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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relation between human resource management (HRM) and innovation in small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) through gift/counter-gift exchanges.

Using the theory of the gift/counter-gift, the authors study the case of a French SME, specifically, a technological innovation project developed from 2013 to 2016. The authors structure the data and create a model using the Gioia method.

The results reveal that the logic of giving evolves in three key stages: freeing up gifts, mobilizing gifts and rethinking gifts.

These stages highlight the importance of an enabling organizational environment, gift/counter-gift relationships and the role of a number of HRM practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how executives can rapidly gain employee acceptance for strategic change through reciprocal sensegiving. The author draw on a processual case study of a transformational European merger to study this question, highlighting the properties of reciprocity in making sense of urgent strategic change, then developing them through the lens of a gift exchange.

The author draws on several qualitative methods to study sensegiving and sensemaking processes in Alpha and Beta from 2011 to 2014: insider-outsider team meetings at the beginning, mid-way and at the end of the merger integration process, ethnographic field notes during a four-month research internship, one focus group meeting with Alpha and Beta managers after the announcement of the redistribution of managerial positions, interviews with a carefully selected sample of top and middle managers, participant observation in key sensegiving meetings with top managers and “custodians,” triangulation with secondary data from the database Factiva, and finally follow-up insider corroboration of the findings by the research intern who took up a management position at Alpha in 2014.

Likening executive and employee sensegiving to a gift-giving and gift-returning exchange, the author elucidates how executives induce employees to quickly “give in” to strategic change imperatives. the author single out the key third party role of custodians of reciprocity in the mechanism, using the metaphor of the Trojan horse to illustrate its executive use and point to the underexplored darker side of prosocial sensegiving dynamics.

Further research should clarify the long-term advantages and disadvantages of the mechanism. The Trojan horse mechanism possibly sacrifices long-term reciprocity for short-term purposes. Following the example of executives in this case study, use of the Trojan horse mechanism should be followed by attention to socio-political balance concerns, including new procedures that clarify the link between value creation aims and employees’ collective contribution. Without such a cohesion-building exercise, employees’ feelings of procedural injustice may build up, resulting in negative reciprocity in subsequent change projects.

The work indicates that a leader’s visionary credentials are not the main source of her norm-shaping power in a project of urgent strategic change. Visionary credentials are welcomed by the dominant group of employees as long as they are framed as a symbolic management exercise that will not substantially impact socio-political balance. Substantively, employees make sense of the justice of urgent strategic change primarily through the lens of custodians and their “power from the past.”

All in all, executives should use the Trojan horse mechanism sparingly, in contexts of urgent strategic change and institutionalized employee behavior. Working with sources and voices of resistance from lower levels of management is more likely to yield symbiotic integration benefits.

Applied to the problem of rapid strategic change in a non-crisis context, the Trojan horse mechanism is a solution to the question: how can executives avoid lengthy socio-political confrontations and quickly induce employee ownership of painful strategic changes?

The purpose of this paper is to examine which forms of compensation are more efficient at affecting employee attitudes, thus extending efficiency wage theory from wage-based compensation to profit sharing and stock-based compensation.

Three models of efficiency wage theory were tested: shirking, turnover and gift exchange. The effects of those three modes of compensation (wages, profit sharing and stock) were contrasted for the three models of efficiency wage theory.

The findings were that raising wages is the most efficient form of compensation in the turnover and shirking models, while in the gift exchange model profit sharing and stock-based compensation may function like efficiency wages.

This is the first study of this particular issue.

