Book Description

In this thematic issue of the Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, entitled Qualitative Research in Economics and Management Sciences, the authors used many quantitative methods and research models, e.g. SEM, PLS-SEM, or probit models (Table 1). Each of these approaches is characterized by methodological rigor and an assessment of the reliability and validity of the research instruments used. Pini and Tchorek (2022) analyze the determinants of exports in two European, culturally related countries, such as Italy and Poland, using an econometric and probit model, which implies a normal distribution of errors and is adapted to binary responses (excluding size and age variables). The authors investigate the influence of many independent variables (size, age, management by family members or external managers) on the dependent variable (export), controlling the research model by product and process innovation, location in a less developed region, operations in a high/medium-high technology-intensive sector or cooperation with many banks. The results confirm the authors' initial assumptions that the size of companies influences the exports of the surveyed countries; the age of companies exporting their goods is more important in Italy than in Poland, where no such impact has been recorded. In addition, management by an external manager increases the likelihood of exports for younger family businesses in Italy and smaller family businesses in Poland. The authors also showed that product innovation is the engine of exports in Italy and Poland, and geographic location affects the likelihood of exports in Italy, but not in Poland. In other studies, Paulino (2022) presents the growing business analytics and business intelligence in the Philippines, their impact on organizational performance, and marketing, financial, and business process performance indicators. Retail companies were selected for the study, focusing on advanced data management used in business operations. The author mainly used the well-known PLS-SEM model, and his research instrument was assessed in terms of content validity, construct validity, and reliability. The results of the measurement and structural model evaluation were also subject to verification. The results indicate the impact of business analytics capabilities (including the ability of the decision support system (DSS), business process improvement (BPM), data dashboard (DD), and financial analysis (FA) on the business intelligence level. In addition, it has been empirically verified that organizational performance influences marketing, financial, and business process performance. Overall, business intelligence is an essential predictor of a retail company's organizational performance. The assumption that the level of readiness to implement business analytics can be treated as a moderating factor between business analytics and organizational performance has not been confirmed. The next article by Klimontowicz and Majewska (2022) presents the positive impact of intellectual capital (IC), especially its three components, such as process capital, human capital and relational capital, on the competitiveness of banks and market efficiency. The authors used the following methods and tools: Principal Axis Factor Analysis, PLS-SEM, PAPI, and CAWI. As a result of their application, they emphasize that, in contrast to previous research, the process capital dominates the bank's potential to create a competitive advantage, not human capital, proving the vital role of technology and innovation. They found that competitive performance moderates the relationship between IC and market efficiency; the environment positively moderates the relationship between IC and competitor performance as well as the relationship between competitor performance and market efficiency. The size of the bank and the length of its market activity affect the market efficiency measured by the average rate of changes in ROA and ROE. The study expands the existing evidence, mainly from well-developed countries, on the intellectual capital of Polish banks, emphasizing the process capital to a much greater extent as a modern and so far little exposed component of IC in other research. The last two articles refer to human resource management. Hassan's study (2022) explores the impact of human resource management (HRM) practices on employee retention. In addition, he moderates the role of performance evaluation, training and development in the relationship between HRM practices and employee retention. Using SEM and questionnaires validated by other researchers, the author proves the originality of research in the retail sector in the Maldives on improving employee retention, a complementary approach to the impact of rewards and compensations, training and employee development, as well as assessing their results in human capital management, recommending practical solutions for the sector retail Maldives. In another study on workers’ adaptive performance, Tan and Antonio (2022) using PLS-SEM prove that the new form of remote work and the so-called e-leadership forced by the COVID-19 pandemic have changed the way employers and employees interact. Organizational commitment, teleworking and a sense of purpose affect the adaptive performance of employees directly, while the perception of e-leadership indirectly. It is also one of the first studies to capture intrinsic motivation as the antecedent of employee adaptive performance, along with perceived e-leadership and teleworking results.