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1 – 10 of 32Andrea Ceschi, Matilde Dusi, Michela Ferrara, Francesco Tommasi and Riccardo Sartori
The way in which managers differ when confronted with risky options or when evaluating different alternatives constitutes a fundamental part of organizational risk management…
Abstract
Purpose
The way in which managers differ when confronted with risky options or when evaluating different alternatives constitutes a fundamental part of organizational risk management. This study aims to investigate how managerial risk-taking attitudes (i.e. ethical and financial risk-taking as a trade-off between benefit and riskiness) change over time and based on gender.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a cross-sectional study on a sample of Italian executives and measured their perceptions of risk-taking, risk perception and risk-benefit, all referring to the company they worked for in the ethical and financial domain. The study also collected demographic data to gather information on age and gender. The authors analyzed data collected using multilevel analysis.
Findings
The results show that perceived benefits are the main drivers of risk-taking attitudes in both domains. Age and gender are not significant direct predictors of risk, but interactions with domains reveal insightful patterns.
Originality/value
Overall, this study highlights the need to assess the whole pattern of relationships emerging from the range of situational variables characterizing a specific population. Concerning the organizational context, it means addressing the role of organizational variables in influencing risk-taking so as to determine the extent to which organizational policies are indeed effective in fostering efficient organizational risk management.
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Michaela Lipkin and Kristina Heinonen
This study aims to characterize how ecosystem actors shape customer experience (CX). The study also proposes implications for managers and research regarding the customer…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to characterize how ecosystem actors shape customer experience (CX). The study also proposes implications for managers and research regarding the customer ecosystem, its actors and actor constellations in the context of CXs.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative study is conducted among activity tracker users to identify how actors within their ecosystems shape CXs. Data include 28 in-depth interviews and ten self-reported diaries.
Findings
This study delineates six actor categories in the customer ecosystem shaping CX within and beyond the service. The number of actors and their importance to the focal customer in various actor constellations form individual-, brand- and socially driven ecosystems. These customer ecosystem types show how actors combine to drive CXs.
Research limitations/implications
Researchers should shift their attention to experiences emerging in the customer’s lifeworld. A customer ecosystem highlights the customer-centered actor configuration emergent within the customer’s lifeworld. It is self-constructed based on the customer’s reference point.
Practical implications
Managers should aim to locate, monitor and join the customer’s lifeworld to gain more insight into how CXs emerge in the customer ecosystem based on customer logic.
Social implications
Customers are not isolated actors simply experiencing service; rather, they construct idiosyncratic actor constellations that include various providers, social groups and peers.
Originality/value
This paper extends the theory on CXs by illustrating how the various actors and actor constellations forming the customer ecosystem shape CXs.
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Michela Magliacani and Alberto Francesconi
This research explores the community's role in feeding a culturally sustainable development project over time and the practices which operationally allow the bridging of cultural…
Abstract
Purpose
This research explores the community's role in feeding a culturally sustainable development project over time and the practices which operationally allow the bridging of cultural heritage management and sustainable development according to the approach of “culture as sustainability”.
Design/methodology/approach
The primary and secondary sources relate to nearly 20 years of life of the Tuscan Mining Geopark case belonging to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) European and Global Geopark Networks. Textual analysis was applied to the dataset. The interpretative approach was aligned with other investigations within this research field.
Findings
The results highlight how a bold project in an uncertain context harnessed bottom-up mobilisation and accountability to stimulate a sustainable community empowerment. The ability to experiment and learn from experience depicts an organisational logic far from the top-down and predefined design practice widely contested in the literature.
Research limitations/implications
Despite a single case study was analysed, it enables researchers to craft a conceptual model for culturally sustainable development projects, and it fills the literature gap on how to operationalise culture as sustainability under the managerial perspective.
Practical implications
The model assembles an organisational process view and practices that can be tailored to a cultural context with insights for developing culturally sustainable projects.
Originality/value
The research increases the observations of community empowerment within culturally sustainable development projects. It demonstrates how the “incompleteness of the design” was not a weakness but rather a trigger of effective organisational practices.
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Jeandri Robertson, Elsamari Botha, Bernard Walker, Russell Wordsworth and Michaela Balzarova
Organisational resilience and digital maturity both explain how some organisations are better able to cope with unexpected disruptions. However, research exploring the…
Abstract
Purpose
Organisational resilience and digital maturity both explain how some organisations are better able to cope with unexpected disruptions. However, research exploring the relationship between these two concepts, and their role in addressing exogenous shocks, remains sparse. This study first aimed to compare digitally mature SME retailers’ organisational resilience with that of digitally less mature SME retailers and then investigate further how their digital maturity impacted their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopt an explanatory two-phase mixed-method research design, with online surveys from 79 SME retailers in South Africa, followed by interviews.
