Search

The aim of the paper is to find out what marketing tools are used by development companies operating in Poland to attract customers and whether the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on marketing can be observed. The secondary aim of the paper is to determine whether developers building investments in the area of the restricted use area (O.O.U.) use more marketing tools to convince potential customers to buy. For this purpose, a secret client survey was used and the research sample consists of four development companies and four of their investments in Kraków. The research conducted led to the disclosure of marketing tools used by developers. The survey shows that some elements of home branding, storytelling and banner ads, social media ads, ads on websites and portals and information brochures are being used. Through the use of virtual walks, housing visualization and the use of social media in advertising, the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on marketing in the industry can be seen. The analysis shows that companies creating developments in the restricted use area are not using more tricks to attract customers. All developers selected for the study use a similar number of marketing tools.

Recent research has underscored the prominent role played by a small fraction of fast-growing new firms in contributing to aggregate net employment growth. While it is typically assumed that those firms experience this superior performance thanks to their ability in undertaking technological innovation, few empirical studies have explicitly addressed this issue. This article examines the innovation-employment nexus for startups using the Kauffman Firm Survey, a unique longitudinal dataset tracking a single cohort of US firms founded in 2004. Results based on fixed effects panel quantile regressions indicate an overall positive but heterogeneous effect of innovation activities on the conditional employment growth distribution. More in detail, the findings reveal that both research and development and patents have a positive association with employment growth especially for those new firms experiencing high growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work explores the determinants of decisions by former apprentices to present product offerings similar to those of their masters. Using a quantitative study of 194 international chefs, this article argues that there is a negative association between the degree to which a master rebels against the rules and conventions of a field and master-apprentice similarity. It also shows that master status and a creative professional's career stage during an apprenticeship moderate the association between master rebellion and master-apprentice similarity. The work concludes by outlining some implications for the career development and creativity of creative professionals and the emergence of new styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

March and Simon's (1958 : 50) assumption that search happens within a "benign environment" has become taken-for-granted in organizational studies. The implications of making this assumption are not widely theorized, investigated, or even discussed, and yet, it often appears to have been unwittingly imported into explanations of organizational learning. March and Simon acknowledged that this assumption was not realistic—our work builds on theirs by investigating the origins and consequences of a non-benign search environment. We draw on in-depth qualitative research at a Fortune 500 mining firm to show how perceptions of social risk problematize the assumption of a benign search environment. Causal links are drawn between role equivalence , performance comparisons , and rivalry for social status to explain how social risk is generated and why it can lead actors to view the intraorganizational search environment as non-benign. These perceptions help create what we describe as a "paradox of local equivalence" that leads actors to search for nonlocal solutions. Our causal logic provides a new way of understanding the phenomena of nonlocal search; complements explanations of nonlocal search founded on myopia in organizational learning; and shows how the micro-foundations of existing search models can be adapted to better explain organizational learning. In doing so, this study contributes to recent efforts to improve behavioral explanations of search and learning by bringing the notion of intraorganizational conflict back to center stage in this important area of organizational theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employees are encouraged to share their knowledge to stimulate creativity and innovation. However, individuals may hide their knowledge to pursue personal interests. Drawing on the coopetition perspective, this study investigates how individual-level knowledge sharing and hiding behaviors jointly influence employees’ creative behaviors, as well as the knowledge sharing-hiding interaction mechanisms. We adopt a mixed-method design combining qualitative and quantitative analyses. Two types of knowledge sharing are identified: Proactive and reactive, both of which promote employees’ creative behaviors. A follow-up empirical test shows that knowledge-hiding behaviors positively moderate the relationship between reactive knowledge sharing and employees’ creative behaviors. However, knowledge-hiding behaviors demonstrate an inverted U-shaped moderating effect on the relationship between proactive knowledge sharing and employees’ creative behaviors. This study makes a pioneering attempt to study the interplay between knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding and challenges the conventional notion regarding the role of knowledge hiding in employees’ creative behaviors.

The urgent lockdowns introduced by many countries at the beginning of 2020 to contain the rapid diffusion of the COVID-19 pandemic overturned many paradigms, significantly affecting workers’ daily routines. Since regulations, policies, habits, and practices have changed, it is legitimate to wonder what will happen, in the long run, to the high percentage of employees who used to work remotely. We analyzed flexibility in time, place, and contract, to examine the complex constellation of hybrid work arrangements through its essential and commonly understood elements (flexibility types) and their interconnections, distinguishing between workers usually based in the office and those based off-site. Adopting the Socio-Technical-System (STS) framework, the paper investigates whether and to what extent companies have changed their structures by designing new functions, roles, and services, such as a head of agile work, work-life balance policies, and psychological support services. We empirically analyze the hybrid work phenomenon through a micro-survey of indirect questions involving approximately 600 Italian respondents. Italy is an interesting analysis domain because radical changes have been introduced because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper presents three main theoretical advancements. First, the study advances the research on flexibility in terms of space, time, and contracts, finding different types of interdependencies with on-site and off-site working. Second, the study extends the theories on the STS framework to flexible work, identifying whether and to what extent interdependencies occur among its main components: the social structure, people, technology, and tasks of hybrid work. The STS framework has also been used to explain the evolution of organizational priorities during the pandemic phases, revealing a relationship between the new role of “head of remote/hybrid workforce” and place flexibility. Third, the paper proves micro-surveys effectiveness with indirect questions in investigating socioeconomic and organizational phenomena. From a practical point of view, the collected data show that Italian organizations need to prepare to deal with the new work scenario because new recommendations should be given to human resource departments about managing hybrid work.

