Anita Zehrer

MCI Management Center Innsbruck · Family Business Center

While risk perception is essential in understanding risk-taking behavior, the risk perception of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) remains widely unexplored. Analyzing the current business situation of about 1000 German companies, we present stylized facts on the perception of risks. Our first result is that five out of twelve risks are do...

Coping with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk is a crucial future competence that needs to be addressed in entrepreneurship education, as the business landscape is increasingly unpredictable. The Erasmus+ project EICAA (Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Competences Assessment Alliance) has undertaken the development of a digital platform explicitly...

Generation Z people born between 1995 and 2006 cite gaming as their favourite media and entertainment activity. For this reason, e-sport continues to be developed as a key channel for interactive marketing. This study aims to segment generation Z e-sports enthusiasts and create meaningful consumer profiles. This exploratory study employed an online...

The hospitality workforce is characterized by various generations working together, who share different values and expectations towards their employer. The purpose of the study was to examine which attitudes differentiate Generations X, Y and Z employed in SME family hotels. A quantitative method using an online questionnaire was used to collect da...

Purpose The vulnerability of the tourism industry to an array of risks, encompassing family-related, small- and medium-sized enterprise-specific, strategic, tourism-specific and external factors, highlights the landscape within which small and medium family enterprises (SMFEs) operate. Although SMFEs are an important stakeholder in the dynamic tour...

Die Tourismusbranche ist ein bedeutender Wirtschaftszweig, der weltweit Millionen von Menschen beschäftigt und eine wichtige Einnahmequelle für viele Länder darstellt. In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat sich die Belegschaft im Tourismussektor zunehmend diversifiziert, da sich Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund vermehrt in diesem Bereich engagieren. Die...

The awareness of the severity of global sustainability challenges has reinforced appeals to harness and leverage alternative business forms and ecologically sustainable innovations to grant future generations the capability to meet their own needs. This paper aims to develop a conceptual model for innovativeness of Environmentally Sustainable Socia...

Given the great potential of Generation Y for the tourism industry, their perceptions, and opinions of family-run hotels, which dominate tourism, were explored through 20 semi-structured interviews. The study shows that Generation Y perceives the image of family-run hotels positively and emphasizes traditions, small-scale structures, authenticity,...

This study explores sport experiences. Sports are a form of popular culture. This study examines sport participants’ perceived sport experiences. The interrelationships between sport experiences and the spaces and places offered within destinations are studied. Destination space, living space and sport places and space are theoretically linked and...

Purpose Although the role of human capital in the hospitality sector is critical, the industry faces challenges in attracting workers with a poor industry image frequently mentioned regarding labor shortages. This research paper attempts to investigate the factors influencing labor shortages by presenting the perspectives of employees and employers...

Higher education institutions across Europe are called to offer entrepreneurship education. Despite the rising interest and the increased offerings in the last decades, entrepreneurship education is yet not as mature as other disciplines, and it is still underdeveloped in some faculties and institutions. One way of embedding entrepreneurship educat...

Purpose - Employing a qualified workforce is a crucial topic for organiza-tional success. Research on employer branding in family businesses has not come to a clear conclusion of which family business characteristics might be attractive for which potential employees. Aim(s) - This paper focuses on family businesses in the IT industry to analyze whe...

Die Tourismusindustrie, obwohl eine der wichtigsten Industrien der Welt, ist ständigen ökonomischen, klimatischen, finanziellen oder anderen Krisen ausgesetzt (Liu & Pratt, 2017; Ritchie, 2004; Zehrer, 2013). Das Konzept der Resilienz ermöglicht touristischen Destinationen oder Branchen durch ihre Kraft mit diesen Veränderungen umzugehen oder gar d...

Recognising opportunities and risks are central for every business to stay successful in the long-run and a mandatory capability to create realistic management strategies. Recent papers argue strategic planning is sustainable in the long run. However, little is known about the owner-managers' attitudes and perceptions of challenges and opportunitie...

