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The purpose of this paper is to present findings derived from research work carried out by a team of six university lecturers who are members of a teaching quality improvement network. The aim is to increase the motivation of the lecturers involved, so that better performance can be achieved, and the teaching‐learning process enriched.

Three complementary performance measures are used: students' active participation; lecturers' personal reflections; and lecturer peer‐to‐peer assessment.

These tools have provided the teaching staff with information about their strengths and weaknesses, as a consequence of which they have learned to deploy their skills inside the classroom and prepare their subjects more effectively. In this way, it is shown that the public teaching system can assess the potential of its human resources, and increase their motivation.

From an institutional point of view, performance quality assessment practices can also help to design training and development programmes that adapt the individual needs identified to the educational goals of today's universities.

We examine negative emotions’ influence on consumer satisfaction and loyalty when repurchasing a product or service after experiencing failures in the financial services sector.

The sample comprised 735 valid surveys of customers who encountered such service failures. An initial model incorporating 14 negative emotions was narrowed down to the most robust one, comprising three emotions, after data collection and statistical validation.

Consumer dissatisfaction is explained by affective (pleasure) rather than cognitive factors (disconfirmation) in the financial services context. Loyalty is influenced only by affective (pleasure and activation) rather than cognitive elements (disconfirmation) in the dissatisfaction generation process, indicating that loyalty is not a cognitive but an affective one. Finally, an affective judgment (activation) rather than a cognitive one (disconfirmation) explains consumer’s recommendation of a product or service despite encountering failures.

This is the first study to focus exclusively on negative emotions, revealing that the pleasure dimension is a significant antecedent of dissatisfaction. By demonstrating that emotional factors rather than cognitive assessments dominate both satisfaction and loyalty responses, this study offers a unique contribution to understanding consumer behavior after service failures in financial services, with practical implications for service recovery strategies.

Este estudio examina el impacto de las emociones negativas en la satisfacción y lealtad del consumidor al volver a adquirir un producto o servicio después de experimentar fallas en el sector de servicios financieros.

La muestra incluyó 735 encuestas válidas de clientes que enfrentaron dichas fallas en el servicio. Un modelo inicial que incorporaba 14 emociones negativas se redujo, tras la recolección de datos y la validación estadística, a un modelo más robusto que comprende tres emociones.

La insatisfacción del consumidor se explica por factores afectivos (agrado) en lugar de cognitivos (desconfirmación) en el contexto de servicios financieros. La lealtad está influenciada únicamente por elementos afectivos (agrado y activación) y no por elementos cognitivos (desconfirmación) en el proceso de generación de insatisfacción, lo que indica que la lealtad no es de naturaleza cognitiva, sino afectiva. Finalmente, un juicio afectivo (activación), más que uno cognitivo (desconfirmación), explica la recomendación de un producto o servicio por parte del consumidor, incluso tras haber enfrentado fallas.

Este es el primer estudio que se enfoca exclusivamente en las emociones negativas, revelando que la dimensión de agrado es un antecedente significativo de la insatisfacción. Al demostrar que los factores emocionales, más que las evaluaciones cognitivas, dominan tanto las respuestas de satisfacción como de lealtad, este estudio ofrece una contribución única para comprender el comportamiento del consumidor tras fallas en los servicios financieros, con implicaciones prácticas para las estrategias de recuperación del servicio.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an ambitious plan led by the Chinese government aiming to reach a close integration between countries, is reshaping the global institutional landscape. Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) play a leading role in the BRI and they usually follow an unconventional behavior derived from the institutional influence of their home government. Prior research reports that institutional distance between home and host countries has an impact on multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) ownership level in their foreign subsidiaries. Therefore, our aim is to investigate how institutional distance, the BRI and state ownership affect Chinese tourism MNEs' ownership level in their cross-border acquisitions.

Drawing on the institutional theory, this study develops several hypotheses that are tested using a sample of Chinese MNEs from accommodation, travel agencies, transport and leisure/entertainment industries.

The results show that the idiosyncratic characteristics of being an emerging-market MNE belonging to a soft-service industry is associated with a positive relationship between institutional distance and a high ownership level in cross-border acquisitions. They also indicate that targeting a country included in the BRI and being an SOE negatively moderates that relationship.

This study extends institutional theory in the case of tourism firms from an emerging economy. It also addresses an under-research topic in the literature, namely, how the BRI is leading Chinese tourism MNEs to redesign their international strategies.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of different technological aspects of organizations on Spanish high‐technology firms' performance.

The relationships studied are confirmed empirically using a structural equation model to demonstrate our hypotheses. The sample was selected from the database “Dun & Bradstreet España” in the year 2005 and includes 201 Spanish firms. CEOs were our main informants.

The results obtained show that support from top managers will directly influence the organizational learning (OL) process and technological distinctive competencies (TDCs) (antecedents of corporate entrepreneurship) and that corporate entrepreneurship finally influences organizational performance.

The paper is exploratory in character, and its goal is to show whether interrelations exist between the variables. The main limitations are: the sectors chosen refer only to Spain; the analysis is cross‐sectional in character; the study uses a single method and self‐reports (CEOs).

To obtain perfect adaptation of the firm to its environment, it is crucial that managers develop corporate entrepreneurship to improve high‐technology sector firms' performance. The paper shows the important role of the top manager's support in developing TDCs and OL. Success in such issues is of vital importance to corporate entrepreneurship in the firm.

The paper seeks to stimulate new lines of research on one variable (TDCs) and to relate it to other constructs, producing new relationships and observing their repercussions for the firm.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of different technological aspects of organizations for Spanish firms' performance through organizational learning and corporate entrepreneurship (where organizational innovation is essential).

