0000000000132718
AUTHOR
César Camisón
Effect of SMEs' International Experience on Foreign Intensity and Economic Performance: The Mediating Role of Internationally Exploitable Assets and Competitive Strategy
In this paper, we study the relationship between the international experience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their economic performance using intangible and financial asset stock, competitive strategy, and international intensity as mediating factors. The RBV provides the theoretical framework to develop a theoretical model postulating that international experience has an indirect effect on foreign growth and economic performance. This model was used to test a sample of 394 Spanish SMEs through the modelization of a structural equations system. Results show that superior economic performance is only achieved by SMEs that can turn the knowledge they gain from international …
The effect of hotel chain affiliation on economic performance: The moderating role of tourist districts
Abstract This paper offers a pioneering analysis of the impact that integration in different types of hotel chains has on firm performance, and the moderating effect of the tourist destination in this relationship. Studies in the literature examine both size and location independently, without reconciling the apparently contradictory trends of globalization and conservation of the local base. The aim of the research is to analyze the comparative effects on tourism firms’ performance of belonging to different types of hotel chains while maintaining the advantages of location in a tourist destination. Based on a study of 292 Spanish hotels, the authors test the proposed hypotheses using hiera…
Human Capital and E-Learning
Companies are increasingly conscious of the fact that the achieving of their objectives, together with the improvement of their competitive advantages, depends on the appropriate management of the human factor. The dynamism and strong competition that characterize the business world make it increasingly necessary to introduce a system of human resources to allow the exploiting of the knowledge and skills of both people and teams, thus encouraging their learning capacity. In this context, e-learning is becoming established as a flexible and quick way of improving the acquiring of knowledge and skills within a company. The rapid growth and expansion of e-learning, together with the failure of…
Análisis del papel mediador de las capacidades de innovacion tecnológica en la relación entre la form’a organizativa flexible y el desempeño organizativo
ResumenEste trabajo examina la relación entre la forma organizativa flexible y el desempeño organizativo tomando como variables mediadoras las capacidades para la innovación tecnológica, basándose para ello en los postulados del Enfoque Basado en Recursos. Esta cuestión de investigación es importante porque nos permite comprender mejor las variables antecedentes de la capacidad de innovación tecnológica relacionadas con el diseño organizativo y sus efectos en el desempeno organizativo. Para el contraste empírico se toma una muestra de 159 empresas industriales españolas y se modeliza un sistema de ecuaciones estructurales mediante la técnica Partial Least Squares (PLS). Los resultados muest…
Measuring innovation in tourism from the Schumpeterian and the dynamic-capabilities perspectives
This paper offers a diagnosis of the “state of the issue” regarding the measurement of innovation in the tourism industry at the company level, and some recommendations for overcoming identified problems. The study addresses two central issues: how existing secondary databases of innovative activity define the boundaries of the tourism industry, and the degree to which these databases reflect the particular characteristics of this economic activity. It is concluded that these analyses present serious biases and anomalies hindering the understanding of the situation at the micro level and complicating the issue of international comparability, and the analyses do not capture the internal hete…
The Complementary effect of internal learning capacity and absorptive capacity on performance: the mediating role of innovation capacity
Organisations are finding it increasingly more difficult to keep abreast with the pace of change. The continuous rise in the number of business opportunities and the increase in global competition require firms to combine internal and external learning processes to renew and reconfigure existing capabilities and knowledge to enable them to meet environmental demands and to innovate. This study aims to unravel the complex linkage between internal learning capacity and absorptive capacity and at exploring the joint effect of both knowledge generation processes on innovation capacity. This study also proposes innovation capacity as an antecedent of business performance. Using data from 952 ind…
Organizational innovation as an enabler of technological innovation capabilities and firm performance
Abstract This study assesses the relationship between organizational innovation and technological innovation capabilities, and analyzes their effect on firm performance using a resource-based view theoretical framework. The article presents empirical evidence from a survey of 144 Spanish industrial firms and modeling of a system of structural equations using partial least squares. The results confirm that organizational innovation favors the development of technological innovation capabilities and that both organizational innovation and technological capabilities for products and processes can lead to superior firm performance.
