Administrative Sciences — Open Access Journal

The main aim of this study is to gain insights into project management professionals’ perception of how project success can be achieved. The Q-methodology was followed in this research. Based on an extensive literature review and validation through expert judgment, a framework consisting of 33 factors increasing the likelihood of success was developed. A total of 34 practitioners in three different sectors (real estate, urban development, and infrastructure) in the Netherlands were asked to rank the statements contributing to the success of their projects. Four different perspectives of how project success can be achieved were distinguished in this study: “seeking the best match”, “being adaptive and open”, “keeping the team focused”, and “preparing for opportunities”. The perception of different practitioners of how success can be obtained may stem from factors of project context rather than sector and complexity. This highlights further research opportunities in taking a contingent approach when investigating project performance. The study helps to grasp the subjectivity of practitioners’ viewpoints regarding the potential ways to enhance project performance by understanding the similarity and differences of these viewpoints. Full article

Restaurant service quality assessment has generally focused on the dining service. However, restaurant service begins with waiting for the meal. When service failure occurs due to a long waiting time, restaurant managers should adopt appropriate service recovery measures to retain consumers and reduce loss. This approach would allow them to mitigate customer dissatisfaction and negative impressions. In this study, we explore the importance of pre-processing service in the context of possible restaurant service crises and construct a restaurant service recovery model for willingness to pay (WTP) through the contingent valuation method (CVM) to measure the effects before and after implementing service recovery. Overall, several psychological and tangible service recovery measures are provided to enhance people’s willingness to extend their waiting time. Within our study group, relatively young participants showed a high willingness to extend their waiting time. Furthermore, the opportunity cost of high-income people in the waiting process was relatively high. Compared with psychological service recovery programs, our results show that tangible service recovery programs prompt respondents to wait for an additional ~10 min. This paper offers support for restaurant managers to manage consumer relationships. Full article

The growing importance of sustainable development constitutes a challenging trend for education. Universities create study programs and organize extracurricular activities in order to prepare future generations of professionals as well as political and social leaders for responsible actions toward sustainable development. The main objective of this article is to investigate how universities in Poland develop educational programs and extracurricular activities to enable students to shape sustainability competencies. The study employed a triangulation of research methods including a literature analysis, desk research analysis of the universities’ educational programs, and quantitative research among students. The findings suggest that Polish universities attempt to shape sustainable development-oriented competencies not only through formal sustainable development education, but also via non-formal activities toward social and environmental challenges. The research results have practical implications for universities and can support the advancement of educational programs related to sustainable development. Full article

Team rivalry has been mostly studied in competition settings, between competing individuals or teams, and has been linked to positive performance outcomes due to its impact on increasing motivation. However, rivalry is not limited to such contexts, it can also occur in collaborative settings, among team members working on a collaborative task. We argue that in such settings rivalry in teams has a negative impact on team performance, due to its negative impact on team learning behaviors. We employed a time-lagged, survey-based design with a sample of 176 students (55 teams) to investigate the relationship between rivalry and team performance through team learning behaviors. Our results based on simple mediation analyses show that, for our sample, rivalry in teams was not in fact negatively correlated to learning behaviors. Furthermore, we did not find support for the hypothesized positive relationship between learning behaviors and team performance, nor for the partial mediation model we proposed. We show how a series of team and task characteristics could explain our results and discuss potential future directions in the study of rivalry in collaborative settings. Full article

Human resource marketing (HRM) is focused on the creation of job-position while including all relevant parameters such as work specification, wage, and adequate communication of a job offer. Wage is possible to understand as not only the amount of money received but also as all kinds of reward for the work that has been completed. Forms of staff renumeration have received more interest during the last decade, especially in regards to managers and the concept of industry 4.0. Job offer descriptions help to find suitable applicants for specific managerial positions. The main objective of this paper is to state the relationship between gender and the chosen variables (job sources). For this purpose, there was a realized questionnaire survey, focused on HRM in the business environment in the Czech Republic. The sample population for the survey consisted of 522 people, though feedback was only received from 185 participants (a return rate of 35.44%). To process the data, we employed Pearson’s chi-square test for independence and cluster analysis. Graphical design was made using an ROC curve (Receiver Operating Characteristic). According to the results obtained, there were defined relationships between gender and job servers as job sources, and between gender and social networks as job sources. This dependence is supported by the ROC curve, which shows the expectations of wage incomes according to the work-experience of the employee. Full article

