Strategic Orientation, Management Characteristics, and Performance: A Study of Spanish SMEs

This paper analyzes from a resource-based view the management characteristics of Spanish small and medium enterprises (SMEs) according to their strategic orientation and the consequences in terms of firm performance and business efficiency. The typology of strategies formulated by Miles and Snow has important implications for management, because depending on the strategic orientation adopted—defender, prospector, or analyzer—the firm can emphasize to a great extent some aspects of management, such as technological position, innovation, organizational design, and human resource management. Moreover, these aspects of management can largely determine firm performance and business efficiency. A sample of 1,351 Spanish SMEs provided the data for an empirical test of these issues. The results confirm the expected relationships, revealing, on the one hand, significant differences between prospector and defender SMEs regarding the key factors on which they base their management characteristics and, on the other hand, the different influences that each strategic orientation has on firm performance.     

Interrelationship among institutional infrastructure,technological innovation and growth. An empirical evidence

This paper uses a multi-equation model to achieve an overall study of two key factors which explain growth, technology and institutions. The paper focuses on the process of the accumulation of these factors and the interrelationship arising among them. A theoretical model is given, together with empirical evidence for the joint impact of these factors on economic growth in a wide-ranging sample of countries between 1985 and 1997. This paper also contributes certain novel aspects in the variables employed. Thus, an indicator of human capital and an index reflecting institutional infrastructure have been used. The human capital indicator considers health, formal education, informal education and accumulated experience. It embraces a wider range of factors than the variables conventionally used in empirical studies. As to the institutional infrastructure index, it has been constructed on the basis of six institutional sub-indices, comprising voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption. Thus, the index constructed captures a greater wealth of the items commonly covered by the concept of institutions.     

Credit Markets With Differences in Abilities: Education, Distribution, and Growth

This article presents an endogenous growth model in which credit markets affect time allocation of individuals with different educational abilities. Credit markets allow the more able to specialize in studying and the less able to specialize in working. This specialization can increase growth and welfare. This article also shows that in economies with high (low) levels of education abilities, the opening of credit markets induces a more disperse (equal) income distribution. The role of intergenerational transfers in overcoming the absence of credit markets is also discussed, as well as other forms of credit markets imperfections.     

Does private income support sustainable agroforestry in Spanish dehesa?

Oak woodland dehesa suffers from the aging of trees without a natural regeneration of young oaks coming in to replace them. Recent European Union (EU) policy reforms for rural development focus on supporting multifunctional agriculture that complies with the EU's environmental goals, such as mitigating biodiversity losses and climate change. Such reforms could result in government support for natural woodland regeneration practices in European agroforestry systems, which are recognized for providing valuable environmental services. Managing dehesa cork oak and holm oak woodlands to stimulate the growth of new oaks could be an efficient option for maintaining, and even increasing, the dehesa's current carbon stock and biodiversity. Here we develop and apply a new agroforestry accounting system based on the concept of Hicksian income to a dehesa in the Monfragüe area of western Spain, using primary microeconomic data from a large case study. Private total income and profitability rates are measured for individual goods and services, and for the entire dehesa in a steady state. Our application extends the EU system of accounts for agriculture and forestry by including private amenity consumption by landowners and the gain or loss in human-made and natural capital. We compare an actual typical unsustainable woodland management scenario with an ideal sustainable management scenario in which there is a continuous regeneration and recruitment of holm and cork oaks as predicted by silvicultural models. The results show that, given current land use policy incentives, allowing a slow depletion of oak trees is more profitable for a dehesa private landowner than maintaining the dehesa's trees. As a result many dehesa environmental services are gradually lost. This market failure requires new land use policies that induce private land owners to invest in the renewal of aging oak woodlands. To evaluate the impacts of this new policy, we show how private landowner income is affected when changes are made to achieve sustainable management of dehesa oaks. More research is needed in order to understand how the dehesa's landowner market income and private amenities trade-off can affect the owner's land use preferences and decisions.     

