cube_s.gif Strategic Leadership

The increasing dynamics of markets linked with changes more difficult to foresee require new procedures and ways of thinking from people working in business organizations as well as public institutions. Innovative entrepreneurship as well the development of a unique system of emotional relations with the most important stakeholders can become a major base for competitive advantages.

Strategic leadership refers to the creation and maintenance of social, economic and technical conditions within an organization. Within this field of research we examine the influence of strategic leadership on the innovation capability of organizations and on their capability of building lasting emotional relationships with and among stakeholders.

Selection of current projects

Knowledge management in festivals
(Dagmar Abfalter, Julia Müller)

Seasonal organizations are characterized by periodic and repetitive patterns in the extent of business activity. As literature provides little insights into knowledge sharing strategies in recurrently changing situations, we study this process in an archetypal seasonal organizations, Music Festivals. Typically, festivals are characterized by a limited number of staff that works all year long and needs to develop and store relevant knowledge, whereas seasonal staff joins during the actual festival season and needs to receive and use knowledge quickly and efficiently. We explore structures and levels of participation of staff members based on their commitment, involvement, responsibility and seniority in order to define strategies for knowledge sharing in seasonal company settings. 

 

Entertainment Experiences and Value of Live Cultural Performances
(Prof. Charles Davis, Dagmar Abfalter, Florin Vladica)
(supported by the Ryerson International Research Excellence Fund, Ryerson University, Toronto/Canada)

Entertainment value is a multifaceted concept, largely used but poorly operationalized. We investigated a range of live cultural events (i.e. opera, ballet, concerts), bringing our expertise in Q-methodology, which we have applied to systematically examine individual subjective entertainment experience and the perceived value derived from such experiences. Our endeavour constitutes a crossover study between audience research, and events and live performances research. Our research builds on the pioneering works of Richard Holbrook's (1999) experiential perspective on consumer value, Sayre and King's (2003 & 2007) research regarding entertainment, the work by Getz (2007) and Berridge (2007) regarding experiences of planned live events.

 

Web-Design in Online Contexts
(A. Brunner-Sperdin, N. Stokburger-Sauer, U. Grissemann)

Consumers evaluate shopping websites based on a multitude of single cues. Recent literature provides frameworks focusing on several aspects of those online environments. We suggest this more holistic approach and indicate that people prefer online environments which are high in sense-making and exploratory qualities because it makes them feel good and comfortable. Therefore we develop a research model to explain effects of environmental cues on emotional responses and thus behavioral outcomes. The study not only provides important implications for website design in order to elicit positive emotional and behavioral responses, but also advances online marketing theory.

 

Evaluating design and emotions of e-destinations
(A. Brunner-Sperdin, N. Stokburger-Sauer & U. Grissemann)

When booking tourism services online, several web-features comprise for a satisfactory service experience. Following environmental psychology approaches we state that the perceived high task- and low task relevant cues of online environments impact pleasure, arousal and attitudes of online bookers and hence influence travel behavior.

 

 


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