A comprehensive conceptual and bibliometric study of person-centered methodologies

Person-centered approaches, such as latent profile analysis (LPA) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), have gained in popularity in organizational scholarship because of their ability to provide insight into how interrelations between a group of conditions can lead to a particular outcome. Despite the growing acceptance of person-centered approaches in social science research, traditional variable-centered approaches continue to prevail, although their dominance is increasingly questioned. This paper offers in-depth analysis of the current state of QCA and LPA from both a conceptual and a bibliometric perspective. This study thus aims to contextualize the role of person-centered methodologies in organizational scholarship. This aim is important, given the significance of exploring novel approaches to advance knowledge in organizational research. This paper provides scholars with quantifiable and readily comparable information on the use of these emerging but promising methods in organizational studies. Ultimately, this scientific contribution sheds light on the current and prospective applications of person-centered methods in research. Moreover, it offers scholars who are considering applying these methods objective analysis of the scientific production in this area thus far.

     

Marketing capabilities and innovation. How do they affect the financial results of hotels?

From the point of view of firms’ managers, the knowledge of the factors which explain their firms’ financial results is considered of great usefulness to propose the most appropriate and profitable marketing strategies and actions. This research sets out from this central idea and proposes a model of relationships that considers the marketing results, the marketing capabilities, and the innovation capability as key factors for achieving good financial results. This model is verified via an empirical investigation carried out among 200 directors of hotel establishments in Andalusia, a region in the south of Spain which is one of the country's main tourist destinations. The results indicate that innovation capability is strongly conditioned by marketing capabilities and resources and that this innovation capability affects the financial results of the firms analyzed. Likewise, it is deduced that a market-oriented management philosophy contributes to the development of these marketing capabilities. The implications for management are considered very relevant as they must lead these firms to invest in the development of marketing resources and capabilities, and apply a market-oriented management philosophy if they wish to improve their financial results.     

Lost in intervention. The Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson effect on the peseta/dollar real exchange rate (1870–1998)

We have decomposed the peseta/dollar real exchange rate (1870–1998) into its trend and cyclical components and used the former to proxy its time-varying equilibrium. Then, we have compared changes in the equilibrium with changes in the Spanish and the USA productivity differentials to identify years that do not fit with the Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson (HBS) hypothesis. The greatest maladjustment is found in the 1940s and 1950s, decades of strong exchange rate intervention in Spain. Conversely, the link between equilibrium and differentials adjusts to the hypothesis when using the non-intervened peseta/dollar exchange rate on the Tangier black market. These contrasting results back up the idea that exchange rate intervention, so common in developing countries, might explain their scanter evidence in favour of the HBS effect.     

The effects of perceived value on loyalty: the moderating effect of market orientation adoption

This paper aims to identify the moderating effect of service firms’ adoption of market orientation on key variables of consumer behavior, namely perceived value and loyalty. The study took a business-to-customer perspective. First, the adoption of market orientation was measured, from the firm’s point of view. Second, customer perceptions were analyzed, using the two variables perceived value and loyalty. The sample comprised 100 service firms and 572 of their customers. The present work provides original insights, identifying that the effect of perceived value on loyalty depends on other variables external to the consumer, such as the market orientation approach.     

Impact of Market Orientation and ICT on the Performance of Rural Smaller Service Enterprises*

Market orientation (MO) is considered as a competitive strategy for the smaller service enterprises based in rural locations. A model is proposed and validated for the rural tourism sector that encompasses the effects of MO and of the use of information and communications technology (ICT) on business activity, taking into account the business's financial results, improvements to the rural location, and the more personal, intangible impact on the local entrepreneur. ICT is found to have a positive impact on MO and outcomes, whereas, similarly, the adoption of MO is found to have a positive effect on outcomes.     