This paper investigates the changed roles and strategies of professionals in a context of hybrid welfare state reform. This context exposes public professionals to market regulation and rationalization (new public management), and simultaneously expects them to work across professional borders to co-produce public services together with their clients, colleagues and other stakeholders (new public governance). Adopting a comparative perspective, we studied different types of professionals for their views on the implications of this reform mix on their work. Hence, we investigate ‘strategy’ at the macro level of public sector reform and at the micro level of professionals’ responses. The study is based on literature and policy documents, participatory observations and especially (group) interviews with professionals across Dutch hospitals, secondary schools and local agencies for welfare, care or housing. We found that professionals across these sectors, despite their different backgrounds and status, meet highly similar challenges and tensions related to welfare state reform. Moreover, we show that these professionals are not simply passive ‘victims’ of the hybrid context of professionalism, but develop own coping strategies to deal with tensions between different reform principles. The study contributes to understanding new professional roles and coping strategies in welfare state reform, in a context of changing relationships between professions and society. Full article

Online reputation is a strategic aspect of lodgings’ image and commercialization. Websites containing tourism reviews have increased their influence on customers’ decisions, leading to the effective management of Internet social media accounts. Customer evaluations of lodgings vary across websites because of differences in the scales used, the variables measured, and the reliability of opinions. The diverse information available on the Internet can produce communication problems in lodgings because the evaluations on online portals can differ. The objective of this paper is to propose an indicator to establish the rating of the online reputation balance, so that lodgings can determine the level of coherence of their communication and image on the Internet. One target for lodging community managers should be to converge different evaluations around a similar value that defines a coherent and real online reputation. The indicator proposed is tested on lodgings of distinct categories in different tourism destinations. Among the aims of the study is to try to provide a simple and practical method for directors to improve the management of hotel communication on the Internet. This is an issue for which research should propose methodologies because it is a new challenge for the competitiveness of accommodations. Full article

Despite the widespread agreement on the importance of customer value proposition (CVP) as one of the most critical aspects of business models (BM), little is known about how strategically valuable organizational resources may contribute to the transformation of CVP. This paper aims to develop and to test a new research framework: The organizational eco-map to explore how strategically valuable resources are underpinning a new customer value proposition of a focal company. Customer value proposition hence is an encapsulation of a strategic management decision on what the company believes its customers value the most and what it can deliver in a way that gives it a competitive advantage. Being a research-based paper, the topic is approached by theoretical analysis, conceptual development, and empirical justification. The presented organizational eco-map model encourages practitioners to grasp an exact relationship between strategically valuable resources of the organization and customer value proposition. Empirically, the paper examines the role of Latvian cultural resources in the forthcoming transformation of the customer value proposition for Riga Central Market of Latvia, a huge infrastructural establishment. Therefore, marketing practitioners will find new ways of understanding customers’ value creation for a “slow tourism” destination to develop marketing strategies to engage cultural resources of suppliers with their customers’ consumption processes to enhance better customer satisfaction. Full article

New international ventures have become an important and growing role in the economics of a country. However, it seems that the literature on international entrepreneurship has paid little attention to their employees and their contribution to the success of these firms in international markets. The employee may be a key point in explaining their rapid and fruitful international development, i.e., increasing the international entrepreneurial orientation of the company. Using case study methodology, this investigation aims to unveil the human resource management in international new ventures, complete previous models explaining these organizations, and contribute to a better understanding of their international success. The findings show that the entrepreneurs aim to foster employee entrepreneurial behavior by implementing certain human resource practices. Full article

