Revista Europea de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa最新文献

In this work, price sensitivity of customers of a company dedicated to the sale of organic beef has been evaluated, as well as the impact of price decisions on sales, using actual data of the firm. In addition, the study discusses customer value of the online channel of the studied company, including the identification of consumer segments more or less profitable. Thus, the efficient management of the portfolio of clients and the optimization of its value require applying different efforts to recruit, retain and develop customers, depending on their potential profit.

Until relatively recent times, the only responsibility that companies had was to increase profits while fulfilling legal and ethical principles. However, growing public awareness of environmental problems and social inequalities has led organizations to include these criteria along with economic principles as parameters that determine how it acts.

Keeping in step, companies have begun to disseminate the suitability of this new way of behaving to society and other stakeholders through sustainability reports in which business practices are synthesized from the triple bottom line: economic, environmental and social.

Different authors argue that corporate transparency is determined both by a company's internal business characteristics and by the external factors representing its surroundings, which up to now have scarcely been analyzed, and given that previous studies have focused on specific countries with their own methodological idiosyncrasies.

In light of this situation, the objective of the present study is to show the influence that the legal system has on corporate transparency in matters of sustainability. Analysis of an unbalanced sample of 1,598 international companies for the period 2004-2010 using a Tobit methodology for panel data shows the strong impact of this institutional factor on the issuing of the most important and comparable information in matters of sustainability.

Starting from the construct absorptive capacity (ACAP), this paper adopts Zahra and George (2002) conceptualization of absorptive capacity, which considers it as two subsets – potential absorptive capacity (PACAP) and realized absorptive capacity (RACAP). Hence we have hypothesized a positive relationship between PACAP and RACAP. We also hypothesized a positive relationship between relational learning (RL) and RACAP. Finally we have assessed the moderating role of RL in the PACAP–RACAP link. Data were collected from a sample of 110 firms belonging to the Spanish automotive components manufacturing sector. Results from a variance-based structural equation-modeling tool show that RL moderates (reinforces) the influence of PACAP on RACAP. In addition this paper provides evidence about the important role that RL plays as antecedent of RACAP.

This paper analyses the influence of family members’ social capital on non-family members’ social capital in family firms. It tests the impact of one type of social capital on another type of social capital using structural equation modelling techniques. The sample consists of 172 Spanish family firms in which at least two family members and two non-family members work in each firm. Data analysis shows that family social capital has a direct and positive influence on non-family social capital and the relationships between some of the social capital dimensions in each group. This research provides family firms with insights on which aspects of their members’ relationships are important to creating an ideal environment in the firm for generating social capital. It shows that relationships between all family members are key to increasing non-family social capital. This is the first study to analyse the effects of relationships between family members on those of non-family members. This work examines both the influence of the various social capital dimensions within each group and between the two groups in family firms, using an integrated model.

Previous national and international evidence show that firms going public through an Initial Public Offering (IPO) underprice. In this research we investigate whether IPO underpricing differs between family firms and non-family firms. We employ a sample of 59 IPOs conducted in Spain over the period 1994 to 2012. We find that both family or non-family firms exhibit significant underpricing, being significantly lower in the case of family firms. Results do not suggest any linkage between underpricing and IPO activity in the Spanish market.

Mutual Guarantee Societies (MGS) are instruments aimed at facilitating financial access for small and medium sized companies (SMEs) through the provision of guarantees. There are two different types of owners: participating partners, the same SMEs that are granted a guarantee, and protecting partners who include, in many cases, local and regional governments who are interested in promoting economic activities through guarantees. We study how MGS achieve the objectives of the two types of owners through the estimation of productivity, as well as the extent to which the objectives of both partners are complementary. Furthermore, given that there are no owners with a major stake in the MGS, and capital is fragmented, we determine whether MGS are also achieving the interests of managers rather than owners.

In recent times, there has been a clear trend in industrial districts towards providing a range of products and services with higher added value. This paper studies the effects of the company knowledge-base, measured in terms of innovative effort, on its capacity to diversify its product portfolio, and how the firm can benefit from being part of the district. Recent findings have shown a positive effect of innovation effort on diversification, but have also shown the existence of a threshold or saturation point of these benefits, as well as a moderating and multiplicative effect of district connectivity on the relationships between innovation effort and diversification of the product portfolio. Our conclusions suggest that R+D investment is extremely important for the competitiveness of the firm, but equally important is a combination of this effort with the participation and commitment of the firm to the district and the shared resources that this implies.

Forecasting financial failure is a critical issue for both financial theory and practice, as bankruptcies cause severe effects, not only for shareholders and creditors, but also for third parties throughout the economic system. We have developed a logit model and an artificial neural network to help forecast financial distress based on the information content of audit reports and auditors contracts. These models are built on empirical evidence indicating that it is possible to infer the existence of unrevealed financial pressures, given a small number of quantifiable signs, e.g. changing of auditors, nonfulfillment of formal requirements, and the accumulation of qualified reports. Even with its parsimony, logit model reaches an 85% hit rate, and neural network is able to correctly classify up to 90% of the companies in training, testing and cross-validation phases. We discuss whether the expression of going-concerns in emphasis paragraphs may reduce the ability of investors to evaluate corporate financial risk and/or forecast bankruptcy events.

Several objectives are pursued in this work. First, a theoretical framework is established that lends support to the board of directors. A literature review then carried out in order to substantiate the relationship between board structure and the performance of the firm. This leads to five hypotheses. The empirical part of the study was then conducted by applying these hypotheses to companies listed in the Madrid Stock Exchange. An econometric model (multiple linear regression) is used to test the relationship between several features of the board (size, activity, independence, busyness and duality) and performance of the firms measured as Return on Equity (ROE) and Return on Assets (ROA), and Tobin's Q. It is concluded that the size and the activity of the board are the only two variables that correlate with the financial performance of the companies.

Studies on the disclosure of corporate social information have identified business characteristics, certain internal factors and, to a lesser degree, the functional institutional aspects that define the context within which businesses interact with their stakeholders, as explanatory factors for the behaviour of entities with regard to corporate transparency. In this respect, depending on the different cultural circumstances that surround them and on the different values, rules and practices involved, local stakeholders have their own expectations regarding corporate behaviour.

This paper is focused on proving the influence of the different countries’ cultural systems on corporate transparency as far as sustainability is concerned. To this end, we have conducted an empirical analysis based on a sample of 1,598 public entities located in 20 different countries during the period 2004-2010. The methodology used for panel data is based on a Tobit dependency model.

The results obtained show that businesses located in countries with community and gender-based cultural systems tend to disclose corporate social information of a more relevant and comparable nature, since stakeholders present a higher degree of concern for common social welfare.