Being in business over a century, Centenarian family firms (CFF) have demonstrated that they adapt to a changing competitive market environment and successfully established longevity, including an efficient succession routine and dynamic capabilities. While family firms are considered to possess a strong set of values (Lumpkin & Brigham, 2011), it...

Purpose This study targeted hospitality family business owners as essential pillars of the tourism industry. How they perceive aspects of the crisis and what they derive organizational resilience from, including the role of their human resources, are explored. Internal and external factors of resilience are analyzed alongside different levels of re...

Purpose Among all forms of commitment, affective commitment has been shown to be the most desirable for enterprises. However, research on commitment among employees in family-run businesses in the hospitality industry is scant. To address this gap, this study aims to analyze the impact of employer image components on hospitality employees’ affectiv...

Purpose Combining sport event tourism and experience economy has led to an experience-based explanation of sport tourists' behavior and the creation of experiencescapes. This study aims to analyze the interdependence of perceived experiences and revisit intention across three events. Design/methodology/approach Using a survey, data ( n = 986) were...

Taking the right amount of risk is essential for successful business. As a response to the importance of risk management, the effectiveness and implementation of enterprise risk management (ERM) systems are recently discussed in literature. However, smaller firm entrepreneurs often deal with this challenge in practice in a more informal way. Most o...

This study offers a cross-cultural perspective to better understand how time orientation shapes owner–managers’ perceptions of innovation capability in small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in tourism. We synthesise the extant literature and determine SME owner–managers’ internal and external innovation capability. Distinguishing between short-...

Purpose This study determines the influence of employer image on industry attractiveness in small and medium-sized hospitality firms by using the instrumental-symbolic framework adapted from marketing literature. Design/methodology/approach A total of 405 employees and 429 family firm owners in Bavaria were surveyed using a quantitative research d...

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a pandemic of COVID-19. The family-owned hospitality industry in the Tirol has been affected by governmental measures and travel bans in particular. The current study focuses on hospitality family business owners as the backbone of the regional tourism industry. Their dealing with the...

Successfully dealing with risk has become a major challenge for firms to stay competitive in the long run. The tourism industry is vulnerable to any crisis and therefore has to deal with a high degree of uncertainty including many risks. The Alpine tourism industry is shaped by small and medium-structured family businesses. Such firms have more inf...

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, now and for years to come, guests at hospitality venues will have heightened awareness with regard to formulating their perceptions of cleanliness. While perceived cleanliness has received attention in our existing body of literature, this conceptual paper integrates potential subconscious influencers on cleanliness pe...

Nachfolgender Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit Corporate Social Responsibility in familiengeführten touristischen Unternehmen. Zunächst wird über die allgemeine Bedeutung von CSR im Tourismus gesprochen, dann wird auf Besonderheiten von Familienunternehmen eingegangen. Letztlich werden verschiedene Handlungsfelder aufgezeigt sowie Vorteile aber auch He...

Technological developments change the way tourists gather information. An appealing website is one approach of tourism organizations to attract potential customers’ attention and turn them into repeat visitors by providing a unique website experience. Thus, choosing proper website elements addressing expectations and emotions alike is the key chall...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the pertinent issues, barriers and pitfalls of intergenerational communication in business families during their leadership succession period. Design/methodology/approach Building on relational leadership theory, the paper makes use of an action research approach using a qualitative single case study to investiga...

Recognising opportunities and risks are central for every business to stay successful in the long-run and a mandatory capability to create realistic management strategies. Recent papers argue strategic planning is sustainable in the long run. However, little is known about the owner-managers' attitudes and perceptions of challenges and opportunitie...

This chapter sheds light on family business employees’ change-oriented and proactive behaviors and the structural conditions they find to support or hinder these behaviors. A study consisting of 20 semi-structured interviews with family business owners and employees is reported. The results give the first idea for linkages to existing theory in fam...

