Dynamic capabilities for service innovation: conceptualization and measurement

Although the development of new services is becoming a major concern for firms throughout the entire economy, there is only little insight in the organizational antecedents of service innovation. It is widely acknowledged that engaging in R&D is relatively uncommon for service providers, but there are also indications that the R&D concept is poorly applicable to service innovation in the first place. Therefore, attention is shifting toward the actual capabilities that allow a firm to source ideas and convert them into marketable service propositions. This paper provides the operationalization of a set of dynamic service innovation capabilities (DSICs) that is general enough to be relevant across different sectoral contexts. While the selected framework is found to consolidate earlier works on the specificities of service innovation, it also captures broad insights on the evolutionary properties of the creation of novel solutions. Thereby, it exemplifies how DSICs can be conceptualized according to the so‐called synthesis approach to service innovation. We operationalize a refined version of such DSICs and develop a measurement scale, using two multi‐industry subsamples from a dataset of 391 Dutch firms. The measured capabilities are found to correlate to different extents with performance measures. Our main contribution, a validated scale for five complementary DSICs, opens the way to comparative analyses regarding firm abilities for creating innovative services.     

A Two-Component Compliance and Ethics Program Model: An Empirical Application to Chilean Corporations

The rise of ethical scandals in the business world urged corporations to allocate time and resources to emphasize the ethical behavior of their managers and employees. The Model of Ethical Behavior in this article has three main assumptions: (1) the institutionalization of a Compliance and Ethics Program Model is done in terms of just two components: one Explicit and the other Implicit, (2) both components have a significant and direct influence over the ethical behavior of employees, which is represented in the model by two variables: Value Consistency and Presence of Ethical Conflicts, and (3) proper ethical behavior is perceived by employees to have a positive impact over the economic results of the firm. Reliable scales are developed to measure all these variables from the data collected by the “Barómetro de Valores y Ética Empresarial^©,” a survey applied in 2009 to 12,321 employees from 54 Chilean corporations. The empirical analysis showed that there are three very distinctive components in the Presence of Ethical Conflicts variable: (1) what the company does that affects the employee, (2) what the company does that affects other people, and (3) what the employee does that affects the company. Finally, the Explicit and Implicit components of a Compliance and Ethics Program are shown to have a significant and positive impact over: (1) Value Consistency in employees’ behavior; (2) the Presence of Ethical Conflicts in organizations; and (3) the perceived importance of ethics as a key factor to improve economic performance.     

New development: Importance of accounts receivable in Colombian state entities and their impact on the preparation of financial information

ABSTRACT

The article shows the importance of accounts receivable in the financial structure of state entities (purely government entities and state companies), and the challenge of standardizing accounting policies in order to prepare a national consolidated balance sheet. The focus is on Colombia. The research is qualitative, based on an analytical link between the nature of state entities, liquidity management and measurement in the preparation of financial information. Evidence is provided about the opportunities and limitations of the accounting regulation frameworks established for the public sector in Colombia. The author identifies future fields of research on public sector accounting and its role in accountability.     

Taking down the wall: Transition and inequality

In this article, we investigate the main determinants of income inequality in the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States during the period 1990–2018. To this end, we address a major methodological challenge that lies at the core of the cross‐country literature on income inequality: the potential endogeneity of income per capita, which is largely ignored by most empirical studies. We adopt a two‐pronged empirical strategy by (1) using trading partners’ weighted average real GDP as an instrumental variable and (2) estimating the model via the two‐stage least squares approach for static models and the generalized method of moments estimator for dynamic models. Our empirical findings are consistent with the Kuznets curve that illustrates a nonlinear relationship between income inequality and the level of economic development. We also find that the redistributive impact of fiscal policy is statistically insignificant and taxation and government spending appear to have the opposing effects on income inequality in transition economies over the sample period.     

Healthcare resource utilization among commercially insured patients with cold agglutinin disease in the United States

Abstract

Aims: Cold agglutinin disease (CAD) is a rare subtype of autoimmune hemolytic anemia associated with increased thromboembolism risk and early mortality. Healthcare resource utilization (HRU) in CAD has not been reported. We aimed to compare HRU of patients with CAD with a matched non-CAD cohort in the United States.

Materials and methods: Patients with CAD were identified from 2006 to 2016 in the Optum-Humedica database using CAD terms in clinical notes and hematologist review. Patients were required to have Integrated Delivery Network records and ≥6 months’ follow-up before and after the first CAD mention date (index date). Patients with CAD were matched to a non-CAD cohort based on demographics. Multivariate analyses assessed inpatient hospitalizations, outpatient visits, emergency room visits, and transfusion use between cohorts 6 months before and 12 months after the index date.

