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This paper seeks to investigate the relationship between managers' beliefs and goal orientation and the self‐perception of transformational and transactional leadership styles and how this relationship is moderated by the level of formal education.

A sample of 76 top executive officers reported their managerial values and beliefs by completing measures of McGregor's Theory XY philosophy of management and Dweck's learning and performance goal orientations. They also reported their use of transactional versus transformational leadership styles with their direct reports and their degree of formal education.

Regression analyses revealed that ratings of transformational leadership are associated with theory Y philosophy of management and a learning goal orientation; whereas ratings of transactional leadership were found to be associated with performance goal orientation. In addition, executives with higher levels of education reported greater behavioral integrity, that is, greater alignment between their managerial beliefs and their corresponding self‐ratings of leadership behaviors.

This paper contributes to the transformational leadership literature by adding a cognitive perspective to the well‐studied behavioral patterns of transformational leaders.

This study investigates the relationship between personal values and feedback‐seeking behaviors. Feedbackseeking behaviors, or the way by which individuals in organizations actively seek information about their performance, has recently become an important research topic in the management literature. However, the large majority of this research has been conducted in the United States. This study aims to test the relationships between the personal values of a multinational sample and feedback‐seeking behaviors. An integrated set of hypotheses regarding the influence of values on feedback seeking are outlined and tested empirically using samples from Canada, China, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States. As predicted, results indicate that significant aspects of feedback seeking were related to personal values. The perceived cost of feedback seeking, the clarity of the feedback from others, and the use of feedback‐seeking behaviors were all linked to personal values. The study also uncovered substantial variations in feedback‐seeking behaviors across nations. The implications of these findings for research on feedback‐seeking behaviors and for feedback practices are discussed.

Since the early modern age, the debt of the State was a constant source for concern to the Spanish governments. Episodes of defaults caused by enormous expenditure to keep the Empire slowly faded out until a certain reorganization of public finance was attained in the central decades of the nineteenth century. The core idea that finance ministers and economists, in general, had at that time was to balance the public budget controlling expenses, in order to handle the problem of public debt. However, alternative views on government finance existed. Focusing on a crucial period for the consolidation of Spanish liberal regime and its public finance, this chapter shows that, among a predominant concern for reducing public expenditure as the best way to stabilize the economy and promote economic growth, the character of Luis María Pastor emerges to support government expansionary policies financed with credit. Far from fearing deficit, Pastor, one of the leaders of the Spanish liberal school of economic thought, believed that investment in infrastructures financed through debt was the key to economic growth. Through a multiplicative effect, a program of public investment would enhance economic growth, eventually solving the long-term insufficiency of Spanish finance. This gives evidence that ideas on public finance of classical liberal economists were far from uniform, contributing to a more precise view on the body of doctrines of this school.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether sheltered employment centers (CEEs) which have a higher rate of professionalization of their managers have better economic returns than those that have a lower one.

A questionnaire has been drawn up for their managers. After collecting the answers, an index of professionalization classifies the CEEs with managers of high, medium and low levels of professionalism. This index is then correlated with the main financial ratios of companies.

The results show that companies with the highest level of managers’ professionalization, on average, have higher economic returns than companies with medium and low rates, although the difference is not very high. This study is an important contribution to academic literature, as it is the first to examine the professionalization of CEE managers.

Finally, this paper is not short of limitations. The number of responses is small but there are similar studies with similar response rates. Additionally, the scarcity of responses may suggest that there is a lack of interest about the utility of professionalization by some CEEs managers because, perhaps, they do not have the necessary competences to understand its importance in management.

This study has some main implications for stakeholders: first, CEEs must pay more attention to the professionalization of their management team, because professionalization can lead to meeting its goals and guaranteeing the firm’s growth. Second, training programs in skills and attitudes should be designed to strengthen these competencies. Moreover, managers of social firms should know that the establishment of strategic plans will be useful to identify new opportunities in the market.

Given the important role of these social firms for the employment of people with disabilities, training programs should be promoted by government in order to ensure the professionalization of these companies.

This research is an important contribution to the literature on this subject because there are no studies about the level of professionalization of CEEs, companies that represent an important value for the economy of a country.

“When James Boswell returned from a tour of Corsica in 1765 he wrote: ‘It is indeed amazing that an island so considerable, and in which such noble things have been doing, should be so imperfectly known.’ The same might be said today of Puerto Rico.” Thus began Millard Hansen and Henry Wells in the foreword to their 1953 look at Puerto Rico's democratic development. Four decades later, the same could again be said about the island.

This paper aims to evaluate the influence of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the momentum effect, analysing its influence depending on the economic cycle and in different quantiles.

To determine the influence of EPU in the momentum effect taking into account the economic cycle and the level of the quantile, linear regression and quantile regression have been applied for the period from 2 January 1985 to 30 April 2019 for the US stock market.

It is shown that an increased feeling of insecurity associated with EPU reduces the momentum effect, especially in times of recession. Distinguishing by quantiles, an asymmetry in the impact of EPU in the momentum effect is discovered, finding that EPU reduces (increases) the profits of momentum strategies in the lowest (highest) quantiles. In the highest quantiles, an investor can obtain higher extraordinary returns with this strategy. For example, in the highest quantile, a one-point increase in the EPU levels would have increased the daily profitability by 12.7 basis points. These findings have important implications for investors and policymakers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that evaluates the influence of EPU on the momentum effect by conducting an analysis based on the economic cycle and different quantiles, demonstrating how these factors are relevant in the influence of this uncertainty in the momentum anomaly.