Purpose – To provide an update on recent intensifications of commoditization among the North (Amoamo) Mekeo (Central Province, PNG) and to assess the extent to which in this context contemporary villagers qualify as “dividuals,” “individuals,” or “possessive individuals.”Methodology/approach – The empirical data presented in this chapter were collected by means of participant observation techniques conducted over a 40-year period. Here those materials are analyzed through a juxtaposition of the “partible” or “dividual” type of personhood foregrounded in the “New Melanesian Ethnography” (Strathern, 1988; Wagner, 1991) and models of the “individual” and “possessive individual” in Macpherson’s (1962) formulation of “possessive market societies.”Findings – Contrary to the canonical assumptions of “individualism” and “possessive individualism” which underpin most social-scientific theories of modernization, globalization, development, etc. in the non-Western world, North Mekeo villagers’ most recent intensive post-contact engagements with capitalism have tended to reproduce indigenous “dividual” patterns of partible personhood and sociality which incorporate seemingly “individualist” practices as momentary parts of overall, total “dividual” persons and processes.Research implications – Explanations of the globalizing spread of capitalism among non-Western peoples must pay heed to indigenous notions of personhood agency if they are to avoid ethnocentric distortions arising from presuppositions of the ubiquity of Western notions of individualism.Originality/value of chapter – This chapter demonstrates the analytical benefits of the New Melanesian Ethnography – particularly its key notion of partible personhood – and the advantage of focused long-term ethnographic fieldwork in accounting for processes of social change.

This study aims to investigate how a French multinational enterprise (MNE) is developing employee stock ownership (ESO) in its subsidiaries in Peru and Mexico, both Latin American countries with deep social and economic inequalities.

This is a qualitative case study which conducted interviews with representatives of the French MNE and its subsidiaries in Peru and Mexico.

The employee stock purchase plans offered by the company to its employees support the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) 1, 8 and 10 in these countries.

The authors argue that MNEs could become flagships in the SDG achievement in emerging economies.

By contributing to better workplace outcomes and enhanced corporate performance, ESO is in line with SDG 8. ESO also fulfills SDGs 1 and 10 by allowing employees to build up savings and wealth, whose lack is the main source of inequality and poverty. Reciprocity and binary economics theories explain these relationships.

Discussing tendencies and shortcomings in the current debate on promoting decent work in hospitality and tourism, this study aims to respond to recent calls for progress on improving employee well-being. It proposes elements of a productivity-based strategy embedded in a circular dynamic linking productivity, service quality, profitability and job quality to enhance tourism employees’ well-being in view of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 8 on decent work.

Drawing on recent empirical work on gift exchange theory, this viewpoint article presents a possible scenario that should stimulate debate among scholars and local policymakers of how decent work and quality of life can be achieved in traditional tourism destinations. This would fill a gap in the current debate, which focuses on quantitatively marginal alternative forms of tourism, to overcome problems inherent to growth-based tourism.

This contribution proposes a productivity-based development strategy supported by an incentive regulation policy targeting employers who provide tourist services in mass tourism destinations, promoting job quality to raise productivity and enhance service quality and in the end profitability.

This short article proposes a new perspective on promoting decent work in traditional tourism destinations based on gift exchange theory and discusses the scope for research essential to support a development based on the scenario described by a circular model.

基于当前关于促进酒店业和旅游业体面工作的辩论中的趋势和缺点, 本研究回应了最近在改善员工福祉方面取得进展的呼吁, 提出了嵌入在循环动态链接生产力中的基于生产力的战略要素, 服务质量、盈利能力和工作质量, 以提高旅游业员工的福祉, 以实现关于体面工作的可持续发展目标 (SDG) 8。

借鉴最近关于礼物交换理论的实证研究, 这篇观点文章提出了一个可能的情景, 以促进学者和当地政策制定者就如何在传统旅游目的地实现体面工作和生活质量的展开辩论, 从而填补当前研究中的空白。该辩论侧重于定量边缘替代的旅游形式, 以克服基于增长的旅游业固有的问题。

该研究提出了一项以生产力为基础的发展战略。该战略以在大众旅游目的地提供旅游服务的雇主提供激励监管政策支持为基础, 提高工作质量从而提高生产力和服务质量并最终提高盈利能力。

这篇短文基于礼物交换理论提出了在传统旅游目的地促进体面工作的新视角, 并讨论了基于循环模型描述的情景发展的研究范围。

Analizando las tendencias y deficiencias del debate actual sobre la promoción del trabajo digno en la hostelería y el turismo, este estudio responde a los recientes llamamientos para avanzar en la mejora del bienestar de los empleados, proponiendo elementos de una estrategia basada en la productividad e inserta en una dinámica circular que vincule la productividad, la calidad del servicio, la rentabilidad y la calidad del empleo para mejorar el bienestar de los empleados del turismo con vistas a alcanzar el Objetivo de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) 8 sobre trabajo digno.

