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The purpose of this study is to develop a better theoretical and empirical understanding of the causal and contextual mechanisms explaining the relationship between customer orientation and business performance.

A three-stage least squares model was used on a sample of 3,720 French firms with 20 or more employees.

By using a moderated mediation approach, it was found that the mediating effect of environmental customer innovation on the relationship between customer orientation and business performance under different contextual factors (market environment, firm size and sector of activity) can be significantly stronger or weaker.

This analysis is restricted by the choice of one particular country, and further research should use data from other countries to develop a general understanding of the issues examined. Additionally, examining relevant mechanisms other than firm performance measures will advance the understanding of the customer orientation–firm performance linkage. Because of the fact that the majority of variables used are binary and that each survey was conducted in a particular situation and in a particular context, the picture portrayed could be biased. Because environmental issues not only concern consumers but also all other market actors, it would be highly useful to verify the obtained results using broader concepts such as Hult’s (2011) “market orientation plus” concept or the “sustainable market orientation” developed by Mitchell et al. (2010).

According to the results, to achieve market success and sustain a competitive advantage, managers must simultaneously invest in customer orientation and innovation performance. Additionally, managers should consider market environment, firm size and sector of activity as important contingencies in their decision of whether to invest in customer orientation.

This study makes an important contribution by opening up a “black box” and offers a deeper perspective on how and why customer orientation affects firm performance. In particular, rather than providing separate analyses of mediating and moderating effects, this study proposes a simultaneous analysis that reveals how and under what conditions customer orientation improves business performance.

In this article the authors examine how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the wage policy of firms. At the first glance, one may think that socially responsible firms want to attract employees via ethical concerns and corporate culture, thereby inducing a negative link between CSR and wages. On the other side, socially responsible firms can be expected to increase wages as social entrenchment strategies.

In order to correct for potential endogeneity bias, the authors employ a simultaneous equation model (SEM) on a French data set that includes 13,186 employees.

The authors show that CSR has an ambiguous impact on corporate wage policy depending on the type of monetary incentives and employee's occupation considered.

The authors extend prior research on the CSR–wage relationship by distinguishing between different forms of monetary incentives: the base wage, total wage and premium wage. Their results draw attention to the fact that the employees' occupation do matter. The evidence confirms that the effect of CSR on the wage is not to be taken for granted: it is wage form and occupation specific.

This study aims to investigates the effect of three customer orientation components – customer information-processing, responsiveness and values and norms – on a firm’s decision to adopt environmental management practices. Consistent with the literature on strategy and industrial marketing, the authors also examine the moderating effect of marketplace characteristics.

The authors use a linear model on a sample of 4,324 French firms with ten or more employees.

Based on a large-scale survey of firms across industries, the results indicate that customer information-processing and values and norms directly contribute to the adoption of environmental management practices. Furthermore, the effect of customer information-processing is shown to be contingent on market competition.

The findings have direct practical implications. When managers recognize the importance and usefulness of customer orientation, they understand the need to formulate organizational strategies in terms of environmental management practices that reflect customer expectations. In addition, following the strategic fit approach, customer orientation should fit with the specific market environment to stimulate the adoption of environmental management practices. In other words, the findings are useful for managers, who can assess the specific environmental characteristics they are facing and align these with customer orientation to build competitive advantage.

The findings indicate that the different dimensions of customer orientation distinctly affect a firm’s decision to adopt environmental management practices. In this sense, the authors argue that they capture different facets of the customer orientation measure, which points to the importance of analyzing the dimensions of customer orientation separately. Furthermore, rather than analyzing aggregate measures of corporate social responsibility, the authors selected environmental orientation as a specific dimension, which has received less attention in the industrial marketing literature. Finally, the main findings mark an important contribution to the literature because they provide deeper insights into the conditions under which customer orientation dimensions drive the adoption of environmental management practices.

The environmental sensitivity of consumers has played an important role in shaping the tourism industry. Although the green trend is an ongoing concern within the tourism industry, empirical research examining the link between green motivation and tourist satisfaction has been lacking in the tourism literature. The study bridges this research gap by examining the relationship between green pull motives and overall tourist satisfaction using empirical data from 28 Member States of the European Union and Turkey, North Macedonia, Iceland, Montenegro and Moldova. Moreover, the framework incorporates both macro- and micro-level analyses, thus offering an unbiased approach compared to analyses based on a single-level perspective. The purpose of this paper is also to compare the relationship between green pull motives and tourist satisfaction across different generational cohorts, thus offering new insights into tourist satisfaction across life-courses.

Through an examination of 7,450 tourists from 28 Member States of the European Union and Turkey, North Macedonia, Iceland, Montenegro and Moldova derived from the Flash Eurobarometer survey called “Preferences of Europeans towards tourism,” the authors used a Tobit model to test the proposed framework.

The obtained findings demonstrate that the green pull motives at the macro level are negatively associated with overall tourist satisfaction. In contrast, the green pull motives at the micro level are positively related to overall tourist satisfaction. In addition, the results show that the relationship between green pull motives and overall tourist satisfaction diverges between different generational cohorts.

These results have wide implications for tourism marketers across different European countries, suggesting that adequately managing attributes associated with green motives at both the macro and micro levels, as well as across life-course, considerably contributes to overall tourist satisfaction.

The novel findings increase understanding of the impact of green trends within the tourism sector by providing unbiased analysis of the relationship between green pull motives and overall tourist satisfaction that involves both a multilevel approach and generational cohort comparisons across life-course.

