Editorial

This third volume of INNOVAR in 2014 is divided in seven sections, with the peculiarity that its first section is devoted to the III INBAM conference that took place in Lisbon, Portugal, from June 17 to 19, 2013. INNOVAR was one of the 17 International Journals with a specific track in this event. Twenty proposals were submitted to our track but only ten of them were selected and presented during the conference. Finally, after a thorough evaluation (we greatly appreciate the support of mª Cristina Baptista and João J. Mota from technical University of Lisbon, ISEG), six of these papers were accepted with minor or major revision effectively carried out by the authors.

The first one, “internal employability as a strategy for key employee retention”, analyze the relationship of internal employability with turnover intention and organizational citizenship behavior, proposing labor satisfaction and commitment as intermediating variables, by using structural equation modeling (LISREL). The second one, “the effects of the global financial crisis on Brazilian banking efficiency”, focuses on the recent history of the market structure of the Brazilian banking sector, as well as the effects of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s on its overall relative efficiency, by using data envelopment analysis. The third article, entitled “the role of intellectual capital and entrepreneurial characteristics as innovation drivers”, analyze the influence of intellectual capital as well as personal characteristics of entrepreneurs on firms innovation results, using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The fourth paper, “Corporate risk in family businesses under economic crisis”, focuses on the possibility of asymmetrical corporate risk effects between periods of stability and economic adversity. Empirical analysis was carried out using a regression model with panel data. The aim of the fifth article, “exploring data collection innovations by examining the effects of relationship marketing on performance in times of crisis”, is twofold: a) to test a model that relates Relationship marketing (RM) efforts with performance using structural equation modelling; and b) to explore innovative and more effective data collection tools to be employed in a marketing research context. Finally, the last article in this special section, “Corporate governance and performance in the largest european listed banks during the financial crisis”, uses panel data analysis to examine the changes in the performance drivers of the biggest european banks in the recent financial crisis.

The second section, dedicated to marketing, contains the articles Antecedents of Positive Relation-building between Restaurants and their Clients; A Relationship marketing Approach to the Provision of Education as a Service: the Experience of the University of Valencia; Traditional Foodstuffs in North Eastern Mexico: Factors influencing Consumption; and The Effects of Visual Information on Citizen Willingness to Pay for Recreational Site Improvements in Chile. The first article employs a sample of 150 restaurants to analyze restaurant-client relationships, building on the following causal sequence: (a) the value of the service delivered, (b) trust and commitment, (c) degree of success in the relationship. The second article in the section represents an exploratory approach, constructing an integral model of the relations that emerge between graduates and university by developing structural equations to compare them. As a result, the authors are able to conceptualize and measure variables related to the behavior and perceptions of graduates of the University of Valencia. The third article analyzes the influence exerted by different aspects of traditional foodstuffs on consumer satisfaction in the state of sonora, using a regional rather than a national perspective. The study is based on a survey of 1,129 consumers and employs both descriptive and bivariate analyses. The final article in the section examines the effects of visual information on the willingness of citizens to pay for infrastructural and water quality improvements in an urban recreational site, applying the contingent valuation method to two population groups.

The fourth section, on organizations and Culture, contains two articles: Developing Agility Paths by Emphasizing Work Values in Knowledge-based Organizations: a Study of Virtual Universities, and The Effect of Paternalism and Delegated Authority on Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment: Examples from Chile and the United States. The first article proposes a course of action to create agility in organizations by emphasizing work values, focusing on virtual universities as knowledge-based organizations. The second article in the section compares paternalist management styles with others that favor the delegation of authority in two culturally different organizational contexts, examining the effects of the different management styles on job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

The section on environment and development contains the article The New Political Governance and Inter-sectorial Collaboration for Sustainable Development, in which the authors suggest that the Relational model of the Welfare state tends to promote plural social and political structures and theoretical-political perspectives that are framed according to the concepts of Corporate social Responsibility and sustainable development. The article examines the nature of the relational model and its inherent risks. In the section on Production and technological management the article Integrating the Design Function in the Portuguese Natural Stone Sector: Defining a Profile examines the various aspects of design that businesses in the sector value most highly, in an attempt to identify connections between the values of innovation, differentiation and competitiveness. The final article of this edition, Colombians and New York Drugs Trafficking Networks in the 70s, which appears in the section drugs trafficking and society, challenges the widely held view that the trafficking of drugs from Colombia has been controlled by the so-called “Cartels”. Using information from Us archives the author shows that it was in fact an open business involving multiple participants from many different countries.

Dr. LORENZO REVUELTO-TABOADA
Member of INNOVAR’s Scientific Committee
Tenured Professor
Business Administration Department
University of Valencia

GLORIA I. RODRÍGUEZ L. Ph. D.
Director and General Editor of INNOVAR
Full-time Associate Professor
School of Administration and Public Accounting
Faculty of Economic Sciences
National University of Colombia, Bogotá Campus