The relationship between customer satisfaction and economic returns has received growing attention in the customer satisfaction literature. However, there has been limited work linking customer satisfaction to customer profitability. Specifically, most empirical studies conduct firm-wide or business-level tests, but few investigate if individual customers' satisfaction with products or services drives their purchase intentions and economic contributions to the firm. Using panel data from 36 retail branch banks managed by an international financial institution (RBANK), which consists of two customer satisfaction data-points over nine months and monthly-activity based customer profitability data, this study examines how individual customers' satisfaction impacts customer revenue, customer costs, and customer profitability. The results indicate that several dimensions of customer satisfaction are positively associated with individual customers' repurchase intentions and firm reputation. The effect of the responsiveness dimension dominates the effect of other dimensions in most tests. At RBANK, individual-level customer revenue and costs both increase as customer satisfaction improves, but no significant relation exists between customer satisfaction and customer profitability. These findings shed light on several management issues, such as market segmentation, customer retention, and the implementation of a balanced scorecard. Furthermore, this study highlights a way for managers to analyze customer value, which is beneficial for long-term customer relationship management.

A growing number of studies propose that the performance outcomes of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR hereafter) are dependent upon how firms implement CSR. If firms are able to strategically implement CSR, their CSR engagement will not only improve stockholders’ value, but will also contribute to corporate sustainability. However, research on strategic CSR is still incipient. This study aims to examine the determinants of strategic CSR. Taking firms that have published CSR reports for three consecutive years as research samples, this study finds that product market competition does not significantly affect the level of strategic CSR, while corporate reputation and customer awareness do both have significantly positive impacts on the level of strategic CSR. These results suggest that the motivation of a firm’s engagement in strategic CSR is to respond to external stakeholders’ implicit claims rather than to respond to the external competitive pressure.

External sources of knowledge are widely believed to be essential in fostering innovation. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between externally acquired knowledge and organisational innovation are inconsistent. Building on social network research, this study examines how the intraorganisational network structure affects the extent to which organisations can benefit from external knowledge in generating innovation. In particular, we focus on the effect of external knowledge diversity on exploratory innovation. Employing network and patent data collected from high technology companies in Taiwan, we find that the diversity of external knowledge has a positive impact on organisational exploratory innovation. Moreover, intraorganisational network brokerage increases the positive effect of external knowledge diversity on exploratory innovation, while intraorganisational network closure decreases the positive effect of external knowledge diversity on exploratory innovation. The results indicate that the effects of external knowledge on organisational innovation are contingents upon the configuration of intraorganisational networks.

This study builds on the transaction cost theory to examine the performance effects of interorganizational cooperation and develops an understanding of how different forms of cooperative relationships affect organizational performance within a major service sector, namely the healthcare industry. The authors study, in particular, two cooperative forms applied to hospitals: hospital-based health networks and health systems. An empirical investigation of 382 hospitals in Taiwan shows that interorganizational cooperation exerts positive effects on hospital performance. In addition, health systems have greater positive effects on hospital efficiency than health networks. Furthermore, this study finds that the positive impact of participation in health systems is especially significant for private hospitals, local community hospitals, and hospitals in highly competitive regions. The findings reveal that performance impacts of interorganizational cooperation are contingent on the cooperative arrangements in the healthcare industry.