The antecedents of direct management communication to employees in Mauritius

We measure whether, in a developing country, existence of a ‘hard’ strategic human resource management (SHRM) strategy developed at high organizational levels or one designed to enhance employee knowledge inputs and thereby promote employer–employee interdependence (EEIN) is a stronger antecedent of direct communication to employees. We use data from a comprehensive survey of HR practices in Mauritius, one of Africa's most open and successful economies. We find that both SHRM and EEIN are antecedents, but that the latter is stronger in public organizations and in smaller and older companies. We conclude that EEIN is a significant analytic category for explaining management practices especially in a historic sense in this and possibly other developing country contexts.     

An Investigation of Justice in supply chain relationships and their performance impact

Justice is important in improving performance of supply chain relationships. However, the role of justice in improving performance in supply chain relationships is an under-investigated subject in the literature. In studying the joint impact of justice dimensions, the traditional assumption is that the three forms of justice interact with each other in a multiplicative manner. However, this assumption creates a managerial problem as discussed in this paper. We outline a different view of how the justice dimensions interact with one another utilizing the constraining factor model (CFM). We show that the CFM resolves some of the problems arising from the choice of multiplicative interaction of justice measures on performance. Specifically, we demonstrate that an increase in procedural, distributive or interactional justice results in a significant and positive improvement in performance only if the specific justice dimension is the constraining factor in the relationship. Overall, our analysis suggests that all three dimensions are important and a high level of one of the justice elements will not compensate for a low level of another, a view that is put forward by a number of past research studies in justice. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings.     

The institutional embeddedness of local inter-firm networks: a leverage for business creation

There is an increasing concern for the notion of ‘embeddedness’ of economic activity; yet the conceptualization of the concept and its operationalization remain underdeveloped. First, embeddedness may concern, on the one hand, the structure of relations that tie economic actors together (structural embeddedness) and, on the other hand, the social strands supplementing economic strands in each relation (substantive embeddedness). In this paper, a network framework is outlined which proposes several layers or ‘orders’ of embeddedness. Focusing on small firms, the point of departure is individual exchange relationships as personal ties combining economic and social concerns. First-order embeddedness concerns the localized business networks created by combining these dyadic relations. Second-order embeddedness is achieved when considering also the memberships of business persons in economic and social local institutions while third-order embeddedness concerns the special cases where these institutions bridge gaps between firms. The network model is operationalized and applied to a small Swedish industrial (furniture) community, its firms and economic/social institutions. The findings generally support the applicability of the model and demonstrate the supplementarity of different layers/orders of embeddedness. Further research challenges are deduced and implications for practitioners are provided.     

Special Issue

The role of informal venture capital in entrepreneurial process and economic development is increasingly recognized by scholars and policy-makers around the world. Much of the attention that this form of financing has received during the last couple of decades is due to its potential to bridge the regional equity gap. This study is concerned with regional distribution of informal venture capital and factors explaining the allocation of informal investments, and it is based on a large random sample of informal venture capital investors in Sweden. The key findings are that the informal venture capital market in Sweden shows a considerable concentration in metropolitan areas and university cities. Further, investments conducted in these places are allocated in proportion to the new business formation rate and concentration of technology-based firms, while the only factor that provides some explanation for the location of informal investments in the peripheral regions is the proportion of the regional population that is considering starting their own business. Finally, there is a small but significant reallocation of informal venture capital from peripheral regions to metropolitan areas and university cities, which shows that the informal venture capital market in Sweden contributes rather to sustaining the regional equity gap than to bridging it.     

Perceived compensation discrimination against physically disabled people in Andalusia

This study proposes and tests a model that explains the job dissatisfaction of the physically disabled as a result of their general perception that they are treated inequitably by their employer, and their specific perception that they have experienced discrimination in compensation. These three variables have not previously been studied in combination. Using the theoretical framework of organisational justice, we apply structural equation models to test our hypotheses in a sample of 220 employed people with physical disabilities in Andalusia. We show that the perception of discrimination in compensation follows the perception of inequity and mediates the relationship between that perception and job dissatisfaction.     

