Search results
1 – 10 of over 49000Divesh Ojha, Mumin Dayan, Beth Struckell, Amandeep Dhir and Terrence Pohlen
This study recognizes service as the majority contributor to global and US gross domestic product and the importance of innovation speed to service innovation. Generating…
Abstract
Purpose
This study recognizes service as the majority contributor to global and US gross domestic product and the importance of innovation speed to service innovation. Generating innovative products and services at a faster rate generates advantages for business-to-business (B2B) service organizations in keeping up with and moving ahead of rivals. This study aims to introduce the concept of capacity for social exchange (CSE) in buyer–supplier relationships, which reflects the degree to which individuals possess competencies that enable the exchange of information, and this study also explores how CSE affects knowledge sharing and innovation speed within a supply chain organization.
Design/methodology/approach
The sampling frame of this research consisted of service businesses in the USA. The data were collected through Zoomerang, an online survey research firm where the B2B panel of Zoomerang formed the sampling frame. The data was collected from 264 B2B service sector executives.
Findings
The key findings are as follows: CSE facilitates knowledge sharing; knowledge sharing is positively related to innovation speed; and the relationship between CSE and innovation speed is fully mediated by knowledge sharing. Additional analysis reveals that knowledge channels which are designed as boundary-spanning strategies used to transfer and create knowledge between business units, directly increase – and positively moderate – the relationship between CSE and innovation speed.
Originality/value
This study addresses the gap in literature focused on micro-level influencers on innovation. This study sets out by presenting the concept of CSE, and this study addresses limitations in prior work by examining the research questions.
Details
Keywords
Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some…
Abstract
Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.
Details
Keywords
Lucie K. Ozanne and Julie L. Ozanne
Time banking is a form of alternative consumer market where members trade services, non-reciprocally creating a local marketplace for services. Time Banks facilitate dyadic…
Abstract
Purpose
Time banking is a form of alternative consumer market where members trade services, non-reciprocally creating a local marketplace for services. Time Banks facilitate dyadic exchanges, meeting members’ practical needs and building diverse skills. The purpose of this research was to determine the broad capabilities developed in the Time Bank economy, and to demonstrate how these capabilities were mobilised following a series of earthquakes, contributing to the larger community’s resiliency.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking an ethnographic approach, data were collected using a variety of methods including interviews, focus groups, participant observation and secondary research.
Findings
Over time, this alternative consumer market developed a significant communication and social network that members activated to solve diverse practical problems facing the community. Similar to other exchange communities, the Time Bank also fostered a strong sense of community based on reciprocity and egalitarian values. Although the Time Bank was created as a marketplace to exchange local services, during a series of devastating earthquakes, it galvanised adaptive capacities, increasing the resiliency of the local community during disaster relief and reconstruction.
Research limitations/implications
The data were drawn from one alternative exchange system in New Zealand.
Practical implications
The study shows how grassroots alternative consumer markets like Time Banks build community capacities alongside the formal economy. During normal times, this system meets consumer needs, but in extraordinary times, this system provides community shock absorbers, thereby enhancing community resiliency.
Social implications
The Time Bank was particularly adept at leveraging local knowledge to provide social support to those residents who were most vulnerable.
Originality/value
Data were collected before, during, and after the earthquakes, providing a rare opportunity to explore the process of community resiliency in action. This research extends existing theories of community resiliency explaining the development and activation of capacities by a local alternative consumer market.
Details
Keywords
Relationships are socially constructed by companies in interaction. This study explains the dynamic character of business-to-business relationships with the aid of rules theory, a…
Abstract
Relationships are socially constructed by companies in interaction. This study explains the dynamic character of business-to-business relationships with the aid of rules theory, a theory borrowed from the communications field. Two forms of rules are identified: constitutive rules guide the interpretation of the other's acts, and regulative rules guide the appropriate response to the interpreted act. Rules theory asserts that companies act as if applying these rules. Relationships provide not only the context in which the parties’ acts are performed but are also the result of such acts. Thus, relationships are potentially reshaped each time one party performs an act and the other party gives meaning to that act and reacts.