Competitiveness and Sustainability in tourist firms and destinations
Tourism is a major activity in the global economy, not only in terms of its economic impact but also its social and environmental implications. The management practices and processes adopted by tourist companies and destinations are very heterogeneous and have variable impacts on the triple-bottom-line sustainability (people, profit, planet) of the ecosystem. However, there is still only limited available knowledge about the value of different practices for promoting both sustainable development and greater competitiveness. This Special Issue includes papers that present new ideas, theories, advancements, experiences, evidence or methodologies that support the convergence of economic, socia…
The Accumulation of Distinctive Competences in Family Firms
Taking as its basis the resource- and capability-based view of the firm, this study provides an in-depth exploration of the ability of the family tourism firm to accumulate and develop the distinctive competences that are key to its success. Specifically, the analysis centres on how the family tourism firm acquires distinctive competences through the development of managerial capabilities. Using structural equation modelling (SEM), the empirical analysis focuses on a sample of 1,019 Spanish tourism firms. The results of the study suggest that family businesses face certain problems in accumulating distinctive competences. Moreover, the study indicates that such problems are due in part to t…
Keys to the Survival of the Family Firm
The purpose of this research is to carry out an in-depth exploration of the causes of the family firm's success over short and long term, analysing which capabilities are the most valuable sources of sustainable competitive advantage in every time horizon. The results confirm only functional capabilities have a positive and significant effect on short-term economic performance, whereas dynamic capabilities are the only ones that have a positive and significant impact on long-term economic performance.
The Importance of Internal Resources and Capabilities and Destination Resources to Explain Firm Competitive Position in the Spanish Tourism Industry
This study draws on the Resource-Based View to analyze the effects of distinctive competences in tourism firms and location in a tourism district on competitive position, and explores the moderating effects of the tourism destination. Multiple linear regression was used to test the research hypotheses on a sample of 1019 Spanish tourism firms. Results reveal that financial resources and dynamic and production capabilities favor a better competitive position for tourism firms in general; however, coordination and marketing capabilities are key factors for firms embedded in a tourism district, while dynamic capabilities have a negative effect in this case. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, …
Are quality management practices enough to improve process innovation?
The popularity of quality management as a system for continuous improvement has not been accompanied by deep theoretical understanding of its effects on process innovation. In this work, the resource-based view serves as the basis for the construction of a model designed to explain the effects of quality management practices (QMP) on process innovation performance and the mediating role of dynamic capabilities in this relationship. The empirical data were analysed using the structural equation modelling technique by examining 6 competing models that represent full, partial mediation and non-mediation relationships on a sample of 550 Spanish industrial companies. The findings indicate that t…
On How Firms Located in an Industrial District Profit from Knowledge Spillovers: Adoption of an Organic Structure and Innovation Capabilities
The canonical approach argues that firms located in industrial districts enjoy advantages for both innovation and performance as a consequence of the exceptionally strong knowledge spillovers that flow freely and spontaneously within them. However, diffusion of shared competences is not as easy and free as postulated in the literature. Using the resource-based view, we study whether clustered firms perform better than non-clustered firms, by providing empirical evidence that location of firms in an industrial district does not directly create innovation capabilities or economic rents. This research question is important because it enables us to better understand how firms benefit from this …
Asset Tangibility, information asymmetries and intangibles as determinants of family firms leverage
Using a sample of Spanish tourism small and medium-sized firms, we have tested the impact of family control, publicly-available information and tangibility on financial structure, providing a multi-theoretical model that incorporates contributions from the classical theory of finance, inspired by agency theory, the behavioural theory of the firm and strategic theory. The results point to the need to jointly consider the effects of information transmission practices, asset investment decisions and ownership structures on debt capacity. The results show how family control is associated with propensity to take on debt, so that the desire to maintain social control and socioemotional wealth pre…
A Theoretical Framework for the Analysis of the Relationship Between Family Firms and Competitiveness
This chapter develops an additive model of the microeconomic sources of family firm (FF) competitiveness. Its main contribution is the proposal of a new explanatory framework with a perspective incorporating both ex post competitiveness and its determinants in a chain of multi-level causality. Based on fully-specified theory, the framework is designed to explain the complementarity of the effects of the firm's country, industry, district, strategy, and distinctive competences, focusing where appropriate on the case of the FF. The theoretical model also sheds light on the forces that influence the accumulation of sustainable competitive advantages. To that end, this chapter incorporates a pa…
Does incremental and radical innovation performance depend on different types of knowledge accumulation capabilities and organizational size?
