Letter from Editor in Chief

 My first words as Director of Universia Business Review will be in thanks to the CEO of Universia for the confidence placed in me, and for his words of support in confronting this new era. I am taking the helm with great enthusiasm, but at the same time, I am conscious of the responsibility that leading this magazine entails. The Universia Business Review would not be what it is today without its Founder and Director, Professor Alvaro Cuervo. Over the years, I have been lucky enough to accompany him at the Management Committee as Deputy Director. I have learned a great deal but, without a doubt, one of the things that has stuck with me the most is that we have to make changes in order to confront new challenges, not settle for inertia and self-satisfaction. This we have to achieve by having competent teams, but also through work, work, and more work. I offer Professor Cuervo my utmost recognition and gratitude. In the coming issues, the new composition of the Management Committee will be made public and we will provide information about the changes to be taken on in this new era.

We begin this issue by reflecting on whether banking’s reputation has been damaged since the start of the economic crisis, even though it has not hit all institutions with the same force on a national scale. Professors Belén Ruiz, Agueda Esteban and Santiago Gutiérrez (University of Castile-La Mancha) compare the reputations of the four main financial institutions in Spain based on a corporate reputation index made up of eight dimensions, offering operational keystones to reputational management in banking. The results show the impact of the state intervention in Bankia on that institution’s reputation. They also offer a very precise view of the differences and similarities in the perception of institutions by their own customers and those of their competitors. Based on that analysis, the authors conclude which are the fundamental aspects institutions should act upon when designing effective policies aimed at improving their reputation.

In the following article, Rubén Arrondo García and Carlos Fernández Méndez (University of Oviedo) analyse top executive (CEO) salaries for a sample of companies listed in 2010, from an international perspective. According to the authors, the main results suggest that there are significant differences both in the amount as well as the pay structure in the ten countries studied. The main difference is the greater use of long-term variable remuneration formulae in in the US, compared with short-term in Europe. Similarly, no significant differences were observed between the salaries of CEOs in the financial sector and CEOs in other sectors. Lastly, they state the relevance of the ownership and corporate governance structure in CEO pay.

Professors Eva Perea and Joan Ripoll i Alcon (Abat Oliba CEU University) analyse the Spanish companies that are operating in China, their reasons for establishing themselves in that country, a study of the difficulties they face, and the list of their priorities for the coming years. According to the authors, the Spanish companies operating in China largely belong to the services sector (56%) and particularly to professional service areas such as advertising, legal advice, consultancy, etc. Almost half of the Spanish companies have set up in the Shanghai area. Contrary to what is normally believed to be true, the majority of companies establish a business in China in order to access its market rather than to employ cheap labour. With regard to continuity, the response is almost unanimous: the majority of Spanish companies plan to remain in the country in the coming years. Their main interest lies in accessing the opportunities offered by this great market.

Mergers/Acquisitions (M/A) are currently a booming strategic alternative for growth, as they allow the resources and capacities of two or more companies to be integrated, synergies to be made, and sustainable competitive advantages to be achieved. Even if the initial motive for undertaking an M/A is not to obtain a certain brand, one of the most important organisational and marketing questions that arises after such an operation is choosing the name of the new institution. In order to create and maintain this asset, it is important to have an adequate understanding of the brand integration process and its determinants. Paula Álvarez-González and Carmen Otero-Neira (University of Vigo) attempt to bring marketing literature together with the literature on M/A and provide evidence to show that the type and relative size of the operation influence the brand integration strategy followed after the M/A.

The impact that the internet has had on companies and on society has been incredible. This revolution has generated new behaviours among consumers, such as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) which has been widely discussed in the literature. There is currently an incipient phenomenon similar to the last which, although achieving a certain level of relevance, still has not been studied. It is known as weWOM (worker electronic word-of-mouth), which consists of employees and ex-employees, on their own initiative, publically evaluating their companies as places to work. There are numerous websites specifically dedicated to this behaviour. In this article, Santiago Melián-González and Jacques Bulchand-Gidumal (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) describe weWOM, where it can be found, and the consequences and implications it could have for companies.
In the next article, María José Quero and Rafael Ventura (Universidad of Malaga) describe a crowdfunding project as a system of relationships for co-creating value. Based on that idea, the authors draw up a typology for participating agents according to seven different kinds of value co-creation. The research identifies the critical processes that enable the objective of each actor to be achieved and which must be kept in mind in designing and planning a crowdfunding project.