Top Management Team Diversity and International Expansion: Spanish Companies in China

This study investigates the relationship between diversity in the Top Management Team (TMT) of Spanish firms and the firms’ willingness to further expand in China, as a proxy for their international success. Data from Spanish companies with direct investment in China were collected through a questionnaire. Regression analyses were carried out to test the differential influences of multiple forms of TMT demographic diversity (age, gender, tenure, and functional experience). The moderating effect of conflict in an uncertain environment is also examined, as this offers potentially novel insights into the determinants of success in emerging countries. Results show that the effects of TMT diversity on international success are very much influenced by the perception of the conflict related to investment in a non-traditional market. The findings highlight the relevant negative role that conflict can exert in diverse TMTs in a growing developing economy.

Career patterns of marketing managers in top European football clubs

PurposeThe goal of this research was to explore career patterns of senior marketing managers in the best European football clubs (SMMEFCs).Design/methodology/approachThe data came from the LinkedIn profiles of current and past SMMEFCs. Firstly, the optimal matching algorithm was used to determine clusters of pathways leading to a first SMMEFC position based on the main activity of the employing organisation. Secondly, these patterns were compared in terms of variables depicting the career paths, clubs and managers. Finally, the evolution of the post-SMMEFC careers was analysed.FindingsPeople in their first SMMEFC positions are mainly male with a university degree in business and marketing, and with a predominantly functional experience in marketing. There are five ways to become an SMMEFC: through business (40% of the sample), football (32%), other sports (11%), marketing and communication (11%), and media (6%). As the majority of SMMEFCs come to their positions from outside the sporting world, the specificity of the football industry is not a serious obstacle. Instead, the careers are bounded by functional marketing experience. Among the individual sequences leading to a first SMMEFC position, only around half of the football cluster may be considered traditional careers. Football, and sports in general, seem attractive for post-SMMEFC career development for the majority of managers coming from all pathways.Originality/valueThe study is the first one to quantify career patterns in professional sports management. It provides new insights about marketing careers and practice in European club football.

Situating the Situationists: The Disruption of a Domesticated Architecture

<p>This research seeks to place Situationist theory into a domestic context through a critical reading of Guy Debord and the Internationale Situationnistes’ writings. Challenging the notion of a domesticated architecture, Situationist techniques and strategies are used to test new ground in the interpretation of a domestic situation. Two techniques explored are the dérive and détournement. In Guy Debord’s Theory of Dérive, the dérive is described as "a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences (Knabb 52)." This technique was used by the Situationists as a way of experiencing a city through the possibilities provided by the "terrain and the encounters they find there (52)." Adding to this definition, Jonathan Hill in Actions of Architecture describes the dérive as "confront[ing] the habitual and functional experience of the city (Hill 67). Détournement, described by the Situationists as 'the re-use of pre-existing artistic elements in a new ensemble (Knabb 67)." is a way of constructing new meanings and expressions for previously defined elements. In A User’s Guide to Détournement, Debord outlines several 'laws' defining the use of détournement as ways of creating situations, which he explains is 'the ultimate goal of all our activity (16)." To dérive in the domestic suggests possibilities of a continual exploration of the spaces within the home. Traditional notions of the home’s function and meaning are reconfigured in order to construct new situations; how do the spaces within a home contribute or hinder these explorations? What role does each room play within the domestic as a whole, and what are their relationships to each other as individual spaces? Détournement links in closely with the exploration of spaces within the domestic. Using it as a way of challenging the traditional functions of both the spaces themselves, and the artefacts contained within [the artefacts being the markers of function in most cases], what are the implications of this misappropriation of artefacts and space? Will these interpretations bring a greater understanding of the artefacts and spaces themselves, as well as create new meanings? The contextual critique of the domestic through a critical reading of the Situationists’ theories will deepen the possibilities of how the domestic is understood. This understanding is visualised through a reworking of an existing domestic framework, a New Zealand state house. Architectural interventions are used to create new modes of inhabitation that modify behaviour and habitual living within the domestic. Here, the role of the artefact and space within the domestic is challenged and altered to create new manifestations.</p>

