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To analyze, through a case study, the essential premises on the basis of which a training plan for the customers of any given firm can be designed, implemented and evaluated.

This paper starts with a review of the literature on customer service training, which is followed by a discussion on how a training plan for customers could be elaborated. After that, the case method is applied (mainly through semi‐structured interviews) to a firm that approaches this type of training in an innovative way.

Concludes that a training plan for the firm's internal staff cannot be extrapolated to customers. Describes how training plans must be modified so as to adapt them to customers.

It will be nesessary to identify other cases and check to what extent the methodology resembles the one we have applied and how successful it is, so that a standard action protocol can be established.

Presents a real case of success at customer training in an industrial firm and provides a model, not only for future research, but also for the direct implementation of these techniques by other firms belonging to any industrial sector.

The accurate description of a training plan for customers made by an industrial firm and its treatment based on the study of a real case. The establishment of action guidelines that will pave the way for further academic research in this field as well as its clear business applicability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore sustainability and collaboration in supply chain (SC) management designs and to develop a sustainable supply chain design (SCD) model.

First, a literature review of the principal theories and SC management approaches is discussed. Second, the development of a sustainable SCD model is described and explained. Third, the results and the operationalization of the model, which incorporates sustainable procurement elements based on the results of interviews from a case study, are outlined.

A framework is proposed to provide managers, practitioners and academics with a practical solution to make sustainable SC decisions in a more structured and consistent manner.

The paper presents a currently discussed problem about the design of differentiated supply chains to avoid or offset the effects of allocation issues in the electronic marketplace. Although past literature reviews provide valuable results, they were based upon the assessment of supply chain decisions failing to consider the sustainable corporate social responsibility and the interaction criteria. The findings from this study highlight the importance of addressing supply chain decisions in a structured manner and prioritize the development of dynamic capabilities to improve the firm’s ability to reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments and reinforce a collaborative SC management system with third parties.

This paper aims to examine the interrelation between two innovating strategies (product and process) on total factor productivity (TFP) growth and the dynamic linkages between these strategies, for Colombia. The authors first explore whether ex ante more productive firms are those that introduce innovations (the self-selection hypothesis) and if the introduction of innovations boosts TFP growth (the returns-to-innovation hypothesis). Second, the authors study the firm’s joint dynamic decision to implement process and/or product innovations. The authors use Colombian manufacturing data from the Annual Manufacturing and the Technological Development and Innovation Surveys.

This study uses a four-stage procedure. First, the authors estimate TFP using a modified version of Olley and Pakes (1996) and Levinsohn and Petrin (2003), proposed by De Loecker (2010), that implements an endogenous Markov process where past firm innovations are endogenized. This TFP would be estimated by GMM, Wooldridge (2009). Second, the authors use multivariate discrete choice models to test the self-selection hypothesis. Third, the authors explore, using multi-value treatment evaluation techniques, the life span of the impact of innovations on productivity growth (returns to innovation hypothesis). Fourth, the authors analyse the joint likelihood of implementing process and product innovations using dynamic panel data bivariate probit models.

The investigation reveals that the self-selection effect is notably more pronounced in the adoption of process innovations only, as opposed to the adoption of product innovations only or the simultaneous adoption of both process and product innovations. Moreover, our results uncover distinct temporal patterns concerning innovation returns. Specifically, process innovations yield immediate benefits, whereas implementing both product innovations only and jointly process and product innovations exhibit significant, albeit delayed, advantages. Finally, the analysis confirms the existence of dynamic interconnections between the adoption of process and product innovations.

The contribution of this work to the literature is manifold. First, the authors thoroughly investigate the relationship between the implementation of process and product innovations and productivity for Colombian manufacturing explicitly recognising that firms’ decisions of adopting product and process innovations are very likely interrelated. Therefore, the authors start exploring the self-selection and the returns to innovation hypotheses accounting for the fact that firms might implement process innovations only, product innovations only and both process and product innovations. In the analysis of the returns of innovation, the fact that firms may choose among a menu of three innovation strategies implies the use of evaluation methods for multi-value treatments. Second, the authors study the dynamic inter-linkages between the decisions to implement process and/or product innovations, that remains under studied, at least for emerging economies. Third, the estimation of TFP is performed using an endogenous Markov process, where past firms’ innovations are endogenized.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the housing wealth effect on non-durable consumption using data from the Spanish Survey of Household Finances (Encuesta Financiera de las Familias, SHF) for the period 2002–2017.

The authors aim at identifying the effect of anticipated and unanticipated housing wealth changes on consumption with the sample of homeowners, following Paiella and Pistaferri (2017).

Results of this study lead us to conclude that there exists a strong housing wealth effect on consumption for the Spanish households.

The authors provide evidence against the permanent income model. They also analyse how the results change with income expectations, age and the household indebtedness rate. Finally, they detect a strong excess sensitivity to income.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a key player in the food services and restaurants sector; thus, the aim of this work consists in studying the previous research on ICTs in food services and restaurants in the context of tourism and hospitality through a systematic literature review.