Critical issues in health and wellness tourism: an exploratory study of visitors to wellness centres on Gran Canaria

The growing commodification of health care and therapeutic landscape, as well as the recent growth in international demand for wellness services and treatments, has led to the proliferation of destinations and enterprises that have selected health and wellness tourism as part of their corporate strategy, including coastal tourism destinations such as the Spanish island of Gran Canaria. This study discusses the commodification of health care and landscape, the relationship between everyday life and going on holiday, as well as the motives for medical and wellness tourism. Wellness tourism development on Gran Canaria is also analysed as a case study that could prove useful for those working on diversification within coastal tourism. An exploratory study of European visitors to wellness centres on the island is also presented. Major findings and contributions relate to socio-demographic characteristics, motives for the visit to the island, the importance of the wellness offer, tourist and travel behaviour and wellness behaviour both at the destination and at the place of residence. Another contribution refers to differences in the use of wellness centres and treatments among visitors, based on their place of origin, gender, age, marital status and job situation. Management and marketing implications are also suggested.     

Technology transfer through imports

Abstract .  We study international technology transfer through R&D spillovers in sixteen countries' manufacturing industries since the early 1970s. The analysis shows that the productivity impact of international technology transfer often exceeds that of domestic technological change, more so in high-technology industries. Moreover, technology transfer is found to be strongly varying across country-pairs and tends to decline in geographic distance, pointing to goods trade as the transfer channel. We directly evaluate this hypothesis, and results suggest that trade is crucial for technology transfer from Germany, France, and the UK, while for the US, Japan, and Canada non-trade channels are more important.     

Technological spillovers from multinational firms

This paper aims to identify genuine technological spillovers from multinational firms (MNEs). To this end, we use data on R&D from MNEs to measure spillovers, while most of the existing literature uses output to measure the foreign presence in an industry (what we call output-based spillovers). In line with the existing literature, we distinguish between horizontal spillovers (i.e., intra-industry linkages) and vertical spillovers (i.e., backward—or downstream—and forward—or upstream—inter-industry linkages). Our results show that the three types of technological spillovers from MNEs are positive, with the horizontal spillovers the larger ones, followed by backward spillovers. The effect of forward spillovers is much smaller in magnitude. Moreover, we find that not controlling for industry size (i.e., technological spillovers from all firms in an industry) leads to underestimating both horizontal and backward spillovers from MNEs, and to overestimating forward spillovers from MNEs. Finally, we find that the distinction between technological and output-based spillovers is of great relevance. The size of backward technological spillovers is approximately 44% of the size of output-based backward spillovers, while for horizontal spillovers both types of spillovers are quite similar. Importantly, output-based forward spillovers are negative while technological forward spillovers are positive.     

Understanding the intellectual structure and evolution of Competitive Intelligence: a bibliometric analysis from 1984 to 2017

ABSTRACT

Competitive Intelligence (CI) is a relatively novel discipline that is generating a growing interest in the field of strategic management. Its novelty, approach and origin have meant that the definition of the CI entails different interpretations and utilities depending on the audience. This research develops a conceptual analysis of CI in literature by quantifying the bibliometric performance indicators, identifying the main authors, countries, journals and research areas and evaluating the intellectual structure and evolution of the discipline using SciMAT as bibliometric analysis software. The bibliometric performance analysis is focused on the citation-based impact of the scientific output, while the science mapping illustrates the evolution of the research themes that build the discipline through the use of bibliometric network analysis techniques. To this purpose, the publications related to CI from 1984 to 2017 available at Scopus have been retrieved (5,275 publications). Finally, it offers a framework to support future researches.     

Level of Economic Development and Income Inequality: Evidence from the Postwar Developed World

Using a recent high-quality panel dataset on income distribution for 19 developed countries, the postwar relation between the level of economic development and income inequality is estimated in terms of several Kuznets-type specifications. Contrary to what one might expect on the basis of Kuznets's hypothesis, inequality does not decline with an increase in income even at such high levels of development, but shows an uninverted-U pattern that is characterized by an initial decline and a subsequent increase in income inequality. The estimates suggest that the position noted for the postwar United States is shared widely in the developed world.