The Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives of Management: Challenges and Opportunities

The expected growth of elders and chronically ill patients requires health insurers and health-care systems to shift from primarily focusing on the care of the sick to focusing both on care of the sick and on preventive health care. Public expectations for high-quality health care call for a new, more profound, and more actionable understanding of the healthy customer’s mind regarding health-promoting behaviors. Mind-Genomics may become the next big idea in health service. The relation between Mind-Genomics and data-driven personalized health plans is now being systematically explored. Some of the findings are reported in this research project.

Methodology: Respondents were 200 members of the Excellus American health fund. Based on measures of patient experience the authors created and tested concepts of messaging. The authors conducted a series of conjoint-based designed experiments to establish response patterns to our messaging. The authors analyzed data using Mind-Genomics, an empirical “micro-science” for discovering psychographic mind-sets and mapping motivating messages for healthy behaviors.

Results: The authors segmented patients by attitudes, perceptions, preferences, needs, and behaviors by their responses to messaging, thereby uncovering underlying psychographic mind-sets. The authors used the Personal Viewpoint Identifier to tag each person in the population by a sample mind-set and use the right messaging.

Discussion: To understand the mind of the patient regarding health plans, health funds may use the powerful tools of Mind-Genomics. Health insurers and health systems may implement Mind-Genomics as the next frontier of knowledge development to offer customized health plans, thus investing in preventive medicine.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have become one of the key growth strategies for firms. However, the management literature fails to consistently explain the paradox of the increasing activity of both cross-border and domestic M&A versus their poor performance. Scholars recently contend that not all M&A are alike. This research will explore how different characteristics of M&A relate to different M&A implementation approaches – namely exploitation versus exploration may better relate to M&A performance. Furthermore, it will provide various propositions that have the potential to foster future research directions.

Purpose: To explore intellectual capital (IC) in the business ecosystem perspective, the chapter examines its connection with several “enabling” factors that influence the creation and development of innovative startups. The most significant of them are: institutions and organizations able to sharpen new entrepreneurship skills; the simplification of rules and granting of incentives; and the enhancement of entrepreneurship IC and accessible financing methods.

Design/methodology/approach: Based on a conceptual model, some testable research propositions are proposed, followed by a discussion on the direction of future research.

Findings: The propositions suggest that several enabling factors and their interactions are explanatory variables of if and how the business ecosystem works.

Research limitations/implications: The limitation of the chapter is its theoretical approach, requiring empirical validation of these enabling factors in connection with IC. Theoretical implications are related to the operating synergies of the four enabling factors also in connection with profitable use of IC resources.

Practical implications: Practical implications are related to managerial and political issues. Managers and policy-makers must consider and monitor the business ecosystems and the dynamics of these factors in order to define and implement efficacious strategies and provide new incentive to stimulate and support the creation of new companies and the value of IC.

Originality/value: The chapter contributes to theoretical literature thanks to its propositions: enforcing the four most important key factors while encouraging profitable use of IC resource policy-makers and new entrepreneurs who can assist in the growth and expansion of innovative startups.

Purpose: This chapter uses the different models developed in international business and the international experience of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to propose efficient ways of confronting globalization.

Design/methodology/approach: The positive experience of SMEs in countries driven by the pursuit of efficiency and innovation was analyzed, taking into account the stages of the development of the country. Uniqueness, cooperation, coalition, and integration are the key to success in the global market, as illustrated by case studies.

Findings: Factor-driven SMEs have the choice of contract marketing based on specialization or of increasing efficiency and establishing various kinds of coalition or cooperation. Efficiency- and innovation-driven SMEs can improve their global position by offering some unique value, by participating in or initiating a coalition, or by establishing strategic alliances with a multinational corporation.

Practical implications: Analysis of case studies illustrating each model of globalization helps the SMEs in selecting a relevant international business strategy over time.

Originality/value: Each model of globalization is illustrated by SMEs that have successfully implemented it.

Many large companies in Europe include mainly men in supervisory boards and the women quota is often lower than 20%. In Germany an optional women quota of 30% in supervisory boards was proposed for capital-market-oriented companies in 2016. Some assume that without a gender quota the earnings of enterprises would shrink as male and female members in supervisory teams do not work in such a harmonized and structured way. Others think that a women quota in supervisory boards should be requested by law and should not remain optional. In this context, conducting research and analyzing the impact of the women’s presence in supervisory boards on the success of companies appear as a necessary topic. The present chapter looks at the companies of EURO STOXX 50 in the year 2015 and their success and tries to establish whether this success can be related to the percentage of female members in supervisory positions. It replicates in this way the study of Binder, Alonso-Almeida, and Bremser (2016) which analyzed the relationship between female’s representation in the management board (executive board) and firm performance (measured by earnings before taxes – EBT) of the EURO STOXX 50 companies in 2014. It is in the same time an extension of the original study as the supervisory board is brought under scrutiny.

Gender diversity in higher management levels of companies is becoming an increasingly relevant topic – organizations in general are realizing the necessity of having a higher proportion of women in higher level management positions. This can only be achieved through actively promoting women in business. Various HR instruments are available to support a gender diversity strategy, one of which is mentoring. This chapter ascertains in what way mentoring is a sustainable instrument for the promotion of women in business specifically in Germany, by analyzing mentoring programs in various German companies from the points of view of both mentees and mentors. With the help of an online survey among female mentors and mentees and the theory given in the literature, the organizational aspects as well as the implementation of such programs are assessed with the aim of recognizing potential areas of improvement for companies in Germany in future. Based on this analysis, it can be concluded that mentoring for women is organized quite successfully in Germany, but that nevertheless certain areas of consideration exist in view of the general organization and the communication and marketing of the program.

