In your hands you have the seven papers that compose the vol. 11, n° 2 of the Tékhne – review of applied management studies for the period July–December, 2013. Six papers highlight different themes of the scientific management area, such as leadership, managerial philosophy, organizational innovation, organizational performance, diversification strategy, e-government services and tourism management, focused on the reality of different countries. The other paper is on corruption and criminal law. We believe that each paper gives an important contribution to the academic and the business world, in accordance with the scope of the journal.
The first paper, authored by Yu-Feng Lin Lee, discusses the idiosyncrasy and incongruence of the leadership and stakeholder management of Chinese corporate executive officers (CEOs) across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Following a comparative analysis among these three economies, the purpose of this paper is to help business practitioners around the world to understand the leadership and the managerial philosophy of pan-Chinese corporate executives based both on the Hofstede culture dimension and on the Confucian moral standard.
The paper follows a qualitative approach based on published interviews of CEOs across the three countries. Three main findings can be withdrawn from this paper:
- (1)
Regarding the managerial philosophy on business vision and corporate development: although the three economies favour a long-term business vision, mainland Chinese CEOs are relatively masculine in their business management, supporting hierarchy and high power distance. By contrast, the CEOs of both Hong Kong and Taiwan are relatively egalitarian which means that they respect the merit of Confucian loyalty.
- (2)
Regarding the leadership and the corporate social responsibility disclosure – from the Hofstede dimension, it is evident that both mainland Chinese and Hong Kong-ese societies support high power distance and weak uncertainty avoidance. Such societal characteristics resonate the hierarchical dominance in common workplaces. On the other hand, the Taiwanese CEOs take a soft and modest approach in their business management. They favour collective and collaborative efforts and disregard high power disparity.
- (3)
Regarding the CEOs’ philosophy in stakeholder management: empirically as indicated in the Hofstede dimension, most executives in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan value collectivism. They agree that cohesive stakeholder cooperation usually leads to a bigger and better outcome.
To sum, the managing philosophy of pan-Chinese CEOs is both founded on the radical culture profoundly from the Confucian value system, and simultaneously maintained by its respective local characteristics across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
The second paper is by M. Birasnav, Mohamed Albufalasa and Yusuf Bader. The focus of the paper is on the organizational innovation as tool capable to sustain competitive advantage and to provide high value to customers. The authors investigate the role of transformational leadership and knowledge management processes on predicting product and process innovation. An empirical study has been developed in Kingdom of Bahrain. Based on data collected by a survey from 119 service firms, the authors test a conceptual model encompassing the linkages among transformational leadership, knowledge management process, product innovation and process innovation.
The following hypotheses have been tested: (1) transformational leadership will be positively related to product innovation and process innovation; (2) implementation of knowledge management process activities such as acquisition, transfer, and application of knowledge will be positively related to product innovation and process innovation; (3) implementation of knowledge management process will mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and product innovation and between transformational leadership and process innovation.
The main theoretical contributions of the paper are: (1) transformational leadership is positively related to product innovation as well as process innovation; (2) knowledge transfer and knowledge application are positively associated with product innovation, whereas knowledge acquisition and knowledge application are positively related to process innovation; (3) knowledge transfer and knowledge application partially mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and product innovation, and knowledge acquisition and knowledge application completely mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and process innovation.
This paper is a contribution to leadership literature. It is the first of its kind to explore the relationship between leadership and innovation concepts separately, as most of the research studies focus innovation as a single construct.
The third paper is by Ihsan Yigit, Nihal Kartaltepe Behram and Emre Isçi and it studies the effect of the diversification strategy on organizational performance. It has been adopted a comparative approach among Turkey and Italy. The concept of corporate diversification as a strategy generally adopted by many firms worldwide and its effects on organizational performance based on different institutional contexts constitute the main contribution of the paper. Along their investigation the authors assume the following argument: an excess of environmental opportunities and the lack of perfect competition conditions in Turkey will make the organizational performance unrelated and single diversified businesses higher while resources and skills increase the performance of related diversification and dominant businesses in Italy. So, the focus is on the existence of institutional gaps among the different countries.
To develop the study data have been collected between 2007 and 2011 for more than 500 business groups of these two countries.
The findings of the study are different for Turkey and Italy evidencing the importance of the institutional context of each country on these results. The relationship between diversification and performance is thought to be affected by factors such as some of the privatization policies in Turkey, working conditions, crises conditions that coincide with the period of research, absence of perfect competition conditions markets in Turkey, some sectors in developing countries being at the end of product life cycle curve while being at point of entry in Turkey. The authors conclude that organizational performance values are high for single businesses and unrelated diversification in Turkey, but the organizational performance is high for dominant businesses and related diversification in Italy. So, organizational performance is increasing by environmental factors in Turkey and by internal factors in Italy. However some limitations have been appointed to the study regarding the crisis context in which the study has been developed and the need to complement the study with other variables.
