Investigaciones Europeas de Direccion y Economia de la Empresa最新文献

Literature on healthcare supply chain management has shown that the kanban system can provide significant benefits. However, very few benefits have been empirically demonstrated and the extent of each remains unknown. This study aims to measure nurses’ satisfaction with kanban systems in logistics of medical consumables and assesses possible advantages and differences among user groups through an anonymous survey at Hospital Universitario Virgen Macarena of Seville, Spain. Treatment of responses included an exploratory factor analysis, and a CAPTCA analysis. The results showed a high level of satisfaction for each aspect of the kanban system. Moreover, it highlighted the differences of opinion between groups of individuals according to workplace, nursing units, job category, seniority, age and kanban training. The exploratory factor analysis revealed that two factors underlie the collected assessments: the inherent advantages of a kanban system, and the logistics system performance as a whole. Thus, hospital managers should promote the implementation of kanban systems, since it increases nurses’ satisfaction and provides significant benefits.

In this paper we analyse the role of exploitation knowledge strategy to explain the relationship between social capital in its bonding dimension and incremental innovation dimension in the field of clusters. To do this, on a sample of 215 cultural tourism companies in World Heritage Cities of Spain, we applied a structural model that allows us to detect a significant indirect effect to bonding capital in incremental innovation through the development of a exploitation knowledge strategy. The results suggest that if firms in a cultural tourism cluster are able to leverage their strong ties and dense networks to implement exploitation knowledge strategies, tend to develop more incremental innovations.

In adjustable interest loans the borrower assumes the risk of interest rate rising, which leads to the growth of loan annuities. Given the importance of this risk in both corporate and personal finance, it is a recurrent topic in economic and financial press. In this paper, we show that the duration of a loan with constant annuity and interest rate can be used to assess the sensitivity of payments of an analogous loan with adjustable interest rate. Also, we develop an empirical application on official indexes of the Spanish mortgage market during the period 2009-2013. We find that EURIBOR is the index that causes less volatility in the mortgage annuity. Likewise, we also obtain that the average rate of loans for house purchasing in the euro zone is the index that cause greater volatility in the payments of loans.

The competitive environment is leading companies in every industry to reinforce their focus on innovation-related activities, and especially on knowledge exploration and exploitation. The relevance of these concepts has generated an important literature as well as appropriate measurement scales. The scales proposed by Atuahene-Gima (2005) have been commonly taken as a reference. However, these have been applied more in medium or high-tech industries than in low-tech industries. In this sense, this study aims to validate the scales to measure knowledge exploration and exploitation capabilities in a low-tech industry as the textile industry. The results show that while it is feasible to use these scales in this type of industries, they need to be adjusted to suit their specificities.

This work has the aim of analyzing the influence of bank and trade debt in the duration of the process of bankruptcy in Spain. To that end, a sample of 567 firms, that fill in bankruptcy between 2004 and 2009, is used. The results show a different behavior between banks and trade creditors, considering the level of their debt and the type of bankruptcy resolution. Thus, whereas the former allow a lengthening of the process, the latter try to reduce it. In addition, those results remain in the sample of firms that liquidate, whereas in the firms that reach an agreement, only the attitude of trade creditors is relevant, who besides, have a different behavior depending on the type of resolution.

This article presents a review of the studies on on boards of directors and corporate social responsibility practices in the banking industry. Several characteristics of bank boards, in particular independence and diversity, may impact their CSR commitments. By studying a sample of 159 banks in nine countries during the period 2004–2010, there is evidence that suggests that banks with more independent and diverse directors follow a path of socially responsible behaviour.

Internal marketing orientation (IMO) can be used as a tool for managing employees’ knowledge that allows companies to develop a competitive advantage to the extent that generates information, communicates it internally and facilitates to articulate a response to their needs. IMO through proper management of human capital facilitates more effective competition and a more agile response to market demands. This study analyzes the three dimensions that make up IMO and involve knowledge management with regard to gathering intelligence concerning employees’ needs, the transmission of these needs and the subsequent response. Then, an empirical research has been carried out to analyze the IMO in Spanish hotels and it had led to the classification of three clearly defined groups. Moreover, the results indicate IMO as a source of competitive advantage as higher levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment are found in the groups with higher IMO.

Despite the growing body of literature concentrating on service innovation, empirical research focusing on measuring its impact, mainly at firm-level, remains scarce. Adopting the perspective that the ability to monitor the service innovation process and to assess its impact is a pre-condition to properly manage it, we conduct a literature review of recent empirical studies on the measurement of service innovation to ascertain our current body of knowledge. We restrict our review to the period covering 2006 to 2014, as previous research has been extensively covered by Adams, Bessant, and Phelps (2006) and concentrate on published empirical academic articles which clearly examine “service innovation” and its impact on performance. Relying on several inclusion and exclusion criteria, thirteen empirical studies were retained and are discussed in this paper. Although this study does not claim to be exhaustive, it shows that knowledge on the relationship between service innovation and performance is limited and that this area of research deserves further scrutiny. We conclude with some avenues for further research, in view of stimulating more research in this promising yet emerging field.

This paper explores the question of whether knowledge assets are more developed in services industries than in non-services. The concept of the “knowledge economy” has always gone hand-in-hand with growth in the percentage of the economy represented by services. Two multi-year, multi-industry datasets are used to directly compare the knowledge asset levels in service industry firms against those in non-service industry firms. Service industries do, indeed, reflect higher levels of intellectual capital in recent years, but did not do so a decade ago. Further, there is considerable evidence of changes in specific service and non-service industries over the time period, adding details to the finding that knowledge development is not static but does vary over time and circumstance. These results open up a number of promising research directions that could lead to a better understanding of the nature of these differing circumstances and how better strategic choices might be made regarding investments in knowledge management.