Reviving and assessing the Kuznets law on innovation

We apply a panel vector autoregression model to a firm-level longitudinal database to observe the co-evolution of sales growth, employment growth, profits growth and the growth of research and development (R&;D) expenditure. Contrary to expectations, profit growth seems to have little detectable association with subsequent R&;D investment. Instead, firms appear to increase their total R&;D expenditure following growth in sales and employment. In a sense, firms behave ‘as if’ they aim for a roughly constant ratio of R&;D to employment (or sales). We observe heterogeneous effects for growing or shrinking firms, however, suggesting that firms are less willing to reduce their R&;D levels following a negative growth shock than they are willing to increase R&;D after a positive shock.     

Managing strategic change: The duality of CEO personality

Using the five factor model (FFM) of personality, we delineate two distinct roles of CEO personality in managing strategic change: initiating strategic change and determining the performance effects of strategic change implementation. Based on data from 120 small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ecuador, we found that some FFM traits of CEOs influenced initiation only (extraversion and openness), others similarly influenced initiation and performance effects of implementation (emotional stability and agreeableness), and still others had opposing effects on initiation and effective implementation (conscientiousness). These results point to a dual role of CEO FFM of personality in managing strategic change, and they indicate the differences in CEO FFM traits needed to initiate strategic change and those needed to improve the performance effects of strategic change implementation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strategic management archetypes

In the recruitment of managers it is increasingly necessary to attune the choice of candidate to the strategy of the company or its subsidiary. In this paper—coauthored by specialists in the fields of management recruitment and corporate strategy—the authors develop classifications of strategies and of management archetypes. Linking of these classifications leads to an approach that can assist both managers-employees and managers-employers when filling management vacancies. In addition, the approach can be used to assist management development programmes and to relate management planning to strategic planning.     

New Perspectives on Customer Relationships: How Relational Models Influence Customer Experience and How They Are Activated

Abstract

Much research has been conducted into the determinants of customer experience. However, these studies do not include relationship norms as a possible determinant of customer experience. Nevertheless, there are strong indications that the relationship norms used by a customer are an important factor in customer behavior and customer experience. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of relational models on customer experience and to explain possible differences in presence of relational models. This paper describes the results of two studies. The first study focuses on the effects of relational models on customer experience. This first study shows that the type of relationship has a strong influence on customer experience in terms of consumption emotions, customer satisfaction, and recommendation intention. Knowing that differences in the presence of relational models have a strong influence on customer experience, a second study focuses on finding a possible explanation for the differences in the presence of relational models. We hypothesize that differences in the presence of relational models can be explained by how organizations approach their customers and how customers perceive the organization. Especially, the perceived organizational involvement and freedom of choice as perceived by the customer play an important role. The second study, therefore, focuses on the influence of perceived organizational involvement and freedom of choice on relational models. The study shows that organizational involvement and freedom of choice have a significant impact on the activation of relational models. The findings are interesting for organizations that want to improve customer experience.     

Domestic mindsets and early international performance: The moderating effect of global industry conditions

We develop and test a sensemaking model of early internationalization that ties domestic mindsets to international industry conditions and early international performance. Our central contention is that the fit between international industry conditions and domestic mindsets will lead to superior early international performance. We test this contention with a sample of 178 large and established domestic firms from 20 industries. Our results highlight the role of domestic mindsets in the early phases of internationalization and prescribe the types of domestic mindsets needed to maximize early international performance in global, multi‐domestic, and transnational industry conditions. Our results also provide valuable insights to top managers of large and established firms on how to reduce the risk of failure and how to successfully prepare for and cope with international environments by matching their domestic mindsets with international industry environments. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CEO Experiences: Effects on the Choice of FDI Entry Mode*

abstract Drawing on the strategic management and international business literatures, this study examines the relationships between the experiences of newly selected CEOs and their choice of foreign direct investment (FDI) entry modes. Based on a sample
of 380 foreign market entry events involving acquisitions, greenfield investments, and joint ventures, our findings indicate that CEOs with less firm experience preferred acquisitions and greenfield investments to joint ventures and, older CEOs were more likely to opt for joint ventures over greenfield investments. In addition, CEOs with throughput functional experience favoured acquisitions over joint ventures and greenfield investments. Finally, CEO international experience was associated with a greater propensity to choose greenfield investments and acquisitions over joint ventures and also greenfield investments over acquisitions. The implications of the findings from the perspective of theory and managerial practice are discussed, along with possible directions for future research.     

A Study of the Symbolic Aspects of Space Using Nonquantitative Techniques of Analysis

This article has two aims: first, to define and analyse the theoretical implications of the concepts of social urban identity and symbolic urban space (Valera, 1993, 1996, 1997; Valera and Pol, 1994) from within the integrated perspective provided by Environmental Psychology and Social Psychology; and second, to present an empirical study of these concepts based on nonquantitative data collection and analysis. Texts recorded in discussion groups were studied using Contextual Content Analysis (McTavish and Pirro, 1990) to determine the social identity of the inhabitants of a neighbourhood within the city of Barcelona and the meaning given to those spaces which they consider to be symbolic or representative of the neighbourhood. Finally, the results, as well as the advantages of this type of analysis, which are rarely used in Environmental Psychology, are discussed.     

A web-based multi-agent decision support system for a city-oriented management of cruise arrivals

Cruise tourism represents a strategic sector for the economic growth of several countries, impacting on different direct and indirect markets. The arrival of cruises in a city represents an unmissable opportunity to increment its tourist market penetration. Nevertheless, the management of an unforeseen number of passengers that need to visit a city in a short time may also have a negative impact, so reducing the expected benefits. This is mainly due to the difficulty of taking the right decisions when organizing the dispatching of passengers in different city areas since these decisions depend on several conditions that can also dynamically occur, and may have an impact on different city sectors. Here, a decision support system is proposed to help involved stakeholders to make decisions to plan passengers' transportation in the city and also to evaluate the consequences for the city if the plans are really implemented. The system is designed according to the multi-agent paradigm, so allowing one to easily manage the necessary coordination among different entities and data sources that are usually distributed and need to cooperate to provide useful suggestions. In addition, a prototype of a web-based application is provided to end users, so that it can run on heterogeneous platforms, and it can be easily accessed by different users from different devices, as it is the case for the considered application domain.