Combining research techniques to improve quality service in hospitality

Hospitality research includes many studies that combine and revisit the quantitative–qualitative debate, and review the arguments for and against using mixed-methods. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the application of qualitative methodologies based on the combination of techniques which also include quantitative elements in addition to those pertaining to qualitative techniques. The research aims to specifically identify the most important managerial factors which, from the point of view of hotel chain executives, serve to improve the quality of the service they provide. The techniques used are concept mapping and qualitative optimization, both of which are qualitative methodologies though they include quantitative elements to overcome the subjectivity deficits typically found in qualitative methodologies. In addition, the combination of both techniques leads to greater precision of the results obtained. Our methodological proposal combines concept mapping with qualitative optimisation, thereby improving the prioritisation and hierarchical ordering of the ideas obtained and structured. Instead of working with each cluster’s average score in terms of importance (as defined within the concept mapping model), our contribution is based on prioritising these based on their distance to the optimal reference. This allows for experts’ evaluations of each idea in terms of its importance to not be strictly quantitative, that is, the experts are not obligated to assign numbers to their evaluations; rather, they can assess ideas based on qualitative labels.     

R&D Investment timing,default and capital structure

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - This paper investigates the interaction between R&D investment timing, probability of default, and capital structure. In particular we are...     

Motherhood in migration: schools as acculturation agents

ABSTRACT

Motherhood roles lie at the intersection of gender, professional, family, and social identities and are highly contextualized in culture, making them particularly relevant for acculturation success. We provide an empirical example of how schools act as acculturation agents, using the experiences of career-oriented migrant mothers whose children attend elite private schools in Santiago, Chile. This study contributes to consumer acculturation research and to research on matricentric feminism, which positions mothers’ concerns as the starting point for theories, politics, and practices of empowerment. We employ Turner's notion of root paradigms to discuss how schools maneuver their unique institutional agentic power, acculturating career-oriented migrant mothers and their families into a cultural framework of female domesticity and intensive mothering.     

Risk Judgments in Climbers: The Role of Difficulty,Meteorological Conditions,Confidence and Appropriate Tools

Risk perception among climbers is a factor that can contribute to injury prevention. The purpose of this study was to analyze how expert climbers make judgments about potential risks to their safety. Specifically, we studied how climbers combine the available information on environmental conditions and personal resources in order to arrive at risk judgments. Sixteen distinct scenarios were presented to 134 climbers, and their risk perception related to each situation was recorded. Findings revealed that all variables were highly relevant for determining risk perception. When all variables were present at the same time, confidence was found to minimize the perception of risks caused by environmental conditions, such as difficult climbing. We conclude that an understanding of how expert climbers combine relevant information in order to judge risk can offer ways for them to take more effective preventive measures against injuries, specifically to identify hazards and their combined effects.     

(Un)expected retirement and the consumption puzzle

In this work we revisit the retirement consumption puzzle using Italian panel data. As emphasised in the literature, the observed consumption drop might be due to unexpected wealth shocks at retirement which modify optimal consumption plans. Using an Euler equation approach, we test the impact of unexpected retirement on the consumption patterns of individuals around the age of retirement by using the panel component of the Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). This dataset contains information on the expected age of retirement which can be used to distinguish between expected and unexpected retirement. Furthermore, we investigate the heterogeneous behaviour of individuals with different levels of education and wealth. We find evidence of a consumption drop at retirement especially for low educated people and individuals with little wealth. The consumption drop at retirement, on average, does not seem to be a response to unexpected retirement. Disaggregating our sample, we find that the consumption drop persists among low educated people with little wealth available, irrespective of whether retirement was expected or not. Highly educated people, conversely, do smooth their consumption, unless they have low wealth and are hit by an unexpected shock at retirement in which case they are forced to drop consumption.     

Collusive Networks in Market‐Sharing Agreements in the Presence of an Antitrust Authority

This paper examines how the presence of an antitrust authority (AA) affects market‐sharing agreements made by firms. These agreements prevent firms from entering each other’s markets. The set of agreements defines a collusive network, which is pursued by antitrust authorities. This paper shows that in the absence of an AA, a network is stable if its alliances are large enough, and in the presence of an AA, more competitive structures can be sustained through bilateral agreements. Antitrust laws may have a procompetitive effect, as they give firms in large alliances more incentives to cut their agreements at once.     

The impact of different kinds of knowledge for the internationalization process of Born Globals in the biotech business

This study explores how different kinds of knowledge of founders and managers at Born Globals are related to the firms’ discovery and exploitation of foreign market opportunities. Based on data from eight biotech Born Globals, we dichotomized Born Globals into two subsets: Born Industrials and Born Academics. The study shows that the founders’ and managers’ different combinations of technological and international knowledge impact the firms’ proactive or reactive behavior in discovering foreign market opportunities. The results indicate that different kinds of Born Globals follow different internationalization processes and that Born Globals, therefore, should not be analyzed as a homogenous group, which has been the common perspective in previous research.     

The Role of a Firm’s Net Cash Payouts in Leland’s (1994) Model

We study the effects of introducing payouts on corporate debt and optimal capital structure in a structural credit risk model à la Leland (1994) . We find that increasing the payout parameter not only affects the endogenous bankruptcy level, which is decreased, but modifies the magnitude of a change on the endogenous failure level as a consequence of an increase in risk‐free rate, corporate tax rate, riskiness of the firm and coupon payments. This simple analytical framework is able to capture realistic insights about optimal leverage, spreads and default probabilities more in line with historical norms (if compared to Leland’s results) and closer to predictions obtained through more sophisticated models.