Search results

This paper aims to operationalise and juxtapose variables related to identity, strategy and communications, and then examine the impact of such integration on organisational stakeholders’ trust, loyalty and commitment by using commitment/trust theory.

This research design utilises explanatory research at the preliminary stage, as informed by the literature and conceptual framework. The subsequent model was examined via a positivist survey carried out among stakeholders in high-end retail stores in London. Structural equation modelling (SEM) via AMOS was conducted to gain insight into the various relevant influences and relationships.

The results indicate that identity and strategy are key drivers of integrated corporate communication, and they serve to build stakeholder trust, loyalty and commitment.

The paper shows that while practitioners have indicated that integrated marketing communication is important for organisations, there are a few other areas of concern with regard to consequences related to trust, loyalty and commitment, especially in a retail context. This paper empirically examined relationships between these constructs by validating a conceptual model by using SEM.

The purpose of this paper is to report the grounded theory empirical validation on key categories within a design-led methodology to envision urban futures. The paper focuses on the editorial products and the design concepts that constitute the heart of the approach. An original elaboration of trend clusters is presented as an exemplification of the outcome of this trend research approach. Although the approach was not created from the viewpoint of tourism and leisure, bibliographic notes on place-making complement it for this journal.

The paper presents empirical findings extracted by the means of the grounded theory, with the purpose to empirically validate two key categories (product and process) of a urban futures methodology. The methodology is an application of High Design, the process in use at Royal Philips BV for two decades. This methodology is contextualized within the constructivist episteme, as defined by the editors of this journal in a separate publication. Bibliographic references to place-making complete the paper.

The following findings are provided: empirical validation of the city.people.light communication platform (qualitative research); empirical validation of the city.people.light workshop practice (qualitative research); and bibliographic descriptions of the design process governing city.people.light and newly developed urban futures trend clusters, at European level, as an exemplification of the program/approach outcome.

The paper is structured according to a multi-layered editorial focus. Empirical findings were generated at primary research level in a 2013-2015 grounded theory projected by the author. Furthermore, the author directed the research processes and products that are the object of empirical validation. Newly defined elaborations and a discussion thereof is offered, taking into account contemporary place-making issues.

The original design-based methodology is a structured practice in urban futures from applied sciences and corporate innovation viewpoint. In this paper, its key categories are empirically validated through the grounded theory. Additionally, outcome from the original foresight programs is presented and a bibliographic review is provided from the viewpoint of place-making.

The co-creative methodology herein empirically validated is socio-cultural centered, with a strong drive to coutnerbalance the positivist and engineering corporate mindset through a humanistic concern for people. The framework in terms of place-making takes into account postmodern evolutions of the field.

The paper benefits from a unique mix of: epistemic note on tourism, leisure, and the future; original urban futures scenarios and design concepts from a world class corporate innovation program; and the actual empirical core of the grounded theory validation as performed in a dedicated research project. These three separate streams are mutually related.

This research has three objectives: one is to develop measuring criteria for ascertaining performance of customs clearance firms, another is to test reliability and validity of the factors, and the third is to analyze the relationship between customer service and firm performance. This research gathered the data from customs clearance firms. Reliability and validity concerned with the collected data are tested by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis and the relationship between variables is tested by analyzing structural equation modeling. The results are as follows. There are no problems in reliability and validity. According to the result of the analysis, customer service is divided into customer focus, customer needs, customer response and flexibility and performance is classified into customer performance and financial performance. The result of empirical tests is as follows. Customer focus has a positive effect on customer performance and financial performance. Flexibility has a positive effect on both types of performance. This means that firms which have discriminative services and a high level of flexibility through collaboration with customers can achieve high levels of customer performance and financial performance.