Basándose en recientes trabajos empíricos sobre la teoría del intercambio de regalos, este artículo de perspectiva presenta un posible escenario que debería estimular el debate entre los estudiosos y los responsables políticos locales sobre cómo se puede lograr el trabajo digno y la calidad de vida en los destinos turísticos tradicionales. Esto llenaría un vacío en el debate actual, que se centra en formas alternativas de turismo cuantitativamente marginales, para superar los problemas inherentes al turismo basado en el crecimiento.

Esta contribución propone una estrategia de desarrollo basada en la productividad y respaldada por una política de regulación de incentivos dirigida a los empresarios que prestan servicios turísticos en destinos turísticos de masas, promoviendo la calidad del empleo para aumentar la productividad y mejorar la calidad del servicio y, en última instancia, la rentabilidad.

Este breve artículo propone una nueva perspectiva sobre la promoción del trabajo digno en los destinos turísticos tradicionales basada en la teoría del intercambio de regalos y analiza el alcance de la investigación esencial para apoyar un desarrollo basado en el escenario descrito por un modelo circular.

The purpose of this study is to attempt to answer the following questions: Are people generous at work places? How often do we see people willing to share, when someone seeks knowledge from them without any expectation? What’s the point in having knowledge when somebody doesn’t share it? Then again, why do firms, reward employees to share their knowledge? ¬ ¬? Does sharing knowledge between people need a commercial acceptance or rewarding inspiration? In firms, people, who do not have relevant work-related knowledge, seek it from others. Thus, this implies that people can either share their knowledge or hoard knowledge or share partial knowledge. This research shows that sharing knowledge has existed for centuries and has been practised through generosity, with proof that the more you share the more you obtain in return. The authors analyse the role of generosity in sharing knowledge by tracing insights from literature, religion, science and modern day management scholarly views, and they show how it can lead firms to succeed. In this paper, the authors will propose a direction for future researchers on how developing generosity helps towards sharing knowledge. They also propose a model of generosity based on literature and its interpretation.

This paper is based on extensive reviews of literature, articles and opinions from scholars. The authors use a keyword protocol to investigate articles from Google scholar and other sources on generosity and knowledge sharing.

This paper finds significant relationships and validated shreds of evidence on how generosity towards knowledge sharing has helped humanity in the past and how generosity can help firms to succeed.

This paper is the first of its kind in trying to explore how developing generosity among people can play a role in facilitating knowledge sharing for firms to succeed. This further suggests a new direction of research for scholars engaged in exploring the role of generosity with a proposed model.

The purpose of this paper is to question the assumptions behind the aggressive competitive image of Northwest Coast (NWC) forager societies, given that their most reflective descendants emphasize sharing and paying back as constant peacemaking actions through history. Also to seek data that help ascertain whether this contemporary view might predate today's sensibilities colored by life as post-foragers encapsulated in nation states.

Historical, ethnographic and ethnohistorical documentary sources are studied, together with regional archeological findings. These are considered against the author's own ethnographic work among various foragers on the edge of, but integrated with higher profile coastal peoples. Some historical context for regional war and peace is provided.

The archeology indicates that evidence for violent warlike activity appears clearly about three times in 10,000 years, the most extensive being contiguous with Europe's economic and political influence on the continent in the past half millennium. Even in this latter period, extended family foragers managed and sought to control aggression/competition by social sharing and cooperation between like units and by upholding established peacemaking processes and protocols.

