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1 – 10 of 258Clara Hoffmann, Sascha Alavi and Christian Schmitz
Seeing past research, sales managers’ encouragement of their salespeople, tailored to the demands of value-creating sales, should constitute a key success factor for implementing…
Abstract
Purpose
Seeing past research, sales managers’ encouragement of their salespeople, tailored to the demands of value-creating sales, should constitute a key success factor for implementing value-centered business models. But prior research is largely silent on sales managers’ encouragement behavior for adopting value-centered business models regarding specific sales manager encouragement behaviors. Hence, this paper aims to examine the moderating effect of in-role and extra-role encouragement by sales managers in value-centered business models on financial firm performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The research model was tested empirically on a sample of key informants from 209 firms working in (sales) management positions using regression analysis.
Findings
The findings suggest that in-role encouragement behavior is more effective to achieve financial firm performance in value-centered business models. Sales managers should use in-role encouragement to provide their salespeople with a clear structure as a framework for their tasks and work environment and a strategic alignment along the sales organization.
Research limitations/implications
First, while the study included a variety of industries, it only covered countries from the Dach region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), which could limit the generalizability of the findings. To validate the results in additional countries, future research could replicate the research in a cross-country study to test whether the effects differ between countries. Second, the study surveys one key informant per firm on a firm-level leadership tendency. Although leadership culture may promote similar leadership styles or behaviors within one firm, individual leadership behaviors may still vary. Future research should validate the findings using individual sales managers data.
Practical implications
Firm managers must encourage sales managers in value-centered business models to engage in in-role encouragement and avoid extra-role encouragement and thus intensify their micromanagement. Micromanaging the salesforce comprises extensive guidance regarding their expectations and execution toward their salespeople’s work-related tasks and their way of thinking. Furthermore, firms must ask themselves whether their sales managers are capable of micromanaging at all and whether they have the capacity to do so. If not, they must create the appropriate capacities for this. Supplementary, firms should offer regular training for managers on the application of in-role encouragement.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study combining the two rather separately considered research streams of encouragement behavior and value-centered business models regarding the effects on firm performance outcomes.
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Stephan Reinhold, Pietro Beritelli and Rouven Grünig
The need and legitimacy of destination management organizations (DMOs) are increasingly questioned. Still, the tourism literature provides little advice on how DMOs change and…
Abstract
Purpose
The need and legitimacy of destination management organizations (DMOs) are increasingly questioned. Still, the tourism literature provides little advice on how DMOs change and finance their activities for the benefit of their destination-given contextual change. This conceptual article aims to contribute to filling this gap. The authors do so by proposing a typology of business models for destination management organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
With the help of typological reasoning, the authors develop a new framework of DMO business model ideal types. To this end, the authors draw on extant literature on business model typologies and identify key dimensions of DMO business models from the tourism literature.
Findings
The challenges DMOs face, as discussed in the tourism literature, relate to both ends of their business model: On the one end, the value creation side, the perceived value of the activities they traditionally pursue has been declining; on the other end, the value capture side, revenue streams are less plentiful or attached to more extensive demands. On the basis of two dimensions, configurational complexity and perceived control, the authors identify four distinct ideal types of DMO business models: the destination factory, destination service center, value orchestrator and value enabler.
Originality/value
The authors outline a “traditional” DMO business model that stands in contrast to existing DMO classifications and that relates DMO challenges to the business model concept. The typology provides an integrated description of how DMO business models may be positioned to create and capture value for the organization and the destination(s) it serves. The ideal types point to important interdependencies of specific business model design choices.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the topic of the Chinese business model and provide a brief introduction to the papers in this special issue.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the topic of the Chinese business model and provide a brief introduction to the papers in this special issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper explores the importance of studying business model in the Chinese market and summarises the eight papers in this issue.
Findings
The papers in this special issue address what the business model is in China, how it influences organizational outcomes, and how to build the business model in the Chinese market. These papers may be germane to both researchers and practitioners concerned with managing business model in China. For scholars, these papers broaden the understanding of business model and extend the theoretical boundaries of the business model from the Western to the Eastern context. For practitioners doing business in China, these papers give implications on how to build business models in China as well as what institutional and technological factors should be considered when designing their business models.
