Human resource management and corporate entrepreneurship

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to introduce the special issue on “Human resource management and corporate entrepreneurship”.Design/methodology/approachThe paper discuses the articles in the special issue, which investigate the relationships between human resource management and entrepreneurship from different points of view, approaches and employing different empirical contexts.FindingsThe papers highlight different human resource management factors of entrepreneurial behaviour and their influence on corporate entrepreneurship. Results from different empirical contexts as small and medium‐size firms, case studies, joint ventures, in the USA, China, and Spain, among others, make important c…

Social Sustainability on Competitiveness in the Tourism Industry: Toward New Approach?

The achievements made over the years of policies seeking to stimulate tourism demand have led to a great increase in the number of tourists arriving in many destinations. Some destinations have begun to suffer problems derived from the success of policies focused solely on increasing the number of arrivals. The objective of this work is to analyze the role of social sustainability in the analysis of tourism competitiveness. Methodologically, this study has been developed from the analysis of papers published in journals indexed in the Journal Citations Reports and Scopus. This has been complemented with information extracted from a number of well-known studies regarding tourism competitiven…

Different ways of measuring performance in the service industries: application in Spanish small and medium-sized hotels

There is no suitable unit of analysis for explaining the profitability and competitiveness of the company, as typically pointed out in the debate between the disciplines of economics and management. After a study of the possible variables, we opted for those of minimum cost output and productivity, using these two measurements to analyse their application to Spanish hotels. The subsequent objective was to attempt to identify general strategies that could be applied to any SME within service industries. In situations where time and resources are not readily available to create action plans for each of the different types of SME, there is a need for incentives that can be applied to the creat…

Total Quality Management

Eight hotel managers in Valencia, Spain, identified what criteria they considered important for a hotel's TQM program. Those findings were then compared to the results of standard EFQM studies (European Foundation for Quality Management), and the differences noted and analyzed. Given the categories of leadership, policy and strategy, personnel management, resources, and processes, hoteliers rated "resources" as far and away the most important factor relative to the others, and, surprisingly, rated "personnel management" and "leadership" as relatively unimportant. By comparison, EFQM studies ranked those same factors in this order, from most to least important: processes, leadership, policy…

Introduction: Contributions of Human Resource Management to the Challenges faced by Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Global Environment

Margot Katz. (2007).Tarzan and Jane: How to Thrive in the New Corporate Jungle. London: Profile Books. 216 pages

Academic Entrepreneurship in Europe WrightMike ClarysseBart MustarPhilippe LockettAndy. 2007. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. 228 pages, hard cover.

Handbook of Research in Entrepreneurship Education, (Vol. 1: A General Perspective. Vol. 2: Contextual Perspectives), edited by Alain Fayolle. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2007. 320 pages (vol. 1, hard cover); 292 pages (vol. 2, soft cover).

Modeling the enterprising character of European firms

In an increasingly globalized economy, innovation pursuing the speeding up of technological changes takes a renewed interest. In this study, we attempt to show those characteristics and variables that make businesses successful, especially innovative small and medium‐sized enterprises. The article focuses on this business sector because the contribution of it to employment generation, wealth distribution and economy appraisal is frequently set to the fore in current political and economic debate. A study of 408 businesses, according to data from the European Commission and the Spanish Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial – Center for Industrial and Technological Development – (y…

The Role of Consultants in SMEs

In this article the external advice sought by small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is analysed through a survey carried out to evaluate the impact of the work done by consultants and to determine the degree of satisfaction with Spanish consulting firms. We will examine the effect of management consulting firms on SMEs when an external consultant offers the consulting service. Research was carried out into companies that could potentially seek the services of an adviser by asking them if they considered the results of the adviser's project and its quality to be useful.

Evaluating European Union support for innovation in Spanish small and medium enterprises

Finding funding is one of the main problems small and medium enterprises (SMEs) face, which is why the European Union has set up programmes to support SME development. This paper has two objectives: firstly, to describe the different European funding programmes available to Spanish firms; secondly, to present an empirical study on the use Spanish SMEs (and especially, SMEs in the service sector) make of these programmes in order to innovate, together with an analysis of the importance these funding programmes have on SME innovation.

Transmitting the entrepreneurial spirit to the work team in SMEs: the importance of leadership

PurposeTo establish the extent of the influence of variables which, under a particular style of leadership, form the necessary basis for encouraging and developing group, entrepreneurial activities carried out within the context of small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) thus explaining the transmission of the entrepreneurial spirit to the work team and, consequently, the existence of collective entrepreneurship in the firm.Design/methodology/approachFrom the results of a questionnaire carried out via personal interviews with over 100 firms, a confirmatory factorial analysis was carried out that provided us with the variables to be studied. The cause/effect relationships and their implicat…

Quality in the consulting service – evaluation and impact: a survey in Spanish firms

The paper deals with the importance of the work of external consultants in firms and of consulting as a function. The study deals with the analysis of external advice within small to medium‐sized enterprises. It tries to reflect the actual importance of external advice sought by firms in trying to reach the highest possible level of client satisfaction. The survey reported in this paper was carried out to evaluate the impact of consulting and to determine the degree of satisfaction of the clients that had used Spanish consulting services. To this end, firms that had used such services were interviewed on‐site. The purpose of the research was to analyse the effects on management processes wi…

Correction to: Engagement in entrepreneurship after business failure. Do formal institutions and culture matter?

Despite the extensive literature on the relationship between entrepreneurship and institutions, there is limited knowledge of the relationship between institutions and engagement after failure. This study compares the entrepreneurial engagement of entrepreneurs who have recently experienced failure and individuals without entrepreneurial experience, emphasizing the interaction of government policies and programmes (formal institutions) and individualistic/collectivist cultures (informal institutions) with business failure and its impact on entrepreneurial engagement. We test our hypotheses using multilevel analysis on a large cross-sectional sample that combines individual-level data from t…

Entrepreneurs' perceptions of official sporting events' capacity to promote their business in the long term

[EN] Academic literature includes numerous studies on the assessment of the economic impacts of sporting events. Some of these impacts are only temporary and don't produce a lasting effect on the productive fabric, while others lead to long term developments. Even though residents' reactions to the long term impacts of these events have been broadly studied, the views expressed by entrepreneurs located in the area of the event remain to be investigated. This article analyses perceptions of entrepreneurs located near the Sierra Nevada Ski and Mountain Resort in Spain relating to their assessment of the long term effects of hosting the 2017 Snowboard and Freestyle Ski World Championship.This …

Universidad social capital and the competitiveness of entrepreneurs: a review of the literature and proposals

The essential question asked in this study is "How can social capital become a competitive tool for entrepreneurs". The answer lies in showing how their own networks can provide the value and competitiveness that entrepreneurs need for their business projects.