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The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare different groups of customers’ perceptions (i.e. stayers, switchers, and heavy switchers) of several loyalty antecedents such as satisfaction, trust, service quality, switching costs, marketing communication, and loyalty itself.

This study was carried out based on data collected through a questionnaire from 353 telecommunication services users in Portugal and using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and analysis of variance.

The three types of customers – stayers, switchers, and heavy switchers – clearly differ among themselves. Stayers differ from switchers regarding their communication efforts perceptions, and from heavy switchers in their loyalty, satisfaction, and trust levels. Switchers differ from heavy switchers in their loyalty levels.

Future research should examine differences between customers taking into account the impact of their personality, price sensitiveness, and orientation toward the adoption of new technologies.

As there are several differences among stayers, switchers, and heavy switchers, companies should not only recognize the heterogeneity of their customer base, but also target their marketing efforts accordingly.

This study is one of the few identifying groups of customers perception’s toward service providers. It also complements previous research by splitting them intro three different groups and by analyzing their behaviors across a set of previously unexamined marketing variables.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the applicability of the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) as an effective tool for decreasing failure risk in the early phase of the new product development (NPD), which adds to existing literature on the application of FMEA in NPD.

Through the application of action research (AR) methodology, it was possible to develop a case study examining the use of FMEA to decrease NPD risk in an early phase of NPD execution.

The importance and immediate gains of identifying NPD failures support FMEA's usefulness for NPD risk decrease. Moreover, its user-friendliness, timeliness and cost advantages facilitate the introduction of FMEA in the early phase of NPD execution.

FMEA is a well-known method used in manufacturing companies to identify and correct failures in products, processes and systems. This article explores the lack of practice-oriented evidence on the use of FMEA in the early phase of NPD execution and provides support to its applicability and effectiveness.

The existing literature suggests that multinational corporations (MNCs) divest subsidiary units whenever they cease to enjoy the advantages of ownership, location or internalization. However, not all MNCs divest under these conditions. This paper aims to explore the factors that contributed to the survival of a particular subsidiary and prevented it from being divested.

The analysis focuses on an individual subsidiary of a large foreign MNC in the electronics industry, which divested other subsidiaries from Portugal. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews.

The subsidiary’s diverse customer base, specificity and high level of efficiency, the local advantages, the existing governmental agreements and the parent MNC’s previous unsuccessful relocation experiences seem to have contributed to the survival of the subsidiary.

Although the results of the case study are not generalizable to the entire population of firms, the featured case study is a rare survival success story in the Portuguese electronics industry.

The proposed framework may offer public authorities measures to create conditions to encourage firms to retain their investment in a particular site. For corporate strategists, new perspectives on subsidiary survival are provided.

This paper is one of the few qualitative studies in the field of subsidiary survival. The results offer an integrative framework on which factors contribute to the survival of a subsidiary located on a comparatively unfavorable labor cost location and support the role of the organizational learning and of previous failed relocation experiences and relocation barriers when a parent MNC decides whether to retain a unit.

Recent years witnessed an exponential growth of the Portuguese real estate market. This growth has generated the need to implement effective management control tools to allow companies to improve their planning and monitoring of activities. Drawing on the agency and goal-setting theories, this paper explores the impact of companies' participative budgeting processes on employee performance in the real estate industry.

For this purpose, a questionnaire was developed and a sample of 116 employees that participate in the budgeting process of real estate organizations collected, with data analyzed using structural equation modelling.

The results show that participation in the budgeting process has an impact on employees' performance through budget goal commitment, trust and job satisfaction. However, no statistical support was found for the role of budgetary slack in this process.

This study was conducted in a single industry and is based on self-reported measures of employees that participate in the budgeting process of their organizations.

The findings highlight the need for real estate organizations to involve their staff in the elaboration of budgets, contributing to a higher level of commitment to established goals, job satisfaction, trust and performance. Real estate organizations should provide adequate working conditions, foster their employees' autonomy and recognize their work.

The findings encourage real estate companies to extend the participation in the budget process to employees and, ultimately, to mitigate the probability of budget failure.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an evolving concept which is increasingly being adopted by companies with the purpose of creating sustained organizational growth. However, while the impact of CSR practices on employees' behaviors and attitudes has been recognized over the years, the relationship between CSR practices and employee performance remains underexplored.

Drawing on social identity theory and using the partial least squares structural equation method, this research examines the impact of CSR practices on employees' performance in a sample of 171 employees belonging to the construction industry.

The findings do not support the existence of a direct relationship between employees' perception of CSR and their performance; instead, they indicate that this relationship is mediated by job satisfaction and organizational trust.

The data concerns employees' self-reported measures on their perceived CSR and the study was conducted in a single industry.

Adopting CSR initiatives in company strategies is worthy as the perceptions of employees and their performance is positively influenced by their organization's CSR activities. Managers should properly communicate and involve internal stakeholders in socially responsible practices to increase their awareness.

This article analyzes the impact of employees' perception of CSR on employees' performance through the roles of employee organizational trust and job satisfaction as mediating variables in a highly socially pressured industry such as construction.

This paper investigates the effect of the fit between supply and demand uncertainty (SDU) and supply chain responsiveness (SCR) (SC fit) on business and innovation performance in Brazilian companies.

The study presented an analysis carried out on an empirical study based on a sample of 150 manufacturing companies. Business and innovation performance of companies with different types of SC fit ( high–high and low–low fits) and misfit (positive and negative) are compared and discussed.