Social investment programs are designed to provide opportunities to the less privileged so that they can contribute to the socioeconomic development of society. Stakeholders in social safety net programs (SSNPs) target vulnerable groups, such as the urban poor, women, the unemployed, and the elderly, with initiatives that have a transformative impact. Inadequate policy awareness remains a challenge, resulting in low participation rates in SSNPs. To achieve all-inclusive development, deliberate policies and programs that target this population have to be initiated by government, corporate bodies, and public-minded individuals. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques could play an important role in improving the managerial decision support and policy-making process of SSNPs and increasing the social resilience of urban populations. To enhance managerial decision-making in social investment programs, we used a Bayesian network to develop an intelligent decision support system called the Social Safety Net Expert System (SSNES). Using the SSNES, we provide an advisory system to stakeholders who make management decisions, which clearly demonstrates the efficacy of SSNPs and inclusive development. Full article

Previous research has emphasized the importance of entrepreneurial characteristics for international entrepreneurship, hence the application of concepts such as entrepreneurial orientation and global mindset to the study of entrepreneurial internationalization tendencies (EIT). However, literature does not adequately address how EIT differ between countries or manifest in fragile country settings. We address this gap through a quantitative study to investigate EIT in two national settings that largely differ in terms of development, institutional stability, and culture. Through the lens of the institutional theory and the mindset theory, we therefore piloted the study on 112 high-growth startups in Germany and Pakistan. Our findings show, that while entrepreneurs in Germany and Pakistan show comparable levels of innovativeness and proactiveness, they significantly differ in other EIT measures. German entrepreneurs appear to have higher levels of risk-taking, which when explained through the institutional theory lens can be attributed to the higher institutional stability and support as well as social security in Germany. This potentially makes engagement in risky activities, such as business internationalization, more appealing than in Pakistan. However, despite having lower international cognition and international knowledge compared to Germany, Pakistani entrepreneurs appear to exhibit higher degrees of international behavior. Full article

Currently, lodgings’ competitiveness depends on pricing, based on the online reputation measured by quantitative scales of variables. The purpose of this article is to analyze the different prices set by lodgings by season in relation to the variables that measure their online reputation. This is an essential aspect in determining prices competitively in a constantly changing market. The study analyzes the offer of three tourist destinations (Gran Canaria and Tenerife in Spain and Agadir in Morocco) and online customer reviews on the quality of service, value, and added value obtained from Booking.com. Bivariate regressions with different functions were carried out to determine which one best matches these variables to the prices. The results show that added value has the greater relationship with prices. The cubic and quadratic functions have the best fit between quality of service and added value with regard to lodging prices. Based on the results obtained, it is possible to determine the most competitive prices lodgings can set depending on the quality of service and the added value offered to customers. To the extent that destinations from different countries are analyzed, the research reaches an international scope that is in line with the competitive reality of the tourism market. Full article

In the paper, we investigate the role of smart building or green building innovations on the Polish real estate market using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method on the group of experts (consultants, managers, brokers) that are active on the office market in Krakow (study area). The findings point towards the highest relevance of the localisation factor, but also at the relatively low importance of the features of a sustainable building: building automation and information technology systems, as well as energy efficiency or certification. The findings suggest that despite the growing interest in sustainability and technological advancement amongst office market participants in Krakow, the relative importance of smart and green building features in their decision-making processes is relatively low. The study has some interesting practical implications. The knowledge regarding the relative importance of decision criteria can be valuable for developers and investors because the anticipation of tenants’ expectations is directly linked with return on investment and innovation premiums. Full article