Vanessa Muler Gonzalez, Lluis Coromina and Nuria Galí
This paper aims to assess the value of impact perceptions as an indicator of social carrying capacity in the heritage town of Besalú, Spain. Additionally, it assesses the impact…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to assess the value of impact perceptions as an indicator of social carrying capacity in the heritage town of Besalú, Spain. Additionally, it assesses the impact tourism dependence and other socio-demographic variables have on this indicator.
Design/methodology/approach
A literature review on social exchange theory (SET) and carrying capacity related to impact perceptions is presented. The method was a survey, with a questionnaire based on the literature review and in-depth interviews. The results have been analyzed statistically to determine the links between perceptions and socio-demographic variables. Using statistical tools, perceptions are compared to three indicators that have been used to determine capacity in literature: willingness to accept more tourism, tourism pressure and the tourist function index.
Findings
The willingness of residents to enter into, and remain, in an exchange relationship is affected primarily by tourism dependence, and to a lesser extent by gender and education. Additionally, impact perceptions do not correspond to a willingness to accept more tourists. The impacts of tourism on conservation show greater consensus, while impacts on the availability of space for residents show links to other capacity indicators.
Originality/value
This study enhances the body of knowledge on social carrying capacity in heritage towns, by focusing on a regionally prominent day-tripper heritage town facing high tourism pressure which is Besalú. From a theoretical perspective, this study attempts to merge carrying capacity and SET, thus linking sustainability to social exchange. It also highlights the importance of a gender-based perspective in sustainability.
Details
Keywords
This chapter is about the modern, Western education system as an economic system of production on behalf of the capitalist mode of production (CMP) and globalization towards a…
Abstract
This chapter is about the modern, Western education system as an economic system of production on behalf of the capitalist mode of production (CMP) and globalization towards a single, global social space around market capitalism, liberal democracy and individualism.
The schooling process is above all an economic process, within which educational labour is performed, and through which the education system operates in an integrated fashion with the (external) economic system.
It is mainly through children’s compulsory educational labour that modern schooling plays a part in the production of labour power, supplies productive (paid) employment within the CMP, meets ‘corporate economic imperatives’, supports ‘the expansion of global corporate power’ and facilitates globalization.
What children receive in exchange for their appropriated and consumed labour power within the education system are not payments of the kind enjoyed by adults in the external economy, but instead merely a promise – the promise enshrined in the Western education industry paradigm.
In modern societies, young people, like chattel slaves, are compulsorily prevented from freely exchanging their labour power on the labour market while being compulsorily required to perform educational labour through a process in which their labour power is consumed and reproduced, and only at the end of which as adults they can freely (like freed slaves) enter the labour market to exchange their labour power.
This compulsory dispossession, exploitation and consumption of labour power reflects and reinforces the power distribution between children and adults in modern societies, doing so in a way resembling that between chattel slaves and their owners.
Details
Keywords
Jaime Ortega-Gutiérrez, Ignacio Cepeda-Carrión and Helena Alves
This paper aims to study the relationship between the knowledge obtained in social networks by firms together with the firms’ knowledge absorptive capacity and organizational…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the relationship between the knowledge obtained in social networks by firms together with the firms’ knowledge absorptive capacity and organizational unlearning as influencers of service-dominant (S-D) orientation, as well as the mediating role of absorption capacity and organizational unlearning in this process.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample amounts to 101 responding companies, obtained from the SABI database. The companies belong to the service sector in Spain and have at least 50 employees and 5 years or more of existence in the market. The model was estimated through partial least squares structural equation modeling with smartPLS software 3.2.6.
Findings
The results show that the use of social media is very important for firms to acquire knowledge and capabilities that help them to become S-D oriented. In addition, absorptive capacity and unlearning processes are dynamic capabilities necessary to transform the knowledge acquired in social media and to become S-D oriented.
Research limitations/implications
Companies’ managers draw conclusions that can generate great value, while better meeting the needs and desires of the market, the more knowledge is obtained. In addition, the use of the knowledge generated in this process will reduce the risk of sudden changes in the market.
