Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Concern

A common concern The outer environment At present,small and medium-sized enterprises are faced with many serious challenges.Since most of the large-sized enterprises in China are state-owned ones, small and medium-sized enterprises in this article are referred mainly to those in the private sector. The challenge comes first from the     

Roles of ‘small- and medium-sized enterprises’ in service industry innovation: a case study on leisure agriculture service in tourism regional innovation

This study combines service-dominant logic (SDL) with industry cluster theory to analyze the evolution of leisure agriculture service in Taiwan. The result shows that cooperation among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can increase customer willingness to participate in value co-creation. Customer-driven cooperation among SMEs drives SMEs to increase their competitiveness and thus overcome their disadvantages in resources and capabilities. Additionally, the four-stage evolution of leisure agriculture service is identified to help tourism SMEs understand their positions and suggest appropriate strategies for achieving sustainable development and it also reveals a shifting paradigm from goods-dominant logic to SDL in tourism industry.     

The ‘Myth’ of Human Resource Management in Chinese Enterprises

This study examines changing labour-management practices in China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in comparison with those in joint ventures (JVs). Based on a sample of 62 firms in seven Chinese major cities, it explores the degree to which HRM practices are a ‘myth’. The researchers carried out semi-structured interviews with managers and other employees at all levels. The role of trade unions and workers' congresses are also examined. The results show that the ownership type, size of the firm, and its location are important factors affecting the extent to which these enterprises have adapted to market-orientated HRM practices. The study concludes that most firms have not fully made this adaptation, and that even where it has been taken up, it has in many cases only been done so partially due to organizational inertia, amongst other factors.     

Influences of Managerial Drivers on Export Sales Units’ Performance of Small and Medium-Size Enterprises

ABSTRACT

This report offers a contribution to the theories related to firms' export performance. Job satisfaction and behavioral and outcome performance of export managers have received attention in export literature. However, the relationships between export managers’ rewards system and the level of export managers’ morale with export managers’ job satisfaction, behavioral and outcome performance, and export sales units’ performance of small and medium-size enterprises have not thoroughly been examined, tested, or validated. A new model is developed based on export managerial psychology theory, which integrates two constructs, the export managers’ rewards and level of morale, as critical variables affecting export performance. The research findings suggest that four connected relationships in a PLS model are positive, significant, and substantial. Particularly, managers’ financial and nonfinancial rewards influence managers’ level of morale, which in turn affects managers’ behavioral performance, and managers' behavioral performance influences managers’ outcome performance, which, finally, affects firms’ export performance.     

Revised CSI and Australian consumers: incorporating ‘innovation’ and ‘automobile purchases’

The first objective of this study was to identify Australian consumers' decision-making styles for automobile purchases. Second, adding an innovation consciousness scale to the original consumer styles inventory (CSI) to assess Australian consumers' car purchase behaviour. Based on a sample of 214 respondents from Australian automobile consumers, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on Sproles and Kendall's (1986) CSI adapted for automobile purchases. As such, the validity of the CSI in the context of high-involvement purchases was tested. The results found that only two factors, ‘brand’ and ‘habitual consciousness’, of the original model were retained and other factors such as ‘investigation process’, ‘information search’, ‘value within budget’ and ‘innovation consciousness’ factors were confirmed for automobile purchase decision-making styles. ‘Innovation consciousness’ was proven to be one of the most reliable and valuable scales for automobile purchase decision-making styles in relation to Australian consumers. The paper also discusses suitable marketing strategies for automobile consumers in Australia. The current research should prove valuable not only to academic researchers but also to automobile companies/managers. The findings will also provide insight into how automobile companies could position themselves with respect to their marketing strategies in Australia.     

Questionable Language in ‘Help Wanted’ Advertising: A Comparison of the Practices of Small and Large Newspapers

For 25 years the US Congress and the courts have expanded employment protection for workers. Despite such actions ‘help wanted’ (i.e., situations vacant) advertisements in newspapers utilize phrases and words which are questionable or overtly discriminatory. Previous studies have analysed the type and rates of incidence of such advertisements in large metropolitan areas. The present study expands earlier research by contrasting the practices of small and large newspapers. Recommendations are made regarding actions to provide fairer employment practices.     