Efficiency and productivity has always being a key issue in economic science. The analysis of the impact of research and development (R&D) has been extensively studied in industries and countries of more or less aggregated level. This chapter aims to investigate the impact of corporate R&D in performance of low-tech industries, medium-tech, and high-tech in OECD countries.

This chapter aims to answer the questions: Is the impact of R&D significant for all types of industries? If so, what are the differences and the magnitude of these effects in each of these types of industries?

To this end, an unbalanced data set from 2000 to 2011 was collected for the main countries of Europe and the United States concerning low-, medium-, and high-tech to analyze the impact of the magnitude of corporate R&D and capital accumulation on productivity of these industries. The productivity of industries was measured by stochastic parametric frontier functions, in order to measure the efficiency of R&D and accumulation of capital on labor productivity.

The main results highlight the impact of corporate R&D on productivity of high-tech industries, but for other industries those relations are not clear. However, capital accumulation became crucial on low technology to improve their performance. These results, although needing to include a more extensive data set of industries across countries, refer the need for policy and decision makers to allocate public funds for R&D in high-tech industries, while the investment in capital seems crucial, particularly in low-tech industries to improve the productivity.

Since the dawn of the civilizations that olive has been playing a critical role on both the society and the economy. Indeed, one can argue that olive and olive oil were as critical as they shaped a form of culture, a seminal pillar that supported the Mediterranean civilizations and that has since then spread worldwide, influencing others. As waves and tides, the use of olive and olive oil has certainly met low points, to the extent that its use even became to be considered old fashioned more recently, when the traditional Mediterranean food and culture started to be jeopardized by very different modern ways of living. Nevertheless, despite defying challenging conditions, stubbornly as always, the Mediterranean diet not only continues to prevail, but keeps granting the admiration of diverse strands of the society and science, being notoriously evident the set of recent research that points to its health benefits, having olive oil as the cornerstone, a vegetable fat, considered to be highly healthy, as it enhances the control of important health indicators, such as the bad cholesterol, serving for nutritional and therapeutic uses, and preventing the occurrence of a number of diseases, including cardiovascular problems and some forms of cancer.

Taking into consideration this framework, the research presented in this book is focused on the examination of the main trends on olive and olive oil in the Iberian Peninsula, from production to retail and consumption, by analyzing several data sets covering recent decades. In terms of findings for more recent years, it was possible to conclude that despite the increasing recognition of the benefits of olive and olive oil by the society, and despite the increase in olive production, the consumption of olive oil has been decreasing internally, being replaced by increases in exports. This is most probably due to the economic conditions that have deteriorated due to the 2008’s financial crisis, which, together with an increase in olive oil prices, has prevented a considerable portion of the population to have financial conditions to access to the consumption of such an important component of the Mediterranean diet.

This chapter from a brief review of the relevant literature on the energy markets points out the changes in the relationships between energy companies and customers through the Web. The objective is to highlight the changes of the energy markets thanks to the web demonstrating that it is able to ensure the raising of the switching rates and hence the competition, goal of the liberalization of public services. To this end, the authors will use secondary data from Accenture researches about the perceptions of customers and energy companies around the relations established via the web, and the CUAC for the switching mode performed in the State of Victoria in Australia.

This study examines the performance consequences of pay dispersion in publicly listed firms in Turkey for the period 2009–2013. Our study focuses on vertical pay dispersion, which reflects intra-firm and vertical differences between pay at two important hierarchical levels: top executive level and lower hierarchical level. The author intends to present arguments based on equity theory and tournament theory and will propose two contradictory hypotheses to test them within the context of an emerging market. Results provided in the present study confirm that pay dispersion between executives and employees has a positive impact on a firm’s profitability in Turkey. Our study contributes current empirical evidence by examining vertical pay dispersion in an emerging country context, which may have a different cultural orientation and societal-wide assumptions concerning fairness, power, and disparities, relative to its developed country counterparts.

Service employees engage in Emotional Labor (EL), either through surface acting (SA) or deep acting (DA), when they interact with aggressive customers, so that they are able to abide to the organizational rules. Current studies have shown that employees engage only in SA when they interact with aggressive customers due to a number of reasons. Based on this, the authors undertake an exhaustive review and analysis of existing literature on EL, in order to enhance our understanding of the DA concept. Consequent to this analysis, tha authors interrelate and present the various research findings into a unified comprehensive framework for engaging in DA during a service encounter. Conclusively, the authors discuss the implications of the developed framework for the scholar community and management practice in the hospitality industry, and the authors propose various avenues for further research.

The twentieth century started writing the history of modern health systems. Their evolvable rate is now higher than ever. The Western Europe was the forefront of setting up the national health systems (NHS) to protect citizens and let them thrive. Successful models progressively crossed the borders and experiences became universal. Hence, this chapter tackles data to perceive the underwent radical transformations and capture intricate aspects to envision the next and get answers time ahead the patients‘needs. Health organizational structures and human resources management play crucially in improving system’s performances: managerial qualities, medical entities’ functionality, results’ forecasting are essential to build up credibility and aid strategic patterns to evolve.

Changes are welcome to better tailor performances, assure successful implementation, avoid inadequate, distressing reforms. Stable and consistent policies are also called for.

Grounded on fundamental patterns, open to applicatory innovation, countries follow specific arrangements to resound with healthcare robustness if goals are well-thought-of: keeping people healthy and safe, identifying and treating defectiveness or abnormal physiological functions affecting people, operations, circuits, and preserving health budget wisely balanced.

Activities and citizens are touched by any structural changes maneuvered. To confront them, a keen eye should be addressed to those nobody’s areas into synergistic efforts to cope with internal causes, face external forces and improve life through fair profitability on the way of full satisfaction.