Volume 7 (2015): Edizione 3 (September 2015)

Modern enterprises appear to be more and more focused on their intangible assets, among which the intellectual capital plays an important role. One of its components – relational capital – is an essential value of an organization as it helps build long-lasting relations between the company and its stakeholders. This, in turn, leads to a business’ competitive advantage. With the help of a research conducted, this study attempts to assess the relations between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their business environment institutions.

The important feature of effective manager is to understand emotions in an effective method. This study looks into cultural variations in trait Emotional Intelligence among the business managers from the provinces of Pakistan i.e. Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Comparing rotated component matrixes of these four provinces revealed the four traits emotional intelligence factors, Well-being, Self-control, Emotionality, and Sociability of these provinces. Short-form of Trait emotional intelligence Questionnaire developed by Petrides [2009] has employed to measure the 404 business managers from four provinces in present article. The results revealed evident the cultural differences in trait emotional intelligence scores with the business managers of Sindh scoring consistently higher than other three provinces and the business managers from Balochistan province scores are at lowest. These cross cultural differences may have ramification for global EI trait, well-being, self-control, emotionality and sociability in business manager’s performance, negotiation, conflict management, decision making and organizational development.

This article discusses the issue of age management in organizations and presents research results concerning workers’ perceptions of the phenomenon. The aim of the research was to study the perceptions of Polish employees of various professional fields, check employees’ level of knowledge of the age management issue, determine the variables differentiating this knowledge and verify whether employees consider age management to be useful and how they perceive experienced workers.

The first part of the article presents concepts explaining what age management is in the context of demographic changes in European societies. Age management is a term encompassing a range of methods aiming at the possibly most effective use of human capital in organizations, irrespective of employees’ age, so that their work is efficient, profitable for the company as well as satisfying for the workers themselves. Strategies referring to age management should consider the perspectives of the company, employee, job market policy and demographic and economic situation conditions. In the later part of this article, the authors present the results of exploratory research into the level of knowledge of age management, the way it is perceived in organizations around Poland, mostly in international corporations. The research included employees of business and budget sectors. Respondents answered questionnaire questions by estimating, on the Likert scale, how they assess age management measures taken in their workplace, the need to use experienced workers’ potential, etc. In the authors’ opinion, because of the importance of the problem of efficient personnel management and promoting and applying age management programs, it is necessary for both employees and managers to have awareness, knowledge and positive attitude towards methods activating the potential of employees from various age ranges.

The development of Information Technology projects using Project Management Methodologies like PMP-PMI, Agile or SCRUM for software development, CPM, CCPM, RAD, XP, FDD, ITIL, JAD, LD, PRINCE2, etc.; may be a complete success or a total catastrophe, for series of reasons, events and circumstances that frequently are not related at all with the deliverables, the products being built, the IT technology involved, the level of expertise, the responsibility and professionalism of the stakeholders including the project manager, but due to intercultural factors. The PMP-PMI Model (PMBOK) describes 10 areas: Cost Management, Time Management, Scope Management, Risk Management, Quality Management, Procurement Management, Integration Management, Stakeholder Management, Human Resources Management and Communication Management. An IT project is considered successful if the customer is happy, but technically and formally if the TEAM was able to meet the triple constraint set up by time/cost/scope. This happy ending is not possible if the project manager and the team as a whole are not able to confront, attack and solve the issues associated with Human Resources Management, Stakeholder Management and specially Communication Management.

These three areas are highly influenced by Intercultural factors like language, race, age, gender, religion, sexual preferences, beliefs, habits, etc., becoming their analysis an essential task if we want to accomplish and guarantee a favorable outcome. This position paper concludes in contradiction with what is a very common believe between many technical project managers that the most important factors to take in consideration for the success of an IT project management is the careful and planned attention to the potential issues and challenges associated with the cross-cultural communication and the human resources implicated in the projects. This paper will describe the cultural dimensions, issues and challenges associated with Intercultural Project Management for IT.

