Moving beyond initial success: Promoting innovation in small businesses through high-performance work practices

After firms experience initial success, leaders frequently turn their attention toward producing and selling their products or services more efficiently, likely at the expense of ongoing innovation. This seemingly prudent decision may unintentionally lead firms to become one-hit wonders, effectively limiting their potential success over time. To help prevent a firm's early success from being its only success, small business executives should adopt practices that promote innovation yet don’t come at substantial cost given limited financial resources. Focusing on the positive influences of ability, commitment, and feedback, we propose a system of high-performance work practices (HPWPs) as an economical means of encouraging innovative behavior that allows for efficiency without losing an emphasis on creativity and entrepreneurial action. This article outlines and discusses nine specific HPWPs targeted for smaller businesses that are expected to promote and fully realize the potential of employees as the driving force for innovation and sustained success.     

How to Become Central in an Informal Social Network: An Investigation of the Antecedents to Network Centrality in an Environmental SCM Initiative

Environmental supply chain management (SCM) initiatives often evolve as informal, grassroots efforts that are driven by policy entrepreneurs at lower management levels in an organization. These individuals usually are not in positions of power or authority to convince others to support the initiative. They thus rely on central positions in informal networks to gain access to and influence over other employees to be better able to sell these initiatives. This study examines how individuals arrive at positions of centrality within the networks surrounding environmental SCM initiatives. Linking social network theory and social capital theory with findings from the organizational behavior and environmental arena, the study investigates how an individual's proactive personality and commitment profile—affective, normative, and continuance commitment—might affect network centrality through the mediating role of championing behavior. Investigating the implementation of an environmental SCM initiative at a multinational enterprise, the authors identified a 90‐actor social network surrounding the initiative. The results provide evidence that championing behavior fully mediates the relationship between commitment and network centrality and to a lesser extent between proactive personality and network centrality. These findings suggest that championing behavior can enable an actor to become more central in social networks. Further, the results indicate that in an environmental SCM context, engendering the right type of commitment is a much more important driver of championing behavior than the proactive personalities of individual actors. This finding suggests that even employees who do not have proactive personalities can champion environmental initiatives and become central within the informal networks that surround these initiatives, if they strongly desire to support the initiative and believe that the initiative will lead to positive change.     

E-mail Advertising in Syria: Assessing Beliefs,Attitudes, and Behaviors

The present study aimed at assessing Syrian consumers' beliefs regarding, attitude, and behavioral responses toward e-mail advertising and investigating the relationships among those variables. A cross-sectional survey was conducted and it yielded 273 valid responses. The proposed model was analyzed and tested using a structural equation modelling approach. Our findings showed that both informativeness and entertainment beliefs positively predicted Syrian consumers' attitudes toward e-mail advertising. Additionally, attitude was found to fully mediate the relationship between beliefs regarding and behavioral responses toward e-mail advertising.     

Buyer Loyalty in Business Markets: Can the Firm and Salesperson Get What They Truly Desire?

Purpose: Prior literature has acknowledged multi-foci customer loyalties (loyalty to the selling firm and salesperson-owned loyalty) and argued that both entities (selling firms and salespersons) foster customer loyalty through respective loyalty-capturing efforts (relationship investments). However, scholars have not investigated the influences of different types of interfirm relationship-specific investment (RSI) activities and salesperson behaviors (brand-building and guanxi behavior) on customer loyalty to the selling firm and salesperson-owned loyalty, especially their simultaneous (interaction) effects. The current research attempts to address this issue and examines the impacts that RSIs and salesperson behaviors have on customer loyalties.

Methodology/approach: A survey of seller–buyer dyads was conducted to test the proposed theoretical model and hypotheses. Using 192 dyadic data from customers and salespersons in the Chinese business-to-business contexts, this study specifies the direct and interactive effects of sellers’ RSIs and salespersons’ behaviors on customer loyalties.

Findings: Results indicate that selling firms’ loyalty-capturing efforts—property-based and knowledge-based RSIs—have different influences on two types of customer loyalty. Salespersons’ relationship investments—brand-building and guanxi behaviors—also have asymmetric impacts on customer loyalty. Counterintuitively, salespersons’ loyalty-capturing efforts weaken the relationships between firms’ RSIs and customer loyalties.

Originality/value/contribution: This study specifies different types of relationship investments and examines their respective and interactive impacts on two types of customer loyalty—loyalty to the selling firm and salesperson-owned loyalty. The findings indicate that firms’ and salespersons’ efforts may lead to unexpected and unintended effects on multi-foci loyalties. Therefore, the current study enriches our knowledge about multi-foci loyalty management and relationship marketing.

Practical implications: Because firms’ and salespersons’ loyalty-capturing strategies exert positive direct influences on loyalty to the selling firm and salesperson-owned loyalty, both entities may actively leverage relationship investments’ impact on customer loyalty. However, as the interactive effects derived from concurrent loyalty-enhancing activities are negative, firms need to clearly assess the nature and

characteristics of their relationship with buyers and properly design relationship investments and guide salesperson behaviors. Managers should use property-based RSIs as a primary safeguard of customer loyalty to the selling firm. Meanwhile, internal branding and training programs can help salespersons develop brand building behaviors and better understand the potential unintended outcomes that different behaviors may induce. Aligning a branding goal between the firm and salespersons can benefit both parties while avoiding counter-productive outcomes.     

