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This paper aims to explore franchisor–franchisee relationships in the context of plural forms. Plural forms implies the co-existence of franchised and non-franchised outlets of a given company. More specifically, the paper examines the impact of franchisors’ leadership styles on franchisees’ relationship commitment when the company franchised outlets co-exist with independent non-franchised outlets. Specifically, this study operationalize the plural forms phenomenon in franchising, using multi-channel complexity as a moderator. The mediating role of relational capital is also examined.

Data were collected from 254 franchisees. The hypothesized model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicate that all three – participative, supportive and directive leadership styles of franchisors increase relationship commitment. In a high channel complexity context, a supportive leadership style is the most effective, whereas, in a low channel complexity context, a participative style is the most effective. Relational capital also partially mediated the relationships between leadership styles and relationship commitment.

Franchisors should follow a participative leadership style when channel complexity is low. However, as they add new channels and the channel complexity increases, franchisors should shift toward a supportive leadership style to maintain existing franchisees’ commitment. In current environments, managers should avoid using directive leadership in favor of the other two leadership styles.

The present study is the first to examine the influence of channel leadership style on relationship commitment in an environment of multiple channel complexity.

Total Quality Management (TQM), this framework proposes, can be achieved only when the organization develops the ability to cater to customers' needs, monitor the internal and external environments on an ongoing basis to obtain and disseminate information needed by empowered group decision makers, establish and maintain an atmosphere where there is strong vertical and horizontal communication, collaboration, and cooperation among individuals in internal units, as well as among individuals in external units, develop and maintain a bond and a “sense of ownership” among employees; and develop and maintain ongoing training programs.

This paper aims to describe and discuss in-house cleaning services in local authorities to gain a better understanding of current practices. These descriptions are intended to increase researchers’, practitioners’ and educators’ understanding of the studied issue, as there at present does not exist a solid understanding of in-house cleaning services in local authorities. Previous studies provide little detailed information regarding the internal environment of facility management (FM) organisations, in particular with regard to FM organisations’ individual services.

This research is based on two descriptive case studies, one from Norway and one from the UK. The case studies are based on semi-structured, face-to-face in-depth interviews and document reviews.

The cases demonstrate that in-house cleaning services can be structured and managed in different ways, particularly with respect to the split in services, the management of staff and customer contracts, the span of control, the chain of command, self-managed leadership, cleaners’ hours of duty and the use of outsourcing.

Although the previous research on particular FM services is limited, this paper’s detailed descriptions may stimulate further development and research within the field. The knowledge brought forward is part of bridging a knowledge gap on cleaning in FM research. This knowledge can contribute to advancements in the way this service is discussed and measured across contexts by encouraging more rigour and specific studies on cleaning.

This paper constitutes one of the first detailed descriptions of in-house cleaning organisation in local authorities. This is a type of service supply that is common in certain contexts and identified as beneficial to cost-saving in other contexts.

We present theoretical and empirical evidence challenging early studies that found unions were detrimental to workplace innovation. Under our theoretical model, unions prefer product innovation to labor-saving technological process innovation, thus making union wage bargaining regimes more conducive to product innovation than competitive pay setting. We test the theory with population-representative workplace data for Britain and Norway. We find strong support for the notion that local bargaining leads to product innovation, either alone or together with technological innovation.

Culture is considered as one of the variables that influence the total quality management (TQM) adoption process. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between cultural dimensions and the strategy of the firms in TQM implementation. These relationships are the subject of prior research. Furthermore, the authors make a comparative analysis of cultural dimensions on strategic choices of the firms, i.e. innovators, prospectors and defenders in TQM implementation.

From the existing literature review on TQM practices and organizational culture, 14 cultural dimensions were employed with organizational strategy in this present study. By using survey data collection method, 111 Indian firms were selected. The authors considered three strategy parameters and six structural attributes to identify the strategy of the firms, namely innovators, prospectors and defenders identified using cluster analysis. Furthermore, the relationship between organizational culture and strategy was examined using one-way ANOVA approach.

The results of the study revealed that eleven of the fourteen hypotheses supported which relating the cultural dimensions to TQM implementation with the strategic orientation. With the help of significant related values of cultural dimensions to the particular strategic firms, it is also found that implementation of TQM is easy or not. Some of the organizations with a particular strategic orientation will be able to implement TQM easily and successfully but some organizations will have difficulty to implement it successfully.

The firms hold their importance with respect to the different strategic orientation toward the various aspects of organizational cultures and TQM approaches in its implementation. Managerially, due to increased business competitiveness and economic pressures, top management sees the way in adopting TQM practices to achieve a competitive advantage. Apparently, it is evident that matching of TQM practices for a different strategy of the firms with various cultural dimensions leads to the smooth functioning of the organization. This study helps to the current organizations in implementing TQM with their respective culture.

This research can be useful for three strategic firms, namely innovators, prospectors and defenders to achieve effective implementation of TQM practices with consideration and understanding of the advantage of each culture dimension. The framework of the current study represents the effectiveness in assessing the TQM practices in individual cultural dimensions and its significant role.

In this paper, the authors aim to propose that status differentiation, the extent to which people differentiate their behaviors or attribute power to others according to perceived status differences, moderates the effect of stretch direction upward or downward and brand image prestige or functional on consumers 2019 responses to line extensions.

