Leadership marketing: an exploratory study

In an era when collaboration is the key to business prosperity, the ability to develop one truly coherent and agile brand lived by its employees and delivered to external stakeholders has become extremely challenging. Unity between the internal brand and a company’s external image, when change is the only constant, has almost ceased to exist. The marketing function is frequently underemphasised at board level and its role is often devalued in leading organisational change. This paper concerns how marketing can partner with organisational leadership for a mutually beneficial exchange of skills and capabilities to be able to reinvent organisations rapidly enough to cope with shifts in the external business environment and create a sustainable future for the business. This paper explores the concept of “leadership marketing” from an interpretivist perspective which challenges the conventional view of marketing and leadership as two separate fields and offers a holistic approach for business management and brand alignment.     

Influence of perceived risk on entrepreneurial desirability and feasibility: multidimensional approach for nascent entrepreneurs

This study examines the influence of perceived risk on entrepreneurial desirability and feasibility as determining factors in the intention to start a self-owned business. Specifically, a multidimensional approach is taken to examine the different types of risks associated with entrepreneurship: economic, social, time, health and personal risks. The results obtained from a sample of 376 new entrepreneurs in Mexico confirm the fact that the perceived desirability and feasibility have a significant and positive effect on the intentions to start their own company. On one hand, the empirical evidence obtained shows a heterogenic effect of the risk dimensions associated with entrepreneurship on the perceived desirability and feasibility in their behaviour. Therefore, it was found that the economic risk associated with entrepreneurship has a negative effect on the feasibility to start a business, but does not significantly influence the desirability of that behaviour. On the other hand, a significant effect from the risk related to health is not seen on desirability and feasibility, but the negative influence of personal risk is empirically supported for both variables. Finally, the results obtained related to social and time risk are contradictory. Social risk negatively influences entrepreneurship desirability, but a positive effect is observed on the feasibility to create a business. For its part, the empirical evidence obtained does not support any effect of the time risk on the perceived feasibility of starting a business, but there is a positive on entrepreneurship desirability. These results, which are contrary to the traditional concept of risk as a barrier to entrepreneurship, are justified by the vocational nature of this behaviour and by the social sacrifices that are sometimes necessary to be able to make a business work.     

Effects of service orientation on job embeddedness in hotel industry

This research aims to develop and analyze a model that depicts work engagement (WE) as a mediator of the relationship between job embeddedness and service orientation. Specifically, the model examines external environmental factors (EEFs) as moderator of the effects of service orientation and job embeddedness in the hospitality industry. All data used for this study were gathered in Iran from hotels frontline employees with a two-weeks’ time lag. These relationships mentioned above were analyzed using AMOS 22.0. It was discovered in the results that WE was indeed a partial mediator and that EEFs indeed moderated the effects of service orientation on job embeddedness with adequate empirical support. The implications of the findings for the managers, the study limitations, and future research recommendations were also discussed.     

Technological Innovation Drivers in Rural Small Food Industries in Iran

The first step in devising the best incentives to support innovation is to investigate factors that affect the development of innovations. This article contributes to exploring such factors in small food industries in the rural areas of Tehran province, Iran. Using a census sampling method, 111 managers of 60 active firms were interviewed. The results showed that in general the level of technological innovation is low in the studied firms. The managers do not find the technological changes successful in bringing benefit to their firms. Even though correlation analysis indicated a complex association matrix between independent variables, only the firm's capacity of production was associated with technological innovation as a dependent variable. Furthermore, the regression analysis revealed that factors which influence technological innovation are the firm's age, formal research and development, fixed capital, and capacity of production. The results of this study were used to derive practical suggestions for managers and policymakers to increase technological innovation in the studied industry.     

