Drucker’s insights on market orientation and innovation: implications for emerging areas in high-technology marketing

In 1954, Drucker boldly declared that organizations have only two basic functions, marketing and innovation. While true for any organization, this insight is particularly pertinent for technology-based businesses. The complicated environment surrounding high-tech companies creates a great need for sophisticated marketing. Yet these companies continue to have under-developed competencies in marketing and in understanding customer needs. This essay explores Drucker’s insights with respect to two particularly salient issues for high-tech companies: developing and implementing a market orientation and break-through innovations. We review Drucker’s insights and synthesize them with the scholarly research on these issues. Finally, we discuss three emerging areas in high-tech marketing where academics and managers could build on Drucker’s insights to guide future research and practice: market driving, customer co-creation, and corporate social responsibility. These illustrative examples highlight that even today, Drucker’s writings continue to offer remarkable guidance to scholars and managers who are willing to take the time to reflect, understand, and incorporate his insights in the unique context of high-tech industries. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

国有资产管理的特征及改革建议

国有资产与机构投资者有着同样的多重委托代理特征,应借鉴机构投资者的资产管理和国际国有资产管理的成功经验,在完善国有企业法人治理的基础上,国有资产管理应该更多地采取被动投资。文章提出了关于完善我国国有资产管理体制的一些政策建议。     

Corporate identity management and employees’ responses

Main goals in this study are to analyse the effects of corporate identity management (CIM) on the employees’ responses, and the moderating effects of two employee personality traits: proactive personality and resistance to change. Two hundred and ninety-three branch managers in the banking sector in Spain participated in the study, and their responses were analysed through structural equation modelling. Results show that organizational identification is a key variable to explain the CIM effects on employees’ responses. Moreover, employees’ proactive personality and resistance to change exert a moderating influence on the way identification leads to extra-role behaviours. Human resource practices should take into account that proactive employees are more prone to externalize their identification by spreading positive WOM. Besides, identification with the organization will lead to loyalty, especially in employees with low resistance to change.     

Informal institutions and international entrepreneurship

This study examines the influence of three informal institutions, performance orientation, self-expression and social desirability, on the extent of internationalization by early stage entrepreneurial firms. We employed multi-level modeling techniques using 20,656 individual-level responses obtained from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey for 39 countries from 2001 to 2008, and supplementing with country-level data obtained from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study. The results demonstrate that high performance orientation, high self-expression, and low social desirability of entrepreneurship in societies increase the extent of internationalization by early-stage entrepreneurial firms. The study promotes new theory and empirical findings on the relationship between informal institutions and entrepreneurial agency.     

“I just don’t feel comfortable speaking English”: Foreign language anxiety as a catalyst for spoken-language barriers in MNCs

Over the last two decades, the impact of language standardization in MNCs has attracted considerable research attention. However, although the current IB literature strongly suggests that the introduction of English can cause a significant barrier, we still have not fully understood the micro-foundations of such barriers. We conducted an inductive study and interpret our findings using an interdisciplinary approach drawing from both IB related research as well as research from the field of linguistics and language studies. We propose that a major challenge for MNC employees is the foreign language anxiety they typically experience in a non-native language. It is manifest in communication avoidance and withdrawal, as well as code-switching. Our findings indicate that such communicative behaviors can have a considerable impact on interpersonal communication, affecting both the content and relationship dimension. Our study contributes to emerging research on the role of anxiety-related factors as micro-foundations of language barriers and provides a so far rather neglected starting point for firms to reduce the language barrier in corporations.     

Farming and tourism enterprise: Experiential authenticity in the diversification of independent small-scale family farming

This article examines the business choices made by independent farming families, when confronting the need to diversify away from traditional agricultural activities by starting farm-based tourism businesses. Based on interviews with farm family members who have set up tourism attractions on their farms, and drawing upon the concept of experiential authenticity, the article explores their self-conceptions of their family identities. In so doing, it addresses the choices and dilemmas facing farm families who attempt diversification through the tourism attraction route, and considers how this affects their attitudes towards more traditional farming activities. Using qualitative case study data, an empirically grounded framework is proposed that expresses the choices and challenges facing tourism entrepreneurial family farm members in the UK, through the conceptual lens of experiential authenticity.     

Determinants of Hotels and Restaurants entrepreneurship: A study using GEM data

The objective of this work is to assess the influence of certain factors on the likelihood of being a Hotels and Restaurants (H&R) entrepreneur. The factors evaluated are demographic and economic variables, variables related to perceptions of the environment and personal traits, and variables measuring the individual's intellectual and social capital. The work uses logistic regression techniques to analyze a sample of 33,711 individuals in the countries participating in the GEM project in 2008. The findings show that age, gender, income, perception of opportunities, fear of failure, entrepreneurial ability, knowing other entrepreneurs and being a business angel are explanatory factors of the probability of being an H&R entrepreneur.     

Impacts of positive and negative corporate social responsibility activities on company performance in the hospitality industry

In spite of growing concern for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in various industries including the hospitality industry, the relationship between CSR activities and financial performance is a rarely examined subject in the hospitality context. Especially, research measuring the separate impacts of positive and negative CSR activities on companies’ financial performances remains, as yet, unconsidered. Thus, this study examines different impacts of positive and negative CSR activities on financial performance of hotel, casino, restaurant and airline companies, theoretically based on positivity and negativity effects. Findings suggest mixed results across different industries and will contribute to companies’ appropriate strategic decision-making for CSR activities by providing more precise information regarding the impacts of each directional CSR activity on financial performance.     

参与精准扶贫与企业创新——基于外部融资视角的分析

为实现消除农村贫困和区域贫困的目标,在党和国家的号召下,越来越多的上市公司参与到精准扶贫战略中,然而学术界对企业参与精准扶贫经济后果影响的相关研究还有待进一步丰富和拓展。以2016-2018年沪深A股上市公司为样本,文章实证检验了企业参与精准扶贫工作对其创新绩效的影响。研究结果表明,参与精准扶贫显著提高了企业的创新产出和创新效率。在改变变量度量方法、更换模型以及使用安慰剂检验和PSM模型控制内生性问题等一系列稳健性检验后,结论仍然成立。进一步探讨其中的作用机制发现,企业参与精准扶贫通过缓解融资约束进而提升了创新绩效,而资源效应（降低债务融资成本和提高税收优惠）和声誉效应（增加媒体正面报道数量）是参与精准扶贫所发挥的外部融资作用。最后,基于宏观社会层面、中观市场层面以及微观企业层面的异质性分析表明,参与精准扶贫对企业创新的正向影响主要存在于地方扶贫压力较大、资本市场信息环境较差的企业以及非国有企业中。通过理论分析和实证检验,本文不仅丰富了参与精准扶贫和企业创新领域的相关研究,也对充分发挥资本市场在服务国家脱贫攻坚战略中的作用以及深入实施创新驱动发展战略、发挥企业在技术创新中的主体作用具有重要的启示意义。     

所有权性质、融资约束与企业投资——基于投资现金流敏感性的经验证据

本文通过研究中国制造业上市公司投资支出与其内部现金流的敏感性,分析经济转轨过程中不同所有权企业融资约束的变动情况。研究发现:(1)制造业上市公司存在明显的融资约束,且民营企业的融资约束明显高于国有企业;(2)在研究期间,全部样本企业的投资现金流敏感性随时间逐渐降低;(3)预算软约束的存在,使得国有企业投资现金流敏感性随时间下降的幅度比民营企业低。