The relationships studied are confirmed empirically using a structural equation model to demonstrate the hypotheses. The sample was selected from the database Dun & Bradstreet España for 2003, obtaining 201 Spanish firms. CEOs were the main informants.

The results show that the support adopted by top managers will directly influence the organizational learning process, technological distinctive competencies and corporate entrepreneurship. Technological distinctive competencies are also supported by organizational slack resources, technological skills and a technological infrastructure. Finally, corporate entrepreneurship influences organizational performance.

The paper is exploratory in character, and its goal is to show whether interrelations exist between the variables. The main limitations are: the sectors chosen refer only to Spain; the analysis performed is cross‐sectional; and a single method and self‐reports are used.

The paper shows that to obtain perfect adaptation of the firm to its environment, it is crucial that managers develop corporate entrepreneurship, especially innovation, to improve high‐technology sector firms' performance.

The paper seeks to stimulate new lines of research regarding technological distinctive competencies, organizational learning and corporate entrepreneurship and to relate them to other constructs, observing their repercussions for the firm.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of changes in employment regulation in Spain on individual labour market trajectories. It is well known that the Spanish labour market has been strongly hit by the 2007 recession. Furthermore, after 2010 and in the benchmark of “austerity”, several reforms were implemented to further flexibilise employment regulation. At the same time, public sector budgets suffered severe cutbacks, that impacted working conditions and prospects of public sector workers. These reforms were implemented by different governments and substantially changed previous existing patterns of employment. This paper explains how these reforms have reinforced previous existing trends towards greater flexibility and weaker employment protection and how they lead to a shift in the position of work in society.

The emerging patterns that these changes provoked are illustrated thorough data from narrative biographies of workers affected by a job loss or a downgrading of working conditions. The workers of the sample had relatively stable positions and careers and were affected by changes that substantially modified their paths.

The paper shows how reforms have expanded work and employment insecurities and have broken career paths. It demonstrates how the reforms have weakened the position of work and organised labour in society and how, when institutional supports are jeopardised, the capacity to plan and act is harassed by the traditional social inequalities.

The paper enhances the knowledge about the impact of institutional changes by analysing their effects in individual working lives by means of narrative biographies.

There have been major efforts to develop the technology for integrated construction environments and the mechanisms needed to improve the collaboration between construction professionals. Evidently, the development and usage of such an environment is a complicated task. The two issues that can be among the main contributors to this are: the development of the technology and its effective implementation. These two issues are addressed separately in this paper. The paper first explains the approaches of sharing project information, followed by a review of a recent project in this area, the result of which is a distributed integrated construction environment based on the industry foundation class (IFC), capable of supporting a number of construction applications. This environment is capable of supporting a construction team to work collaboratively over the internet. It then discusses the difficulties facing the successful implementation of such environments in construction organisations. This is addressed within the context of two management models for effective implementation of IT: the resource‐based model and the Nolan model.

This research explores perceptions of knowledge management processes held by managers and employees in a service industry. To date, empirical research on knowledge management in the service industry is sparse. This research seeks to examine absorptive capacity and its four capabilities of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation and their impact on effective knowledge management. All of these capabilities are strategies that enable external knowledge to be recognized, imported and integrated into, and further developed within the organization effectively. The research tests the relationships between absorptive capacity and effective knowledge management through analysis of quantitative data (n = 549) drawn from managers and employees in 35 residential aged care organizations in Western Australia. Responses were analysed using Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modelling. Additional analysis was conducted to assess if the job role (of manager or employee) and three industry context variables of profit motive, size of business and length of time the organization has been in business, impacted on the hypothesized relationships.

Structural model analysis examines the relationships between variables as hypothesized in the research framework. Analysis found that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities correlated significantly with effective knowledge management, with absorptive capacity explaining 56% of the total variability for effective knowledge management. Findings from this research also show that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities provide a useful framework for examining knowledge management in the service industry. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the perceptions held between managers and employees, nor between respondents in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Furthermore, the size of the organization and length of time the organization has been in business did not impact on absorptive capacity, the four capabilities and effective knowledge management.

The research considers implications for business in light of these findings. The role of managers in providing leadership across the knowledge management process was confirmed, as well as the importance of guiding routines and knowledge sharing throughout the organization. Further, the results indicate that within the participating organizations there are discernible differences in the way that some organizations manage their knowledge, compared to others. To achieve effective knowledge management, managers need to provide a supportive workplace culture, facilitate strong employee relationships, encourage employees to seek out new knowledge, continually engage in two-way communication with employees and provide up-to-date policies and procedures that guide employees in doing their work. The implementation of knowledge management strategies has also been shown in this research to enhance the delivery and quality of residential aged care.

As purveyors of knowledge-based and high value-added services to the manufacturing sector, industrial service small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must develop the information technology (IT) capabilities that, in combination with other non-IT capabilities, enable their capacity for organizational learning (OL) and for explorative learning in particular. In this context, this study aims to identify the different causal configurations that account for the nonlinear complex interplay of IT capabilities for exploration and strategic capabilities for explorative learning as they affect these firms’ competitive performance.

Survey data obtained from 92 industrial service SMEs were analyzed with a configurational approach, using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

As it allows for equifinality, the fsQCA analysis identified two sets of causal configurations that characterize the sampled firms’ explorative learning capability as it relates to competitive performance. In the first set, two configurations were equally associated with high innovation performance, whereas in the second set, four configurations were equally associated with high productivity.

By viewing explorative learning as a dynamic capability that is enabled by the firm’s IT and strategic capabilities, the study contributes to OL theory by providing a more concrete or “operational” grounding, which allows for a greater practical applicability of this theory. By taking both the configurational and capability-based views of the OL-IT-performance causal framework, the authors provide an empirical basis for unraveling, explaining and understanding the complex non-linear relationships embedded within this framework.