Does the family involvement affect exports in the family firm? The literature seems to support this view even if the direction and magnitude of this impact remains controversial. Drawing on the perspectives of agency [Chrisman et al. 2004; Schulze et al. 2001] and stewardship as applied to family firms [Davis, Schoorman and Donaldson 1997] and also on socio-emotional wealth perspective [Gómez-Mejía et al. 2007], this study seeks to contribute to this debate by studying the influence of family involvement on the SME exports intensity. To reconcile the divergent views, our research attempts to assess the role of the manager’s international orientation as a variable moderating the relationship between family involvement and exports in SMEs. Based on a hypothetical-deductive approach, the study uses a sample data of 125 family SMEs obtained through a questionnaire. The results show that even if the positive influence of the manager’s international orientation is corroborated, its moderating role seems to be limited to only one facet of the construct of family involvement i.e. involvement in management. Moreover, owning-family involvement in management seems to negatively influence exports while some results argue for a positive effect of the family involvement in ownership on exports.

Hospitality organizations which are increasingly operating internationally create real challenges for their employees and managers to interact and effectively work with people from different cultural environments. Many problems may relate to intercultural communication between managers and employees as well as between employees and hotel guests from different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, the issue of intercultural communication has recently had an increasing reach in the hospitality industry.

Cultural awareness, sensitivity and understanding of cultural differences should be perceived as a critical issue for business success. Therefore, the following questions still need answers from both academics and the business: What kind of challenges does the hospitality industry face in view of the multicultural diversity of its markets? What kind of managers’ skills and abilities, particularly in the case of entry-level managers, are strongly needed today to manage effectively multicultural hospitality workforce? And how may educational programs influence intercultural competence development of tourism and hospitality students to interact effectively in a multicultural environment. The aim of the study is to show that cultural diversity of hotel employees and guests may create unique challenges of cross-cultural service encounters, which may provide an opportunity for service differentiation.

The research problem is to find answers to the questions: how may the challenges that emerge from cross-cultural interactions become a source of hotel competitiveness and how may the educational process contribute to the intercultural competence development, to recruit employees who will be able to operate successfully in a multicultural hospitality environment.

The study problem is discussed in the context of literature review and the previous research conducted in the hospitality setting. Implications for practitioners and educators are also delivered.

The main objective of this article is to present the relevance and possibilities of using the “retro” trend in marketing communication strategy of global brands, taking into account intercultural environment of companies. In the article the examples of retro-communication of global brands are presented. The results of comparative studies of attitudes of French and Polish consumers concerning retro communication campaigns of global brands are also analysed, taking into account the product category, as well as geographic and cultural consumers characteristics. The results of the research confirm the significance of retro marketing communication in case of global brands in current market conditions and their impact on consumers attitudes.

It is now widely recognized that knowledge assets and technological enhancements are essential strategic resources for any organisation to achieve competitive advantage and sustainability. The imperative for achieving this efficiency is in transfer of relevant information for decision-making across all levels of company structure. It can be done with well-disposed knowledge management system, that improves the overall corporate performance. This paper examines how companies in Czech Republic manage their internal knowledge associated with environmental sustainability so as to improve their overall corporate performance.

Traditionally, organizational culture is strongly connected with the culture of a particular country or a region. In Poland more and more organizations have been paying attention to it since the beginning of transformation. Managers and employees are increasingly putting an emphasis on the intentional development of culture in their own business, also during trainings, as this is an important element of organizational success. However, in Poland, which is a conglomerate of various cultural patterns, specifying one common reference point as the main determinant and the basic element of organizational culture in Polish companies is not easy. The transfer of Polish cultural patterns into a different area usually creates problems. Polish organizations also struggle with adopting other cultural patterns. Globalisation and the process of “shrinking” the world lead to the development of international organizations. As a result, new types of organizational culture can be observed. This can be called a blend of cultures or multiculturalism. Managing in such conditions is cross-cultural management. Organizations, managers and employees have to act in such a way in order to, on the one hand, maintain their cultural identity, on the other hand, skilfully adapt and implement elements from other cultures. This gives organizations an opportunity to be creative and competitive in today’s market.