‘Balanced Scorecard’ as an operation-level strategic planning tool for service innovation

This study proposes a model for implementing the balanced scorecard (BSC) as an operation-level strategic planning tool in a medical service department for service innovation. The study involved four major units in a district hospital: the internal medicine ward, surgery ward, gynecology ward, and pediatrics ward. The results indicated that the nursing department not only had its own unique goals and tasks, but also that it was obligated to a comprehensive service system in addition to its specific caring subjects. The study is the first to shed light on the role of department-level strategic planning tool for service innovation. The results also indicated that the operation-level should design its own BSC as a strategic planning for service innovation.     

How do alternative strategic orientations influence social media performance?

Increasingly organisations are using social media due to its advantages over traditional media however, its successful implementation has been problematic. To address this issue this study drew from the organisational orientation literature to examine alternate frameworks for implementation. Survey data were obtained from senior marketers from various Australian industries and structural equation modelling was used to test the hypothesised relationships. The study identified the components of alternate strategic orientations which were positively or negatively related to social media performance. The contribution of the study is to identify how the different emphasis within market, entrepreneurial and e-marketing orientations impact social media performance in terms of customer retention and customer acquisition. Implications for theory and practice are provided. Finally, research limitations and future research suggestions are presented.     

Motivated or empowering antecedents to drive service innovation?

Which type of antecedents, motivated or empowering, can stimulate service innovation? We choose the empowering (team and worker empowerment) and motivated variables (creative self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation) as the four antecedents to investigate how they influence service innovation. Positive psychological capital (PPC) was chosen as a key mediator to examine whether the four antecedents have impacts on service innovation through PPC. Hierarchical linear modeling was adopted for analyses. This study provided the following findings: (a) the empowering factors have no positive effects on service innovation. (b) The motivated factors have significantly positive effects on service innovation. (c) PPC completely mediated the relationship between the empowering factors and service innovation and partially mediated the relationship between the motivated factors and service innovation. Our findings suggest that motivated factors have significantly positive influences on service innovation compared with empowering factors. We also confirm PPC as the mediating mechanism to stimulate service innovation.     

Is innovation always beneficial? A meta-analysis of the relationship between innovation and performance in SMEs

The performance implications of innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have attracted considerable interest among academics and practitioners. However, empirical research on the innovation-performance relationship in SMEs shows controversial results. This meta-analysis synthesizes empirical findings in order to obtain evidence whether and especially under which circumstances smaller, resource-scarce firms benefit from innovation. We find that innovation-performance relationship is context dependent. Factors such as the age of the firm, the type of innovation, and the cultural context affect the impact of innovation on firm performance to a large extent.     

When are venture capital projects initiated?

This paper examines how public market information relates to the initiation of venture capital projects. Analysis of venture capital investments in the U.S. between 1980 and 2007 indicates that venture capitalists tend to defer new investment projects in target industries with substantial market volatility. This delay effect of market volatility is reduced if the target industry experiences high sales growth or if competition among venture capitalists is intense in the target industry. The paper provides further evidence to corroborate the view that venture capitalists rationally respond to market shifts in their investment decisions.     

When do consumers feel betrayal and face-loss? Examining service communality and social presence types in service failures

This study investigates the importance of consumer–restaurant relationship norms (service communality) in connection with consumer–companion social presence types (business versus private) in producing consumers’ feelings of betrayal and face-loss in service failures. The results suggest that consumers felt more betrayed and face-loss in service failures as service communality increased. In addition, social presence types moderated the effect of service communality on face-loss, suggesting consumers in private social presence situations were more sensitive to face-loss as service communality increases. These findings were integrated into a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications regarding restaurant service management.     

When do investors forgive entrepreneurs for lying?

A growing literature suggests that some entrepreneurs lie to investors in order to improve the likelihood of acquiring resources needed for firm survival and growth. We propose a framework outlining the conditions that may enable an investor who has been told a lie by an entrepreneur to respond with forgiveness rather than by withdrawing from the relationship. Integrating the literatures on evolutionary psychology, forgiveness, and stakeholder theory we argue that investor's appraisals of expected relationship value and expected exploitation risk are the key antecedents to an investor's decision to forgive an entrepreneur's lie.     

Does ownership type matter for innovation? Evidence from China

According to the institution-based view, ownership type is a key variable affecting environment-strategy configurations. This study configures the mechanism in which ownership types (as an institutional factor) moderate the effect of innovation strategies on firms' innovation performance. An empirical analysis was conducted on Chinese hi-tech manufacturing firms, using information related to the innovation activities of 303 firms. The empirical results suggest that ownership type affects the positive relationship between three sources of innovation (internal R&D activities, partnering with alliance partners, and partnering with universities) and innovation performance, as well as the negative relationship between external contracting and innovation performance (product or process innovation). The results imply that organizations doing business in China must be aware of the business environment that they intend to enter, especially if the intention is to develop new products or innovate current business processes.     

