Search results

This study aims to empirically investigate the effects of both soft and hard quality management (QM) on innovation and organizational performance. It also examines the mediating role of hard QM, administrative innovation and technical innovation on the relationship between soft QM and organizational performance in higher education (HE).

The approach of this study is quantitative. The data used to test the hypotheses were obtained through online questionnaire sent to the academic staff of public universities in Naples (Italy). The hypothesized relationships are tested with data collected from 356 respondents by using the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique (PLS-SEM).

The results show that quality practices improve innovation and organizational performance, while innovation positively impacts organizational performance. The findings also indicate that soft QM affects organizational performance directly and indirectly through hard QM. Hard QM and innovation show a partial sequential mediating effect on soft QM-performance relationship

In order to implement quality management properly in HE, directors need to recognize the different roles that soft and hard QM can have on innovation and organizational performance. It is important that higher education institutions (HEIs) allocate resources to establish both types of QM practices to achieve the effectiveness of the whole QM system.

Despite the existence of numerous studies on the relationship between QM, innovation and organizational performance in manufacturing and services, studies conducted in higher education are still few. This is one of the earliest studies that adopt the multidimensional approach of QM in HE which could help directors understand the interdependencies and different roles of soft and hard quality practices.

The purpose of this study is to empirically develop and validate a practical, consistent and specific scale to assess perceived service quality at the service encounter at quick-service restaurants (QSRs).

Development and validation of the scale involved a five-stage process. Data were collected from 430 customers of a QSR belonging to an international brand located in Barcelona. Surveys were applied immediately after the service encounter, using the face-to-face method. The scale development procedure involved exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.

The results suggest a specific and parsimonious measurement scale, whose structure comprises 14 items in four dimensions. In contrast to previous studies, this study identified the appropriateness of splitting the interaction quality dimension into two single dimensions, one focusing on the interaction time and other on staff–customer interaction. Furthermore, these indicate that a speedy service, pleasant treatment and food quality are the most valued attributes in QSR.

This scale is a useful instrument to administer and assure service quality standards within QSR management systems. Its practical approach and short survey length ease data collection, considering that customers spend short amounts of time in this type of restaurant. Furthermore, it could also be used by franchisors and restaurant operators as a tool to monitor continuing compliance with service quality standards.

The resulting scale introduces a novel four-factor structure with high goodness of fit to effectively measure customers' perceived service quality in QSRs, where the ease of use and speed of gathering client responses are a key factor for successful implementation.

This paper aims to analyze factors based on organizational knowledge management (KM; transactional memory systems and knowledge-oriented leadership [K-OL]) that help firms to mitigate conflicts based on task management at work, with the aim to improve their innovation capabilities (IC). The knowledge-based view of the firm, conflict management theory and cognitive collective engagement theory have been used to build a model of relationships that connects the development of positive KM contexts and management of dysfunctional conflict with IC improvement.

Data survey collected from inland hotel establishments in Spain is used to test seven hypotheses by means of structural equations modeling, applying the partial least squares technique. Direct, indirect and mediating relationships between variables are examined from the structural path model.

The results confirm that, as expected, IC improve when K-OL and transactive memory systems (TMSs) are properly implemented by hotel establishments, which leads them to reduce negative effects of task management conflict (TMC). Significant direct effects are found between the key variables of the study and also a significant indirect effect between K-OL and IC through TMS reinforcement and the mitigation of TMC.

This paper provides useful ideas for hotel managers about how to improve KM contexts in their establishments while avoiding TMC. Efforts devoted to creating those contexts by hotel establishments are shown to be effective to improve their IC and create competitive advantages.

The analysis of IC improvement by studying TMC mitigation had not been researched to date by the KM literature. The consideration and testing of a model that integrates KM-related tools such as K-OL and TMS to avoid TMC in the hotel industry is the main contribution of this study.

This study explores entrepreneurial decision-making in the equity crowdfunding (ECF) context, and it aims to shed some light on the relationship among three aspects: entrepreneurial characteristics (i.e. entrepreneurial alertness and entrepreneurial self-efficacy), entrepreneurial motivations (i.e. promotion, improvement of networking and acquisition of product and market knowledge) and entrepreneurial behaviours (i.e. campaign characteristics in terms of communication and offerings).

The hypotheses testing and analysis were conducted using the partial least squares approach to structural equation modelling, and data were collected from the overall population of Italian ECF platforms.

Our results highlight that entrepreneurial characteristics may be central in ECF because of their significant impact on some motivation entrepreneurs have to adopt ECF, which in turn have an impact on meaningful campaign characteristics that can influence ECF performance.

The current literature is mainly focused on investors' decisions, while a neglected perspective until now has been that of entrepreneurs. This study is among the first to focus on entrepreneurs in the ECF context, and, to the best of our knowledge, it is the first study to investigate the entrepreneurial decision-making process. The added value of this research lies in the analysis of the entrepreneurial aspects underlying entrepreneurial decisions to use ECF.

Innovation is one of the most important foundations on which to create and sustain competitive advantages in companies, but at the individual level, employee innovative behavior has recently been jeopardized by the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. changes in workplaces, employee interaction, motivation). This study analyzes wellness programs and actions through which organizations have tried to adapt to the new situation caused by COVID-19 and their effect on employee innovation behavior.

