What motivates people to work? When jobs are abundant, salaries are competitive, companies are out-perking themselves and the workforce is fickle – is that really motivation? And…
Abstract
Purpose
What motivates people to work? When jobs are abundant, salaries are competitive, companies are out-perking themselves and the workforce is fickle – is that really motivation? And, how do you continue to motivate employees in a company that struggles with its mission and is experiencing a significant downturn and disengagement? The purpose of this study is to look at the measures Softonic, one of Spain’s most successful tech companies, had to take to motivate, re-engage and give employees a strong sense of purpose after the company suffered a significant downturn.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking an honest look at the situation and tacking head on. Creating a whole new playbook that relies on: Leadership by Example, Ownership and Empowerment, and Development and Recognition.
Findings
When you create a culture of transparency, break down the barriers and empower your employees to reach beyond their limits; they will re-engage and motivate.
Originality/value
This is a case study detailing how new management re-engaged and motivated the workforce of Softonic after a severe company downturn.
Details
Keywords
Marisa Ramírez-Alesón and Marta Fernández-Olmos
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of imported intermediate inputs on innovation performance, differentiating among types of innovation output (product and process…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of imported intermediate inputs on innovation performance, differentiating among types of innovation output (product and process innovation) and considering both family and non-family firms in the Spanish context.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses an unbalanced panel of 1963 firms in the Spanish manufacturing sector (13,155 observations; 2006–2016) that can be identified as family or non-family firms. The authors apply a recently developed methodology (conditional mixed process model) that takes into account the possible relationships among the dependent variables to a panel bivariate probit model with robust standard errors.
Findings
Importing intermediate inputs is an important source of process innovation for all firms, but not of product innovations. Significant differences were found between family and non-family firms in favor of the family type.
Research limitations/implications
This paper breaks down the family state into two categories (belonging to a family group or not) because the database does not contain information regarding the percentage of family ownership or the number of family members in the management structure. Moreover, the research is context specific.
Practical implications
These results will be useful for firms that are considering the value of importing intermediate inputs as a strategy to improve their process innovations, particularly for family firms.
Social implications
Family firms are more successful in the utilization of imported intermediate inputs to achieve greater innovation performance. If family firms are more competent in leveraging their intermediate input imports in innovation performance, it should contribute to increasing business performance.
Originality/value
The research on imports takes into account the different impacts of intermediate imports depending on innovation performance (product innovation vs process innovation) and the nature of the firm (family firms vs non-family firms).