Jeffrey G. Blodgett, Aysen Bakir, Anna S. Mattila, Andrea Trujillo, Claudia Quintanilla and A. Banu Elmadağ
Previous research indicates that dissatisfied consumers in other countries react differently as compared to those in the USA, due to their cultural orientation. These studies…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous research indicates that dissatisfied consumers in other countries react differently as compared to those in the USA, due to their cultural orientation. These studies, however, have not recognized that retail policies (regarding returns and exchanges) in the USA are much more liberal and “consumer friendly” than in other parts of the world, and thus it is possible that their conclusions are flawed. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to determine the extent to which cross-national differences in complaint behavior are due to cultural vs situational factors.
Design/methodology/approach
To examine this issue, a two-part study was conducted. Study 1 compared consumers living in China, India and Mexico to cohorts who immigrated to the USA. Study 2 compared individuals from those same countries to subjects who are native to the USA.
Findings
The findings indicate that situational factors (i.e. consumer-oriented vs restrictive refund/return/exchange policies) have a large impact on consumer complaint behavior (i.e. redress, negative-word-of-mouth and exit), and that the effects of culture are minor.
Research limitations/implications
To infer cause-effect, and establish scientific theory, one must rule out alternative hypotheses. Researchers who are investigating cross-cultural complaint behavior must take situational factors into account.
Practical implications
With the emergence of “global consumers” consumer expectations around the world are changing. Astute retailers should institute and promote more liberal return policies, thereby mitigating consumers’ perceived risk.
Originality/value
This study dispels the notion that culture is responsible for differences in cross-national consumer complaint behavior.
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Pedro Vázquez and Miguel Méndez
The board of directors of a firm is a governing body exercising key top-level decisions. Due to the involvement of the controlling families, boards of directors of family firms…
Abstract
The board of directors of a firm is a governing body exercising key top-level decisions. Due to the involvement of the controlling families, boards of directors of family firms have been found to behave differently than those of other organizations. Besides family control, national and/or regional contexts have been suggested to influence how companies are governed. Boards of directors of family firms have been studied mostly in developed regions and knowledge from developing regions such as Latin America is scarce. This chapter summarizes the main findings about boards of directors in family firms and compares this research with our knowledge from Latin America. It discusses the different challenges and opportunities that owners of family firms and boards of directors face in the Latin American context. Finally, it suggests that research on boards of directors of family firms in Latin America has a very promising future as it still has to validate and/or contextualize findings in developed regions, overcome some theoretical and empirical limitations, explore some salient characteristics related to the institutional context in depth, and provide recommendations linking board characteristics and firm performance.
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Diana Nandagire Ntamu, Waswa Balunywa, John Munene, Peter Rosa, Laura A. Orobia and Ernest Abaho
By the end of their studies, students are expected to: undergraduate level. Learning objective 1: Describe the concept of social entrepreneurship. Learning objective 2: Explain…
Abstract
Learning outcomes
By the end of their studies, students are expected to: undergraduate level. Learning objective 1: Describe the concept of social entrepreneurship. Learning objective 2: Explain the sources and challenges of funding social entrepreneurial activities. Learning objective 3: Discuss the different strategies that social entrepreneurs may use to raise funds. Postgraduate level. Learning Objective 1: Use theory to explain the concept of social entrepreneurship. Learning objective 2: Discuss the role of social capital in facilitating resource acquisition for social entrepreneurial activities. Learning objective 3: Evaluate the current action for fundamental change and development (AFFCAD) funding model and propose strategies that may be used by a social enterprise to achieve financial sustainability when donor funding expires.