Retail atmospherics: The impact of a brand dictated theme

Although retail atmospherics has been an active area of study, a glance around a typical mall indicates many retailers still do not actively differentiate their retail environment from competitors. This is likely due to retailers considering the atmospheric elements (lighting, music, etc.) individually and making decisions regarding the elements based on what is “standard” for their customers, merchandise, and format. This approach leads to very little differentiation and fails to consider that today’s consumer is often expecting a more multi-sensory, interactive, and holistic shopping experience. This paper considers an alternative approach, where a brand dictated “theme” is used to guide the manipulation of the atmospheric elements. This allows retail brands to break free from standard design to create a more interactive, immersive, and authentic environment. Outcomes include increases in shopping enjoyment, positive brand attitudes, and brand loyalty. T-tests are utilized to compare the two approaches within both the apparel (Study 1) and restaurant (Study 2) industries.     

Information technology and consumer behavior in travel and tourism: Insights from travel planning using the internet

Sustaining business success hinges upon a firm׳s ability to understand and capitalize on consumer behavior trends. Synthesizing information from a variety of sources, this paper discusses the nature of use of the Internet by American travelers. In general, the adoption of the Internet has reached a level of saturation and some traditional channels such as online travel agencies (OTAs) continue to dominate travel planning. While traditional means of Internet use for travel planning appears to be widespread across all customer segments, higher-order Internet uses (i.e., social media) are now prevalent among some segments, particularly among travelers of Generation Y. Also, there seems to be an important bifurcation in the traveler population in that the traditional online consumers remain unchanged with their pattern of use of online tools while sizable groups are adopting emergent information sources and transaction channels. This article details the particulars of these trends and offers managerial implications and future research directions.     

Consumers' reaction to fair trade motivated price increases

Consumer perception of price increases and their reactions are a topic of great relevance for marketing research and practice. We investigate consumers' acceptance of price increases justified by higher costs due to company's corporate socially responsible activities by conducting two experimental studies. In the first study we examine perceived fairness and intentions following a price increase justified by a fair trade commitment. To assess the green attitude–behavior gap in consumer behavior our second study incorporates a real world experiment to explore actual consumer behavior against stated intentions. Our investigation adds nuance to our understanding of the effects of corporate social responsibility on consumer response to price increases. Our results reveal that a price increase due to a fair trade commitment is perceived as fair and does not have a negative impact on purchase behavior. We contrast our findings with a price increase due to higher taxes and due to profit increase. Our results demonstrate that fair trade justified price increases can skim twice the amount compared to tax justified increases. Furthermore, consumers' actual buying behavior reveals no difference to their stated intentions. Hence, prior research proclaiming an attitude–behavior gap in the context of consumers' socially responsible buying behavior has to be called into question.     

威权型领导是否会引发员工的越轨行为？来自心理契约违背和个体自尊的解释

较之此前的越轨行为,数字经济发展背景下的越轨行为呈现出与数据结合、损害更为严重的特点。基于情感事件理论,文章通过344份企业员工数据,探讨威权型领导对员工越轨行为的作用机制和边界条件,验证了心理契约违背的中介作用,以及个体自尊的调节作用。结果表明：个体自尊既可以调节威权型领导与员工心理契约违背之间的关系,也可以调节心理契约违背与员工越轨行为之间的关系。当个体自尊水平较高时,威权型领导对心理契约违背的正向影响增强,而心理契约违背对员工越轨行为的正向影响减弱。研究结果拓展了对威权型领导影响效应的认识,为理解威权型领导与员工越轨行为的关系提供了新的视角,推动了个体自尊动态研究的发展,并为企业实践提供参考。     

侵权责任法第八十七条的博弈论分析

由于高空抛物侵权责任实际上是侵权人与无辜第三人之间的博弈,通过博弈论这一法经济学分析方法对高空抛物侵权责任进行分析,将无辜第三人分为侵权人之外的可能加害的建筑物使用人和物业公司两种,通过两者的优势比较得出的结论是物业公司赔偿方案比现行高空抛物侵权责任立法更有效率。     

我国医院营销行为中存在的问题及对策分析

本文认为,我国医院营销行为中存在的主要问题有:营销意识淡薄,营销观念滞后;营销组织不健全,营销人才缺乏;市场调研不科学,信息反馈不到位;医疗服务同质化,市场开拓能力较弱;医药费用虚高,医疗服务定价不合理;营销手段单一,宣传力度不够;医疗诚信缺失,过度推销严重等等。文章提出,提高医院营销管理水平,一要树立营销意识,更新营销观念;二要建立健全专职营销组织,积极培养和引进营销专业人才;三要充分发挥营销部门的主导作用,实现医院营销手段和营销主体的有效整合;四要加强诚信教育,完善管理机制,遏制过度推销行为。