The systematic literature review is performed on full papers published in journals included in the Journal Citation Report of the WoS in the category of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism. A total of 165 articles from 28 journals are analyzed, following different criteria, such as the research methods, perspectives, statistical techniques, geographical focus, topics, technologies, authors and universities.

The restaurant sector is more and more based on the creation of experiences and ICTs, through their multiple possibilities, can undoubtedly contribute to adding value to the simple meal and create and recreate experiences to attract and retain customers who are increasingly sophisticated and hooked on ICTs. ICTs are basic for managers taking decision at the highest level in food services and restaurants, so ICTs should not be seen as a technical tool but as an essential element for top management.

This paper examined articles from very well-known tourism and hospitality journals, leaving aside others as well as different publication formats such as books or papers presented at conferences.

A significant contribution made with this paper is the availability of a list of topics in the context of ICTs in food services and restaurants. These topics are classified into three areas (Consumers, Suppliers and Environment and Tendencies) that can serve as a future research framework. The paper also provides useful information to restaurant managers about ICTs, to researchers for their future projects and to academics for their courses.

ICTs play a key role in the tourism sector, influencing the labor context among other things. Hence, the purpose of this study: a review of the literature in which the topics of tourism, ICTs and human resources converge through an analysis of the articles published in the relevant journals, which are included in the Web of Science.

The 60 articles analyzed – published over a period of 31 years – were studied according to several criteria such as research methodology, statistical techniques used, topics dealt with, technologies addressed, authors and countries.

The topics under study were divided into four broad areas – technology and employees, technology and HR processes, technology and results and technology and organizational structure – the first, which focuses on how employees behave in relation to technology, received the most attention.

The literature review was confined to articles on the topics of tourism, ICTs and human resources published in 73 academic journals, leaving aside other research sources, e.g. books and papers presented at conferences. This study can be useful both in the academic field and for tourism firm managers – especially those in ICT and human resources.

Although there are several previous reviews of the literature on human resource management and ICTs in the tourism sector, none of them has jointly examined these three topics.

Hotels are dependent on information and communication technologies (ICTs) for both their internal management and their relationships with customers and the other stakeholders. Therefore, research on ICTs in the hotel sector has kept growing lately. The purpose of this paper is to offer a review of the literature dedicated to ICTs in hotel management by analyzing papers published in seven prestigious journals in the field of Hospitality Management.

The 147 papers analyzed – published over a 27-year period – have been studied according to a variety of criteria such as their research methods, perspective, statistics used, topics covered, technologies and authors and countries.

The conclusions suggest a promising future regarding both ICT applications for hotel management and research in this area.

Concerning limitations, the most important one stems from the selection of works subject to examination because our analysis dealt with papers published in only seven journals, other publication sources have not been considered. Nevertheless, the present paper can prove useful both for researchers and hotel managers because new trends are emerging in both contexts with regard to technologies themselves as well as to some of their uses.

One of the most important contributions made with this work is the preparation of a list with the topics covered by the papers under examination. Moreover, no studies have to date specifically tried to identify the technologies used in hotel management by means of a literature review.

This paper aims to examine information system (IS) outsourcing success through the satisfaction achieved therewith. It simultaneously analyzes how IS outsourcing may influence the IS managers’ job.

The results obtained in a survey on this topic carried out over a 12-year period are described. The proposal consists in a model that relates the degree of outsourcing with the satisfaction achieved therewith, in which the influence exerted by IS on the systems manager’s job acts as a mediating variable.

The study concludes that the way in which outsourcing affects the IS managers positively influences the satisfaction achieved with this service.

Outsourcing poses a great challenge for IS managers because they must devote more time to their managerial functions, and they need more knowledge too. These greater requirements or demands will most probably make these executives feel unsatisfied with outsourcing. However, the paper shows that satisfaction increases insofar as, despite all these demands, the working post characteristics improve, and the satisfaction and autonomy of IS managers grows and most importantly, they believe that their job has a higher added value.

No studies had, hitherto, related outsourcing success and the implications of outsourcing for IS managers.

The aim of this paper is to determine the main reasons that lead to information systems outsourcing, the reservations that are initially present in front of this kind of contract and the factors considered necessary for the success of outsourcing in the case of Spanish public universities. With this aim, a survey has been made among information systems managers in those universities. The results show the possibility of establishing a typology of universities depending on the position they have adopted with respect to outsourcing.

In this article, after laying the conceptual foundations of communication and corporate culture, we revise the disagreement on whether their role in their mutual relationship is a minor or a fundamental one. Then, we define “communication in corporate culture”, as the foundation of the communication‐culture system. Building on this idea, we suggest a model for organizational reinforcement. Finally, we define the basic patterns in order to strengthen and reinforce the proposed cycle.