Over the last decades, education quality (EQ) assurance has emerged as an important public policy issue. Unfortunately, there is still no agreement on the following issues: EQ definitions, essential assessment indicators, and the fundamental suitability of the models proposed. To fill this vacuum, we propose an EQ model that empirically identifies the resource-capability variables linked to learning outcomes of students, and their association with the competitive positioning of universities.

Faced with a panorama of growing competitiveness in which universities are forced to get resources on their own, the concept of market orientation can be seen as a solution backed by ample literature. However, the existing literature is based principally on the profit-making sector with the publications in the educational field being still scarce. The purpose of our exploratory research is to develop and validate a market orientation measure in a sampling of Spanish universities. The scale integrates and expands the theoretical proposals from previous research; it shows acceptable levels of reliability and validity while allowing the setting-up of future lines of research in the area.

Ante un panorama de competitividad creciente en el cual las universidades están obligadas a conseguir recursos por su propio desempeño, el concepto de Orientación al Mercado se presenta como una solución respaldada por amplia literatura. Sin embargo, la literatura existente se basa principalmente en el sector con fines de lucro, mientras las publicaciones sobre el sector educativo aún son escasas. El propósito de esta investigación exploratoria es desarrollar y validar un instrumento de medida de la Orientación al Mercado en una muestra de universidades españolas. La escala integra y expande las proposiciones teóricas de investigaciones previas, muestra aceptables niveles de fiabilidad y validez y permite establecer futuras líneas de investigaciones en el área.

The literature acknowledges the importance of the education in Economics and Business Administration for the competitiveness of all countries. However, what exactly is educational quality in this discipline has been insufficiently studied. The objective of this paper is to contribute in this area by putting forward a conceptual model to assess and monitor quality in higher education. Our study intends to provide information that is significant to the lecturers and higher education managers that compete in an international knowledge-based economy, and particularly in Europe, and more precisely in Spain, in the European Higher Education Area.

This study proposes and tests a model of educational quality in marketing management incorporating resource-capability variables linked to learning outcomes for students and the competitive positioning of universities. Drawing on resource-dependence theory, the study develops a comprehensive model for measuring educational quality. The hypothesised relationships in the model are tested with a sample of Spanish university teachers using a two-stage least squares regression analysis, while controlling for the possible effect of the public/private nature of the university. The results validate the model and show that educational capabilities are reliable variables for predicting the educational quality of marketing-management programs at Spanish universities. As with all educational research, certain problems are acknowledged with respect to the data and the theoretical constructs that are ...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept used by firms to obtain competitiveness. Although the focus of academic research has been on identifying the link between financial and social performance, the causal evidence of this relationship remains unclear. Our research attempts to fill this gap by validating hypotheses indicating that the effect of CSR on business competitiveness requires integrating other variables. The literature review shows limited research conducted on CSR and professional sports in emerging countries. Our article fills these gaps by investigating the effect of CSR on competitiveness of football teams. Our results will expand the applicability of CSR to other organizations, while at the same time offering recommendations to a sector with economic and sociological global repercussions.

This article aims to respond to recent demands for more in-depth study on how consumers use brand-associated images to shape their attitudes to buying. A multi-attribute design is used to analyze how certain variables among buyers (ethnocentrism and similarity) are related to brand images (country and product) in the formation of attitudes within an international context. This research is based on a sample of 215 international experts from 31 countries whose responses were analyzed with structural equation modeling. The results obtained have implications for academics, government officials and directors of international marketing. Among the contributions made by the present study is its attempt to clarify the existing literature regarding the causes and effects of brand images and, as well, the measures it develops to make certain key variables (as indicated in the literature) operationa...

Based on empirical information from the Peruvian mining sector, a model is proposed that relates social conflict, social license to operate, and the value of extractive companies, in order to contribute to the understanding of socio-entrepreneurial dynamics of the extractive sector. The variables used in the model are the price of mining shares, the official record of conflicts, and social licenses. Using multivariate linear regression, it is found that the increase in social conflicts decreases the value of the companies and that the social license to operate has a positive effect on this variable; moreover, it moderates the impact of the conflict on the value of the company. The study empirically confirms the social and economic relationships between extractive companies and communities, and guides managers, politicians, and authorities to prevent conflicts. It also contributes to clos...