Findings
Digitally mature SMEs exhibited higher levels of organisational resilience, specifically with respect to situational awareness, management of keystone vulnerabilities and adaptive capacity. The authors also demonstrate that digital leadership is a greater driver of organisational resilience than digital capabilities.
Practical implications
The authors suggest ways for SME retailers to develop their digital maturity, particularly their digital leadership, to increase their organisational resilience.
Originality/value
This paper makes a case for SME retailers to focus on building their digital maturity to better cope with and learn from unexpected events. In particular, digital maturity is positively associated with SME retailers’ innovation and creativity and their devolved and responsive decision-making.
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Michela Magliacani and Daniela Sorrentino
The purpose of this research aims at extending the knowledge on whether and how universities include sustainability dimensions in managing their collections. Precisely, the study…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research aims at extending the knowledge on whether and how universities include sustainability dimensions in managing their collections. Precisely, the study focusses on the creation of a university museum (UM), as an embryonic stage of life during which management concerns both strategic and operational issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Sustainability is envisioned as a multifaceted concept, composed of the economic, cultural, environmental and social dimensions. Resorting to an acknowledged theoretical model for sustainable development in museum management, a qualitative interpretative study is carried out, gathering data from multiple sources. The empirical setting is the University of Pavia, which has recently created a new Museum of Natural History (Kosmos).
Findings
Results highlight how sustainability dimensions intertwin in UM creation. Moreover, the economic dimension emerges as a basement for the others. Value for the community, expressed in economic terms, must be ensured in UMs creation as well as throughout its entire life, in order to support cultural, environmental and social sustainability.
Research limitations/implications
Focussing on the embryonic stage of UMs life allowed to consider how sustainability is embedded in relevant strategic and operational decisions. Nevertheless, scholars are encouraged to replicate the study in other stages of UMs' life, in a way to provide insights on its dynamics.
Practical implications
University collections managers can benefit from this research by acknowledging the role played by the economic dimension of sustainability. Notwithstanding their mission, universities should pay attention to extracting economic value from the management of their collections, as a means to ensure innovative and sustainable management on the cultural, environmental and social respects. Furthermore, this research suggests how a higher education system is able to create a new museum by relying on interdisciplinary competencies, which support sustainability since the embryonic stage.
Originality/value
This research contributes to the cultural heritage management literature by proposing an updated version of the sustainable development model for museums, which highlights the different relevance of the sustainability dimensions with particular regard to the UM creation and management.
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Angela Dettori and Michela Floris
This study aims to explore the main drivers that family businesses possess to strengthen their resilience during the COVID-19 crisis.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the main drivers that family businesses possess to strengthen their resilience during the COVID-19 crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
This study followed a quantitative method analysis through a multiple regression analysis based on a sample of 570 Italian family firms.
Findings
The results showed that job quality and innovation significantly stimulate family firms' resilience during the COVID-19 crisis.
Practical implications
The study has several academic implications. Firstly, the study contributes to family firm research by extending the studies on factors that significantly influence the concept of resilience; secondly, the work contributes to crisis management, offering suggestions to help other firms exceed the COVID-19 crisis.
Originality/value
The present study clarifies the role of family firms' resilience, and it reveals how job quality and innovation play a meaningful role during the COVID-19 crisis.
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James Lappeman, Michaela Franco, Victoria Warner and Lara Sierra-Rubia
This study aims to investigate the factors that influence South African customers to potentially switch from one bank to another. Instead of using established models and survey…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the factors that influence South African customers to potentially switch from one bank to another. Instead of using established models and survey techniques, the research measured social media sentiment to measure threats to switch.
Design/methodology/approach
The research involved a 12-month analysis of social media sentiment, specifically customer threats to switch banks (churn). These threats were then analysed for co-occurring themes to provide data on the reasons customers were making these threats. The study used over 1.7 million social media posts and focused on all five major South African retail banks (essentially the entire sector).
Findings
This study concluded that seven factors are most significant in understanding the underlying causes of churn. These are turnaround time, accusations of unethical behaviour, billing or payments, telephonic interactions, branches or stores, fraud or scams and unresponsiveness.
Originality/value
This study is unique in its measurement of unsolicited social media sentiment as opposed to most churn-related research that uses survey- or customer-data-based methods. In addition, this study observed the sentiment of customers from all major retail banks across 12 months. To date, no studies on retail bank churn theory have provided such an extensive perspective. The findings contribute to Susan Keaveney’s churn theory and provide a new measurement of switching threat through social media sentiment analysis.
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