Since the region and its literature are vast, this theme requires extensive long-term investigation. Findings given here from a limited number of locations are tentative and require detail from other parts of the region; however, they do suggest an existing ethic of sharing and peacemaking reflected back in time through oral history and archeology.

The literature of the NWC's bellicosity, its slavery, war-making and agonistic giving is based on events reported from a very short span of contact history. If these conditions had been endemic over time, there would have been insufficient peace to allow these foragers to hunt, gather, fish, barter and prepare foods and goods with which to survive between annual growing and spawning seasons.

Instead of finding ways to cooperate with each other to seek better living conditions, some NWC post-foragers now assume competition and aggression to be endemic features of their relations with each other. Such persons, perhaps from a sense of inferiority engendered by history, cite the bellicose literature and the glories of the fur trade period as more typical of their heritage than the wisdom and peaceful teachings of their own elders about the past, the future, human relations and the natural world.

The findings from the NWC suggest analogies in the emphasis on sharing as a mechanism for making and maintaining peace in the broader comparative context of hunter-gatherer studies. Sharing remains central whether one examines complex hunter-gathers or their more egalitarian colleagues.

The extremely low fertility of European society is today one of the most important policy and scientific topics due to its adverse effect on increasing aging of the population. Since extant research has evidenced a huge complexity of below replacement fertility, it cannot be satisfactorily explained on the basis of a single pattern. Each country can therefore contribute through specific case studies to a better overall understanding of this phenomenon. This chapter presents the results of research into the fertility behavior of farm population, the group with the highest fertility rate in Slovenia. They reveal that the fertility of farm population is not based on a higher respect for family norms and related values, as some critics of contemporary life patterns of the young generation might suppose. The results indicate that it is more probable that motivation for a higher number of children among the farm population derives from their social context; the specific social relations of ‘gift exchange’ that help to maintain the particular nature of ensuring their everyday livelihoods.

The purpose of this study is ascertain if the hotel concierge service will continue to be relevant in a technological world where consumers have increasing access to information about their destination. To trace the origins of the hotel concierge, their route into the profession and establish whether the profession is geographically localised. Their role within the hotel, working philosophy, core values and characteristics were considered in relation to creating and delivering an experiential service encounter.

Eleven participants were selected who worked on the concierge desk in four- and five-star hotels in Edinburgh. All were male, aged between 20 and 64 years old; nine were Scottish, six of whom were from Edinburgh, one from Wales and one from England. Six respondents were members of The Golden Keys Society. A qualitative approach was adopted with semi-structured interviews designed around key themes identified in the literature review.

No feelings of servility or inferiority were documented in the host/guest relationship. Comparisons were made between the contextual setting and the appearance and manner of the respondents with that of a “performance”. The uniform was deemed to facilitate feelings of empowerment analogous to having superpowers. Technology has been adopted by the concierge department as a tool, but is considered to be ancillary to their personal recommendation and network of business and personal contacts and collaborators.

Changes in the demographics of people travelling and discounted rates being offered in four- and five-star hotels has resulted in general perceptions of a less elite clientele. This may have implications for the future of concierge services.

The internet seems to have opened up this profession to enable concierges to effectively operate in a location they are not indigenous to. The personal recommendations that the concierge provides through their own knowledge are used in conjunction with technology, but are not in imminent danger of being replaced by it. It may prove beneficial for the hotel to provide some training for older members of staff to keep up with technological developments. This study could prove useful to service providers who aim to gain competitive advantage by elevating their level of guest service to exceed guest expectations through emulating the personalised service that the concierge can offer.

The socio-cultural issues within this study are important. Internet technology is generally perceived to be the panacea of all contemporary communication ills in the twenty-first century. The authors however propose that the concierge is the last bastion of front-line service personnel who are still approached for their individual, sometimes unique, knowledge that cannot be found online.

This study contributes to an area of interest that lacks contemporary research due to the natural gatekeeping that occurs within this “closed” environment.