Building on the resource-based view theory, this paper aims to evaluate the role of innovation on competitiveness and competitive efficiency among Costa Rican small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs).

The study uses a sample of 231 Costa Rican small and medium-size firms for 2019. The authors compute a competitiveness index that includes four pillars: innovation, strategy, markets and human capital. To estimate competitive efficiency, the authors use a non-parametric model, namely, data envelopment analysis, with a single constant input.

The results confirm that competitive and efficient SMEs present a more homogenous distribution of resources and capabilities. The innovation pillar is positively correlated with competitive efficiency. A positive correlation exists between market experience (business age) and innovation and between innovation and business size in terms of the number of employees.

The study contributes to the understanding on how SME managers’ decision-making processes affect resource allocation within the business, and on how SMEs can introduce strategic actions based on improvements of those resources that will likely have a greater impact on competitive efficiency.

This study contributes to better grasping how the configuration of resources and capabilities, in which innovation plays a decisive role, and contributes to shape the competitive efficiency of small and medium-sized businesses in a developing economy.

To empirically study the determinant factors of adopting work–life balance measures at the firm level.

After reviewing the main theories that explain work–life balance practices, IBEX-35 Spanish companies during 2015–2019 are studied to see whether the firm sector, the presence of female employees, qualified personnel, a company agreement and an equality plan determine these types of practices.

The results indicate a negative relationship between the firm activity sector and adopting work–life balance practices. Industrial companies offer fewer work–life balance measures than service companies. A company agreement implies more extensive adoption of work-life practices. Older companies are characterized by greater adoption of work-life practices, in contrast to their level of profitability that is associated negatively with these practices.

Since it is difficult for industrial companies to change their idiosyncrasies, it is necessary to incorporate other measures that promote work–life balance, such as timetable flexibility. Companies and policymakers should promote the advantages of a company agreement to contribute to the implementation of work–life balance practices.

The empirical evidence is scarce, especially in Spain and at the company level, given that most previous studies have focused on workers and the Anglo-Saxon sphere. Given the growing interest in this topic in the business world, the authors intend to contribute to this scarce literature by incorporating variables considered in previous studies, as well as other more innovative ones (agreement, equality plan) in a single model through a longitudinal study.

Estudiar empíricamente los factores determinantes de la adopción de medidas de conciliación a nivel de empresa.

Tras revisar las teorías que explican la adopción de prácticas de conciliación, se estudia para las empresas españolas del IBEX-35 durante el periodo 2015–2019, si el sector de actividad, la presencia de mujeres y de personal cualificado, así como la existencia de un convenio de empresa y de un plan de igualdad, determinan este tipo de prácticas.

Los resultados sugieren una relación negativa entre el tipo de sector al que pertenece la empresa y el índice de conciliación. Las compañías industriales poseen un menor índice de conciliación que las de servicios. La existencia de un convenio de empresa permite un mayor índice de conciliación. El índice de conciliación tiene mayor nivel de implantación en las empresas con mayor antigüedad si bien un mayor nivel de rentabilidad está asociado de modo negativo con las prácticas de conciliación.

En las empresas industriales es necesaria la incorporación de otras medidas que fomenten la conciliación, como, por ejemplo, la flexibilidad de entrada y salida. Animar a las empresas y policymarkers a incidir en las ventajas de un convenio de empresa puede contribuir al fomento de la implantación de medidas de conciliación.

La evidencia empírica es escasa para el caso español, y a nivel de empresa, dado que la mayoría de estudios previos han analizado al trabajador como objeto de estudio y pertenecen al ámbito anglosajón. Considerando el creciente interés de este tema en el mundo empresarial, se pretende contribuir a esta escasa literatura en España, incorporando tanto variables consideradas en estudios previos como otras más novedosas (convenio, plan de igualdad) a través de un estudio longitudinal.

This paper aims to analyse the open data business models (ODBMs) as a source of knowledge and innovation to generate economic and social value. A framework for understanding ODBMs is presented. First, the knowledge structure of the ODBMs literature is identified. Second, a conceptual model for analysing the ODBMs is proposed. And finally, the future trends in ODBMs research are discussed.

In this paper, co-word analysis is performed to identify the topics related with ODBMs.

The ODBMs structure of knowledge is articulated in five themes: business model, smart city, business ecosystem, decision-making and innovation. Based on these results, a five-step model for analysing ODBMs is proposed. Finally, a discussion of the future trends of ODBMs focussed on a knowledge management perspective, open data ecosystems and business intelligence is presented.

The paper presents a picture of what, where, for whom and for what ODBMs have been studied and develops a new model to explain the value creation process of ODBMs. Taking a step further, applying the principles and models of knowledge management and business intelligence to ODBMs is also recommended in order to transfer and transform open data into valuable knowledge that can be used for developing apps. In that context, the importance of encouraging collaboration between different agents in the so-called open data ecosystem is presented.