Search results for "tertiary sector"
showing 10 items of 58 documents
The Development of the Activity-Based Costing Method: A Comparison between France and China
2011
In France, like in the USA, ABC was considered as a remedy for the crisis of management accounting. Now, the level of diffusion in France is as important as in Anglo-Saxon countries. Not surprisingly, the ABC method is more developed in western countries than in China. Chinese scholars began to do researches on ABC in the 1990s and at the beginnings of the 21st century, we can observe some ABC implementations in Chinese manufacturing enterprises and then in the service industries. We can also find a similarity between the Chinese and French situations. In France, we have observed some resistances to the Anglo-Saxon way of manage firms and at the beginnings, a tool like ABC has been strongly…
The performance of entrepreneurial small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises
2012
Innovation is an important driver of economic growth for it leads to new products and services, enhanced quality, and lower prices. In an increasingly competitive global market, innovation turns out to be essential to secure a viable competitive position. Although there is no perfect correspondence between accounting intangible assets and innovation activities, the association between these two concepts is close enough to take investment in intangible assets as a proxy for entrepreneurship and innovation. To identify differences between innovative and non‐innovative small and medium enterprises in the service industry, both descriptive and statistical analyses are performed on financial dat…
The influence of innovation orientation on the internationalisation of SMEs in the service sector
2009
This article examines the internationalisation of small- and medium-sized service firms from an international entrepreneurship perspective. The results of the empirical research developed in Spain have shown that innovation orientation accelerates the time these companies take to internationalise and allows them to implement more activities and opt for high-control entry modes in foreign markets. The results suggest that two different models of internationalisation can be found within the services sector: firms either adopt a gradual process or attempt to benefit from a rapid transition period of internationalisation.
Guanxi, performance and innovation in entrepreneurial service projects
2013
PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the role played by two dimensions of entrepreneurs' private social capital in the survival, growth and innovativeness of entrepreneurial service ventures: local size and preferential attachment degree.Design/methodology/approachData were collected by a questionnaire, the unit of investigation being the private entrepreneur in the service sector in the city of Shanghai. The questionnaire allows the authors to identify the social network of the entrepreneurs, estimate the empirical degree distribution for the entire sample, and estimate local size and preferential attachment degree.FindingsThere is empirical evidence that entrepreneurs do not create social ne…
Master International Franchising in China: The Case of the Athlete’s Foot
2016
Franchising in China is a relatively new and growing phenomenon, which has gained momentum since the 1990s. Among the franchising pioneers in China are large and well-known food and beverage brands, such as KFC and McDonald’s. Less well known, but equally important, are the non-food retailing and service industries, which also made inroads in China using franchising. One such example is the case of the Athlete’s Foot Company. This American company has been a major competitor in the athletic shoes and sportswear sectors globally, made early entry into China using master international franchising, and, consequently, ran into problems indicative of the issues companies that expand internationa…
Women entrepreneurship in small service firms: motivations, barriers and performance
2012
This article presents an exploratory study on the characteristics of women entrepreneurs and the businesses they run in the Valencia region. Following a close look at the evolution of literature on women entrepreneurs, the study shows how different internal and external factors affect the motivation, obstacles and performance of firms created by women. These results contribute towards a better understanding of business creation by women as they provide an empirical contrast of these variables (motivation, barriers and performance). Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of women entrepreneurs and the businesses they run in the Valencia Region of Spain, in order…
Factors affecting the performance of entrepreneurial service firms
2008
In the current climate, the importance of the role played by entrepreneurship as a palpable reality that enables economic growth at a macroeconomic level, and as a factor that favours the progress of companies at a microeconomic level, has made it the subject of continual analyses from many different perspectives and in a variety of contexts by researchers from around the world. In this study, Spanish entrepreneurial firms in the service sector are analysed in order to determine the factors that influence their performance.
High performance in after-sales support services in the automotive industry
2009
In the automotive aftermarket industry, market development has become more than merely the offer of a core product portfolio. With the aim of genuine differentiation and increased customer loyalty, the so-called value-added services have been brought into the market as separate/independent services or as product-supporting services by the automotive industry. However, owing to the increasing price erosion and budget pressure in practice, it has become essential for companies to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the services offered. The groundwork of effective and efficient service is a market- and customer-oriented service portfolio. This in turn requires a service-controlling sys…
The impact of service innovation on firm-level financial performance
2011
This article empirically investigates if firms focusing on service innovation perform better financially than firms not focusing on service innovation. Analysis of the financial performance of 3575 Norwegian firms in the manufacturing industries supports the proposition that firms focusing on service innovation have significantly higher growth of operating results than firms not focusing on service innovation. However, this proposition is not supported in a corresponding analysis of 1132 Norwegian firms in the service industries. We elaborate on these results by investigating a variety of performance measures and by comparing the effects of service innovation between manufacturing and servi…
Energy and environmental life cycle assessment of an institutional catering service: An Italian case study
2019
Food production is recognised as one of the major drivers for global environmental pressure. In the last years, changes in consumption models result in an increasing population consuming food out of home that pose the catering service sector at the centre of the European Union policies aimed at improving the environmental sustainability of the food sector. In this framework, better technical knowledge on the environmental impacts of catering service is essential in order to identify potential actions towards a more sustainable food sector. This article presents an environmental assessment of a school catering service operating in Italy and delivering approximately 2,518,128 meals per year. …