素质为本人性提升全面发展——对高职院校加强思想品德和人文素质教育的思考

近20年来,我国高等职业教育得到了飞速发展,已进入内涵建设的关键时期.当前,我国的高职教育理念存在误区,普遍存在重技能、轻素质,重智育、轻德育的“偏科”现象,加强思想品德和人文素质教育势在必行.高职院校必须转变教育观念,把“做事”和“做人”结合起来,提高学生的综合素质,实现“能力本位”向“素质本位”转变,从而真正培养出德、智、体、美全面发展的高素质技术技能型人才.     

我国小额贷款公司可持续发展的探讨

小额贷款公司的出现和发展,避免了金融机构小额信贷业务的诸多弊端。为确保其可持续发展,仍需明确小额贷款公司的宗旨与定位,要满足农民具有个性化、区域化的融资需求,扩大和加强基层信贷员队伍建设,切实提高农民的还款率、实现公司的盈利,从而更好地为低收入农民提供金融服务,在条件成熟时允许盈利的小额贷款公司吸纳存款。     

Value Orientations, Income and Displacement Effects, and Voluntary Contributions

Identifying the value orientations of subjects participating in market or non-market decisions by having them participate in a ring game may be helpful in understanding the behaviour of these subjects. This experiment presents the results of changes in the centre and the radius of a value orientations ring in an attempt to discover if the measured value orientations exhibit income or displacement effects. Neither significant income effects nor displacement effects are identified. An external validity check with a voluntary contribution game provides evidence that value orientations from rings centred around the origin of the decision-space explain significant portions of voluntary contributions while value orientations from displaced rings do not.     

Regional variations in entrepreneurial cognitions: Start-up intentions of university students in Spain

Empirical research has recently paid considerable attention to the role of environmental factors in explaining regional variations in entrepreneurial activity. However, cognitive models have not usually included these factors in their analyses. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to identify some of the environmental cognitive elements that may explain regional differences in start-up intentions. Thus, an entrepreneurial intention model is developed, theoretically based on the planned behaviour approach, institutional economic theory and social capital theory. The empirical analysis is carried out using structural equation techniques over a sample of 549 final year university students from two Spanish regions (Catalonia and Andalusia). Results confirm that valuation of entrepreneurship in each region helps explain regional differences in entrepreneurial intentions. As expected, social valuation of the entrepreneur was higher in the more developed region (Catalonia), positively affecting perceived subjective norms and behavioural control. In Andalusia, the influence of perceived valuation of the entrepreneur in the closer environment was more important, affecting attitude towards the behaviour and subjective norms. These results explain some of the differences in the pool of potential entrepreneurs in each region. They also justify the need by public-policy decision-makers to promote more positive entrepreneurial values in relatively backward regions.     

国有企业工作经历、企业家才能与企业成长

人力资本的高效配置和企业家才能的充分发挥关系到经济的可持续发展,制度建设如果能促进资源合理流向具有企业家才能的企业家,就能创造更多就业和社会财富。基于全国1997—2016年的私营企业调查数据,本文考察企业家的国有企业工作经历对企业成长的影响。研究结果显示,企业家的国有企业工作经历使得企业在市场扩张和盈利能力等方面表现更好,带来了更高水平的企业成长。机制讨论表明,企业家行为带有明显的烙印效应,国有企业工作经历为企业家带来了更多的社会资本和更高的公司治理水平,从而促进了企业成长。为了缓解由于选择性偏误等带来的内生性,本文采用倾向得分匹配、处理效应模型、代理变量、双差分模型等方法进行处理,结论仍然稳健。中国经济要向资源配置效率改善型模式转变,企业家才能的发挥至关重要,国有企业改革不仅应注重产权等方面的改革,同时也要充分重视国有企业改革带来的人力资本溢出效应。在不断深化国有企业改革的大背景下,本文从企业家才能培育和人力资本配置效应的角度考察国有企业改革问题,倡导国有企业改革进程中进一步营造企业家才能发挥的空间和制度安排,提高人力资本配置效应,从而促进中国经济健康可持续发展。