This paper argues that elected politicians may strengthen their political leadership role by initiating, orchestrating and engaging in the co-creation of public value outcomes. The collaborative turn in public value theory shows how public managers may mobilize the knowledge, ideas and resources of users, citizens and organized stakeholders, but it has so far neglected the role of elected politicians who tend to be reduced to a legitimizing sounding board for public managers aiming to advance public value creation in collaboration with a plethora of public and private actors. This paper seeks to compensate this benign neglect by advancing a new notion of ‘interactive political leadership’. This new construct aims to conceptualize the way that elected politicians may develop new and better policy solutions through a problem-focused interaction with relevant and affected actors from the economy and civil society, including users, volunteers, citizens and other lay actors. The theoretical argument about the development of interactive political leadership, which takes us beyond the traditional forms of sovereign political leadership that perceives politicians as ‘elected kings’, is illustrated by empirical examples drawn from local, national and supranation levels of government. Full article

The growing importance of sustainable development, especially regarding environmental issues, contributes to shaping new trends at the level of enterprises. Sustainable development is perceived as a source of new entrepreneurial opportunities that serve to solve social and environmental problems. The main objective of this study is to identify factors supporting and hindering the development of enterprise innovativeness exemplified by the bioeconomy sector in Poland. A research analysis was based on the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) model. The study employed the method of critical literature analysis, as well as qualitative methods, such as individual direct interviews with experts and smart labs with 252 enterprises from the economic sector. The results of the research analysis show that the innovative activity of enterprises in the bioeconomy sector depends on external, as well as internal, factors. This is particularly important, owing to the impact of enterprises on the environment and on society, as they contribute to the creation and implementation of new, more sustainable production and consumption models. Full article

The issue of the paper is devoted to the oligopolistic market structure, which is a popular form of imperfect competition occurring in the current market economies. The main aim of the paper is to quantify the selected oligopolistic structure of the telecom industry in the Slovak market in the period 2013–2017. We subjected the oligopoly to concentration analysis of the market to quantify and assess the competitive environment in which mobile providers are operating. Market concentration was measured while using specific indicators of market concentration CR2, CR3, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, Lorenz curve, Gini coefficient, and coefficient of variation, using the information on total revenues of operators, the share of mobile operators on total revenues, number of active customers, and the penetration of SIM cards. The calculated values of the selected market concentration indices in the telecom sector proved that the mobile operators market is highly concentrated. The services that are offered by operators are not identical, and they are differentiated based on price, quality, availability, or the target group of customers. We also identified the entry barriers, which can be categorized to strategic, economic, technical, and time barriers. The Slovak telecom sector is an oligopoly where competitors offer slightly differentiated products; however, the competitive environment in which they operate is highly concentrated and competition needs to be regulated to achieve the sustainable development of the telecommunication sector. Full article

Are the MBA programs really designed to foster entrepreneurial minds? Answering this question is the main objective of our work. After a literature review we identified several programs’ characteristics that promote entrepreneurship. Using a sample of 99 executive or part-time MBA programs, we found that the diversity in this sector is high. Not all the programs have been designed to foster entrepreneurship behavior; moreover, most of them do not even have an entrepreneurship subject in their curriculum. Nevertheless, other dimensions that favor this type of behavior, like internationality, are widespread in the European MBA market. Full article

Tourism causes important environmental impacts and can generate great pressure on local resources, such as land, water, energy and food, generating large amounts of waste, as well as problems of congestion, noise and air pollution. The circular economy is presented as an alternative model to the linear model, which recognizes the fundamental role of the environment, its functions and the interaction between the environment and the economic system. The hotel sector and the tourism sector in general, have been criticized for not adequately addressing environmental problems and global warming. In order to carry out the transition to a circular economy (CE), it is essential to innovate in business models, designing a circular business model. The objective of this work is to design guidelines on possible actions and opportunities that allow us to carry out a successful transition towards a circular model in hotel companies, as well as to design a model for this transition in a tourism destination, analyzing the roles of the different agents in this transition. Findings identified the main opportunities and benefits of this transition in the hotel sector and describes a three-axis model to carry out this transition in a tourism destination, identifying the roles of public administrations and DMOs, resident population and the tourism sector. Future research implications are also discussed. Full article