In developing and sustaining tourism, destination management involves the coordination of various stakeholders, and theory suggests that securing sustainability, including stakeholder interests in decision-making and strategic planning is crucial. Therefore, understanding stakeholders’ interests and relationships is also essential. In the Austrian...

According to the Alpine Convention for the protection and sustainable development of the Alpine region, about 13 million people in eight countries in more than 6,200 municipalities are currently living in the European Alps (CIPRA, 2007). About 90 % of the Alpine surface is covered by Austria, Italy, France and Switzerland. Slovenia holds 5.8 % of t...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore leadership succession in families in business. Although there is a vast amount of research on leadership succession, no attempt has been made to understand this phenomenon by using an intergenerational learning approach. By applying the Double ABC–X model, the authors discuss how resilience is develop...

This research uses social role theory to investigate gender differences in volunteers at the Special Olympics and interrelationships among motivations, commitment, and social capital. Volunteers at the 2014 National Summer Special Olympics in Germany were surveyed ( n = 891). Multigroup structural equation modeling has revealed gender differences a...

Zusammenfassung Unternehmerfamilien sind komplexe Systeme, geprägt durch wechselseitige Einflüsse und Rückkoppelungen in den beiden Subsystemen Familie und Unternehmen. Eine wesentliche Herausforderung stellt die Betriebsnachfolge dar, der in vielen Unternehmen zu wenig Beachtung geschenkt wird und die durch systemisches Nachfolge-Coaching begleite...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the usability of different design methods in understanding the customer experience from a contextual and systemic standpoint. Design/methodology/approach Three design methods (i.e. personas, observations and collaborative service mapping) were applied to analyze customer experiences in two service s...

EURAM 18 (European Academy of Management)

Traditional ethnographic methods were designed for realistic observation in bounded settings. Instead, mobile ethnography uses mobile devices and complement traditional methods. Yet, our literature confirms, there is a lack of coherent definition, methodological inconsistencies, underdeveloped validity criteria, and overall limited discussion about...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how intergenerational communication between predecessors and successors impacts on the entrepreneurial family and the family business, and aims at developing a typology of communication patterns in family business succession. Design/methodology/approach Based on grounded theory methodology, ten in-...

The purpose of this research is to investigate if the perceived benefits and costs of volunteering are congruent among nonprofit organizations and for-profit sport events and how they influence volunteers' satisfaction and behavioral intentions. By means of a survey, data from the German Championships in Gymnastics (n = 51) and a tournament of the...

Purpose Previous mountain tourism research addressed economic, environmental, social and political impacts. Because limited studies evaluated visitors’ perception of their experience, this study aims to examine the tangible and intangible visitor experience in a Tyrolean alpine tourist attraction. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted Kl...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential interrelationship between different types of volunteer involvement (event involvement and community involvement) and their impact on the behavioural intentions of different types of events. Design/methodology/approach By means of a survey, data from an one-off sport event ( n =316),...

Within an increasingly networked environment and recent transitions in the landscape of funding for DMOs and destinations, pooling knowledge and resources may well be seen as a prerequisite to ensuring the long-term sustainability of reshaped, yet financially-constrained DMOs facing severe challenges to deliver value to destinations, visitors and m...

The aim of this paper is to apply a power perspective to knowledge transfer in internal succession processes of small family businesses. We argue that knowledge is a source of power. Distilling existing literature on small family businesses, knowledge transfer and power theory, we focus on the role of owner-manager and successor in internal success...

Students’ feedback on online education has become of major importance for many higher education institutions. While researchers already identified students’ success factors and analyzed students’ satisfaction in online study programs and courses, the role of expectations in students’ online educational experience has been very often neglected in pr...