The results indicated that SC fit had a positive effect on both business and innovation performance. Further analyses suggested that companies with SC fit present similar business performance, independent of the level of SDU that characterizes the environment where they compete, while companies in environments with higher levels of uncertainty tend to present superior innovation performance. Companies with positive and negative misfit present similar performance.

An analysis of the literature showed that there is no consensus when it comes to the definitions and measurements of SC fit. The paper investigates the effects of SC fit on business and innovation performance, while previous empirical studies have mainly addressed its impact on financial performance. Moreover, this study compares the effects of two types of fit and two types of misfit and assesses SC fit in Brazilian manufacturing companies, analyzing the context of an under-researched reality.

The paper aims to explore the relationship between gamification and design thinking approach to innovation in the context of the early stage of innovation process (ESoIP). Design thinking is conceptually appropriate to support innovative, complex and uncertain business environments. Still, its practices have demonstrated some difficulties in managing the ESoIP, such as lack of structure and clarity around goals. This paper argues that gamification can enhance and complement design thinking in the management of firms' ESoIP.

Given the need to achieve a deeper understanding of the linkages between gamification and design thinking, the paper follows an exploratory theory building approach for this complex reality of innovation. The case study research method was conducted in three firms (Trivalor, Novartis and Microsoft) that applied a gamification approach to the ESoIP.

The results demonstrate that gamification has the power to enhance and complement design thinking practices by getting tasks more organized and improving coordination and employees' engagement in the innovation process.

The paper provides critical managerial contributions on how firms can use gamification to improve design thinking approaches to ESoIP. Its consequences are also crucial to innovation, R&D, and product/service development managers interested in using gamification to support the ideation and concept development of new solutions complementing traditional design thinking approaches.

Merging the gamification and design thinking approaches is novel, particularly on firms' ESoIP. The paper provides a comprehensive discussion of design thinking shortcomings and the role that gamification can play in overcoming them.

The importance of innovation as a generator of competitive advantage and the collaborative nature of this process are recurring themes in the literature. This paper aims to contribute to the improvement of knowledge about the relationship between supply chains and the innovation process by means of a systematic literature review.

The method used consists of the identification, selection, analysis and synthesis of existing research on the subject and aims to ensure that the review is transparent, auditable and replicable. This paper presents the analysis of 94 papers from 37 journals and the major contributions are explored.

The identification and analysis of relevant articles showed the complexity, timeliness and the wide-ranging character of the theme. The analysis of articles allowed the identification of facilitators of the innovation process, as well as five approaches applicable to supply chains to drive the innovation process. From these analyses, a model synthesising the main practices identified for improving innovation performance is presented.

When carrying out literature reviews, the selection of articles might be considered subjective. To circumvent this limitation, the papers have been assessed by three researchers.

The results presented can be applied in the decision-making process by managers in the areas of innovation and supply chain.

This paper synthesises knowledge involving the relationships between supply chains and the innovation process. The analysis is based on quantitative and qualitative criteria.

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing research on industrial divestment in order to identify the reasons for it, the process whereby it is achieved, and the outcomes of industrial sell-offs and closures. The study reports the main findings that have gained acceptance in the literature, gaps in the research and potential directions for future research.

A three stage systematic literature review protocol was used to conduct this review. The results are organized according to an “Antecedents – Process – Outcomes” framework.

The traditional accounts of industrial divestment have been framed in terms of firms’ weak performance and over-diversification as antecedents to divestment, leading to corporate governance issues. However, the list of antecedents of industrial divestment is more extensive. There is no consensus over the impact of some factors on divestments, as is the case of firm and unit size. The results are not conclusive as to whether firm performance improves after divesting.

Future research should analyze the relationship between the antecedents of investment and divestment. The divestment process is not well studied and more studies that engage in theory building are needed, namely, on primary data and examining the short-term and long-term impacts of divestment on performance.

This review offers a comprehensive synthesis of the antecedents, the process and outcomes of divestment through sell-offs and closures. Factors such as environmental conditions and the entry mode strategy are important in determining the divestment of subsidiaries. Divestments may be positively or negatively regarded by shareholders, depending on the context of the firm. Promoting managerial changes facilitates divestment.

This paper synthesizes knowledge of the main reasons as to why firms completely dispose of their assets, contributing to this under-researched field.

This paper aims to investigate supply chain (SC) strategies, analyzing the adoption of lean, agile, leagile and traditional SC strategies with respect to product characteristics, environmental uncertainty, business performance and innovation performance.

The paper presents an empirical analysis carried out on a sample of 329 companies. Cluster analysis was applied, based on lean and agile SC characteristics, to identify patterns among different SC strategies. One-way analysis of variance of different constructs by types of SC clusters was conducted to test the research hypotheses.

Cluster analysis indicates that the companies studied adopt four types of SC strategies – lean, agile, leagile and traditional. The differences between the clusters are identified and discussed, highlighting that companies adopting a leagile SC strategy present the highest performance, while those that adopt a traditional SC present the lowest; companies adopting an agile SC compete in the most complex and dynamic environments, while companies with a lean SC present a clear predominance of functional rather than innovative products.

This paper provides empirical evidence of the antecedents and consequences of the adoption of different SC strategies. As a limitation, the results are based on a survey research with a limited sample size.

Based on the analysis of the relationship between constructs that have not been addressed previously, the paper adds to the knowledge regarding the role of SC strategies, as well as the antecedents and consequences of their adoption. The results may support managers in the difficult task of choosing the “right” SC strategy.