The holy grail:Environmental management, competitive advantage and business performance in the Spanish hotel industry

© Emerald Group Publishing Limited G959-6119. Purpose - This paper aims to analyse the influence of environmental proactivity on cost and differentiation competitive advantages, and to explore the double relationship between environmental proactivity and business performance. Design/methodology/approach - The population consists of all three- to five-star hotels in Spain. A sample of 350 hotels was classified according to environmental proactivity and performance levels, employing a two-step cluster analysis. Significant differences between groups were examined. Findings - The results show two types of environmental behaviour (reactive and proactive), with proactive hotels developing significantly better on both cost and differentiation competitive advantage and achieving significantly higher performance levels. Hotels which achieve above average business performance levels are significantly more environmentally proactive. Research limitations/implications - The present paper demonstrates that environmental management is related to competitive advantages and business performance. Environmental management systems are more developed in higher category, chain-affiliated and larger hotels. This could be due to having more resources to develop their environmental capability. The environmental proactivity scale employed in this study is presented as a reference measure for hotel managers to benchmark their current practices and implement environmental improvements. Originality/value - First, measuring environmental proactivity using four managerial systems (operative, information, strategic and technical) is innovative and provides a more detailed approach to measuring environmental proactivity. Second, demonstrating a double association between environmental proactivity and performance provides fresh insights into the relationship between these variables

Use of mixed methods designs in substance research: a methodological necessity in Nigeria

The utility of mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) is becoming increasingly accepted in health sciences, but substance studies are yet to substantially benefit from such utilities. While there is a growing number of mixed methods alcohol articles concerning developed countries, developing nations are yet to embrace this method. In the Nigerian context, the importance of mixed methods research is yet to be acknowledged. This article therefore, draws on alcohol studies to argue that mixed methods designs will better equip scholars to understand, explore, describe and explain why alcohol consumption and its related problems are increasing in Nigeria. It argues that as motives for consuming alcohol in contemporary Nigeria are multiple, complex and evolving, mixed method approaches that provide multiple pathways for proffering solutions to problems should be embraced

The Holy Grail: Environmental management, competitive advantage and business performance in the Spanish hotel industry

Purpose - This paper aims to analyse the influence of environmental proactivity on cost and differentiation competitive advantages, and to explore the double relationship between environmental proactivity and business performance. Design/methodology/approach - The population consists of all three- to five-star hotels in Spain. A sample of 350 hotels was classified according to environmental proactivity and performance levels, employing a two-step cluster analysis. Significant differences between groups were examined. Findings - The results show two types of environmental behaviour (reactive and proactive), with proactive hotels developing significantly better on both cost and differentiation competitive advantage and achieving significantly higher performance levels. Hotels which achieve above average business performance levels are significantly more environmentally proactive. Research limitations/implications - The present paper demonstrates that environmental management is related to competitive advantages and business performance. Environmental management systems are more developed in higher category, chain-affiliated and larger hotels. This could be due to having more resources to develop their environmental capability. The environmental proactivity scale employed in this study is presented as a reference measure for hotel managers to benchmark their current practices and implement environmental improvements. Originality/value - First, measuring environmental proactivity using four managerial systems (operative, information, strategic and technical) is innovative and provides a more detailed approach to measuring environmental proactivity. Second, demonstrating a double association between environmental proactivity and performance provides fresh insights into the relationship between these variables

A comparative analysis of open government data in several countries: the practices and problems

Open Government Data (OGD) practice for researchers are intriguing to analyze as a decade has passed and showed many differences in application from each country. This difference may occur due to diversity in culture of openness, level of openness, and the level of trust or confidence of the country in opening data. Researchers presume that there is linearity in both, in meaning if the practice of government in the real world goes well then so is in cyberspace. Researchers also assume that OGD practices in developing countries in terms of success and failure are not equal to developed countries. It is interesting for researches to study the practice of OGD member of Association of Southeast Asian Nations that is developing countries with culture of openness, level of openness, and the level of trust or confidence of the country that is similar due to its homogeneity to ASEAN nations. This paper gives out description and study of the reality of OGD practices from ASEAN countries. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) through literature review is done to see the ratio of OGD practices among developing countries especially ASEAN countries

Drivers of Productivity in the Portuguese Nature Tourism Industry

Part of the Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies book series (SIST, volume 208)Considering the importance of tourism to the world economy, productivity measurement has been raising increasing interest in academia and recognized as critically important for the understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the tourism sector. Thus, this paper analyses the determinants of firm-level labor productivity of Portuguese nature tourism firms. A fixed effects model was used to analyze the impact of physical capital, human capital, firm size, innovation, competition and agglomeration economies on labor productivity of Portuguese nature tourism firms, for 2014–2017. The sample comprises 369 firms, representing 55% of firms operating in nature tourism in the mainland. Results show that labor productivity is driven by physical capital, suggesting that human resources in nature tourism are more productive when helped by machinery and equipment, for example information technology. By contrast, the negative impact of the number of employees on labor productivity may be triggered by inefficiencies, due to dysfunctions in tourism services with excess of personnel. Also, and in the case of Algarve, the presence of agglomeration economies may hinder labor productivity. Indeed, the existence of many tourism firms in the region and, therefore, several employment opportunities, might dampen the incentive to increase productivity on the part of employees in nature tourism firms. These results can be of significant use to further understand the various dimensions of tourism management.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Rhetorical enthymeme : the forgotten trope and its methodological import

Despite growing interest in rhetorical analysis by management scholars, the study of enthymemes or arguments‐in‐use, arguably the mainstay of rhetoric, has been scarce. We argue that enthymeme analysis holds promise in enabling researchers to access agents' shared beliefs, in turn shedding light on organizational processes. We draw from two key studies of enthymeme analysis; one interpretivist and one objectivist, to propose a mixed methods approach that combines the situationally‐specific, grounded insights of the former, with the confirmation, population validity aspects of the latter