The futures of offshoring FDI in high-tech sectors

This paper examines what is still a relatively new phenomenon in the literature, the outsourcing/offshoring of high-technology manufacturing and services. This has become a concern for both policy makers and academics for two reasons. Firstly, policy makers have become concerned that the offshoring of high-technology sectors in the West will follow the more labour intensive sectors, and move to lower cost locations. Secondly, international business theory has tended to view low costs, and high levels of indigenous technological development as being the two main drivers of location advantage in the attraction of FDI. We show that this may not be the case for offshored high-technology manufacturing or services.     

Motivations and differences upon reconciling professional and personal life: an empirical study of businesswomen and businessmen in the Valencian Community

According to the last report “Women FTSE 2009” developed by Cranfield School of Management and the IE Business School and sponsored by Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, Sainsbury, Enlivens, HSBC and Pearson, the number of European companies with women in positions of executive direction has been reduced from 16 to 15 and the number of women in the board meetings from 39 to 37 has fallen. Moreover, there has been a decrease in the number of total of businesses with women in their counsels, since 1 of each 4 businesses has an exclusively male counsel. The study, reveals a pessimistic panorama for women from the analysis of the number of guidelines that work in the companies that belong to FTSE 100, the British index that includes the 100 main values of the London stock market. The study also reflects a descent in the number of women that occupy key positions in the businesses of the FTSE 100. In the year 2008 there were only 5 women CEOs and 3 regional executive directors. In the 2009 only there were 4 CEOs. The purpose of this article is to see if the origin of this situation is a direct consequence of businesswomen confronting more difficulties than the businessmen upon putting in common its professional and personal life or if by contrast this corresponds to an stereotyped perception of gender inequality. With this end we conducted a study using a sample of businesswomen and men with experience analyzing its motivations to create business, difficulties that they find, and the solutions to improve the conciliation of its professional and personal lives. The results show that there are no significant gender differences in the motivations, regardless of who the head of the family is (bearing main responsibility for the house and children). On the other hand, we show that businesswomen diverge from businessmen in the perception of motivations and challenges they have. Indeed, businessmen agree with businesswomen in the motivations and difficulties that these have, and consider that they give to them more importance than women themselves.     

Foreign Direct Investment Spillovers: Evidence from the British Retail Sector

This paper discusses the impact of foreign‐ownership presence on the productivity performance of British‐owned domestic retailers. In particular, we analyse the existence of productivity spillovers, in the form of knowledge transfer, by using establishment‐level data from the Annual Respondents Database over the period 1997–2003. The results confirm the presence of such spillovers and highlight their positive and significant impact on the productivity of domestic firms, although these spillovers are mostly confined to the region in which foreign subsidiaries locate. There is also evidence that the productivity benefit from regional foreign direct investment spillovers increases with the absorptive capacity of domestic retailers.     

Note on the applicability of the VCG mechanism to capacitated assignment problems and extensions

For the allocation of heterogeneous items, it is known that the buyers-are-substitutes condition is necessary and sufficient to ensure that a pricing equilibrium can yield the same allocation and payments as the VCG mechanism. Furthermore, concavity of the corresponding transferable utility TU-game guarantees that this VCG outcome can also be achieved by an ascending price auction. We show that concavity, and hence the buyers-are-substitutes condition, holds for the TU-game of the assignment problem with general capacities. Therefore, the VCG mechanism is supported by a pricing equilibrium which can also be achieved by an ascending auction. We also show that the buyers-are-substitutes condition, and hence concavity, does not hold anymore for very natural and straightforward extensions of this problem. This shows that the necessity of the substitutes property is a considerable restriction on the applicability of the VCG mechanism.     

The Formation of a Tourist Destination's Image via Information Sources: the Moderating Effect of Culture

The present study aims to outline the growing importance of culture in the field of tourism. More specifically, it highlights culture as a moderating variable in pre‐visit tourist destination image formation, through the information sources utilized by the tourist in the selection of a holiday destination (that is, travel agencies alone vs. travel agencies together with the Internet). For this purpose primary research used a multicultural sample of 371 tourists from different European countries. The results show that the formation of a destination's pre‐visit image amongst tourists, based on the information sources they use, is moderated by the level of uncertainty‐avoidance of their national cultures. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.