Short-haul city travel is truly environmentally sustainable

With rising interest in and concern about climate change and environmental sustainability, and the significance of the tourism industry worldwide, the impact of tourism-related activities and behaviors on the environment has become a key area of research. In particular, transport related to tourism has come under scrutiny for its contribution to the ecological footprint of tourism of a destination, mostly accounted for by the dominance of air travel. This study contributes to research in this area by identifying the types of travel situations in which tourists make environmentally friendly choices about travel modes and, consequently, which types of tourism destinations should seek to develop and promote in order to minimize the environmental impact of the tourist sector on both an individual destination and global scale.     

Innovation and performance in the hotel industry

The growing competition in the hotel industry is one of the main challenges of this segment, which increasingly depends on the ability to innovate. Thus, this article aims to analyze the impact of innovation on the performance of employees and hotel organizations. This is an exploratory study, with a quantitative approach using a structured computer-administered questionnaire to 73 managers of hotel chains, located in Brazil, which correspond to 792 hotels. Data analysis used multiple linear regression method with SPSS software to find out the relationship between the factors of innovation (communication, processes, leadership, and strategy) and the performance of employees and hotel organizations. Results show that the factors of communication, leadership, and strategy directly influence the performance of the employees. However, only the leadership factor directly affects the performance of hotel organizations.     

Awareness as a foundation for developing effective spatial data infrastructures

The development of an effective spatial data infrastructure (SDI) often occurs in a fragmented organizational environment requiring a high level of inter-organizational collaboration. Different organizations from various jurisdictions need to work together closely when agreeing on how they will jointly register, store, use and share data and how they will make their data available to the wider society. However, this collaboration is generally regarded as very difficult. For example people often resist data sharing across organizational boundaries due to loss of control, power and independency. Organizational issues are thus considered one of the fundamental constraints to inter-organizational sharing of spatial data.     

Resource allocation strategy for innovation portfolio management

Our study demonstrates empirically that the choice of resource allocation strategy affects innovation performance. Allocating resources to a broader range of innovation projects increases new product sales, an effect that appears to outweigh that of resource intensity. In addition, we find that the performance benefit of breadth is higher for firms that allocate resources selectively at later stages of the innovation process. This breadth‐selectiveness effect is greatest for firms intending to create relatively more novel products, departing further from their knowledge base. Based on these results, we theorize that breadth increases performance because it spreads firms' bets on unproven innovative endeavors. Limiting resource commitments by selecting out deteriorating projects prevents an escalation in the costs of breadth. This advantage increases with the uncertainty implicit in greater innovative intent. The paper thus contributes to theory of how resource allocation strategies influence performance outcomes of innovation project portfolios. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Market representations in industrial marketing: Could representations influence strategy?

A central question in industrial marketing is whether the form in which the market of a firm is represented influences the marketing strategy. This question has been studied generally through case study research, and quantitative evidence is limited. In response to this limitation, this paper reports on a quasi-experiment investigating whether market representations have a constructive aspect in business. Empirically, this study compares two types of market representations - ostensive and performative - in order to test for influence exacted in two well-established strategies in industrial marketing - service focus and product differentiation. Results indicate that service focus is selected when market representations rely on agency in firms (i.e., performative), and product strategies are selected when structures are emphasized (i.e., ostensive). This paper contributes to methodology development by expanding the link between a case study approach and quasi-experiments explaining how quasi-experiments can replicate findings in industrial marketing.