Search results

Mission statements are a key element of any organization. Ideally, the mission statement should be written at the initial stages of an organization’s life to be a useful tool to guide future organization’s decisions and strategy. However, at the early stages of an organization’s life, the organization might still be under development with the objective and stakeholders not yet well-defined, and therefore, stating the mission so early on, might neglect some important elements. In this paper, the authors explore the difference in mission statement quality between missions that have been created at the birth stage of an organization versus missions that are just explicitly formulated once the organization is already well-established and an underlying implicit mission already exists. The authors use as an empirical setting university research parks.

The authors evaluate mission statement quality using content analysis. The authors then test the differences on mission statement quality between two groups of research parks, those that have followed a creation strategy versus those that have followed a formulation strategy, using mean of differences test.

The authors find that a formulation strategy produces more complete mission statements than the creation strategy. Research parks that have followed a formulation strategy include in their mission statements more references to relevant stakeholders, such as investors, than parks following a creation strategy with respect to their mission statement.

The research setting is Spanish Science Parks. This research setting is appropriate to answer the research question, as two Park creation strategies, planned and unplanned, allow the researchers to clearly differentiate between two mission conception strategies. However, the sample size is rather small.

Research has shown that a well-defined mission helps organizations focus and strategy formulation. The authors’ research offers some guidance on how to achieve a high-quality mission statement which will, in turn, help organizations have a better definition of their purpose.

Research until now has assumed that the mission statement should be formulated at the initial stages of the organization’s life. The authors’ research shows that defining the mission statement later in the process creates higher-quality mission statements that better reflect the organizations purpose and relevant stakeholders.

Multiple crowdfunding platforms have been created over the last decade. Some have become extremely successful, but many others have failed. This study focuses on those strategic choices that founders of crowdfunding platforms need to make early on and which determine the basic characteristics of a platform. Specifically, it examines which combination(s) of these initial strategic choices shape(s) the survival of a platform.

Qualitative comparative analysis is used to analyze the design configurations that are especially relevant for the long-term survival of crowdfunding platforms. Several robustness checks are performed. The empirical setting consists of a unique dataset of all crowdfunding platforms created in Spain over a period of ten years.

Ten configurations are obtained (four in the case of reward and donation platforms, and six for equity and lending), suggesting different paths to platform survival. Although equity and lending platforms tend to be more likely to survive than donation and reward platforms, the type of platform is not definitive. Another interesting observation is that when platforms fail, they do so quite fast.

We acknowledge that strategic choices are a combination of different elements; therefore, our approach offers a holistic view that mirrors the heterogeneity of resources and capabilities of entrepreneurs. Our study derives a different set of recommendations for lending and equity platforms than for reward and donation platforms, underlining the importance of designing and treating each type of platform in a particular way.

Most crowdfunding literature has the individual crowdfunding project as the main level of analysis. Research to date has focused on the characteristics that projects must possess to succeed. The present study explores differences at the platform level. Our research brings new evidence on some of the decisions entrepreneurs need to confront when starting a crowdfunding platform and provides useful recommendations that might help them increase the chances of survival for their platform.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze from an adopters’ perspective the European Quality in Social Services (EQUASS) Assurance standard, a certification program to implement a quality management (QM) system specifically tailored to European social service organizations (SSO). Specifically, it analyzes the motives, internalization, impacts, satisfaction, and renew intentions of this standard.

The research uses a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey methodology with both closed and open-ended questions. Of the 381 organizations contacted, 196 responses from eight different European countries were considered valid (51.4 percent). Descriptive statistical techniques and content analysis were employed to analyze closed- and open-ended questions, respectively.

The results show that SSO typically implement the certification for internal reasons, internalize EQUASS Assurance principles and practices in daily usage, obtain mainly operational and customer benefits, and consider main pitfalls such as increased workload and bureaucracy. Around 85 percent of the respondents are very satisfied or satisfied with the standard, which suggests that it meets their needs. The intention to renew the certification is also encouraging, but the final decision may be contingent on several aspects. Overall, the results reveal a rather optimistic picture, though there are some reasons for concern.

Recent years have seen many social services implementing QM systems, but there have been few studies investigating this phenomenon. Social service managers, consultants, auditors, and the EQUASS certification body can find in this work valuable information to make their practice more effective. This is the first study to report the results of an EQUASS survey in a scholarly journal.

This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on social enterprises and business model innovation. Particularly, it sheds some light on those factors that turn a social innovation initiative into a success, both in terms of meeting social needs and achieving economic sustainability.

By using a grounded theory approach, an inductive comparative case study is conducted. Two work integration social enterprises in the hospitality and tourism sector are selected. Both companies are located in Barcelona (Spain) under the same legal regulation and economic situation and initially run a manufacturing business. Due to the economic crisis they were forced to reinvent themselves to survive. Data were collected from different sources and coded using content analysis procedures.