This study was a 2 (culture: Chinese vs American) × 2 (stretch direction: up vs down) × 2 (brand image: prestige vs functional) experiment design. Study 2 was a 2 (status differentiation: high vs low) × 2 (stretch direction: up vs down) × 2 (brand image: prestige vs functional) experiment design.

The results of two studies show that high status differentiation has a positive prestige-enhancement effect on an upward extension but a detrimental effect on a downward extension. This effect is more pronounced for prestige brands than for functional brands. In addition, the authors have found similar patterns for the prestige perceptions of the parent brands after extension.

This research makes important contributions to the fields of cross-cultural psychology. The status differentiation beliefs could be primed temporarily and had a significant impact on individuals’ responses to line extension.

The research identifies status differentiation as an important factor for marketers to consider when extending their brands to global markets.

Past research on vertical extensions has examined numerous factors influencing consumers’ responses. This paper is the only one to examine culture factor.

Based on the idea of part standardisation and product differentiation in lean management, this paper answers the question when integrate firms should choose market foreclosure to maximise profits by studying a two-tier supply chain, which contains three types of firms: suppliers, manufacturers and integrated firms. Moreover, the effect of the substitutability between final products and the competition among firms in the supply chain would be investigated from the perspective of dynamic analysis.

Considering the decision order of integrated firms and manufacturers in the downstream of the supply chain, the authors build three competition models. In each model, integrated firms compete with manufacturers in Bertrand–Nash fashion. And, suppliers compete with each other in Cournot fashion, so do integrated firms and manufacturers. The authors further discuss how the competitive relationship between firms affect the equilibrium result.

Numerical analysis reveals that under other conditions unchanged, the increased competition between downstream firms leads to the rise in the willingness of selling parts for integrated firms, while the increase in the number of suppliers has the opposite effect. In addition, due to the market change before and after the vertical merger, it may lead to the transition from profitable to unprofitable for the vertical merger.

This paper provides a theoretical analysis and managerial implication for integrated firms' market foreclosure decision. From the perspective of dynamic analysis, this paper demonstrates the result of vertical mergers and provides an explanation for the failure of vertical mergers.

The paper attempts to analyze vertical product differentiation as a strategy pursued by European banks seeking greater market power and higher reputation for quality, and to examine whether this entails losses in banking efficiency.

First, the empirical analysis seeks to demonstrate whether borrowers at banks in Europe are willing to pay a premium to operate with banks that attempt to increase their reputation for quality in the market, i.e. whether banks use quality to vertically differentiate and so soften competition. To test such hypothesis requires us to define an empirical model with variables that describe certain characteristics of banking quality as explanatory variables of the loan interest to the market interest rate margin. This model is estimated by two stage least squares. Second, the paper seeks to test whether the market power derived from vertical product differentiation (quality reputation) prevents banks from operating efficiently. To test this hypothesis first we estimated cost efficiency taking into account bank risk preferences and then we define an empirical model that relates the results on efficiency with the margin of interest loan rate over the market interest rate.

The results show that less competition, deriving from a bank's ability to differentiate its services from those of its rivals through quality, is positive because it helps to provide a more stable banking system. Moreover, the banking market power generated by investing in quality does not prevent banks from operating efficiently from a production point of view.

The findings are consistent with the view that European banks soften competition by being more stable, and this does not prevent cost efficiency. So it seems that the regulatory authorities should improve their solvency measures since borrowers’ preferences are to maintain relationships with non‐fragile banks, and on the other hand banks’ risk preferences seem to be to look for sound borrowers.

Frontier cost efficiency scores that account for bank's risk preference are able to be related with customer preferences based on the model of the industrial organization (10) based on vertical product differentiation in banking.

This is the first paper that relates vertical product differentiation with the results obtained from the literature on x‐efficiency. It is also the first paper that studies the impact of banking market power jointly with cost efficiency in social efficiency when market power comes as result of investing in reputation for banking quality.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the problem of optimal product line design in marketing channels where consumers are heterogeneous in both horizontal and vertical dimensions.

This paper develops a model to evaluate when it is preferable for a firm to extend the product line in a vertical or horizontal direction. Consumers are modeled as being vertically heterogeneous with respect to their valuation of quality and horizontally heterogeneous with respect to their preference on the esthetic component of the product. These model characteristics allow us to consider a broader set of product line extension strategies. By considering both a vertically integrated channel and a decentralized channel, this study investigates how channel structure influences optimal product line design. The problem with supplemental numerical analyses is mathematically analyzed.

The analysis shows that a horizontal product line extension strategy that offers the customized product can be used as an alternative to a vertical product line extension strategy. If the fixed cost is not too high, offering the customized product with low quality may be preferred to the quality-based segmentation strategy. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the channel structure is influential as the preference for the horizontal product line extension strategy is more pronounced in the decentralized channel than in the centralized channel.

The analysis presented in this paper is limited by the consideration of full market coverage. Further research is needed to see how the results can be generalized to the case with partial market coverage.

The analysis suggests that a firm may consider product customization as part of its product line strategy. Information regarding market characteristics and channel structure is important when deciding on the optimal product line design.

The model reflects a more realistic marketing strategy and channel structure than previous studies that typically consider product line extension in only one direction and focus on the centralized distribution channel. Combining the standard product line extension and customization strategies also represents an important contribution to the literature. These extensions produce interesting new results and insights into a firm’s optimal product line design strategy.