While prior studies recognize the importance of knowledge accumulation capabilities in innovation performance, current research has still failed to empirically identify its role with regard to different types of innovation performance. The objective of this paper is to address this knowledge gap and to explore the relationships between internal knowledge creation and absorptive capabilities, and incremental and radical innovation performance. The study also contributes to analyzing the complex effect that organizational size has in the whole innovation process, influencing its antecedents (internal knowledge creation capability and absorptive capability) as well as its outputs (incremental …
Is tourism firm competitiveness driven by different internal or external specific factors?: New empirical evidence from Spain
Abstract The quest to understand the multilevel antecedents of competitiveness has led to a separation of approaches. On one side of the question are the environment theories that analyze the structural characteristics of the general and competitive environment. On the other side are the Resource Based View and its extensions that highlight firm-specific resources and capabilities as the main basis of firms' competitiveness. However, in recent years the nature of competition and shifting economic conditions have given rise to new theoretical approaches that complement the assumptions underlying both environmental and firm theories. Specifically, this study contributes by examining the regio…
Las capacidades directivas en la empresa familiar turística: ¿Es la profesionalización la clave para su desarrollo?
Este trabajo tiene como principal objetivo analizar los elementos de la particular estructura de gobierno de la empresa familiar y la implicación de la familia en el negocio con tal de comprobar sus efectos sobre las capacidades directivas. Asimismo, se estudiará la profesionalización en este tipo de empresas como variable moderadora. Para abordar este análisis, se tomarán como base el Enfoque Basado en Recursos y Capacidades y la Teoría de la Agencia. El estudio empírico se lleva a cabo sobre una base de 591 empresas turísticas españolas mediante un análisis de regresión lineal múltiple. Los resultados demuestran que muchas de las características peculiares de la empresa familiar ejercen u…
Business Models in Spanish Industry: a Taxonomy-based Efficacy Analysis
The present study provides a conceptualization of the business model construct from which a multi-dimensional evaluation tool is developed that provides the basis for drawing up a taxonomy and analysing its comparative efficacy. The empirical data was obtained from a sampling of 159 Spanish business organisations. The cluster analysis revealed the existence of four business models that were designated as “multidivisional”, “integrated”, “hybrid” and “network”. The results also indicate that the adoption of a certain business model is not enough to attain superior performance, highlighting the need to consider other contingent factors.
Return on capital in Spanish tourism businesses: A comparative analysis of family vs non-family businesses
The analysis of the keys to competitiveness in the tourism sector has an unquestionable justification for its importance in the Spanish economy and its global growth prospects. The need for a better understanding of the keys to the competitiveness of the tourism firm is also fuelled by the magnitude of the challenges that it faces and by the sector structure, characterised by a notable weight of family-owned businesses. The objective of this research lies precisely in developing a diagnosis of the return on capital of the tourism sector and the determinants of its evolution in the family business (FB) vs non-family business (NFB). Specifically, this study focuses on the analysis of both fir…
Non-technical innovation: Organizational memory and learning capabilities as antecedent factors with effects on sustained competitive advantage
Abstract The aim of the present study is to analyze the role of organizational memory and learning capabilities as antecedents to non-technical innovation, comprising organizational and marketing innovation, and to examine their effect on sustained competitive advantage within a capabilities-based view (CBV) theoretical framework. For analysis of the proposed theoretical model, 159 industrial companies in Spain were sampled and a system of structural equations was modeled using partial least squares methodology. The results confirm that both organizational memory and learning capabilities favor the development of organizational innovation and marketing innovation. Furthermore, the paper sho…
Cluster and firm-specific antecedents of organizational innovation
Based on the idea of the tourist destination as a cluster, this paper proposes a model to explain the relationships between exploration and exploitation capabilities – whether originating in the cluster or firm-specific – and a firm’s organizational innovation. This study turns to the resource-based view to provide a theory-based concept of shared capabilities accumulated in a tourist destination or cluster, together with valid measurement instruments to capture them. Our conceptual model highlights the theoretical and practical benefits for firms of being embedded in a cluster to develop both exploration and exploitation capabilities. The study also analyses the interaction between cluster…