Practical implications
The more knowledge is gained using social networks, the better the companies’ managers will be able to draw conclusions that can generate great value, while at the same time better satisfying the needs and desires of the market, and thus create capacities that allow the company to be service-oriented. In addition, the use of these knowledge platforms strengthens the strategic advantage of companies through the promotion of innovation and by relating dynamic capabilities with the orientation toward sustainable development. As mentioned above, a process will be generated that will reduce the risk of sudden changes in the market.
Originality/value
This is one of the few studies trying to study the antecedents of S-D orientation and the first to study the direct effect of social media use, and the direct and indirect effect of absorptive capacity and organizational unlearning on S-D orientation as dynamic capabilities.
Details
Keywords
This chapter reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a firm shareholder governance model has shaped society. This consideration is motivated by the scale and scope of the modern global crisis, which has combined financial, economic, social and cultural dimensions to produce world disenchantment.
Methodology/approach
By contrasting an exchange value standpoint with a use value perspective, this chapter explicates current conditions in which neither the state nor the market prevail in organising economic activity (i.e. cooperative forms of governance and community-created brand value).
Findings
This chapter offers recommendations related to formalised conditions for collective action and definitions of common guiding principles that can facilitate new expressions of the principles of coordination. Such behaviours can support the development of common resources, which then should lead to a re-appropriation of the world.
Practical implications
It is necessary to think of enterprises outside a company or firm context when reflecting on the end purpose and means of collective, citizen action. From a methodological standpoint, current approaches or studies that view an enterprise as an organisation, without differentiating it from a company, create a deadlock in relation to entrepreneurial collective action. The absence of a legal definition of enterprise reduces understanding and evaluations of its performance to simply the performance by a company. The implicit shift thus facilitates the assimilation of one with the other, in a funnel effect that reduces collective projects to the sole projects of capital providers.
Originality/value
Because forsaking society as it stands is a radical response, this historical moment makes it necessary to revisit the ideals on which modern societies build, including the philosophy of freedom for all. This utopian concept has produced an ideology that is limited by capitalist notions of private property.
Details
Keywords
Yasmin Fayad and Raghda El Ebrashi
This paper studies the role of inter-firm supply chain social capital and intra-firm social capital in enabling Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE), and also investigates the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper studies the role of inter-firm supply chain social capital and intra-firm social capital in enabling Corporate Entrepreneurship (CE), and also investigates the moderating and mediating effect of absorptive capacity.
Design/methodology/approach
A correlational descriptive survey research is employed for 200 firms; adopting a 13-item Likert scale obtained from Wang and Li (2016) for measuring inter-firm social capital, and an eight item Likert scale for measuring absorptive capacity. This is in addition to a nine item Likert scale obtained from De Clercq et al. (2013) to measure the intra-firm social capital, and a nine item semantic differential scale developed by Covin and Slevin (1989) for measuring the level of corporate entrepreneurship. Statistical analysis packages SPSS V.24 and AMOS V.24 were used.
Findings
Results provide evidence that structural supply chain social capital has an effect on corporate entrepreneurship; mediated by potential absorptive capacity. Additionally, the effect of relational supply chain social capital on corporate entrepreneurship is fully mediated by potential absorptive capacity. Furthermore, the effect of cognitive supply chain social capital on corporate entrepreneurship is fully mediated by potential absorptive capacity. On the other hand, results show that both intra-firm social capital and realized absorptive capacity moderate the relationship between potential absorptive capacity and corporate entrepreneurship.
Research limitations/implications
The convenience sampling technique increases the probability of selection bias. In addition, the research focused on two aspects of intra-firm social capital, namely relational and cognitive dimensions, and overlooked the structural dimension of social capital.
Practical implications
Providing managers with insights about the critical role of developing social capital among supply chain partners to facilitate the transfer and exchange of crucial knowledge necessary for product development and innovation. This is in addition to the need to capitalize on intra-collaborations and cross-functional routines to facilitate CE.
Originality/value
This study provides a required extension to the previous literature, which has not empirically modeled the role of potential absorptive capacity as means by which supply chain social capital dimensions enable CE. Also, the research identifies contingency factors that enable the effect of potential absorptive capacity on CE; namely intra-firm social capital and realized absorptive capacity.
Details
Keywords
Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor,survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to themodern neo‐classical writers. The focus…
Abstract
Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.
Details