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1 – 10 of 80Ahmed Mohamed Habib, Guo-liang Yang and Yuan Cui
This study examines the effects of CLS and DS on companies' WCME and analyses the differences in WCME at company and market levels.
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the effects of CLS and DS on companies' WCME and analyses the differences in WCME at company and market levels.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts the DEA approach, regression, differences, and additional analyses to achieve its objectives. This study employs 235 non-financial companies and 1,175 company-year observations from eight active industries in the United States from 2016 to 2020.
Findings
The findings indicate that CLS and DS strategies positively influence companies' WCME. Additionally, WCME differed across size categories and industries, with large companies and those operating in the communication services industry showing better WCME. By contrast, WCME did not differ between the periods before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Practical implications
This study scrutinizes the impact of CLS and DS strategies on companies' WCME to bridge the gap in this field. It extends the investigation of competitive strategies as explanatory variables for a company's WCME and examines the differences in companies' WCME at the company and market levels, which may assist decision-makers in improving their strategies and efficiencies for continuous improvement.
Originality/value
This study enhances current knowledge by uncovering the influence of CLS and DS strategies on improving companies' WCME, an underexplored topic. It also explores companies' WCME trends and patterns regarding company size, industry type, and the pandemic period to draw interesting conclusions about the essence of WCME.
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Avi Karan, Jyoti Verma and Rajeev Verma
Start-ups require a competitive advantage to integrate sustainable practices and develop organizational capabilities to thrive in dynamic business environments. However…
Abstract
Purpose
Start-ups require a competitive advantage to integrate sustainable practices and develop organizational capabilities to thrive in dynamic business environments. However, implementation of these practices presents several ethical challenges. This study aims to quantify the influence of organizational capabilities (information technology capabilities and organizational virtues) on start-ups' competitive advantage and readiness to implement environmental, social and governance practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employed a survey design, and data were collected from 320 start-up founders and/or managers in India. The data were analyzed using Smart PLS 4.0.
Findings
The findings suggest that organizational capabilities, including information technology capabilities and organizational virtues, play an important role in enhancing start-ups' competitive advantage and readiness to implement sustainable practices. Dynamic capability mediates these relationships, while entrepreneurial orientation moderates the relationship between organizational virtues and dynamic capability.
Practical implications
This study has significant implications for organizations implementing sustainable business practices through the development and nurturance of organizational virtues and information technology capabilities. The study is also useful for leaders, managers and entrepreneurs in training and development, managing tradeoffs and maintaining important organizational capabilities to establish a balance between people’s concerns, the environment and profits.
Originality/value
Few studies have examined the role of organizational capabilities, sustainable business practices and competitive advantage in the context of start-ups. This study contributes to the literature on sustainable entrepreneurship and organizational capabilities.
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Karishma Trivedi and Kailash B.L. Srivastava
Innovation is critical for businesses to stay competitive in today's world, as it allows them to constantly look for new ways to differentiate their products or services from…
Abstract
Purpose
Innovation is critical for businesses to stay competitive in today's world, as it allows them to constantly look for new ways to differentiate their products or services from their competitors as well as improve cost-effectiveness. This study explore the role of strategic human resource practices in developing organizations' competitive capabilities-differentiation and cost-effectiveness, which, improves their innovation performance to create a competitive advantage.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected data from 387 employees from 25 knowledge-intensive information technology organizations in India through a questionnaire-based survey. After checking for biases, reliability and validity, the hypothesized relationships were tested by structural equational modeling using AMOS 26.
Findings
Strategic HR practices have a significant and positive effect on innovation performance and both competitive capabilities-differentiation and cost-effectiveness. While the differentiation capability had a strong positive effect on innovation performance, cost-effectiveness capability was not significantly related to innovation performance. The differentiation capability mediates the relationship between strategic HR practices and innovation performance link, whereas the cost-effectiveness capability did not have a mediating effect.
Practical implications
This study provides practical insights to HR and knowledge managers to focus on development of human capital and invest in hiring, training, development, strategic performance management practices to enhance employees' knowledge behaviors, which, stimulates innovation performance.
Originality/value
The paper adds to the strategic HRM paradigm by clarifying the underlying process of how strategic HR practices leads to higher innovation. It affirms the vitality of choosing appropriate competitive capabilities, and supporting organizational factor for business's success. It fills an important research gap by providing original empirical evidence from knowledge intensive information technology organizations in the emerging economy of India.
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The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant declines in international tourist arrivals and receipts. It has also influenced destination preference, tourist demographic, travel…
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant declines in international tourist arrivals and receipts. It has also influenced destination preference, tourist demographic, travel motivation, and behavior. Recognizing health and safety as the new considerations in pursuing tourism activities in the better normal, this necessitated a reassessment of the current tourism industry by directing the attention from the usual destination-centric perspective to a value chain perspective. This chapter proposes a new paradigm for the better normal value chain by deconstructing the concepts of travel, tourism, and travel sectors and revisiting the concept of the tourism value chain (TVC) by mapping out the chain and its functional levels and integrating travel, tourism, and hospitality sectors in one value chain. Policymaking approaches such as reorganizing the value chain, empowering stakeholder involvement through coopetition, and resilience building in the face of possible adversities in the future should be adapted to achieve this suggested paradigm's goals. This analysis provides stakeholders with a broader understanding of the needed interventions in future-proofing the industry backed by industry trends in the better normal while fostering collaboration and offering flexibility to cope better in other possible shocks in the future.