Research limitations/implications
Further investigation is needed into the interaction among Chinese firms' activities on business model design and operation and the institutional, technological, and market environment.
Originality/value
Overall, these papers make remarkable contributions to our understanding of Chinese business model. The topics of these studies are various and the methods are also multiplex. Several interesting Chinese business models are addressed such as Bandit business model and “a company + farmers”.
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Roland Kassemeier, Sascha Alavi, Johannes Habel, Christian Schmitz and Jan Wieseke
Christoph Tienken, Moritz Classen and Thomas Friedli
Digital solutions (DS) that build on recurring revenue models (RRMs) offer new opportunities to continuously create and capture superior value. However, many firms fail to engage…
Abstract
Purpose
Digital solutions (DS) that build on recurring revenue models (RRMs) offer new opportunities to continuously create and capture superior value. However, many firms fail to engage their sales force in digital solution selling (DS selling), leading to agency problems that receive little attention in literature. This study aims to examine the drivers of agency problems that surface in the transition toward DS selling and the sales control systems that resolve these problems.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a qualitative, inductive study. Data were collected from interviews with 72 marketing and sales managers representing 53 industrial firms transitioning toward DS selling.
Findings
DS selling is subject to adverse selection and moral hazard caused by motivation-related, opportunity-related and ability-related drivers. Input, capability, activity and outcome controls – detailed in this study – can resolve these agency problems.
Research limitations/implications
The limitations of this study’s methodology and scope suggest several directions for future research. Methodology-wise, the authors mainly relied on cross-sectional interview data from informants in Central and Northern Europe. Scope-wise, more research is needed on the capabilities, processes and steering instruments supporting DS sales. Finally, only now do the authors begin to understand which compensation plans motivate DS selling.
Practical implications
The controls identified in this study help managers to steer their sales force in DS sales.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate DS sales control systems. Thereby, the authors enhance prior understandings of solution selling, agency problems and sales control systems.
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Weige Yang, Yuqin Zhou, Wenhai Xu and Kunzhi Tang
The purposes are to explore corporate financial management optimization in the context of big data and provide a sustainable financial strategy for corporate development.
Abstract
Purpose
The purposes are to explore corporate financial management optimization in the context of big data and provide a sustainable financial strategy for corporate development.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the shortcomings of the traditional financial management model are analyzed under the background of big data analysis. The big data analytic technology is employed to extract financial big data information and establish an efficient corporate financial management model. Second, the deep learning (DL) algorithm is applied to implement a corporate financial early-warning model to predict the potential risks in corporate finance, considering the predictability of corporate financial risks. Finally, a corporate value-centered development strategy based on sustainable growth is proposed for long-term development.
Findings
The experimental results demonstrate that the financial early-warning model based on DL has an accuracy of 90.7 and 88.9% for the two-year financial alert, which is far superior to the prediction effect of the traditional financial risk prediction models.
Originality/value
The obtained results can provide a reference for establishing a sustainable development pattern of corporate financial management under the background of big data.
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Daniel B. Cornfield, Jonathan S. Coley, Larry W. Isaac and Dennis C. Dickerson
As a site of contestation among job seekers, workers, and managers, the bureaucratic workplace both reproduces and erodes occupational race segregation and racial status…
Abstract
As a site of contestation among job seekers, workers, and managers, the bureaucratic workplace both reproduces and erodes occupational race segregation and racial status hierarchies. Much sociological research has examined the reproduction of racial inequality at work; however, little research has examined how desegregationist forces, including civil rights movement values, enter and permeate bureaucratic workplaces into the broader polity. Our purpose in this chapter is to introduce and typologize what we refer to as “occupational activism,” defined as socially transformative individual and collective action that is conducted and realized through an occupational role or occupational community. We empirically induce and present a typology from our study of the half-century-long, post-mobilization occupational careers of over 60 veterans of the nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement of the early 1960s. The fourfold typology of occupational activism is framed in the “new” sociology of work, which emphasizes the role of worker agency and activism in determining worker life chances, and in the “varieties of activism” perspective, which treats the typology as a coherent regime of activist roles in the dialogical diffusion of civil rights movement values into, within, and out of workplaces. We conclude with a research agenda on how bureaucratic workplaces nurture and stymie occupational activism as a racially desegregationist force at work and in the broader polity.