Organizations are confronted with problems and political risks to which they have to respond, presenting a need to develop tools and frames of understanding requisite to do so. In this article, we argue for the necessity of cultivating “political judgment” with a “sense of reality,” especially in the upper echelons of organizations. This article has two objectives: First to highlight how a number of recent interlinked developments within organizational analysis and practice have contributed to weakening judgment and its accompanying “sense of reality.” Second, to (re)introduce some canonical works that, although less in vogue recently, provide both a source of wisdom and frames of understanding that are key to tackling today’s problems. We begin by mapping the context in which the need for the cultivation of political judgment within organizations has arisen: (i) increasing proliferation of political risks and “wicked problems” to which it is expected that organizations adapt and respond; (ii) a wider historical and contemporary context in which the exercise of judgment has been undermined – a result of a combination of economics-inspired styles of theorizing and an associated obsession with metrics. We also explore the nature of “political judgment” and its accompanying “sense of reality” through the work of authors such as Philip Selznick, Max Weber, Chester Barnard, and Isaiah Berlin. We suggest that these authors have a weighty “sense of reality”; are antithetical to “high,” “abstract,” or “axiomatic” theorizing; and have a profound sense of the burden from exercising political judgment in difficult organizational circumstances.

The present study seeks to outline the role of marketing automation (MA) in measuring the return on marketing activities and the challenges associated with reaching accountability in marketing.

To investigate the objective of the study, the authors adopted a qualitative approach, conducting an exploratory study among ten key informants located in Portugal.

Based on the results of the qualitative analysis, a conceptual framework is proposed, which includes both strategic- and operational-level factors with the goal of creating a value-based agenda. In this agenda, executives such as the Chief Marketing Officer emerge as value creators, fostering business scalability, and further arguments are provided to justify budget allocation to MA activities.

Through careful research of the elements that characterize the phenomenon under study, the present paper ultimately contributes to a better understanding of MA and accountability within the current business paradigm.

This study aims to provide more insight into how customer voice is captured and used in managerial decision-making at the marketing-finance interface. This study’s focus is on understanding how the customer voice, often communicated through online and social media platforms, is used in high-performing hotels.

This research is based on a case study of four high-performing Irish hotels. For each case, multiple informants, including marketing managers, general managers and finance managers, were interviewed and shadowed. Twenty seven decisions across the four cases were analysed to assess the use of customer voice in managerial decision-making.

Social media provides a stage that has empowered the customer voice because of the public nature of the interaction and the network effect. Customer voice is incorporated in managerial decision-making in three distinct ways – symbolically as part of an early warning system, for action-oriented operational decisions and to some extent in the knowledge-enhancing role for tactical decisions. While there is a greater appreciation among senior managers and the finance and accounting managers of the importance of customer voice, this study finds clear limits in its utilisation and more reliance on traditional finance and accounting data, especially in strategic decision-making.

The cases belong to a highly visible open environment of hotels in an industry where customer voice has immediate and strong effects. The findings may not directly apply to industries characterised by a relatively more closed context such as banking or insurance. Moreover, the findings reflect the practices of high-performing hotels and do not necessarily capture the practices used in less successfully operating hotels.

While marketers need to enhance their ability to create a narrative that links the customer voice to revenue generation, finance managers also need to develop a skillset and adopt a mindset that appropriately reflects the influential role for customer voice in managerial decision-making.

Despite the linkage of marketing performance to business performance, there is limited research on the impact of customer information on managerial decision-making. This research provides insight into how customer voice is considered at the critical marketing-finance interface.

In recent years, the acronym VUCA has gained traction in strategic communication (SC) as an umbrella term that summarizes the recurrent challenges (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) of digital communication environments. However, an integrated reflection on how the VUCA dimensions facilitate a deeper understanding of specific digitalization challenges and how to navigate through these challenges is lacking. This article aims to explore and substantiate the descriptive (how) and prescriptive (how to) potential of VUCA for SC under digitalization conditions.

We first provide a systematic discussion of the four VUCA dimensions based on the general strategy literature. While their descriptive value is undisputed, prescriptive advice on how to respond to these challenges is contradictory. We substantiate this observation in a second empirical step based on problem-centered interviews with strategic communicators at the agency and corporate levels.

Our findings reveal that VUCA facilitates a systematic mapping of digitalization challenges consistently identified by professionals. The proposed strategic responses, however, remain contradictory at the theoretical and empirical levels. Hence, we propose the VUCA radar as a comprehensive descriptive and prescriptive framework.

The radar provides (a) a systematic overview of recurrent digitalization challenges to SC at the industry and practice levels and (b) prescriptive advice on how to navigate through these challenges by balancing contradictory strategic responses at the levels of vision, understanding, clarity and agility.