Results indicate that three factors, namely, value proposition, appropriate market research and stakeholder involvement, heavily contributed to firm’s success, corroborating previous studies. Furthermore, our study reveals that social need pressures and managerial trust on employees are additional factors that drive social business model innovation.

Changes in the demand, the rules governing the market or economic downturns are external drivers for demand-pull innovations. In such context, firms need to reformulate their business models if they wish to survive. Acknowledging the factors that help firms overcome these obstacles is of great interest for both academics and entrepreneurs.

Social innovation in business models is a topic still poorly defined in the literature, yet, its boundaries to other fields are still fuzzy. This paper aims to fulfill this gap by presenting the theoretical domain in which this topic fits in and evidencing those successful factors that should be considered when designing and implementing a business model innovation which may help other firms facing a similar process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between work-life balance, organizational pride and job satisfaction. When evaluating employee work-life balance the present paper takes into consideration two relevant antecedents: supervisor support and job autonomy; and explores their link with organizational pride and job satisfaction.

To verify the hypothesis, a questionnaire survey was used to collect data in a Spanish pharmaceutical organization; 374 responses were obtained. Structural equation modeling was used for the data analysis.

Data confirms the relationship between the analyzed constructs. The results support the hypothesized relationships of supervisor work-life balance support and autonomy with employee work-life balance. In addition, employee work-life balance is positively related with organizational pride and job satisfaction.

This study provides a useful measurement model that employers and employees can use to evaluate and improve work-life balance through job autonomy and supervisor support. Companies should pay attention to employee work-life balance to enhance organizational pride and job satisfaction. The research tries to help companies to more effectively use their human capital resources.

The paper addresses gaps in the current literature in work-life, organizational pride and job satisfaction. The results may serve as the criteria for managers to better enhance employee job satisfaction in organizations.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate how knowledge-based organizational support (KOS) influences organizational performance through project management.

Data were obtained from a survey and from archival sources with a time lag for the dependent variable; structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The sample was made up of 106 organizations in Colombia, considering two key respondents from each organization: general manager and project manager.

Results show that KOS is an antecedent of project management and project performance. Furthermore, project management and project performance play a mediating role between KOS and organizational performance.

Research limitations are the following: use of cross-sectional data with a time lag, one single unit of analysis, organizational performance analyzed only from a financial perspective. Despite these limitations, the paper puts forward relevant implications that bridge knowledge management and project management literature by clarifying the conditions under which knowledge organizational support generates a significant impact on organizational performance. Intellectual capital and knowledge management dynamic capabilities play a relevant role in this connection.

The findings have important practical implications: decision-makers are to allocate effectively hard and soft resources to configure a knowledge-based infrastructure, through the development of intellectual capital and knowledge management dynamic capabilities.

The findings are generalizable to projects management in the context of non-government organizations or other social-oriented initiatives.

This study assumes and operationalizes organizational support from a knowledge-based perspective, represented by intellectual capital and knowledge management dynamic capabilities, providing empirical evidence of the way KOS influences organizational performance through project management and project performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between product innovation and network and their export performance, particularly in trade fair context. Moreover, this paper conducts a comparative study among services/industrial small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and considers the home-country context. Innovation and internationalization are stagnant themes in the recent literature on trade fairs, so they require to be renewed.

The empirical study includes a survey with 341 SMEs’ respondents separated into both industrial/producer and service/other. A conceptual model was developed and examined from three different perspectives: Model A encompasses all surveyed SMEs, Model B includes only industrial/producer SMEs and Model C comprises service/other SMEs. Data analysis happened in two steps. The first step included the structural equation model (SEM) and the assessment of hypotheses (from three different perspectives). Thus, it was possible to make a comparative analysis between the models. In the second step, the ordered logit model (OLM) is used to study relationships between control variables and the criteria variable export performance.

The SEM’s results confirm a conceptual model about a dynamic trajectory that SMEs, mainly industrial/producer, can take advantage of: innovate to networking and networking to export. The results allowed to verify when comparing services/industrial SMEs that the tangibility which characterizes the innovation of industrial SMEs' products contributed significantly to the performance of business networks and exports. The study also reveals, through the OLM, two catalysts for the success of the SME’s export performance: export experience and continued participation in trade fairs. The OLM results also reveal that the size of the companies is not relevant, so trade fairs are marketing tools accessible to any company, regardless of their size. Finally, the study considered home-country context of the surveyed SMEs, which allowed additional interpretations to be drawn.

The study does not reflect the individual's personality in his network capacity and the export performance was measured based on the level of satisfaction and not on real sales results. However, the study provides relevant practical implications and can support future studies.

