Market knowledge of the travel industry from knowledge-based view: a case of two Taiwanese travel agencies

There has been a lack of comprehensive model elaborating the key dimensions of knowledge management in the tourism field. Based on market orientation literature, market knowledge could be illustrated from consumer and competitor dimensions. However, what knowledge topics are in these two dimensions (e.g. knowledge depth) or do any dimensions of market knowledge exist (e.g. knowledge breadth)? These questions can be clearly answered. Drawing on knowledge-based view of firms, this study explores market knowledge from four characteristics: depth, breadth, tacitness, and specificity. It seeks to contribute to the existing literature through a series of semi-structured interviews and behavioral observation with senior managers of Taiwan’s leading travel agencies. Four market knowledge categories emerge: customer knowledge, employee knowledge, competitor knowledge, and partner knowledge. It is suggested that high levels exist as to the importance of knowledge acquisition, classification, dissemination, and usage, and this represents a significant change over past findings.     

Effects of service orientation on job embeddedness in hotel industry

This research aims to develop and analyze a model that depicts work engagement (WE) as a mediator of the relationship between job embeddedness and service orientation. Specifically, the model examines external environmental factors (EEFs) as moderator of the effects of service orientation and job embeddedness in the hospitality industry. All data used for this study were gathered in Iran from hotels frontline employees with a two-weeks’ time lag. These relationships mentioned above were analyzed using AMOS 22.0. It was discovered in the results that WE was indeed a partial mediator and that EEFs indeed moderated the effects of service orientation on job embeddedness with adequate empirical support. The implications of the findings for the managers, the study limitations, and future research recommendations were also discussed.     

Technological Innovation Drivers in Rural Small Food Industries in Iran

The first step in devising the best incentives to support innovation is to investigate factors that affect the development of innovations. This article contributes to exploring such factors in small food industries in the rural areas of Tehran province, Iran. Using a census sampling method, 111 managers of 60 active firms were interviewed. The results showed that in general the level of technological innovation is low in the studied firms. The managers do not find the technological changes successful in bringing benefit to their firms. Even though correlation analysis indicated a complex association matrix between independent variables, only the firm's capacity of production was associated with technological innovation as a dependent variable. Furthermore, the regression analysis revealed that factors which influence technological innovation are the firm's age, formal research and development, fixed capital, and capacity of production. The results of this study were used to derive practical suggestions for managers and policymakers to increase technological innovation in the studied industry.     

素质为本人性提升全面发展——对高职院校加强思想品德和人文素质教育的思考

近20年来,我国高等职业教育得到了飞速发展,已进入内涵建设的关键时期.当前,我国的高职教育理念存在误区,普遍存在重技能、轻素质,重智育、轻德育的“偏科”现象,加强思想品德和人文素质教育势在必行.高职院校必须转变教育观念,把“做事”和“做人”结合起来,提高学生的综合素质,实现“能力本位”向“素质本位”转变,从而真正培养出德、智、体、美全面发展的高素质技术技能型人才.     

Do Individual Employees' Learning Goal Orientation and Civic Virtue Matter? A Micro‐Foundations Perspective on Firm Absorptive Capacity

Research summary : In this study, we build on the micro‐foundations perspective and investigate how individual characteristics contribute to the development of firm absorptive capacity. In particular, we assess how individual learning goal orientation affects firm potential and realized absorptive capacity. Furthermore, we study how individuals' civic virtue acts as a micro‐level social integration mechanism that moderates the effect from firm realized absorptive capacity to potential absorptive capacity. Using the multilevel structural equation modeling technique and data from 871 core‐knowledge employees nested in 139 high‐technology firms, we find support to our major hypotheses. Together, this study finds support for the micro‐foundations' perspective and generates novel insights on how individual‐level factors could be linked with firm‐level heterogeneity in absorptive capacity. Managerial summary : We study how employees' characteristics contribute to a firm's absorptive capacity, that is, the ability of a firm to identify, assimilate, and exploit knowledge from the environment. Because firms have increasingly tapped into external resources to foster innovation over the past two decades, absorptive capacity is crucial to firm learning and success. Using data from 871 core‐knowledge employees in 139 high‐technology firms, we find that individual employees' learning goal orientation, the tendency to seek improvements in employees' competence and to understand or master new things advances the development of a firm's potential and realized absorptive capacity. More important, individual employees' civic virtue, the discretionary involvement in company issues, serves as a social integration mechanism that reduces the gap between firm potential and realized absorptive capacity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