Results: Of 814 patients with CAD, 410 met inclusion criteria and were matched to 3,390 patients without CAD. Mean age of patients with CAD was 68.0 years; approximately 62% were female. In the 12 months after the index date, mean inpatient hospitalizations (0.83 vs. 0.25), outpatient visits (17.26 vs. 6.77), emergency room visits (0.55 vs. 0.32), and transfusion days (1.05 vs. 0.05) were higher for patients with CAD than the matched non-CAD cohort (all p?<?.0001). Similarly, in the 6 months before the index date, patients with CAD had higher HRU than matched patients without CAD for all measures evaluated.

Limitations: Results of this study are based on patient information from the Optum-Humedica database, which is limited to commercially insured patients and may not represent the overall CAD population.

Conclusions: CAD places a substantial burden on patients and healthcare systems. In addition, the high HRU for patients with CAD observed in the 6 months before diagnosis indicates that disease awareness and better diagnostic practices may be needed.     

The value of excess cash and corporate governance: Evidence from US cross-listings

We examine whether and how a US cross-listing mitigates the risk that insiders will turn their firm’s cash holdings into private benefits. We find strong evidence that the value investors attach to excess cash reserves is substantially larger for foreign firms listed on US exchanges and over-the-counter than for their domestic peers. Further, we show that this excess-cash premium stems not only from the strength of US legal rules and disclosure requirements, but also from the greater informal monitoring pressure that accompanies a US listing. Overall, because investors’ valuation of excess cash mirrors how they expect the cash to be used, our analysis shows that a US listing constrains insiders’ inefficient allocation of corporate cash reserves significantly.     

Internationalization Strategies to Replicate in Design and Consulting Engineering Services Firms Related to the Energy Industry

Based on a case study of a Colombian company, HMV Ingenieros Ltda, this article aims to analyze different strategies for expanding consulting and design engineering firms related to the energy industry. Variables taken from internationalization theories, such as the Eclectic paradigm, the Uppsala model, and the five competitive forces, are considered in a longitudinal case study to determine the industry best practices for consulting and design engineering firms. As the focus on these services is relatively new in internationalization and competitiveness studies, this study is believed to be of great interest for research purposes.     

Industry Interactions in Innovation Systems: A Bibliometric Study

Assorted interactions among the agents in a territory are considered as key elements for its scientific, technological, and innovation development, thus fostering the competitiveness of its business fabric and enhancing the quality of life of its residents. In this context, this article analyses this phenomenon, specifically industry relations with innovation system players (academic, scientific, technological, financing, and facilitating agents) through a bibliometric analysis. The methodology used progresses in three stages: construction of the scientific papers search strategy (published in the ISI Web of Knowledge reference database between 2001 and 2014); its implementation; and the corresponding bibliometric analysis, using the Vantage Point® software as a support tool. Among other aspects, the findings present progress achieved in the research field, together with leading authors, organizations, and countries, as well as with cooperative efforts among them, highlighting the status of this topic in Latin America. Finally, the article concludes that industry relations in innovation systems is a topic that is steadily expanding worldwide, with large numbers of cooperative projects among countries. However, it also shows that this study theme is still incipient in Latin America, not just Brazil.     

Introducing management models in service organisations in developed and developing countries

The aim of this paper is to examine the application of the European Foundation for Quality Management model for self-assessment as a means to introduce changes in management in services in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Spain and in Jordan. This paper uses the case study methodology on eight administrative services in a public university in Spain and seven university services in two Jordanian universities, a public and a private institution. The findings show the steps that an administrative service may follow in order to apply the questionnaire approach successfully in a reform process, the difficulties, the benefits and the success factors in both countries and the consequences of the changes introduced. The study provides lessons for decision makers and managers from other universities in developed and developing countries, who wish to introduce the practice of quality management by creative means. This paper extends knowledge on self-assessment (steps, difficulties, benefits, success factors and changes in management) to services in HEIs.     

Cultural boundaries of self-justification and prospect theories in escalation of commitment: a US–Mexico comparison

The interplay among managers' cultural origin (i.e. Mexican vs. the USA), decision context and framing was investigated to test the cultural boundaries of self-justification and prospect theories in escalation of commitment. An experimental design indicated that, although a negative decision frame had a greater impact on escalation of commitment among Mexican managers, a positive frame had a greater impact on escalation of commitment among American managers. Moreover, a pattern indicating that framing had an opposite effect in each country emerged when the decision context was negative. Specifically, when the incoming information is positive, US decision-makers escalate their commitment to a failing course of action, whereas it is negative incoming information that leads to escalation for Mexican decision-makers.