1 About the Book
Contemporary organisations, from across the typological and geographic spectrum, are increasingly pressured to survive and grow in an incessantly changing business context, one characterised by the constant shape-shifting of the industry and market forces.1 At the same time, conventional, time-honoured strategies and tactics are proving less and less efficient in providing the means or the ends to the task at hand. Consequentlyâand irreversiblyâbusinesses are progressively questioning conventional theories and practices and are seeking to adopt innovative means to innovative ends, with innovation and capacity building being targeted within multiple modes and contexts.
It is the scale of the change that in practice constitutes a revolution for business management as we have come to know it, though it also represents a barrier to overcome for many. This is because it brings new notions, processes, attitudes, concepts and systems that experientially and/or instinctively bring about successful innovation and novelty. Positive results have been marked in varied organisational aspects of management and marketing, but, more importantly, less through focused and specific interventions, and more through comprehensive and holistic organisational redesign. Practitioners naturally initiated the shift towards this new order of things; inescapably, scholars and researchers were quick to notice and pick up on these trends towards innovation and strategic reorientation. Works have begun to be published in this domain and there is a noticeable effort across academia to descriptively comprehend and/or prescriptively adapt organisations to the evolving business context.
This first volume of the series Palgrave Studies in Cross-Disciplinary Business Research, In Association with EuroMed Academy of Business has thus been entitled Innovation and Capacity BuildingâCross-Disciplinary Management Theories for Practical Applications. This was purposefully chosen, in the vein of the above context, aiming to bring together different works of various types and foci; these, in their own individual way, touch upon the subject of innovation and change, and describe or prescribe actions that pave a way ahead for the relevant industries. The book puts forward strategic propositions and paradigms that are innovative and mesh with the trending conditions of business, presenting a good mix of empirical and conceptual works that represent a balanced array of disciplinary, geographic and typological foci. The chapters collectively reflect contemporary business management philosophy, attitude and practice; they provide direction and/or food for thought for international consideration, development and application, both for scholars and practitioners alike. Neuromarketing, family firm entrepreneurship, emerging market corporate social responsibility, creativity, motivational leadership, development assistance, knowledge streams, customer data ethics, nation branding, career development, science parks, mergers and acquisitions, and control, are all presented in the context of innovation and capacity building in the modern-day business world.
Ultimately, and moving beyond the strict confines of the chaptersâ foci, this collection of works implicitly defines an organisational philosophy that incorporates functionality but transcends it to embrace business notions pertaining to the wider contextual transformations imposed by the combination of macro-environmental developments. On this note, the following section presents in summary the chapters of the book, along with their purpose and place in the collection.
2 Book Structure and Topics
The book continues with Chap. 2 by Barbasso, Tardivo, Viassone and Serravalle entitled âNeuromarketing in customer behaviourâCustomersâ diencephalic and midbrain implications in purchase dynamicsâ. The specific topic reflects scientific developments in the field of business and a key innovation with practical implications for marketing and consumer understanding. Specifically, in the light of the limitations that traditional methods of marketing have, particularly related to the degree of subjectivity of consumer responses, which often prevents measurement of the effects of marketing communication on them, this chapter highlights the influence that neuromarketing has on the understanding of consumersâ decisions, allowing managers to directly understand the latterâs thoughts, emotions and intentions. The chapter describes the concept of neuromarketing and the associated effects of advertising on brain activity, and further investigates the subject to identify and highlight the positive effects of neuromarketing on the measurement of consumer behaviour, and to provide its important theoretical and managerial implications.
In the innovation context of this book, Chap. 3 investigates âThe role of dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities and innovation in intergenerational succession of family firmsâ. Authored by Karagouni, this chapter provides a different perspective on innovation and capacity building; in particular, it presents and discusses the role of dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities in family-business succession and the need to support and enhance innovation and competitiveness across family generations. The chapter further shows that a firmâs innovation capabilitiesâ depend closely on knowledge, elevating the latter to a key resource for sustained competitive advantage. Through case studies from Greece and Cyprus, the chapter focuses more specifically on the subjects of succession and innovation, as critical to family business survival (such businesses often fail beyond the second and third generations). Innovation-based dynamic entrepreneurial capabilities are conclusively found to contribute to the widening of successorsâ knowledge base, to the positive realisation of succession and to family firmsâ defiance of the ominous mortality rates towards not simply survival but growth.
Chapter 4 moves us to the other end of the typographic and geographic spectrum, and from small family firms in south Europe to banking corporations in rural Peru. Specifically, del BrĂo and Lizarzaburu present âCorporate social responsibility and corporate reputation in emerging countries: an analysis of the Peruvian banking sectorâ. They evaluate the influence of corporate social responsibility on the reputation of a corporation from a strategic point of view, thus filling a knowledge gap for this topic with respect to the banking sector in emerging countries. Utilising a survey-based statistical analysis, they assessed the perspectives of key executives from Peruvian rural banks towards corporate social responsibility activity, the latterâs influence on corporate reputation, and its implications for this rising form of business attitude and process.
Chapter 5 focuses on the innovation component of creativity and its link to motivational leadership and styles. Thrassou, Orfanos and Tsoukatos, in âLinking motivational leadership with creativityâ, stipulate the principles of motivation and creativity as constituting key parameters of successful management and as contributing significantly to productivity and efficiency. Their work extensively combines primary qualitative with quantitative data to investigate the subjects of motivation and creativity in the workplace, and particularly in the context of leadership styles and hierarchy. Their findings show that once both leadership and employees are motivated to the degree that they achieve job satisfaction, employees naturally become more creative. The research validates mainstream theoretical arguments documenting the effectiveness of leadership and hierarchy in motivating employee creativity, and also suggests resulting practical implications.
Repousis and Lois in Chap. 6 study âInnovation performance and development assistance and growth in four East European member statesâ. In particular, they examine the impact of international development assistance on economic growth in the European Union member states of Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia; these countries fall into two different innovation performance groups, for a period of 16 years (1995â2010), as can be seen by imposing a behavioural equation of flows (not an accounting identity). The authorsâ findings show that both international net official development assistance and official aid received, as well as net bilateral aid flows from Development Assistance Committee donors, have no statistically significant effect on gross domestic savings in two different innovation performance groups. In four European Union member states with different innovation performance, only per capita gross domestic product is statistically significant. The results are also consistent with the notion that foreign aid transfers can distort individual incentives.
Chapter 7, by Vrontis, El Nemar, Al Osta and Azizi, focuses on the âImpact of innovation and change management on employeesâ performanceâ. They term the former âcore conceptsâ in strategic and leadership management, seeing openness in innovation and continuous change in organisational dynamics as important factors in determining organisational effectiveness. Linking innovation with change, they study the impact of these on the performance of employees working in the health sector in northern Lebanon. Through theoretical and primary quantitative research, they connect change communication (representing organisational dynamics), employee satisfaction with change, and employeesâ perceptions of innovation management to identify a positive impact on employee performance.
Shams, in Chap. 8, follows an inductive constructivist approach to study âThe evolution of marketing as an innovative knowledge stream:...