An individual‐level assessment of the relationship between spin‐off activities and research performance in universities

One of the most problematic aspects in the creation of spin‐offs by university personnel concerns the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and research activity by researcher‐entrepreneurs. The literature has expressed varying and opposing views as to the nature of the relationship, but very little has been produced to empirically legitimate one position or another. The present work proposes to address this shortcoming by exploring the relationship existing between academic spin‐off generation and the research performance of enterprise founders. The study investigates whether, and to what extent, scientific performance by academic entrepreneurs is different than that of their colleagues, and if the involvement in entrepreneurial activity has an influence on the individual's research activity. The research questions are answered by considering all spin‐offs generated by Italian universities over the period 2001–2008 and evaluating, through a bibliometric approach, the scientific performance of founders relative to that of their colleagues who carry out research in the same field. The data show better scientific performance by the researcher‐entrepreneurs than that of their colleagues, and in addition, although there are some variations across fields, the creation of a spin‐off does not seem, on average, to have negative effects on the scientific performance of the founders.     

Hotel general managers: A review of prominent research themes

This paper offers a comprehensive review of the prominent research themes concerning hotel general managers. The paper identifies and explores six main research themes; issues relating to managerial work, hotel managers’ careers, the personality characteristics of hotel managers, occupational functions, skills and competencies, women hotel managers, and emerging themes. The commonalities and differences between the research fields are outlined, both within and between the categories. By way of conclusion, the paper identifies areas of research that would benefit from further exploration, these are issues relating to skills and competencies, job mobility, and the barriers to career advancement for females in the hotel industry. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What drives the growth of academic spin-offs? Matching academics,universities, and non-research organizations

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This paper aims to contribute to the on-going debate on the factors that affect the growth of academic spin-off firms (ASOs) in the...     

Feminist Knowledges as Interventions in Physical Cultures

Abstract

This collection explores how feminist knowledges work as interventions in physical cultures and recognizes the considerable contribution of feminist theories and methodologies in understanding the power relations implicated in embodied movement. Our introductory piece weaves together questions about the gendered formation of physical cultures (across leisure, sport, the arts, tourism, well-being, and various embodied practices) with key issues raised by contributing authors, from disciplinary perspectives to theory-method approaches. Exploring questions of digital and physical cultures, more-than-human relations, post- and decolonial ways of knowing, and contemporary onto-epistemologies, this feminist collection aims to contribute to the movement of ideas within and across physical cultural studies. Bringing together diverse perspectives around our common focus we entangle physical cultures with a range of gendered problematizations and interventions that produce different ways of knowing, imagining and doing feminisms.     

Leadership Issues and Challenges in the Tourism Industry: A Hong Kong Perspective

This study examines current leadership issues and challenges in the tourism industry with a particular focus on Hong Kong, a trend-setting locality for the industry. Employing qualitative research, in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 highly respected industry leaders, all having long-established careers involving extensive local and global experience. These leaders represent a wide variety of sectors of the tourism industry. Study findings highlighted specific skills (business knowledge, communication, self-reflection), personal characteristics (determination, open-mindedness) and excellent relations with other parties (team support, respect) as key attribute requirements of industry leaders. The industry's universal “people orientation” emerged as the dominant issue that requires particular leadership skills with regard to interpersonal relations and communications. The emergence of new technologies and changes among employees were identified as the two key industry trends that require changing leadership skills. The implications of these findings are discussed and areas for future research highlighted.     

Context Dependence and Aggregation in Disaggregate Choice Analysis

There is an emerging consensus among disciplines dealing with human decision making that the context in which a decision is made is an important determinant of outcomes. This consensus has been slow in the making because much of what is known about context effects has evolved from a desire to demonstrate the untenability of certain common assumptions upon which tractable models of behavior have generally been built. This paper seeks tobring disparate disciplinary perspectives to bear on the relation between context and choice, to formulate (1) recommendations for improvements to the state-of-the-practice of Random Utility Models (RUMs) of choice behavior, and (2) a future research agenda to guide the further incorporation of context into these models of choice behavior.     

CEO performance evaluation systems: empirical findings from the Italian health service

This paper examines the way that the performance of chief executive officers of Italian healthcare organizations is evaluated. The aim is to analyse the extent of the use of New Public Management techniques in the highly regionalized and political Italian healthcare sector. A positive association was found between formal CEO performance evaluation systems and the quality of regional governance. There was no significant relationship between formal CEO performance evaluation and the duration of CEO tenure.     

Exploring the relationship between employee creativity and job-related motivators in the Hong Kong hotel industry

The purpose of this research is to determine if there is any relationship between employee creativity and job-related motivators, using a case study of hotel employees in Hong Kong. From a sample of 983 employees, canonical correlation indicated there is a relationship between creativity and job-related motivators. Furthermore, the risk-taking dimension under creativity was found to be more correlated to the intrinsic job-related motivators. Intrinsic job-related motivators which include opportunity for advancement and development, loyalty to employees, appreciation and praise of work done, feelings of being involved, sympathetic help with personal problems and interesting work, are found to encourage the hotel employees’ risk-taking behavior. A “See-Saw” model is presented to show the relationship between the two opposing sides: intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators versus creativity and risk-taking factors.     

Episodes of Exuberance in Housing Markets: In Search of the Smoking Gun

In this paper, we examine changes in the time series properties of three widely used housing market indicators (real house prices, price-to-income ratios, and price-to-rent ratios) for a large set of countries to detect episodes of explosive dynamics. Dating such episodes of exuberance in housing markets provides a timeline as well as empirical content to the narrative connecting housing exuberance to the global 2008 ?09 recession. For our empirical analysis, we employ two recursive univariate unit root tests recently developed by Phillips and Yu (International Economic Review 52(1):201–226, 2011) and Phillips et al. (2015). We also propose a novel extension of the test developed by Phillips et al. (2015) to a panel setting in order to exploit the large cross-sectional dimension of our international dataset. Statistically significant periods of exuberance are found in most countries. Moreover, we find strong evidence of the emergence of an unprecedented period of exuberance in the early 2000s that eventually collapsed around 2006 ?07, preceding the 2008 ?09 global recession. We examine whether macro and financial variables help to predict (in-sample) episodes of exuberance in housing markets. Long-term interest rates, credit growth and global economic conditions are found to be among the best predictors. We conclude that global factors (partly) explain the synchronization of exuberance episodes that we detect in the data in the 2000s.