The fourth paper is by Vincent Hamburg and studies how and why various municipalities in the Netherlands adopt personalized electronic services. The channels of communication and persuasion that are being used in the diffusion process have been analyzed in this study. Based on the e-government theory the paper builds upon the prior research lines by explaining the diffusion of personalized electronic government services in a target population of more than 400 municipalities in the Netherlands in the time frame 2006–2010.
The paper contributes at the practical and theoretical level. At a practical level, the findings of the paper might aid local politicians, public managers and e-government project managers in enabling future e-government initiatives. At a more theoretical level, the identification of determinants of personalized electronic service delivery contributes to the literature on the adoption and diffusion of information and communication technologies and organizational innovations, particularly in the public sector.
The main argument of the paper is that technology diffusion and adoption are not associated primarily with individually rational cost/benefit considerations but rather with organizations’ attempts to cope with a variety of prevailing norms, values, belief systems and rules that are imposed upon them. The author concludes that municipalities are confronted with channels of communications persuasion that are both vertical and horizontal, by which pressure is put on municipalities to adopt innovations and to gain legitimacy. The paper ends with a number of new issues and research questions that can be addressed to the e-government research community.
The fifth and the sixth papers are by Oliveira-Brochado and Gameiro and by Padin Fabeiro, Magaña Carrillo and Svenson, and are focused on the tourism management area. They have been selected from papers presented at the III International Congress on Tourism organized at the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave on October 2013. The paper of Oliveira and Gameiro investigates whether the importance of different characteristics of the overall hostel guests’ experience varies according institutional factors, such as age, gender and nationality of backpackers. Both qualitative and quantitative (survey) methods have been used to identify the main aspects valued by customers in a hostel experience (interview and content analysis) and to gather data from hostel customers (survey).
The study is based on a sample of 313 hostel guests staying in Lisbon, from December 2012 to February 2013. The findings of the study indicated that Lisbon already have popularity with hostel backpackers and a position in the market place. Indeed, almost 30% of the guests had already been in Lisbon before. Given that about 80% of the respondents selected and booked in a hostel book website, hostels should use this vital channel of distribution for marketing purposes. Moreover, guests’ evaluation should be properly monitoring for continuous improvement. Quality of the staff was the item that had the best overall importance score. Nowadays the importance of recruiting the right staff, sharing the hostel values and mission is of utmost importance. However, the results revealed that treating the backpackers as homogenous groups would be a mistake.
In sum, the results of the study indicated an emerging diversity and increasing heterogeneity of backpackers’ preferences. Therefore different marketing strategies should be developed for different market segments in this sector in order to delight backpackers.
The paper by Padin Fabeiro, Magaña Carrillo and Svenson contemplates the redefinition of the tourism planning and management concept based on sustainability, from the definition of planning within tourism, and the necessary components that serve to integrate the economic, social, and environmental dimensions. An holistic model has been proposed to promote the culture for the State of Colima (located in the area of the MexicanPacific).
The focus of the paper is on tourism planning and the interconnection of tourist activities with the rest of the activity sectors, and with society as well. The authors ask for a tourist model to carry out the exercise of planning and linking tourism with the agents in the area. The main question to promote touristic activities is the participation of all the agents involved in the tourism process, not only the tourist customer, but also the residents of the destination, both at an individual and collective levels. Thus, it becomes necessary to create a model of collaboration in order to quantify, from a standpoint of sustainability, the progress reached among the agents present in the destination. The authors believe that it is possible promote the culture of tourism among the people of Colima, based on the proposed model of excellence for tangible and intangible products and their delivery or service.
Finally, the seventh paper is authored by Gonçalo Bandeira and studies the problem of corruption in a context of economic crisis. It emphasizes how the social and economic criminal law and the criminal justice policy see and lead with this problem. In particular, it emphasizes the problems of the Portuguese Penal Code in combating and reducing this crime. The author concludes that much of the corruption, in the broad sense, is the legislation itself; “the legislature appears, here and there, as an ‘agent of corruption”’ which makes the expression doubtful “fight or combat against corruption”. The main idea brought from this paper is that corruption is not just a problem of the State towards the citizens, but also of the citizens towards the State. This is not just a problem from Portugal or a problem from Europe. It is a worldwide problem, definitely. Therefore, the author approached it as a “global” phenomenon.