Family Matters? Recruitment Methods and Cultural Boundaries in Singapore Chinese Small and Medium Enterprises

Singapore official discourse speaks of (Chinese) families as both cultural and economic assets and as vestiges of national identity. Chinese families are often described in traditional terms, namely as patrilinial, patrilocal, patriarchal and clearly hierarchical. In Singapore official discourse, the historical success of traditional family businesses is presented as a unique ethnic and national characteristic. Simultaneously, the Singapore state claims to be ‘modern’, ‘Western’, and ‘cosmopolitan’, allowing little space for ‘parochial practices’ and ‘archaic traditions’. Either praised or looked down on, family businesses occupy an ambiguous position within the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ discourses of the Singapore state. This article supplies the evidence of changing family and business relations in Chinese–Singapore firms. Three major factors are isolated that influence Singapore attitudes towards family businesses: Chinese culture, globalization and the logic of developing capitalism, and the role of the Singapore state.     

The effect of innovation policy on SMEs’ employment and wages in Argentina

This article evaluates the effect of the Argentinean Support Program for Organizational Change on employment and wages. The program aimed at increasing small and medium-sized enterprises’ competitiveness by co-financing technical assistance to support process and product innovation activities. Although employment is not usually the main objective of these types of programs, they are always implemented assuming that they create—or at least do not destroy—employment opportunities. We use a unique data set with information for the population of firms in Argentina from 1996 to 2008 to test this important assumption. Using a combination of fixed effects and matching, we find that both process and product innovation support increased employment and wages, with a higher impact on employment. In addition, we find that product innovation support had a larger effect on wages than process innovation support.     

Branding Taiwan for tourism using ‘Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory’ and ‘Analytic Network Process’ methods

Countries should have a clear, credible, appealing, distinctive image in a wide and diverse global marketplace. Nation branding is a good method for countries to survive and prosper in a wide and diverse global marketplace, and many countries have embraced the concept. Nation branding is a sophisticated endeavor, which includes economics, tourism, culture, and political destiny. This paper addresses the problem of branding Taiwan's tourism using the decision making trial and evaluation laboratory approach combined with the analytic network process method to evaluate the performance criteria of branding Taiwan. The results show that ‘festival’ is the critical criterion for branding Taiwan for tourism.     

Disruptive innovation and the creation of social capital in Indonesia’s urban communities

Abstract

Existing research on social capital has primarily focused on examining the outcomes of social capital, whether these are about individual, organizational or even societal outcomes. However, much research is still needed in terms of examining how social capital is created. We contribute to filling this gap by examining the ways in which social capital is created in urban communities in an emerging economy. Social capital, in this study, is viewed as being created as a consequence of an organization’s disruptive innovation. We analyse the context of Go-Jek, a rather newly established service firm in Indonesia, and examine how the disruptive innovation of Go-Jek’s service provision influences the creation of social capital in terms of social connectedness, trust, and shared understanding, in Indonesia’s urban communities.     

How Effective Is Government Support for Korean Women Entrepreneurs in Small and Medium Enterprises?*

Women entrepreneurs are not as involved in economic activities as should be expected, despite the growing number of women entrepreneurs and increased government support in Korea. This study aims to investigate how effective the government is in terms of boosting the satisfaction of women entrepreneurs using the structural equation model. We investigated causal effect of government support policy and government support process on women entrepreneurs' satisfaction along with many other personal factors such as individual capacity, family life, social network, and business environment. The empirical results show that the government support process has the highest effect on the improvement of the satisfaction of women entrepreneurs. However, the current level of government support process is relatively low and therefore needs to be improved. It is interesting to note that the government support policy has the least effect on the satisfaction of women entrepreneurs. That is, women entrepreneurs are not sensitive to the support scale, support program, and gender‐sensitive policies currently employed in Korea. Also, we obtain the satisfaction index of women entrepreneurs according to their marital status, presence of children, age, education level, and business type. Finally, we propose improvement plans that can effectively be activated for each business type in which women entrepreneurs are involved.     

Measuring innovation in a ‘low-tech’ service industry: the case of the Dutch hospitality industry

This article presents the findings of a survey among 613 firms in the Dutch hospitality industry adopting a demarcation perspective. The paper illustrates that innovation in this service industry is much higher and more varied than regularly reported. It further indicates that innovation activities in ‘low-tech industries’ can be in place with less formalized forms of (service) innovation management. Finally, it is shown that a higher innovation intensity is associated with better firm performance. Based on this, some implications for managing innovation in the hospitality industry are discussed. Finally, some fundamental issues in the measurement of service innovation are raised.     