Case overview/synopsis
The past decade has seen the emergence of many social enterprises from disadvantaged communities in low-income countries, seeking to provide solutions to social problems, which in developed countries would normally be addressed by government sponsored welfare programmes. The social entrepreneurs behind such initiatives are typically drawn from the disadvantaged communities they serve. They are often young people committed to improving the lives of their most disadvantaged community members. Being poor themselves and located in the poorest communities, establishing their enterprise faces fundamental challenges of obtaining resources and if accessed, sustaining the flow of resources to continue and grow their enterprise. Targeting external donors and mobilizing social resources within their community is a typical route to get their enterprise off the ground, but sustaining momentum when donor funding ceases requires changes of strategy and management. How are young social entrepreneurs dealing with these challenges? The case focusses on AFFCAD, a social enterprise founded by Mohammed Kisirisa and his three friends to support poor people in Bwaise, the largest slum in Kampala city. It illustrates how, like many other similar social enterprise teams, the AFFCAD team struggled to establish itself and its continuing difficulties in trying to financially sustain its activities. The case demonstrates how the youngsters mobilised social networks and collective action to gain access to donor funding and how they are modifying this strategy as donor funding expires. From an academic perspective, a positive theory of social entrepreneurship (Santos, 2012) is applied to create an understanding of the concept of social entrepreneurship. The case uses the social capital theory to demonstrate the role played by social ties in enabling social entrepreneurs to access financial and non-financial support in a resource scarce context (Bourdieu, 1983; Coleman, 1988, 1990). The National Council for Voluntary Organisations Income Spectrum is used as a tool to develop the options available for the AFFCAD team to sustain their activities in the absence of donor support. The case provides evidence that social entrepreneurs are not limited by an initial lack of resources especially if they create productive relationships at multiple levels in the communities where they work. However, their continued success depends on the ability to reinvent themselves by identifying ways to generate revenue to achieve their social goals.
Complexity academic level
This case study is aimed at Bachelor of Entrepreneurship students, MBA, MSc. Entrepreneurship and Masters of Social Innovation students.
Supplementary materials
Teaching Notes are available for educators only.
Subject code
CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.
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Starting from an event occurring in 2018, I consider burials of abortive remains as a battleground for reproductive governances. Public debate on pregnancy loss is often…
Abstract
Starting from an event occurring in 2018, I consider burials of abortive remains as a battleground for reproductive governances. Public debate on pregnancy loss is often intertwined with the abortion debate. In Italy this association caused a considerable delay in implementing practices recommended by international guidelines on pregnancy loss. In this essay, I analyse burial regulations and the ways in which they are enforced asking what is at stake when the State, the regions, the Catholic Church, healthcare and cemetery professionals and women undergoing a termination or a pregnancy loss decide what to do with bodily remains. What is the meaning of these peculiar dead bodies? How are they publicly named? What are the effects of the actions performed on fetal remains over the lived experiences of women and couples with different reproductive histories? Who has the right to make decisions over these peculiar bodies and relationships?
Based on a long-term ethnography on abortion and pregnancy loss in Italy, I explore the inherent complexity of these questions, arguing that burial practices conflict with abortion rights when they signify the body unequivocally, separating it from social and intimate relationships, fixing its identity and determining the conditions for its recognition. Human flesh, sociologically understood (Memmi, 2014), is both material and symbolic: a fluctuating reality that takes on different meanings and affects over time within relationships.
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Fernando Macías-Aranda, Teresa Sordé-Martí, Jelen Amador-López and Adriana Aubert Simon
In this chapter, the authors describe the developments towards Roma inclusion in Spain through Successful Educational Actions. First, the authors describe the main characteristics…
Abstract
In this chapter, the authors describe the developments towards Roma inclusion in Spain through Successful Educational Actions. First, the authors describe the main characteristics of the Spanish Roma Minority with special regard to their cultural and linguistic diversity and deprivated social situation. After a brief overview of the Spanish education system, the authors give a detailed picture of the educational attainment of the Roma minority in Spain. After then the authors present and analyse the most important successful policies and support programmes for Roma education.
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Stefan Prigge and Katharina J. Mengers
This chapter presents the current research status of family constitutions from an economics perspective. It locates the family constitution as part of the family and business…
Abstract
This chapter presents the current research status of family constitutions from an economics perspective. It locates the family constitution as part of the family and business governance structure of a family firm and the owner family. The typical structure and content of a family constitution are introduced. The chapter focuses on the status of research about family constitutions and provides a structured map for future research. With regard to extant research, it must be stated that the stock of literature is small. The contributions to literature are categorized in surveys; conceptual contributions; survey data; small sample, qualitative, empirical studies; and big sample, quantitative, empirical studies. The latter group includes three studies with a separate family constitution variable. This small number symbolizes that the family constitution still is an under-researched area. Therefore, family constitution research is far away from being able to answer central questions of advice-seeking owner families like, for example, whether a family constitution affects family performance, firm performance, or both; or whether the development process of a family constitutions disposes of an effect on family or firm performance separately from the hypothesized effect of the family constitution document.