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Martin Kornberger, Clarissa Ruth Marie Schott, Dan-Richard Knudsen and Christian Andvik
This paper aims to point to the shift in the temporal orientation, going from reporting on the past to creating insights about the future, which might be suggestive of perennial…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to point to the shift in the temporal orientation, going from reporting on the past to creating insights about the future, which might be suggestive of perennial managerial attempts to push the boundaries of bounded rationality.
Design/methodology/approach
In this essay, the authors want to critically engage with the concept of “data-driven management” in the context of digitalization. To do so, they sketch the edges of current discourses around the emerging idea of data-driven management and its relationship with the inner workings of organizations from an accounting perspective. They question the often-times supposed objectivity and increased rationality of the concept and instead introduce the idea of becoming “data-curious” (before being data-driven).
Findings
The authors observe that this push also seems to be accompanied by trends of individualized decision-making and prevailing hopes of technology to solve organizational problems. They therefore suggest that it is valuable for current debates to take a moment to give attention, in practice and in research, to the role of temporality, benefits of collective decision-making and changes in professions (of accountants).
Originality/value
The aim of this paper is to spark curiosity and engagement with the phenomenon of data-driven management by outlining a novel set of potential future pathways of research and point towards methods that might help studying the questions arising for a data-curious approach.
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Honglei Liu, Chang Suk Choi and Kyung Hoon Kim
This study discusses the sources of value co-creation and its effects on businesses using social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and blogs.
Abstract
Purpose
This study discusses the sources of value co-creation and its effects on businesses using social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and blogs.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 301 survey responses were selected. The selected respondents indicated that they lived in South Korea, had an occupation as a private business or marketer and had used a social platform one or more times a day. The hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model.
Findings
The study reveals that the source of sustainable value co-creation between social platforms and businesses positively affects the competitive advantage of maintaining businesses. This advantage reveals an integrated relationship that leads to the successful financial performance of businesses through online word of mouth and customer satisfaction. Moreover, this study finds that the relationship between variables differs by social platform types (unidirectional vs bidirectional service).
Research limitations/implications
The results of this study explain the relationship between value co-production, value-in-use, SCA and long-term performance. However, this study focused on private business and marketing staff working in companies in South Korea. Accordingly, more countries in which social platforms are widely utilized should be taken into account to help generalize the empirical findings.
Practical implications
There is a difference in the relationship between co-creation activity and cost advantage/long-term performance in accordance with the service type of a social platform. The results indicate that a bidirectional service is a more powerful tool for cost advantage and long-term performance.
Originality/value
This study focuses on the role of value co-creation in social platforms to ensure companies’ sustainable competitive advantage and performance. The results of this study will help companies develop online marketing strategies using social platforms.
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Abstract
Purpose
Along with the development of the robotics industry, service robots have been gradually used in the hospitality industry. Nevertheless, service robot categorization and the fulfillment of the cognitive and emotional needs of consumers by hotel service robots have yet to be fully explored. Hence, the purpose of this study are to categorize hotel service robots, to explore consumers’ robot hotel experience, to identify the consumers’ preference of hotel service robot in general, to reveal consumers’ preference for hotel service robots based on their fulfillment of emotional needs and to examine the completion of cognitive–analytical and emotional–social tasks.
Design/methodology/approach
Through in-depth interviews with technology managers and questionnaire survey among consumers who have and have not had robot hotel stay experience to achieve the aforementioned research objectives.
Findings
Findings of in-depth interviews show that service robots can be categorized as check-in/out robots, artificial intelligence (AI) robots and service delivery robots. Results of questionnaire survey indicate that consumers prefer non-humanoid robots (n = 213, p = 47.87%) among check-in/out robots, the Xiaodu Smart Display (n = 163, p = 36. 63%) among the AI robots and the machine-shaped robot porter (I) (n = 178, p = 40.00%) among the service delivery robots.
Practical implications
This study provides implications, such as the adoption of robot-shaped AI with a screen display, to hotel managers to meet the needs of consumers regarding the completion of cognitive–analytical and emotional–social tasks of robots.
Originality/value
This study extends uncanny valley theory by identifying preference for the shape and functions of different categories of service robots and contributes to the limited literature on hotel robots.
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Martin Carlsson-Wall, Christofer Laurell, Oliver Lindqvist Parbratt and Mart Ots
The paper investigates the relationship between accounting and promises in the context of digital change.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper investigates the relationship between accounting and promises in the context of digital change.
Design/methodology/approach
Relying on emergent literature on accounting and promises, a qualitative field study has been conducted covering 57 interviews with municipal directors, digitalization strategists, administration managers and CFOs in a Swedish region consisting of 13 municipalities.
Findings
The paper provides insights into how municipalities draw on accounting in attempts to reconstruct promissory narratives of the digital. By highlighting two contrasting cases, we show how this can involve practices of either restoration or transformation. Likewise, we find that attempts to restore promises can sometimes have unanticipated effects, in our case a transformation of the promise instead.
Originality/value
We introduce a “promise” lens to the literature on accounting and digital change and empirically describe how accounting is implicated in shaping promises in the context of public sector digital change.
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Thanduxolo Elford Fana and Jane Goudge
In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after…
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.
Design/methodology/approach
A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.
Findings
Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.
Originality/value
Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.
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