Trade credit versus bank credit: a simultaneous analysis in European SMEs

Small Business Economics - Trade credit and bank credit constitute two of the most important external sources of finance for small firms. The purpose of this paper, first and foremost, is to...     

International Expansion of SMEs: The Inducascos Case

While small and medium enterprises contribute to gross domestic product, generate crucial employment, and improve socio-economic development, unfortunately the literature on the internationalization processes of these companies remains timid and inconsistent. The following study seeks to analyze the international expansion of the Colombian company Inducascos. The research follows the structure of a case study including literature analysis and secondary data of the Colombian industrial market and Inducascos. Challenges, opportunities and learning process of the organization related to its international expansion and set out, seeking to contribute to the existing studies in international business.     

What's Behind CRM Research? A Bibliometric Analysis of Publications in the CRM Research Field

The diversity of approaches to customer relationship management (CRM) brings about the need for systematic reviews. The objective of this article is to identify and categorize the most used publications in the CRM field. We conducted a bibliometric analysis using the Web of Science database. To identify and categorize the subfields, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis. The most used publications were categorized into: (1) methodology in the CRM research field; (2) relationship marketing; (3) service quality and customer loyalty; (4) implications of market-oriented strategy; (5) CRM theory and its practical implications; (6) strategic management; and (7) customer value.     

The Price of Team Spirit for Sensemaking Through Task Discourse in Innovation Teams

Despite interest in innovation teams, we have only limited insights into how team members make sense of innovation teams’ inherent ambiguity. By referring to the sensemaking literature and to the research on task discourse, our study introduces task discourse as a valuable sensemaking mechanism in innovation teams. We argue that team creativity and feasibility testing increases the need for task discourse, which in turn improves team performance. Beyond this, we consider ambivalent effects of team spirit. On the one hand, team spirit allows leveraging smoothly synergies to emerge but on the other hand, high team spirit can limit team member’s willingness to challenge each other’s different perspectives and opinions critically. Data on 250 innovation teams of German manufacturing teams support the assumed beneficial effects of task discourse and the ambivalent effect of team spirit. Teams need sensemaking through task discourse when they want to achieve benefits from team creativity. The total effect of creativity on team performance is insignificant, while the indirect effect of team creativity on team performance is significantly positive. Our study enriches current research on ambiguity and sensemaking in innovation teams, answers the call to elaborate benefits and drawbacks team spirit might bring to teams, and provides valuable managerial implications.     

Networks and self-employed migrants

This paper examines the immigrant’s decision to become self-employed. Personal characteristics and attitudes are crucial to this decision, but recent literature also highlights the importance of social networks as providers of information and financial support. To date, empirical research dealing with the network effect has considered self-employed migrants as a homogeneous group. In contrast, our paper examines the impact of the size and the composition of geographic concentration of co-nationals on the propensity to be self-employed among the foreign-born workers taking into account two possible choices: own-account workers and entrepreneurs. Using micro-level data of migrant workers in Spain over the period 2000–2009, the results show that networks affect positively the probability of becoming self-employed. However, they do not affect the likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur, which is determined by individual characteristics such as education and number of years of residence. Thus, our results suggest policies that enable immigrant assimilation can play a significant role in generating entrepreneurial activity.     

Efficiency of travel agency franchises: a study in Spain

Efficiency in a firm is important because it ensures that the economy’s scarce resources are not being wasted. It produces something else of value—profits or the continued existence of the organisation. This work contributes to the literature on efficiency in franchising. Specifically, it is focused on the sector of travel agencies which operate in the franchising system in Spain. This fact is an original contribution and is very important because until now there have not been any studies about efficiency in this sector of franchising. The results show that the number of brand names which are efficient is around 50%. This means that many chains are not efficient. This result may be, to a great extent, a result of the dynamics of this sector in recent years. A Tobit model is also used in order to characterise the franchisors’ efficiency. Some important findings are showed.     

Managerial Firms,Entry, and Switching Costs

Empirical evidence shows that switching costs are important in many industries. We analyze the welfare effects of entry into markets with switching costs when firms can be run by managers and the entrant may be partially foreign-owned. We find that with profit-maximizing firms, the welfare effect of entry depends crucially on the ownership of the entrant firm. We also show that entry is less likely with managerial firms than it is with profit-maximizing firms. In the latter case, entry always reduces welfare if the share of the entrant firm owned by foreign investors is high. However, with managerial firms, entry always increases welfare.     

Web 2.0, social capital and work performance in service companies: the employees’ view

Web 2.0 networks have provoked a revolution in the last years due to their capacity to modify human relationships, particularly in business contexts. Social capital, as a crucial intangible asset embedded in Web 2.0 networks, can be extremely helpful to build and optimize personal and organizational power or resources. This exploratory study empirically analyzes the use of Web 2.0 networks for work-related purposes under a new perspective: the perception of Spanish service companies’ employees. Results show a reasonable employee use of Web 2.0 applications with work-related purposes, and identify the main benefits from them and relevant differences in their use.     

The chain from customer satisfaction via word-of-mouth referrals to new customer acquisition

It has often been argued that word-of-mouth (WOM) can contribute significantly to a firm’s success in a variety of ways. Here, we analyze the functional linkage between customer satisfaction, WOM, and new customer acquisition. Using data from two empirical studies we conceptualize and test the direct, non-linear, and moderated relationship between satisfaction and WOM. We further explore the circumstances under which WOM leads to new customer acquisition using a logistic regression model. We do so for two groups (new customers and long-term customers) from the customer base of a large energy provider (n = 688), and for a random sample of B2B customers (n = 416) in the same market. Results indicate that the satisfaction-WOM link is non-linear and is moderated by several customer involvement dimensions. Based on our results, we demonstrate how the satisfaction-WOM-new customer acquisition link can enrich return on quality and satisfaction models. Further, we draw conclusions about how companies can make use of both the satisfaction-WOM and the WOM-new customer acquisition link for better allocating their marketing resources.

Does Poaching Distort Training?

We analyse the efficiency of the labour market outcome in a competitive search equilibrium model with endogenous turnover and endogenous general human capital formation. We show that search frictions do not distort training decisions if firms and their employees are able to coordinate efficiently, for instance, by using long-term contracts. In the absence of efficient coordination devices there is too much turnover and too little investment in general training. Nonetheless, the number of training firms and the amount of training provided are constrained optimal, and training subsidies therefore reduce welfare.