The study offers important implications for SME. The results reveal that presenting product innovations at trade fairs is a useful tool for SMEs to create networks, which facilitates their export performance, especially for industrial SMEs residing in small economies such as Portugal. This study is also relevant for business associations of industrial SMEs and/or public or semi-public SME promotion agencies.

This paper contributes to the literature on trade fairs, suggesting a new innovation, networking, export (INE) framework to reflect on the participation in international trade fairs. So, this research especially combines product INE performance in a particular context – international trade fairs for SME. It also considers the home-country context of the SMEs, which adds depth to the study. Finally, the comparative study also provides insightful implications for industrial SMEs on how to improve the export performance from trade fairs by leveraging innovation and networking.

This study aims to develop a novel diagnostic methodology for implementing ISO13485:2016 and test its applicability to improve quality management systems (QMS) in the medical devices industry context.

First, a literature review on the topic was conducted. Second, insights gained from the literature and expert interviews were employed to develop the new maturity assessment methodology. Subsequently, the methodology was tested on a medical device manufacturer. Next, based on the evaluation of the intervention, actions were recommended to improve the QMS.

Research findings have developed a maturity assessment methodology comprising 52 certifiable requirements structured into four macro-requirements derived from ISO 13485:2016. Findings show that the methodology is valuable for aiding QMS implementation, and the diagnosed maturity levels corresponded with the company’s empirical perceptions of the requirement’s maturity.

Empirical evidence validates the significance and practical utility of the proposed methodology, as evidenced by the company’s attainment of FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) approval after the intervention. Findings suggest that the methodology could be replicated within the medical products industry or adapted to assess other QMS, leveraging the organizational alignment with the international regulations of the sector and the ISO 9000 requirements.

The developed methodology fills existing gaps in both literature and practice within the medical devices industry, providing a valuable contribution by addressing the limited research on diagnostic methodologies designed for ISO 13485:2016 implementation. The article assists medical device enterprises in addressing QMS maturity levels as a metric for evaluating QMS requirements, which is an underexplored avenue in existing QMS evaluation approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether households with members that experience job loss shocks are able to protect their previous level of consumption. The paper also tests whether consumption protection is affected when spells persist through time.

The paper estimates an intertemporal consumption model, where households try to smooth their marginal utility over time. For that purpose it analyses Spanish household budget surveys that span a long period, 1999-2012, including the Great Recession. Unlike most consumption datasets, this microdata is designed as a panel and provides detailed information for all consumption categories as well as household members’ labour status.

The paper finds that consumption smoothing is dependent on the household member facing the unemployment transition. In particular, only main breadwinner’s unemployment transitions affects consumption smoothing. It also shows that the consumption drop persists beyond the period of the job loss for ongoing spells, although it follows a decreasing pattern. Finally, the estimation results are stable over the business cycle.

The results suggest that Spanish households are not capable of fully insuring against main breadwinner’s unemployment shocks. Further, the results show that this effect remains up to two years for ongoing unemployment spells. Thus these results highlight a welfare loss by Spanish households with unemployed members.

The paper extends the usual analysis of job loss shocks by the main breadwinner to include the cases of both the spouse and the rest of household members, who tend to account for most unemployment. Further, it tests for unemployment persistence. Finally, it checks the sensitivity of the results to the business cycle, including the Great Recession.

This paper aims to identify the determining factors for the financial performance (FP) of social enterprises in an emerging country, in this case Brazil.

This paper identifies the determinants of the FP of social enterprises in Brazil using the resource-based view as a theoretical lenses and the quantitative method (n = 601) of logistic regression, analyzing the importance of nine variables related to SEs.

The findings refer to practical contributions (which show how SEs should focus and allocate their resources to maximize FP) and theoretical contributions linked to entrepreneurship literature (by differentiating the results of this work from the literature on commercial entrepreneurship in terms of resources), social entrepreneurship literature (by presenting the resources that determine their FP), business literature, entrepreneurial finance and entrepreneurship in emerging economies.

This work represents a novelty from a methodological point of view, filling the gap regarding the lack of studies that apply a quantitative methodology to a large sample and analyze several different variables when most studies analyze only one factor related to the performance of an organization. It also fills the gap in entrepreneurship studies that use some theoretical lenses. This work is also a pioneer in analyzing the variables involved, such as market orientation, technologies and impact measurement in social entrepreneurship. As this work uses data from a secondary sample, there is the limitation of not choosing the analyzed variables. Even though there were many variables in the sample, it was impossible to consider some variables, referring to various aspects of resources and performance. For this same reason, the social performance of SEs, which is of fundamental importance within the objectives of any organization of this type, was not analyzed and may be a suggestion for future work.