Evidence-based practice is a professional standard for occupational therapists, but limited time, resources and knowledge challenge its implementation. This study aims to identify what free evidence summary sources (FESS) can be found through a simple online search, related to child/youth interventions surrounding cerebral palsy (CP), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), developmental coordination disorder (DCD), mental health or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (MH/ADHD). Evidence summaries share research in concise, time-efficient manners.

An internet-based scoping review was conducted between February 2022 and July 2022, using Google, and known evidence summary producers. Evidence summaries meeting the inclusion criteria were located and catalogued. Type of agency, target audiences, purpose and distribution of evidence summaries related to diagnosis were identified for each FESS.

Ten FESS were found, which produced 113 intervention-focused evidence summaries within the past 10 years. These FESS were aimed at a variety of target audiences: service providers, service users, parents/families, researchers and commissioners, and were produced primarily by non-profit/charity organisations (6 of 10) who were trying to fill a gap in evidence. Forty-eight evidence summaries were related to ASD, 34 to CP, 29 to MH/ADHD and two to DCD.

A catalogue of FESS that exist online was produced, to support evidence-based practice for paediatric occupational therapists with limited resources, and may support improved health promotion and informed decision-making for service users. No consistent framework for FESS evidence summaries exists at this time.

Organizational sociology and organization studies have a long history together, while also sharing a proclivity to self-diagnose crises. Instead of taking these assessments at face value, this paper treats them as an object of study, asking what conditions have fueled them. In the case of organizational sociology, there are indications of a connection between rising levels of discontent and community building: self-identified organizational sociologists have progressively withdrawn from general debates in the discipline and turned their attention to organization studies, which, they suspect, has seen dramatic levels of growth at their expense. Organization studies, on the other hand, are still haunted by “a Faustian bargain”: leaning heavily on the authority of the social sciences, business school faculty were able to facilitate the emergence of a scholarly field of practice dedicated to the study of organizations, which they control. However, in doing so, they also set organization studies on a path of continued dependence on knowledge produced elsewhere: notably, by university disciplines such as sociology.

Esta investigación utiliza la Teoría Basada en Recursos como base para un modelo que permite integrar las acciones organizacionales con las variables que pueden moderar, directa o indirectamente, su impacto en el alto desempeño de los clubes de fútbol.

Se desarrolla una contrastación empírica en tres fases. La primera fue la técnica de regresión lineal. En segundo lugar, un análisis multivariado de covarianza (MANCOVA) y el tercer procedimiento, una regresión por mínimos cuadrados en dos fases. El objetivo de usar estos dos últimos procedimientos fue evaluar el efecto conjunto de las variables independientes sobre las variables dependientes, así como los efectos de interacción entre las mismas.

Se validan las relaciones, directas e indirectas, entre las variables organizacionales y decisionales previstas en el modelo. También se valida la importancia de las acciones promocionales del club, para lograr competitividad basada en su desempeño o resultados.

Investigaciones futuras se podrían replicar en otros países, usando muestras más grandes con técnicas estadísticas más complejas. También, se podría contrastar si las relaciones encontradas pueden variar según las culturas, o pueden usarse otras variables no contempladas en este estudio.

El cuestionario usado es una fuente de información fiable para los directivos de marketing de los clubes de fútbol, puesto que las escalas pueden ser usadas como guías para evaluar y diagnosticar su potencial de competitividad basada en el desempeño.

Los clubes de fútbol tienen un desarrollo e impacto directo en la sociedad. Por ello, las implicancias en el club recaerán en el entorno cercano (aficionados y sociedad) a este.

Esta investigación aporta varias contribuciones fundamentales a la literatura sobre la competitividad organizacional en el sector deportivo, con aplicación específica a los clubes de fútbol. Este es uno de los escasos estudios que muestran que la competitividad es el resultado de una dinámica motivacional y organizativa, y que el éxito de los clubes se basa en un fenómeno más complejo que solo la asistencia a los eventos. También, es una investigación en un país emergente, lo cual extiende la aplicabilidad teórica y práctica del fenómeno estudiado.