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The construction industry has traditionally been a male-dominated economic sector. Barely 10% of managers are women. On the other hand, this sector is considered an engine of the economy. For these reasons, it is important to examine the influence of women CEOs on financial variables of firms in the construction industry.

The empirical study is carried out using a sample from the Iberian Balance Sheet Analysis System record (“Sistema de Análisis de Balances Ibérico”, SABI). The sample includes 8,492 Spanish companies from the construction sector. The methodology employed is a three-stage least squares (3SLS) analysis. This methodology controls for the endogeneity of explanatory variables. It is employed in accordance with the peculiar characteristics of the sample, which includes data for only one year.

The results show that firms with a woman CEO have a lower level of debt, whatever the terms of the maturity of the debt are. In contrast to most previous evidence, firms managed by women are found to be less profitable.

The paper gives evidence of the influence of the CEO's gender on the performance (return and risk) of a firm. It provides original empirical evidence for the male-dominated construction sector. An extensive search identified no literature in which the researchers had focused on the construction industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between women on the board of directors and firm performance in a comparative analysis between Italy and Spain.

The generalized method of moment is employed to examine this relationship in a sample of 1,393 firm-year observations.

The results show that the presence of women on the board has a positive impact on the performance of Italian and Spanish firms. However, when the whole sample is divided into Italy and Spain, some results are remarkable. For Spain, the presence of women on the board has a positive influence on firm performance, whereas for Italy the authors find a negative and significant effect on firm performance. This study also finds that the “masculinity” dimension has a negative impact on firm performance.

The results of this study have several practical implications. First, masculinity differences within the countries can have a large impact on firm performance and can explain some differences between similar countries. Second, the legal system of countries might not explain adequately some differences in the decision-making process. Third, cultural values and thinking styles, in terms of masculinity, might better explain why the results on the relationship between female directors and firm performance are mixed. Fourth, the findings suggest that it is very important to promote gender equality, not only by passing laws but also taking action about the educational system.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the relationship between female directors and firm performance between Italy and Spain considering the cultural differences in term of “masculinity.”

el objetivo de este trabajo es examinar la relación entre la presencia de mujeres en el Consejo de Administración y el rendimiento de la empresa, realizando un análisis comparativo entre Italia y España.

Se emplea el método generalizado de los Momentos (GMM), utilizando una muestra de 1.393 observaciones.

los resultados muestran que la presencia de mujeres en el consejo tiene un impacto positivo en el rendimiento de las empresas italianas y españolas. Sin embargo, cuando se analizan por separado ambas submuestras se obtienen algunos resultados destacables. Para España, la presencia de mujeres en el consejo tiene un efecto positivo, mientras que para Italia la influencia resulta negativa. Este estudio también muestra que la dimensión “masculinidad” tiene un efecto negativo en la rentabilidad de la empresa.

Los resultados de este estudio tienen varias implicaciones prácticas. En primer lugar, la diferencia en la masculinidad entre países puede tener un gran impacto en el rendimiento de las empresas y explicar algunas diferencias entre países de características similares. En segundo lugar, el sistema legal de los países podría no explicar adecuadamente algunas diferencias en el proceso de toma de decisiones. En tercer lugar, los valores culturales y el modo de pensar, en términos de “masculinidad” podría explicar mejor el hecho de que los resultados de la relación entre consejeras y rendimiento de la empresa no sea concluyente. En cuarto lugar, nuestros hallazgos sugieren que es muy importante promover la igualdad de género no sólo a través de la aprobación de leyes, sino también actuando sobre el sistema educativo.

Que tengamos conocimiento, este es el primer estudio que investiga la relación entre la presencia de consejeras y rendimiento de la empresa para Italia y España considerando las diferencias culturales en términos de “masculinidad.”

Many authors describe police culture as a relevant determinant of officers' health, policing behavior and reaction to change. Investigation of such relationships requires an appropriate instrument for measuring police culture.

This paper proposes a questionnaire containing 20 values that are characteristic of police culture (e.g. masculinity, loyalty, solidarity). In an online survey, 153 German police officers described their last workgroups in terms of how typical these values are. Besides conducting item and factor analyses, multiple regression models were tested to explore the effect of group characteristics on police culture.

A four-factor solution, comprising (1) conservative-male culture, (2) institutional pride culture, (3) team culture and (4) diligence culture, seems to fit the data best. Significant predictors of the police culture total score are percentage of male officers, average age of the group and service in a problematic district.

Overall, the results indicate that police culture is a measurable multidimensional construct, which substantially depends on the composition and the operational area of the workgroup. A limitation of the study is the retrospective and subjective assessment of cultural values.