In this paper, we model a performance measure of water utilities, considering an undesirable output: the amount of water lost within the network during distribution. We improve three methodological approaches in traditional production technology modeling with an undesirable output. We first adapt the model to the specificities of water production and distribution network. We then extend the analysis to include the economic objectives of three different stakeholders - a regulator that seeks to preserve this natural resource, the operator who wants to maximize his profit, and the consumer who seeks maximum consumption - in the context of a developing country with unfulfilled water demand. Finally, using our model, we estimate the economic value of lost water by its shadow marginal cost, which enables us to evaluate the cost of loss on the water grid in each of the scenarios. We then propose an empirical application for water production in Côte d'Ivoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intrapreneurship is known to play an important role in enhancing innovation and competitiveness within firms. However, there remains a dearth of literature on the workings of intrapreneurship at the regional level. Based on a qualitative analysis of intrapreneurship in the South East Region of Ireland, this paper explores the link between intrapreneurship and regional development. It makes several contributions that further the understanding of intrapreneurship at the regional level: (1) we detail the manner in which intrapreneurship emerges in distinct corporate contexts; (2) we identify the main barriers and challenges to intrapreneurship in these different contexts; and (3) we provide evidence that sets out the relative importance of the two key routes through which intrapreneurship stimulates regional development: firm growth and new firm formation.

With few exceptions, the sports attendance demand literature assumes the intensity of fan responses to home and visiting team quality are homogeneous across the markets in a league. However, the theory of sports leagues makes no such assumption. In this paper, we empirically investigate heterogeneity in fan win preference intensity using Major League Baseball attendance. Using a generalized linear mixed model, we find evidence of substantial fan preference heterogeneity, toward both home and visiting team quality, across Major League Baseball markets. In addition to the demonstrated importance for empirical analysis, we detail how this also matters for league policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do exporters react to changes in formal institutional contexts? We hypothesise that when the formal institutional context reduces uncertainty, family-firm exporters increase their productivity more than those of non-family firms. To examine our general conjecture empirically, we leveraged the shift from a flexible to a fixed exchange rate regime that occurred with the adoption of the euro. Our findings showed that, after adopting the euro, intra-European Union (EU) family-firm exporters achieved higher productivity than non-family-firm exporters. Owing to the elimination of exchange rate volatility, intra-EU family-firm exporters, who were particularly sensitive to uncertainty because of their specificities related to wealth concentration, family-oriented goals, and corporate transparency, became more willing to adopt investment decisions than intra-EU non-family-firm exporters. Consequently, these investments yielded significant improvements in the productivity levels of the former group. We also found that the gains in productivity were not evenly distributed among intra-EU family-firm exporters. The introduction of the euro facilitated the transition of intra-EU family-firm exporters from low to intermediate productivity levels. Moreover, it allowed those with initially intermediate productivity levels to remain in the same group, while reducing the likelihood of falling behind high-productivity intra-EU family-firm exporters.

Excessive usage of social networking sites (SNSs) has permeated individuals’ daily lives, leading to negative outcomes such as reduced cognitive performance and physical problems. Regardless of the threat, few researchers have examined the negative consequences of social networking sites on employee performance. This study uses cognitive theory and Eysenck's theory of personality as the foundation of the proposed model to explore whether excessive social networking site usage deteriorates workers’ cognitive performance. We propose that excessive use of social networking sites negatively impacts employees’ cognitive performance, that extroverted individuals are the most distracted by social networking sites compared to introverts, and that ambiverts are the least distracted by them in the workplace. A sample of 266 Chinese and Pakistani users of social networking sites from the software house service sector was tested empirically to validate the proposed model. This study contributes to mitigating the negative impact of excessive SNS usage by implementing and using digital well-being applications to control addictive behavior. Furthermore, it provides theoretical and practical insights for organizations to improve employees’ cognitive performance.

This article studies how a world-leading technology-intensive firm organized to renew its architectural knowledge (AK) to escape the mirroring trap. On the strength of a longitudinal, in-depth, qualitative study, we develop a process model that identifies the phases, learning modes, and core design decisions that led to new AK. The analysis of our case highlights that the development of architectural and component knowledge could not be perfectly separated. Further, we infer that the renewal of AK can be attained through partial mirroring and by dissolving extant technical and organizational boundaries. Finally, we show how resource constraints affect the extent of AK generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A coworking space is a setup of bringing together independent professionals who do not work for the same company. This study aims to determine the impact of the coworking space environment and of social interactions on the job productivity of coworkers, as well as the influence of social interactions in the relation of coworking space environment and job productivity. A positive significant relationship was found between the coworking space environment and job productivity as well as between social interactions and job productivity. Moreover, the moderating variable “social interactions” strengthens the relationship between coworking environment and job productivity. The findings of the study highlight the importance of coworking spaces as a source of social interactions among freelancers and entrepreneurs. Furthermore, human resource managers and corporate office managers can use this study to help their staff operate in a more flexible and productive setting.