Situating the Situationists: The Disruption of a Domesticated Architecture

<p>This research seeks to place Situationist theory into a domestic context through a critical reading of Guy Debord and the Internationale Situationnistes’ writings. Challenging the notion of a domesticated architecture, Situationist techniques and strategies are used to test new ground in the interpretation of a domestic situation. Two techniques explored are the dérive and détournement. In Guy Debord’s Theory of Dérive, the dérive is described as "a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences (Knabb 52)." This technique was used by the Situationists as a way of experiencing a city through the possibilities provided by the "terrain and the encounters they find there (52)." Adding to this definition, Jonathan Hill in Actions of Architecture describes the dérive as "confront[ing] the habitual and functional experience of the city (Hill 67). Détournement, described by the Situationists as 'the re-use of pre-existing artistic elements in a new ensemble (Knabb 67)." is a way of constructing new meanings and expressions for previously defined elements. In A User’s Guide to Détournement, Debord outlines several 'laws' defining the use of détournement as ways of creating situations, which he explains is 'the ultimate goal of all our activity (16)." To dérive in the domestic suggests possibilities of a continual exploration of the spaces within the home. Traditional notions of the home’s function and meaning are reconfigured in order to construct new situations; how do the spaces within a home contribute or hinder these explorations? What role does each room play within the domestic as a whole, and what are their relationships to each other as individual spaces? Détournement links in closely with the exploration of spaces within the domestic. Using it as a way of challenging the traditional functions of both the spaces themselves, and the artefacts contained within [the artefacts being the markers of function in most cases], what are the implications of this misappropriation of artefacts and space? Will these interpretations bring a greater understanding of the artefacts and spaces themselves, as well as create new meanings? The contextual critique of the domestic through a critical reading of the Situationists’ theories will deepen the possibilities of how the domestic is understood. This understanding is visualised through a reworking of an existing domestic framework, a New Zealand state house. Architectural interventions are used to create new modes of inhabitation that modify behaviour and habitual living within the domestic. Here, the role of the artefact and space within the domestic is challenged and altered to create new manifestations.</p>

The prerequisites and consequences of customers’ online experience regarding the moderating role of brand congruity: evidence from an Iranian bank

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prerequisites of customer online experience and its outcomes in banks. Brand congruity is an important mediating variable in these connections. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative approach is used to test the model based on the literature review. The subjects are online customers of an Iranian bank, Bank Mellat, in East Azerbaijan Province, which is famous for its e-banking. Data analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling. Findings The results suggested that the prerequisites of customer experience affected customer experience, which was, in turn, divided into two components (affective experience and functional experience). Besides, brand congruity played a moderating role in the relationship between prerequisites and consequences. Research limitations/implications In the model, brand congruity was the only moderating variable and other moderating variables were excluded. Further, test results were related to a specific brand. Practical implications This paper explores how the behaviors of customers could be improved in the online context by concentrating on determinants of customer online experience. The paper offers implications for the improvement of customer online experience in service marketing, especially in banking. Originality/value This is the first study in Iran to use brand congruity as a way of surveying the perquisites and outcomes of online experience in banking. The findings expand the importance of brand congruity in online experience to the entire banking sector.

Bypass in Urban Space: Creative Scenarios

Considering functional and experiential congestion in Kadıköy, the paper deals with the concept of “Bypass in Urban Space” in the context of the user-centred design. The case study is limited with the axis extending from Söğütlüçeşme and General Asım Gündüz Street which is connected to the main artery. Kadıköy, as one of the rapidly growing and transforming urban centres in Istanbul, reflects variable traumas in terms of human-environment behaviour relationships. A research model is developed to identify these traumas and produce a solution through bypassing the congestion in the area. Within the scope of the study, it is aimed to contribute to the dynamic structure of the city by creating new functional experience spaces in the capillary streets. On the other hand, it is aimed to design the spaces that lead the user to stop and perceive the environment beyond its transition function of the main artery within the dense pedestrian and vehicle traffic. By the research model, it is suggested multi-functional creative scenarios through the problems and hypotheses identified within the framework of the user-environment connection. Environmental and behavioural research, conceptual readings, sketch of ideas and visualization of conceptual studies, the designer scenarios are the main phases of the research as well as developing a proposal within the scope of contribution to the field. Most of design solutions analyses several dynamics such as bypass, main artery, in-between space, spatial conjunction, integration in urban space. So, it is aimed to design integrative mobile spaces for continuity of user-environment relationship beyond establishing a physical and visual connection.

