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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the links between employee attitudes, customer loyalty and business results. Methodology/approach: From a conceptual point of view, this employee–customer–business results chain is well founded and generally accepted, also in the European Excellence Model. But for many companies, it seems difficult to demonstrate such links, and several issues must be addressed to uncover the links. To investigate these links empirically, a hotel chain provided data matching employee and customer measures with measures of profit, and a modelling approach is developed. Findings: The model is successfully applied. As it is possible to estimate and test the links, we have demonstrated the effects of employee attitudes on customer loyalty and further on business results. The findings provide strong empirical evidence for the developed model, and the study provides evidence of the employee–customer–business results chain. Research limitations: The study is limited to four hotels in Copenhagen, Denmark. Practical implications: The research findings provide a better understanding of the employee–customer–business results chain and may help practitioners in improving company financial performance. Originality/value: This paper provides new insights into the relationships between employee attitudes, customer loyalty, and business results.

This study explores the various roles of quality departments and investigates whether their roles have different effects on business results. Based on a survey of quality managers in 211 Swedish organisations, the analysis identifies four roles of quality departments: firefighters, auditors, process improvers, and orchestrators. The roles vary in their predominant adoption of Quality Management practices ranging from a narrow scope focusing on quality management systems to a broader scope based on multiple practices. An analysis was performed to identify how each of the identified roles influences business results. The results show that quality departments with a broad focus that combines both explorative and exploitative quality practices contribute the most to business results.

This study examines the awareness, the implementation status, and the results from implementing Lean among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in two segments of Virginia’s manufacturing industry. One hundred and eighty responses from a census mail survey (population size 1033) were analyzed and the results confirm previous research that smaller enterprises in these industries are marginally aware of Lean and its potential benefits. Smaller enterprises also have implemented Lean to a lesser degree than have medium or large enterprises. Also, fewer respondents working in small enterprises reported improvements in ‘lead-time,’ ‘on-time delivery,’ ‘inventory turnover,’ ‘cost per unit,’ and ‘sales per employee’ due to the implementation of Lean than respondents from medium and large enterprises. Small enterprises also indicated a lower need for Lean implementation support from third parties than did medium or large enterprises.

In increasing markets and economy, human capital investments have evolved as a result of intense competition, rapid growth and change, colliding cultures, technology waves and more, that occurs at unprecedented speeds. The interest and purpose of this research is due to Malaysian Government worries on Government Linked Companies (GLCs) and to assist the Malaysian Government as in the 9th Malaysian Plan, to focus on the National Mission to achieve Vision 2020 through one of the priority areas, human capital development. This paper draws on the review of training evaluation literature on the factors contributing to the implementation of evaluation on business impacts (BI) and ROI for soft skills training in Malaysian GLCs. The proposed contribution factors to be discussed are organisational policy, organisational resources and organisational culture.

This research contributes to the understanding of how different practices of innovation management are related to mid- and long-term growth and profitability. Governments and regional development agencies invest relevant budgets to foster innovation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and improve their innovation management practices to make them more competitive. Nevertheless, it is not clear what impact these practices have on a company's performance over a long period of time. We propose a model to audit and classify innovation practices and empirically test the impact of innovation practices on the firms’ long–term financial performance, using a broad sample of companies in the electronics sector. Our empirical results show that, within a regional context, companies that are similar in terms of size, position in the value chain, and ownership structure follow similar innovative practices. Furthermore, the use of a systematic approach for innovation leads to revenue growth but does not necessarily increase profit or productivity.

La Responsabilidad Social Corporativa (en adelante RSC) puede explicar el logro de ventajas competiti- vas. La RSC trata de minimizar los efectos negativos que ciertos aspectos de la organización provocan en el ambiente. Con el desarrollo de RSC, las empresas, además de llevar a cabo “buenas prácticas” en sus actividades, podrían ser consideradas agentes social- mente responsables y por consiguiente mejorarán su imagen, prestigio y reputación empresarial. La relación entre RSC y el rendimiento financiero ha sido objeto de un controvertido debate durante años. La presente investigación pretende aportar nuevo conocimiento sobre este debate planteán- dose como objetivo principal analizar cómo influye el fomento de la cultura en materia de RSC y, la contribución a la concreción de las dimensiones estratégicas o medidas de RSC, en los resultados de las empresas. Para ello se ha realizado un estudio empírico con una muestra de 226 empresas del sector agroindustrial. Los resultados indican que las dimensiones estratégicas con sus respectivos valores sociales como las medidas de RSC en las que se incluyen a los grupos de interés tienen influencia en los resultados empresariales. Corporate Social Responsibility (hereinafter CSR) may explain the achievement of competitive advan- tages. CSR aims to minimize the negative effects that several aspects of the organization cause in the environment. With the development of a CSR, businesses, in addition to carrying out “good prac- tices” in their activities, could be considered socially responsible agents, improving its image, status and corporate reputation. The relationship between CSR and financial performance has been the subject of controversial discussion for years. This research aims to provide new insights into this debate consi- dering as main objective to analyze how it influences the development of culture in terms of CSR and the contribution to the realization of the strategic dimensions or measures of CSR, on business per- formance. An empirical study with a sample of 226 companies in the agribusiness sector was developed. The results indicate that both the strategic dimen- sions that refer to the social values as CSR measures involving interest groups, influence business results.