Market orientation for the hotel segment： The Portuguese case

In view of the importance of the hotel segment for the tourism and for the economy of countries such as Portugal, the objective of this study was to measure the level of orientation for the market of the largest hotel groups of Portugal. This investigation initially emphasized the importance of the marketing for the organizations, mainly the orientation for the market. After a brief explanation on the hotel segment in Portugal, an empirical study was presented, of quantitative, exploratory and traversal character, performed with the largest groups of 20 hotels of Portugal, using as an instrument of collection data, the traditional Markor scale （market orientation） adapted to the hotel sector. After analyzing the data, it was found in the investigated organizations that a good capacity to generate market information and response to the market, which formed two of the three constructs of Markor scale. However the results obtained with the construct of the dissemination of market information were below the expectations. It was possible to conclude that marketing professionals of the large hotel groups in Portugal are well oriented to the market, something not shared by other investigated departments of the hotels. So the current challenge for the main networks of hotels in Portugal is to improve the internal dissemination of information that marketing professionals gathered at the market.     

The contradictory roles of ambiguity for innovation in an industry: how beneficial are standardisation and classification?

Studies on the influence of ambiguity on innovation show inconsistent understandings: it could be beneficial owing to flexibility, while it might be detrimental owing to distraction of information. Faced with the contradictory understandings, this study examines whether technological standardisation and industry classification could increase innovations of an industry. Using ISO9001 and the SIC codes in Korea from 1998 to 2010, the empirical tests illustrate inverted U-shaped relationships between industry-level innovation and standardisation/classification. Therefore, it is suggested that a moderate degree of standardisation and classification provides a positive infrastructure for innovation by providing the necessary guidelines for a firm's behaviour as well as maintaining its flexibility.     

Is there an innovation effect on current account? A case for European countries

The aim of this article is to find out whether there is an innovation effect on the current account, and if there is one then to determine its significance. The study is carried out for the current accounts of European countries. Innovation is tested together with some other factors as control variables in order to estimate and compare its role in the determination process of the current account. The results indicate that innovation has quite a significant influence on the current accounts of European countries, and the form of the relationship between innovation and current account is non-linear. Moreover, the impact of innovation is stronger for countries at higher levels of innovation, but the growth rate of its average marginal effect diminishes through its increasing levels.     

Transition through subsystem innovation? The case of traffic management

This article analyzes traffic management as an example of infrastructure operation and assesses to what extent the transition approach as developed by Rotmans, Geels, and others is helpful in providing insight and contributes to the transition of the mobility system. Based on a conceptual framework which draws on the work of Luhmann and Critical Systems Thinking (CST), two cases of traffic management innovation in the Netherlands are analyzed. From this it becomes clear that traffic management is more than the optimization of the current mobility system. Rather than being a technical exercise, traffic management has to deal with substantial uncertainty which results from political dynamics and interactions between traffic management and other parts of the larger mobility system. The cases show that, in dealing with these uncertainties, actors may start to explore broader system definitions. Thus, a transition of the car-dependent mobility system is shown to be strongly emergent, which questions overly linear projections formulated by transition researchers as well as practitioners.     

Can innovation network projects result in efficient performance?

This paper examines the effects that process, structure and governance dimensions of networks have on innovation performance. The main focus of the paper is the multidimensional aspect of innovation networks and how these dimensions affect network performance. Technology management, resource-based, transaction costs and social capital perspectives are applied in the construction of the model variables of each subsystem or dimension analyzed. With results drawn from a sample of 350 project managers identified in the European Union CORDIS database who are actively involved in European innovation networks, we argue that the performance of innovation networks is increased through the suitable design of process, structure and governance subsystems. Empirical findings also show that interactions between these subsystems have a complementary or synergic effect resulting in improved innovation performance.     

Why are social enterprises good candidates for social innovation? Looking for personal and institutional drivers of innovation

The last few years witnessed theoretical and practical contributions to the field of social innovation and social enterprise. However, analysis of the interplay between these two different realms is still limited. This article aims to fill some gaps in this respect. We deal with historical reconstruction of the concept of Social Enterprise and Social Innovation, and their conceptual premises. We consider the process of creation of social innovation in social enterprises. As members’ motivations, ownership rights and governance rules in social enterprises create a new relational context and new routines, which are germane to the production of social knowledge and deliberation, social innovation can be considered one of the main outcomes of this setting. Social motivations, collective action of a cooperative kind, multi‐stakeholder governance and socialization of resources, and their interplay are singled out as main drivers of innovation. Social innovation is seen as akin to novelty in social interaction, a non‐standardized and non‐standardizable outcome of the operation of this organizational form.     

Who are more sensitive to procedural fairness? The impact of an innovation implementation approach,employees’ status concerns and need for control

Drawing upon research on personality, innovation and procedural justice, we examine the two-way and three-way interaction effects of people's status concerns (SC) and need for control (NC) on the relationship between a participative innovation implementation approach (PIIA) and procedural justice perceptions. The results indicate that SC and NC moderate the aforementioned relationship in a complex three-way manner. Those who have both high SC and high NC are the most sensitive to the PIIA in terms of procedural justice perceptions. The underlying psychological mechanisms are discussed.     