Structural equation modeling by means of the partial least squares technique was used to test the study's hypotheses after collecting survey data from Spanish companies, providing evidence that wellness programs and measures to deal with COVID-19 through perceived organizational support and affective commitment encourage employee innovation behavior.

The results suggest that efforts developed by firms focused on employee well-being to overcome difficulties caused by the pandemic strengthen innovative behaviors by means of intrinsic motivation based essentially on personal commitment. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed by the paper's authors.

This paper corroborates and extends previous research regarding wellness programs, perceived organization support and affective commitment. It provides a comprehensive model of relationships that predicts employee innovative behavior. It analyzes the influence of enterprise wellness programs based on protective COVID-19 measures.

This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of sustainability app on environmental citizenship behavior on the basis of norm-activation model.

A questionnaire survey, which comprises five variables (i.e. awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, personal norms, environmental citizenship behavior in a private sphere and environmental citizenship behavior in a public sphere) measured through 16 items, was conducted in the USA by using Amazon Mechanical Turk. With 549 valid respondents’ answers in hand, the collected data were analyzed applying a multi-group structural equation modelling technique with IBM SPSS AMOS 23 software program.

The results revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, personal norms and environmental citizenship behavior in both private and public sphere. Furthermore, this study attested that sustainability apps utilization has a moderating effect on the predictors of environmental citizenship behaviors.

Past studies have seldom examined the contribution of mobile apps to environmental sustainability. This paper enriches the extant academic literature in the field of technology for behavior change, and bears significant implications on how sustainability apps can be adopted by governments, policymakers, organizations and teacher educators to engage people and stimulate environmental citizenship behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mediating effect of the identification of valuable external knowledge on the relationship between the development of inter-organizational ties (structural social capital) and the acquisition of external knowledge.

Using a sample of 87 firms from Spanish biotechnology and pharmaceutics industries, the authors have tested the proposed mediation hypothesis by applying the partial least squares technique to a structural equations model.

The study results show that those firms with stronger, more frequent and closer inter-relationships are able to increase the amount of intentionally acquired knowledge, partly due to the greater level of development of their knowledge identification capability. Thus, firms with a higher capability to recognize the value of the knowledge embedded in their inter-organizational networks will be more likely to design better strategies to acquire and integrate such knowledge into their current knowledge bases for either present or future use.

This research contributes to knowledge management and social capital literature by means of the study of two key determinants of knowledge acquisition – structural social capital and knowledge identification capability – and the explanation of their relationships of mutual influence. The paper thus tries to fill this literature gap and connects the relational perspective of social capital with the knowledge-based view from a strategic point of view.

A key point in the internationalisation process of companies comes with the choice of international market. Following this choice, the results companies may thereby obtain help in measuring their level of international performance. This study aims to measure the impact of internationalisation processes in keeping with company market orientations (MOs) through measuring their effect on international performance.

The authors obtained the data from a questionnaire sent out by email to a total of 8,103 exporting companies and/or with interests in exporting (the study population) registered in the AICEP-Portugal Global database that provided the email addresses of the company representatives responsible for internationalisation. The authors received a total of 320 valid responses (sample).

The results display a positive MO effect both on internationalisation processes and on international performance. The authors also note the importance of studying the influence of strategic orientations on internationalization processes, motivated by the particular SME’s characteristics.

The authors aim to contribute to the study of the influence of the MO, both upstream and downstream, thus seeking to verify its impact on internationalization processes.

This paper aims to analyze unexplored connections between economic, environmental and social dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and knowledge management (KM) strategies (exploration, exploitation), also considering environmental dynamism as an influencing variable on these connections. The predicted CSR-KM interplay suggests, from stakeholder and knowledge-based views of the firm, the existence of ideal configurations between CSR and KM strategies that generate differentiated impacts on companies’ innovation capabilities, especially in dynamic environments.

Structural equation modeling by means of the partial least squares technique was used to test the study’s hypotheses after collecting survey data from Spanish companies of the renewable energy sector.

The study findings show that in highly dynamic environments, companies will tend to commit prominently in CSR, although their orientation (economic, environmental, social) and effects on innovation capabilities will depend mainly on the selected KM strategies. Social and environmental CSR are found to be highly related to KM exploration, whereas economic CSR is highly related to KM exploitation. Nevertheless, while a significant indirect effect of economic CSR by means of the KM exploitation strategy on innovation capabilities is found, the proposed indirect effect of both environmental and social CSR through the KM exploration strategy on innovation capabilities is not significant.

The results suggest that company managers should be aware of the advantages of following specific paths of investment in KM and CSR initiatives in highly dynamic environments, as there is a potential payoff in terms of innovation capability improvement. The results also suggest that “good” relationships with stakeholders, built from specific CSR investments, make firms able to get valuable knowledge that it is useful to develop KM strategies for innovation capability development.

Previous studies do not consider the interplay between KM strategies and CSR as a catalyzer for developing a firm’s innovation capabilities. This paper contributes to the KM and innovation literatures by introducing CSR into the conversation about how to improve innovation capabilities in dynamic and sustainable industries by using configurations of KM strategies and specific CSR investments in economic, social and environmental areas.