An Operative Framework for Total Hicksian Income Measurement: Application to a Multiple-Use Forest

A methodology for estimating total hicksian income in multiple-use forests is presented. The approach consistently incorporates commercial as well as non-commercial economic values and enables the measurement of national accounting aggregates taking into account variation in man-made and natural capital. Innovative solutions are developed (i) for the estimation of non-market values, such as recreation, where an attempt to determine exchange values has been made simulating markets, (ii) for timber, where standing timber valuation methods have been extended to cover uneven stands, and (iii) for carbon fixation valuation, where only permanently fixed carbon after 1990 has been taken into account. The methodology is applied to a multiple-use pinewood in the Guadarrama mountains, near Madrid (Spain). Timber, cattle grazing, hunting, recreation, carbon fixation and conservation values are measured and integrated in the accounting system, using primary microeconomic data from the case study. Results indicate the importance of non-commercial income, which accounts for 51% of the total income, and the social relevance of the analysed forest, implying that only 31% of the total income generated is appropriated by the forest owner.     

A methodological proposal for a strategic design investigation

This article presents the decisions that are presented in the transition from theoretical to methodological, as a means to establish coherence and validity in an investigation that addresses strategic design’s contribution to organizational transformations. A coherent methodological proposal is presented between the ontological posture (intersubjectivity), epistemological posture (pragmatism), and research method (mixed) required to address the object of research in strategic design, and to consistently select the various techniques and procedures required. This proposal is pertinent to respond to the research question of what the role fo strategic design might be, as related to organizational transformation, to the extent that it provides competencies (human capital), processes (structural capital), and a relationship model (relational capital).

     

A comparison of qualitatively and quantitatively driven analytic procedures of psychotherapeutic group sessions with deviant adolescents

The present paper deals with the therapy-related change in a group of deviant adolescents attending a therapeutic facility. The main issue of two studies reported here is to identify pattern of changes through different methods. The paper describes how the mixing of two different types of analysis may yield a more complex and complete view of the data. The analyses were performed at the same time: the first part (study 1), which was of a clinical–quantitative nature, involved picking out changerelated features through the analysis of the frequency of lemmas in the content of the sessions; the second part (study 2) had a qualitative orientation and traced the pattern of narrative themes in the sessions during the course of time. In both studies, the same data were analyzed at the same times, though each study adopted a different approach. While both approaches focused on change, the results brought out different aspects: the study that adopted the quantitative/clinical approach highlighted changerelated problems and proposed an explanation in terms of the “deviant peer effect”; by contrast, the qualitative study underlined the possibilities offered by change and viewed therapeutic change in terms of the shift in narrative themes from the detachment and lack of responsibility initially shown by the youths towards progressive maturation that may have been due to the efficacy of the therapy. The discussion of results brings us to consider the fuzzy set approach for future research into the field of criminology and group therapy. In conclusion, the paper shows that looking at the same data through two different methodological “lenses” yields different, and only apparently contradictory, conclusions.     

Formalized HR practices and firm performance: an empirical comparison of family and non-family firms

The influence of the family on human resource (HR) management structures creates important idiosyncrasies with potential implications in terms of firm performance. Based on the agency and socioemotional wealth perspectives, this paper examines the formalization and effectiveness of three basic HR practices – selection, training and compensation – in different contexts of family and non-family firms. Using a sample of 500 Spanish companies, the results show that a higher degree of HR formalization has a positive influence on firm performance, confirming the negative moderating influence of family involvement on the relationship between the formalization of training practices and the firm performance. In addition, the findings indicate that the mediating role of selection practices in the relationship between training and firm performance is smaller in family than in non-family firms.     

The Double Movement Ten Years After the Fall of Lehman Brothers

Ten years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the sharpest moments of panic within the global—and particularly the United States banking system—a somewhat strange dynamic has appeared. While the principal agents behind the crisis have collapsed their own institutions, the markets that they dominated, and even provoked what has been called the third crisis of economic theory, their political power has not waned. This theme has been well addressed by some academics such as Philip Mirowski (2013 Mirowski Phillip. 2013. Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Crisis. London: Verso Books. [Google Scholar]), while it has flummoxed others. In this article, we will argue that Karl Polanyi’s theory of the “double movement” offers a coherent framework that is able to account for the history of the last ten years. Polanyi argues that different groups and members of society seek protection from the market, and that this search for protection has been the driving force between historical change. Polanyi does not ignore class; rather, he argues that different social classes can protect themselves in more or less effective ways. We argue that during the last ten years, the interests of globalized financial capital have been able to protect themselves with utmost effectiveness, while all other classes have been trammeled, often not even recognizing how or why actions are taken against the general interest.