Editorial

Citation

Larraza-Kintana, M. (2017), "Editorial", Management Research, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 146-147. https://doi.org/10.1108/MRJIAM-03-2017-0740

Another step forward

Dear colleagues,

You have in your hands the second issue of Volume 15 of Management Research. This second issue of 2017 contains five interesting research articles. The research articles deal with different but complementary topics. The paper by Goussevskaia, Arruda and Lótfi develop a longitudinal inductive study to trace the process of capability transformation in an acquisition of a medium-size entrepreneurial firm by a larger corporation. Their goal is to better understand the role played by individual-level cognitive, motivational and behavioral mechanisms in the success of the integration process that follows acquisitions. They observe successful integration, and the subsequent performance depends on a continuous interplay of knowledge leveraging and interest alignment mechanisms. They further show which managerial skills and actions contribute to the integration capability. Gomes, Paula and Macedo-Soares also use a qualitative approach to analyze firm strategic alliances. These authors focus their attention on the shopping center industry in Brazil. This industry grew fast in the past decade but now is showing signs of slowing down. In this context, they seek to understand the role of alliances in mitigating the structural threats this industry is facing in Brazil. More specifically, Gomes, Paula and Macedo-Soares analyze the alliance network of two leading Brazilian companies in the shopping center industry. They observe that these networks and the activity of firms in creating and maintaining them are essential to cope with some of the structural industry threats.

The paper of Proenca, Torres and Sampaio focuses also in the service sector to examine the influence of structural empowerment, psychological empowerment and intrinsic motivation on perceived customer satisfaction in contact centers. Unlike the previous two cases, these authors use a quantitative approach based on the information provided by a survey conducted among 703 employees of a contact center. Structural equation models reveal that structural empowerment results in higher levels of perceived customer satisfaction through psychological empowerment and intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, structural empowerment effect on psychological empowerment is mediated by intrinsic motivation. These results provide further light and insights on the precise cognitive mechanisms that link human resource management (HRM) policies and employee behavior and its ultimate effect on company performance measures. In this vein, this article provides valuable ideas for both scholars and practitioners interested in people management issues.

The article by Gur, Tzafrir, Zatzick, Dolan and Iverson also deals with HRM-related issues in a service sector. More particularly, these authors develop a tool for measuring antecedents of customer aggressive behavior (CAB) in health-care service settings. They conduct four complementary studies applying different techniques to develop and validate a CAB scale. In total, 18 items were identified across five dimensions: personal characteristics; uncomfortable environment; aggressive role models; reinforcement of aggressive behavior; and aversive treatment. The development of this measurement tool is of great interest not only for health-care manager but also for managers whose employees may face situations of CAB, as it allows them to evaluate and proactively manage CAB and its implications within their organization.

Finally, Mallon develops a theoretical model that analyzes the factors that increase the likelihood that financial stakeholders will commit resources to support strategic transformation. He observes that moral legitimacy, pragmatic legitimacy and unfamiliarity with the firm directly affect the likelihood that financial stakeholders will commit resources to strategic transformation. Cognitive legitimacy or familiarity amplifies the positive effect of pragmatic legitimacy on resource commitment, and pragmatic legitimacy lessens the negative effect of unfamiliarity with the firm on resource commitment. These propositions outline a model that may be of great help for practitioners trying to secure the support of financial stakeholders.

It has been already two years since we started to work at the editorial room of Management Research. During these two years, we have witnessed the steady growth and progression of the journal that has reached different milestones. It started increasing the number of readers and users, not only from Ibero-American countries but also from countries all around the world. The journal then increased its presence in different data bases and journal rankings such as ABI Inform, EBSCO, ERA, Qualis or Latindex. Few months ago, we announced that the journal had been included in Thomson Reuters’ Emerging Sources Citation Index. Just recently, we proclaimed that Management Research, the official journal of the Ibero-American Academy of Management, had been accepted onto SCOPUS. Being part of this prestigious ranking is a great achievement and will be instrumental to sustain the journal’s future growth and expansion.

This progression and achievements would have not been possible without the commitment and work of the reviewers, the members of the Editorial Advisory Board and, of course, of the authors that trusted us and submitted their work to the journal. The quality of the articles they wrote was central to attract the interest of readers from all over the globe and, therefore, to explain the growth experienced by Management Research in the past two years. We want to express our gratitude to all of you and let you know that this editorial team will continue working to provide the highest possible visibility to your work. In this vein, we are working on several areas to move the journal to the next level. Among them, the publication of special issues (a special issue on the location decisions of franchises guest edited by Professor Fernando Robles from George Washington University is going to be published this year) or the development of issues centered on papers written by key scholars. A first example of this format was published in the last issue of 2016 based. A paper about decision making in family firms written by Gomez-Mejia and Martin was complemented by commentaries from leading scholars in the field of family firms. You can access the articles of this special issue and previous issues in our web site: www.emeraldinsight.com/journal/mrjiam

We continue working to offer to our community a selection of high-quality research help to enlighten our understanding of central issue is management. If you want to contribute to this endeavor, please send your research to Management Research. We will be glad to review and consider it for publication in our journal.