Asia (Japan, China, India and South East Asia) has a population of more than 2.5 billion people (a little less than half the world’s population). Asia is diverse and complex but it is first of all an exciting place and accounts for a significant and increasingly large share of the global economy, boasting three of the ten biggest economies – China, Japan and India. It is the growth center of the current world economy, with two of the fastest emerging economies, China and India. The rapid development is partly because the countries have received huge amounts of foreign direct investments (FDI). In 2009 China alone received US $ 92 billion in FDI and China has more expatriates than any other country in the world (Welch, Welch & Worm, 2007). Many expatriates are also based in Japan, India and South East Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia as well.
Recent advances within the dynamic capabilities view emphasize the “sensing” of
employees as an important part of the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities: By
putting in place organizational processes that mobilize and exploit information gathered
by individual employees from their operating environment, firms can update insights
about performance outcomes and improve strategic decision-making. We test empirically
the extent to which firms can ascertain performance outcomes by drawing on employee
knowledge. Our empirical setting is the Scandinavian hospitality sector with respondents
among frontline service employees. Using a time series approach, we show that
employee respondents (collectively) assess medium-term organizational performance
better than management and the financial models available to them.