Differences in access to high-speed broadband between urban and rural locations are known as the 'digital divide'. Governments around the world have committed to spending considerable amounts of money to alleviate disparities in broadband infrastructure. However, to date, there is limited causal evidence for broadband and firm performance with even less of an understanding on whether the effects are distinct between firms located in urban versus rural localities. In this article, we exploit geographical discontinuities in broadband availability across the UK to capture the causal effects on firms on both sides of this divide. We find for both urban and rural firms that broadband causes an increase in their size, but not labor productivity. In addition, we find evidence that these size effects are strongest for urban firms, but for both urban and rural firms, the effects are concentrated in knowledge-intensive industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accelerators have been becoming increasingly popular among young entrepreneurs interested in developing products, attracting investors, or establishing relations with industry represented by large companies.

The appropriate application of statistical methods in enterprises should have an important role in business decision-making processes. However, Croatian enterprises still tend to have certain resistance to statistical methods. The new challenges introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic emphasised the importance of conducting statistical analyses as support for making business decisions. In order to investigate the situation and attitudes towards the use of statistical methods, primary research was conducted in the form of a web survey on a sample of 768 Croatian enterprises, of which 40% use statistical methods in their business. The research revealed the level of statistical methods use in Croatian enterprises, demonstrated which statistical methods Croatian enterprises prefer, and defined who is most responsible for their use. Furthermore, the reasons for the use of statistical methods and the major obstacles to the use of more intensive statistical methods were also investigated. The results are described and discussed on an overall level and by considering the size of the enterprises.

Two years after the deregulation of the German interurban bus industry in January 2013, two new entrants emerged as industry leaders: MeinFernbus (MFB) and FlixBus (FB). We use a comprehensive route-level data set to investigate the determinants of route entry for both providers. Applying survival models, we find that both companies show an increased probability to enter populous routes with large shares of young inhabitants; however, they both avoid entries into routes with low-quality rail connection as well as cities located farther away from the next motorway. Furthermore, both industry leaders largely refrain from entering small- and medium-sized routes in which the other provider is already operating. In large markets, however, they both show an increased entry probability independent of the presence of the other provider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and innovation for firms of different ages. We blend data drawn from the ISS RiskMetrics and the Bureau van Dijk Orbis databases to perform micro-econometric analyses on a sample of 2200 listed firms. We show that CG may decrease research and development for all firms and that, more importantly, it has a significant and negative effect on the patenting strategy of the younger firms. Our results are consistent with the CG life cycle view, according to which young companies tend to privilege short-termism and value preservation rather than long-term risky innovation strategies. What shown and discussed in this contribution supports the proposition that firm age matters in how CG may alter innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite agreement on many points, including our shared insistence that 'corporation' and 'firm' are different concepts, Jean-Philippe Robé still maintains that they are mutually exclusive: no corporation is a firm, and no firm is a corporation. In contrast, we follow standard nomenclature when we point out that all (business) corporations are firms, but some firms are not corporations. We show here that this is a standard practice among lawyers writing in leading law journals and note that Robé seems to have abandoned the task of defining the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The relationship between organizational mission and vision statements, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction has been discussed vastly in previous research, both in the domain of public sector organizations and in profit organizations.

Despite the importance of informal modes of learning and innovation for developing countries, there is little empirical evidence on their role in firm performance. This paper examines the effect of formal and informal learning modes followed by small and large firms on their overall performance in the capital goods industry. Following the wider literature on national innovation systems, we categorise the innovation modes as formal Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and informal learning by Doing, Using and Interacting (DUI) mode. We observe that in the case of small firms the informal learning and experience-based innovation is related to improved performance, while the formal STI mode does not have any effect. On the other hand, for large firms, both STI and DUI innovation modes are positively related to their sales growth. Our results indicate that building certain DUI capabilities may act as a pre-condition to enhance the strength of science and technology-based innovation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major contribution of Oliver Williamson, who was a 2009 Nobel Prize co-Laureate in economics, consists of proposing a heuristic analysis of governance structures, namely, the firm, the market, and what he will later call the 'hybrid forms'. This cardinal issue in organizational economics has made it possible to propose rigorous arbitration tools for the famous 'make or buy' decisions in modern market economies based on asset specificity and quasi-rents. However, Williamson's work goes far beyond these contributions alone. His contribution is based on a multidisciplinary theoretical background in building the science of organization. This is the important but sometimes neglected aspect of Williamson's work that I wish to highlight in this paper in memory of Williamson in regard to three major pieces on atmosphere (and informal organization), private ordering, and industrial pluralism. In doing so, I also propose reconsidering the different stages of Williamson's evolving science of organization from recent neo-institutional works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]