Although temporary work arrangements play a strategically important role in contemporary economic development, its influence on firm performance has remained elusive. In our work we measure firm performance from the systematic perspective, including both innovation and financial performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to test a model that specifies the influence of temporary work arrangements on the two indicators of firm performance, namely, innovation and sales.

This research is based on the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS, 2009) created by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank. As the relationship between temporary workers and firm performance could be contingent on institutional setting, we divide our sample in three country groups: European Union (EU), European countries outside the European Union (non-EU) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. Furthermore, we analyze the actual question on all three groups of countries separately.

Findings provide support for the positive relationship between the percentage of temporary workers and innovation performance. On the other hand, the evidence reveals a negative link between the percentage of temporary workers and financial performance measured by sales. Taking into account country-specific effects, the results remain negative when examining the influence of the percentage of temporary workers on the financial performance measured by sales for all three country groups (EU, non-EU and CIS countries). However, the positive and significant effect of the share of temporary workers on innovation performance holds only for non-EU and CIS countries but is not observed for EU countries.

Given the importance of temporary work arrangements in terms of a systematic approach in contemporary business, policymakers should continue to work on improving their status to overcome potential negative outcomes related to the temporary workers’ engagement. In addition, managers of the firms should be aware that temporary workers could be a valuable source of innovation; however, they could hamper other aspects of firm performance. Therefore, they should be cautious when hiring temporary workers and find the “best balance” between permanent and temporary workers.

The obtained findings highlight the importance of performance context systematic approach in studying the impact of temporary workers and firm performance. Based on the obtained findings, we may suggest that knowledge and creativity accumulation through temporary workers’ engagement is beneficial for innovation performance improvement. Conversely, long-lasting labour engagement is necessary for financial performance improvement.

Whereas the majority of research explores the direct relationship between quality management practices and firm operational performance using data on developed economies, this paper asserts that the effect of quality management practices on firm operational performance needs to be evaluated with reference to the contingency approach, especially in developing countries. Therefore, the authors empirically test whether competitive intensity moderates the relationship between quality management practices and inventory management process.

The authors employ a fixed-effect model on data from more than 7,000 observations operating in 27 Eastern and Central European countries.

The findings reveal that the adoption of quality management practices decreases inventory days only in a highly competitive market. Additionally, the results indicate that this effect is changing when distinguishing between countries and sectors.

This study advances research on quality management practices by emphasizing the importance of contingency and institutional approach.

Contemporary tourism product, in terms of its systemic understanding, consists of tangible and intangible elements. These two elements lead to the increase of tourist satisfaction in a way to provide tourism products and services that match tourist expectations. Finally, tourist satisfaction is considered as a key factor influencing repeat visit intention. In line with mentioned, this study aims to empirically test a model linking tangible and intangible elements, tourist satisfaction and revisit intention.

Using data from the Montenegrin survey called Guest Survey 2010, structural equations modelling has been used to determine the impact of tangible and intangible constructs on tourist satisfaction and tourist repeat visit intention in Montenegro.

Working on a sample of 740 tourists, the results reveal that both tangible and intangible elements improve tourist satisfaction that influences tourist repeat visit intention. Noteworthy, the findings indicate that intangible elements have a stronger impact on tourist satisfaction than tangible elements have.

Tangible and intangible elements as factors of satisfaction are analysed and evaluated so that they could be improved in a way that provides superior experience to tourists, which hopefully could result in repeat visitation that is considered as a tool for boosting destination competitiveness, thus indicating the need for the systemic approach to tourism management.

This paper extends earlier tourism research by empirically analysing separately both tangible and intangible elements and their association with repeat visitation that is mediated by the tourist satisfaction. Therefore, a more holistic approach relating the antecedents of tourist repeat visit intention is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether knowledge management (KM) practices trigger environmental innovation. Additionally, distinguishing between two types of KM practices, the authors want to examine whether different types of KM practices have the same role for environmental innovation.

Employing two French surveys, namely, the Community Innovation Survey (2002-2004 and 2006-2008) and Annual Firm Survey (EAE, 2000), the authors analyze empirically the relationship between KM practices and environmental innovation. The theoretical relationship the authors propose is tested using bivariate probit model on 1,117 French manufacturing firms.

The econometric estimations show that the investment in KM practices trigger environmental innovation. Furthermore, the authors distinguish between two types of KM practices: a written policy of KM and a culture intended to promote KM sharing. The main results are also confirmed for both types of KM practices. Moreover, based on coefficients and significance levels, the empirical results indicate that a culture intended to promote KM sharing has a more substantial impact on green innovation than a written policy of KM.

KM can boost environmental innovation, which also enhances firm business performance. Therefore, managers should foster investment in KM capabilities. They need to create working atmosphere that generates, stores, transfers and applies knowledge in order to improve a firm’s green innovativeness. Additionally, the study results show that managers can choose among different KM practices in order to enhance environmental innovation. However, managers should be aware that not all KM practices provide the full advantage in terms of performance improvement. They should know that different KM practices have differential impacts on different performance outcomes. In this sense, managers should implement KM practices that fit their performance strategy.

The relationship between KM and innovation performance has received increasing attention from researchers during the past years. However, even though scholars underline the importance of environmental innovation, the relationship between KM and environmental innovation remains significantly under-researched. The findings suggest that KM should be considered as an important source for environmental innovation improvement.