我国小额贷款公司可持续发展的探讨

小额贷款公司的出现和发展,避免了金融机构小额信贷业务的诸多弊端。为确保其可持续发展,仍需明确小额贷款公司的宗旨与定位,要满足农民具有个性化、区域化的融资需求,扩大和加强基层信贷员队伍建设,切实提高农民的还款率、实现公司的盈利,从而更好地为低收入农民提供金融服务,在条件成熟时允许盈利的小额贷款公司吸纳存款。     

Value Orientations, Income and Displacement Effects, and Voluntary Contributions

Identifying the value orientations of subjects participating in market or non-market decisions by having them participate in a ring game may be helpful in understanding the behaviour of these subjects. This experiment presents the results of changes in the centre and the radius of a value orientations ring in an attempt to discover if the measured value orientations exhibit income or displacement effects. Neither significant income effects nor displacement effects are identified. An external validity check with a voluntary contribution game provides evidence that value orientations from rings centred around the origin of the decision-space explain significant portions of voluntary contributions while value orientations from displaced rings do not.     

Effective communication styles for the customer-oriented service employee: Inducing dedicational behaviors in luxury restaurant patrons

The goals of this study were (1) to identify the optimal facets of communication style for customer-oriented service employees and (2) to examine the ways in which the customer-oriented service employee (COSE) induces luxury restaurant patrons’ dedicational behaviors. Customer dedicational behaviors are defined as ‘a set of active and positive customer voluntary behaviors towards a business induced by high relationship quality’. Based on the existing body of communication literature, nine types of communication styles were derived. Theoretical relationships between the nine communication styles and the COSE also were developed via literature review, and causal relationships between the COSE and three different types of consumer dedicational behavior styles were subsequently suggested. By integrating the derived theoretical hypotheses, a conceptual model was proposed and then tested utilizing data collected from 527 luxury restaurant patrons. The results of data analysis revealed that five types of communication styles (attentive, friendly, impression leaving, open, and relaxed) bear a positive impact on COSE, while one communication style (contentious) bears a negative impact. It was also found that the customer-oriented service employee plays a critical role in inducing three types of dedicational behaviors in consumers: enhancement, cooperation, and advocacy. The key theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed in the latter part of this article.     

Why do satisfied customers switch? Focus on the restaurant patron variety-seeking orientation and purchase decision involvement

Company efforts to make customers switch from competitive brands to their own or induce them to repurchase their own brands are very important in their marketing activities and in this regard studies of customer variety-seeking orientation and level of involvement in decision making play a crucial role in explaining customers’ product selection activities. The purpose of this study intends to examine interrelationships among customer satisfaction, loyalty, and switching intent in family restaurants and verify the moderating effect of customer variety-seeking orientation and purchase decision involvement. A total of 305 patrons in Korea participated. The results showed a positive relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. Participants expressing a high level of satisfaction were more likely to switch restaurants. Whether customers feel loyalty determines their switching intent. There were moderating effects related to customer variety-seeking orientation in the causal relationships between customer loyalty and switching intent. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.     

Regional variations in entrepreneurial cognitions: Start-up intentions of university students in Spain

Empirical research has recently paid considerable attention to the role of environmental factors in explaining regional variations in entrepreneurial activity. However, cognitive models have not usually included these factors in their analyses. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to identify some of the environmental cognitive elements that may explain regional differences in start-up intentions. Thus, an entrepreneurial intention model is developed, theoretically based on the planned behaviour approach, institutional economic theory and social capital theory. The empirical analysis is carried out using structural equation techniques over a sample of 549 final year university students from two Spanish regions (Catalonia and Andalusia). Results confirm that valuation of entrepreneurship in each region helps explain regional differences in entrepreneurial intentions. As expected, social valuation of the entrepreneur was higher in the more developed region (Catalonia), positively affecting perceived subjective norms and behavioural control. In Andalusia, the influence of perceived valuation of the entrepreneur in the closer environment was more important, affecting attitude towards the behaviour and subjective norms. These results explain some of the differences in the pool of potential entrepreneurs in each region. They also justify the need by public-policy decision-makers to promote more positive entrepreneurial values in relatively backward regions.