The study explores visitor experience while visiting a mountain attraction in the Alpine region of Tirol, Austria, through participant observations, informal conversations, and photography. A grounded theory approach was adopted to uncover the meaning of visitors’ overall experience and deduct a possible theory that may contribute to a better under...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the pertinent issues of innovation and service experiences in family firms in the tourism industry, which are mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises. Design/methodology/approach The conceptual paper, building on social identity theory, undertakes a thorough review of the relevant literature before developing...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop and test an explanatory model of how perceived crowding and coping behavior impacts upon customer satisfaction. The paper contributes to the service management literature by; 1) identifying key factors impacting crowding perception in a winter sport outdoor setting; 2) highlighting its influence on c...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify and synthesize major streams of research on quality of student experience in higher education, to present an agenda for future research. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a systematic review of research published in high-quality journals during the period 2000 to 2014 in the areas of qu...

Zusammenfassung Die Wichtigkeit von eLearning hat aufgrund der Reichweite und Anwenderfreundlichkeit von digitalen Technologien stark zugenommen. Dies trifft auch auf den Bereich Tourismus zu. Allerdings sind digitale Lehr- und Lernformate, der damit verbundene Kompetenzerwerb, die Aktivitäten zur Verbesserung der Lernleistung sowie die Beurteilung...

Although worldwide the vast majority of firms are micro and small businesses, research on micro firms is limited. However, an understanding of processes and planning of micro firms is needed as they face unique challenges compared with larger firms. We discuss strategic planning in the context of micro firms.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and synthesize major streams of research on quality of student experience in higher education, to present an agenda for future research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a systematic review of research published in high-quality journals during the period 2000 to 2014 in the areas of...

The importance to integrate innovation and environmental and social responsibility within and between firms is increasingly documented in the academic literature. However, research on this phenomena has largely focused on large organisations. By comparison, there is a paucity of empirical research on what the implemented Sustainable-Oriented Innova...

The aim of this research was to identify the degree to which internal and external variables influence innovativeness. With this objective we address a significant gap in tourism research as, although the importance of innovation is widely recognized, open questions remain in terms of measurement for services and in particular for the tourism indus...

Gerade die klein- und mittelbetrieblichen Strukturen im Tourismus verlangen nach innovativen Unternehmern, qualifizierten Managern und motivierenden Führungskräften. Alle Akteure im Tourismus stehen vor der Aufgabe, sich den ständig wandelnden Rahmenbedingungen anzupassen, sich strategisch neu auszurichten, Innovationen hervorzubringen, um dadurch...

Studies about measuring competitiveness of winter sport destinations are rare. Subjective measurements seem to dominate research mostly either from demand or supply side; however, seldom integrated approaches from both sides are used. Objective measures seem to be scarce, and comparisons of both subjective and objective measures seem to have been n...

Book chapter to be published in Pechlaner, H., & Innerhofer, E. (eds.), Competence-Based Innovation in Hospitality and Tourism. Gower Publishing.

Since the 1990s experiences are regarded as an important source of customer value (Matzler, Heischmidt, & Velentas, 2001) and a means to create unique selling propositions. Customer value is not anymore derived from the purchased service but from the consumption of an experience (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982). Stakeholders in destinations need to cre...

Purpose – This paper aims to serve as an introduction to a rather under-researched field. It aims to provide a conceptual definition of destination management organisations (DMOs) serving as leadership networks in destinations drawing on what is to be called the DMO Leadership Cycle – a guiding framework integrating the perspectives of management,...

The impact of volunteer tourism on participants has gained interest in tourism research with popular topics of study such as motivation, expectations, and values. However, only a few studies have examined outcomes of the experience such as satisfaction and most works were purely descriptive. The purpose of this research is to find out more about th...

The purpose of this study is to develop a destination image model that shows how the overall destination image of a winter sports destination is defined and how it affects the intention to revisit. The article undertakes a review of the relevant literature and develops a structural equation model for destination image, which is tested with data fro...

Research collaboration has become an important characteristic of contemporary academia and is of prime importance for the academic career opportunities of young scholars. For the purposes of this study research collaboration is a formal manifestation of intellectual collaboration in scientific research and involves the participation of two or more...

