IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/1376.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Impact of quality and environmental investment on business competitiveness and profitability: The case of travel agencies

Author

Abstract

Few studies have examined the combined effect of implementing quality and environmental management within the service sector. This void is more evident if we focus on segments in which small businesses predominate and even more so if we look for highly competitive sectors that are very variable and that have high business mortality. After analysing 198 surveys of Spanish travel agency managers using structural equations, it can be concluded that practices of quality management have a significant direct impact on business competitiveness but not on this business's financial results, at least directly. However, there is a significant relationship between environmental management practices and economic benefits. This article suggests that commitment to quality and the environment can allow small businesses in the service sector to have a competitive advantage that will separate surviving and ceased operations, particularly in sectors that are rapidly evolving and highly competitive.

Suggested Citation

  • Llorenç Bagur & Jordi Perramon & Oriol Amat, 2013. "Impact of quality and environmental investment on business competitiveness and profitability: The case of travel agencies," Economics Working Papers 1376, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    • Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1376
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/1376.pdf
    File Function: Whole Paper
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Álvarez Gil, M. J. & Burgos Jiménez, J. & Céspedes Lorente, J. J., 2001. "An analysis of environmental management, organizational context and performance of Spanish hotels," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 457-471, December.
    2. Terlaak, Ann & King, Andrew A., 2006. "The effect of certification with the ISO 9000 Quality Management Standard: A signaling approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 579-602, August.
    3. Sadikoglu, Esin & Zehir, Cemal, 2010. "Investigating the effects of innovation and employee performance on the relationship between total quality management practices and firm performance: An empirical study of Turkish firms," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(1), pages 13-26, September.
    4. Yee, Rachel W.Y. & Yeung, Andy C.L. & Edwin Cheng, T.C., 2010. "An empirical study of employee loyalty, service quality and firm performance in the service industry," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 109-120, March.
    5. Eva Carmona-Moreno & José Céspedes-Lorente & Jerónimo De Burgos-Jiménez, 2004. "Environmental strategies in spanish hotels: contextual factors and performance," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3), pages 101-130, May.
    6. Wiengarten, Frank & Pagell, Mark, 2012. "The importance of quality management for the success of environmental management initiatives," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 407-415.
    7. Stanislav Karapetrovic, 2002. "On the concept of a universal audit of quality and environmental management systems," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(3), pages 147-156, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francesca Bartolacci & Andrea Caputo & Michela Soverchia, 2020. "Sustainability and financial performance of small and medium sized enterprises: A bibliometric and systematic literature review," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 1297-1309, March.
    2. Llorenç Bagur-Femenías & Jordi Perramon & Marc Oliveras-Villanueva, 2019. "Effects of Service Quality Policies in the Tourism Sector Performance: An Empirical Analysis of Spanish Hotels and Restaurants," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-13, February.
    3. Eneko Ibarnia & Lluís Garay & Antonio Guevara, 2020. "Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Travel Supply Chain: A Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-21, December.
    4. Željko Stević & Ilija Tanackov & Adis Puška & Goran Jovanov & Jovica Vasiljević & Darko Lojaničić, 2021. "Development of Modified SERVQUAL–MCDM Model for Quality Determination in Reverse Logistics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-17, May.
    5. Juan José Tarí & José F. Molina‐Azorín & María D. López‐Gamero & Jorge Pereira‐Moliner, 2021. "The association between environmental sustainable development and internalization of a quality standard," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(5), pages 2587-2599, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Llorenç Bagur-Femenías & Jordi Perramon & Marc Oliveras-Villanueva, 2019. "Effects of Service Quality Policies in the Tourism Sector Performance: An Empirical Analysis of Spanish Hotels and Restaurants," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-13, February.
    2. Elisa Calza & Micheline Goedhuys & Neda Trifković, 2019. "Drivers of productivity in Vietnamese SMEs: the role of management standards and innovation," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 23-44, January.
    3. Alsawafi, Ahmed & Lemke, Fred & Yang, Ying, 2021. "The impacts of internal quality management relations on the triple bottom line: A dynamic capability perspective," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    4. Elisa Calza & Micheline Goedhuys & Neda Trifković, 2019. "Drivers of productivity in Vietnamese SMEs: the role of management standards and innovation," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 23-44, January.
    5. Llorenç Bagur-Femenias & Dolors Celma & Josep Patau, 2016. "The Adoption of Environmental Practices in Small Hotels. Voluntary or Mandatory? An Empirical Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-14, July.
    6. Bourke, Jane & Roper, Stephen, 2017. "Innovation, quality management and learning: Short-term and longer-term effects," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1505-1518.
    7. María Alonso-Almeida & Llorenç Bagur-Femenías & Josep Llach, 2015. "The adoption of quality management practices and their impact on business performance in small service companies: the case of Spanish travel agencies," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 9(1), pages 57-75, March.
    8. Leonidou, Leonidas C. & Leonidou, Constantinos N. & Fotiadis, Thomas A. & Aykol, Bilge, 2015. "Dynamic capabilities driving an eco-based advantage and performance in global hotel chains: The moderating effect of international strategy," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 268-280.
    9. B.E.A. Oghojafor & O.A. Ogunkoya, 2015. "This paper is a case study that investigates the activities of the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC) in relation to the environmental marketing strategies of hotels in the Nigerian hospi," The Journal of Accounting and Management, Danubius University of Galati, issue 2, pages 86-95, August.
    10. Mackelprang, Alan W. & Jayaram, Jayanth & Xu, Kefeng, 2012. "The influence of types of training on service system performance in mass service and service shop operations," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 183-194.
    11. Minh Hue Nguyen & Anh Chi Phan & Yoshiki Matsui, 2018. "Contribution of Quality Management Practices to Sustainability Performance of Vietnamese Firms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-31, January.
    12. Maria-del-Mar Alonso-Almeida & Alfredo Rocafort & Fernando Borrajo, 2016. "Shedding Light on Eco-Innovation in Tourism: A Critical Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-12, December.
    13. Ramanathan, Ramakrishnan & Ramanathan, Usha & Zhang, Yubo, 2016. "Linking operations, marketing and environmental capabilities and diversification to hotel performance: A data envelopment analysis approach," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 111-122.
    14. Belen Lopez & Alfonso Torres & Alberto Ruozzi & Jose Antonio Vicente, 2020. "Main Factors for Understanding High Impacts on CSR Dimensions in the Finance Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-17, March.
    15. Younès El Manzani & Mohamed Larbi Sidmou & Jean-Jack Cegarra, 2018. "Does IS0 9001 quality management system support product innovation? An analysis from the sociotechnical systems theory," Post-Print hal-03080217, HAL.
    16. Magali Delmas & Ivan Montiel, 2009. "Greening the Supply Chain: When Is Customer Pressure Effective?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 171-201, March.
    17. Dimitrios Kafetzopoulos & Evangelos Psomas, 2016. "ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING, NON-TECHNICAL INNOVATION AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION OF SMEs," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(03), pages 1-28, April.
    18. Erlantz Allur & Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria & Olivier Boiral & Francesco Testa, 2018. "Quality and Environmental Management Linkage: A Review of the Literature," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-15, November.
    19. Blind, Knut & Mangelsdorf, Axel & Pohlisch, Jakob, 2018. "The effects of cooperation in accreditation on international trade: Empirical evidence on ISO 9000 certifications," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 50-59.
    20. Clougherty, Joseph A. & Grajek, Michał, 2014. "International standards and international trade: Empirical evidence from ISO 9000 diffusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 70-82.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Quality management; Environmental management; Firm performance and Travel agencies.;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1376. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.upf.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.