The questionnaire presented in this paper depicts the culture of police workgroups in a differentiated way and is able to detect cultural variation within the police. Future research could draw on the questionnaire to investigate determinants and consequences of police culture.

Organizational process improvement plays an important role for sustaining business in a competitive environment. Therefore, enterprise leaders are increasingly prone to adopt business process improvement (BPI) practices. However, organizations are unable to implement formal and reusable solutions, representing a gap between academic research and practical use. In addition, companies adopt discipline-dependent solutions, lacking BPI representations of best practices applicable to all organizational divisions. This paper aims to propose some constructs on top of the Quintessence kernel for representing the practice systematic development of the BPI in the BPI lifecycle and we conduct two case studies in a multinational company.

A quantitative research design was adopted for recognizing gaps in previous approaches and identifying best BPI practices. Subsequently, characterization of practices and activities are represented based on a unified definition model and the Quintessence kernel. Finally, two case studies are developed for applying the solution.

The formal representation is applicable to multiple disciplines in organizational environments. Besides, the sub-alphas (abstract level progress health attribute) states and the work products resulting from each activity completion criteria evidence the health and progress accomplished during the practice execution.

The practice representation serves as a formal, graphical, reusable and multidiscipline guide compiling activities and tasks for systematically developing BPI during the radical/incremental improvement lifecycle.

This article aims to investigate the impact of managerial orientation on the career success of physicians employed in hospitals.

The authors collected data between August and October 2006 using a written questionnaire that was sent to all 278 physicians employed in two German hospitals. The data was analyzed using a multinomial logistic regression.

The data indicate that a pronounced managerial orientation has indeed a positive impact on the career success of physicians in hospitals. But the results vary with respect to the different dimensions of managerial orientation.

Some aspects of managerial orientation are more compatible with physicians' professional values and, consequently, more relevant for career success than others. The acquisition and improvement of management skills seems to be a crucial factor.

The impact of managerial orientation on the career success of physicians has been unclear so far. Physicians are trained and socialized according to professional values and norms that are considered to be the antithesis of a managerial orientation. Furthermore, the typical career paths of professionals are different from careers of other occupational groups. However, this paper shows that physicians employed in hospitals need a certain degree of managerial orientation to have a successful and satisfying professional career.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between perceived power and transformational leadership in the public sector.

The authors investigate this topic empirically in the context of German police forces using a between-groups design, manipulating power and statistically analyzing the results on the multifactor leadership questionnaire.

Police officers with a high perception of power achieve significantly lower scores on transformational leadership compared to their low power counterparts.

The study contributes to advancing public leadership theory by showing that transformational leadership, which is considered as particularly useful in public organizations, is likely to be adversely affected by leaders’ power. Furthermore, it also extends on the literature on power by providing first empirical evidence that power has a significant impact not only on factors such as the pursuit of a goal, social behavior, or affect, but also on leadership.

The results suggest either to control power accumulation in leadership positions of public organizations, for instance by implementing flat hierarchies, or to come to terms with more authoritative leadership styles in top management.

To the best of knowledge, the authors provide the first study that investigates the impact of power on transformational leadership in the public sector using an experimental design and quantitative empirical data.

Environmental protection and conservation have been closely linked with the promotion of sustainable tourism across destinations. This is underpinned by the assumption that the environment and tourism have an interdependent relationship – where tourism activities need to support the preservation and conservation of environmental areas so that such economic activities can be sustained. That is a balance must be struck between the two. Within these two areas, women have been recognized to play a crucial role – in tourism, women were seen to dominate the industry's workforce globally; in environmental efforts, women were believed to play a key role in supporting such initiatives across societies. In both areas, women's efforts, despite being crucial to the achievement of sustainability, are often perceived as small and thus overlooked. Despite these, little has been said about their experiences in promoting sustainable tourism. To contribute to discourses promoting the idea of “thinking small,” this chapter looks at women's tourism-related environmental efforts that are often seen as small and overlooked, alongside their experiences in being involved in these initiatives.

High performance of new hires is of imminent interest to organizations in the hospitality sector. Yet, limited studies have focused on the relevant traits of new hires that improve on-job performance. This study aims to identify and understand a few critical traits that predict high performance across multilevel roles within the hospitality sector.

Drawing on the human capital theory, through a time-lagged field study spanning 16 months, this study used multisource data for 540 active job opportunities and 205 new hires within the hospitality industry. This study used partial least squares-based structural equation modeling and analyzed the various traits that predict high on-job performance.

This study finds that humility is a significant predictor of job performance and wholly mediates the effect of interpersonal understanding, self-confidence and flexibility on new hires’ performance.

This study enhances talent management research for the hospitality sector by determining the critical traits of new hires that can predict superior on-job performance.