Which commercial partners are important for the most recently admitted EU countries?

This paper describes the degree of trade integration inside the European Union (EU) after the fifth enlargement in 2004. To achieve this goal, we build a database of information on trade flows between the new EU countries (EU‐10) and 180 commercial partners in six different sectors from 1999 to 2011. Using the standard gravity model and estimating a difference‐in‐differences specification, we analyze how joining the EU affected the intensity and direction of the EU‐10's trade flows. Our results show that though trade exchanges between the EU‐10 and EU‐15 intensified after 2004, the impact of integration was much more significant to the EU‐10 group.     

Which factors hinder the adoption of open innovation in SMEs?

The literature on open innovation (OI) is characterised by studies based both on large companies and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Among all, one of the less explored issues in SMEs is what impedes them to adopt OI. Thus, this paper has the threefold objective to identify which factors hinder the adoption of OI in SMEs, to investigate if different behaviours exist among SMEs in relation to these factors, and to understand if the same factors effectively influence the level of adoption of OI. Based on a survey on 157 Italian SMEs, we identified four main barriers (namely, ‘knowledge’, ‘collaboration’, ‘organisational’, and ‘financial and strategic’) and three profiles of firms, different in terms of innovativeness of the industries they belong to (knowledge intensive, medium-innovative, and less innovative) and hampering factors perceived (‘knowledge’, ‘financial and strategic’, and ‘collaboration’ and ‘organisational’ barriers). Moreover, we found that some of these factors effectively impede the adoption of the paradigm.     

Which factors are perceived as obstacles for the growth of Italian academic spin-offs?

During the last decades, academic spin-offs have received increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners, mainly due to their ability to advance industrial application of scientific knowledge. In the past, scholars believed that these organisations were subjected to fast growth after their establishment. Only in the last decade, scholars realise that the fast-growing perspective hypothesised was an oversimplification, as the majority of high-tech academic spin-offs growth slowly or remain small in size for long time. The aim of our study is to investigate the reasons that inhibit the growth of established academic spin-offs, focusing on the Italian context. Through the implementation of the Delphi technique and of the fuzzy logic we derive new and relevant results, for scholars, spin-offs’ managers and policy-makers.     

Which stock exchanges are more attractive? The competition analysis of listing and trading performance

With the globalization of capital markets, stock exchanges around the world have faced their most challenging era since 2005. While the traditional role of the stock exchange should evolve by enforcing competitive advantage, as the heart of modern capital markets, stock exchanges give rise to both capital demand outflows and capital supply inflows, and both of these have to be taken into consideration. What is it that makes some stock markets more attractive than others from the viewpoint of firms as well as from the viewpoint of investors? This paper focuses on the stock exchanges' performance from an international perspective by combining both the listing competition and trading competition aspects using data for the world's 45 largest stock exchanges. The exchange-specific performances that both take and do not take a country's specific financial regulatory regime into consideration are evaluated. In addition, a competition matrix is designed to help the managerial authorities of stock exchanges around the world to position themselves within the industry.     

Which business model for e-book pricing?

We characterize and compare equilibrium pricing strategies in a marketing channel in two scenarios. In the first scenario, the manufacturer chooses the wholesale prices of the two versions of a product, i.e., tangible and digital. and the retailer their prices to consumer. In the second scenario, the players use a revenue-sharing contract for only the digital version, while the competing version is managed by a wholesale price contract. The problem is inspired from a pricing controversy in the e-book industry.     

Which types of commodity price information are more useful for predicting US stock market volatility?

This study aims to investigate which types of commodity price information are more useful for predicting US stock market realized volatility (RV) in a data-rich word. The standard predictive regression framework and monthly RV data are used to explore the RV predictability of commodity futures for the next-month RV on S&P 500 spot index. We utilize principal component analysis (PCA) and factor analysis (FA) to extract the common factors for each type and all types of commodity futures. Our results indicate that the futures volatility information of grains and softs has a significant predictive ability in forecasting the RV of the S&P 500. In addition, the FA method can yield better forecasts than the PCA and average methods in most cases. Further analysis shows that the volatility information of grains and softs exhibits higher informativeness during recessions and pre-crises. Finally, the forecasts of the five combination methods and different out-of-sample periods confirm our results are robust.     

Is experience a useful resource for business model innovation?

Business model innovation has been proposed as a powerful strategic tool, able to offer competitive advantage, create markets and even reshape industries. Despite these powerful effects, little research has been conducted into studying and improving business model generation methods, and even less study has gone into analysing how to define new business models that can exert a disruptive effect on markets and industries. Our work tries to fill this gap, analysing whether experience encourages or discourages the generation of disruptive business models. An empirical analysis was carried out using an experimental methodology. The results seem to contradict the currently dominant Resource-Based View, but can be explained by the theory on inertia in organisations.     

Is utility additive? The case of alcohol

By using the quantile regressions of earnings equation, we find that the educational wage premium is higher in industries with rapid technological change than in industries with slower technological change at every decile in the distribution of wage residuals. The wage premium associated with the technological change is mostly explained by the returns to workers' unobserved heterogeneities, which are correlated with education, rather than the rents of high-tech industries.