Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence that adopting open innovation (OI) has on the innovativeness and performance of specialized small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper also examines the adoption of OI within a firm’s practices and models, and within the three dimensions of firm sustainability.

Survey data from 48 specialized SMEs manufacturing supercars were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. SmartPLS software was used to conduct a path analysis and test the proposed framework.

The findings suggest that high adoption of OI models tends to increase firm innovativeness. Similarly, the adoption of OI practices has a positive effect on innovativeness but to a lesser extent than OI models. The moderation results of innovativeness further show that OI models and practices can benefit the performance of SMEs. Specifically, two dimensions of performance – environmental and social performance – were found to be greatly influenced by OI.

Due to parsimony in the investigated model, this study only focuses on OI adoption as practices and models without considering its drivers or other contingency factors.

This paper could help practitioners in SMEs better understand the benefits of adopting OI to be more innovative but also more sustainable.

This study contributes to the literature on the role of OI practices and models regarding the dimensions of firm sustainability performance by being the first paper to investigate this relationship in the context of small and medium manufacturers of supercars.

This paper explains how the location of motorsports events is an integral part of the marketing of the sport of motor racing and of all its attendant commercial interests. Case studies of the major motorsports events staged in public street circuits in Australia are used to illustrate how the locations have particular symbolic significance that adds legitimacy to the sport of motor racing, and the messages and impacts associated with these events. The paper examines the wider significance of allowing special public spaces in cities to be used for motorsports events, and contends that the marketing of sporting events should not be considered independently of the major challenges facing the world.

Two studies were undertaken with the aim of determining the nature and prevalence of exposure to alcohol sponsorship communications associated with sport. Study 1 reports a content analysis of alcohol sponsors' leveraging across popular sporting events. Study 2 examines alcohol sponsors' activation in social media. A high proportion of alcohol sponsorship messages containing content appealing to young adult drinkers are revealed across multiple media. Events and policy implications are addressed.

This paper aims to examine how collaborative supplier development (SD) activities, supplier capabilities and buyer–supplier relationship interrelate in technology-based, luxury product business contexts characterized by small volumes, difficult targets and resource constraints relative to those targets.

Using inductive case research method, the authors investigate multiple embedded cases involving six dyadic buyer–supplier relationships of two luxury product manufacturers in the motorcycle and automotive industries. Each dyad represents an important sub-system for which the buying firm committed significant SD efforts to help the supplier successfully achieve difficult targets.

The analysis reveals how paradoxical tensions might emerge as the firms engage in successful SD activities, which could lead to decreasing relationship commitment ultimately resulting in the termination of the relationship. The authors utilize the “value co-creation and value capture” paradox framework to understand the SD and relationship dynamic and characterize it as developing-leveraging paradox to explain its dualities, i.e. commitment-based SD efforts (increasing value co-creation), and unilateral leveraging of the newly acquired capabilities (increasing value capture) by both the buyer and the supplier. Overemphasis on value capture by one of the exchange partners spurs a detrimental vicious cycle leading to the decline of the relationship.

The study explains the paradoxical dynamics that may emerge in SD activities of innovative, technologically complex, luxury product firms. The findings contribute to the SD literature by highlighting how learnings from SD activities could contribute to the dark sides of buyer–supplier relationship. The technologically complex, luxury product contextual characteristics of the study may limit the generalizability of the study findings.

The study provides novel insights into the emergence and management of paradoxes in buyer–supplier relationships, in terms of virtuous and vicious dynamics of developing-leveraging.

Alcohol sponsorship of sport is common in Australia, with much debate about the appropriateness of linking sport with alcohol advertising and promotion. This paper provides examples of such sponsorships to appreciate the extent and nature of the complex relationship between sport and alcohol sponsors. The public health and policy implications of alcohol sponsorship of sport extending to creating a sporting competition purely to promote an alcohol brand are considered.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different community groups differ in the extent to which environmentally friendly behaviours are performed, as well as how they differ across a host of other psychologically relevant variables.

The study was conducted via a self‐report questionnaire delivered to four community samples (environmentalists; performance car enthusiasts; young and older people; n=124) assessing demographic information, ecological behaviour, and the psychological variables.

Results showed that environmentalists engage in more ecological behaviour, are more cooperative, have stronger social and personal norms, a more internal locus of control, feel more collective guilt, and identify less with Australia than performance car enthusiasts. Differences in younger and older populations revealed that young people engage in less ecological behaviour, cooperate less, have a more external locus of control, and identify less with Australia.

The study may provide a starting‐point for future research and behaviour change campaigns aiming to develop methods for increasing ecological behaviour in specific segments of the community.

The paper is important in understanding factors contributing to ecological behaviour, and differs from previous research in that it identifies that certain variables are represented differently in different community samples.

The existing literature suggests that multinational corporations (MNCs) divest subsidiary units whenever they cease to enjoy the advantages of ownership, location or internalization. However, not all MNCs divest under these conditions. This paper aims to explore the factors that contributed to the survival of a particular subsidiary and prevented it from being divested.

The analysis focuses on an individual subsidiary of a large foreign MNC in the electronics industry, which divested other subsidiaries from Portugal. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews.

The subsidiary’s diverse customer base, specificity and high level of efficiency, the local advantages, the existing governmental agreements and the parent MNC’s previous unsuccessful relocation experiences seem to have contributed to the survival of the subsidiary.

Although the results of the case study are not generalizable to the entire population of firms, the featured case study is a rare survival success story in the Portuguese electronics industry.

The proposed framework may offer public authorities measures to create conditions to encourage firms to retain their investment in a particular site. For corporate strategists, new perspectives on subsidiary survival are provided.

This paper is one of the few qualitative studies in the field of subsidiary survival. The results offer an integrative framework on which factors contribute to the survival of a subsidiary located on a comparatively unfavorable labor cost location and support the role of the organizational learning and of previous failed relocation experiences and relocation barriers when a parent MNC decides whether to retain a unit.