Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems success: impact of employees’ perceptions and satisfaction on expected benefits in a manufacturing setting

The increasing turmoil in the external organizational setting or business environment has focused attention on capabilities and resources as the primary source of competitive advantage. Obviously, this statement points to the application of the resource-based view (RBV) of organizational management. Nevertheless, what constitutes RBV remains an illusion in many quarters of organizational management, as scholars have managed to put up their personal ideas, and managed to converge on phenomenon-driven theories, in addition to RBV. This paper reviews the concepts of RBV in light of knowledge management to highlight some critical pitfalls that might have eluded the research community on the subject matter of RBV. To this end, this paper’s educational value lies in the fact that it simplifies the concept of RBV to the new researcher in a fashion that is capable of appealing to his or her level. A cross-sectional qualitative research approach was employed in an effort aimed at understanding the role of RBV in creating a sustainable competitive advantage and key competencies. A total of 20 relevant articles were searched from different databases and search engines, including Scopus, EBSCO, ABI Inform, IEEE, PubMed, Science Direct, SABINET, IEEE, Bing, Science Direct, and Google Scholar. The findings indicate that RBV plays an important role and assists organizations not only create, nurture, and maintain competitive advantage, but also understand the collective resources needed to compete favorably in a globalized and highly competitive market. With expert knowledge workers at its core to provide support for knowledge creation, sharing, and utilization, the RBV principles discussed in this paper promise to guarantee a methodological step geared towards the achievement of competitive advantage. It, therefore, makes an incremental contribution to the RBV to attain modest improvement in organizational settings.

The aim of the article was to find out the optimal capital structure of the companies in relation to their maximum performance. To reach this aim, the data of the companies operating in the field of heat industry of the Slovak Republic were used. As the first method, a correlation matrix was applied. It was found out that there is statistically significant relationship between capital structure indicators and performance of the companies. Due to the lack of data in time series, the authors were not able to apply multiple regression model to assess the impact of these indicators on performance. Therefore, a method of modelling was used to analyze the impact of the change in capital structure on performance. Modelling was based on the principle of a gradual change in the capital structure in favor of debt. By the increase in debt, it was confirmed that there was a change in the values of selected indicators. In the course of analysis, it was confirmed that the value of EVA equity increased with the rising indebtedness by which the proposition I of the modified MM theory was supported. The performance expressed by EVA entity indicator is at its minimum when the capital structure is 90:10 in favor of equity. By increasing the debt, EVA entity rises. Based on these results, it can be stated that the performance of selected companies increases when the share of debt also rises, even when taking into account the rising financial risks.

There is no consensus in theoretical and empirical studies about the relationship between bank competition and stability. This research aims to investigate the relationship between bank competition and stability in the UK. The analysis has been done on a large sample of UK banks for the period 2004–2014. There is quite contrasting evidence on the bank competition and bank soundness relationship. A unified framework has been developed to assess how different factors may make it more likely that the data favor one theory over another. The results suggest that in some cases a U-shaped relationship exists between bank competition and stability. Therefore the conclusion is that in order to protect the bank from different risk exposures a moderate level of bank competition is needed.