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Fiona X. Yang and Virginia M.C. Lau
– This study aims to investigate generational disparities of Chinese Generation (Gen) X and Y tourists by examining their loyalty determinants in a luxury hotel setting.
Abstract
Purpose;
This study aims to investigate generational disparities of Chinese Generation (Gen) X and Y tourists by examining their loyalty determinants in a luxury hotel setting.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey of five-star hotel guests in Macau yielded 285 complete responses. Structural equation modeling was used to test the quality-loyalty framework through the mediating roles of perceived value and satisfaction, with a multi-group comparison to examine generational differences.
Findings
The results indicate that top quality rooms and services are high on the agenda of both generations, while Gen X places more weight on convenience and food and Gen Y on security; satisfaction does not induce loyalty, whereas value fully or partially mediates the quality-loyalty relationship; and Gen X is value-centered in building loyalty, yet Gen Y exhibits both value consciousness and stronger demands for upscale quality features.
Practical implications
The findings help hotel managers cater to different generations by improving determinant attributes of service quality and enhancing hotel value.
Originality/value
The study makes noteworthy contributions to the generational differences of Chinese tourists and sheds light on future research in tourism and hospitality to explore the characteristics of young generations.
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Gautam Mahajan, V. Kumar, Marco Tregua and Roberto Bruni
This paper aims to present the seven organizational principles for developing value-dominant logic (VDL) thinking and advancing it toward making a business purposeful and open to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present the seven organizational principles for developing value-dominant logic (VDL) thinking and advancing it toward making a business purposeful and open to a lifestyle of value for humanity at large.
Design/methodology/approach
VDL considers value as rooted on axiology, actor-network theory, the hygge concept and is deployed through seven organizational principles deriving from the original eight VDL principles (Mahajan, 2017).
Findings
It is necessary to consider value in its polysemous meanings as an emergent element and a result of people’s interpretation based on norms and beliefs. At the same time, managers conceptualize businesses to create stimuli for the markets and society and favoring the emergence of a positive and sustainable value. This study explains how organizations and managers can be driven by norms and beliefs and a purpose to make decisions and assume postures and behaviors capable of stimulating the emergence of positive and sustainable value, creating opportunities for humanity at large; this managerial behavior creates conditions for value creation, and it is framed in VDL.
Research limitations/implications
A research agenda is provided that can spawn fruitful research in VDL.
Practical implications
This study develops the theoretical roots for a management approach that will support organizations and managers in interpreting their role as stimulators of value.
Social implications
The study focuses on the well-being and happiness of all the stakeholders.
Originality/value
The study developed organizational principles deeply rooted in the VDL.
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Thomas Anning-Dorson and Michael Boadi Nyamekye
While acknowledging the importance of innovation capability and its potential for creating competitive advantage for firms, the purpose of this paper is to further explain how…
Abstract
Purpose
While acknowledging the importance of innovation capability and its potential for creating competitive advantage for firms, the purpose of this paper is to further explain how firms can gain the most from this potential. In the face of the low success rate of innovations and innovation activities in the hospitality sector, this study explains – through the dynamic capability perspective – that building a flexible organization is instrumental in creating competitive advantage out of innovation capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses data from hospitality firms operating in an emerging economy with a fast-growing hospitality sector. As this study uses survey and statistical methods, the possibility of common method bias is addressed by partial least squares structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized relationships.
Findings
The study finds that organizational flexibility (OF) is an important mediator in the relationship between innovation capabilities and competitive advantage. The study explains that building a flexible organization is instrumental in creating competitive advantage out of innovation capabilities in hospitality firms.
Originality/value
This study suggests that relying only on innovation capability offers hospitality firms just a fraction of what would be gained if such capabilities are properly aligned with OF. This is because such alignment generates better response power to changing needs as the firm becomes more mobile, responsive and agile to rapidly identify market trends, adjust internal operations and respond quickly to new market demand.
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