Is online-to-offline customer care support essential for consumer service?

Customer satisfaction is the main pillar for convenient and profitable retailing. The retail sector continuously tried to develop new strategies to improve consumer satisfaction. It is impossible to provide each service directly to the consumer by the retailer. In this direction, the retailer establishes customer care to provide the best service to consumers. Consumer care can provide promotional or prevention services, increasing the consumer's satisfaction level. This study is developed to show the impact of retailers' customer care service for an offline-to-online retailing strategy. The demand is consumer support, advertisement, and selling price dependent. For maintaining consumer service, some free home delivery policies are offered, when consumers ordered more than a certain percentage of the amount. Finally, the total profit of this O2O retailing system is calculated by the classical optimization technique. Some special cases are discussed in the numerical section to prove the impact of customer care services. Numerical results prove that customer care support enhances the profit by 48.20%, whereas investment in the advertisement and home delivery strategy helps the retail industry to earn 44.80% and 16.74% more profit, respectively. Finally, from this study, it is clear that customer care activities are essential to increase the profit of the retailing sector.     

Do Consumers Discriminate Against Foreign Companies Even When They are Green?

The international business literature has long investigated the role of corporate environmentalism, or “going green,” in business. However, this research has been limited regarding the dynamics of a firm's eco-friendly image and consumers' intention to purchase the firm's products in light of the consumer's complex social viewpoint and how that eco-friendly image is perceived. This limitation is due in part to the complex nature of the eco-friendly image-purchase intention relationship, especially when taking into account the consumers' identification with the firm, as well as the role of consumer ethnocentrism. Through the use of an experimental survey, we found differences between countries and the role of the firm's eco-friendly image and consumer ethnocentrism. In particular, an eco-friendly image was positively related to identification with the firm in a German company sample. The findings also show that this identification mediates the effect of eco-friendly image on purchase intention. Consumer ethnocentrism significantly moderated the effect of this identification on purchase intention as well in the Chinese company sample. Implications for managers of multinational enterprises are discussed, as are avenues for future research.     

Is exchange rate stability beneficial for stabilizing consumer prices in China?

This study examines the relationship between real effective exchange rates (REERs) and the consumer price index (CPI) in China, utilizing a bootstrap Granger full-sample causality test and a sub-sample rolling-window estimation. Considering structural changes, we assess the stability of the parameters and find that both the short-run and long-run relationships between the two estimated variables are unstable. This result suggests that full-sample causality tests cannot be relied upon. We instead employ a time-varying (bootstrap) rolling-window approach to revisit the dynamic causal relationship, and we find that the CPI is affected by the REER for several sub-samples due to the role of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) under the managed floating exchange rate regime in China. These findings provide further proof of the impact of stable exchange rates on the maintenance of relatively steady price levels especially during the economic crisis and economic reform in China. The policy implication of these findings is that maintaining exchange rate stability is beneficial for controlling inflation during the economic crisis and economic reform.     

Healthier for whom? Technological service improvement in the healthcare industry

This study tackles the dilemma of a technology-based service improvement wherein an organization performs a technology change to improve its service process, while its customers do not necessarily perceive the new service as an improvement. The empirical research follows a healthcare provider that changed its primary care provider appointment scheduling using a new call centre technology. The methodology involves three processes reflecting the entire change: personal interviews, focus groups, and surveys. To facilitate adoption of a technology-based service, it is recommended that there be a focus on customers’ experience with similar service industries’ image, and organizational policies on contracting service representatives.     

Environmental regulations and innovation for sustainability? Moderating effect of political connections

Companies are subject to both formal regulation pressure from government and informal regulation pressure from other stakeholders to adopt green innovations for sustainability. Using a sample of 4924 private Chinese companies, our empirical study indicates that both formal and informal regulation pressures have a positive effect on green innovation. We also find that political connections positively moderate the effect of formal regulation pressure on green innovation, but negatively moderate the effect of informal regulation pressure on green innovation.     

Measuring word-of-mouth activity after a service encounter: are we measuring what customers communicate?

The current study differs from previous research that measured WOM activity, as an experimental between-subjects research design, was applied and the stimuli were videos of four service encounters to ensure external validity. The factors that were manipulated in the experiment were the level of service quality provided by the waitron and the waitron’s emotional display. The study found that WOM activity measurement by means of a typical recommendation item is not a true reflection of how a customer experienced a service encounter and more recommendations were done personally than by electronic means. Managerial implications, based on the findings, are made.