Enhancing organizational performance with social media use: the catalysing effect of corporate entrepreneurship

Social Media use has become pervasive and firms are increasingly relying on it, not only to relate to customers, but also to leverage internal processes like innovation. The strategic use of these tools can facilitate also the entrepreneurial orientation of the firm, as it provides useful knowledge which can make the firm more entrepreneurial, stimulating it to find new opportunities or innovative ideas where other companies do not recognize them. However, despite the relevance of the phenomenon in current hyper-competitive environments, empirical research on the topic remains scarce. To shed some light on the issue, the main purpose of the paper is to examine how Social Media use impacts the different dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship (new business venturing, innovativeness, proactiveness and self-renewal), enhancing also organizational performance. The study is intended to extend knowledge on this topic, by providing understanding of the path firms should take to benefit from Social Media use to become more entrepreneurial and achieve higher organizational performance, developing and nurturing competitive advantages. The paper analyses data obtained from a sample of 201 technological firms located in Spain. The methodology used is Structural equation modelling with LISREL analysis. Findings confirms how the use of Social Media tools positively impacted all the different dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship, translating also in enhanced performance. This paper contributes to the literature by empirically confirming in a structural model how Social Media use helps to create business value, by enhancing proactive behaviours, promoting strategic renewal inside the firm and increasing innovativeness and new business venturing and displaying the internal and sequential relationships among these dimensions.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Rule-based preprocessing for data stream mining using complex event processing

Data preprocessing is known to be essential to produce accurate data from which mining methods are able to extract valuable knowledge. When data constantly arrives from one or more sources, preprocessing techniques need to be adapted to efficiently handle these data streams. To help domain experts to define and execute preprocessing tasks for data streams, this paper proposes the use of active rule-based systems and, more specifically, complex event processing (CEP) languages and engines. The main contribution of our approach is the formulation of preprocessing procedures as event detection rules, expressed in an SQL-like language, that provide domain experts a simple way to manipulate temporal data. This idea is materialized into a publicly available solution that integrates a CEP engine with a library for online data mining. To evaluate our approach, we present three practical scenarios in which CEP rules preprocess data streams with the aim of adding temporal information, transforming features and handling missing values. Experiments show how CEP rules provide an effective language to express preprocessing tasks in a modular and high-level manner, without significant time and memory overheads. The resulting data streams do not only help improving the predictive accuracy of classification algorithms, but also allow reducing the complexity of the decision models and the time needed for learning in some cases

Analyzing the drivers of knowledge management processes in spanish hotels

La gestión del conocimiento y la gestión de relaciones con clientes (CRM) han surgido como iniciativas estratégicas claves en el entorno competitivo actual. A pesar de que hoteles de todo el mundo están implementando tales iniciativas con objeto de personalizar su servicio y mejorar así sus resultados, la investigación sobre la temática es aún limitada. Los estudios existentes no muestran resultados concluyentes, ni describen claramente qué factores determinan el éxito a la hora de poner en marcha dichas iniciativas estratégicas. Con objeto de cubrir este gap, usando una muestra de 93 hoteles españoles, analizamos cuáles son los determinantes del éxito de los procesos de gestión del conocimiento y cuál es su impacto real en el desempeño organizativo, usando una metodología de ecuaciones estructurales (PLS). Los resultados subrayan el papel determinante que juegan las variables organizativas y la disposición tecnológica como determinantes significativos de la gestión del conocimiento.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Excellence and Quality in Andalusia University Library System

From 1996 onwards, then, the Quality Assessment National Plan and the adoption of its agenda by regional authorities and Universities alike has resulted in a growing acceptance by the Spanish academic community of the challenges and opportunities offered by evaluation and quality assurance activities. Academic librarians have been committed to this culture of quality from the very beginnings and in most cases have being leading the way in their own institutions. General tools like the Evaluation Guide referred to above developed to be applied in administration and services alike were of little use for libraries, so academic libraries have been the first units to develop their own evaluation guides at local and regional levels. University System in Andalusia (Spain) is formed by 10 Universities financed by regional government. The Quality Unit of Andalusia Universities convened in 2000 an Assessment University Libraries Pilot Plan to do a global analysis of the Library System. This Pilot Plan has had three steps: - During 2000-2002, a technical committee to draft a new evaluation guide for academic libraries. Based on the EFQM, because of its growing influence in the evaluation of the public sector and not-for-profit organizations across Europe. During the course of our work we were delighted to see that we concurred basically with the approach taken by LISIM. The Guide is divided into 5 parts, as follows: Analysis and Description of 9 criteria adapted to library scenario, 35 Tables for data collection, a set of 30 quality and performance Indicators, a Excellence-rating matrix, an objective tool, to determine the level of excellence achieved by the library on a scale from 0 to 10, and General guidelines for the Assessment Committees of University Departments (the basic unit of research assessment undertaken by the University) and of degree courses (the basic unit of assessment of teaching personnel). - In 2002-2004, a coordination committee drove the assessment process of 9 libraries and tested materials and evaluation methodology. The Pilot Plan has finalised with External Evaluation for 5 External Committee formed by librarians, faculties and EFQM methodology specialist. The aim of this paper is explain different parts and strong points of this process and how EFQM is suitable for all kind of librarie