Business Ethics and the ‘End of History’ in Corporate Law

If social scientists take natural science as a model, they may err in their predictions and may offer facile ethical views. MacIntyre assails them for this, but he is unduly pessimistic about business, and in rejecting the separation thesis he raises some difficulties about naturalism. Aristotle’s views of the good life and of the close relationship between internal and external goods provide a corrective to MacIntyre, and in fact suggest how virtues can support social capital and thus prevail within and among firms in competitive markets. Aristotle’s views are not necessarily inimical to those underlying modern democratic capitalism, but they raise questions about the limits to the good life. The separation thesis misses the importance of addressing the questions with both empirical and ethical resources.     

Joint service,pricing and advertising strategies with tourists’ green tourism experience in a tourism supply chain

We consider the supply chain in the tourism industry, in which tourists are susceptible to the tourists' green tourism experience when they make purchase decisions for a green tourism product. Our research considers a green tourism supply chain (GTSC) consisting of one scenic spot (SS) and one travel agency (TA), and studies the joint green tourism service, pricing and advertising problem of the SS and the TA. We establish Stackelberg differential game models between the SS and the TA in the centralized, decentralized and revenue-sharing scenarios, and apply Pontryagin's maximum principle to obtain the dynamic equilibrium solutions of the GTSC members. Based on the three different scenarios, we analyze influences of the tourists' green tourism experience concern level, the wholesale ticket price and the sharing ratio on the optimal decisions and performances of the GTSC. This paper is the first quantitative research to study the green tourism service effort, pricing and advertising strategies of the GTSC members and design GTSC improvement contract with considering the green tourism experience. Our results provide management insights for the SS and the TA to manage GTSC under the green tourism preferences and the green tourism experience of tourists.     

Reform of State-Owned Enterprises in Full Swing

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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.     

Shareholder Theory and Kant’s ‘Duty of Beneficence’

This article draws on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to explore whether a corporate ‘duty of beneficence’ to non-shareholders is consistent with the orthodox ‘shareholder theory’ of the firm. It examines the ethical framework of Milton Friedman’s argument and asks whether it necessarily rules out the well-being of non-shareholders as a corporate objective. The article examines Kant’s distinction between ‘duties of right’ and ‘duties of virtue’ (the latter including the duty of beneficence) and investigates their consistency with the shareholder theory. The article concludes that it is possible within the ethical framework of shareholder theory for managers to pursue directly the happiness of non-shareholders. Furthermore, shareholders have a duty to hold management to account for the moral consequences of the firm’s activities on non-shareholding stakeholders.     

Emotions and dissonance in ‘ethical’ consumption choices

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of emotions and the prevalence of dissonant/incongruent choice behaviour within the context of ethical consumption. Based on 31 in-depth interviews with British consumers, the findings demonstrate that consumers consciously indulge in ‘ethical’ and ‘unethical’ behaviour (as defined by respondents themselves), often within short time frames, and that they often compensate for unethical choices by making ethical choices later on (and vice versa). The study provides evidence that positive and negative emotions are a key driver of this dissonant behaviour. Guilt is the most salient emotion, and a taxonomy of guilt in this context is derived from the data. Consumers are found to employ guilt-management strategies in order to sustain contradictory behaviour and manage cognitive dissonance. A conceptual framework is derived in order to summarise the observed role of emotions in ethical consumer choice. The paper also provides additional explanations of the manifestation of the attitude–behaviour gap.     

‘Information and Communication Technologies’ and entrepreneurial activity: drivers of economic growth in Europe

Innovation and entrepreneurial activities have become increasingly important elements for economic growth and are also decisive factors in a country's level of development. As regards the scope of this work, the European region as a whole occupies the top positions in most of the technological indicators. Entrepreneurial activity plays a significant role for the economy of a country owing, among other matters, to its effects on the labour market and economic growth. Apart from fomenting job creation, the presence of entrepreneurs may be related to the structure and performance of a country's economy. The main purpose of this work is to analyse what relationship exists between technological availability and the presence of entrepreneurs in European countries.