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Mariano González-Delgado, Manuel Ferraz-Lorenzo and Cristian Machado-Trujillo
After World War II, an educational modernization process gained ground worldwide. International organizations such as UNESCO began to play a key role in the creation, development…
Abstract
Purpose
After World War II, an educational modernization process gained ground worldwide. International organizations such as UNESCO began to play a key role in the creation, development and dissemination of a new educational vision in different countries. This article examines the origin and development of this modernization process under the dictatorship of Franco. More specifically, we will show how the adoption of this conception in Spain must be understood from the perspective of the interaction between UNESCO and Franco's regime, and how the policies of the dictatorship converged with the proposals suggested by this international organization. Our principal argument is that the educational policies carried out in Spain throughout the second half of the 20th century can be better understood when inserted into a transnational perspective in education.
Design/methodology/approach
This article uses documents from archives that until now were unpublished or scarcely known. We have also analyzed materials published in the preeminent educational journals of the dictatorship, such as the Revista de Educación, Revista Española de Pedagogía, Bordón and Vida escolar, as well as documents published by the Spanish Ministry of National Education.
Findings
Franco's dictatorship built an educational narrative closely aligned with proposals put forward by UNESCO on educational planning after World War II. The educational policies created by the dictatorship were related to the new ideas that strove to link the educational system with economic and social development.
Originality/value
This article is inspired by a transnational history of education perspective. On the one hand, it traces the origins of educational modernization under Franco's regime, which represented a technocratic vision of education that is best understood as a result of the impact that international organizations had in the second half of the 20th century. On the other hand, it follows the intensifying relationship between the dictatorship and the educational ideas launched by UNESCO. Both aspects are little known and studied in Spain.
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Chrysi Alexiadou, Nikolaos Stylos, Andreas Andronikidis, Victoria Bellou and Chris A. Vassiliadis
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the need to evaluate perception-based quality in service encounters. It sets out to diagnose potential mismatches in how customers and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the need to evaluate perception-based quality in service encounters. It sets out to diagnose potential mismatches in how customers and front-line employees perceive quality in high-involvement service settings, based on the premise that any initiative toward quality enhancement in service encounters is advisable only when employees and customers evaluate quality utilizing common perceptual structures.
Design/methodology/approach
The study utilizes invariance analysis. The survey involved 165 bank branches and 1,522 respondents (463 front-line employees and 1,059 customers) and operationalized the same set of questions for both groups of participants. Multisample confirmatory factor analysis tested a series of measurement models.
Findings
Results revealed equivalence for tangibles, responsiveness and assurance but also mismatches between customers and front-line employees perceptions of reliability and empathy.
Practical implications
Findings add to current knowledge of how both groups of participants evaluate quality in service encounters and are discussed with reference to managerial consequences for perception-based quality mismatches.
Originality/value
So far only a few studies have simultaneously examined front-line employees’ and customers’ perceptions of service quality in service encounters. Unlike previous research designs, this study addresses the critical aspect of potential mismatches in how customers and employees perceive service quality, and presents a methodological procedure to detect them.
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Manuel Jesus Ramirez, Ivonne Eliany Roman, Edgar Ramos and Andrea Stefano Patrucco
This paper aims to explore the antecedents and performance outcomes of supply chain integration in the agri-food industry in Latin America, a context that the literature on supply…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the antecedents and performance outcomes of supply chain integration in the agri-food industry in Latin America, a context that the literature on supply chain management has not extensively addressed. The quinoa supply chain, an industry that has encountered a boost in market demand in the past year, is selected as the unit of analysis. Supply chain integration dynamics are analyzed to provide recommendations about integration strategies and benefits in the agricultural sector.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual model was designed in this study, which includes the drivers (i.e. trust and commitment) and outcomes (i.e. operational and economic performance) of supply chain integration. The relationships were verified through a unique survey, the data of which were collected from 79 respondents operating at different levels of the Peruvian quinoa supply chain (i.e. suppliers, producers and customers). The proposed hypotheses were tested through the partial least squares (PLS) regression.
Findings
The results underscore the relevance of trust and commitment as enablers of supply chain integration initiatives in the agri-food industry. These factors are particularly essential for involving the farmers who are the most upstream actors in the supply chain and characterized by unstructured organizations. A high level of integration in these types of supply chain enhances the capacity to improve operational performance, which in turns positively affects the main economic indicators.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the discussion of supply chain integration in the agri-food industry, which remains unexplored thus far. It relies on a multitier collection of responses, which is extended to all the levels of the quinoa supply chain, thereby providing the study with a unique depth of analysis. Furthermore, this work contributes to the ongoing discourse on the performance impact of supply chain integration, which several SCM scholars have recently questioned.