Desarrollo de un modelo de éxito para la implementación del CRM en hoteles españoles

La gestión de relaciones con clientes (CRM) constituye una herramienta clave para la gestión estratégica actual. No obstante, a pesar de la relevancia del concepto, que consideramos como iniciativa estratégica posibilitada por las TI, sigue sin existir un marco conceptual que guíe a las empresas en su exitosa implementación. Por ello, en el presente trabajo, revisando la literatura sobre el CRM detectamos sus Factores Clave de Éxito y en base a ello proponemos un modelo de éxito para su implementación. La validación empírica del modelo fue desarrollada en el sector hotelero, con una muestra de 153 hoteles españoles. Como principales conclusiones podemos resaltar la importancia fundamental que ejercen las variables organizativas (aspectos relacionados con el liderazgo, gestión de recursos humanos, integración funcional y estructura organizativa) en los resultados de la implementación del CRM.Today customer relationship management is considered as a key tool for strategic management, particularly enabled by IT. However, despite its relevance, there is still no conceptual framework to guide companies in their successful implementation. Therefore, in this work, after conducting a review of the CRM literature, the their key success factors are defined and a success model for its implementation is proposed. A empirical validation of the model was developed in the hospitality sector, with a sample of 153 Spanish hotels. As conclusions the fundamental importance that organizational variables (lidership, Human Resource exert on the results of the implementation of CRM are highlighted

Genetic purging in captive endangered ungulates with extremely low effective population sizes

Inbreeding threatens the survival of small populations by producing inbreeding depression, but also exposes recessive deleterious effects in homozygosis allowing for genetic purging. Using inbreeding-purging theory, we analyze early survival in four pedigreed captive breeding programs of endangered ungulates where population growth was prioritized so that most adult females were allowed to contribute offspring according to their fitness. We find evidence that purging can substantially reduce inbreeding depression in Gazella cuvieri (with effective population size Ne = 14) and Nanger dama (Ne = 11). No purging is detected in Ammotragus lervia (Ne = 4), in agreement with the notion that drift overcomes purging under fast inbreeding, nor in G. dorcas (Ne = 39) where, due to the larger population size, purging is slower and detection is expected to require more generations. Thus, although smaller populations are always expected to show smaller fitness (as well as less adaptive potential) than larger ones due to higher homozygosis and deleterious fixation, our results show that a substantial fraction of their inbreeding load and inbreeding depression can be purged when breeding contributions are governed by natural selection. Since management strategies intended to maximize the ratio from the effective to the actual population size tend to reduce purging, the search for a compromise between these strategies and purging could be beneficial in the long term. This could be achieved either by allowing some level of random mating and some role of natural selection in determining breeding contributions, or by undertaking reintroductions into the wild at the earliest opportunity

La vida animal en un planeta humanizado: efectos sobre aves y mamíferos de los cambios en el paisaje producidos por el hombre en España

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Ecología. Fecha de lectura: 01-02-2016Esta tesis tiene embargado el acceso al texto completo hasta el 01-02-2019Esta tesis doctoral ha sido financiada por una beca de Formación de Personal Universitario del Ministerio de Educación (FPU: AP2008-00577) y el proyecto CGL2008-02567 del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación

Seguridad democrática y militarización en Colombia : más allá del conflicto armado

El objetivo de este estudio es analizar hasta qué punto el proceso de militarización en Colombia, que se viene dando en la última década como parte de la llamada política de seguridad, ha incidido en la agudización de la violencia, el desplazamiento forzado y la violación de los derechos humanos, justificado en la derrota a la insurgencia mediante la confrontación militar. El aumento en el pie de fuerza no ha dado lugar a mayor seguridad ni al fin del conflicto armado; por el contrario, ha generado pérdida de libertades civiles y políticas. En el artículo se mencionan las principales características desarrolladas durante la vigencia de esta política