-firm alliance strategies. According to these approaches, the main driver for alliance formation is the internal resource condition of the firm and the need to acquire external resources. We argue that resource motivation is moderated by perceived environmental uncertainty. First, we conceptualize how perceived environmental uncertainty and resource conditions independently affect the probability of firms to develop alliances strategies. Then, we analyze how the role of resource conditions is affected by environmental uncertainty. Finally, we test our point of view using a sample of Portuguese firms.

Research aims: This study aims to examine the influence of budgetary participation and environmental uncertainty on the managerial performance of the village government. In addition, it examines the budgetary participation as an intervening variable.Design/Methodology/Approach: The research was conducted using a survey method by distributing questionnaires to village governments in Bantul Regency, Indonesia. Totally, 118 completed questionnaires were returned. Data analysis was carried out using a partial least squares (PLS) approach.Research findings: The results revealed that budgetary participation and environmental uncertainty significantly influenced managerial performance. Besides, environmental uncertainty was found as a determinant of budgetary participation implementation. This study confirmed that budgetary participation had an intervening role in the environmental uncertainty-managerial performance relationship.Theoretical contribution/ Originality: This research pioneered the testing of budgetary participation as the intervening variable in the context of a village government study.Practitioner/Policy implication: Referring to the results, the village government needs to appreciate the practice of budgetary participation to encourage managerial performance, especially to convert the negative impact of environmental uncertainty to be a chance to achieve better performance.Research limitation/Implication: This research was only undertaken in the scope of Bantul regency. Therefore, the generalization ability of this study is limited.

Uncertain environmental conditions and typology of corporate strategy are the determining factors in improving company performance. This study aims to prove the analysis results of the typology of strategic management accounting techniques on company performance and test the role of environmental uncertainty in moderating the typology of strategies on company performance. This research is quantitative research with data collection using a survey method. The sample in this study was 237 managers of manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). Sampling using the type of probability sampling. Data analysis in this study used the PLS-SEM (partial least square modeling) analysis method through the SmartPLS 3.0 program. There are three findings in this study, namely. First, the typology of strategy has a significant effect on company performance. Second, strategic management accounting techniques have a substantial impact on company performance. Third, environmental uncertainty has strengthened the influence of strategy typology on company performance. This study also analyzes the results of the 'Fit' contingency test for the prospector, defender, and analyzer strategy typology variables on company performance through crosstab analysis using the SPSS.25 program. Based on the results of the contingency fittest, it has been proven that when conditions of environmental uncertainty are high in a competitive environment, companies can use a strategy typology with a prospector strategy rather than a company with a defender or analyzer strategy. The fittest prospector strategy typology is more appropriate for companies to improve performance.