Antonio Padilla-Meléndez

Organizational factors affecting Internet technology adoption

Purpose – To explore the factors that affect the implementation of Internet technologies and to what extent the size of the company, as an organizational factor, influences that process.Design/methodology/approach – According to the innovation adoption theory, it was found that Internet adoption in firms is a process with different stages where a company is in one of a number of development stages depending on some variables related to organizational factors, such as the availability of technology resources, organizational structure, and managerial capabilities. The paper identified empirically different stages in the Internet adoption process and linked them with those factors. It analyzed questionnaire‐based data from 280 companies, applying factor and clustering analysis.Findings – Four main groups of companies were found according to their stage in the adoption of Internet technologies. The paper established that, contrary to the literature suggestions, the size of the company does not have any effect...

Analyzing the impact of knowledge management on CRM success: The mediating effects of organizational factors

Customer relationship management (CRM) and knowledge management (KM) have become key strategic tool for all companies, especially in the current competitive environment. Moreover, customer knowledge is an important issue for CRM implementation. Reviewing the literature, we found many studies that analyze the crucial role played by KM initiatives as determinants of the success of CRM. Moreover, we found also diverse studies that show high rates of failure when implementing that strategy, so there is still no integrated conceptual framework to guide companies to their successful implementation. In this paper, with data of 153 Spanish hotels, we examine the relationships between KM and CRM success using a structural equation model. The main contribution is that having knowledge management capabilities is not sufficient for the success of CRM, but there are other factors to consider. In particular, organizational factors indeed impact CRM success and they appear to be intermediaries of the impact of other factors (KM capabilities/technological/customer orientation factors) in the success of CRM (in financial and marketing terms).

Perceived playfulness, gender differences and technology acceptance model in a blended learning scenario

The importance of technology for education is increasing year-by-year at all educational levels and particularly for Universities. This paper reexamines one important determinant of technology acceptance and use, such as perceived playfulness in the context of a blended learning setting and reveals existing gender differences. After a literature review on the mentioned topics, some statistical analysis, such as difference between means and structural equation modeling, were run with a sample of 484 students. The main contribution of this study is to provide evidence that there exist gender differences in the effect of playfulness in the student attitude toward a technology and the intention to use it. In females, playfulness has a direct influence on attitude toward using the system. In males, this influence is mediated by perceived usefulness. Some implications and conclusions are included.

Factors affecting e-collaboration technology use among management students

This paper describes an exploratory study of 225 management students in a medium-sized university in southern Spain. The influences of gender and previous experience as determinants of technology use were analysed. Furthermore, a modified Technology Acceptance Model, using SEM, was applied to explain the influence of perceived computer self-efficacy on the intention to use Internet-based e-collaboration technologies in the learning-teaching process. This was completed with qualitative data from unstructured interviews with ten students. Our results suggest that the management student cannot be considered an advanced user of the Internet. Computer self-efficacy has a positive influence on intention to use the system. This intention is also influenced by attitude towards the system, but not directly by perceived usefulness. These and other contradictory findings are analysed in the paper.

Web and social media usage by museums: Online value creation

Abstract This paper contributes to the understanding of online strategies in the context of museums as examples of cultural organisations, an underrepresented sector in the information management literature. It presents a theoretical framework for understanding the online strategies of museums’ use of Web and social media, their sources of online value (efficiency, novelty, lock-in, complementarities) and some measurements of Internet performance, such as the Alexa Internet ranking and the number of followers of museums in social media. This type of analysis has not been conducted before and the findings will help museum curators and managers of other cultural institutions to appreciate the impact of these technologies and to make better informed decisions regarding online strategies and resource allocation. In addition, the results of this research are applicable to similar organisations, such as archives and cultural exhibitions, as well as to other service organisations related to information, education and entertainment activities.

creativity, Innovation, and E-collaboration

IT–endowed collaboration within and between groups will catalyze creativity, which in turn will facilitate multidisciplinary innovation and reduce barriers and inefficiencies among people working together. This article describes the challenges of supporting creativity and innovation through e-collaboration, and summarizes the papers that were accepted for a special issue of the International Journal of e-Collaboration. Three papers were selected from among 31 manuscripts that had been received; these manuscripts were reviewed with the assistance of 46 independent reviewers. The authors of the selected papers cover three important aspects of IT-endowed collaboration: the impact of collaboration tools on process, product, and relational innovation; the impact of e-information, e-communication, and e-workflow on innovation; and design requirements for collaboration tools aimed at creativity assistance. The article ends with a call for further research on the design and evaluation of collaboration environments tailored for use by virtual teams.

Open innovation in universities: What motivates researchers to engage in knowledge transfer exchanges?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the main factors affecting researcher engagement in knowledge transfer exchanges (KTE) in an Open Innovation (OI) context, devoting special attention to specific factors such as personal and professional profile, institutional variables, social networks and recognition.Design/methodology/approach – An extensive literature review was conducted, focusing on current studies concerning the OI concept and research lines, OI and universities, KTE, and the factors affecting researcher engagement in university KTE. Based on this review a conceptual framework was proposed, including four main factors that affect KTE researcher engagement (personal and professional, institutional, social networks and recognition). The assumptions of this framework were explored in an empirical study involving 382 senior researchers, acting as leaders of different research groups, at Spanish universities. This was followed by univariate, bivariate and multivariate statistical ana...

Customer relationship management in hotels: examining critical success factors

Customer relationship management (CRM) has become a key strategy for personalising the customer experience and improving customer satisfaction and retention, particularly in hotels. However, previous research shows that these hotels are not taking advantage of the full potential of CRM and that most of them struggle to succeed with its implementation. This study analyses the main success factors of CRM implementation based on a sample of 128 small- and medium-sized hotels in Spain. The results highlight the crucial role played by organisational factors (top management support, employee training and motivation along with organisational structure/processes) and provide relevant implications for research and practice. The findings reveal that investing in technology is a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving positive results with CRM. To do this, hotel managers should exert effective leadership and motivate their employees to engage with the strategy.

Shifting sands: Regional perspectives on the role of social capital in supporting open innovation through knowledge transfer and exchange with small and medium-sized enterprises

This article explores the role of social capital in enabling knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) between higher education institutions (HEIs) and spin-off (academic and non-academic) small and medium-sized enterprises in the context of open innovation, in order to convert knowledge into innovation within regional innovation systems. It presents the findings from 18 in-depth interviews with related stakeholders, and social network analysis of relationships in an exemplar technology park in Andalucía, southern Spain. The main findings suggest that there are many challenges to achieving successful KTE in regional innovation systems: recognition, intellectual property contracts and timescales. Similarly, there are opportunities related to intermediaries, joint teams and market impact. Significantly, the study highlights the importance of both formal and informal relationships as enablers of successful KTE involving HEIs and spin-off small and medium-sized enterprises in the context of open innovation.

The influence of entrepreneur characteristics on the success of pure dot.com firms

The growing popularity of the Internet, accompanied by falling access costs, is provoking an increase in the number of users and buyers on the net, and the appearance of new organisations that commercialise their products and services exclusively on the net. At present, this type of firms, known as dot.coms or cyber-traders, is playing an increasingly significant role on the internet, although the majority have not yet achieved much success. Despite this, there have been few studies focusing on the factors that affect the success of these companies. This current work attempts to determine if the characteristics of the entrepreneur may constitute a success factor for such firms, and if so, to what extent. With this in mind, 23 cases of Spanish dot.coms were analysed and a model to explain the influence of the entrepreneur characteristics on the success of pure dot.com firms was proposed.