Functional actions of hands and tools influence attention in peripersonal space

Human perceptual and attentional systems operate to help us perform functional and adaptive actions in the world around us. In this review, we consider different regions of peripersonal space—peri-hand space, reachable space, and tool space when used in both peri- and extrapersonal space. Focusing on behavioural and electrophysiology/event-related potentials (EEG/ERP) studies using comparable target detection paradigms, we examine how visuospatial attention is facilitated or differentiated due to the current proximity and functional capabilities of our hands and the tools we hold in them. The functionality of the hand and tool is defined by the action goals of the user and the available functional affordances or parts available to achieve the goals. Finally, we report recent tool-use studies examining how the distribution of attention to tool space can change as a result of tool functionality and directional action crossing peripersonal and extrapersonal space boundaries. We propose that the functional capabilities of the hand and tools direct attention to action-relevant regions of peripersonal space. Although neural mechanisms such as bimodal neurons may enhance the processing of visual information presented in near-hand regions of peripersonal space, functional experience and the relevance of the space for upcoming actions more strongly direct attention within regions of peripersonal space. And, while some aspects of functionality can be extended into extrapersonal space, the multimodal nature of peripersonal space allows it to be more modifiable in the service of action.

R&D, Marketing, Strategic Planning, or Human Resources? Which CEO Career Is Most Helpful for the Economic Sustainability of ICT Startups in South Korea?

The market performance of a company is greatly influenced by the functional experience of the chief executive. In the case of a small startup, the functional experience of the chief executive is even greater. Based on career data of chief executives, this study first classifies startups in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry into four different groups. In addition, this study analyzes the effect of the CEO’s experience on the market performance of ICT startups by deriving the efficiency of each company using the financial data of ICT startups provided in the database. This study estimates the technical efficiency of each group using stochastic frontier analysis and then uses meta-frontier analysis to compare the efficiency of different groups. As a result, the CEO group with a career in strategy and planning showed the highest meta-frontier efficiency, whereas the CEO group with a career in R&D showed the lowest.

The Influence of “Smartwatch” Attributes towards Users’ Purchase Intentions in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area

This study aims to develop understanding of the relationship between the product attributes of smartwatches, emotional and functional customers’ experiences, and purchase intentions. The attributes examined in this study include Connectivity (CN), Interactivity (IA), Sense of Presence (SP), Intelligence (IT), Convenience (CV), and Security (S) among users of smartwatches in the Bangkok Metropolitan area. An on-line survey questionnaire was conducted among 400 respondents during July - October 2018. Multiple Regression was used to test the hypothesized relationship. Results showed that Sense of Presence (SP), Intelligence (IT), Convenience (CN), and Connectivity (CN) positively influenced emotional experience, whereas Intelligence (IT), Security (S), Sense of Presence (SP), Interactivity (IA), and Convenience (CV) positively influenced functional experience. Both emotional experience and functional experience positively influenced users’ purchase intentions (R2 32.8 %). The results of this study support the importance of customers’ experiences in smartwatch purchase decision making and so the key elements of product attributes that smartwatch developers should pay attention to are proposed.

Innovative problem solving in macaws

Behavioural innovations with tool-like objects in non-habitually tool-using species are thought to require complex physical understanding, but the underlying cognitive processes remain poorly understood. A few parrot species are capable of innovating tool-use and borderline tool-use behaviours. We tested this capacity in two species of macaw (Ara ambiguus, n = 9; Ara glaucogularis, n = 8) to investigate if they could solve a problem-solving task through manufacture of a multi-stone construction. Specifically, after having functional experience with a pre-inserted stick tool to push a reward out of a horizontal tube, the subjects were required to insert five stones consecutively from one side to perform the same function as the stick tool with the resulting multi-component construction. One Ara glaucogularis solved the task and innovated the stone construction after the experience with the stick tool. Two more subjects (one of each species) did so after having further functional experience of a single stone pushing a reward out of a shortened tube. These subjects were able to consistently solve the task, but often made errors, for example counter-productive stone insertions from the opposing end, even in some of the successful trials. Conversely, multiple trials without errors also suggested a strong goal direction. Their performance in the follow-up tasks was inconclusive since they sometimes inserted stones into un-baited or blocked ‘dummy tubes’, but this could have been an attention-deficit behaviour as subjects had not encountered these ‘dummy tubes’ before. Overall, the successful subjects’ performance was so erratic that it proved difficult to conclude whether they had functional understanding of their multi-stone constructions.