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Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to test whether households with members that experience job loss shocks are able to protect their previous level of consumption. The paper also tests whether consumption protection is affected when spells persist through time.Design/methodology/approach– The paper estimates an intertemporal consumption model, where households try to smooth their marginal utility over time. For that purpose it analyses Spanish household budget surveys that span a long period, 1999-2012, including the Great Recession. Unlike most consumption datasets, this microdata is designed as a panel and provides detailed information for all consumption categories as well as household members' labour status.Findings– The paper finds that consumption smoothing is dependent on the household member facing the unemployment transition. In particular, only main breadwinner's unemployment transitions affects consumption smoothing. It also shows that the consumption drop persists beyond the period of the job loss for ongoing spells, although it follows a decreasing pattern. Finally, the estimation results are stable over the business cycle.Practical implications– The results suggest that Spanish households are not capable of fully insuring against main breadwinner's unemployment shocks. Further, the results show that this effect remains up to two years for ongoing unemployment spells. Thus these results highlight a welfare loss by Spanish households with unemployed members.Originality/value– The paper extends the usual analysis of job loss shocks by the main breadwinner to include the cases of both the spouse and the rest of household members, who tend to account for most unemployment. Further, it tests for unemployment persistence. Finally, it checks the sensitivity of the results to the business cycle, including the Great Recession.

The standard theoretical framework for analysing households' intertemporal decisions is the life-cycle/permanent income model. Among its implications, testing the model allows to analyse the response of consumption to fiscal policy. However, the empirical literature with microdata has yielded mixed results. This paper examines the sensitivity of the results to the assumption of separability among goods and of homogeneity across households. For that purpose, we test a rational expectations permanent income model with household data drawn from the Spanish Family Expenditure Survey. This survey contains detailed information on total expenditure, and the income presents large, exogenous quarterly changes due to an institutional feature. The paper shows that assuming separability among commodities biases the test against the model. When separability is not imposed, we show that the rejection of the model depends on heterogeneity across households in terms of their members being unemployed or not. For those households permanently employed, the model cannot be rejected whatever their income status.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between happiness at work (HAW), organisational learning capability (OLC) and organisational citizenship behaviour.Design/methodology/approachThrough structural equation models, a sample of 167 allergists of public health services was analysed.FindingsResults suggest that the relationship between HAW and organisational citizenship behaviour is fully mediated by OLC. Hence, OLC has a critical role to describe how HAW improves organisational citizenship behaviour. Basically, HAW promotes motivation for learning, and a better quality of the interactions between employees, which results in pro-social behaviours.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample is focussed in a knowledge-intensive context. Future research might consider other service sectors, such as a private business sector. In addition it would be interesting to examine a longitudinal perspective of the model.Practical implicationsThe results confirm the direct and positive effect of HAW on organisational citizenship behaviour. Nevertheless, showing positive attitudes as HAW does not assure to achieve perceived service quality. It is needed to take into account certain conditions that promote learning.Originality/valueCurrent attitudinal theories do not contemplate environments that promote learning to explain pro-social attitudes. The research offers a theoretical model and provides evidence that the attitudes-behaviours relationship needs to be explained bearing in mind OLC.

The creation of new firms is important for the economy, and entrepreneurial learning is essential for the performance of new firms. We contribute to existing knowledge by combining these two topics and considering a third one: The role of multinational companies (MNCs) as a source of learning for the entrepreneur. This approach has rarely been taken in the literature. We investigated the performance of a group of young companies created by former employees of MNCs and their relationship with entrepreneurial learning in such companies. The study was based on a sample of 175 former employees of MNCs in Costa Rica, who founded their own firm between 2001 and 2007. The control group was formed in the same sectors and over the same time period, but contained people who were not former employees of MNCs. We found a positive linear relationship between post-start-up entrepreneurial learning and performance. No relationship was found between pre-start-up entrepreneurial learning and performance. We did not find significant differences in entrepreneurs with work experience in MNCs. This poses interesting questions for future work.

The conditions of change and complexity that characterise the new environment are forcing companies to adopt more flexible organizational structures that allow a quicker adaptation to these continuous changes. States that there are very few companies with enough resources to form their own value chain. Opines this is one of the reasons why the establishment of collaborative agreements among companies seems to be one of the most interesting alternatives in order to complement one another's deficiencies. The formation process of a cooperative business network is analysed, identifying two principal stages: trial and integration. Through an analysis of the network formation process in a case study concerning the Spanish automotive sector, particular issues are identified that characterise the two stages of the process. Shows clearly that the role of information technology and information systems in this situation is very much one of a facilitator.

Globalisation is forcing companies to reshape their boundaries and causing business leaders to rethink corporate strategies within the firm. It is creating the basis for new ways of doing international business. The effects of this global interdependence are also being felt at the more aggregate levels of industries, financial markets and countries economies. The evolution of these trends has rendered obsolete some of the basic understandings of IB theory and practice, including traditional notions regarding the nature of the boundaries of the firm and even the definition of the multinational enterprise itself. This volume of Progress in International Business Research includes a selection of 13 papers from the 35th European International Business Academy Annual Conference, which was held in Valencia (Spain) from the 13th to the 15th of December 2009. This volume organizes in three parts a number of contributions to shed further light on these issues. Part I focuses on the boundaries of the firm and points at issues such as offshoring, cooperation and internationalization. Part II examines the phenomenon of networks within the context of MNCs. Finally, Part III deals with the role of knowledge and innovation in international high-tech environments.