Service quality and design researchers in tourism have long been directed by demand-driven paradigms and consumer-centred rationales. Ontologies and epistemologies are largely output orientated and customer centred, that is, performance of services, number of satisfied customers, loyal repeat visitors, overnight stays, financial performance and oth...

Service quality and design researchers in tourism have long been directed by demand-driven paradigms and consumer-centred rationales. Ontologies and epistemologies are largely output orientated and customer centred, that is, performance of services, number of satisfied customers, loyal repeat visitors, overnight stays, financial performance and oth...

Purpose – Co-operation activities play a central role for the development of a tourism destination, and require a co-operative approach among numerous different actors to manage and market a tourism destination. This paper aims to describe the characteristics of leadership networks in tourism destinations and their impact on destination development...

This paper uses network analysis to identify the pioneering scholars and seminal works which have influenced recent papers in leading journals. The analysis extends beyond rankings of scholars by using co-citation networks to visualize the relationships between the most influential scholars and works and to uncover the disciplinary contributions wh...

Tourism as one of the most economically important industries is also one of the most vulnerable to crises and disasters. This study is focused on measuring the short-term impact of a recent incidence, the 2010 BP Gulf oil spill, using a systems perspective. Drawing from two datasets measuring the performance of the hotel and vacation rental industr...

Research collaboration has become increasingly common in the tourism field. Although there have been a number of studies on research collaboration, relatively little attention has been given to conceptualizing or measuring the determinants and outcomes of collaboration at an individual level. The purpose of this study is to propose a research colla...

Abstract This developmental paper presents mobile ethnography as an emerging research method in management studies. The study aims to explore the current use of mobile ethnography within separate research fields of management in order to develop a model of application of mobile ethnography. Initial findings suggest that mobile ethnography is an eme...

Purpose – This paper suggests mobile ethnography as a method for data collection, where Generation Y customers are integrated as active investigators. The paper aims to contribute to the debate on museums as experience-centred places, to understanding how the experience is perceived by Generation Y, to identifying the customer journey, to providing...

With recent developments in globalization there is a need to further understanding of the processes and consequences of internationalization and its implications for tourism education (Ottewill, Riddy, Fill, 2005; Sharma & Roy, 1996). Internationalization is not a new phenomenon as people have interacted with other nations and cultures for centurie...

Zusammenfassung Netzwerke sind ein geeignetes Strukturmuster, um akteursübergreifende Destinationsprodukte zu entwickeln. Die Ausprägungen der Netzwerke beeinflussen dabei den Produktentwicklungsprozess und den Grad der Innovation. Die Besonderheiten wie die große Anzahl von Akteuren, die Tendenz zur Eindimensionalität, zum Zusammenschluss sich ähn...

Research NoteThis exploratory study is focused on the degree to which stress occurs on vacations, including how and where it develops, who is most susceptible, and how it affects one's interest in returning to the destination in the future. Drawing from a national panel of 110 US residents who reported taking a recent vacation, the data revealed pr...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop a vacation stress model that shows the influence exerted by internal and external stressors on the overall stress appraisal of US residents. Design/methodology/approach The paper undertakes a review of the relevant literature and develops a SEM model for vacation stress, which is tested with data fro...

People travel to different destinations for different reasons. In this study, we investigate the viability of market segmentation by personal traits (based on and exemplified by Jungian's MBTI variables) of travelers from Switzerland, by performing a data-driven a posteriori segmentation by means of k-means clustering. To identify the segmentation...

It has long been understood in the service sector that positive disconfirmations of expectations drive customer satisfaction. Using a sample of 334 travel blog postings that describe positive disconfirmations of international hotel guests, this research finds that a traveler’s home country culture influences whether or not the positive disconfirmat...

Information and communication technology has increasingly gained importance in marketing of the tourism and travel industry. Social media have literally become an integral part of the society and as such have gained increasing interest beyond industries such as tourism. In higher education, we have seen a trend towards a rather slow adaptation of n...