Effect of customer orientation and entrepreneurial orientation on innovativeness: Evidence from the hotel industry in Switzerland

While researchers have explored the relationship between customer orientation, entrepreneurship and innovativeness with business performance in different organizations, few such studies exist on the hotel industry. This current work investigates the potential influences of these variables on hotel industry performance. Data for this study was collected through personal questionnaires collected from 156 hotel managers and owners from German and French speaking cantons located in Switzerland in order to examine the interrelation between innovativeness, customer orientation, entrepreneurship and service business performance dimensions (i.e., profit goal achievement, sales goal achievement and ROI achievement). The findings support aspects of prior research, but also provide some new insights by exploring customer orientation and innovativeness simultaneously and revealing how these factors impact upon the performance of the Swiss hotel industry. In the light of existing literature, limitations and future research directions are subsequently addressed.     

Tourism Education in Austria and Switzerland

SUMMARY

Both Austria and Switzerland are small countries with a long tradition hosting tourists. Irrespective of high levels of economic development, the two countries also have high levels of tourism intensity when measured either in terms of number of tourists per native population or in terms of tourism receipts per population (e.g., per gross national product). Consequently, both countries also display a long tradition and evolution in their development of systems of tourism education and training albeit under differing market conditions and pressures. Both countries provide similar products like in the field of cultural tourism and alpine tourism. The tourism structure is also comparable. Both countries are dominated by family owned small and medium size businesses. However, their political structures are very different. This paper shows how each country under the three forces of labour market pressures and industry requirements, on the one hand and tourism education policy initiatives on the other has evolved two slightly different tourism education systems. Furthermore, an attempt was made to provide, based on the discussion in the first part of the paper, a more general explanation with respect to the response of tourism schooling/training supplies to varying conditions in tourism product markets, tourism employment and labour market systems, public choice decisions and general economic conditions. Finally, the paper discusses the paradigmatic shift (i.e., structural change) of tourism factor and product markets from the “Old to New Tourism” and discusses its implications for new types of tourism schooling and training in these two countries.     

Wolves' contribution to structural change in grazing systems among swiss alpine summer farms: The evidence from causal random forest

The return of wolves to Swiss mountains and the damage they cause to sheep and goat herds in the region have raised concerns about a consequent wave of farm closures. In this paper, we examine the relationship between wolf attacks and the decline of Alpine summer farms, a specific high-altitude farm type. We collected farm structure data and monitoring data on wolf attacks between 2004 and 2021 and analysed them using a causal random forest method, enabling a detailed analysis of the relation between wolf attacks and the number of different types of Alpine summer farms at a regional level. The results show that the farming systems are unaffected by incidental and infrequent wolf attacks, but that a high number of wolf attacks in a region is related to faster decrease in number of grazing systems where sheep are most vulnerable to such attacks. In contrast, systems that allow for better herd protection tend to show an increase in areas with frequent wolf attacks.     

The effects of national culture on ERP implementation: a study of Colombia and Switzerland

This research explores the effects of national culture, as understood by Hofstede's concepts of power distance, individualist/collectivist and uncertainty avoidance. The study is based on case studies of ERP implementation in Colombia and Switzerland and interviews and document analysis methods were employed. Evidence is found on the ways the three dimensions impact on ERP implementation. It is concluded that although the two countries differ markedly in each dimension, there was no evidence of specific individualist/collectivist effects. The implications of this are discussed.     

Exchange rate and foreign GDP elasticities of Swiss exports across sectors and destination countries

This article uses a detailed breakdown of Swiss trade flows to identify how the impact of the two main determinants of Switzerland’s exports – foreign demand and the real exchange rate – varies across sectors and export destinations. Our main findings are that (i) both foreign demand and exchange rate elasticities vary substantially across both export sectors and export destinations. (ii) Foreign demand trends are more important for structural considerations than the exchange rate. This is due to the fact that exports of the two largest export sectors are relatively sensitive to long-run foreign demand developments while they are relatively insensitive to changes in the exchange rate. (iii) The sectoral structure of Switzerland’s exports has shifted towards goods that have a lower short-run demand elasticity and a higher long-run demand elasticity. Goods exports are thus less influenced by business cycle fluctuations while they benefit more from long-term growth trends. (iv) The export share of sectors with a relatively low exchange rate elasticity has increased. However, this result is mainly driven by the strong rise in exports of chemicals and pharmaceuticals as well as precision instruments and watches, which are also the two important sectors responsible for the Swiss trade surplus.